“THE DRONES ARE INVISIBLE TO RADAR.”

The Able Team leader’s jaw set firmly as he scanned the shadowy terrain ahead. “If they had stealth robot tanks, then they could build a stealth helicopter.”

A red light buzzed on the control console. “We’re hot! Target radar lock!” the pilot announced as he wrenched the chopper hard right.

Strapped in, Lyons felt the jerk like a dog on the end of a leash. Out of the darkness, he saw a flaming halo growing in intensity and following the helicopter’s thrashing movements.

He knew exactly what the flaming halo was—the rocket exhaust of an antiaircraft missile, the lethal shaft of its warhead forming the black void in the center of a hellfire ring.

Death shrieked at the men of Able Team on a jet of flame.

Other titles in this series:

#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

#70 RAMROD INTERCEPT

#71 TERMS OF CONTROL

#72 ROLLING THUNDER

#73 COLD OBJECTIVE

#74 THE CHAMELEON FACTOR

#75 SILENT ARSENAL

#76 GATHERING STORM

#77 FULL BLAST

#78 MAELSTROM

#79 PROMISE TO DEFEND

#80 DOOMSDAY CONQUEST

#81 SKY HAMMER

#82 VANISHING POINT

#83 DOOM PROPHECY

#84 SENSOR SWEEP

#85 HELL DAWN

#86 OCEANS OF FIRE

Extreme Arsenal

STONY MAN ®

AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Don Pendleton

To Sam, for teaching our troops in Iraq and saving lives in Thailand after the tsunami. Some people might believe that God sends disasters to destroy the world, but He doesn’t. He sends good men and heroes like you. Come home safely, my friend.

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

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona

Dane Whitman watched the MidKnight Mark II armored combat drone roll across the Yuma proving grounds. He glanced over at General Stephen Rogers and smiled.

“How’s she holding up?” Whitman asked.

“Still quiet on the seismic detectors,” Rogers said as he looked at the monitor. He swiveled the flat screen so that Whitman could look at it. The general hovered the cursor over the infrared sensors. “Even its heat signature is nearly invisible. Good work.”

“Stealth and armored combat never worked that well, hand in hand, but this is a revolutionary new design,” Whitman replied. “With the MidKnight, we can hit the enemy with impunity. Don’t want to risk a Marine platoon on foot? Send in a small squadron of MidKnights.”

Rogers pursed his lips. “What about regular tanks?”

“That’s the joy of this. The MidKnights are slave drones. One operator can handle and coordinate two of them. The range on the remotes are fairly limited, so our operators will need to be close. What better place than wrapped in the Chobam armor of an M-1A tank?” Whitman asked.

Rogers nodded. “But what about the tanks themselves?”

“The hypersonic vibrational dampeners are modular designs,” Whitman explained. “They can be installed in M-1As with ease.”

Rogers frowned. “So why use the drones?”

“To increase our armored ability. Instead of sending out large squadrons of tanks, we have two armored vehicles and four drones able to do the work of a squadron, with more firepower and superior coordination,” Whitman said. “And with less risk of someone with a cheap, shoulder-mounted rocket launcher taking out a tank crew.”

Rogers looked dubiously at the monitor.

Suddenly one of the MidKnights exploded. Chunks of armor plating and flames erupted as if from a metallic volcano.

“What in the hell?” Rogers demanded. He stood in the control booth, eyes locked on the field below. Another of the MidKnights detonated in an orange blossom of flame and debris.

“Sir!” Lieutenant Aaron Blake spoke up. “There’s something else out on the field!”

“Impossible!” Rogers bellowed. “This testing ground is protected on all sides. There are no access roads…”

The control tower shook.

Whitman held on to his chair, but Rogers and Blake were tossed to the floor. He glanced down to see a spiked disk pass near the bonfire of one of his drones. A long, thick tail rose from the thing’s back. Its bulbous tip spit out another flash of fire. He watched the low, armored intruder’s head spit twin lines of flame that smashed the tent with the MidKnight operators to shreds.

The millionaire inventor held his breath as more of those attackers became visible, their tails alive with jets of fire. Rockets speared out of the sides of the blunt tail tip and destroyed a hangar building.

“How in the blazes did they get here?” Rogers asked.

“Ankylosaurs,” Whitman whispered. “They look like Ankylosaurs.”

“What?” the general shouted.

“Ancient armored dinosaurs…” Whitman said. His eyes widened as one of the disk-shaped drones pivoted and opened fire on the base of the control tower with their heavy machine guns.

“Pull off of the field!” Rogers shouted into the mike. “Get out of the line of fire!”

Whitman looked at the monitor. In its infrared lens, the bodies of Yuma defenders flared hotly as they were pierced by lances of automatic weapons fire. Several had already fallen, turning from yellowish white to cool blue. Except for the flaming muzzles and rocket shell launchers, the Ankylosaurs were all but invisible to infrared and radar. He clicked through various detectors. The intruders were stealthier than his own designs. While the MidKnights and the Ankylosaurs were both invisible to radar, the black, spiked monstrosities had a null heat profile except when their weapons fired.

Glass shattered in the control room and Blake’s torso exploded as 25 mm shells ripped through him. Whitman recoiled, soaked with hot, fresh gore. Slimy gobs of pulped flesh dropped to the floor as he shifted position. Rogers stared in pained shock, for a moment at the head of the lifeless officer, and it took a moment for Whitman to focus on the fact that all the general held was a head attached to the grimy taillike spinal cord, ribs sticking up like insect legs where they’d been shattered.

“Get out of here now,” Rogers said resolutely. “This tower’s no protection against those things.”

Whitman hit the eject button on the DVD recorder drive.

“Come on, man!” Rogers shouted.

“The sensors have information on the attackers. We can use it!” Whitman replied.

“Think about your designs another—”

“No! To learn who is attac—” Whitman began. Something hot burned below his back and he suddenly felt very tired. The glimmering disk in his hand seemed too heavy to hold up and he flopped facedown on the floor.

“Whitman!” Rogers shouted. “Oh, God…”

Whitman didn’t know what the man in the green suit was talking about. His mind drifted. “Ankylosaurs…”

“Don’t talk,” Rogers said. He gripped Whitman’s lapels and pulled him along toward the steps.

Whitman was glassy-eyed in shock, his brain not registering properly. His breathing was difficult. He looked back over his shoulder and saw a pair of legs, half a pair of them actually, blown off just above the knees. One was flopped on its side, but the other leaned against a counter, as if it were still standing.

“Hey…” the weapons designer muttered as he was dragged over the top step.

“Save your strength, Dane. It’ll be okay,” Rogers whispered. “It’ll be okay…”

Whitman looked drunkenly up at the man. He thought he should know this nice person’s name, but it escaped him. All he could think of was the dinosaurs, the Ankylosaurs. He smiled.

He loved dinosaurs. He always liked to read books and watch movies about them…and when he went to the museum…

His eyes blinked lazily.

“Dane, hold on dammit,” Rogers gritted.

“I like the museum…” Whitman whispered, his head resting on the cold stone step. He closed his eyes, imagining an era when leviathans roamed the Earth.

Death took the genius as he smiled dreamily.

GENERAL ROGERS FELT for a pulse and found none. His lips pulled back tightly, and he looked down at the mirrored disk the man died to retrieve.

“To learn who attacked,” was what he’d said before the 25 mm cannon shell had blasted his upper thighs into a messy spray of vaporized flesh and bone.

Rogers took the disk and slipped it under his jacket. “Okay, Dane. I’ll make sure the right people get this.” The general took off down the stairs, reaching under his jacket and drawing out the SIG-Sauer M-11 pistol from its concealed holster. The little handgun wouldn’t do much against an armored juggernaut, but it was something that gave him some confidence. He wasn’t completely helpless.

As he reached the base of the tower, he glanced at a gaping hole in the wall. Two soldiers were strewed in the rubble on the steps, and Rogers knelt to check on them. Both were dead.

Numbing anger washed over him. These soldiers were under his command, and they had given their life in a rush to his side. His jaw set, he shook off his shock. He needed to contact the rest of his men and insure their safety. He looked down and spotted a field radio.

He plucked it from the corpse’s belt and heard the sounds of the Yuma Security Task Force as its members tried to coordinate a defense against the attacking robots.

“This is General Rogers. All security forces fall back! Those things are too powerful to stop!” he ordered. “Fall back to shelter and do not engage!”

Rogers sensed danger and threw himself to the base of the steps. The impact jarred the old soldier’s bones, but the drop saved his life as machine guns and cannon fire tore at the steps he’d just occupied. He looked at the radio and stunned realization hit.

The attackers drones had homed in on his transmission. He lurched to his feet and raced for the door. He pressed down the lock transmit button and called into the unit, “Cease radio communication! They’re targeting anything that transmits!”

Gunfire chopped at Rogers’s heels and he tossed the communicator away from him as he continued his mad dash across the field. The deadly line of autofire that hounded him swung away and ripped apart the ground where the radio bounced. The shock wave of a grenade detonation buffeted the general’s back, but Rogers continued to rush toward a stone bunker. The Ankylosaurs, as Whitman called them, paused, seemingly confused.

Rogers smiled. His last message had gotten through. The drones had nothing to target. One of the machines suddenly whirled toward him.

Radio targeting wasn’t their only means of detection, Rogers realized and he threw himself into a ditch instants before heavy-caliber machine gun fire slashed the ground he’d just vacated. The general flopped facedown in the mud and curled tightly to the bottom of the runoff ditch.

The rumble of the Ankylosaur’s approach thundered in his ears and he looked up at the looming robot. A blunt, bearlike head adorned with two 25 mm cannon barrels and belts for the weapons swiveled along the ditch. Multifaceted lenses swept across Rogers and he held his breath. Those lenses had to have been infrared sensors. The thing would spot him…

The Ankylosaur pivoted, as if continuing to search for him. Chilled and drenched, Rogers felt his teeth begin to chatter and he clenched his jaw shut. The cold mud caked him and obscured him from IR detection. Only the momentary snap of chattering teeth had drawn the murderous robot’s attention.

Sonar or vibrational sensors, Rogers realized. His ears throbbed with the hum and chatter of low-frequency sonics buzzing through the air. Just like Whitman’s design for the MidKnights. The ULF sonics provided an obscuring cloud of null-sound that counteracted both a vehicle’s audible signature and the vibrations it released as it moved. That’s how it had sneaked up on the testing grounds unseen. But from where had it come?

There was no time to answer that question.

Rogers stayed deathly still, counting his heartbeats, wondering whether the next pump would be his last. The two barrels leveled at him, like the murderous black-eyed sockets of the Grim Reaper himself. The general had served his country his entire life, and fought to make sure his men would be safe. At least he knew he’d give up that life having given his soldiers the chance to be safe.

A thunderbolt struck the head of the machine and hot, flaming wreckage sprayed all over Rogers. He recoiled from the sudden wave of burning splinters, but when he looked up, he saw that he was unharmed. He patted his jacket and felt the DVD, still intact, nothing had burned or marred his jacket where he’d secreted it.

“General!” a voice shouted. The Ankylosaur opened fire, and Rogers rushed along the ditch away from the autofire. He looked back to see the tail boom of the wounded battle robot swivel toward his troops.

Throwing all caution to the wind, Rogers leveled the muddy M-11 pistol at the raised launcher. He opened fire, burning off the entire 13-round magazine and the hot 9 mm ball round in the pipe. The tail boom sparked as the high-impulse bullets struck home, then flashed brilliantly.

The general’s stomach dropped as he realized that the robot tank had launched one of its rockets, but the fireball was too bright to be the flare of the miniature missile’s engine. The Earth shook and the tail boom separated from the attacker robot. The explosion flattened the general and knocked the empty pistol from his hand.

He had to have hit the machine rocket as it entered the launch tube; a one in a million shot that had saved the lives of his men.

More antitank missiles and the deep-throated thumps of heavy-caliber antimatériel rifles filled the air.

A young man raced into the ditch, a smoking missile tube in his hands.

“Sir…” Corporal Vance Astrovik called as he swung a rifle off his back. “Sir, are you okay?”

Rogers nodded. “I ordered you men to clear the field.”

“We wouldn’t leave you behind,” Astrovik stated. He saw that the general was soaked with cold muddy water, and bent down to scoop up a helmet full of cold goop. The soldier poured it over his own head and face, then crawled to the edge of the ditch.

“Don’t speak. They have some sort of audio detectors, as well,” Rogers whispered as he crawled to the corporal’s side.

“Fall back, sir. I’ll cover your retreat,” Astrovik told him.

Rogers knelt to pick up his muddy SIG, then shook out the excess gunk. He slammed home a spare magazine and watched the machines. “Sorry, son. I lead from the front.”

Astrovik managed a weak smile.

“Look out!” he suddenly blurted. The young corporal knocked Rogers down to the bottom of the ditch as a crescendo of fire and thunder filled the air.

Rogers glanced up to see the damaged Ankylosaur being hammered by the other units into a mangled pulp of unidentifiable metal. Rockets and explosive cannon rounds left a scorched hulk behind. The robots weren’t going to leave much for the Yuma experts to look over after their raid.

Rogers and Astrovik slid from the bottom of the ditch and watched the squat little drones whirl and roll frantically into the distance, disappearing through the scrub. One of the armored machines trailed smoke from a fire, but the general’s men wouldn’t be able to track it.

Looking around, General Stephen Rogers saw that the test base had been all but flattened. Every vehicle was now a twisted mass of crushed metal and rubber. Some blazed from explosive shells that lit the fuel in their ruptured tanks, but there was nothing on wheels that would allow them to chase down the retreating armored assault drones. Rogers cursed under his breath.

A bugle clarion split the air and Astrovik turned on his radio.

“Our spotters lost the drone toward the old mine pass,” Astrovik quickly told Rogers. “They’re retreating.”

Rogers nodded and took the radio. “Can we get air support?”

“General Rogers?” It was Gunnery Sergeant Pym. “I have Lieutenant Van Dyne calling in. U.S.A.F. states they’ll have medevac helicopters here in twenty minutes, but defensive air cover is only thirty seconds away.”

“Good man,” Rogers said.

A heartbeat later, fighter jets roared through the sky overhead. He couldn’t see what they were against the night sky, but as soon as they passed, he could tell by their single cones of exhaust that they were F-16s of some form. He hoped that they had air-to-ground weaponry.

One F-16 cut loose with its 20 mm cannons; the air ripped with the shredding rattle of high-velocity explosive shells. Both jets suddenly swerved as spears of flame lanced into the sky toward them. The drones’ rockets sailed into the night, missing their intended targets, but giving the attackers time to escape even further.

“General, we’ve lost the intruders,” Van Dyne broke in. “They’re invisible to FLIR and radar…The Air Force can’t pick them up on sensors or visually.”

Rogers breathed out a harsh sigh.

“I want a team to follow those things’ heading, Lieutenant,” Rogers ordered. “Call in a mountain operations Ranger team and have them set up with antitank weaponry.”

“It’ll be a few hours, sir,” Van Dyne answered. Despite the carnage, her voice was calm and focused.

Rogers looked in the direction where the Ankylosaurs escaped. The old mine pass was a dead end. Those drones were as good as caught.

But something nibbled at the back of the general’s mind.

He doubted that their assailants were going to be found. Not for a long time.

Rogers thumbed the DVD from his jacket.

Those nightmare robots would be seen again. And from what he’d seen so far this night, they had proved to be an irresistible force for destruction.

“God help us,” Rogers prayed softly as the F-16s orbited the burning base.

CHAPTER ONE

England

The London fog rolled in on cue as David McCarter took to the streets with his friend Pat. They walked arm in arm, McCarter his usual brisk, ground-eating stride slowed to accommodate the blond woman’s pace. She walked with her temple rested against his shoulder.

They’d just left the cinema after watching a controversial film and were engaged in light banter concerning the plot.

Something moved in his peripheral vision as he turned to press his point and he stopped. His combat instincts cried out that trouble was brewing.

Pat felt McCarter’s muscles tighten, as rigid as those on a marble statue. “What’s wrong?”

A black-clad figure, wielding a submachine gun, darted across the street to climb a small privacy wall around a home. McCarter pushed Pat into the shadows of a house’s entranceway and shielded her with his back.

“There’s some drama happening,” the Phoenix Force leader whispered softly. Drama, in the slang of the SAS, involved guns and imminent violence. “Stay out of sight, no matter what.”

Pat’s lips pulled tightly into a thin, bloodless line. “You don’t have your mates with you.”

McCarter reached under his jacket and slid out a tiny Charter Arms .38-caliber revolver and pressed it into her hand. “Don’t do anything stupid. If anyone with a gun pops into view, let him have the full load.”

Pat nodded nervously. He gave her hand a quick squeeze and turned toward the house. He was in mid-draw of his favored Browning Hi-Power when he spotted two more mysterious figures dart into view. One pivoted and dropped to a knee to aim at McCarter, who lunged out of the path of a line of silenced autofire. The SAS veteran’s handgun was out by the time he struck the cobblestone road, its luminous front sight a fuzzy green ball. The glowing dot interrupted the torso of the gunman. He fired two quick shots and rolled frantically so as not to provide a stationary target for the other gunner.

The black-clad wraith that he’d hit twisted to punch another burst of silenced bullets into the road. McCarter leaped behind the fender of a Mini Cooper, its chassis rattling as slugs struck home.

“Dammit.” The enemy gunman grunted. “He’s behind cover!”

“Who the…” the other assassin whispered as he stepped onto the sidewalk. McCarter swiveled and took aim at the second attacker’s knee. He tapped off another shot and was rewarded by his target toppling off balance. The victory was brief, though. A salvo of suppressed gunfire rattled against the bumper of the Mini Cooper in response to the Phoenix Force leader’s attack. “That hurt, you miserable…”

McCarter popped up and fired over the roof of the vehicle. This time he pumped out three shots. Sparks flew as bullets exploded against his enemy’s helmet. The gunman staggered backward, then shook the cobwebs out of his head. The Briton ducked back behind the body of the car as the Mini Cooper’s windows detonated under a hail of automatic weapons fire.

As chunks of broken glass rained down on the Phoenix Force leader, he bit back a growl of frustration. The three head shots would have brought down anyone. Even one bullet would have slipped into the gap between the helmet and the goggles of an armored opponent. But the sparks that exploded showed McCarter that even his custom of loading one hollowpoint and one NATO ball round wasn’t enough to penetrate whatever they were wearing. The mix of expanding and deep penetrating ammunition was the Briton’s insurance against opponents who wore body armor. At this range, the NATO ball round should have cracked through even a Kevlar helmet.

The two hardmen were betrayed by their shadows as they approached. They assumed that they had the Phoenix Force commander boxed in, and that was their mistake. As long as he had breath in his lungs and his heart still beat, he wouldn’t give up. He glanced back and saw Pat huddled in the doorway. If the gunmen got any closer, they’d be able to see her, and the tiny Charter Arms .38 would be even more impotent against their protective armor.

McCarter exploded into action. He charged the gunman in the street and fired directly at the assassin’s face. The armored attacker froze at the sight of the Englishman’s sudden attack, and was blinded by the point-blank muzzle-flashes and 9 mm rounds smashing into his armored faceplate. The gunman let out an inarticulate yell that gave McCarter all the opportunity he needed. He threw his empty handgun aside and grabbed his enemy’s submachine gun. With a savage twist, he pried the weapon to one side and slipped behind his black-clad opponent’s body. The other gunman tracked him and opened fire on instinct.

McCarter’s human shield jerked as slugs punched into him. He hauled the armored assassin’s arm around to grab the killer’s weapon. The black-clad body slumped and turned into deadweight as the Briton clawed the subgun out of its grasp. With a kick, the Phoenix Force commander threw himself to the ground and out of the path of another burst of fire.

For a moment McCarter thought that the weapon in his grasp was a mini-Uzi. It had the same feel, but when he triggered it, the bullets that erupted tore through the Mini-Cooper’s door as if it were made of tissue paper. The surviving gunman jerked as the slowed slugs hit him. He charged around the back of the vehicle.

The sound of a revolver split the air and sparks erupted on the gunman’s body. Pat had seen the killer and she followed McCarter’s advice. It was enough to distract the murderer and he twisted to pump a burst into the doorway, but McCarter cut him off and emptied the machine pistol’s magazine into the armored attacker.

This time, the gunman folded over and dropped to the ground, dead. McCarter discarded his empty magazine and frisked the corpse for spare ammo. He looked up to see Pat’s pale face, eyes wide with fear. He winked at her. “Chin up, love.”

She nodded.

He checked the top round in the machine pistol and saw that it was a bottle-nosed bullet. It took a moment for him to figure out what the cartridge was, when he remembered the Saab Bofors Dynamics CBJ MS personal defense weapon. Based on the mini-Uzi, it could be modified to fire 6.5 mm armor-piercing bullets from a bottle-necked 9 mm case. The extra powder charge behind the narrow slug allowed it to pierce Kevlar and ceramic trauma plating with all the authority of a rifle round. He charged up the Bofors and headed for the low wall when he noticed another of the armored gunners crawl into view.

“What the…” the assassin demanded, then saw the lean-faced Briton, armed with the deadly machine pistol. He dropped out of sight before McCarter could trigger the weapon, so the Phoenix Force warrior leaped to the top of the low wall and went prone. He aimed his machine pistol into the darkness, then lined up on the glint of a streetlight on the curved dome of the dark assassin’s helmet.

McCarter didn’t give his enemy a chance. He cut loose with a salvo of high-powered slugs that chopped into the armored helmet. Chunks of bullet-resistant material flew, smashed to splinters by the Bofors slugs.

He dropped to the lawn and raced toward the house. Through the window, he spotted an armored gunman line up his shot on a cowering woman.

“Not on my watch, mate.” McCarter growled as he triggered the Bofors CBJ. Glass shattered and the assassin jerked violently. He still stood, which told the Briton that it would take a close-range salvo, without the interference of even a pane of glass, to neutralize the enemy. He charged the window and dived through even as the would-be assassin recovered.

McCarter felt the heat of the gunner’s burst cut closely over him. He triggered the Bofors one last time and stitched his adversary from crotch to throat. The woman screamed as the armored man’s corpse smashed violently against the china cabinet. The ex-SAS commando crossed to her and saw that she was uninjured.

“Is there anyone else in the house?” he asked. She looked at him, her dark brown eyes pools of fright.

“Yo no…”

“Esta otros en la casa?” McCarter quickly corrected. He knew his accent and grammar were horrible, despite his practice with his teammate Rafael Encizo and Rosario Blancanales of Able Team, but he still got the point across.

“Mi tio,” she stammered. Her uncle. She pointed, knowing that gestures were easier to understand.

McCarter held his hand out, palm down. “Abajo.”

She nodded. She would stay down, and wisely crawled behind a sofa. The Phoenix Force leader turned and moved deeper into the house. Chances were, there were at least one or two more killers in the building. He dumped his depleted magazine and fed in a fresh one.

McCarter reached the bottom of the stairs, then ducked back as the floor erupted. A hail of gunfire chopped the floorboards to splinters and would have sliced him off below the knees. Crippled and mutilated, he would have been easy pickings for the assassins.

“Hurry up!” a voice shouted. McCarter spotted an apple resting in a bowl by the stairs. He reached for it, pulled the stem out and spit it. Then he hurled the phony grenade up the stairs. “Shit!”

The gunman lurched into view, flushed from the top of the stairs and into the Phoenix Force commando’s line of fire. McCarter ripped off a short burst that smashed the gunman’s arm to a useless pulp. He swiveled the muzzle and ripped the assassin across the knees. He was going to need answers, and since these guys spoke better English, he picked the one on the steps. The gunman and his weapon slid down the stairs. McCarter rushed to the fallen killer and punched a short burst at the man’s outstretched wrist. The black-clad hardman had nearly reached his weapon when the 6.5 mm Bofors rounds completely severed the limb.

“Stay put, mate,” McCarter said as he kicked the submachine gun farther down the hall as a precaution. “I want to chat with you in a bit.”

He charged up the stairs and saw the last of the armored assassins surge into the hallway. McCarter dropped to the floor instantly, a scythe of burning lead tearing the air where he’d stood moments before. He blasted the black-clad killer across the shins. The high-powered CBJ rounds splintered bone and pulped flesh in their passage, and dumped the murderer to the floor. McCarter rose to go after him, but dropped back down as the hit man wouldn’t give up. A Bofors bullet grazed the Phoenix Force leader’s shoulder after it punched through the top step.

“Bloody bastards don’t know when to quit.” He popped up and swept the floor with the submachine gun, turning the landing that the gunman laid upon into a mass of splinters, shredded armor and gore. The Bofors locked open, empty, and instinctively he reloaded the last magazine into the weapon. He wasn’t going to be caught off guard.

McCarter approached the last corpse. Bare skull poked through the shattered helmet.

He entered the room that the assassin had just left, then froze. A bloodied sheet covered an immobile lump in the middle of the bed. McCarter shook his head. He’d been too late for the victim. He stepped over to the body and turned on the lamp to look at the man. His features were familiar, but the Briton couldn’t quite place them. He frowned and heard the sirens of police cars outside.

The Phoenix Force leader stepped back outside and looked down the stairs. The gunman who’d been deprived of his limbs convulsed, shrieking in pain. McCarter went to the base of the stairs, stripped his machine pistol of its magazine and popped the round out of the chamber. He dropped the empty weapon and laced his fingers behind his head, elbows up.

Two armed policemen burst through the door, the muzzles of their Glock 17 pistols leveled at him.

“There’s a dead one in the sitting room, one at the top of the stairs, and they murdered the owner of this home,” he offered. “My name is David King. I’m former SAS…”

He turned to let them see that he was unarmed. One officer rushed over to frisk him.

“You’ve got empty holsters on your hip and ankle,” the policeman said.

“I lost my Browning in the street, and my companion has an empty revolver,” McCarter replied. “I gave it to her to protect herself.”

The policeman fished out his wallet. “You have permits for the handguns, and to carry them concealed. You must be pretty important.”

“I’m supposed to be armed. There’s an unarmed woman in the sitting room. She speaks Spanish, and she’s very frightened. She’s the niece of the home owner,” McCarter explained.

“Does she speak English?” the other officer asked.

“No. I tried,” McCarter replied.

“Do you speak Spanish?” the officer who frisked him asked.

McCarter nodded. “Not fluently, but I can get by when I’m not under pressure.”

“Could you help, then, sir?” the policeman asked. “You can lower your hands now.”

McCarter relaxed. “Sure. No problem. Bring my friend in?”

The policeman nodded and spoke into his radio. It was going to be a long night, and McCarter didn’t want Pat stuck out in the cold dampness alone.

MCCARTER SCREWED HIS KNUCKLE against his eye socket, fighting off the need for sleep. The sun burned in the window, shining on him like God’s flashlight. He glanced toward the sofa where Pat slept fitfully, curled tight with her shoulders drawn against a chill that was deeper than her bones.

“Thank you for your patience, Mr. King,” Inspector Byers said. “You’ll be in the London area for a while?”

McCarter nodded.

Stony Man Farm had enough pull with the British government to arrange for the Phoenix Force leader to leave the city should he be called away on an emergency mission.

“All right,” Byers said, reluctance coloring his words. “You’re free to go. Just keep in touch.”

McCarter shook the detective’s hand. “Much obliged, mate.”

He walked over to Pat and touched her shoulder. Her pale eyes flickered open immediately.

“What now?” she asked.

“I’m taking you home, love,” McCarter answered. He helped her to her feet and laced his arm with hers. Together they walked slowly to the front door and left the crime scene. A police car was out front, waiting to take them wherever they wished.

They remained quiet on the drive back to her flat. It wasn’t difficult to fake exhaustion. McCarter could feel the passage of blood cells through his cheeks like the rumble of underground trains. Pat leaned against his shoulder, a warm reassurance that she was all right. His empty holsters felt all wrong, though. The police had, understandably, confiscated the side arms for evidence in the shooting. Byers was thorough, and McCarter bit back his discomfort at being disarmed. Even his spare magazines and strip of .38-caliber cartridges to reload the Charter Arms had been taken away.

Hal Brognola would move heaven and earth to make sure those weapons were retrieved from the evidence locker and replaced with sanitized replicas. The originals bore too many of the Briton’s fingerprints and their serial numbers would be traced to David King, his cover persona. All records of the investigation would eventually be purged of any mention of the Phoenix Force commander, the levels of secrecy that Stony Man Farm operated under restored to protect their phantom war against those who thought themselves above the law.

McCarter’s mouth was pressed into a tight, brooding frown. Six trained commandos with high-powered weapons and bulletproof armor and helmets hadn’t been sent to eliminate any old man living in obscurity in London. The bastards he’d fought were too good.

It would have been easier if he hadn’t gotten involved, but McCarter hadn’t become one of the most experienced warriors in the world because he didn’t care. When people needed help, he acted, the consequences of doing the right thing be damned.

They left the squad car when it stopped at her apartment building, and McCarter saw Pat safely to her door. Minutes later he was in a taxicab and back in his room at a nearby hotel.

He went to his luggage, opened a bag and pulled out a spare pistol rug. McCarter unzipped it and revealed a Glock G-34 in 9 mm Parabellum and a smaller Glock 26 in the same caliber. He held up the blocky pistol. The members of Phoenix Force were evaluating the handguns, and as the leader of the team, he had reluctantly accepted the pistol to wring out at a couple of ranges with his fellow SAS men. Calvin James and Rafael Encizo had been the first to fall in love with the Austrian-built handgun and managed to recruit Gary Manning and T.J. Hawkins to their side. The fact that the two men had been able to shoot the gun under water, and had done so in combat, only endeared it further to the experienced divers. The grip, though a little more square, was similar in feel to his Browning. In 9 mm, the G-34 had a 4-shot greater capacity to his beloved Browning, with only a shade more height and thickness to compromise its concealment. Since he usually dressed in oversize, often rumpled clothing, that was no problem.

“The times, they are a changin’,” McCarter murmured as he checked to make sure the chamber was loaded. Assured that the Glock was hot, he holstered the gun. The New York 1 trigger, in Glock nonclementure, meant that it was a trigger-cocking only action, only needing a smooth, 7-pound pull of the trigger to fire off a shot. At first he was iffy about the lack of a thumb safety, but the New York trigger’s pull was enough to stave off a discharge and the pull of the Safe-Action trigger was as slick and complementary to precision shooting as the single-action trigger of his favored Browning. Plus, the members of the SAS that McCarter had been catching up with had been sold on the Glock family of handguns. The British elite troopers were very excited by the light, safe pull of the new series of pistols. As a bonus, the G-34, while being concealable, had a rail on the dust cover that allowed the men of Phoenix Force to attach laser-aiming modules or various flashlights for low-light combat.

He stuffed the Glock into his waistband. He loaded the little Glock, as well, and deposited it back in the pistol rug.

He zipped it up and carried it to the nightstand. The cell phone looked like a metallic dead rat, a reminder that, for all intents and purposes, his vacation was now over.

Though on a busman’s holiday, McCarter was also in London to reinforce some old contacts in the SAS and MI-6, and he’d decided to spend some time with Pat. He plucked the cell from its resting spot in his suitcase and pressed the speed dial, reaching the Farm’s secure number.

Barbara Price, as usual burning the midnight oil, took his call after Stony Man’s computers pronounced his signal clear of prying ears. “David?”

“Hi, Barb. I came across a situation in England,” McCarter explained.

“I know. David King showed up on Scotland Yard’s background check,” Price stated.

“That’s why you’re awake—to chew me out, eh?” the Phoenix Force commander asked.

“You know, it’s usually Striker or Carl who can’t take a decent vacation without getting into a war,” Price responded.

“I felt left out,” McCarter quipped. He then broke into an account of the men he’d encountered and the murder of the old Hispanic man.

“We’ve been running a check on the victim. Interpol’s firewall is giving Aaron’s team a headache,” Price said. “The name we entered activated their cyber-security and clamped things down tightly.”

“Bloody inconvenient of them,” McCarter snapped.

Price sighed. “It’s for the best. The firewall is under their witness protection protocols. It should be too tough to crack.”

McCarter frowned. “That’s why he seemed so familiar.”

“You might know who it is?” Price asked.

“Try Roberto DaCosta,” McCarter suggested.

Price muffled the receiver and passed on the information. McCarter waited, knowing it wouldn’t take long.

“David?” Price asked.

“What’d you find out?”

“Roberto DaCosta was a Catholic bishop from El Salvador. He testified against the old Organización Democráticia Nacionalista—ORDEN—regime and the ESA. Able Team once pulled security for him against one of their teams,” Price responded. “It was a brutal, dirty mission.”

McCarter frowned. “Well, I was too late to help him out. ORDEN…Did they hire American mercenaries?”

“Why do you ask?” Price inquired.

“They spoke English and they sounded American,” McCarter responded.

“They have recruited experts from all around the world, but right now, ESA is pretty much a dead issue,” Price responded. “Most of them are either dead, deported or serving jail time. Again, a lot of ORDEN and their death squads went down hard under Able.”

“Maybe someone had a plan to undeport,” McCarter replied.

“Someone’s trying to make a comeback?”

“Start the guys rattling cages,” McCarter answered. “I’m going to check out a few more things on this side of the pond.”

“Do you want Phoenix over there?” Price asked.

McCarter shook his head. “No. They could be put to better use working in tandem with Carl and his boys until we pick something up.”

“All right. I’ll make sure one of Hal’s irregulars is on the case to get your pistols back,” Price responded. “Do you need to acquire some weapons?”

“I’ve got the evaluation Glocks.”

“Really? I never thought you’d be happy with the new Glock,” Price responded.

McCarter patted the gun stuffed into his waistband. “It’s not that I have to be happy. If I’m going to trust this gun to protect my boys, then I have to trust it to protect my arse.”

“I’ll mark this day in history,” Price joked.

McCarter chuckled. “I’ll never hear the end of this, will I?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll be in touch,” he told her.

“You’ll leave your phone on?” Price asked.

“Yeah, I’ll keep my phone on. If you don’t reach me, leave a voice message,” McCarter replied. He hung up.

CHAPTER TWO

“Black seven on red eight.” McCarter’s voice cut through the darkness.

Christopher Reasoner looked up from his table, solitaire cards splayed out. “It doesn’t count as a win if you get help, David.”

McCarter, in a knee-length black peacoat, stepped from the shadows. He looked like a floating head in the darkness beyond the pale cone of light thrown down by the desk lamp. “Like you’d have noticed?”

Reasoner moved the stack over under the red eight, then placed a blotter sheet on top of them. “What’s up, David?”

“I’m looking for a ship that came in a while back, say within the past week,” McCarter replied. “They paid to be left alone.”

“You know as a dock authority, I’m supposed to subject all craft to a search,” Reasoner answered. He laced his fingers together and gave the SAS veteran his most honest look.

McCarter clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Chris, don’t give me that crap. Someone came in. They didn’t do any offloading. I’m thinking, they came from South America.”

“David, you’re hurting my feelings. When have I ever been duplicitous with you?” Reasoner asked.

McCarter rolled his eyes then leaned forward. He motioned with his finger for Reasoner to come closer. The man glanced toward the door. McCarter tilted his head, a warm friendly smile setting the dock man to ease. Reasoner bent nearer to McCarter, then felt a hand clamp over the back of his head. Before he could resist, his face hammered down into the blotter and he felt his nose crunch sickeningly.

“Bloody hell!” Reasoner howled, streams of blood pouring from his nose like a waterfall.

McCarter yanked the man’s head down into the table once more and Reasoner’s eyes crossed from the pain. The official’s fingers clawed at the rough green construction paper, crumpling it as his tormentor hauled him up, glaring at him angrily.

“Listen, you little tosser,” McCarter snarled. “The people on that ship shot at me and nearly shot a close friend.”

Reasoner coughed. Red droplets spattered and disappeared on the heavy wool of McCarter’s coat. “Oh, fuck me…”

McCarter pushed Reasoner’s face into the puddle of blood forming on the crumpled blotter. He applied his full weight to Reasoner’s neck, and the official kicked at the smooth concrete floor.

“My neck!” Reasoner sputtered. “You’re breaking my bloody neck!”

McCarter sighed and leaned back, letting Reasoner sit up again. “You were a whiny bitch back at the regiment. How long does it take to grow a pair?”

Reasoner reached for a drawer, then heard the snick of a safety. He froze and looked down the nearly half-inch diameter black hole of a muzzle. “I’m getting a box of tissues for my face, you right bastard!”

McCarter nodded, his aim unwavering. “Go ahead and get the box. If you touch anything else, though…”

“You’ll kill me?” Reasoner asked.

McCarter smiled. “I’m a better shot than that. I’ll just make you wish you were dead, and still leave you able to write the answers I want.”

Reasoner saw McCarter shake his head behind the big square slide of the pistol leveled at him. He set his box of tissues on the desktop, pointing out to the SAS man the .357 Magnum revolver resting in the top drawer. The dockman’s eyes narrowed. “Were you born a bastard, or did you take lessons?”

“I’m a natural, but that doesn’t mean I don’t keep training. The amateur trains until he gets it right. The true professional trains until he never gets it wrong,” McCarter answered. “Nice Maggie. Hand it over by the barrel.”

Reasoner set the revolver on the desktop and sighed. “Okay. A ship called the Kobiyashi came in the other day.”

“Japanese registry?” McCarter asked.

“Mix of Asians and Hispanics on the crew. Liberian registry, as usual,” Reasoner replied. He pressed a wad of tissues to his upper lip and it soaked immediately through and through.

“Where was its last stop?” McCarter inquired.

“Since when did you start taking to plastic pistols?” Reasoner interrupted. He was trying to stall and regain his composure. “Isn’t that the new Glock?”

McCarter glared at Reasoner. The 9 mm hole in the business end of the pistol glared at the official with only slightly less intensity and intimidation. After a long, uncomfortable moment, McCarter spoke up. “You like eating through a straw?”

“A straw?”

“Liquid nourishment. Actually, you wouldn’t taste it without a tongue, since they’d stick the tube through your nose and straight into your stomach.”

“So like I was saying. The Kobiyashi was just out of Panama,” Reasoner replied. “Came across the canal. Before that they were in the Pacific.”

McCarter frowned. “Any idea where?”

“Up in the armpit between Baja, Mexico, and the mainland,” Reasoner said. He wiped more of his blood off his chin. “Why?”

“I’m writing a book,” McCarter answered.

Reasoner nodded. “Then I’ll keep the words short and easy for you to spell.”

A thunderbolt went off in Reasoner’s right ear, hot flames licking at his eyes. The official screamed and covered his head. Hot stickiness filled the inside of his head and when he opened his left eye, he saw a wisp of smoke rise from the barrel of McCarter’s pistol.

“Sorry. Underestimated the muzzle-flash,” McCarter replied. It sounded as if he was trying to speak through a pillow. Reasoner reached up and found that his right ear was still there, burned and tender from the nearby muzzle-flash that clamped his right eye shut, but he came away with fresh blood.

“What…”

“I think I blew the eardrum. Sorry, mate,” McCarter answered.

Reasoner shuddered. “You’re insane.”

“I just don’t have any patience for smugglers,” McCarter responded. “Or the bastards who make it easy for them.”

“Listen…” Reasoner began.

“You were kicked out of the regiment for selling off our equipment,” McCarter said. “Your lawyer kept you from becoming some bloke’s boyfriend in prison, but if it were up to me, you’d be lucky to take a long drop off a short rope.”

“I didn’t sell to the Provos,” Reasoner answered. “And it was old gear…back stock.”

McCarter was unmoved. “What berth?”

“They’re setting sail in five minutes. You’ll never catch them,” Reasoner replied.

“Leave it to me,” McCarter said. “What berth?”

“Thirteen,” Reasoner answered.

“Close your eyes, Chris,” McCarter ordered.

The official closed his good eye. “You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”

Silence.

It took Reasoner nearly five minutes for him to get up the courage to see if McCarter was still there.

MCCARTER KNEW that he was going to be cutting it close. Not only was he armed with only a pair of pistols that weren’t ones he was familiar with, and Reasoner’s .357 Magnum revolver, but he was all alone. A takedown of a ship would need at least two more people, as Able Team had proved several times. He’d have preferred to have all four of his Phoenix Force teammates on hand to throw in against the smugglers on the Kobiyashi.

It would have to do. The Phoenix Force leader didn’t want to lose track of the boat. Already the sailors were undoing the moorings. The bow’s rope, big and fat, was being hauled up over the railing while two sailors unwound the stern cable. Crewmen jogged up the gangplank.

“All aboard!” came the call from the deck.

It was now or never.

One more thing slowed the Phoenix Force leader. There was a possibility that the entire crew on the ship wasn’t implicated in the transport of a team of assassins. McCarter was audacious and ruthless, but he wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer and when he fought, he fought against those he knew were killers and had deadly intent. He’d fall back to the handguns as a means of last resort, which meant that he was even further behind the curve.

“Hey! We’re casting off,” a Filipino sailor called to him. The round-faced seaman was stocky, his shoulders betraying a burly strength. “You can’t come aboard.”

“Official business, no time for a chin-wag,” McCarter said as he barely slowed, sidestepping the Filipino.

The stocky sailor grabbed McCarter’s arm and pulled open his jacket to reveal a revolver. The former SAS commando pivoted and broke the Filipino’s nose with the point of his elbow, then plucked the revolver from the man’s waistband. “I told you, no time to talk, mate.”

A second sailor rushed up, but instead of helping out his stunned shipmate, he reached for his own weapon. McCarter sighed and pistol-whipped the man across the jaw with the barrel of the Filipino’s revolver, twisting the newcomer’s handgun out of his grasp. A sweep of his feet across the man’s ankles, and the Briton dumped the man to the ground. With a quick flip, he had a revolver in each fist.

“Anyone else want to slow me down?” McCarter growled.

The other sailors who were handling the moorings looked at the armed man, dressed in black and packing a brace of handguns after three quick strikes. They didn’t want to see what he could do with bullets and took off running. McCarter let them flee and continued up the gangplank.

A figure rushed to the railing and McCarter spotted a submachine gun in his grasp. Uzis weren’t standard issue for security forces on a ship, so he threw himself flat on the slanted walkway. Both revolvers spoke with thunderous reports. Twin .38-caliber slugs chopped into the gunner and threw him onto his back before he could aim. Autofire ripped from the dead man’s assault weapon into the night sky.

“Good news and bad news,” McCarter muttered to himself as he leaped to his feet and raced to the deck. “Good news, now I know who the bad guys are. Bad news, they got bigger guns than I do.”

On deck, he looked both ways and watched as another pair of gunmen burst from the wheelhouse. Their weapons were an odd mix, one carrying a battered AK-47, the other packing another of the compact Bofors CBJs. McCarter took the CBJ gunner in the face with two slugs from his right-hand weapon, and put a bullet from the other revolver through the wrist of the AK man’s trigger hand. The rifleman screamed as he clutched his ruined limb to his chest, his weapon forgotten as it tumbled over the rail.

McCarter rushed toward the wheelhouse and discarded the partially spent revolvers. He skidded to a halt, scooped up the fallen assault rifle, shouldered it and looked for more targets. The wounded gunman above pulled his sidearm and leaned over the railing. The Phoenix Force commander sidestepped before a bullet exploded on the metal at his feet. Then he pulled the AK’s trigger.

Nothing. He racked the bolt and chambered a new round, the old case spinning from the breech. He tried to shoot again, but there was still nothing. The injured guard fired again, twice, but upside down and using the wrong hand, his accuracy was off, not that McCarter left himself as a stationary target. He popped the magazine and saw that the casings were green and rusted from too many years at sea.

As another shot chased him, the Phoenix Force veteran dived behind the bulkhead, leaving the AK-47 behind. Poor weapons maintenance would have gotten him killed. He reached for the alloy-framed Glock G-34 and drew it, the safety snicked off reflexively. McCarter suddenly felt very comfortable with the new handgun. It was blockier than his sleek Browning, but the muzzle thickness helped add to the heft that made the balance feel almost like his confiscated pistol.

The door crashed open and a fat thug with a shotgun burst onto the deck. McCarter didn’t wait for the newcomer to aim, triggering the G-34 twice. High-velocity 127-grain hollowpoint rounds slammed into the big guard, and it was as if the man had hit an invisible force field. The shotgunner collapsed to the walkway with a sigh and a thud. McCarter leaped over the dead man and cut into the door he’d exited.

A black-armored phantom with the same gleaming helmet as he’d encountered the night before loomed at the top of the stairs. McCarter dived into a hallway as armor-piercing slugs smashed the floor where he’d stood instants before. Tucked into a shoulder roll, he somersaulted another few feet and came up facing the stairwell. He let the Glock hang in his left hand, yanked out Chris Reasoner’s .357 Magnum revolver and thumbed back the hammer.

The armored assassin stepped into view and received a hot blast of 125-grain lead, screaming along at nearly 1500 feet per second. The 9 mm might not have penetrated the goon’s armor, and the hollowpoint round didn’t do much better, but the high-powered bullet did flatten the machine gunner. McCarter snapped up the Glock and punched a single 127-grain bullet into the gun of the attacker, wrenching the Bofors autoweapon from the killer’s grasp.

McCarter followed up with a solid kick to the helmeted man’s chin. A sickening crunch sounded and the gunman was stilled. The Stony Man commando’s gamble had paid off. There was no way the automatic weapons and body armor would have gotten through aircraft or train customs, but the bribery at the docks and the nature of boat smuggling would have made it all but impossible for someone to truly check out the ship. Security was tight in the post 9/11 era, but short of dismantling the freighter, there would have been no way to find everything.

The stunned, armored assassin struggled to get up, but McCarter stooped and pulled the helmet off the killer. “Who’re you working for?”

The hit man looked down the muzzle of the 9 mm Glock. “I’m not going to talk.”

McCarter growled and pistol-whipped the armored killer into nerveless unconsciousness. Boots pounded on the metal grating that made up the steps, and he shifted his aim back to the stairwell.

The first gunman into the open caught a .357 Magnum slug in the groin. Pelvis shattered, his legs stopped working and he plopped into a heap in the hallway. Two more guards tripped over the fallen seaman, their weapons clattering as they struggled to stay up. McCarter caught one of the pair as he bent to grab his assault rifle and punched a 9 mm round through the joint of his shoulder and neck. Bone and muscle were destroyed instantly as the hollowpoint tunneled deep and stopped in the sentry’s left lung. The body smashed face-first into the floor and flopped to one side.

“Don’t do it!” McCarter ordered the other gunman as he reached for a revolver under his sweater.

The guard paused for a moment, but a slamming door behind the Briton spun his attention away. He dropped to the ground as another of the thugs cut loose with a charge of buckshot. Pellets zipped over McCarter’s head and crashed into the paralyzed gunner, a salvo of shot blowing him off his feet.

The Phoenix Force leader took out the shotgunner with two shots from the thundering Magnum revolver, then turned to look at the carnage.

“I’m dying, man,” the wounded gunman whispered, blood rasping in his lungs.

McCarter looked helplessly at the bloody chest of the seaman. He was skilled enough in battlefield medicine to stop lethal blood loss from a single bullet wound, but the chopped hamburger that remained in the path of the 12-gauge’s violence was larger than the Briton’s fully spread hand. He tore a wad of cloth from a corpse’s shirt, but by the time he made a compress out of it, the wounded sailor had expired.

McCarter frowned in frustration. He’d come onto this ship to get answers, not to leave behind total carnage. He shook his head in disgust and checked the load on Reasoner’s revolver. Three shots remained in the cylinder, so he stuffed it away as a backup weapon. He checked the load in the Glock and the 17-shot reservoir was still more than half full. He pocketed the partially depleted magazine and fed it a fresh stick.

McCarter holstered the Glock and picked up the Bofors, but cast it aside when he found that the receiver had been smashed by the 9 mm slug he’d punched into it. Instead, he picked up an old battered Sterling. Remembering his encounter with the rotten ammo in the AK-47, he pointed at a wooden crate marked “shoes” and pulled the trigger for a short burst, using the cargo to absorb any ricocheting rounds. The submachine gun burped to the SAS veteran’s satisfaction and he frisked the dead man for spare magazines. He found two more curved 32-round sticks for the Sterling and pocketed them.

He moved to where the latest gunmen had entered the superstructure on the freighter, and saw an assembly of figures heave something long over the side. McCarter shouldered the Sterling.

“Don’t move!” he warned.

A pair of black-clad assassins dived over the railing as another man spun. McCarter triggered a burst into the gunman. Bullets sparked against ceramic trauma plating and the gunman’s helmet, and the Phoenix Force pro rolled back through the door to escape a salvo of 6.5 mm armor-piercing rounds. As it was, only falling to the deck had saved him as the Bofors bullets punched through the steel bulkhead above him.

The torrent of withering fire kept McCarter pinned long enough for whomever was on the deck to escape. When there was a lull in the shooting, he swung out and saw that the railing was clear. Only the churning white water produced by the Zodiac boat’s engines gave any indication where the enemy had gone, and by the time he rushed to the bow of the ship, they were out of range for the machine pistol he carried. Even though he’d fired on the run, there was no sign that the Sterling had done anything. He let the submachine gun hang on its sling and let out a sigh of frustration.

He had prisoners, though.

It was a beginning.

Not a satisfying beginning, but it would have to do.

MCCARTER LIT a cigarette, then took a pull from his can of Coca-Cola Classic. He replayed the interrogation of the armored assassin, mind reeling from the implications of the man’s answers. He tried to push aside what he’d had to do to get those answers.

Phoenix Force had a long career of capturing and interrogating prisoners. While they used mostly psychological trickery to get their answers, bad cop/good cop scenarios and such before they had acquired Calvin James’s medical expertise and the use of drugs, there had been a few times when McCarter had had to bloody his hands.

Combat against armed and capable opponents was one thing. Torture, though, was something that disgusted him. But without a trained medic to monitor heart rate and examine the prisoner for heart defects, the Phoenix Force commander had to do things the old-fashioned way.

“Torture is inefficient,” his predecessor and mentor, Yakov Katzenelenbogen, used to say. “People will say anything to stop the pain, and it’s too time-consuming a process.”

McCarter winced inwardly. He felt like he’d let the old man down, but he’d needed what answers he could get.

Not only was the mission at stake, but now that he understood what was going on, all of Central America was threatened. He closed his eyes and fought down guilt for doing horrible things to vulnerable, defenseless flesh. It was one thing to pop Reasoner’s eardrum and to smash his face into a tabletop a couple of times. A little roughhousing was needed to convince the traitorous scumbag that it was in his best interests to spill information.

The assassin, however, required work. McCarter did what had to be done. Unease bubbled and roiled inside of him as he sifted through the memories of pleading cries for mercy to get to the information about the designated mission of the assassins.

Roberto DaCosta had been assassinated by a hired crew of killers. While the assassin hadn’t known much about who had hired them, he had known that after they left the port, they were to rendezvous with a sea plane several miles offshore to return to Central America for further sweeps.

Whatever happened, someone was going to have to back up the mastermind’s play. Denied his cadre of nearly invulnerable murderers, or most of them, there would be a mad scramble to refill the ranks to continue the operation. McCarter thought about those who had escaped on the Zodiac boat. The motorized raft would have the speed and range to make the rendezvous with time to spare. There would be no way to intercept them, and they would report back to their boss that they were no longer working in secrecy.

McCarter realized that instead of flushing his targets, he might have driven them back underground, deeper into hiding.

The flight would keep him in the chase, but Phoenix Force and Able Team would be busy elsewhere, hunting down leads. He’d contacted the Farm via cell phone, and that would give them a head start. Maybe they would be able to intercept the escaping assassins, though it was doubtful.

It had been pure luck that allowed McCarter to stumble on this operation, and Barbara Price made noises that there was another emergency in the works that would occupy Able Team’s concentration. She didn’t give details over the cell phone. Even though their communications were over secure lines, operational procedure was that she didn’t share information that the Phoenix Force leader didn’t need to know. If Able Team pulled off their mission in time, maybe they could assist afterward.

Until then, Phoenix Force was on its own.

McCarter knew one thing, though.

It was better than being all by himself. While he didn’t feel helpless without his teammates, it would be good working with his friends, the four men he considered his family, once again.

Standing together, the five warriors of Phoenix were truly an irresistible force.

CHAPTER THREE

Yuma, Arizona

Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz looked at the assembled scorched garbage strewed across the tabletop at Yuma.

“We’ve had some of our best tech experts look over this,” General Rogers told the Able Team genius as he poked at a charred circuit board. “Nothing that survived could be identified or traced to a manufacturer. At least not with the technology we have on hand.”

Schwarz shook his head slowly as he picked up the burned circuit board piece. “You’ve cataloged and photographed all the pieces, where they were placed in the remote drone?”

Rogers nodded. “Yes. Our techs are attempting to reverse engineer the design, but the missiles and explosive 20 mm shells smashed the machinery and electronics apart brutally.”

Schwarz looked at his notebook. “You have a very concise description of their sensory and stealth capabilities, however.”

“Mostly through close personal experience,” Rogers stated.

“How close?” Schwarz asked.

Rogers looked at the floor between them, then took two paces back. “About this range.”

Schwarz released a low whistle. “You like to lead from the front, sir.”

The general shrugged. “I’m responsible for my men. It didn’t hurt that I was on the run for my life, but…Son, I don’t know who you’re supposed to be, but these things attacked and killed my people, my friends. This place, for all its secrecy and military regimen, is a home for us. We’re as close to a family as we can get here. Do you know what I mean?”

Schwarz glanced toward the entrance where Rosario Blancanales and Carl Lyons stood. They conducted interviews about the Ankylosaur raid with other members of the proving ground staff. “Heart and soul, General.”

“I want to find whoever’s responsible for this and bring them to justice,” Rogers said. “If you need anything, I’ll make sure you get it.”

“Thank you, sir,” Schwarz replied. “Is it okay if I take some of the wreckage to your lab? I want to work with it.”

“No problem,” Rogers answered.

Schwarz gave the general a reassuring smile. “We’ll get these guys. They might be able to run, but they won’t hide for long. Not from us, sir.”

He picked up several pieces and set them in clear plastic bags.

Rogers and the Able Team genius crossed to the entrance of the hangar, where Lyons and Blancanales both stopped and greeted their friend with a nod. Blancanales reflexively gave the general a smart salute, which was returned.

“Another ex-military man?” Rogers asked.

Blancanales nodded. “For security, that’s about all I can say.”

“I understand,” Rogers answered.

“I’m hitting the lab to look at some of these components. I think I can pick something out of the bits and pieces,” Schwarz said. “Think the two of you can handle the recon without me?”

Lyons rolled his eyes. “No problem. I think we can track a few killer robots without you. Go nerd out and we’ll tell you about the exciting hike we took later.”

Schwarz sighed. “You’re too good to me, Ironman.”

“That’s something I thought I’d never hear.” Lyons grunted. “C’mon, Pol. Saddle up and head ’em out.”

“‘Rawhide,’” Blancanales quipped. He pointed toward the 4-wheeled ATVs and slipped on his helmet. “Able style.”

“Don’t let Cowboy hear you say that,” Lyons said, referring to John “Cowboy” Kissinger, the Stony Man Farm armorer.

“I don’t think Cowboy ever rode a horse in his life,” Blancanales answered.

Lyons threw one leg over the seat and sat down. He revved the engine and slipped on his helmet. “Sure you wouldn’t rather come with us?”

“I don’t think there’s going to be anything in the mine,” Schwarz replied. “But if there is, bring me a few chunks back.”

Lyons nodded. “Have a good time.”

Lyons, Blancanales and the team of MPs rode off on their four-wheelers.

Logic told Schwarz that there wouldn’t be any trouble, but something nagged at him. “General? Could you have someone set the lab up for me?”

Rogers looked after Lyons and Blancanales as they left. “You’ve got that feeling, too.”

Schwarz pulled a spare helmet off the ATV they’d set aside for him. He checked the rifle stuck in the saddle, then made sure his personal weapons were secure. “I’ve learned never to distrust my instincts. As soon as they pulled away…”

“I understand. Don’t waste time gabbing with me,” Rogers told him.

Schwarz fired up the ATV and rushed off to join the rest of Able Team.

THE PLATOON OF RANGERS that Able Team hooked up with had the mine entrance hemmed in. The powerful Fabrique Nationale M-240 machine guns rested on bipods. The 7.62 mm muzzles stared into the darkened cave, ready to unleash a torrent of armor-piercing thunder against anything that made a move out the front. A trio of Dragon antitank missile pods rested on their legs, the big fat tubes similarly aimed. The Dragon warheads had the power to tear apart any modern tank, and if they couldn’t stop the Ankylosaurs, they would at least bring down a huge section of mountainside.

Tons of rubble would stop even the killer robot tanks.

Carl Lyons waited for the Rangers to set up the mighty M-2 .50-caliber machine guns. That would finish the ring of steel that would hem in any escaping drones. He pulled his rifle from the ATV’s saddle sheath and snapped back the bolt, chambering a .50 Beowulf rifle round into his weapon’s breech. The magazine held twelve of the massive rounds in the same space that a normal M-16 would have held a full thirty shots. He traded firepower for purely awesome stopping power. While the .50 Beowulf round was only half as long as the rounds fired by the M-2 machine gun, it was still a significant powerhouse. Kissinger had given Able Team several magazines of tungsten-cored slugs, designed for use against armored vehicles.

Just in case.

Lyons checked the light on the muzzle of his rifle, then looked to the others.

“M-16, Viking style,” Blancanales said. He couldn’t quite hide the tension in his voice.

Schwarz slipped on a pair of Wolf Ears hearing protectors and clicked them on. “Give me a sound check.”

Blancanales and Lyons wore the same hearing protectors. Advanced electronics and padding would prevent ruptured eardrums caused by the thunder of automatic weapons in a cave, but sensitive microphones would pick up softer sounds that could betray an enemy. The three men of Able Team had trained with the Wolf Ears long enough to know that they worked under stressful, nasty and dirty conditions. When they were forced to use full-power, unsuppressed weapons in a tunnel, they often made the effort to wear the hearing protector-amplifiers.

“Testing,” Lyons whispered.

“Yabba dabba doo,” Blancanales spoke softly.

“You guys are confusing me as to which one’s the caveman,” Schwarz quipped.

Lyons slipped his goggles down over his eyes again. He made sure they didn’t displace his Wolf Ears. “Funny. Remind me to laugh later.”

“Whenever I do, you hit me with a newspaper,” Schwarz answered. The Able Team leader only narrowed his gaze. He wasn’t known for his sense of humor, especially this close to a possible engagement.

“Lock and load your rifles,” Lyons ordered as he picked up a large lantern. “I’m on point.”

Blancanales and Schwarz put aside their banter and fell into step behind Lyons. They spread out and stalked into the mine entrance.

Blancanales paused and shone his light on the ground. “This floor has been graded.”

Lyons knelt and ran his fingertips over the hard-packed earth. “No signs of treads. Gadgets?”

“They weren’t hovercraft,” Schwarz replied. “But what dust there is has been smoothed out. Look…There are rails.”

Lyons walked over and tapped his flash hider against the bent metal. “Something heavy rolled over this. There’s gouge marks on it, too.”

Blancanales looked at the scarred and mutilated metal, then stared deeper into the tunnel. “Some other machine?”

“A digger?” Schwarz asked. He moved farther down the tunnel, then squinted through his goggles. “Someone knocked a back door through to Yuma’s testing facility.”

Schwarz pulled out a map from his case and flicked his light on it. “The Bear gave me some maps to help me figure out how the attack drones could have escaped.”

“This mountain range is heavy-duty granite, though,” Lyons said. “Right?”

“Mountains usually occur when tectonic plates collide. The higher the mountains, the newer they are and the more force behind their collision. The Blue Ridge Mountains, where the Farm is located, are very old and worn down, but there are fissures and caves throughout them. Geological surveys try to map them out, but you can’t find them all,” Schwarz answered. “Whoever made this attack had this place geographically staked out.”

“And they had just the right size digger to punch a hole big enough from a naturally formed cave, or even an underground river to pop up in this mine,” Lyons finished. His brow furrowed. “It’s been nearly fifteen hours since the initial attack. We might have lost the trail.”

Something rumbled in the darkness.

“Or not…” Blancanales spoke up. He shouldered his rifle and looked through its scope. “Something big’s moving in.”

Lyons snicked the safety off on his Beowulf. “Pull back.”

An engine revved and roared, and floodlights snapped on. The Able Team leader pivoted and opened fire, .50-caliber, tungsten-cored slugs erupting from the muzzle of his rifle. The heavy slugs sparked violently on machinery. Through the lights, the three Stony Man commandos saw the whirling shapes of multiple drill heads spin wildly.

“Aw, hell,” Schwarz muttered as he cut loose with his own weapon. “We found the digger!”

“Fall back!” Lyons bellowed as the machine continued to close.

Blancanales triggered the M-203 attachment under his Beowulf. “Fire in the hole!”

A tunnel-shaking explosion, deadened by the sonic filters on the Wolf Ears, flared. The drilling machine was cast in stark relief. The moment that the high-explosive flashed, three rotating cones of multiple drills were visible, gnashing stone-chewing teeth flickering wickedly like the mouth of some hideous dragon.

The digger paused for a brief moment, shaken by the high-explosive grenade fired by Blancanales, then lurched forward again. Lyons shoved the Able Team veteran behind him and held down the trigger for an extended burst of heavy-caliber, armor-piercing slugs.

The spinning drill heads bounced slugs all over. The machine was all but indestructible as it bore down relentlessly on them.

Lyons dumped the empty magazine from his rifle, then looked back at Blancanales, who forced a fresh grenade into the breech of his launcher.

“I told you to move it!” Lyons growled.

A canister sailed over the two men, interrupting the Able Team commander.

“Heads down!” Schwarz called.

Lyons grunted as Blancanales kicked him out of the way and aimed at the ceiling above the digger.

The double-shock wave shook the whole mine and rolled over Lyons as if it were the treads of the deadly machine itself. Rock tried to flex, but shattered and crumbled. The pressure wave blew the Wolf Ears right off Lyons’s head, and he shook off the thunderbolt that cracked between his ears.

A clap on his shoulder brought him out of a temporary daze and he saw Blancanales shouting at him. The man’s lips moved, but nothing was coming through the ringing in his skull. He glanced over and saw the digger, its drill bits still whirring wildly. It had stopped, though, one light torn from its housing by the shearing force of the double explosion.

“—said are you okay, Ironman?” Blancanales asked.

“Yeah. What did you do?” Lyons asked.

“I dropped some of the roof on that thing, and Gadgets flipped some high explosive under the belly of the beast. Looks like he took care of at least one set of treads, and the collapsed rock pinned the rest down.”

Lyons blinked and saw Schwarz, highlighted by the remaining floodlight on the drill, his rifle aimed at the ground, looking around the sides of the machine when the thing lurched. Schwarz stepped back and fired a short burst into the drill head, but only succeeded in raising more sparks as heavy tungsten bit into solid steel.

“I don’t think it’s dead!” Lyons mocked as Blancanales helped haul him to his feet. They kept out of the range of the churning teeth. He looked around the front, then saw Schwarz shoulder his rifle and fire a single shot.

Smoke billowed and the trio of drill heads slowed.

“Spotted the motor and tried to take it out with a burst,” Schwarz explained. “Pull back some. I’m going to roll a grenade under the other motor.”

Lyons nodded, and he and Blancanales pulled back. The Able Team leader donned his Wolf Ears again and clamped them tight over his head. Schwarz raced back to them, and a new detonation rumbled in the confines of the tunnel. Blancanales and Schwarz spoke again, but it was muffled by the hearing protectors. Lyons tried the microphone switch and shook his head, removing the headset.

“That did it,” Schwarz replied. He looked at the Wolf Ears. “Problems?”

“Yeah,” Lyons answered.

“Let me look at it,” Schwarz told him. “Go check on the digger.”

Lyons nodded and followed Blancanales. The drill bits no longer moved, and Pol slid his frame between the digger’s chewing drill points and the ground. It was a little too close for the brawny ex-cop’s tastes, in case the machine managed one last surge of power. It could easily chew his friend to a pulp and Lyons wouldn’t have a chance to rescue him.

“Looks like we have room to get behind it,” Blancanales called. “The tunnel is pretty clear. A little rubble from the cave-in, but other than that…”

“Can you check to see if this thing’s fully down for the count?” Lyons asked. “I don’t want to have you stuck under this bastard with your shins chopped into ground beef.”

“Sure, hang on. Gadgets’s first grenade peeled open the bottom, and I can see a few engine parts,” Blancanales explained. He clicked on a pocket-size flashlight, then drew an Emerson folding knife. The sturdy blade sliced through cables, though the Able Team commando hissed as a slight jolt burned his fingers.

“You okay?” Lyons asked.

“Yeah. I cut through the main battery cables, and a little bit of the charge came up the blade. I wasn’t in good contact with the metal, though, so nothing more than a small burn,” Blancanales replied. “Taking care of the generator cables now, too.”

The floodlight cut out, and Lyons snapped on his pocket light. Schwarz tapped him on the shoulder and he accepted his Wolf Ears back. “What was wrong?”

“The shock wave knocked the battery wires loose. I stripped the insulation, hand wound it back together again, and taped it up. It won’t be perfect,” Schwarz said, “but you can hear, and the protectors will keep your eardrums safe. I’ll solder it into prime shape when we get back to base.”

“Good,” Lyons answered. “All right. Tie some rope around your rifle and pack. Pol’s going to haul our stuff through so we can get past this hunk of junk.”

“You think we might find something at the other end,” Schwarz replied.

“Yeah,” Lyons answered.

Schwarz looked at the machine, then frowned. “Hang on.”

He reached into his pack and pulled out a meter. “Pol! Shut off your comm for a minute! You too, Carl.”

Lyons nodded and did as his partner said.

“I’m picking up some readings,” Schwarz said. “A carrier wave.”

“But Pol killed the power,” Lyons replied.

Schwarz backed up and continued to look at his field meter. “It’s got its ears live for something. Wait…starting to pick up a signal the closer to the entrance I get. Pol?”

“I’m checking,” Blancanales called back. “Yeah! I feel this thing packed with plastic explosive.”

“Let me get in there,” Schwarz ordered. He pulled out another device and handed it to Lyons. “This is a jammer. Stand right where I was, and keep this thing on until I tell you to turn it off. Someone’s transmitting a detonation code to some explosives in the machine.”

“Enough to bring down the tunnel and take out a search party,” Lyons mused.

“You catch on fast,” Schwarz replied. Blancanales slid out from under the digger and Schwarz slipped underneath after clamping wire cutter handles in his teeth.

Blancanales crouched and added his light to Schwarz’s efforts under the machine. Lyons, no expert at demolitions disposal, stood with the jammer, sullen and silent. He didn’t like standing by helplessly, but he knew that his lack of experience with disarming explosives would only be a hindrance. Gadgets and the Politician were weaned on C-4 from their A-Team experience. If anyone could handle the booby-trapped juggernaut, it was his partners.

Lyons took a deep breath and waited for the deadly digger to be tamed.

ROSARIO BLANCANALES accepted the central processor from Hermann Schwarz.

“Save that. Bear and the others are going to have a field day working on its programming,” Schwarz told his old friend.

Blancanales nodded. “How did this thing move without radio controls?”

“The processor. It must be an artificial intelligence unit. Fairly basic. We set off the digger’s motion detectors as soon as we got too close,” Schwarz answered. Something snapped in the hollowed gut of the machine. “Damn. We woke it up. It’s got infrared sensors.”

Blancanales shook his head. “As soon as it got the detonation signal, it would have dropped the whole mountain onto us.”

“Or whoever went in. I’m thinking that they expected a platoon of soldiers, sweeping the darkness with IR to keep from being ‘seen,’” Schwarz replied. “It would have been like waking up Ironman with a floodlight in the face.”

Schwarz shimmied out from under the machine with a handful of radio components. “The detonators.”

“Look like standard radio units,” Blancanales replied.

“They are, but we can trace them. I’ll pull out the C-4, and then we’ll get the Rangers to pull out the digger,” Schwarz told him. “We’re going overland.”

Blancanales smiled. “The transmitter for the detonation signal would likely be manned.”

Schwarz nodded. “Beats a tunnel fight, especially if the drones rolled through an underground river. We don’t have scuba gear with us.”

“Good thinking,” Blancanales congratulated. “I’m sure Carl would like the breathing room too.”

Schwarz took out the squashed blocks of explosives and set them apart from the detonators. “Scorched earth, and a bunch more dead soldiers. The bastard behind these robots is starting to piss me off.”

Blancanales knew that the electronics genius was a mellow, slow-to-anger man. It stemmed from his Southern California upbringing, and the endless patience it took to work with ever-shrinking electronic components. The fact that he mentioned being upset meant that Schwarz’s blood had to have been boiling. Though he was part of the Stony Man Farm operation, he was still a veteran of the United States Army, and the death of brother soldiers always struck him hard. And unlike Carl Lyons, who mastered his berserker’s temper long ago, Schwarz got very cold when he got angry.

“We’ll take care of this,” Blancanales told him. “That’s our job. Revenge for the good guys…semiofficial style.”

“Prosecution to the max,” Lyons added. He picked up the C-4 to take it to the Rangers at the entrance. “I heard you two talking. We’re going overland?”

Schwarz nodded. His lips were drawn tight, trying to control his emotions.

“I’ll see if we can get a pilot,” Lyons replied. “Gadgets…”

Schwarz glanced up.

“They’re dead. They just don’t know it,” Lyons reassured.

Schwarz nodded tightly, as if the muscles in his neck were coiled to the breaking point. “I gotcha, big guy. Prosecution to the max.”

THE CANYON WAS too tight to land a UH-60, but a Hughs 500D “Little Bird” could set down nicely. The pilot was a clean-cut kid named Lieutenant Tim Sarlets.

“You boys call for a ride?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Schwarz replied. He climbed into the shotgun seat. He had one of his radio monitors in his lap, and looked at the Army pilot. “We’re going to be doing a little circling, triangulating a radio signal. Think you can do that?”

“Sure thing,” Sarlets answered. “Any other requests?”

“Keep us low,” Lyons told him. “We don’t want whoever we’re triangulating to spot us coming.”

Sarlets gave the big, blond ex-cop a short salute. “Roger that. I kind of figured you didn’t want to be seen.”

“I like this guy. Can we keep him around?” Blancanales asked.

“We’ll have to ask the boss,” Lyons responded.

Loaded up, the men of Able Team strapped in and the Little Bird rocketed skyward.

CARL LYONS PERCHED in the open side-door of the helicopter. In the darkness below, somewhere, a radio transmitter broadcast a signal that was intended to kill dozens of American soldiers on their home soil. On top of a massacre by armored juggernauts, the tragedy would have been compounded as more brave men died and the trail to the murderous masterminds would have been closed off by a collapsed mountain.

His knuckles flexed white around the grip of his Beowulf M-4. He’d replaced the magazine of tungsten-cored antimatériel rounds with a load of 350-grain jacketed hollowpoint bullets. Even against a living opponent who wore body armor, they’d shatter bones and mangle muscle behind Kevlar. Through the night-vision goggles attached to the helicopter helmet, the terrain beneath him was a weird, alien world of green hazy stone and deep shadows. He spotted movement and shouldered the Beowulf, but held his fire as a goat trotted out of a dark recess. Lyons lowered the rifle and shook his head.

“Anything yet?” he asked, impatience gnawing at his core.

Schwarz looked up from his map. He marked off another zone where the radio signal started to fade. “One more sweep, Ironman.”

“Good.” Lyons grunted. He double-checked the 40 mm high explosive round in the M-203 launcher stored under the barrel. Just because it was unlikely that they would run into the deadly drones that swept down on Yuma didn’t mean he didn’t want to have something that could devastate the slaughtering robots.

Schwarz’s murmurings, readings of the field monitor as he registered signal strength, were a low drone, a constant reminder that this was slow, tedious work. Lyons strained his ears, listening for the readings. He picked up Gadgets’s mutters of a lower signal strength and tensed even before the electronics genius made his announcement.

“That’s the box,” Lyons stated. He pointed toward a ripple of shadows and outcroppings. “Sarlets, put us down. We’re on foot from here.”

“I’ve got no clean spots to land. This is rough terrain,” the pilot answered.

“That’s good news,” Blancanales replied. “They couldn’t bring heavy antiaircraft along.”

“How about a crane helicopter?” Schwarz asked.

Lyons shook his head. “This place is too close to Yuma to pull that kind of—”

“The drones were invisible to radar,” Gadgets reminded him.

The Able Team leader’s jaw set firmly as he scanned the shadowy terrain ahead. “If they had stealth robot tanks, then they could build a stealth helicopter.”

A red light buzzed on the control console. “We’re hot! Target radar lock!” the pilot announced as he wrenched the helicopter hard.

Strapped in, Lyons felt jerked like a puppy on a leash. Out of the darkness, he saw a flaming halo growing in intensity and following the aircraft’s movements as the chopper thrashed.

He knew exactly what the flaming halo was—the rocket exhaust of an antiaircraft missile, the lethal shaft of its warhead forming the black void in the center of a hellfire ring.

Death shrieked at the men of Able Team on a jet of flame.

CHAPTER FOUR

Virginia

T.J. Hawkins sighed and slipped his Glock 26 into its hip holster. A second, identical tiny Glock was holstered at his ankle, and two 12-round magazines were clipped to his belt. He looked over to Calvin James as the man checked the loads on his .45-caliber Colt Commander and his backup short-barreled Colt Python.

“Jet Aer G-96 in an ankle sheath,” James told Hawkins.

“We’re going to CIA Headquarters. They’re just going to try to take our weapons away anyhow,” Hawkins replied. “Why do we have to run this drill every time we go out armed?”

Gary Manning and Rafael Encizo both shook their heads as they made sure of their weapon loads.

James, a tall, black man, held up his hand to the others. “T.J. hasn’t done as much legwork as we have, guys. Just because we’ve had some pretty soft travels for the past few years with him on military flights and not a lot of street-level investigation…”

Manning, a brawny Canadian, nodded. “I know. You were dropped in without being told how cold the water was with us. Since the majority of our activities lately have been paramilitary operations, T.J. hasn’t been given much exposure to the classic Stony Man Tourist Luck.”

“Stony Man Tourist Luck?” Hawkins asked.

Encizo, a handsome Cuban, grinned widely. “Whatever can come out of the woodwork will come out of the woodwork.”

“Terrorists at the airport,” James began.

“Thuggee assassins with strangling scarves,” Manning added.

“Don’t forget wolves,” Encizo admonished Manning. “Of all the times to have been without my PPK…”

“And ninjas,” James stated.

“Like cucarachas.” Encizo spit.

“This is CIA Headquarters, guys. Not downtown Beirut,” Hawkins explained. “Sometimes I think McCarter’s feeding you paranoid pills.”

“We tried,” James said with a sigh.

Manning slipped a magazine full of .357 Magnum slugs into the grip of his Desert Eagle and stuffed it in his shoulder holster. “No knives. But I have an Impact Kerambit wrench in my right front pocket.”

The others nodded.

“Come on,” Manning ordered. “T.J., you drive.”

Hawkins saluted the Canadian with an index finger touch to his brow. “Yes, sir.”

AGENT SAM GUTHRIE looked at his desk clock and saw that his noon appointment with the four Justice Department agents was only minutes away. He closed the top button of his shirt, readjusted his tie and made sure his shirt was tucked into his suit pants. Being a tall, slim man, it was hard to find clothes that fit him so that he matched the image of a neat, suave spy. At least the short bristle of his graying blond hair was hard to mess. He turned off his computer and stepped out of his office.

“Want anything from the commissary on my way back, Xian?” Guthrie asked his secretary.

Xian, a pretty Vietnamese-American woman, gave him a warm smile. “No thanks. My roommate Dawn packed some quesadillas for me and I picked up some pop on the way in.”

“All right. I’ll catch you later,” Guthrie said, and left for the meeting, which was being held outside in a courtyard. The small park was ringed with white-noise generators concealed under bushes to prevent eavesdropping. It was also in sight of several low-profile guard emplacements, with Marine sharpshooters on duty. It may have seemed paranoid, but Guthrie knew from recent history that even Langley wasn’t immune to attack.

The four “Justice Department” agents looked like a motley crew to Guthrie—a tall, slender black man, a barrel-chested Caucasian, a stocky, swarthy Hispanic, and a lean, but average-looking Caucasian.

“I’m Roy. That’s Rey, Farrow and Presley,” Manning stated. “Hal Brognola arranged this interview.”

“Right. Something about an old acquaintance of mine,” Guthrie replied. “It wouldn’t be Roberto DaCosta, would it?”

Manning nodded. “What have you heard?”

“That he was murdered last night,” Guthrie replied. “I used to work with him down in El Salvador.”

“Doing what?” Encizo asked as Guthrie directed them to a granite table with matching semi-circular benches.

“We were investigating ORDEN and the ESA, the governing body of El Salvador and their pet killers, back in the eighties,” Guthrie replied. “Roberto was an asset within the organization, and he kept us up to date on ORDEN’s less than legal operations.”

“Death squads,” James challenged.

“Among other things,” Guthrie responded. “Even back then, we weren’t too excited to be associated with professional murderers. Once the Sandinistas murdered an American missionary in Nicaragua, and it appeared as a full-page spread in Newsweek, we became a lot more gun shy about who we worked with.”

Guthrie shook his head at the thought. “Roberto wanted out desperately, and I arranged for his relocation to London after ORDEN collapsed. Even though someone went to town exterminating the death squads that made up the ESA, it really wasn’t safe for him in-country anymore.”

Encizo nodded at the answer. He remembered Able Team’s wars with Fascist International, the primary supplier of right-wing death squads to Central and South America. Though he’d only been involved in one operation against the Reich of the Americas, he kept up with after-action reports and knew that when Able put Fascist International in its collective grave, the world became a better place to live. He ruminated for a moment on how much of a link there might be between a revived FI and the assassination of DaCosta.

“Did DaCosta keep close tabs on things back home?” Hawkins inquired.

Guthrie shrugged. “I tried to limit my contact with him. I didn’t want to compromise his new location.”

“You still refer to him as Roberto, though,” James stated. “He was more than just an asset.”

Guthrie frowned. “You picked up on that.”

“We’ve been around a few times,” Manning said. “What did you hear?”

“His nephew is on the run from something,” Guthrie replied.

“What happened?” Hawkins asked.

Guthrie shook his head. “I don’t know. That much didn’t get back to me, but I started trying to find him through my own resources…”

The throb of a helicopter cut through the air and caught the attention of the assembled men.

“Classic Stony Man Tourist Luck,” Hawkins muttered loud enough for James to hear over the approaching aircraft before the hiss of rockets split the air. Rooftop targets spit up geysers of flame, and Hawkins realized that the helicopter had just destroyed the heavy antiaircraft emplacements nestled atop the office buildings.

The ex-Ranger would have laughed if he hadn’t seen the weapons pods bristling like stubby wings on the sides of the helicopter. Instead, he dived across the marble table and threw Guthrie to the ground.

From the towers, Marine marksmen opened fire, but their rifle bullets only sparked ineffectually off the hull of the sleek gunship overhead.

A line of machine-gun fire chopped across the courtyard and a .50-caliber slug smashed a crater in the center of the marble table that Phoenix Force had been sitting at.

Manning dumped the magazine out of the butt of his Desert Eagle and stuffed in a clip of 180-grain, keg-shaped hunting loads. It wouldn’t be much more effective than the rifles the Marines had in the towers, but the combat rounds he had loaded previously would flatten like spit balls against an armored aircraft. Encizo unleathered his Heckler & Koch USP and pumped out a half dozen 9 mm Parabellum rounds before he ducked behind his heavy stone bench.

A rocket lanced from the wing pod and blew a Marine sentry in his perch to oblivion. Another two helicopters popped out over the main computer center, but unlike the slender-tailed, bulb-headed dragonfly that swept death and destruction over the Langley compound, these were ugly, reptilian sharks, disgorging rappelling lines and black, armor-clad killers.

“Look familiar?” James asked Guthrie.

“Nope,” the CIA agent replied as they got to their feet. James pushed Guthrie toward the shelter of another marble table as the deadly bug-shaped gunship pivoted and spotted them.

Manning fired two shots from his Desert Eagle, aiming the accurate weapon at the barrel-like rocket pod hanging off the side of the helicopter. The 180-grain keg-shaped slugs hit the drum-size target, but one round sparked wildly off the rocket launcher and ricocheted into the main body of the gunship. The second bullet punched through the thin, precut sheet-metal cover of the artillery rocket pod and glanced off the top of the tube. A fearsome jet of flame erupted from the front of the pod as the explosive dart was detonated by a .357 Magnum penetrator. The gunship rocked, but the pod was well-designed, containing and funneling the explosion into a thrust of superheated gas and shrapnel that peppered the windows of a building.

Explosive bolts fired and the heavy, drumlike canister tumbled off the stub-wing and sailed toward the ground. Hawkins had taken cover behind a tree, and was drilling 9 mm slugs at the bottom of the helicopter. His rounds had little effect, and he leaped wildly as the rocket pod smashed through the branches of the tree and cracked the concrete where he’d been crouched instants before.

Hawkins whirled and looked at the pod. A red light began flashing rapidly on its top, and the Phoenix Force warrior knew that the electronic box wasn’t going to be healthy for anyone in the courtyard if it reached its peak. He aimed his stubby little Glock 26 and hammered out the remnants of its magazine into the black transmitter. The metallic box crumpled and shattered, sparks flying as battery capacitors discharged. Hawkins took a deep breath as he realized that being close enough to recognize the remote detonator for what it was, was also near enough to ground zero to be vaporized by the self-destructing rocket pod.

He shook off the thought of being that close to death and fumbled a 12-round magazine into the butt of the tiny Glock, his hands trembling with the aftershocks of an adrenaline rush that slipped him into overdrive. Hawkins took cover behind a tree beside the inert rocket pod and took three quick breaths to get his thundering heartbeat back under control. A burst of .50-caliber slugs tore through the dirt and punched into the tree trunk, spraying Hawkins’s hair with splinters.

Rafael Encizo rushed toward the entrance of the building where the black-armored commandos disgorged onto the roof. A quick glance told the stocky Cuban that this was the computer center at Langley. He hit the doors with his shoulder and bounced off the glass. Electronic locks had shut down the building, and he knew that he couldn’t shoot through the clear doors. CIA Headquarters was protected by armored glass that was resistant to even rifle rounds.

The Cuban turned and saw the gunship swivel. He decided to play chicken with the aircraft. It would be a one in a million chance, but the Computer Center was under assault by mysterious invaders, and the CIA would need all the help it could get from the members of one of America’s finest fighting forces. The Cuban pro fired off three quick shots at the silhouette of the pilot behind his armored cockpit dome. Even the high-potency 9 mm NATO ball ammo bounced off the heavy curved Plexiglas, but it drew the ire of the gunship’s jockey.

The heavy M-2 machine-gun pods suddenly erupted with fire and Encizo threw himself behind the heavy granite cylinder that provided both decoration for the courtyard and antiramming and car-bombing protection for the Computer Center building. Four feet in diameter, the heavy stone block stopped the first salvo of 750-grain, half-inch slugs from the deadly gunship, even though each impact created a four-inch deep crater in the face of the pedestal. Encizo rolled to one side as the helicopter swiveled and tried to get a new line of fire on him. Behind him, the armored glass doors detonated into a rain of cracked shards as armor-piercing .50-caliber bullets smashed through them. The power of the big fifties had served Encizo in opening up the Computer Center, though he was pinned down now.

It wasn’t hopeless, however. Three other members of Phoenix Force were in action in the courtyard.

Calvin James and Gary Manning exchanged a quick glance, and the black ex-SEAL and the burly Canadian leveled their .357 Magnum sidearms at the tail boom of the gunship. James’s short-barreled Colt Python wasn’t designed for long-range shooting, but across the forty yards to the NOTAR tail boom of the gunship, it was plenty accurate and powerful. Manning’s massive Desert Eagle had proved itself capable of hitting targets five times that distant. Heavy-duty penetrating slugs from both mighty Magnum weapons hammered into the tail boom. James’s 158-grain lead slugs and Manning’s 180-grain hunting rounds struck the air vanes that directed forced thrust to stabilize the helicopter in flight. The NOTAR was protected from ground fire, its vulnerable tail rotor replaced by a powerful fan housed in a cylinder of armored metal. However, the directing vanes needed to be exposed to allow the helicopter to turn in one direction or the other.

The .357 Magnum maelstrom directed at the tail boom vents smashed the louvers out of place, wrecking them on their pivoting mechanisms. The gunship jerked as the pilot fought to keep the aircraft straight.

“T.J.! Go with Rafe!” Manning bellowed.

The Southerner nodded and broke for the Computer Center as the Cuban raced into the now-excavated entrance.

James rushed across the courtyard as the helicopter and gunner fought to keep the gunship in the air. He skidded to Manning’s side behind another marble table. “Any plans to deal with the chopper?”

“It’s moving too erratically for us to target any more vulnerable points,” Manning answered. The big Canadian’s eyes narrowed as he watched the aircraft dip, then swerve. The machine guns ripped wildly, blowing out windows in another building. “Still, if it keeps shooting, it’ll kill people in the buildings, even without aiming.”

James popped the cylinder on his Colt Python and thumbed two fresh rounds into the revolver. “I wish I’d brought a rifle or a grenade launcher…”

Manning looked over to the jettisoned pod, then back to James. “How about a rocket launcher?”

James grinned. “How’re we going to set it off?”

“I’ll improvise,” Manning replied.

The two Stony Man commanders rushed toward the rocket pod.

THE SECURITY GUARDS spotted Encizo and Hawkins as they rushed into the lobby, guns drawn, but the Phoenix Force warriors had out their badges. Recognition of their authority had saved them from a mistaken-identity shooting.

“It’s a war outside!” one guard snapped. “What the hell is going down?”

“Two helicopters dropped a squad of commandos on your roof,” Hawkins replied. “Are you getting any reports from upstairs?”

The sentry keyed his radio and heard static and screams over the speaker. “This is all we’ve got.”

The other guard nodded anxiously. “We were going to evacuate the building, but with that gunship out there…”

“Keep an eye on people down here,” Encizo ordered. “We’ll take care of things. Do you have any shotguns or submachine guns?”

“I’ll take you to the security office,” the second guard said. “All we have are—”

A wraith in black burst into view, heading toward the security office. The newcomer’s head was wrapped in a shiny black helmet, making him look almost insectlike, an alien invader out of a science-fiction movie. Hawkins, Encizo and the two security guards all acted as one and unleashed a swarm of 9 mm slugs at the black-clad invader. The swarm of bullets knocked the intruder down, and Encizo rushed up to the fallen invader, keeping the muzzle of his HK leveled at the helmeted face.

The black-clad killer suddenly jerked to life and swept the muzzle of his machine pistol at the Cuban, but he kicked the frame of the weapon. His armored adversary’s grip was too strong to dislodge the gun, but Encizo had saved himself from a chestful of bullets. He fired point-blank at the assassin’s head, but jerked away as his 9 mm slugs rebounded off the shiny helmet. The invader twisted and hooked the Cuban’s ankle with one arm. Off center, Encizo struggled to maintain his balance as his opponent rolled and toppled him. The machine pistol’s muzzle swung up toward Encizo’s face, the unblinking eye of the barrel threatening to be the last thing he ever saw when a hurtling form crashed into the downed pair.

Hawkins wrapped his forearm around the intruder’s throat. “Stick him, Rafe!”

Encizo didn’t need prompting as he drew his Cold Steel Tanto fighting knife. The reinforced chisel point flashed for a moment, then plunged through the tough black fabric across the invader’s chest. It took every ounce of the Cuban’s weight and strength to penetrate the body armor, and even then, the razor-sharp blade lodged in the killer’s rib cage.

“Cristo.” Encizo cursed as he redoubled his efforts to eviscerate the bulletproof attacker. A second surge of the muscular Phoenix Force warrior’s frame against the invader’s armored chest, and the full six and a half inches of reinforced, chisel-bladed steel snapped through bone and bullet-resistant material. Pulling with all his might, Encizo dragged the deadly knife through the marauder’s stomach, slitting him open like a fish. The black-clad intruder thrashed in Hawkins’s grasp for a moment, then died.

“Holy shit,” Hawkins gasped. “What the hell is this bastard wearing?”

“Good stuff,” Encizo answered as he plucked the machine pistol from the killer’s lifeless fingers. He dumped the magazine and checked the top round, a bottle-necked, greenish-black tipped slug. “Teflon-coated tungsten penetrators, 6.5 mm.”

“Same caliber as the creeps David ran into in London,” Hawkins said as he handed Encizo spare magazines. He plucked a handgun from the dead man’s holster and checked its load. “Same ammo for this one, too…but it’s a high-capacity 1911.”

“You take that one until we can find one of these things for you,” Encizo replied, holding up the Bofors PDW.

Hawkins holstered his mini-Glock and took two spare magazines for the high-cap 1911. “Twenty rounds per stick. Not that bad a piece.”

“Come on. If they penetrated this far, then they’re probably all over the building,” Encizo responded.

The two Phoenix Force commandos left the security guards to retrieve their heavier weapons to protect the CIA employees in the lobby.

GARY MANNING EXAMINED the pod as Calvin James watched the lurching gunship. The big Canadian ducked as a scythe of .50-caliber slugs ripped the air over his head, ignoring James’s exclamation as the salvo came too close.

“Hurry up, Gary,” the black ex-SEAL admonished. “That thing’s taken out a lot of windows and sections of wall.”

Manning pulled his Impact Kerambit wrench from its sheath and chopped its reinforced fiberglass point between the seams that formed the end of the drum. He twisted hard and broke off the tip, but pried apart the metal enough for him to fit his powerful hands in. The Canadian’s massive shoulders swelled as he wrenched the metal pod open, his face beet-red from the effort.

James tried to ignore his friend’s display of nearly superhuman strength, but even with a deadly gunship spraying lethal streams of fire overhead, it was a sight to behold. The drum popped open and armored tubes were visible inside. Manning swallowed hard, breathing deeply, then planted one foot against a tube and wrapped both of his paws around another. “I need your Taser, Cal.”

The tall ex-SEAL nodded. “Think it’s got enough of a charge to set that off?”

“It should. These things don’t need that much voltage to fire.” Manning grunted as he flexed against the tube. Metal crumpled and wrenched as the brawny Canadian hauled on the rocket tube. He’d freed one end, levering it out of the pod when James tackled him to the ground. A heartbeat later a thunderstorm of bullets hammered into the ground, destroying what was left of the tree stump. Dirt and wood chunks rained on the prone Stony Man commandos.

“Thanks,” Manning replied, breathing hard.

“Anytime,” James answered. “You’re going to end up with a hernia.”

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” the Canadian replied as he returned to the rocket pod. It had been left untouched by the stream of lead that nearly chopped the Stony Man warriors to pieces. Manning braced himself again before the pilot could swing the helicopter around.

“He’s not shooting the other rocket pod,” James noted. “He must not want to hit his own people inside the Computer Center.”

Twisting steel shrieked as Manning ripped the rocket tube free.

“It’s loaded,” he said softly, exhaustion having crept into his voice. James knew Manning possessed prodigious endurance, regularly running in marathons and engaging in weight-lifting contests with Carl Lyons, Able Team’s muscular commander. For him to show weariness meant that he’d tapped reserves of strength that the Phoenix Force demolitions expert had rarely touched. “Fire off your Taser, Cal.”

James nodded and fired the X-26 point-blank into the dirt. The launching probes shot out, but he released the trigger, preventing the battery’s capacitor charge from draining. Manning grabbed the probes and hooked them up to the wire leads at the base of the rocket pod.

James slid his slender but strong frame under the tube and shouldered it. “You aim.”

Manning nodded as he wrapped the wire leads around the electrical probes at the tip. He stepped clear of the back of the rocket tube, sighting along the top of the bore as the black ex-SEAL grunted under the weight of the armored cylinder and its explosive payload. The wobbly helicopter saw what the two Phoenix Force warriors were doing and struggled to come level with them, its machine gun muzzles swiveling onto the pair.

“Gary…”

“If we miss, that’s it,” Manning admonished. The enemy gunship stabilized for one moment and pointed straight at them. The initial machine-gun bursts slammed into the earth on either side of the Stony Man commandos.

“And we’re in their blind spot,” Manning added. He pulled the trigger on the X-26 Taser. The little pocket-size unit cut loose with its charge, and the rocket motor fired to life. The 77 mm warhead leaped out of its tube and speared through the bulbous head of the gunship, lancing it like a soap bubble filled with napalm. The shock wave bowled over James and Manning, flaming wreckage fluttering down in a burning snow that ignited patches of the Phoenix Force warriors’ suits.

The hot licks of flame jolted the two stunned Stony Man fighters and forced them to roll to put out the burning tongues that flared on their clothes.

Their immediate emergency over, James and Manning surveyed the area. Others in the courtyard had been hiding behind stone walls and marble tables, and those who had been injured were being tended to by fellow employees.

“Come on,” James said, helping Manning to his feet. “You got enough left to deal with a marauding force of ninja killers?”

“I guess I’ll have to.”

The Canadian pulled his sleek Desert Eagle and followed the black commando into the Computer Center.

CHAPTER FIVE

Yuma, Arizona

Carl Lyons perched like a gargoyle cast in bronze and black, his knees deeply bowed, hard blue eyes scanning the rolling hills that had proven so treacherous the night before. He glanced back over one bulging shoulder. “Anything on the radio?”

Hermann Schwarz shook his head. “This place is a blanket of space noise.”

Lyons looked at the approaches to their cave. “Pol?”

“Sarlets is sleeping now,” Rosario Blancanales answered. “It was the least I could let him do after we hauled him through this range.”

Lyons grimaced. “I hated moving him, too, Pol. But if we stayed at the helicopter…”

“I know, Carl,” Blancanales replied. “I made sure he’d recovered from shock before he went to sleep. I don’t think he has a concussion, so he’ll be able to rest.”

Lyons looked at his watch. It had been nearly dawn when the enemy missile had torn off the stabilizing rudder on their chopper. Sarlets, despite receiving a six-inch jagged shard of shrapnel in his abdomen and burns across his right arm and leg, managed to get them onto the ground in one piece. Their priority was to get the Army pilot to safety before a hunting party showed up to finish off the helicopter.

The bottles of Ringer’s solution that Schwarz and Blancanales insisted Able Team carry on every mission, from their experience in the Green Berets, had proved invaluable in keeping Sarlets from dangerous blood loss while Blancanales sewed and taped his stomach injury shut.

“He’s lucky. If the shard had sliced his bowel or intestine, we’d have to deal with a serious infection,” Blancanales, the Able Team medic, stated.

Lyons slid his rough hand over the receiver of his Beowulf M-4, watching the approaches. “A small enough favor. There’s still a few man-size germs running around.”

“You think that there’d be an assault squad attached to the missile launcher?” Blancanales asked.

“Otherwise we wouldn’t be under radio jamming in the area,” Schwarz answered. “We’ve been out of contact with the base for four hours, though. General Rogers might have someone looking for us by now.”

“And risk another helicopter crew and search team being shot out of the sky?” Blancanales asked. “This was a trap, and we fell for it hook, line and sinker.”

“Rogers will send a search party,” Lyons said. “But he’ll make sure that they’re covered, and it takes time to set up that kind of security.”

Suddenly the Able Team commander lifted his closed fist and the trio fell silent. Schwarz and Blancanales drew their silenced pistols while Lyons moved forward and nestled in the shadows of a rock. The big ex-cop pulled his silenced Para-Ordnance 1911, pointed at his eyes, then to the right-hand gully. The Stony Man warriors set up in their hides, and Blancanales hefted a small rock.

Lyons gestured with his fist and Blancanales whipped the stone at the wall. The loud clatter resounded and two shadowy shapes blurred just behind the corner of an outcropping.

Silence reigned uneasily in the rocky canyon for several long, heart-stopping moments.

Then a dull, snorting rumble filled the air. Lyons braced himself against a verbal reaction, but he knew that the exhausted, injured and unconscious Sarlets couldn’t help it. He was snoring.

His lips drew tight into a mirthless smile a moment later, and he silently egged on the sleeping pilot to continue his unconscious racket, wishing that Sarlets could snore even more loudly.

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