“THIS IS A SURPRISE, NUNG,” BROGNOLA SAID

“I am here to do you a favor,” the man said.

“Really?” Brognola was not going to insult the man’s intelligence by claiming to be a minor functionary in the Justice Department.

“Your team did exceptionally well in Caracas.”

“I see,” Brognola said. It was surprising that Nung had so readily admitted to Chinese involvement.

“The world is a very complicated place, Mr. Brognola. It is my job to help guide my country through treacherous political waters. I understand well that you and I share similar vocations which often put us on different sides of the same issue.”

“But not in this case?”

“My superiors do not believe that a second attack of the magnitude of 9/11 would be advantageous to our relationship. A shift toward more conservative political thought by your nation could only serve to strain our national interactions.”

Brognola felt a cold chill surge through his body. “You have knowledge of a planned attack on the American homeland?”

High Assault
Don Pendleton’s

Stony Man®

America’s Ultra-Covert Intelligence Agency

www.mirabooks.co.uk

HIGH ASSAULT

CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER ONE

October 25, 2007—Beirut, Lebanon

The massive Lockheed L-100 cargo plane circled above the night-shrouded landscape with the relentless patience of a vulture, its four heavy Allison T56-A-15 turboprop engines droning steadily.

From within the civilian version of the C-130E Hercules, Brigadier General Abdul-Ali Najafi watched the operation unfolding below him with the detached scrutiny of the consummate puppet master. Inside the insulated interior cabin, he reclined in an expensive leather wingback chair purchased at Nigel’s of London. In front of him rose a stack of HD television monitors fed from glasses-mounted, POV digital cameras that routed their signal through a booster unit in the ground-operations vehicle.

The images flickering on the screen were chaotic and jumbled as the strike team conducted its mission preparations. Najafi glimpsed the barrels of folding-stock Kalashnikovs, the dashboard of the big black Suburban SUV the hit squad was operating from and the masked faces of the unit. Through the windshield Najafi could just make out the urban residential street along which the target passed each day from work to home.

Najafi leaned forward and hit a key on his laptop. He spoke into the microphone. “Adjust focus,” he ordered.

The gunner wearing the headset lifted a hand encased in a black Lycra driver’s glove from the pistol grip of his weapon, and the image on the screen shifted as he worked the attachment. The resolution on the display screen sharpened.

“Very good,” Najafi said and leaned back into his chair.

From behind him he heard the door to the Lockheed’s tactical operation center open. Najafi knew without checking that it was his executive officer, Colonel Ayub. Ayub had come up through the regular Iranian army, but through family connections on the Revolutionary Council he had managed to secure the coveted posting as Najafi’s assistant.

“Do you have it?” Najafi demanded.

“Yes,” Ayub answered.

Najafi held up his hand, gesturing toward a clear spot on the table in front of him. His nails were manicured, and a gold Rolex Diplomat luxury watch was fitted onto a slender wrist. There was a heavy band of white gold on his ring finger, along with a silver-and-platinum signet ring on his index finger.

“Put it there,” he ordered.

Ayub stepped forward away from the TOC’s central door and around the dentist’s chair secured incongruously in the middle of the control room. He lifted a Schlesinger leather attaché case and set it down. The valise cost a thousand dollars, which Colonel Ayub knew because he had purchased both the case and the item it held on a recent shopping excursion in Tbilisi, Georgia, while doing business with certain Russian bankers in that city.

Beneath his dusky complexion Ayub paled as he looked at the screens. His eyes slid from the monitors to the wingback chair then back to the attaché case before coming to rest on the HD monitors again. His tongue flickered out to moisten his lips under a thin mustache. He released the handle of the case and stepped back.

On the screen there was a sudden flurry of motion. The team leader’s arm came up and pointed across his body out the passenger window. The man barked a command into his microphone that was clearly audible through the TOC’s sound system. Like dominoes falling in succession, the pictures on the screens of the monitor array flickered to life as one by one the other team members initiated their cameras.

“Now we’re moving,” Najafi murmured.

The commander drew a slim white cylinder of a fashionable Turkish cigarette from an open pack in his shirt pocket. Ayub responded without thinking, removing the lighter and stepping forward to light the cigarette as Najafi inclined his head.

Gray smoke billowed up in front of the screens. On the monitors, balaclava hoods were pulled into place, turning the hard-eyed killers into anonymous androids. The interior of the vehicle seemed filled with the muzzles of weapons.

Colonel Ayub let his breath out in a slow, controlled hiss and prayed Najafi couldn’t hear.

MICHAEL SULEIMAN looked out at the passing street through the bulletproof glass of his limousine’s rear windows. He watched, lost in thought, as the tall buildings of Beirut’s business district gave way to more residential neighborhoods as they drove up toward the hills east of the city.

In the car beside him, his wife, Suha, read from a children’s book to his four-year-old daughter, Taraneh. The little girl had her mother’s dark brown eyes and smooth olive complexion, as well as her keen intelligence. Michael Suleiman was always amazed by Suha’s insights, even after fifteen years of marriage. In his private moments he doubted seriously if he could have risen to power so smoothly in the Kataeb Party without her support.

His eyes slid past the scars of war left over from the violence of civil unrest dating as far back as the 1980s, despite the reconstruction efforts of more recent years. What his eyes couldn’t ignore were the piles of rubble left over from the sectarian violence following the 2006 incursion by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Unconsciously, Suleiman frowned at the thought. Despite international pledges to the contrary, that cross-border assault had only strengthened the hand of Iran in Lebanon, through their proxy puppets—Hezbollah.

In parliament, Suleiman had been using all the leverage he could muster to fight that Iranian influence in his homeland. It was this bitter opposition that had, in no small part, resulted in his newfound need for armed bodyguards.

Four soldiers armed with M-4 carbines drove a scout vehicle ahead of his limo, and even now one of the American-trained protection specialists rode with him, sitting next to his seven-year-old son, Ephraim, listening patiently as the young boy explained the intricacies of whatever new game he was playing on his handheld game system.

The bodyguard smiled indulgently over the boy’s head as his eyes met Suleiman’s. He looked like a favorite uncle indulging his nephew. Suleiman saw how earnest the boy, a spitting image of himself, was in the explanation and felt an answering grin tugging at his lips. Then the bodyguard’s jacket shifted, exposing the handle of the man’s machine pistol, and Suleiman’s smile faded. He looked away and out through the black-tinted glass of his window and sighed. One day, God willing, his country would be free of the influence of Iran. It was a mission to which he had dedicated himself tirelessly.

He’d be happier once they were safely home.

NAJAFI LEANED FORWARD, drawing deeply on his cigarette, his eyes narrowing as he watched the screen. The white Ford Excursion carrying Suleiman’s bodyguards drove past the mouth of his team’s ambush street, followed seconds later by the black stretch limo.

The team leader slapped the dashboard, and the SUV gunned forward as the vehicle operator responded to the command. The big automobile shot out of the side street and pulled in behind the cruising limo. The death squad began babbling excitedly, the words coming too hard and fast to differentiate over the microphone pickups. From behind the squad leader came the unmistakable staccato rhythm of a Kalashnikov on fully automatic.

Inside the confined space of the TOC, Ayub could feel his commander’s excitement. It rose from the man like heat or static electricity. The head of Iran’s elite Special Republican Guard loved the visceral thrill of his work.

On the screen Najafi watched as, ahead of the limousine, Suleiman’s scout vehicle swerved into the opposite lane in response to the first burst of gunfire. The interception had been designed to take place on the tight switchbacks leading into the residential hills above Beirut—making it easier to box in the target vehicles. The protective agents were falling neatly into Najafi’s trap.

The modified sunroof of the lead SUV slid back and a gunner armed with an American M-4 carbine popped out of the opening. The SUV slowed as the stretch limo sped up, making it easier for them to try to change places.

“Now!” Najafi snarled into his microphone pickup.

Suleiman’s bodyguard shouldered up his carbine and triggered a tight burst. On the HD monitor Najafi and Ayub watched the rounds spark off the reinforced glass of the hit squad’s vehicle. Ahead on the road a tight switchback suddenly appeared. The bodyguard SUV’s brake lights flashed red and the limo driver gunned it even harder.

“Yes,” Najafi whispered as if breathing into the ear of a lover.

On the screen, the multi-POV camera angles simultaneously revealed the sudden appearance of the garbage truck on the narrow road. The tail ends of both target vehicles suddenly fishtailed as their drivers slammed on their brakes. The garbage truck slowed considerably and swerved to the right, nose pointed toward the downhill side of the road.

The bodyguard SUV slammed into the back half of the garbage truck, its front end collapsing with a shriek of metal clearly audible over the repeated bursts of the gunfire pouring from the Hezbollah vehicle. The bodyguard firing from the sunroof was jerked forward like a rag doll, his weapon spinning away like a pinwheel as he was flung into the unforgiving steel of the massive garbage truck. His body seemed to explode with spraying blood as he was smashed to a pulp.

The front end of the limo slid forward at the end of a desperate skid and rammed into the garbage truck’s immense bumper. The limo’s hood crumpled, and the big V-12 engine block was shoved backward into the front passenger compartment, splitting the reinforced glass of the windshield. The spilled engine fluids caught fire and began to burn.

On the HD screen the garbage truck’s passenger door was kicked open. The assassin’s folding stock AKMS poured a hailstorm of heavy lead down on the crumpled limo, the muzzle-flash spitting star-pattern bursts of flame as the weapon bucked and kicked in the Hezbollah gunner’s hands.

The rounds slammed into the SUV’s already compromised windshield at point-blank range, punching divots and gouges and spiderwebbing the safety glass until it began to come apart completely. The black Suburban SUV holding the Hezbollah hit squad drove straight up into the pile, smashing bumpers with Suleiman’s limo and pinning it into place inside the killbox.

The Hezbollah hitters bailed out of their vehicles, spraying 7.62 mm rounds at the bodyguard vehicle. From that range, and under the terrific onslaught, glass was pulverized and metal riddled. On the TOC screens Ayub could clearly see the dark silhouettes of the trapped bodyguards dance and jerk.

On the screen, the team leader peeled off from the main group. A second and then a third Hezbollah foot soldier followed closely as they headed for the trapped and burning limo in a classic fire team configuration. The stretch limo’s driver door flew open and a Lebanese army commando in a dark suit and armed with an MP-5K emerged.

He was met with a merciless wall of lead as the team leader and flank gunners unleashed their Kalashnikovs. The HD monitors in the Lockheed’s TOC showed the carnage in startling clarity. Najafi ground out one cigarette as he watched the bodyguard come apart, dropping hard to his knees, his jaw going slack as the big bullets knifed through his body armor to scramble his organs. Then his head disappeared in a spray of pink and scarlet, and the brigadier general pulled another cigarette from his pack.

With the reactions of a trained sycophant, Ayub was there to light it. There were dark stains on his silk shirt under his armpits and his forehead was beaded with sweat. Najafi’s eyes danced from one monitor screen to the other, not wanting to miss one second of the grotesque action.

On the screen, the Hezbollah team leader gestured with the muzzle of his AKMS, and one of his fire team ran forward to cover the open limo door, his boots splashing through the dead bodyguard’s blood like a child stomping in a puddle. The leader spun and his hand appeared in his POV shot, pointing at the rear door, then making a slashing motion.

“Now we’re on it,” Najafi said, his voice almost a giggle. “Let this Lebanese Christian learn what it means to displease the servants of the Revolutionary Council.”

Ayub muttered something appropriate as he watched, mesmerized, as the Hezbollah team’s explosives engineer sprang into action. The man let his AKMS hang from its cross-body sling as he pulled an industrial appliance from a thigh pouch on his web gear. The device looked almost identical to a home construction caulking gun.

The Hezbollah gunner ran forward, the caulking gun up in his gloved fists under the cover of the team leader and secondary gunner. Behind them the remaining hitters had pushed right up onto the wreckage of the bodyguard SUV and were spraying the vehicle’s interior with excessive enthusiasm. Two of the gunners peeled off and came over to take up overwatch positions as the explosives trooper prepped the egress point.

The gunman, a powerfully built fireplug of a man, raced up to the rear passenger door of the limo and brought up his applicator. He squeezed the lever against the pistol-grip handle and instantly a Semtex-based foam shot out of the slit-tipped nozzle and stuck to the vehicle in inch-thick strips.

With smooth, practiced motions he outlined the plastique foam around the edges of the door where they met the vehicle frame. Once he had outlined the structure he pulled a thin timing pencil from his black fatigue shirt and hit the plunger on the top to start the five-second countdown.

He inserted the initiator charge in the explosives molding and sprang back, turning his head to the side as the rest of the team fanned out to give the breaching charge room to detonate.

In the C-130, Najafi gripped the edge of the table hard enough to turn his knuckles white. The bright cherry on the end of his cigarette flared like an airstrip beacon as he drew on it, and his eyes fairly bulged from their sockets as he soaked in every aspect of the pregnant seconds before the charge went off.

The crack of the explosive detonating was sharp enough to hurt Ayub’s ears through the speaker pickups. The blinding flash of light was followed immediately by a billowing cloud of gray-white smoke. The car door shot straight off the frame and sailed outward ten feet like a cork from a champagne bottle.

The bodyguard inside the rear compartment of the limo came out immediately, his MP-5K up in both hands and blazing. The 9 mm rounds tore the face off the secondary gunner and spread his brains and skull across his team leader. Blood and clumps of flesh struck the POV camera and smeared the lens, obscuring the leader’s feed.

The bodyguard landed on the road and went to one knee, swinging the compact subgun around. From half a dozen directions AKMS assault rifles opened up in a brutal symphony. The bodyguard came apart like a grenade exploding and his submachine was shattered as his hands were torn from his wrists.

“Wipe your camera! Wipe your camera!” Najafi screamed at the leader.

Ayub didn’t know why Najafi was so excited as the feed from six other cameras showed the scene well enough. On the leader’s screen the Hezbollah assassin followed the frantic order of the brigadier general and wiped his screen clear. Smoke was billowing around them as the hit squad collapsed on the breach point into the target vehicle.

Ayub’s eyes flickered to the tactical display clock on the wall next to the bank of television screens. Fifty-eight seconds had passed since the initiation of the ambush. The Hezbollah attackers were performing ahead of schedule.

What happened next was ugly.

The big, rough men came out of the car with Michael Suleiman between them. He tried to struggle and they pounded him brutally with fists until he was battered and dazed. The team leader struck him once in the face with the smoking muzzle of his AKMS, tearing the Lebanese politician’s nose as the kidnappers dropped him to the ground. One of the men came down with a knee on Suleiman’s back, causing the parliamentary leader to scream out in pain.

As a plastic zip tie was tightened around Suleiman’s wrists, the man’s seven-year-old son came charging out of the ruined vehicle to protect his father. Ephraim Suleiman’s young face was twisted in anger, and tears formed tracks down his cheeks as he sprang on the closest Hezbollah killer.

The Iranian-trained terrorist backhanded the boy and the child went tumbling backward. The explosives trooper stepped into the foreground and brought up his AKMS.

CHAPTER TWO

Suleiman screamed in protest, but his cry was cut off by the banging clatter of the Kalashnikov on full auto. The boy’s body came apart in chunks of flesh and gouts of blood and most of him ended up spread across the rear bumper and trunk of the limo.

There was a scream so shrill and frantic it cut through the roar of the weapons, and the Hezbollah team leader’s camera snapped back toward the breach point on the limo. Suha Suleiman, looking disheveled and battered, clawed her way out of the swirling smoke inside the limo passenger compartment. Behind her the shell-shocked face of her daughter, Taraneh, stared out blankly.

Suha screeched again as she saw the pitiful pile that was all that remained of her son. She opened her mouth and her beautiful face twisted into a mask of hurt and confusion in marked contrast to the tiny mirror image at her side, who simply stared at the trussed-up image of her father on the road.

“Finish it,” Najafi said into the microphone, and this time his voice was a giggle.

No one on the team hesitated. The terrorists turned their weapons on the wife and daughter of a known Israeli sympathizer. They fired. Michael Suleiman screamed. Green tracer rounds knifed through the roiling smoke. Colonel Ayub felt his heart lurch so painfully in his chest he thought he’d torn it. The woman and girl were punched backward into the vehicle. Suleiman screamed again, but it was only the beginning of the screaming he would do this day.

Brigadier General Najafi moved his finger over and hit the button on the intercom system for the plane, putting him instantly in touch with the pilots of the C-130.

“The package is acquired,” he said. “Put the plane down.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot answered.

Behind Najafi, Colonel Ayub found his eyes once again drawn to the expensive attaché sitting on the table next to his commander. He thought about what it held. He closed his eyes.

The plane made its descending approach.

THE BIG CARGO PLANE landed on an improved runway controlled by a pro-Iranian Shiite militia. The pilot deftly leveled out and brought the massive bird down on the mile-long runway. As soon as the wheels hit the tarmac the load master in the cavernous bay initiated the cargo-acquisition procedures and the ramp began to lower even as the plane continued to taxi down the runway.

The Hezbollah hit team’s Toyota Sequoia raced out from between two hangars and onto the runway. The ramp lowered into position just a few short inches above the pavement and the SUV, with Michael Suleiman trussed up inside, ran up on the platform.

The vehicle driver gunned the Sequoia up onto the platform and drove it straight into the cargo bay of the lumbering C-130, which was large enough to hold five more just like it. Once the SUV was inside, the load master alerted the pilot and began closing the ramp. Instantly the cargo plane’s mammoth Allison Turbine engines changed pitch and began racing.

Instead of holding down the speed the pilot applied full throttle, and almost immediately the blunt nose of the airplane began to lift. Inside the cargo hold the snatch team waited for takeoff and watched the load master, now in a jump chair, for the all clear to exit their vehicles.

Inside the TOC both Najafi and Ayub surveyed the hold through a video feed, Najafi calmly smoking while his subordinate stood mute and sweating.

Engines screaming, the C-130 completed its stump-and-jump running landing and left Lebanese soil, heading out to the west toward the sparkling blue waters of the Mediterranean Ocean.

As the plane began a smooth ascent, the load master nodded to the Hezbollah agents in the Sequoia. They sprang into action as Najafi came out and stood on the scaffolding leading up to the TOC’s door. Ayub remained in the chamber, studiously avoiding looking at either the attaché case or the dentist chair. It took a considerable amount of willpower.

Outside the door he heard Najafi taunt the prisoner.

“Ah, Michael, so good to see you again,” Najafi said. He looked imperiously down from his perch at the top of the scaffolding. In his mind he was Xerxes surveying the beating of an insolent slave at the hands of his Immortals. The Hezbollah thugs jerked the Lebanese parliamentary member from the back of the SUV. His face was purple and black and swollen. Bloody drool hung in ropes from split lips, and he looked up at Najafi with the dull eyes of a wounded animal.

He tried to speak as he was carried up the steps by the masked gunmen but could only manage to gag. His hands and feet had been secured behind him with white plastic zip ties and his business suit had been torn and splattered with blood. He could only manage mewling sounds as he was shoved through the TOC’s door and thrown roughly into the dentist’s chair.

While the Hezbollah gunners cut the man loose from his restraints and then locked him into the chair, Najafi fitted his impeccable suit jacket on a hanger, then hung that from a hook on the wall. He maintained a calm, playful manner as he donned a blue apron and a pair of black rubber gloves.

“I know we’ve had our difference, Michael,” he purred. “That whole public denouncement of my diplomatic mission as nothing more than a political destabilization operation by Ansar-al-Mahdi was, in particular, quite hurtful—conveyed as it was on your parliamentary floor, in front of television cameras.”

Behind the men, Colonel Ayub took an unconscious step backward as Najafi donned a cotton surgical mask and a pair of clear plastic safety glasses. He came up hard against the cold metal wall of the TOC. He could feel the vibration of the plane through the wall as it climbed toward a thirty-thousand-foot ceiling. The Hezbollah agents were inscrutable observers behind their masks, their weapons still reeking of cordite from their recent use.

“Despite that…unpleasantness,” Najafi continued, “I was so sorry to hear about the loss of your family, Michael. These are unfortunate times. The Koran tells us to turn to Allah and the words of the Prophet in times of trouble.” Najafi stopped, regarded the battered Lebanese secured to the chair in front of him. “But you don’t follow the teachings of the Koran, do you, Michael? You worship this Jesus Christ, like some American lapdog.”

“You murdered my family!” Suleiman screamed. “Killer! You disgusting animal!”

The bruised man pushed up against his restraints, disfigured face twisted into rage. His eyes, almost swollen shut, blazed with hate and anger until they were bright points of light. Bloody spittle flew from split lips over broken teeth, and the veins of his neck stood out in sharp relief, like rivers.

Najafi ignored the outburst. He calmly walked over to his attaché case where it sat on the table and undid the gold relief clasps. The springs were tight and the snap of their release was clearly audible despite Michael Suleiman’s inarticulate screaming. Suleiman’s snarls turned to choking gags behind Najafi and, up against the wall, Colonel Ayub closed his eyes.

Najafi reached into his expensive leather attaché case. The Bosch eighteen-volt high-torque impact wrench was a cordless power drill. Michael Suleiman fell silent as Najafi turned around with the 9.5-inch device in his hands. The power tool was blue with the trigger and brand name printed in a brilliant red. The flat battery pack was secured to the bottom of the drill’s pistol grip like a magazine in a handgun. The drill bit was itself five inches long, grooved like a rifle barrel and colored a dull graphite-gray that seemed to absorb light.

Grinning, Najafi depressed the trigger. The 2.4 Ah batteries surged power at 1,900 RPM, generating 350 foot pounds of torque as specially designed cooling rods absorbed the heat generated by use.

“What could you possibly want from me?” Suleiman begged. “What could I possibly know?”

Najafi released the trigger and watched the drill spin down. His sneer was spread across his face as he called over his shoulder to the visibly pale Ayub. “Why do they always think it’s about information?”

Chuckling to himself, Najafi turned back toward the helpless Suleiman. “Michael, I already know everything I need to know. There are no secrets in Beirut I do not already possess.”

Najafi stepped forward and touched the hard metal of the drill against Suleiman’s left leg. The power tool rested on his vastus medialis, the teardrop-shaped muscle of the quadriceps located next to the kneecap. His gloved finger rested lightly on the red trigger of the cordless drill.

“Then why?” Suleiman asked, his voice a moan. “Just kill me. You murdered my family. I’ve suffered enough.”

“I say when you’ve suffered enough!” Najafi suddenly screamed. His face was a grossly animated mask of anger.

The drill screamed as the leader of Ansar-al-Mahdi pulled the trigger and pushed downward. The powerful industrial drill bit easily into Michael Suleiman’s flesh, burning through skin and tearing into muscle fiber as if they were paper. Scarlet blood splashed as the prisoner screamed, streaking Najafi’s pale blue apron and marking his safety glasses with beads of crimson.

Najafi wore a maniacal grin as he pulled the drill free then plunged it down into Suleiman’s leg again four more times in rapid succession. Colonel Ayub felt his gorge rising as he tried to look away, but the tortured man’s screams drew his eyes despite himself. Blood spilled into the seat of the dentist’s chair and puddled on the floor of the TOC.

Suddenly a satellite phone positioned on the table below the POV cam monitors came to life. Najafi straightened, lips pursed as he let the spinning drill power down. Michael Suleiman’s head sagged on his neck.

“Always with the interruptions,” Najafi snarled. “Always whenever I’m really starting to make progress on a project I am interrupted.”

The phone beeped loudly again.

Najafi sighed, almost theatrically. He turned around and walked toward the table. He stopped, looking down at the heavy power tool he still held in his hands. He turned back toward the helpless and bleeding Suleiman.

“Would you hold this for me?” he asked. “Thank you.”

The drill screamed into life and Najafi carelessly pushed the impact wrench down into the Lebanese political leader’s thigh until it bit into the bone of his femur. The man screamed as it cored into his bone marrow.

The phone rang and without bothering to remove his blood-drenched glove, Najafi snatched it up. “Yes, what is it?” he snapped.

Colonel Ayub, standing only a few short yards away, could hear clearly both sides of the conversation and he recognized the voice on the other end of the connection immediately. It was a voice he feared.

“Is that how you talk to a man in my position, General?” the voice asked.

Najafi’s manner and tone instantly changed. “Of course not, Your Eminence,” he said. “How may I serve you?”

Behind them Michael Suleiman moaned in agony, the noise very loud in the confined space of the mobile TOC. Najafi scowled fiercely and pointed a finger at the Hezbollah team leader. With a slash of his hand he indicated the bound and helpless Suleiman. Instantly the terrorist stepped forward and threw a right cross down onto the prisoner. The knuckles of the man’s hand connected with the sharp prominence of Michael Suleiman’s jaw, and the Lebanese political leader’s head went limp on his neck.

“There has been a change in certain global geopolitical realities that displease the Revolutionary Council,” the voice on the phone said.

“What happened?”

“The Americans in their arrogance have formally labeled our Islamic Revolutionary Guard and the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics command as terrorist organizations. The world press is running with the story now.”

“The Americans’ insolence knows no bounds!” Najafi snarled. “How quickly they forget the humiliation of their embassy hostages on the world stage before that cowboy Reagan came to power.”

“The council agrees,” the voice replied. “This arrogance will not be ignored. Our own parliament is already constructing a resolution labeling the CIA and U.S. Army as the terrorist organizations they are—but that is only our public face.”

“You have something else in mind?”

“We want you to return to Tehran immediately. Your Ansar-al-Mahdi is to be given a new tasking. We’ll leave the Lebanese situation to VEVAK officers for now,” the voice said, referring to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence.

“As you command,” Najafi said. “I will turn the plane around now.”

“Good.” The line went dead.

Najafi put the satellite phone down on the table and slowly turned to regard the bound Michael Suleiman. The Lebanese prisoner was only semiconscious, eyes dull and blood pouring from his torture wounds.

“Terrorist organizations,” Najafi scoffed, shaking his head with irritation. “You heard that?” he asked Ayub, who nodded. “Those cowboys will soon learn to regret their arrogant presumption.”

Najafi walked over to Suleiman and yanked the cordless drill from the man’s leg. Suleiman screamed. The drill whined to life, spinning at its fearsome 1,900 RPM. Suleiman’s eyes sprang wide in terror and he threw his head back against the chair.

Najafi lifted the drill in an almost offhand manner and plunged it into his captive’s left eye. Michael Suleiman jerked like a man in an electric chair, coming up out of his seat against his restraints, then sagging back down limply and falling irrevocably still.

Najafi yanked the drill free. Behind him Colonel Ayub bent double and vomited on his own shoes as the Hezbollah commandos snickered behind their masks. The Ansar-al-Mahdi commander regarded his subordinate with a look of cool distain until he had finished purging.

“Something you ate?”

“Yes, General,” Ayub said, wiping his mouth.

“Good.” Najafi shoved the gore-drenched power tool into the colonel’s shaking hands. “Clean that so that my briefcase is not stained.” He turned toward his Hezbollah surrogates and pointed at the corpse. “Take this piece of shit down to the cargo bay. I’m going to the cockpit. We’re on our way back to Tehran. When we’re over north Beirut I’ll signal the load master and you dump the body out so it can be found.”

“Yes, General,” the team leader replied.

Najafi turned back toward Colonel Ayub in his vomit-splattered dress shoes. “When you have finished with your valet duties, come up to the cockpit,” he told the man. He paused at the door of the TOC after removing his bloody apron. “We are going to figure out how exactly to show these Americans exactly what terror really is.”

Colonel Ayub nodded and Najafi went out the door. The politically connected military officer felt the eyes of the Hezbollah gunmen on him. He forced himself to stand straight. He looked at the bloody and mutilated body of Michael Suleiman and he forced his features into a mask of indifference despite the taste of his own vomit on his tongue.

“You heard the commander!” he snapped. “Get the body downstairs and wait for your orders.”

But the Hezbollah team was already in motion and they simply ignored the bureaucrat.

CHAPTER THREE

Stony Man Farm, Virginia—Present Day

Barbara Price pushed hard against the pedals of the elliptical machine, her honey-blond hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and her body shiny with sweat. A beautiful woman with a model’s looks, she tried to maintain a high level of fitness though her workaholic nature had kept her at the Shenandoah Valley covert operations site almost continuously over the recent months. The War on Terror had left the clandestine Stony Man personnel—both Phoenix Force and Able Team—like paramilitary firefighters, rushing from one global hot spot to the next with little downtime between assignments.

The former NSA mission controller didn’t see an end in sight, either.

The cardio trainer machine beeped at her and the readout display informed her that her forty-five-minute workout was almost over. She refocused her attention and began to swing her legs even faster. She was off her normal pace and fought hard to regain the distance before her time ran out.

Her body was fluid in motion. She was trim and muscular, with an assertive but feminine sexuality that caused men’s heads to turn when she passed. She took pride in her appearance, but her dedication to fitness was no longer about cosmetic sensibilities. When she was fit, her endurance improved, and when she went days without sleep while exercising a grueling schedule of life-and-death multitaskings, her improved stamina made her a better leader and support system for the men in her command.

Suddenly the cell phone resting on her elliptical machine’s console began to ring. Frowning at the interruption, she picked it up and looked to see who was calling the encrypted device before she answered.

“Barb, I need to see you in the War Room of the main house,” Hal Brognola announced.

“I thought you were supposed to be in D.C. today,” Price replied. “Briefing the Man on our last op in Kenya.”

“I was,” the big Fed said. “Now I’m in a chopper about thirty seconds from the Farm.”

“What have you got?”

There was a pause, and when Brognola spoke again Barbara Price could easily hear the grim note of satisfaction in his voice. “We’ve finally got a breakthrough on Stage One.”

Instantly the Stony Man mission controller stopped running, the machine slowing beneath her. “Really?” she said, her own voice eager. “We have a lead?”

“One for sure and one likely,” Brognola answered. “I’ll tell you more when I touch down.”

“Understood. I’ll see you in ten,” Price said, and clicked off.

She stepped off the exercise machine and grabbed up a handy towel to mop her forehead and blot the sweat on her arms. She threw it around her neck and then clicked over to the walkie-talkie function on her cell phone. Her thumb pressed the push-to-talk button and she spoke into the phone.

“Bear, you on?”

There was a pause and then Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman’s gruff voice growled out a response. “Go ahead, Barb. What’s up?” The brilliant technician served as leader of the Farm’s cyber team and was Barbara Price’s right-hand man.

“Meet me in the War Room,” Price told him. “Hal’s coming in now and he has something for us.”

“Something big?”

When she spoke Price could hear the same satisfied tone in her own voice as she had just identified in Hal Brognola’s. It made the corners of her mouth tug upward in an involuntary grin.

“Hal says we just broke something on our Stage One project.”

Kurtzman made no attempt to keep his enthusiasm in check. “Hot damn!” he barked into the phone, making Price wince. “It’s about time we caught a break on that one.”

“Copy that, Bear,” Price agreed. “Is Carmen or Akira near you?” she asked, referring to two members of Kurtzman’s team. Carmen Delahunt was an ex-FBI agent recruited into the Stony Man program by Hal Brognola, and Akira Tokaido was a network systems interfacing genius and all around cybercowboy who had conducted digital wizardry for Price many times in the past.

“Carmen’s right here,” Kurtzman replied.

“Good. Have her alert Able Team and Phoenix Force,” Price said. “I want the teams on standby and ready to go the minute we get the rundown from Hal.”

“Copy that.”

“All right, I’m out. See you in the War Room.” The mission controller cut communications and hurried out of the workout center.

The well-oiled machinery of Stony Man had begun ticking with precision timing and practiced competence. Soon men would be out on the sharp end and the blood of killers would begin to spill.

STONY MAN FARM was located in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Despite housing an extensive command-and-control logistics network, an airfield and outdoor training areas, the remote clandestine site maintained a facade as a tree farm, orchard and pulp mill. Security was a fully integrated package of electronic, computer-monitored and human surveillance. The farm workers and general laborers spread around the Farm were actually highly trained soldiers from America’s elite military and law enforcement units.

In the past rotational assignments to the Farm had given members of those units access to advanced training tactics and an opportunity to engage in cross-organizational networking. As the wars in southwest Asia and the Middle East had ground on, the short-term assignments to the top secret site had started to provide physically and emotionally exhausted multitour combat veterans with a low-key break from near-constant combat operations.

Such breaks were not available for members of the Farm’s premier crews, Able Team and Phoenix Force. While the security corps, designated as blacksuits, maintained protective defensive operations, the Farm’s strike teams deployed constantly across the Western Hemisphere and the world on offensive mandates for the U.S. government.

The leaders of those teams now gathered in the basement facility under the Farm’s main house in a briefing area called the War Room. Besides Hal Brognola and Barbara Price, Aaron Kurtzman was there with the unit commander of Phoenix Force, David McCarter, and Carl Lyons, Able Team leader.

Kurtzman, confined to a wheelchair after an attack on Stony Man grounds by KGB surrogates had left him paralyzed from the waist down, sat off to one side, running the briefing media presentation components from a keyboard built into his chair.

Built like a power lifter, the barrel-chested Kurtzman still routinely did sets of the bench press with 250 pounds for nearly a dozen reps. In contrast to his heavy build the two big men seated at the massive conference table in front of him seemed built more for endurance, despite impressively muscular builds.

The fox-faced Briton, David McCarter, was a consummate pilot and driver, as well as being a former member of the British Special Air Service. He had seen combat around the world in places as diverse as Oman and Belfast before coming on board as a shooter for the Farm’s Phoenix Force. Now, years later, the brown-eyed Englishman commanded that team and had committed violence on behalf of the U.S. government in every region of the globe.

“What have you got for us?” he asked, his English accent mellow after years in United States.

“Tell me it’s something good,” Carl Lyons answered.

The blond leader of the three-man Able Team was a former LAPD homicide detective. Lyons lived up to his moniker of Ironman. There was no better pistol marksman or fitter athlete than Lyons on the Farm’s teams. He had the subtlety of a bull in a China shop, combined with the acumen of a veteran espionage agent. When Carl Lyons ran into a problem he put his head down and battered his way through it.

“We’ve been waiting for a long time for some actionable intelligence on this,” Hal Brognola said. “A long time. Several years, in fact.” The Fed’s suit was rumpled and he spoke from around the stump of an unlit cigar. He gestured toward Barbara Price, who stood unselfconsciously in her sweat-stained workout gear. “Barb?”

The Stony Man mission controller nodded once curtly, obviously eager to get into the meat of the briefing.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “let me tell you about Stage One. Quite a while ago national intelligence estimates began warning the Oval Office about an increased threat focus coming from Iran. These threat focus assessments had little to do with Iraq or with Tehran’s burgeoning nuclear program. In fact, the assessments were not Israel centered in nature.”

Intrigued, McCarter lifted an eyebrow and glanced over at Lyons, who shrugged. Behind them, Kurtzman hit a button on his keyboard and an Iranian in an army general’s uniform appeared on the monitor at the head of the table.

“The intelligence was disparate, piecemeal and often obtuse. The Oval Office asked Hal to put Bear and his cyber team on it to try to analyze what we were seeing,” Price continued.

Kurtzman powered his wheelchair forward toward the head of the table. “We had precious little to go on,” he admitted. “Everything that was Iranian intelligence, Hezbollah, Hamas or Iraqi special groups related had to be screened to see if it fit with any other irregular activities worldwide. We figured out that whatever they were up to, it had something to do with the U.S. directly and not through surrogates or proxies. Mostly we got lost in smoke and mirrors.”

“Don’t be modest, Bear,” Hal Brognola said. “You were two weeks ahead of the golden boys at INR in identification of Stage One.” The big Fed referred to the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

The bureau had few or no field operatives of its own, but was instead tasked with performing oversight and analysis of information gathered from other branches of the U.S. intelligence community. In both the cases of pre-9/11 threats and the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, the INR had offered up the only dissenting voice in the national intelligence estimates and had subsequently come to be seen as the nation’s premier brain trust on intelligence.

Beating them on a point of analytical determination had provided Aaron Kurtzman with a moment of quiet pride.

“If this has been going on for a while, then why are we just now hearing about it?” McCarter asked.

“Because we didn’t have any operational intelligence,” Price replied.

“You couldn’t find anyone for us to shoot or hit over the head?” Lyons asked.

Hal Brognola removed the unlit stogie from his mouth. “Exactly,” he said. “Bear and his team were putting together a jigsaw puzzle from half a dozen different boxes while in a dark room.”

Barbara Price spoke up. “Stage One is an umbrella term for some sort of operation directed at the United States. It includes several separate but connected operations and projects that are all being run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their black ops unit, the Ansar-al-Mahdi. We were only ever able to tie a couple of low-level couriers and agents to the project. That included this man.” She pointed to the Iranian on the monitor screen. “Colonel Muqtada Ayub of a Basij division near Tehran.”

“Basij?” McCarter frowned. “I thought they were a local militia, like a National Guard for the Revolutionary Guard.”

“Yes and no.” Price nodded. “They are an auxiliary paramilitary force. But they also serve in law enforcement, emergency management and social and religious organizing in their respective areas. They also serve as a secret police militia against the general population doing morals policing and suppressing the activities of dissident groups.”

“Nut jobs?” Lyons asked. He took pride in a direct approach many often referred to as crass. He also liked to claim it was part of his charm, though he had never met anyone who actually agreed with him about that.

“Highly motivated nut jobs,” Brognola specified. “They provided the martyr volunteers for Iran’s human-wave attacks against Saddam Hussein’s army during the Iran-Iraq war.”

“It seems Colonel Ayub is also connected by marriage to a prominent cleric on the Revolutionary Council,” Price added. “He’s the highest ranking operative we’ve been able to connect to Stage One so far.”

“He’s a big, fat intelligence node just waiting to be hacked,” Kurtzman added. “With what he can tell us, I’m sure I’ll be able to piece together this puzzle in no time.”

“Getting him would be a major coup,” Price said.

“Where is he now?” McCarter asked. “I assume somewhere we can get to him.”

“Yes,” Price answered. “Specifically we have him located in a safehouse in Hayaniya, a Shiite-militia-controlled neighborhood in northwestern Basra. Carmen will provide you momentarily with a briefing packet of operational details for you to go over with the rest of Phoenix once we’re done here.”

“That explains what David’s going to be doing,” Lyons spoke up. “How about Able?”

Price acknowledged him, then nodded to Kurtzman. The computer specialist used his thumb to strike a key, and the picture changed to a surveillance shot of a Middle Eastern man in civilian clothes. “That individual is Aras Kasim,” she said. “A known agent of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, VEVAK.”

Lyons leaned forward, reading a sign in Spanish in the picture behind the man. “Where’s he at? Caracas?”

“Yes. You can thank the very thorough Carmen Delahunt for giving you someone to knock over the head, Carl,” Price answered. “Two days ago a CIA interagency memo had Kasim meeting with Ayub in Basra. This morning a brief by DEA agents surveilling Juan Escondito showed him in a meeting with Kasim.”

“An Iranian intelligence operative meeting with a Venezuelan narco-trafficker?” Lyons grunted. “That is big. We can run with this.”

“Good. Carmen will have your operational details ready to go in a couple of minutes, as well.” Barbara Price looked down at her team leaders from the head of the conference table. “Go out and bring me these men so we can shut the Iranians down.”

Both David McCarter and Carl Lyons were grinning as they rose from their seats.

CHAPTER FOUR

Basra, Iraq

Akmed Anjali had been a major in the Iraqi police since the Americans had taken Baghdad. He had been a loyal and partisan son of the Shammar clan all of his life and a follower of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Shiite sect since he had been a small boy. His loyalties were not divided; they were prioritized. Allah, family, national duty. He followed them in that order, and if his duties as a Shia patriarch ever conflicted with his responsibilities as police officer, then he had to remember that his land was far older than most Americans could conceive and after the Americans were gone his land and his faith would continue unabated, like the life-mother Tigris River flowing perpetually to the sea.

It was because of this understanding that he went to see the Iranian after he left his liaison meeting with his British counterparts at their Basra international airport headquarters. Diplomatic imperatives had dictated that the British share what they knew with Major Anjali, just as religious obligation dictated that Anjali share what he knew with the Iranian.

Anjali directed his driver away from the airport and toward the northwest Basra neighborhood of Hayaniya. The sergeant, a nephew of Anjali, guided the white Toyota 4-Runner through a maze of backstreets once they reached the neighborhood. The buildings rose around them to heights of five or six stories, and vendors populated store-front properties along the narrow streets, selling everything from chickens to cheap plastic children’s toys and a thousand different knockoff versions of name-brand items.

They stopped the police patrol vehicle in front of a baked-brick wall with an iron gate that opened up on an inner courtyard. Anjali nodded to the man guarding the entrance. The sentry, who wore an Uzi submachine gun on a shoulder strap, instantly recognized him and let him in. The sounds of the street life behind Anjali faded as the man closed the heavy iron gate behind him.

“Wait here,” the sentry informed the police officer, and Anjali did as he was told.

The man he was here to see kept company with hardened killers. Some were Iraqi insurgents, but more than a few were Quds Force veterans; the Iranian special forces. The network run by the Colonel Ayub was the most efficient Anjali had ever seen in southern Iraq and it ran on impeccable discipline structured around instantaneous and brutal violence.

The sentry reappeared at the inner courtyard door and waved him forward into the building proper. Anjali resisted the urge to unbutton the flap of his sidearm holster. He was walking into a nest of vipers and the only thing that could protect him was the same thing that had always protected him. The good graces of his associates.

He entered a long, low-ceilinged room. Fans ran the length of the chamber, spinning slowly and casting moving slashes of shadows from the harsh white sunlight shooting in from the slats of the window shutters. Anjali paused at the door, blinking his eyes into focus.

There was a blue haze of cigarette smoke heavy in the air. The smell of unwashed male bodies freely sweating in the heat assaulted his nose. The room was filled with armed men in the traditional white robes called thobe. Low couches were positioned against the walls, but no one was sitting in them.

A knot of expressionless men stood clustered toward the center of the room. Somewhat hesitantly Anjali started forward. The group of men opened to let him walk through. Cigarettes dangled from their lips, Kalashnikovs dangled from their shoulders and large ceremonial knives dangled from their belts. Flat, inscrutable eyes of black or deepest brown regarded him with either contempt or indifference.

Anjali walked into their midst, and they closed in behind him like the bars of a cell door sliding shut even as more militiamen in front of him stepped back to reveal his Iranian contact.

Colonel Ayub looked up as Anjali stepped forward.

At Ayub’s feet an Iraqi in civilian clothes was on his knees. The man’s hands were bound tightly behind his back and a bandanna covered his eyes. His face was a checkerboard of bruises beneath the blindfold and he turned toward the sound of Anjali as he stepped forward.

Ayub’s arm was extended outward and down toward the captive. In his hand was the largest pistol Anjali had ever seen. It was massive and silver with a long barrel and gigantic muzzle. Ayub’s finger rested lightly on the trigger of the big automatic.

“Ah, look,” Ayub purred. “The police are here. Just in time.”

The crowd of men in the room chuckled lowly as if they shared one voice. It had the disconcerting effect of making Anjali feel even more hemmed in. The police major, who was himself no stranger to either torture or murder, kept his own facial expression as neutral as that of the killers around him.

“I have news,” he said.

Ayub nodded. “In a moment. You have arrived just in time to witness the judgment of Allah for crimes of collaboration with the westerners against the free Iraqi people.”

At this announcement the man on his knees began to sob and babble, crying out his innocence. Ayub shushed him gently, the way a mother might quiet a frightened toddler. When this didn’t work he coldly pressed the muzzle of the .44 Magnum against the man’s forehead just above the blindfold and snapped, “Silence!”

The man fell silent.

Ayub’s finger took up the slack on the trigger of the massive handgun. Anjali could almost hear the mechanical squeak as the spring was compressed. He silently steeled himself for the sound of the pistol going off. The crowd of men pushed in around them remained very silent.

“So,” Ayub said, suddenly changing tracks, “what is your news?”

Anjali felt his eyes glued to the spot where the .44-caliber weapon’s muzzle was up against the captive’s forehead. The man was sweating profusely, and a fat drop of perspiration slid down cheeks marred by black-heads and a sparse, wiry attempt at a man’s beard. The captive was skinny as a rail and his Adam’s apple stood out like a knot on his thin neck. He swallowed hard and Anjali saw it bounce like a bobber on a fishing line.

“The British bribed someone,” Anjali said. “They know where you are. They told the Americans, who have sent for some commandos.”

“Task Force 162?” Ayub asked, referring to the combined unity of Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs and CIA paramilitary operatives that had been formed to track down Saddam Hussein and other high-value targets.

Anjali shook his head. “No. Another group. The briefer didn’t specify who they were. Only that they had come from the U.S. for you.”

“For me?” Ayub asked. “By name?”

Anjali looked down at the man on his knees. Tears had joined the sweat on his face now. The police major nodded. “Yes. By name.”

“Do you see?” Ayub whispered down at the man. “Do you see now? You camel fucker!” he suddenly screamed. “You talk and this does not work! No one must talk!”

“Please!” the man sobbed.

Time slowed for Anjali as a sudden flood of adrenaline coursed through his body. He saw the big silver automatic jump in Ayub’s hand just as the report deafened him at that close range. A sheet of flame erupted from the pistol muzzle, scorching the prisoner’s skin and setting his oily black hair on fire.

A single smoking shell casing was kicked loose to tumble through the air, and the man’s face disappeared in black smoke and red blood as the back of his skull suddenly burst backward, spraying the white, loose flowing robes of the terrorists standing closest to him. The body undulated on its knees then slumped as if the corpse had been deboned.

The crack of the pistol echoed through the room, and out of his peripheral vision Anjali saw a section of the floor tile suddenly burst apart and shatter as the heavy-caliber slug burrowed into it. The man keeled over and dropped to the floor, all slack limbs and gushing blood and spilled brains as Anjali’s ears began to ring.

He pulled his eyes from the horrible vision of the murdered captive and felt a surge of surprise so intense it bordered on fear when he saw Ayub already looking at him. The man’s mouth was moving as he spoke and the Iraqi police major could see the thin lips forming words over blunt yellow teeth, but the ringing of the shot at such close quarters had deafened him. Then his ears popped and he could suddenly hear the Iranian cell leader again.

“—let the American commandos come. We’ll have a surprise waiting for them.”

Then Ayub looked down at the cored-out head and blown-apart face of his victim and began to laugh. Immediately the knot of Shiite terrorists around Anjali started laughing, too.

Screw it, he thought and chuckled right along.

Caracas, Venezuela

ARAS KASIM could hardly believe his good fortune. For five years he had labored in Tehran watching dissidents and walking point on guard teams for important Imams, opening limo doors and shoving people clear on the streets. The whole experience had been an exercise in extreme boredom and hardly the reason he had left a Revolutionary Guard marine battalion combat swimmer assignment for a position with VEVAK.

Then he had worked a security detail under a colonel named Ayub and his life had changed almost overnight. Ayub had his pick of intelligence ministry agents, and from within the protective umbrella of Brigadier General Najafi’s patronage the colonel got what he wanted when he wanted it. Kasim had earned his stripes in this new operation first by smuggling explosive devices across the southwestern Iranian border into Iraq and then to Baghdad.

Once he had proved himself resourceful and battle tested, Ayub had used him as a insurgent-cell communications facilitator and, finally, as a punitive agent against anyone suspected of disloyalty within the organization. Kasim had executed seven Iraqi insurgents and tortured three times as many under Ayub’s direction.

With his competence established Ayub had begun to tap him for more and more serious activities. First travel to the border areas of Pakistan to coordinate with al Qaeda and Taliban operatives there. Then to carry money to cells in Lebanon and the Philippines. There was the torture and murder of a CIA case officer in Ethiopia followed by the meetings with Russian arms dealers in Chechnya.

And finally there was the Juan Escondito network.

The Venezuelan narco-trafficante had been a secular blessing to the Iranian intelligence operative. Meetings included fine whiskey, the kindest cuts of cocaine and more young prostitutes than Kasim could ever have prayed existed.

In bed with two of them now, Kasim could only look up toward heaven past the spinning ceiling fan and offer thanks for what the teenage girls were doing to him now. He leaned back against the cool spread of his sheets with their three-hundred-count weave of Egyptian cotton. His body was slick with sweat and the smell of sex was a heavy musk in the room.

On the table was a half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label and a mirror piled high with fine-quality cocaine. His head was buzzing and his skin tingled with euphoric sensations. He could feel the press of Marta’s breasts against his shin bone on one side and hot damp cling of Juanita’s sex on the arch of his other foot as they took turns pleasing him. They would growl and chatter in Spanish to each other and he just knew, though he didn’t speak a word, that they were just saying the filthiest of things.

In the morning Program Manticore would begin the operation to bring jihad into the American heartland. Lethal justice would spread through the United States like drugs from the Southern Hemisphere, and the warmongering westerners would relearn what terror really was.

He reached down and put a possessive hand on the top of Marta’s bobbing head. Once this was over he would see about parlaying his service into a permanent assignment in South America. The Israelis had a presence here, as well, and the only thing that could please Kasim more than operating against the Americans would be a chance to kill Jewish agents of the Satan state.

He felt Juanita’s fingers begin to massage his testicles then slide lower; she knew what he liked best of all. All in all Kasim could not think of a more perfect outcome for his life.

ABLE TEAM’S PLAN was simple.

They would come in on a commercial flight and make it through customs clean. Following that they would pick up a vehicle and make their way to a safehouse used by the CIA and Army special operations. There, Able Team would establish a base before starting surveillance of the target.

Things began to go wrong immediately.

Carl Lyons pulled his carry-on bag down from the overhead compartment just after the unfasten seat belts sign popped up on the TWA commercial flight. They were flying first-class as part of their administrative cover and the team leader had watched, bemused, as Rosario “Politician” Blancanales worked his gregarious charm on a Hispanic flight attendant.

Team funny man Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz had cracked one stale joke after another as the silver-haired smooth talker flirted shamelessly with the dark-eyed Venezuelan beauty half his age.

There wasn’t a person on the plane among the crew or passengers who didn’t think the three men were anything but what they claimed; middle-aged divorced tourists on a South American vacation. Blancanales’s audacity was role-playing brilliance.

If there was anything bothering Lyons as he exited the plane after the flight attendant had slipped her cell number to Blancanales, it was that circumstances dictated they begin the operation unarmed. Carl Lyons didn’t like taking a shower unarmed, let alone entering a potentially volatile nation without a weapon.

“Okay,” Schwarz murmured as they emerged into the big, air-conditioned terminal, “we can add a certain TWA flight attendant named Bonita to our roster of Stony Man local assets.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lyons replied, “I’m sure she’ll be a big help. We can just send Dave and his boys down here sometime and they can all crash at her hacienda. It’ll be like the Farm ‘South.’”

“You see how it is, Gadgets?” Blancanales said, voice weary. “You try to take one for the team and management doesn’t appreciate it. I try to show loyalty through service and all I get is cynical pessimism.”

“Can you gentlemen come this way.”

The voice interrupted their banter with a tone of un-disputed authority. The members of Able Team turned their heads as one to take in the speaker. He was a tall Latino with jet-black hair, mustache and eyes in the crisp uniform of a Venezuelan customs officer. There was a 9 mm automatic pistol in a polished holster on his hip, but the flap was closed and secured.

However a few paces behind him the assault rifles of the military security guards were visible as the soldiers stood with hands on pistol grips and fingers resting near triggers.

Lyons scowled. Schwarz gave the officer his best grin in reply to the summons. Then he turned his head slightly and whispered out of the side of his mouth, “Any chance you want to take one for the team now, Pol?”

Blancanales fixed an insincere grin of his own on his face. “Nope. This time we move right to cynical pessimism,” he replied.

VENEZUELAN CUSTOMS separated the three men quickly, hustling them into separate rooms. There they sat isolated for two hours. Carl Lyons found himself sitting in front of a plain metal table on an uncomfortable folding chair while the customs officer pretended to read official-looking papers printed in Spanish with a government seal at the top of the pages.

Fluent in Spanish, Lyons easily read them and saw they were merely quarterly flight-maintenance reports being used as props. Warily, Lyons decided to relax a bit; this seemed a more random occurrence than he had first feared. The Farm had considerable resources, but the operation was miniscule compared to other government agencies, and Stony Man operatives were often forced to rely on logistical support from larger bureaucratic entities. Whenever that happened security became a prime concern, but for now this seemed a more typical customs roust than anything more threatening.

The officer, whose name tag read Hernandez, picked up Lyons’s passport and opened it. “Mr. Johnson?” His English was accented but clipped and neat.

Lyons nodded. “That’s me.”

Hernandez regarded him over the top of the little blue folder. “What brings you to Venezuela?”

“Sunny weather, beautiful women, the beaches. All the usual. Is there a problem with my passport?”

Hernandez carefully put down the blue folder. He ignored the question and carefully tapped the passport with one long, blunt-tipped finger. “There are many countries in South America with beautiful beaches and women.”

“But only one Margarita Island—it’s world famous,” Lyons replied in flawless Spanish, referencing Venezuela’s most popular tourist designation.

Hernandez’s eyes flicked upward sharply at the linguistic display. His eyes looked past Lyons and toward the large reflective glass. Lyons knew from his own experience as a police officer that was where the customs officer’s superiors were watching the interrogation. Hernandez let his gaze settle back on Lyons. He offered a wan smile.

“I’m sure this is just an administrative error,” the officer said. “My people will have it sorted out in no time.” Hernandez rose to his feet. “Please be patient.”

“Okay,” Lyons nodded agreeably. “But man, am I getting thirsty.”

Hernandez left Lyons and walked into the interrogation room containing Hermann Schwarz. As he moved down the hallway he saw the tall, cadaverous figure in a dark suit standing behind his commanding officer. The man met Hernandez’s gaze with cold, dead eyes, and the Venezuelan customs officer felt a chill at the base of his spine. What was he doing here? Hernandez wondered. He stifled the thought quickly—it didn’t pay to ask too many questions about Hugo Chavez’s internal security organization, even to yourself.

As he walked into the room he saw a burly sergeant had Schwarz pinned up against the wall, one beefy forearm across the American’s throat. The officer was scowling in fury as Schwarz, going by the name Miller, smirked.

Schwarz looked over at Hernandez as the man entered the room and grinned. “Hey, Pedro,” he called. “You know why this guy’s wife never farted as a little girl? ’Cause she didn’t have an asshole till she got married!”

The officer rotated and dipped the shoulder of his free hand. His fist came up from the hip and buried itself in Schwarz’s stomach. The Stony Man operative absorbed the blow passively and let himself crumple at the man’s feet. He looked up from the floor, gasping for breath.

After a pause Schwarz again addressed Hernandez. “You know what this pendejo’s most confusing day is? Yep—Father’s Day.”

His cackling was cut off as the sergeant kicked him in the ribs. Hernandez snapped an order and reluctantly the man backed off. “Leave us!” he repeated, and the officer left the room still scowling.

Hernandez moved forward and dropped Schwarz’s passport on the table. He looked down as the American fought his way back up to his feet. Hernandez watched dispassionately as the man climbed into his chair.

“This is a helluva country you got here, pal,” Schwarz said. “Tell a few jokes and get the shit kicked out of you. I should get a lawyer and sue your ass.”

“You’ll find Venezuelan courts unsympathetic to ugly Americans, Mr. Miller.”

“Yeah, well, your momma’s so fat when she walks her butt claps.”

“Why have you come to Venezuela, Mr. Miller?”

“I heard a guy could get a drink. I think it was a lie. Seriously, I’m here with some buddies to check out the sites, maybe see the senoritas on Margarita Island—but instead I get this?”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t insult my officers?”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t lock an innocent tourista up for two hours in a room with a trained monkey like that asshole.”

Hernandez sighed heavily, a weary man with an odious task. “I’m sure this is just an administrative error. We’ll have it sorted out shortly.”

“You’re damn well right you will,” Schwarz snapped, playing his role to the hilt.

“In the meantime, perhaps you could refrain from antagonizing my officers? Yes?”

“Hey, Pedro—is that your stomach or did you just swallow a beach ball?”

Officer Hernandez turned and walked out of the room, studiously ignoring the thin man standing outside in the hall next to the doorway.

“Hey, who do ya have to screw to get a drink around here?” Schwarz demanded as the door swung closed.

From behind the two-way mirror the thin man watched him with inscrutable curiosity.

AS CUSTOMS OFFICER Hernandez entered the final interrogation room, Blancanales, whose own passport was made out under the name of Rosario, rose from his seat, manner eager and face twisted into a mask of hopeful supplication.

“Listen,” he began babbling, “I’m really sorry—”

“Shut up and sit down!” Hernandez interrupted. “Yes, I know, I know. You are all here innocently. You are all planning to go to Margarita Island, you are all thirsty and need a drink because you are just typical ugly Americans here to screw our women and drink tequila!”

Face frozen in a look of sheepish innocence, Blancanales settled back down in his chair. He blinked his eyes several times. “Well, er, I guess…yeah.”

Face red, Hernandez spun on a heel and tossed the blue passport on the table in disgust. He left the room and slammed the door behind him so hard it rattled in its frame.

Blancanales called after him, “Actually, I am kind of thirsty, amigo.”

Out in the hallway Hernandez marched up to his superior, who stood waiting next to the thin man in civilian clothes. “Sir, their paperwork checks out. Everything checks out perfectly. They’ve obviously rehearsed their story—or it’s the truth. Should I toss them in a holding cell?”

“That won’t be necessary,” the thin man said. “Let them go. Apologize for the mistake, wish them well.”

Hernandez slid his gaze over to his commanding officer, who glanced at the man next to him, then nodded. “Yes, we have enough. Let them go.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Basra, Iraq

The rotors of the Black Hawk helicopter were still turning as the side door to the cargo bay opened to reveal the men Major Anjali had been sent to greet. He surveyed them with a critical eye, noting the athletic physiques, flat affects and nonregulation weaponry hanging off their ballistic armor and black fatigues.

Anjali had seen enough special operations soldiers in his life to recognize the type. The elite always had more in common with each other than even with others of their own country or military. Anjali was a wise enough and realistic enough man to know he himself did not belong among their ranks. It was no matter of ego for him; his interests lay in other directions.

At the moment he remained focused on gaining these mysterious commandos’ trust, leading them into hostile terrain beyond the reach of help and then betraying them—making himself a little wealthier in the process.

The first man to reach Anjali was tall and broad with fox-faced features and brown eyes and hair. Having spent the past five years operating alongside British forces in Basra, the Shiite police officer recognized an Englishman even before he spoke and revealed his accent.

“You Anjali?” David McCarter asked.

Anjali nodded, noting the man did not identify either himself or his unit. Behind the Briton his team paused: a tall black man with cold eyes, a stocky Hispanic with a fireplug build and scarred forearms standing next to a truly massive individual with shoulders like barn doors and an M-60E cut-down machine gun. Behind the tight little group another individual, as tall and muscular as the rest, turned and surveyed the windows and rooftops of the buildings overlooking the secured helipad. There was a sniper-scoped Mk 11 with a paratrooper skeletal folding stock in his hands, the eyepieces on the telescopic sight popped up to reveal an oval peep sight glowing a dim green.

“We were briefed on the flight in,” McCarter continued. “You get us past the Iraqi security checkpoints and militia crossings until we’re within striking distance, then fall back with the reserve force should we need backup.”

“Just so.” Anjali nodded. “I’m surprised you agreed to having only Iraqi forces as overwatch. Did you work with us in Basra before?” The question was casually voiced, but still constituted a breach of etiquette in such situations.

“Has there been a change in the situation since our initial briefing?” the black man asked, cutting in.

Anjali turned to face Calvin James, noting the H&K MP-7 submachine gun dangling from a sling off his shoulders down the front of his black fatigue shirt. In his big, scarred hands the man casually cradled a SPAS-15 dual mode combat shotgun, its stock folded down so that he held it by the pistol grip and forestock just beyond the detachable drum-style magazine.

Just as with the rest of them Anjali saw the man’s black fatigues bore no unit insignia, name tag or rank designation. His voice was flatly American, however, the accent bearing just a trace of the Midwest, but the major couldn’t be sure.

The Iraqi pretended not to notice the pointed disregarding of his own indelicate question. Behind the team the Black Hawk’s engines suddenly changed pitch and began to whine as the helicopter lifted off.

Anjali shook his head to indicate no to the black man’s questions, then waved his hand toward the armored personnel carrier parked on the edge of the helipad’s concrete apron. The Dzik-3 was a multipurpose armored car made by Poland and used by Iraqi army and police units throughout the country.

The 4.5-ton wheeled vehicle boasted bulletproof windows, body armor able to withstand 7.62 mm rounds, puncture-proof tires and smoke launchers. T. J. Hawkins, covering the unit’s six o’clock as they made for the APC, thought it looked like a dun-colored Brink’s truck and doubted it could withstand the new Iranian special penetration charges being used in current roadside IEDs—Improvised Explosive Devices. He would have felt a lot safer in an American Stryker or the Cougar armored fighting vehicle.

He was used to stark pragmatism, however, and made no comment as he scrambled inside the vehicle, carefully protecting his sniper scope.

It had been easier to coordinate a blacked-out operation through local Iraqi forces than to bring British authorities operating in the Basra theater in on the loop because the deployment had been so frenzied. Hawkins accepted the situation without complaint.

Inside the armored vehicle the team sat crammed together, muzzles up toward the ceiling. Rafael Encizo sat behind the driver’s seat holding a Hawk MM-1 multiround 40 mm grenade launcher. As Anjali settled in the front passenger seat beside his driver he looked back at the heavily armed crew with a frown.

“I am in charge of my vehicle during transport and thus am commanding officer for this phase of the operation,” he said, voice grave. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you put your weapon safeties on.”

McCarter leaned forward, shifting his M-4/M-203 combo to one side as he did, the barrel passing inches from Anjali’s face. He held up his trigger finger in front of the Iraqi major’s face and smiled coldly.

“Sorry, mate,” he said. “I know you’ve heard this before but—” he wiggled his trigger finger back in forth in front of Anjali’s eyes “—this is my safety.” He settled back into his seat. “End of story.”

Anjali turned around, face red with fury. He slapped the dash of the vehicle and curtly ordered his driver to pull away from the tarmac of the helipad. As the vehicle rolled out into traffic, he forced himself to calm. It was as the old Arabic proverb, claimed by the English as their own, said: who laughs last laughs best, and Major Anjali planned to be laughing very hard indeed at the end of the next few hours.

PHOENIX FORCE REMAINED alert as the Dzik-3 left the main traffic thoroughfares surrounding the airport and pushed deeper into the city. They rolled through Iraqi national army and police checkpoints without a problem, but as the buildings grew more congested and rundown, and the signs of the recent civil conflicts became more prolific—in the form of bullet-riddled walls, the charred hulks of burned-out vehicles, gaping window frames and missing doors—so did flags and graffiti proclaiming Shia slogans and allegiance.

Now the checkpoints were manned by local force police officers who all wore subtle indicators of tribal allegiance in addition to their official uniforms. Portraits of the firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr became prominent. They were entering a section of the city where centralized authority had lost its influence and clan leaders and imams were the de facto power structures.

The checkpoint stops became longer and the night grew deeper. In the backseat Gary Manning used the GPS program on his PDA to plot their course as they moved through the city. After a moment he froze the screen and leaned forward to tap McCarter on the shoulder. “We’re here,” he said.

McCarter nodded and looked out a side window. They had entered an area of urban blight forming a squalid industrial bridge between two more heavily populated sections of the city. The dull brown waters of the Shatt al-Arab, the waterway formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, cut through concrete banks lined with empty and burned-out factories, manufacturing plants and abandoned electrical substations. A rusting crane sat in a weed-choked parking lot like a forgotten Jurassic beast of steel and iron.

“Pull over,” McCarter told Anjali.

The major looked back in confusion. “What? We still have two more checkpoints to go before the rendezvous point,” he protested.

“Pull over. We have our own ops plan,” McCarter stated. “When we give the signal, you and the chase vehicle can meet us at the RP. We’ll insert on foot from here.”

“This isn’t what I was told—” Anjali sputtered.

“Pull over.”

Anjali scowled. Then he barked an order to his driver, who immediately guided the big vehicle over to the side of the road. They rolled to a stop and Phoenix Force wasted little time scurrying out of the vehicle, weapons up.

Before he slammed the door shut McCarter repeated his instructions to the Iraqi major. “Get to the RP. Link up with the chase vehicle and hold position as instructed. When I come across the radio we’ll be shaking ass out of the target zone so expect hot. Understood?”

Anjali nodded. His face was impassive as he replied, “I understand perfectly, Englishman.”

“Good,” McCarter answered, and slammed the Dzik-3’s door closed.

As soon as the man was gone Anjali had his cell phone out. He could feel his laughter forming in his belly and he bit it down. He’d save it for when he was looking at the bloody corpses of the western commandos.

Caracas, Venezuela

ABLE TEAM STEPPED OUT into the equatorial sunlight from the cramped depths of the customs station on the far side of the international airport. Hermann Schwarz’s eye was swollen slightly and he had a bemused look as he used a free hand to rub at his sore ribs.

He turned toward Lyons, who was squinting against the hard yellow light of the sun. “Next time you play the asshole,” he said.

Blancanales chuckled to himself. “It does come more natural to you,” he argued.

Lyons shrugged and slid on his shades. He stood in the doorway of the police center and smiled. “Quick, use your cell phone to take a video of me.”

Pretending to laugh along with the joke like ugly American tourists, Blancanales quickly opened his cell phone and thumbed on the video function. He started rolling, capturing the scene.

Immediately he saw a cadaverous man in a business suit watching them from beside their interrogator as he pointed the camera over Lyons’s bulky shoulder. The man frowned as he saw the Americans taking pictures and then turned and walked away.

“Something to remember Caracas by,” Schwarz said loudly.

“Oh, that was great acting,” Lyons muttered, walking forward.

“Thank you, thank you very much.”

“Did you get it?” Lyons asked.

“You mean, tall, skinny and corpse-looking?” Blancanales asked. “You betcha. I’ll see what Aaron’s crew can do with it.” He hit a button and fired off the short video clip to a secure server service that would eventually feed it into Stony Man.

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

THE E-MAIL TRAVELED with digital speed through security links and into Carmen Delahunt’s computer. Seeing the priority message beeping an alert to her, she quickly lifted her hand, encased in a sensory glove, up to her left and pantomimed clicking on the link with a finger. Inside the screen of her VR uplink helmet the short cell phone video played out.

“Just got something from Pol,” she said. “They want an ID on what appears to be a civilian who’s buddy-buddy with Venezuelan law enforcement officials.”

From behind her in the Stony Man Annex’s computer room Aaron Kurtzman’s gruff voice instructed her, “Send it over to Hunt’s station. His link to the mainframe is more configured to that kind of search than your infiltration and investigation research algorithms. You stay on trying to get into VEVAK systems through their Interpol connection. I’m still convinced that’s our best route into Ansar-al-Mahdi computer files.”

Tapping the stem of a briarwood pipe against his teeth, Professor Huntington Wethers froze the video image on a single shot then transported it to a separate program designed to identify the anatomical features on the picture then translate them into a succinct binary code. He ran the program four times to include variables for age, angle and articulation, then ran a blending sum algorithm to predict changes for bad photography, low light and resolution obscurity. He grunted softly, then fired off double e-mails of the completed project, one back to Carmen Delahunt and the other to Akira Tokaido.

“There you go,” Wethers said. “I would suggest simultaneous phishing with a wide-base server like Interpol and something more aimed, like Venezuelan intelligence.”

“Dibs on Venezuelan intel,” Tokaido called out.

Speaker buds for an iPod were set in his ears, and the youngest member of the Stony Man cyberteam slouched in his chair using only his fingertips to control the mouse pads on two separate laptops.

“That’s just crap,” Delahunt replied. “I already have a trapdoor built into Interpol. Dad, Akira’s stealing all the fun stuff!”

“Children, behave,” Kurtzman growled. “Or I’ll make you do something really boring like checking CIA open agency sources like your uncle Hunt is doing.”

“Your coffeepot is empty, Bear,” Wethers replied, voice droll.

“What?” Kurtzman sat up in his wheelchair and twisted around to look at the coffeemaker set behind his workstation. To his relief he saw the pot was still half full of the jet-black liquid some claimed flowed through his veins instead of blood.

“Every time, Bear, I get you every time,” Wethers chided.

“That’s because some things aren’t funny,” Kurtzman said. “I expect such antics from a kid like Akira, but you’re an esteemed professor, for God’s sake. I expect you to comport yourself with decorum.”

“Brother Bear,” Wethers said, his fingers flying across his keyboard, “if you ever did run out of coffee you’d just grind the beans in your mouth.”

“Bear drinks so much coffee,” Delahunt added, her hands still wildly pantomiming through her VR screen, “that Juan Valdez named his donkey after him.”

“Bear drinks so much coffee he answers the door before people knock,” Tokaido added. He appeared to be hardly moving at his station, which meant he was working at his most precise.

Stony Man mission controller Barbara Price walked into the computer room just in time to catch Tokaido’s comment. Without missing a beat the honey-blond former NSA operations officer added a quip of her own.

“Bear drinks so much coffee he hasn’t blinked since the last lunar eclipse.”

Kurtzman coolly lifted a meaty hand and gave a thumbs-down gesture. Deadpan, he blew the assembled group a collective raspberry. “Get some new material—those jokes are stale, people.”

“Bear drinks so much coffee it never has a chance to get stale,” Delahunt said calmly. She tapped the air in front of her with a single finger and added, “Hugo Campos—”

“Hermida,” Tokaido simultaneously chorused with the red-headed ex-FBI agent.

“Of the General Counterintelligence Agency,” Wethers finished for them. All humor was gone from his voice now. “The Venezuelan military intelligence agency.”

Sensing the tension immediately, Price turned toward Kurtzman. “Venezuela? What does this mean for Able?”

Kurtzman pursed his lips and sighed. “Trouble.”

CHAPTER SIX

Basra, Iraq

Phoenix Force became as ghosts.

They crossed the broken rubble of the abandoned parking lot until they could squat in the lee of a burned-out warehouse. T. J. Hawkins, who had perfected his long-range shooting as a member of the U.S. Army’s premier hostage-rescue unit, scanned their back trail through his night scope. The other four members of the team clicked their AN/PVS-14 monocular night-vision devices over their nonshooting eyes.

McCarter waited patiently in the concealed position for his natural night vision to acclimate as much as possible before moving out. A stray dog, ribs prominent under a mangy hide, strayed close at one point but skittered off in fear after catching the scent of gun oil.

The group maintained strict noise discipline as they waited to see if they had been observed or compromised during the short scramble to their staging area. After a tense ten minutes McCarter signaled a generic all clear and rose into a crouch. He touched James on the shoulder and sent the former Navy SEAL across the parking lot toward a break in a battered old chain-link fence next to a pockmarked cinder-block wall.

James crossed the open area in a low, tight crouch, running hard. He slid into place and snapped up the SPAS-15 to provide cover. Once he was satisfied, he turned back to McCarter and gave the former SAS commando a single nod.

McCarter reached out and touched Encizo on the shoulder. The Cuban sprinted for the far side of the lot, his dense, heavily muscled frame handling the weight of the Hawk MM-1 easily. He slid into position behind James and swept the squat, cannon-muzzled grenade launcher into security overwatch.

McCarter leaned over and whispered into Hawkins’s ear. “You go after me.”

Hawkins nodded and flipped down the hinged lens covers on the NXS 15X scope of his Mk 11 Enhanced Battle Rifle. He took up the EBR in both hands and slid up to the edge of the wall while Gary Manning took his place on rear security, using the cut-down M-60 machine gun to maintain rear security.

McCarter checked once with Encizo, then slid the fire-selector switch on his M-4 to burst mode. There was a fléchette pack antipersonnel round loaded up in the tube of his M-203 grenade launcher, and he had attached an M-9 bayonet just after entering his forward staging area. He got a second clear signal from Encizo and immediately sprang forward.

He covered the distance fast, feet pounding on the busted concrete with staccato rhythm, then quickly slid into position behind Encizo. The muzzle of his weapon came up and tracked left to right, clearing sectors including rooftops with mechanical proficiency.

Satisfied, he turned and caught Calvin James’s eye. He made a subtle pointing gesture with his left hand and the ex-SEAL turned the corner and scurried between the break in the fence next to the cinder-block wall. As soon as he was gone McCarter slapped Encizo on the shoulder and former anti-Castro militant followed James through the opening.

McCarter scurried up to take his post next to the breach and then gave Hawkins the all-clear signal. The man raced across the opening with his weapon up and disappeared behind the bullet-riddled wall.

McCarter waited a moment, giving Hawkins a chance to take a good position beyond the wall, then waved Gary Manning over. Trusting McCarter to cover him, the Canadian special operations soldier took up his machine gun and crossed the danger area.

Once Manning was past, McCarter scrambled backward through the opening, remaining orientated toward the open parking lot the team had just crossed, carbine up and ready.

On the other side of the breach he found the unit in a tight defensive circle. A single-story outbuilding lay inside a concrete enclosure. A metal placard in red and white showed the universal sign for electrical danger above black Arabic script. McCarter looked at Hawkins, who immediately moved to lie down and take up a position in the breach.

Gary Manning set his machine gun down and quickly pulled open the Velcro flap of a pouch on his web belt. He pulled an electrician’s diagnostic kit from the container while Rafael Encizo pulled a pair of compact bolt cutters from the compact field pack on his back.

“Right, mate,” McCarter whispered, “don’t electrocute yourself, then.”

Manning didn’t look up as he quickly assembled his gear. “Do I tell you how to act like a complete jackass?”

“Not once,” McCarter admitted, but the corner of his mouth crept upward.

“Then perhaps you can let me do my job wisecrack free?”

“Not a chance, mate,” McCarter replied with complete seriousness. “Your ego’s already too well developed for my liking.”

Manning stopped what he was doing and looked at the Briton. “My ego?”

“Hey, now,” McCarter protested, “if you’re still mad about that little waitress in Barcelona—”

“Perhaps later would be a better time for this discussion?” James cut in, voice as dry as the Iraqi air.

Manning looked up and nodded toward Encizo. “Ready.”

Encizo quickly used the bolt cutters to snap the locking arm of the rusted old padlock connecting the panel access doors. The muscles on his forearms jumped out in stark relief like cables running down to thick wrists. The lock popped free with a sharp crack and dropped to the ground at his feet. Encizo picked up his MM-1 and scooted quickly back.

James helped him put away the bolt cutters as Manning replaced Encizo in front of the access panel. He reached up and pulled the metal hatches apart to reveal a wall of exposed wires, relay switches and conduit housings.

From behind them, T. J. Hawkins suddenly hissed a low warning.

McCarter instantly moved to his side and sidled down low to present a minimal profile as he eased around the corner. Beside him the former Army Ranger lay his finger in the gentle curve of his trigger, taking up the slack. Out on the parking lot a dry wind pushed dead weeds and loose trash around. The area was an island of dark between two illuminated areas of population so the headlights of the approaching vehicles were easily visible.

Hawkins lay the scope on the convoy, quickly working the dampener on his scope’s light amplifier to compensate for the illumination of the vehicle’s high beams. The images of the Iraqi police squad in three Dzik-3 armored personnel carriers filled the crosshair of his reticule. M-2 .50 caliber machine guns were mounted on the roofs.

“Who the fuck are those guys?” McCarter demanded. “That wanker Anjali’s boys? This isn’t part of the plan.”

Hawkins carefully zeroed in his scope and scanned the crew as they parked their vehicles in a wedge formation facing the abandoned warehouse Phoenix Force had used to shield their initial movements after disembarking from the first wheeled APC minutes earlier.

“They’re police for sure,” Hawkins answered. His voice was grim. “But to a man they’re wearing green insignia shoulder epaulets.” He removed his eye from the sniper scope and looked over at the former SAS commando. “David, they’re Shia militia. Muqtada al-Sadr’s boys.”

“Bloody hell!” McCarter swore.

Caracas, Venezuela

“GODDAMN IT to hell!” Lyons swore. “We’re in country ten fucking minutes and we’ve got Chavez’s head spook nosing up our asses.”

His big hand slammed the steering wheel of the rental SUV, a black Ford Excursion. His eyes darted up to the rearview mirror, scanning the flow of traffic behind them for any obvious tails or suspicious patterns. Caracas was a teeming, modern city of three million people and the streets were packed with automobiles, motorcycles, service trucks and pedestrians. Around them, skyscrapers of steel and glass rose in prototypical urban canyons. They would have to be sharp if they were going to spot a surveillance team in that kind of environment.

“At least the Farm was able to get us the information quickly,” Schwarz pointed out as he slipped his PDA into a pocket. “It’d be much worse if we weren’t aware el douche was hot on our ass.”

“Having Venezuelan internal security meeting us right there at the airport is a bad, bad sign,” Blancanales said. He sat in the back using a PDA of his own to download a software upgrade created by Schwarz into the vehicle’s GPS system. “Something got SNAFUed right from the beginning.”

“We can’t roll on the VEVAK agent till we get to the safehouse,” Lyons said. “But we can’t lead a team of Chavez’s secret police right to a U.S. safehouse, either. Freakin’ fine mess.”

“I guess we have to identify the shadow unit, then outdrive them.” Schwarz shrugged. “I mean, the CIA does everything the CIA can do. The Farm does what the CIA can’t.”

“Or the FBI,” Blancanales agreed. He caught Schwarz’s eye in the rearview mirror and winked. “Or the LAPD,” he added, voice casual.

Lyons, an ex-LAPD detective, stiffened in response to the inclusion. “Finest police force in the world. You can go to hell. Only reason I left is because SOG has a better dental plan.”

“No, no. This is true,” Schwarz said. “Absolutely. In fact, if you were to do an unbiased comparison of the three organizations I would say it’s obvious the LAPD comes out on top.” His voice was completely deadpan as he continued. “This is a no bullshit story, heard it right from the big Fed, Hal, himself. The LAPD, the FBI and the CIA were all trying to prove that they are the best at apprehending criminals. The President decided to give them a test. He released a rabbit into a forest and each of them had to try and catch it.

“The CIA goes in. They place animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations they concluded that rabbits do not exist.

“Then the FBI goes in. After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and they make no apologies. The rabbit had it coming.

“The LAPD goes in. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear. The bear is yelling, ‘Okay! Okay! I’m a rabbit! I’m a rabbit!’”

“Ten will get you one that bear had done something,” Lyons fired back as his two teammates laughed.

Instantly, Hermann Schwarz stopped laughing. “Pol, does that qualify as an actual joke from the Ironman?”

“Close enough, as far as I’m concerned,” Blancanales replied in a sober voice, sounding slightly bewildered.

“Screw you both,” Lyons replied. He then promptly ran a red light. “Got the bastards! Green current-year Impala, looks like three of them in the rig.”

Blancanales turned and quickly looked over his shoulder. “I got ’em. Looks like three in the vehicle,” he repeated. There was a sudden blare of horns, squealing brakes and a chorus of angry shouts around them in the intersection. “They just ran the red, too,” Blancanales added.

“We’re on now,” Schwarz said. “Of course if we actively loose these ass clowns then they’ll know we’re up to something and we’ll have to go completely black instead of trying to maintain cover.”

“Good,” Lyons muttered, and pushed the accelerator to the floor. “I was getting goddamn tired of all the bullshit sneaking around we’ve been doing.”

“Oh, yeah, we’ve been real below the radar.” Schwarz smirked. Then he put his seat belt on.

Basra, Iraq

DAVID MCCARTER scooted quickly backward, leaving T. J. Hawkins in his low-profile overwatch position. Once away from the opening he turned to check on the rest of the team’s progress. Gary Manning was coolly using a stylus to work the touch pad on his diagnostic server.

“How we coming, mate?” McCarter asked.

“More time,” Manning replied.

“We kind of have company.”

“Look, I’ve got to uplink this substation to the coalition power grid, then trace the connection to our neighborhood before I can shut out the lights. I need more time.”

“Right.” McCarter turned to the rest of his men. “Encizo, get into position next to Hawkins. If T.J. decides he needs to take a shot I want you to bring the noise.”

“Copy.” Encizo nodded. The Cuban lifted the MM-1 grenade launcher and slid in next to the prone Texan.

McCarter lifted his left hand and pointed at Calvin James. “We’re advancing the plan by ten minutes,” he said. “I want you to open the sewer entrance right now and hold the position until we can get Manning through this sabotage gig.”

“They’re rolling this way.” Encizo spoke up for Hawkins. “Moving slow, but it seems obvious they’re spooked and looking for something, not just patrolling.”

McCarter turned back to the massive Canadian. “Gary?”

“Need time.”

“Right, then.” He twisted around. “Hold the line,” McCarter whispered to Encizo, who leaned over and relayed the information to Hawkins. The Phoenix leader turned toward James and nodded once.

The former SEAL rose into a crouch and glided into the narrow space between the relay station Manning was working on and the cinder-block wall that encircled the work area. McCarter heard the whisper of cloth and leather on the concrete, then James was over the top of the far wall and gone into the night.

James hit the ground on the other side of the wall, his boots making a crunch on the loose gravel as he landed. He was in a small access alley running behind a line of empty buildings. At one end of the lane a worn and deteriorated industrial wharf jutted out into the Shatt al-Arab waterway. In the distance, the lights of a garbage scow moved slowly away, gulls circling it, their night cries sharp against the low rumble of its engine.

James swung around to look the other way. He let the SPAS-15 dangle from his strap and pulled a silenced Beretta 92-SB from a holster on his thigh. Down at the end of the alley opposite the pier ran a larger secondary road, intersecting with the alley where a commercial gas station had once stood. The fuel pumps had been blown clean off their moorings at some point in the war and the building was a soot-covered and burned-out hulk.

Moving carefully, pistol up, James jogged up the alley toward the burned-out service station where a manhole cover was set in the ground. He covered the backs of the building fronting the alley, but all he saw were empty windows, dark doorways and tight, twisted openings leading inward between the structures like tunnels.

Coming up to the manhole cover, James quickly went to one knee and holstered his Beretta to pull a thick-bladed diver’s knife from a sheath on his combat boot. A diving knife was, by design, intended to be a pry bar and was built with full tangs and reinforced steel.

Working quickly, James slid the knife into the lip of the manhole cover and pried it up. Instantly a foul miasma wafted up from the opening, causing him to yank his head back in sudden disgust.

As he turned his face to the side, nose wrinkled against the stench, a Mahdi army militia member stared out at him from a weed-choked causeway between two deserted maintenance sheds made out of corrugated tin and aluminum siding. The man had an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips with a blue, cheap plastic lighter held up with his free hand cupped around the flickering flame.

Slung over his shoulder was an AKM.

James popped up out of his crouch like a jack-in-the-box. The Iraqi’s eyes grew wide and his mouth sagged open in surprise. James pushed his feet hard into broken ground, springing forward. The militia gunman’s cigarette tumbled from his lips and the flame on the lighter winked out as it dropped from his hand.

James crossed the road in a flat sprint, knife up and ready, face twisted into a snarl of rage. The plastic lighter hit the ground at the Iraqi’s feet and bounced next to the forgotten cigarette. The man scrambled for the assault rifle slung on his shoulder, fingers fumbling in his fear.

The man tore the strap off his shoulder and swung the Kalashnikov down into his hands, fingers hunting for the trigger as he tried to bring the AKM barrel around. James swung his right hand down and knocked the weapon back into the man’s own chest, blocking him like a defensive back on the line of scrimmage.

The man’s fetid breath rushed out in a gasp, his spittle spraying James in the face. The dive knife arced up and plunged into the Iraqi’s torso just below the sternum, slicing through the membrane of the solar plexus. The man collapsed inward around the thrust and James tore the knife free, blood gushing out to splash into the dust at their feet, making a sticky mud instantly.

James stepped backward to give himself room, then brought the knife back up in a murderous underhand slash. The triangular point of the blade caught the mortally wounded Iraqi militia gunman in his throat just below the bobbing knot of his Adam’s apple.

James felt the blade slice through flesh and cartilage. Hot blood gushed out over his fist and the man croaked and his bowels opened up as a spasm rocked his body. James stepped in and shoved hard, pushing the corpse off the end of his knife and letting the man drop like a sack of loose meat.

He whirled and ran back out into street, slipping the blood-smeared knife blade under the web belt of his H-harness suspender. He drew his silenced Beretta and put a finger to his headset mike.

“Let’s move this up,” he said without preamble. “I just had company at the secondary insertion point. There are bound to be more—he can’t have been alone.”

“Copy,” McCarter confirmed. “Get cover—we have issues here, as well.”

“Roger, out,” James said.

He dropped to his knee and curled his finger tip under the manhole cover. He jerked upward and threw it clear. Once that was done he rose and quickly unholstered and transferred the Beretta to his left hand while taking up the pistol grip of his SPAS-15 in his right. He backed up quickly to the garbage-filled causeway where he had left the body of the Mahdi army sentry.

In the distance he heard the sudden sharp crack as T. J. Hawkins opened up with his sniper rifle. A second later Rafael Encizo let go with his grenade launcher and Calvin James realized hell had found Phoenix Force one more time.

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