Ramrod Intercept

Official G-men were on the prowl.

He hoped they came running, trying to close the net. With some cunning and a little brazenness, he could lead them outside, a dark alley maybe, where he could send a message to the Feds. When they came and picked up what was left of the bodies, he didn’t figure they’d just pack up their surveillance and leave town, tails tucked between their legs. No, they’d turn up the heat, but that was just fine with him. Things were reaching a critical mass anyway, and only a swift and decisive counterattack could save the DYSAT kingdom.

After dogging the marks around for days, where they wiled away their nights in gentlemen’s clubs, paid cash for quickies and huffed up blow in back rooms, he was starting to feel mean, and dirty. Midforties, he was somewhat surprised to find a craving for younger girls boiling in his loins, an urge he hadn’t known existed until now. But this was business, and he had no time to indulge any amount of seething lust.

He needed relief, though, and he was content enough to find it through the barrel of his sound-suppressed Beretta 92-F.

Maybe when this whole dirty business was cleaned up he could return to one of these clubs, peace of mind intact, and spend some of his hard-earned cash indulging the fire.

He spotted them beyond the next stage where three girls were gyrating the creamy goods to heavy metal thunder, in their faces. The swirling light show lit up their baby-smooth features, eyes glittering, and it angered Roswell to find the executives ready to laugh and lust the night away while prepared to stick it to DYSAT. They had secured a booth, nothing but Heineken and top-shelf booze for those guys.

Roswell gave Morton the nod. They knew the drill.

And they had their marks squeezed into the booth before they could wonder what the hell was happening.

Grogan had his bottle poised near his lips, eyes darting all around. “You guys…”

“Yeah, us guys,” Roswell said. “There’s good news and there’s bad news, ladies. Bad news—Collins, Hurley and Samuels found new employment…in hell. Good news—you guys have a chance to stay breathing, but only if you talk to us and give us everything you even think you think you know.”

Caldwell was the first to want to spill it. “Not a problem, guys, just let us explain…”

“Not here,” Roswell said. “Nice and quiet, we’ll all get up, one big happy family, out the back door.”

“We’ve got a problem. Twelve o’clock.”

Roswell followed Morton’s stare out to the party sea of lights and noise and AWOL husbands. In Roswell’s experienced estimation of human nature, separating what was what from who was who in the interest of self-preservation, the big guy was falling way short of trying to blend into the crowd as another rooster on the loose away from the wife and kids. For one thing, there were the twin bulges under the windbreaker, the first tipoff a hunter had walked in, trying to close the gap, quick and quiet. He didn’t quite have the look of a Fed, Roswell decided. There was something too cold and menacing to conclude he and Morton would simply hear the guy reading off their Miranda rights.

The big guy with icy eyes stuck to the Mr. Cool routine, just the same, ordering a beer at the bar, grinning around at the female amusement park. Once the bottle was settled in front of him, he picked up his march, shouldering his way through the suits.

Moving with purpose.

Roswell grabbed Caldwell by the arm. “Let’s go.”

LYONS WAS twelve to fifteen steps away from the hardmen when he was spotted. They were hauling the playboys out of the booth, the two buzz-cut thugs seeing him without seeing him. Tweedledee and Tweedledum had the eyes, too.

Which meant they would just as soon kill him as look at him.

He could have radioed Pol for backup, as he saw the foursome weaving through the crowd, angling for a gigantic bouncer guarding what Lyons supposed was the doorway to whore paradise. The Able Team leader decided to go solo, do it his way.

The hard way.

He deposited the beer on the edge of the bar, brushed past a scantily clad waitress who scowled and bleated an oath at his backside. They made the door, and Lyons saw Tweedledee slip a crisp bill into Godzilla’s hand, mouthing something in his direction.

Rolling on, as the foursome was swallowed up by the gloom beyond the door, Lyons already knew where this was headed. Godzilla was all evil eyes, watching as Lyons marched up to him. Getting tensed up to go on the muscle, Godzilla sizing the opposition.

“It’s a private party. Take a hike, Pops.”

Lyons gave Godzilla a quick measure. Late-twenty-something, all muscles, the kind of arrogance in his eyes that told Lyons he had never done much more most likely than toss a few drunks out the front door.

“You’re telling me this is members only, son?”

Godzilla was about to lose it, his eyes turning mean. “What part of ‘take a hike’ didn’t you understand, Pops?”

“How about none of it?”

It came from the heart to begin with, the tried-and-true warrior backed by experience, all the pain and disappointment a man could know, choke down and file away along the course of his life coming together in a critical instant to do the deed. It boiled down, essentially, to a man versus a punk. Physically it came from the legs, a coiled spring that cut loose up his lower back, up the spine, an explosion down the arm until his forearm shot up with all the force of an erupting land mine. Lyons saw the light nearly winking out as Godzilla was lifted an inch or so off his patent leathers, head snapping back on wilting rubber from the forearm pile driver to the jaw. Figure he’d spent a few more hours in the gym lately, pumping more iron than Lyons had his entire life, and he saw the need to follow up with a sweeping left hook. It damn near scared Lyons to hit the guy that hard, his fist driving through jawbone, head snapping sideways, out and back. For a second, Lyons wondered if he had decapitated Godzilla. When the man went thundering off the floor, down for the count, Lyons checked his pulse, found a weak beat. A scan of the party crowd and he found his luck was holding up for a change. They were too busy playing grab ass to notice the incident.

“Pops” Ironman Lyons freed his Colt Python, then hit the door.

CHAPTER THREE

Schwarz found the black Lexus parked in the shadows of some white-facaded structure gone to seed with weeds and vines. There was no gate around the lot, permitting quick and easy access, no valet he could find with a search of the naked eye. And the surging party mass along Sunset was too busy trooping in and out of all the rock, comedy and gentlemen’s clubs to pay one straggling shadow any mind.

Or so he hoped.

He was deep in the lot, but felt an unseen watcher hawkeyeing his back, radar from some invisible force homed in on his march, lining him up. He started to feel an itch between his shoulder blades as he gave the line of vehicles a long probing eye.

Nothing stirred.

Okay, he was in, but something felt off-kilter, and he found himself planning his exit already. Still he had a job to do, but as he was forging toward the black Lexus, he couldn’t help but feel Lyons was on a headhunting tour inside the club, a sense of urgency to get back to the van burning him up. Three days of lurking all over town, watching their targets live it up like piggish royalty. For some reason he couldn’t quite pin down, he felt it was set to blow up in their faces.

Lyons wasn’t the patient sort.

Schwarz picked up the pace, feeling that heart palpitation Pol mentioned, wondering where the black SUV that carried at least two of the other thugs was parked. He’d settle for one out of two, at worst, even though Ironman wouldn’t appreciate a half-assed outing. It wasn’t that Schwarz intended to come up short on his task. Rather, he felt a strange anxiety, some omen hanging out there in the buzz and babble of nightlife. Speed and a quick retreat made more sense than wandering about, checking out vehicles, casting about the paranoid eye like some potential car thief in the neighborhood.

He made the Lexus, fixed the small magnetic tracking box under the starboard front fender. He was suddenly thinking of his choice side arm, the Beretta 93-R, when he sensed a presence behind him. It was pure combat instinct that sent Schwarz springing to his feet, propelling himself into a flying leap over the hood as the pistol sounded a cracking retort from behind, a bolt of hot lightning burning over his scalp. The round chipped off a fleck of stone above his head, the screaming ricochet flying off into the night. Smart money told him a cop would have at least identified himself.

That left the missing third goon.

Schwarz had the Beretta out, came up, glimpsed the thug in question and capped off a round to let the guy know he was no easy tag. He missed badly, a hasty shot with no time to line it up, winging it for effect, the thug dropping beneath the roof. The windshield of a Jaguar downrange absorbed his wild round, a neat hole punched through to give the missing driver some mystery to ponder over later.

Schwarz hit the pavement on his belly, somehow kept the wind from getting punched out of his lungs, adrenaline doing all the work as he knew there was less than a second to clean it up before he was the only mess left behind. It was nothing more than a flash, feet scampering up the opposite side, but Schwarz tapped off a 9 mm round that scored flesh and bone, chopped the guy off at the ankle. Even in the heat of battle, he gave the opposition some credit for not screaming out, the hardman hammering the ground, but holding on to dish it back and fight it out.

The microsecond of begrudging admiration ended in the next eye blink as the thug turned wildman, opened up to throw his own play back in his face. Rounds were whining off the asphalt, lead hornets buzzing and banging off the chassis. Schwarz hit the front end, the tire punched out in a thud followed by a long hiss of exhaling air, then he went for broke.

Schwarz made a snap decision to steal a page from the Ironman manual on combat tactics. It was akin to charging the hill, all balls and brazen defiance, but Schwarz knew there was no choice but to go for it.

The opposition was still blasting away on the blind-side when Schwarz threw himself onto the hood, rolling up the windshield as more wild rounds then came erupting through glass, the shooter trying to line him up, professional cool under pain and fire, the faceless hardman trailing all the racket of his weight slamming metal with screaming lead. He was up and sliding down the roof, skidding on his butt off the back end when the shadow shooter figured out the play too late. It could have been white-hot agony clogging up the works, keeping the fallen shooter from twisting to line him up. It could have been he’d burned out the clip by the time Schwarz was dropping off the trunk and going for it.

It didn’t matter either way in the end. Schwarz hit his feet, pumped a 9 mm sendoff between the shooter’s eyes just as the hardman was swinging the pistol his way.

The curtain might have dropped on one out of three, but Schwarz knew the real trouble had only just started. So much for high-tech intentions.

War had just been declared on Able Team.

Schwarz was scanning the vicinity, retracing his steps back through the lot. They were still laughing it up out there on Sunset, unaware death walked among them. Schwarz kept the Beretta out and leading the way. He was thinking of Lyons, some uncanny instinct tugging him toward the club. He pulled out his handheld radio, raised Blancanales and told him, “We’ve got problems.”

ROSWELL DECIDED the alley would mark the big guy’s final resting place. A deathtrap was in order, something quick and neat, since he’d just seen their pursuer slip through the doorway, a large revolver in his hand. Something had gone wrong, the fifty spot he’d laid on the bouncer wasted money. Just before hitting the far back door, Roswell thought he’d caught the sound of a falling body where the bouncer had stood guard.

Whoever the big guy was, he had a look about him that warned Roswell they were being tracked by a mad dog who wouldn’t rest until the choice beef was in its mouth. And now he wasn’t only moving with more purpose, but he was also kicking ass and taking names.

A quick scan of the wide alley, and Roswell nodded toward the garbage Dumpster behind, told Morton, “I’ll get his attention.”

Roswell needed this nailed down, five seconds ago, then get on his way back to the colonel’s office. A long night of grilling two more of DYSAT’s loudmouths was going to prove a task grim enough. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth was on the menu, on hold for the moment, but the last thing Roswell needed was some armed bulldog chasing them all over Los Angeles, growling and biting at their heels.

Enough. Time to make a stand.

Roswell grabbed Caldwell by the scruff of his neck, then jammed the muzzle of his sound-suppressed Beretta against the base of Grogan’s skull. “Both of you. Slow. Turn around. Any squawking, any sudden cute moves, I just as soon shoot you both and leave you for the garbagemen in the morning.”

THE STINK of sweat and stale sex in his nose, Lyons advanced down the long hallway, tuning out all the moaning and mewing from behind closed doors on the way. Moments ago, he’d spotted his quarry going out the back door. Colt Python leading the march, Lyons made the door, listened to the silence beyond. If they were gone, he could only hope Pol had a visual, Gadgets delivering the tracking presents. If they were waiting…

Lyons shouldered his way out the door. Two steps beyond and into the alley, he heard, “Hey, over here!”

It was too easy, and the old saying about something looking too good to be true saved his life. He was lurching back just as the first two or three rounds were barking his way. Lyons had the setup mentally gauged, as slugs tattooed the doorway in a flash of sparking steel. Tweedledee was using the DYSAT playboys as human armor, with Tweedledum down the alley, looking to wrap this up, no fuss.

Screw it, Lyons thought, crouching, swinging around the big hand cannon. He was lining up Tweedledee’s leg when the howling of men in anguish raked the air. The Beretta was blown out of Tweedledee’s hand in a burst of crimson, then Lyons made out his back-door cavalry.

Schwarz.

Maybe it was the sight of watching his comrade in kidnapping going down as his head was cracked open by one well-placed round from Schwarz’s Beretta. But Tweedledum’s head popped over the edge of the garbage Dumpster, eyes bugged, and Lyons pulled the trigger, erasing the picture of confusion forever.

The playboys were grabbing air, hopping around, snapping out the questions. Lyons was already on his radio, rounding up Blancanales. “Pol, get your ass in the alley.”

Schwarz was sporting a wry grin, stepping up to the DYSAT executives. “Good thing I was thinking about you.”

Lyons matched the look as Blancanales roared the van into the alley. “Something just told you your old pal would need a helping hand, huh?”

“You know, Carl, you ever think about cutting back on the red meat?”

“WHERE TO?” Blancanales asked as he headed the van west on Sunset.

“Find Santa Monica Boulevard,” Lyons answered. “That will get us in the general vicinity of Century City. I think it’s time we paid their boss a visit. Assuming he keeps longer work hours than the hired help.”

Lyons was scrunched up beside Gadgets, and their two songbirds were in back. The plastic cuffs had already been snapped on their wrists, and Lyons read the fear on their expressions as they sat on the floor.

“Right, you two are in a world of hurt.”

“Are you cops?”

“Not exactly. Right now we’re the only thing that stands between a bunch of guys like the ones we left back there in the alley, and your permanent retirement from DYSAT.”

“You want us to talk about what we know?”

“You sound like a smart young man.”

“What’s in it for us?”

Lyons chuckled. “Now you’re sounding not so smart. All I’m telling you on a deal, is that it depends on what we hear. Bottom line, that’s not my call to make.”

He was about to unleash the flurry of questions when the phone with its secured line beeped from its hookup on the console. Schwarz fielded the call. Lyons waited, heard Gadgets grunting.

“Yeah…uh-huh…right…just a second…”

“It’s Hal,” Schwarz said, his hand over the mouthpiece. “He said we have a green light—sort of.”

“What the hell’s sort of?”

“There’s conditions. What do you want me to tell him about our situation?”

“The truth.”

THE TRUTH SENT Brognola digging out the packet of antacid tablets. He washed three of them down with coffee, then moved deeper across the Computer Room. Akira Tokaido and Hunt Wethers stopped their cyber sleuthing on pertinent background data on the key DYSAT players long enough to catch the grim update on Able Team.

“Carl says it was self-defense,” Brognola said. “Schwarz says his guy came in, likewise blasting.”

“The bad guys know they’re targeted,” Kurtzman said from his workstation. “Maybe that’s good. Now that the opening guns have sounded, the top dogs will get nervous, maybe try and pack up their toys, whatever the latest shipment, and bull ahead.”

“Or pull up the drawbridge,” Price stated.

“I don’t think it’s exactly what the President had in mind,” Tokaido put in, “when he alluded to turning up the heat a notch. But we all know Carl can get a little antsy.”

“Well, antsy or whatever, the heat is on, people,” Brognola said. “The only question is who burns first.”

“And the DYSAT lab facility in Idaho?” Wethers asked. “Is it still hands off?”

“For now. Okay, where are we?”

Brognola checked the large monitor that displayed a tract of the Indian Ocean where the minisub was taking Phoenix Force to the Madagascan shore. Tokaido commented on the visual capacity of the state-of-the-art high-energy X-ray laser tracking beam that was monitoring the minisub and anything else moving in the water from space. Just like an X-ray it outlined the sub, twenty feet below the surface in a hazy gray frame.

“Two more minutes and they’re out the hatch,” Price announced. “They’re right on schedule.”

“The problem is that damn Russian satellite,” Brognola groused. “We’re going to be blind soon, and we won’t have another satellite pass over until they’re wheels up in the Spectre.”

“Five hours before it has to move on,” Kurtzman said. “And we still can’t get any answers from our side or any contacts we have in Moscow why a Russian satellite is up ONI-1’s rear. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way. Over the phone.”

“Hal, I know I’m getting a little ahead of the program,” Wethers said, “but I’ve been poring over the sat imagery of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. At some point I think we need to address it again. I mean, I have a clear and growing military buildup, far exceeding anything the Iranians have done to date. The key islands in the strait, Larak, Henqin, Sirri, Qeshm and the Greater Tunb Islands…well, they’ve moved in an additional sixteen pieces of antiaircraft hardware, including surface-to-air missiles. Now, one-third of the world’s oil supply is tankered through the Strait of Hormuz. I’m not pushing any panic buttons, but we’re looking at some connection between DYSAT, Sudan, the Iranians in Madagascar and the latest renewed military buildup on the islands. Say the Iranians pull the trigger? A 130 mm gun is more than plenty to sink any one of twenty tankers that pass through the strait every day. A wall of fire, a massive oil spill would shut the strait down. I don’t even want to begin to imagine the damage to the economic infrastructures of Europe, Japan, and, of course, the United States.”

And thus phase two.

“The President’s aware, Hunt, of the potential enormity of the problem. Depending on what happens with Phoenix in Madagascar, and if Striker’s able to link a few of the missing pieces together…let’s get Phoenix through Phase One. The Strait of Hormuz situation remains on the back burner.”

Brognola was watching the X-ray beam tracking the minisub when he saw it. It came at the minisub, from the south, moving through the water, on a collision course.

Kurtzman muttered a curse as he recognized it for what it was. “How close are they to shore?”

“Three hundred yards still,” Tokaido said. “Oh, my God.”

Brognola nearly lost his grip on the coffee cup, fingers clenching so hard around the cigar he nearly snapped it in two. “Please, people, someone tell me that’s not what I think I think it is.”

CHAPTER FOUR

It was the dreaded demon, the alpha and the omega, he thought, of any SEAL’s worst nightmare.

It was a white shark, and it was a big one.

Calvin James nearly leaped off the bench, as soon as the thud struck the hull from above, the black ex-SEAL scrambling toward the control console when—

He froze, heart lurching into his throat as he caught sight of the massive tail slowly stroking, fanning the murk, back and forth, out to the port side. Yellow light from the minisub outlined the creature, framed its white underbelly from which it got its name.

The sub’s driver, a blacksuit brought from the Farm, watched until the distant darkness swallowed up the great fish, his eyeballs nearly popping out of his skull.

Gone but hardly forgotten.

“Sir, that was at least a sixteen—”

“No,” James said, “more like an eighteen footer, four, maybe five tons. A submarine with teeth.” The former SEAL turned and read the grim fear on the faces of his comrades in Phoenix Force.

T. J. Hawkins was watching the dark gloom, intent as hell, as if the behemoth might come back for another look at the minisub, or worse—ram its head straight through the reinforced glass bubble. “Cal, I’m thinking they probably never told you what to do about something like that in BUDs.”

“Pray.”

Rafael Encizo, donning his frogman suit like the other commandos, said, “Beyond the Our Fathers and the Hail Marys, what’s the plan?”

David McCarter, the leader of Phoenix Force, stepped up to the control console, reading the depth gauges. “How close can you get us to shore?”

“Another fifty, sixty yards tops, then I’m cutting it close to hitting the bottom.”

And, of course, they were warriors, with a mission on the table. No one, even if the thought fleeted through his mind, was about to say out loud, “Hell, no, I won’t go.”

“So, that leaves us how far a swim?” Gary Manning wanted to know.

“A little less than a hundred yards.”

“Fire the torpedo,” McCarter told the blacksuit. “All right, mates, everybody has a knife. We swim in a staggered formation. Slow and easy. Give yourselves six feet apart, I’m thinking, breaststroke it in, blade in one hand.”

Space enough between them, which meant they wouldn’t accidentally cut each other with their knives while stroking.

“Gary and I will watch the flanks and the rear. It shows up and wants a late-night snack, go for the eyes.”

“I suggest we swim to the bottom, hug the deck all the way in,” James said. “When they strike, they usually come up from below.”

“Understood. Keep the headlights on us to light the way in,” McCarter told the submariner. “All right, mates, let’s saddle up and hit the hatch. No fish is going to keep us from going to the dance.”

BROGNOLA RAISED McCarter just as Phoenix Force was fully suited up, lined up and set to go out the hatch. He gritted his teeth until the blood pressure throbbed in his eardrums, the mere thought of what waited for them outside the minisub cutting a primal terror through the Justice man, the ungodly likes of which he hadn’t known in some time. A part of him wanting like hell to tell McCarter to scrub the mission for the time being, they’d find another way.

“I don’t like it, David,” Brognola said, checking the sat imagery from the X-ray eyes in the sky. “It’s either left the area or gone too deep to pick up on our end. We’ll be out of touch until you reach shore. You don’t even have a weapon—except a commando dagger.”