Unconventional Warfare

Monica lifted the end of the jerrican and the greasy metal slipped in her grip. The jerrican dropped to the ground hard, knocking the strainer cap free and splashing high-octane fuel up in a spray.

Some of the gas splashed onto the still hot exhaust pipe and instantly ignited. The spilled gas lit in a flash with a small explosion, and Monica screamed in agony as she was burned.

Manning came around the side of the SUV in a rush. He saw Monica stumbling backward as flames began racing up the spilled gas on her jumpsuit. He struck her with a shoulder and knocked her to the ground.

Instantly he was on top of her, using his own body to smother the flames. The industrial jumpsuit, not unlike the kind worn by military pilots, was made of flame-retardant material, helping his attempts to put her out.

“Monica, Monica!” Manning demanded, voice on the edge of frantic. “Are you okay?”

“My arms, my hands,” she said, teeth gritted against the pain.

She held her hands up for Manning to inspect and despite how red and puffy they looked, he was amazed the damage was so minimal. Despite this his practiced eye realized that soon, perhaps within minutes, the skin would first blister, then crack.

Such open wounds in the African bush were a guaranteed invitation to infection. On top of this, they had little in the way of pain medication in their medical kit. The chances of her slipping into shock were great, putting her life in danger.

“Hold on,” he said.

Hurriedly he got the med kit from behind the driver’s seat and began applying antiseptic cream to the wounds before wrapping them in loose, dry bandages.

“Gary, I’m so sorry.”

“Shut up.”

“But the race—”

“I said shut up,” Manning repeated. “To hell with the race. I’ll get you back to the checkpoint in the village we passed. We’ll have you airlifted out to Nairobi in no time.” He looked down the road and into the rough African terrain now cloaked in darkness. “Besides,” he continued, “if anyone can finish this race without a chase vehicle, it’s those two jokers.”

CHAPTER THREE

The Nissan pickup driven by David McCarter rattled like dice in a dryer as the Briton hammered the vehicle through the course. He and Hawkins were feeling the effects of so much vibrational trauma sapping their endurance.

Both men were silent for a moment after Manning had relayed his situation and intention to take Monica for medical help, leaving the racers without a chase vehicle. Hawkins looked up from his GPS device.

“Screw it, David,” he said. “We’re past the point of no return anyway. We might as well finish the race because it’s just as short a distance to Nairobi as to turn around.”

McCarter nodded. “Agreed. Tell Gary we’re pushing on.”

Hawkins relayed the information and for the next five minutes carefully calculated how far the fuel they carried with them would let them race.

“We don’t have a choice.” He looked up from his calculations. “We’re going to have to risk the shortcut. Our fuel reserve is just too tight.”

“Who Dares Wins,” McCarter replied, using the motto of his old unit, the British Special Air Service.

Up ahead a lone baobab tree appeared in the Nissan’s bouncing headlights and Hawkins immediately sat up.

“That’s it!” He pointed through the dust-smeared windshield. “That’s the marker for the shortcut.”

“All right, mate,” McCarter replied. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch.”

He slowed, downshifted, took the fork and gunned the vehicle back up to speed. Inside the cab the two Phoenix Force drivers were bounced against their safety harnesses like pinballs.

“Holy crap,” Hawkins swore in his Texas drawl. “I didn’t think a road could get worse than the one we’re on, but this son of a bitch is tearing us up.”

“It’ll save us twenty minutes,” McCarter reminded him.

“If it doesn’t rip apart our axle,” Hawkins shot back.

“You want to go back?”

“Just drive!”

For the next fifteen minutes the Nissan bounced across the open country course, leading them out of the foothills. Once a lone elephant standing calmly in the middle of the road appeared in their headlights.

McCarter swerved up out of the tire ruts and bounced across a rocky berm to avoid the multiton animal, then snapped the pickup back on the road before a pile of rocks almost tore off his front end.

Finally their first river crossing appeared in front of them.

Mexico

“THE AZTECS USED TO sacrifice about two hundred and fifty thousand of their own people every year,” Schwarz said. “They would cut out their hearts while they were still alive.”

“Okay, that provides us with a template on how to deal with this guy Chavez,” Lyons pointed out.

Blancanales nodded from behind the wheel of the black Dodge SUV. Around them a rambling shantytown sprawled outward from the edges of Juárez. The Stony Man crew kept the blacked-out windows on their SUV buttoned up tight against the smell.

The road they rolled along was made of dirt and heavily rutted, dotted with puddles of dubious origins. Bored, apathetic faces stared out at the expensive vehicle from the safety of clapboard and aluminum-siding shacks.

The poverty was appalling and left Carl Lyons uneasy. He was no stranger to Central and South American conditions. Able Team had made the lower half the Western Hemisphere a primary area of operations since the unit’s inception.

Blancanales, already recovering, guided the big vehicle through narrow alleys while hungry dogs barked and chased them. Up ahead a line of railroad tracks divided the sprawling shantytown and massive warehouses began to line its length. Beyond these the silent mausoleum of factories built by American companies that had exported jobs to exploit cheap labor reared up like austere, prefabricated mountains.

Blancanales cut the SUV onto a single-lane dirt road that paralleled the train track. The Dodge’s suspension rattled and hummed but inside the climate-controlled cab the ride was smooth and virtually silent. Up ahead a chipped and cracked asphalt lot opened up just past a broken gate in a dilapidated chain-link fence. A battered and rusted sign warning away trespassers in Spanish hung off to one side like a forgotten letter.

The building across the old parking lot was abandoned, dotted with broken windows and gaping emptiness where doors had stood. A line of crows had taken roost across the top, and Blancanales slowed the vehicle as he pulled into the old parking lot.

“How are we sitting for time?” he asked.

Lyons looked at his watch. “We’re a good hour before the meet, according to the CIA stringer,” he said. “We couldn’t have got here any sooner with flight time anyway.”

Blancanales guided the SUV around the side of the building. A pair of filthy alley cats hissed in surprise at the sudden appearance of the monstrous vehicle and scrambled for the safety of some overflowing garbage bins. Lyons eyed the building with a wary gaze as Blancanales drove around it. He reached under the seat and pulled an M-4 clear.

“Politics give me a rash,” Lyons muttered. He snapped the bolt back on the compact carbine and seated a 5.56 mm round.

“I just wish we had more time to check out this set up,” Schwarz said from the backseat. He pulled an identical M-4 from a briefcase on the seat next to him and chambered a round. “We don’t know this guy from Adam.”

Blancanales reached over and pulled his own prepped and ready M-4 from the inside compartment of his door. Each man on the team wore a windbreaker over a backup shoulder holster. They had no intention of hiding their firepower when they went into the meet.

As the team stepped out of the vehicle there was a thunderous roaring as a freight train began its approach of the rail yard off to the side of the building. Lyons looked around. This was the location of the meet with the man who was supposed to take them to where their target was hiding.

“This strike you as overly isolated for a simple meet-and-greet?” Schwarz asked.

“Why, whatever do you mean, Grandma?” Lyons asked.

The freight train began to slow even further. The engineer popped its brakes with a deafening hissing noise accompanied by the screaming of steel on steel as wheels locked up on rails. Blancanales eyeballed the upper reaches of the building as they approached. The windows looked back at him, silent and dark.

Closer to the ground the building was taken up by a concrete loading dock and roll-up bay doors for almost two-thirds of its length. The other section was broken by a single metal door set at the top of a short flight of concrete steps. Spiky lines of graffiti covered the wall and doors. Displaced air from the sliding train pushed scraps of paper across the broken asphalt like stringless kites.

Juárez was one of the most polluted cities on the face of the earth and here, in its underbelly, the stench was sharp and chemical, coating the tongues of the three men as they approached the building.

The train pulled up next to the yard, arriving in a deafening din as boxcar after boxcar slowly rumbled by. Though they stood right next to each other the men couldn’t have heard one another speak. Lyons frowned and made a gesture with his hand.

The other two immediately spread out, forming into a loose triangle as they finished their approach to the front of the building. Schwarz looked to one side and saw a line of gouts suddenly erupt in the earth. He reached over and shoved Lyons to one side, then flung himself in the other direction. The line of bullets stitched its way up the middle of them while off to the side Blancanales had lifted his carbine and began spraying it at the top line of windows on the building.

The compact M-4 carbine was designed for close-in range and ease of concealment, but the 5.56 mm rounds were more than powerful enough to cross the space between the ambush sniper and the men caught in the path of his murderous fire.

Blancanales’s burst peppered the building.

Lyons rolled with the hard shove his teammate had given him and somersaulted over one shoulder. He came up and quickly scanned the building for the attackers. He saw nothing other than the single sniper trading shots with Blancanales and quickly crossed his stream of 5.56 mm rounds with those of the ex-Green Beret.

Bullets rebounded off the wall and shattered what slivers of glass still remained in their frames. He saw brilliant bursts of muzzle-flash and tried to bring his own fire to bear accurately as he continued racing toward the building. The freight train had formed a blanket of painful white nose on the entire area, and Lyons felt acutely strange, able to register the feel of his recoil and the heat of escaping gases but still almost entirely unable to hear the report of his own weapon in his hands.

Off to one side Schwarz bounced up off the parking lot and raced for the single pedestrian door set to one side of the building. Behind him Blancanales continued spraying successive bursts into the area of the sniper in an attempt to suppress his gunfire. The freight train continued to roll on past their position in an endless line of flatbed trailers and boxcars.

Snarling with the effort, Schwarz raced toward the building, his M-4 carbine up and at the ready. Closing with the short staircase, he let go of the carbine with his left hand and leaped up like a sprinter running hurdles. He caught hold of a metal safety rail running the length of the stair and vaulted over to the top of the steps.

He tucked his elbow in tight against his ribs and drew the M-4 in close to his body. With his free hand he grabbed the doorknob and twisted, jerking the heavy door open on protesting hinges. The sound of the train rolled into the building and echoed off it so that the racket was actually worse the closer the Stony Man crew got to the massive warehouse structure.

As the door swung open in his hands, he darted inside. Immediately, Schwarz found himself in a cavernous space some three stories high. He scanned the gloomy interior and let the door swing closed behind him. He had expected the structure to contain floors but he quickly shifted his tactics to compensate for the open space.

He pivoted and dropped into a crouch facing an erector-set formation of ladders and scaffolding set against one wall. Through a forest of metal bars and steel mesh he caught an impression of movement. He triggered a burst and heard the sniper do the same. Lead slugs ricocheted wildly inside the building and muzzles-blasts flared, casting crazy shadows.

Realizing he had to cut an angle on the sniper, Schwarz dived forward across oil-stained concrete and came up before triggering a second burst with his M-4. He saw a black-clad figure lean over a railing with a scope-mounted M-16, its black buttstock jammed tight into his shoulder.

The man fired down at Schwarz, and the Able Team electronics whiz threw himself toward the uncertain cover of a line of fifty-five-gallon barrels. One of the rolling bay doors directly beneath the sniper suddenly slid open to a height of about three feet and Schwarz had a brief glimpse of Rosario Blancanales lying flat on his stomach, M-4 held out in front of him.

Realizing Lyons was about to enter the abandoned factory, Schwarz raked the scaffolding with automatic fire, still desperately seeking an angle to catch on the sniper. He couldn’t force a clear trajectory out of the mess and his rounds scattered in a wild pattern around the hunched and ducking man.

The sniper rose, straightened his weapon and returned fire, his assault rifle set to 3-round bursts. A flurry of rounds began to hammer into the barrels Schwarz crouched behind. Below the man Carl Lyons pinpointed his position and turned his own M-4 skyward. The chatterbox rattled in his hands and a stream of dull gold casings arced out like water from a hose and bounced and rolled across the concrete floor.

The 5.56 mm slugs began slamming into the mesh and metal framework at the sniper’s feet and the man suddenly began sprinting toward one side of the platform above them while still trying to turn and return Lyons’s fire.

Schwarz used the opportunity to merge his own stream of gunfire with Lyons’s, only to have his magazine run dry.

He dropped the magazine from the well in the pistol butt, and curling gray smoke followed the empty box. He pulled a secondary magazine from his coat pocket and slid it home before chambering a round. In the brief time it took for the Able Team commando to switch out magazines, the faceless sniper had managed to reach the temporary safety of a double-girder overhead-bridge crane control panel and engine housing.

Schwarz cursed. The control area was like a fortress of metal squares and thick welded beams. He tried an exploratory burst but the M-4 was less than precise. He would have to settle for burst cover fire unless he could work his way in closer for a more accurate shot.

Off to one side Schwarz saw Blancanales enter the building, and three steady lines of 5.56 mm slugs now began converging on the sniper’s position. The man disappeared behind cover only to reemerge and return fire.

The situation was fast approaching a stalemate, Schwarz realized. Without drawing closer, the M-4s were too inaccurate to pose a threat at the current range. But to get closer the Stony Man operatives would have to cross open space easily within the range of the man’s assault rifle.

Carl Lyons sprinted out across the space between his position and the barrels Schwarz was using for cover. He rolled over and came up next to his teammate as Blancanales continued to fire from the edge of one of the bay doors. The train outside just continued rolling past, and the clatter rolled into the open space of the old factory through the open door and bounced around.

“This is insane!” Lyons yelled. “The asshole can’t possibly think the CIA will let him get away with setting up a meet and then ambushing American agents!”

Schwarz lifted his M-4 and sprayed another quick burst. “He must think he can run.”

The sniper poked the barrel of his M-16 around the edge of the panel and squeezed off an answering burst. Blancanales returned fire.

“The only way to find out is to take him alive,” Schwarz said.

“You want to cross that open space and charge up a ladder?” Lyons demanded.

“No, but I was hoping you would, though,” Schwarz retorted. “You are known for your temper.”

“Kiss my ass, Schwarz!” Lyons muttered, the carbine bucking in his hands.

Schwarz scanned the wide-open floor space of the factory. He realized that with his elevated position and superior range the sniper still had every advantage—even though he’d blown his initial attack.

“Let’s just go,” Schwarz said.

“What!” Lyons shouted, voice incredulous.

“Lets just boogey out of here. I mean it. Let him think we ran.”

“We need to know what that guy knows!” Lyons argued. “Our bad guy is a ghost—he’s our only lead.”

“To find out,” Schwarz said, “we need him to come down.”

Lyons opened his mouth to reply. He paused, then closed his mouth and cocked an eyebrow. He turned toward Schwarz and nodded once. “Okay, let’s do it,” he said.

“Blancanales!” Schwarz shouted.

“What?” Blancanales shouted back.

“Get the car!” Schwarz yelled. “Trust me!”

Blancanales looked at him, then nodded. In a second he was out the door. Lyons dropped a magazine from the pistol grip of his M-4 and inserted a fresh one while Schwarz provided covering fire.

CHAPTER FOUR

The fleeing sniper cranked the throttle on his street bike and raced out of the building. He was pretty close to panicked. He had gone too far, pissed off the Americans. There was nothing left but to run for it.

What had started out as easy money from influence peddling against the arrogant Yankees had quite suddenly backfired. The Juárez organization on the border was wrecked. Their commandant butchered. It was time to take the money and run. Too bad, so sad. Now it was time to go.

He gunned the powerful motorcycle across the abandoned asphalt parking lot of the old factory and out the front gate. The American investigating team had made their escape and it was time for him to do the same. He used the toe of his boot to push the bike into a higher gear and he cranked his wrist, holding the throttle wide open.

He shot through the gate and out onto the access road lined with shacks of aluminum siding and cardboard. Suddenly up ahead, next to the rusting derelict of a train engine parked and forgotten on the old tracks, the sniper saw one of the American agents, the big blond bastard, standing out in the open with his carbine. The man flipped him the middle finger and the sniper locked up his bike, sending it into a slide and changing direction before the fool opened fire.

His rear tire caught on the hard-packed earth and he felt the motorcycle start to respond. Suddenly he saw movement and looked up. Too late he saw the American’s vehicle, a massive SUV, rush out of a narrow alley and head directly at him. Behind the blacked-out visor of his helmet the sniper screamed.

Blancanales’s face was a smooth, flat affect, as expressionless as a mask as he rammed the big vehicle into the man. The heavy bumper struck the Japanese bike and sent it skipping end-over-end down the road, tossing the rider like a rag doll in a spinning pinwheel of limbs.

The corrupt Mexican law-enforcement agent struck the ground and bounced, his limbs almost instantly folding into unnatural angles. Blancanales hit the brakes on the SUV to allow the motorcycle to bounce away and avoid becoming entangled with it. He watched the figure of the ambush assassin rebound off the ground like a rubber ball and sprawl in an ungainly slide onto the weed-choked railroad tracks.

“Oh, that’s going to leave a mark,” Schwarz muttered, and winced.

Blancanales twisted the wheel and threw the SUV into a slide as he brought the vehicle to a stop. He opened his door and bailed while across from him the Able Team electronics expert did the same. Both men brought their compact carbines up to provide cover.

From his decoy position Carl Lyons raced toward the fallen man, his own carbine covering the motionless figure. Blancanales sized up the situation and immediately turned to provide cover outward as his two teammates converged on the broken body.

Lyons knelt and put two fingers against the motorcycle rider’s throat while Schwarz covered him. Lyons pulled some clothing to one side and felt again. He looked up at Schwarz and shook his head.

“No pulse,” he said.

“Yank the helmet,” Schwarz said.

Setting the M-4 down, Lyons quickly undid the chin-strap and pulled the helmet free. The man’s head bounced oddly and came to rest at an almost obscene angle. The neck of the assassin was clearly broken.

“Well, I guess we’re done in Juárez,” Lyons muttered.

“Shake him down for a cell phone or something, it might pay off,” Schwarz suggested. “I’m sorry, guys. I know we needed him alive. I didn’t realize he’d be riding a bike instead of driving a car when I set up the plan.”

“Shit happens,” Lyons said.

“Find anything?” Blancanales called.

Lyons looked up. “No, he was running clean.”

“Let’s get out of here, then,” Schwarz said, looking around. “The natives are starting to get curious.”

Lyons stood and nodded.

“Let’s roll.”

Kenya

“DOESN’T THAT JUST BEAT everything?”

McCarter’s voice was so dull with disappointment it barely held a trace of his accent. Beside him in the SUV, Hawkins just slowly shook his head.

“It’s the French,” he said. His disbelief only served to thicken his Texas drawl. “Why did it have to be the goddamn French?”

McCarter didn’t have an answer.

Their vehicle was parked on a bluff overlooking the river. Halfway across the dark brown waters they could clearly see the commercial ferry taking cars across to the other side.

Based on its current speed, the two Phoenix Force members estimated it’d be another half hour before the ferry unloaded its cargo on the far side and made its way back to pick them up.

To make matters worse the ferry was loaded with the French racing team. The laughter of the other racers was clearly audible as they powered away across the water. One of the Frenchmen lifted up his arm and flipped off the two men.

“I guess I had that coming,” Hawkins said.

“They started before us,” McCarter pointed out. “So the fact that we’ve caught up to them again, means our times are good.”

“Sure,” Hawkins conceded. “But I’d feel a hell of a lot better with them at our six than running flat out ahead of us.”

“What do you want to do?”

“According to the map there’s another crossing down the river,” Hawkins answered. “We get there and across, we could gain even more time.”

“Better damned if we do than if we don’t?”

“I sure as hell don’t want to burn daylight just sitting here if we have another option.”

McCarter released the parking brake and put the idling SUV into gear. “Let’s hit it,” he agreed.

The SUV powered across the open terrain.

McCarter navigated the riverbank for almost a mile until it twisted in a great bend. Reading the map beside him, Hawkins instructed him to cut straight cross-country to meet the waterway where it looped back.

Still battered by the lack of a road, the two men found the going relatively easy across a flat stretch of grassland. McCarter kept one eye on his watch while Hawkins used the dashboard compass, his much abused race map and the GPS unit to coordinate their position exactly. Soon he was plagued by a constant, low-grade headache. As they pressed on without an update on Monica Fischer’s condition, their worry mounted.

Copses of trees proved the most difficult obstacle to navigate but the route called for them to ford several small streams along the way. McCarter gunned the vehicle through one such obstacle and clawed his way up the other side and the men found themselves on an immense plain.