Terror Descending

A powerful militant group has amassed a private army of weaponry, mercenaries and a mandate of world peace - by way of mass murder. Across the globe, unmarked planes are unleashing a tidal wave of innocent blood as military and civilian targets all become fair game. When enough of the world is gone, they will step into Power. Unless freedom's last, longest... and only shot does what it does best: the impossible.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nick Pollotta for his contribution to this work.

Prologue

As silent as a thief in the night, a shadow moved across the lush countryside, briefly eclipsing the bright sun and casting the world into stygian gloom.

Suzette Perdue recoiled slightly as a titanic 757 jumbo jet noisily rumbled over the Marseilles Provence Airport, the thunderous wake of the rising airliner audibly shaking the unbreakable Plexiglas window of the passenger lounge.

Smiling in embarrassment, Perdue looked around, but thankfully, nobody had noticed her childish reaction. The bustling crowd was busy rushing to and from gates, buying things at the duty-free shops, eating, laughing or standing impatiently in long lines at the security checkpoints.

Uniformed soldiers of the 1st PIR — Parachute Infantry Regiment, the French Special Forces — stood alert behind low sandbag walls, some sort of double-barrel weapons held in their calloused hands. Machine gun, assault rifle, bazooka, Perdue had no idea what the bulky things were, but the weapons looked very deadly, and she timidly shied away from the burly men and women in their stark military uniforms. Swinging her cell phone toward the soldiers, Perdue saw one of them glance her way and frown. Immediately she lowered the device and timidly smiled in return until the stern man nodded in approval and looked away.

Turning her back to the troops, Perdue exhaled in relief. These were perilous times, and all of this new security was necessary to allow the nation to run smoothly. As her grandmother always said, freedom was anything but free.

"Flight 219 from Cairo, arriving at Gate 18," a genderless voice announced over the PA system.

Excitedly, Perdue moved closer to the observation window, lifting the cell phone and switching back to the camera function to try to record the arrival of the jet. A special moment to remember forever. This was it, Jean-Pierre was coming. At any second now they would be together at last. After so many years of service, her fiance was finally returning from war in the Middle East, along with some general famous for something she had never heard about. The city had a big celebration planned for him, but that had nothing to do with her and Jean-Pierre. While the general was wined and dined, they would be married at a small chapel downtown, and then quickly leave for their honeymoon in the motel near the lake.

Outside the window, the massive airport spread out for what seemed like miles. There were a dozen runways, wide and black, radiating in an overlapping pattern.

Suddenly voices were raised in anger from behind and she turned to see grim-faced soldiers converging on a checkpoint. Briefly, Perdue saw a fat man struggling to get away from their grasping hands, then his shirt ripped open and out poured an endless flow of glistening white powder. Cocaine, or heroin, it was impossible to say. She aimed the tiny camera lens of the phone at the scene, then lowered it. This was not going into her wedding book.

Using the butts of their rifles, the soldiers brutally subdued the drug smuggler and the limp body was dragged away. Only moments later, the line of passengers was moving smoothly again, and an old janitor arrived with a mop and pail to start cleaning the bloody powder off the smooth terrazzo floor, overseen by airport security.

Turning away from the awful sight, Perdue pressed her face against the observation window, trying to see into the misty sky, the forgotten phone clenched tightly in her hand. However, there were too many planes overhead, and it was impossible to tell which were about to land and which were streaking past the airport at supersonic speeds. Distance made the velocity of the aircraft illusory, the lower planes seeming much faster than the rocketing aircraft high overhead.

Just then a shadow moved over the rows of tarmac and a fiery explosion blew apart a baggage truck, bodies and suitcases flying skyward in a grisly volcano of death.

Recoiling in horror, Perdue raised a hand to her mouth as more explosions riddled the runway, fuel trucks detonating like a nuclear blast. A Canadian 757 airliner violently came apart, the crumpled pieces of the fuselage lifting off the ground on a writhing column of flame.

By now, multiple sirens were howling, the sounds growing steadily in volume and power as something large rumbled over the airport terminal, closely followed by a deafening series of strident detonations.

Everybody had stopped talking in the airport, and the French soldiers were quickly muttering into the mikes dangling from cords attached to their epaulets.

Unable to believe what was happening, Perdue watched the wreath of flames spread outward to engulf other planes, Russian, Japanese, American, British; in turn each erupted, chunks of wreckage and human limbs flying away in every direction.

Several more planes on the ground burst apart as they tried to taxi out of the area, adding to the tidal wave of destruction. Bricks sprayed out from the control tower as the building started to buckle in the middle, the tall structure audibly groaning as it eased over, the tons of masonry cascading onto a row of parked cars filled with screaming people.

In the sky, the arriving planes were turning away from the airport, and two of them touched for a brief second, the wings bending before they snapped off. Sharply angling around, the airliners slammed directly into each other and broke apart, the pieces and passengers tumbling downward like a rain from hell.

Steadily increasing in power and fury, the destruction of the airport continued unabated, fires raged out of control in a hundred locations. Sprawled bodies covered the tarmac. A few of the forms pitifully tried to crawl away, but the rest were ominously still.

As bright as daggers from the sun, fiery darts shot across the chaotic airport, and the distant hangars became engulfed in flames.

Galvanized into action, Perdue cast aside her cell phone and dashed for the nearby emergency exit, her every thought on reaching Flight 219. Jean-Pierre had to still be alive. He had to be! As she reached for the handle of the door, the wall changed into blinding light and something hard hit her in the back, stealing the breath from her lungs. Thrown to the debris-covered floor, Perdue tried to rise again, but her legs were numb, unfeeling lumps of flesh below her blood-splattered hem. Everything seemed to slow as she looked down to see a dark red stain spreading across the front of her dress, a long shard of the Plexiglas window sticking out of her belly like a transparent dagger. Her throat tightened, but no sob came. She felt oddly dizzy, and there was no pain. No pain at all. How very strange.

Charging through the wreckage, a PIR soldier carrying a medical bag headed toward her when the floor cracked open wide and he fell out of sight into a smoke-filled crevice. Reaching out for the soldier, Perdue felt herself starting to fall forward into a bottomless abyss.

Less than a minute later Flight 219 descended from the misty sky to flash over the charred ruins of the international airport, the crew and passengers unable to believe the devastation below.

Chapter One

In the spacious War Room, several people sat in the dark around a large conference table, watching a jumbled recording of the dire events that had occurred in France less than six hours earlier. Their faces were grim, and nobody moved or spoke until the last horrific scene of destruction was finally over.

Pressing a button on the remote control, Barbara Price, the Farm's mission controller, banished the horrific images. Slowly, the room lights brightened to full strength.

"That was recovered from a dozen smashed security cameras at the Marseilles-Provence Airport," Price said, setting the remote control on the table. "The whole attack lasted less than two minutes."

Somebody whistled softly, and another bitterly cursed. "That fast?" David McCarter asked, raising an eyebrow.

"This was no slapdash operation by a bunch of lunatics throwing a homemade firebomb out of speeding car," Price replied curtly. "This was a surgical attack with military precision, highly sophisticated and extremely well coordinated."

"These people are as ruthless as mad dogs," Aaron "the Bear" Kurtzman growled, running stiff fingers through his wild crop of hair.

Everybody who saw the hirsute goliath quickly accepted his nickname of Bear. Although an expert computer specialist, one of the best in the world, the man had the shoulders of a professional linebacker and the heavily muscled arms of a stone mason, in spite of the fact that he was in a wheelchair. His face was bright and alive, his black eyes sharply intelligent.

Odd for a man living at a government base with nearly unlimited funding, his wheelchair was an older model, the metal struts badly scarred from countless small repairs. But the burly computer expert much preferred the manual chair to any motorized version, as the constant exercise of pushing himself along kept his upper body in excellent shape.

"They're worse than mad dogs," Price countered, taking a seat. "That kind of attack would have been random, chaotic. This was deliberate, cold-blooded efficiency, plain brutal mass murder."

"How many are dead?" asked Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group and Justice Department liaison to the White House. A leather briefcase lay nearby with the lid raised. Inside were stacks of manila folders marked with the telltale red stripe of a Top Secret report.

"We have no idea yet of the death toll," Price replied, opening a folder and taking out several black-and-white photographs. "Homeland Security had the NSA fly a Keyhole satellite over the area and take some pictures, but there is simply too much wreckage. NATO and the French authorities are still... assembling the bodies."

"Do they have a rough count?" Brognola asked, glancing at the photos. There was a set of before-and-after shots to help gauge the destruction, but the pairing wasn't necessary. The area looked like something from the Iraq war, smashed buildings, hundreds of small fires and blast craters in the pavement large enough to see from space.

Folding her hands, Price nodded. "Yes. Approximately four hundred civilians, along with about a hundred military personnel, and maybe twice that in service personnel, but with so many tourists..."

"Okay, how the hell did these sons of bitches get close enough to the airport to do a bombing run?" Carl Lyons demanded, his ice-blue eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Whatever did this must have been seen on radar, or was the place bombed by a stealth plane?"

The blond giant, a former Los Angeles police detective was the leader of Able Team. Banded cables of muscles stood out on his bare forearms, and a massive .357 Magnum Colt Python revolver rode in a military-style shoulder holster. The other two members of his team were in the garage, listening to the briefing over the intercom while checking the team's new equipment van.

"Oh, the incoming plane was seen on radar, all right," Price countered, sliding over another report. "The killers are quite visible. We have the log of the air traffic controllers to confirm that."

"Was Flight 219 taken over by terrorists and armed somehow?" McCarter asked, glancing at the recon photos.

Called away from a fishing trip, the Phoenix Force leader was in uncharacteristic denims and a red flannel shirt. A pack of Player's cigarettes was tucked into his shirt pocket, and the man smelled faintly of bug repellant.

"No, Flight 219 had nothing to do with the attack on the airport," Price said, reaching out to tap a photograph of a jetliner. "They arrived about two minutes after the bombing and were escorted by a wing of Mirage jetfighters to Bordeaux-Merignac air base where the passengers and crew were, well, vigorously interrogated, would be the polite term, and the plane all but disassembled. However, they were innocent dupes. The terrorists merely pretended to be the flight so that they could get close enough to bomb the airport."

"How is that possible?" Brognola asked, frowning. "Aside from the radar, there are call signs, encoded transmissions and ident signals..."

"All of which were perfectly duplicated by the invaders," Price said curtly. "So there was no reason why the tower should not have given the fake Flight 219 permission to approach and land."

"Only they didn't land," Lyons said. He was starting to get an idea where this was going, and liking the situation less and less by the moment.

"No, they simply dropped a maelstrom of ordnance while flying past the airport at slightly over a thousand feet."

"A thousand feet is pretty close," McCarter said. "Anybody get a good look at the craft? Was it a stealth bomber?"

"Good Lord, no," Price said. "This was a much older vehicle. Smaller, and more compact. A Boeing 707."

"Yes, Hal, we do," Price said, touching the remote control once more. "This was recovered from the smashed cell phone of a dead woman waiting for Flight 219 to arrive." The wall screen came to life showing the blurred image of something flying high above the airport, a dotted line of black objects tumbling from a belly hatch, while fiery darts launched from weapons pods hidden between the turbojets on the wings.

"That's not a 707," Lyons stated with growing conviction. "Look at where the wings are positioned. That's a B-52 heavy bomber!"

"Impossible. It can't be," Brognola countered, squinting at the wall screen. "There are windows along the sides. A B-52 doesn't have any side windows. Then again, those are double engines, not singles. Barbara, is that a B-52?"

"Yes, although it was modified to resemble a Boeing 707," Price replied, tapping a switch. The screen split into a side-by-side view of two different jet planes. "Carl was correct. It's a B-52 bomber. Those windows are only painted onto the fuselage." She adjusted the controls and the picture zoomed in to show a tight shot on an aft window. "See? The paint has streaked a little on a couple of them from the force of the wind shear. The hulls of the two planes are similar enough to fool even combat pilots. The B-52 is based upon the basic design of the 707."

"But surely any trained pilot..." Brognola started, then stopped. "No, forget that. The general shape of the two planes is very similar, and any differences, wing position, double engines, would be undetectable at a thousand feet, much less ten thousand."

Standing quietly in the corner, John "Cowboy" Kissinger merely grunted at the news. The master gun-smith maintained every weapon on the Farm, along with those used by the field teams. He had nothing to add to the meeting at the present, but was already mentally calculating what kinds of explosives and specialty ordnance the field teams might need.

"Unfortunately, there's more," Price stated, pressing a button on the console. Silently sheets of paper slid out of slots set into the table in front of each person. "At the exact same time there were similar attacks on a civilian airport in China, as well as an American AFB just outside Nome, Alaska."

"So this is not just a grudge with France, but a worldwide strike on both civilian and military targets."

The single word sent chills down the backs of the Stony Man operatives. An attack this widespread meant a major organization, thousands of personnel and nearly unlimited funds.

"If a Chinese airport hadn't been hit, I would have assumed they were behind it all," McCarter said. "Any chance they hit their own territory as a diversion?"

"At the cost of billions in collateral damage?" Price queried. "No way, David. It's not the Chinese. The Red Star wants these Airwolves even more than France does."

"You know, I would have thought that hacking into the electronic system of a major airport, and doing it fast enough to 'impersonate' an arriving plane, would have been flat-out impossible," Brognola said, thoughtfully twisting his wedding ring. "Obviously, I was wrong."

"Something like this would require a top-notch team of samurai," Kurtzman said, then saw the puzzled expressions, and quickly explained. "Samurai is our term for an expert hacker, the very best in their field."

Frowning, Kurtzman continued. "They'd also need a really good supercomputer. A Cray Mark IV might do, but I would have gone with an IBM Blue Gene or a Dell Thunderbird."

Nobody made a comment on the bizarre observation. The best way to find a terrorist was to learn how to think like one. The tactic required a special kind of mental flexibility that many ordinary police officers simply could not accommodate. For an operative working for Stony Man, it was practically a requirement.

"All of which these wolves in sheep's clothing obviously have," Price said, rising from her chair to walk to the side table. The woman poured herself a mug of steaming coffee and took a sip. "Broadcasting the correct codes and ident signals, these people are, for all intents and purposes, invisible, innocently mixed in with all of the other planes until they attack."

Lyons grimaced. "In a single day, the military has been thrown back to visually tracking incoming planes by using binoculars, and against a supersonic jetfighter no one would have a clue!"

"Even if somebody got a visual on the B-52," Brognola said slowly. "They'd think it was just a 707, and without the flight log of the tower to check, how could anybody know the incoming flight was actually supposed to be something else!"

Everybody turned to look at him. Hunched over, the man was feverishly working a handheld calculator.

"The math on these attacks doesn't work out right," Kurtzman repeated, looking up and placing the calculator on the table. "To hack into the tower, get the ident for a plane, and the flight path, then slip in just ahead of the plane, would require supercomputers."

"You already told us that," Brognola stated, then suddenly looked alert. "And there's not a plane in the world large enough to carry one of those into battle. It can't be done! A supercomputer is huge, but very delicate."

"They also weighs tons, and require a lot of constant technical support," Price added, setting her mug aside. "Just taking off from the ground would crash a supercomputer."

"Which means the Airwolves must have a ground base somewhere," McCarter added, grimly intent. "That might be mobile, on a ship maybe, but it gives us a target to find. Take out the computers, or even the comm sat..."

"And they're visible again, flying in plain sight," Price finished. "Bear, have your team start a global search. Find their satellite and backtrack it to their ground base."

"On it," Kurtzman stated, hitting a button on the intercom to issue some terse instructions to his team in the Annex's Computer Room.

"You know, whatever we do, we'll need a diversion to keep the enemy off balance and looking in the wrong direction," Lyons said, clearly thinking out loud. "Bear, how many abandoned airports are there in North America?"

That caught the chief hacker off guard. "Let me check," he replied, and worked his laptop for a moment. "Okay, according to the last FAA survey, there are 1643 abandoned airfields."

In growing understanding, Kurtzman grinned and worked the keyboard again. "That would be 603, including the Nevada Salt Flats, where you could land Mt. Rushmore."

"Hal," Price said, "please contact the President immediately, and ask him to have the Air Force bomb those old airfields, then send in regular Army ground troops to check the ruins."

Without a word, the man rose and went to a wall phone. "Give me a secure line to the White House," he demanded. After a brief wait, he spoke in a subdued whisper for several minutes, then hung up the receiver.

"What exactly did the Airwolves hit the airport with?" Lyons asked, staring hard at the pictures of destruction.

Setting aside her mug, Price checked a page on a clipboard. "Let's see — air-to-ground missiles, rockets, cluster bombs, smart bombs and iron bombs."

Looking up, Kurtzman started to ask what those were, then stopped as he suddenly remembered that with the creation of smart bombs, old-fashioned bombs that had no guidance systems or any electronics, had been renamed dumb bombs, then finally iron bombs. Politically correct weapons. The very idea made his butt hurt.

"Any chance the French gathered enough parts to figure out where the weapons came from?" Brognola asked. "The Surete has some of the best criminal forensic people in the business."

"They do," Price replied. "We made the missiles. Or rather they were U.S. Air Force issue. The rockets were British, the cluster bombs Russian and iron bombs from Italy."

"Mixed ordnance," Lyon said, rubbing his jaw. "Sounds like these bastards were using whatever they could get."

"Or else that's what they're trying to make us think," McCarter responded. "This might actually be China, or some new group trying keep hidden. Remember the Brigade, or Unity?"

Clearly, everybody in the room did, and their faces grew more stern, if that were possible.

"Okay, there is no way that we're going to track them through the munitions," Price stated. "Unless they're idiots, they've been stockpiling for years." Adding some sugar to her coffee, the woman stirred it slowly. "But we might be able to find them through the sales of the munitions."

"Through the weapons dealers who illegally sold them the bombs," Lyons said. "Armando in Ohio would be the man to check with first. He's the dirtiest arms dealer in the U.S. We can put the squeeze on him. Maybe he's heard something. These guys have a network. We can go in as buyers... no, as sellers, and see what we can dig up."

"The best way to follow the money..." Brognola added sagely "...is to be the original source."

He wanted Bob? Crossing her arms, the woman almost smiled in understanding. "Fair enough," Price said out loud. "Good luck. Report when possible."

Taking the remote control, Brognola brought up the fuzzy picture of the B-52 bomber. "This is an old plane, been around for over sixty years," Brognola said slowly, testing the words as if they were creaking wooden boards under his feet. "How many of them are still in service around the world?"

"Unfortunately, yes." The armorer shrugged. "The damn things fly forever, if you have enough spare parts."

"Buy enough parts from enough different sources and you could probably build a B-52," Brognola said with conviction, sensing a possible vulnerability in the enemy.

Suddenly alert, Price almost smiled. "And exactly where do you buy replacement parts for a B-52 heavy bomber?"

Thoughtfully, Kissinger chewed a lip. "Well, there is a place called the Boneyard out in Arizona. That's where the Air Force stores their old, and new, B-52 bombers, along with a lot of their other off-line or obsolete war planes."

"Sounds like the Boneyard is a good place to start a search... No, forget that," Price corrected herself. "It's much too obvious a source. That would be the last place the terrorists would get any parts."

"If we're talking about black market war planes, that would be either Miami, the Sudan or Mexico," McCarter announced. "And Homeland Security has the Miami group so heavily infiltrated that those boys can't sell a wing nut, much less an entire war plane, without Washington knowing about it. There is a huge market for airplane parts, especially for military planes, and even more so for jets of any kind. The money involved is so good that a lot of drug dealers have switched from heroin to smuggling airplane parts."

"And the CIA has done the same with Sudan," Brognola added. "Which leaves Mexico."

"The very place I was thinking about," McCarter said. "Out in the Yucatan Peninsula, there was an airfield built secretly during the reign of Mario Madrid, the so-called king of Cancun."

"One of the first. The son of a bitch killed hundreds of Interpol agents, CIA operatives, police, Mexican federales. It's said that he shifted more cocaine and heroin than we will ever know. The Mexican police finally took him down." Price smiled. "With a little help from us and Mack."

"To keep an airfield hidden, it would have to be located somewhere out in the desert," Brognola said. "Maybe Mack would know where, but he's busy in Tennessee right now."

"No sweat," Kurtzman stated with conviction. "I'll personally run a search through the CIA and NSA spy satellites. I'll find the airfield for you, David, long before Phoenix Force lands in the capital city of Chetumal."

Standing, McCarter pointed a finger at the chief hacker and shot him by dropping a thumb. Kurtzman deflected the imaginary round with a palm, and both men grinned.

Chapter Two

Walking along the deserted streets, Armando Delacort kept an easy pace, his five bodyguards maintaining a tight formation around the millionaire arms dealer. Their suits bulged from the Uzi machine pistols slung under their jackets, and their heads were shaved in a military buzzcut, giving the men an oddly similar appearance. None of them wore jewelry, and all of them had multiple scars on their hands and faces telling of many battles fought hard and won. After the unexpected retirement the previous year of his Manhattan business rival, business had been booming.

Dressed in white linen as if this was the tropics, Delacort showed no sign of his inner demons, and coolly radiated the sort of easy affluence that only the truly rich and powerful could master. However, childhood habits died hard, and there was a switchblade knife tucked into his hip pocket, a pair of brass knuckles in his vest and a brand-new, state-of-the-art Glock 18 tucked into a tailored shoulder holster.

The weapon was a marvel, justifying the boastful claim that Glock was the premier weapons designer in the world. In appearance, it was absolutely identical to the Glock 17, a simple semiautomatic pistol. But just a touch on the trigger of the Eighteen, and it chattered off seventeen 9 mm rounds in slightly under two seconds. Two seconds! Absolutely incredible. Privately, the arms dealer was eagerly looking forward to the first reasonable excuse to use the new weapon, to see how well it did in combat.

Smiling contentedly at the sun, Delacort ambled along, savoring the clean morning air. As always, the city streets were mostly empty at this ungodly hour of the day, the sun just cresting over the top of the Hyatt Sports Stadium clearly announcing that it was barely 10:00 a.m. All of the commuters were at work, the mob of students attending the four local colleges were in class, and any shoppers were at the upscale shops located far uptown.

Whistling a tune, Delacort sauntered along the sidewalk, taking his time and almost feeling sorry for the hordes of people who had to eke out a living in the daily grind. Few people understood that life was like a fine wine — it should be savored and enjoyed, not gulped like water or guzzled like soda pop!

"Baa... baa..." Delacort said, imitating a sheep at a passing couple on the other side of the street. The man and woman gave no sign that they had heard, but they did hurry around the corner and out of sight.

Chuckling softly to himself, Delacort paused for only a second to check the oncoming traffic, of which there was none, before crossing Main Street even though the traffic light was red.

Straight ahead, on the corner of High and Main streets, the international arms dealer smiled at the sight of the Anchor Cafe, the green-and-white-striped awning fluttering in the gentle breeze above a score of wrought-iron tables and chairs, which were surprisingly comfortable. Taking a seat at an empty table, Delacort smiled at the other patrons, then snapped his fingers for service. For anybody else, this would only result in them being the last person in the cafe to get service, but Delacort was feared, and a big tipper, so the staff fought over who got to handle the Little King of Columbus.

"Good morning, Susan." The arms dealer smiled, handing it right back. "Eggs Benedict, please, with bacon on the side. Coffee, black, whole wheat toast with orange marmalade and a date tonight? I have tickets for... well, anything that would please you, my dear."

Taking down the order on her pad, Susan giggled at the pass and calmly walked away without responding. The woman knew full well that the big man did not mean it, even if she had been interested in a brief dalliance with him. This was just a game he played with the staff to amuse himself, that was all. Which suited them fine. There were rumors about some of the other games he liked to play, and only a suicidal lunatic would go to bed with a man whose tastes ran in the direction of silk ties and whips.

Shifting his chair so that the back was to the brick wall, Delacort reached out a hand and a bodyguard passed over a folded newspaper. Nodding his thanks, the arms dealer went straight to the political page. However, there was no more information about the terrorist attack on the airport in France, so he folded the paper and placed it aside. Ah, well, such is life. He always got a vicarious thrill reading about what his clients did with the munitions he sold. The arms dealer knew it was foolish, but if he could not do the killing personally, then at least he could have a note of satisfaction that his weapons were being handled by professionals.

Just then the wail of a police siren caught his attention, and the bodyguards moved fast to close around their employer as a black SUV screeched around the corner. A blond giant was behind the wheel, another man sitting alongside apparently having trouble loading some sort of a shotgun. In the backseat, two more men were firing handguns out the open windows of the SUV at the flock of police cars in hot pursuit.

Instantly everybody in the cafe started to scream and run for cover, but Delacort knew professionals at a glance, and stayed where he was to enjoy the show. Instinctively the arms dealer identified each of the weapons in sight — Atchisson 12-gauge autoshotgun, Colt .45 pistol, Model 1911 and a classic 9 mm Beretta. Whomever these criminals were, they knew guns, that was for certain. Naturally, the cops were all armed with a boring and predictable 9 mm Glock. A nice enough weapon, if safety, not death, was your main concern.

Wheeling around an island in the wide street, the men in the SUV hammered the police cars with a hail of hot lead, the rounds slamming off the sides of the vehicles, smashing a sideview mirror and shattering a headlight. The cops answered back with their service-issue Glocks, the 9 mm rounds hammering the back of the SUV but failing to achieve penetration.

That piqued his interest and Delacort raised an eyebrow. The SUV had armor plating? Exactly who were these men?

As the cars raced around the island once more, one of the men in the SUV shot out a store window, showering the street with glass. But the resilient tires of the police cars went over the sparkling shards without blowing a tire.

One of his bodyguards grunted at the tactic, and Delacort agreed. It had been a good try, and his respect for these men increased. Mentally, he wished them well. Careening off the side of a parked laundry truck, the SUV fishtailed out of control for a moment, then straightened and took off down Main Street. A police helicopter appeared over the Prudential building, distracting Delacort for a split second, and when he looked back the man saw a female police officer jerk backward as blood erupted from her ruined throat. Grabbing the ghastly wound with both hands, she fell to the ground, her Glock dropping to the street and clattering away to disappear into a sewer grating.

"Sons of bitches!" another cop bellowed, thumbing a switch on his Glock before pulling the trigger.

Incredibly, Delacort thought the weapon had exploded, then he realized it was a Model 18, exactly the same as the one under his jacket. Chattering away, the machine pistol discharged in a continuous roar and the SUV, flipped up. A tire blew, a window shattered and the head of the man loading the shotgun seemed to get hit as blood splashed across the inside of the windshield.

"Good shot," Delacort noted with a chuckle as bank bags jounced out of the open trunk to hit the pavement and break open. Stacks of bills went everywhere, and a police car plowed through them, sending out a corona of loose bills that the breeze took and began to spread across the intersection like manna from heaven.

Numerous civilians who had been crouched in hiding, now insanely charged into the street to grab whatever they could. More bundles fell from the speeding SUV. But Delacort noticed that these came from the men in the rear seat and were not the bank bags in the trunk. What in the world could those be?

Black smoke exploded from two of the bundles, and then the rest banged loudly, throwing numerous small objects across the pavement.

Plowing throw the smoke, the police cars suddenly lurched of out control as all of their tires blew at exactly the same instant. Riding on only the rims, the drivers fought to control the screeching vehicles as showers of bright sparks were thrown up behind them like fireworks. Forcing the cars to a stop, the police inside jumped out before the crippled vehicles rocked to a halt, and took off on foot. But the SUV was impossibly distant by now, and the snarling men angrily holstered their weapons. A few of them started to shout orders to the civilians dashing around, grabbing at the whirlwind of money, while older and obviously wiser cops started to speak into their radios.

Kneeling on the pavement, a policewoman with a spreading bloodstain on her arm, lifted something small and metallic-looking from the street.

"And what the fuck is this?" she demanded of nobody in particular, turning the object over to inspect it from every angle.

As his bodyguards relaxed their defensive postures, Delacort smiled in amusement, recognizing the item as a caltrop, a primitive device invented by the Romans to stop the advance of barefoot enemies, but it worked equally as well against modern-day cars. It was a small triangular piece of wood with sharp nails driven through to point outward from each side. No matter how they fell, if a tire went over one, the nails deflated it, and that was the end of the chase. Well, against the police, or the FBI, Delacort noted mentally. The CIA and Homeland had puncture-proof military tires. Against those, a thousand caltrops would be as ineffectual as throwing spitballs.

"Still, I wonder if those would sell well wholesale," the arms dealer muttered, snapping his fingers for the waitress once more before returning to the newspaper. He was hungrier than ever now, and sure that the staff would come out of hiding eventually.

* * *

Taking a corner on two wheels, Lyons angled sharply into a parking garage and took the ramp to the second level at breakneck speed. Smashing aside a row of bright orange safety cones, the Stony Man commando slammed on the brakes as the back of a huge Mack truck came into view.

Decelerating quickly, Lyons had the SUV down to only 50 mph when he hit the sloped sheet of corrugated steel leading into the open rear of the cargo truck. The front end crashed against the metal, throwing the people inside hard against their seat belts, the bloody mannequin in the passenger seat — Bloody Bob — flopping wildly. As the interior of the truck filled his sight, Lyons threw the SUV into Reverse. The transmission gave a metallic groan, then slammed the vehicle to a halt, a barrage of shrapnel blowing out the bottom as gears shattered under the abrupt change in direction.

Rocking slightly back and forth on the shock absorbers, the men in the SUV clawed at their seat belts as the blacksuits from the Farm dropped the access ramp, then swung the doors closed. Darkness descended with a strident clang.

Only a few seconds later there came the sound of a police siren racing past the truck, then fading into the distance as the cops streaked along the ramps of the empty garage, going higher and higher.

"Well, that was interesting," Hermann Schwarz said, wiping his mustache clean with a palm. The hand came away streaked with crimson, none of it from him. "You know, I've had fun before, and this isn't it." Standing average height, and sporting plain brown hair, Schwarz was an ordinary-looking man, and there was nothing about him to show that "Gadgets" was one of the top electronics experts in the world.

"You can say that again, brother," Rosario "The Politician" Blancanales muttered, brushing back his wavy crop of salt-and-pepper hair. Built along a more stocky frame, Blancanales had been a Black beret before joining the Stony Man team, and although an expert in psychological warfare, he radiated physical strength the way a furnace did heat.

"He's dead," Lyons said, reaching over to shake the human-size mannequin. At the touch, more red fluid gushed from the wound in its head, and a few more plastic teeth sprayed forward to bounce off the dashboard, sounding like rattling dice.

"Damn. Don't think I can fix him this time," Schwarz said with a frown. "And still make him appear human."

"Fair enough. He's ready for permanent retirement," Blancanales agreed, placing his Colt 1911 on the seat. "Let him rest in peace."

"Rest in pieces, you mean," Schwarz said, chuckling as he reached under the seat to extract a briefcase.

In the front seat, Lyons merely grunted at the feeble joke as he pulled the Atchisson shotgun from the stiff fingers of the mannequin and started wiping the weapon down with a damp cloth to remove the sticky theatrical blood. Personally, Lyons was glad the charade had come off without a hitch. Time was short, and with no other place to start an investigation, this desperate plan was their only way to try to find the Airwolves, and their pretend streetfight could have gone wrong in a hundred different ways. Thankfully there had been no real accidents. The cop who had died in the police car chasing them had only been the sister of Bob, Dyin' Donna, operated by Schwarz by remote control.

In a muted rumble, the big diesel engine of the Mack truck lumbered into life, revving a few times to build power before smoothly moving forward.

Now that the team was in motion once more, Schwarz opened the briefcase and tucked the partially loaded Beretta into the soft gray foam, followed by the Colt. Then the man extracted a duplicate pair of weapons, only these were adorned with tiny splotches of yellow paint to mark them as real weapons. Passing the Colt to Blancanales, Schwarz briefly inspected the Beretta before slipping in a magazine of live ammunition.

Rubbing off the yellow paint, Blancanales did the same to his Colt. Long ago, the team had learned that using blanks in their weapons to simulate a firefight would not fool professionals. The guns looked the same and sounded the same, but the blanks shot out a feeble spray of sparks from the end of the muzzle instead of a hot lance of flame the way a live round did. That was the kind of mistake that could easily cost lives. So for these kinds of maneuvers, the Stony Man operatives used theatrical weapons acquired from a Hollywood production company.

The safe weapons were identical to real guns, but the interior of the barrel was throttled down to only a slim passage so that the quarter-charge of powder in the cartridges sent off a very realistic-looking muzzle flash. There was even enough of a kick to operate the complex loading mechanism and cycle in the next round. Which was how a studio had its pampered movie stars dramatically fire off machine guns in a film without them looking foolish, or worse, accidentally killing somebody. Blanks sent off wads of cardboard, supposedly harmless, but under the right conditions, they could break bones, and occasionally the cheap brass in the cartridges shattered, sending out a deadly spray of razor-sharp metal that killed every bit as easily as hot lead.

With a jounce, the truck exited the parking garage and started along High Street, heading northward. The police cars howled in the distance, moving east along Main Street.

"Mighty nice of the local cops to help us out on this," Schwarz said, threading a sound suppressor onto the barrel of his Beretta before holstering the weapon.

"Anything to help Homeland Security," Lyons replied, inspecting the Atchisson for last vestiges of the fake blood. When satisfied, he eased in a drum of 12-gauge cartridges and clicked on the safety. "Besides, they hate Delacort with a passion that can only be measured in kilotons."

"The enemy of my enemy, eh?" Blancanales asked, tucking the Colt into a shoulder holster. "Come on, let's get out of this filthy car and get dressed. I'm covered with fake brains."

Exiting the battered SUV, the team retrieved duffel bags from restraining straps on the walls of the truck and pulled out designer suits, expensive Italian shoes, Rolex watches and fat plastic containers of moist towellettes. Stripping to the skin, the men washed off the fake blood and began to get dressed again, starting with imported silk shorts. They needed to appear rich, and there was no telling how detailed a search Delacort might have his bodyguards perform.

"So, who are we this time?" Schwarz asked, splashing on some expensive French cologne.

"We're mercenaries called Red Five," Lyons replied, slipping on a designer shirt. "We're a radical splinter group of the Aryan Nation."

"This evening," Lyons replied, sliding on a pair of sunglasses. "Any sooner and he might become suspicious. We get only one chance at this, so we have to play it low and slow."

"And if he doesn't know anything about the Airwolves' military ordnance?" Blancanales asked, sliding a gold signet ring onto his hand. Clenching his fist, the ring blossomed into a flower of razor blades. Easing his hand, the ring snapped shut, returning to the appearance of mere jewelry.

Chapter Three

Swiftly, the massive C-130 Hercules airplane glided through the clear sky like a winged mountain. David McCarter had turned off the huge engines as the coastline of Mexico came into sight, and was now dead-sticking it, flying the colossal warplane with his hands on the yoke, directed by instinct and years of training.

Strapped into the copilot's seat, a tall, lean man in a military jumpsuit was using both hands to operate a military image enhancer. More than merely magnifying a view of the ground below, the device also scanned in the ultraviolet and infrared spectrum. Boasting window-in-window capability, the display screen showed a real-time view of the ground below, plus a series of static shots, the view constantly shifting as the cameras focused briefly on anything hot enough to register as a potential threat.

Thomas Jackson Hawkins had been raised in Texas, and was outlandishly proud of the fact. A genial man who smiled a lot, Hawkins spoke slowly, but moved with lightning-fast reflexes when it was time to kill. A former member of the elite Delta Force, Hawkins was trained in quiet kill techniques, but much preferred a thunder and lightning blitzkrieg.

"Okay, thermals read clean again. Aside from a campfire some kids built, there's nothing down there but a coyote. No sign of any motorized traffic or other campfires."

"Good to know," David McCarter stated, putting his full attention on the stygian darkness ahead.

The former SAS commando knew that the bustling city of Cancun was only a few miles to the east, but the electric glow of the famous vacation spot was completely swallowed by the sheer distance, along with the endlessly shifting mountains of rolling sand dunes. The Phoenix Force leader felt like he was flying with the windows painted back, the night was so dark. His muscles were starting to ache from the strain of being constantly ready to dodge an outcropping.

The peninsula of Quintana Roo was mostly wild desert that stretched to white sandy beaches, occasionally punctuated with the crumbling ruins of Mayan temples perched atop low rocky cliffs. But that was Mexico; Cancun was as peaceful as Quintana Roo was savage.

Without shifting his sight, McCarter reached out to flip some switches, feathering the propellers and dropping two of the four airfoils. Instantly the huge plane slowed as if plowing into a wall of gelatin.

"Hundred feet... eighty... sixty..." Hawkins read off the altimeter. "Watch out — the freaking temple!"

"I saw it," McCarter growled, speeding past the stone building and then dropping the last two flaps.

"Guess so, since we didn't just eat sandstone," Hawkins snorted, hitting a button on the intercom. "Hold on to your asses, boys, this is it. We're going in!"

Fifty feet away, in the main body of the huge airplane, past a short flight of stairs, three men sat strapped into jumpseats, their camouflage-colored uniforms covered with military equipment.

Over the intercom set into the arm of the jumpseat, Hawkins's reply consisted mostly of four-letter words.

"Only if you buy me dinner first." James laughed, a strong Chicago accent announcing his own native city.

Over six feet in height, the lanky man was classically good-looking, although oddly sporting a pencil-thin mustache like a movie star from the Roaring Twenties. Ready for battle the instant they touched down, James had an MP-5 submachine gun strapped across his chest and night-vision goggles at his side. A sleek 9 mm Beretta rode high on his chest in a combat holster, and a Randall Survival knife was at his side, the telltale blade of a Navy SEAL. Unlike the others, his camouflage paint was dull gray to mix with his naturally dark skin.

Surrounding the members of Phoenix Force were large pallets bolted directly to the deck, the stacks of equipment trunks lashed tightly into place. Parked fifty feet away at the rear of the plane was a Hummer, the heavy military vehicle tightly cocooned in a spiderweb of restraining belts. Ready for desert combat, the Hummer was painted a mottled array of dull colors, the headlights covered with night shields, and a M-249 SAW machine gun already attached to the firing stanchion, the breech open, the attached ammo box ready for action.

Instantly the plane shuddered as the wheels bounced off the hard desert sand. A spray of loose particles peppered the aft belly as the C-130 Hercules airplane rose slightly only to touch down once more. The plane shuddered again, then jerked hard and began to crazily jerk around as it bounced along the irregular ground. Everything loose went flying, and the three men in the jumpseats held on for dear life, not fully trusting the safety harnesses.

The noise of the sand hitting the underbelly of the plane grew to hurricane force, then the brakes engaged and the violent shaking rapidly eased until the gigantic craft came to an easy stop.

"Well, I'm delighted to see that correspondence course in flying is really working out well for David," Rafael Encizo commented, working his jaw to see if any teeth were loose.

Gary Manning grinned, shrugging off his harness and pulling on a black knit cap, trying not to smear his tiger-stripe combat paint in the process.

Standing, Manning swung around a massive rifle. The bolt-action .50-caliber Barrett was a sniper rifle with a range of over a mile, the monstrous 700-grain bullets were the size of a cigar and fully capable of shooting through a brick wall. Many professional soldiers considered the deadly weapon a piece of field artillery, instead of merely a rifle.

"Good news, people," McCarter announced from the top of the metal stairs. "Bear hacked into a Quest-Star comm sat and found the airfield. It's five klicks due east, so leave the Hummer, we go on foot."

"Low and quiet, just the way I like it," Hawkins stated, appearing from the flight deck. An MP-5 was in his hands, and the plastic tube of a LAW rocket launcher was slung across his back. These days, many soldiers liked the reusable Armbrust, or SMAW, but the Stony Man team much preferred the one-shot LAW. Afterward, they simply tossed away the empty tube, which saved them a lot of time and trouble. Their covert missions were usually fast, furious and short. There was no supply line. They carried everything, which made every ounce saved vitally important.

Going to the side door, McCarter checked outside through the small observation port, then turned to nod at James. He killed the internal lights and McCarter swung open the door, going from darkness into the night. The others quickly followed, readying their weapons.

Gathering outside, the team members listened to the sounds of the desert for a moment, trusting their ears to tell them if anything hostile was in the vicinity. Silence in the middle of a forest or wild glade always meant the immediate presence of humans. Or a major predator. But savage men hidden in the desert were to be feared a lot more than any mountain lion or poisonous reptile.

Slowly, the insect life recovered from the rude arrival of the Hercules, and began to sing their songs once more. An owl hooted in the distance.

Swinging down his night-vision goggles, James dialed for infrared and scanned the vicinity, while Encizo did the same using the Starlite function. That mode augmented the natural illumination of the stars until the operator could see everything as clear as if it was day. The one drawback being that unless the surge protector was engaged, somebody lighting a match or turning on a flashlight, could blind the operator for several minutes until his eyes recovered, leaving him temporarily helpless.

"Clear," James subvocalized into a throat mike, the word repeated in the earbuds of the rest of the team.

Satisfied for the moment, McCarter flipped up the lid of the compass on his wrist to check directions, then snapped it shut and started off at a run.

The kilometers passed in total silence, the only sounds the soft patting of their combat boots on the dry sand. As expected, the Mexican desert was very chilly at that time of night. The terrible heat of the day had completely radiated away, leaving the landscape bitterly cold, and soon their breath began to fog. There were small chemical packs sewed into the lining of their ghillie suits that would start to generate a soothing warmth for hours if slapped. But the U.S. Marine Corp hot-packs would make the team members light up a thermal scan like fireworks, so the Stony Man operatives simply ignored the low temperatures and concentrated on moving across the desolate and inhospitable Quintana Roo peninsula.

Reaching a low dune, the team went flat and covered the next hundred yards on their bellies. Cresting the top, the Stony Man commandos tried not to disturb the young sage plants that grew thick from the sand, and looked down the other side using monoculars. The world turned black-and-white, the view crystal clear and wire sharp.

Spreading out in front of the men was a wide area of land that had been cleared of all plants. Off to the side were some old cinder-block buildings, the doors were riveted metal, the windows merely ventilation slits, and lots of sand, rocks and plants were piled high on top on the flat roof. Obviously it was protection from an aerial search.

More importantly, just outside the armored door a fire was crackling inside a fifty-five-gallon oil drum, holes cut into the sides to allow the light and heat to escape. Sitting on folding chairs, there were a couple of men in ponchos talking and smoking stubby cigars, assault rifles leaning against the cinder-block wall nearby. One of the rifles was a brand-new AK-101, the other was a much older AK-47. Obviously, one of the men was new and not given the better, more expensive weapon until having proved his worth.

However, the team members still frowned at the sight. Both of the Russian assault rifles were equipped with 30 mm grenade launchers and infrared night scopes, which could be real trouble.

The sound of metal hitting metal came from another cinder-block building; streamers of light escaped from the canvas sheet blocking the wide front door. More fifly-five-gallon drums were situated under a canvas awning, along with a small electric generator. The Stony Man commandos marked it as the garage. Then they spotted another canvas lump and identified it as the proper size and shape for a heavy machine gun, or maybe an auto-mortar. However, there was no way of telling where they were.

A small wooden shack was set off by itself, clearly identifying it as the outhouse. Several yards distant was a bare metal flagpole, the tattered remains of a windsock dangling limply. Even though it was reduced to rags, the old cloth could still give an incoming plane vital information on wind direction.

Just past the flagpole, cutting across the cleared area, was a wide strip of concrete, as incongruous a sight as a buffalo in a ballet. Smooth and flat, the disguised airstrip reached out of sight, and the members of Phoenix Force nodded in admiration at the sight of pictures of more plants and rocks painted onto the landing strip. Clever. More protection from visual tracking. The team could only see the concrete because of the angle and the silvery moonlight. Otherwise, it would have been nearly invisible.

"Hidden in plain sight," Hawkins muttered, shifting his grip on the MP-5 to screw on an acoustic sound suppressor. "Same as the Airwolves."

"How come so many criminals are smart enough to make more money honestly, than they ever would as crooks?" Encizo asked softly, attaching a suppressor to his own machine gun.

"Don't know, don't care," James replied, sliding a fat 40 mm shell into the launcher attached under the main barrel of his MP-5 weapon. His heart was beating hard in his chest, and the soldier tried his best to regain a professional calm.

"Gary, get me a number on the runway," McCarter asked, tucking his monocular into a cushioned pouch on his web belt.

"In a second," Manning replied. Focusing the telescopic sights of the Barrett on the extreme end of the clear strip of land, the tiny digital display on the bottom of the scope gave him the precise distance. Now sweeping the crosshairs to the other end, he added the two readings.

"Ten thousand four hundred and nine feet," Manning replied grimly, lowering the sniper rifle. "More than enough for a B-52 to land."

"Or anything else this side of a NASA space shuttle," Encizo agreed, leveling his MP-5. "Doesn't mean they're the terrorists, though. Might just be some drug smugglers."

"David, want me to put a 40 mm shell into the fuel drums and set the place on fire?" Hawkins asked, resting a finger on the trigger of the grenade launcher.

"Think they're stupid enough to store the fuel by itself," McCarter asked skeptically, "and not mixed with the water supply to retard any fires?"

Reluctantly, McCarter had to concede the point. A few years ago, Phoenix Force had encountered a splinter group of the Libyan Army of God and had put a warning shot into the fuel depot merely to start a blaze as a distraction. However, the previously unknown stockpile of ten thousand gallons of high-octane aviation fuel ignited, blowing the whole base off the map in a writhing fireball of gargantuan size. A genuine one-shot battle. It was a freak event, but the team members remembered it fondly.

"From the sound of those two engines it can't be much larger than a Skywagon or a Crusader," James said with a scowl.

"Yep, good call, David. There's activity in those foothills," Encizo said, dialing for maximum computer augmentation on the monocular.

"Reinforcements?" Manning asked, swinging the ungainly Barrett in that direction and looking through the nightscope.

"No, just one guy... and he's looking through Zeist field glasses at the airfield."

Field glasses? Those were oversize binoculars much too heavy to carry into combat. They were only for a fixed observation point. "Think he's Mexican Intelligence or CIA?" James asked tersely, his face lost in the cathedral of shadows caused by the moonlight through the tall sage plants.

"There's no camera and no radio, and he's got what looks like a... yes, that's a Barrett Fifty slung across his back," Encizo declared. "And there's a Victory motorcycle parked nearby."

"Not unless he recently won the lottery," McCarter agreed with conviction. The Victory motorcycle was an expensive bike, mostly because it was one of the best in the world, which made it highly unlikely the man was a law-enforcement agent. However, the presence of the deadly Barrett was the clincher. There was no reason at all for any cop to be carrying a sniper rifle on a stakeout. The man had to be a guard, set to watch the airfield. And the only logical reason for that was to see who arrived to look for the Airwolves and to strike them down from above like Zeus, which might be to the Stony Man team's advantage.

"Want me to take him out?" Manning asked coolly, lifting the Barrett into a firing stance.

"Not yet, we're going to burn the rope," McCarter said, activating the transceiver on his belt. "Rock House, this is Firebird, come in."

"Roger, Firebird, this is Speed Racer," a familiar voice replied. "Read you loud and clear. Ten-four."

"Speed Racer, we need a blanket and right now," McCarter stated roughly. "We've got incoming, and don't want any outgoing. You savvy?"

Nasty. That was this month's code for the NSA. "Keep him safe and secure in case he rabbits. Confirm?"

"Two should do. Repeat, two is fine." Saying it twice, meant to hold the blanket for only half the time. If anybody was listening in, that would keep them off the air for two hours, while Phoenix Force could use the radio again in an hour. Every little bit helped.

"At your earliest convenience, Speed Racer," McCarter said, but instantly a howling began to wail from his earbuds, and every member of the team involuntarily flinched, their hands racing to kill the com link.

Across the entire peninsula, no radio signals were going anywhere, every transmission killed by the powerful jamming field broadcast by Kurtzman from the equipment on board the Hercules. Not even cell phones would operate due to the additional interference of the Stony Man satellite in high Earth orbit.

Just then, a sleek Cessna Skywagon flew past the airfield, the pilot tripping the engines as identification. Down on the concrete airstrip, a bearded man waved a halogen flashlight and suddenly a double string of red lights appeared, edging both sides of the concrete to give the pilot a visual reference for a landing.

Swinging around, the Skywagon soon returned and touched down lightly, rolling to a stop near the rusty metal pole and bedraggled windsock.

Immediately a trio of armed men exited the cinder-block building. One of them was morbidly obese, while the other two resembled weightlifters, their short-sleeved shirts deliberately cut to give their bulging arms some much needed room. The pilot climbed down from the cockpit of the plane, obviously dressed for comfort in a loud Hawaiian shirt, clam-digger shorts and white deck shoes.

As the trio walked closer, he hailed them with a friendly wave, and then had a few private words with the fat man. Finally some money was exchanged and the now-smiling pilot opened the small passenger door and extracted a plastic-wrapped rectangle about the size of a shoe box. Hundreds more of the same items were stacked inside the Skywagon.

Pulling out a switchblade, the fat man clicked it into life and stabbed the thin blade into the block, then pulled it out and licked the metal clean. After a moment he nodded in acceptance, and the other men started ferrying the blocks from the plane to the garage.

"That's heroin," James whispered, checking the chemical scanner is his hand. The DEA device was small, but very powerful, however this was at the extreme limit of its range. The only reason he was getting any reading at all was that the blocks were packed solid with heroin, the pure quill, not yet cut to sell on the street.

Impressed, Encizo stopped himself from whistling. There had to be thirty or forty million dollars' worth of narcotics in the decades-old Skywagon. No wonder the smugglers kept the airfield staffed 24/7.

"Not good enough for a court of law, but good enough for us," McCarter declared. "Gary, keep Zeus off our back. Everybody else, let's go make some noise."

Then, as silent as ghosts, the rest of the team eased down the sand dune to merge with the shadows. Skirting around the dune, the Stony Man commandos separated, each going for a different target. McCarter and Hawkins headed for the Cessna, James the garage, and Encizo the main building.

Nearing the outhouse, Encizo went motionless as the door swung open and a big man exited, zipping up his pants. The Cuban slipped up behind the criminal and thrust a knife into his head directly behind the ear. The bearded man went stiff, galvanized motionless from the incredible pain. Then Encizo twisted the blade and the man slumped, dead before he reached the dusty ground. Retrieving his knife, Encizo moved on and quietly dispatched another man standing nearby smoking a cigarette, obviously waiting for the first fellow to finish and get his own turn in the outhouse.

At the garage, James scratched on the door, and gave a low meow. Muttering something in guttural Spanish, somebody inside tromped over to the door and threw it open, a heavy Stilson wrench brandished in a dirty fist. Seeing the Stony Man commando crouching in the darkness, the mechanic registered shock for only a microsecond before the silenced Beretta chugged twice, sending the man reeling back into the workshop. Moving fast and low, James followed close behind, catching the wrench before it fell. As the door swung shut, the commando was inside. The Beretta coughed several more times, and then silence.

* * *

"WHAT WAS THAT?" a guard sporting a scraggly beard demanded, feeding some scraps of loose wood to the fire in the oil drum.

"Nothing. Shut up," the bald guard replied, opening the plastic wrapping on a granola bar.

"No, I heard something," the first guard said uneasily, dropping the rest of the scraps into the drum.

"Probably just the boss chatting up the pilot," the bald man replied curtly, biting off a piece of the bar. Chewing for a moment, he frowned, then swallowed. "He likes to get the news from home fresh."

"I don' think so, amigo," the guard said, grabbing the AK-101 and working the arming bolt.

Instantly a weapon coughed softly, and both men jerked as their lifeblood splashed onto the dirty cinder-block walls. They staggered into each other and the Kalashnikov discharged a short burst, the 7.62 mm hardball rounds punching through the chest of the dying bald man and coming out the other side.

Unexpectedly there came an answering grunt of pain from the direction of the outhouse, and Encizo staggered into the dim firelight, his hands clutching a red belly just underneath his NATO body armor.

Instantly the pilot drew a huge Redhawk .44 revolver from within his Hawaiian shirt, and the two weight lifters each produced a Steyr machine pistol, clicking off the safety with a thumb.

Realizing the need for stealth was over, McCarter and Hawkins fired their silenced pistols at the guards, and the criminals staggered backward, but did not fall. Then they returned fire with the Steyrs, the muzzle-flashes of the little machine pistols strobing the night.

"It's a raid!" the fat man bellowed, casting aside the brick of heroin and pulling a Colt .45 automatic pistol into view. "Sound the alarm!"

As if that was a cue, the garage suddenly erupted into flames, the door flying off from the force of the detonation of the C-4 satchel charge set by James.

The blast's concussion was still moving across the airfield when McCarter and James appeared once more, firing their MP-5 machine guns. The barrage of 9 mm hardball ammo hammered the two musclemen backward, until they tumbled onto the concrete, twitching into death.

Wildly cursing in Spanish, the fat man leveled his Colt and started banging away.

Incredibly, the pilot pivoted at the hip and shot the fat man in the back. Slammed hard by the brutal impact of the heavy Magnum round, the dying man haplessly spun the Colt still firing. The pilot flipped over backward, drilled by a .45 hollowpoint round, most of his face gone, teeth and eyes sailing down the landing strip.

Turning in that direction, McCarter and Hawkins broke into a fast run. But they were only halfway there when a second man appeared from behind the plane, working the arming bolt on a Uzi machine pistol. As he opened fire, McCarter and Hawkins dived apart, and came up shooting their MP-5 machine guns. The 9 mm rounds tore into the Cessna, and aviation fuel gushed onto the concrete. The second gunman shouted in anger, the Uzi raking the darkness, then the window shattered and his head exploded. A split second later, there came the rolling thunder of the Barrett sniper rifle.

Hitting the ground, McCarter and Hawkins barely had time to take cover when the grenade went off. But instead of an explosion, there was a brilliant flash, closely followed by a searing wave of heat that increased geometrically with every passing heartbeat.

"Thermite!" McCarter cursed, protecting his face with a raised hand. "Bastards are burning the drugs!"

"Kind of a moot point now," Hawkins drawled, dropping an empty clip and reloading the MP-5 with practiced speed. Then he frowned. "Or do you think..."

A dozen men carrying military ordnance burst out of the cinder-block house firing wildly in every direction. They spread out fast, taking advantage of what little natural cover there was, but the man passing by the outhouse suddenly jerked, the handle of a knife sticking out his neck. Dropping the Webley, the gunner grabbed his neck in both hands, trying to staunch the flow of blood. But the effort was proving to be futile.

"Blue nine!" another man shouted. "Blue nine!" The X-18 grenade launcher in his hands began thumping steadily, sending out a salvo of 30 mm rounds. The canisters hit the ground and rolled, spewing thick volumes of smoke.

Firing their machine guns at the fresh troops, McCarter and Hawkins exchanged a brief look. The drug smugglers used battle codes? Clearly the fat man had not been in charge, but was merely the chemist sent to check the purity of the heroin.

Crouching, McCarter and Hawkins listened to the noise, getting his position, then triggered their weapons through the weeds. The burly man cried out in pain, and the Kalashnikov stopped firing.

"Two one!" another man cursed, a Remington pump-action shotgun blasting into the billowing smoke at chest level. "Two one!"

Man down, McCarter translated, pulling the pin on a grenade and flipping off the arming lever before throwing it toward the voice.

While the explosive was still counting down, Hawkins peppered the area alongside the building, trying to force the others toward the sphere. A few seconds later, the grenade detonated and several men shrieked in pain.

"Black Five," a different man shouted in an oddly feminine voice, then added the belching roar of the 30 mm grenade launcher.

The sage brush disintegrated under the assault, and a cactus was pulverized, but nothing much else happened. Then an MP-5 chattered briefly in savage counterpoint and the drug smuggler crumpled over sideways.

"They got Uncle Chollo!" another weight lifter snarled, insanely marching out of the protective smoke. "Gonna kill you..."

Which was as far as he got when there came the sound of distant thunder from the Barrett. His khaki shirt ballooned out the back as his chest erupted, the fabric splitting apart as his internal organs sprayed into the darkness.

"Red ten!" the first man shouted, and the X-18 began chugging shells into the sky. The rounds came down whistling like bombs and hit the ground to form fiery geysers that banished the artificial cloud cover and laid waste to large patches of the sandy desert. Dead bodies flipped into the air, along with rocks and plants.

Trying to drive the gunner into view, James laid down a barrage from his MP-5. But the smuggler stayed within the roiling smoke and continued to pump out high-explosive death.

Unable to proceed in that direction, McCarter and Hawkins separated to try to get around the incoming barrage. But as they did, there came an unexpected explosion from the burning garage. Sounding like a crumpling soda can, the sheet metal roof buckled, then the walls shattered, cinder blocks tumbling away to expose a raging inferno with some sort of machine sitting in the middle on the conflagration, the chassis completely covered with flames.

Ducking behind a cluster of cactus, McCarter recognized the charred wreckage as a Russian T-80, one of the toughest vehicles in existence. The Stony Man commandos couldn't have stopped the juggernaut if it had managed to get rolling. It was a good thing that they had taken out the garage in the opening strike.

Listening closely to the sound of somebody trying to get a cell phone to work, Hawkins simply could not get a definite fix, so he pulled out a grenade and threw the unprimed sphere in the most likely direction. It hit the ground and rolled into some tall weeds, near a sand dune. A split second later several men abruptly appeared, scrambling to get away. Ruthlessly, Hawkins mowed them down, then grunted from the impact of incoming lead from the other direction. Outflanked! However, the NATO body armor held and the hardball rounds did not achieve penetration.

Badly bruised, but still breathing, Hawkins fired a single round, then began to curse, and started working the arming bolt as if his weapon had jammed. Almost instantly a dark form appeared from within the smoke, rushing his way. But as he cleared the protective smoke, the Barrett spoke once more, and the man doubled over, unable to stand with most of his spine removed.

Realizing the battle was not going their way, the gunner dropped the exhausted drum from the X-18 and fumbled in a bag at his side to produce a spare one when James rose from the smoke to fire the MP-5 only once. Hit in the head, the gunner staggered, and the Stony Man commando was gone before the criminal fell.

"Two one, two one!" a tall man shouted, firing short, controlled bursts from his AK-47 into the thinning smoke. "Delta ten!"

Now the remaining criminals started retreating to the cinder-block building, their assault rifles hosing the smoky darkness in wild desperation. Keeping their backs to the blockhouse, they dropped spent clips to quickly reload when Encizo stepped into view from within the building, holding his MP-5 in both hands. Without a word, he cut loose, the weapon chattering nonstop and chewing the criminals into hamburger until the clip ran empty.

Rushing over to the man, McCarter scowled at the sight of fresh blood welling from underneath the commando's body armor.

"Cal, man down!" the big Briton bellowed, ripping the vest open to inspect the damage. There was a line of holes right along the man's abdomen. He grimaced, but said nothing.

Suddenly, James and Hawkins arrived with weapons at the ready. At the sight of the blood-soaked Encizo, both men scowled. Then Hawkins assumed a defensive position while James knelt to lay aside his gun and look over the wounds before ripping open a med pack to sprinkle the wounds with sulfur.

"These are pretty bad," James stated, rummaging inside a medical pack to extract a field dressing and press it gently to the man's bloody abdomen. "There's nowhere near enough blood showing."

Which meant internal bleeding. McCarter had thought so, but hoped he was wrong. "Okay, what do you need?"

"Fast transportation to a decent hospital," James replied, pulling out a syringe and checking the contents. "The medical supplies that we have in the Hercules won't do for this kind of injury. He needs immediate surgery." He injected Encizo's thigh, the pale man giving no response.

"Done." But starting to reach for his throat mike, McCarter cursed in frustration, then looked around. "There! Take the Cessna and fly him to Chetumal Airport near Cancun," he directed. "We'll race back to the Herc, kill the jamming field and radio the doctors to let them know you're on the way."

"T.J., lend a hand," James commanded. He lifted the unconscious man in his arms and took off at an easy run across the littered desert.

Shouldering his weapon, Hawkins charged over the fallen bodies and blast craters to scramble into the plane and start the engine. It caught with a sputtering roar, and then smoothed to a sustained purr. Working together, the two men gently placed the unconscious Encizo on top of the packaged heroin, then they clambered inside. James stayed with his patient, while Hawkins took the controls and immediately began taxiing along the runway for a fast takeoff.

Turning away, McCarter started around the dune when Manning appeared from the darkness.

"I'm faster," he said bluntly, the Barrett resting on a broad shoulder. "I'll meet you there."

"No, I'm going back to the plane," McCarter countered, already in motion. "You stay with our friend in the hills, and don't lose him! Keep with him at all costs."

Confused, Manning narrowed his eyes in annoyance, then realized that if there was any trouble, a Barrett was the only weapon that stood a chance against another Barrett. Accepting the inevitable, Manning broke into a sprint, heading deeper into the desert to approach them from the side as the Cessna lifted off the ground and McCarter disappeared behind the sand dunes.

Gradually, the sounds of the engine and boots faded into the distance, and the desert airfield was still once more, the cooling corpses illuminated by the moon and the crackling blaze in the ruined garage.

Chapter Four

A cold wind blew across the frozen land, carrying away the last vestiges of heat. Pristine white snow frosted the ground and the small lake was a solid sheet of ice. Along the curve of the horizon, rough mountains rose in jagged peaks as if they were new and not yet completely finished. Majestic condors flew among the craggy tors, forever on the hunt for anything edible.

Standing near the edge of a cliff, a woman in a brightly colored parka was setting a camera onto a tripod when she heard the crunch of snow under boots. Out there? A stranger was approaching from the direction of an old jeep, the heat visibly radiating from the engine.

"Hello," she said hesitantly, a hand going into a pocket to touch her cell phone.

Hidden inside the glove, a silenced .22 Remington snapped off six fast shots, the tiny bullets almost leaving through the same hole in the quilted material.

Recoiling as if hit by sledgehammers, the woman staggered away from the camera, blood gushing from her ragged throat. Clutching the ghastly wounds with her own gloved hands, she tried to yell and only managed a rough cough, warm red fluids filling her mouth to spill over her lips and down the front of her insulated parka.

Reaching the edge of the cliff, the woman suddenly realized her location and started away from the abyss. Craig Rexton shot her twice more, then kicked the photographer in the stomach. Air and blood exploded from her mouth, and the dying woman went sailing over the cliff. It seemed to take her an inordinate length of time to disappear into the misty darkness, but, then, it was more than nine hundred feet to the base of the cliff.

Grunting at the sight of the messy impact below, Rexton nodded in satisfaction, then began to toss the woman's boxes of supplies over the cliff. Especially that damn camera. He was not overly familiar with the model, and cracked the plastic shell getting to the film, which he exposed to the weak sunlight.

Producing a grenade from his parka, Rexton pulled the arming pin, released the handle and then threw the grenade down the cliff. He turned and raced for the Jeep, and was about halfway there when the bomb detonated. Done and done. If anybody ever found the body, which was highly unlikely, there was nothing to connect the death to his people.

And certainly not in enough time to do anything. Rexton smirked. It was a pity there were no wild predators in the vicinity. But then, nothing was perfect.

Visitors to Patagonia were few and very far between. Wanted by nobody, but claimed by both Chile and Argentina purely for political reasons, Patagonia was rife with impossibly steep mountains, live volcanoes, molten lava, acrid deserts and glaciers larger than most cities, making it the most inhospitable land on the planet. There were no native inhabitants, no outposts nor even roads. Most people called Patagonia the edge of the world.

It was early spring and the yearly thaw had not yet begun to release the long winter's accumulation of snow and ice. Even the waterfall extending from the side of a granite cliff was still a solid mass that reached straight down to the barren shoreline of smooth rocks. Aside from the condors, nothing moved, even the clouds seemed quiescent.

For now, Patagonia was a desolate world of bitter cold and black rocks, void of any useful minerals, ores or even natural beauty. It was a vast and sterile land of no conceivable use to anything or anybody.

Entrenched just to the south of the dried mud lake was a flat expanse of gleaming white concrete. Set off safely to the side was a series of massive fuel tanks, and on the opposite side of the airfield were several concrete bunkers, the rooftops bristling with radar, optical scanners, dish microphones, squat Vulcan miniguns and SAM launchers. An acre of strong canvas stretched between two outcroppings covered several B-52 bombers parked on the ground. One was partially disassembled, and another had been reduced to a mere skeleton, every salvageable part already removed, but the others were in perfect condition, the fuselages gleaming with fresh paint, their bomb bays heavy with deadly cargo.

Encircling the entire airfield was a double row of burnished steel rods that hummed softly whenever a condor flew overhead or a leaf fluttered past the finely tuned proximity sensors. Buried between the rows were land mines of every conceivable type, some automatic, others remotely controlled. Many of them were linked together. There was no gate or access road. The only way to reach the base on land was through the mines. Setting off one would cause a score of others to detonate, spreading a wave of destruction that would herald a corona of deadly shrapnel. Some mines were hidden outside the row of sensors, an additional trap for any possible invaders foolhardy enough to risk approaching the somber headquarters for Genesis.

Jouncing over the irregular terrain, Rexton held tightly on to the steering wheel, the hood of his parka flipping backward to reveal his starkly handsome features. The man looked like an aging movie star using plastic surgery to hold on to the last few years of beauty, but that was merely his natural countenance. The plastic surgery would come later, after the fall of America.

As the vehicle came into visible sight of the base, the weapons on top of the bunkers instantly locked on to the moving target, the multiple barrels of the Vulcans automatically spinning to a blur as they prepared to fire.

Heading for the bunkers, Rexton touched an electronic device strapped to his wrist and the Vulcans promptly powered down and returned to their ready status.

Knowing that any variation in speed would trigger the live mines, the man maintained a steady course through the defensive barrier and safely reached the other side without undue incident. He barked a laugh at that as if gaining access to the base was some sort of minor victory.

Passing a low dome barely visible above the ground, Rexton waved in greeting to the armed guards inside the kiosk. A thin layer of concrete covered the muzzles of the old German 88 cannons, and anybody who did not wave, with the left hand only, was killed on sight. Some of his people complained about all of the complex security regulations, but the leader of Genesis was fully aware of what sort of violent countermeasures the brutal American government would take if it ever learned who was behind the bombings of the major airports. They had to be ready at all times for a full-scale invasion, both from above and from the ground. At least they were safe from the river, as it was frozen solid for most of the year, and even when warm, it was hardly of sufficient depth for the U.S. Navy to send in an attack submarine or even a squad a SEALs.

No, the base was secure, the terrorist noted mentally. We're well protected in every direction. Genesis would be safe here, until the coming war was over, and sanity finally returned to the world.

Braking to a halt in front of an unmarked bunker, Rexton killed the engine and stepped out of the Jeep to plug an electric cord into an external socket. If the vehicles were not kept constantly warm, the engines would freeze and refuse to start until the motors were disassembled and thoroughly cleaned. He hated to waste electricity, the group tried to be ecologically aware, but such was the price to pay for saving the world. A garage would have served the same purpose, but those were always a prime target for a commando attack. So the bunker marked as the garage was actually just a solid dome of concrete.

Let the fools hit it with all the missiles they wanted, Rexton thought proudly. It would accomplish nothing. Everything had been taken into account. The battle plan was perfect. Perfect! And there was nothing America could do to stop them this time. Greenwich would be avenged!

Heading for the front door of the bunker, Rexton blew into his gloved hands, privately wishing that they could have been heated electrically like his jacket and boots. But the danger of a short-circuit had been too great. Pity, because it was exceptionally cold this day, but slowly getting warmer. Winter was over, and there was a sense of spring in the air. Life was returning to the frozen landscape. A more than fitting analogy. Soon Patagonia, the most remote spot on the globe, would become the center of a new civilization. His civilization. A society of peace and love and tolerance.

After we kill off all of the warmongers, that is, Rexton admitted privately. Back in 1774, Thomas Paine had said it plainly enough in his book Common Sense. Occasionally the free of liberty had to be watered with the blood of patriots. Sad, but true. Though in the thousands, no doubt, the killings would be kept to an absolute minimum. He was no madman, just the savior of humanity. But if anything went wrong, then St. James would have no choice but to use the Dragon. At which point, he thought grimly, God help us all.

But that was a worst-case scenario, and so far everything had gone off strictly according to schedule. It had taken Genesis more than thirty years to build the base, and almost that long to acquire the three B-52 bombers needed for the operation. And then, buying the bombs had taken almost every last dime Genesis had accumulated. Their fathers had started the Great Project, but they wanted to be the generation that brought it to fruition. To end war, every war, all wars, forever! There was no higher or more noble goal. It was just like performing surgery to remove cancer. He could kill the cancer, to save the patient. True, it was a pity that so many people had to die to achieve worldwide peace, but such was life.

Way back in the 1960s a group of students called Genesis had tried to save America by forcing the government to end the war in Vietnam. They had some limited success, but then the full might of the FBI was turned against the fledging group, and the main leaders were either slain by police bullets or sent to prison. Only a handful of followers escaped, along with most of the cash the freedom fighters had liberated from numerous banks. Once situated safely here in Chile, they took new identities and stayed low, far from public scrutiny, and they invested wisely in oil and steel, then communications and finally advanced computer software.

Now worth millions, the children of Genesis had decided to finish the war for independence started by their parents. They hired mercenaries to teach them how to fight, and they studied the art of war in colleges, and psychology at universities, across the world. Unfortunately, America had grown fat over the decades, and once more was waging political warfare, trading blood for oil, a conflict that was certain to escalate horribly out of control when some terrorist group finally managed to build a hydrogen bomb and started a nuclear world war that nobody could win. Many years sooner than planned, Genesis was facing the end of the human race and had been forced to rush their plans into completion. But now, at last, they were ready to force peace upon the world no matter what. Victory or death.

Tapping an access code into a small keypad, Rexton waited a few seconds as the heavy door slid aside. Then he tapped a second code into the pad, and the door closed, then opened once more, this time with the antipersonnel mines buried inside the jamb deactivated.

Stopping at an alcove, Rexton luxuriated in the waves of heat pouring from a wall vent while he hung up the heavy parka and ski mask, the tattered remains of the glove going into a waste receptacle. Pounds lighter, the man proceeded deeper into the bunker, vainly adjusting his cuffs and collar.

Seeking the approval of the staff and the pilots, Rexton always came to the command center dressed in sneakers, blue jeans and a red flannel shirt. The clothing of a humble working man. It helped him to stay focused on the goals of the group, to free the people.

Smiling at a security camera high in the corner of the ceiling, Rexton nodded in passing to an armed guard sitting in a small alcove.

"Welcome back, brother," the guard said, smiling, then it vanished. "Were those noises just more ice coming off a glacier or..." He left the sentence hanging.

Sagging slightly, the guard sighed. Penguin, that was the code word for civilian. "Then may God guide their spirit into the next world," he whispered, touching his heart, lips and forehead, in an ancient blessing.

Gripping the man by the shoulder, Rexton squeezed hard, as if the death of some nobody had actually bothered him. After he was satisfied by the amount of guilt demonstrated, Rexton moved onward, eager to get back to work. When would these people ever learn that death was the only act that changed the world?

Impatiently lengthening his stride down the hallway, Rexton placed a palm to a glowing plate set into the wall alongside an armored door. He felt a faint tingling as an electrical current surged through his hand to verify whether he was alive, or merely a disembodied limb stolen by enemy forces to gain entrance. Their chief scientist, Professor Dimitri Oughton, was an electronics wizard who had both Genesis bases prepared for any possible contingency.

A technical genius, "Dizzy" Oughton could have easily run the entire operation himself from Lightning Base, which was why Rexton maintained strict control of the supercomputers down here in Thunder Base. The microsecond delay between the two bases was considered an acceptable danger. The other members of Genesis might think the organization was a democracy, as it had been in the days of their parents, but that was a polite fallacy. Rexton ruthlessly maintained an iron control over absolutely everything. If it became necessary to invoke the final option, there would be a rebellion, and he was ready to kill the rest of the staff to achieve victory. A thousand would die to save six billion. What did the military call that again? Oh yes, a soldier's burden.

With a soft pneumatic sigh, the heavy door slid aside and Rexton entered the busy control room.

Everybody looked up at the arrival, several of the women smiling widely. He did the same in return. Rexton knew that he was good-looking, although some thought he was almost too handsome. Clearly, his face was the result of delicate plastic surgery performed by experts. His father had dearly wanted Rexton to fly the planes that would awaken America, but after his second crash, that had proved to be impossible. The teenager simply had not possessed the lightning-fast reflexes of a combat pilot. Instead, he studied tactics, and eventually assumed the job of leading Genesis.

Situated in the exact middle of the heavy dome, the control room was wide and spacious, the ceiling arching overhead. Truncating the room was a wall of double-thick Lexan plastic, behind which the massive IBM Blue Gene supercomputer hummed softly, the rows of blade-class servers chilled by liquid nitrogen to temperatures far more deadly to human life than the icy glacier outside.

Across the room was a curved row of consoles facing a huge plasma-screen monitor. At the moment, it was divided into four sections, with a scroll across the bottom giving constant reports on their stolen satellites. The staff was dressed in heavy jumpsuits as protection from the chill coming off the Lexan wall separating them from the supercomputer.

"What is the current situation?" Rexton asked, easing into a chair. The leather was old and cracked, but it settled around him like an old friend.

In the center of the main screen was a vector graphic of the world, tiny blue triangles showing the locations of the three B-52 bombers, along with a dozen green squares, computer-generated shadows. Professor Oughton was firmly convinced that no hacker in the world could figure out which were the real planes, and which the fake, in time to do anything. So far, he had been proved correct.

"Good and bad," Oughton replied from a section on the monitor. "Greenwich's captain reports they received some damage from flak during the strike on NATO. But they managed to escape into the civilian traffic over the Channel."

"Any pursuit?" Rexton asked, tapping a few buttons on the console to briefly review the monitor readout on the progress of the B-52 bombers.

"None worth mentioning," Oughton replied. "NATO put a dozen planes on the hunt, but each is heading in the wrong direction. They have no idea where the Greenwich went."

"Excellent," Rexton said, a hand brushing across his perfect cheek. The physical scars were gone, but the memories of the fiery crash remained inside his mind. The former pilot had never flown again since his last crash, and did not even like to review the paint jobs on the B-52 bombers that made them resemble a Boeing 707. Even if it meant his own life, Rexton would never again set foot inside a plane. End of discussion.

"Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the rest of the fleet," Alyssa Dean announced tersely, swiveling away from her console. Weighing less than a hundred pounds, the tiny blonde had a slim, almost boyish figure, but she possessed the face of an angel even without any cosmetics. A steaming cup of coffee sat dangerously near the keyboard of her console, and a long-barrel Uzi .22 conversion hung across the back of her chair, a space clip attached to the leather strap.

"Captain Tomashevsky in the Berkeley is en route to Eastern Europe. He stopped at our Tunisia base for refueling, and took on a full load of ordnance, so no problems there," Dean stated brusquely. "Unfortunately, Captain Whitehorn in the Detroit has reported finding a fuel leak. They're down to quarter tanks, and will never reach our refueling depot in the Caicos Islands in time."

"Dizzy, can you send them a tanker?" Rexton asked, looking at the picture of Oughton.

"Not halfway around the world," the professor said. "Sorry, but there's nothing we can do to help."

Sitting back in his chair, Rexton glanced at the clock on the curved wall. This was intolerable! How could they have possibly lost a bomber this early in the fight?

"Captain Whitehorn could risk landing at a commercial airport in South Carolina," Dean offered hesitantly, making a vague gesture at the main screen. "The professor could fake them an ID easily enough, and I can transfer all the funds needed to a local bank. However..."

"However, if anything goes wrong they could be detained by the local police," Rexton finished for the woman. "Or worse, captured by American Special Forces who would turn our brothers over to the CIA to be brutally tortured until they revealed the location of our two main bases."

"But we are not," Rexton countered. "Millions of dollars, and years of hard work, would end in total failure, which in turn would spell disaster for the rest of humanity." Leaning forward, the man sat upright in his chair. "Okay, give me options."

"I see," Rexton growled. "Then we have no choice. Alyssa, have the Detroit head out to sea. We'll need to hide the wreckage. Do they have a raft onboard?"

"Parachutes, but no rafts," Dean replied grimly. "And any water landing would be immediately investigated by the Coast Guard."

"We all knew how the mission could end, sir," Oughton said, his face a grim mask.

Sir? Hearing the honorific, Rexton understood. "Then so be it, we at least spare them the horror of being interrogated by the madmen of the CIA," he said, taking a chain from around his neck. There was a small key attached, and he slipped it into a slot on the console, first twisting to the left, then sharply to the right. Off by itself, a red light began to glow.

Lifting his hand, Rexton turned to scowl at the rapidly approaching woman. Tall, with a cascade of ebony hair that reached past her trim waist, Dr. Carolina Barry was wearing a white medical jacket over a winter-camouflage ghillie suit. A stun gun was holstered at her side, a medical bag slung over a shoulder in case of an emergency.

"Marshall," the physician replied. "Land them in Marshall, to refuel on the ground."

"Marshall is near a major airport," Barry countered. "It shouldn't be very hard for them to buy, or steal, enough fuel to allow them to reach Tornado Base for a proper refueling."

"That just might work," Dean muttered, bending to work out some figures on her keyboard calculator. "Yes, they can do it!"

Crossing her arms, Barry scoffed. "At an abandoned airstrip, in the middle of a cornfield?"

"It's worth a try," Rexton said, turning off the remote destruction button. Slowly, the red light died away. "However, I want them to get some protection. Send along some mercs to guard the crew until they're safely back in the air."

"Not a problem, we have lots of friends in that area," Dean replied. "However, once the mercs hear about what happened at Brussels, they'll know who we are and try to blackmail us for more money."

"Then have Whitehorn blow the airfield off the map once he's flying again," Rexton stated coldly.

"Not a problem," Dean said, swinging back to her console, her fingers dancing across the keyboard. "But once the word of our betrayal spreads, we'll never be able to trust any mercs again."

"After tomorrow, there will be no need," Rexton replied, going back to studying the map of the world on the main screen.

Chapter Five

Ghosting out of the darkness, a large black Hummer rolled along the cracked asphalt of the city street. The windows were darkly tinted, the license plate splattered with dried mud, and the VIN plate on the dashboard innocently covered with a folded map. To a casual glance, this was just an expensive car. But a trained observer would have noticed that the car was riding too low and there was no manufacturer's name on the tires. The Hummer was illegally armored, and riding on bulletproof military tires. For all intents and purposes, the vehicle was a private tank.

Lounging on a street corner near a closed gas station, a group of older teenagers were industriously doing nothing, drinking beer from oversize cans and smoking an assortment of cigarettes and joints.

Listening to the rock music coming from down the street, their casual conversation stopped instantly at the appearance of the Hummer as it cruised around a burned-down grocery store. Immediately drawing weapons, mostly cheap pistols and old revolvers, they eased back into a nearby alleyway merging with the blackness. A car like that, in this neighborhood, could only mean customers for Delacort, and they wanted no part of his business. Some hardass enforcers from the Cincinnati mob had tried to hijack one of his shipments, and the next day the men were found dead, stripped naked, castrated and nailed to a billboard sign along Route 465. The crazy gunrunner had crucified them and left the bodies in public view! After that, even the cops were hesitant to bother Armando "Crazy Mondo" Delacort.

Passing a bar, the music from inside rattling the windows, the Hummer took the next corner and left the paved road to start along a ragged pathway of busted concrete and weeds. The streetlights were soon left behind, and the armored car moved through the darkness, accompanied by the soft purr of its engine and the crunch of the tires over the loose gravel and shards of old glass beer bottles.

Concrete pylons appeared in the gloom, the thick pillars rising to reach the beltway high overhead. Fifty feet above the ground, Route 270 encircled the entire city of Columbus.

Past the beltway, the Hummer turned on halogen headlights, the brilliant beams helping the driver to maneuver through a maze of railroad ties, K-rails and mounds of refuse that probably would have been unnamable in broad daylight.

Beyond the wall of garbage, the people in the Hummer saw the dark outline of the old canning factory dominating a flat empty field. Weeds ruled the landscape, with huge rusting machines of some sort standing about and gradually decaying back into the soil from which they had been originally mined.

Reaching the sagging remains of an electrical substation, the Hummer's driver parked the vehicle and killed the lights before sounding the horn twice, then twice more. Moments later a light answered from the murky factory, the beam blinking the same pattern in reply.

Turning off the engine, Carl Lyons stepped down from the Hummer and straightened the collar of his Hugo Boss suit. "Keep control of your fucking temper, Knuckles," he growled, looking sideways at Schwarz. "We're here for business. Savvy?"

"Yeah, yeah, stop stepping on my dick, will ya," Schwarz replied with a snort, lifting an M-16/M-203 assault rifle combo from inside the Hummer. Working the arming bolt on the 5.56 mm rifle, he checked the load in the 40 mm grenade launcher, then rested the dire weapon on a shoulder. Ready for instant use, but not pointing in anybody's direction.

"We shoulda left the ape behind," Blancanales rasped in displeasure, drawing his Colt .380 automatic pistol and clicking off the safety before holstering the weapon again. "Somebody might offer him a banana, and he'll go all postal on us."

"Blow it out your ass, clotheshorse," Schwarz retorted, not even looking in the direction of the man. "Gotta have one real man along to do any heavy lifting."

"Which would be me," Blancanales said loftily. "So what are you here for again, landfill?"

"Shaddup, the both of ya," Lyons ordered, smoothing down his hair with both hands before starting forward at an easy walk. His .357 Magnum Colt Python was resting in a belly holster, but the former cop felt oddly vulnerable without easy access to his Atchisson autoshotgun. But that didn't fit into this role for this night. Instead he was carrying a soft leather briefcase, the kind that a lawyer would use to tote mounds of paperwork. The contents bulged slightly and felt heavy.

From the moment Able Team had passed the burned-down grocery store, the men had stopped using their real names and started taking on the persona of the poorly educated and staggeringly brutal, Red Five, former street soldiers from the Mob and now hired muscle on the prowl for anything that made a fast buck.

"Roger that, received loud and clear," Toni said with a smile in her voice. "Okay, boys, the ball is in your court. I'll do nothing until you say frog, or they jump you. T-Bird going silent, but live."

As Able Team approached the loading bay, the iron doors rolled up to emit a wealth of bright light. Silhouetted in the glare were a dozen men carrying automatic weapons, the barrels resting casually on their shoulders. In the background were stacks of crates, most of them with military markings: some from the U.S. Army, but there were also ones from the Canadian Department of National Defence, a few with Spanish markings, and some marked NATO.

"Right on time," Armando Delacort said, stepping closer. "I like punctuality. It is a sign of intelligence."

"I like broads with big tits," Schwarz answered. "It is often a sign of big tits."

"Ignore the ape, I'm in charge," Lyons said, stopping a safe distance from the ramp. "I'm Zane O'Connor. My secretary called you this afternoon about a possible business deal."

Nodding, Delacort looked hard at the strangers. They were all armed, which only showed they were not fools, but much more importantly they each had the stone-cold look in their eyes of a seasoned killer. That could not be imitated, no matter what the Feds said. You either were, or you were not. And these men were. But that still did not mean they were criminals. Soldiers also got that expression, as did some federal agents.

"O'Connor, of course. I have heard of your exploits," Delacort said carefully. "The Red Five are not known as rapscallions or palliards."

Recoiling slightly, Schwarz and Blancanales blinked in surprise. They knew what the obscure words meant, but their characters would not.

"Ah... great. Good to know," Lyons countered, shifting uncomfortably, as if trying to cover his complete lack of understanding. "Now, the word on the street is you're the man with the guns, and that's why we're here."

"Wait a second, sir. I know these guys," the bodyguard standing alongside Delacort said out of the blue. "These are the men who shot up downtown today."

Before Lyons could answer, Delacort did. "Yes, I know," he said simply. "I recognized them immediately."

"The bank robbers." Another guard chuckled without any humor. "What happened to the guy with the shotgun?"

"Whaddaya think we did, moron?" Schwarz growled, bringing the M-16/M-203 into a firing position. "We shoved him up your mother's ass!"

Instantly the rest of the bodyguards swung up their weapons, and the night became alive with the metallic sound of safeties being clicked off.

"Freeze, everybody!" Lyons's voice boomed at the top of his lungs as he raised a hand in surrender. The leather case stayed at his side. "Look, Mr. Delacort, we're a little touchy right now, having buried a man that's been with us for years."

"And Knuckles ain't well-known for his good manners, just his aim," Blancanales added, easing a hand away from his holstered piece. The Stony Man commando could have drawn his weapon and fired at least once before the bodyguards had gotten their weapons into operation, but that was not his reputation. Tough as nails, slow as molasses.

"Fair enough, sir. Then please, allow me to apologize for my own people," Delacort said, leaning forward slightly. "They are always suspicious of new customers. Even ones with, shall we say, such a solid introduction as you gave this morning. The killing of a police officer is even better than a personal introduction in my opinion."

"Didn't do it for an intro," Lyons muttered, his blood boiling from the callous remark. "But it's nice to know."

Easing their aggressive stance, the bodyguards moved aside to let Able Team up the ramp and into the loading dock. The interior of the old factory was stacked high with hundreds of crates of every size and description. Most were marked only with a number sequence to tell what was inside, but the Stony Man commandos could read quartermaster shorthand as easily as if it were English: M-16 and AK-108 assault rifles, Stinger missile launchers, MANPADs, M-79 and X-18 grenade launchers, dozens of automatic mortars, Soviet Union depth charges, Neostad shotguns, Claymore and Bouncin' Betty land mines, C-4 satchel charges, Daewoo, Imbel, Norinco, every type of pistol there was, and any form of hand grenade that existed.

Following Delacort to a nearby office, Able Team took seats while most of the bodyguards stayed outside, only two of them remaining with their employer. That was protocol in the mean streets, three for three. A balance of power.

"There, much better," Delacort said, sitting in a high-backed chair while the guards flanked him like armed linebackers.

Ignoring them, Able Team got comfortable, Lyons set the case on the carpeted floor with a dull thump, and Schwarz laid the massive M-16/M-203 across his lap.

Sensing the tension in the air, Delacort gestured at a sideboard filled with liquor bottles. "Please feel free to help yourself to some refreshments. A guest is a jewel that rests in a cushion of hospitality."

Eagerly, Blancanales started to reach for a crystal decanter of amber whiskey, but Lyons shut him down with a glance, and the expert in psychological warfare returned both hands to his lap, clearly disappointed. Now the guards had him pegged as a boozer, and no real threat.

"So, to business. What can I sell you gentlemen?" Delacort asked, beaming a friendly smile. "I have some excellent XM-8 assault rifles. They're brand new, and absolutely state-of-the-art, modular construction. They take 5.56 mm rounds with an easy conversion, have hundred-round drums and twice the range of an M-16, and two full pounds lighter. Two pounds!"

Schwarz snorted in disbelief at that, and Lyons made a gesture of dismissal. "Sorry, but we're not here to buy, but sell," he said, trying not to sound offended, and failing.

"I'm always interested in acquiring new materials," Delacort said, holding out an open hand.

Reaching into a pocket, a guard passed over a Humbug, and the dealer clicked the device into operation.

That took the Stony Man commandos by surprise, but they did not let it show. The Humbug was a CIA invention, and it wasn't even available to the general public. Using a combination of magnetic fields and ultrasonic soundwaves, the Humbug effectively neutralized any radio, microphone or maser that attempted to listen into their conversation. There was no way to call Toni for help if it was needed. The team was on its own.

"So what do you have?" Delacort asked, crossing his legs at the knee. "Weapons or drugs? And how much?"

The weapons dealer nodded. "Those are always useful. What kind of explosive? C-4 satchel charges, grenades or land mines? I pay top dollar for those. Land mines are illegal to sell, which makes the market only want them more than ever."

"No, I mean real bombs," Lyons corrected. "Like the kind you drop from a plane."

"Guided?" Delacort asked, a note of excitement in his words. "I have a client who has need of a great many bombs."

"They're called iron bombs, idiot," Blancanales said out of the corner of his mouth.

"Indeed, they are." Delacort smiled. "And may it be told how you acquired such a haul?"

"We were delivering them to a customer in Fort Wayne," Lyons stated. "But he tried to pay us off in lead, instead of green, and Knuckles here taught him the error of that decision."

"Yes, the same thing has happened to me," Delacort said. "With similar results, I can assure you."

"Some folks never seem to learn," Blancanales added, shaking his head sadly. "Your word had gotta be good in this business, or else you're dead in the water."

"How very true. The only thing a man cannot buy is his own reputation," Delacort said in a singsong voice that clearly meant he was quoting somebody.

"May I assume that contains a sample?" Delacort asked, pointing at the leather case.

Taking the case, Lyons stood and walked it halfway between them. He returned to his chair, and a guard stepped forward to open the case and check inside, before ferrying it to his boss.

Bending, Delacort opened the case and examined the contents. Nestled inside on a soft cushion of gray foam was a short cylinder tipped with a rounded nose and clipped delta fins at the other end. The housing was in perfect condition, and the end of nose was flat, the arming fuse removed to render the deadly explosive inert.

"They're Canadian, not American," Lyons said as if offering an apology. "But in tip-top shape."

Born in Montreal, the criminal took no offense. "This seems most acceptable," Delacort said, leaning back in his chair. "And when can you deliver the rest of the soup?"

"There is no discussion," Delacort said in a hard voice. "These are good, but there is little market for such items here in America, so they will have to be shipped overseas. I'll pay five hundred each."

Pushing his friend back down, Lyons looked at the arms dealer. "A grand," he said.

"Done," Lyons said. There was no shaking of hands in this kind of matter. Even the most cordial of deals between old friends was still based upon the basic tenet of total distrust. "When do you want them"

"Tomorrow," Lyons said, then added, "Tonight, if you're willing to go back to nine hundred."

"Tomorrow will be fine." Delacort chuckled in amusement. "Bring the merchandise here, and I will have your cash ready. Small, nonsequential bills, nothing larger than a hundred. Will that be satisfactory?"

Walking through the munitions warehouse, Able Team could feel the attitude of the guards and even the workers warming noticeably. They were no longer strangers, but clients, which made a world of difference.

Leaving the dock, the men waited until they were back inside the Hummer before saying anything.

"You were right," Toni announced, holding a headset to her ear. "It was hard as hell to hear through the leather bag, but the bug worked just fine. Delacort turned off the Humbug as soon as you guys left to immediately call a customer. He said there was an additional supply of fresh eggs to deliver, for the right price."

"No name?" Schwarz asked, pulling an Army laptop from under the seat and defusing a trap before opening the lid.

"Then we have to do this the hard way," Lyons said, opening a ceiling panel and pulling down his Atchisson. He checked the drum of 12-gauge rounds. "If anybody else has a great idea, now is the time to start talking."

"There is no other way, Carl," Blancanales stated grimly, passing out chemical warfare masks. "We can't blow up the warehouse. The concussion would level half of Columbus, and we can't let them find the bug."

"Which they will any second," Toni said hastily. "Somebody is opening the bag right now to examine the bomb further."

Which meant the second canister hidden behind the thin wadding of C-4 would soon be discovered, Lyons realized with growing unease. Why hadn't the stupid bastard simply said a name, any name, and Schwarz would have simply detonated the bomb, giving Delacort and his people a nice clean death. The blast had been carefully calculated to not set off the tons of munitions stored in the factory, just to kill Delacort. But now... The man grimaced. This was not something he had ever been forced to do as a cop. Hell, every law on the books forbid exactly such an action, but this day, it was their only option.

"For some damn reason, I really hate doing this." The man sighed, activating an icon on the plasma screen and pressing it three times. On the third touch, the icon pulsed and then died away. Sadly, this was the only way to get the job done without civilian deaths. The Stony Man commandos knew that, and accepted the fact, but they did not have to like it.

"Okay, I can hear the hiss of the bomb releasing the nerve gas," Toni said, her features going hard. "There's some coughing... Something made of glass just broke... A body dropped... there goes another... two more... somebody is yelling now... oh crap, something about finding the gas masks."

Immediately the three Stony Man commandos grabbed face masks and were out of the Hummer, racing for the old factory. There seemed to be a lot of activity inside the building. A man screamed, a machine pistol chattered and several windows shattered. The doors to the dock rumbled upward, exposing a dozen men laying twitching on the floor. Then Armando Delacort stumbled into view holding a folded handkerchief to his mouth. His eyes were already bleeding, and foam was dribbling from the wadded cloth.

Without hesitation, Lyons mercifully let rip a burst from the Atchisson, the barrage of flechettes blowing the arms dealer to hell. The tattered remains of the dissolving body flew backward into the warehouse and skidded across the floor. Only to be almost run over by a forklift, the twitching driver slumped over in the seat, ghastly fluids oozing from his deathly pale features.

Like mythological demons, the men of Able Team swept through the factory, shooting everybody they found, whether or not they seemed dead. If a bullet could bring even a few seconds of relief from the horrible agony of the nerve gas, then it was worth the effort. These men were criminals, dealers in death, but not monsters. Nobody deserved to die this way.

Inside an airtight freezer where bottles of liquid nitroglycerine were stored, the team found a couple of shivering workers hastily assembling a bomb, obviously planning to blow the entire facility as revenge. Kicking open the door, the three Stony Man commandos rushed inside with knives drawn, their guns worse than useless with an enemy surrounded by so much nitro. The fight was short, and very bloody.

Less than an hour later, Able Team left the factory and got into the Hummer to head straight for Delacort's condo. The nerve gas was already dissipating, and soon would be harmless. Now, they had to raid the private files of the arms dealer before the local PD got the news of his demise, and rushed over to beat them to the punch.

Or worse, Lyons realized privately, trying not to look at the sky — the Airwolves discovered the death and decided to bomb downtown Columbus out of existence purely as a precautionary measure.

Chapter Six

The building was massive and old, the marble floors worn to a dull sheen from the passage of countless shoes and an unknown number of daily polishings. The teller cages were made of rosewood, the brass as shiny as mirrors, and every customer was accompanied by a personal assistant and a bodyguard, sometimes, several of each.

Entering through the revolving door at street level, the fifteen big men strode into the lobby as if they owned the place. Instantly the bank guards were alert and started promptly forward, talking quickly into the radio mikes hanging from the shoulders of their trim uniforms.

"Homeland," a bald man announced, flipping open a commission booklet to show the ID card and badge inside.

In tight formation, the Homeland Security agents marched directly to the private offices set off to one side of the lobby. Entering without knocking, they ignored the rows of secretaries and clerks, and went straight to a set of double doors bearing the name of the president of the bank.

Lowering a phone receiver, the skinny man behind a huge desk raised a single eloquent eyebrow at the invasion.

"Homeland," the bald man announced, setting the commission booklet on the desk so that it stood up by itself.

"How can I help you, Officer?" the bank president asked, trying to keep a quiver of fear from his voice. He had already hit a button under the desk with his knee, and soon swarms of guards, lawyers and the Swiss ambassador himself would arrive.

"Here is a picture of your wife and children," the bald man stated without any preamble. "And here is a photo of your... Well, let's just say that she's your mistress, shall we? How can anybody tell how old a woman is really?"

Reaching out, the bald man tapped a code into the alphanumeric pad on the intercom, killing the silent alarm. The other fourteen agents spread out in the luxurious office, covering the exits and windows as effectively as soldiers. None of them seemed to be armed, but there was no doubt that they were.

Delicately reaching out, the skinny man turned over the photographs, then folded his hands. "And how can I really help you?" he asked, looking into the face of the big American.

"I need to see the files, the real files," the Homeland Security agent stated. "The files that are not kept on a computer, only in ledgers."

"And you have no legal means to obtain those files," the president hedged awkwardly.

The agent shrugged in agreement. "True, but under international law I can arrest you as a suspected terrorist, and then interrogate you down at Gitmo Base for the next twenty or thirty years. And when you eventually confess, we will seize all of the assets of this bank, including your personal accounts."

Turning his family into paupers. "I do not have access to the ledgers," the president said in a rush of compliance. "Truly, I do not!"

"Nor do I know where they are even located," the president added hastily. "But I... I can send down an update sheet, and perhaps the courier could be followed? That would have nothing to do with me."

Reaching into his suit, the bald man produced a sheet of light blue paper. "Send this," he said, then turned and left without waiting for a reply.

However, the fourteen other HS agents remained where they were standing, hands folded, stern faces looking hard at the skinny man behind the expensive desk purchased with the blood money of criminals from around the world.

Sliding the photographs into a drawer, the president locked it securely, then slid the blue paper into a courier pouch and started to make a long distance phone call.

* * *

Walking through the cold night, Dr. Carolina Barry shivered slightly as she hugged the fur-lined parka tighter to her body. Soon the physician would be warm, but at the moment, the bitter mountain wind cut across her skin like razor blades, her ears and nose already numb. Only her feet were warm, the battery packs clipped to the outside of her boots feeding in enough electricity to keep them warm in any temperature.

She knew that the guards had something similar for their assault rifles so there would be no misfires. Even her own Remington .22 had a warming unit attached to the holster. The physician hated the weapon, but knew that it was a necessary evil for the time being. Everybody was armed at the base, even the cook and janitorial staff. Each man and woman was trained in basic weaponry, and combat shooting, each weapon assigned the most powerful that specific person could control.

As a physician, Barry needed to keep her hands soft and supple for surgery, which accounted for her feeble .22, a gun more suitable for target practice than a firefight. Although under the right conditions, any size caliber could kill. Most of the staff carried 9 mm weapons, a few of the larger men and women .357 Magnums. Only Rexton and Oughton were armed with those staggeringly powerful .50 Glocks.

A llama bleated somewhere in the distance, and bizarrely it was answered by a condor in the mountains.

Glancing upward, Barry once more marveled over how far sounds traveled in the mountains. She assumed it had to do with the incredibly clean air. The stars overhead seemed so close it was almost as if she could simply reach out and gather them in her hand like fireflies. The desert was very high, the air so thin it took a week for most of the newcomers to learn how to breathe properly. Just more security for the base. If attacked, the enemy would have to wear respirators, or run out of breath every few feet, putting them at a tremendous disadvantage. She did not really like Craig Rexton very much, but had to admit that the man seemed to be a tactical genius.

Passing a water storage tank clearly marked as a fuel depot, Barry held out her ID badge for the guard to see. He said nothing behind his thick scarf, wrapped around his head, but nodded in reply. Continuing onward, she tried not to shiver. The guards never challenged anybody they encountered, but if you did not show them the proper ID, they would shoot you in the back the moment you turned. The physician sighed. More tricks and traps for invaders. They were everywhere. Sometimes, it almost seemed that Rexton wanted the base to be invaded. Ridiculous thought, to be sure, but the finer points of his master plan still eluded her.

Suddenly spotting the concrete dome for the barracks, Barry moved forward eagerly and quickly worked the keypad to gain entrance. Stepping into a small passageway, she impatiently waited until the exterior door closed, and then used a different code to open the interior door.

As it sighed aside, the woman stepped into delicious warmth, which she let seep into her bones before heading for her room. There were several people in the lounge, reading books or playing board games, and a few waved hello. She returned the friendly gesture, but stayed hunched over as if still fighting the cold so that they would not see the raw emotion on her face. A physician was trained to hide their true feelings when delivering bad news to the family of a patient, but nobody had ever shown her how to mask happy feelings. The logical question would be to ask why would anybody need to disguise being happy? And the answer was, of course, that all depended on what made you happy in the first place.

Reaching her room, Barry slipped inside, then worked the door lock to give her several hours of uninterrupted privacy. Only her room had this special function. A tired doctor made mistakes that could kill, so she had the authority to seal herself away for short periods of time to get some vitally needed and uninterrupted sleep.

Although that was the last thing she had on my mind at that moment. She mentally chuckled, hanging up the heavy parka and turning off her boots.

Unlike most of the military in the world, Genesis accepted the fact that grown adults would have sex with each other from time to time. It was only natural, and even encouraged as good for morale. However, sex outside marriage was strictly forbidden, and when Barry had met her lover, the world changed forever, in more ways than she could ever imagine, in spite of the fact that a marriage stood between them like an invisible wall.

Divesting the rest of her clothing, Barry went to the small bathroom to quickly wash, and comb the wind-blown tangles out of her hair. The cascade covered her freely hanging, naked breasts, and tickled slightly. Barry fought back a giggle of excitement, then gave it free rein. At last, she was alone, away from the weapons and constant talk of death. It was marvelous, even if only for a few hours.

Wrapping a terry-cloth robe around herself, the woman went directly to the bedroom and entered without knocking.

The darkness was lit only by a few flickering candles, the air sweet with incense. Flower petals had been strewed along the floor, making a path to the bed. Barry knew they were only made of satin, but the petals certainly looked real in the candlelight, and that was what mattered.

"Took you long enough," Alyssa Dean said from the bed, a smile crossing her elfin face. Her short hair was slightly damp from the shower. Her nails were painted a deep red to match her lipstick, and a simple silver chain hung around her neck, the links glistening between the gently sloping valley of her full breasts. They were the only thing about the woman that wasn't petite.

Shifting her bare feet on the carpet, Barry smiled at her, unable to speak for a moment. Whenever Alyssa walked into a room, the lights seemed to get brighter, and there was more oxygen in the atmosphere, making her feel exhilarated, and alive, more alive than anything else. The overwhelming desire to hold the woman, to taste her lips once more, to feel the warmth of her body, the touch of her skin, was unstoppable, irresistible, intoxicating.

Filling a fluted glass with champagne, Dean offered it to the taller brunette. "A drink first, my love?" she asked.

Smiling widely, Barry accepted the glass, the beating of her heart getting louder every second. Then she frowned. "Your ring," she said, indicating the item with her chin.

Filling her own glass, Dean paused in confusion, then blushed as she laid the bottle aside and quickly removed her gold wedding ring to tuck it inside her purse.

Setting her glass aside, Barry took the smaller woman by the shoulder and turned her until they were facing each other again. "Hush," she whispered, leaning in to brush her lips against the other woman's. "That is a word we never use between us. No regrets, for anything. Okay?"

"Okay," Dean said softly. Then she pulled the larger woman to her in a long and ardent embrace, the passionate touch relaying volumes of feelings that were simply beyond the pale of words.

"For once, we have plenty of time," Barry purred, letting the robe fall to puddle around her ankles. "They're busy attacking Russia at the moment, and then they'll go after The Red One."

Already? "Then may God have mercy on their souls," Dean whispered, bowing her head.

Chapter Seven

The sound of the nearby ocean mixed with the sounds of traffic and the controlled chaos of the dockyard, creating a background murmur oddly similar to that of a machine.

Standing near an idling truck, a Russian soldier lit a cigarette and drew the dark smoke deep into his lungs.

"Good duty, eh, my friend?" He smiled, allowing the smoke to trickle out of his nostrils.

"Only if nothing happens," the corporal replied, binoculars held tight to his upturned face. The local sky was clear of all traffic up to the clouds.

In addition to their AK-101 assault rifles, both soldiers had an SA-18 rocket launcher slung across his back, the new weapons gleaming bright, fresh from the factory in St. Petersburg. Based upon the much older SA-7, this new model SA-18 had twice the range, and three times the speed. Hopefully, it would be enough.

Only last month, the Kremlin finally got the long-awaited S-400 air defense system in operation. The dozens of hidden rocket bases linked directly to the radar arrays secreted downtown and out in the fields. With the push of a button, the combined might of Mother Russia could fill the sky with death, able to annihilate any invaders, enemy bombers or even incoming missiles. Well, hopefully. The first field test of this system would be sometime next week. In the past, the great nation was ruled by fools and friends of fools, but now they were waist deep in politicians, paper-pushers who wanted war reduced to the pushing of buttons. As if courage and honor weren't as necessary as a loaded weapon. Onions, as his grandmother liked to call them, fools with their heads in the dirt hiding from the sunlight.

"So what are you looking for, Corporal?" he asked, leering at the family passing on the other side of a wire fence. "All of the women are down here." The soldier merely grunted in reply.

The young teenage girl blushed slightly, excited from the frank looks of the handsome soldier. Soldiers made good husbands. With the advent of terrorism, their work was steady, and that meant a lot in these thin days.

"Women will be the death of you, Lech," the corporal muttered, adjusting the focus on the binoculars.

"Too true, my friend." The man grinned, watching the teenage girl sashay away. "But what a way to go, eh?"

Parked right behind the soldiers was a flatbed Saab truck carrying the massive honeycomb of a BM-21v multiple-rocket launcher. The diesel engine was softly operating, the radar dish on the roof spinning merrily. Designed for all-weather combat, the deadly MRL was primed and ready for instant use, with a spare load of the nine-foot-long surface-to-air missiles tucked safely behind a fireproof wall only a yard away.

Inside the cab, a lieutenant in the gunner seat had his hat pulled low and was snoring, while a private lounged behind the wheel reading a Japanese comic book.

To save weight, which translated into money, there was no blast shield between the cab of the truck and the forty tubes of the MRL, aside from a ballistic blanket. The high command in the Kremlin said that no blast shield was necessary, but the soldiers knew better and had purchased the blanket out of their own pockets over the Internet.

Although they were combat veterans, or perhaps because of it, the soldiers were relaxed, and not overly concerned about the city, or the port, being attacked. There was nothing here of strategic value, as the navy submarine pens were located outside of Vladivostok, and buried deep underground. Aside from them, the only other things to bomb would be civilians, the cargo ships unloading at the dockyard and a factory that made spare parts for MiG fighters. No, the MRL had been placed here, prominently on a hill, merely for show, a public display of Russian might to make the civilians, and tourists, feel safe. Besides, the Airwolves would have to be mad to strike here. The instant a target was located, the forty tubes of the honeycomb could be discharged in less than a minute, more than enough firepower to blow anything out of the sky.

Of course, what the soldiers had heard in the barracks was that figuring out which plane was the enemy seemed to be rather difficult. Every jetliner in existence was suspect, but they were not to be harmed until the bombs started falling. Missiles were expensive, and not to be used until the enemy had been clearly identified. Money was tight as the new democracy was still paying for the excess of the Communists.

"I'm done," the private behind the wheel announced, an arm sticking out of the window proffering the comic book. "Either of you want to read it next?"

"What is this one about?" the corporal asked, lowering the binoculars. Lech had been right, anything important to see was on the sidewalk, wearing nylons.

As the soldier reached for the graphic novel, there was a fiery blossom from the port, and a loading crane began to slowly topple over as a black cloud of smoke rose from a tilting cargo ship.

"It's them, the Airwolves!" Lech cried, working the arming bolt of his rifle. "Missiles, fire the missiles!"

"Or it could be an accident, or smugglers, or a hit from the Moscow Mafia, or even those damn Hamas," the private behind the wheel answered nervously, licking his lips. He started to reach for the slumbering officer, but stayed his hands. The lieutenant had been celebrating the previous night, and his hangover was probably tremendous. There was no sense disturbing his sleep until they knew for certain there was any real danger.

Just then, another explosion rocked the dockyard, a stack of cargo containers sailing through the air along with a score of tiny human figures. Suddenly they heard a low crackle of gunfire from the buildings downtown, and everyone on the streets began to scramble for cover. The family with the pretty teenage girl dashed into a department store only a split second before a dozen black objects tumbled through the clouds. Some of them burst apart in the air, sending out a halo of smaller objects, while others whistled straight to the ground and violently detonated. A couple of them spiraled to head directly for the MiG factory and the electrical substations.

Snarling in rage, Lech did the same, but held off touching the firing button. The screen could not find a viable target. Or rather, there were too many targets! The Airwolves had to be attacking from within the flow of traffic above the clouds, and there was no way for the radar to tell which was which without a visual confirmation.

"Clever bastards," the corporal growled hatefully, releasing his grip on the switch to conserve power.

Destruction was spreading across the city, a million windows shattering as entire buildings shuddered from the savage pounding. Bridges were blown into rubble, and burning cars lifted off the streets. The entire population seemed to be screaming in terror.

"Hey, wake up, you fool! Flag One!" the driver bellowed, pummeling the officer on the arm. "Incoming, two o'clock high!"

Jerking awake, the lieutenant blinked, then scrambled into action, his hands moving across the control board of the MRL with amazing speed. "How many of them are there?" he demanded furiously. "The screen is full of..." His voice faded away, then came back strong. "Run! Run for your lives!"

But before the soldiers could react, something streaked across the tumultuous sky to loudly explode directly above the truck, sending out a hellish spray of shrapnel. The men and vehicle were chewed to pieces, the fuel tanks igniting, and the spare pod of rockets erupting, the big chunks tearing through the heavy ballistic cloth as if it were paper.

Then from the burning heart of the writhing fireball, a dozen of the surface-to-air missiles launched, streaking in every direction. One went straight up and disappeared from sight, while another slammed into the hillside, blowing out huge gouts of grass and shrubbery. Unfortunately the rest headed randomly into Vladivostok, blowing up a billboard, a hotel, a hospital, a second MRL truck and a fire station.

Dodging the falling chunks of masonry, a howling mob of people dashed around like frightened insects. Patients in gowns jumped out of a hospital that was starting to fall over. Prisoners inside a jail shrieked insanely, then abruptly stopped. A gas line ruptured, filling a side street with fire, while a water main burst in another, the foamy rush forcing the screaming civilians back into the deadly heat of the flames. Blood and broken glass were everywhere, tattered limbs lay scattered on the broken sidewalks, and the bombs kept coming, wave after wave, until it seemed as if the entire world was being consumed in death and destruction.

On the dockyard, a cruise liner started to tip sideways. An oil tanker was gushing a tidal wave of black petroleum into the choppy water, then a warship vanished in a burst of white light, the sheer force of the staggering concussion from the tons of military ordnance shoving everything aside for hundreds of feet. The titanic shock wave created a clear patch of hellish intensity in the middle of the thundering pandemonium.

Only minutes later, two full wings of MiG 35 jetfighters streaked across the clouds, desperately searching for the mysterious enemy. But there was nothing in sight except the dozens of commercial jetliners flying above the cover, blissfully ignorant of the monstrous devastation covering the world below.

Then a MiG pilot spotted the belly of a 707 plane closing in the manner of a bomb bay doors, and suddenly realized the wings were set too high on the fuselage. That was no 707, but an American B-52 bomber! However, as the man started to shout a warning into his VOX microphone, there came a brief flash from the tail of the huge plane, and the jetfighter was annihilated, the burning wreckage tumbling down to vanish into the city below.

* * *

"WAIT A SECOND, I think there's something coming through," Carmen Delahunt announced from inside her VR helmet, her gloved hands apparently grabbing empty air as she manipulated the cybernetic world of the Internet. A former FBI agent, the vivacious redhead had been recruited to the cybersquad by Hal Brognola.

"Found another T-burst?" Kurtzman asked, glancing up from his own computer monitor. Aside from a small chessboard with a game in play, there was no free space around his keyboard, the area stacked high with Top Secret files, code books and several older issues of Jane's Aviation magazine detailing the range and weight limitations of the Boeing B-52 heavy bomber.

"It might be a T-burst..." Delahunt said hesitantly, unwilling to commit the resources of the Cray computer until she was more definite. As powerful as the Cray Mark IV supercomputer was, it could not go everywhere at the exact same time, and so like a general directing troops in battle, the hacker had to choose her targets wisely.

Flipping a switch, Kurtzman slaved his computer to hers just as the screen scrambled with a wild display of static and hash, then went dark again.

"Yeah, it's gone," Delahunt stated flatly, canceling the search with the wave of a cybernetic glove. "I was a half millisecond too slow." Removing the gloves, the woman flexed her cramped fingers. "The burst was en-shrouded in a cloud of a hundred other T-bursts, and I simply grabbed the wrong one to decode. But I have their style now, Aaron, and I'll get the next one for sure."

"Fair enough," Kurtzman growled, just for a moment sounding like his namesake. Actually, he was impressed that she had gotten that close on only the second attempt. A cloud of T-bursts was damn clever. A lot smarter than he would have expected from people who threw bombs and ran away. Created only a few years ago, a T-burst was the Internet version of a blip transmission of a radio, a massive amount of information compressed into a single microsecond tone. Unless you were ready — and listening — at precisely the right time, it was gone, vanished into the sea of background static like a drop of water falling into the ocean, unrecoverable, gone forever. However, what hackers created other hackers could crack.

"Any idea on the origin?" Akira Tokaido said, removing his earbuds to give his colleague his complete attention. A handsome young man of Japanese American descent, Tokaido was dressed in black denim and a vintage T-shirt displaying the logo of a classic rock group from several decades earlier, his ratty sneakers appearing even older than that, albeit with brand-new laces.

Although relatively young, Tokaido was considered one of the best hackers in the world.

"Well, if I had to guess, and it would only be a guess, mind you, I'd say that from the secondary encryption traces, North Korea was talking to the Fifteen Families again," Delahunt answered, removing the bulky virtual reality helmet to clean the inside with a moist towelette. "But I can't tell for sure. Whoever is running the show really knows their stuff."

"Then it can't be anybody working for the Fifteen," Tokaido muttered scornfully.

Donning her helmet, Delahunt agreed with that assessment. The Fifteen Families were the kings of illicit narcotics in Western Europe. They specialized in cocaine and heroin. If you wanted to buy, or sell, you had to go through them. Or else. The Farm had tangled with the Fifteen Families before, but there were always more of them to replace the ones fallen in battle. Just like cockroaches, it seemed that the more of them you exterminated, even more came scuttling out of the woodwork.

"Now, what would North Korea want with the Fifteen?" Kurtzman wondered out loud, reaching out to change the position of a knight on a small chess board along side his keyboard. Then he frowned. "Son of a bitch, I think the Great Leader is trying to buy an Airwolf!"

"Or at least also have them bomb a specific target. Yes, that would also be my conclusion," Huntington Wethers said around the battered briarwood pipe in his mouth. "Perhaps, nukes are simply getting too hot for the man to handle anymore. No pun intended."

"None noticed." Kurtzman grunted, starting to type with both hands, pulling up the CIA files on the dictator of North Korea.

Quietly bemused, Wethers smiled at the rebuff, and went back to his own work laying traps for the enemy hackers inside the defensive software of American and British telecommunication satellites. Chewing industriously on the stem of his pipe, his hands flowed across the keyboard like a classical pianist.

Exceptional tall, and whippet lean, Wethers had subtle wings of silver located at each temple, a high prominent forehead, and usually looked as if he had just walked off a college campus in loose tan slacks, deck shoes and a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Formerly a professor at USC Berkeley, the erudite scholar was the foremost expert in advanced cybernetics. However, Wethers had turned away from the world of academia to serve his country in its time of need.

As the team of cyberwarriors proceeded with their tasks, the main wall screen flickered to show a recent attack in Russia, the death toll scrolling along the bottom, and the type of munitions used indexing across the top.

"Heads up, people! I just got an update on Rafe from the Chetumac Hospital," she announced.

"That's not known at the moment," she replied, crossing her arms. "He just went into surgery. However, they're giving him a fifty-fifty chance of survival. And considering the nature and location of the wounds, that's pretty damn good."

"However, survival is not recovery," Wethers noted sternly, not looking up from his work. "Was there any mention of a prognosis?"

"Yes," Price admitted, keeping her tone even. "Even if he lives, Rafe may never walk again. One of the bullets hit... Well, it nicked his spine."

Nobody spoke at that, but Kurtzman involuntarily flinched at the memory of his own months of painful surgery and rehabilitation.

"Well, if worse comes to worst you can always make him an assistant to Cowboy," Kurtzman added, a calloused palm running along the rubber top of the hated wheel. "Few people know weapons as well as Rafe."

"We'll have to see how he feels about that," Price said, walking closer to view the wall screen. She scowled at the numbers steadily rising in Russia. Things were rapidly getting out of control. "Carmen, any success yet in tracking down the main base of the Airwolves?"

"Not yet, they're using T-bursts wrapped in a cloud for all of their communications," Delahunt replied, her gloves fingering the empty air as she ripped through firewalls and flimsy commercial software. "There seem to be at least two locations, I get a lot of echoes, but nothing definite so far."

"Unfortunately, about the same," Wethers replied. "They jump from satellite to satellite with amazing alacrity. I'm trying to establish a mathematical equation for the selection, but have had no success so far. It may be truly random."

"Hope so," the woman replied, glancing at the wall clock. "Any word from Able Team?"

"Nothing new, no," Kurtzman replied, sipping from a steaming mug of coffee. "But Phoenix Force has gotten back together again and are hot on the frail of their Zeus."

At that, Price allowed herself a small smile. Finally some good news. "Did he head for the Cayman Islands as we expected?"

"Belize," Tokaido said, unwrapping a stick of bubble gum and popping it into his mouth. The smell of the coffee was making his nose twitch. "I almost lost him downtown, but found him again when he rented a car using only cash. Big mistake there. I've hacked into the navigation system of his Land Rover, so I know precisely where he is at every moment and wherever that car goes, I maintain the jamming field."

"Not for several hours, no. He seems to have given up trying. Probably thinks it's busted."

"Hopefully," Price said, tugging pensively on an earlobe. "Well, don't ease up for a second. If he places a call, we lose our stalking horse."

"Understood. I've even pulled up detailed street maps of the city, in case he stops at any store that sell ham radios."

Damn that was smart. "Well done," she complimented. "Where is he at this moment?"

Just then the wall screen flickered, recording a new attack on a British RAF base in Libya. Along the bottom, the death toll started steadily rising into the high numbers.

"Heads up, people!" Kurtzman bellowed, throwing some switches and hitting a macros key on his console. "If they just did an attack, their hackers will need to access several satellites to help cover the escape. Watch out for any unusual traffic in the high-band widths..."

"Good God!" Tokaido said, sitting bolt upright in his chair. "Something just tried to access our comm sat."

"Do you mean a telecommunications satellite operated by the U.S. government?" Price asked, feeling her heart suddenly beat fast. "Or one of the orbiters reserved for the NSA?"

"I mean our comm sat!" the man answered curtly, hands flying across the controls. "The one used by the Farm."

Instantly the rest of the team lurched into fevered activity, operating controls and activating subsystems as if they had done this before ten thousand times.

Unable to stop herself, Price looked up at the ceiling, her mind flashing three hundred miles straight up to the unmarked satellite locked into a permanent geosynchronus orbit directly above the military installation.

"Did they get in?" she asked, and when nobody answered she repeated the question much louder. "Did they get in?"

"We're checking!" Kurtzman growled, hunched over the console. "Hunt, prepare for a false data dump! Akira, get Eden ready to take over! Carmen, with me! Let's bust their ass!"

Fighting the urge to offer advice, Price remained silent. There was nothing she could suggest that these cyberwarriors had not thought about, and already done. She turned and went to the wall phone, hitting a button.

"Red alert." Price spoke calmly, knowing that her words were repeating through the entire base and over the earbuds of every blacksuit outside on patrol. "Repeat, red alert. The Farm may have been compromised. Repeat, we could have incoming hostiles. Alert the park rangers and have them clear out all of the tourists ASAP! Activate the SAM bunkers, alert the White House, and I want primary lock down for all stations, right now!"

Impatiently, Price looked at the cadre of busy computer experts performing who knew what. Most of what they did was so far beyond her level of technical expertise it became a simple matter of faith. At least she knew about Eden. That was Kurtzman's pet name for the new Stony Man backup computer located in the Annex, an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer designated to be used if the Cray mainframes were ever damaged, or worse, hacked. The Eden came from the actress Barbara Eden who played a genie on an old TV sitcom. Genie, Blue Gene. As always, the mission controller found the humor of computer wizards inane and cryptic.

Turning his head, Kurtzman flashed her a hard smile. "It was close," he stated. "But they didn't get in, or even obtain our location."

"Well, thank God, for that," Price exhaled, feeling some of the tension leave her shoulders. "Any chance we got a trace on their signal?"

"Working on it," Delahunt stated, her hands caressing the air as she raced after the fleeting impulses of the elusive Airwolf computer. It dropped T-bursts like shrapnel, but those she simply ignored. Nothing was going to distract her this time. She rammed through every firewall as it sprang into being, and dodged around the Black Ice as counterintrusion programs exploded before her like a lightning storm. Whoever the hell was running the IT department was good. The best she had encountered since the fellow from India, the Mongoose.

"They've moved on to a BBC relay sat," Wethers announced. "Correction, now they're in an experimental satellite for a pharmaceutical company... no, a Spanish cable TV comm sat. My God, they're fast!"

"Keep it tight, people!" Kurtzman ordered in unaccustomed gentleness. "Stay focused! They're in our ballpark now, and we own them. Just don't let them slip away!"

Mumbling assent, the team concentrated on the task as they raced to pursue their invisible opponent across the heavens, and around the world....

Chapter Eight

Coming out of the subway station, the CIA operative neatly spun out of the way of the oncoming traffic, only to now find himself facing a dozen more cars racing along the incredibly wide boulevard.

Ducking behind a streetlamp, the man started to reach for this gun under his jacket, when a pair of calloused hands grabbed him by the collar and dragged him across the sidewalk and into the safety of a dark alley.

Shifting the heavy shopping bag slung across a shoulder, a blond woman shrugged. "What do you expect in a city without traffic lights and with more cars than people?"

Nearly deafened by the endless din, the operative could only nod in reply. Welcome to the future. The smog was thick today, worse than London fog, and the noise was horrendous, the stream of traffic streaking past the door of the tall building, every vehicle honking a horn and playing music loudly enough to be classified as a deadly weapon. Unfortunately, the narrow sidewalks were no better. Unlike the lazy coastal cities full of half-clad swimmers and drunken tourists, the city of Brasilia was jammed solid with serious men and women in expensive business suits or somber military uniforms, all of them moving fast, carrying briefcases and shouting into cell phones.

"It's like Crystal City on crystal meth!" a woman shouted in disgust. But from the lack of smiles from the other members of the unit, she correctly guessed that clearly none of them were from the Washington, D.C., area. Oh, well.

"Who designed this crazy city?" a burly CIA operative asked, squinting at the passing parade of speeding cars, lumbering trucks, hissing buses and whirring motorcycles.

Everything, and anything that could roll passed by the unit in a nonstop blur — old battered junkers, brand-new luxury sedans, imported compacts, vintage roadsters, taxicabs, police cars, military vehicles. There seemed to be no end to the mixture, and no limit to their velocity.

The capital of Brazil, the infamous Brasilia, had been built several decades earlier to replace Rio de Janeiro as the new capital of the nation. It was sleek, wide, clean and bizarrely futuristic-looking. Each road was eight-lanes wide in an effort to alleviate the expected traffic congestion, and that had proved to be nowhere near enough. Combined with the use of traffic circles in place of traffic lights, Brasilia was a nightmare for pedestrians until the relative safety of the outer suburbs was reached.

"I've had fun before, and this ain't it, brother," a shapely CIA operative shouted, brushing back her wild array of ginger hair as the unit rushed across the incredibly wide street to reach the next towering skyscraper.

The director of the unit merely nodded. The futuristic-looking city was a zoo, seemingly without any order or control. On top of the car horns, music and endless shouting, there was also the cacophony of two million car engines merging into a single cohesive roar. Just for a moment, the director had a flashback to his nightmarish days as a lowly snipe, a mechanics assistant, in the U.S. Navy when he had to crawl underneath the working engines of an aircraft carrier to perform routine maintenance. The pulse of Brasilia beat upon his face with tangible force.

"The sooner we're out of this crap the better," the director shouted out of the corner of his mouth, leading the unit into another alley.

The hammering beat of the city lessened slightly, and the unit relaxed in the luxury of not having to chew the air to get the foul stuff into their lungs.

Pulling out a small EM scanner, the director ran a fast check on the office building, and soon got an answering beep on the monitor. "Okay, it's here," he stated, tucking the device away again. "Get hard, people. This is going to be bloody."

Trying to appear casual, the members of the elite Garbage unit said nothing in reply as they formed a loose group around the access door set flush to the concrete base of the soaring office building. Disabling an alarm, an operative then used a lock-pick gun on the locked door. It yielded in less than a minute, and the unit piled inside to stand for a brief moment in the quiet coolness. The unit proceeded up the stairwells, reaching the twenty-sixth floor in short order.

Pausing to check their weapons, the unit smashed open the fire door and charged along the carpeted corridor past an array of startled people to then crash through a set of double doors at the end of the long hallway.

"Stop right there!" a big man shouted from behind an ornate wooden desk, swinging an Imbel 12-gauge shotgun into view.

As the guard worked the pump-action to chamber a round, the director of the CIA unit riddled his chest with a hail of case-hardened 9 mm rounds from a compact Beretta 93-R machine pistol, a sound suppressor reducing the muzzle-blast to a subdued chug. Crumpling very slowly, the guard sighed into death, the shotgun discharging as his fingers convulsed for one last time before going still forever.

Running through the room, the unit triggered its own shotguns, the 14-gauge paintballs hitting the security cameras positioned safely behind strong steel grids. Bullets and hammers could not reach the cameras, but the fine spray of white paint could. Never even slowing, the unit left the thickly coated devices behind, an angry whirring noise sounding as the cameras panned back and forth trying to shake off the tacky goo.

Around the next corner, the CIA unit encountered a group of clerks filing papers in a long row of metal cabinets. Changing hands, the unit unleashed a barrage of tranquilizer darts, the innocent civilians tumbling to the carpet, the surprised expressions on their faces fading before they had properly formed in the first place.

Past a set of double doors, the unit unexpectedly found themselves in a branching corridor.

"Which way now?" a man demanded, a Beretta in one hand and pneumatic dart gun in the other.

Checking the EM scanner in his hand, the director swung it around in a fast circle, then pointed to the left. Without a comment, the unit headed that way.

Several more armed guards rushed out of offices and were effortlessly dispatched, along with two more civilian clerks, their armloads of papers exploding into the air like a snowstorm as the powerful narcotics in the sleep darts took effect.

Finally the unit reached a corner office, the entrance blocked by a steel gate. The lock yielded to the lock-pick gun in record time, but now they faced a more formidable barrier — a banded steel door that would have looked more at home in a bank than an import-export company.

"Import-export," a CIA agent said derisively, slapping a C-4 charge to the frame. Stabbing a timing pencil into the explosive compound, he snapped it off at the twenty second mark, then politely knocked, and rushed for cover.

Muffled footsteps sounded from the other side, and the view port slid aside just as the timing pencil detonated the wad of C-4. Instantly, the jamb warped, and the door blew open. A startled cry of pain erupted from somebody on the other side, followed by a sickening crunch.

"Sure as hell hope that wasn't a civilian," an operative muttered, rushing through the billowing cloud of acrid smoke.

"Not on this side of the door," the director retorted, lifting a small black box to the ceiling. A fire alarm started to wail, but he pressed a button and it went silent. Kneeling alongside the mutilated form oozing red onto the thick carpeting, a woman scanned the body with the pinhead camera in her PDA to run a fast check on what remained of the features, but there was no correlation in the portable data bank. With the terrible feeling that the unit may have just burned a civilian, she pressed the least damaged fingertip onto the screen of the PDA to get a print and hit the transmit button. Almost instantly there came back a positive identification. Attenburg Cortland. Attenburg? A freelance mercenary who hired out to anybody with enough cash — the Yakuza, KGB, Mafia, Colombians — the man didn't care who he worked for, as long as he was paid on time.

"Clear," she announced, letting the others know the dead man had been a legitimate kill. Import company my ass, she thought. This was Brazil One, the clearing house for every money-laundering operation in South America.

Another locked gate blocked any further progress into the secret criminal bank, and as the director started on the lock, a dozen armed men arrived, shouting and firing their weapons. Several members of the CIA unit took hits and went down bloody, but the rest unlimbered their deadly 9 mm machine pistols, blowing away the guards. As the last men fell, the gate swung open and the unit poured through, slapping fresh clips into their weapons. Two of their comrades didn't rise from the floor to follow, but nobody had a comment. They knew this was a potential suicide mission and accepted the risk, knowing the prize was worth the danger.

On the way through the gate, the director emptied his pockets of what resembled butane cigarette lighters, scattering them around in every direction.

Now they entered a sumptuous office of rosewood panels and crystal chandeliers. Sitting behind a desk, a woman screamed and ran for a nearby closet. Shooting her in the back, the director stepped over the trembling corpse to check inside. The walls were lined with burnished steel, and racks of G-12 caseless assault rifles stood loaded and ready. Off to the side was a shelf piled with currency, and a courier pouch marked with the logo of the Swiss Bank in Manhattan.

"Okay, this is the place," the director said, pocketing the now useless EM scanner. "Find those files fast. We have ten minutes, maybe less, before the reserve troops arrive and things get interesting."

"Here!" a man shouted, shoving over a bookcase to reveal a recessed alcove packed full of file cabinets.

The faces of the unit members brightened at the sight, but then darkened when they saw the cabinets were armored and locked with a combination dial and keypad.

"No way we're going to crack those in time," a man growled in annoyance, swinging around an equipment bag and unzipping the top. "I gotta burn them."

"Then make it fast," the director said. "Eight minutes, and counting." The man stated that as a fact, even though he wasn't wearing a watch.

"More than enough time," the operative replied, applying a butane lighter to the end of a thin metal tube. Instantly the tip erupted into blazing flame, the tube melting away as the fire steadily progressed along the shaft.

Going to the first cabinet, he applied the burning bar to the lock, and the white-hot tip cut through the armor as if it were gossamer.

Carrying the burning bar to the desk so that the others could start checking inside the cabinets, the operative laid it down and walked away, the end still blazing away. That was the one major drawback of the burning bar — there was absolutely no way to extinguish a thermite fire. Putting it into water only made the flame hotter as it consumed the oxygen in the water. There was nothing to do but let it burn out all by itself.

Another operative carefully angled the bar toward the door, then returned to the others rifling through the assortment of papers and files.

"These have been very busy boys," the director muttered, speed-reading a file, then stuffing the documents inside his vest.

"Same here," a woman said, then cursed as she threw the file away. It hit the floor and exploded into confetti from a self-destruct charge.

"Hope that wasn't important," a man growled, ramming more papers inside his clothing.

"Yeah, me, too," she admitted, starting to return to the work when she paused, straining to hear over the loud crackling of the burning bar. Was that footsteps? Oh hell.

"Incoming!" she shouted, turning to fire her Beretta at the office door, emptying the entire clip in a single, prolonged burst.

An answering hail of lead came back from what sounded like Kalashnikovs. Then the director pushed back his sleeve to reveal a small watch strapped to his wrist. Rotating the watch, he pressed it hard, and there came a fast series of sharp explosions from the fake butane lighters strewed about the outer office and hallway.

As two of the CIA operatives shoved the desk with the burning bar directly in front of the riddled office door, dark clouds of thick smoke started to appear, and there came the sound of men coughing hard. But then the Kalashnikovs spoke once more, and a CIA operative fell backward with most of his face removed.

The others cast a single glance at their fallen comrade, then rushed across the office to throw open the windows. A warm wind blew into the room, carrying the reek of gasoline fumes.

"Stop! Halt!" a voice shouted from the smoke, an AK-47 hammering rounds along the walls and floor.

"Has that ever worked?" a man asked contemptuously, replying with both his 9 mm Beretta and dart gun.

"Not on anybody I know," a woman replied, casting away her weapon before running across the carpet and diving out the open window.

The rest of the unit quickly followed, and only yards away from the building, the CIA operatives spread their arms wide to reveal that they were wearing squirrel suits, thin plastic membranes stretching from torso to arm. Instantly, their descent slowed as the membranes caught the air currents and lifted them higher.

The squirrel suit, or wingsuit, was a recent invention, and absolutely state-of-the-art for anybody with a death wish. The bastard combination of para-sail and parachute, the person wearing it would literally glide along the wind, easily reaching a hundred miles per hour and using sheer speed to stay airborne. Landing was a problem, but the unit had an answer for that. Hopefully.

Steadily increasing their speed, the CIA operatives started to arc around a colossal hotel, the startled faces of guests and staff staring at them through the closed windows. On the streets below, the traffic streamed in chaotic patterns, blissfully unaware of the American fliers. However, a moment later, there came the sound of assault rifles firing from their wake, and one of the men flinched as a hot round scored a bloody furrow across his leg.

"Close, but no cigar," he grunted, a thin frail of blood trickling behind in a crimson contrail.

Angling around the hotel, and then away from the city, the unit rode the gray thermals caused by the exhaust fumes of the mass of traffic all the way to the cleaner suburbs. As the air cleaned, it became cooler, and the CIA operatives dropped rapidly, barely managing to sail over a tall stone wall completely surrounding the manicured lawn of a huge estate.

Swinging past the mansion, the unit glided toward the Olympic-size swimming pool, but passed over that to head for a wide expanse of empty cardboard boxes covered with a canvas sheet. They hit hard, and the boxes vomited a blizzard of foam packing peanuts from the impact of their arrival. But the operatives rolled out of the tangled canvas relatively undamaged. Only the wounded operative stayed where he had landed, panting heavily, the blood still flowing from his punctured leg. Grabbing U. S. Army field surgery kits from a stack of supplies alongside the pool, two of the operatives rushed to his aid and started hasty repairs.

"No, we got away," the director replied, unzipping his vest and pulling out a wad of crumpled documents. "But send these to Langley ASAP. Just in case the goddamn secret police arrives in force to ask us some questions at the end of a blow torch."

"Thought they used cattle prods," the man replied, and headed toward the nearby mansion, kicking foam out of his way with every step.

"Sir, what are the chances that the papers will show who the B-52 terrorists are?" a woman asked, dropping the clip from her Beretta, only to slam it back into the grip.

"Not my department. We're just a snatch and run unit," the director said, sagging slightly to the first tugs of adrenaline fatigue. Then he grinned fiendishly. "But if they do, the Company will send in a wet team, and those high-flying bastards will find themselves entering a whole new world of pain."

"Hallelujah," the woman replied, starting to remove the sweat-soaked squirrel suit, exposing a civilian bikini underneath as police sirens began to howl in the distance.

* * *

Situated a good mile offshore, the colossal aircraft carrier sat like a steel island dominating the ocean. Streams of much smaller boats were slowly forming lines to enter the busy Panama Canal, as even more boats chugged out of the first lock to enter the clear waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Too wide, too long and drawing too great a depth, it would have been impossible for the titanic carrier to pass through the old canal. But then, it was here merely to serve as a guardian for the vital passageway. Once before terrorists had bombed the canal, trapping dozens of cargo ships between the two oceans and bankrupting a hundred companies. That was not going to be allowed to happen again if the captain and crew of the USS George Washington had anything to say about it.

"Sir, I thought the enemy B-52s were only hitting military targets?" the executive officer asked, watching the flow of traffic enter and leave the western lock. He lowered the monocular and turned off the minicomputer. The device could see in total darkness, find a heat source, or even track by ultraviolent light. But it was still just a telescope that carried information beyond the usual senses.

"Which is why we're here," Captain Harrison muttered, tightening his grip on the iron railing of the observation landing. "These terrorists have a very loose idea of what constitutes a military target. After that air show that they hit in Hungary, anything with a handful of Marines eating a pizza could be considered legitimate."

"I almost hope they do make an appearance," the XO stated proudly, looking down upon the busy flight deck.

Fifty feet below, the deck was swarming with sailors, the men and woman busy checking over F-18 Hornets and a scattering of the new F-22 Raptors. The planes appeared to be unarmed, but that was only because all of their weaponry was located inside the fuselage. Hinged ports swung open to unleash a missile, or fire the 20 mm cannon. Unlike most jetfighters that had to drop to below Mach speed to fight, the Raptors could engage an enemy while streaking along at twice the speed of sound, which gave them a lethal superiority in any aerial battle.

Sounding a loud warning horn, an Italian cargo ship trundled out of the canal, as an Australian oil tanker moved to take its place. The canal was always busy.

"Excuse me, skipper?" a sailor said, giving a crisp salute. In her other hand was a computer flimsy, the edges marked with bright red stripes marking it as a level nine communication, Double-O, officers only.

"What is it, sailor?" the captain asked, struggling to dredge up her name, and failing completely. But that was hardly surprising. With a five thousand member crew, it took years to learn all of their names, and by then, half of them were gone, and replaced with recruits and transfers.

"Sir, radar picked up an unscheduled flight a few minutes ago, a C-130 transport," the woman reported, obviously choosing her words with care. "The Panama airport had nothing scheduled, but has given the crew and passengers priority clearance to land, refuel ahead of other planes, and it will not be searched for any contraband."

"Yes, sir! We cracked the Panama military codes years ago," the woman answered. "There was also a reference to a wounded Skylark. We have nothing on that name in the books, so I brought it straight to your attention, sir." She faltered. "You know, in case it was important."

The captain struggled to hide his surprise. Wounded Skylark? That was one of the security phrases reserved for the White House! Something big was happening in Panama City right under his prow. Glancing upward, the sky was a clean azure all the way to the horizon.

"Just sounds like more smugglers to me," Captain Harrison lied, stifling a yawn. "Thankfully, local crime is not our concern. Pay it no further attention. That will be all."

Clearly expecting some other reply, the woman paused for only a second. "Yes, sir, aye, sir," she replied, and snapped off a salute before disappearing back into the bowels of the carrier.

"I don't know who they are," Harrison answered, "but we can both guess what they do for a living. Probably Delta Force, SEALs, or something else along that line."

"Think they're here about our current problem?" the XO asked, looking over the line of ships and boats using the locks, and the sprawling city on either side of the great canal.

"Lord, I hope not," the captain muttered. "But just in case, let's get a couple of birds in the air, pronto."

Giving a brief salute, the XO walked to a wall phone and started barking orders. Seconds later on the flight deck, sailors and technicians scrambled to get out of the way as the pilot in a F-22 Raptor fired up his Pratt & Witney engines and started rolling toward the catapult.

Everybody was shouting, either trying to sell something, or merely attempting to be heard over the constant noise. Derricks and cranes rose above the buildings like giant black skeletons, and the ships in the locks constantly blared their horns. Small dogs ran wild in the gutter, and the aroma of frying grease almost masked the smell of salt water and diesel fumes. The cobblestone roads were in poor condition, the buildings needed to be painted, and the smells coming from the sewer gratings were just this side of noxious, yet the outskirts of Panama City still had the feeling of home to the members of Phoenix Force. They had been here many times before. With so much cargo moving through so small a country, it was a hotbed of illicit activity, and a gateway port for those heading north to do business, and those escaping to the south.

Driving the Hummer through the crowded streets of Panama, Hawkins caught a glimpse of something in the air above, and snapped up his head to see an American F-22 streak over the city, closely followed by an F-18 Hornet.

"Looks like somebody noticed us arriving," James commented, straddling a golf bag between his legs.

"Good," McCarter replied. "Now the mercs will think the jamming is being done by them, and not us."

Only a block ahead was a dirty red Toyota with Belize plates. A man dressed in disheveled clothing was leaning against one of the tires, apparently asleep, and somebody had written an obscene joke across the grime-encrusted lid of the trunk.

Nearby was an old Harley-Davidson with American plates, and in the dust covering the rear fender, somebody had hastily written the words "Rock House." McCarter almost smiled at the sight. That was their code name for the Farm. Obviously, Manning had taken possession of the bike somewhere along the way while tracking the sniper-merc, and left it there for them to find. Only...

"Any sign of Gary?" McCarter asked, easing his Browning Hi-Power from under a newspaper.

"Not that I can see," Hawkins admitted, doing the same to his own Beretta 93-R machine pistol.

"No way he let the merc slip," James stated flatly, using a thumb to snick off his Beretta's safety. "Not after following him all the way down here from Cancun."

The man felt an urge to look up and wave to Kurtzman, but restrained himself. The man had done one hell of a job visually tracking Manning on a NSA satellite, then a DEA satellite, and finally on a Navy milsat. It had been touch and go several times along the way, especially in the congestion and chaos of Belize, and the cybernetic team had actually lost the Stony Man commando, then they would have been forced to call him on the radio and risk exposure. Whoever was behind the Airwolves had a technical staff the equal to Kurtzman and his people. The hackers had done their best, but this is where the trail ended, with a battered Toyota on the side of the road. Now, everything depended on Manning somehow leaving a trail for the rest of Phoenix Force.

"Okay let's find the trail," McCarter said, swinging the door open and stepping from the vehicle.

Walking cautiously to the battered Toyota, the three men stayed alert for any traps or snipers. But nobody seemed to be paying them any attention aside from a couple of teenage prostitutes across the street, young women with old eyes and way too much makeup, to hide their poor health.

Nudging the sleeping man with a shoe, McCarter urged the transient to move along, and he did so without complaining as if this was a daily occurrence. Without touching the two vehicles, the Stony Man commandos checked them both out, but saw nothing unusual, except for a startling number of empty food wrappers strewed about on the seats and floor mats of the little car.

"Our merc is a pig," James grunted, pulling a pencil-size ultraviolet flashlight from his pocket. Splaying the powerful beam around, he got no response from the windows, or from the piles of litter inside the car. Next, he checked the motorcycle, but with the same results.

"I guess he was in a hurry," James said, tucking away the UV pen. "The merc must have been on the move." This was a trick the team liked to use when leaving message to each other in a hostile zone of engagement. There were a lot of common items that glowed under the effect of a UV light, and a brief message could be left for the rest of the team to find on a bathroom mirror, bedsheet or car window. But not this time.

"At least, there are no blood spills," Hawkins added thoughtfully. "Then again, that could only mean they killed each other in the weeds or an alley."

"Then go check the alley," McCarter said, heading across the street. "Cal, search inside the car. I'll check with the ladies."

As the big Briton walked across the busy street, the two prostitutes on the corner instantly perked up in interest, one of them opening her blouse to display her full breasts and pierced nipples.

"You want, sailor boy?" she asked in heavily accented English. "Good stuff. I love long time."

"Well, I love dirty stories," McCarter said, holding out a fifty. That was a key phrase the team used with each other. Every city in the world had prostitutes, and the working girls were always delighted to earn some fast cash while keeping their clothes on.

Nodding eagerly in a complete lack of understanding, the big-breasted working girl made a grab for the cash, but he pulled it back just in time.

"Go hotel room," she said, thinking the man was shy about having sex in the middle of the street. "We go, very good. Long time!"

Trying not to frown, McCarter turned away from the woman. Nothing there from Manning. Damn. "What about you?" he asked hopefully, proffering the bill.

Smiling broadly and displaying a gold tooth, the skinny blonde lifted her short skirt to show a complete lack of underwear, then repeated the exact same phrases, as if that was the only English they knew.

Outraged at his rejection, the teens heaped abuse upon McCarter in colorful Spanish, questioning his preferred gender, sanity and general ancestry.

"I can hear they had nothing for you," Hawkins stated, meeting the man at the car.

"Nada," the man said, closing the door. "Maybe Gary did lose the merc, and is trying to find him, or..."

Turning around fast, the team members saw a small kid in sandals pushing a wooden cart stacked with DVD boxes of recent and classic movies.

"Order of the Phoenix, good price!" the boy called out, waving about a clearly black market copy of the hit movie. "Order of the Phoenix, good price!"

Trying not to display any undue eagerness, the three men strolled over to the boy, and McCarter offered the fifty again. "I like a good story," he said.

Pausing for only a second, the boy grinned widely and held out an open palm. "Then try Alhambra Club," he said in broken English. "They tell good stories. Hot girls, very hot."

The boy nodded, and the man gave him the bill. It instantly disappeared inside his clothing, and the kid moved onward, loudly selling the illegal DVDs.

"The Order of the Phoenix." James chuckled as the team started down the road. "Damn, that was clever."

"Gary must have seen the kid selling movies, and quickly improvised," Hawkins stated, shifting the golf club bag over his shoulder. It clinked softly, and seemed to weigh a lot.

Staying on the alert for any further directions from Manning, the team found the Alhambra ten blocks down the road. The neon banners and electric signs proclaimed the establishment was a strip club, and entering the front door the Stony Man commandos were hit by a wall of sound and smoke.

The stage was lined with mirrors so that the shouting patrons could have an unobstructed view of any angle of the dancers they wished, five women of assorted ages were dancing around steel poles to the savage beat of the rap music blaring from wall speakers the size of ovens. Most of the women were topless, several were covered with tattoos, and all of them had a thin elastic belt around their waist feathered with dollar bills.

The floor was covered with sawdust, the material clotted with unrecognizable spills. The tables were small, and the drinks even smaller. The drunk crowd was cheering and leering and waving money in the air. There were quite a few men in U.S. Navy whites, but most of the customers were tourists.

Off to the side were the private rooms, where a customer could have a few intimate moments with the dancer of his choice. Unlike most countries, Panama had no law against prostitution, and there were stairs leading up to the private bedrooms, where the dancing could take on a more horizontal momentum.

As expected, the air was thick with dark smoke, most of it from tobacco, but not all, and there was an all-pervasive reek of stale beer and sweat forming a gluey miasma almost thick enough to chew. Muscular waitresses wearing fishnet bodystockings and very little else were delivering drinks, their hips constantly swaying to avoid the overly friendly hands of the drunk patrons.

Checking for a good location to keep a watch on both the front and back doors, McCarter spotted Manning, nursing a beer. The Stony Man warrior was un-shaved, and greasy, but the man did not seem drunk in the least.

Catching each other's eye, McCarter and Manning exchanged nods, and the team started in that direction when they were stopped by a diminutive Filipino waitress.

"No tables open," she announced in remarkably good English. "Gotta sit at the bar."

"Thanks. We have a friend in the corner," McCarter countered, giving her a fifty. "Cold beer for five, cold, mind you, and keep the change."

"My, what a lovely establishment," James muttered, heading across the room again.

Fighting a smile, McCarter started to reply when suddenly a bald man with a badly scarred face bumped into him and backed away apologizing. Furious over the clumsy attempt, McCarter spun fast and caught the man's wrist, forcing it into view. As the fellow tried to jerk free, McCarter's wallet fell to the floor.

Instantly a short man with a pointy beard stepped in to punch McCarter in the kidneys, but Hawkins blocked the cowardly blow and twisted the little man's arm with both hands. The shoulder joint promptly dislocated, and the would-be thief dropped to the floor gasping at the incredible pain.

"Cut you, gringo!" the bald man snarled, producing a wicked knife with a curved blade.

Not wishing to kill the man out in the open, McCarter simply slammed him in the throat with an open hand, and the knife clattered to the floor, the pickpocket grabbing his neck to pitifully wheeze for air.

The women dancing on the stage paused for only a moment at the display of violence, then went right back to their erotic gyrations. Then a hulking giant appeared from the darkness, holding a sawed-off baseball bat.

"All right, what the fuck is going on... Oh, it's you two again, eh?" The bouncer's aggressive tone changing instantly as he recognized the wounded men. Grabbing them roughly by the collars, the bouncer shook them like a terrier killing rats. "I told you assholes what would happen if you ever came back in here," he snarled menacingly.

"But, they attacked us!" the bearded pickpocket whimpered, cradling his aching limb.

Skeptically, the bouncer looked at McCarter and the other members of Phoenix Force, then snorted in disbelief. "Not likely," he growled, and slammed their heads together with a distinctive crack. The men moaned and assumed a submissive posture as if this had happened many times before.

"Sorry about this," the bouncer said to McCarter, never taking his sight off the thieves. "Your first beer is free."

As the bouncer escorted the pickpockets out the back door, the Stony Man commandos joined Manning at his corner table. A chugging air conditioner was situated directly above the man, so the fumes from the rest of the bar were noticeably less prevalent.

"I hear the Zagat guide gave this place four stars," Hawkins said deadpan, setting down the golf bag before taking a seat.

"Location is everything," Manning said with a grin, closing his wrinkled jacket to cover the .357 Desert Eagle in his shoulder holster. "I'm just glad you found me. I wanted to call in, but couldn't without using the name of the place. My Spanish isn't good enough to know what Alhambra means."

"Really?" Manning curled a lip. "Considering the neighborhood, that's kind of dirty."

"Actually, the word isn't Spanish, but Moorish, a bastardization of the name of a famous fortress in southern Spain whose walls..."

Just then, the tiny Filipino waitress arrived with the beers, and dropped them off without a comment about the drinks supposedly being free or offering to return their money. She stood for a moment as if waiting for another order from the men, then shrugged and walked away briskly.

"I think she likes you, Gary," Hawkins said, taking a sip of the beer. It was cold, and went down like a healing balm after eating so much dirt on the race to get here.

"Can't wait to introduce her to Barbara," Manning retorted. "They'll have so much in common, what with both of them being carbon-based, and using oxygen."

McCarter sipped the beer. It was more than decent, but as thin as tap water compared to a good British stout. "So, where's our guy?"

"Watching the redhead with the snake tattoo," Manning replied without looking in that direction, fiddling with the damp label on the bottle. "I spread some money around. Guy's name is Evan Kelly."

Positioned to face the stage, Hawkins looked over the dancer and her attending fan. "Must be an animal lover," he muttered, studying the man. Kelly was rather typical, tall and wide, his triangular torso coming from exercise in a gym, not hard work. There was a gun holstered at the small of his back, the outline clearly visible through his sweat-stained shirt.

As the music stopped, the skinny dancers were replaced by a set of busty twins and a monstrously obese woman covered in latex. As the twins started undressing each other to the disco beat of the fast music, the fat woman produced a whip from somewhere and started lashing it at the crowd gathered worshipfully along the edge of the small stage.

Moving his chair away from the jiggling latex dancer, Kelly went to watch the lithe twins, tossing them some bills.

"Has he done anything since he got here?" McCarter asked, getting the oddest feeling deep down in his guts. "Made any phone calls, passed the waitress a note?"

"If he did, I didn't see it," Manning stated flatly. "And I followed him into the John just to make sure."

Digesting that unsavory news, the team sipped their beers for several minutes, then deliberately placed the bottles aside.

"There's something wrong here," Hawkins said uneasily, draping an arm across the golf bag. "These dancers are too varied for such a shithole. How can this dump afford novelty acts like the S&M specialist and the twins without a heavy cover charge?"

"Been thinking about that myself over the past eight hours," Manning admitted, seemingly relieved at the confirmation. "They had a dancer from Miami here yesterday, a real beauty, Juggs something..."

"That's the one, and she looked like she wanted to get a tetanus shot the second she rushed off the stage."

"Starting to feel the same way myself," McCarter noted, carefully studying the crowd of patrons. It was difficult to tell through the darkness and the smoke, but it seemed like almost everybody here was armed, and with good weapons, not old-fashioned revolvers, and Saturday Night Specials, but state-of-the-art machine pistols, Berettas and Glocks. Plus, many of them had ankle holsters, something normally used only by under-cover cops and DEA agents.

Feeling more uneasy by the second, McCarter unholstered his cell phone and surreptitiously took several fast pictures of the crowd, transmitting them to Kurtzman for analysis. Minutes later a reply came back.

"According to Bear," McCarter said softly, keeping his expression neutral, "half the people in here are Army Intelligence, or work for Homeland."

"But how..." Hawkins began angrily, then paused to frown. "Who did Barbara say was going to be checking the abandoned airfields in America?"

Scratching near his Beretta, James answered. "The Air Force was going to bomb them out of existence," he said. "But then the rubble would be checked by..."

"Army Intelligence," McCarter finished. "Bloody hell, the Airwolves must have had some of the key vacant airfields in the States watched by mercs, each of them told to come here when it got destroyed!"

"Just how rich are these terrorists?" James asked. "An operation that huge would bankrupt al Quaeda for a decade!"

"Guys," Hawkins said solemnly, reaching into the golf bag, "there is only one reason why any terrorist group would want to bring this many counterintelligence commandos to the same place."

"We've been tricked!" McCarter snarled, standing and drawing his Browning. Assuming a stance, he fired a fast five times and the wall speakers exploded into splinters, and blessed silence returned.

Screaming in terror, the dancers raced off the stage while everybody else in the bar turned to stare at the big Briton, many of them with military weapons in hand.

"This is a trap!" McCarter thundered, flashing the fake DEA badge inside his wallet. "The B-52 bomber terrorists know we're here!"

"Run for your lives!" Hawkins added, pulling a bulky Carl Gustav rocket launcher from the leather golf bag.

The crowd of armed patrons scowled, then registered shock as they heard the powerful drone of a low flying jetliner, the noise previously masked by the deafeningly loud music.

In a controlled surge, the mob headed for the exits as there came a whistling noise that rapidly built to end in a thundering explosion that shook the entire bar, shattering the mirrors on stage and all of the liquor bottles behind the counter.

Chapter Nine

The sky was a clear and blue above Manhattan, the towering office buildings of chrome and steel shining like new sin now that the rains had finally departed. All across the city, trees were coming alive from the long winter hibernation, grass was sprouting in the parks, and flowers bloomed in ten thousand window boxes, adding just a touch of color to the otherwise somber gray metropolis that loved to claim the inhabitants never slept.

Down in Times Square, traffic was moving briskly along the avenues and thoroughfares, the white gloves of the police flashing steadily as the officers conducted a symphony of motion. However, fifty blocks uptown, NATO and U.S. Army APCs sat like monstrous steel toads around the grand plaza of the United Nations, their radar dishes in constant motion scanning the clear blue sky. Two MRL trucks dominated the center of the plaza, and hundreds of grim soldiers stood behind sandbag nests armed with Stingers, SMAW, Carl Gustav and Israel B-300 missile launchers.

Plus, strategically placed at the four corners of the plaza were conventional Hummers, but instead of being armed with the usual heavy machine guns, the vehicles carried brand-new PEP lasers. Roughly the size of a refrigerator, the million-dollar energy weapon emitted a scintillating power beam that cut through lead as if it were margarine. Smoke and rain had little effect on reducing the efficiency of the PEP laser. However, the giant buildings of Manhattan effectively reduced the attack radius of the weapon by the sheer fact of their existence. But if the Airwolves were foolish enough to enter a clear zone, the lasers would slice and dice the B-52 bombers in only a matter of seconds.

Ever since 9/11 the airspace above the UN building had been declared a no-fly zone. But only the previous week, a young pilot had gotten lost and flown past the General Assembly, almost crashing into the monolithic structure. He had gotten off with a heavy fine and the loss of his license for a year. However, the penalties had been dramatically increased since the attack on Provence, and the next plane would be shot down on sight, without a warning.

An armada of U.S. Navy warships patrolled up and down the Hudson River, causing quite a bit of sensation along both banks. Flying at their maximum height, several wings of F-17 Eagles constantly flew over Manhattan to visually hunt for the lumbering B-52 bomber, and Apache gunships sat armed and ready on top of a score of office buildings, some of them covered with camouflage netting to remain covert, while others stood brazenly out in the open, inviting attack from the terrorists.

Public schools were closed for the duration to try to hold the civilian casualties down, and every police officer, EMT and firefighter was on duty, ready, and almost eager to tangle with the enemy.

Deep inside the General Assembly building, guards wearing bulky body armor double-checked all identification, and every level of the structure that could be closed down had been. Entire floors were still, without even the janitorial staff doing their usual cleaning.

"Order, I shall have order!" the secretary-general demanded over the gooseneck microphone, banging on the podium with a wooden gavel. Grudgingly, the raucous ambassadors quieted for a moment.

"As I said before being so rudely interrupted," the ambassador from Paraguay said, looking at the others defiantly, "the obvious solution to this problem is to forbid any 707 to either land or take off. But every 707 cannot be grounded forever, or else the world economy will collapse. Or is that the goal of the terrorists?"

"Nonsense!" the American ambassador snapped. "All the so-called Airwolves have to do is change the ident signals and they can pretend to be any airplane they wish!"

Somberly the ambassador from the United Kingdom stood. "Besides, the 707 is the backbone of the air freight industry," he intoned seriously, a hand holding on to the lapel of his jacket as if he were delivering a speech to the House of Lords. "We ground every one, and soon we will have a worldwide problem, putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work, and collapsing the economies of several of the smaller nations."

"If we save lives, who cares?" Turkey shot back, his bushy eyebrows clenched together suspiciously as if expecting a rebuttal.

"Who cares, sir? Tell that to the starving mobs of the unemployed next month," France retorted angrily. "The planes cannot be grounded. Good God, this is why they chose that plane?"

The man glared at the woman, and she did the same right back, then they both sat in unison.

"If anybody dares to attack the sovereign nation of North Korea, we shall immediately strike back with nuclear weapons!" an Asian man shouted, waving a clenched fist in the air.

"Launch them at whom?" America retorted. "If you know who the Airwolves are, tell us all right now, and we'll jointly blast their base out of existence!"

Having nothing else to say, the North Korean sat again, satisfied that he had done his duty and warned the Americans in public.

"May I ask, exactly what is the United States of America doing to curtail the further occurrence of those brutal attacks?" the ambassador asked.

Clearly furious, the Saudi narrowed his eyes. "Are you suggesting that we are in the service of the terrorists?"

More likely, it would be the other way around, the ambassador thought privately. He knew about Unity, and the United Arab Front, both of which had received funding from the Saudi oil sheikhs, but since not even the CIA deep teams could find any actual links between them and the Airwolves, there was nothing he could do. However, the man knew in his heart that the minute proof surfaced, the first target for the U.S.A.F. would not be Saudi military headquarters, but the palace of the royal prince who kept talking peace while teaching hatred for everything American.

"Maybe our cousins to the north are hesitant to say it, but since we don't buy any of your bloody oil, I have no qualms," the Australian ambassador declared, sticking thumbs into his suspenders. "You codgers are just a pack of toffee-nosed, egg-sucking, back-door Muslims."

The supreme religious insult actually made the entire delegation of Saudis recoil in shock. Nobody had ever talked to them in such a derisive manner! According to the Koran, saying that a man was a back-door Muslim was not a reference to his sexual indiscretions, but a blatant accusation that he only gave the religion lip service, and did not actually follow any of the tenets of peace and brotherhood. That he sneaked out the back door of his home at night to indulge in eating pork, drinking wine and other unclean acts. To a devout Muslim, it was the most amazingly vulgar insult possible, and in the Middle East it was more than enough cause for a knife fight to the death in a public market.

"You'll pay for that, Aussie pig," the Saudi ambassador snarled. Then he froze and began to pale as the low rumble of a jetliner began to shake the building, steadily increasing in volume and power...

* * *

A hot dry wind blew across the ancient city, wind-borne grit stinging every inch of exposed skin. The sun was high, the temperature even higher, and smoke trickled upward from a burning minaret just outside the Green Zone. From somewhere came the crackle of small-arms fire, mixed with the dull thud of a grenade, and then shrill police whistles.

In the marketplace, families were strolling along enjoying the relative peace, buying what food was available and haggling with venders over the prices of black market music CDs, medicine and sneakers. Surprisingly familiar, the gentle murmur of commerce almost made the American troops homesick. Parked around the market was a cordon of massive Buffalo-class antimine trucks, the hulking behemoths capable of riding over Russian land mines as if they were firecrackers. Every machine was dotted with a score of small gray smears left by ricocheting bullets, but none of them was incapacitated in any way whatsoever, while in the background the charred remains of a Hummer was being used by some small children as a makeshift jungle gym.

Despite what the camera crews were allowed to show on cable TV, large sections of the city were badly damaged, the weakened buildings cradled in iron-pipe scaffolding to facilitate the repairs. Armed soldiers in desert camouflage uniforms stood everywhere, and groups of the new Iraqi troopers moved along the city streets in packs of ten for their own protection.

Out in the desert, something was burning to the extreme west, and in the east rose the distillation towers of a petroleum plant. The defenses there were even greater than those around the capital city, but then, those were privately financed, not politically motivated.

At the airfield, an American flag fluttered above the control tower and a dozen C-130 Hercules planes sat on the tarmac, some of them preparing for takeoff, while others had their loading ramps down and were disgorging pallets of supplies and fresh troops. A sheet of canvas stretched over some poles protected a full wing of F-18 Hornet jetfighters from the heat of the sun.

Inside the control tower it was cool and dim, the large Lexan windows heavily tinted as protection against the blazing sun. One window had several irregular chunks of metal imbedded into the resilient material, mute testimony as to the marksmanship of Iraqi snipers.

"Delta Four-Three, you are cleared for approach on the main runway," a corporal said into his throat mike, both hands busy on the controls covering the complex board.

"Roger, Tower. Main runway is confirmed," a woman's voice said over the ceiling speakers. "Sure as hell hope that's not a long line for the privy, because my back teeth are floating!"

"No problem, Delta Four-Three." The corporal laughed, the tension easing from his shoulders. "If you want, I'll have a boot go warm the seat for you!"

"Glad to do it, Four-Three. The local hospitals can sure use the drugs you're carrying, and the troops are itching for some mail from home."

A titanic C-5 Galaxy descended gracefully from the crystalline sky. The Galaxy was the largest plane in the world, bigger than many Navy warships, and was infamous for handling like a flying dump truck. However, it landed on outrageously short strips, and carried more supplies than could be believed. More than one new member of a ground crew helping to unload a Galaxy began to think that somebody had to be stuffing cargo into the plane from the rear as they took it off out the front because there did not seem to be end to the matter.

The base was on full alert, not that they were ever off alert. But the incoming plane was special in very many ways, the most important being that it was from the Red Cross. Although the organization was not called that in the Middle East because the name implied a certain type of religious imperialism. So in this part of the world, the organization operated as the Red Crescent and used the appropriate symbol, so as to not offend. Their stated goal was to render humanitarian aid to people in aid, everything else was considered superfluous.

Coming in hot and fast to try to outfly any possible attacks from the insurgents, the C-5 Galaxy lowered its wheels and cut back two of the colossal GE turbofan engines, significantly reducing altitude. Aligning properly on the designated runway, the plane corrected its approach slightly to adjust for a crosswind and dropped its flaps when the radar in the tower started pinging like crazy. Then the Galaxy exploded.

Impelled by sheer inertia, the blast spread across the landing strip in a fiery tongue, shrapnel hammering the concrete for a thousand feet and killing a hundred soldiers on the ground and pulverizing the F-18 Hornets. A fuel truck whoofed into flames as the wave of debris tore it apart. The control tower was riddled with jagged engine parts and melting medical supplies. Incredibly, the Lexan plastic windows held, but the spray chewed through the concrete walls and shredded the startled air traffic controllers into screaming hamburger.

Almost instantly, the ground-based Vulcan miniguns set along the perimeter of the airfield came to life, the multiple barrels spinning into a blur as the weapons swiveled toward the sky then cut loose with prolonged bursts of 40 mm rounds, the spent brass arching high from the side port to land ringing on the pitted concrete.

A dozen missiles detonated in the air, but more came arching in from beyond the horizon, everything imaginable — BVRAAM, Sky Flash, Derby, Vymdec, Sidewinders, IRIS-T, MEDA Meteor, Redeye, Harpoon... It was a cornucopia of death-dealers, the staggering tidal wave of jamming fields, radar ghosts, briefly overwhelming the defense computers.

Wildly, the Vulcans jerked around trying to focus on the incoming swarms, confused by the deluge of false signals. One of the miniguns turned to random aim at Baghdad, but the safeties engaged with electronic speed, and the weapon went dead rather than shoot upon civilian territory. A few of the shorter range missiles ran out of fuel before reaching the base and tumbled from the sky to impact on the hot sand, sending up geysers of smoke. Some of the deadhead rockets simply streaked past the base, hitting nothing as they headed for Iran over the horizon, and the yammering Vulcans kept firing nonstop, blowing away scores of the incoming warbirds. Air-to-air, air-to-ground, antiarmor, antihelicopter, antisubmarine, the EM spectrum was filled with trash and hash from the insane mixture of international ordnance, the radar stations registering an impossible million incoming bleeps. Then an experimental Swedish AVRAAM slipped through the defensive barrage from the Vulcans to slam deep into an unimportant sand dune. There was no radar globe there, no barracks, no Abrams tanks, fuel tanks or even a helipad for gunships. It was just a big mound of sand.

A split second later the underground generator, supposedly thought to be safe in the concrete bunker, violently disintegrated, and on the surface the deadly Vulcans went silent, the spent casings from their last burst flying away to musically scatter across the ground for a few moments.

"Dirty sons of bitches..." a major snarled, holding on to the ragged end of his missing left arm, blood squirting from between his fingers.

Lurching for a Quonset hut, he dizzily slapped a red button set prominently on the corrugated metal wall. As the soldier slipped into death, a siren began to howl from the wreckage of the tower, and across the Green Zone, civilians dashed for cover as soldiers rallied to the defense of the base.

"Where the fuck are they?" an Army private demanded, launching a Stinger into the clear sky. The missile did a classic spiral pattern as it engaged a hunting protocol, then darted away to vanish from sight apparently heading for the Persian Gulf.

"Damned if I know!" a Marine snapped back, lifting a MANPAD launcher to his shoulder. But before he could fire, another wave of missiles and rockets came straight down from the blue sky and the men ceased to exist.

Scrambling into positions, hundreds of Army soldiers desperately triggered their M-16 assault rifles at the empty sky, and scores of Marines sent salvo after salvo of Stingers skyward, while lumbering rows of Abrams tanks thundered shells at the unseen foe.

Revving into action, the Apache and Cobra gunships lifted off the ground and assumed combat positions as they climbed in their steepest possible ascent. Missiles locked on to their radar, mass and heat, but the pilots threw out chaff and flares, nullified the radar locks with scramblers, then their own rockets and missiles took out dozens of the enemy munitions as the grim airmen fought to reach the distant enemy. But as their ammunition stores became exhausted, the missiles found them and the vaunted gunships were blown out of the sky one at a time.

A terrible silence spread across Baghdad, flaming wreckage still tumbling back to the ground from the initial explosions, when a full wing of F-18

Hornets from the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier in the Gulf arrived only a few minutes later. But the pilots found only a hellish vista spread across the city, the Airwolves invisible once more as they merged back into the civilian traffic flowing from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Chapter Ten

Slipping on a pair of sunglasses, Carl Lyons saw the dawn crest over the city as he drove eastward along Market Street. This early in the day, the traffic was light, most folks still waiting for the taste of the toothpaste to fade so that they could enjoy that first cup of coffee.

"Okay," Rosario Blancanales said, "nobody has arrived yet to investigate all the gunfire at the factory, so we should have a good hour to get the job done, maybe even more, depending upon how soon the local blues decide to risk the wrath of Delacort."

"Good to know," Lyons noted, accelerating the Hummer slightly. "I only hope that's enough time."

Armed with a newly acquired pair of Glock 18 pistols, Toni Blancanales had been left behind to watch over the factory and make sure nobody tried to loot the place. She was also supposed to give Able Team a warning when the police arrived to investigate all the noise, and if needed, to make enough noise to summon the cops. But that was only for when the team had accomplished its mission. The longer it took the cops to discover what had happened, the more time Able Team would have to search Delacort's condo for anything that could lead them to the Airwolves. Toni didn't really like acting as a rear guard, she much preferred to be in the thick of the action, but the plucky woman had agreed anyway.

After departing from the factory-warehouse, Able Team cut through the oddly named city of Ghana to get rid of the extremely noticeable Hummer and reclaim their battered, nondescript equipment van. In actuality, the van was virtually a tank, carrying more armor than most bank trucks, and was a rolling arsenal of weapons and surveillance equipment, along with a good selection of false identification papers for the team.

Dressing as plumbers, the men were wearing union boilersuits. Their oversize toolboxes were packed with grenades and other items that might be needed. Delacort had been rich and crazy, which was the perfect formula for trouble.

Circling around Columbus had taken a while, and the team was expecting to hear from Toni at any second when the exit for the old Continent area finally came into view. Passing by a news truck delivering copies of the Morning Dispatch, the team angled past the Anchor Bar & Grill, then crossed the street to take a spot in a huge parking lot.

Spreading in front of them was a large shopping area that included several small parks with tiered fountains and towering apartment buildings, along with the usual big chain stores as anchors and a hundred independent shops selling everything conceivable.

"Move here, and you never have to leave the place," Schwarz dryly commented, slinging his laptop over a shoulder. "The lazy man's idea of heaven."

"Everything but a cemetery," Lyons added, setting the handbrake then activating the intruder alarm. Designed by Schwarz in collaboration with Hunt Wethers and Cowboy Kissinger, the van was more than capable of defending itself against thieves. The first time they would get only a massive electrical shock through the metal door handles, the second time it would be a spray of tear gas.

"Seems like a good place to take cover," Blancanales stated, tucking away a stun gun. "Even when the stores are closed at night, this place is alive with people strolling around walking their dogs, coming home from seeing a movie, whatever. It would be damn near impossible for the police to stage a raid here, without the civilians giving advance notice."

"Which also means a good supply of hostages if we screw the pooch," Lyons observed grimly, closing the latch on the toolbox containing his Atchisson autoshotgun.

"Then we better not," Schwarz said, opening the door and stepping down to the pavement.

This close to one of the parks, the night air was redolent with the smells of live greenery, the playful splashing of the fountain aquatic music. The name on the side of the apartment building was Buckingham Place, and what wasn't made of polished granite was edged in shiny brass.

Starting for the apartment building, Blancanales snorted. "Brother, if you have to ask, then you can't afford it."

"A lot of that going around these days," Lyons agreed, stepping around a chalk painting on the sidewalk to not spoil the homemade art.

A locked gate of iron lace separated the foyer of the apartment building from the public area. Lyons and Blancanales stood casually reading the work order on a clipboard while Schwarz tricked the lock with a lock-pick gun, then paused and swung around the laptop to attach some probes to the metal frame. Typing in some commands, the plasma screen scrolled for a few moments and the lock disengaged with a hard click.

"Magnetic sensors must be built into the keys," Schwarz explained, deftly removing the probes. "This place is really high security."

Moving past the gate, the team looked over the foyer. The interior was cool and clean, the tile floor spotless and freshly washed, a few damp areas still visible here and there, the smell of pine-scented soap strong. In the corner behind a Plexiglas shield was a security camera, the lens pointed downward.

"Gadgets, did you kill the camera while killing the lock?" Blancanales whispered into his mike.

"Glad you're on our side," Lyons subvocalized into his throat mike, almost smiling. "Okay, where do we start, roof or basement?"

"Roof," Blancanales stated. "That way Delacort would have a clear avenue of escape if he got cornered."

"Really?" Schwarz asked, tilting back his cap. "Now, I would have chosen the basement and escaped through the sewers. Make it harder for dogs to track my scent."

"But then, you're smart enough not to be a criminal," Lyons whispered, ignoring the elevator for the five-story building and heading up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs, the entry to the fifth floor was barred by another iron lace gate, this one with a small brass plaque marked Private Entrance. Schwarz went through the lock even faster than before, vastly relieved to not find another proximity sensor built into the frame. A few seconds later, Able Team closed the gate behind them and started to walk across a plush carpet that completely muffled their footsteps. Cool air whispered from disguised wall vents, and delicate vases full of fresh flowers stood on antique tables nestled in small wall niches. Original paintings hung on the walls, each marked with a small plate giving the name of the artist. Most of the artwork was done in the post-modern style, just squiggles and splotches, the titles of each piece as indecipherable as the art itself.

"Now, I may not know art," Schwarz whispered, oddly feeling as if he were in a museum, "but I know what I like, and this isn't it." Ten feet ahead was a huge painting of a multicolor splotch with an arrow going through the middle. The title of the piece was A Sad Thursday for Bananas.

"Looks like a chimp named Bananas jumped off a skyscraper and landed on the canvas," Blancanales observed into his mike.

Quickly stepping to the picture, Lyons swung up a dart gun and fired twice. The tiny barbs cut through the canvas and there came a muffed grunt from the other side, followed by a body drop.

Farther down the well-appointed hallway, the team unexpectedly encountered a short flight of steps leading to an elevated section of the floor. Another door blocked their way, but this one, oddly, was unlocked.

Kneeling, Blancanales got out a monocular and dialed for the UV spectrum. Instantly there appearing a network of light beams crisscrossing the hallway at odd angles.

As Schwarz got busy with his laptop once more, Blancanales tucked away the monocular. He had expected something like this. The old days of finding an infrared beam with smoke, or an aerosol spray, were long gone. Try that nowadays, and the second the mist obscured the beam by only a small percentage, the alarms went off.

"Whew, good call," Schwarz said into the com link, slowly standing. "This wasn't part of any alarm system. Something else is buried in the walls, and my guess would be antipersonnel mines. Probably Claymores."

"Good, then we must be close," Lyons said, taking the lead once more. But upon reaching the end of the hall he was startled to discover that there was no door there for an exclusive condo. Just a smooth blank wall.

On the floor below, somebody walked past the stairs, and the men swung around with their weapons at the ready. But the footsteps kept going and soon faded away.

Studying the wall carefully, Schwarz spotted nothing unusual and had to assume that the sensors were hidden out of sight. Fair enough. Pulling out an EM scanner, he easily located them behind the wall, and swung up the laptop once more to clip the scanner to a USB port.

"I've got a tone, but no response," he said tersely, working away. "The damn things don't seem to understand English, or Basic."

"Try Russian," Blancanales suggested. "The KGB sold a lot of security systems similar to this on the gray market just after they fled the country."

Yeah, Schwarz knew the term. After the fall of the Soviet Union, a lot of items appeared for sale that were not strictly illegal, but not technically legitimate. The gray market, neither twit, nor twean, but always a pain in the ass.

Schwarz had the laptop run through a million combinations in Cyrillic language. There came an immediate response, and a section of the wall slid aside to reveal a spacious apartment, full of expensive furniture. Lyons and Blancanales froze at the sight of another video camera, but Schwarz strolled past the device as if it were deader than disco.

Going to a window, Lyons glanced down at a brick-lined courtyard. Dozens of people were walking around carrying packages, laughing, listening to headphones, talking on cell phones, eating ice cream and pushing baby carriages.

The other men nodded and pulled out toilet plungers just as a door opened and a man wearing a shoulder holster over a short-sleeved shirt walked into view talking on a cell phone.

"Now, how the flick should I know?" he snapped irritably. "Maybe we blew a fuse, or something..." The man stopped talking the instant he saw the team. "Now, who the flick are you guys? We didn't call for any plumbers!"

Tossing aside the plungers, all three of the men fired their dart guns, and the guard crumpled to the soft floor, his neck bristling with tiny darts.

"Nah, I hate flying," Blancanales replied, closing the phone and turning off the ringer. A live phone in combat was an excellent way to get your head removed.

Not fully understanding the reference, Lyons assumed it was a military joke, and proceeded to do a fast sweep of the condo. It took the former cop only a few minutes to ransack the entire condo, and he found nothing of interest until he checked the kitchen. The refrigerator was double-wide, with two vertical doors. The right side showed only the usual array of foodstuffs, bread, pickles, beer and a lot of Chinese take-out containers. But the left side was locked.

"Let's find out," Schwarz whispered, running an EM scan of the appliance. But there were no results.

Looking for something that might be the locking mechanism, Lyons felt a vibration on his hip. Two of them, a pause, and then three. Damn! That was the signal from Toni that the cops had just arrived. Now the team was racing against the clock.

Drawing the Colt Python, Lyons fired twice, the silenced pistol blowing off the hinges and the door swung away to crash on the tiled floor. For a moment, swirling clouds of fog blocked his view, then the mist dissipated and there was no back to the freezer. Bingo.

Carefully stepping through, Lyons found himself in a windowless room. Ballistic cloth covered the walls against sniper rounds from outside, and there was a ham radio sitting on a large table, directly underneath a fully stocked gunrack. The assault rifles were in mint condition, none of them old or even used. Lyons realized that these guns were not for sale, but for the personal protection of the arms dealer — Heckler & Koch 9 mm pistols with sound suppressors, and both the XM-8 and the equally new AK-107, each assault rifle tipped with an acoustic suppressor. There were entire boxes of Glock 18 pistols, crates of ammunition, smoke grenades by the score, gas masks and lots of body armor. There was even an M-l flamethrower in the corner, and a couple of X-18 multigrenade launchers. More than enough firepower for Delacort to blast his way to freedom through a crowd of police or civilians.

Eagerly rubbing his hands, Schwarz went straight to the ham radio, while Blancanales assumed a position near the busted refrigerator. The electronics expert pulled up a seat and worked the controls for a few moments, then grunted in failure and attached the laptop to the radio's internal circuit board. This did not always work, but it was their best chance.

"And... I'm in! Okay, it seems they have a delivery to make soon," Schwarz announced, flipping through the screens showing times and frequencies. The encoding on the transmissions was good, better than most criminals used, that was for damn sure. But under his adroit manipulation, the unreadable symbols crumbled away into plain English.

Working steadily, Schwarz shrugged. "Can't say for sure. Too many of the details are truncated. Jersey for New Jersey, Rado for Colorado, and so on. Not actually a code, just an informal shorthand, which is much tougher to break. Give me a minute..." The typing continued for several minutes.

A grunt came from the direction of the refrigerator, and both Lyons and Blancanales swung up their weapons and loosed a burst. A man standing in the kitchen collapsed, his machine pistol clattering to the tiles. Stepping outside, Blancanales now assumed a defensive stance. Lyons moved between Schwarz and the open doorway.

"Better type faster, amigo," Lyons ordered, trying to hear any further sound of footsteps in the luxury condo. He would have sworn the place was clear, but obviously the ultrasoft carpeting was masking the movements of the guards. The condo might be empty now, or there could be a dozen more men armed with anything available under the sun.

"Doing my best. But I think we better link with Bear," Schwarz said at last. "These last codes are tough. Whoever designed this is very good, really top-notch. "

"Do it fast," Lyons advised just as a red light flashed on the radio and an entire bank of controls illuminated.

Thankful that he had already accessed the main codes, Schwarz fed the alphanumeric sequences back into the military radio. A garbled howl came from the speakers before it changed into a background purr.

Damn, a voice scrambler. There was no way of telling if the speaker was a man, or woman, or if it had an accent.

"The shipment is ready," Schwarz said in a bored voice as if he did this sort of thing a hundred times a day.

"No, but the boss got it anyway," Schwarz replied, mentally crossing his fingers. He was gambling, positive that the haughty Delacort would not handle sordid details like this, but delegate them to his staff. If he was wrong, the jig was up. On a hunch, Schwarz crumpled some papers near the microphone. "You want a full inventory?"

Leaning back in his chair, trying to make it squeak, Schwarz snorted. "Not that'll be found for a couple of weeks."

Suddenly alert, Lyons frowned at the word. Haymarket. Where had he heard that name before?

"If you have the cash, we bust our ass!" Schwarz boasted. "So, need anything else? Cold beer, sandwiches, a couple of nukes?"

There came a soft monotone chuckle from the speakers, only slightly garbled by some static. "Got one, thanks."

Suspiciously, the Stony Man commandos scowled at the casual pronouncement. Was the other person serious? Suddenly this mission took on an entirely new aspect. If the Airwolves had a black-market nuke, they could drop it almost any place they wished and there was no way to stop them at present.

"We shall rendezvous with you at Bama Gee, that is 'g' as in girl, tonight at zero," the voice said. "Confirm."

"Roger, wilco," Schwarz replied confidently, then realized his mistake. These were not professional soldiers!

Lurching into action, Blancanales knelt to turn over the corpse and start rummaging through his bloody clothing.

"It means 'will comply,'" Schwarz explained, trying to sound bored again, a bead of sweat trickling down his face. "The boss likes us to use military parlance whenever possible. Doesn't yours?"

Flipping open the wallet, Lyons pulled out the drivers' license and showed it to Schwarz.

"Who do you think?" Schwarz scoffed. "It's me, Al. Alan Rowe Dumphy. Big guy, good shoes, almost too handsome to be believed. I carry a Twelve... ain't we never met? I was there with the boss when... you know." He specifically didn't add any further details.

Visibly, the Stony Man team relaxed, allowing themselves to breathe again. That had been close.

"See you at Bama at zero," Schwarz drawled, grabbing a butane lighter off the table and flicking it alive, then sucking air through pursed lips to pretend he was smoking. "Buckingham, out." This was also a gamble. If addressed in such a manner, most folks would respond in kind.

"Confirmed. Thunder Base out," the voice replied, sounding amused, and the speaker went silent.

Not satisfied, Schwarz killed the power to the microphone and yanked out several of the primary circuit boards. "Okay, we can talk now," he said, stuffing the electronics into his toolbox.

"Thunder Base, as in thunder and lightning," Lyons mused out loud. "That certainly seems to imply they have only two bases."

"Which is good to know," Schwarz agreed, closing the Velcro straps. "If we knew their locations. Think they really have a nuke?"

"My guess would be yes," Blancanales answered through the refrigerator. "However, we could ask them personally if we knew where Bama Gee was. Any ideas?"

Swiveling around in the chair, Schwarz said, "Makes sense. Now we just have to figure out the Gee part." Then his face brightened. "You don't suppose that it could mean..."

"Hold it," Blancanales interrupted, turning to face away from the misty freezer. Then he frowned. "Gum-ball machine coming."

Stepping into the gory kitchen, the other two men joined him at the window to look outside and see the red-and-blue flashing lights of approaching police cars moving along the 270 Beltway.

Moving fast, the Stony Man commandos tucked away their weapons, got the radio and exited the building. Returning to the van, they slowly drove along the street as the police charged down the access ramp in full force.

"What were you saying before, Gadgets?" Lyons asked, shifting gear. "The word Gee might mean... what?"

Sitting at a small workbench bolted to the wall, Schwarz was downloading the files in the laptop into a zip drive. "The only airfield I know of in Alabama that has a Gee as part of the name is the Tuskegee Airfield."

"Tuskegee," Blancanales muttered, rocking slightly as the van braked to a halt at a traffic light. "Is it abandoned?"

"Hell no," the electronics expert denied vehemently. "But the Airwolves would have to be morons to send the bombers out empty to pick up munitions. I think they'll use smaller planes, maybe a Lear. Or a couple of Gooney Birds."

"Yeah, a DC-3 could handle a ton of material, and can land damn near anywhere," Blancanales agreed, opening his long toolbox to remove the M-16 carbine. Sliding back a panel in the ceiling, he tucked the weapon away. "Any chance the airfield is in the middle of farmland?"

"Tell you in a sec," Schwarz said, accessing the Internet on the laptop. "Yep, it sure is."

Looking up from his computer, Schwarz grinned. "I knew there was some reason we kept you around."

"Okay, this sounds good," Lyons said, starting toward the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where their transport was parked. "We'll ambush them at midnight, zero hour, and squeeze the location of the main base out of their hides."

"The simplest plan is always the best," Blancanales agreed, shoving the toolbox under his seat until it locked into place. "You know, Toni will want in on this."

"No, but a pretty girl serving coffee will help put the bastards at ease. Help us catch them off guard."

Watching the traffic on the road, Lyons considered it. "Sorry, we can't take the chance. If these are Muslims, having a woman around will only make them uneasy and suspicious."

"Fair enough," Schwarz said, taking a hand mike down from a clip on the wall. "Maybe next time."

"If there is a next time," Lyons noted dourly, taking a corner at just below the speed limit.

Going west, Able Team headed for the Air Force base where a blacksuit was already warming up their Hercules transport. However, as the miles rolled by in the monotony of farmland, the word Haymarket kept repeating in the back of Lyons's mind, the metronomic beat filling him with growing dread. Haymarket. Why did the name bother him so much?

Chapter Eleven

Whistling tunelessly, the police officer stopped in his tracks the instant he heard the woman scream. Dashing into the alley, he grabbed his service weapon and the hand mike for the radio slung over his shoulder.

"One Oscar Ten to Base," he said, sprinting into the darkness. "Possible rape in progress at Tenth and Shenandoah, will advise!"

"Roger, Oscar Ten, advise if an ambulance will be needed," the dispatcher said in his earpiece, then went off the air.

The old alley behind the theater was cool with shadows, the rising sun not yet over the top of the surrounding buildings to be able to shine into the recess of the narrow passageway. Posters from former shows, fading into obscurity on the brick walls, sported a fresh blood speckling, and a woman's handbag lay near a drain, the strap broken.

"Police!" the man bellowed, reaching for the flashlight on his belt when something slammed into his face. Pain exploded in his mouth, and bloody teeth flew away as he staggered from the blow. Then he saw the brick clatter to the ground. What in the world... It was a trap!

Automatically the police officer tried to get his back to the wall for protection, as he pressed the transmit button on the mike, but all he could utter was a horrible gurgle.

Spitting blood from his mouth, the officer tried again when another brick slammed into his stomach, knocking the air from his lungs, and then a third smacked into his hand, crushing the bones and sending his Glock skittering away.

Now the four people appeared from behind a garbage bin, three men and a woman. Their heads were shaved as bald as a new egg, the skin shiny with oil. Muscles bulged under the sleeveless T-shirts, showing a vast assortment of tattoos. Some were expertly done, while others were primitive, almost crude. However, all of the skin-art had a similar theme: torture and death, along with a lot of different-size swastikas.

If not for the tattoos, they might have passed for ordinary folk. Their smiles were wide and friendly, clean white teeth gleaming with health. However, a single glance into the clear blue eyes told a very different story. The ancient poets said that the eyes were the window to the souls. If so then these people had no souls, and were only animals that walked, talked and killed.

Oh shit, the Hammerskins! the cop realized in growing horror, pressing the button of the emergency signal on his transponder. The real names of the skinheads were unknown, lost under a thousand different identity changes and aliases. But according to the FBI Gang Task Force computers, they only used their chosen names now: Treb, Witz, Bibor and Danek, derivative forms of the infamous Nazi death camps.

"Well, look what we got here," Treb said, grinning widely while tapping the pipe in his palm.

"I think the bastard was coming to save me." Danek laughed, then shrilly screamed while pulling out a switchblade knife and snapping it into life.

"On way..." the black police officer managed to mumble, backing away, trying to buy time with distance.

"Liar," Bibor scoffed, and the skinheads converged upon the wounded cop, the iron pipes wailing and slamming into his body with meaty thunks.

Covering his head with both arms for protection, the cop dodged the first few blows and managed to kick one of the skinheads in the crotch. But the man only grunted, obviously wearing some sort of protection at that vulnerable point.

The gang moved in, using their combat boots to stomp the policeman's face and genitals, until the cop shuddered and stopped screaming.

"Enough," Treb panted, tossing away the pipe. It hit the ground with a clatter. "Strip him, and let's roll! The real cops will be here soon."

Disposing of their makeshift weapons, the gang descended upon the unconscious officer, yanking off his wedding ring, and watch, then taking his wallet, spare ammunition clips, can of pepper spray, and anything else valuable.

"Wish we had the time to do him proper," Danek snarled, then hawked on the supine man. Feebly, a broken hand twitched, showing that he was still alive, but just barely.

"Yeah, been a while since we last had us a real party," Witz chortled, wiping the blood off the officer's badge before tucking it away into a pocket.

"No time for that now, the white cops are on the way," Treb stated, touching his earbud while adjusting the volume on the portable police scanner clipped to his Garrison belt.

Softly, sirens began to wail in the distance. The skinheads fled down the alley to their waiting bikes. Climbing onto their motorcycles, the gang kicked the German-made BMW machines alive; the bikes purred softly.

Streaking away through the narrow alleyways, the Hammerskins took corner after corner at breakneck speed, until they were several blocks away. Now moving onto the main streets, they dropped to the speed limit and drove along obeying the law and smiling contentedly.

In response, Treb drew the stolen Glock and pointed it at them. Gasping in surprise, the man slammed on the gas to race away.

A few miles later the skinheads crossed over a set of railroad tracks, then parked their bikes in front of a liquor store that had a sign out front announcing that it was for "Whites only." Leaving the expensive machines out in the open, the gang went down a flight of stairs into a converted cellar. They knew that the machines were completely safe from being stolen in this neighborhood. The last man who tried was found several days later, still alive, but it would have been much kinder if the skinheads had simply killed the poor bastard.

The door at the bottom of the stairs was covered with chains, and made of metal, reinforced with more sheet steel riveted on the inside, making it a truly formidable barrier. The furniture had all been recovered from the side of the road on trash days, and a dehumidifier hummed in the corner, occasional gurgling as it emptied into a drain. There was a massive stereo unit in the corner and a bookcase full of liquor bottles from around the world. The walls of the cellar were decorated with garish posters bordering on the pornographic. Mostly they depicted young black women scantily dressed, bound with ropes and duct tape, but there was also a huge Nazi flag, and a banner with the slogan Seventeen Words! emblazoned across it.

Dropping the stolen items into a wooden box, the gang members washed their hands to remove the stink of touching a policeman, tucked their scanner into a recharging socket, then got some German lager from a small fridge.

"That was fun!" Danek laughed, shrugging of her leather jacket. She wore only a grimy T-shirt underneath, and clearly was not wearing a bra, nor did she really need one.

"A stomping always takes the edge off," Witz agreed, hoisting the beer. "Gotta be sharp tomorrow for Mr. Delacort. Can't let the man down."

"Escort work is boring," Bibor complained, peeling the label off the dewy bottle. "All we do is stand around and look menacing. Been months since he needed us to kick some ass."

"Tough," Treb snapped, putting his boots on the coffee table. "It pays the bills, and Delacort keeps us packing."

"True enough," Danek said, throwing back her head as if she still had the long hair of a civilian.

In the far corner of the cellar was a metal cabinet, the door partially open to reveal gleaming rows of the brand-new Heckler & Koch Model 47 assault rifle. The German-made weapons were tipped with tubular Sound Moderators that did nothing to impede the velocity of the fat 7.62 mm rounds, and 40 mm grenade launchers were attached under the main barrel.

Just then, the bathroom door swung open and out walked a young skinhead, drying his hands on a towel. He was bare to the waist, his stomach completely covered with an idolized portrait of Hitler.

"Man, I really wanted to call you on the job, but didn't want to cramp your fun," Dauch said in a rush, crumpling up the towel and tossing it onto the bathroom floor. "I just got a call from a friend on the newspaper. We got trouble."

"Cop trouble?" Treb asked, dropping the beer to pull a .357 Magnum Ruger from behind his back.

"God, if only it were." Dauch sighed, dropping into a ratty chair repaired with duct tape. "You won't fucking believe it, but he's dead. Delacort is dead."

"Bullshit." Witz scowled in disbelief. "The man has more bodyguards than the President!"

"They gassed him man, like Jews in an oven," Dauch said, barely able to believe it himself. "Gassed him dead, then shot him in the fucking heart."

"For real?" Bibor asked, briefly wondering if this was some sort of a weird joke.

Hunching her shoulders as if braced for a blow, Danek chewed a lip. "The cops know who?" she demanded.

Furiously, Witz stood and kicked aside a stool. "Motherfucker! We were gonna earn some serious Benjamins tomorrow working the perimeter at the gig down in Alabama!"

"Any chance the assholes who aced our man are gonna be there to steal the shipment?" Treb asked thoughtfully, rubbing the muzzle of the Ruger across his cheek.

Irritably, Treb waved that aside. "Whatever. Think they might be there, jacking his shit?"

Holstering his gun, Treb strode to the cabinet and yanked open the doors to grab an HK-47 assault rifle. "Then let's go fucking find out," he growled.

* * *

The men of Phoenix Force raced to the edge of the lock and dived in headfirst. They were still knifing for the water when the entire world seemed to explode behind them and an invisible hand slapped them hard into the murky waves.

The Stony Man commandos went under water amid total chaos, the water muffling the thunder of explosions and yells. However, trained in this sort of combat they instinctively focused on the bubbles of their exhalations. Always follow the bubbles. Bubbles meant life.

Erupting from the water, the team raggedly pulled in deep breaths, then tried not to cough as the bitter smoke billowed to spread across the salt water like a woolen blanket. In the air above them, there was only noise and flames, bellowing madness mixed with pitiful screams. Then a dark shadow swept across the lock as something large blocked out the sun, the strident roar of eight massive turbofans sounding like a prolonged nuclear blast.

Then the B-52 was gone and the sunshine returned — along with a rush of scorched air reeking of chemical fire and aviation fuel.

Hawkins started to shout a comment, then realized that the team was not alone in the lock. Only yards away was a cargo ship, the rust-streaked hull rising like an iron wall alongside the men as the vessel rocked to the force of the dockside explosions.

Starting low and slow, a swell began to lift the team upward from the water being compressed between the ship and the side of the lock. Knowing that to be caught between the ship and the wall of the lock meant death, the commandos redoubled their efforts to escape, attempting to ride the rising swell and use its force to help them move faster.

The world became darker by the second as the irrisistable force headed directly for the immovable object. A single split second of blind panic touched the men of Phoenix Force as the hull came straight for them. But they wisely used the adrenaline surge to aid their desperate attempt to live. Most combat reactions were fueled by adrenaline, which was why some soldiers burned out after facing too much fighting. The slow, dull, colorless world of reality was unable to even vaguely compare to the electric rush of living forever on the edge of life.

Trained as a Navy SEAL, James was the first to reach clearance and hastily got out of the way of the others, his mind whirling with ideas on how he might be able to assist them. But nothing seemed feasible. The bullets in his gun and the blade at his hip were utterly useless to try to stop the irresistible advance of a megaton cargo ship.

Moving fast, Hawkins was next, then Manning, his face bright red from the exertion. Straining his body to the limit, McCarter was the last, cursing himself for ever having smoked a cigarette in his life. Suddenly he could hear the beating of the huge diesel engines on the other side of the oncoming hull as the steel began to press against his shoulder. The former SAS commando spun and got clear of the bow a microsecond before the vessel slammed into the side of the dock with an stentorian clang. The metallic ringing concussion shook McCarter hard, sending him under the waves once more, and he temporarily lost consciousness, awakening a few seconds later supported by his teammates as they hauled him to safety.

The commotion from the surface never eased for a second as the team reached the far end of the lock and started climbing up the safety ladder built into the metal gate. Their soaked clothing felt as if it weighed more than the ship and entire Pacific Ocean combined, but they never stopped or slowed. The cargo ship was on the move again, this time heading for the gate that closed off the lock from the next section of the canal.

Reaching the top rungs, the men staggered away from the edge, concentrating on survival, and momentarily ignoring the assorted screams coming from the decimated port city. Huge fires burned everywhere, the heat and smoke filling the atmosphere with hellish intensity. Pieces of rooftops lay broken in the debris-filled streets, alongside overturned cars. In the distance, something was exploding again and again, involving further screams. A fire alarm was keening, the wail only adding to the stupefying cacophony of noise.

Taking refuge near a gushing fire hydrant, Phoenix Force saw piles of limp bodies strewed on the cracked pavement, the lolling clouds of gray-and-black smoke thankfully masking much of the horrific deaths. Although forged to an iron hardness from a thousand battles, Manning felt his heart ache for a moment at the sight of a burning wooden cart, the stacks of Hollywood movies partially melted, a smoldering sneaker laying near the outline of a small form that would never rise again.

Mad with uncontrollable fury, the big Canadian vehemently cursed the terrorists in the sky. Even the roaring inferno of the smashed city seemed to pause for a moment from the sheer vitriolic power of the commando's incalculable rage. Then cool reason returned as a dark hand took him by the shoulder.

James added his silent vow to also hunt down these cowardly mass-murdering fiends. Hawkins joined them, and then McCarter. The four brothers in blood glanced at one another, wordlessly sealing the compact between them as no civilian ever could understand. In their universe, a man was bonded by his oath. End of discussion.

"All right, let's get the bleeding hell out of here!" McCarter shouted, but oddly heard nothing. He shouted again, even louder, and the other men looked at him strangely.

James opened his mouth to form words, but McCarter heard nothing. Then he suddenly realized that he was not hearing anything at all. He could see the rampaging fire, and had felt the explosions, but he was locked in a world of silence.

Frowning, Hawkins asked him something, and the man touched his ears, then shook his head.

Scowling unhappily, James slapped his hands together right alongside McCarter, and the big Briton only shrugged. Cupping the man's face, James studied McCarter's eyes for any leakage that would reveal a major internal trauma. Washed clean by the seawater in the lock, thankfully there was only sweat and a trickle of blood from his nose.

"Temp-por-ary," James said slowly, pronouncing the word as carefully as possible. "You'll... You. Will. Be. Fine. Just. Shock!"

Nodding in understanding, McCarter touched his throat mike to call Kurtzman for assistance, then realized what he was doing and pointed at Hawkins. Understanding, the man activated his own mike and spoke at length. Finally he gave McCarter a thumbs-up.

Knowing there was nothing else they could do to help the hundreds of hurt people in the city, McCarter started back to where the Hummer had been parked. Hopefully, it was still in working condition. If not, then the team would simply run the ten miles to the Panama City International Airport. There was no doubt in his mind that Kurtzman already had rescue teams from the George Washington racing into the city, closely followed by an army of workers from the Red Cross. In the meantime, it was their job to stop the Airwolves and to make sure that this sort of slaughter never happened again. The image of the sneaker came into his mind, and he forced it aside, grimly concentrating on moving through the jumbled piles of masonry, wreckage, fires and bodies.

They found the Hummer intact, but tilted sideways. It took all of them to get it back on four wheels. Minutes later, the Stony Man commandos were headed for the Panama airport. Several times they had to stop to shoot looters, but eventually Phoenix Force reached the airport and forced its way through the rioting mobs of panicking people to finally reach the waiting Hercules. Locking themselves inside, the team dropped exhausted to the cool metal deck, savoring the sweet air coming through the filtration system for almost a full minute before exhaustion at last overwhelmed them.

Awaking with a jerk, McCarter rolled to his feet and looked around fast, a hand on his Browning Hi-Power. Slowly, the prior events unfolded in his memory and the man relaxed, shoving the weapon back into its holster.

Across the plane, the rest of the team was sitting around a small repair bench that was serving as a makeshift dining table. Dressed in civvies, the men seemed in good shape, aside from having a bumper crop of bruises and plastic bandages. However, McCarter took heart that their health was good from the way his teammates were shoveling down unheated food directly from the Mylar envelopes of MRE packs. McCarter could see that MP-5 machine guns also rested on the tabletop, along with several medical kits and a small field stove, the blue alcohol flame licking at the bottom of a U.S. Army coffeepot.

As McCarter shuffled closer, he could smell the sharp tang of medical alcohol mixing with the delicious aroma of fresh-brewed coffee. However, there came no sound of bubbling from the steaming pot, and even his own footsteps seemed distant and muffled.

Without speaking, Hawkins offered the man a steaming cup, and McCarter frowned deeply.

"Would you like a cup, David?" McCarter repeated slowly, listening to the ringing in his warm ears. "Is that what you just said?"

Accepting it with two hands, McCarter sniffed the dark brew then took a long swallow. It was scalding hot and burned all the dust out of his throat on the way down like a healing balm.

Wisely, James slid over an MRE food pack, and suddenly McCarter was less concerned about what was happening outside the plane and dived into the food like a starving wolverine.

"Christ, I needed that," McCarter said a few minutes later, then burst into a huge smile as if this was Christmas morning. "Hey! I kind of heard that!"

"Always knew you were a fast healer!" Manning shouted, his words echoing slightly. "Couple of pays, you'll be quite a brain."

"In a couple of days, you'll be right as rain!" Manning bellowed, then broke into laughter. "So much for us being covert anymore!"

Shrugging, McCarter headed for the lavatory at the front of the plane. He had a splitting headache and felt like he had spent the night inside a cement mixer. Several minutes later, he emerged infinitely cleaner, and wearing fresh clothing.

The team was waiting for him with a printed report from the Farm, courtesy of Barbara Price.

Claiming a jumpseat, McCarter gave the report a fast glance. It seemed that most of Panama was in flames. The only safe zones were near the canal where the fire departments could use the unlimited amounts of sea water to hose down the conflagration. Apparently the team had been out for several hours, and in that time rescue crews from several nations had arrived with more than enough people to help the beleaguered city. More and more civilians were being extracted from the rubble alive and being taken to hospitals. That was good to know.

Even better was the fact that most of the Army Intelligence guys had gotten out alive, many of them doing the exact same thing as Phoenix Force and taking a hasty refuge in the nearby canal. He scowled at the mention of a major who had been crushed to a pulp when he was caught between a cruiser liner and the wall of the lock, his mangled remains not yet recovered from the murky water.

For a split second, McCarter could hear inside his mind the mind-shattering collision of the cargo ship, and his heart thudded in his chest. But then the phantom sound was gone and he began to breathe easier again. This was something most soldiers had been through in their careers, and he knew all of the tricks to overcome the debilitating effects of a near-death experience. This was just part of the job, nothing more. A soldier's burden, as his father liked to say.

"It seems that there were some survivors from the Alhambra, including our guy Kelly," McCarter said, stopping as he found himself shouting. He continued in what he hoped was a normal level of conversation. "All those not identified as Army personnel are being held in El Renacer Prison, because of the weapons they had."

"Which is why we're going back," Hawkins said, opening a wall locker and pulling out a kit bag. Setting it on the deck, he started shoving in grenades, rope and handcuffs.

"Their boss just tried to kill them," James said carefully. "So if any of the mercs are ever going to talk, now is the time to ask."

"Agreed, which is why I am coming, too," McCarter growled, going to a weapons locker.

Sliding on a NATO bulletproof vest, Manning arched a questioning eyebrow, until he saw the man extract the spare Barrett Light Fifty. McCarter might be as deaf as a post, but his eyes were as sharp as ever.

While McCarter checked over the sniper rifle, James got a medical bag from a locker and filled a syringe with a dark colored liquid.

"Don't even wear earphones," James directed, tapping out a bubble. "Your wounds need a chance to recover, or else the damage could be permanent."

Curious, McCarter started to ask what the man was giving him but passed that over and simply accepted the injection. Soon, the ringing in his ears decreased slightly and his nukestorm of a headache faded to a gentle throb.

When the others were finished with their preparations, they released the Hummer from its safety cocoon, and loaded the military vehicle with a couple of heavy equipment trunks, as well as an ammunition locker and a case of grenades.

Setting the alarms for the Hercules, the team lowered the rear access ramp and drove away into the night. Behind them, the ramp to the Hercules automatically cycled closed and locked with an audible boom.

"El Renacer," Manning said with a lot of meaning, thumbing a shell into the breech of a Barrett rifle.

Both hands on the wheel, Hawkins shrugged in reply. There was nothing else to say. Everybody knew about El Renacer.

"How much is in the war chest?" James asked, priming a block of C-4 high explosive.

"A little over a hundred thousand in cash," McCarter answered from the rear seat, his attention on their mouths. He had been taught to lip read by the SAS, and the skill was coming in handy.

"We'll just have to convince them otherwise," Hawkins stated, curving around the madness of the airport and heading deeper into the untamed jungle of Central America.

Chapter Twelve

A couple of hours before midnight, zero hour in military parlance, Able Team arrived at an old abandoned farm out in the middle of nowhere. The inky rural blackness was only occasionally broken by another passing vehicle.

Turning off the main highway, Rosario Blancanales drove the equipment van along a winding road that snaked through the weedy acres of the abandoned farmland. The brambles were thick with witchweed and kudzu, and within only a few minutes the members of Able Team were starting to think that they were back in rural Cambodia.

"You sure we have the right place?" Blancanales asked skeptically, craning his neck to try to see over the gently waving plants. The punk tail reeds seemed to extend forever through the dark night without any sign of a break aside from the scraggiry trail meandering through the plants.

"Absolutely. According to my GPS, we've been on the Tuskegee Airfield for the past ten minutes," Gadgets Schwarz said, glancing at the glowing screen of the laptop on top of the equipment table. An M-16/M-203 assault rifle combo lay across his lap, and securely strapped to his workbench was the radio liberated from Delacort's condo, the dials glowing with power.

"How is that possible?" Carl Lyons demanded, slapping a drum of cartridges into the breech of the Atchisson autoshotgun. "These guys were heroes! This airfield should be a museum, not... this."

"Damned if I know," Blancanales agreed, the sound of distaste strong in his voice. There was another M-16/M-203 leaning against the passenger seat, plus a fully armed Stinger missile launcher. There had not been enough time to arrange for a supply drop from the Farm, but the cargo van always carried a few 66 mm LAW antitank rocket launchers, along with a multifunction 84 mm Carl Gustav. Unfortunately, they only had the one Stinger. But with any luck, none of the big-punch weapons would be needed this night.

Suddenly there was a heavy thumping noise, and the van drove past a small oil rig, the machinery operating without human supervision. The presence of the oil rig was what put the Tuskegee airfield high on the list of possible landing fields for the Airwolves, and low on the list of areas to be bombed by the Air Force.

"Between the isolation, and having two international airports so close, this place is perfect for the Airwolves," Schwarz stated, looking out the window. A ghostly reflection looked right back with equal intensity.

"How long is the runway?" Lyons asked, looking around with a pair of Nighthunter goggles. There were a couple of heat sources out amid the weeds, but they were moving far too low and fast to be human.

"The original runway is five thousand feet," Schwarz replied. "Which is dangerously short for a B-52, even if they used JATOs, but it would be just enough for a DC-3 or Cessna Skywagon."

Some old buildings rose from the weeds directly ahead of the van. Only moments later, the weeds and brambles abruptly ended, and the van rolled into a clear zone that extended for hundreds of yards in every direction.

Easing the van to a gentle halt, Blancanales killed the engine and the team listened to the music of the night. The oil pump thumped along steadily, and cicadas were everywhere, along with quite a lot of frogs. A pair of shiny yellow eyes stared at them from the darkness, then raced away, moving low and fast.

Spreading out in front of Able Team was an old airstrip, the pavement in oddly good shape as if recently repaired. The nearby buildings were clearly ruins, the glass gone from the windows, the roofs collapsed and doors absent. Ivy covered what remained of the walls, and one building near the center of the airstrip was gone entirely. From the location, it most likely had been the control tower. Now, only the rectangular form of the basement remained, the gaping hole in the ground doubly dangerous now that night had descended.

"Behold, the home of the Tuskegee Airmen," Blancanales said dramatically. "I saw a documentary on them once. They were the only black pilots in the Second World War. The Airmen were the best of the best, and have an officially confirmed record of 100 planes destroyed, and one destroyer, too."

"That took a lot of guts," Lyons said. "Charging the deck guns of a German destroyer to drop bombs."

"Actually, they were coming back from another mission and were out of bombs," Blancanales said with a note of pride. "So they took it out with just machine-gun fire."

"Five guys in Mustangs took out a German destroyer with only lead?" Lyons asked, sounding incredulous.

"I'll bet the Nazis on board were rather surprised when that happened," Schwarz commented dryly, studying the glow on a small radar screen on the bench. There was an awful lot of traffic in the sky, but then, both Birmingham and Huntsville had international airports, which offered the Airwolves a lot of local traffic to mix with for easy coming and going.

Climbing out of the van, the three men hauled out heavy plastic containers and stacked them on the ground. The boxes were only filled with bricks, but it would be wise to maintain the illusion that they were here to deliver bombs for as long as possible before trying to capture some of the terrorists alive. A man would often let valuable information slip in casual conversation that he would never reveal under anything but the most brutal torture. Of the two tactics, Able Team much preferred guile. Working swiftly, they'd barely finished with the task when the appropriated radio on the workbench crackled into life.

"Break-break one-nine," a man said from the speaker. "This is the Haymaker seeking a road check, kick 'er back."

Haymaker, as in Haymarket. Even as he reached for the hand mike, Schwarz had to admire the clever bastards. Even if the NSA or Homeland caught the transmission, all they'd hear would be innocuous CB chatter. Only the frequency was wrong, it was much too high for a standard radio.

"Haymaker, this is Uncle Buck," Schwarz responded into a hand mike. "No smokies in sight, good buddy. You can put the hammer down. Ten-two."

Moments later, there came a rumble of powerful engines and something large appeared from the south, swooping over the hidden airfield in a low pass. Then the shape rose to angle around and bright lights appeared in the sky as a Grumman Albatross began to descend for a landing. Now the team understood why the plane had been so hard to see. It was painted a flat, reflectionless black, and had no running lights.

Hidden in plain sight again, Blancanales noted. He felt sure this said something important about the terrorists, but hadn't quite worked out what that was yet.

"A goddamn Albatross," Schwarz said. "That's smart. The plane is amphibian and perfect for smuggling. It can use parking lots, highways, lakes, rivers, and hauls something like seven tons of cargo. Once, I heard Jack Grimaldi joke that he could land an Albatross on a postage stamp if you licked the back first."

"Probably true, then," Lyons agreed. "Makes me wonder if their base is near water."

But all conversation stopped when the rubber tires squealed loudly on the cracked tarmac as the aircraft touched down and bounced, then did it again, rapidly decelerating as the pilot dropped the flaps and engaged the brakes.

"Keep one of them alive," Lyons said out of the side of his mouth as the Albatross came to a smooth stop in front of the crumpling ruins of the old barracks.

As the roar of the powerful engines eased into a steady purr, the propellers visibly slowed, but never stopped. Lyons had to admit that was smart. They were keeping the ship ready to leave in case of trouble. That complicated matters.

Barely discernible above the sound of the engines, a section of the fuselage disengaged and swung down from the airplane, the curved inside becoming a short flight of steps to the ground. Inside were several men in work clothes, with pistols on their belts and rifles slung across their backs.

Damn it, more secret codes! Lyons raged internally. And this time there was no way to lie around not knowing the proper response. As precious seconds ticked away, the former cop made a hard decision, and brought up the Atchisson to trigger a long burst into the smiling men. The terrorists never even had a chance to register shock before the hellstorm of buckshot tore them into bloody gobbets.

Instantly somebody inside the plane loudly cursed and the pilot revved the engines up to full speed, preparing for an immediate take-off.

Firing from the hip, Blancanales raked the left-side tires of the Albatross with a long spray of hardball ammo, chewing them into pieces. As the plane tilted slightly, Schwarz send a 40 mm AP shell directly into the spinning propellers. The hail of stainless-steel slivers blew them into splinters, the debris spraying out harmlessly. Thrown off balance, the big engines choked, backfired, then revved out of control and burst into flames.

Dimly seen in the cockpit, the pilot was frantically working the controls, and the badly wounded Albatross started inching forward on just the right-side engine.

Charging for the stairs, Lyons dived inside with the Atchisson firing. A man at a radio was blown in two, his guts smacking onto the aluminum wall. Dropping the spent drum, Lyons pulled out a spare when a big man appeared from the cockpit holding a MAC-10 machine pistol. Triggering a long spray, he walked the hose of 9 mm rounds toward Lyons. Dropping both the replacement drum and Atchisson, the Stony Man commando drew his Colt Python and fired twice, the big-bore rounds of the booming .357 Magnum revolver punching holes completely through the terrorists and the wall behind. With a low groan, the man crumpled and went still.

From outside there came the sound of Blancanales and Schwarz firing in unison, and the engines stopped so fast that Lyons could hear the empty brass musically hitting the pavement.

"All right, come out with your hands up!" Lyons bellowed, advancing toward the front of the plane with the Colt held in a steady two-handed grip. "We want you alive, but..."

He was interrupted by a single gunshot, then an arm flopped into view and a Colt automatic pistol clattered to the deck, the barrel smoking slightly.

Rushing into the cockpit, Lyons saw the dead pilot leaning against the conversation window, tufts of hairs and brains splattered across the cracked glass. Lyons knew it was useless, but he checked the pulse of the corpse just to be sure, then used two fingers to close the dead man's eyes. The pilot had taken his own life rather than surrender. Was he a fanatic? Or just a brave man giving his last full measure for what he believed was a just cause? There was no way of ever knowing the truth now.

Glancing over the control panel, Lyons saw a PDA clipped near the altimeter. The numbers on the liquid crystal display were rapidly blinking down in sequence. With a snarl he swung up the Colt to smash the thing, but as the screen went to zero there came a brief flash of light, the display winked out, and a puff of acrid smoke rose from the suddenly melting plastic box.

Holstering his gun, Lyons realized the electronic device had to have held the details of their flight plan back to wherever the plane came from. The pilot set it to self-destruct just before taking his own life. Whatever else these people might be, they weren't cowards. Grudgingly, his respect for the terrorists went up a notch, as did his rage.

A long whistle came from the rear of the plane, and Lyons answered with two short whistles before stepping into the causeway that lead from the cockpit, past the electronics storage and lavatory to the rear of the Albatross.

"Any maps up front?" Blancanales asked, both hands holding on to his M-16/M-203. Schwarz was already at the radio, removing the back cover to look inside.

"No, they used a PDA and burned it out," Lyons said, kneeling alongside the body on the deck. He checked the pockets but found a pack of chewing gum and Dramamine.

"They sent a guy who got airsick on a flight?" Blancanales said thoughtfully. Then his face brightened, and he headed for the exit. "I'll go check the belly to see if there are any ring assemblies installed."

Lyons scowled at that. Ring assemblies... like the ones used on an aircraft carrier?

"Okay, Carl, I've got good news and bad," Schwarz announced, putting the cover back on the radio. "The code to operate this was punched into the keypad. However, I can't remove the chips without losing power and scrambling the codes."

"So let's take the whole thing," Lyons said, holstering the Colt to lend a hand. "Is it bolted down?"

"Yeah, but we have some wrenches in the van," Schwarz said when without warning the radio crackled into life.

"Steel Town to Little Bird," the flat monotone of an artificial voice said. "Report your status."

Frantically, Lyons and Schwarz looked around for another voice-box and found several of them sitting in recharging docks. Obviously, these handheld units were designed to take along and use over cell phones or land lines. Snatching one, Lyons saw that there were several settings. Hell, which was the correct one?

"Little Bird, this is Steel Town. Have you landed yet?" the bland voice demanded. "Are you in trouble?"

Breathing on the keypad, Lyons brought up fingerprint smudges on two buttons, and pressed the one on the right.

"Little Bird to Steel Town, we're fine," he replied in a flat modulated tone. "Caught me spitting out my gum."

Unable to assist, Schwarz shrugged, but Lyons felt a visceral surge as he suddenly remembered where the lyrics came from. He had not heard the song in many, many years. So, they were back, eh?

"... to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing," Lyons answered confidently.

There was another pause. "If any of our people can hear me, your names will be remembered, comrades," the monotone said, and the radio went dead.

Not liking the sound of that, Schwarz reached behind the radio to start ripping out wires, when a wave of warmth emanated from the front of the plane, the windshield cracking as the metallic reek of thermite reached the two Stony Man commandos.

Dropping everything, Lyons and Schwarz charged for the door and hit the ground running. Crouching under the Albatross with a flashlight, Blancanales saw them race by, and surged into action, following their lead. It didn't take a genius to figure out what was happening.

As the team changed direction, a bright light began to steadily grow behind them, and the night became uncomfortably warm. Reaching the edge of the depression, the men kept running, twisting in the air to land on their sides in a martial-arts stance, their slapping arms absorbing most of the impact of the ten-foot-fall. A split second later, hell itself filled the world as a roiling fireball extended from the Albatross to stretch across the basement at ground level.

Burying their faces into the cool dirt, Able Team tried not to breathe for as long as possible, then only stole small sips through their clothing to spare their lungs as much as possible. Even protected by the damp earth, and yards of distance, the searing heat of the military compound was painfully cooking the men, but there was nothing to do but take the punishment and hope for the best.

Chapter Thirteen

The surface of the lake was relatively smooth for this time of year, the chop no more than a foot high, the swells barely noticeable. A dense fog filled the air, making it impossible to see more than a dozen feet in any direction. But that was not a matter of any serious concern. This far out on the Great Lake there were no rocks, islands, or anything else for a boat to watch out for. The lake was more than five hundred feet deep here and there was no civilian traffic, speedboats, scuba divers or drunken fools trying to water ski after fifteen minutes of instruction. Lake Huron was calm and placid, the deep waters quiet and still.

Moving through the chop, a small skiff chugged easily along, the outboard motor kicking up a spray in the wake. There were three men in the skiff, one of them operating the till, and the other awkwardly holding a medical bag. The third kneeled at the bow, squinting into the cottony air.

From out of nowhere, a sizzling flare rose high into the sky, the incendiary charge hanging suspended for a long moment upon reaching the apex of its flight, before beginning a graceful descent back into the gloom.

"Ahoy! We're over here!" an eager voice answered from nowhere. A moment later another flare climbed skyward and the man at the till changed direction.

Soon, a murky white shape dotted with lights could be seen ahead of the skiff, and that resolved into a cabin cruiser, the running lights wan in the heavy fog. Across the aft was the name Sister Sue in bold flowing script. On the aft deck were a couple of men in lifejackets, one of them was waving his arms and the other was holding a flare pistol. As the skiff chugged closer, they both grinned widely.

"Thank God, you found us!" The man stopped waving and laughed in relief. "Our engine died two days ago, and we've been drifting in this damn fog ever since!"

"This is a bad month to travel across Huron," Rudd stated, tossing out a mooring line.

"You got that right!" the other man declared, tucking away the flare gun. Grabbing the line, he cinched it around a cleat, pulling it ever tighter until the two boats were alongside each other.

With professional ease, Rudd stepped across. "Anybody hurt?" he asked, jerking a thumb toward the man with the medical bag.

"Oh no, we're fine, just cold and wet," the first man said. "After we got lost, we turned the engine off to save fuel, but it got so cold...." He didn't finish the sentence.

"Why didn't you radio for help?" Rudd asked, glancing over the cruiser. There was the remains of a meal for two on a table, and only two lifejackets removed from a set of four attached to the cabin wall.

"Radio died... okay, we broke it by accident," the fellow admitted sheepishly. "And way out here, cell phones are about as useful as shouting really loud."

"You'll never know how true that is," Rudd said, drawing a Webley .44 revolver and shooting both men in the face. The booming sound of the gunfire echoed out across the lake, but was soon swallowed by the dominating fog.

Wrapping the bodies with chains, Rudd dumped the corpses overboard, and waited until they completely sank from sight before going belowdecks to open the drainage valves. Now moving quickly, Rudd went back on deck and released the mooring lines before crossing over to the skiff. By then, the Sister Sue was listing slightly, loose items on the deck sliding to the port side.

"What a couple of idiots," the tillman said, sneering, starting up the outboard engine once more and angling away from the sinking cruiser. "Why don't these people ever learn something about sailing before actually going sailing?"

"Because they're idiots," the other man said in dismissal, packing away the medical bag in a waterproof locker.

With a shrug, Rudd silently agreed, dumping out the two spent brass from his pistol and sliding in live rounds. If the landlubbers had been properly equipped, the U.S. Coast Guard would have come to their rescue, and that would have been that. No harm, no foul. But since they were making a fuss, it became necessary to make them go away. Help them, or sink them. Professor Oughton had said the choice was his, and as always, Chief Rudd chose death. He liked to kill. It started as an urge when he was a little kid, then became an obsession as a teenager, and finally his line of work as an adult. And ever since joining Genesis he had done more killing than ever before. Stealing a boat, smuggling supplies. Lake Huron accepted all of his victims equally, hugging them down to her cold heart on the bottom to lay there forever, beyond the reach of the law, or the eyes of God.

"Let's get some coffee." Rudd yawned, tucking the gun back into a holster and buckling down the flap.

Checking the compass heading, the tillman kept the skiff on course and soon enough the hulking Pittsburgh appeared out of the lake mist. The converted cargo ship was as big as could pass through the locks in the St. Lawrence Seaway that carried her from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. The Pittsburgh was a full thousand feet long, and a hundred wide, with enough heavy weapons to sink anything the Coast Guard from either the U.S. or Canada could send their way.

Easing the skiff to the hull, the sailors reattached the lift lines, then settled down in place while the deckhands operated the winches to haul the skiff out of the lake and back up the deck.

Leaving the crewmen to stow the skiff away, Rudd got a cup of coffee from the galley, then headed down to report to Oughton. The computer expert liked to hear about everything in person, rather than getting a written report. Something about staying in touch with reality. Personally, Rudd had always found reality rather boring. He much preferred reading books.

Sipping as he walked, Rudd nodded to the armed guards at the sentry posts along the way until reaching the Freezer. Or at least, that's what the crew called the computer room. It was colder than the meat locker and occupied an entire deck. The only thing larger on the boat was the motors that operated the flight deck. He had been told about them in detail before coming on board, but until Rudd saw the damn things working he had not been able to comprehend just how complex they were. A cargo ship was normally a very simple thing, just a metal hull, deck and a motor. But the Pittsburgh was now a single gigantic machine that simply had to be seen to be believed.

Setting his empty mug on a convenient shelf, Rudd took down a parka from a coatrack and zipped up tight before entering the computer room.

"Shut that door!" Dr. Dimitri Oughton bellowed, without even looking up from a clipboard. A hulking giant, Oughton seemed to be the very antithesis of a conventional computer expert, his huge hands having sausagelike fingers, and his broad shoulders more suitable for a defensive linebacker on a professional football team. Yet he handled microprocessors and repaired broken chips with the skill of a surgeon.

Scowling, Oughton looked up from his calculations, his features softening into a smile. "William! Nice to see you back so soon. Everything work out?"

"We're alone again," Rudd said simply, the words visible in the air for a moment before fading away.

"Glad to hear it," he muttered, going back to his clipboard. "Wish I could say the same thing."

But the scientist was already deep in his work, and after a while Rudd left the computer room for a warmer climate. The computer room was bitterly cold, the technicians all dressed in heavy parkas and gloves, many with woolen ski masks covering their features. Unlike their counterparts in Patagonia, the technicians didn't have electric boots or jumpsuits. That would have warmed the air slightly, and the whole point was to make the supercomputer as cold as possible. Set along the wall were pressurized canisters of liquid nitrogen. Attached to the tanks were regulators connected to thermostats. If the temperature dropped for any reason, the tanks would release some gas until that was corrected. The danger was that the liquid nitrogen would crystallize human skin, and anybody caught in the rush would die instantly, frozen solid in under a heartbeat. The Pittsburgh had lost a man that way during the initial testing. The poor fellow seemed perfectly fine, until somebody touched him with a gloved hand, and the body shattered into billions of tiny snowflakes. Incredible. Rudd had never seen anybody die that like before, and eagerly looked forward to the next time.

Chewing on the end of a pencil, Oughton went back to working out the fuel consumption rate for the three B-52 bombers as they circled the globe sowing death and destruction. NATO and the United States were proving smarter than anticipated, and new calculations had to be made. Shifting fuel to a new location consumed fuel, and the pilots were using far too many missiles in his opinion. Bombs were much cheaper, and easier to obtain. Of course, the planes had to get much closer to their targets, but that was their problem. His job was to keep them flying, and fully armed, no matter what. Which included his personal hatred of the sea.

Privately, the scientist acknowledged that the Great Lake was not actually the sea, but it was close enough to give him night sweats. The only real difference between them and the ocean was the lack of salt, and no sharks. Oughton liked that last part. Having seen a childhood friend attacked by a great white off the coast of Australia, the man had been terrified of being eaten by sharks ever since. But the lake was safe, and the only fish in it were harmless. There were no sharks, whales, squid or even barracudas. The worst thing Huron had was a lake snake, which was about as deadly as a house cat.

Returning to his work, the scientist walked in endless circles around the control stations and the humming blade-class CDP servers. Subconsciously he listened to the hum of the IBM Blue Gene, the tone of the machine telling him that it was operating at peak efficiency. But then, it damn well should. The air filtration system was the best in existence, removing every tiny particle of dust, or dandruff, that might slow the ultrafast machine, and the hull was triple insulated. The Blue Gene was the fastest computer in the world, and this was the exact same model that the Pentagon and the NSA used.

Just then, the computer room shook gently, the vibrations traveling from one end of the room to the other as another Albatross launched from the top deck. The Pittsburgh carried several of the propeller-driven amphibians for both deliveries and pickups. The Grummann HU-16 was capable of landing and taking off under extreme weather conditions, and while hauling amazingly heavy loads. It could also fly low enough to go under the radar of most nations, something the B-52 bomber was completely incapable of doing. The oddly named Albatross was the workhorse for Genesis, dropping off fuel and munitions at isolated airfields, sometimes only minutes before the B-52 bombers arrived. But then, as with most military operations, timing was essential. The only way to beat NATO and the Pentagon was to be smarter and to move faster. So far, everything was working precisely as planned.

"Professor Oughton, we have a problem!" a woman called out, still hunched over a control console.

"What's wrong, Susan?" the scientist asked, hurrying closer. Most of the staff called him by the nickname of Dizzy. If she was using his full name, then something had just gone horribly wrong.

"The... I..." Biting a lip, Susan composed herself with an effort. "Sir, Charles and his people are dead. Their plane was seized by the FBI, and I was forced to activate the self-destruct."

Instantly, the cold room went unearthly still, all conversation stopped, until the only sound was the humming of the colossal mainframe.

"Is this a joke?" Oughton demanded, his throat tight. "There is a time and place for such things, Susan, and..."

"No, sir," she snapped, looking up with tears in her eyes. "This is not a joke. They're dead. All of them. Dead!"

At the name, his expression became ugly. Them again. Those were the bastards who helped capture the original members of Genesis. As much as Oughton hated the federal pencil-pushers, as a scientist the man was forced to admit the NSA was pretty damn good at its job. "Any chance they piggybacked our signal?" he asked, thoughtfully tapping a shoe on the metal deck.

"None," Susan stated defiantly. "It would take a team of cybernetic experts to unravel the complicated relay of signals and false trails I wove across the globe. Not some eighteen-year-old Army grunt with two weeks training and a secondhand laptop."

After a moment Oughton conceded the point. "Fair enough," he said, tucking the clipboard under an arm. "But just in case, arm the relay points. If anybody does show up, have them automatically blow."

"But then we'll be completely cut off from one another!" a skinny man gasped, his features hidden behind a ski mask.

"Better that than capture," Oughton stated, his mind racing ahead of the available data. If Tuskegee was a trap, he thought, that would mean Delacort must also be deceased, and possibly all of our other black market suppliers.

"Anders!" he barked. "Contact Rexton at Thunder! Inform him that there will be no new supplies of either fuel or munitions. We only have what is remaining on this ship and stored at our depots around the world. After that, we have to shut down and go into hiding."

"Abandon the attacks?" The man gasped, swiveling in his chair. "But, sir, we're nowhere near completion!"

"Then we have no choice but to prepare the final option," he said in a low voice, the icy room suddenly feeling infinitely colder.

Chapter Fourteen

Droning loudly, four 707 jetliners seemed to appear directly out of the blazing sun and dive straight toward N'Djamena International Airport.

On the ground, sirens began to wail and bells to clang in dire warning. Tossing aside their luggage, swarms of civilians screamed in terror and raced away in a blind panic. But the six pilots from the Chad air force raced to get into their old MiG-8 Fulcrum jetfighters and started taxiing along the main runway, passing within only yards of a C-90 passenger liner that was in the process of landing.

Dashing out of underground bunkers where they had been trying to escape the heat of the day, a full company of soldiers swarmed across the airport to their assigned posts, then quickly aimed and launched their China-made Stinger antiaircraft rockets.

Streaking high and fast, the rockets headed directly for the incoming 707 jetliners... but then violently exploded as the escort of Sudanese MiG-29 fighters moved into position alongside the jetliners and promptly cut loose with their 30 mm nose cannons, chewing the rockets to pieces.

"Those are not the Airwolves!" a policeman yelled, drawing his service revolver for no sane reason.

"It is the Sudanese again!" another officer concurred, pulling out a radio and starting to relay the information to headquarters.

Angling past the bustling airport, the 707 jetliners and military escort were headed directly for downtown N'Djamena, and as they passed over the presidential mansion the jetliners opened hastily made bomb bay doors and emptied their cargo hold of bombs. The rain of iron bombs chewed a path of destruction across the manicured lawn of the presidential estate, to finally hit the mansion and violently reduce the elegant structure to splinters and broken marble columns in only a few moments.

Racing along the access road in their BMW truck, the soldiers stopped to once more attack with their Chinese Stingers. But again the MiG-29s easily neutralized the rockets, then the Sudanese pilots released a deadly salvo of Aphid missiles at the ground troops. Not designed for such a tactic, several of the missiles went wild and missed the men on the highway completely to instead slam into desert hills. But the few that reached the truck annihilated the brave men.

Banking sharply, the wing of 707 jetliners was headed toward the Chad oil fields when the MiG-8 fighters appeared, launching rocket after rocket at the hated invaders from Sudan. One of the jetliners was hit, and violently disintegrated, the fireball stretching out to swamp a MiG-8 desperately trying to escape. The jetfighter was buffeted by the concussion and shrapnel, and simply broke into pieces, the wreckage tumbling to the ground to hit a school and an outdoor mall.

Now the Chad pilots flying the old MiG-8s directly faced the Sudan pilots in the much-newer MiG-29s, and all of them cut loose with cannons and air-to-air missiles in a roiling dogfight. Then a wing of Mirage F-l fighters appeared from the direction of the French airbase. Igniting their afterburners, the French pilots surged to join forces with their local counterparts and swarmed after the hated Sudanese in savage bloodlust. Swarms of missiles zigzagged across the clear blue sky, leaving a maze of contrails. Rockets streaked across in every possible direction. Million-dollar jetfighters detonated, men died and the combat raged on.

Meanwhile, the remaining 707 jetliners dropped strings of cheap Soviet Union incendiary charges across the oil fields and refinery, starting a wave of individual fires that culminated into a huge fireball as a main feeder line was hit. The underground storage tanks erupted like angry volcanoes.

In the distance, Puma-class attack helicopters rose into view, their machine guns chattering away. But the 707 jetliners left them easily behind and continued to sow death and destruction across the helpless capital city. Moving fast over the midtown area, more bombs dropped, impacting on bridges and shopping malls.

As the planes headed for the port of the city, dozens of Russian-made tanks belched antiaircraft rounds at the Sudanese invaders, and a 707 jetliner vanished in a thunderclap of light.

Instantly the remaining planes turned sharply and headed away from the booming tanks, only to find themselves facing the triumphant French Mirage fighters and one MiG-8 jet, badly leaking fuel, its 30 mm nose cannon firing in tightly controlled bursts.

Suddenly parachutes appeared as the crews in the last two 707 jetliners abandoned ship. But that availed the invaders nothing. As the French and Chad jets blew the unmanned jumbo jets out of the sky, thousands of soldiers and civilians raced along the city streets, on foot, on stolen bicycles, to gather below the descending enemy and draw knives as they patiently waited for the monsters from Sudan to come just a little bit closer...

* * *

Leaning forward, Hal Brognola placed his hands on the conference table and locked his fingers together. "Now, let me get this straight," he said slowly. "The Sudan military used actual 707 jumbo jets to try to pretend they were the Airwolves just to throw a scare into Chad just so that they could blow up some refineries?"

"It appears so," Barbara Price said, passing over some NSA satellite reconnaissance photos. "And to say that it failed spectacularly would be putting it mildly. Sudan has money, but the people of Chad are incredibly tough fighters. Now the two nations are at war again, and everybody else in the Middle East is too busy protecting themselves to bother to stop them this time."

Frowning, Brognola inspected the photographs. MiG-8 against MiG-29 and the Eights won. Weapons were important, but it was the man behind the gun that really counted. "How many civilian casualties?" he asked.

"Hal, the numbers are in the hundreds, and rising fast," Price answered, indicating a wall monitor. The screen showed a vector graphic of the world with a pulsating dot everywhere the Airwolves had struck. Along the bottom was a scroll showing the death toll in each country.

"And this is just the thin edge of the wedge," Price stated. "There is rioting in Spain because the government shot down a commercial airliner that didn't identify itself fast enough. Both France and the United Kingdom are getting ready to close their borders to any air traffic, even though that means financial ruin. Civil war has broken out in Bolivia, and the Fifteen Families are using this golden opportunity to try and seize control of the heroin traffic in Albania once more. Hezbollah and Iran have attacked Israel, claiming they're the Airwolves, and Israel is responding hard, but only with conventional weapons at the moment."

"At the moment," Price repeated, stressing the words. "Meanwhile, Greek and Turkish ships have already clashed at sea, North Korea and South Korea are massing troops and along the DMZ, Pakistan is preparing to launch a nuke at India to stop an aerial invasion, and India is doing the same." Price paused to tap a button on the table. The monitor changed to a real-world view of Western Europe. "Plus, Russia and China are arming for full-scale warfare with everything they've got — ships, tanks, men, subs, and enough long-range Stiletto and Dong III missiles to remove each other from the face of the Earth."

"And us, too, probably," Brognola noted, studying the monitor. The man simply could not believe how fast things had gotten out of control. The world was boiling over with fear, and soon enough the lid would come off the nuclear pot. Then the death toll would really start climbing. Hundreds of thousands? Millions? He shook the numbers from his mind.

"Okay, that's the downside of the ledger. Is there anything positive to report?" he asked. "Can we stop them from using telecommunication satellites to hack into the airport computers?"

"No. The only way to stop them would be to blow every satellite out of the sky."

Which NATO could do, the man noted dourly. But that would leave America, and every other nation, completely blind, much less able to stop any incoming nuclear missiles. The only way to stop the Airwolves would make the nation even more vulnerable to another kind of deadly attack. Could that be the whole point, to try to start a nuclear war? Christ, I hope not. Because they might just manage to do that.

"Okay, different tactic," Brognola said, loosening his necktie. "Have the Airwolves finally contacted the White House, or the United Nations, or anybody for that matter, with some demands? A trillion euros in gold, disbanding NATO, or the release of political prisoners? Anything we can use to track them down?"

"No, Hal, not a damn word," Price said. "They only seem to want to spread chaos and death. Oh, I'm sure the terrorists have a goal, but it has nothing to do with our willing cooperation."

"Agreed. And I have more bad news," Price added, crossing her arms. "Aaron has found that enough spare parts for B-52 bombers have been sold, or stolen, to make a hundred of the damn things, so we have no idea how large a fleet the Airwolves have. Carmen is laying traps for them in telecommunication satellites around the globe, while Hunt and Akira are going on the offensive, doing a straight hunt, but so far..." She left the sentence hanging.

"What about the teams?" Brognola asked, leaning back in his chair to rest a hand on the recon photos and slide them about. Unfortunately the pictures did not change, the nightmarish view of the burning city and rioting mobs unaltered.

"Phoenix Force is staging a raid on El Renacer Prison in Panama to try to get to Evan Kelly, the merc Gary tracked."

Price frowned. "No word from them yet. At the last report, Cal was about to engage a supplier for the Airwolves in Alabama, but since then, nothing."

She already knew, but Price glanced at her wrist. "Less than an hour. I'm giving them approximately thirty more minutes, then I'm sending in Jack Grimaldi with a couple of blacksuits to see what they can recover."

As in bodies, Brognola realized grimly. Looking at his own watch, the man then checked it against the digital clock above the door. It should be just after midnight in Alabama. He could not imagine anything stopping Able Team, but if the men had fallen...

* * *

Long minutes passed before the lambent corona of the thermite charge finally ebbed away and the delicious cool night returned. Dragging in deep breaths, the men of Able Team checked themselves for any damage, and were slightly surprised to learn they had escaped unharmed.

"M-man, I will never be mean to a pot roast again," Schwarz added, wheezing slightly. His M-16/M-203 was gone, but the electronics expert still had the laptop slung at his side. Quickly, he checked to make sure that it was undamaged.

"Okay, I didn't hear the van explode," Lyons said, wiping his sweaty face clean. "So I'll assume that we still have transportation."

"Let's find out." Clicking on his flashlight, Blancanales played it across the old basement and soon found some brick stairs in the corner. Checking them over, he found the masonry firm and led the others back to the surface.

As expected, the amphibian plane was gone, reduced to a glowing pool of molten aluminum in the middle of a charred circle that reached for a hundred feet in every direction. An entire swath of punk tail reeds was on fire, and the plastic containers near the van had completely melted, the loose piles of bricks now covered with a sticky residue that was yet bubbling. Parked behind the bricks, the van was discolored in spots, but otherwise seemed unaffected.

That was when the men saw the smoking driveshaft of a Pratt & Witney engine sticking through the vehicle's windshield. Blancanales inhaled sharply at the sight. If his sister had came along and waited for them in the van, she would most likely be dead.

Lyons frowned as an odd sound penetrated the night. Instinctively, he drew the Colt Python just as halogen headlight pierced the darkness and dark shapes came out of the burning weeds moving low and fast.

"Bikes!" Lyons cursed, ducking out of the way as the sleek BMW speedsters flashed by at incredible speeds.

Just for a second, he saw the riders in the glow of the melting plane. Bald men, wearing leather jackets and carrying assault rifles. Then he caught the glint of light reflecting off the swastikas hanging around their necks. That caught the Stony Man commando by surprise. What were Nazis doing in Alabama?

"Skinheads!" Schwarz called, swinging the laptop behind his back to protect the vital chips inside.

"Hammerskins!" Treb corrected, triggering a burst from the HK-47 into the air, the spent brass flying away in a golden arch.

Not wasting a second, the Stony Man commandos ducked and moved among the crumbling buildings, reloading their weapons and constantly shooting at their attackers.

Separating, the rest of the Nazi gang darted among the ruins, only to circle back, the muzzle-flashes of their HK-47 assault rifles fiery blossoms in the night. But Able Team had already taken cover behind a broken wall, and now returned fire with their handguns. Three of the bikers cried out from the impacts, but nobody fell or even slowed down.

"Damn it, they must be wearing body armor!" Blancanales growled. "We need to reach the van and get some heavy weapons!"

"You first, brother!" Schwarz whispered into his throat mike over the gentle coughs of his silenced Beretta.

Appearing from around the windowless wall, Witz bellowed an inarticulate war cry as he triggered a XM-18 grenade launcher, the fat barrel thumping steadily. The canisters tumbled through the air and hit the ground to explode into blinding pools of hellish fire.

At the first whiff of the fumes, Lyons identified the chemical as willie peter. White phosphorous was illegal for anybody to use outside of the Special Forces unit, and he immediately knew these people had to have worked for Delacort. Obviously these were hired muscle, street soldiers he used for dirty jobs. This was revenge for his death.

Now lowering the X-18, Witz began thundering out antipersonnel shells, the spray of double-aught buckshot hitting the brick walls hard enough to shake loose a bird's nest and years of accumulated dust.

Nimbly maneuvering around the gaping holes in the ground, Bibor stopped his bike near the battered van and tossed something through the smashed window. As he quickly wheeled away, the interior became harshly illuminated and then the vehicle bulged outward from the concussion of the HE grenade. The remaining windows held for a single instant, almost appearing as if they were going to contain the explosion, but the Lexan plastic burst free from the frames to sail away intact. Then the van's fuel tanks ignited, closely followed by the self-destruct charges hidden inside the frame.

The vehicle's armored chassis lifted off the ground from the sheer force of the combined detonations, then came right back down again, impacting the grass as a thick column of smoke and embers swirled into the starry sky.

"Okay, time to go dark," Lyons said, pausing in the combat for a single moment to yank off his shiny gold Rolex wristwatch and toss it aside. The team had planned to pretend they worked for Delacort and had dressed appropriately. But now the flashy rings and jewelry would only reflect the firelight and give away their movements to the Nazi bikers.

Silently, Schwarz and Blancanales did the same, then grabbed a handful of loose dirt and rubbed it on their cheeks and foreheads as crude camouflage. It wasn't much, but all they could do at the moment.

Whooping and hollering, the bikers began to race around the three men, keeping a safe distance from the hole in the ground and the slagged residue of the melted Albatross. Placing their shots, the Stony Man commandos tried for the gas tanks of the bikes, and then the tires. But while the machines appeared to be civilian models, they were clearly military and heavily armored.

Snapping off two fast rounds, Blancanales hit the headlight of an approaching bike, the hollowpoint .380 rounds ricocheting off the bulletproof glass. Then Lyons stood and triggered a single .357 Magnum man-stopper, the hardball round smashing through and killing the light. While Schwarz and Blancanales gave cover fire, Lyons took out the other headlights. Only the woman escaped by turning off her headlight just in time.

Darkness returned, but the reprieve was short-lived. As their sight adjusted to the darkness, the men of Able Team saw that a soft red glow permeated the ruins from the combined light of the molten Albatross, the burning van and the dying pools of willie peter. It wasn't much, but more than enough for combat-trained troops.

Caught in the middle of reloading her assault rifle, Danek stopped her bike on the runway and mumbled a curse as she fumbled trying to insert a fresh clip.

Listening to the familiar sounds, Blancanales tracked on the noise and sent off five fast rounds with the Colt .380. The first two missed the woman completely, but the next three hit the windshield hard enough to shatter the safety glass and drive the horde of tiny glass squares directly into her unprotected face.

Shrieking in pain, Danek dropped the weapon to clutch the tattered remains of her bleeding features. Using her pale hands as a target frame, Blancanales put three more rounds directly between them, and the back of her bald head opened wide, spraying out a horrid geyser of life.

As if suspended in time, the dead woman stood on the bike for a long second, the muscles still obeying the last command of a brain that was no longer present. Then she limply collapsed and the bike fell over, spilling out spare ammunition clips and several grenades.

"The feeb got Danek!" Bibor roared, swinging out the stock of the assault rifle to smash his own windshield to prevent such a tactic being used on him. "He got Danek!"

Slapping in his last clip, Lyons caught that and almost smiled. Feeb. They thought the team were FBI agents? Good. The FBI had to follow rules and regulations that the Stony Man team did not.

"No more games!" Treb yelled, triggering the 40 mm grenade launcher. "Kill 'em!"

The HE shell sailed away and hit an old brick wall to bounce off as harmlessly as a thrown rock. The skinhead seemed astonished at the lack of a detonation, clearly unaware that the 40 mm shell armed itself in flight and needed at least sixty feet of travel before becoming primed.

Taking careful aim, Lyons fired into the grass just to the side of the shell. The bullet kicked up some loose dirt, making the explosive charge roll away — directly into a pool of the white phosphorous. Immediately, Able Team ducked and a split second later the warhead in the shell cooked off from the searing heat. The strident blast ripped apart the night, one of the ancient walls noisily came apart, the bricks tumbling down in a clattering avalanche of destruction.

Before the destruction finished, Schwarz and Blancanales dashed out of hiding to sprint across the runway to grab the fallen HK-47 and two grenades.

Braking his bike to a rough stop, Treb angrily tried to track his assault rifle on the men, but always seemed to be just a heartbeat behind. Then they hopped over a smoldering piece of wing, and were gone, vanished into the shadows once more.

"They got an assault rifle!" Witz shouted, opening the breech of the X-18 to start hastily thumbing in fresh rounds.

Instantly, Lyons was on the move, the big man crossing the short distance between them in a shadowy blur. As he got close, Lyon conserved ammunition by slashing out with his knife, not for the skinhead's throat, but his hands. With a cry, Witz released the grenade launcher, and the loose 40 mm shells fell away to roll freely around on the hard ground.

Burying a fist in the man's exposed groin, Lyons then drove his blade upward as the Hammerskin doubled over. The blade slammed deep into the mouth of the skinhead, pinning it closed. As Witz clawed at the knife jutting from his jawline, Lyons raced away to dive behind an irregular slab of broken asphalt. Almost immediately, the other Hammerskins cut loose with their assault rifles, the yammering streams of 5.56 mm rounds tearing the wounded man apart. Flailing away, Witz fell backward to land sprawling, more 40 mm shells coming loose from the bandolier under his riddled leather jacket.

"Fucking bastards!" Treb bellowed, yanking the pin from a grenade and throwing the bomb.

Swinging the stolen assault rifle like a baseball bat, Schwarz smacked the sphere right back at the skinhead. It detonated between them, filling the night with a thunderclap that only churned the grass and weeds.

Already in motion, Blancanales snatched two of the 40 mm shells off the grass and threw them at Schwarz. One sailed too high, but the man caught the other and thumbed it into the empty breech of the grenade launcher attached under the main barrel of the HK-47 assault rifle.

As Blancanales dived for cover behind the corpse of Danek, Schwarz pivoted and fired the grenade launcher.

Flinching as the shell flashed past his head, Bibor grinned in frank relief at the incredible miss. A split second later, the shell traveled the rest of the hundred feet across the ruins, fully armed itself and slammed into the brick wall behind the skinhead. The blast blew a ragged hole in the old bricks, sending out a halo of broken chunks. Still smiling, Bibor was chewed to pieces by the onslaught and flew into the weeds, his assault rifle firing just once before it was also smashed apart.

Unexpectedly, a fifth Hammerskin stood behind a broken section of wall holding an MIA flamethrower.

Aiming for a spot just below the hip of the skinhead, Blancanales emptied the Colt. Grinning at the obviously poor marksmanship of the federal agent, Dauch sent out a burning lance of annihilation toward the man, when he heard a prolonged hiss from the fuel line near his hip, and suddenly he was engulfed in flames. A human torch, the Hammerskin never stopped screaming as he blindly stumbled along to tumble into the open basement. Slapping in his last clip, Blancanales rushed to the edge of the hole a second later, and fired the Colt twice, mercifully ending the pitiful wails.

Out of ammunition, Lyons went to a fallen BMW motorcycle to check the aft compartments for any additional clips, when he discovered a short plastic tube. What in hell were the skinheads planning to do with this?

"Time to die, motherfucker!" Treb bellowed, burping the assault rifle. Then he saw what Lyons was holding, and blanched.

Dropping the HK-47, the skinhead used both hands to rev the big BMW engine and race away balanced on just the rear wheel.

While Blancanales lobbed a grenade toward the escaping skinhead, Schwarz raked the leather jacket of the big man with 5.56 mm rounds from the assault rifle, doing no appreciable damage.

Yanking out the arming pin, Lyons extended the launch tube to its full length, aimed and pressed the button on top.

For a very long moment nothing happened, and the Stony Man commando almost changed his stance when the LAW rocket launcher came alive with a roar of flame and smoke from both ends.

Treb was almost at the first curve of the winding dirt road when he was brutally slammed in the back with the antitank rocket, the tip coming out his chest glistening with fresh blood.

Incredibly, the Hammerskin felt no pain, just some difficulty breathing. Unable to process the fact that he was already dead, Treb managed to stay on the bike and keep driving for another couple of yards before a great wave of cold washed through his body. Limply he slid off the expensive bike to hit the ground hard and tumble along for quite a while, but again felt little pain.

Coming to an eventual halt, Treb saw that he was sprawled in the mud at the bottom of a shallow drainage ditch. Dimly, he recalled that this was almost exactly how the Great Leader died, laying in a ditch, and Treb felt a swell of insane pride at that. He tried to smile, but nothing seemed to work anymore, then his vision failed and a bitterly cold blackness swallowed him forever.

"All right, let's move out," Lyons growled, casting away the spent launcher. "The state police should be here soon to check out all the fireworks. With the van gone, we have a long walk back to the airport."

"Maybe a few of the bikes are salvageable," Schwarz suggested, heading to a fallen machine.

"Sure hope so. The sooner we leave the better," Blancanales said, wrinkling his nose. When the team had first arrived, the abandoned Tuskegee airfield smelled clean and fresh. Now it reeked of jellied gasoline, high explosives, burning rubber tires and roasting human flesh.

"Smelled worse, but not by much," Lyons said, then abruptly stopped talking, his face a mask of consternation.

Pulling the bike upright, Schwarz started to ask what was wrong, when he saw Blancanales looking at him with the exact same expression. Thinking he had to have gotten shot, Schwarz released the machine to frantically check himself for any damage, but he was fine. Completely unhurt. That was when the man realized how light the laptop felt.

Quickly swinging it around, Schwarz vehemently cursed at the sight of a long gash in the titanium armor, tufts of wires dangling from the opening, the mother-board and IC chips smashed into an unrecognizable mess.

Chapter Fifteen

Dawn slowly arrived as Phoenix Force followed a concrete highway away from the airport and into the wild Panama jungle. Aside from a few trucks and buses, there was little traffic on the road at that time of the morning, and the team kept a safe distance from the civilian vehicles as they drove farther away from the ocean, the landscape gradually changing from cultivated fields and small towns into a marshy forest, and then finally a true swamp.

Very quickly, the humidity rose to unbearable levels, and the air became filled with swarms of buzzing insects and the putrid reek of decaying vegetable matter. Massive banyon frees rose from the thick black water like wooden giants, somber and imposing, their weathered branches heavy with Spanish moss and hanging vines. A rainbow of beautiful orchids grew in grand profusion, but everything else seemed to be covered with a thick carpet of moist green moss. Chattering loudly, a gang of monkeys scampered through the bushes chasing a wild boar with a dead snake dangling in its mouth, and flocks of parrots flew majestically overhead constantly screeching.

"Well, at least there are no signs of any alligators," James said, craning his neck to study the fetid waters of the swamp for any suspicious movements. There were a lot of floating logs in sight, but none of them seemed to be moving.

"Yeah? Try again," Hawkins retorted, swerving the Hummer to go around a twenty-foot monster lying in the middle of the road. As the vehicle passed, the alligator hissed angrily and lashed its massive tail with deadly pendulum force.

Alongside the road, a wooden sign announced a turn for El Renacer, a hairy spider sitting ominously on top. A web nearby was dotted with tiny struggling insects.

"Man, I hate symbolism," Hawkins muttered, taking the turn and starting down an old paved road, the rough surface full of badly repaired potholes.

A wooden bridge led them to another paved road, and then a modern-day trestle bridge. Armed guards checked their papers and accepted an exorbitant bribe not to search the Hummer for any contraband.

As they rode away, the Stony Man commandos eased down the hammers of their automatic pistols. This was only the outer perimeter of the infamous El Renacer Prison. The bribes would only get larger from then on, and any failure to pay could very well end with them behind bars for the unforgivable crime of not bringing enough hard cash.

Built by the Panamanian government, El Renacer was both the worst, and the best, prison in South America, possibly the world. Surrounded by miles of impassable jungle, situated in the middle a swamp teaming with alligators, the prison was a world to itself, alone and isolated from the rest of civilization. Designed to hold five thousand prisoners, El Renacer rarely held more than a third of that number, despite the fact that every other prison in Central America was staggeringly overpopulated. And for a very good reason.

If a prisoner had a steady supply of funds, or was connected to one of the larger drug cartels from Mexico or Colombia, daily life in El Renacer could be quite pleasant. Family members would be allowed to visit with baskets of food, clothing and even medicine. Private rooms were available, with doors that locked from inside the cell for safety and privacy. Conjugal visits could be arranged, and if a prisoner was not married, then a local girl could be found to serve the same function — for a price, of course. Incredibly, even field trips out of the prison were made from time to time, so that a prisoner could conduct business and maintain the steady flow of cash into the coffers of the drug cartels.

However, if a prisoner was poor, then he was forced to serve as an example of what would happen to the more pampered inmates if they stopped paying the guards. The men were beaten daily and given only scraps of food. They were sent chained into the swamp on work details for no reason whatsoever, and many of them got malaria or, worse, lost a limb to the savage alligators or fell victim to poisonous snakes. Most had no beds, few possessed shoes, soap was nonexistent, and occasionally some poor bastard would be chosen to simply vanish in the night, his pitiful wails echoing along the stone corridors until mercifully ending.

Slowing at a curve, Hawkins parked the Hummer and the team looked down at the spiraling prison complex. Dark green water stretched for miles, a single low bridge connecting the mainland to a small island holding El Renacer. The stone block walls were tall and frothy with barbed wire, an enclosed dog pen ran along the base. Squat guard posts stood like medieval forts along the shoreline, the fortification bristling with machine guns and searchlights. In the center of the prison was a large stone tower resembling something from the days of Pizarro, the roof covered with loudspeakers, more searchlights, radio antennas and stubby tubes that the men recognized as 30 mm flare launchers.

Taking out a pair of field glasses, Hawkins studied what little could be seen of the interior yards from this angle. The prison was divided into quadrants, each subdivided into smaller sections. Most were empty, a couple holding only a handful of people, but one was jammed with prisoners as if they were cattle. Ominously, there was a scaffold in the far corner, a nude body of a man dangling from the end of a noose. Hawkins wasn't sure if the poor bastard was still alive, or just swaying to the fetid breeze blowing in from the swamp.

"What a hopeless hellhole," James said unexpectedly, lowering a monocular. "Never seen a place in more desperate need of high explosives in my life."

"Any chance the place is computer controlled?" McCarter asked, working the bolt on the Barrett sniper rifle. He saw the parts move, but heard nothing. The world was still just a ringing in his ears.

"Computers? Hell, no," James scoffed loudly. "The place barely has electricity!"

Slinging the massive rifle over a shoulder, McCarter grunted. So much for Kurtzman helping them on this. Normally, the hackers could block radio signals, set off fire alarms, neutralize sensors, turn off video cameras, tangle traffic by playing with the stop lights, all sorts of useful things. But not out here in the middle of a swamp, at the end of the world. Kurtzman had only been able to help them with some hard intel. Hopefully, that would prove to be enough.

Waving a hand, Manning got the man's attention, then touched two fingers to his own eyes and pointed down at the swamp, not the prison.

Nodding in understanding, McCarter licked a finger as if to test the wind, turned to merge into the thick foliage and vanished from sight.

"Okay, showtime," Hawkins said, slipping behind the wheel and starting the engine.

Following the paved road, the three men soon encountered an intersection, one direction leading directly to the swamp bridge heading for the prison. The guards openly demanded a heavy toll this time, and even more not to search the Hummer.

"This is getting expensive," Manning said as they drove away, the war chest pounds lighter.

"Good thing we're not leaving this way," James noted, removing the tape from around a HE grenade and tucking it inside a tightly rolled sleeping bag.

The bridge ended in a spacious parking lot, layers of loose gravel beaten into the ground as protection from the spring rains. Parking a safe distance from the other cars, the three men slung canvas bags over their backs and walked to the front gate. Suddenly, there came a crunching from under their shoes, and the team looked down to see the ground covered with shards of broken glass.

"Five will get you ten they keep the prisoners barefoot at all times," Manning whispered out of the side of his mouth.

Passing a fifty-five-gallon drum filled with garbage, James dropped in a foam container and kept walking, never turning even when the box slipped off the top and fell to the ground.

Several guards stood in front of the metal gate armed with Remington shotguns and holstered pistols. Two of them were smoking, one was reading an Argentine newspaper and another was eating a fried-egg sandwich. The men were neatly dressed in electric-blue uniforms, the brilliant color obviously chosen to be highly visible in the green swamp if stolen by a prisoner before trying to escape. Aside from the firearms, the guards were also equipped with a so-called rib-spreader baton, the steel ball on the end specifically designed to crush a man's chest, making it impossible for him to breathe.

Not bothering to move, the guards studied Phoenix Force with mild interest. They saw people like this five times a day.

"Buenos dias, "the corporal said, setting aside his newspaper. "Como est..."

"We're here to see a prisoner," Hawkins said, pulling out his cell phone. "His name is Kelly and here's his picture."

Accepting the cell phone, the guards studied it for several moments, passing it among themselves before giving it back.

Hawkins snapped his fingers and Manning gave the guard an envelope stuffed with cash.

Eagerly, the guard looked inside and smiled. "Oh, you mean the American!" the corporal chuckled, tucking away the bribe. "Yes, he just arrived this morning. This Kelly is very bad man, sir. A terrorist, or worse. Nobody is allowed to visit him in that part of the prison. Perhaps you can come back tomorrow. Or maybe the day after that, eh?"

This time James passed over a much fatter envelope, and the guard did not even bother to look inside, he simply stuffed it into his shirt.

"Well, perhaps you can visit for a few minutes," the corporal said, waving a hand.

Still chewing his sandwich, the guard reached through a window of the kiosk to pull a switch. There came a heavy clang of a steel bolt disengaging, and two of the other guards walked over to push the steel gate aside, the hinges squealing in protest.

Nodding in reply, Hawkins led the way inside, and the gate rumbled closed behind them to loudly lock once more.

Pulling out a pack of cigarettes, Manning pretended to find it empty and tossed it into a corner, near the hinges. So far, so good.

Crossing a wide courtyard, the Stony Man commandos were not surprised to find it a flat, featureless expanse, with nothing in sight that could be used as a makeshift weapon, or anyplace for a prisoner to hide from the deadly batons of the prison guards.

A large sign in both Spanish and English gave directions to the various sections of the prison, and Hawkins started toward the warden's office. The walls loomed high around the team, and now they could see concertina wire dangling on the inside of the prison walls to prevent people from even trying to climb over. That was smart. Ruthless, but smart. Whatever else they were, the people who ran El Renacer seemed to be experts at keeping men under control.

On their left was a public shower, the broken tiles of the floor showing a caked yellow residue that meant it was actually a debusing station. The opposite wall was pockmarked with hundreds of small chips clustered around a wooden post heavy with chains. Clearly, that was where the guards performed executions with a firing squad.

"First thing you see coming in, and the last thing you see in this world," Manning noted. "Nice folks."

Just then, a group of prisoners walked by Phoenix Force. All of them were in dirty rags, yet oddly carrying brown paper packages sealed with security tape — all of them except the fat man in the middle who carried a bottle of French champagne. He was in a brand-new prison uniform, the creases in the fabric still sharp, and faint music could be heard coming from his earbuds, an MP3 player clipped to his belt. The Stony Man commandos caught a faint whiff of cologne as the fat man waddled by, the smell nearly masking the pungent odor of rancid sweat from the other men. However, all of the men were barefoot.

"Charming. How come we haven't visited these fine folks before?" Hawkins asked softly, his hand itching to go for a weapon.

"So many assholes, so little time," James answered under his breath, tossing away another crumpled cigarette pack.

Entering the next quad, a guard checked their papers, accepted a small bribe for doing his job and let them through.

"No weapons or drugs in those packages, right?" he asked listlessly, not really concerned.

The guard barked a laugh at that. "There is no God in here, sir. This is El Renacer!"

"Yeah, so I noticed," Manning growled, dropping a wad of crumpled newspaper into a trash can.

They passed a hospital, which had a derelict appearance, and across the street, the library was closed. Peering through a dusty window, James saw that the shelves were empty and covered with cobwebs. This was simply something to show the government officials if any ever inspected the prison. Somehow, the big former Navy SEAL had a strong feeling that event had never happened in recorded history. El Renacer was completely autonomous, an independent nation inside the nation of Panama.

Another bilingual sign announced when the team had reached the warden's office, although they could have easily identified it themselves from the heavy steel bars covering the windows and the armed guards flanking the front door. These men carried AK-47 assault rifles, and had the feel of professional soldiers.

The guards looked hard at Phoenix Force, as if recognizing a credible threat, but said nothing as the well-dressed foreigners walked up the short flight of brick stairs and pushed open the ornately carved wooden doors.

Inside it was cool and crisp, an Italian air conditioner built into the wall humming softly. The floor was carpeted, and oil paintings hung on the walls depicting the major cities of the world, London, Paris, NewYork and so on.

"Yes, can I help you?" a receptionist asked politely from behind a massive rosewood desk. There was nothing on the polished piece of furniture but a romance novel in Spanish, and a laptop that was turned off at the moment. The woman was a busty peroxide blonde, wearing too much makeup and expensive silver jewelry. She reeked of cheap lilac perfume. Her flower-print dress was demure enough, covering her from wrist to throat, but then only a suicide would have dressed alluringly among this many male prisoners. However, when she moved it was painfully obvious there was nothing underneath the fabric except her. The effect was quite galvanizing.

"Mr. Daniel to see the warden," Hawkins said, giving the name of his favorite whiskey.

Touching her coiffured hair with fingernails the color of rubies, she smiled. "Do you have an appointment?"

Sweeping the money into a drawer, she reached under the desk to press a button and a large metal door set into the nearby wall slid aside with the soft hiss of working hydraulics.

"He has been expecting you, Mr. Daniel." She smiled again and went back to reading her book.

Sounds of splashing came from the next room, and the team saw a group of men and women lounging around a swimming pool built into the tiled floor. The furniture was all rattan chairs and glass-topped tables, more suitable to Miami Beach than a prison. A mixture of Spanish and American, the men wore casual business attire, while the young women were in skimpy bikinis. A bald prisoner in a clean uniform was working as a waiter, serving them iced tea seasoned with lemon slices, the glass pitcher dewy with condensed moisture.

Sitting like a king on a rattan throne was a barrel-chested man in a white linen suit, woven leather sandals on his feet. He was talking on a cell phone, and was wearing a shoulder holster, the checkered grip of a Desert Eagle just visible under his jacket. Two big men with heavily scarred faces sat in chairs just behind the warden, their jackets off to show the Uzi machine pistols hanging from their broad shoulders.

Nobody seemed to notice the men of Phoenix Force as they walked closer, but the bodyguards slightly shifted their stance to bring hands closer to the automatic weapons, "New prisoners came in today. One by the name of Kelly," Hawkins said without any preamble. "We need to talk with him."

"Ah, yes, the terrorist," the warden replied, taking a sip from his glass of tea.

The Stony Man commandos were starting to get the feeling that everybody in the prison was called a terrorist regardless of his crimes merely as a ruse to keep the prices sky-high.

"No visitors are allowed. Kelly is a very dangerous man," the warden said, setting aside the glass and wiping his damp fingers on the leg of his pants.

"You have an hour," the warden said, pulling out a pair of sunglasses and setting them into place on his face.

"There is also the possibility that we may need him to accompany us on a short business trip," Hawkins added on impulse. There was no script to this sort of transaction, it was all done on instinct.

Over the rim of the sunglasses, the warden looked up at the Texan for the first time. "And if he does not wish to go?" he asked curiously.

"Ah, business. Yes, I see." The warden chuckled. "Then the price is two hundred thousand U.S. dollars for a twenty-four-hour pass. However, it is only fifty thousand if you wish to question him here."

From deeper inside the building there came an agonizing cry of pain, the wordless scream fading away as if the victim was willingly casting his soul to the eternal wind.

"You can use our... facilities for free," the warden said, offering a smile that held no humor or warmth.

Emptying their pockets, Manning and James laid down a hundred grand, and one of the bodyguards rose to take all of the cash and drop it into a cardboard box already half full of currency.

"Have him back by noon tomorrow," the warden added, passing Hawkins a plastic card. Then he waved over the waiter for a refill. "Or else make sure that he never falls into our hands again."

Turning to leave, the three Stony Man commandos stayed in tight formation as if moving through enemy territory. Step one had been achieved, they were inside. Now all they had to do was find the man and get back out with him alive and relatively intact.

Following the signs, the team found the correct quad. The gate was cast-iron, streaked with rust but covered with coils of concertina wire. Through the bars, they could see the enclosure was packed with prisoners, hundreds, maybe thousands of them. The stink of that many unwashed bodies was so strong they could taste it in their mouths. Expecting this, James passed out sticks of chewing gum. It helped, but not much.

There was just one guard on duty, the big man armed only with a baton. Hawkins showed him the card, and the man grunted in reply. Unlocking the door, he let the team through and then locked it tight behind them.

At the metallic clang, a hundred ragged men turned their way, then went back to whatever they had been doing. There was a dice game going on in a far corner, and a fistfight inside a circle of shouting men, the exhausted contestants clearly on their last legs, the punches slow and feeble. Several men were relieving themselves against a wall, and a body lay near a sewer grating, a rat nibbling on the pale dead flesh.

Wherever they went, Phoenix Force was stared at with raw hatred for their clean clothing and shoes, along with fear from the display of guns. Open doorways lined the walls leading into small cells. There were no doors. Clouds of flies buzzed over the prisoners, somebody wept uncontrollably, and another howled at the open sky, madness bright in his darting eyes.

The Stony Man commandos did not pull their guns, but simply sidestepped the men and grabbed their arms in a judo lock. Twisting their grips, there came the sound of breaking bones, and the would-be assailants howled in pain then quickly staggered away, cradling their damaged limbs.

Wisely, the mob looked away, content that an effort had been made. Then several men broke away from the others to head after the wounded prisoners, laughing among themselves.

Watching their backs, it took the team two full circuits through the entire quad before finally locating Kelly. The mercenary from Alhambra was standing with his back to the wall, hands in his pockets, head down. His clothing was ripped in several places, and his face was covered with fresh bruises, his left eye starting to swell shut. But he was still standing, and otherwise seemed unharmed.

"Your ticket out of here," James said, spreading open his jacket to show the Beretta in his holster.

Astonished, Kelly stared at the gun as if he'd never seen one before, then scowled suspiciously. "You guys with Haymarket?" he asked warily.

"You mean, the people who tried to kill you at Alhambra?" Manning asked pointedly. "No, we're not."

"Do you now?" Kelly asked, a flicker of an Irish brogue coming to life like summer lightning. "Keep talking, gentlemen, you have my complete interest."

"If you know how to find them, you walk out with us, here and now," Hawkins said.

"Yes, a lovely man. He rather reminds me of a chain saw I once knew." Inhaling deeply, Kelly let it out slowly. "Okay, I'm in. The bastards broke our contract when they bombed the bar, so they can go fuck themselves for all I care. You want 'em? Be glad to help."

"Fair enough," Kelly said, pushing himself off the wall. "Now, I don't know their precise location, I was just the hired help, but I know some names and what country they're in. That good enough?"

Hawkins thought that over. "Maybe. Give us a taste." The Stony Man commando wanted everything immediately, but that was not how a negotiation went.

"They call themselves Genesis," Kelly said. "The man in charge is Craig Rexton, a middle-aged man who makes the dear warden look like Mother Theresa."

Reaching into his collar, James pulled the throat mike into position and quickly relayed the information to Kurtzman. A few seconds later he grunted and tucked it away again. If any of the milling prisoners noticed the brief display of technology, there was no reaction.

"According to our hairy friend, Genesis was a radical group of hippie bombers back in the sixties," James said, his calm face revealing nothing. "Their most famous attack was the bombing of a Chicago police station at — wait for it — Haymarket Square."

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner," Manning whispered, a brief smile showing.

"This way to the egress, Mr. Kelly," Hawkins said, turning to walk away at a brisk pace.

Now with Kelly protectively in the middle, the three men headed directly for the exit, eager to get away from the festering prison and back to the nice clean swamp as fast as possible. Mumbling in protest, the crowd of prisoners sullenly parted before the advance of Phoenix Force, raw envy clear on their faces. They reached the gate without incident this time. However, the lone guard was gone, replaced by the warden and a dozen men armed with machine guns.

"We appear to have a problem, Mr. Daniel," the warden said, fanning himself with a handful of American currency. "The money you gave me were only stacks of single dollar bills with a hundred on top."

"We were kind of hoping that you wouldn't notice that until we were long gone," Hawkins said, crossing his arms, his fingers now only inches away from the Beretta 93-R tucked under his jacket.

"Oh, I am sure of that," the warden said, his smile turning ugly. "Now you must consider yourselves permanent guests of El Renacer." Dropping the money onto the ground, he turned and walked away. "Hang one of them," the fat man ordered over a shoulder. "But let the rest live if they help."

"All right, gringos, we can do this hard way or easy way," a guard snarled in broken English, while working the bolt on an antiquated Thompson .45 machine gun. "Pass over those handguns, or die. Your choice. Either way is good for us."

"Well, in that case, we choose the easy way," Manning said politely, and reached into a pocket to press the radio detonator.

Instantly every garbage can along their path into the prison exploded into flames and smoke, the combination sounding louder than D-day. As the startled guards spun to see what was causing the commotion, the men of Phoenix Force drew their weapons and fired, ruthlessly mowing them down from behind.

Throwing himself against the gate, Kelly shoved a hand through to grab the Thompson, but it was too big to pass between the narrow bars.

"Leave it!" Hawkins commanded, grabbing the mercenary by an arm and hauling him away.

"We need those guns!" Kelly roared, when the lock on the gate suddenly exploded, and the iron barrier swung aside to slam against the stone wall with a ringing crash.

A split second later, there came the echoing report of a high-caliber rifle in the far distance.

Rushing through the gate, the men of Phoenix Force each took a Thompson, dropping the clips to check the loads before slamming them back into place.

"That was a hell of a shot," Kelly said, checking the balance of the obsolete weapon.

Suddenly an alarm began to howl from the top of the central tower and angry shouting came from numerous directions.

As the four men departed, the prisoners in the quad surged toward the broken gate like a human tidal wave. The first few made it through unscathed, but the others got entangled as too many of them tried to get out at the exact same time. Angry shouts became bitter curses, and soon the struggle changed into a roiling fight with feet, fists, elbows and teeth used in place of the automatic weapons lying only a few feet away.

Running along the smoky paths, Phoenix Force broke for cover as a squad of guards raised their shotguns in tight formation. But before anybody could shoot, one of the guards violently jerked to the side, hitting the next man, and he did the same, until all of them were lying on the ground, bleeding profusely.

Jumping back up, Phoenix Force was back in motion long before the sounds of the distant Barrett arrived.

Kelly fired a short burst just as a door opened. Still loading their own Thompsons, the guards inside tumbled back, blood everywhere.

Sprinting up the stairs, Hawkins grabbed a bag and shook it once to hear the clatter of spare ammunition clips, then returned, and the group took off again, passing around the ammunition as they moved.

Manning paused to slap a fire alarm, but nothing happened. He stopped and tried it again with the same result. Son of a bitch, it was a fake! Just a decoration for the local fire marshals, or whoever the hell did the safety inspections. He should have expected no less in this hellhole.

Since the time for secrecy was long over, the team brought up their throat mikes and tucked the earbuds into place. Kelly arched an eyebrow at the sight, but said nothing.

By now, the pandemonium had spread to other quads, and the guards found themselves fighting a full uprising. Prisoners were dashing around in every direction, some holding bloody knives, others trying to put on the bloody shoes of dead guards while they ran. However, more and more guards rushed to join the fray from the assorted buildings, working the arming bolts on old Browning Automatic Rifles and U.S. Army M-4 carbines.

Phoenix Force did not scoff at the older weapons. Each was a classic killing machine, and a seventeenth-century blunderbuss could blow off your head just as easily as a twenty-first-century Neostad shotgun. And dead was dead.

Jammed together, the wild mob of guards and prisoners looked like something out of a zombie movie. Ragged clothing, wild eyes, screaming and yelling, waving their weapons as if trying to win the conflict through sheer intimidation.

With no choice, the team began killing guards on sight. Kelly, however, seemed to be going out of his way to merely kneecap the men, leaving them alive and helpless to the brutal mercy of the escaping prisoners. Hawkins wanted to berate the mercenary, but after what he had seen on their brief tour of the facility, the guards were only getting what they deserved.

Just then, a Jeep rolled around a building, the guard standing in the back firing an M-60 machine gun. The shooter was clearly unfamiliar with the weapon, the machine gun jerking and jouncing as he fought to gain control. Hawkins and James sent a fiery wreath of death at the guard, then the weapon bent in two and flew away from the vehicle, taking the guard's left hand along with it for the ride. In openmouthed horror, he stared at the ragged end of his wrist, blood pumping out as the deadly Barrett announced its presence one more time.

Unexpectedly, the siren on top of the central tower went silent, and Hawkins glanced up to see the machine tumble over the edge to plummet out of sight. More sharpshooting from McCarter. If Manning wasn't careful, he'd lose his sniping job! However, the entire prison was already in total chaos. The smell of blood seemed to trigger some sort of primordial reaction from both sides, like starving animals released in a butcher's shop. They were gorging themselves on death.

Quickly, the big Texan realized that if there were five thousand prisoners, and maybe half that many guards, the combined group could take any punishment that the Stony Man commandos could dish out, and still win when the team simply ran out of bullets.

Suddenly a woman's scream cut through the noise like a laser, and Phoenix Force saw the receptionist running toward them, her dress ripped off the shoulder, five grinning prisoners in lustful pursuit. Kelly and Hawkins fired in unison, killing the men from behind, and the receptionist managed to get inside the hospital and loudly lock the door.

Reloading the Thompson, Hawkins gave no reply, his thoughts his own, but James nodded in agreement and Manning nudged the man with an elbow.

At the next gate the guards were trying to assemble a barricade of tables and chairs taken from the neighboring buildings. Kneeling in a firing line, Phoenix Force laid down a tight barrage of .45 rounds, forcing the guards closer to the trash can. Manning waited until the last second, then hit the radio detonator again. The small wad of C-4 inside the crumpled newspaper exploded, and the rusty steel drum was instantly peppered with scores of tiny holes from the halo of stainless-steel buckshot. Literally torn to pieces, the burbling guards fell in crimson destruction, and the four men dashed through the gate, pausing only for a second to lock it tight behind them.

Kelly looked at the man, then realized he was telling the truth. Okay, no way in hell these were other mercenaries. Just who were these guys, anyway?

Through the turmoil, the Barrett sounded again a fast three times, but the results were unseen to the men on the ground. However, they had complete trust in McCarter and knew that he was not shooting randomly into the crowd.

Reaching the front gate, the team took cover along the wall, slapping fresh clips into the hot receivers of their stolen weapons. That was when they noticed the warden sitting against the wall, a gaping hole in his chest, his lifeblood splashed across the pockmarked wall where he had sent so many others to their death. Only a few yards away was a big guard armed with a XM-18 portable minigun. The multiple barrels were dented, loose piles of long .223 cartridges scattered on the ground, and there was a yawning hole in the battery that powered the electric weapon, the crater continuing on through the guard and out his other side.

"They're somewhere in flicking Patagonia!" Kelly said, trying not to look the other man directly in the face.

It took only a heartbeat for Hawkins to understand. The mercenary felt that he was in their debt, and was paying them back right now in case he fell in battle. His grudging respect for the merc increased.

Different types of machine guns were chattering from numerous locations in the prison, and the yelling of the prisoners was a constant roar. Dense clouds of smoke started to mix with the chemical smoke bombs, the clouds carrying a strong smell of wood. El Renacer was on fire.

"Time to leave," Hawkins said, standing. The man pointed at the front door of the prison, then splayed his fingers wide and folded each one down in turn. As he reached the thumb something appeared out of the distance, streaking down from the hills, moving almost too fast to see, the Carl Gustav antifortification rocket zeroing on the radio transmitter hidden in the crumpled cigarette pack.

The detonation rocked the prison, and the doors were blown off their hinges to sail away as if they weighed nothing. One of the doors landed in the parking lot, crushing several vehicles that immediately burst into flames.

Charging through the ragged opening, the team sprayed the stunned guards in the kiosk with their Thompsons, already making alternate plans in case the Hummer had been destroyed. Still reeling from the brutal concussion of the stentorian blast, the guards blindly shot their guns, one of them accidentally killing another. Kelly stopped shooting at them after that, then grunted as a ricochet grazed his neck. With a curse, the mercenary raked the guards with the Thompson until the clip was exhausted and they were all down, no longer interested in the trials and tribulations of the mortal world.

"Get some shoes!" Hawkins commanded, looking at the sparkling field of glass ahead of them.

Just then, there came the steady beat of a helicopter, and something large rose from within the smoky prison, orange flames licking at its belly.

"No time, brother!" Kelly snarled, and ran across the glass, leaving behind bloody footsteps after only a few yards.

The mercenary never slowed for an instant, but upon reaching the parking lot, he stumbled and nearly fell, the pain clearly more than he could manage. Without pause, Hawkins gave his Thompson to Manning, then grabbed the mercenary in a fireman's carry, and started through the rows of parked cars and trucks.

Bracing the two machine guns, Manning fired them both into the smoke above the prison, hoping for a lucky strike.

Sprinting ahead, James was relieved to see that their vehicle was undamaged, although the stink of tear gas was noticeable, and the corporal from before was kneeling on the asphalt puking out his guts. The coward had left his post and tried to get away. It might have worked, too, but he had unfortunately chosen the wrong vehicle to hijack.

Setting Kelly in the back, Hawkins went to the camping supplies and yanked out an MP-5 machine gun. He tossed it to James behind the wheel, then extracted his own weapon, plus a LAW rocket.

"Give me... a gun," Kelly panted, his face deathly pale, the blood streaming from his tattered feet. "N-not going b-back alive."

"Enjoy," Manning said, thrusting a Thompson at the sweaty man, then retrieving his MP-5 from a bedroll, and another radio detonator from inside a folded tent.

Clutching the machine gun as if drawing strength from the steel and wood, Kelly clumsily worked the arming bolt, then slumped unconscious, the weapon falling to the floorboards.

Deactivating the antiintruder systems, James started the engine and shifted into gear. With squealing tires, he raced directly for the prison, then turned sharply just before hitting the crumpled door. Just then, there came the sound of a machine gun from above, and a line of ricochets chewed across the pavement, missing them by less than a yard.

Squinting upward, Hawkins saw a Bell helicopter come out of the smoke above the prison. It was the recon model, seemingly half made out of glass, the bubble windshield was so huge. Stilettos of flame stabbed down from the passenger seat and Hawkins recognized a Stoner weapons system. The gun was far from state-of-the-art, but deadly nonetheless.

Holding on to the safety harness with one hand, Hawkins leaned dangerously out of the speeding Hummer and sprayed the MP-5 in a sideways figure-eight pattern. The man with the Stoner kept firing, spent brass falling like golden rain. Then the pilot jerked back on the stick, his arm going limp, a red stain spreading across the sleeve.

Out of control, the bubble chopper spun around and around, Hawkins and Manning hammering the craft with copper-jacketed 9 mm bullets. Suddenly regaining control, the pilot banked away from the Hummer, but the gunner continued shooting, bracing the big Stoner in a two-handed grip.

Reaching the bridge, James straightened and poured on the power, rapidly accelerating, the meters on the dashboard climbing toward the red zone. At the far end of the bridge, the guards had closed the wooden gate and taken refuge inside a brick kiosk, the muzzle-flashes of their automatic weapons clearly visible.

Crouching behind the wheel, James did not dare let go to try to shoot back. This next part was going to take split-second timing.

Suddenly a line of holes stitched across the roof of the Hummer, letting in tiny shafts of light.

"The son of a bitch has finally gotten our range!" Hawkins growled just as something hard hit the front window, sending out a spiderweb of hair-thin cracks across the glass.

"Them, too!" James shouted, trying to urge even more speed out of the roaring engines.

Unexpectedly, they heard the Barrett, but nothing seemed to happen. The Hummer was halfway across the bridge when the sniper rifle spoke once more, but this time the side of the brick kiosk spurted dust, and the guards inside fell over, sticky red fluid coating the observation window.

Glancing back at the prison, Manning saw several of the other cars in the parking lot begin to move. He didn't know if it was guards coming to join the fight, or prisoners trying to escape, but neither of those was good news. Then he saw a Portuguese Chaimite lumber into view. The man could only guess that the APC had to have been the warden's private transport, only now somebody else had the machine. This was real trouble. The armored personnel carrier was faster than the Hummer, had a 12.7 mm cannon that could core them like a ripe apple and was covered with enough armor to resist even the Carl Gustav. The Chaimite APC could even travel through the swamp, almost as fast as the Hummer could traverse a dirt road. The hard fact of the matter was that Phoenix Force had nothing that could stop the sleek Portuguese war machine.

"Brace yourselves!" Hawkins shouted. Grabbing a ballistic blanket from the back, he threw it over the unconscious mercenary.

Still firing the MP-5, Manning saw a spiraling dart come out of the hills, another gift from the versatile Carl Gustav. The deadly little missile easily locked on to the blazing hot engines of the helicopter, slamming into the cowling and nearly coming out the other side before detonating. In a thunderclap, the helicopter vanished from the sky, replaced by a writhing fireball, horrible pieces of men and machinery tumbling to splash into the watery swamp.

"The chopper is down!" Hawkins announced just as the 12.7 mm cannon on the Chaimite belched smoke and a round whistled past the Hummer.

"What was that?" James demanded, his hands knuckle-white on the steering wheel, unable to look away from the flashing bridge. There were more guards coming out of the swamp, and one of them was carrying an M-60 machine gun, but he seemed to be having trouble getting the belt of linked brass to feed into the receiver.

"Don't worry about it," Manning said, lifting the radio detonator into view. Something visibly ricocheted off the APC, closely followed by the sound of the Barrett.

Leaning out of the Hummer once more, Hawkins sent a full clip at the guards ahead of them. One man fell, clutching his face, but the other hit the dirt and started shooting back with the M-60, the muzzle-flashes heralding an outgoing storm of tracers that swung unerringly toward the Hummer. Then the APC spoke in reply, a section of the wooden railing along the bridge exploding into a million pieces.

"Gary, we're almost out of road," James said in forced calm as a headlight shattered and the sideview mirror was destroyed. The Portuguese cannon spoke again, the shell coming frighteningly close to the Hummer.

"Just a few seconds more..." Manning said, licking dry lips. Impossibly, time seemed to stretch, seconds taking hours, as he anxiously watched the APC finally roll onto the bridge. Instantly he squeezed the detonator.

There was a microsecond pause, and then the entire span of bridge behind the Hummer vanished, reduced to splinters from the C-4 satchel charges the team had dropped along their way into the prison. Caught squarely in the blast, the APC flipped high into the air and came down hard, impacting sideways in the watery swamp with a huge dirty splash. As a flood of red blood seeped out the cracks, alligators converged on the machine, trying to find some way inside to reach the fresh meat.

Shoved forward by the titanic shock wave, James nearly lost control of the Hummer. Careening off the wooden railing, he almost crashed through, but managed to ride out the deafening concussion and flash past the last guard, missing him by the thickness of a prayer.

Reaching the gravel road, James deliberately fishtailed the vehicle to knock down the welcome sign for the prison, then fromped on the accelerator and raced away, taking a curve on only two wheels before disappearing from sight.

Chapter Sixteen

Streaking across the hazy blue sky, the B-52 heavy bomber darted from cloud to cloud as it crossed central Europe heading toward Austria. While the aircraft cruised at the top speed of 750 miles per hour, conversation was impossible for the crew inside the rumbling airplane, massive Pratt & Witney TF-33 engines seeming to make more noise than a prolonged earthquake.

On the initial trials, the Genesis crew had joked they would have no need to ever whip eggs for breakfast because the yokes would be out of the shells already scrambled. It was an exaggeration, of course, but not by much. The USAF pilots flying cold war patrols had said pretty much the same thing. The B-52 heavy bomber was a miracle of engineering, she could take a tremendous pounding and still get the crew safely home, but comfortable it was not, by any definition of the word.

"Captain, we have trouble," Joshua Robbs said into the throat mike of his insulated helmet, both hands checking the rows of dials filling the control board set above the copilot seat.

The inside hull of the huge craft was draped with thick ballistic cloth, along with slabs of lightweight ceramic armor, both as protection from flak and to help keep out the bitter cold. The breath of the crew visibly fogged, and there was a small dehumidifier near every piece of electronic equipment to help ensure it did not short circuit from the unwanted condensation.

"What is it, Robby?" Lenka Whitehorn asked, glancing briefly sideways. The young man was frowning hard in concentration, his normally pleasant face dark and unsmiling.

On the ground below, farms and fields, lakes and mountains flashed by in a steady progression, the beautiful landscape of eastern Switzerland reduced to only a rolling blur of colors from the sheer height of the war-craft. But that was absolutely vital. At the moment, the Detroit was flying along the Corridor, the main airway across Europe. They were surrounded by other planes in every direction, safely cocooned in a cloud of jet-planes thundering across the sky like cars on a highway.

"We're leaking fuel bad," Robbs announced, feverishly using a pencil to work out mathematical equations on a clipboard. "We must have picked up some shrapnel back there over Brussels."

"Well, it's no wonder considering how much shit they shot at us," Naomi Flaggan said from the navigation console. The woman was ensconced in maps and charts, two different radar screens glowing and bleeping steadily, the tones telling her more than sight ever could.

"Yeah, they threw the kitchen sink at us, that's for damn sure," Robbs agreed. "Unfortunately, if any other plane spots us leaking fuel, and doesn't hear us squealing for help, the jig is up, brothers."

"Any chance of refueling while flying?" Flaggan asked hopefully. A wooden peace sign hung from a leather thong around her throat, the medallion dangling between her breasts, which swayed freely with every motion of the bomber.

"Not in the middle of the Corridor," Robbs replied curtly, starting to reach for the levers to increase their speed, but pulling his hand back at the last moment.

"It's a pity Oughton couldn't have gotten a KC-10 for midair refueling." Robbs sighed.

"Yeah, that wouldn't have been suspicious." Flaggan snorted. "A KC-10 riding a 707. Might as well paint a bull's-eye on our ass."

"All right, turn off the main pumps to those tanks, and send somebody to seal the leak," Whitehorn directed. "We'll fly on what there is in the auxiliary tanks for a while."

"That only gives us a few minutes at most," Robbs countered, tapping the clipboard. "We're down to dust and good wishes in the mains."

"Then the mechanic better hustle," Whitehorn snapped, flipping a row of switches. "Because there is no way we could reach the refueling depot in Yugoslavia in time."

As Robbs began relaying the commands into his microphone, there came a series of sharp tones from the Doppler radar, and Flaggan bent over the glowing screen to study the new blips very carefully.

"We have incoming," the terrorist announced, adjusting the gain on the Doppler. "Five... no, six jetfighters moving along the Corridor at different heights and speeds." She looked up. "They're doing visual checks!"

"What kind of planes?" Whitehorn demanded, immediately arming the Sting and Skyflash air-to-air missiles in the hold. The Detroit was down to the bottom of munitions, just a few hundred iron bombs remaining to destroy the depot after they refueled. However, there was always a stash of missiles kept in reserve to defend the bomber. "We should be able to handle a couple of old Swiss MiGs, or Austrian F-14 Tomcats."

Damn it, that had to be NATO on the hunt for some revenge! "Okay, we have no choice," Whitehorn declared, preparing the defenses of the plane. "Bombardier, prepare to drop everything in the hold!"

"You heard me, Jefferson! Drop everything!" the captain growled, throwing rows of switches in a fast sequence.

A faint tremor shook the bomber as the bay doors fell open, and out rained their complement of weaponry. Almost instantly, the Eurofighters curved away from the other planes and headed directly for the big B-52.

"They've found us," Flaggan announced in forced calm. "They have radar lock... What the hell?"

Suddenly there were a dozen more objects streaking away from the bomber on the radar screen. Mixed in among the hail of tumbling iron bombs, the ATAS missiles locked on to the incoming jetfighters and streaked away at Mach speed. Caught off guard by the bizarre ambush, the NATO pilots tried to switch from the hunter to the hunted, angling their jets sharply away while throwing out chaff and flares.

A dozen missiles were diverted and destroyed, but the rest slammed into the exposed bellies of the Eurofighters. The multimillion-dollar jets exploded across the sky like fireworks, and only a single parachute appeared from an escaping pilot. However, the rear gunner in the B-52 cut loose with a rapidfire 20 mm cannon, and soon there was only a tattered parachute fluttering toward the distant ground, the NATO pilot no longer visible.

Instantly, the radio erupted into chatter from every plane above the visible horizon.

"One... three... six — that's it, Lenka!" Flaggan cried out in delight. "We got them all!"

"Good. Joshua, how is the fuel now?" Whitehorn asked, wiping her mouth on the back of a glove. The adrenaline rush of combat was better than sex.

"With the weight loss... yes, we now have the flight time to reach the refueling depot in north Yugoslavia," Robbs stated, letting his shoulders relax. "Damn, that was clever. I never saw that trick coming."

"Which is why we're going to win," Captain Whitehorn said confidently, changing the ident on the bomber, then shifting altitude and direction to effortlessly merge with the excited civilians once more and vanish into the clouds.

On the concrete wall, a flashing red light rapidly spun around, a siren hidden behind the ceiling howling mercilessly loudly.

"Shut that damn thing off!" Craig Rexton bellowed over the cacophony, with a curt hand gesture.

A technician at the control board hurriedly threw some switches and a blessed silence returned to the command bunker. In spite of the ten-foot-thick dome, the arctic wind could now be faintly heard howling outside.

"Okay, what the fuck happened?" Rexton demanded, studying the displays and screens.

"We lost the Albatross and every man on board," the image of Professor Oughton said from a monitor set kitty-corner to the room, a small Web cam on top blinking a red light to show that it was live.

"The Albatross is... was the DC-3 we used for ferrying munitions from Delacort."

"Was it shot down in flight?" Rexton demanded, taking a chair at the control board.

"No, sir. It was attacked on the ground at Double G... ah, that is, Tuskegee Airfield in Alabama."

"Did that fool Delacort betray us?" Rexton asked in a hoarse whisper, his face slowly turning into a feral rictus of barely controlled fury.

"No, sir," Alyssa Dean reported from her station. "Delacort is dead, found at his warehouse by the Columbus PD along with fifty of his men."

Pensively, Rexton scowled at that. Then this wasn't a takeover bid from his employees. "Were there any survivors?" he asked brusquely, a hand unconsciously going to the Glock 18 holstered on his belt.

Moving gently to the motion of the ore ship, Oughton nodded vigorously. "To the ground, Craig. The thermite was ignited within sixty seconds of discovery."

"Absolutely!" the professor declared, the word visible in the cold air of the distant computer room. "Even if the FBI or Homeland got their hands on the chips in the radio, there's not a hacker alive who could crack my codes! I used a random number generator of 10 million/million per second to invoke a key created on a base 7..."

"Spare me the details, Dizzy," Rexton snapped in annoyance. "Fine, you did your job. Our lines of communication are still secure?"

"More importantly, do we have any idea who attacked the plane?" Rexton asked. "Was it the FBI? The CIA? Or was it those damn skinhead idiots that Delacort sometimes used as muscle?"

"Impossible," Dean stated firmly. "The Hammerskins love the man. They would never turn on a friend."

"You attribute a sense of honor to the Nazis?" a technician asked incredulously, looking up from his station.

The tiny blond woman shrugged. "In their own way, yes, sir. It's like the mercenaries we use in Mexico. Everybody thinks a merc can be bought away from a client for a higher price, but if that were true..."

"Then nobody would hire them in the first place," Rexton finished impatiently. "Yes, yes, I've heard this rhetoric before. Even supposing it is true..."

"Fine! Even supposing it was true, our parents lost many friends to the police, and they never gave up!" Rexton continued doggedly. "All right, we have lost personnel. That is regrettable, but not unexpected. We simply have to soldier on and fight the good fight. We're trying to save the human race from itself. Death was an inevitable byproduct."

Standing, the man glanced at the picture on a nearby wall of the original Genesis on that cold Michigan campus. Most of the people in the photograph did not live out the year, and many of the others went to prison. They were killed, and captured, but they never surrendered.

Nor will we, Rexton added privately. Down in Australia, far out in the Salt Lake Desert where there was nothing in any direction for a thousand miles, Genesis had long ago established a fallback redoubt. The underground fortress was stocked with food, water, medicine, fuel, books and weapons. Lots of weapons. Everything needed for the freedom fighters to stay alive for ten years. When the radioactive death shroud spread across the world, the last place it would reach was Australia, and it was the first place where a new civilization would be born.

"As of this moment, I'm putting both bases on full alert," Rexton commanded. "No one can leave, or enter, until further notice. Anybody attempting to do so is to be terminated on the spot." When nobody spoke, the man added, "And prepare the Dragons."

Nervously, the technicians in both control rooms exchanged anxious looks, then slowly got to work on their consoles, unlocking new sections and allowing the complex controls to slowly warm and brighten to full power.

Dragons was code for their atomic bombs. Over the long years, Genesis had been able to make three crude nuclear weapons and a dozen dirty bombs at the cost of millions of dollars and ten men who willingly died of radiation poisoning to arm the group with the ultimate weapon. They knew the bombs weren't very powerful. The blasts would barely achieve a quarter-kiloton yield, just enough to level six city blocks. However, the eggs of the Dragon were extremely dirty, and the radioactive fallout would spread for miles, making the death toll reach into the millions if used in the center of a major city like New York, Paris or London. But those were acceptable numbers; millions would die so that billions might live.

"What is the target, sir?" Dean asked tersely, rubbing her hands along the smooth surface of the console on either side of the keyboard.

"The island of Manhattan, the White House and Haymarket II," Rexton said simply.

"God forgive us," Dr. Barry muttered, fighting a shiver. "This will cause a tidal wave of terrorism across the globe!"

"Exactly," Rexton agreed coldly. "Forcing the nations of the world to declare peace, or die."

"And what do we do after that, sir?" Dean asked, already starting to type instructions to the captains of the three B-52 bombers: Greenwich, Detroit and Berkeley.

Deliberately not responding, Rexton turned and walked from the room, the armored door closing behind him with the hard clang of steel on steel.

Chapter Seventeen

The atmosphere of the Computer Room was tense, the members of the cybernetic team hurriedly typing on their keyboards.

Across the room, on the main wall screen, aerial photographs of the great Patagonia Desert flashed by at lightning speed.

Leaning back in his chair, Akira Tokaido seemed asleep, only the motion of his hands across the keyboard showing that he was hard at work patrolling the Internet for any sign of their elusive enemy.

Minutes passed with nobody speaking, the clock ticking, the keyboards softly tapping, then the shots of the Patagonia Desert abruptly stopped.

"Damn it!" Carmen Delahunt raged from inside her VR helmet. "Both of the NSA and NASA satellite photos of South America have been tampered with by an expert. A lot of them are merely the same picture repeated over and over!"

"Then have the orbiters do another pass!" Price commanded curtly. "Maximum resolution!"

"We can't," Delahunt replied, sliding off the helmet. Her normally gloriously hair was plastered flat with sweat, and there were rings around her eyes. "The satellites aren't scheduled to return until next year, and if we shift their flight paths..."

"Genesis will notice, and leave long before we can find them," Price growled angrily, releasing her hold on the phone. "Okay, any other spy satellites in the area that we can beg, borrow or steal? Japan or Brazil, maybe Australia?"

Putting the VR helmet back on, the woman shrugged. "None that I am aware of. But then, who keeps a multimillion-dollar piece of advanced electronics over the most empty piece of real estate in the world? There aren't even any cellular phone comm sats in the area!"

"Meaning that there is no way to find Genesis's base from orbit?" Price demanded, releasing her hold on the phone. "David was right. His team will have to find the Airwolves by doing a hard recon on the ground."

"Why can't they just fly over?" Huntington Wethers asked, then stopped. "Because Genesis would be expecting that and blow anything coming their way out of the sky."

"Along with several dummy bases to confuse the hunt," Price added. "That is what I would do. No, a ground recon is the only way to be sure."

"Months," Price corrected grimly, running stiff fingers through her long hair. "The Patagonia Desert is larger than the Sahara and the Mojave combined! But there's no other choice. Everything depends upon Phoenix Force."

"At least the terrorists have a name now, Genesis, and we have a vague idea where the terrorists are located," Kurtzman added, trying to stay positive. "That's a lot more than we had five minutes ago!"

"Not by much," Delahunt countered, hunching over her console and throwing herself into the swirling electronic chaos of the virtual world once more.

Grudgingly, Price had to agree. As soon as the real identity of the Airwolves had been uncovered, she had accessed their FBI file in her office. Genesis were the original homegrown American terrorists, radicals who bombed office buildings and Army recruitment centers to try and to stop the Vietnam War. What one had to do with the other, the woman had no idea whatsoever, but it had been another time, a different America. Then Genesis achieved national attention by destroying a small police station at Haymarket Square in Chicago. After that, the FBI had put them on the Most Wanted list, and assigned a special task force to track them down at any cost.

Rampaging from East Coast to West Coast, Genesis had been diligent in its efforts, claiming the most noble of goals while killing innocent civilians until they were captured. The bombers spent time in jail, and were eventually released to vanish overnight, along with all of the money they had liberated from a score of banks.

Now it seemed that the children of Genesis had returned, richer and more deadly than their parents had ever been, this time attempting to bomb the whole planet into submission to achieve some unknown result. Maybe they were trying to achieve world peace through mass murder. Who could understand the logic of lunatics? However, it seemed clear that Genesis was back in a big way, and unless they were stopped soon, this time the death toll would be astronomical.

"Einstein to Rock House," the voice of Hermann Schwarz said over the device. "Upload is complete. Did you receive the scrambled eggs?"

"Rock House to Einstein, this is Wheels," Kurtzman said into a VOX microphone, his large hands playing across the keyboard. "Confirm, we have the eggs." On the screen of the console, rows of code retrieved from the broken chips began to flash by with ever-increasing speed.

"Good luck making an omelet," Schwarz added tersely. "This is quantum-level cooking. Way beyond the capabilities of my little stovetop."

"Understood, Einstein. We'll let you know the moment breakfast is ready," Kurtzman grunted as a subprogram found a virus hidden among the garbled lines of code, and automatically isolated it, then destroyed the secret invader.

"Wheels, much obliged. Einstein out," Schwarz said, and the speaker went silent.

"Hmm, what an interesting configuration," Huntington Wethers said, slaving his console to Kurtzman's, and reviewing the data streams. "Looks like a 10 million code using a base seven algorithm. The terrorists must have a very powerful supercomputer, a Cray, or something better, maybe an IBM Blue Gene."

"Let's see," the professor mumbled around his old briarwood, and starting to access several different programs.

Just then, new symbols blinked into existence on the world map showing the destruction of a full wing of Eurofighters over the Swiss Alps, and bizarrely an abandoned military base formerly called the Presidio near San Francisco seemed to have been leveled by a bombing run.

"Why did they hit that?" Wethers asked. "The Presidio has been closed for years."

"Maybe they don't know that," Kurtzman said, working steadily. "Or it could be symbolic."

"No, he's right," Price said, warming to the notion. "The original Genesis got its ass kicked at the Presidio, so I guess this new version wanted to finally settle the score."

"I guess that would mean the one place on Earth they won't bomb is Haymarket Square," Kurtzman said, "because that was the location of their biggest victory, if you want to call it that."

Price started to agree when she realized the full import of what the man had just said. Rushing to the wall phone once more, she dialed for a secure line.

"Hal? Barbara here," she said swiftly. "Contact FEMA and the NYPD to start the immediate evacuation of Greenwich Village. Genesis may bomb the area as revenge for when the FBI captured their... oh... yes, I see." With a face of stone, the woman replaced the receiver. "The area is on fire. They hit it only minutes ago."

Wordlessly, Kurtzman flipped some switches on his console and the left side of the triptych wall screen changed into a local Manhattan cable news show. A young reporter was talking into a microphone, while behind her entire buildings were ablaze, the streets and sidewalks covered with wreckage, blast craters and dozens of filled body bags.

For a long time the grim Stony Man team said nothing, each person locked into his or her own dark thoughts. In spite of their technology and training, the Farm was always a few minutes behind Genesis, and civilians kept dying. They had to outthink the bastards.

"Alert," Tokaido said. "I just caught a T-burst from Haymarket to somebody called Detroit."

The young man frowned. "Yes and no. Unfortunately, it consisted of just three words — Dragons are go."

"Which could mean anything, or nothing," Kurtzman growled unhappily. "Genesis has been flooding the Internet with meaningless babble to hide their real messages."

"Damn!" Her mind racing with possibilities, the woman tried to extract some tiny kernel of information from the three words. Dragons are go. Were the Airwolves called dragons, or was that the CIA, or even Stony Man itself? China was often called the Sleeping Dragon. Could this whole thing have been some kind of a complex plan to attack the communists? There was no way of ever telling for sure, but deep down in her gut the former FBI agent was starting to get a very bad feeling about this innocent little message.

"Now I have something," Wethers announced calmly, massaging his hands. "The chips held no discernible messages, but there were tiny pieces of the fake ident signals assigned to each stolen satellite that it passed through."

"Were you able to establish an event chain?" Kurtzman asked, feeling a rush of adrenaline.

"Yes. The origin of the last transmission that triggered the self-destruct charges in the DC-3 was 45 degrees north, 84 degrees west."

"Aaron, bring up a map!" Price demanded, walking closer to the big wall screen as if physically approaching the enemy. "Give me a location! Show me where the goddamn bastards are!"

* * *

Powerful searchlights swept through the swirling banks of fog as the U. S. Coast Guard cutter Dolly Madison knifed along the gentle swells. Sonar was clean, aside from a massive forest of kelp under the water, but radar had spotted the target the moment the cutter came over the horizon.

Unfortunately, their instructions from the White House had been crystal clear, with no room left for inventive maneuvering or deliberate misinterpretation. The Dolly Madison was to get as close as possible to the target, and engage them in conversation for five minutes. No more, no less. Then they were to leave until over the horizon once more, and hold their position until ordered otherwise.

That was bad enough, but even worse was the condition that under no set of circumstances was there to be any use of force. Even if fired upon, crewmen killed, and in the process of sinking, the Coast Guard cutter was to do nothing in retaliation, just retreat. Clearly, the bigwigs in D.C. had decided that whatever was on the target was more important than the Dolly Madison and her crew of thirty-seven. The captain did not like it, and the crew hated it. The Dolly was more than just a rescue-and-surveillance vessel. She regularly tangled with smugglers and drug dealers, and the ship was heavily armed with a pod of Hellfire rockets, a 16 mm deck gun, a pair of 25 mm Bofor Autocannons, and enough Remington .50-caliber heavy machine guns to sink Circle Island if necessary. But orders were orders.

A dark shape loomed ahead of the cutter, the captain ordered the engines to slow the vessel until it gradually halted fifty feet away from the much larger ore carrier, the Pittsburgh.

Already standing on the forward deck, a lowly boson raised a loudspeaker and thumbed it alive. "Ahoy the Pittsburgh!" the burly man boomed across the water. "Ahoy!"

There came the sound of movement on the unseen deck of the taller boat, then a spotlight crashed into operation, silhouetting a group of men along the port side.

"Ahoy yourself!" William Rudd shouted back through cupped hands. "What's the damn problem... oh! Well, what can I do for you CeeGees?"

Standing behind the bulletproof windows of the bridge, the captain of the Dolly Madison grunted at that pronouncement. CeeGee was Canadian slang for the American Coast Guard. The phrase jibed with the homeport of the boat — although named the Pittsburgh, the ore carrier was registered out of Nova Scotia.

"Give the word, skipper, and I can have a boarding party on that junker in sixty seconds flat," the executive officer muttered, a hand resting on the Colt .45 pistol holstered at his hip. An old-fashioned lanyard connected the weapon to his belt in case it was dropped overboard.

"At ease, sailor," the captain drawled. "We have to play this by the book. Nice and easy."

"Well, accidents happen," the captain whispered, moving his hand slightly closer to the alarm button so tantalizingly close.

Out on the deck, the boson swayed slightly to the motion of the waves as a couple more sailors came out of the hold to openly gawk and stare at the colossal vessel.

"How did you ever get that monster through the locks?" a woman asked, her ponytail moving in the wind.

"Slowly!" Rudd replied with a laugh. "Look, if that's why you're here, to check our tonnage or something..."

"No, we're looking for a boatload of fools," the boson interrupted, trading on the standard disdain of all professional sailors toward weekend amateurs. "Have you seen anything of some drunk yahoos in a fancy-ass cabin cruiser? White with red stripes, thirty feet, name of Sister Sue? The owners have been missing for several days."

"Sorry, nobody out here but us and the fish," Rudd replied with a straight face.

Crouching on the rusty deck, out of sight below the gunwale, five of his crew were preparing weapons in case of trouble.

"So, been catching anything?" the boson asked, a hint of suspicion in his voice. "Sturgeon, maybe?" He could not act out of character. Everything must seem perfectly normal. It was the unofficial rule of the Coast Guard to consider every ship out of the Great Lakes as potential criminal until proven otherwise. Nine times out of ten, they were right.

Grinning, Rudd threw his arms wide. "Sturgeon are too small! We're secretly Icelandic whalers! You got us, Officer! We surrender!"

Both of the crews had a laugh at that. The largest fish in the Great Lakes was the sturgeon, some of which did reach more than fifteen feet long. There were always rumors of fresh water whales in the lakes, but somehow, they were only seen by people thoroughly drunk.

"Catch all the whales you want, and with my blessings!" the boson said with a chuckle, giving no visible sign that he heard the three distinct splashes from the far side of the cutter. The fish were in the soup. Now all he had to do was to stall for two more minutes. "Just no sturgeon, savvy?"

"Yes, sir, no sturgeon," Rudd repeated. "Look, if you wanna come on board and check..." He undid the latch on the gate and swung back a section of the gunwale. The armed terrorists stayed in the shadows, their hands tightening on the black-market weapons.

"No need, this is anything but a fishing boat," the boson noted pragmatically. "So what are you folks doing all the way out here?"

"Salvage," Rudd replied, jerking a thumb at the array of cranes looming above, the top of them lost in the cottony fog. "There are a lot of boats on the bottom with all sorts of goodies in their holds, you know."

"Treasure hunters, in the Great lakes?" The boson laughed in frank amusement. "Find anything yet?"

"Well, watch out for the lost weekenders. Call us if they show, and try not to give them too much crap for getting lost."

"No promises!" Rudd laughed, snapping off a two-finger salute. "Clear sailing, Chief!"

Politely, the boson returned the gesture as the Dolly Madison revved her engines and started to pull away. Soon the cutter was gone in the fog, only the sound of her engines remaining for a long time before finally fading into the distance.

"That was close," a man growled, easing his grip on the firing handle of the bulky XM-214. The battery light blinked from green to red as the safeties automatically engaged.

"No, not really," Rudd said, flexing his big hands. "We killed enough fishermen that it was only a matter of time before somebody came looking."

"Damn good thing it was the CeeGees," the woman said, resting the LAW rocket launcher on a shoulder. "Those RCMP bastards would have checked the boat for contraband anyway."

Yes, the RCMP would have tried to search the entire boat, Rudd noted. Had the CeeGees deliberately let them off easy? Was this some sort of a trick? Scowling, the terrorist replayed the brief conversation in his mind, but could find nothing out of the ordinary. With a shrug, Rudd accepted the arrival of the Coast Guard as merely coincidence, and started down into the hold to report in detail to the professor.

* * *

AT THE FAR END of the mammoth vessel, Able Team slowly eased over the gunwale and gently lowered themselves to the metal deck trying not to make any noise. Wearing dead black scuba suits and combat sneakers, the Stony Man commandos let themselves drip for a minute as they checked their small assortment of weapons and equipment. Their usual weapons had to be left behind this time as swimming against the prop wash of the ore carrier would have been tough enough without the added weight of an M-16 or Atchisson. However, they felt sure that replacements of some kind would be available from the crew.

Drawing silenced pistols, the team scanned the boat with night-vision goggles. Satisfied that they were alone, the men tossed the magnetic climbing gloves overboard, the tiny splashes swallowed by the night.

Starting forward, they stopped almost immediately upon seeing a large man sitting on a coil of rope and smoking a cigarette. There was a Kalashnikov assault rifle slung across his back, and he was wearing a web harness strapped to his chest, grenades hanging off the straps, with a pair of holstered pistols at his sides. The handle of a knife jutted from his boot, and as he moved his legs to a more comfortable position a second knife could be seen in the other boot.

Instantly the team classified him as a rank amateur. It was a classic rooky mistake to carry too many weapons. A split second of indecision trying to decide which to grab next often meant the difference between life and death.

Moving to the side, Lyons made a soft noise, and as the guard turned Blancanales shot him with a pneumatic dart. With a grunt, the large man slapped at the dart sticking out of the side of this throat, but the noise changed into a groan and he began to slump. Moving fast, Schwarz caught the unconscious man before he hit the deck and eased him gently down. The team did not know for certain that this vessel was operated by terrorists yet, so wanted to keep the bloodshed to an absolute minimum. And even if this was one of their bases, or the main base for that matter, they still desperately needed to find the supercomputer that enabled the Airwolves to disappear, along with the people in charge to make sure it never happened again. This mission had to be a clean sweep, every base hit at the exact same time.

Spotting the dropped cigarette, Blancanales scooped it up and tossed it overboard.

Assuming combat formation, Able Team started forward once more, moving from shadow to shadow, trying to always stay as low as possible. The lake waves lapped gently against the steel hull, chains softly rattled, and there came the murmur of conversation from an air vent, along with the smell of onions and frying fish.

A large canvas mountain filled the deck in front of them, and the team slipped around the great obstruction, wary of all the ropes lashing it down tight. Suddenly suspicious, Lyons used a knife to cut a large slit in the canvas and peek through. It took a few seconds for the goggles to switch from Starlite to UV, and the man was not surprised to find a Grumman amphibian plane moored under the tarpaulin. Then he blinked. No, there were three of them! Quickly, he informed the others.

"Got to be them," Schwarz subvocalized into a throat mike. "There is no way somebody else would have that many of this plane hidden at this exact location."

"Certainly explains the cranes," Blancanales added, pulling out a remote detonator and stabbing it into a soft block of C-4 plastique. "The deck is too irregular to use as a flight deck, so the planes land in the lake and are hauled on board."

"No way an Albatross could haul enough fuel for a B-52," Lyons stated as a fact, easing through the slit and disappearing around the airplane. "These must simply be used to rearm the bombers. The terrorists must have hidden airfields, or depots, stashed around the world. They use each one a single time, and never return."

"Hit and git, again. No wonder Bear couldn't find them," Schwarz muttered, keeping careful watch on the rest of the long boat. Men were moving in the distance, but in the swirling fog it was hard to tell if they were coming closer, or going farther away.

"Well, he'll be able to hear this explosion," Blancanales said, returning from the darkness. "These babies are stacked with munitions — Sidewinders, Aphid, Skyflash, Redeye, everything you can think of. We'll want to be very far away when I set this off."

"Curious, I wonder why they haven't been sent off," Lyon said, a cold feeling of dread tingling down his spine.

Just then, they heard a low rumble of powerful engines, and the Pittsburgh began to sluggishly move forward, deeper into the fog.

"I don't like this," Schwarz said, shifting his grip on the dart gun and silenced Beretta. "These creeps are up to something."

"Agreed," Lyons said, moving directly for the wheelhouse. "So let's find out what."

Tense minutes passed as Able Team moved along the misty deck. The men could see an arc light sitting on top of the wheelhouse, and in its beam, they would be sitting ducks to anybody with a working rifle. Their pistols were excellent for close-quarters combat, but the boat was more than a thousand feet long, well outside the effective range.

Ahead of them was the wide-open middeck, a flat expanse of deck stretching for two hundred feet, maybe even more. There was no gunwale in the middle. The team had no idea why, but it appeared to be the original design and not a modification by the mercenaries, so there had to be some sort of logical reason for it, although what that could be they had no idea.

Reaching the wheelhouse, they heard the murmur of voices from inside, and Schwarz attached a small suction-cup microphone to the wall and plugged the end into his replacement laptop. Suddenly voices could be heard over their earbuds.

"Everything, lock, stock and barrel," another man replied, and there came the sound of coffee being poured, followed by a satisfying sip. "Gonna be a hell of a thing. The balloon should go up around 0600."

Flipping up his goggles, Blancanales checked his watch. Zero six hundred was six o'clock, roughly an hour from now, around dawn.

"And when did you become a soldier?" The first man laughed. "Call it six in the morning, for Pete's sake."

"Says who? I did two years in the Chilean army to learn underwater demolitions before going to Thunder Base. I'm a freaking corporal!"

Thunder Base? Chile? Touching the transponder on his belt, Lyon whispered the words to Bear over the comm link.

"Well, you can kiss my ass 'cause I'm the captain of this tub," the other man said with a chuckle.

"Christ, I'll bet he's going nuts about this down below. His hackers helped design the bombs, but Oughton sure as shit never wanted to use the damn things!"

"Got that right, and Rexton has sent off the entire reserve — three Dragons and a dozen eggs."

"Aw, stop using those ridiculous code names and just call them nukes and dirty bombs."

Nukes? Instantly the Stony Man commandos surged into action, kicking down the door to the wheelhouse, their dart guns chugging.

Dropping their coffee mugs, the two men staggered backward. The bald terrorist slammed into a table, sending a plate of sandwiches flying, while the bearded man wearing a captain's hat awkwardly lunged for a large red button on the wall. With no other choice, Blancanales fired his Beretta twice. However, the captain buckled from the deadly arrival of the hollowpoint man-stopper and hit the wall bloody, his splayed fingers only inches from the button. Sighing into death, he slid down the wall, leaving behind a grisly contrail of warm life as the universe claimed another damned soul for perdition.

Rebounding from the table, the bald man dizzily clawed for the Colt .45 at his side, then dropped flat on his face, his nose audibly breaking.

Closing the door, the Stony Man commandos checked for any surveillance cameras, shot the one in the corner to pieces, then quickly disarmed the unconscious terrorist. They looked around for any radio equipment in the wheelhouse, but there was only a refrigerator full of food, a gun rack of Kalashnikovs and the usual controls for operating the massive boat.

Just then, the team paused with their weapons in hand as somewhere in the fog, a man walked along the deck, his boots clanging on the steel. Peeking out the window, Blancanales saw that the range was too great for the dart gun, switched again to the silenced 9 mm pistol. However, the terrorist strolled by, disappearing into the mist, whistling tunelessly.

"Close one. Okay, there's no sign of the radio in here, so it must be down below in the hold with that professor they mentioned," Schwarz said, looking at the ceiling. "I'll bet one of those arc lights is really a satellite uplink."

"We could smash them... No, we can't take the risk," Blancanales hastily corrected himself. "If the bombers already have the nukes, we'll want to recall them, instead of just making them visible. If trapped, the sons of bitches might drop the nukes anyway, wherever they are at the moment!"

Grimly, Lyons and Schwarz agreed with the assessment. The crew of terrorists were viable targets, but under no circumstances could the team harm the supercomputer. It was the key to bringing down the Airwolves.

"Three Dragons must mean they have only three Airwolves," Schwarz rationalized. "But three nukes is more than enough to start a full world war."

"Which means we need to seize control of the supercomputer, not just smash it and get the satellite codes," Lyons growled, feeling a rush of cold anger. The mission had just gotten a hundred times harder, and infinitely more complex. "Okay. He said that Professor Oughton was below. Any chance this could be their chief hacker?"

"If he designed their nukes from scratch, I'd say yes," Schwarz stated, checking the load in the dart gun.

"Which probably means the computer is also down in the hold," Blancanales added, doing the same. "I've never known a hacker who liked to be far away from his cybernetic counterpart."

"Let's ask an expert," Lyons said, changing frequencies on the belt transceiver. "California Dreamer to Rock House. Come in Rock House," he said. "Alert! The Airwolves have a..." The man recoiled slightly as there came an oscillating wail from his earbuds. The transmission was being jammed! In perfect unison, a siren began to keen outside the wheelhouse, and the arc lights loudly crashed into operation banishing the night.

"Shit, they know we're here!" Schwarz cursed, slapping a small device at his side. Instantly, the modified Humbug surged into operation. Now their own jamming field would also blanket the airwaves to prevent the terrorists from contacting anybody. Neither group could call for help now.

"All right, let's give them something to worry about besides us," Lyons said, going to the control board. Pushing the throttle to maximum, he set their course on a tight circle to nowhere, then rammed the stock of a Kalashnikov into the board, smashing the instruments.

"Gadgets, any chance you could hack into the computer from here?" Blancanales asked hopefully, grabbing an AK-47 from the rack on the wall. Dropping the clip, Blancanales checked the load, then slammed it back into the breech. Satisfied, he tossed the primed weapon to Lyons, and started on the next.

"With a laptop? No way," Schwarz stated, holstering his dart gun and stuffing clips of 7.62 mm cartridges into a belt pouch. "That would be like pissing on an electrical fire. More dangerous to us than them."

"Just out of curiosity, how big a crew can this thing have?" Schwarz asked, hefting the Kalashnikov to get the feel of the weapon. These older models were a little light in the barrel, which made riding upward a problem during full-auto fire. He would have to watch out for that.

"Standard complement is fifty men," Blancanales said, spotting a roll of duct tape on a utility shelf. Ripping off a piece, he lashed two ammunition clips together to make a flip-clip. That would cut his reloading time by half. "But with these guys, say, maybe twice that."

"We may need a diversion," Lyons said in a rare display of sarcasm, taking a position near the window. People were rushing around in the fog, shouting and doing things. Experimentally, the man fired a round into the air, and there instantly sounded a wild barrage of shots from an assortment of weapons — pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, machine pistols, and then the dull thud of a grenade.

"Oh yeah, we're definitely going to need a diversion," Schwarz agreed, casting a look at the now empty gun rack. "And more ammo."

"One diversion coming up," Blancanales said confidently, pulling the radio detonator from his pocket, but then the man frowned. They couldn't use this. If just one missile went in the wrong direction it could easily sink the boat, and they needed the supercomputer undamaged. Reluctantly, he tucked it away once more. "Any suggestions?"

"As a matter of fact..." Schwarz said thoughtfully, slinging the Kalashnikov over a shoulder. Going to an emergency light set above the smashed control board, the man ripped the device off the mooring and set it on the wooden table.

By now the gunfire outside was taking on a more controlled sound, and a bullet ricocheted off the metal wall of the wheelhouse to zing away into the night.

Pulling out his knife, Schwarz cut the two power cables free and cleaned off the end until a good half inch of cable was exposed.

"Whatever you're doing, make it fast," Lyons stated as Blancanales joined him at the window. Together, the men fired their pneumatic dart guns into fog and were rewarded by a startled grunt of pain, closely followed by another session of blind firing by the crew.

"Just give me a few seconds more," Schwarz muttered, touching the cables to the bare metal of the wall. There was a huge electrical snap that briefly illuminated the wheelhouse and gave off the bitter reek of ozone. With a smile, the man made more sparks, changing the length and duration every time until they seemed to take on a familiar pattern.

Chapter Eighteen

Standing outside in the freezing cold, Alyssa Dean stomped her insulated boots on the frosty sand, trying to extract some additional warmth from the battery pack. The large concrete dome of Thunder Base rose behind her, cutting some of the force of the wind, but it still found a hundred tiny openings to reach her vulnerable flesh and stab like icy knives.

There came the soft crunching of footsteps, and Dean looked up in time to see Dr. Barry walk around the dome.

"He's unleashed the Dragons," Dean said simply, her hatred of the man as clearly discernable as the words in the air. "We are going to start nuking cities now. Not military bases, but homes and schools...." She turned fast, tears sparking diamonds in her dark eyes. "Children! We're going to start killing children!"

"But there is no other way," Barry said simply, her hands hanging uselessly at her sides.

Shocked, Dean actually recoiled from the physician, the expression on her face a mixture of betrayal and disgust. For a long moment neither woman spoke, each wrapped in her own private thoughts.

"No, there is another way, We have to stop him," Dean said with unaccustomed vehemence. "We have to stop him. This whole project has failed. We are becoming the mass murders, the terrorists, that the U.S. government always claimed that our parents were! We are the villains now, not them, us!"

"Don't say such a thing," Barry said quickly, looking around to make sure nobody else was near. But the outside of the base was deserted, aside from a small flurry of snow carried down from the mountains by the cold winds.

"No, it's treason!" Barry whispered, grabbing the arm of the smaller woman. "My God, if you think Rexton would kill us for having an affair, then he would go ballistic over you saying..."

"I don't care if we die! He must be stopped!" Dean declared. "Alone, I have no chance. But together we could get close enough, lure him away, maybe outside the dome. Or we could break radio silence and inform the authorities where we are. The U.S. Air Force would do the rest."

Gently Dean placed her small gloved hands on the twilled fabric of the other woman's parka. "Please, help me," she said, the need thick in her voice.

The weight was light, but to Barry it felt like she was being crushed. She tried to speak, but nothing came out, then she swallowed and tried again. "Yes, my love, I will help you," she whispered softly, and pulled her in close for a kiss.

But as their lips met, Dean went stiff, her breath exploding out of her lungs. Barry held on tight as the woman thrashed for a few seconds, then went limp. Opening her arms, the physician let her lover drop to the ground, wisps of steam rising from the ghastly wound in her chest.

"Rexton is correct, there is no other way." Barry spoke softly, the wind carrying away the empty words. "And nobody can be allowed to stop the Great Project, not even you."

Opening her wet glove, the physician let the knife fall alongside the twitching corpse, the sharp blade bright with coppery blood.

"All hail the revolution," Barry croaked, a sob tearing at her throat as she headed back into the dome. There was still a lot of work to be done before the end of the world.

Starting to tap the entry code into the keypad, Barry paused at the sight of something far off in the desert coming toward the base. It was moving fast, but seemed much too big to be a car, or a truck, and was much too low to be a condor.

* * *

Flashing across the rugged terrain at a height of only a few yards, the C-130 Hercules came barreling toward the terrorist base like an express train in the night.

As radar spotted the plane, the SAM bunkers instantly came alive and a dozen missiles streaked away toward the huge invader. Even before the missiles arrived, the automatic Vulcan miniguns spun into action, the four barrels spitting out stilettos of flame as streams of 40 mm shells were unleashed.

Immediately the Hercules responded by throwing out clouds of metallic chaff to confuse the radar, and then pumped out a dozen flares, the magnesium charges burning many times hotter than the supercharged engines.

Confused for a split second, the shells went wild and arched into the distance, hitting nothing of importance. Spiraling fast across the landscape, the first wave of missiles also went for the flares, exploding only feet away from the sizzling charges and throwing out a deadly corona of shrapnel.

Boulders shattered from the barrage, the frozen ground churned as if it was boiling, and the Hercules was hit a score of times, the windows shattering, the fuselage denting as it was riddled with countless small holes. The cowling came off an engine, and it burst into flames.

At the extreme other side of the base, Phoenix Force swooped down from the hills in SkyKing powered gliders. Moving fast and silent, they sailed high over the ring of land mines, then slapped the release buttons on the harnesses and hit the ground rolling to come up in a full run only yards from the main concrete dome.

As the strident concussion of the missiles cleared the air of the glittering chaff, the Vulcans zeroed in on the speeding Hercules. The first couple of shells did scant damage, most of them glancing off to explode safely yards away. But the savage pounding took a terrible toll, and a door buckled, then the landing gear was torn off. The hoppers of chaff and flares ran empty, and the Hercules flew straight on, completely vulnerable.

Now, the 40 mm shells brutally peppered the military plane, blowing gaping holes in the nose section and filling the flight deck with high-explosive death.

Under cover of the massive explosion, the men of Phoenix Force used their MP-5 machine guns to shoot out every security camera, then braced themselves for the coming apocalypse.

Now, the SAM missiles dived in from every side, penetrating deep inside the aircraft before exploding. That ignited the reserves of fuel and ammunition, and in a chemical thunderclap, the C-130 violently disintegrated.

Flaming pieces of the hull and red-hot chunks of the engines sprayed the ground, setting off the land mines, the blast throwing up geysers of flame and spreading out the debris to trigger even more mines in an unstoppable chain reaction.

The entire eastern perimeter of Thunder Base became a roiling wall of destruction, the multiple concussions shaking the frozen valley in stentorian fury. Dirt, rocks and pieces of hot metal pelted the concrete domes for long minutes, before the explosions eased and a thick ringing silence covered the land once more.

Pressed flat against the lee side of the main dome, directly opposite the plane crash, the men of Phoenix Force removed the clips from their weapons holding live ammunition, and inserted new ones containing only rubber stun bullets.

"I'll wager that nobody ever used a Hercules that way before," McCarter said, tossing away the ultrasonic remote control for the doomed plane.

"Not deliberately," Hawkins countered with a hard grin, checking the radio jammer riding in a cushioned pouch on his belt.

Grunting in reply, Manning touched a small rip in his ghillie suit located at shoulder height. An inch closer and the piece of shrapnel would have removed his arm.

Pulling out a section of tubing from a bulky equipment bag, James scowled at the sight of a small blond woman sprawled in the cold dirt. Her clothing was covered with frozen red crystals, and a gore-streaked knife lay nearby.

"Looks like we lost our informant," he stated gruffly, threading the sections together.

Following the directions from Evan Kelly, the men of Phoenix Force had already been heading deep into the Patagonia Desert when the Farm reported that the T-bursts flooding the Internet had abruptly changed. Instead of each one carrying terabytes of random trash, they became identical, containing only the sentence Stop the Dragons! Triangulating the barrage of signals, Kurtzman soon had an exact location.

Leaving the wounded Kelly at a Chilean hospital, the feverish mercenary fighting for his life against a rampaging infection caused by deep cuts from the dirty glass, Phoenix Force concocted a hasty battle plan, had Brognola pull some strings to get equipment from the Argentine government, then moved in fast and furious for the base. They knew that time was against them, and a blitzkrieg was their only hope of success.

"Forget her for now," McCarter said, his ears throbbing from the noise of the blasts. The ringing was coming back hard, and the man forced himself to ignore the pain. "Calvin, start burning! Everybody else, get hard, 'cause here they come!"

In tight formation, Phoenix Force sent a concentrated spray of the 9 mm stun rounds toward a pair of men heading their way. The stun bullets hit the terrorists hard, breaking bones, and they fell howling in agony.

Ignoring the fight, James ignited the reassembled burning bar and pressed the hellish tip against the dome. The thermite flame ate into the resilient material with little resistance, as if it were freshly baked bread. The waves of heat felt good, although the resulting reek was beyond indescribable.

Suddenly a squad of people came charging out of another dome, this time armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles.

Dropping flat to the ground, McCarter and the others laid down a suppressing barrage with their MP-5 machine guns. The stun rounds knocked down the terrorists, scattering them like autumn leaves. Spinning, one man accidentally stitched a woman across her chest, the spray of hot blood freezing before it splattered against the cold dome only feet away.

McCarter cursed at the sight. Damnation, they needed these people alive for questioning! Unless they found out exactly where the Dragons were being sent, millions were going to die.

"How you doing, Cal?" Manning asked, working a jam from the ejector port of his weapon.

"Almost through..." James panted, sweat dripping off his face as the big man put the full strength of his body into the task. Slowly, inch by inch, the burning bar was eating through the dome, but the dome was proving to be much thicker than anticipated, and the Stony Man commando wasn't sure that he had enough to reach the other side.

Reaching over a shoulder, Hawkins pulled out a LAW, primed the antitank weapon and fired. The 66 mm rocket streaked away and hit the gun emplacement like the wrath of God, concrete, flame, wiring and busted machinery blossoming into a hellflower of destruction.

"Okay, the other Vulcans can't reach us here!" Hawkins stated, tossing the spent tube. It hit the ground with a clatter and rolled away on the bitter wind, bouncing along.

"Which means they'll send an APC next," McCarter noted, pulling out a smoke canister and yanking the pin, but keeping it clenched in a gloved fist.

"Or a gunship," Manning added, watching the sky as he released the MP-5 and brought up the Barrett.

"Tell them that!" Hawkins snarled, firing from the hip as a Jeep appeared from behind a dome, the rear full of men firing their weapons.

Puffs of dust rose from the ground around Phoenix Force, and live rounds ricocheted off the dome behind them. Concentrating on the driver, the team replied in a prolonged fusillade, the rubber bullets hammering the man so hard he tumbled out of the vehicle. Out of control, the Jeep sped away, heading directly for the mine field. Screaming in horror, the passengers dived out of the vehicle only seconds before it crossed the boundary. Nothing happened for almost a full second, then it was blown into the sky on a column of flame.

Feeling no more resistance, James pulled the bar back and tossed it away. "I'm through!" he shouted, shoving an insulated tube into the hot hole, then turning the release valve on top of a small canister. With a soft hiss, the gas poured through the tube to rush into the sealed dome.

Shouting something, probably obscenities, a big man with blood on his face staggered toward Phoenix Force, his ripped parka exposing molded body armor underneath, his hands cradling a massive M-60 machine gun.

As McCarter threw the gas grenade, Manning triggered the Barrett. The M-60 actually bent in the middle before it was torn from the grip of the terrorist, taking away several of his fingers.

When the canister stopped hissing, James simply let it drop and Phoenix Force slid on gas masks and rushed around the dome to the armored front door. A guard lay there, his hands twitching on the stock of a Neostad shotgun. Hawkins kicked the weapon away, and Manning shot the terrorist with a tranquilizer dart. There was no chance this was the man in charge — Rexton, Kelly had said. They would find Rexton in the most heavily guarded room in the dome. The team would capture him alive and conscious for immediate interrogation.

Stepping into the recessed doorway, McCarter studied the door, then attached a couple of probes to the keyboard. Quickly, he ran a few tests. "Dead," McCarter announced, pocketing the probe. "They killed the power."

"Not a problem," Hawkins said, priming a satchel charge and placing it against the door.

Moving fast, the team raced around the dome and took cover. Seconds later, the blocks of C-4 exploded, triggering a response from the ring of Claymore mines hidden inside the jamb. The recess acted like a gunbarrel, and the hail of flechettes and ball bearings hissed through the cold air in so dense a formation it was actually visible for a brief moment.

The roiling blasts were still echoing across the base when McCarter lead the rest of the team back around the dome to find the doorway reduced to a tattered array of twisted metal and loose mounds of broken concrete. Boldly stepping into the swirling cloud of dust, McCarter entered the dome, his MP-5 at the ready.

The corridor was filled with ceiling tiles and debris, three people sprawled on the smooth floor near a Colt AutoSentry, the robotic gun not yet activated.

As the team moved past the people, Hawkins shot the battery of the machine with his silenced Beretta to make sure it could not be used against them on the way out.

Following the curve of the corridor, Phoenix Force found a score of people laying on the floor. None of them was wearing a parka or boots, and they were all armed with pistols. These were not guards, but support staff, radar technicians and such. They were close to the core.

The corridor ended at a set of double doors, which were firmly locked. There was no lock or keypad, so James slapped a shaped charge of C-4 where he guessed the hinges should be, stabbed in a timing pencil, and the team retreated around the curve.

Confined inside the corridor, the blast sounded louder than the destruction of the Hercules. Once more, the team was on the move before the concussions finished reverberating through the dome, tossing gas grenades ahead of them. The canisters hit the floor and rolled away, pouring out volumes of incapacitating tear gas.

But there was nobody in the next room, only elaborate control boards twinkling with lights, beeping radar screens, dark plasma monitors and a large wooden box filled with fat sticks of TNT, a sizzling fuse almost touching the primed stick of deadly high-explosive laying on top.

Chapter Nineteen

Scowling darkly, the captain swung around in his command chair. "What did you just say?" he demanded, setting aside a cup of coffee.

"We're receiving a message from the away team, Skipper," the ensign replied. "Sparks is positive that this is them. It has the correct code prefix for today and everything."

"There's nothing on the radio," the executive officer began hesitantly, glancing at the silent speaker.

"No, sir. Not on any channel, sir. It's in old Morse code. Somebody is tapping out dots and dashes against the hull of the boat."

"Unknown, sir. But his guess would be with an electrical cable of some kind. Maybe an extension cord."

The ensign did not need to glance at the paper in his hand. "'Dolly, attack the Pittsburgh, but do not harm. Diversion.' Then it repeats."

Rubbing his hand along his jawline, the captain said nothing for a minute, chewing over the matter. He'd known this was going to be a tricky assignment when the president had called him personally from the White House. Him, personally! INS agents, my ass.

"All right, XO, you heard the message," the captain said at last, sitting straighter. "Let's rattle the waves for them!"

"Yes, sir!" the lieutenant replied. "I'll have the gunnery crew put a few rounds across their bow for starters!"

"Also yank the warheads out of a couple of fish, just in case," the captain replied gruffly, reaching out to flip a switch on the intercom. "Bridge to Weapons! Gunny, I want the Fifties to strafe that ore carrier along the waterline, and nowhere else. Just at the waterline. Understood?"

"That is the point, Gunny. Fire at will," the captain directed, releasing the switch. "Ensign, I want full-spectrum radio jamming! Sonar, watch for enemy divers! Radar, stay alert for incoming missiles! XO, get our birds hot, just in case of trouble. Boson, have the chaff and flares ready to go! Navigation, kill the running lights! No, belay that. Kill all of the lights. We're going dark! Helmsmen, port a beam! Full speed back to the Pittsburgh!"

As the bridge crew erupted into activity, the captain scowled out the windows at the foggy night. There was nothing in sight but the endless lolling waves. Reaching upward, the officer took his cap down from a peg and placed it reverently on his head, then tilted it slightly back as a prelude to battle.

* * *

Spent brass flying, Lyons and Blancanales maintained a steady fire from the window of the wheelhouse, while Schwarz continued tapping away against the metal wall.

"Try shooting straighter," Lyons replied, sending a wreath of 7.62 mm rounds into a canvas-covered lifeboat. There came an answering cry, and a limp arm flopped into view, a grenade falling to the deck and rolling overboard to detonate under water with a muffled boom.

"Bitch, bitch, bitch — when did we get married?" Blancanales retorted, gunning down a terrorist as he darted between a couple of barrels. With most of his face gone, the man fell backward to vanish into the fog.

Just then, they heard the soft hooting of a Coast Guard siren, the sound rapidly increasing in power and volume until it was a deafening crescendo. Then an amplified voice boomed out of the night, demanding that the crew of the ore carrier surrender, and prepare to be boarded.

"Okay, let's roll," Schwarz said, dropping the cables and grabbing a Kalashnikov off the table.

Without comment, Lyons reached out the open window and tossed a grenade onto the roof. Opening their mouths, and covering their ears, the Stony Man commandos braced themselves. A few seconds later a thunderous explosion shook the wheelhouse, the concussion driving them to the deck, but the riveted steel ceiling held. The arc lights winked out, casting the deck into Stygian gloom.

Crashing through the door, the men instantly hit the deck and rolled away to the sides only a heartbeat before becoming the focus of a wild barrage of gunfire. The incoming lead hammered the wheelhouse, ricochets zinging off in every direction. Lyons grunted as something hard smacked him between the shoulder blades, but there was no telltale numbness, and he knew the NATO body armor had held.

Crawling to the gunwales, the Stony Man team found a terrorist fumbling to load an M-79 grenade launcher. Swinging up the wooden stock of the AK-47, Blancanales broke the man's jaw, and Lyons snatched away the weapon. As the terrorist reeled, Schwarz kicked him in the throat and he went over the side.

"Surrender," the Coast Guard cutter demanded, moving past the huge vessel like a ghost in the night.

That caught Able Team by surprise until they realized the cutter had turned off all their lights. Smart move.

"Surrender? Fuck you!" a terrorist replied, lifting a Stinger missile launcher to his shoulder and activating the radar box.

Instantly, Lyons trigger the M-79. The 40 mm shells exploded inside the stubby barrel, revealing that it was an antipersonnel round. A volcano of flechettes vomited from the black maw, and the man ceased to exist, disappearing into a crimson spray.

Now, there came a roar of heavy machine-gun fire from the cutter, the multiple streams of .50-caliber hardball rounds pelting the steel hull of the ore carrier nonstop and making conversation impossible.

Checking the blueprints of the boat on his laptop, Schwarz directed the other men past a helipad and down a short flight of stairs to a unmarked door. Taking cover, the Stony Man commandos impatiently waited until the handle began to turn, then they cut loose with the Kalashnikov aiming at the narrow opening. Startled cries came from the other side, along with the muffled sound of bodies tumbling down a stairwell.

Yanking open the door, the team saw a pile of men at the bottom of the stairs, their clothing in bloody tatters, but several of them still alive and moving. Without a qualm, Able Team aimed their assault rifles downward to permanently end the matter.

Somewhere in the foggy night, a cannon boomed and a shell whistled over the bow of the Pittsburgh. The team descended the companionway, halting only long enough to recover some spare ammo clips from the twitching corpses. The team moved on, heading for the main cargo hold, where the supercomputer should be located. Hopefully.

Unexpectedly, a door opened and a blinking man appeared wearing only underwear, a toothbrush in his mouth. "What the fuck is going on?" he slurred, then blanched at the sight of Able Team. Spitting out the toothbrush, he stepped back, slammed and locked the wooden door.

Kicking it open, Lyons found the terrorist working the arming bolt of a MAC-10 machine pistol. Ruthlessly, the former cop shot the terrorist and moved on.

Taking a corner, Blancanales found himself inches away from a bald man holding a double-barrel shotgun. They both stepped back for clearance and triggered their weapons. The double discharge was deafening in the confines of the metal corridor. But as the smoke cleared, Blancanales stepped over the dead man.

Overhead, the warfare on the main deck raged unabated, the Coast Guard machine guns seeming to have unlimited ammunition.

"This way," Schwarz directed, stealing a quick glance at the blueprints again. But as he closed the laptop, the computer slammed into him, a bullet bouncing off the titanium housing to hit the metal ceiling and ricochet again with a musical twang.

Spinning to the side, Schwarz flattened himself against a door and shot back with his silenced Beretta, the gentle cough barely discernable above the tumultuous battle outside.

A bearded man holding a Browning Hi-Power staggered slightly as the 9 mm rounds pounded him in the chest, but then he fired back unhurt. He had to be wearing body armor, too, Schwarz realized as one of the rounds caught him in the ribs. He grunted at the blow, and put a single copper-jacketed man-stopper directly in the middle of the terrorist's forehead, the back of his skull blowing out in a grisly froth of bones, brains and blood.

Lyons started to ask if Schwarz was unharmed when a group of people appeared down a side corridor, their hands full of different weapons and holding Lexan plastic riot shields.

Dropping flat to the deck, the three Stony Man commandos cut loose with the Kalashnikovs, but aiming behind the terrorists. The 7.62 mm rounds zinged off the metal walls and slapped into the enemy's unprotected backs. Gushing life from a dozen wounds, the terrorists dropped their shields, and Able Team sent them to hell in small pieces.

Suddenly something slammed into the hull of the boat with ringing force, the reverberations echoing along the corridors as if they were inside a gigantic bell.

"That was a torpedo," Blancanales said, slapping his last full clip into the assault rifle. "Things must be getting hairy up there."

"Good," Lyons snarled, doing the same. But then he saw that one felled woman had carried an Atchisson autoshotgun. Making a fast battlefield decision, he passed the Kalashnikov to Schwarz and appropriated the Atchisson, slipping a bag of spare ammo drums off her shoulder and onto his own.

"Thanks, Sue," Lyons said, reading the name on her ID badge. Then he paused. So far, nobody else they'd encountered had been wearing a name badge. Suspiciously, he touched it and found the plastic icy cold.

"Which direction did they come from?" he demanded, clicking the safety off the Atchisson.

"The left," Blancanales replied, jerking a thumb. "But the hold should be to the right."

But Lyons was already in motion, sprinting along the corridor at fall speed. Hefting their weapons, Blancanales and Schwarz were close behind.

The team heard the loud hissing long before they turned the corner and were forced to back away from the savage wave of heat issuing from a billowing cloud of live steam completely filling the corridor, blocking any possible advance.

Looking upward, Lyons studied the maze of conduits and pipes snaking along the ceiling, carefully following an insulated one around the corner. When he was far enough away, Lyons cut loose with the Atchisson, using a full drum of 12-gauge cartridges. Instantly, the thick pipe ruptured and a new geyser of steam exploded from the dented ceiling.

Returning to the others, Lyons found the open vent in the steam pipe now only hissing slightly, a few drops of oily water trickling onto the deck.

Blancanales and Schwarz were already past the turn-off valve on the wall and checking an armored door with a small observation window tinged with frost. Chewing his bottom lip, the electronics expert already had the laptop open and was running wires to the keypad, hundreds of alphanumeric combinations scrolling along the small screen.

"They're inside smashing the supercomputer!" Blancanales snarled, ramming the stock of the AK-47 against the window. But the wooden stock shattered into splinters, doing no damage whatsoever.

On the other side of the door, Professor Oughton looked up for only a second from pouring a smoking liquid across the keyboard of a console, the plastic bubbling and melting from the deluge of acid.

"Working on it!" Schwarz replied, the computer balanced on a raised knee as he typed with both hands.

Reaching into a belt pouch, Blancanales produced a thermite grenade, then tucked it away once more. That would melt the door, but the wave of heat would also destroy the supercomputer. Then inspiration came, and he dug in a pocket to retrieve a preshaped wad of C-4 designed to blow the lock off a door. Pinching it in two, Blancanales slapped the wad against the Lexan window, and stabbed in a timing pencil, breaking it off at the lowest mark.

The team barely got out of the way before the high explosive detonated, blowing the bulletproof window out of the door like removing the cork from a bottle.

A wave of bitter cold flooded the corridor as Lyons dropped the useless Atchisson and pulled out the Colt Python to start shooting through the opening. Caught totally by surprise, a dozen of the terrorists died while Schwarz resumed working on the stubborn keypad once more.

"Retreat!" Oughton shouted from behind the tower of a humming server. "Smash the CPU, or all is lost!"

"No, we can stop them!" a man bellowed defiantly, brandishing a Glock machine pistol.

"Get back, you fool!" the professor yelled, stepping out from behind the tower for a split second.

But that was more than enough, and Lyons blew away most of the man's face, teeth and eyes smacking into a dark monitor. Burbling horribly, the terrorist slumped to the cold deck as the other technicians madly scrambled into the maze of towers and vanished from sight.

With a musical ting, the armored door unlocked and hissed aside. Charging through, the men of Able Team tried not to shiver as they raced past the ruined consoles and shot anybody who moved.

Dodging around a pen full of liquid nitrogen tanks, Schwarz saw a pretty woman clawing at the safety tape on a thermite grenade.

As she looked up, he shot her in the forehead, the spray of brains sailing safely past the server to splatter the chilly wall.

Howling like a demon, William Rudd jumped down from the top of a tower, a Webley .44 revolver in each hand. Shooting as he dropped, the man incredibly hit both Lyons and Blancanales in the chest. The men crumpled from the brutal impacts of the hollow-point rounds, then returned fire from kneeling positions.

Still triggering his weapons, Rudd reeled backward, blood pumping from the two neat holes in his muscular throat.

"No!" Schwarz yelled, reaching out a hand, but it was too late. The dying man stumbled into a large server, knocking out several of the blade units and ripping free a nest of slim wires. As he dropped, the tower went dark.

"The main CDP? Hell, yes," Schwarz interrupted, rushing over to reinsert the loose blades. A few of the lights came back on, but not many.

"Maybe," Schwarz replied tersely, swinging around the battered U.S. Army laptop and connecting USB cables everywhere.

"What can we do to help?" Blancanales asked, tightening his grip on the Kalashnikov.

"Seal that door! Check for any more of these idiots, and make this fucking room cold again!" Schwarz snarled, his hands flying across the keyboard.

"Then pray that I'm half as good as you guys think I am," Schwarz added in a whisper to the universe.

Chapter Twenty

Releasing their MP-5 machine guns, the men of Phoenix Force riddled the crate of TNT with live rounds from their handguns. The sticks of TNT were torn apart under the subsonic lead, chunks and pieces flying across the control room, and when the fuse reached the detonator cap only a tiny nubbin was still attached. The cap gave a hard bang, and the tiny piece of TNT exploded in the corner with a tremendous blast that rocked the entire room, smashing monitors and throwing out a whirlwind of loose papers. The team was hit numerous times by loose debris, but retained no serious damage.

"The stupid bastards didn't know that you could only set off TNT with a detonator cap," Hawkins said, sneering contemptuously, his ghillie suit ripped in several places, revealing the body armor underneath.

"Amateurs," Manning agreed, releasing his death hold on the Barrett. There was a paper clip embedded into the stock, and a gouge along the side where a pencil had shattered with triphammer force.

Ignoring the rhetoric, McCarter stalked around the room looking everywhere. There was only one door to the room, so where was it? There had to be some sort of a hidden escape hatch... aha! The blast had shoved aside a file cabinet, partially exposing a steel plate set into the floor.

Working together, the team managed to move aside the incredibly heavy cabinet. The plate was actually a hatch with a wheel lock, similar to the type used in submarines. Kneeling, James checked for traps, then operated the wheel and hauled the hatch back. A tunnel descended straight down. A ladder had been bolted along the side, the tunnel's bottom lost in darkness. Instantly, the rest of the team threw down chemical lights sticks and stun grenades. A few seconds later, the non-lethal charges ignited, emitting a bang louder than a grenade and a flash ten times brighter than the sun. However, there were no corresponding cries of shock and pain.

Grabbing the ladder, Hawkins braced his boots on either side as brakes, and simply slid down the entire length, coming to a halt only a few feet off the bottom. Jumping clear, the man saw a trip wire attached to the bottom rung, and slashed it free with a single swipe of his Gerber Combat knife.

Waving them on, Hawkins stepped back as the rest of the team arrived, then they took off at a full sprint along a crude tunnel hewn into the living rock. But only a few yards away was a sharp curve, and the tunnel branched out in two different directions.

"That leads toward the mountains, and that the river," James snapped, checking the GPS attached to his belt.

"Gotta be the mountains. The lake would be solid ice," Hawkins began, but then frowned. "Wait a second, didn't Able Team report that Delacort had a couple of Silvercrest submersibles in his warehouse?"

"No, they reported he had only one, the other was sold!" McCarter corrected grimly, charging along the tunnel to the right.

Less than a hundred feet later, they heard the sound of excited voices, and the team paused to throw more flash-bangs ahead of them. This time, the stun grenades caused a furor of anguished cries, and Phoenix Force rounded a corner to find a dozen people laying unconscious on the rough stone floor, disorientated and bleeding from their ears, their clothing in disarray.

Kicking away their weapons, the team went straight past them to discover a small concrete dock extending into a dark blue river. Irregular chunks of ice were bobbing along the rushing water, and a bright yellow minisub moved steadily away from the rocky shore. As the Stony Man commandos reached the dock, the Silvercrest minisub slipped below the surface and disappeared.

Moving fast, Manning swung up the Barrett and fired, the titanic 750-grain slug penetrating the yardage of turgid water as if it were sheer vacuum. There came an audible clang as the steel-jacketed round hit the submersible and punched clean through the thin hull. Now aiming for the stubby conning tower, Manning put four more rounds into the thin metal, leaving gaping holes behind as large as a clenched fist.

Slowing abruptly, the Silvercrest became surrounded by bubbles from the escaping air, and it started to rise.

Standing at the extreme edge of the dock, McCarter saw a man in his forties operating the controls of the machine, his clothing soaked from the streams of icy water gushing through the ragged bullet holes.

Looking directly at the big soldier, Craig Rexton slowed the ascent of the minisub, his face registering a thousand emotions. Then closing both eyes, the terrorist pulled out a Glock 18, pressed it to his temple and fired.

"No, don't!" McCarter raged as the chattering machine pistol tore the man's head apart, the last few rounds going into the control board and sending off a wild shower of bright sparks.

Feeling the mounting pressure of time, a silent McCarter went back to the alcove and chose the least damaged of the people there. "Her," he decided.

Stabbing the terrorist with a military syringe in the carotid artery, James waited a full minute for the NATO Hot Shot to rouse the woman. He hated to do that, as the bastard mixture of drugs and chemicals could kill her, even as they forced her into semiconsciousness, but there was no other choice.

"What... happened..." Dr. Barry mumbled sleepily, trying to focus her badly blurred vision.

"Don't worry, we're safe now," McCarter croaked hoarsely, tightening a hand around his throat to alter his voice. "The Feds are dead."

"Then we win..." She sighed, slumping against the cold rock floor. Her chest rose and fell fast, her heart racing out of control, and fresh blood trickled from her broken nose.

"London, Paris, yes." Barry smiled. "Sh-should h-have done those, too! B-but th-those murdering lunatics at Haymarket II, Manhattan and the White House will never... know what... hit them..."

"H-hay... m-market," she repeated mindlessly, then suddenly convulsed, and went very still.

Internally, McCarter raged over the accidental death. Damn it, they needed a confirmation on the targets! Unfortunately, all of the other terrorists were in even worse condition. Any further attempts at drug-induced coercion would be worse than useless.

"Unknown. Everybody go back to the control room and see if there's any maps with that name on a location," McCarter snapped, turning off the radio jammer at his side. "Look for a postcard, travel brochure, anything, any bloody thing at all!"

"Firebird to Rock House," McCarter said, touching his throat mike. "We may have the target locations, but they are not confirmed. Repeat, we have possible locations, but they are not confirmed!"

"Okay, Gadgets managed to save the CDP of the supercomputer on Lake Huron!" Carmen Delahunt announced. "Do we have the access codes yet?"

"No, and we're not likely to get them, either," Kurtzman snapped. "Everybody at Thunder Base is dead, or unconscious."

"However, Phoenix Force has gotten two of the locations," Price stated, massaging her temple. "Carmen, can you cancel the false identification signals for the Airwolves, leave them out in the open?"

"Excellent! If we send everything we have to Manhattan and D.C., they should be able to stop those nukes."

"Which only leaves Haymarket," Kurtzman growled, hunching his shoulders. "Okay, what could that be? The original Haymarket was a police station, so if she actually did say Haymarket II, then this is somewhere else. Someplace called Haymarket after the first place bombed by their parents."

"Logically, it should be another police station, or something similar," Hunt Wethers guessed, removing his pipe. "The FBI training facility at Quantico, or perhaps the CIA headquarters at Langley."

"Or the NSA computer annex, headquarters for the British Secret Service, MI-5, the Mossad, the FSB. Hell, it could be anything!" Price retorted, trying not to look at the wall clock. Any second now, there would come in a report of a major city blown off the map, the death toll in the millions. They had to stop it from happening, but how?

"Wait a second, I... I know where it is," Tokaido said out of the blue, his voice registering surprise. Bending over the keyboard, his hands began typing in a blur. "We've been thinking too small. Consider the other targets — Manhattan and the White House! The terrorists aren't going to nuke the FBI, they're going after the most powerful law-enforcement agency on the face of the planet!"

"Bigger," Tokaido declared, tapping a key and sending off a priority one message to NATO High Command in Brussels. Everything depended on them now.

Removing his headphones, the young man sighed. "Yeah, I know," he said, studying the main screen for any indication of a nuclear strike. Crawling over the vector graphic of the world, hundreds of different symbols for jetfighters and interceptors were rapidly converging on Manhattan, eastern Washington, D.C., and along the southern coastline of France.

* * *

Turning inland, the B-52 heavy bomber Detroit started across the rugged Swiss Alps on its way to the isolated city of Lyon, France, home of International Criminal Police Organization, more commonly called Interpol.

"Eighty miles to target," Joshua Robbs said, checking the figures on a clipboard. "Then we can drop the Dragon, and head for Australia."

"Roger that." Lenka Whitehorn grinned savagely. "I've been looking forward to taking out these sons of bitches for a very long time."

"I hate cops," Naomi Flaggan muttered from the navigational console, pouring a cup of coffee from a thermos.

Just then, the radio speaker set into the ceiling panels crackled into life. "Unidentified plane, land at once, or you will be shot down!" a man's voice boomed angrily.

"Are... are they speaking to us?" Flaggan asked, looking around nervously. There was nothing on the radar, then a full wing of Euro fighters rose into view from the east and west.

"Genesis bomber, surrender, or be destroyed!" the man barked once more. "This is your only chance!"

"Fire all missiles!" Whitehorn commanded, pushing the engines to full power. "Scramble the radar! Release countermeasures and prepare to drop the nuke!"

"But we're only over Monaco," Flaggan countered. "The population is less than a million!"

"We have to!" Whitehorn rejoined, throwing switches to deploy a cloud of chaff and flares.

However, as the Detroit surged with power, the NATO pilots realized what the terrorists were planning and knew there was no time for a prolonged dogfight. Seconds counted now. With the decision made, the pilots grimly ignited their afterburners.

Rapidly accelerating, they nimbly dodged the incoming missiles and rammed their jetfighters directly into the hulking behemoth of the B-52 bomber at nearly Mach speed.

* * *

So many good people had been victims of the Genesis terrorists, both military and civilian. The death toll had been high, but Hal Brognola knew it would have been much worse if the Stony Man teams had failed. It wasn't much comfort, but it was better than nothing.

The day was saved, and the battle won. At least this day. Tomorrow was another matter.

Don Pendleton'sTerror Descending

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

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Chapter Three

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Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

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Chapter Seven

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Chapter Eight

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Chapter Nine

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Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

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Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

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* * *

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

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Chapter Eighteen

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Chapter Nineteen

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Chapter Twenty

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Don Pendleton's
Terror Descending