“THIS IS A TRAP!”

“Yeah, I know,” Lyons growled, slipping a hand inside his windbreaker to loosen the Colt Python in his shoulder holster. “I just spotted it a second ago.”

The other men needed no further encouragement to get their own weapons ready for combat, and the van was filled with the soft metallic clicks of working arming bolts and safeties disengaging. Every car in the parking lot was dusty and badly needed to be washed, as if they had been there for days without moving. This was exactly the sort of detail that a street cop looked for to spot an abandoned vehicle parked along a busy downtown street. Now a grieving family might leave a car here for a few hours, or even overnight, but certainly no longer than that, and not ten of them. That was way beyond the limits of probability. These cars were merely window decorations to make the place look more inviting and less empty. Which meant the entire cemetery was a trap. But was it for them or somebody else? Did the enemy know Able Team had arrived, or were they still waiting for a target? Only one way to find out, and that was to go ask them, face-to-face.

The soft recon had just gone hard.

Extreme Instinct
Don Pendleton’s

Stony Man ®

America’s Ultra-Covert Intelligence Agency

www.mirabooks.co.uk

EXTREME INSTINCT

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Caucasus Mountains, Russia

A cold winter wind was blowing through the forest preserve, and the full moon illuminating the land with a clear silvery light made everything look as if it was cast in steel.

Rumbling steadily over the rough terrain, the BTR-70 “Battering Ram” armored personnel carrier plowed through a thick wall of shrubbery and came to a halt in a small clearing on the side of a hill. The dense stillness was only disturbed by the soft ticking of the massive diesel engines as they began to cool. Down in the valley below, the darkness twinkled with a million lights of the top-secret Russian army weapons facility code-named Mystery Mountain.

“Something is wrong here,” muttered the master sergeant inside the APC, resting scarred hands on top of the steering yoke. The curved banks of twinkling controls illuminated his stern features.

In the rear of the vehicle, the troops angled around in their jumpseats to look out the numerous gunports. Several worked the arming bolts on their new AK-108 assault rifles.

“What is it, Sarge?” a stocky woman asked, squinting into the night. “Think we got some more TV reporters nosing about?”

“Don’t know yet,” the master sergeant replied slowly, trying to put into words a gut instinct honed in a thousand fights.

“Looks peaceful enough to me, Sarge,” a private countered, craning his neck to glance outside.

The powerful halogen headlights of the BTR-70 banished the night, giving the recon platoon a clear view of the surrounding area. The forest was beautiful, old pine trees rising majestically into the starry sky and a thick blanket of laurel bushes covering the ground, the red winter berries glistening among the greenery like hidden jewels.

Somewhere nearby, an owl hooted and was answered by a lake loon. The master sergeant tensed slightly at that. Odd, we’re nowhere near water…

“Sir! Radar reads clean, sir,” a young recruit reported crisply, both hands working the compact monitoring station in the rear of the APC. The other soldiers merely grunted at the pronouncement and tried not to show their opinion of the young boot.

“Be sure to check the sonar,” one of the older veterans muttered sarcastically.

The green recruit immediately started activating the underwater controls on the amphibian APC before he paused, then darkly scowled. “Blow it out your ass,” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

Amused, the other soldiers openly grinned.

“Shut up, all of you,” the master sergeant growled uneasily, reaching down to loosen the service automatic holstered at his side. “There is something wrong here. I can feel it.”

The troops prepared to go EVA, pulling on insulated gloves and tightening the scratchy wool scarves around their throats. There was no snow on the ground, but the standing joke was that Russian winters killed more people than Stalin ever had. It was probably true, in spite of the best efforts of the blood-thirsty madman.

Just then the radio crackled. “Base to Wolf Nine, why are you not moving?” a voice demanded. “Confirm status, please.”

Taking the hand mike, the master sergeant thumbed it alive. “Wolf Nine to Base, we…that is, I….” The master sergeant paused awkwardly, unwilling to tell the duty officer that he had stopped a security patrol because of a bad feeling. He did sense that something was out of place, but everything looked fine on the hillside.

“Wolf Nine, report!” the speaker demanded.

“All clear, Base,” the master sergeant said, throwing the APC into gear and lurching into motion. “Nothing wrong here. We were just…using the bushes.”

There came a friendly chuckle. “Can’t blame you for that,” said the voice over the speaker. “I’d also be guzzling coffee out in that bitter cold.”

“Confirm, Base,” the master sergeant replied, checking the rearview monitor one last time for anything suspicious in the clearing. “Wolf Nine back on patrol. Over and out.”

AS THE SOUNDS of the APC rumbled off into the distance, the leafy ground cover stirred and five figures slowly rose like ghosts escaping from the grave.

Covered with frost and dirt, the Foxfire team was dressed in camouflage gillie suits, twigs and leaves deliberately attached to the material as additional disguise. Their faces were streaked with different colors of paint, and insulated hoods covered their heads to help keep them warm and also to hide their throat-mike radios.

Scanning the area with a pair of stolen Russian night-vision goggles, Andrew Lindquist checked for any guards, either human or mechanical. “The zone is clear,” he announced, tucking the goggles away into a belt pouch. “Everybody okay?”

“No. Jimmy’s dead,” George Hannigan stated bluntly, looking down at the tread marks of the APC on the ground. Off to the side there was a slowly spreading dark patch in the soil, a bent human finger sticking out.

“The goddamn thing must have parked right on top of him,” Sonia Johansen stormed, shifting her grip on an old AK-47 assault rifle. The cylindrical silencer attached to the end of the compact weapon gave it a futuristic appearance, and oddly, no moonlight reflected off the dull black metal. On this mission, every piece of equipment was either Russian made or legally purchased in the country. Even the military crossbows. Misdirection had always been the best friend of any mercenary.

“Same thing happened to me,” John Barrowman said through clenched teeth, cradling his left arm. The limb was bent at an impossible angle, the sleeve of the gillie suit torn and spotty with blood.

“Let me give you a shot for the pain,” Saul Kessler offered, swinging around a small Red Army medical kit.

“Can’t.” Barrowman grunted. “The drugs’ll make me fuzzy. Gotta stay sharp. This is too important.”

“Agreed,” stated Lindquist, reaching inside his gillie suit to pull out a map. “Which is why you’re going back to the escape vehicle to wait for us.”

Barrowman frowned. “But, sir…”

“That was an order, mister,” Lindquist said, tucking away the map once more.

Their employer had not raised his voice, but the mercenary reacted as if he had. Stiffening, Barrowman snapped a salute with his good arm and moved off into the forest, soon disappearing into the darkness and the shrubbery. The man had five miles to cover, and his left arm was useless.

“Think we’ll see him again?” Kessler asked, rubbing his jaw with the back of a gloved hand.

“Let’s go,” Lindquist said, turning to proceed down the sloping hill.

Moving fast and low, the rest of the mercenaries skirted past the access road and the creek, keeping to the trees. Reaching the halfway point, they went motionless under a spreading oak as a Mi-28 Havoc helicopter gunship moved overhead, a blinding searchlight sweeping the roadway and creek.

“Damn, these guys are predictable,” Hannigan subvocalized into a throat mike. The softly spoken words could not have been heard a foot away, but the rest of the Foxfire team heard them crystal-clear in their earbuds.

Clearly annoyed, Lindquist slashed a thumb across his throat for total silence. The burly mercenary nodded in understanding. The team was very close to Mystery Mountain, and God alone knew what kind of security the Russians had there.

The complex was rumored to be three times the size of NORAD high command at Cheyenne Mountain, which sounded very impressive but was also a great weakness. That much land could not be securely guarded without using so many troops that you gave away its location to enemy satellites.

As the Havoc gunship moved away, Hannigan pulled out a sonic probe and moved it around the sky and then along the roadway. When the passive sensor detected no other Russian troops or aircraft, he gave a thumbs-up to the others, and the team went on the move again. Only a few yards later Johansen detected a cluster of land mines on an EM scanner, and they skirted the area. Officially, land mines were banned in Russia, but here at Mystery Mountain, the military was free of most legal restrictions and did whatever it wanted.

Heading away from the clusters of bright lights that marked the military base, Lindquist and the mercenaries soon reached a cliff that overlooked a forlorn section of the valley. The landscape below was bare dirt and rock, the material churned and burned as if it had been strafed by a thousand heavy bombers. The only plant life was a few resilient weeds growing out of the bomb craters. Lindquist thought it resembled the dark side of the moon and was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Down in the dried river, a full company of armed Russian soldiers walked alongside a BMW flatbed hauling a large cylinder of burnished steel. The object rested in a wooden cradle and was securely strapped into position with several heavy canvas belts.

Judging the cylinder against the height of the soldiers, Lindquist would guess it was just about the right size to fit snugly inside a SS-X-27 Topol missile. He had not expected anything so huge and immediately began to adjust his plans accordingly. This was going to be tricky….

Four armored scout cars flanked the procession, the drivers bulky with body armor, the young gunners standing behind the heavy machine guns alert and suspiciously watching the hillsides through infrared goggles.

Their breath fogging, several of the older technicians dressed in white lab coats fiddled with the controls set into the flat end of the cylinder. Their words were lost in the distance. One of them removed his glasses to make a suggestion. The others eagerly agreed, and more internal corrections were made. Suddenly a bank of lights changed colors and the technicians closed an access hatch, locking it into place with crescent wrenches.

At the sight, Lindquist felt his smile fade away. Son of a bitch! The soldiers were right on time, but the goddamn technicians were ahead of schedule. The T-bomb was live!

“Sir…” Kessler started to ask.

“This changes nothing!” Lindquist snapped, pulling a radio detonator from his belt. “We must have that bomb. End of discussion.”

But even as he spoke the words, a gunner in one of the scout cars jerked his head in their direction and shouted something to the driver.

“They know we’re here,” Hannigan cursed, working the bolt on his silenced assault rifle.

“Too bad for them,” Lindquist snarled, flipping back the cover and pressing a button as if thrusting a dagger into the heart of a hated enemy.

In the next microsecond the two weeks of work by the camouflaged mercenaries paid off as a series of explosions ripped along the riverbed. The fiery blasts threw the scout cars and pieces of the soldiers high into the cold night air. The flatbed rocked from the concussions, but did not flip.

The Foxfire team was amazed at the sight. The armored truck was completely undamaged. This crazy plan might just work after all!

Heads reeling from the ringing concussions of the detonations, the battered technicians barely had a chance to recover before a second explosion came from somewhere in the far distance. They flinched at the noise, then relaxed somewhat. However the new detonation kept building in volume and power, until the very ground itself shook.

Even as the truck driver turned off the engine of the flatbed, a strange and terrible light began to brighten the darkness until a fiery column rose above the craggy hills to form the classic mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. Instantly every light in the entire valley winked out and the earbuds of the team went dead. But that was part of the plan. The EMP blast of a tactical nuke permanently fried every piece of electronics within the blast radius. Until shielded equipment was brought out of storage, nobody at the military facility could call for help. This gave the mercenaries a window of several minutes. Hopefully, it would be enough.

Resting her AK-47 assault rifle on a shoulder, Johansen started to speak when unexpectedly something dropped out of the sky. A few seconds later there came the whine of a helicopter spinning out of control and the Havoc gunship crashed into the trees on the opposite side of the valley.

Down at the flatbed, the technicians were frantically shouting into radios for help. Except for one man with silver hair and thick glasses. Fumbling in his pockets, the scientist unearthed a keycard from his clothing. It was attached to his belt with a slim chain.

“That’s him!” Lindquist stated.

Aiming their crossbows, Kessler and Johansen fired, the long quarrels slamming into the scientist. Gushing blood, he tumbled off the flatbed, and the mercenaries fired again, pinning him securely to a truck tire.

“Do it again,” Lindquist snapped just as a hot wind blew along the valley, rustling every tree and sending flocks of startled birds streaming into the starry heavens.

“Too late!” Hannigan shouted.

Quickly, Lindquist and the mercenaries grabbed the nearest tree and held on tight. Somewhere a pistol shot rang out, closely followed by another, then several more that became a fusillade of rounds, the crackling rising in volume until it was a near deafening roar. The wind abruptly turned bitterly cold as a wave of blackness swelled from the distant mountains.

“Here it comes!” Kessler shouted, closing his eyes.

Rapidly growing in power, the tidal wave of escaping water from the nuked hydroelectric dam thundered along the dried riverbed. The deluge was filled with the countless bodies of Russian soldiers, civilians, motorcycles, cars and jetfighters.

Unstoppable, the Mystery Mountain lake poured over the flatbed, sweeping up the score of fresh corpses and the screaming technicians. For a chaotic minute, the valley was awash with turbulent waters, the foaming rush almost reaching the mercenary team. Then the rampaging cascade subsided, leaving the muddy ground covered with mounds of wreckage. All of the bodies were gone, washed completely away, except for the one scientist pinned to the tire of the armored flatbed. During the deluge, the vehicle had shifted position by a hundred yards, only to become trapped by the outcroppings of bedrock jutting up from the old riverbed.

Checking the radiation counter strapped to his wrist, Lindquist grunted in annoyance and dropped his backpack to retrieve a protective NBC environment suit. Stepping inside, he zipped it closed and quickly started down the slippery slope toward the flatbed lying sideways amid the assorted debris. The steel cylinder was clearly still strapped to the truck and, aside from dripping water, seemed completely undamaged. Excellent.

Donning their own protective suits, Hannigan and Johansen followed Lindquist, leaving Kessler alone on the hillside, thumbing a fat 30 mm round into the grenade launcher attached beneath the barrel of the AK-47.

Going to the sodden corpse pinned to the truck tire, Lindquist used a pair of bolt cutters to free the keycard. Climbing onto the flatbed, he fumbled to find the slot on the end of the T-bomb, then slipped the keycard inside. There was a soft beep, then the service panel disengaged and swung open wide. Knowing that all of the controls had been reversed as a security measure, Lindquist calmly pressed the detonation button on a small keypad. There was a brief buzzing, and he stopped breathing. But the internal lights dimmed and faded away completely.

“It’s deactivated,” Lindquist announced, tucking the precious card into a belt pouch, which he zipped shut. His hands were shaking from the adrenaline overload, and the man was glad the bulky NBC suit hid the fact from the combat veterans.

Suddenly machine gun fire erupted and a BTR-70 jounced out of the forest, a dozen weapons chattering from every gunport of the armored personnel carrier.

Caught in the glare of the halogen headlights, Lindquist stepped protectively in front of the T-bomb as Hannigan and Johansen blindly fired back with their assault rifles. Both of the mercenaries knew full well that even if they managed to achieve a hit, the 7.62 mm rounds wouldn’t even dent the heavy armor plating the military juggernaut. However, safely off to the side, Kessler had a clear view. Swinging up his AK-47, he aimed and fired the grenade launcher.

The yellow-tipped round slammed into the front of the APC, punched clean through and violently detonated inside.

Tendrils of flame extending from every vent and port, the APC raced past the flatbed. Kessler put another million-dollar round into the rear compartment. The depleted-uranium slug penetrated the armor plating as if it were cardboard, then the thermite charge violently exploded inside the working engine, filling the interior with a maelstrom of shrapnel.

Gushing fuel and blood, the decimated BTR-70 continued up the other side of the riverbed and rolled into the trees, careening off a boulder before vanishing into the night.

Returning to their work, the mercs diligently released the restraining straps, while Lindquist fired a flare into the air. With the radios dead, it was their only way to communicate over long distance. However the message was received, and soon Barrowman arrived in an old Soviet-era truck. The Cold War vehicle had been built long before the invention of electronic ignition and fuel injectors, and thus was completely immune to the neutralizing effects of a nuclear EMP blast.

“Think they’ll ever figure out what really happened?” Hannigan chuckled, pulling out a crescent wrench from the tool belt around his NBC suit.

“Not until it’s too late,” Lindquist snarled hatefully, patting the keycard safe in the belt pouch. “Not until it’s all over, and there is a new world order.”

“Thought this was about protecting America?” Johansen asked sharply, beginning to work on a restraining bolt.

“Shut up, and work faster,” Lindquist countered, walking over to the waiting Soviet Union truck, his face an iron mask.

CHAPTER ONE

Whitehead River, Colorado

Standing waist-deep in the chilly runoff, Harold Brognola found the morning Rocky Mountain air more than invigorating; it was damn near rejuvenating. With each passing hour, he could feel the pressures of his job at the Justice Department slipping away, muscles slowly relaxing. The top cop in America found himself involuntarily whistling.

Carefully keeping the split-cane fly rod in constant motion, Brognola let the line out, then the artificial fly touched the surface of the river. A large trout rose into view as it tried to reach the elusive food, then flipped back into the shadowy depths, slashing its tail in frustration.

“Better luck next time,” Brognola chuckled, loosening the line to disengage a tangle. Fly-fishing was proving to be a lot like his regular line of work. There was a great deal of waiting and watching, then strike hard and kill when necessary.

Suddenly a dozen trout flashed past his waders heading upstream. Turning, the puzzled man watched them head for the pool below the waterfall. Okay, that was odd. Then the whistling stopped and his smile faded away as a dozen more trout flashed by in the same direction, closely followed by an entire school of sunfish and then several big-mouth bass.

Jerking his head downstream, Brognola saw nothing coming his way. Still he hurriedly sloshed through the river toward the nearby bank. Scrambling onto dry land, he shrugged off the suspenders and dropped the heavy waders, then sprinted for his car parked alongside the old gravel road.

Reaching the vehicle, Brognola yanked open the passenger door and reached under the seat to haul out a S&W .38 revolver and a brand-new Glock 18. The Smith & Wesson had been with the Justice man since his tour of duty in the old Mafia Wars, but middle age was taking its inevitable toll and the massive firepower of the deadly Glock machine pistol was a welcome addition. As Bolan liked to say, a man could never have too many friends or too much firepower. True words.

Working the slide on the 9 mm machine pistol, Brognola thumbed back the hammer on the police revolver and took a defensive position behind the car. It wasn’t much, but some protection was better than nothing.

The sound of the approaching vehicle could be heard long before it appeared around a bend in the Whitehead River. Charging along the riverbed, the tires of a big Hummer threw out a wide spray, creating a traveling rainbow behind the speeding military transport. The soldiers wore the uniforms of Green Berets, and the men in the back openly carried M-16 assault rifles.

Vaguely, Brognola remembered there was a military base somewhere in the nearby mountains, but could not recall the exact name. However, if these were fake soldiers, the killers had done an excellent job. As far as he could tell, these were the real thing. He tightened his grip on both weapons. But a fool often dropped his guard for a friendly, smiling face. As the director of the Special Operations Group, Brognola had made a host of enemies over the years, and he had simply accepted it as part of the job that someday, somewhere, they would find him alone and extract a terrible revenge.

Barreling out of the river, the driver parked the Hummer on the sloped bank. A lieutenant stepped out and started to give a salute, but stopped himself just in time and changed the gesture into removing his cap.

Brognola grunted. So far, so good. Soldiers did not salute civilians. But he was still far from being convinced. “Morning,” Brognola called, leveling both guns. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” The man’s heart was pounding in his chest, but his palms were dry.

“Recognition code, Alpha Dog Bravo,” the officer said crisply, then waited expectantly.

“Zulu Tango Romeo,” Brognola replied, giving the countersign for the week and lowering the guns. “Okay, what the hell is going on here?”

“Sir, somebody needs to speak to you immediately. Your cell is out of range, so our CO sent us out on recon,” the lieutenant explained, donning the soaked cap. “Since everybody knows about this fishing pool, we checked here first.”

“Fair enough,” Brognola said, tucking the Glock into his belt. The service revolver was slipped into a pocket of his jeans. “That somebody got a name?”

“Yes, sir. Eagle One.”

Instantly all reticence was gone and Brognola walked over to the Hummer, holding out a hand. As he got close, the corporal in the back proffered a hand mike attached to a large transmitter situated between the seats.

Accepting the mike, Brognola impatiently waited while the soldiers moved away from the vehicle to give him some privacy. They might not be sure who he was, but they sure as hell knew the identity of Eagle One.

When the Green Berets were far enough away, Brognola thumbed the transmit switch and repeated his name, slow and clear. There was a brief pause as the signal was encoded and relayed across the continent via a series of military satellites. Once NSA equipment on the other side analyzed his vocal patterns to ascertain it actually was him, a familiar voice crackled over the speaker.

“Sorry for the interruption, Hal,” said the President without a preamble. “But I needed to talk to you immediately, and there was no time to fly you back to D.C. We have a problem in Russia.”

“Is Striker in trouble?” Brognola asked.

Striker was one of the many code names for Mack Bolan.

“Not at the moment, Hal, no. This is something completely different,” the President stated. “Just a few hours ago, a NATO courier delivered a coded report to the joint chiefs. One of their spy satellites detected a tactical nuclear explosion near Mystery Mountain.”

“But that is not a nuclear facility,” Brognola said, sitting inside the Hummer. The seat was damp from the rush up the river, but he paid it no mind. “The mountain mostly works on experimental weapons, plasma lasers, coil guns, orbiting kinetics, microwaves, robotics and such.”

“Correct. And this was nothing new. Just an ordinary nuclear weapon.” The President paused. “Except that the flash signature was Chinese.”

The words were said quite simply, but Brognola exhaled as if punched in the stomach. China nuked Mystery Mountain? “Has that been confirmed?” he demanded brusquely.

“Triple checked from multiple sources.” The President sighed. “There can be no mistake. The nuclear weapons of every nation are completely different, and the flash signature of the fireball cannot be faked to resemble another. This was a Chinese nuke.”

“Son of a bitch,” Brognola whispered. “How could a goddamn Chinese ICBM get that far inside Russia without being shot down?”

A scholarly man, the new President really did not approve of the crude language, but said nothing. Brognola had to be accepted on his terms, and thus was one of the very few people in the world who could address him this way. “It wasn’t an ICBM,” he corrected. “Just a tactical nuke. Barely a half-kiloton yield. Probably a suitcase model, very similar to our own man-portable charge.”

“Well, that’s something, then.” Brognola sighed, looking across the river. “There could not have been that much damage. With any luck—”

“Hal, the base was obliterated. Utterly destroyed.”

“With a tactical nuke?” Brognola scoffed. “That’s not possible, sir, unless… Goddamn it, the Chinese nuked the dam and flooded the base.”

There was an affirmative grunt. “As usual, Hal, you are correct. The death toll is in the thousands and the base will never fully recover. There is simply too much contamination.”

“The Kremlin must be going insane.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” the President agreed. “Their president has already contacted me to remind me of our mutual defense pact.”

Which was the first step toward declaring open war, Brognola realized, shifting the Glock in his belt to a more comfortable position. A goddamn nuclear war. “Any response from China?”

“They say it is a Russian trick, and are massing troops along the border to repel a possible invasion.”

“Which means Russia is doing the same thing to stop them from invading. Right?”

“Actually no,” the President said, speaking slowly. “The Kremlin has authorized a full mobilization, land, sea and air, almost everything they have. However, all of it is heading toward Mystery Mountain. Not China.”

“But why—?” Brognola inhaled sharply. “China had nothing to do with this—the nuke was a goddamn diversion.” The man ran stiff fingers through his hair. “Something was stolen from Mystery Mountain,” he stated with conviction. “Something new, and big.”

“Sadly, that is the same conclusion that my chief of staff, the national security adviser and I each arrived at about an hour ago,” the President stated forcibly. “We have no idea what this new weapon could be, but the very fact that the thieves used a nuclear weapon to obtain the device clearly indicates it is more powerful. You don’t use a rocket launcher to steal a handgun.”

“Unless a rocket launcher is all you have,” Brognola countered, momentarily lost in thought. “Could this have been done by some terrorist organization? Maybe Hamas, or the Warriors of God?” There was a brief surge of static and any response was lost.

“Sir? I missed that,” Brognola said. “Please repeat.”

“I said that terrorists doing this is most unlikely, but we should not rule out the possibility,” the President acknowledged. “This might even be the work of some lone madman trying to bring back the glory days of communism.”

God forbid. “What has been done so far, sir?”

There came the rustling of papers. “Homeland Security is trying to confirm if China is innocent or is working through some mercenary group. The CIA is concentrating on the larger terrorist organizations. Military Intelligence is looking into the radical splinter groups, while the FBI is tackling domestic terrorists, and the NSA is monitoring all cell phone traffic in western Europe and Asia for any reference to Mystery Mountain.”

“Sounds good. What would you like for my people to do, sir?” Even over a scrambled transmission, Brognola could not bring himself to name the covert Stony Man teams. In spite of every conceivable security precaution, the Farm had been invaded once, and the man was grimly determined to never allow that to happen again.

“For the time being, merely to stay alert and watch for any unusual sales in the underworld,” the President said. “If some new, experimental weapon has indeed been stolen, then most likely it will soon be offered for sale like those damnable Shklov rocket torpedoes a few years ago. Pay any price within reason—no, scratch that. Pay any price to get the whatever it is off the streets. We can decide what to do with it later.”

“Rabbit stew,” Brognola muttered.

The President snorted at that, obviously familiar with the military axiom. The recipe for rabbit stew was always—first and foremost—catch the rabbit.

“Confirmed, and what about the thieves?”

The President thought about that for a moment. How many people had been working at the dam when it blew? How many families, wives and children, had been living in the off-base facilities downriver? How many soldiers and scientists had drowned when the tidal wave arrived?

“Sir?” Brognola repeated. “What if we manage to capture the thieves alive?”

“Don’t,” the President declared gruffly, and hung up.

Staring at the radio for a long moment, Brognola returned the mike to a clip, then climbed out of the Hummer. “Lieutenant!” he bellowed. “Please have one of your men drive my car to the hotel where I’m staying. I’ll have somebody pick it up later.”

The soldiers walked closer. “And you will be coming back with us to the base,” the officer said, not posing it as a question.

“And commandeering a jetfighter back to the east coast.” Brognola nodded. “Eagle One wants me there ASAP.”

“Going to the White House, sir?” a young soldier asked excitedly.

“Something like that,” Brognola muttered evasively, climbing into the damp front seat and glancing at his watch. If he flew directly to Andrews Air Force Base, he could reach the Farm in western Virginia by midnight. With any luck, the Russian army would have captured the thieves by then and the matter would be over. If not, then it would be time to activate the Stony Man teams.

Caucasus Mountains

AS THE OLD Soviet Army truck raced along the mountain highway, Lindquist glanced in the side mirror and watched the river valley vanish behind them in the night. Good riddance.

Personally, there really was nothing in the world the man hated more than Russians, and Lindquist was extremely pleased that Foxfire had left the Russian weapons facility pounded flat, with large sections of the surrounding forest ablaze. The mushroom cloud of the nuclear explosion was long gone, but the hellish red glow of the growing conflagration was rapidly spreading across the hills. A forest fire had not been in the original plans, but it made a nice addition to their escape.

Give the bastards something else to worry about than trying to find us, Lindquist thought, smirking. Not that it would do them any good.

Now wearing civilian clothing, the man and his team were speeding away from the annihilated valley along an old logging road not on any civilian map. It was in surprisingly good condition. The pavement was smooth, the dividing lines freshly painted, and there were tiny plastic pyramids set into the material to reflect the headlights of a vehicle so that a driver could stay in the correct lane during even the worst possible winter storm. Obviously this road was reserved for use by visiting politicians and generals. But it would serve them well tonight, and in ways never dreamed of by the idiots in the Kremlin.

Keeping a hand on the wheel, Kessler shifted gears and glanced sideways. “What’s that thing under the dashboard?” he asked with a frown. “Some sort of radar jammer?”

“Just an eight-track tape player,” Lindquist replied, checking the map. Soon they should be nearing the tunnel where everything would happen.

“Yeah?” asked the puzzled man. “And what the fuck is that?”

Not in the mood to explain antiques to a child, Lindquist dismissed the question with a wave of his hand.

In the rear of the truck, Barrowman was practicing loading an assault rifle with just one hand, Johansen was wrapping an amazingly realistic-looking plastic baby in a soft pink blanket and Hannigan was hard at work on the last lock, sealing shut the huge cylinder recovered from the flatbed. A wooden box on the floor was filled with parts he had already removed, including a delicate Faraday Net, which protected the complex electronics of the weapon from the EMP blast of a nuclear bomb.

“How is it coming?” Lindquist asked impatiently.

“Almost there,” Hannigan muttered, wiping his forehead with a sleeve and leaving a streak of grease behind. “Damn, these locks are intricate.”

“It was not designed to ever be disassembled,” Lindquist reminded him harshly.

“This I know,” Hannigan rumbled, returning to the task.

Outside the truck, a car raced by, heading in the opposite direction, the headlights washing over them for only a moment before it was gone.

“Think that was the FSB?” Barrowman asked, bringing up the AK-47 assault rifle.

“Too soon,” Lindquist stated. “The federal police will be the very last people the Kremlin lets know what actually occurred this night.”

“Good.”

Just then, Johansen jerked in surprise as the animatronic doll swaddled in her arms began to softly cry. With a scowl, she gently rocked the thing, and the noise stopped.

“Do I look like a fucking mother?” the mercenary angrily muttered under her breath, shifting uncomfortably in her plain woolen dress.

“More than the rest of us, yes,” Barrowman said, clumsily working the arming bolt.

“Hmm, sounds like it’s hungry. Why don’t you whip out a tit and give it a drink?” Kessler called over a shoulder, both hands on the wheel.

“Why don’t you jump up your own ass?” Johansen snarled, gesturing, and a knife dropped into her palm from a sleeve of her dress.

“Can’t while I’m driving. Maybe later.”

“I can wait.”

“Got it,” Hannigan cried, stepping back.

As he dropped a circuit board into the wooden box, there came the low hiss of working pneumatics and the middle section of the cylinder cycled up to reveal seven large spheres nestled inside the complex machinery, their smooth surfaces glistening with condensation. It took a moment before the mercs realized the white objects were not truly spheres, but some sort of decahedron, or more properly, a dodecahedron, the curved sides made of a smooth array of a hundred interlocking pyramids.

“Whew, so that’s them, eh?” Barrowman said, scratching his arm inside the sling. “Kind of hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

“Not really, no,” Lindquist replied, feeling his heart quicken at the sight. The spy at Mystery Mountain had informed him that the Skyfire weapon system possessed multiple warheads, but he had expected to find two thermobaric bombs, not seven. This windfall once again changed his plans.

Shifting gears to take a hill, Kessler looked at the spheres in the rearview mirror. “What kind of a yield are we talking about here?”

“Close to the order of a kiloton of TNT,” Lindquist answered absentmindedly, his thoughts elsewhere.

“Are you serious?” Kessler gasped. “But that Chinese nuke we used on the dam only had a quarter-kiloton yield.”

“Then this would be more,” Johansen said with a tolerant smile.

“Four times more powerful than a tactical nuke,” Barrowman muttered. It was incredible. One of those spheres could flatten Manhattan. The cluster would burn all of New York City, from Brooklyn to the Bronx, clean off the map.

“Pity we’re not selling them on the black market,” he said impulsively. “We’d be millionaires overnight.”

“Billionaires, more likely,” Lindquist corrected.

The mercenaries exchanged glances, but said nothing.

“How much farther to the tunnel?” Johansen asked, licking her lips.

“We should be there any minute now,” Lindquist answered.

“There she blows!” Kessler announced, taking a curve in the road.

Directly ahead of the truck was a wall of dark rock, impossible to climb or traverse. But smack in the middle was a small tunnel, the mouth just barely large enough for the huge Soviet truck to gain entry.

As they entered the tunnel, the truck headlights illuminated the interior for hundreds of feet. The pavement was old, but the smooth concrete walls were spotlessly clean, without any trace of diesel fumes or car exhaust, almost as if the tunnel was brand-new.

Or very rarely ever used, Lindquist mentally corrected himself. Only the top brass at the Kremlin ever used the secret tunnel, and not even the nosy Americans knew of its existence.

But almost instantly, Kessler downshifted and started to brake. “There’s roadwork up ahead,” he added in a suspicious voice.

Craning their necks to see through the windshield, the Foxfire team scowled at the sight of a van parked in the middle of the roadway, the headlights beating to the rhythm of the idling engine. Surrounded by a ring of bright yellow cones, a team of workmen wearing bright orange safety jackets and carrying shovels seemed to be doing something to the pavement. There were several tanker trucks on the far side of the construction zone, the drivers standing outside their rigs smoking cigarettes.

Braking to a halt, Kessler pumped the gas pedal a few times to stop the engine dieseling. At first it did not seem to work, then the engine went still and a heavy silence blanketed the highway.

“Okay, we do this by the numbers,” Lindquist said, pulling out a 9 mm automatic Tokarev and working the slide. “Everybody stay here, and I’ll go see what’s happening.”

“We got your six, sir,” Johansen stated, pulling the Carl Gustav launcher onto her lap.

Tucking the Soviet automatic into a pocket, Lindquist opened the side door and stepped down to the roadway. “Hello,” he called, waving a hand. “What’s the trouble?”

“Water main broken,” a slim man shouted in a heavy accent, checking something on a clipboard.

“Can we get past?” Lindquist asked, walking over casually. Then he suddenly dived to the side.

Instantly the workers dropped their clipboards and shovels to bring up Red Army 30 mm grenade launchers and fire a salvo at the Soviet truck.

“What the… It’s a trap!” Kessler bellowed, frantically trying to start the engine while the barrage of canisters impacted around the truck, gushing out thick volumes of a bilious green smoke.

“Gas attack,” Johansen cursed, grabbing a gas mask from under a seat.

Everybody else did the same as the rising fumes seeped into the truck, swirling around their boots. Breathing deeply as they had been taught, the mercenaries now grabbed weapons, but a terrible wave of nausea overtook each of them. The strength flowed from their limbs like water down a drain. Their fingers turned numb, breathing became impossible, then they went blind. Foaming at the mouths, the Foxfire team dropped twitching to the floor, and went very still.

Staying safely where they were located, the workers waited for several minutes until the ventilation system of the tunnel cleared away the fumes of the deadly gas.

With a bang, the rear doors of the truck slammed open and out stepped a skeletal thin man wearing the crisp uniform of a Soviet Union admiral. There was a Tokarev automatic holstered at his stomach, the grip reversed for a left-handed man. A nylon cord connected the pistol to his belt in case it was dropped when at sea. He appeared to be much older than he actually was and his teeth were clearly false, but the bony man still possessed a full head of wavy hair and radiated authority the way a furnace does heat.

“Report please, Sergeant,” commanded Brigadier General Ivan Alexander Novostk, both hands held behind his back. A smooth red scar crossed his throat from ear to ear where a Soviet Union paratrooper had tried to remove his head and failed at the cost of his own life. General “Iron Ivan” Novostk considered himself unkillable. His body was covered with scars from a hundred battles, hard fought and won. His long career in the Slovakian military was burned into living flesh, and most of the scars were a constant reminder of the brutality of the Kremlin and its monstrous lapdogs, the KGB, forever renewing his unquenchable hatred of the Communists.

“The air is reading clear, sir,” Sergeant Petrova Melori announced in Slovakian, checking the monitor of a chemical sensor.

Rising to his feet, Lindquist dusted off his pants. “Two of you make sure they’re dead,” he directed in the same language. “The rest of you clear away these cones. The entire Russian army will soon be here, and we better be long gone.”

“You heard the colonel!” a corporal bellowed, slinging the grenade launcher over a shoulder. “Kleinova, Louvsky, check the bodies and watch for traps. Everybody else, clear the way.”

As the soldiers got busy, Lindquist walked over to the skinny man. “Good to see you again, sir,” he said with a genuine smile.

“And you, Colonel,” General Novostk replied, offering the man a hand. “How many T-bombs did we get?”

“Seven,” Colonel Lindquist replied, drawing the Norinco automatic and tossing it away. “More than enough to get the job done.”

“Excellent! I am more than pleased.”

Damn well hope so. But the colonel said nothing out loud.

A sharp whistle came from the Soviet truck and a soldier waved. “They’re dead, sir,” he shouted through cupped hands.

“You sure?” Lindquist demanded, brushing back his hair.

There came the sound of four individual pistol shots.

“Yes, sir,” the private replied. “We’re sure.”

Good enough. “Well done, Private.”

After transferring the seven angular spheres to the van and strapping them down, the soldiers threw the box of spare parts across the tunnel and left.

“To enhance the appearance of an internal explosion,” Colonel Lindquist said to the sergeant. If the general did not agree, he kept the matter to himself.

Satisfied for the moment, Lindquist drove away in the van, the soldiers easily running beside the slow-moving vehicle until it reached the other end of the tunnel. Idling there was a titanic Mi-6 Hook, the largest helicopter in the world.

The van was guided up the rear ramp into the Hook, where the soldiers lashed it securely into position. Then they took seats along the walls and put on their seat belts. This promised to be a bumpy ride. Lindquist and Melori went to the flight deck for their seats, and strapped in tight.

As they did, the pilot revved the power to full strength, and the nearly overloaded Mi-6 Hook lifted off.

As the tunnel dwindled below, Sergeant Melori waited until he was sure the cargo helicopter had reached a safe distance, then activated a small radio detonator and pressed the button.

The range was too great for them to feel the shock wave of the explosion. But from their great height, the two officers saw volcanoes of flame erupt from both ends of the tunnel. The fire raged unchecked until the steel support beams began to soften and the mouth of the tunnel melted shut.

“I wish them luck getting those open soon,” Melori stated, tucking away the detonator.

“What did you use?” Lindquist asked, watching the white-hot flames recede until they were only a pair of bright points in the darkness, then only a single point, and then the natural contour of the landscape took them from sight.

“Rocket fuel,” the sergeant replied.

Saying nothing, Lindquist tilted his head in disbelief.

“No, it’s true, my friend.” General Novostk chuckled. “Those tankers contained liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. We used the same mixture as the Americans do for their space shuttle. Two parts liquid oxygen and one part liquid hydrogen. Add some diesel fuel from the engines, and the mixture burns almost as hot as a thermobaric bomb.”

“Almost. But not quite.”

The general shrugged. “No, not quite. However, it should take them days to figure that out. And by then…” He grinned.

Colonel Lindquist understood. Soon enough, the whole world would have other things to worry about than the deaths of some thieves. Then he frowned.

“Were the tankers stolen?” the colonel demanded. From bitter experience, the man knew that hijacked trucks were easily traced, and this needed to resemble an accidental triggering of the Skyfire device, not a clever way of destroying any trace of forensic evidence.

“No, they were supplied by a dummy company owned by your employer in the Ukraine.” General Novostk laughed. “On paper, they never existed, and thus cannot go missing, eh?” Then he pretended to punch the officer in the arm. “Do not worry, my American friend. Every detail has been considered and taken care of. We are quite safe. Nobody will ever know who we really are.”

Angling away from the spreading umbrella of hard radiation tainting the clouds over the remote valley, the Soviet Union cargo helicopter moved low and fast over the rugged terrain, heading due south, out over the Black Sea.

CHAPTER TWO

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

“Just a few minutes ago, we caught another heat flash,” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman said, turning his wheelchair away from his computer workstation to pour himself a cup of coffee. “At first we thought it was a second nuke, but this wasn’t hot enough, and the chemical signature more resembled a space shuttle launch.”

“Have the Russians put something into space?” Barbara Price demanded, her stomach tightening.

Without adding milk or sugar, Kurtzman took a long draft of the steaming coffee as if it was tap water. “No, we don’t think so,” the Stony Man computer genius replied carefully, setting the mug into a recess on the armrest of his chair. “If the blast had occurred out in the open, that might have been a possibility. This actually seemed to be two simultaneous explosions exactly where the CIA believes there is a hidden tunnel.”

A tunnel? The Farm’s mission controller frowned. “Okay, something exploded inside, and the blast came out the ends,” Price rationalized, crossing her arms. “Could it have been the Red Army dealing with the thieves?”

“Or vice versa,” Carmen Delahunt announced from her console. Perched on the edge of her chair, the redhead was focused on her computer screen. Dangling from the back of her chair an S&W Bulldog revolver was tucked into an FBI-style shoulder holster.

“Explain that,” Price demanded.

“According to the NATO Watchdog satellite we hijacked, there were isotonic traces of diesel fuel in the chemical signature of the explosion,” Delahunt said. “Along with similar amounts of vulcanized rubber.”

“That sounds like a truck,” Price said slowly, testing the words.

“Three trucks, by my calculations,” Delahunt answered.

“Insulated trucks,” added Akira Tokaido, removing his earbuds. “There was far too much cobalt in the signature to come from anything other than heat-resistant steel.” Tokaido was of mixed Japanese-American ancestry. He seemed born to operate computers, code coming to him as easily as breathing to ordinary people.

“Maybe there was a tank, or an APC caught in the blast,” Price offered hesitantly.

“I wish that was true, but no,” Kurtzman countered, sliding his wheelchair under his console. “Russian military contains natural wood fibers to make the metal more elastic, and thus proof to most armor-piercing rounds.”

Wood fiber in tank armor? “Are you positive?” Price scowled.

Tokaido gave a curt nod. “The spectrum analysis is conclusive. No military vehicles were involved in the blast. So unless whatever was stolen detonated while suspended in liquid boron, or something equally outrageously exotic like that…”

“Then the explosion was caused by insulated tanker trucks carrying liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Clearly, it was a trick by the thieves to try to fake their own deaths,” Huntington Wethers said, removing an old briar pipe from his mouth. “Unfortunately, it also tells us what was stolen.”

Tall and distinguished-looking, Wethers seemed to be the epitome of a college professor with wings of silvery hair at his temples, a briar pipe and leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket. Although fully tenured at Berkeley University, the man had felt a strong need to serve his country, and left the world of academia to become one of the most feared cyberhunters in existence.

Thoughtfully, Price chewed a lip. An explosion powerful enough to be mistaken for a tactical nuke, but without any radiation. The only thing that came to mind was… Oh hell, not that. “What was the last weapon tested there?” Price demanded, trying to stay calm. If what she thought had just happened, the world was in for a long hard rain of blood and pain.

“Difficult to say,” Delahunt answered. “The master computers of Mystery Mountain are not connected to the Internet, and the entire valley is covered with a camouflage net so that our Keyhole and Watchdog satellites can’t see what was happening down there.”

“However, the only logical extrapolation is that the thieves stole one of the new Russian thermobaric bombs,” Tokaido interjected.

“Now, LOX and LOH don’t quite burn as hot as one of those,” Kurtzman stated, cracking his knuckles. “But pretty damn close.”

Several decades ago, the Pentagon had started a program to create an arsenal of nonnuclear weapons, and the cream of the crop was the FAE bomb, or Fuel-Air Explosive, nicknamed Skyfire. The idea was simple, as all good ideas are. Imagine closing all of the doors and windows in a house, then turning on the gas oven but turning off the pilot. In only a few minutes, the house would be completely filled with highly explosive gas. Now stuff an ordinary fuse under the front door and light it. When the fuse reaches the interior, the house would thunderously detonate, obliterating the entire structure and quite often the homes alongside.

The FAE bomb did the same thing, but out in the open. A plane would drop the bomb and it would burst open, sending out a huge cloud of flammable gas, the exact composition of which was not known to even Stony Man. A split second later, the plummeting canister would explode, igniting the cloud, and a fiery implosion of unimaginable power would blanket the sky, uprooting forests, knocking over homes and office buildings and setting fire to everything within range. The one limiting factor was that a FAE bomb would not work if there were strong winds, or if it was raining, snowing, or even if there was heavy fog. It had to be a clear, calm day.

In spite of colossal efforts, no other nation had ever been able to duplicate the American trick of making a fuel-air explosion work. But a few months ago rumors had surfaced in the intelligence community that the Russians had not only figured out how to make an FAE but had also gone even further. They called their weapon a thermobaric bomb, and it worked exactly like an American FAE bomb, except it could function in high winds, rain, snow or fog. There were no operational limitations on a T-bomb, and if true, it was the most deadly weapon in existence. For all intents and purposes, it was a nuclear bomb that did not give off hard radiation—a clean nuke.

“Is there anything in space?” Price asked, walking closer to the wall screens, her hands clenched into tight fists. “Have the Russians created a new…I don’t know, some sort of a new plasma weapon and it’s running wild?”

“Space is clear,” Delahunt intoned.

Damn. “Do we have any video from the valley? Security cameras or such?”

“Not after a nuclear explosion,” Kurtzman scoffed, drinking from the old cracked mug. “The EMP blast of the nuke erased all of the electronic records.”

Which was probably deliberately done by the thieves, Price realized dourly. It would be very hard for the FSB to track down the thieves if they knew absolutely nothing about them. The nuke destroyed the base, along with any video, then the tanker trucks in the tunnel faked the death of the thieves and vaporized any physical evidence. Whoever took the weapon was smart. Too damn smart, in her opinion.

Deep in thought, Price started to pace. Personally, she hoped that China had stolen the damn thing. At least with them, the United Nations could exert political and economic pressure to not use the weapon. If a terrorist group got their hands on a T-bomb they would immediately use it to destroy a major city—New York, London, Tokyo. The death toll would be in the millions.

“Okay, if somebody has stolen a T-bomb, then how do we track the thing?” Price demanded. “There must be remote telemetry or a lowjack on the thing.”

“Which anybody with an EM scanner could find and remove,” Tokaido stated, studying the monitor on his console. The screen was flashing through road maps of the Russian countryside. A flatbed had been seen by a NATO spy satellite amid the wreckage left by the tidal wave from the destroyed dam. If the bomb was particularly heavy, then it could only be hauled over specific roads. Unfortunately, most of the logging roads in the mountains connected with railroads, and those went everywhere in Russia.

Grudgingly, Price accepted that. “Okay, what about dogs or chemical sensors?” She rallied. “We can tune every one at every major airport to look for just T-bombs.”

“Sorry, no can do,” Kurtzman stated bluntly, placing aside his empty mug. “Hell, Barb, we don’t even know what the damn thing looks like, much less how it works.”

Chewing a lip, Price tried to find some way to approach the problem, but was coming up with nothing. The Russian superweapon was practically invisible. Nobody would know it had been smuggled into Washington until the Pentagon vanished in a fiery implosion that also ripped the White House from its very foundation.

“Okay, do we know of any operational limitations?” she demanded.

“Unfortunately, no,” Wethers muttered around his pipe. Smoking was forbidden anywhere near the supercomputer, but the man found chewing on the stem oddly inducive to his creative concentration. “The Pentagon strongly believes that the T-bomb can be activated at extreme low levels, perhaps as little as five hundred feet.”

Price stared hard at the professor. “Are you trying to tell me that it may not be necessary to drop the T-bomb from a plane?” she said slowly, absorbing the information. “Instead it could simply be rolled off the roof of a fifty-story building?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“But no nation in the world can secure every office building over fifty stories tall. There must be hundreds, thousands, of them.”

Deep in thought, Price poured herself a mug of coffee, adding a great deal of sugar and milk. Kurtzman liked the stuff strong enough to degrease tractor parts, but lesser humans preferred it at less lethal levels of corrosion.

Taking small sips, the woman finished the mug, then turned around with a new light in her eyes. “All right,” she said forcibly. “If we can’t track the weapon, then we go after the thieves.”

“But we don’t know who took it,” Kurtzman tactfully reminded her.

Impatiently, Price waved the objection aside. “That doesn’t matter. We know that they used a Chinese nuke. Start there. Send Phoenix Force to Milan to see if somebody purchased a black-market nuke recently. After that, they can try Paris and then Sudan. This whole thing might have been a trick by Russia for an excuse to attack their ancient enemy, China.”

“You think the Kremlin nuked Mystery Mountain just to have a legitimate excuse to start a nuclear war?” Tokaido asked in disbelief, then frowned. It wouldn’t be a nuclear war, but a Skyfire war. “On it,” he announced, and bent over the console, his hands flying across the keyboard.

“The big question is, how did the thieves know about the test?” Kurtzman growled. “It wasn’t exactly broadcast on the evening news.”

“Which leaves two possibilities,” Price continued. “Either there is a traitor, or somebody hacked into the computer system at Mystery Mountain.”

“Not even we can do that,” Delahunt stated in annoyance, curling her toes on the floor. “Their firewalls are just as good as those at the White House.”

Kurtzman snorted. “So it’s got to be a traitor.”

“Or a spy,” Price amended. “Carmen, check the first-class-passenger list at every major airport in the area, cross reference that to the personnel file we stole from the Kremlin last month. Find me somebody who went on vacation the day before the T-bomb was stolen.”

“I’ll also check with the health department to see if anybody recently got sick. Vacations can be cancelled by your boss, but nobody would interfere with a cancer treatment,” Delahunt muttered.

Clenching her gloves, she closed the files she had been reading and activated the NSA communication protocols.

“Okay, if Russia and China were not behind the theft, this might have been done by mercenaries hired to do the bloody work,” Price speculated. “Hunt, activate the Dirty Dozen, try to hire the top mercs and see who is not available.”

“Already doing it, Barb,” the professor muttered around his pipe.

Long ago, Mack Bolan had suggested the creation of some artificial buyers of weapon. In virtual reality, that was easy. But Kurtzman had decided to take the matter one step further. Together with his team, the Farm had created a dozen fake personalities in all of the major areas of crime, along with a team of black ops mercs called Blue Lightning.

The Dirty Dozen was a collection of artificial criminals invented by Kurtzman and his team long ago. Their entire lives were fake, forged out of nothing but the Stony Man hackers slipping data into files around the world. When a bank was robbed in Melbourne, the hackers started the rumors that it was financed by one of the Dozen. If a politician got assassinated in Norway, it was because he had crossed the path of another of the Dirty Dozen. Pirates attacked a cruise ship in the Caribbean, an Interpol agent was shot in Amsterdam, a plane crashed in the Andes—any unsolved crime was quickly attributed to these secretive masters of criminal underworld.

The names of the Dozen were constantly changed as they died in car accidents or were captured and executed—only to be immediately replaced by another Stony Man construct. The Dirty Dozen was a constant source of valuable information about international crime as people tried to sell them stolen goods. And whenever one of the Stony Man field teams needed to contact a terrorist group, a member of the Dirty Dozen was always available to vouch for them through e-mail or a phone call.

“Hunt, keep a watch for any secret arms sales,” Kurtzman added. “If the T-bomb becomes available for sale, it is a safe bet that one of the Dozen will be invited to the auction. If so, pay any price to get it. Better to pay a billion dollars now than a hundred billion to rebuild Los Angeles.”

“Agreed,” the professor muttered, his hands busy. “However, it could be more than a billion.”

“Don’t care. Pay whatever is necessary. I’ll have our Keyhole and Watchdog satellites initiate a planetary recon for any other gigantic explosions,” Kurtzman declared brusquely. “The thieves may try to fake their own deaths again. Or worse, actually use the T-bomb on somebody.”

“God forbid,” Price muttered softly, glancing at the clock on the wall.

“Hold on…okay, I found him,” Delahunt announced. “A janitor working at Mystery Mountain recently won a free vacation in an online contest and had to leave the day before the theft occurred or else he lost the prize.”

A contest win, that was a good cover. She had used something similar once herself. “What’s the name, and where did he go?”

“Stanislav Kominsky. Disney World, Orlando, Florida.”

“The other side of the world,” Kurtzman muttered. “Not very subtle.”

“Okay, try this,” Delahunt said. “He was killed in a car crash en route to his hotel room on the day he arrived. The body was taken to the Dade County morgue, and since Mr. Kominsky is Jewish, he had to be buried within twenty-four hours.” She paused. “He was interred at Bonaventure Acres roughly six hours ago.”

“Less than an hour before the theft took place.”

“Yep.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.” Kurtzman’s hands flew across the controls of his console with expert speed. “I’ll have Jack Grimaldi warm up a C-130 Hercules, and Able Team can be there in a few hours to check the body.”

“Why not have the local police or a CSI team do it?” Tokaido asked, tentatively glancing sideways.

“Because, with any luck, it could be a trap,” Price stated with a humorless smile.

CHAPTER THREE

Balaklava Bay, Ukraine

The land around the secluded cove was rough and seemed almost half formed. Cold and deep, the Black Sea extended far beyond the shimmering horizon to the distant nations of Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania.

The small cove was protected from the worst of the storms by a natural breaker of glassy ballast. The barrier had been strongly reinforced under the Communist regime of the Soviet Union with huge concrete slabs. Abandoned pillboxes were secreted among the arcadia bushes along the barren shoreline.

Dominating the area was a crumbling lighthouse, the cupola only splintery framework, the glass long gone and the great stone blocks weathered to a dull sheen from the constant pounding of the waves. But only a hundred feet away rose a brand-new lighthouse, even taller than the ruins, the freshly painted sides glistening with the salty spray, the plastic cupola topped with radar and microwave receptors.

A town curved along the eastern side of the cove, the fishing shacks and drying huts converted into hotels and restaurants for visiting tourists. Under the indolent rule of the czar, Balaklava had been a thriving seaport, a bustling community of fishermen and sailors, plying their ancient trade. Then the Communists seized control and soldiers forced the people to leave their homes for reasons unknown. The few men foolish enough to ask were never heard from again. Then the Soviet Union fell, and the people of Balaklava returned to reclaim their ancestral homes, and to try to build a new life as a resort community. The fishing was excellent, the vodka cheap, and there were countless subterranean caves to be explored, along with the abandoned glory of a secret naval base. The massive fleet of submarines was long gone, but the dry docks remained, as well as the facilities to house and maintain a fighting force of over a thousand sailors.

Directly across from the seaside village was a wooden dock that led directly into a volcanic cave, the entrance to the underground redoubt. At one time, it had been a shooting offense to know the location of the cave. Now it was decorated with posters and photographs from the glory days of the Cold War, along with a stenciled placard announcing the days and times of each tour.

Standing on the other side of a woven yellow rope, a fat man in a loose white suit glared indignantly. His skin was pale from a life working under fluorescent lights. Mirrored sunglasses hid most of his face, and a large Nikon camera hung around his neck.

“What do you mean, closed?” the man demanded angrily.

“Closed. As in not open to the public anymore,” the tour guide replied patiently. “The government is doing something here, and nobody is allowed inside until they’re done. Okay?” The guide enjoyed using the strange American word. He had heard it often in movies.

“No, it is not okay!” the fat man bellowed. “I’ve come all the way from St. Petersburg to see this goddamn installation, and I want to see it right now. Fuck the government!”

“In the old days, that would have gotten you shot,” the guide coldly reminded.

“But these are not the old days anymore, comrade,” the tourist sneered. “We’re a democracy now. Free men all. So fuck you, fuck the government and get the fuck out of my way, I want to see the submarine pens!”

“Fair enough,” the guide replied, unclipping the rope and stepping aside.

Triumphantly, the tourist strode along the long wooden dock and into the volcanic cave. The man removed his sunglasses to see the interior better when the light vanished. Turning, he scowled at the sight of a thick black curtain hanging across the mouth of the cave.

“What the fuck is this?” the fat man demanded loudly, looking around for somebody to berate. Then he blanched at the sight of a dozen men coming out of a duty room. They were each dressed in combat fatigues and carried automatic weapons.

“Hey,” the tourist mumbled only a split second before the mercenaries opened fire.

The silenced Kalashnikov assault rifles chugged softly, the 7.62 mm rounds tearing the fool apart. He hit the stone floor coughing and twitching, the white suit rapidly turning a deep crimson. The echoes of the muted gunfire repeated endlessly along the watery tunnel, disappearing into the distance.

Walking closer, Colonel Lindquist pulled out a Tokarev automatic and shot the civilian once more. Gurgling horribly, his head snapped back from the arrival of a steel-jacketed round, and then went still forever.

“Russians,” Novostk sneered, stiffly walking into view. “The best way to make them do something is to tell them not to do it.”

The skinny general had already changed out of the hated Soviet naval uniform, and now was back in his Slovakian uniform. It was plain and unadorned, with only the insignia on the collar showing his rank. An old Samopal Vzor assault rifle was slung across his back, and a web belt of ammo pouches encircled his skinny waist with a bulky Rex .357 Magnum revolver holstered on the hip.

“I knew we should have dismantled the dock,” Colonel Lindquist said, holstering his pistol. “Mikhail, clean up the blood. Petrov, get rid of the body in one of the submarine pens. Zhale, put up a sign about falling rocks. That should keep away the fools until we’re gone.”

Quickly, the assigned men moved to obey. The rest stayed where they were, close to the general.

“Speaking of which, we’re ready to leave,” General Novostk said, shifting the Samopal Vzor assault rifle to a more comfortable position. The weapon was a Slovakian version of a Russian AK-47. Both the metal and wooden stock worn from years of use, but gleaming with fresh oil and polish.

“Already?” Lindquist asked in surprise. “Excellent. Has even the helicopter been dismantled?”

“Sealed off in a side tunnel,” the general countered. “I did not know if you wanted to use the Hook again.”

“Too risky, sir,” Lindquist answered. “I’ll use a boat for the next part.”

The general arched an eyebrow at that but said nothing. The colonel was an amazing officer, in spite of being a mixture of American and Slovakian blood. Clearly, there was just a touch more Bratislava in his soul than Brooklyn.

“And how is your former employer taking the betrayal?” Novostk asked, heading deeper into the dim cavern.

“Fuck him,” Lindquist snarled, clasping both hands behind his back. “He’s part Slovak himself, but harbors no ill will toward the Soviets, in spite of everything they did to our nation.”

“Then he is a fool.”

“Agreed, sir. Which is why I had no trouble killing his mercenaries to turn Skyfire over to you.”

“History will remember you as a true patriot, Colonel!”

Unimpressed, Lindquist shrugged in reply. As a soldier, it was his sworn duty to protect his homeland. The Soviet Union had plundered the natural resources of Slovakia, and that lunatic Stalin had sent millions of its citizens to the Siberian gulag work camps never to return. As a soldier, Lindquist would have much preferred a straight fight with the Russian army, but if this was the only way for Slovakia to strike back at Moscow, then so be it. Blood was blood, and terrorists were always heroes to the dead they avenged.

Turning at a corner, the officers paused at the sight of a bound man covered with chains. A soldier tried not to smile as he shoved the helpless prisoner forward. A muffled scream escaped his gag as the bound man toppled off the concrete apron, to land in the water with a large splash. He sank immediately into the depths, leaving behind a small trail of air bubbles.

“And who was that, Private?” Novostk asked casually. “Another fisherman who wandered in here by accident?”

“Smuggler, sir,” the soldier replied, giving a crisp salute.

“Indeed,” Lindquist muttered, glancing at the struggling man descending to the bottom of the pen. The water was over fifty feet deep, and soon there was only a trickle of escaping air bubbles visible in the underwater lights. “And what was he trying to sneak into Russia?”

“Heroin.”

The general scowled, then spit into the water. “No loss, then. The fool only got what he deserved. We want the Russians dead, not enslaved to that filth.”

“And what did you do with the drugs?” Lindquist asked sharply.

“Made him eat it, sir. A half kilo of Bulgarian black tar.”

“And he lived?”

Suddenly the air bubbles stopped rising from the murky depths.

“No, sir, he did not.” The soldier grinned savagely.

“Well, the fish should have a good time disposing of the carcass.” Lindquist chuckled in dark amusement. “Very good, Private. Carry on with your duties.”

“Yes, sir.”

Proceeding along the tunnel, the officers headed toward an old Soviet Union submarine moored to the concrete dock. Purchased on the open market in Amsterdam, the borderline antique had been incredibly cheap, mostly because the submersible lacked any sort of modern convenience. It was slow and noisy, the air always smelled of diesel fumes, the toilet leaked, plus the torpedo tubes had been welded shut. The submarine was useless to anybody but ichthyologists and historians. In spite of that, a group of Iranians had outbid Lindquist’s former employer, and the first assignment of the Foxfire team had been to convince the Iranians to give them the sub, in exchange for a few ounces of subsonic lead.

“How is the work of the bombs progressing?” General Novostk inquired.

“Poorly. So far, we are having no luck opening one of the T-bombs,” Lindquist admitted unhappily. “They are well sealed, and our sensors indicated numerous traps. They’re designed to never be accessed.” He paused. “We may need some special help.”

“Just make sure he is good,” the general snapped, kicking a stone out of his way. “Our contact in Mystery Mountain had said there was only a slim possibility that the weapon being tested today would contain multiple warheads, and here we are with seven of the bombs. Seven!” He shook a bony fist. “This changes everything. Four will be assigned targets, and we need to keep one for analysis—that is a given—and yet another will be reserved for an emergency. But the remaining bomb should be used immediately.”

“As a diversion.”

“Exactly. And to let the world know what kind of a horror is now loose among them.” The general sneered, touching the scar on his neck. “That will buy us enough time to complete the analysis.”

“In my experience, people fear the unknown, sir,” Lindquist offered hesitantly.

“No, that is only true of the individual,” the general countered. “Nations are only frightened of demonstrable threats. The United Nations and NATO must see the weapon in operation! Then they will panic.” The old man glanced sideways. “Have you chosen a target yet?”

“Of course, sir,” Lindquist replied. “Something highly visible that the entire world will hear about.”

“And blame the Russians?”

“And blame the Russians, yes, sir.”

“Excellent. And what about the spy?”

In reply, Lindquist only gave a hard smile. The general nodded in approval. Traitors always reaped the whirlwind.

Nearing the end of the dock, the two officers paused in front of a heavy wooden table covered with electronic equipment. Sergeant Melori was bent over the devices, adjusting the controls with a fingertip. Behind the slim man stood a massive lieutenant, a borderline giant, his Herculean frame almost bursting out of the largest Slovakian military uniform the quartermaster had been able to obtain. A smoked-beef stick stuck out of his mouth as if it was a cigar, and he chewed steadily.

Only a few yards beyond were a pair of old wooden planks extending to the conning tower of a submerged submarine. The emblem of the Soviet navy had been covered with black paint and replaced with the flag of the Republic of the Ukraine, fellow victims of the savage Communists. Just a tad more confusion to any possible witnesses.

“Anything on the radar?” Lindquist asked, studying the small glowing screen.

“No, sir,” Melori replied, standing and saluting.

“At ease,” General Novostk commanded impatiently. “Give me a report on the outside world. Do we have any more uninvited guests today? We seem to have taken refuge in the main train station of Bratislava.” All of the other soldiers chuckled at the joke.

Not exactly sure why they were doing that, the colossal Lieutenant Gregor Vladislav merely grinned to be polite. Most people said things that he did not fully comprehend. But that was okay. His expertise was with weapons, killing came as easily to him as flying did to a bird. It was only people that he could not really understand. As a child, his father had wisely taught Vladislav that there was always somebody smarter than you in the world. Intelligence was rather like the martial arts; no matter how good you were, there was always somebody a little bit faster or a little bit stronger. The trick was to not attract attention to yourself, and then strike from behind.

“The outer perimeter is clear, sir,” Melori reported, fondly touching the delicate sensors. What his friend Vladislav did with a knife, he could do with electronics. Together, they were an unstoppable team. “Both radar and sonar show no unusual activity in our vicinity.”

“And what is the usual activity?”

“Schools of fish to the west, fishing boats to the east, a commercial jetliner to the far north, some oil tankers to the far south.”

“Very good, Sergeant,” the general said with a nod. “Let us know if anything approaches very fast. That will probably be the FSB.”

“Closely followed by the entire Russian army,” Lindquist added in a snarl.

“We can stop them, sir,” Vladislav stated in a voice of stone. “The missiles are live and ready to fire.”

The other soldiers stoically said nothing, but Melori seemed slightly embarrassed by the outburst.

“Yes, I’m sure the fight would be glorious, but in the end, a thousand will beat fifty every time,” General Novostk said tolerantly. “So until we’re safely back home, I would prefer to avoid the enemy.”

“Yes, sir, of course,” the lieutenant growled. “Pull back in a feint, then strike from behind.”

Patting the giant on the arm, Novostk smiled. “Something like that, old friend.”

Leaving the men to their work, the two officers shuffled carefully along the planks over the dark water.

“Why are we keeping that idiot alive?” Lindquist muttered.

“I have my reasons,” Novostk replied curtly. “And they are none of your concern.”

Stepping onto the conning tower, the officers found the watertight hatch already open. A clatter of noise was coming from inside the submarine, the command deck below a hive of activity.

As Lindquist stepped aside to let the general climb down first, Novostk touched his arm. “Are the scuttling charges ready?” he asked in a low whisper.

The colonel maintained a neutral expression in case somebody was watching them. “Absolutely, sir. Just give the word.”

“Hopefully, we will not have to,” General Novostk stated, rubbing the scar on his throat. “But it is always best to be prepared for the worst.”

Without further comment, the two Slovakians clambered into the old submarine and began the final preparations for their departure, and the beginning of World War III.

Boca Raton, Florida

SWOOPING GRACEFULLY out of the clear blue sky, the huge C-130 Hercules landed on a private airstrip on Miami/Dade Airport and taxied straight into a private hangar at the extreme end of the field.

As the massive aircraft came to a stop, the rear ramp cycled to the ground and out rolled a small cargo van, the windows tinted darkly. The unmarked van seemed perfectly ordinary enough, but it contained more armor than an APC, along with a small arsenal of military weaponry tucked inside hidden ceiling compartments.

Dressed in loose civilian clothing, the men of Able Team were planning on making this mission a soft recon, low and easy. But just in case of trouble, they also brought along some heavy iron.

Suddenly the radio speaker built into the ceiling crackled alive. “Sky King to the Senator,” the voice of Jack Grimaldi said over the background static. “Sky King to the Senator, ten-four?”

“Ten-two, Sky King,” Rosario Blancanales said into a hand mike from the passenger seat. “This is the Senator. Is something wrong?” Glancing into the side mirror, Blancanales watched the door to the hangar close as the building itself dwindled into the distance.

“Negative,” the pilot replied. “Just wanted you to know that I should have the Hercules refueled and ready to eat clouds in an hour, just in case we have to leave in a hurry.”

“Roger, Sky King. Much appreciated,” Blancanales said with a wan smile. “We’ll give a holler if things get exciting.”

“You do that. Tails high, brother! Ten-two.”

“Over and out,” Blancanales replied, returning the mike to its clip.

“‘Tails high’?” Schwarz asked from the rear of the van, stuffing tools into his belt pouch from a small worktable bolted to the wall.

“Hermann, not even I understand the humor of pilots,” Blancanales sighed, opening a ceiling compartment to take down an M-16 M-203 assault rifle combo.

Broad and powerful, the man radiated charm the way a furnace does heat, only the salt-and-pepper hair suggesting his true age. A master of psychological warfare, Blancanales had talked his way out of more hot spots than could be easily counted, and had earned his nickname of “the Politician,” a thousand times over.

“I think the thin air makes them crazy,” said Carl “Ironman” Lyons from behind the wheel, shifting gears to accelerate the van. The Able Team leader was a stocky man with short blond hair and cool blue eyes. “Or rather, it makes them even more crazy,” Lyons amended, turning onto an access ramp. “All pilots are odd to begin with.”

Schwarz was busy tucking a U.S. Army laptop into a black shoulder bag. Even though the battlefield laptop was sheathed in bullet-resistant titanium, the bag was a ballistic cloth resistant to fire, knives and most small-caliber rounds. If anything, Schwarz believed that planning for a disaster was the best way to achieve success.

A stocky man with short brown hair and full mustache, Schwarz had a friendly, smiling face and bright, intelligent eyes. An expert in electronic warfare and countersurveillance, “Gadgets” Schwarz designed most of the communications equipment for the Farm. Barbara Price had been known to joke that Schwarz could chew a toaster and spit out a cell phone. The man could make, repair or alter anything that used advanced electronics, including high-explosive booby traps.

Chuckling in agreement, Blancanales closed the grenade launcher, then eased a clip of 5.56 mm hardball ammunition into the receiver of the assault rifle. Before Able Team left for the mission, John “Cowboy” Kissinger had tried to persuade Blancanales to take along one of the XM-8 assault rifles that would soon be replacing the old M-16 as the standard weapon for the entire United States military. But Blancanales had declined, at least until the Pentagon removed the “experimental” prefix from the sleek weapon. The XM-8 looked great on the gun range, but the difference between that and actual combat was often measured in the length of a dying soldier’s prayer.

Still sitting at his small workbench, Schwarz began to whistle as he opened a wall compartment and removed an XM-8 assault rifle. The new weapon gleamed with oil and polish. Working the arming lever, Schwarz inserted a plastic clip. The 5.56 mm HEAT rounds inside were clearly visible through a clear plastic window.

“Had a little talk with Cowboy, did you?” Blancanales asked mockingly.

“Why not? We’ve got to field-test these things sometime,” Schwarz stated, checking the 40 mm grenade launcher attached to the side of the XM-8 assault rifle.

So far, he approved of the new weapon. The XM-8 had excellent balance, an oversize ejector port to reduce jams, ambidextrous safety and was a good two pounds lighter than an M-16. That didn’t sound like much, but after a twenty mile run through the jungle, that measly two pounds could feel like half a ton. Two pounds lighter, yet it had greater range and was significantly quieter.

“Five miles to the cemetery,” Lyons announced, checking the navigation unit clipped to the dashboard. “Better get those out of sight.” Near his sneakers was a long box marked with the name of a local florist. It was tied with a ribbon and smelled slightly of gun oil.

“Anything on the radar?” Blancanales asked, working the slide on his Colt .380 automatic. The weapon was equipped with a bulbous acoustical silencer. That made it harder to draw fast, but the acoustical silencer would last forever, unlike a conventional silencer, which only worked for a few rounds.

“Passive is clear,” Schwarz reported, checking the machines. “We had a ping before, but it was just a traffic cop checking our speed.”

“Are you sure?” Lyons demanded, signaling to change lanes.

“Hell yes, I’m sure,” Schwarz snorted, crossing his arms defiantly. “The day I can’t tell the damn difference between traffic radar and a missile getting target acquisition, please shoot me.”

The other men accepted that, and settled in for the long ride. There were small airports a lot closer to the Bonaventure Cemetery that the commercial one they had used, but none of them were quite large enough to accommodate a C-130.

Only a few minutes later, they reached Boca Raton. The cemetery was located outside town, safely behind some tree-covered hills, and thus out of the sight of the most-elderly townspeople so as to not impolitely remind them of their own mortality.

Sculptured hedges divided the different sections, and an artificial waterfall splashed down from a central hillock to form a shallow stream that meandered through the lush greenery. The sprawling cemetery was a rich green, the perfect condition of the smooth expanse almost resembling a golf course. On the crest was a stand of oak trees with a tiered fountain splashing playfully inside the cool shade. Only the neat rows of orderly headstones marred the sylvan expanse. Only a few monuments stood amid the others, along with a row of garish mausoleums.

A high stone wall completely encircled the cemetery, and the front gates were simple affairs of wrought iron, thick enough to stop a Mack truck.

“Very impressive,” Blancanales muttered as they drove through. “I’ll bet they have very little trouble with grave robbers here.”

“This is Boca, you idiot, not Transylvania!” Schwarz snorted in amusement.

“No, Politician is right. Lots of rich folks live around here,” Lyons agreed, driving along the curved roadway. “And most of them want to be buried wearing their favorite gold watch or diamond jewelry. A fast man with a shovel could make a small fortune if he struck right after the funeral of a millionaire.”

Disgusted, Schwarz frowned. “When I die, just drop me into the sea with my dog tags and a rock for ballast. You can keep everything else.”

“And the way you play poker,” Blancanales added, “that’s all there will be—tags and a rock.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch, that inside straight paid for your new plasma screen, didn’t it?”

“For which I thank you, in high definition and Dolby stereo.”

“You’re welcome, old buddy.” Schwarz chuckled, patting the other man on the shoulder, then his face tightened. “Oh, shit, this is a trap.”

“Yeah, I know,” Lyons growled, slipping a hand inside his windbreaker to loosen the Colt Python in his shoulder holster. “I just spotted it a second ago.”

The other men needed no further encouragement to ready their weapons for combat. The van was filled with the soft metallic clicks of working arming bolts and safeties disengaging. Every car in the parking lot was dusty, and badly needed to be washed, as if they had been there for days without moving. This was exactly the sort of detail that a street cop looked for to spot an abandoned vehicle parked along a busy downtown street. Now, a grieving family might leave a car here for a few hours, or even overnight, but certainly no longer than that, and not ten of them. That was way beyond the limits of probability. These cars were merely window decorations to make the place look more inviting and less empty. Which meant the entire cemetery was a trap. But was it for them or somebody else? Did the enemy know Able Team had arrived, or were they still waiting for a target? Only one way to find out, and that was to go ask them, face-to-face.

The loose gravel of the parking lot crunched under the tires of the cargo van as Lyons casually headed into the far corner and stopped well away from the other cars.

“Get hard, people,” Lyons said, pretending to adjust his collar to activate the throat mike hidden underneath. “If this is not for us, they will not want to damage the van and give away the show. Whoever this is, they’ll wait until we step outside and then take us down hard.”

“Blood on the gravel being a lot easier to disguise than a burning car wreck,” Blancanales added, adjusting the flesh-colored radio bud in his ear. Unless the entire cemetery was mined to blow, any snipers would have to wait for the Stony Man operatives to reveal themselves to become targets. The soft recon had just gone hard.

“Especially this one,” Lyons said, brushing away the top of the flower box to extract a massive Atchisson autoshotgun.

“Confirmed,” Schwarz stated, looking through a scope of the new XM-8 rifle. “We’re already painted with a UV laser from somebody in those trees on top of the hill. I can see it sweeping back and forth, waiting for us to step outside and say welcome.”

Tugging on a dark baseball cap to cover his blond hair, Lyons started to reach for the hand mike, but stopped just in time. Even if the sniper was scanning the EM bands, he’d never be able to decipher the encoded transmission, but the mere fact that there had been a transmission would tell him far too much. The last thing they could do was call for help, because it would literally be the last thing they ever did. Their pilot, Jack Grimaldi, was on his own.

“The numbers are falling, brothers,” Blancanales stated, draping a bandolier of clips and shells around his neck. “If we take too much longer, the sniper will know we’re wise, and then all hell breaks loose.”

“For him,” Lyons whispered menacingly, easing open the driver’s side door and slipping quietly outside.

Crawling on their bellies into the flowering shrubbery, the three men snaked along the wood chips covering the dark soil. The smells of nature surrounded them, but their focus was on the copse of oak trees on top of the distant hill.

Entering a thick growth of laurel, Schwarz swung up the XM-8 and looked through the built-in telescopic sights to try to find the source of the UV laser. The beam entered the shadows in the crown of the tree and vanished. He knew where the sniper was located, but could not get a clear view.

“This could be a friendly,” Schwarz whispered, shifting position in the greenery. “The Feds or even Homeland.”

“Unlikely,” Lyons began as a flash of light came from within the oaks and a fiery dart raced down the hill to violently explode on the side of the van.

The strident concussion seemed to shake the world, it was so loud, and the car alarms on the other vehicles in the parking lot began hooting, whooping and blaring.

Swirling around, a thick cloud of smoke masked the van as a soft rain of shrapnel sprinkled the gravel. But as the dark fumes cleared, the cargo van was still there. A side panel had been burned completely clean from the explosion, and the bare armor underneath now exposed.

“Well, he knows who we are now. Go, go, go!” Lyons commanded.

The Stony Man operatives broke cover to charge across the open field of gravel and dive for safety behind some granite headstones.

Almost instantly, there came the hard chatter of a powerful machine gun, and the headstone shook from the arrival of hot lead, sharp chips flying off from the hammering impacts.

Recognizing the sound of a FN Mini-Mi, called a M-249 SAW by U.S. troops, the Stony Man team waited until the 200-round belt cycled empty, then they moved again, fast and in different directions. Only a suicide gave an opponent a group target.

As the SAW lurched back into operation, Blancanales and Schwarz took refuge behind a tall hedge, only to recoil from a pungent reek. Looking around, they spotted the tattered body of an old man in work clothes next to a lawn mower, his dried blood splattered over the machine. The hedge had hidden the corpse from them in the parking lot. Filled with a cold certainty, the Stony Man operatives knew in their guts there would be more corpses scattered around the beautiful cemetery.

Carefully aiming between the body of an angel and her outstretched wings, Lyons cut loose with a long burst from the Atchisson, the sustained discharge briefly sounding louder than the rocket attack. The leaves in the copse of trees shook wildly from the arrival of the steel buckshot, but there was no answering cry of pain or spray of blood.

Chattering away once more, the SAW probed the hedges randomly, and Lyons responded with another barrage, letting Blancanales and Schwarz jump ahead several rows. Racing behind a hedge, they fired short bursts from their own weapons into the air. Both of the grenade launchers could reach the trees by now, but the team wanted the man alive. This mission was still basically a recon, and hard intel was the goal, not revenge.

Slapping in a clip of rubber-tipped stun bullets, Schwarz angled a long burst at another obelisk near the top of the hill, and he managed to get some of them to ricochet into the trees. The SAW stopped firing, but only for a moment. Blancanales tried the same tactic from a different direction, but the results were sadly the same.

“Hollywood to Sky King,” Lyons subvocalized into his throat mike, firing a short burst into the trees. “We have a guests at the party. Repeat—” A strident squeal erupted in his earbuds, and the man bit back a curse as he turned down the volume. The radio signal was being jammed.

As if focusing on the brief transmission, the SAW rattled the headstones around the man, the 5.56 mm rounds annihilating more flowers and bushes. Blancanales and Schwarz answered on full automatic as Lyons sprinted for the protection of a granite bench. He made it just in time, a single round plowing through his shirt to glance off the body armor underneath.

Once more the M-249 roared into life, spent brass tumbling from the crown of the tree like hot autumn leaves. The billiard-table-smooth field of grass churned from the arrival of the hollowpoint rounds, and several headstones were knocked over, leaving a large gap in the neatly trimmed hedges.

Sending back a full drum of cartridges in reply, Lyons cursed at the realization that the sniper was creating a shatter-zone, an open space that Able Team would not enter without getting torn into pieces. Smart. Too damn smart.

A grenade came sailing out of the trees, arching high into the clear blue sky. Quickly jerking up the Atchisson, Lyons emptied an entire drum of 12-gauge cartridges, and the grenade detonated harmlessly over a reflection pool, the halo of shrapnel hissing into the water.

Crouching behind a marble statue of Venus, Blancanales sharply whistled to catch the attention of the other men, then he raised a fist, splayed his fingers and flashed two. Silently, Lyons and Schwarz nodded in agreement.

As the other men opened fired with their weapons, Blancanales stepped to the left, then spun around and sprinted to the right. His heart pounded savagely in his chest, and he almost tripped at the startling discovery of a young woman lying dead in the grass. Jumping over the body, Blancanales did a shoulder roll and took cover behind a wide obelisk. Forcing himself to ignore the deceased civilian, the soldier concentrated the M-203 on the distant trees.

Running low behind the hedges, Schwarz discovered more bodies, a family this time, including a swaddled infant. Snarling, the soldier stood and fired the grenade launcher. The 40 mm shell sailed up the hill to arc between the oaks and slam into the tiered fountain, blowing debris in every direction. Softly, somebody cursed in pain, and a large machine gun tumbled out of the branches to smack onto the sodden ground. It looked like an M-249 SAW.

Suspecting a trick, the three Stony Man operatives patiently waited, reloading their weapons. A moment later there was a powerful boom from within the trees and a headstone violently exploded, throwing out a corona of broken granite. When the smoke cleared, the headstone was gone.

That had been a Barrett 25 mm rifle! Blancanales realized, blood trickling down his face from a cut on his temple. Bolt-action, 5-round clip and way too accurate for this short a range. We’ll have to do something about that double-quick.

Another headstone detonated, closely followed by a statue of Jesus, and Schwarz grunted from an impact on his body armor as he fired the XM-8 assault rifle. However, there was no feeling of a spreading warmth, which meant there had been no penetration. Level Five ballistic cloth was a foot soldier’s very best friend. Tomorrow his bruises would hurt like hell, but right now his job was to keep low, move fast and stay alive.

With the stink of propellant and old blood in his nostrils, Lyons spit the foul taste from his mouth, and eased in his last ammo drum from the Atchisson. After this, he would be down to the Colt Python. Even worse, these last cartridges were all fléchette rounds, stainless-steel razor blades would mince a grown man into hamburger in a split second. Not exactly what he would have chosen to capture an opponent. However, that gave him pause. Fair enough.

Drawing the massive handcannon, Lyons dashed sideways, triggering both weapons. The sniper attempted to aim the Barrett just ahead of the running man, and make him run into the deadly blast, but Lyons constantly changed direction until he reached the temporary safety of a headstone, only to roll into the shallow runoff from the waterfall. Half a heartbeat later, the headstone detonated like a bomb.

Thumbing in a fat HE shell, Schwarz launched it high into the sky and it hit on the far side of the hill, the roiling blast achieving zero results.

Taking a moment to catch his breath, Blancanales spun around the granite slab to fire his own grenade launcher. The 40 mm stun bag disappeared into the trees yielding no effect. But a large swatch of leaves was gone, leaving a deadly gap in the protective cover of the lush greenery.

Understanding what the man was doing, the other Stony Man operatives now attempted to do the same, their stun bags ripping away the leafy boughs until something metallic was seen nestled amid the thinning foliage.

Thumbing in a loose cartridge, Lyons scowled at the sight. Son of a bitch, that was an Auto-Sentry! With the knowledge that there was no living opponent in the tree, he unleashed the full might of the Atchisson. Leaves exploded into the air in a whirlwind of destruction, and something man-size fell to the ruins of the fountain.

Giving the fallen machine a wide berth, the Stony Man operatives warily checked for any other Auto-Sentries in the trees and bushes on the hillock. When satisfied that they were alone, the men approached the Sentry. They scowled in open disapproval at the sophisticated device. The video camera was still attempting to aim the lethal Barrett toward them, a LAW rocket launcher clicking futilely. The antenna was gone, so the deadly machine was merely attempting to perform the last command it had received.

“Whoever installed this here was watching through the camera until activating the jammer,” Schwarz said, swinging around his laptop. “They waited until those poor folks back there were in the proper position, and then killed each one, making sure the bodies fell behind cover to not warn anybody pulling into the parking lot.”

“Ruthless,” Blancanales muttered in open disgust.

“Monstrous,” Lyons amended, resting the hot barrel of the Atchisson on a broad shoulder. “They were watching the cemetery through that video camera, until we arrived. Then they put the Sentry on automatic, and activated the radio jammers.”

“And burned out the transponder,” Schwarz added glumly, lifting a piece of melted electronics. “There’s no way we can track them through this.”

“Wait a second. Those are blocks of C-4 inside the Sentry,” Blancanales said with a frown. “If this thing was designed to explode and destroy any possible evidence if somebody captured it, then why didn’t it?” Slowly he smiled. “Oh, right.”

“Exactly,” Schwarz agreed, patting the laptop. “They were jamming us, but we were also jamming them.”

Lyons almost smiled. “You’re a devious man, Gadgets.”

Blancanales snorted. “Never saw an Auto-Sentry equipped with multiple weapon systems before. That also something new, Gadgets?”

Attaching some wires to an exposed circuit board, the man shrugged. “Nothing I ever heard about. Must be a modification they did. Clever idea, though.”

“Yeah, clever as hell,” Blancanales muttered, glancing back at the dead people sprawled in the ruined shrubbery. From this angle, he could see that the team had missed several corpses scattered around the hillock.

Typing some commands into the laptop, Schwarz grinned in satisfaction. Reaching past the twitching Barrett, the man yanked out some wiring, and the Sentry went dark and still. Instantly, the jamming field went off the air.

“Sky King to Rock Hounds. ETA, four minutes.” Grimaldi’s voice blared in their earbuds. “Repeat, ETA three minutes.”

“Sky King, this is Hollywood,” Lyons said quickly into his throat mike. “The party is over. Return to base. We’ll—” He glanced down at the van in the gravel parking lot. The chassis was dented, but still serviceable. Even the Lexan plastic windows were intact. However, all four of the tires were flat. “We’ll grab a cab, and be there soon.”

“What happened to your roller skate?”

Lyons grimaced. “Somebody brought a firecracker to the party.”

“Ah, understood, Hollywood,” Grimaldi continued smoothly. “I’ll have Bear call off the local cops, and send a couple of blacksuits to recover what’s left of the van.”

“Much appreciated,” Lyons said, listening to the howl of sirens growing steadily louder.

“All a part of the service, Hollywood.” Grimaldi chuckled. “This is Sky King, returning to blacktop. See you soon. Out.”

“Over and out,” Lyons said, brushing back his blond hair.

The three men waited expectantly for a few minutes until the police sirens abruptly stopped. In the ringing silence, the decimation of the cemetery somehow seemed even worse than before.

Loosening the clips and wires, Schwarz returned the laptop to his shoulder bag, then began ripping out the circuit boards from the Sentry.

“All right, anybody feel like checking the grave of the Russian janitor?” Lyons asked, clicking the safety on the Atchisson.

“I’ll do it,” Blancanales snorted, swinging up the M-16 assault rifle. Sweeping the rows of headstones, he found a fresh mound of dirt, checked the name on the headstone and then fired a single round. Instantly the grave exploded, blowing a geyser of dirt and rocks toward the clouds.

“Yeah, thought so,” the man muttered, lowering the assault rifle. “You would have to be a fool to booby trap an entire cemetery, but not the main reason we came here.”

“And whatever else these people are, they’re not fools,” Lyons agreed dourly, bending to recover one of the empty 25 mm rounds for the big Barrett.

Inspecting the bottom, the man was not surprised to see there was no lot number on the brass. There was no way to trace the ammunition. The Stony Man team used something similar in their weapons, as did the CIA, Navy SEALs, Homeland Security, British MI-5, the Mossad, a lot of folks who wanted to keep their involvement in clandestine operations out of the public scrutiny.

“Then again, maybe they are,” Schwarz muttered in a measured tone, extracting a tiny microprocessor from the morass of wiring and holding it triumphantly to the noon sunlight.

FIVE MILES AWAY in nearby Boca Raton, an armed man on the roof of the tallest downtown building released the telescope. When the transponder signal of the Auto-Sentry stopped broadcasting, that meant the jammer was in operation, which meant the balloon had gone up at the Bonaventure Cemetery. However, he was safe. No matter what sort of advanced military opticals the invaders might have with them, there was no way for anybody to find him this far away without astronomical-grade equipment, the kind that could not be transported without a hundred men and a fleet of trucks.

Pulling a PDA from his belt, the man thumbed in a coded text message, then sent it out over the Internet as a microsecond T-burst. The message was simple and concise. “Package delivered, goods en route.”

Tucking away the device, the man wiped his prints off the big telescope and headed for the elevator. Time to go home. Briefly, the mercenary wondered if the three men were with the FBI, CIA, NSA or more of those triple-damn Homeland Security agents. Those were very hard boys, and mighty hard to stop. Then again, it really didn’t make a difference. Once Westmore had them strapped down to a surgical table and then began to remove pieces of their internal anatomy, they’d talk.

Everybody always did.

CHAPTER FOUR

Podbanske Base, Slovakia

When the Communist government fell, the Russian soldiers assigned to the Czechoslovakian missile base simply turned off the equipment and went home. Naturally, they took along everything they could in lieu of pay, but all of the big machinery stayed intact and fully operational—including a mainframe computer and all of the big thermonuclear weapons. Only the tactical nukes had been carried away, which was why General Novostk had been forced to trade a Euro-Russian hydrogen bomb for a Chinese tactical nuke. That trade was the key to get the much more useful T-bombs.

In every way possible, the Soviet missile base was superior to the old headquarters of Saris Castle in the badlands of the Carpathian Mountains where even the goats found nothing to eat. Easily half of the crumbling ruins were inhabitable during the winter, with the water pipes freezing solid, the toilets backing up and the electricity fading away for no apparent reason. Then the soldiers had been forced to become extremely proficient with their handguns to eliminate the staggering rat population. One section of the cellar they had declared a demilitarized zone, and simply nailed the door shut in surrender.

But here at Missile Base Nine, the Slovakians had lights, heat, food, weapons, vehicles, everything needed to wage war on the hated Russians. Of course, the general had known about the base for decades, but even when it had been abandoned, there was no way to get past the massive armored door at the entrance. Then, like a gift from God, some crazy American billionaire had hired them to steal a T-bomb, and offered full technical support, including an American criminal who was an expert at opening bank vaults. Once the Slovakians got past the door, the general discovered the nuclear weapons in storage, and a bold new plan was made, with Lindquist eagerly on board from the very beginning.

Prompted by a blast of the Russian truck’s horn, a dozen soldiers rushed out of a tinted-glass office on the loading dock to assist with the unloading of the T-bomb.

Masking his impatience, General Novostk waited for the unloading to commence. On their way to Slovakia, Colonel Lindquist and Lieutenant Vladislav had been dropped off at a small island in the Black Sea to proceed on their individual assignments, recruitment and misdirection. This would allow the general to concentrate on the real mission: revenge and mass destruction.

“Good to have you back, sir,” a corporal shouted to Novostk, giving a stiff salute. “May I take it that the mission went well?”

“More than well. We have acquired seven of the weapons,” Novostk replied, returning the salute. Normally, soldiers did not salute a superior officer while inside a building, but the entire Red Army base was underground, and so technically inside, so he accepted one if offered, but did not push the matter. These were patriots, ready to die to serve their nation. Novostk would not begrudge them some minor blurring of the rules of military etiquette.

“Seven,” the corporal gasped. The word was repeated several times by the unloading crew. “That’s grand news, sir. We’ll smash the Russians for sure now.”

Did that mean he had harbored doubts before? Novostk wondered privately. That was disquieting, but then soldiers always grumbled, even patriots.

Just then, an electric crane rumbled into life, the arm swinging out over the truck, heavy chains jingling as they descended. The soldiers were scurrying to attach the chains to the precious T-bomb.

“Handle them carefully, gentlemen!” the general bellowed in his best parade-ground voice. “If you set one off, I will be most displeased.”

That made the soldiers crack smiles, and they redoubled the work efforts, the previous tension massively eased.

“I’m always impressed how you do that, sir,” the corporal said in clear envy, resting a hand on the Rex pistol holster at his side. “I’ll never make much of an officer until I learn how.”

“You will learn in time,” General Novostk said, walking out of the way of the busy workers. “Now, is there anything to report on your end? How is the house cleaning progressing?”

The corporal flashed a toothy grin. “Complete victory, sir. We got rid of all the bats by using a flamethrower and roasting the little bastards alive.”

Slowly, the general raised an eloquent eyebrow. The hull of an ICBM was just strong enough to withstand launch, and keep the fuel tanks attached to the engines long enough to reach the target halfway around the world. There had been ten missiles snug in their silos. All of them had been damaged in some way from sheer neglect, but by cannibalizing parts for one to fix another, he had hoped to get three, maybe four of them, into working order.

“Son, did you just tell me,” the general asked in a measure voice, “that you used a flamethrower to clean out the colony of bats inside the launch tube of a thermonuclear ICBM?”

That caught the corporal off guard. “Why…yes sir. I mean, no, sir. I mean…”

With a gentle thump, the first decahedron was placed on the loading dock, and men swarmed to remove the chains to go for the next.

“Were the missiles damaged in any way?” Novostk demanded, every trace of humor and patience gone from his demeanor. Suddenly the friendly old man in a uniform was gone, replaced with “Iron Ivan,” the terror of the Carpathian Mountains.

“No, sir,” the corporal replied hastily, giving another fast salute. “Well, a little, but during the course of fighting the blaze we found a sealed tunnel that led to a cave on the surface. It holds ten SS-25 Sickle missile trucks, sir. Each of them in prime condition, with no work needed at all to make them ready for combat. Well, aside from charging the truck batteries.”

The general squinted. “Ten of them?”

“Yes, sir, ten.”

The second bomb was placed alongside the first.

“Indeed,” the general murmured, deep in thought.

The quartermaster records had only listed one such truck on the premises, and the soldiers had never been able to find the vehicle. The natural assumption was that it had been stolen along with so much other equipment when the staff departed. But now the general could see that report had meant one wing of the deadly missiles. True, they had nowhere near the range of the monster ICBMs in the silos, but those needed a lot of work to get working once more, while the SS-25 Sickles were ready to go. As the old saying went, a copper in your hand was better than a bag of gold in your dreams.

Ten missiles and seven bombs, with one of those held back as a reserve and Colonel Lindquist using another to divert the world’s attention. If the technicians could not crack the defenses of the weapons, he would launch all ten missiles, one live and a dummy toward every target. That would double the chances of the T-bomb getting through the air defenses of each city chosen: Beijing, Paris, London, New Delhi and Washington. Millions would die in the volley, quite possibly a lot more. Which would guarantee the start of World War III, and the end of Russia. The war might spread to other nations, but the Slovakians would be fine, and that was all that mattered.

“That is excellent news, Corporal,” Novostk said, repeating the man’s rank to let him know he could keep it, for now. “Make me a list of every major city they can reach, along with flight times.”

“Here you are, sir,” the corporal said, thrusting out an envelope. “Population numbers, size of military, any known antimissile defenses, distance in kilometers and miles and estimated flight times. Once we install the bombs in the warheads we can launch in five minutes.”

Waving the fellow away, Novostk read the report while the rest of the bombs were laid down as gently as Christmas eggs.

“Sir, the six bombs are unloaded,” Sergeant Melori reported with a casual salute. “I already have some men hauling one down to the basement to be attached to the self-destruct circuits.” He knew there used to be a big hydrogen bomb hardwired there, but they had traded it at Milan in exchange for the NBC suits, the VX nerve gas and many miscellaneous items needed to bring the base back to a full war status, including several tons of food. Trading bombs for corned beef—the technician wasn’t quite sure who got the better of that deal.

“Very good,” the general said, folding the report to tuck it away inside his jacket. “Now, I fear that I must speak to you on a most delicate matter.” He paused. “A private matter.”

“Of course, sir,” Melori replied, wondering what his oafish friend Vladislav had done now. Killed someone or broken another piece of irreplaceable equipment? Soon the general would decide the man was a menace to the mission, and ask to have a quiet word with him somewhere in private. Just the two of them, on the end of the cliff, and a gun containing a single bullet.

Joining the general at the end of the loading dock, the sergeant warily kept his back to the wall.

Noticing the surreptitious maneuver, Novostk smiled. “No, Sergeant, I am not here to deliver some gun-barrel justice. Instead, I need to ask you a very personal question.”

“Sir?” Sergeant Melori asked, also not liking the direction this new line was heading.

Clearly unsure of how to proceed, the general fumbled for the correct words, not wishing to insult the man he needed for an important favor.

“I think I know what you’re trying to ask, sir,” Sergeant Melori whispered softly. “And I would admit this to nobody else, but the answer is yes, I do not care for the intimate company of women.” Even as the man said the words, his stomach tightened. Back in the hill country, such a declaration would get you killed. But Melori had taken a solemn oath to die for the general, so at the very least he should tell the man the plain, unvarnished truth.

“Thank God.” General Novostk exhaled in relief. “Sergeant, I need you to return to our headquarters at Saris Castle and oversee the safety of a prisoner. The professor will most likely be…uncooperative…and may need to be forced to do as we wish, and unlock the secrets of the T-bombs. She is also supposed to be a very beautiful woman, and I do not want the men at the castle to, shall we say, lose sight of our real goal. We need her to remove the antipersonnel hardware defending the bombs, not set one off early to end her unbearable sexual torture.”

“Or to replace the traps with new ones of her own,” Melori finished in sudden understanding. “And with my knowledge of electronics, I’ll also be able to stop her from doing any unwanted augmentation of the weapons.” He blinked. “This is why you’re having her work at the castle, and not here. Just in case.”

The general was pleased to see his choice had been the correct one. “Exactly. Our work is too important to risk being derailed by a madwoman defending her honor.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll take ten men as an escort, have them load a T-bomb into a half-track and leave immediately.”

“Make it fifty, and bring along some motorcycles, and the Soviet tank. It is a hard journey through rough country, and nothing must get in your way. I want you there long before Lieutenant Vladislav arrives.”

So let the men have time to get used to me being in charge. Smart. The old man didn’t miss a trick. Then an unpleasant thought occurred. “Sir, what if…what if she cannot be convinced to help us?”

“She must,” the general said flatly, turning away. “There is no other option.”

Slowly comprehension dawned and the sergeant nodded in grim understanding. They would attempt to do this honorably, but as the hated KGB had taught the entire nation, the end always justified the means. The prisoner would be made to comply, end of discussion. And may God have mercy on our souls.

Milan, Italy

A GLOSSY BLACK Hummer drove slowly along the street as it meandered through a series of low hills. At a fork, the vehicle waited as liveried guards swung an ornate iron gate aside. Rolling through the barrier, the people inside the Hummer saw the gate close behind them. The gate meant nothing; it was merely a social courtesy to deter outsiders from taking this particular road. However, it also served as a line of disembarkation, clearly showing the local police where their jurisdiction ended. Technically the land beyond the flimsy fence was still Italy, but in reality it was a world as unreachable as Mars. The mansion and surrounding grounds were privately owned by the Norel Corporation, the biggest arms dealers in the world.

Carefully moving along the private street, the driver of the Hummer stopped for a security check at a brick kiosk where the guards carried holstered pistols. Everything was in order, and the Hummer proceeded up a steeply sloping road into the rugged mountains. On the beautiful azure sea below, sailboats moved in the far distance, along with an unusually high concentration of yachts, and a couple of cargo carriers flying the flag of either the politically neutral Switzerland or Luxembourg.

Privately owned helicopters flitted back and forth from the vessels, steadily conveying passengers to the heliport of the mansion sprawled on top of the craggy mountain. All of the vessels were moored just past the twelve-mile mark from the coast, and thus were in international waters and safe from any unwanted intrusion by the federal police, the Italian navy or even NATO.

Once more, the driver of the black Hummer stopped at a kiosk for a security check. This deep into Norel territory, the kiosk more resembled a concrete pillbox. The guards were carrying AK-105 assault rifles, each one equipped with a 30 mm grenade launcher. Off to the side was a sandbag nest where guards were manning several of the new MANPAD rocket launchers, powerful enough to blow a hole through even a U.S. Army Abrams M-1 tank or an Apache gunship.

The security guards found the people in the Hummer acceptable and waved them through. Sheikh Abdul Ben Hassan was a regular customer here, although he always seemed to send different representatives. But that was the prerogative of a customer; the only person a man could trust was himself, and the only safe place on Earth was the grave.

Following the road to the crest of the mountain, the driver of the Hummer stopped the vehicle in a spacious parking lot nearly filled with luxury vehicles.

“You can almost taste the money,” David McCarter muttered, running a finger along his stiff collar. He was wearing a designer suit, a blue cravat of raw silk held in place by a gold stickpin. His shoes were Italian loafers and a Rolex Supreme glinted on his wrist. As a former member of the elite British SAS, the lanky man felt about as uncomfortable as a nun in a whorehouse on coupon night.

“Smell the blood money, you mean,” muttered T. J. Hawkins, maintaining a neutral demeanor as he set the brake. Born Thomas Jefferson Hawkins, the combat veteran was called T.J. by his family, and Hawk by his fellow soldiers. A sleek Beretta machine pistol was holstered at his side, spare clips thrusting up from an ammo pouch like ancient Japanese samurai swords.

Stepping out of the Hummer, the two men coolly studied the high stone wall separating the parking lot from the Norel estate on the other side. There were no coils of concertina wire, electrical wires or even video cameras edging the defenses of the mountaintop mansion. But the former member of Delta Force knew that the plain-looking wall was jammed full of reactive tank armor, antipersonnel mines, EM scanners and more proximity sensors than the west wing of the White House. There was nothing crude or slapdash about the Norel operations, but then the international weapons merchants were richer than most small nations. Every weekend, the Norel exposition was open for business, and as old saying goes, business was good.

As with many aspects of life in Italy, the operators had an understanding with the law, along with an uneasy truce. No deaths occurred here, and no weapons were sold to anybody who lived within a hundred miles. If the federal police or the military ever did arrive, they could arrest many of the customers, but the next day Milan, Rome and Venice would be flooded with advanced weaponry sold at discount prices, the Norel cartel practically giving the guns away as revenge.

Both of the Stony Man operatives knew that there were no actual weapons at the exposition. Only brochures and smiling salesmen. A customer perused the merchandise, made selections and paid a hefty deposit, with the rest of the money upon delivery, which was always very far away from Milan. It was a genuine den of thieves that operated on the honor system.

After a moment McCarter snapped his fingers and the remaining three members of Phoenix Force climbed from the Hummer as if they had been waiting for permission. They were all well dressed, freshly scrubbed, yet carried the unmistakable aura of controlled violence, the calling card of every mercenary alive.

“Man, I hate doing this naked,” Gary Manning muttered. The burly Canadian brushed a callused hand over his slicked-down hair. He felt like a damn fool in the tailored clothing, with a small diamond clipped to his left earlobe. There was a bulky Desert Eagle automatic holstered under his jacket, two spare clips attached to the straps. An expert sniper, his preferred weapon was a Barrett .50 rifle, but that had to be left behind for this particular mission.

“At least you have that popgun,” Rafael Encizo countered, adjusting his glasses. “I only have my winning smile.”

The eyewear was fake, merely sheets of clear glass, but they served as a vital part of his disguise as the money. The Stony Man operative was wearing a dark business suit of only moderate price range, but the attaché case handcuffed to his wrist was sheathed in the finest Moroccan leather. The lock was a biometric sensor plate, and the hinges glistened like solid gold. The stocky Puerto Rican had a quick smile, and even faster hands, and was considered one of the best underwater demolitions experts in the world.

“No guns allowed, brother,” Calvin James said in a thick Chicago accent. The former U.S. Navy SEAL was wearing a yachting outfit, including white deck shoes and a jaunty cap. He was also armed with a Desert Eagle .357 Magnum, the big-bore automatic carefully fired a dozen times to take the clean sheen off the brand-new weapon.

“Rather ironic for a weapons market, don’t you think?” Encizo asked out of the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t think they know what the word means,” McCarter replied, striding for the front gate.

Leaving the Hummer unlocked, the other men followed close behind as befitting their place as his staff. At the gate, the Stony Man operatives showed their identification once more to the guards. These men were wearing Level Five body armor, the so-called Dragonskin, and carrying MP-5 submachine guns slung on their shoulders. Grudgingly, McCarter approved of the choice of weapons. The Heckler & Koch MP-5 was what his team regularly used on combat missions, and in his opinion was the best all-purpose weapon in existence.

“Welcome to Norel, gentlemen,” a bald guard said, waving a hand toward the plastic arch of a weapon scanner. “Step this way, please.”

As McCarter stepped through the arch, a soft beep was audible.

“No guns,” the second guard stated in halting English. “Leave it with us.”

“But this is a gun show,” McCarter stated in mock outrage.

Laying a hand on the MP-5, the guard stiffened. “No guns.”

“Excuse my partner, sir,” the first guard said smoothly. “The Norel weapons policy is for your own protection. There are far too many—shall we say—old friends who meet here, and in the heat of the moment…well…” The guard smiled tolerantly, spreading his hands in a classic Italian gesture.

Pretending to be annoyed, the members of Phoenix Force passed over their never-before-used weapons, and McCarter incredibly received a claim chit in return, as if they had just stored their coats at a restaurant.

“And how is the sheikh these days, sir?” a guard asked out of the blue.

“Still deceased,” McCarter replied, then added a smile that said the exact opposite was true.

The two armed men laughed and bowed slightly as they waved him forward.

One at a time, the Stony Man operatives walked through the weapon scanner. There was a brief moment of concern about the locked attaché case carried by Encizo, so he reluctantly opened it to display a double row of small bars of gold bullion. The guards probed for a false bottom, but found nothing and finally allowed Encizo through to join the other members of Phoenix Force.

It was clear that the guards were suspicious of that much rare metal being used as a payment, as diamonds were much more prevalent. They were lighter, smaller, easier to transport and could be smuggled inside a human mule if necessary. However, there was nothing forbidden about using precious metals; only narcotics were not acceptable as payment for the goods. Not for any ethical reasons, but purely because the quality of drugs was often too difficult for even a professional to properly ascertain.

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