Critical Intelligence

Across the room from Tokaido sat his polar opposite.

Professor Huntington Wethers had come to the Stony Man operation from his position on the faculty of UCLA. The tall, distinguished black man sported gray hair at his temples and an unflappable manner. He currently worked two laptop screens as a translation program fed him information from monitored radio traffic coming out of France.

Carmen Delahunt walked through the door between the Computer Room and the Communications Center. The redheaded ex-FBI agent made a beeline for Barbara Price when she saw her boss. The only female on the Farm’s cyberteam, she served as a pivotal balance between Tokaido’s hotshot hacking magic and Wethers’s more restrained, academic style.

She finished her conversation and snapped her cell phone shut as she walked up to Barb. She pointed toward the newspaper in the mission controller’s hand.

“You see that about GAO investigations?” she asked. “I started running an analytical of our financial allotments and expenditures, just to double-check none of our money originated in accounts tainted by the investigations.”

Price smiled. “You read my mind, Carmen,” she said. “Once we have Phoenix and Able taken care of, why don’t you send me a summary in case anything comes of it.”

“Will do.” Delahunt nodded. “I have to double-check the South American arrangements we made for the team’s extraction with the ‘package’—if it comes to that. It’s nice to be able to tap the resources of larger groups like the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, but coordination is a nightmare.”

“Let me know if anything goes wrong,” Price said.

Delahunt nodded, then turned and began walking back across the floor toward the connecting door to the Annex’s Computer Room, her fingers punching out a number on her encrypted cell phone.

Barbara Price smiled.

She could feel the energy, the sense of purpose that permeated the room flow into her. Out there in the cold eight men on two teams were about to enter into danger for the sake of their country. If they got into trouble, if they needed anything, they would turn to her and her people.

She did not intend to let them down.

She made her way to her desk, where a light flashing on her desktop phone let her know a call was holding. She looked over at Kurtzman and saw the man returning a telephone handset to its cradle. He pointed toward her.

“It’s Hal on line one,” he said.

“Thanks, Bear,” she answered.

She set her coffee down and picked up the handset as she sank into her chair. She put the phone to her ear and tapped a key on her computer, knocking the screen off standby mode.

“Hal, it’s Barb,” she said.

“I’m outside the Oval Office right now,” Brognola said. “Are the boys up and rolling?”

“As we speak,” Price answered. “Tell him operations are prepped to launch at his word.”

“All right. Let’s hope this one goes by the numbers,” the gruff federal agent said.

“As always,” she agreed, and hung up.

“All right, people,” she announced to the room. “Let’s get ready to roll.”

CHAPTER TWO

Bogotá, Colombia

Lieutenant Colonel Sim Sin-Bok lit his cigar.

The North Korean intelligence officer narrowed his eyes in pleasure as he inhaled the thick, strong smoke of the Corona Grande. The rich nicotine entered his bloodstream and he immediately felt the euphoric rush. He relaxed into the plush leather seats of the BMW X3 and released the tobacco smoke through his nose in a sigh.

“Nothing but the best, eh, my friend?” Jimenez Naranjo purred.

The FARC commander was seated directly across from the covert representative of North Korea. The two men rode in comfort as the sleek, black BMW SUV flew down a jungle road leading deeper into mountains.

“I must admit,” Sin-Bok said in accented Spanish, “I have come to enjoy our little liaisons.”

“Your boss, he enjoys our money, too. No?” Naranjo winked, flashing white teeth.

“As much as yours enjoys our armaments,” Sin-Bok countered.

The intelligence officer had been all over the Pacific Rim and Middle East in his years of service with the most glorious leaders. He had come to have a grudging respect for the FARC commander Naranjo in the course of their dealings, but weapons sales to violent groups always left him feeling nonplussed at best.

The SUV raced along the jungle road, cutting deeper into the mountain stronghold of the last nebulous Communist insurgency left on the planet. More than any ideological revelations, it had been the extortion of Colombian drug barons by the FARC guerrillas that had propelled them down a road toward the sort of capitalism they claimed to despise so much. They claimed their actions were about the rights of the peasant farmers to grow a crop that turned them profits and improved their lives.

For all Sin-Bok knew, the FARC leaders believed that. But he also knew that the influx of cocaine money had made things like up-armored diplomat-model BMW SUVs available to what had once been a rabble force dressed in rags. They were also able to purchase guidance systems such as the ones he carried on a flash drive in his briefcase. Guidance systems that could turn shoot-and-forget munitions such as old Soviet S-7 grail rocket launchers into weapons of pinpoint accuracy, capable of disabling a tank or knocking even American combat helicopters out of the sky.

Naranjo moved his hand down and hit a lever button on his seat rest. Behind him the vehicle’s glass partition powered smoothly up, the engine making a subdued whine as it closed.

Sin-Bok kept his face inscrutable. He had dealt with Chinese Tongs based in Hong Kong, with representatives of Hamas and the Syrian government. He had sold or bought illicit goods from them all. He did not rattle easily and best of all, his ability to eat outside of the famine pit that was North Korea had left him with a bit of a pot belly. Such a belly was an indication of power in his nation. Men noticed and feared those grown so powerful they could be fat. Women took note and were appropriately impressed.

Sin-Bok cocked an eyebrow toward Naranjo.

When the FARC leader spoke he carefully enunciated each word so that there could be no misunderstanding. And he spoke in English.

“Two plus five equals seven,” he said.

Sin-Bok felt a cold squirt of adrenaline hit his stomach. He felt his throat swell up from the reaction and he forced himself not to swallow and thus reveal his surprise and nervousness.

By the dragon’s luck, he thought wildly, this cannot be. Then he thought, Their servants truly are everywhere.

On his lap his hands tightened momentarily around his attaché case. Then relaxed. He met Naranjo’s eye and nodded once, sharply.

“Three plus four equals seven,” Sin-Bok replied, also in English, completing the code parole and establishing his rank as one higher than his contact.

The two agents of the shadowy organization stared at each other for a long moment. Naranjo opened a lid set between his rear-facing seats and pulled out two cut-crystal tumblers and a bottle of expensive rum.

He poured Sin-Bok a glass and handed it over. The North Korean espionage agent took it without a word. The enhanced suspension on the BMW made their vehicle ride like it was on rails. He sipped the sugar-cane liquor, enjoying the sharp alcohol.

He carefully set his tumbler on top of his leather attaché case and picked up his cigar from the ashtray. He drew in a lungful of smoke as the FARC narcoterrorist and field agent poured himself a drink.

After Naranjo had put the bottle away, Sin-Bok spoke again.

“I take it these guidance systems aren’t just headed for your jungle camps,” he observed.

“Ah, no,” Naranjo admitted, switching back to Spanish. “I, like you, am a link.”

With a rueful look Sin-Bok held up his glass. “Here’s to Seven,” he said, voice rueful.

White House, Washington, D.C.

HAL BROGNOLA LOOKED OUT the east door of the Oval Office and into the Rose Garden. Beside him in a comfortable chair sat the special envoy to North Korea. They faced the President of the United States in his traditional seat behind the desk made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute.

Behind them in the northeast corner a grandfather clock built by John and Thomas Seymour ticked out the passing of time. Waiting for the President to finish reading the report, Brognola looked down at the carpet on the floor, noting the presidential seal. He’d been in this office a good many times over the years, seen more than one man pass through the job, seen the job age them all.

The President sighed. He tossed the national intelligence estimate addendum down on the desk and leaned back. He folded his hands in a pensive motion and cocked an eyebrow at Brognola.

“You’re sure, then?” The question was perfunctory.

Brognola nodded once. “Yes, sir.”

The President frowned and twisted slightly in his seat. “Let’s get ’em on the line,” he told the envoy.

The special envoy leaned forward and tapped a few numbers out on the handset located on the desktop. He activated the speakerphone function and leaned back while the number dialed. After two digital ring tones a smooth feminine voice answered, Korean.

The envoy answered in Korean, then stated, “With your permission, Mr. Ambassador, I would like to switch to English.”

There was a brief pause, then a sharp, almost shrill man’s voice spoke in quick, truncated syllables. The North Korean regime did not maintain a diplomatic presence in the United States, and the men in the Oval Office were speaking to the leader of the U.N. delegation in New York.

“Yes, English is fine,” the ambassador said. “But whatever language we choose to continue wasting our time in, the fact still remains constant. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has no knowledge of the activities of which you speak. We consider such activities as a personal insult on the character of our most beloved leader, the eternal president, Kim Jong-il. Frankly a continuation of this so-called investigation will be construed as a hostile act.”

Brognola shifted his gaze away from the conference call toward the President’s face. It remained impassive except for the slight tightening of muscles along the jaw, indicating that he was grinding his teeth.

“Mr. Ambassador,” the envoy began, “we consider the arming and training of known terrorist groups such as FARC to be hostile acts.”

“Fortunately for the United States, Korea has not undertaken any of these activities.”

“Why is that ‘fortunate’ for us?” Brognola interjected.

“Because,” the voice continued, “if such an error in perception was to occur, the United States might be tempted to do something rash in response.”

“I trust you’ve read the dossier I sent you earlier,” the envoy prompted.

At his desk the President made a steeple of his long, slender fingers and leaned slightly forward in his chair. He was due to a staff meeting to discuss implementation of public health care options in twelve minutes. Brognola could see the President growing more annoyed with the futile game they were now playing with the North Koreans.

“I have seen the dossier,” the ambassador admitted. “I saw nothing compelling in those documents. The idea that a member of our security services would be working as a trainer and liaison for a FARC cell in Colombia is obviously impossible. That leaves only two explanations for your report that I can see.”

The envoy let out a sigh and leaned back in his chair. “And those explanations would be…?”

“Either your much vaunted intelligence services are mistaken or, second and more likely, you are attempt to fabricate this evidence to justify a preemptive strike on our homeland.” The ambassador paused, then began speaking in a much louder, much shriller voice. “This is inexcusable! We will not be the victim of your imperialist plots! We will defend our home by any means necessary from your Western aggression!”

The President looked over at Brognola. He silently mouthed the word imperialist to the big federal agent. Brognola shrugged, then murmured under his breath, “They’re a little like Cuba,” he explained. “Forty or fifty years behind. They probably just got a copy of Dr. Strangelove in Pyongyang last month.”

The President made a sour face as the ambassador continued to bark his outrage over the conference link. He made a chopping motion with one hand toward the phone, then nodded at the envoy.

“Mr. Ambassador,” the envoy interrupted, “your protests have been noted. We will not be speaking of this matter again. Good day.” He cut the connection.

“Okay,” the President said. “I gave it one last try. We don’t know what kind of brinksmanship they’re trying to pull off this time, but they can go to hell.” He spun around in his chair and looked out at the Rose Garden. “Your boys in position to execute our contingency plan?”

“It seems our contingency just upgraded to primary,” Brognola said. “And yes, my crews are in place and ready to roll.”

“Then proceed,” the President said.

Once they left the office Brognola and the special envoy went in separate directions, each man pulling out a NSA-encrypted cell phone. The director of the Justice Department’s Sensitive Operations Group hit the number 1 on his speed dial option. Two rings later Barbara Price answered.

“I just got out of my meeting with the Man,” he informed her. “We are ready to execute.”

Stony Man Farm

BARBARA PRICE STOOD in the hallway in front of the door leading to the Communications Room. She said goodbye to Brognola and cut the connection on her phone before opening the door.

Price entered the room like a gust of wind. The attractive mission controller wore a headset communications link and carried a matte-black cell phone PDA with NSA security upgrades.

She walked across the room, nodding to where Akira Tokaido and Carmen Delahunt sat at workstations. A giant flat screen was fixed to the wall above their heads. The monitor was silent and still, for the moment showing only the screen saver: an image of the movie poster for The Magnificent Seven with the quote from the script, “We deal in lead, friend.”

“Time?” Price asked.

“M-Minute minus twenty seconds,” Kurtzman replied.

From the other side of the room he used a blunt, square-tipped finger to toggle his wheelchair away from his workstation. The electric engine of the power chair ramped up as the leader of the Stony Man cybernetics team pulled even with Stony Man’s mission controller.

“Okay,” Price said. “Bring central synchronistic communications online.”

At her station, Carmen Delahunt typed a command on her keyboard. Inside Price’s headset earjack, the receiver popped and the ex-NSA operational manager nodded once to Delahunt.

“Stony Base to Stony Eagle,” she said. “Radio check, over.”

Instantly the voice of Stony Man pilot Jack Grimaldi answered, coming over the digital link with crystal clarity. “Base, this is Bird,” he replied. “I have good copy.”

Price gave a curt nod to herself and turned toward the communal HD screen and pointed a finger.

Kurtzman tapped a command on an interface board built into his power chair and the screen switched to a satellite image of the Earth. The observation platform was a Keyhole satellite in near-Earth geosynchronous orbit completely dedicated to the needs of Stony Man operational taskings.

“Stony Base to Stony Hawk,” she continued.

“Stony Hawk, good copy,” Able Team leader Carl Lyons answered in clipped syllables.

On the screen the sat image rotated until the HD monitor showed the Western Hemisphere. Kurtzman tapped out a few clicks on his keypad, centering the screen over Central America, and then began to tighten its resolution as it slid down toward the southern continent. Kurtzman hit another command key and a political map was overlaid on the topographical features.

“Do you have eyes on target?” Price asked.

“Affirmative,” Lyons responded.

“Eagle, give us your position,” Price told Grimaldi.

“I’m in a holding pattern behind Hill 372, about three klicks out,” Grimaldi said.

On the overhead monitor the political map showed Colombia. The spy camera tightened its resolution even further and suddenly the POV began descending at a rapid rate.

To the onlookers it seemed as if they were in the nose of a plane as it dive-bombed through wispy patches of clouds toward the earth below.

“Hawk and Eagle, we are green light go,” Price said. “I repeat, we are green light go.”

“Copy,” Grimaldi answered.

“Copy,” Lyons said.

Price looked to the wall. On one side of the image, scrolling vertically were GPS coordinates blinking rapidly next to numerical sets of longitude and latitude readings.

Patches of green and brown, at first unidentifiable, formed into a jungle canopy over a series of rolling hills. On the southeast side of the screen a broad, fast-moving river cut through the trees. Up the sheer plateau from the water, a brown dirt road cut out of the rugged geography.

From his position at his workstation Akira Tokaido manipulated the sat image. The camera view settled on a flat area of the map. At first the location appeared to be nothing more than dense brush where the road ended.

“Toggling to IR,” Tokaido informed the room.

His thumb struck the appropriate key and instantly the crystal-clear picture on the screen changed to a swirling mesh of colors based on radiant heat that made the monitor appear like a watercolor canvas.

On the screen the figures beneath camouflage netting showed up immediately. Roughly two dozen individuals moved around, spread over an area the size of a soccer field.

Several bright spots indicated where industrial furnaces were active and in one section of the field several large vehicles sat clustered in parallel rows. Cool rectangular blobs revealed Quonset huts and long, narrow buildings of concrete and wood.

The tension in the room grew as they waited for the field teams to strike. Barbara Price leaned forward and grabbed the backrest on an office chair. She squeezed it hard until her knuckles shone white from her grip.

Then, on the screen, all hell broke loose.

CHAPTER THREE

Colombia

Carl Lyons lifted his Bushnell binoculars and scanned the FARC camp below. Able Team’s position was located right above the only road leading into the terrorist outpost. This was a hammer-and-anvil operation, with Able Team serving as the anvil.

The readout on the range finder built into the optics showed 204 meters. Sweat trickled down Lyons’s body, sliding over his feverish skin to collect at his armpits, navel and groin. He was a big man and heavily muscled, which made the heat a burden to him. He was growing crankier by the second.

Behind him in the brush Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz slapped a mosquito. The Able Team electronics genius was crouched next to a 80 mm mortar. Lined up in front of the squat weapon’s base plate were six rounds: two high explosive, two antipersonnel, two white phosphorous. He lowered a compass and quickly adjusted the angle of the tube based on his reading.

On the ground a tripod-mounted electronic device hummed softly. The size of a Power-Book it had an antenna dish set in the top that slowly rotated. On loan from the Pentagon through the DARPA—Defense Advance Research and Projects Agency—program, the XM-12 was a field-portable scrambler unit capable of disrupting digital signals in addition to radio waves.

Out in front of Schwarz and Lyons the third member of Able Team lay belly-down on the soggy ground. Ex-Special Forces sergeant Rosario Blancanales had his right eye suctioned up close against the rubber cup of his sniper scope.

“You heard the lady,” he growled. “Let’s do this thing.”

“Phoenix inbound,” Grimaldi informed them over the com link. “Adios, assholes,” Blancanales muttered to the narcoterrorists. Behind him Schwarz picked up the first HE round.

In the reticule of his scope the Puerto Rican’s crosshairs were settled on a bearded FARC soldier manning the machine gun position at the entrance to the camp.

The man wore dark khaki fatigues stained with sweat. His tangle of long, greasy black hair was kept back by a shapeless black beret, and he wore a 9 mm Browning Hi-Power in a belt holster opposite the sheath for a wicked-looking machete.

He laughed, and blunt, very white teeth stood out like neon against his walnut-brown complexion. On his web gear he carried a sat phone, which had first alerted Blancanales that this was a leader. Two other soldiers, much younger and beardless, stood around listening to the older man talk, M-16 A-2 assault rifles in their hands.

Blancanales slowly released his breath and felt his world narrow to the crosshairs of his scope. The FARC leader’s fatigue shirt was open to the belly, revealing an expanse of curly black hair across his lean chest. A gold chain hung down between the man’s pectoral muscles. Blancanales’s crosshairs centered there.

From the valley there was the sudden sound of an approaching helicopter. The man snapped his head around at the noise. The M-21 sniper rifle with folding paratrooper stock coughed once as Blancanales squeezed the trigger in a slow, controlled movement.

Across two hundred yards he saw the FARC leader jerk as the 7.62 mm NATO round struck him. In the sniper optic Blancanales saw blood halo out behind the man in a fine mist. The target half spun, crumpled to his knees, then fell forward on his face.

The two sentries standing next to the dead man swept up their weapons. They turned toward the sound of the helicopter, spun back toward the road from where Blancanales’s round had come. They brought their M-16s to their shoulders and started shouting in Spanish.

Lyons opened up with his cut-down M-60E.

He had the machine gun supported on a fallen log and fed from a green plastic, 200-round drum magazine. The weapon roared to life with a stuttering thunder as hot shell casings arced out of the receiver and spun to the forest floor.

The earth in front of the FARC sentries erupted in a series of geyser spouts as he walked his fire in on them. Behind him Schwarz released his hold on the mortar round, dropping it smoothly into the tube. It went off with a throaty bloop. Lyons’s rounds struck the two men.

The heavy-caliber bullets buzzed into the FARC sentries, hacking them up like spinning axes. They spun and jiggled like marionettes dancing for a puppeteer. They staggered, dropping their weapons, then flopped to the ground still quivering.

Schwarz’s 80 mm HE mortar round struck the camp dead center of the FARC motor pool. A black Ford Excursion with its roof cut off and massively oversize tires exploded. A ball of black smoke and orange flame mushroomed out. The vehicle was picked up off the ground and spun end-over-end, crumpling an old school bus repainted OD-green. Two five-ton Oso-12 trucks had their windows blown out, and a FARC soldier walking past was picked up and thrown like a rag doll.

Blancanales drew down on a running soldier and pulled his trigger. The man fell in a tangled heap.

Lyons eased up on his machine gun and activated his throat mike.

“Eagle, this is Hawk,” he said. “The front door is sealed. Deploy.”

“Copy,” the British-accented voice of David McCarter replied.

“Drop the WP right on the road in case anyone tries to drive out,” Lyons told Schwarz.

Schwarz nodded, then twisted the elevation knob on the mortar down several clicks. He lifted a white phosphorous round and dropped it in. The mortar went off and the round lobbed outward in a tight arc. The WP bomb struck the earth at the sentry post and detonated. Instantly the corpses at the impact site burst into flame.

Satisfied, Schwarz dropped his second round on the same angle and turned the entrance to the FARC camp into a raging conflagration.