STONY MAN

The best military fighters and cyber techs in the world, the Stony Man teams are on the front lines of America’s war against terror. Operating under the President’s orders, these elite warriors put their lives on the line in the name of freedom.

NO ESCAPE

An investigation into government corruption turns deadly when two reporters are attacked by a Mexican black ops group. With one journalist killed and the second held captive in Mexico’s most dangerous prison, Phoenix Force will need to act fast before its rescue mission becomes a recovery operation. But while Phoenix Force is battling the country’s deadliest inmates in a high-tech fortress, Able Team learns the corruption has already infiltrated US law enforcement, threatening both sides of the border.

“STEP OUT OF THE VAN.”

Blancanales listened for signs of a possible hidden gunman. He had a prisoner, at least for the moment, but one mistake and his brains could be spilled on the street with the would-be killers he’d just dispatched.

The prisoner followed Pol’s instructions.

“Lie down on your stomach and lace your fingers behind your head,” Blancanales barked. The guy, obviously in a mood to survive this encounter, did as he was told. His breath came in rapid gulps, anxiety too real to be faked.

“Anyone else get away?”

“Yeah,” the man answered. “He ran...”

Toward the front of the van, the Able Team warrior concluded, as a shadow flickered in the windshield of the vehicle, disappearing around the corner. There were no abandoned weapons on the sidewalk, so there was a good chance the escaped ambusher was packing some serious firepower.

Blancanales dropped to a kneeling position at the sound of footfalls on the asphalt on the other side of the van. The gunman intended to flank him, but Blancanales was ready, front sight on the spot where a head would appear.

Exit Strategy

Don Pendleton

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

Few things were ever truly worthwhile on these witness protection jobs, but Domingo Perez did find this family to be actually worth a damn. Sadly, Justice never really had much for “innocents” who were in the line of fire; their deals went to scumbags who had their hands painted red with blood up to their elbows. This case was different and Perez had known there was something of worth in this security detail when he’d gotten word that the operation involved blacksuits. Seeing Harold Brognola at the briefing for the mission had been the icing on the cake. The big Fed was known as someone who was well connected to even the highest-level covert ops.

The Castillos were a fine family. There was the father, formerly a crusading journalist in Mexico. Joaquin Castillo had stirred the hornet’s nest of government and law enforcement corruption plenty of times over the years, and Perez was fully aware that anyone the reporter had targeted was well and truly bent. His wife, Amanda, was herself in the journalism business; practically the other half of the investigative team that peeled back layers of grimy corruption by carving through the tumorous hide of the diseased beast that was south-of-the-border law enforcement.

Perez had worked with more than enough of them to realize that while the rank and file were good and honest, the higher in rank you rose, the more stink you had to roll around in, rutting in it like a pig in mud. Up high, you either had to be a saint with the reflexes of a cockroach or practically dance in the laps of the cartels.

Donald Burnett, the marshal in charge, had given Perez the three Castillo children to place in protection. The oldest was a fourteen-year-old boy, also named Domingo. Then there were his younger sisters, Pequita and Annette, born at two-year intervals after Domingo.

At fourteen, Domingo Castillo had already lived in two different countries and was as fluent in English as he was in Spanish to the point where he’d only have an accent if he wished to. His hair was a light brown, a “gift” from his grandfather by his mother, Amanda, strong currents of Spaniard blood coursing through that side of the family. His eyes were hazel and mercurial, flashing at times bright green or smoldering into a dark brown, which often reflected the young man’s moods.

Pequita, at twelve, was already growing into a young beauty. She had her father’s black hair and her mother’s cool blue eyes. Whenever Perez was in the room, Pequita seemed to never look away from him. He remembered when he was twelve and how girls his age had never showed the slightest interest in him, not when there were older boys or men around.

Perez was flattered at the attention, but at the same time he thought of all the poor twelve-year-old boys of the world who were just starting to form an interest in girls. Twenty years ago, Perez would definitely have been agog over Pequita, and at the same time be halted by crippling shyness that such a cute girl would have had on him.

Grin and bear it, Dom, he told himself.

Annette was just as tall as her older sister, but more round-faced and bespectacled. That pure Spaniard blood showed in how her cheeks freckled instead of tanning evenly, the glimmering yellow highlights in her hair and the flash of blue in her eyes.

The safe house in Arizona was one that was large and comfortable enough for the Castillo clan and the eight agents assigned to protection. The security wall around the estate was twelve feet in height and equipped with some of the best and latest sensors available. This, Perez thought, also likely thanks to the top people at Justice.

It was a good setup, at least in terms of technology. The members of the witness protection team themselves were equipped for a war if necessary. Except for Burnett, every member of the team was armed with a Glock 21 .45 ACP autoloading pistol. With fourteen rounds on tap and thirteen in subsequent reloads, Perez couldn’t have asked for more firepower that he could hide under an untucked shirt.

Perez, watching over the kids as they enjoyed a swim day in the roasting Arizona heat at a pond on the property, had a Mossberg 930 SPX not far away in the Jeep. Using the lessons learned from the earlier Mossberg Jungle Gun made for the United States Marine Corps in the nineties, Perez knew his semiautomatic 12-gauge shotgun was designed for combat. Nine rounds of 12-gauge were in that piece with more shells in a sidesaddle on the stock of the big blaster. He liked the interchanging of buckshot and slugs because there was no telling at what range he’d encounter an attacker.

There were M4 SOPMOD rifles and actual M16s back at the villa, as well, but Perez was a Chicago boy and in his heart and mind being a cop meant using a shotgun.

Domingo Castillo swung on a branch out over the glassy surface of the pond and let go. The boy’s slender limbs flailed for a moment as he hung in the air before splashing down. Pequita and Annette laughed at his “air dance” and Domingo burst up through the surface with an ear-to-ear grin.

“Did you see that?” Annette called out. The bespectacled youngest sister had been shy around all the strange new adults, even the female marshals, Lewis and Moore, but as Perez was their primary “sitter” the girl was comfortable with him.

Perez nodded and smiled. As he did so, he saw her cheeks redden and he realized that Pequita wasn’t the only one who had an interest in older men.

¡Dios! Perez prayed for strength. Ignore it and move on, Dom. And pray to hell this doesn’t cause any trouble for you in the future.

As if at the very thought of trouble, the rumble of distant helicopters wafted to Perez’s ears. Nothing appeared to be flying in this direction, but he lunged into the cab of the pickup to grab the set of binoculars he’d left on the dash.

There were three helicopters hovering over the compound. Dull black metal, not even reflecting sunlight off their skins, dark-tinted windows and strange tail booms told him that these were not normal aircraft. Their rotor-slap was only suddenly heard not because of their approach but because they no longer were operating under minimal noise profile. Perez loved helicopters and noticed that one had the little dolphin nose of a Bell Ranger but the same round, squat body of the AH-6 “Little Birds” of US Special Operations fame.

It took a moment for him to recognize one of the helicopters as the Bell MD-900 Explorer. The normal Explorer was a bird that could carry six passengers alongside its pilot and copilot and had a range of nearly three hundred miles on internal tanks. Through the zoom of his binoculars he saw drop tanks, as well, which could easily double its flight time, and he knew it could cruise at 154 miles an hour with its turbo Pratt & Whitney engines.

One stayed in the air, side door open, an odd strobe flickering off the side. Perez swept the binoculars down to the other Explorers that had landed and disgorged men. A dozen of them, dressed in black, with helmets, heavily laden vests and assault rifles rushed toward the compound

As soon as gunfire crackled in the distance, Perez let the binoculars drop into the seat well. He looked back at the children by the pond.

“Get in the truck,” Perez ordered. “Now!”

Domingo Castillo’s pupils were tight, his normally tanned cheeks flushed and damp with sweat as he guided his younger sisters toward the marshal’s service vehicle.

Perez heard the violent faraway roar of something big. Guns sounded a lot louder, much more dangerous than they did on television, but this wasn’t new information for him. Had he the time to contemplate, he’d show some regret at living so close to violence that he knew the true sounds of gunfire. His parents had tried to keep him and his sisters safe from the ravages and the corruption of everyday life in Mexico.

The girls, to their credit and to the shame that they had learned this so young in life, knew what was wrong, what was happening. Perez had the passenger-side door open for the kids, Glock .45 in his fist ready to go.

Violence seethed up at the villa and though his every instinct was to rush up there and assist his fellow marshals, he knew that bringing three preteens into the middle of a gunfight was the worst possible thing that he could do. In the choice between helping his friends and saving the lives of the Castillo children, his orders were to run like a scared little girl.

Cursing, he moved around to the driver’s side, got in and fired up the engine. If someone pursued, and so far he saw nothing in the rearview mirror, his job was to evade hostiles and to defend the kids if cornered. The fight he could put up with his shotgun and pistol would be long and loud. And, hopefully, be more than enough to keep this precious cargo secure.

Pedal to the metal, he put distance between the children and the conflict at the main house.

“Stay down, girls!” Perez shouted. “Stay down!”

Keep going faster and faster. Pull away before they hear—

The rear windshield cracked as something hit it. It wasn’t a pebble. Not with the force of the impact. But it was also not a bullet that retained enough energy to punch through safety glass.

Perez stomped on the gas harder, building up speed.

* * *

AMANDA CASTILLO’S LIFE was never considered to be one of caution and comfort. She was born into privilege in Mexico, with enough European Spanish blood in her to allow her natural blond highlights and the glimmer of blue eyes. Though the differences between her and other Mexicans weren’t that apparent, especially given the richness of her sunburned skin, her father’s wealth was something that had kept her in undeniable comfort. His kind of money meant that he didn’t have to worry about the legalities of protecting her from the “lower classes.”

What had started as rebellion as a teenager had turned into something much different. She’d hung with Joaquin, an idealistic, young wannabe revolutionary in the slums of Mexico City, and her youthful aimlessness had evolved into a crusade for justice. Joaquin Castillo had turned from Marxist idealist into someone who saw the truths of corruption, both right-and left-wing. Amanda Moran conveyed her good looks and connections into a place where she could strip bare the hypocrisy and corruption in an anchor’s chair.

They’d married, but Amanda Moran Castillo was part of a one-two punch. Joaquin dug deep into the secrets behind the camera and Amanda laid them raw and unfiltered on nationwide TV. It was dangerous, risky, and Amanda was reminded of that every day when she looked in the mirror at the scars on her hips and stomach. The end of her two-piece-bikini days was a small price to pay, however, for the cause of truth and justice.

Now, however, as she watched a US Marshal apply emergency first aid to Joaquin, she realized that some prices were just too high to pay.

“¡Mi corazon!” she breathed as Marshal Burnett put his arm across her chest, holding her back from the scene.

Amanda wanted to tear loose from the old lawman with his Southern drawl, but she became all too aware of the need for his restraint. The wooden floor between her and her wounded husband was shredded, splinters and sawdust erupting as a wave of heavy automatic fire rained down.

“Gettin’ yourself killed ain’t gonna help your man!” Burnett growled. He tugged her farther back from the damaged wall, keeping himself and his big silver handgun between Amanda and any incoming harm. Burnett, no stranger to Southern law enforcement given his twang, walked the line with a big old 10 mm STI Executive.

Amanda, who’d spent enough time around firearms thanks to her rich family, was impressed at the beast of a gun. Everything from its gleaming, mirror-polished slide and black polymer frame screamed “fear me.” The Executive was essentially what happened when a Texan decided that the Colt 45 just didn’t have enough punch or enough rounds in the magazine. The basic design of the 1911 had been preserved, but the polymer frame had a hole in the grip to handle a double-stack magazine. Burnett said he had twenty rounds in each of the fat magazines on his belt. The 10 mm round carried as much punch at 100 yards as the .45 ACP had at the muzzle, and Burnett wasn’t using the down-loaded FBI rounds that had eventually given birth to the .40 Short and Weak, as he called it.

The house had gone from silent to a maelstrom of thunder and disintegrating objects in the space of heartbeats. With Joaquin down, but seemingly miles away on the other side of a deadly firefight, Amanda’s thoughts quickly turned toward her children. They were out of the house...

Out in the open!

Burnett kept her still, edging them farther along the interior of the house, avoiding clear fields of view from the windows.

“The kids!” Amanda shouted.

“Out on the edge of the estate,” Burnett growled. There was a motion caught out of the corner of Amanda’s eye, and Burnett reacted, firing that big silver gun through the naked windowpane. The Executive roared loudly enough to make the crackle of gunfire outside disappear for a moment. Apparently, Burnett’s first shot didn’t have an effect. He shifted his aim and fired through the wall. Massive chunks blew out and in less than a moment the figure of a toppling man appeared for a brief instant in the window.

“We have ground attackers! Side three!” Burnett shouted over his hands-free mike. Whether any of the other lawmen around the compound could hear a thing was highly in doubt. But even as Burnett barked his observation, bigger guns cut loose from inside, blasting more chunks through walls, tearing into those laying siege to the house.

Amanda knew that, unfortunately, that vulgar display of firepower made them targets. Something turned the ceiling of the house to shredded remnants of terra cotta, tar paper and ceiling struts raining down in the wake of a blaze of automatic gunfire. The silhouettes of gunmen disappeared in the rain of burning lead.

The next thing she knew, her voice was raw from screaming over the loss of two of her defenders. Hell clattered all around her and Burnett forcibly pushed and pulled her to her feet. She stumbled, but Burnett’s hand never allowed her to trip. He was a steady guide, a protector.

Amanda glanced back and the room where she’d left Joaquin was obscured by collapsed ceiling and walls. Her stomach twisted. Joaquin’s injuries already horrific, he was now either buried in rubble or chewed to ribbons by the torrent of fire and death hurled by their assailants.

If death hadn’t already claimed her husband from his gunshot wounds, it was closing its grasp on his life tighter and tighter.

Her eyes stung, throat constricted.

“Make sure that Perez got away with the kids,” Amanda shouted over the din.

“He had his orders,” Burnett growled. “He’ll get them as far away as possible. Or die trying.”

Amanda’s eyes widened with horror at that thought.

“They’re hammering this house from all sides. I doubt they brought enough aircraft to do that and chase down Perez in his truck,” Burnett emphasized. “But those kids need their mother. That means we keep on the move!”

Thunder and lightning seemed to blast Amanda’s world to splinters, her vision and hearing fading out. She could feel the dull thud of the floor against her cheek and shoulder, and even through the wail of ringing in her ears, Burnett’s big bad gun cracked through the mayhem of her sensory deprivation.

Rough hands suddenly yanked her to her feet, pushed her along. This time her feet snarled against each other, her knees cracking against clutter. These were the hands of a thug hauling her around like a piece of meat, not the hands of a protector.

Time had little meaning, but she felt her feet bash and stumble against each other what felt like a thousand times. Just when she was tired of tripping on her own feet, her vision cleared enough to see that she was outside in the Arizona sun.

She only caught a brief glimpse of the blue sky before she toppled face-first into the dry grass of the yard. Spitting and coughing blades from between her lips, she heard the grumbles of two men talking. Explosions and gunfire left her ears too muddled to make out their conversation, but when one bound her wrists behind her back, it didn’t leave much doubt.

From witness in federal protection to widow and prisoner.

With the aircraft and sheer firepower on hand, Amanda quickly put together that this was one of the many enemies she had made. Undoubtedly this was a cartel, since few others could afford helicopter gunships and trained troops, and only the most insane of Mexican government agencies would dream of murdering US Marshals on American soil.

Then again, Accion Obrar was a branch of the federales known for its gleeful willingness to break the rules. Harold Brognola of the US Justice Department had brought the Castillos to Arizona to protect them from AO, and if these men were cartel, they were only once removed from the paramilitary, unsanctioned vigilante force that she and Joaquin had gathered so much dirt on.

And now they owned her. The nylon cable ties bit her wrists cruelly, and her shoulders burned in protest as a captor hauled her to her feet.

“On the chopper, puta” came the order. Amanda struggled to stay upright despite the force of the thug’s shove, and she did enter the helicopter, but only after banging her knees and thighs against the bottom of the opened side door. The bare metal flooring chilled her cheek, and more hands snagged her ankles and lower legs, levering her up and into the cabin. She wanted to turn over, but a forest of combat boots surrounded her. They penned her in; she couldn’t move. She wanted to spit and curse them all, but more than one of them planted a sole on her back. The weight of their feet immobilized her, informed her that she was only meat for them; a trophy deer brought back from a successful hunt.

She only lived at their whim. One mistake and they crushed her underfoot, without qualm, without mercy.

Though, if their intent was to keep her, then she knew there was only one destination ahead for her.

El Calabozo sin Piedad.

These were Los Lictors, a group of merciless yet utterly precise commandos whose skills relegated the similar Los Zetas to second best. Assault rifles, special operations tactics, brutal accuracy and violence of action made them the elite champions of the cartel wars.

El Calabozo sin Piedad.

The Dungeon without Pity.

In her decades of covering corruption among Mexican law enforcement, no other prison in the world harbored such a grim, soul-chilling reputation. Not even the Black Dolphin prison in the former Soviet Union had such a reputation for violence and level of security.

People went in there, and the only reason they came out again was that they’d only been put there for “a vacation.” Accion Obrar used it to keep their favorite gun thugs and smugglers out of the view of the law. It was a place where demons were allowed to indulge their tastes for mayhem and abuse against rival cartels and political dissidents.

Amanda Moran Castillo was such a political dissident in the eyes of Accion Obrar.

And in the space of a day’s travel, she would be handed over to the worst inmates at the darkest, deadliest asylum on the planet.

No, Amanda didn’t live at the whim of these kidnappers. They wanted her to live.

For she was on the fast track to hell, and death was a mercy she’d soon beg for.

CHAPTER TWO

The assembly of all the members of the Stony Man Farm’s teams—Able Team, Phoenix Force, as well as the cybernetic squad—was not a good portent. With all hands on deck, this either had to be a national emergency or a direct threat to the Sensitive Operations Group itself. Without the presence of the founder of Stony Man—the Executioner, Mack Bolan—the covert agency still thrived, undimmed by the privation of the legendary soldier. The lone warrior had his own missions out in the world; things that fell through the cracks that even a top secret government-sanctioned antiterrorism agency could not attend to.

Carl Lyons, brawny, blond and grim-faced, and his colleague in arms, David McCarter, bracketed Harold Brognola at the head of the table. In contrast to the square-jawed, all-American football hero Lyons, McCarter was lean and fox-faced. His build was no less defined than Lyons’s, but he was more panther than king of the jungle. They were the respective leaders of their teams; Lyons commanding the urban warriors known as Able Team and McCarter being the leader of Stony Man’s foreign ops unit named Phoenix Force.

Though Able Team consisted of only three commandos, it was just as effective as the five-man army that was Phoenix Force. There was a spirited competition between the two groups, but each saw the other as an equal. The eight of them together were quite brilliant in a diversity of fields ranging from emergency medical treatment thanks to former SEAL and Navy corpsman Calvin James of the Force, to Able Team’s electronics genius Hermann Schwarz. When Brognola and Bolan had vetted the teams, they’d looked for smart, capable, quick-to-learn men who were straight shooters and athletic combatants.

The cyber team leader, Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, may not have been low in body fat, but with his thick shag of beard and furry, heavily muscled forearms, he was no weakling. Despite being confined to a wheelchair by a gunshot wound to the spine, Kurtzman’s upper body was slabbed over in thick muscle from exercise and the constant maneuvering of his manual chair. As strong as his arms and chest were, though, his mind was equally powerful as the creator and coordinator of the incredible computerized data collection and intelligence system that made the Farm’s missions possible.

“What’s the deal, Hal?” McCarter spoke up first. Though McCarter’s antic energy had been tamed greatly by the role of leadership of his team, the British SAS veteran still was not given to idling when there were things to do. “What’s the crisis du jour?”

“I just got news from Arizona,” Brognola answered. “We lost a lot of blacksuits serving as a security detail.”

An older bulldog of a man who had been with the Farm since the very beginning, Brognola had been an FBI agent assigned to capture or kill Mack Bolan a lifetime ago, back when the Executioner had waged his unsanctioned vigilante actions against organized crime on US soil. Rather than ultimately eliminate Bolan, Brognola had set up a situation where his lethal fighting skills could be more readily used to protect the United States. Since then, the big Fed had expanded the Sensitive Operations Group’s reach by creating the blacksuit program.

The blacksuits were cultivated from the best and brightest of the military and law enforcement, well-trained and honest men and women who didn’t quite have the clearance or lack of ties that would make them perfect for the covert agency. They came to the Farm in the shadow of the old Stony Man of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where they received continuing education and refresh training. They were also tapped for intel that didn’t make it into top secret databases immediately. Often, it was the men of Able or Phoenix who educated these warriors, so the loss of one was the loss of a friend as well as a student.

“How many?” Lyons asked, his voice a low rumble like thunder across the plains.

“Seven confirmed dead, five wounded. Don Burnett is missing, as well as one of the packages they were protecting,” Brognola advised regrettably. “Another principal was killed.”

“How many were they protecting?” McCarter quizzed.

Brognola took a deep breath. “Five. A man and his wife. Three children. The man, Joaquin Castillo, was killed. The children were out at a swimming hole. Their protection detail pulled them out when the attackers struck.”

Brognola handed out packets for the two action teams to read. The cybernetic crew had already gone over the information and grisly imagery in preparing the briefing packages.

“Son of a bitch,” Calvin James growled. James was the first American member of Phoenix Force. Despite the kind of discipline it took to be a medical corpsman and a SEAL, and later a member of San Francisco SWAT, James was still a little quick with a curse. Tall, black and lanky, he was passionate about his position. “You don’t need to ask me twice to put boot to ass against the bastards behind this.”

“I’ll have to,” Brognola returned. “That’s Mexican federale equipment at the scene of the crime. That means this is an international incident. One that the State Department wants to keep under wraps.”

“Excuse me?” Rosario Blancanales, the elder of Lyons’s two Able Team partners, asked. Five foot eleven, with silver hair and a face wizened beyond his years, his lithe, spry frame belied the appearance of his age. Where Lyons was a police officer and undercover FBI agent who had allied with Bolan often, Blancanales had served in Bolan’s unit during his military career and later assisted him in his private war against organized crime. Blancanales’s first team-up with Bolan post desertion had ended with him in jail, one of only two survivors of the Executioner’s death squad. His entry into Able Team had cleared those records. His elite Ranger training and natural diplomacy, which had earned him the nickname “the Politician,” made Blancanales an invaluable member of Stony Man. “The government is going to downplay the slaughter of US Marshals?”

“It’s being kept under a tight lid,” Carmen Delahunt interjected. Delahunt, one of the members of Kurtzman’s cybernetics team, had investigative and tech skills that easily translated into search algorithms that helped keep the Stony Man teams up-to-date on enemy action. “State Department and the White House don’t want the public to get a word of this,” she added.

“Federales involved? No doubt,” Gary Manning added. Manning, a Canadian, was a barrel-chested polymath, tall and strong, and he was also a genius with explosives. His restless intellect, however, had kept him moving from field to field. He had proved to be an expert woodsman and hunter, served with the military in Southeast Asian operations, owned his own import-export firm and was an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, where he’d cross-trained with German antiterrorism agencies.

This depth and breadth of experience had made him a steady hand and wise counsel to Phoenix Force leader McCarter, while his hunting talents had translated into his being a lethal sniper and his engineering had made him a master of demolitions. He, like McCarter, was an original Phoenix Force operator and was not surprised by an act of cross-border violence being held in secret to avert the possibility of war between two nations. Too often, Phoenix’s five had been sent in to defang and defuse conflicts instigated by outside parties looking to profit from war and chaos. “Given that Joaquin and Amanda Castillo are considered enemies of the state in Mexico, the legitimacy of this strike force could be fairly solid.”

“You know about these two?” Hawkins asked. The youngest and newest member of Phoenix, T. J. Hawkins, was the other American who’d diluted the original mission description of Mack Bolan’s foreign legion.

Hawkins, who had grown up on the South Side of Chicago, was a veteran of the US Army Rangers and Delta Force. He had a history of going outside the rules to protect innocent lives to do what was right, politics be damned. He was a prime candidate to fill in the ranks after McCarter replaced their retired original commander.

“The last time we were in Mexico, I managed to catch a newscast about Accion Obrar. The similarities to Stony Man made me curious enough to delve further,” Manning noted.

Hawkins frowned. “Being a Texas boy, I looked into Accion Obrar because they were allegedly behind unseating paramilitary gangs operating on both sides of the border. Just in case we had to deal with Los Sigmas or Los Omegas or some group like that.”

“The new hotness is Los Lictors.” Hermann Schwarz spoke up. Schwarz was Blancanales’s longtime friend and a fellow survivor of Bolan’s death squad. Balancing electrical engineering and Ranger training made Schwarz, nicknamed “Gadgets,” one of the top ten fighting elite in the country alongside his fellow Able Team warriors. “For those of us on Able Team who aren’t fluent in Spanish, that’s ‘the officers’ or ‘the magistrates.’”

Lyons met Schwarz’s gaze at his friend’s usual razzing. “How illuminating.”

“He’s up to five-syllable words, Gadgets! Cheese it!” Blancanales stage-whispered across the table. The humor, so close in the wake of the loss of several blacksuits, was meant to distract from the pain. These men were law enforcement professionals and gallows humor was a means to keep laughing instead of crying. For that, Lyons was glad for his friends’ antics, though it didn’t ameliorate the anger he felt for the murderers of the blacksuit marshals.

“This is particularly disturbing in that we have little idea who could have betrayed the location of the Castillos,” Huntington Wethers, the third member of the Farm’s cyber crew, noted. A tall African American who looked born to be a college professor, complete with corduroy jacket and pipe, Wethers was a mathematical genius and a man who was meticulous in seeking out information on the web. This didn’t mean that he was slow; indeed, he was able to process raw data in bulk, but he was thorough. “The setup arranged by Hal, utilizing ‘in-house’ resources, was kept away from agency heads specifically.”

“The potential for a mole to intercept was minimized, but there’s never a sure thing where more than one person is involved,” Brognola grumbled. “So, we have a list of who could have let slip about their security.”

“A list we’re going through with a fine-tooth comb,” Akira Tokaido said. No irony was lost that the young Japanese American’s spiky punk hairstyle only saw a comb to further splay and launch it toward the ceiling. Where Wethers was meticulous, Tokaido was punk rock and thrash metal, making wild leaps of deductive logic, though his mathematical and coding capabilities were not haphazard.

Where speed and intuition were required, Tokaido was an F-22 Raptor pulling 9 Gs to outmaneuver his opponents. Wethers was more the aircraft carrier sailing along at 35 knots but with eyes and ears everywhere. Delahunt was the bridge between the two, using her own investigative instincts to seek handholds of information to scale impregnable fortresses of mystery.

“I pity your quarry, mates,” McCarter quipped.

“Eventually they become yours,” Delahunt said. “And when they do, that’s when things get...satisfying.”

Gary Manning raised an eyebrow at Delahunt’s breathless final word. The red-haired ex-cop was a beautiful woman, regardless of age, and even her toughness never marginalized her feminine allure.

Manning turned toward the big Fed, hoping to keep his mind clear. “You don’t think that it’s a direct link to the government, do you, Hal?”

“No,” Brognola returned. “The crew has been digging deep and hard, looking for threads that might have exposed the blacksuit witness security detail, and those assignments are showing up in the system. It’s not an actual mole inside WITSEC, either.”

“More like a worm in the computer systems,” Tokaido acknowledged. “I’m picking up the damage left behind and Hunt and I are trying to locate and end it.”

“As well as to perform some forensic work on the worm so we can learn where it came from,” Wethers added. “Its elusive nature confirms that a genius put it together, or even a team of geniuses.”

“Say, the best hackers a Mexican covert agency could put together?” Lyons asked.

Wethers nodded in affirmation.

“Accion Obrar is a fairly blunt name for a so-called top secret government op,” McCarter said.

Lyons tilted his head. “It seems more like a terrorist group. In fact, I think some French commies could sue for stealing the title ‘Action Directe.’”

“It’d make targeting them easier,” McCarter mused.

Lyons smirked. He turned back to Brognola. “We’ll be babysitting the kids? Because you know that they’ll still be a target.”

“That, and I know you want a crack at the thugs who killed so many of our blacksuits,” Brognola confirmed. “Weapons free. No rules. No referee.”

“Using the kids as bait is going to be tough.” Blancanales spoke up. “But, sadly, this wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had to do it.”

“And we haven’t lost one of our protectees yet,” Schwarz interjected. “We won’t let them down.”

“You said the father was killed and the mother is missing,” McCarter said. “She might be on her way back to Mexico?”

Brognola indicated the Briton was right with a nod. “The most likely place they’ll put her is El Calabozo sin Piedad. So, right now, our priority is for Phoenix to head to Mexico to get her out of there.”

Rafael Encizo grumbled, drawing McCarter’s attention. “I’ve heard rumors about that place. It’s on a scale of the Cuban prison I was kept in as a teenager.”

In his youth, Encizo, the last of the original founders of Phoenix Force, had fought against the Communist dictatorship in his native Cuba. Only by breaking his jailer’s neck and stealing a boat did he escape to the United States. One of the few members of Stony Man’s action teams not a military veteran, Encizo’s lifetime of work as a salvage diver and as a special consultant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration in Florida had forged him into a highly capable combatant. Officially the oldest of Phoenix Force, he was a swarthy and incredibly strong man for his diminutive height of five-eight. Not the most muscular member of Phoenix—that was Manning—his strength was still considerable, as were his skills with knives. “The worst part is that this is a prison in a friendly nation to ours.”

“Cuba’s on the friendly list now, after all this time,” James offered. He was Encizo’s closest friend on the team, the two spending long stretches of off time scuba diving as well as practicing sparring with their chosen knives. “But, yeah, Mexico is supposed to be a democracy.”

“If Mexico were working so well as a democracy,” Hawkins interrupted, “people wouldn’t be flooding across the border illegally to escape poverty, corrupt governments and the cartel wars.”

The Texan didn’t often offer his opinion on a crisis unless he felt strongly about it. Raised in a border state, Hawkins had a lifetime’s worth of perspective on illegal immigration, and could tell the difference between the criminals who exploited desperation and those seeking escape from turmoil in Mexico or other Central American nations. He caught a knowing nod from the three members of Able Team who had engaged in their own operations against corruption in El Salvador, Guatemala and some of the harsher Mexican states.

Then again, the people of Stony Man were in a position of experience and education, having intimate familiarity with the forces of corruption that trampled humans with their clumsy steps.

“Since we’ll be breaking into an official Mexican prison, I don’t think we’ll be able to head across the border with our arsenal in diplomatic luggage,” McCarter said to Brognola.

“Sadly, no. You’ll be working without a net,” the big Fed agreed. “Unless you happen to have some contacts down there. We’ll arrange a HALO jump for you, if necessary.”

“The day the five of us can’t skirt border security without a parachute insertion is the day we’re retiring as a team,” McCarter countered. “Sorry, T.J.”

Hawkins shrugged. As the team’s jump master, he was usually the one who prepped them for such intrusions, the same as James and Encizo took the bulk of the preparation work for underwater operations. “No skin off my nose on how we get there, boss. We just need to get there before Amanda Castillo is irreparably damaged.”

“We are on the clock,” Brognola said.

“Is that why Barb’s not here?” McCarter asked. “Burning up the phone lines looking for alternate approaches?”

“Making use of every asset we can.” Brognola affirmed the mission controller’s absence. “I don’t have to tell you that this is going to be one of the stickiest things we’ve had to deal with in a while. One wrong move and we could have a war flare-up on our border.”

“We’re never called in when the options are clear and easy,” Schwarz said. “That’s why they call it the Sensitive Operations Group.”

Brognola’s scowl didn’t bode well for the continuing discussion.

“Something else amiss?” Manning asked.

Brognola nodded. “Somewhere in the mix, the attackers on the Arizona safe house left a trail of breadcrumbs that ties the blacksuits to the Farm and this operation. So far, we’re still an unsubstantiated rumor, but a Congressional Oversight Committee is being assembled for the express purpose of finding out who created this enormous screwup.”

“The blacksuit training program and you are out in the open and vulnerable on this,” Lyons said. “And considering the kind of political infighting that’s been wrecking Congress over the past five or so years, if they learn that you have the ear of the President...”

“They will come down on us. They’ll use it to crush him and weaken the nation even further in international eyes,” Brognola confirmed. “It’s not me that I’m worried about, but our sudden vulnerability is too coincidental with the Castillo situation for it not to be a direct attack.”

“People have come at the Farm with armed force before,” McCarter observed. He glanced over to Lyons, remembering one instance where virtual reality hypnosis had turned Able Team into one such assault force. “But this time they’re going after our underbelly.”

Lyons narrowed his eyes. “We’ve been making more than enough enemies and ruining more conspiracies. And the one that has the deepest-digging fingers is the Arrangement.”

“White supremacists and Mexican drug gangs?” Tokaido asked.

“You remember the Fascist International in our files,” Lyons offered. “There are plenty of pure-blooded Mexican and other Central American ‘whites.’ More than enough to keep us steadily busy all this time. Our last outing with them was more than enough to cause them a lot of pain and discomfort in the media.”

“The loss of Stewart Crowmass,” Blancanales added.

“Well, apparently he’d lost enough iterations of the Aryan Right Coalition to have an idea who or what we are,” Brognola said. “That’s another thing that Carmen and Aaron are working on. We’re trying to erase the trails and the crumbs that would expose the President and the Justice Department.”

“So even if we bring down Accion Obrar, there’s still a chance that you’ll be made to fall on your sword? After all we’ve done for the country?” McCarter asked.

“Face it. We’ve done a lot more than just water-boarding and drone strikes,” Lyons said. “The Democrats will go nuts over civil rights violations of our targets, especially someone not proven guilty like Crowmass. The Republicans will just stamp us as another out-of-control government program and a symbol of big government picking on the innocent.”

“Crowmass was good at whipping up each party, hitting their particular hot buttons,” Schwarz added. “Even dead, he’s giving us shit.”

“Not just Stony Man,” Encizo added. “The whole country. Because if things degrade to the point where we might go to war with Mexico, the groundwork he laid might just spark a civil war.”

The Stony Man operatives got up from the meeting table. As of now, they were on the clock and more than just one life was at stake. Just as it always was. They wouldn’t have it any other way.

CHAPTER THREE

When David McCarter mentioned being able to circumvent the law in getting them into Mexico without outside assistance, he’d exaggerated some. During the flight to Yuma, Arizona, where the surviving blacksuit had retreated with the Castillo children, McCarter had Rafael Encizo and Calvin James calling in favors with their friends. In addition to the blacksuits trained by Phoenix Force, James had friends in both California and Nevada police agencies from his time as a member of San Francisco SWAT, and Encizo had similar brothers in arms in the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Deputy Marshal Domingo Perez had driven south from the safe house, moving closer to the Mexican border instead of farther away. But that was a good thing; it provided a major city and airport hub. The Yuma PD, the county sheriff’s office and local FBI and USMS were present and on alert, keeping watch over the still-free family. Yuma sat only fourteen miles and change from the Mexican border, and with the Gila River and all manner of county roads webbed across the countryside, there was plenty of above-ground activity to keep an eye on.

What McCarter sought was the underground smugglers’ routes, all the way from Andrade, California, on Interstate 8 to Douglas, Arizona, on 191. Over the years, nearly one hundred covertly built tunnels had been discovered; routes by which the cartels could get between the Sonora State in Mexico to Arizona. Heroin, cocaine, guns and money flowed freely through those tunnels, and there were likely many more that hadn’t been unearthed by American and Mexican law enforcement. Both Phoenix Force and Able Team had experience with the subterranean trespasses over several missions, and McCarter was certain of one thing: if they found one end of such a tunnel, they’d be set for supplies.

Considering the state of tunnel politics, they would be going full clandestine. Sure, each member of the Force was equipped with sanitized versions of their preferred sidearms, but having access to cartel weaponry and money would be a boost of support that McCarter could truly appreciate. After all, one way that Stony Man was able to keep its chunk of the US government’s black budget so small was thanks to rules of engagement that stated the blood money assembled by drug dealers and terrorists would be well spent turned back against them. Over the years Stony Man kept a minimal footprint despite its government sanctions, having adopted Mack Bolan’s rule of robbing the robbers.

Hitting the end of a smuggler pipeline would not be anything new for the team.

Encizo’s nodding increased in frequency, his expressions growing more excited as he spoke in rapid Spanish to the person on the other end of his call. McCarter smiled, snapping his fingers to get the attention of the others, none of which showing signs of a solid lead.

While Encizo had his cell phone to his left ear, his right hand was busy scribbling down notes. He was on to a very hot lead, which was exactly what McCarter wanted. Everything was written down in pencil, because McCarter watched the eraser bob and wag with each new bit of info.

After a seeming eternity, Encizo was finally off the phone.

“Whatcha got?”

Encizo grinned at McCarter. “Nogales, Arizona. Here’re the notes.”

McCarter took the pad, reading up and down.

In essence, the Nogales site was one that was heavily suspected, thanks to weeks of surveillance, but both Mexican and American judges were dragging their feet. It was, little doubt, due to pressure from one of many cartels. In years past, the cartels had carried out assassinations and other attempted murders on both sides of the line, irrespective of the tourist draw of the small cities and, according to the local DEA, Los Lictors had picked up the slack.

That the enforcer gang seemed to be doing a lot of cleanup of rival cartels, while drugs still flowed across the border, was a sign that Mexican federales and military were working in collusion with “the Magistrates.” In particular, the report claimed the government was helping the Caballeros de Durango Cartel to take control of the Juarez Valley area and destroy other cartels.

Joaquin and Amanda Castillo had personally interviewed dozens of officials and ordinary people for their investigation. One report quoted a former Juarez police commander who claimed the entire department was working for the Knights of Durango Cartel and helping it to fight other groups. He’d also asserted that the cartel had bribed the military. Also quoted was a Mexican reporter who’d stated hearing numerous times from the public that the military had been involved in murders.

Further evidence appeared in the US trial of an ex-Juarez police captain who admitted to working for the cartel. He asserted that the Durango Cartel influenced the Mexican government and military in order to gain control of the region. A US DEA agent in the same trial alleged that the bent cop had contacts with a Mexican military officer. The report also stated, with support from an anthropologist who studied drug trafficking, that data on the low arrest rate of Durango Cartel members was evidence of favoritism on the part of the authorities. A Mexican official denied the allegation of favoritism, and a DEA agent and a political scientist also had alternate explanations for the arrest data. Another report detailed numerous indications of cartel corruption and influence within the Mexican government.

The ties between Los Lictors and the Knights of Durango Cartel were strong and apparent, but the Castillos, in uncovering those ties to the Mexican federales and the armed forces, had drawn down enormous heat. Their evidence threatened a lot of powerful people south of the border.

That the tunnel was owned by the Knights of Durango was icing on Phoenix Force’s cake.

“That’s a lot of good intel,” Hawkins said. “Damned shame that Mexican judges and American Feds are afraid to take the dive into shutting down such a sewer.”

“No shame at all, brother T.J.” James spoke up. “With this pipeline still open, it gives us a walk through an unlocked back door.”

McCarter nodded. “Hey, up front, can you drop us off at Nogales?” he asked their pilots.

“Not a problem” came the response. Jack Grimaldi and Charlie Mott served as the flight crew of the Stony Man Gulfstream jet. Outfitted with top-of-the-line avionics, storage facilities that could hide an armory, and double the normal range of a standard private jet, the aircraft would have little problem stopping at one airport or another. With Grimaldi and Mott at the controls, the plane could be set down on the shortest of municipal runways if necessary. Stealth electronics would also help it land inside an enemy nation without notice if need be.

Carl Lyons agreed with the air crew’s assessment. “Currently, Deputy Perez and the kids are surrounded by a ring of armed lawmen.”

“A bigger one than the last protection team, at least,” Schwarz amended.

“As brazen as the assault on the Arizona safe house, it still was less blatant than an incident at a federal building in Yuma,” Blancanales added. “We can spare a half hour to drop you off.”

“Thanks,” McCarter returned. “It’ll save us the stress of driving and prepping for an assault across country.”

“You’re not the only one planning in the cabin, David,” Lyons said.

McCarter smirked. “How’s your work going?” he asked Schwarz.

“Well, since we have the enemy wanting to come to us, we’ll just figure out the best place to draw them in. Lines of fire, dirty tricks to even the odds, all manner of shenanigans,” Schwarz added. “Like at Gary’s place. Remember when the Russians took a run at you in Montana?”

Manning’s lips curled into a slight smile. When elements of the Russian espionage machine had grown tired of Phoenix Force’s interference in their operations, they’d launched an all-out effort to exterminate the group. Two hundred men, from the Spetsnaz and various wet-works agencies, were thrown at Phoenix. The first few skirmishes were not much, but Manning and the others had let the Russians know where to find them in the remote cabin in the Rockies.

There, Phoenix Force had sniper rifles, booby traps and explosive mines set up to turn the assault force into carrion for scavengers. The team survived, and those who’d believed in the old Soviet corruption ways had been taught a very expensive lesson.

“Knowing what battlefield you’ll be facing your enemy on goes a long way toward evening the odds,” Manning observed.

“Evening the odds?” Blancanales asked. “We want every unfair advantage in the book.”

“Truth spoken,” McCarter agreed. “Whoever said cheaters never win hasn’t studied his military history.”

“Any particular gear you bringing on this mission?” Lyons asked.

“I’m missing my old MAC-10, and Rafe loves his Heckler & Kochs, so we decided to split the difference and pack the MP-7. We’ve got suppressors and proper ammo for quiet hits as well as loud,” McCarter explained.

“Yeah, got to love the old tried-and-true T-grip style,” Schwarz added.

Lyons wrinkled his nose. “I’m barely comfortable with the .22s that come out of an M16. But 4.6 mm? That’s only .18 caliber.”

“Well, that’s the thing, Carl. Rafe and I actually know how to shoot,” McCarter answered with a wink. “Plus, everyone we’ve hit with those little .18-caliber bullets has been suitably impressed and hasn’t complained.”

Lyons chuckled.

“Since Cal and I are AR guys, we’re rolling out with these stubbies based on the DPMS PDWs,” T. J. Hawkins added. “Seven-inch heavy barrel AR-15s and a nice little name.”

James smirked. “Technically, it’s not called the Kitty Kat anymore in that configuration.”

“If our founder could have his Big Thunder, then I’m entitled to my Kitty,” Hawkins returned.

Blancanales nodded toward Manning and the weapon he was checking in its case. “Chopped-down Fabrique Nationale FAL?”

“No,” Manning answered. “I’d love to have my favorite battle rifle, but the Mexican army still issues the G-3 in 7.62 mm NATO. Kissinger made a version for me with a thirteen-inch barrel and collapsing buttstock I can fit it into a tennis racket case, yet still have 500 yards of reach for precision shooting. Cowboy made this up from a ‘clean’ Heckler & Koch, like he did with the sanitized Kitty ARs that Cal and T.J. are rocking. No chances of jamming with any of these guns.”

“Nor with the M203 compact he made for my Kitty,” James said. He affected a sneer. “Say hello to my little kitty!”

Encizo rolled his eyes. “And here I thought that world was mine.”

“What happens when you run out of ammo for David and Rafe’s BB guns?” Lyons asked.

McCarter smirked. “The Caballeros Cartel actually has been working with MP-7s or, rather, Brazilian-built copies, complete with ammunition designed for it. And since the ammo and guns are built to spec on cartel money...”

“You can scrounge reloads from the drug runners’ own security forces,” Lyons surmised.

“Bingo,” McCarter said. “That, along with the M16s and G-3s, which already use the ammo for the rest of our teams’ guns.”

“Shrewd,” Blancanales noted.

“We’ve showed you our toys for this trip. What about you?” McCarter asked.

“Well, you know Carl’s feelings on the 5.56 mm NATO that the rest of us haven’t had a problem with,” Schwarz said. “We’re not going to be trying to bust into any smuggling tunnels, or penetrating into a prison, so we can operate with our rifles having longer barrels.”

“Also, a stubby 7-incher isn’t going to put out much murder at five hundred yards like a proper rifle barrel would,” Blancanales said.

“We’re rolling with .300 Blackout rounds in our M16s. We’d have gone with .458 SOCOM, but then we’d be limited to only nine rounds in a magazine,” Lyons added. “And we also want some reach with our rifles.”

“Ever since you had that custom AK made for you on that Lebanon mission, you’ve been wanting an AK-caliber M16 for yourself,” Blancanales pointed out. “And the Blackout was designed to provide that kind of horsepower per bullet, while still being usable in an accurate rifle.”

Lyons nodded in agreement. “Going for punch and lots of punches for everyone sent at us.”

He opened his case. “And my particular Blackout has a box-fed shotgun attachment. Because sometimes you just need the kind of attitude only provided by a 12-gauge load of buckshot or slugs.”

“Doesn’t the M26 just make it too heavy?” Gary Manning asked.

Lyons laughed.

“Sorry... I forgot who I was talking with,” Manning returned. “The second strongest of the Stony Men.”

“Second, eh?” Lyons challenged.

Manning winked, knowing any rivalry or competition between members was in good fun.

“I see you’re jumping on my bandwagon, too, with the revolver,” Lyons noted, catching sight of the handle of Manning’s big Python Plus handgun.

“This hog leg?” the Canadian asked. “I’ve had an 8-shot .357 Magnum for a long time. The trouble is Cowboy can’t seem to hold on to any of his Colt Anaconda frames and clean cylinders long enough to sanitize one for my fieldwork.”

“Glad you finally have one for yourself,” Lyons said with a laugh. “Sorry for hogging them all.”

“You have two with you, right now?” Manning asked.

Lyons nodded. He pulled them both out; one from a shoulder holster, one from behind his hip. One was a big matte-stainless machine with a four-inch under-lugged barrel. The other was a stubbier snub-nosed revolver cast in a dark Parkerized finish. Both had fat cylinders, each holding eight rounds of .357 Magnums, one to be hidden more completely than the other. Though they had the polish and action similar to Lyons’s old .357 Magnum Colt Python, they were converted .44 Magnum Anacondas, cylinders altered to hold an extra two rounds in the larger design. Kissinger and Lyons dubbed it the “Python Plus.”

Manning’s, on the other hand, was a long, sleek, camouflage-gray revolver with a six-inch barrel and weights. It looked as if, somewhere in its family tree, an ancestor’d had relations with a Desert Eagle, with flat, high-tech angles and facets along the barrel’s length.

“Nice coloring on yours,” Lyons said, admiring the big gun. Naturally, the Canadian woodsman would have preferred a hunting-size revolver. All the horsepower of a Magnum bullet meant nothing if you couldn’t hit with it. “I usually don’t have problem with my four-inch revolvers, but, man, the only sucker who could miss with this puppy is the one with the bread to afford it.”

Manning chuckled. “I also like a little bit of reach with my weapons. You’re good out to a hundred, a hundred and fifty yards with yours. This, I’ve hit steel ram targets at three hundred yards.”

“Okay...that’s impressive,” Lyons admitted. He didn’t have to try out the trigger pull on the big .357. It was hand built by John “Cowboy” Kissinger, Stony Man’s armorer, an artist of steel and springs. His personal revolvers were slick and smooth, parts gliding across each other as if ice skating. They were also coated and treated against even the harshest of elements, further protecting their inner workings from hitches and imperfections that would ruin accuracy or speed of shooting.

“Just be careful out there,” Lyons said, trading Manning’s hog leg back for his pair.

The brawny Canadian nodded in return. “Careful? Or just do it as we’ve always done it? Because, pardon my linguistic torture, careful don’t do the job.”

“Yeah,” Schwarz admitted, interjecting. “We tend to err on the side of wild-ass hijinks. But this time, we’ve got the Farm under attack from an outside source. One we just can’t shoot up.”

“Well, we could, but then we’d be on the run for blowing a renegade congressman in two,” Hawkins added.

“It worked for Mack,” James offered. “On the run...convicted of a crime—they pretty much pulled—they operate in the Los Angeles underworld. If you have a prob—”

“Please. We got enough of that when the movie remake came out,” Blancanales groaned. Even so, he got a smile out of James.

“I’m not going to lie and say we don’t each have our own exit strategies.” McCarter spoke somberly. “But right now the only way out we need to concentrate on is getting Amanda Castillo back together with her children.”

“Don’t worry. We’ve never let a kid down,” Schwarz said. “And you five are pretty damn good yourselves. You’ll free her.”

“First things first,” Encizo added. “We bust down the doors of a Caballeros Cartel smuggling tunnel and get into Mexico the hard way.”

“Always with the negative vibes, Rafe,” Blancanales quipped. “To us, it’d be the fun way.”

“We’d also like to not level half of Nogales, Arizona, though,” Encizo countered.

“Don’t worry about that,” McCarter calmly assured. “We’ve got Gary. Even if we go with a nuclear option, he’ll make sure no bystanders are hurt.”

“Just Los Lictors and the Caballeros de Durango,” Manning added with emphasis.

“And in this case, since I’m better with Mexican-dialect Spanish, I’ll take the lead,” Hawkins, the Texan, said. He continued in the language he indicated, “Or don’t you think I’ll be convincing?”

“You know, Gadgets, I think we’ve been coveting the wrong member of Phoenix for Carl’s replacement on Able,” Blancanales joked.

Schwarz grinned. “We’d be golden even with a member of the Lollipop Guild if we wanted.”

Lyons scratched his head with his middle finger, extended as a beacon to his two wisecracking buddies.

“If any cartel is going to have a light, Caucasian-looking gent, no matter how well tanned, it’ll be the Durango mob,” Encizo admitted. “Especially with their ties to Accion Obrar.”

“Those bastards smell awful familiar,” Lyons said. “Like our old sparring partners. Remember Miguel Unomundo?”

“The Fascist International had a minor resurgence a while back. Remember the Ankylosaur robots?” Hawkins asked.

“Ankylosaur combat drones,” Manning corrected.

“Something tells me that with the involvement with Stewart Crowmass, the Fascist International has a brand-new title.”

“The Arrangement,” McCarter concluded.

Lyons nodded. “We thought that taking him down during the Japanese whaling crisis would have ended all of his problems, but that shrewd bastard already had a set of fail-safes in place. It’s why Hal’s got his neck on the line back in Wonderland and we’re busy pretending to be target practice for paramilitary cartel enforcers.”

“Are you certain it was merely Crowmass?” Manning inquired. “He was not alone in all of this. According to Carmen, he had allies in Central and South America and the Middle East.”

“Do you have any specific names?” Blancanales asked.

Manning quickly wrote down several notes on a page, tore it out and handed it over. “If, while you’re playing the Judas Goat, you happen to run across someone in Texas or California, you might want to bring the trouble to their very own front door.”

Blancanales looked over the sheet, face torn between a frown of concern and a mirthless grin of malice. “Him? You sure?”

“It’s only rumors at this point,” Manning stated.

Lyons took a peek at Manning’s notes and sighed. “Even when he shot a lawyer in the face, he was still a goddamn hero. No wonder this wasn’t a part of the official briefing.”

“Hal and the Sensitive Operations Group are on thin ice as it is. Going after this guy, with his hooks in the US government and overseas, it’d take a hell of a lot of brass,” Manning stated.

Lyons ejected a shell from his rifle’s under-barrel shotgun. It gleamed from base of round to the tip. “Brass? I’ve never been accused of being short of that.”

Grim silence enveloped the cabin as the two teams returned their gear to their cases.

Nothing less than full-on warfare was going to occupy their thoughts for the next several days.

CHAPTER FOUR

From his position operating a small tamale cart near the refrigerated warehouse run by the Caballeros de Durango Cartel, Pedro Guzman was easily able to keep an eye on the US side of the smuggling tunnel and any who’d dare approach it. If something strange showed up on his personal radar, he was in direct walkie-talkie contact with his brethren. So far, his tour of duty as security for the tunnel had been uneventful.

Few lawmen would ever want to take on Los Lictors, and he and his brothers in arms had dealt with Los Sigmas, the last group of hard-core paramilitary cartel muscle that had obtained control of Nogales and the border crossings into and out of Arizona. Competition and the authorities were set to rout, and anyone who still maintained an interest was left impotent, thanks to friends in high places who had handles on judges and ranking law enforcement officials.

So, when he saw the two men walking toward the Durango “icehouse,” Guzman’s instincts suddenly went into overdrive. Both wore dark sunglasses and carried the bronzed skin of those who lived in the unflinching sun on the border. He gave a tap of the send button on his communicator; a sort of heads-up that hissed inside the warehouse.

If this turned out to be trouble, he’d be on the line immediately, but so far the two didn’t appear to be hostile. Both wore oversize button-down shirts as light jackets, nothing out of the ordinary since this was technically winter in Arizona. Even so, Guzman’s gaze was locked on the smaller of the men.

He was darker than the other, but he walked with a hard authority, arms swinging, ending in fists that swayed to and fro like idling wrecking balls on a gale-force day. The tall man was younger and moved much more casually, arms and legs undulating as if he were straight out of a cartoon. Both looked like legitimate gangsters, though Guzman hadn’t seen them around here before.

They were making for the icehouse as if they were arrows aimed and fired. The little guy had purpose and a scowl bowing his lips down. He gave Guzman a glare that was hard even through opaque sunglass lenses.

“We expect any business today?” Guzman asked over his hands-free radio, speaking loud enough for only the walkie-talkie to hear him.

“Nope” came the response.

Guzman continued watching the pair. “Well, they look like they’re here on business. And like they don’t give a damn who knows they’re here.”

“Yeah, we’re watching now. Damned odd,” his partner, Zacco, replied. “But we start shooting, who knows what kind of heat we’ll call in.”

“So far, things are quiet. Maybe get them inside. You’ll have them outnumbered and outgunned, even if they are strapped,” Guzman noted.

Zacco chortled. “We kinda figured that plan out already. Just keep watch, in case they’ve got backup.”

“Keep me posted,” Guzman returned.

* * *

RAFAEL ENCIZO WAS hardly a tall man, but his shoulders were broad and powerful, his torso bulky yet tapering to a slender waist. Thanks to this build, the Cuban Phoenix veteran was able to conceal the sleek and compact Heckler & Koch MP-7 machine pistol under his jacket. As backup, the stocky, swarthy professional had his P-30 9 mm autoloader from the same manufacturer as the machine pistol.

T. J. Hawkins, on the other hand, was not blessed with shoulders or a torso that could snug a foot-long automatic weapon underneath a jacket. The best he could do was a matching pair of Beretta Brigadiers in 9 mm Parabellum. The former Ranger and Delta Force veteran had developed an appreciation for the sleek Beretta handguns in his service, despite the fact that Delta tended to operate with .45s rather than 9s. His time with Phoenix Force and Calvin James had merely reinforced his appreciation for the Italian design, now entering its fourth decade of service with the US Armed Forces.

The Beretta he wore in his shoulder holster had a stubby suppressor and a rail-mounted gun light, both accessories taking the already negligent recoil of the sleek pistol and turning it into nothing short of a laser beam in his hands. Hawkins’s other Brigadier was clean, meant to operate as a backup should the first somehow jam or get lost in the fury of conflict.

Behind the two of them, McCarter, Manning and James followed as stealthy ghosts shadowing and guarding them. At this moment McCarter was a whisper in their earbuds.

“Tamale cart. He’s noticed you and is giving you the hairy eyeball,” the Briton warned.

“We made him immediately,” Encizo murmured into the hands-free microphone at his collar. “Any response from the icehouse?”

“Negative,” Manning informed them. “The windows are covered, but my infrared has picked up bodies behind the glass. Normal movement for now.”

“Awesome,” Hawkins returned. “That means they’re still paranoid.”

“It’s only paranoia if no one’s out to get them,” Encizo stated. “And since we are out to get ’em...”

The corner of Hawkins’s mouth turned up in a smirk. “Cartel goons didn’t get to be rich by hiring lazy or inattentive soldiers. This’ll be a bit tricky.”

“Well, you’re the one taking the lead. Granted, I can’t hide much of myself behind your skinny Texas ass, but I’ll still be alive long enough to say ‘I told you so,’” Encizo replied.

“How about you use that time to shoot back?” Hawkins asked.

“That’s a good idea. For a moment I thought I was a cable news pundit,” Encizo grunted.

“Preferring to being ‘proven’ right than to actually solving the damn problem?” Hawkins said.

“Exactly,” Encizo returned. “Don’t worry, my foolishness has swiftly passed.”

Manning interrupted the two. “We’ve got two in the window, looking down on you. Both have big dark voids where their hands should be.”

“Gunmen,” Encizo extrapolated.

Hawkins cut in. “They aiming at us?”

“No, they just look curious about why two guys are walking up to their warehouse. Weapons are at low ‘not quite ready,’” Manning answered.

“Thank goodness for some laziness in this crowd,” Hawkins said.

McCarter’s gruff voice broke in on the hands-free communicators. “Maybe they just feel like they can handle you. Overconfidence, especially since they’ve likely got rifles and such inside the warehouse.”

“We can work with overconfidence, esse,” Hawkins returned, settling verbally into his role and flow. His walk already was smoother, rolling, his head bobbing to an internal beat. It could have been seen as a stereotype, but the truth was that he’d seen far too many boys from the barrio who affected the gait and rhythm he copied. Just because it was a cultural cliché did not mean that it wasn’t real.

Encizo, on the other hand, stomped along, shoulders swiveling, fists rocking back and forth. Not tall, his strut would take up an entire sidewalk, if only by force of his demeanor, not counting his wide shoulders and brawny arms. This was the confidence and weight of a veteran of the streets. No gang member or cartel representative could look at him and not think that he’d been representing la raza out on the front lines. Even without seeing the scar tissue he’d incurred over the years on Phoenix Force, observers would see a longtime warrior. That, plus his mode of dress and his demeanor, made him not merely an enforcer, but the enforcer.

The two of them were indeed strapped to the teeth. Encizo had his two HK pistols, plus his favorite Walther PPK in its ankle holster, and a pair of Tanto-styled fighting knives, one in a sheath hidden on the calf opposite his Walther, the other hanging from a leather thong around his neck. Hawkins had additional weaponry, too, including a push knife inside his gaudy-looking belt buckle, and a snub-nosed .357 Magnum—a tiny five-shot in comparison to Manning’s and Lyons’s handguns. The trouble for the cartel’s watchman and the other observers was that they had no idea that these two were ready for all-out war, or that the other three members of Phoenix Force were poised and ready to give them a hail of blazing cover fire on a moment’s notice.

The two of them also had extra surprises to grant them an advantage. Their electronic ear buds, low-profile and hard to notice without a high-powered telescopic lens, provided not only communications with their allies, but also hearing protection, electronically filtering out ear-damaging booms the likes of indoor handgun fire, or even better, flash-bang grens, which the two of them were also equipped with.

Curiosity would be the bait for the cartel gun thugs to allow them into the icehouse. Security and thorough procedure would make them shut the sound-proofed doors before they even considered firing the first shot to eliminate the two intruders. And in the moments between, Encizo’s plan was to buy them precious extra minutes and the element of surprise by popping off a distraction device at 140 decibels and blazing bright. That was what the sunglasses were for, given the flash-bangs went off at an intensity of 600 thousand lumens, more than enough to leave an opponent seeing stars and blotches of afterglow for a long time.

It wasn’t a sure thing; nothing ever was. But anything that gave them at least one second’s worth of surprise was worth another second of life in the middle of a firefight. Each extra second alive was one where they could find another opportunity, another means of cheating death. Those instances were supported by Encizo and Hawkins wearing undershirt body armor, advance intel based on ground-facing satellite radar and infrared, and Gary Manning’s sniper-rifle-mounted thermal vision, which could peer though even the tinted windows of the icehouse to see gunmen looking down upon them.

This was a plan burned into their brains in the past half hour, and all of that after an hour of study of the options, approaches and possibilities. The five men of Phoenix Force were trained professionals, and they were bringing with them the best technology ever assembled for combat and espionage. Their minds combined were the worth of any combat computer, let alone the paranoid security measures of the Caballeros Cartel.

Hawkins rapped on the door. “¡Abrir, esse!”

Encizo was impressed enough with Hawkins’s facility with the tone and dialect to think that they might have a chance at getting in the front door.

A panel opened up. “What makes you think we’re interested in what you’re selling?”

“We’re not selling anything,” Hawkins returned in rapid street Spanish. “Unless it’s your own asses.”

Wary, suspicious eyes burned through the door panel.

“It’s only the two of us. What are we going to do?” Encizo growled, every inch the veteran gang-banger. “What’s coming on our heels is much worse.”

Hawkins gave the door another thump, right under the aperture the guard glared through. “Come on. Tamale Boy knows there’s nothin’ coming with us. But we wait out here five more minutes, ICE is going to be rolling up with tanks!”

The reference to Immigration and Customs Enforcement widened the eyes of the doorman. “Rolling up in tanks?”

The door opened only slightly. A submachine gun muzzle poked through the crack. “Keep your hands where we can see them at all times.”

Hawkins rolled his eyes and interlaced his fingers at the back of his head. “This good, homie?”

Encizo did likewise. The door opened farther, hands snatching at their shirts and tugging them into the foyer. As soon as they were inside, Hawkins was able to count the welcoming committee: four men, including the guy standing at the door. He’d been standing there with an MP-7 leveled at Hawkins’s midsection and was continuing to follow him.

Encizo’s flannel shirt dropped open and the assembled Durango gun thugs recognized the hardware hanging in a shoulder harness.

There was a brief instant of confusion.

“Are you from—” one began to ask.

Unfortunately the moment the doorman started to close the door, Encizo’s interlaced fingers released the tension on the flash-bang grenade he was holding at the back of his neck. He’d thumbed out the pin when it looked as if he was surrendering, but the canister dropped to the floor, the safety spoon clanging away middrop.

The ensuing thunderbolt detonation at his feet was so hard that Encizo felt it like a punch to his chest. That was while wearing eye and ear protection. To the unprepared cartel guards, it was an assault on the senses.

In a flash of movement, Encizo drew his Cold Steel Tanto and drove it into the belly of the man holding an MP-7 at Hawkins’s navel. Six inches of chisel-tipped, razor-sharp steel plunged through muscle and viscera, severing the Caballero doorman’s aorta. Such a vicious arterial wound would kill in under a minute. Encizo sped up the process to prevent his suffering, driving the point upward and impaling the cartel guard’s heart.

Hawkins also opted for a non-gunshot first strike. He had out his punch dagger in the space of an instant and leaned into a hard jab to the neck of a second of the sentries. The wide arrowhead-shaped blade parted flesh and muscle, severing arteries and nerve clusters in its passage through the Mexican’s throat. With a twist, he presented the blunt back edge of the knife and pulled out with all of his strength. Any blood vessels or muscles not neatly slashed were now corkscrewed and bluntly ripped on the exit path. The sentry’s blinded eyes rolled up into his head as he toppled backward in a boneless mass.

Encizo gave a powerful kick to the third of their welcoming committee. The point of the Cuban’s boot was steel-tipped, and when he connected with the hip of that man, the force of the impact dislodged the femur from his pelvis. There was a numbed wail of horror, but it was cut off as Encizo clawed his free hand’s fingers into the Mexican’s face. The Tanto knife came up and punched through the relatively weak bone of the caballero’s temple. Bone splintered and large chunks of brain lacerated with brutal efficiency, Encizo ended this man much more swiftly than the other.

Hawkins snatched the submachine gun in the fist of the fourth and last of the group in the foyer. Blinded and deafened, the caballero barely had a grasp on the machine pistol before Hawkins spun it around. The Texan triggered a 3-round burst under his enemy’s chin, putting him out of commission in the blink of an eye.

The rest of Phoenix Force was at work now, as they heard the toppling form of one man hit a pallet from the catwalk by the icehouse’s windows. Gary Manning’s work with the G-3 was dead-on, taking out at least one of the gunmen in the windows. In the same instant, dock doors around the back exploded off of their hinges with the aid of a Manning-designed breaching charge.

Hawkins and Encizo tossed another flash-bang. On the detonation, they exited the foyer, machine pistols tracking.

There’d been another pair of men poised to act in case something happened, but the sudden crash of one of their partners from the catwalk caught their attention. A moment later they were the recipients of a flash-bang detonation and, in that next instant, streams of 4.6 mm autofire that slashed through their internal organs.

From the back, McCarter and James were blazing away with their own weapons. The Briton with his MP-7, James with his Kitty carbine that, despite a suppressor, still produced a vigorous clatter as high-velocity 5.56 mm tore through the air at nearly 2,500 feet per second. Cartel gunmen twisted and writhed as swift bursts chopped through their flesh.

Another body toppled over a railing above. His arrival on the warehouse floor was punctuated with the thunder of splintering wood and a mist of spraying blood as bones on the way to the concrete split flesh between like ersatz scissors. Hawkins paused long enough to see who else Manning had engaged from a distance. He saw another three bodies sprawled on the wire mesh flooring of the catwalks, each lying with limbs twisted to impossible angles. He saw that there were another two gunmen up there and was about to aim at one, but Manning’s marksmanship was demonstrated again. The man’s face burst into a cloud of dark gore, skull cored by 7.62 mm NATO jacketed lead.

The last of the gunmen threw his weapon away, holding his hands up in an effort to keep the invisible god of death from taking his life.

The others on the icehouse floor were still in the mood to fight, no sudden thunderbolts of doom whispering out of nowhere to execute them. Hawkins hurled a flash-bang at a clot of Mexican cartel gunners, letting his empty MP-7 crash to the floor. The distraction device struck one of the caballeros and bounced skyward before it detonated, raining earsplitting thunder and eye-burning light.

With the crash of the grenade, Hawkins transitioned to the light-equipped Beretta, drawing it up and firing. As in practice with the barrel given extra weight from the mounted torch, recoil was nonexistent. A stream of 9 mm bullets barked out of the five-inch barrel of the M9, connecting with Durango soldiers and punching through upper chests and heads with laser precision. For ten shots, four men were down and dead, Hawkins so fast on the trigger that he punched them twice or three times before gravity caught up with the suddenness of their demise.

Encizo had the stock extended on the MP-7, braced against his shoulder. From this position he was able to move and pivot with speed and grace, and yet, every time he had a clear view of an enemy, he also had the machine pistol on target. High-velocity projectiles exited the barrel so swiftly, their mass so minor, that recoil wasn’t a factor in putting rounds on target, either. A flurry of 4.6 mm hornets zipped through skin and cartwheeled through muscle, lodging in bone once they struck fluid mass.

Though adrenaline and the fog of combat made the fight seem to stretch out longer, in truth, it was barely closing in on a minute since Encizo had dropped the first flash-bang to start the battle. Moving with trained precision, and making certain they were in cover, the four men of Phoenix Force inside the icehouse exercised brutal efficiency at crushing any opposition.

A minute and five seconds after the flash-bang started festivities, an eerie silence enveloped the icehouse

“Gary, how loud was it out there?” McCarter’s voice rang over their hands-free communicators.

“Except for the tamale cart, nobody even noticed it. He crashed just inside the foyer when I took him,” Manning returned.

“Right. Get down here,” McCarter ordered. “Good breach, T.J., Rafe.”

“Thanks,” Hawkins answered. Even though they were engaged in radio chatter, none of the five commandos were letting their attention wander from the tasks at hand. For the four inside, it was making certain no one was up and fighting. For Manning, it was removing himself from his hide and joining the others.

So far, they’d only secured one end of the Nogales icehouse smuggling tunnel.

There was still three hundred feet to trek underground and security at the other end to deal with.

CHAPTER FIVE

Perez took another sip of his energy drink, his eyes feeling full of sand and grit. He wasn’t sure when the last time was that he’d blinked. Nerves buzzed throughout his body, but all that really mattered was the Castillo children. The two girls slept. Pequita with her arms around the younger, shorter Annette, protecting her. The two kids drew strength from their contact and he hadn’t allowed their minds to wander to the fates of their parents.

Domingo Castillo, however, stayed mostly awake, or only partially asleep. Young Dom was classically nodding off, pulling himself awake only as he dipped into slumber.

Perez sucked back another sip. A knock at the door startled him and he nearly choked on his drink.

His hand fell to the big .45 on his hip.

“Friends coming in,” growled a voice from the other side.

Dom jerked fully awake but his sisters remained wound together in sleep.

In walked three men, newcomers Perez hadn’t seen around the offices before. He’d been told to expect them. While he recognized them, he didn’t know any names. He knew the trio was usually referred to by code names. He also knew these guys weren’t supposed to exist, and the things they did when not teaching cops and soldiers were to stay secret until the end of time, according to the nondisclosure agreement Perez had been made to sign during training ops.

“I don’t know if you’re a sight for sore eyes or if I’m gonna regret dragging you guys into this mess,” Perez said.

Carl Lyons strode forward, holding out his hand to the deputy marshal.

Though Perez initially worried that these three men might be hurt, the handshake waylaid any fears that the man introduced as Ironman was fragile.

The man Perez knew as Politician seemed only two-thirds the size of Ironman by muscle mass, and yet the gray-haired warrior’s grip and arm were no less tightly muscled and firm. There was a wary alertness in his eyes, and though his hair had gone prematurely light, he still possessed a limber ease of movement that accompanied that strength.

The last was called Gadgets, and though he didn’t have the same muscle tone and cut of build as the other two men, he didn’t lack for a good grip in his handshake. It just seemed as if everything the genius did required very little physical or mental effort; that he glided with the flow rather than struggle unnecessarily. That Zen mentality had showed its true nature when he’d watched the man win a bench-press competition among the blacksuits without a grunt of exertion.

“We’re not going to talk about too many details in front of the kids,” Lyons warned. “By the way, I’m Karl Stone, he’s Pol Rosa, and Gadgets is Hermann Black.”

“Nice to meet you again,” Perez replied.

Schwarz walked over to Domingo Castillo carrying a small pack. He unzipped it and pulled out a small bottle of orange soda, handing it to him. “You doing okay?”

The boy nodded. He glanced over at Perez, as if to ask if it were okay to drink this. Perez gave a nod of assent, and Dom pulled off the top and took a thirsty sip. He approached his sisters and whispered to them, “Pequita, Annette!”

The girls’ eyes opened. Schwarz watched them, reminding Perez of a loyal family dog, one that would die for them before allowing harm to strike.

Sadly, tragedy had already struck.

“Orange soda and candy bars. Dentists might hate him, but he knows how to raise a kid’s spirits,” Blancanales said to Perez. “How about you?”

“I’m pretty certain my urine will be glow-in-the-dark neon green next time I piss,” Perez said, tapping the side of his can. “But the jokes aren’t true. I can’t smell colors yet.”

Lyons plucked the can from the blacksuit marshal. “You’ll get some sleep before we go anywhere. I need you in good operational condition.”

“You think I want to sleep?” Perez asked.

Lyons sat him down. “We’ll give you an hour. Don’t worry. We’ve got your back.”

“I don’t...” Perez began. His eyes grew heavier.

He realized that Pol was tapping rhythmically on his shoulder. The steady, soothing beat hypnotized him. Slumber came quickly.

“Nice trick,” Lyons said.

“Learned it from an old guy when I was stationed in Korea,” Blancanales replied.

Lyons smirked. “Think he’d teach it to me?”

Blancanales shook his head. “Nah. You’re too much of a pale sow’s ear.”

Lyons rolled his eyes. “Take a look at the kids while Gadgets has them filling up on sugar.”

Blancanales did so. In the meantime, the Able Team leader took Perez’s cell phone and checked it. He didn’t expect there to be anything on it, but maybe someone had sent messages to Perez. Lyons found some alerts on his phone, but they were simple emails and social media garbage. That didn’t mean there weren’t clues inside the phone that someone else would find useful.

“Done looking at the magic picture box?” Schwarz asked.

“All yours, wizard,” Lyons returned. “Grog not understand intricacies of electronic communications within it.”

Schwarz smiled and pulled out his Combat PDA. He connected a wire between the two devices then let the microcomputer dive into the phone, checking for the sort of trace programs and outré technology that would turn a cell phone into a weapon. “Bang.”

“Find something?” Lyons asked.

“This phone’s riddled with worms,” Schwarz explained. “I’m running through the diagnostics and there’s little wonder how the safe house was found. And it’s still transmitting.”

Lyons nodded. “That means we can expect shadows.”

Schwarz locked eyes with his friend and partner. “Expect them? I never figured you for a passive host waiting for guests.”

Lyons looked over at Blancanales, who had finished his initial evaluation of the kids. Though they hadn’t come to physical harm in the escape to Yuma, they were frightened, and very likely had a feeling that their parents were either dead or in fatal danger. Blancanales’s expression evidenced that those worries dogged the children, though they each managed to maintain a brave face.

“I’ll only be in passive mode until you give me something to shoot at, Gadgets,” Lyons announced. “So how fast can you give that to me?”

“That’s the Ironman I remember,” Schwarz returned. “Call it fifteen minutes?”

Lyons narrowed his eyes. “Make it ten.”

Blancanales gave his report on the mood and emotional status of the Castillo youngsters quickly and succinctly.

“I hate dragging them around as bait,” Lyons grumbled. “But I also don’t want to abandon them. If this thing is an attempt to ramp up tensions between the US and Mexico, leaving them here makes the federal building a target.”

Blancanales rested his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “We’ve handled babysitting-style assignments before. If anything, with us, they not only have a group of the best defenders in the world, but also folks who can handle the trauma the kids have experienced.”

Lyons nodded. “We already went over this at the Farm and on the plane. It’s the least of all possible evils, and it’s something I can live with.”

Blancanales returned to Dom and his sisters while Lyons took a mental inventory. Utilizing the resources of the Farm, as well as the skills and strengths of his partners, there was little doubt that Able Team could bring the hammer down on Los Lictors or whomever the Durango Caballeros were using as their enforcers on this side of the border.

Their plan to have Deputy Marshal Perez on their side, continuing his role as caretaker for the kids and as a fourth gunner, allowed them some wriggle room, but he was glad for Schwarz’s additional suggestion. Out in Los Angeles, where Able Team had a lot of friends and contacts, they had a woman who could also supply her own brain and firepower to the mix.

Lao Ti and her business partner, May Ling Fu, had aided the Stony Man trio on previous occasions and were now on their way to assist once again. As they were not a federal law enforcement agency, although Dr. Lao Ti’s electronics and computer firm was a government contractor, there was a better possibility that holes in Brognola’s agency security would be averted. If not, then there was another angle with which to see how the Mexican agency and their pet cartel were penetrating US government security.

He got on his assigned phone. “Barb, it looks like someone loaded some tracking software into the phones of the blacksuits. Gadgets says he’s going to see if any trackers are in the area.”

Price sounded skeptical. “We’re skating on the edge here. Maybe this was just the thing necessary to draw all of you out into the open.”

“A trap. Something from the legacy of Crowmass and the Arrangement,” Lyons mused aloud, giving in to grudging agreement.

“They’ve resurrected the Aryan Right Coalition enough times to figure out who you are and why you’re their number-one target,” the mission controller added. “You as in Able and Phoenix.”

“And we’re going in expecting them to want to trap us,” Lyons answered. “Just look back on all of those ambushes we’ve been through. We fight our way out. It’s what we do.”

“But sooner or later that string of luck is going to fail,” Price countered. She sounded worried, and Lyons knew that his bluster and bravado wouldn’t do anything to soothe her nerves. There were facts and knowledge, prior example, but there was also the knowledge that for all their talent and strength, the warriors of Stony Man Farm were still human, still fallible. Mistakes and a run of bad luck could be the end of any or all of the Stony Man warriors. Lyons had watched too many comrades fall, too many lovers in his life cut down by vengeful thugs.

“Luck isn’t a string. It’s a wave you ride. And in between the waves, a good surfer knows how to stay afloat and position himself for another swell,” Lyons added. “There’s so much more than just chance working for us.”

“Gadgets should be getting the telemetry necessary to home in on your shadows,” Price said. “And he and you were right. They’re waiting to ambush...at least ambush Perez and the kids if they leave.”

Lyons looked at his Combat PDA, which displayed the presence of three vans on a satellite view of the federal building. He tapped one of the van blips and could see heat sources from downward-looking infrared.

“They’re on the same channels...I think,” Price said. “Bear and Gadgets have the proper terminology of how these traces go. And those vans don’t look like they’re sitting waiting for rush hour to take advantage of the carpool lane.”

Lyons, phone tucked between his ear and shoulder, scanned the vans that had been marked as targets. Every one of them was loaded with men and all were huddling, ready to explode into action. Lyons had seen that kind of ready-to-roll-out tension before, back when he was on the LAPD and the FBI. He’d been on enough SWAT raids to understand that preparedness, to know the coiled energy waiting for an opportunity to burst. He’d felt that tension in his own bones, so he knew what he was looking at, even through a thermal camera in low orbit over Yuma, Arizona.

He put the PDA away. “We’ll take care of the vans. After all, there’s only one vanload for each of us. We’ve practically got them outnumbered.”

“Pride goes before the fall,” Price noted.

Lyons snorted. “But to really bowl ’em over, you need 12-gauge.”

Price managed a laugh and disconnected.

“You got it all in five minutes,” Lyons said to Schwarz. “You were yanking me on needing fifteen to do the job.”

Schwarz grinned. “What makes you think that?”

“Because you’re trying to impress me, inflating the haggling price so that when you finish in a third of the time, I’m surprised,” Lyons answered, giving Schwarz a gentle pop on the shoulder.

“Curses...foiled!” Schwarz answered. “We’re leaving Perez to snooze?”

Lyons nodded. “Saddle up, Pol. We got people to do and things to see.”

Blancanales held his tongue for the sake of the kids, at least until he bid them so long. Outside the safe room, the eldest member of Able Team was brought up to speed on the situation and layout of the ambushers.

“One per van?” Blancanales asked. “We hit them simultaneously. Are we looking for prisoners?”

“That would be a bonus, but considering that these creeps are looking to kidnap kids and murder more federal agents and local cops, I don’t see a lot of need to be gentle. Just leave enough for dental or fingerprint identification,” Lyons explained.

The three men went to a locker room that had been set aside for them. They’d left their gear bags within and now quickly went to work changing.

“What’s the plan, Ironman?” Schwarz asked. “I mean, beyond kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out?”

“We don’t want them to see us coming until it’s too late,” Lyons returned. “I’ll be a hiker.”

Lyons stripped out of his suit and pulled on a pair of cargo shorts. He laid and tucked his body armor, complete with trauma plates, over his bare, muscular torso, which he covered with a loose-fitting T-shirt. The cargo shorts were held up with a full two-inch belt. He clipped an inside-the-waistband holster and an outside pancake holster, for the snub-nosed and full-size Python Plus respectively, to that belt. The oversize T-shirt fell over the two weapons, disguising them against his waist.

He reconfigured his war bag into a hiking pack, throwing the carry loops over his shoulders. There was a sheath into which he could reach, drawing a compact, folding-stock version of the Mossberg 930 SPX. Compact wasn’t really a true term for it. The scattergun still had a full 24-inch barrel and an under-barrel tube magazine that held eight 3-inch Magnum shells or nine standard 12-gauge rounds. With the folded stock, however, it disappeared inside the backpack. Pulled out, the stock would snap instantly into place, braced against Lyons’s shoulder to control recoil and direct the fistfuls of pellets with deadly precision.

With an extra in the chamber, Lyons was happy with having ten hefty blasts of 00 Buck from regular 12-gauge shells. He also had sixteen rounds of .357 Magnum ready to go with just a quick draw. The semiautomatic Mossberg didn’t need to be pumped to lay out its payload of rage against a group of targets.

Schwarz shrugged into a windbreaker and sunglasses, but only after he put on a shoulder harness for a Brügger & Thomet MP-9 submachine gun. This, too, had a folding stock and condensed itself to the length of a standard handgun, yet had a shoulder stock and a vertical handgrip for the same kind of precision Lyons got out of his shotgun. With a 15-round flush-fitting magazine to start off the festivities and spare 30-round sticks, Schwarz wasn’t undergunned, either. Especially when it spat out 9 mm rounds at 900 in a minute.

“I’ll just be another Fed going out in an unmarked car,” Schwarz announced. “What about you, Pol?”

“Hate to say it, but I don’t think these guys are going to pay much attention to a Hispanic in coveralls with a tool chest,” Blancanales responded as he changed into his gear. “The toolbox is going to be a nice little knock-knock joke.”

With that, the Politician set a stand-alone M203 grenade launcher in the toolbox. He also had an MP-9 subgun, which tucked under his loose coveralls nicely. A name tag and a battered old ball cap rounded out to make him look like a maintenance man coming off duty or going to some other appointment.

“How do I look?” Blancanales asked.

“Like I should give you a tip so you can get your cousin to clean my pool,” Lyons grunted.

“Be careful, man. Someone might think you’re trying to be ironic and politically correct,” Schwarz chided.

“Perish the thought,” Lyons returned.

“He’ll get a little more than an hour of nap if we don’t wake him.” Blancanales motioned toward the safe room where the deputy marshal and the children were being kept under guard.

“Just as well. You saw how exhausted he was,” Lyons said. “We’re fresh, and we’re ready to give some payback.”

With that the Able Team trio split up to take their separate exits.

Phoenix Force had their opening shots in this war, but it was time for the Able Team warriors to make their entrance.

CHAPTER SIX

Under Nogales, Arizona, specifically under the icehouse utilized by the Caballeros de Durango Cartel, the five members of Phoenix Force were busy at various tasks.

Gary Manning checked out the systems of the smuggling tunnel, impressed with both the tunnel’s professional construction and with the powered cart-and-track combination that ferried goods across in bulk. Each cart could convey up to 250 kilograms on a pallet, and there were two sets of tracks, each with trains composed of four such cars. Both were on the Arizona side, docked in, as the train meant to travel down to Mexican Nogales was partially loaded. There were crates for rifles and other weaponry, as well as stacks of ammunition for those weapons in the process of being loaded. The attack by Phoenix Force had interrupted the shipment.

The crates were being examined by McCarter and Encizo, each assessing the types of armaments destined for warfare to the south of the border. Judging by the small arms and ammunition amounts involved, some form of security force was being reequipped. Lack of rocket launchers or other antiarmor weaponry indicated this shipment wasn’t going to a guerrilla force somewhere in the vicinity of Central America or the northern part of South America, where FARC and similar antigovernment troops needed that kind of firepower to take on military forces. This gear looked like the stuff necessary to give a small paramilitary force the edge it needed to overwhelm and slaughter police officers in the streets of a major Mexican metropolis or to even the odds against a rival cartel.

Encizo confirmed it with a shipment of knockoffs of their MP-7 submachine guns. A close examination and he could tell that these weapons were built in the People’s Republic of China, which also produced an unauthorized copy of the SIG Sauer P228. That knockoff ended up as the sidearm of many a clandestine operation for both sides of the Bamboo Curtain. Encizo looked carefully at the ammunition.

“These look like just the right kind of hardware for an executive protection team,” the Cuban said.

McCarter nodded. “Or some blokes who might want to go through a temporarily powered-down metal detector.”

Encizo frowned. He’d heard plenty of stories of the audacity of Mexican cartels, but the Durango faction and their caballeros had earned their notoriety from walking through seemingly airtight security to make their kills. “Well, it’d be a shame to let them fall into the wrong hands.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep a nice stash of spares handy,” McCarter said. “Gary can booby-trap the rest.”

“No traps,” Manning countered. “Just need to make certain they’re unusable. Remember, the police are going to be here.”

“Right, I forgot,” McCarter said. “The last thing we need to do is hurt the blokes who are on our side.”

Calvin James and T. J. Hawkins returned from their reconnaissance sortie down the tunnel, both men moving swiftly.

“We got within a hundred feet of the other end and heard activity ramp up,” James reported. “No cameras sighted us, but T.J. was watching a scanner and the airwaves were busy down there.”

“They know that this side of the border has been compromised,” Hawkins added.

“And they’re counting down to their side being hit. Through the tunnel.”

“That explains the lack of rockets or grenades,” Manning mused. “They didn’t want us to roll a cart down to that end with sufficient explosives to take out a mob of defenders.”

McCarter looked around.

“What are you thinking, David?” Encizo asked.

McCarter looked at the carts and their supplies. “Barb said she would contact me if the Nogales authorities were coming. I’m going to call them and make certain that things are still quiet. In the meantime, bring down kilos of coke.”

Encizo grinned. “We going to have a Hollywood party?”

“No, but the air will be thick with booger sugar on the other end,” McCarter said. “Can you make charges that can disperse it in a large cloud?”

“Give me ten minutes,” Manning answered. “How high do you want them and how far away?”

“Blurred to the gills,” McCarter ordered. “And as large a cloud as we can assemble. Just don’t have all of Nogales get hooked on cocaine.”

Manning nodded and then he, Hawkins and Encizo, the three strongest members of the team, went back into the icehouse for the supplies for McCarter’s plan.

“Cal, you’re with me. We’re going to see if the caballeros have any wheels for what we need,” McCarter instructed.

The lanky team medic nodded but paused to pick up bags of ammunition and spare magazines. “Why make one extra trip? Besides, we might need some of this free ammo.”

McCarter smirked. “Good idea.”

The Phoenix commander also grabbed some of the contraband munitions in a pair of bags. Together, the Stony Man warriors climbed into the icehouse. As they moved toward the warehouse parking lot, they saw Manning carrying an oxygen tank. Neither of them had to doubt the purpose of that huge metal bottle. McCarter wanted to produce a wide-spreading cloud, and the oxygen inside the tank was under tremendous pressure. A good charge of explosives would crack the bottle and the ensuing burst of the tank would be catastrophic.

Just the sort of element that a David McCarter plan usually hinged upon.

“What are we looking for?” James asked.

“At least a Ford F-350,” McCarter said. “Enough room for all of us in the cab, plus the horsepower to help us ram through the fence. If possible, something a bit smaller to help flanking maneuvers and avoid bunching all of us together in a fight or chase.”

James indicated that he understood with a curt nod and split from McCarter.

The British commando found the burly pickup he sought, little doubt that he would as Arizona and off-road-capable working trucks went hand in hand. He muttered over the throat mike to James, “It’s not shiny or new, but neither is it a rusted-out hulk. It should hold together, even under enemy fire.”

“They do tend to be good at busting down blockades,” James returned.

McCarter circled the truck before climbing inside. It had seen months since its last washing, but opening the door and hot wiring it showed that it had a full tank, a good battery, and its massive V-8 engine had a healthy roar.

Across the lot, he heard James start the car he’d found.

James spoke over the com set. “Got a Toyota RAV 4, not really a load-hauling engine of business, but it’s off-road capable. More of a SUV than the pickup you chose. Both vehicles can hold the full complement of the team, as well as weapons and other gear.”

McCarter grunted in response. “The brute Ford will be first through the border fence and the Toyota would use its maneuverability to back it up. That way, we can flank and fake them out.”

They parked the two side-by-side at the icehouse’s loading dock door.

By the time they had gotten out, Encizo and Hawkins were there with more sacks full of loot and seized equipment.

“We’re taking two trucks?” Encizo asked. He put his gear into the back of the Toyota.

“Two is one and one is none,” Hawkins interjected. “Always good to have an extra.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Encizo answered.

“I also intend to have you be Cal’s gunner, just in case,” McCarter told Encizo. “T.J., you’ll be with me and Gary. Fit your carbine with a grenade launcher.”

Hawkins gave an understated salute to the commander and left to retrieve his stubby assault rifle.

McCarter then connected with the Farm. It was time to find out what Kurtzman’s cyber wizards had picked up as a response to Phoenix Force’s incursion into Mexico.

“Price, here,” the Stony Man mission controller answered. “I take it you saw the response waiting for you in Nogales.”

McCarter grinned. “We know there is some. And they’re ready for us to come through. I’d like specifics.”

“I’m having Bear send satellite infrared and radar to your PDAs,” Price told him. “You doing a direct border breach?”

“Like my countrymen sang back in the ‘80s, ‘it’s so fun being an illegal alien,’” McCarter answered.

“The lyrics were ‘it’s no fun,’” Price corrected.

McCarter’s smirk deepened. “Well, they play their tunes, I’ll play mine. The boys and I are going to ambush our ambushers. No chance that our border people will accidentally stumble into it?”

“The Caballeros Cartel seems to have cleared everything on its side of the fence, as we’ve done for you. This isn’t a smuggling tunnel. It’s an arena,” Price explained. “You’re supposed to be the Christians and they are the lions.”

“We’ve sold our cloaks for swords in that event,” McCarter said. “Granted, they’re in 4.6 mm, 5.56 mm and 7.62 mm, but they are swords.”

“I’d prefer you had some 40 mm,” Price returned.

“Cal and T.J. are fitting their M203s,” McCarter told her. “No grenades to replenish the supplies on the Arizona side, but we’ll see what we can scavenge over there.”

“In that case, happy hunting,” Price concluded.

McCarter could tell that Barbara Price wasn’t excited about the means by which Phoenix Force intended to circumvent the cartel’s ambush. The plan was going to involve a lot of explosions and a ton of gunfire.

Even so, this was the bed the Caballeros de Durango had made for itself. McCarter, anticipating the possibility, had had Blancanales, Encizo and Hawkins, using Arizona and Texas Spanish accents, record messages while on the plane. The plan was simple. If the cartel and Accion Obrar hoped to make Stony Man look bad with a front-page splash of violence and terrorism on the border, the agency would throw up a smoke screen. The three Spanish-fluent Stony Man commandos would be portrayed as reconquistas: radical Mexican insurgents who wanted the southern border states added to their own.

“We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us!” and “¡Viva la raza!” peppered the recordings. There was also condemnation of the criminally complacent Mexican government and law enforcement.

It was a simple ruse, but intricate enough to obfuscate the presence of the American covert agency in this mission. Just as the packets of cocaine and the oxygen bottle would provide a blinding haze, so would the messages to news agencies. The press, however, would receive their high from the juicy weight of the incident.

* * *

HUNDREDS OF MILES AWAY, on the streets of Yuma, Arizona, Rosario Blancanales maneuvered into position with his toolbox full of warfare. The earbud, hands-free communicator he wore was invisible, and even if it were noticed, his salt-and-pepper hair was light enough to allow him to get away with appearing to need a hearing aid.

The real concern he had was that he’d betray the presence of the arsenal under the loose folds of his coveralls, but so far, no one had noticed. Arizona was a state that allowed for open carry, but a shoulder-holstered submachine gun, a full-auto converted Para-Ordnance P14 “FrankenColt Mark II” and a grenade launcher would stretch the limits of even the state’s relatively lax gun laws.

He found the van and confirmed that it was his target. Part of his disarming appearance, aside from the work clothes and toolbox, was the bag lunch he’d brought with him. Blancanales took a spot on a bench, set the red metal case beside him and pulled out a sandwich and a bottle of cola. A bag of chips to complete the lunch-break illusion, and he was armed to the teeth, yet invisible in plain sight.

Blancanales waited for his partners to set up on their targets.

“Ready.” Lyons’s voice crackled in his ear.

“In position,” Schwarz confirmed.

Blancanales set down his lunch and opened the big red toolbox. Inside, he had his stand-alone M203. He kept the grenade launcher hidden until he thumbed a buckshot round into the breech of the mighty weapon. The 40 mm barrel was twice the diameter of even the heaviest over-the-counter shotguns. That doubling of bore meant that the buckshot “grenade” held eight times the payload of a 12-gauge shell, turning the launcher into a brutal antipersonnel device. He closed the breech then swung it out of the toolbox, aiming at the driver’s-side door of the van and firing.

The range was fifty feet, which gave the swarm of projectiles Blancanales triggered the room to spread out to a four-foot-diameter circle. Each pellet, a third of an inch in span, perforated sheet metal and glass. The driver of the van and his steering column were ravaged brutally, bearings finding flesh, bone, plastic and wiring equally fragile. With a single blast, the Able Team warrior had eliminated the ambusher’s ability to escape the counterattack.

With smooth, practiced precision, Blancanales ejected the empty shell and pushed a second one home, aiming toward the rear of the van. Its back doors started to swing open, which confirmed that there were gunmen bunched up and ready to burst out onto the street.

The same sheet metal that provided so little protection for the driver buckled under the onslaught of another four-foot-wide swarm. The buckshot might not have had enough energy to punch through the skin of the van and an entire human body, but the second salvo of flying copper and lead meant that corpses tumbled out onto the street, not active, angry shooters.

The double burst of doom provided more than sufficient staggering horror to keep the gunners still inside the van stunned and indecisive as Blancanales put the grenade launcher back in its box and ripped his MP-9 from its harness. The shoulder stock clicked into place and Blancanales moved forward, selector on full-auto.

One of the enemy decided valor was the better part of discretion and leaped from the rear doors, weapon in hand. Before he could land, Blancanales tracked him and ripped off a burst of four 9 mm slugs. All four rounds were on target and instead of landing on his feet like a hero, the charging assassin toppled and crashed into a bloodied mess on the asphalt.

Cries in Spanish and English rattled from inside the van. Blancanales heard the jangle and roll of a side panel on the opposite side of the vehicle. Those unhurt, or at least able to beat a retreat, had decided to keep the bulk of the van between them and whatever avenging force was bearing down upon them.

However, sheet metal was as ineffective against a 9 mm submachine gun as it was to the 40 mm buckshot payload. Blancanales knew where the side door on the van would be; he aimed at the right spot and triggered two more short bursts. Slugs chopped into the thin skin of the van and a cry of agony split the air. To say that Blancanales felt bad about literally shooting fish in a barrel would be a lie.

These men were stationed, watching a federal building, and in wait to attack and either kidnap or kill a US deputy marshal and three terrified children.

No, mercy was not in the cards for these armed thugs, and as Blancanales swung around the rear of the van, keeping his eyes on the open doors, he was primed to continue blazing out 9 mm retribution as long as someone was there with a gun in his hand.

Cutting the pie to not expose himself to enemy fire, he spotted another cartel soldier standing in the rear doors. He was splattered in wet pink clothing, white shirt and linen jacket soaked through to the skin where his partners had bled all over him. He still had a rifle in both hands and the sight of Blancanales startled him.

Blancanales, on the other hand, had expected someone to be there and he stroked the trigger on the MP-9. At 900 rounds per minute, he emptied the last of the 15-round magazine into the blood-drenched ambusher. Blancanales destroyed his face and upper chest with that extended burst. In a heartbeat, he ejected the spent box and pushed home a fresh stack of thirty 9 mm slugs.

The last man in the van, the last living body at least, was huddled behind the driver’s seat, hands up and fingers splayed wide. “I’m not armed! Don’t shoot!”

Blancanales kept the muzzle of the machine pistol leveled at the man, but scanned the area. There could be one more gunman, possibly crouched around the front of the vehicle. This guy might be a legitimate surrender, or he could simply be a distraction. Either way, Blancanales refused to lock into tunnel vision on him.

In the distance the heavy booms of a shotgun and another machine pistol crackled in the midafternoon streets of Yuma.

“Step out of the van through the panel door,” Blancanales ordered. He listened for other signs of a possible hidden gunman. He had a prisoner, at least for the moment, but one mistake and his brains could be spilled on the street with the would-be killers he’d just dispatched.

The prisoner followed Blancanales’s instructions.

“Lay down on your stomach and lace your fingers behind your head,” Blancanales barked. He wanted this man as far out of position to start a fight as possible. The guy, obviously in a mood to survive this encounter, did as he was told. He intertwined his fingers and lay down, eyes shut. His breath came in rapid gulps, anxiety too real to be faked.

“Anyone else get away?” Blancanales asked.

“Yeah,” the man lying on the sidewalk answered. “He ran—”

Toward the front of the van, the veteran Able Team warrior concluded as a shadow flickered in the windshield of the vehicle, disappearing around the corner. There were no abandoned weapons on the sidewalk, so there was a good chance that the escaped ambusher was packing some serious firepower. Judging from what he’d seen in the hands of the dead sprawled in the back of the van, they had submachine guns, too.

Blancanales dropped to a kneeling position, making himself a smaller target as footsteps sounded on the asphalt on the other side of the van. The gunman intended to flank him, but the wily veteran was ready, front sight on the spot where a head would appear.

The cartel gunman burst into view, firing from the hip. That stream of bullets would have torn through Blancanales’s face had he remained standing, but instead, slugs merely sparked against a stone wall and lost their energy. Deformed bullets tinkled to the concrete like metallic turds.

In the meantime Blancanales fired from the shoulder, controlling his trigger pull and maintaining his front sight on his target.

The last violent ambusher died as Blancanales shredded him from crotch to throat with two tribursts of autofire in quick succession. Groin, spine and heart were all defiled by the brutal swathe of 9 mm rounds Blancanales threw at them, and with that, in the space of a few moments, the gunfight was over.

He looked to the man on the sidewalk.

“Stay right there. Make a move and you’ll be in hell before you untangle your fingers,” Blancanales warned him.

“Yes, sir.”

Blancanales wasted little time securing his wrists with a nylon cable tie.

“Carl, we’ve got our prisoner,” Blancanales said over the com.

“Good,” Lyons returned. “Because nothing’s left of my target.”

Blancanales could tell by the gruff tone of his partner’s voice that he’d found something particularly nasty in his attack.

Whatever it was, it was too important to broadcast even over the secure communication frequencies Able Team used in the field.

And if Lyons was worried, then Blancanales was in a hurry to know why.

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