IT WAS SET TO BLOW, LOUD AND HOT

“Well, Agent Lemmon, I guess there’s not much left to say except I can’t recall the last time I saw a G-man walking around in rubber-soled combat boots. I didn’t know government issues, the official kind, trooped around with compact submachine guns in special swivel rigging beneath oversize windbreakers. To answer your questions, yes, I have a major deal in the works that could change the entire destiny of the world. My employees were just chess pieces, pawns to take the fall while I rode off into the sunset. You know what my problem is—”

“I’m not your shrink, Colonel,” Lyons interjected.

The Able Team leader was already searching for cover, aware that he and Blancanales were in a cross fire. It was something in Lake’s eyes, a look, that warned Lyons to make a scramble to save his skin.

He was in the air, flying over a couch as the Uzi appeared, like some sorcerer’s trick, in Lake’s hands.

Other titles in this series:

STONY MAN IV

STONY MAN V

STONY MAN VI

STONY MAN VII

STONY MAN VIII

#9 STRIKEPOINT

#10 SECRET ARSENAL

#11 TARGET AMERICA

#12 BLIND EAGLE

#13 WARHEAD

#14 DEADLY AGENT

#15 BLOOD DEBT

#16 DEEP ALERT

#17 VORTEX

#18 STINGER

#19 NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE

#20 TERMS OF SURVIVAL

#21 SATAN’S THRUST

#22 SUNFLASH

#23 THE PERISHING GAME

#24 BIRD OF PREY

#25 SKYLANCE

#26 FLASHBACK

#27 ASIAN STORM

#28 BLOOD STAR

#29 EYE OF THE RUBY

#30 VIRTUAL PERIL

#31 NIGHT OF THE JAGUAR

#32 LAW OF LAST RESORT

#33 PUNITIVE MEASURES

#34 REPRISAL

#35 MESSAGE TO AMERICA

#36 STRANGLEHOLD

#37 TRIPLE STRIKE

#38 ENEMY WITHIN

#39 BREACH OF TRUST

#40 BETRAYAL

#41 SILENT INVADER

#42 EDGE OF NIGHT

#43 ZERO HOUR

#44 THIRST FOR POWER

#45 STAR VENTURE

#46 HOSTILE INSTINCT

#47 COMMAND FORCE

#48 CONFLICT IMPERATIVE

#49 DRAGON FIRE

#50 JUDGMENT IN BLOOD

#51 DOOMSDAY DIRECTIVE

#52 TACTICAL RESPONSE

#53 COUNTDOWN TO TERROR

#54 VECTOR THREE

#55 EXTREME MEASURES

#56 STATE OF AGGRESSION

#57 SKY KILLERS

#58 CONDITION HOSTILE

#59 PRELUDE TO WAR

#60 DEFENSIVE ACTION

#61 ROGUE STATE

#62 DEEP RAMPAGE

#63 FREEDOM WATCH

#64 ROOTS OF TERROR

#65 THE THIRD PROTOCOL

#66 AXIS OF CONFLICT

#67 ECHOES OF WAR

#68 OUTBREAK

#69 DAY OF DECISION

Ramrod Intercept

STONY MAN®

AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Don Pendleton

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

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

PROLOGUE

They knew.

He couldn’t nail down, of course, the when and where he suspected he’d been found out, but Reza Nahru sensed the angry heat of a killing mood in the barracks as soon as he was roused from sleep.

“Get up! On your feet! The general wishes to speak with us!”

There was real menace, he thought, in the way his brother Iranians glanced at him, then turned away, a few of them wrinkling noses as if they were in a hurry to clear a bad stench. He was on his feet, reaching for his assault rifle when Bahruz Fhalid growled, “Leave it.”

And then he knew he was a dead man, beyond any scintilla of a doubt.

Time seemed suspended, and he found it strange to the point of some peaceful, easy feeling how he could so calmly accept the inevitable, go and face down his own death. At least, he told himself, he wouldn’t die alone, since he heard both men were likewise told to leave their AK-47s where they were leaned up against respective edges of their cots.

Small comfort. Dead was dead.

A moment stolen to look at Tabriz and al-Hammud, rising now from their cots under the dark scowls and black eyes of AK-47s, and he still couldn’t help but wonder how his treachery had been uncovered.

It had to have been his CIA contact in Port Sudan or perhaps Khartoum. The secret meetings, accepting the envelopes of cash from the CIA’s contract agent in Sudan, had been spied out somehow, by someone. Sudan, he knew, was crawling with Iranian agents, all manner of former SAVAK thugs, and he could have cursed himself for not being more careful in watching his back. Too late to kick himself now—clearly word of his deceit and betrayal had trailed him all the way down to Madagascar.

The sweeping courtyard was just beyond the door. The massive stone walls of the garrison, once home to French soldiers, would be smeared with his blood when he was marched out there to be shot.

Death at the hands of his own. Shot down like a mad dog in the street. A sorry testament, he decided, to a bad life.

A fitting end.

“A moment to pray?” he asked Fhalid.

“Be quick about it.”

He slumped to his knees, shut his eyes, clasped his hands. As a Muslim, once devoted to God and his will, committed to prayer and to his faith, he had somehow, somewhere lost that faith, his belief in right and wrong, stripping himself of any sense of humanity. No, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain on exactly where and when he had stopped believing in God, but supposed it had begun when he had left—abandoned—his wife and three children in Tehran, right after the way with the Iraqis. From there, a pit stop in Beirut, beefing up on weapons and intel. There, rallying an elite corps of freedom fighters, mapping out strategy against the infidels. Then on the Gaza Strip, where he’d recruited the poor, the angry and the desperate out of Palestinian refugee camps to blow themselves up in Tel Aviv, martyrs for God. There was also an American diplomatic entourage wiped out in Pakistan not long ago that he had played no small role in arranging. At least twenty of the men gathered in the barracks had also been part of creating slaughterhouses in six different countries.

And it was his knowledge of these incidents that had brought the CIA to his doorstep in Port Sudan, dark shadow men picking his brain, putting the ultimatum to him. Play ball or else.

They wanted names and whereabouts of his fellow brothers in jihad. They wanted to know from where recent shipments of high-tech weapons were coming from, to find their way into the hands of his fellow Iranians.

So be it. A change was long since coming anyway. Sometimes, he thought, conversion of the soul just came to a man, a virgin bride eager to marry the one she loved, or sometimes the man actively and with passion he had never before known sought out the inner cleansing. Who could say?

But for some time Nahru had questioned the morality of the so-called holy way against the Great Satan. He asked himself if God was the creator of all men, why, then, would he want the blood of the innocent on his divine hands?

Silently Nahru asked God to have mercy on his wretched soul.

“Up!”

“We had a deal!”

Rising, eyes wide open, Nahru nearly laughed out loud when the moment of truth was revealed. The old Nahru would have unleashed a torrent of vicious cursing on al-Hammud. The new man simply felt a sense of curious relief sweeping over him. If nothing else, his own Judas would die beside him.

Al-Hammud began blubbering for his life to be spared. “You told me—”

Fhalid stung the man’s face with a backhand that slapped flesh with the sound of a pistol shot. “Get these jackals out of my face!”

Nahru allowed himself to be shoved and manhandled through the door. He winced into the beam of white light striking him in the face as he stumbled into the courtyard. He was thinking to be shot couldn’t be such a bad way to go. Quick, clean, fairly painless. One well-placed bullet through the heart…

The stench nearly knocked him off his feet. He heard al-Hammud scream out his terror next when he was pushed toward the trio of Madagascan soldiers. It was all he could do to keep the vomit from spewing out. The cattle carcass was still being gutted, long strands of intestines dug out by the soldiers with machetes ripping away, the dripping gore getting smeared up and down the long thin stakes.

Greasing the way.

Nahru felt knees buckle, his limbs turning to boneless mass when Fhalid bellowed the order to strip them down. The blows pummeled his head next, bringing on the stars and the white-hot pain. He was falling hard and fast, then became aware he was on the ground, face plastered in the red earth, hands like claws shredding his clothes.

Reza Nahru offered up one last silent prayer. He asked God to avenge the obscenity of his coming death.

GENERAL FATEH ARAKKHAN was a man without a country. It angered him to no end, this knowledge he was unwelcomed, unwanted in his homeland, not to mention he was a soldier being hunted for alleged war crimes. The rumor floating his way from Khartoum went that his own people, in their greed and hunger to become a prominent oil-developing and -exporting country, were ready and willing to hand his head over to the infidels.

The Arab-controlled north Sudan might be his home of birth, but a few circumstances had recently dictated he find comfortable lodging someplace far away from Khartoum. One, the military and intelligence bastards and whores of the evil Western empires, he thought, had proclaimed him the Butcher of Southern Sudan, and before the United Nations for five years running. Second, a number of upper-echelon two-faced thieves in the intelligence arm of the National Islamic Front were more than irked that he had helped himself to what they claimed was more than his rightful share of Red Cross and UN planeloads of food and medicine, shipped to southern Sudan under some shaky international-relief agreement.

Yes, it was true enough he had strongarmed enough supplies, reselling them to Somalia—not to mention helping himself to a vast pool of oil money—and mounted a fat numbered back account in Switzerland. But how could a leader, he reasoned, ever hope to lead unless he could feed, clothe, arm and pay his own men properly? A soldier with an empty belly, with no money in his pocket to throw around on R and R… Well, a soldier stirred up with bitter malcontent meant mass mutiny could be as close as tomorrow’s kneel to Mecca.

But the former number-two man of the National Salvation Revolutionary Council was working on his comeback. Someday soon he would return to Khartoum in triumph, and more than a few backstabbing colleagues would find themselves gored and suspended high in the air for all of Khartoum to gaze upon, the masses out there meant only to shimmy and shake in fear at the very mention of his name.

Just like the three treacherous Iranian jackals shrieking below, the future was in his mind’s eye, and it was looking bright.

The general mounted the parapet, reveled in the screams of traitors. He was short, slightly built, but he felt like a giant right then, the center of grim and undivided attention, decked out in full uniform, epaulets, with ribbons and medals weighing down his tunic. He savored this victory, a vision of tomorrow, as they were raised and the bloody ends of the stakes were buried deep into the ground. Of course, the ankles required rope, fastened to stakes to keep them in the air while gravity did its gruesome work.

As in most countries where Europeans once trod, there was a language barrier. Madagascar was no different. He addressed the Iranians in English, aware most of the Madagascan soldiers had a working knowledge of the universal language. “Behold the fate of all those who give themselves over to the Great Satan like common whores. I am General Fateh Arakkhan, but you already know that. What I am to you is your ayatollah—or sign of God. Treason is unacceptable. Submission to my will is acceptable. You have been brought to this island to serve in what will soon become the mother of all holy wars. Yes, I know you have your own agendas, regarding your islands in the Strait of Hormuz.”

The screams faded to bitter weeping as shock set in and their limbs hung limply by their sides. “We must plan our futures together if we are to succeed in defeating our enemies. These three men were fools, with weak wills and deceit in their hearts. You can clearly see I still have friends in important places in Sudan, watching, waiting for my return.” He glossed over the fact it never hurt to spread the wealth around, whether Khartoum or here in Madagascar, where he had the president tucked in his pocket, along with ranking Madagascan officers and about one-third of the People’s National Assembly. “I am issuing the fatwa. Anyone who is not with us is against us. It cannot be much more clear and simple. Gaze now upon the fate of our enemies. That is all.”

A moan of agony rose up from the courtyard as he moved down the parapet. He would need a few minutes at some point with Fhalid to discuss where it all went from there. For now he would simply let his actions speak the truth, revealing the future of his enemies for all to behold.

RYAN COLLINS HAD a lifestyle to maintain, and figured a measly quarter-million a year wasn’t cutting it. There was the beachfront home in Malibu to consider. There were bimonthly trips to Hawaii, three sports cars to think about. There were two ex-wives with their hands clawed deep in his pockets, and their lawyers planted square up his butt. There was a mistress who had a coke habit….

Girls, girls, girls.

All things about the opposite sex considered, he felt right at home as he claimed a table in the far corner, eyes lighting up at the blond vision shaking and baking on stage. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, the coiffed dark hair, the rugged movie-star good looks, couldn’t resist a smile.

Feeling good.

He saw she was already cutting a beeline his way, all smiles, ready to rock, waving off the come-ons from the wanna-be lady-killers. He was one of the privileged elite clientele who had access to the back rooms. And why not, he figured, the kind of money he threw away in the place, a fringe benefit or two should always be on the menu. He was in a stressful line of work, after all, needed relief, and things weren’t getting any less tense around the office.

Los Angeles was a party town, around the clock, and Collins was looking for some way to keep the good times rolling. He believed he had found the answer, only he was concerned where he might go with his information and who should get it.

And for what price.

Still, he was disturbed about recent events he couldn’t explain, but his ticket to paradise was stashed away in the aluminum briefcase by his side.

And there were shadows following him. He couldn’t see them, but three of his colleagues had gone AWOL. The past month or so had seen a few grim-faced robots—Terminators, he thought—lumbering around the DYSAT office in Century City. These days, he felt he was always being watched, since he was a top-ranking executive with access to sensitive information to classified high-tech weapons, microchip processors….

Well, he had stumbled across the order manifests and they didn’t jibe with production output. Not only that, but the end users—purchasers—were logged as…

He shuddered to even consider whom DYSAT had fallen into bed with. Okay, he figured he could talk to the president of the company, a former Air Force colonel, and put the screws to him. It might cost him his job, but if he made some noise about going to the Feds unless there was ample cash compensation…

“Hey, cutie. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Was it his imagination, or did Cyndy look especially pleased to see him?

“Likewise.”

“You want a drink first?”

“After.”

She took his hand, leading the way. Paradise.

“You sound real horny tonight.”

“Tough day at the office.”

She seemed too eager to please, not even bothering to relieve him of two hundred bucks first, but he figured she was just hot to get it on. He trailed her through the rear door, into a narrow, murky hall. He was grateful the back rooms were nearly soundproof, blotting out the thunder of heavy metal and the roar of hyenas in heat. The only kind of noise he wanted to hear was her mewing for more. Down the hall to the last room, and she opened the door. He was moving inside, looking from the soft light burning on the nightstand, adjusting his eyes to the deeper gloom, when he spotted the shadow.

“What the…?”

“Mr. Collins. Nice of you to show up.”

Collins felt his blood pressure rise like a war drum in his ears, heart pulsing with fear and anger. “What is this? I’ve seen you before.”

“I left your envelope with the bartender.”

Collins nearly bellowed with outrage as the whore simply nodded, not even looking at him as she left the room, the door snicking shut.

The Terminator rose, and Collins heard the dialogue leaping to mind, aware he had been set up, screwed. He was about to say, “I can explain,” when the behemoth in a buzz cut pulled out a pistol and attached a sound suppressor.

“Your services are no longer required by DYSAT.”

“Listen! No, I can—”

A chug, then the lights were punched out.

CHAPTER ONE

“You look like the messenger with bad news—and ‘very’ bad news.”

Hal Brognola was fondling an unlit cigar as he rolled into the War Room at Stony Man Farm. The director of the Justice Department’s Sensitive Operations Group swept on, past Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, the chief cyber sorcerer who was confined for life to his wheelchair, thanks to a bullet, and grunted at Bear’s remark.

“Well?” Kurtzman pressed. “Did the Man give us the green light?”

The Man, of course, was the President of the United States, and half of Brognola’s twin-bill duty was playing a critical role as the Farm’s liaison to the chief executive. “We’re sitting in limbo—still.”

No thumbs-up from the Oval Office, and Barbara Price, the Farm’s mission controller, groaned. “Unbelievable. Does he have any clue how hard we pushed, maneuvering all the logistical chess pieces, to get it at the doorstep of…this eleventh hour?”

The Justice man knew all too well how many hours—belay that—days the Farm team had racked up, the number of strings tugged, contacts cajoled, markers raked in from the Pentagon to Langley. It galled him alone to think Stony Man’s elite commandos were poised on three separate thresholds, combat ready, chomping on prebattle nerves.

Waiting for the phone to ring.

The big Fed poured a large foam cup of Kurtzman’s infamous coffee, then dumped enough sugar in the black swill to make it go down a little easier. “Five days, as a matter of fact, since we put this one on the drawing board. I don’t mind saying I’m feeling the strain myself, people, and all the way to the hair on my toes,” Brognola told the key players, grabbing his seat, dumping himself down at the head of the table. “The Man’s as clued in like I was the burning bush to his Moses, all right, but he’s firmly stated his concerns about what could become a whopping and ugly international mess.”

“Welcome to the Oval Office,” Kurtzman groused.

“I damn near said that. At any rate, it’s why I’ve been at my office all day, waiting by the phone, lighting a few more fires around Wonderland.” He glowered at the red phone on the table within arm’s reach. “Looks like we’re all still going to have to wait—if and when—for the tough choice to get made.”

The chopper ride from his office at the Justice Department to the Farm in Virginia was roughly ninety minutes. But with only a catnap on the office couch, here and there during the past few days Brognola felt as if he’d just crossed three time zones, jet lag and ten years older. Tired as King Solomon perhaps over the folly and insanity of humans chasing the wind, on edge admittedly, and leaning a little to the mean side.

Brognola worked on the coffee, chomping his stogie, then said, “Okay, sitreps. I know we’ve run it down before, but maybe we missed something. A to Z. The basics and the particulars. Let’s start with Phoenix Force. Barbara?”

The honey-haired blonde, who could have just walked off the pages of a fashion magazine and into the War Room, took up a remote-control box and snapped on one of the large monitors built into the wall. An enlarged grid map of Madagascar and the Indian Ocean to the east flared to life. “The hunter-killer submarine Seawolf SSN 21 is submerged and still holding its position, forty kilometers and change from where Phoenix will be inserted on the eastern central shore of Madagascar. Sat imagery shows it’s a remote area, with only two villages and a scattering of rice terraces, a solitary Catholic church along the march. It will be your basic grunt march—move fast and silent and avoid contact with the locals. According to our and the Seawolf’s depth gauges and X-ray sat imagery of the water, the inlet’s bottom is smooth enough, slanting evenly up to shore, no crags, no snags, to receive the unarmed torpedo that will carry their gear and weapons onto the beach. Something like an underwater surfboard, special delivery riding right up on the sand. Ready and waiting for them to finish out their swim.”

Brognola grunted. “For some reason, I get damn nervous over the idea of inserting them by sea. I see twenty things going wrong all at once. Aren’t those shark-infested waters? As in great white?”

“Actually,” Kurtzman said, “the eastern coastline of Madagascar is called Whale Highway. Most of the marine life traffic is made up primarily of the larger animals, at least, namely migrating humpback whales.”

“I hear primarily and actually and namely, I don’t exactly get a warm fuzzy feeling, Bear. I’m not sure, but I don’t think they teach wanna-be SEALs in BUDs what the hell to do—other than pray—when they see a sixteen-foot torpedo-like shadow coming at them out of the murk with bared teeth the size of a butcher’s knife.”

“Your white shark population sticks farther to the south, off the coastline of South Africa where there’s an abundant seal menu.”

“Why couldn’t it have been an air drop instead of going out the hatch of a submersible?”

“A minisub,” Price said. “Riding piggyback on the escape hatch of the Seawolf. A submersible requires a surface support vehicle at all times, often needs to be hooked by cable to the mother ship. The state-of-the-art Titan was designed by aerodynamic engineers for the specific intent of inserting soldiers by sea. It’s not a deep research vessel by any stretch. It’s built for speed and deployment of combat troops.”

“I stand corrected. If I sounded like a grumpy old man, Barbara…”

“I understand perfectly. Okay, Aaron and I ran down the logistics, worked out the timetable from start to finish. Jack Grimaldi and a blacksuit crew are parked on a military base, courtesy of our own State Department’s clout with a few government officials in Tanzania. Once Phoenix hits the beach, Jack will be contacted by us, hooked up on a three-way sat uplink with the ground troops. The AC-130 Spectre gunship will take off from Dar es Salaam, fly east by southeast, then due south, move in, westward, once it hits their insertion point. Sat imagery lines up the old French garrison, due west, approximately ten kilometers west of where they will come ashore.”

“And if Jack gets there first?”

“He’ll fly a holding pattern, and hope. However, we have this timed down to the minute, Hal.”

“There was never any doubt.”

“To answer your question,” Price said, “about an air insertion, we know the garrison has state-of-the-art radar, sold to the government in Antananarivo—or Tana for short—by France. We’ve picked up machine-gun nests, but no antiaircraft batteries and no fighter jets. However, if one of the terrorists is running around with a Stinger when this goes down, the Spectre would be history if it’s wielded by even semicapable hands. Besides,” she added, a trace of sarcasm in her tone, “the former French colony has been attempting to go democratic for about ten years.”

“How? By giving safe haven to a small army of international murderers?”

Price shrugged. “What can I say? All of us know graft and corruption don’t care about the difference between communism, iron-handed dictatorship or fledgling democracy.”

“I hear you.”

Brognola heaved a breath, told himself to drop it down a notch, aware his jacked-up mood was affecting and stretching taut nerves all around.

Price rode out a moment of silence, then said, “The way I figured it, since Madagascar is an island four hundred kilometers from the east coast of Africa by the Mozambique Channel, and with what we have planned, an air drop sounded too risky. Too much open sea, to get them from point A to B. And the Seawolf was available. Going in by cover of the vast Indian Ocean, and at night, was the lesser of two evils. Once the dust settles and the smoke clears, an airfield about two hundred meters west of the garrison can accommodate Jack and company for a landing. Evacuation for our troops. And we assume, there will be some of the more notable terrorists left standing to be brought back to the States to stand trial for what we know is their involvement in just about every major terrorist attack around the world in the past ten years or more.”

“We’re assuming an awful lot, all of us,” Kurtzman said. “We all know the President’s position on this. He wants a few live ones to hold up to the cameras. Whipping boys or trophies, I have to wonder.”

“I told him up front and in no uncertain terms I wasn’t about to make that promise,” Brognola said. “Could be why I’m getting the silent treatment. No way in hell am I putting Phoenix into the fire, working under the assumption these fanatics are just going to throw their hands up and let our guys read them their Miranda rights, recite Geneva Convention nonsense, chapter and verse and all that crazy shit. Besides, I have to agree with the Man to some extent on one point. A few songbird fanatics could have the mother lode of intelligence. Give me a numbers crunch on bad guys.”

“Bear?” Price said.

“Two full squads of Madagascan soldiers. Thirty-four, now thirty-one Iranian fanatics.”

Brognola raised a curious eyebrow over the smoke at the grim tone in Kurtzman’s voice. “I get the feeling you want to tell me something?”

“I’ll do better. I’ll show you, live and in color.” Kurtzman palmed his own remote and flashed on a sat image that made Brognola freeze as the steaming brew was being raised to his lips. “We have an ONI-1 satellite, courtesy of the DIA, parked in space over Madagascar.”

Kurtzman muttered a curse. “There’s our Butcher of Southern Sudan, hard at work, showing off the kind of talent he used on black Christians and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army for some five years. Bloody animal. The UN puts his slaughter of mostly innocent women and children in the tens of thousands.”

“A real charming piece of work,” Price added. “Mr. Sunshine.”

“So, who got to know Vlad the Impaler’s loving feeling?”

“One of them was Reza Nahru,” Kurtzman informed.

“That name sounds familiar.”

“It should. He was tried and convicted by the Israelis in absentia for three separate terrorist attacks that claimed forty-three lives,” Kurtzman said. “One was a busload of little else but women and children in Tel Aviv. We have also picked up from ONI-1 four other faces belonging to Iranians linked to bin Laden who were likewise convicted in absentia but by the Jordanians. Death warrants issued for these butchers.”

“Which leads us to the task at hand, as far as the Madagascar and Sudan situations are concerned,” Brognola said. “This General Arakkhan is no small fish. He still carries heavy weight among a loyal military faction in Khartoum who want to see his return to…well, the Vlad the Impaler glory days. The problem is the CIA contract agents who got us this far are disappearing all over Sudan.”

“They were working on getting the Company a leadin,” Price said, “to where the shipment of high-tech weapons is located, or being shipped, which is rumored to be an Iranian-occupied island in the Strait of Hormuz. Now, the rumbling I caught from Langley was that Nahru had jumped to the other side of the tracks, looking to deal or double deal. Who can say now? Obviously word got back to Arakkhan the impaler. Three less fanatics on the loose now, if nothing else. And with what we know about the situation in Los Angeles we can at least surmise the smuggling operation has its origins there.”

“DYSAT,” Brognola growled. “What do we know about them, other than three of their executives who went to the FBI have been abducted by the DYSAT mother ship?”

Kurtzman filled in the blanks. “Apparently they do classified work, chemical lasers, microchip processors for high-energy X-ray lasers. It took some digging and a few phone calls over to the Pentagon, but that’s about as far as we got. Their only office is in Century City, Tinsel Town, which I find sort of strange, planting classified military think tanks in the heart of where all the movie execs and agents do their trolling and scamming.”

“Go figure,” Brognola said. “I read smoke screen, hiding out in the open. And by classified, I’m hearing you mean to say they are a black project.”

“It certainly reads that way,” Kurtzman went on. “Since the files I hacked into over at the Department of Defense are full of blacked-out words and whole deleted sentences about the pasts of the head honchos. The top dogs are former Air Force air commandos, nothing, however, untoward that would indicate they would be part of some conspiracy. The workforce is primarily civilian, Harvard, UCLA, MIT grads, pretty-boy types. We did find out DYSAT’s production and research facility is located in Idaho.”

“I don’t mean to get sidetracked here, but can someone explain to me just what a chemical laser is?”

“Akira and Hunt,” Kurtzman said, referring to Akira Tokaido and Huntington Wethers, two more vital cogs in the cyber machinery at the Farm, “could probably explain better than I could.”

“Give it a shot.”

“Well, since the genesis of laser technology some three decades ago, it would appear the research is on the verge of crossing the Rubicon. The brass ring of future high-tech is within grasp, or so it would seem. Basically, a laser weapon works as the transfer of heat to a target. It’s a silent killer, supposedly, or so the scuttle-butt goes, which is capable of burning the eyes out of a soldier on the battlefield, and from as much as a hundred miles or more out. Meltdown, evaporation of anything the beam is focused on, no shots fired in anger. Only now the next quantum leap would be to use it on aircraft and missiles. Or even satellites. That’s where the microchips come in to help get the bugs out of high-energy X-ray lasers. Now, the ones DYSAT have produced—or so our informants told the FBI—can locate, identify, track and intercept satellite transmissions, anywhere, anytime.”

“And disrupt,” Brognola said. “There is nothing wrong with your television sets, NORAD. We are in complete control.”

“In a worst-case scenario,” Kurtzman went on. “What our three AWOL contacts told us is called Ramrod Intercept is currently on the drawing board and is designed to shut down early warning of ballistic missile launches or air attacks. Akira and Hunt get all worked up when they start talking about excimers, carbon dioxide molecular transfers and gas exits, but it’s essentially pulse radiation from what I can understand.”

“I get something of the picture,” Brognola said. “We’re talking about the next step in silent, invisible warfare. Warfare directed from space.”

“Or even from the ground,” Kurtzman said, “if you have the microchips, a computer, the component parts of what the missing informants called a roving command center.”

“We still have three more civilian brain suits who hacked into the Pandora’s box, right? These college playboys running scared?”

“Carl,” Price informed Brognola, referring to Carl “Ironman” Lyons, the leader of Able Team, “states he has them under constant surveillance. Alive and well, I might add.”

Kurtzman grunted. “Carl’s on a short leash, I have to tell you, Hal. Well, you know the guy’s bulldog style. He says if he has to go into one more gentlemen’s club and order soda water and watch everyone else having a grand old time while he’s playing a poor man’s Magnum with his thumb up his—”

“I get the drift,” Brognola said. “He’s about to go apeshit. And this is where, once again, I get the long hard pauses from the Man to the point where I nearly have to ask him if he’s still there. He tells me, item—DYSAT is a legitimate Air Force–run classified project, funded, of course, by Congress. Bottom line he wants absolute, one hundred percent concrete proof there’s a conspiracy before I send Lyons and Able Team crashing down the front door, kicking ass and taking no names.”

“They’re working on it,” Price said. “And we have enough suspicion, handed to you by way of the FBI, that there is a conspiracy to get these weapons and the Ramrod Intercept technology to both the Sudan and the Iranians.”

“Which brings me to Striker’s status. Well?”

Brognola read into the anvil of silence. Mack Bolan, also known as the Executioner, was Stony Man’s lone wolf operative. There would be no Phoenix Force or Able Team this time out watching his back. They all knew that, days ago and going in.

“Limbo, to quote you, and holding,” Kurtzman said, “at a U.S. air base in Saudi.”

“I haven’t quite gotten the particulars yet on what he’s supposed to do or how he’s prepared to get into Sudan, a country hostile, to understate it, folks, to the West.”

“Once we receive the green light,” Price volunteered, “Striker will be air-inserted inside the Sudanese border, a HALO jump from a Starlifter C-141.”

“I’m waiting for the good news.”

“I’ve arranged for a CIA contract agent to meet him, roughly twenty kilometers northwest of Port Sudan. One call on a secured satlink from the Company, and the contract agent will be there to pick Striker up, on-site and waiting. Striker will have a passport stating he’s an Iranian businessman who deals in Persian rugs and jewelry, if he finds himself facing down Sudanese soldiers while in-country.”

“That’s thin, Barbara. Especially if he’s confronted by the Sudanese authorities at a roadblock and they decide to lock him up until they can check him out. They tend to skin Western spies over there alive and feed them their own flesh.”

“It was the best we could do, Hal,” Kurtzman offered. “Since we have an ongoing situation in Port Sudan, and since we strongly suspect DYSAT is funneling the high-tech goodies through the country—”

“And with the Company contract agent as an escort,” Price quickly put in. “It’s dicey, I know, but Striker insisted he go. Shake some trees and see what falls. He said…he’d figure it out.”

Brognola had to smile at Bolan’s balls-to-the-wall philosophy. “Tell me why I’m not surprised he said that.”

He and the others dropped into silence as each of them hashed over the enormity of not one, but three separate missions. Just the same, three or five doors to bulldoze through, Brognola could see the dots beginning to connect all over the map.

The only thing left was to take decisive action, start putting the old boot through some doors and find out what waited on the other side.

The clean-and-simple approach.

“Is he dropping in with a full bag of necessities, Barbara?”

“One commando knife, his Beretta, just in case.”

“God knows…”

“Once he’s inside Port Sudan, the contract agent will land him the requisite hardware.”

Brognola rubbed his face. “Okay, so I guess we just work it out as we go along.”

“The usual,” Kurtzman said.

“Right. What’s new?”

Brognola found Kurtzman studying the world map on a monitor, suddenly as grim as hell. “What is it?”

Kurtzman cleared his throat. “Well, we have a window for about, well, another two hours, tops.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning if we don’t get the call, we’ll have to wait another full twenty-four hours—or rather Phoenix will have to wait. If we’re going for a dawn strike it has to get under way ASAP, according to the timetable we’ve laid out. And there’s another piece of bad news, Hal.”

Maybe it was nerves or just plain weariness, but Brognola sounded off a grim chuckle. “Oh, this is getting better by the minute. Do tell.”

“At roughly six o’clock, Madagascar time, the ONI-1 satellite is going to have to get moving on. Akira tells me there’s a Russian satellite moving in the same orbital path.”

“A collision course with a Russian satellite? How in the…? Never mind. I never understood how the Russian mind works anyway. You’re telling me no one on either side can move either satellite’s orbital path from down here?”

“Not can, but will they?” Price posed. “I’ve been stonewalled at Langley, and no one at the DOD has an answer.”

“So,” Brognola said, “Phoenix is on their own, and we’re blind to what they’re up against because the Russians…unbelievable. It’s outer space, folks. You mean to tell me…they can’t…or won’t…”

“We’ll still have the satlink,” Kurtzman said, but his grim expression told Brognola that was little comfort.

The silence was hanging for long moments, thick enough to reach out and grab it, when the red phone trilled. The big Fed nearly bit his cigar in two as he felt their eyes boring into him. A deep breath, expecting more bad news, and he lifted the receiver.

Brognola recognized the voice as the Man said, “A few items we need to go over first, and I want to make certain we are crystal…”

He wasn’t sure if high anxiety hit the air or relief was lighting up their faces, but he knew they were reading the gleam in his eyes, stone-cold frozen and watching. Brognola didn’t even hear the next few words, but he knew enough, reading into the Man’s tone. He gave them the thumbs-up.

CHAPTER TWO

“Every day’s just one big party for these guys. Cars, broads, blow, not a care in the world. One big tits-and-ass joyride. I tell you what—”

“Oh, shit.”

Rosario Blancanales knew that god-of-thunder voice for what it signaled. Trouble was on the way, mayhem imminent and aplenty and just around the corner, but so far Carl Lyons was keeping his temper reined in.

Barely.

Blancanales was edged out some himself, all the waiting and watching eating at nerves demanding action. Still he regretted the slip, not wishing to incite Lyons to blow before the time was right for a real showdown.

“What was that, Pol?” Lyons growled from the shotgun seat.

A wry smile worked its way over Blancanales’s lips. “Nothing, Carl. I was just having a heart palpitation. Might just be heartburn from lunch.”

Lyons was the leader of Able Team, which was comprised of the former L.A. detectives, Blancanales and Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz. They were all friends, tried and tested commandos who would make the ultimate sacrifice if need be, and for one another if it came down to that. It wasn’t that a wrathful Lyons made Blancanales especially nervous or even intimidated—no, berserker outbursts were simply wasted energy as far as he was concerned. Try telling that, he thought, to Ironman. Best just to let him vent some steam, clean the pipes out, then get himself refocused. Men, he knew, who fought and killed the enemy side by side, who knew what it was to face down death and walk out the other side of combat had a way of coming to read and gauge each other’s mind-sets and moods better than most couples married for a lifetime.

“I’m getting sick and tired of all this sneaking and peeking around,” Lyons growled, his gaze fixed on the strip joint across Sunset Boulevard. “Watching a bunch of goddamn playboys acting out their own Hollywood Babylon. They take two hour cocktail lunches in Brentwood, sashay out the office lobby before four, then go piss the night away gaping at ass and getting hummers in back rooms ‘reserved’ for their candy.”

Blancanales groaned against his will. “Oh, man…”

Lyons fixed him with an eye that was glinting between mocking and irritation. “Another heart palpitation? Maybe you should go a little easier on all that hot sauce I watch you drown your tacos in. We’re not getting any younger, my friend. We can’t assault our systems the way we used to, you know.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

Lyons went back to glowering at the front doors where two of their DYSAT exec targets had just entered to begin a long night of trolling for fun and games. “These thousand-dollar-suited pricks are starting to annoy the hell out of me. These guys, every time I see them get a lap dance they throw at least a twenty-spot away, go skipping up to the stage, same deal. A bunch of twinkle toes with shit-eating grins. Their cash is trash. Big shots.”

Blancanales looked into the rearview glass, caught Schwarz grinning from his control console in the back of the van. He put a glare into his eyes, softly shook his head, but, damn it if Schwarz didn’t barge ahead with it anyway.

“If I didn’t know better, Carl, I’d say you were sounding a smidge jealous.”

“You’re right—you don’t know any better. And jealous of what? I just got a full head of steam, three days and nights out here, doing grunt dick work while we wait on Hal to tell us the Man finally made the hard call. We know these guys at DYSAT are dirty. I mean, two pigeons vanished off the face of the earth just as Hal’s Justice suits were marching to scoop them up. Two and two still add up to four where I come from, guys.”

“We still have three to watch,” Pol said.

“Baby-sit, you mean,” Lyons said. “And, you know, I somehow don’t get the whole scam. If this DYSAT is run by spooks and former air commandos, why hire a bunch of kids damn near fresh out of business school? Still wet behind the ears, but given the keys to the kingdom.”

“I think I have a pretty good hunch why,” Schwarz volunteered.

“That right? Well, Pol and I are all ears.”

“They were handpicked, chosen.”

“You’re telling us,” Blancanales said, “they’re sacrificial lambs.”

“Something like that. I’m thinking they were sought out on purpose, with the specific intent of becoming scapegoats if the arms and high-tech wheeling and dealing was found out by the Feds. Your basic fall guys. The former air commandos, with their service records, would simply shrug it off, lie their way out of it, go to ground until the smoke cleared and the college boys were safely on their way to the big house.”

Blancanales saw Lyons bobbing his head, hashing it over.

“Makes sense, in some twisted way,” Lyons said. “And the marginal lifestyles they lead, it wouldn’t be a stretch for the top brass to point out these guys had serious vice problems.”

“It’s the only thing that fits,” Schwarz said. “We know they are simply numbers crunchers for the most part, moving the parts of the goodies around, writing up the manifests, using the contacts of the real powers to create safe transport lanes for delivery. They figured the civilian workforce they hired would be too naive to figure it out.”

“How wrong they were,” Blancanales said. Then he saw two big men in dark suit jackets and buzz cuts going for the doors to the gentlemen’s club, rolling out of the night shadows, flashing lights jumping about like winking halos around them from this lit-up neon stretch of clubs and bars. “Hey, heads up. Our playboys are about to get paid a visit by your friendly neighborhood DYSAT goons.”

“Yeah,” Lyons said. “They were at the last club, too, where Collins disappeared. Only I counted up three the last stop.”

“I know their vehicles,” Gadgets said, watching his monitor, the image being relayed from a minicam mounted on top of the van, the rolling command center handed off to Able Team courtesy of Hal Brognola’s Justice contacts in L.A. “I photoed them and the plates yesterday when they came out of the garage of the office complex.”

“So, go find them,” Lyons said, “and stick another of your famous tracking boxes so we can stay glued on their tails. I see a parking lot down the street, the direction they came from. Let’s rock and roll, Gadgets. I’m going in. Pol, keep the engine hot. The looks I just read on the goons’ faces…let’s just say I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Blancanales cleared his throat as he watched Lyons secure the mini-Uzi in a special rigging beneath his loose-fitting windbreaker, the Ironman’s .357 Magnum Colt Python snug in a shoulder holster on the opposite side with a clear bulge. Subtle wasn’t found in Lyons’s vocabulary. “Easy, big guy. We still haven’t been flashed the green light.”

Lyons shot Blancanales a cold grin, checked the load on his Colt Python, then slid the big piece back into shoulder leather. “Relax. I’ve got a few extra bucks on me to throw around. Maybe I’m just rolling in there to have a couple laughs, check out the girls. Let ’em know big daddy’s in town.”

Lyons was out the door, into the night. Schwarz rolled back the side door, gone to play his role as bug planter.

Now Blancanales felt a real heart palpitation, and it wasn’t the aftereffect of hot sauce and too many tacos. This wasn’t good, he thought. Hell’s bells, he could almost feel the angry energy, trailing Lyons as he crossed the street.

A human time bomb, looking for a place to blow.

No mistake, he could feel it all about to hit the fan, and maybe go straight to hell before the mission even got official status.

JACK ROSWELL DESPISED his current task, or, more to the point, the kind of flunkies he was hunting. The former air commando and black operative for the NSA had his orders from up top, and he would carry them out even if he couldn’t fathom the logic in the whole scheme from the very beginning. This whole mess, he thought, could have been avoided long ago. Now he had been cut loose, a stone-cold killer, on the march to silence wagging tongues.

As he weaved his way through the gaggle of suits and howling throngs of half-drunken lechers, Morton on his left flank, he wondered where it was all headed. It was the colonel’s show, just the same, from day one, and he had often considered broaching the subject. Such as why hire on a pack of twentysomething guys to do the dirty work of moving the prototype high-tech goodies around the globe? Such as why allow them access to classified files? Such as why let them run all around Los Angeles, having the Sodom and Gomorrah time of their lives, a couple of them coked up half the time, six figure salaries to a man? Flash, showing off, now flapping loose lips.

Worse still, the backbone, the real movers and shakers behind DYSAT, had the boot heel of the Justice Department stomping down on it, putting on the weight, ready to snap it in two. At last count, three of the pretty-boy executives were dead and accounted for, with three more that he knew of still running around, making little whispered noise about blowing the lid on the whole plan to one another. Well, the Feds had come running, and Roswell knew they were even right then in the neighborhood. No, it wasn’t all that difficult to spot the black van bristling with antennae, parked across the street for what it was.

Official G-men were on the prowl.

He hoped they came running, trying to close the net. With some cunning and a little brazenness, he could lead them outside, a dark alley maybe, where he could send a message to the Feds. When they came and picked up what was left of the bodies, he didn’t figure they’d just pack up their surveillance and leave town, tails tucked between their legs. No, they’d turn up the heat, but that was just fine with him. Things were reaching a critical mass anyway, and only a swift and decisive counterattack could save the DYSAT kingdom.

After dogging the marks around for days, where they wiled away their nights in gentlemen’s clubs, paid cash for quickies and huffed up blow in back rooms, he was starting to feel mean, and dirty. Midforties, he was somewhat surprised to find a craving for younger girls boiling in his loins, an urge he hadn’t known existed until now. But this was business, and he had no time to indulge any amount of seething lust.

He needed relief, though, and he was content enough to find it through the barrel of his sound-suppressed Beretta 92-F.

Maybe when this whole dirty business was cleaned up he could return to one of these clubs, peace of mind intact, and spend some of his hard-earned cash indulging the fire.

He spotted them beyond the next stage where three girls were gyrating the creamy goods to heavy metal thunder, in their faces. The swirling light show lit up their baby-smooth features, eyes glittering, and it angered Roswell to find the executives ready to laugh and lust the night away while prepared to stick it to DYSAT. They had secured a booth, nothing but Heineken and top-shelf booze for those guys.

Roswell gave Morton the nod. They knew the drill.

And they had their marks squeezed into the booth before they could wonder what the hell was happening.

Grogan had his bottle poised near his lips, eyes darting all around. “You guys…”

“Yeah, us guys,” Roswell said. “There’s good news and there’s bad news, ladies. Bad news—Collins, Hurley and Samuels found new employment…in hell. Good news—you guys have a chance to stay breathing, but only if you talk to us and give us everything you even think you think you know.”

Caldwell was the first to want to spill it. “Not a problem, guys, just let us explain…”

“Not here,” Roswell said. “Nice and quiet, we’ll all get up, one big happy family, out the back door.”

“We’ve got a problem. Twelve o’clock.”

Roswell followed Morton’s stare out to the party sea of lights and noise and AWOL husbands. In Roswell’s experienced estimation of human nature, separating what was what from who was who in the interest of self-preservation, the big guy was falling way short of trying to blend into the crowd as another rooster on the loose away from the wife and kids. For one thing, there were the twin bulges under the windbreaker, the first tipoff a hunter had walked in, trying to close the gap, quick and quiet. He didn’t quite have the look of a Fed, Roswell decided. There was something too cold and menacing to conclude he and Morton would simply hear the guy reading off their Miranda rights.

The big guy with icy eyes stuck to the Mr. Cool routine, just the same, ordering a beer at the bar, grinning around at the female amusement park. Once the bottle was settled in front of him, he picked up his march, shouldering his way through the suits.

Moving with purpose.

Roswell grabbed Caldwell by the arm. “Let’s go.”

LYONS WAS twelve to fifteen steps away from the hardmen when he was spotted. They were hauling the playboys out of the booth, the two buzz-cut thugs seeing him without seeing him. Tweedledee and Tweedledum had the eyes, too.

Which meant they would just as soon kill him as look at him.

He could have radioed Pol for backup, as he saw the foursome weaving through the crowd, angling for a gigantic bouncer guarding what Lyons supposed was the doorway to whore paradise. The Able Team leader decided to go solo, do it his way.

The hard way.

He deposited the beer on the edge of the bar, brushed past a scantily clad waitress who scowled and bleated an oath at his backside. They made the door, and Lyons saw Tweedledee slip a crisp bill into Godzilla’s hand, mouthing something in his direction.

Rolling on, as the foursome was swallowed up by the gloom beyond the door, Lyons already knew where this was headed. Godzilla was all evil eyes, watching as Lyons marched up to him. Getting tensed up to go on the muscle, Godzilla sizing the opposition.

“It’s a private party. Take a hike, Pops.”

Lyons gave Godzilla a quick measure. Late-twenty-something, all muscles, the kind of arrogance in his eyes that told Lyons he had never done much more most likely than toss a few drunks out the front door.

“You’re telling me this is members only, son?”

Godzilla was about to lose it, his eyes turning mean. “What part of ‘take a hike’ didn’t you understand, Pops?”

“How about none of it?”

It came from the heart to begin with, the tried-and-true warrior backed by experience, all the pain and disappointment a man could know, choke down and file away along the course of his life coming together in a critical instant to do the deed. It boiled down, essentially, to a man versus a punk. Physically it came from the legs, a coiled spring that cut loose up his lower back, up the spine, an explosion down the arm until his forearm shot up with all the force of an erupting land mine. Lyons saw the light nearly winking out as Godzilla was lifted an inch or so off his patent leathers, head snapping back on wilting rubber from the forearm pile driver to the jaw. Figure he’d spent a few more hours in the gym lately, pumping more iron than Lyons had his entire life, and he saw the need to follow up with a sweeping left hook. It damn near scared Lyons to hit the guy that hard, his fist driving through jawbone, head snapping sideways, out and back. For a second, Lyons wondered if he had decapitated Godzilla. When the man went thundering off the floor, down for the count, Lyons checked his pulse, found a weak beat. A scan of the party crowd and he found his luck was holding up for a change. They were too busy playing grab ass to notice the incident.

“Pops” Ironman Lyons freed his Colt Python, then hit the door.

CHAPTER THREE

Schwarz found the black Lexus parked in the shadows of some white-facaded structure gone to seed with weeds and vines. There was no gate around the lot, permitting quick and easy access, no valet he could find with a search of the naked eye. And the surging party mass along Sunset was too busy trooping in and out of all the rock, comedy and gentlemen’s clubs to pay one straggling shadow any mind.

Or so he hoped.

He was deep in the lot, but felt an unseen watcher hawkeyeing his back, radar from some invisible force homed in on his march, lining him up. He started to feel an itch between his shoulder blades as he gave the line of vehicles a long probing eye.

Nothing stirred.

Okay, he was in, but something felt off-kilter, and he found himself planning his exit already. Still he had a job to do, but as he was forging toward the black Lexus, he couldn’t help but feel Lyons was on a headhunting tour inside the club, a sense of urgency to get back to the van burning him up. Three days of lurking all over town, watching their targets live it up like piggish royalty. For some reason he couldn’t quite pin down, he felt it was set to blow up in their faces.

Lyons wasn’t the patient sort.

Schwarz picked up the pace, feeling that heart palpitation Pol mentioned, wondering where the black SUV that carried at least two of the other thugs was parked. He’d settle for one out of two, at worst, even though Ironman wouldn’t appreciate a half-assed outing. It wasn’t that Schwarz intended to come up short on his task. Rather, he felt a strange anxiety, some omen hanging out there in the buzz and babble of nightlife. Speed and a quick retreat made more sense than wandering about, checking out vehicles, casting about the paranoid eye like some potential car thief in the neighborhood.

He made the Lexus, fixed the small magnetic tracking box under the starboard front fender. He was suddenly thinking of his choice side arm, the Beretta 93-R, when he sensed a presence behind him. It was pure combat instinct that sent Schwarz springing to his feet, propelling himself into a flying leap over the hood as the pistol sounded a cracking retort from behind, a bolt of hot lightning burning over his scalp. The round chipped off a fleck of stone above his head, the screaming ricochet flying off into the night. Smart money told him a cop would have at least identified himself.

That left the missing third goon.

Schwarz had the Beretta out, came up, glimpsed the thug in question and capped off a round to let the guy know he was no easy tag. He missed badly, a hasty shot with no time to line it up, winging it for effect, the thug dropping beneath the roof. The windshield of a Jaguar downrange absorbed his wild round, a neat hole punched through to give the missing driver some mystery to ponder over later.

Schwarz hit the pavement on his belly, somehow kept the wind from getting punched out of his lungs, adrenaline doing all the work as he knew there was less than a second to clean it up before he was the only mess left behind. It was nothing more than a flash, feet scampering up the opposite side, but Schwarz tapped off a 9 mm round that scored flesh and bone, chopped the guy off at the ankle. Even in the heat of battle, he gave the opposition some credit for not screaming out, the hardman hammering the ground, but holding on to dish it back and fight it out.

The microsecond of begrudging admiration ended in the next eye blink as the thug turned wildman, opened up to throw his own play back in his face. Rounds were whining off the asphalt, lead hornets buzzing and banging off the chassis. Schwarz hit the front end, the tire punched out in a thud followed by a long hiss of exhaling air, then he went for broke.

Schwarz made a snap decision to steal a page from the Ironman manual on combat tactics. It was akin to charging the hill, all balls and brazen defiance, but Schwarz knew there was no choice but to go for it.

The opposition was still blasting away on the blind-side when Schwarz threw himself onto the hood, rolling up the windshield as more wild rounds then came erupting through glass, the shooter trying to line him up, professional cool under pain and fire, the faceless hardman trailing all the racket of his weight slamming metal with screaming lead. He was up and sliding down the roof, skidding on his butt off the back end when the shadow shooter figured out the play too late. It could have been white-hot agony clogging up the works, keeping the fallen shooter from twisting to line him up. It could have been he’d burned out the clip by the time Schwarz was dropping off the trunk and going for it.

It didn’t matter either way in the end. Schwarz hit his feet, pumped a 9 mm sendoff between the shooter’s eyes just as the hardman was swinging the pistol his way.

The curtain might have dropped on one out of three, but Schwarz knew the real trouble had only just started. So much for high-tech intentions.

War had just been declared on Able Team.

Schwarz was scanning the vicinity, retracing his steps back through the lot. They were still laughing it up out there on Sunset, unaware death walked among them. Schwarz kept the Beretta out and leading the way. He was thinking of Lyons, some uncanny instinct tugging him toward the club. He pulled out his handheld radio, raised Blancanales and told him, “We’ve got problems.”

ROSWELL DECIDED the alley would mark the big guy’s final resting place. A deathtrap was in order, something quick and neat, since he’d just seen their pursuer slip through the doorway, a large revolver in his hand. Something had gone wrong, the fifty spot he’d laid on the bouncer wasted money. Just before hitting the far back door, Roswell thought he’d caught the sound of a falling body where the bouncer had stood guard.

Whoever the big guy was, he had a look about him that warned Roswell they were being tracked by a mad dog who wouldn’t rest until the choice beef was in its mouth. And now he wasn’t only moving with more purpose, but he was also kicking ass and taking names.

A quick scan of the wide alley, and Roswell nodded toward the garbage Dumpster behind, told Morton, “I’ll get his attention.”

Roswell needed this nailed down, five seconds ago, then get on his way back to the colonel’s office. A long night of grilling two more of DYSAT’s loudmouths was going to prove a task grim enough. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth was on the menu, on hold for the moment, but the last thing Roswell needed was some armed bulldog chasing them all over Los Angeles, growling and biting at their heels.

Enough. Time to make a stand.

Roswell grabbed Caldwell by the scruff of his neck, then jammed the muzzle of his sound-suppressed Beretta against the base of Grogan’s skull. “Both of you. Slow. Turn around. Any squawking, any sudden cute moves, I just as soon shoot you both and leave you for the garbagemen in the morning.”

THE STINK of sweat and stale sex in his nose, Lyons advanced down the long hallway, tuning out all the moaning and mewing from behind closed doors on the way. Moments ago, he’d spotted his quarry going out the back door. Colt Python leading the march, Lyons made the door, listened to the silence beyond. If they were gone, he could only hope Pol had a visual, Gadgets delivering the tracking presents. If they were waiting…

Lyons shouldered his way out the door. Two steps beyond and into the alley, he heard, “Hey, over here!”

It was too easy, and the old saying about something looking too good to be true saved his life. He was lurching back just as the first two or three rounds were barking his way. Lyons had the setup mentally gauged, as slugs tattooed the doorway in a flash of sparking steel. Tweedledee was using the DYSAT playboys as human armor, with Tweedledum down the alley, looking to wrap this up, no fuss.

Screw it, Lyons thought, crouching, swinging around the big hand cannon. He was lining up Tweedledee’s leg when the howling of men in anguish raked the air. The Beretta was blown out of Tweedledee’s hand in a burst of crimson, then Lyons made out his back-door cavalry.

Schwarz.

Maybe it was the sight of watching his comrade in kidnapping going down as his head was cracked open by one well-placed round from Schwarz’s Beretta. But Tweedledum’s head popped over the edge of the garbage Dumpster, eyes bugged, and Lyons pulled the trigger, erasing the picture of confusion forever.

The playboys were grabbing air, hopping around, snapping out the questions. Lyons was already on his radio, rounding up Blancanales. “Pol, get your ass in the alley.”

Schwarz was sporting a wry grin, stepping up to the DYSAT executives. “Good thing I was thinking about you.”

Lyons matched the look as Blancanales roared the van into the alley. “Something just told you your old pal would need a helping hand, huh?”

“You know, Carl, you ever think about cutting back on the red meat?”

“WHERE TO?” Blancanales asked as he headed the van west on Sunset.

“Find Santa Monica Boulevard,” Lyons answered. “That will get us in the general vicinity of Century City. I think it’s time we paid their boss a visit. Assuming he keeps longer work hours than the hired help.”

Lyons was scrunched up beside Gadgets, and their two songbirds were in back. The plastic cuffs had already been snapped on their wrists, and Lyons read the fear on their expressions as they sat on the floor.

“Right, you two are in a world of hurt.”

“Are you cops?”

“Not exactly. Right now we’re the only thing that stands between a bunch of guys like the ones we left back there in the alley, and your permanent retirement from DYSAT.”

“You want us to talk about what we know?”

“You sound like a smart young man.”

“What’s in it for us?”

Lyons chuckled. “Now you’re sounding not so smart. All I’m telling you on a deal, is that it depends on what we hear. Bottom line, that’s not my call to make.”

He was about to unleash the flurry of questions when the phone with its secured line beeped from its hookup on the console. Schwarz fielded the call. Lyons waited, heard Gadgets grunting.

“Yeah…uh-huh…right…just a second…”

“It’s Hal,” Schwarz said, his hand over the mouthpiece. “He said we have a green light—sort of.”

“What the hell’s sort of?”

“There’s conditions. What do you want me to tell him about our situation?”

“The truth.”

THE TRUTH SENT Brognola digging out the packet of antacid tablets. He washed three of them down with coffee, then moved deeper across the Computer Room. Akira Tokaido and Hunt Wethers stopped their cyber sleuthing on pertinent background data on the key DYSAT players long enough to catch the grim update on Able Team.

“Carl says it was self-defense,” Brognola said. “Schwarz says his guy came in, likewise blasting.”

“The bad guys know they’re targeted,” Kurtzman said from his workstation. “Maybe that’s good. Now that the opening guns have sounded, the top dogs will get nervous, maybe try and pack up their toys, whatever the latest shipment, and bull ahead.”

“Or pull up the drawbridge,” Price stated.

“I don’t think it’s exactly what the President had in mind,” Tokaido put in, “when he alluded to turning up the heat a notch. But we all know Carl can get a little antsy.”

“Well, antsy or whatever, the heat is on, people,” Brognola said. “The only question is who burns first.”

“And the DYSAT lab facility in Idaho?” Wethers asked. “Is it still hands off?”

“For now. Okay, where are we?”

Brognola checked the large monitor that displayed a tract of the Indian Ocean where the minisub was taking Phoenix Force to the Madagascan shore. Tokaido commented on the visual capacity of the state-of-the-art high-energy X-ray laser tracking beam that was monitoring the minisub and anything else moving in the water from space. Just like an X-ray it outlined the sub, twenty feet below the surface in a hazy gray frame.

“Two more minutes and they’re out the hatch,” Price announced. “They’re right on schedule.”

“The problem is that damn Russian satellite,” Brognola groused. “We’re going to be blind soon, and we won’t have another satellite pass over until they’re wheels up in the Spectre.”

“Five hours before it has to move on,” Kurtzman said. “And we still can’t get any answers from our side or any contacts we have in Moscow why a Russian satellite is up ONI-1’s rear. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way. Over the phone.”

“Hal, I know I’m getting a little ahead of the program,” Wethers said, “but I’ve been poring over the sat imagery of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. At some point I think we need to address it again. I mean, I have a clear and growing military buildup, far exceeding anything the Iranians have done to date. The key islands in the strait, Larak, Henqin, Sirri, Qeshm and the Greater Tunb Islands…well, they’ve moved in an additional sixteen pieces of antiaircraft hardware, including surface-to-air missiles. Now, one-third of the world’s oil supply is tankered through the Strait of Hormuz. I’m not pushing any panic buttons, but we’re looking at some connection between DYSAT, Sudan, the Iranians in Madagascar and the latest renewed military buildup on the islands. Say the Iranians pull the trigger? A 130 mm gun is more than plenty to sink any one of twenty tankers that pass through the strait every day. A wall of fire, a massive oil spill would shut the strait down. I don’t even want to begin to imagine the damage to the economic infrastructures of Europe, Japan, and, of course, the United States.”

And thus phase two.

“The President’s aware, Hunt, of the potential enormity of the problem. Depending on what happens with Phoenix in Madagascar, and if Striker’s able to link a few of the missing pieces together…let’s get Phoenix through Phase One. The Strait of Hormuz situation remains on the back burner.”

Brognola was watching the X-ray beam tracking the minisub when he saw it. It came at the minisub, from the south, moving through the water, on a collision course.

Kurtzman muttered a curse as he recognized it for what it was. “How close are they to shore?”

“Three hundred yards still,” Tokaido said. “Oh, my God.”

Brognola nearly lost his grip on the coffee cup, fingers clenching so hard around the cigar he nearly snapped it in two. “Please, people, someone tell me that’s not what I think I think it is.”

CHAPTER FOUR

It was the dreaded demon, the alpha and the omega, he thought, of any SEAL’s worst nightmare.

It was a white shark, and it was a big one.

Calvin James nearly leaped off the bench, as soon as the thud struck the hull from above, the black ex-SEAL scrambling toward the control console when—

He froze, heart lurching into his throat as he caught sight of the massive tail slowly stroking, fanning the murk, back and forth, out to the port side. Yellow light from the minisub outlined the creature, framed its white underbelly from which it got its name.

The sub’s driver, a blacksuit brought from the Farm, watched until the distant darkness swallowed up the great fish, his eyeballs nearly popping out of his skull.

Gone but hardly forgotten.

“Sir, that was at least a sixteen—”

“No,” James said, “more like an eighteen footer, four, maybe five tons. A submarine with teeth.” The former SEAL turned and read the grim fear on the faces of his comrades in Phoenix Force.

T. J. Hawkins was watching the dark gloom, intent as hell, as if the behemoth might come back for another look at the minisub, or worse—ram its head straight through the reinforced glass bubble. “Cal, I’m thinking they probably never told you what to do about something like that in BUDs.”

“Pray.”

Rafael Encizo, donning his frogman suit like the other commandos, said, “Beyond the Our Fathers and the Hail Marys, what’s the plan?”

David McCarter, the leader of Phoenix Force, stepped up to the control console, reading the depth gauges. “How close can you get us to shore?”

“Another fifty, sixty yards tops, then I’m cutting it close to hitting the bottom.”

And, of course, they were warriors, with a mission on the table. No one, even if the thought fleeted through his mind, was about to say out loud, “Hell, no, I won’t go.”

“So, that leaves us how far a swim?” Gary Manning wanted to know.

“A little less than a hundred yards.”

“Fire the torpedo,” McCarter told the blacksuit. “All right, mates, everybody has a knife. We swim in a staggered formation. Slow and easy. Give yourselves six feet apart, I’m thinking, breaststroke it in, blade in one hand.”

Space enough between them, which meant they wouldn’t accidentally cut each other with their knives while stroking.

“Gary and I will watch the flanks and the rear. It shows up and wants a late-night snack, go for the eyes.”

“I suggest we swim to the bottom, hug the deck all the way in,” James said. “When they strike, they usually come up from below.”

“Understood. Keep the headlights on us to light the way in,” McCarter told the submariner. “All right, mates, let’s saddle up and hit the hatch. No fish is going to keep us from going to the dance.”

BROGNOLA RAISED McCarter just as Phoenix Force was fully suited up, lined up and set to go out the hatch. He gritted his teeth until the blood pressure throbbed in his eardrums, the mere thought of what waited for them outside the minisub cutting a primal terror through the Justice man, the ungodly likes of which he hadn’t known in some time. A part of him wanting like hell to tell McCarter to scrub the mission for the time being, they’d find another way.

“I don’t like it, David,” Brognola said, checking the sat imagery from the X-ray eyes in the sky. “It’s either left the area or gone too deep to pick up on our end. We’ll be out of touch until you reach shore. You don’t even have a weapon—except a commando dagger.”

“We’re here and the troops are tired of sitting around, cooped up on a sub, Chief, thumbs up the old sphincter. We’re gone. I’ll phone home as soon as we hit the beach.”

“Good luck, and godspeed,” Brognola muttered, but he was talking to dead air.

“Torpedo just went ashore,” Akira Tokaido announced, but no one in the Computer Room looked hardly relieved by that minuscule piece of good news.

Brognola watched the monitor as, one by one, the five white ghostly shapes of Phoenix Force left the hatch and started swimming for the bottom. A hundred yards, he thought, the length of a football field. It might as well be a hundred miles.

THE END OF THE LINE, of course, for each and every man or woman was death. The journey along the way shaped, forged and revealed a man’s character before the Grim One rolled the dice and the man crapped out, ticket yanked.

No problem, as long as a man was somewhat in control of the journey, and could die on his feet, in battle, with honor intact, he thought. Thomas Jackson Hawkins, as a warrior, never had a problem with the concept of his own death. He never dwelled, much less brooded, on the idea of a world without him tomorrow. He was in the business of death, after all, preferably dispensing it, but he knew someday, somewhere he would go down and not rise up. As a warrior, dying in combat was accepted going in, part of the high-stakes game of being a balls-to-the-wall commando. Combat to him was as natural as breathing.

The problem he had, as he breaststroked ahead, knife in hand, was being chomped in two by a creature three times his length and fifteen to twenty times his weight. Something as old as the earth itself, which knew no fear, and had no known enemies.

Something that had put the fear of God into him, and any human being, he imagined, who had ever laid eyes on it. It always galled him, he thought, when some skipper and National Geographic types hit the waters off Australia or South Africa, in search of man’s greatest fear, camera ready, Budweisers in hand. Spouting off—in nervous laughing voices from the safety of their deck—how white sharks were misunderstood, weren’t really the ferocious man-eaters the uneducated believed them to be. All of it just myth, you see, fabricated by folks with too much time and imagination on their hands. So, why, then, he wondered, did they always go down into the water in titanium-reinforced cages?

Call it twenty, twenty-five yards tops of visibility on the flanks, with James and Encizo beside him, Manning and McCarter on the far outsides, the big Canadian and the former SAS commando lagging a little behind, doing a slow circle to watch their rear.

Ten inches of steel against a submarine with teeth. Man alive, he thought, they had to be crazy.

It was a straight plunge of roughly thirty feet to the ocean’s bottom, the halo of yellow light from the minisub losing its glowing shield the more distance he put from the craft…and closer to shore. Could the monster home in on the hammering of his heart? Could it smell the undeniable and understandable fear, leaking out in great streams of sweat beneath his wet suit?

Don’t think about it. He knew he wasn’t alone.

Small comfort, to be damn sure.

The sandy bottom began to run off on a gradual downward slant, and he was thinking another fifty yards or so.

An eternity still.

He decided to look back, found McCarter falling behind, eyeing their rear through his mask, as if he sensed its presence.

And the massive shadow of the great beast appeared, materialized out of the darkness beyond the minisub. For some reason the monster was taking another look at the minisub, holding, some black demonic apparition, then slowly worked its massive body around the craft. Hawkins felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked at Encizo, the Cuban shaking his head, indicating with his knife they keep moving.

Not a problem. But why was McCarter trailing them? he wondered. What the hell was he doing?

A moment later Hawkins saw the ex-SAS commando fall back in, resume stroking with a renewed burst of energy.

IF THE MONSTER CAME for them, McCarter decided he would sacrifice himself if that meant the others could reach shore in one piece. He knew they wouldn’t allow that, not if they wanted to get up the next day and look themselves in the mirror. But if the creature started ripping him limb from limb, he could only hope primal fear and good sense would take hold of the others and send them shooting like human bullets for the beach.

It was a false hope they would leave him to die one of the most horrible deaths he could imagine, but the mission was more important than the life of any single man on the team.

Still the behemoth appeared more curious about the minisub, circling the craft, nudging it with its great torpedo head. He gave the blacksuit submariner a mental salute. The guy was staying put, lighting the way to shore.

Nothing but steel balls. There was never any doubt.

McCarter turned toward shore, figuring another thirty yards or so, arms sweeping, legs scissoring. The team had pulled ahead, with James and Hawkins looking back, peering at him, aware, most likely, of what he was thinking if it went to hell. A few more strokes and McCarter was in line, but craned his head around every few yards. It wasn’t much longer and he felt his knees scrape bottom, his head poking out of the surface. Twenty yards and they surfaced to a man. As luck would have it, they caught a decent wave, and began stroking now like Olympic swimmers as they rode it into shore.

Rebreathers were out and tanks were stripped off. The heavy breathing of Phoenix Force slashed the calm quiet of the beach as flippers were removed and they made solid land.

McCarter gave the smooth glass surface out to sea a search. No giant fin knifing out of the water, just a soft glow of light beneath the surface where the minisub was parked. He checked the troops, and his chuckle carried a heavy note of grim relief. “Anybody have to change his shorts first?”

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

BROGNOLA COULD BREATHE again, but it would take a few minutes, he knew, before the trembling left his hands. McCarter was on the satlink. “All present and accounted for. We’re changed, locked and loaded. Titan on the way back to the mother ship.”

“Grimaldi will be wheels up in two minutes, David,” Price said. “We’ll monitor your march and alert you to any locals or army units on the prowl.”

“Well, in that case, we’d better shake and bake. A tenklick hike will be cutting it close to sunrise.”

“Understood,” Price said.

“Shouldn’t be a problem moving double-time. I can still smell the adrenaline after our close encounter with Jaws. We’ll be in touch. Out.”

Brognola lifted the stogie in a shaky hand. “Air drops. For a while, at least, only air insertions. That, folks, was way too close for this old guy’s heart.”

They were smiling, nodding, but their relief, Brognola knew, sweet as it was, would prove short-lived.

The worst was yet to come. Getting in might have proved the easy task.

Century City, California

“YOU BOYS AREN’T really telling us much more than we already know.”

Lyons was laying the evil eye on Grogan and Caldwell as Blancanales punched in the access code that lifted the door to the underground parking garage.

The van was rolling, going down into the subterranean labyrinth where the office of DYSAT was housed in Century City. Schwarz was monitoring the police bands with his scanner, had informed Lyons units were already on the scene of the carnage back in the alley. No firm ID on suspects. No description of their vehicle.

The way Lyons figured it, from there on it was time to crank up the heat, put some serious fire to the tails of the so-called board of directors. Grogan had put in the call to the boss. The man in question, James Lake, ex-colonel in the Air Force air commandos, was hunkered in his office, calling the shots.

Literally.

“What more do you need to know?” Caldwell sputtered. “We accessed the classified files, it was something of a fluke, an accident. We found out they’re using a cutout in Thailand to ship the merchandise from there to Port Sudan. The microchips are prototypes, samples.”

“And this Benny Goodman…”

“Godwin,” Grogan corrected.

“Whatever. This clown somehow lifted the samples and is sitting on them at his girlfriend’s place in Malibu.”

“Along with the information we downloaded about the operation,” Caldwell added.

“What’s our next move, Carl?” Blancanales asked.

“Find a space in DYSAT’s turf and park it. Me and you are going to have a little chat with the board of directors.”

“How come the sound of that puts me a little on edge?” Blancanales said.

“Because these assholes are traitors. Because I can’t stand traitors. From now on, we do it our way, and if the President squawks he squawks. Hey, what’s the problem anyway? These guys tried to draw first blood. We have ‘official’ status as special agents of the Justice Department. I can walk up to the guy’s office now and start slapping the crap out of him, if I want, threaten him with about twenty-five to life and back it up.”

Lyons watched through the windshield as Blancanales motored deeper into the garage, found DYSAT painted on a stretch of concrete, slid into a space that was isolated from other vehicles.

“You’re going to need my magnetic swipe card to get through the door,” Grogan said.

“Where is it?”

“In my wallet.”

Lyons was his usual gentle self, clawing a talon into Grogan’s shoulder, shoving him around and bending him over a little to yank the wallet out of his back pants pocket. He found the card, slipped it in the pocket of his windbreaker, dumped the wallet in the guy’s lap.

“Then what?”

“Well, you have to go up the steps to the lobby. You can’t take the elevator from down here.”

“Meaning a rent-a-cop encounter.”

Grogan grunted. “He’ll want to see your ID.”

“No problem.”

“He’ll call up to Lake.”

“Again no sweat.”

Lyons reached into the weapons bin and handed an Ingram MAC-10 to Blancanales. “Gadgets, you’re on baby-sitting detail. If we get a bunch of attitude from these clowns when we go up, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Meaning it’s hit the fan,” Schwarz said, sporting a grim smile.

“Let’s rock, Pol.”

CHAPTER FIVE

James Lake knew the end of DYSAT would come, had to, in fact, and from the very beginning when he’d helped conceive it, put the pieces together and get it launched as part of the Pentagon’s Special Access Programs. It was designed to go down in flames on purpose, make certain an avalanche of badges and subpoenas came crashing down on DYSAT, all the sound and fury of the Justice Department, trumpeting out the intimidation, offering guys immunity in the Witness Protection Program and the like. But also in mind from the start would be the final conflagration, stoked and brewed to critical mass, while he skipped out the door, all the way to the bank.

The genius of it all was it had been worked out by his own cunning and the toil of spilled blood on his hand.

Everything in life ended. Everyone died. Survival was not necessarily for the fittest.

Survival was simply survival. They said that after the big one dropped, only the cockroach would inherit the earth. Mindful of that disgraceful tidbit, just how special could man be?

Not very, he thought.

If there was no hope for humankind, there was also no redemption, and certainly no salvation. Armageddon was inevitable; it just needed a decent shove in the right direction to ignite the fuse.

He sat in his large, deep-cushioned swivel chair, scanning the massive office suite, an amused smile tugging at his mouth. Beyond his teakwood desk, the size of three grand pianos, Grandahl and Preuter were busy on their secured cellulars, trying like hell but failing to dial up their hitters. He wanted to believe no news was good news, but the whole deal was unraveling fast. He could feel it, a noose dangling over his head, ready to drop and put the squeeze on.

It was time to clean up the garbage and bail.

Yes, he had wanted this whole venture to fail from the start. Failure, he once heard said, was often the measure of a man’s success, but he never bought into that loser’s philosophy. Granted, he had failed in three marriages, with seven children he never saw spread all over the country, but what could he say? Women were women, and a man needed far more in life than the comfort and stability of some suburban purgatory.

A man needed conquest, honor and respect. It was either the bliss of heaven or the agony of hell; nothing in between was acceptable. And, no mistake, never again would he fail at anything. DYSAT was his baby, and if he had given it life, he could most certainly take it away. He had always believed the real power in the world came from the left hand of darkness anyway, the true father of light. Even the devil, he believed, had real feelings and needs. It was simply a question of having those wishes honored by the legions of faithful subjects. Meaning they had to be prepared to not only sacrifice their lives for him, but also sell him their very souls.

Still, he often thought life would have been much simpler, easier if he had been, say, a biker. Riding in the wind. A big middle finger jammed in the eye of society at large. Wheeling and dealing guns and dope… Well, he could at least claim he was something of an arms dealer, an outlaw, to be sure.

And outlaws only had to care about and look out for number one, which was why his stint as an Air Force air commando had been brief to the point of ridiculous. Search-and-rescue missions didn’t mean much more than a gob of flying phlegm when a man didn’t care if human beings lived or died. On then to a number of years working as a special black operative, guarding classified Air Force installations where they were building the future of super high-tech. Grooming contacts and, of course, quietly removing any thorns in his side on his climb to the top.

Well, Jim Lake had finally arrived. His big deal was on the table, in the wings, ready to fly. The college kids had been nothing more than pawns, mere toilet paper, he thought. Bring them on board, unleash a few secrets, here and there, fat salaries so they could indulge their every whim and petty earthly desire. He always knew a couple of them would have cracked under the strain of uncovering knowledge of high-tech espionage, state-of-the-art goodies being delivered to so-called enemies of the United States. Truth was, he had counted on them to go running, pants wet, to the Feds. By the time the real law figured it out, he would be long gone, a whopping numbered account overseas, engineering grand schemes to bring on some doomsday from a remote tropical paradise. It would be a sort of in-their-face gesture, proving to every American man, woman and child, from the hallowed classified halls of the Pentagon all the way to Silicon Valley, that Jim Lake was just a little smarter, tougher and, yes, better looking than they were.

That Jim Lake wasn’t only his own man, but a god among mere mortals to be worshiped.

He was scanning the bank of security cameras hung from the ceiling over his desk when he spotted the two men in the lobby. The bigger one was haggling with the security guard, flashing a wallet packet, looking as if he were poised to fly over the desk and start slapping the man. A Fed, on the muscle, only if that guy was a Fed he was Gandhi.

“Gentlemen, I believe we’re about to have company.”

“I don’t like the looks of those two,” Grandahl said, craning his neck some to stare up at the camera bank. He was fingering his goatee, running a nervous hand over his shiny dome. “I can’t raise Morton or Roswell. We should have heard from them by now. We know the Justice Department was set to bag—”

Lake sounded a long deep chuckle, a hollow knell that seemed to swell up the suite with the sound. “Relax. We’ll deal with them. It’s time we wrapped this up anyway. We have one more pigeon out there on the run to take care of. We have a backup security force in town, which you just put out the call to, on standby.” He leaned up, smoothed out the arms of his silk jacket, punched a button on his phone. “Giddell, I’ve got company on the way. They look rather unpleasant.”

“Yes, sir, I saw them, too.”

“Stand by but make yourself available next door. There’s going to be some noise, then we’re bailing.”

“Understood, sir.”

Lake wheeled back a few inches, reached under his desk and slid the Uzi submachine gun from out of its special mounting. He checked the load, cocked the bolt, then took a peek at the Beretta 92-F in shoulder rigging. If it wasn’t enough, there was an arms cache in a hidden wall panel, twelve paces to his right.

“When we’re finished here,” Lake told his hitters, “we go pay this little snip Godwin a visit. I’m hearing he got his filthy paws on the Ramrod Intercept microchips and data manual. Without those, gentlemen, my deal may fall through. If I can’t retrieve them, our whole timetable will be altered.”

“Meaning?” Grandahl asked.

“Meaning we’ll have to go the lab in Idaho and pick up another batch. I had planned to do that anyway. One last shipment has already been arranged through a CMF.”

“A classified military flight,” Grandahl said, nodding. “Sweet.”

“Standard procedure. Look alive, they just hit the elevator.”

Of course, he took the obligatory alerting phone call from the security guard.

“They had badges, Mr. Lake, looked official, meaning they looked real enough to me. Special Agents from the Justice Department, they’re telling me. Carl Lemmon and Rosario Bocales. I—”

“Not a problem, there was nothing you could do. I’ll handle it. Thank you.”

Jim Lake leaned back and sounded off another death knell chuckle. Life, he thought, was just about to get real interesting.

And what was real gain, true triumph on the way to glory without risk?

WHEN LYONS AND BLANCANALES stepped off the elevator to the DYSAT floor, they found yet more cameras monitoring their every step.

Lyons led the march toward the mammoth teak doors with the gold-plated Jim Lake, President hung as large as a Vegas neon sign. He could feel Pol’s nerves mounting as they closed on the doors, the mirrored walls reflecting their grim looks, the cameras catching them on the roll. Lyons felt his own personal time bomb ticking away in his gut.

It was time to start spreading the misery around, kick a few of the top dogs in the teeth.

“How come I feel like raising a middle finger salute to one of those?” Lyons growled.

“How do you want to play this?”

“Straight and to the point. Just follow my lead.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

They reached the DYSAT gates to the inner sanctum. Lyons was about to bang on the door when a chuckle that sounded as if it came from the bowels of hell filtered out the small intercom beside the doors.

“It’s open, ‘Agents’ Lemmon and Bocales. Please, enter. Please, fear not.”

Lyons considered going through the door with his Colt Python out so they could get quickly beyond any friendly preamble. He opted to leave the big piece where it was for the moment, until he got a firm read on what was what. He led Blancanales through the door and found himself moving into a sprawling suite fit for a king. Big leather couches. Wet bar, giant-screen TV. Two inches of white carpet, wall to wall. Long black marble conference table. Soft white light fell from the ceiling, framing a handsome face he recognized from the Farm’s intel pac on Jim Lake. As he moved deeper into the suite, he was somewhat curious why a former Air Force colonel would wear his jet-black hair down to his shoulders, like some wanna-be hippie or biker. Go figure how the mind of a traitor, or an insane demon worked, he thought.

He took a measure of the two other men standing off to the side of the desk. One was a Van Gogh–type gunslinger, goatee, but no hair on his head, the face gaunt and weathered, the eyes sunken black pieces of coal. The other guy was a buzz-cut issue like the men he’d gunned down in the alley. The eyes of both men warned Lyons they had itchy trigger fingers.

Lyons took up turf in front of the desk, hauled out his Justice credentials. And Lake gave him that deep chuckle, in his face.

“Please, don’t insult me.”

“How’s that?” Lyons growled.

“Okay, we’ll play it your way for the moment. What can I do for you, Agent Lemmon and Agent Bocales?”

JIM LAKE KNEW a bulldog when he saw one. In fact, wildmen were the only kind he wanted to hire on as security. Guys, yes, who could go through a door loud or quiet, in search of blood and wearing somebody’s guts for a necklace, either way they charged in. No fear, just do it. To even consider losing made a man a loser before the proverbial feces even hit the fan.

The one called Lemmon wasn’t the kind to tap dance or dream of losing. “Here it is, Colonel,” the big guy said, with a contemptuous note dropped on “Colonel.” “Three of your buzz-cut Dirty Harrys were eighty-sixed. They tend to want to shoot people on sight to make their day. They tend to seem to not care if they’re civilian or like us, with the Justice Department, which already dumps you in a world of feces. This is what we know, and this is what we’re going to do. We know you’re running a scam to unload high-tech weapons and technology overseas somewhere. We know you were using your executives and think tankers to draw out the wolves, my guess is so they could be scapegoats when you left Dodge. You’ve gone for broke, and you lost. Now we have two of your employees who want to turn songbird under our care and protection.”

Lake knew what had to be done. He steepled his fingers, rubbed his eyes and blew out a long breath.

“What? Am I boring you assholes?”

“Uh, Agent Lemmon, let me speak frankly, so we can get past all this macho posturing and palavering.”

LYONS SENSED the whole mood change around him. It was as if a dark veil had dropped over Mr. Chuckles, some rage clamped down on before then, churning over now, building heat, the pot of his black soul simmering. Van Gogh and Buzz-cut Issue had to have been clued in to the sudden shift in Lake’s demeanor, and Lyons read the squaring of the shoulders for what it meant.

It was set to blow, loud and hot. It was going to get messy, and the mere fact Lake was prepared to go for it told Lyons the guy had backup somewhere, ready to bolt town to pick up the pace on whatever his dark agenda.

“Well, Agent Lemmon, I guess there’s not much left to say, except I can’t recall the last time I saw a G-man walking around in rubber-soled combat boots. I didn’t know government issues, the official kind, trooped around with compact submachine guns in special swivel rigging beneath oversize windbreakers. To answer your suspicions, yes, I have a deal, a major deal in the works that could change the entire destiny of the world. Yes, my employees were nothing more than human chess pieces to be moved around at my wish, to take the fall, as you put it, while I fly off into the sunset. You know what my problem is—”

“I’m not your shrink, Colonel. I didn’t come here to listen to how you were an abused child and all you need is a little love.”

The big chuckle again. “My problem is I don’t like wrinkles in my plans, large or small. My problem is, when I don’t get my way or what I want, I become extremely agitated.”

And Lyons was already searching out some immediate cover, aware he and Pol were caught in the coming cross fire. It was something in Lake’s look and voice, a new darkness sinking to still lower depths, that warned Lyons to make a scramble to save his skin.

The Able Team leader was in the air, flying over a couch as the Uzi appeared, like some sorcerer’s trick, in Lake’s hands.

CHAPTER SIX

The Uzi subgun was out and flaming 9 mm parabellum rounds before either Blancanales or Lyons could free his own hardware. Lake beat them to the punch. Instead of standing his ground in some grandstand suicide play, pulling iron and blasting back at the face of death where he stood his ground, he opted to take a running dive over the conference table. The sprint and flight stole him a few precious moments. Only pistols were barking now, chiming in the deafening symphony of weapons fire, hot lead scorching the air, seeking out his scalp like angry hornets.

“You’re fucking with the wrong air commandos, ladies!”

Lake, bellowing like some fire-and-brimstone preacher hungover on Sunday morning, the long-haired crazy man pounding out the lead, marking his turf behind the desk, defying to be shot. Blancanales skidded off the table, hot slipstreams of lead tearing past his scalp, tugging at his shoulders. On the way down he unleathered both the Beretta 92-F and the stubby Ingram machine pistol, and got busy dishing it back before all was lost. A shaved head with goatee came shooting around the corner of the table when Blancanales cut loose with a double burst. The Van Gogh shooter was capping off rounds from his own Beretta when Blancanales was rewarded by a scream of pain. Van Gogh lurched back, out of sight, grabbing at the red smear on his upper thigh, cursing up a storm.

“If you’re Feds, I’m the prince of darkness!”

The way the madman was pumping out the lead, screaming in berserker fury, Blancanales didn’t find the statement a stretch.

Lake was stone-cold insane.

A swivel chair was absorbing a flurry of 9 mm rounds when he popped up, and let it once more rip with twin lead barrages. It was luck, more than skill, winging the rounds out when he tagged the buzz-cut gunner, sent him crashing down on Lake’s desk, bleeding and flopping all over polished teakwood surface like some giant gutted salmon.

“Nice shot, son!”

And Lake seemed to slap home a fresh clip in a nanosecond, not missing a beat.

“You want the best, you’ve got the best! The hottest Colonel in the land. Jim Lake!”

THE GUY WAS hung out there but good, off in some land of insanity that even caused Lyons to balk for a full second or two. He was shooting up his own office, which told Lyons he didn’t plan on coming back here. Whatever Lake’s personal vision of greener pastures, Lyons didn’t intend to let it become reality.

Not on his watch.

Not this night.

The mini-Uzi and Colt Python out, Lyons skirted on a hunch away from the tracking line of autofire that was eating up the couch, a storm of insatiable lead locusts buzzing in his ears. He came up, just in time to find Blancanales nailing the buzz-cut gunner and cut free with hand cannon and subgun to give his friend a much needed helping hand. The mini-Uzi hosed the desk, but Lake was already ducking, the curtained window behind him, drawn to block out some bird’s eye view of the city skyline, taking a few hits. It fluttered a little as holes were punched through the window to let some traffic noise filter in from far below.

On his two o’clock Lyons found Van Gogh was shooting on the move for the wet bar when he assisted Blancanales in waxing the guy off his feet. Four converging points of fire turned Van Gogh into a bursting sieve, painting him crimson from the neck down to his crotch. He was airborne next, snarling out the pain and rage, before he sailed over the wet bar and brought down the top-shelf booze.

Lake jumped back into the game, back on the trigger, screaming out something about abortion pills marking the end of civilization, how civilians were all too willing to serve bastards and whores.

What the hell? Lyons thought.

The Able Team leader was going down behind the couch when the ex-colonel fired another long burst his way, then shifted his aim and drove Blancanales down behind the conference table.

Then a shadow with a massive autoshotgun whirled around the corner where some slat appeared in the wall near Lake’s desk.

The cavalry, riding onto the scene, out of nowhere.

The curse was choked off in Lyons’s throat as he flung himself away from the couch on the peal of thunder. Lake’s subgun spray came back and helped chase Lyons to cover behind a wooden cabinet, the expensive teak scarred as tracking rounds began eating up the facing. A roaring boom and half of the cabinet vanished in Ironman’s face in razoring wood splinters.

“See you around, ladies!”

The dark hole swallowed up Lake and Mr. Autoshotgun as Lyons broke cover. The slat was closing and Lyons, jacked up on adrenaline, hit the area with a .357 round and a half-dozen 9 mm projectiles from his mini-Uzi.

Wasted effort and ammo.

Lake was gone.

Lyons was feeling the wall for some button or latch that would open the slat. Nothing. There was no space either where he could dig his fingers in to force the slat open.

“Time to boogie, Ironman. Something tells me the cavalry’s going to be waiting when we hit the hall.”

Lyons grabbed up his handheld radio and patched through to Schwarz.

“WHAT MORE CAN we tell you? We’ve given you directions to where Godwin is holed up. I put the call through, like you asked. You know he’s there, and he has the package you want.”

They were sweating out the unknown, worried about little more than saving whatever might be left of their dicey futures, wanting nothing else but for their party to go on. Schwarz didn’t have the time or the inclination to put their fears to rest, nor did he much care about their desire to keep the good times rolling. The more they found out about DYSAT and the goons who ran it, the more he felt the killing heat was only just getting turned up.

And DYSAT needed to go down the toilet.

“Hey, come on, mister. Cut us some slack here. We’re cooperating. We didn’t know what we’re getting involved in. Hey, we came to you people. That should count for something.”

Schwarz was watching the lot through the windshield and the monitor. He heard Lyons coming on his handheld radio, as gruff as usual, but now there was a definite edge of urgency in his voice.

“Gadgets!”

“Yeah.”

“Round two’s just started. Lake tried to turn me and Pol into human sushi with an Uzi he had stashed under his desktop. Two more of his shooters are down for the count. Lake and another goon with a SPAS-12 are probably headed your way. Maybe he’ll pick up reinforcements on the way down. We’re on the way. Look alive.”

“I copy.”

And Lyons was gone off the air, in pursuit.

Schwarz scrambled for the weapons bin, hauled out a Colt Commando assault rifle. One clip of 5.56 mm rounds up the snout and he took three more, jammed them in his waistband.

“Which one is Lake’s car?”

“It’s a black Towncar.”

Schwarz searched the monitor, worked the stick to move the mounted minicam around. At that hour there weren’t many vehicles left in the garage, but he was irritated it took him ten seconds before he spotted the vehicle belonging to the president of DYSAT. It was parked at the deep north end, sandwiched between a white van and Cadillac. Okay, he decided, move in on foot, take up position behind a concrete pillar down that way.

Lay in wait and ambush the bastards. Sounded like a plan.

“Stay put, no matter what,” Schwarz growled at Grogan and Caldwell. “Try and run on me…”

“We understand.”

Schwarz malingered, not certain they did. Something was turning over in their eyes, but he didn’t have a second to spare.

A couple of mad-dog shooters, or more, were on the way.

Schwarz was out the door, the assault rifle up and ready. He was almost clearing the van when a leggy blonde came through the doorway leading to the stairwell. Mouthing an oath, he was forced to wait until she vacated the combat zone he was sure was only moments away from erupting.

LAKE WAS LIVID as he stormed into the security room. He was raising Burrows, part of his security detachment from the next floor down, when Giddell hit the button on his private elevator. Lake scanned the bank of cameras, watched as the two human freight trains rolled for the doors.

“Burrows, you and Jackson hit the main hall. Our friends are right now coming out. Do not worry about noise or making a mess. Just get it done.”

“Aye, aye.”

Just get it done, he thought. Seething, as the door to the car opened, he couldn’t understand where it had gone wrong in the office. He was certain he’d gotten the draw on them, but they moved in an eye blink, as if they’d anticipated his killing play or could read his mind, which was impossible.

No, it was something else that had saved their skin. Experience, he decided. Those guys were pros of some kind. But what? And from what agency?

There would be a few moments to kill before the elevator reached the garage. In that span he needed to raise the reinforcements, get his thoughts together about their next stop. Malibu. Godwin and girl. He owned a private hangar in an airfield south of L.A. proper that was used exclusively for ferrying military brass, and DYSAT people. Once he had the data manual and the Ramrod Intercept microchips…

First he needed to clear the premises. He couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think Burrows and Jackson had what it took to take out the freight trains. If nothing else, they might slow them, long enough for him to make his Towncar and ride on.

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