Death Dealers

With that knowledge, she gave her cybernetic crew a quick goodbye and exited the Computer Room.

She opened the encryption on her tablet, clearing the rest of the data from both the screen and its random access memory. It was a paranoid habit, sterilizing the device of the full data she’d been accessing just for a telephone call, but the Farm had battled against major intelligence agencies and conspiracies with considerable hacking abilities.

“Barb,” Brognola said as his video call came through on her tablet.

“Hal.... So far, the capsules inside Carl, Gadgets and T.J. are still reporting normal vital signs,” Price informed him right off the bat.

Brognola had known Lyons and Schwarz for a long time, since even before the founding of the Sensitive Operations Group.

“These are the passive sensors, correct?” Brognola asked.

Price nodded. “We’ve got their location, as well. They simply can’t talk to us and we cannot warn them. Other than that—”

“Remember.” Brognola cut her off. “If things go to hell, you just have to remember, that’s Able Team and Phoenix Force already on the ground. To them, being surrounded just means they don’t have to watch their fire.”

Price smirked. “That’s one positive way of looking at it.”

“What about Blancanales and the rest of Phoenix?” Brognola asked.

“They’re currently in Hong Kong, checking in with David’s old girlfriend, Mei Anna,” Price said.

“Which is very iffy, considering China is an enemy state,” Brognola mused. “Though, technically, we’re working alongside them here.”

“The Ministry of State Security doesn’t know that, and even if they did, there’s still going to be a bit of bad blood between our two agencies if they figure out who McCarter and company are,” Price said. “Just a couple of weeks ago, Phoenix intercepted an MSS ‘fund-raising shipment’ of heroin and destroyed it.”

“If the MSS has more than a rumor of Phoenix Force’s existence, that would be bad. Very bad,” Brognola stated. “But there was no evidence of whom and what attacked that shipment, correct?”

“Correct,” Price returned. “It’s my job to see the worst-case scenario, however. So forgive me if I give you these kinds of cues.”

“It’s a shame that both teams are already deployed. I’d have loved to have someone on the ground in New Mexico just to get some hard data on the actual raid,” Brognola said.

Price could imagine Brognola’s jowled face turning into a grim frown. “So far, the Department of Defense investigators seem to be doing quite well on their own. We’re monitoring evidentiary data and field reports, and doing what we can to track down leads based on that data and feeding it back into the investigation. If something requires a ground response, we can always pull Phoenix off the current operation, or we can see if Striker is available.”

“We don’t usually get that opportunity,” Brognola returned. “But it’s worth a try. Anything on the China attacks?”

“The Gobi desert facility that was struck was the same one that test-fired the Dong-Feng-21 variant in 2013,” Price told him. “So we’re currently operating on the idea that the attackers were after the experimental ballistic missile designs. There’s a bit of disjoint, however.”

“The DF-21 and the American engine prototypes are incompatible,” Brognola concluded.

“Right. The DF gets so fast because it is riding atop an engine that can reach low orbit, while the American design is intended for nap-of-the-earth or wave-lapping altitude at Mach 10, necessitating the complex guidance systems,” Price affirmed. “The cybernetic team is currently aware of this disparity and is looking to see what else might have been there.”

Brognola grunted his receipt of the message. “I hope it’s just a missile system.”

“Just a missile system? The Dong-Fengs are nuclear capable,” Price stated.

Brognola’s grumble of worry was deeper now. “It’s not nuclear warheads that concern me. It’s something that sounds like it’s out of a James Bond novel.”

Price narrowed her eyes for a moment, trying to think of what Brognola was referring to. Then it hit her. “The BWMO—Beijing Weather Modification Office? That does sound like something out of the movies.”

“Like it or not, however, they’ve gotten very good at seeding clouds to produce rainfall,” Brognola stated. “All for the purposes of dispelling hailstorms and counteracting the advent of dust storms that affect Beijing itself.”

Price resisted the urge to open the Stony Man databases while on an outside call. What she did recall from the facts she knew, was that the BWMO utilized missile systems and cannons to seed clouds. With those shells and warheads, they’d been able to irrigate miles of arable land and protect it from hail damage utilizing materials such as aluminum oxide, barium or silver iodide.

Barium—that locked in Price’s mind. The material was naturally radioactive and, while it generally was not hazardous in a radiological manner or carcinogenic in water-soluble form, it was potentially poisonous. Its effects on the nervous system and muscle fibers were well documented, but as a serious weapon, the barium in even a concentration of seeder missiles or shells would prove wanting.

Seeded clouds could also be loaded with other hazardous materials, however. Price also couldn’t help but think that much of the concern over man-made climate change had no better source than manipulation of the weather of a half-million-square-mile area, barring pollution and natural volcanic ejecta.

“When I get in touch with David, I’ll have him check on that factor,” Price stated. “Either way, be it a MaRV warhead or weather manipulation, the potential for damage for each can be huge.”

“We’re not sure what was taken in China. Just that they released the cover story of a misfired missile,” Brognola reminded her. “It could have been something akin to what happened in New Mexico, where the inventors were taken. The wreckage is still being sorted through, isn’t it?”

“No assumptions are being made. Just keeping an eye on what could be coming down the pipe.”

“Let me know if anything pops up with Anna,” Brognola reminded her.

Price killed the connection and returned to the Computer Room. “Guys, one of you take a look into the Beijing Weather Modification Office to see what kind of materials and munitions they have on hand. Things might just get a lot more complicated now.”

“Weather modification,” Wethers mused out loud. “No stranger than Frankenstein-like organ hijacking, various forms of zombies and cannibal-psychosis-producing fungi.”

Tokaido cleared his throat. “Remember the time we saved the world from that weird shit?”

Delahunt smirked. “Remember? We call that Wednesday morning.”

“Enough shots from the peanut gallery. Carmen, you got the weird detail,” Kurtzman called out. “Barb, Phoenix is making contact now.”

Price nodded.

Hong Kong appeared on their computer screens. Kurtzman was watching local law-enforcement communications and Tokaido was checking for signal chatter among the more secretive groups. If things went to hell, Stony Man could watch. But only Phoenix Force could fight its own way out.

CHAPTER FOUR

David McCarter was alone on the streets of Hong Kong. While the initial plan was to have Phoenix Force act as cover and overwatch, that plan was not going to come to fruition. Five men, moving in a coordinated manner, would simply attract too much attention. Encizo and Blancanales were traveling as Argentine businessmen on a “busman’s holiday.” Manning and James were also in the role of tourist, this time both of them acting as Canadians.

Phoenix Force’s presence in the city was to be kept as low profile as anything, especially in regard to their operation on the Hong Kong docks, intercepting a shipment of heroin intended for American shores. Though the Stony Man computer crew looked for signs that the team had been recognized and was on watch lists, McCarter was still in a paranoid mood. It had been a classic Phoenix Force raid, full of fire and thunder, ending with his team disappearing into the shadows like smoke.

The Ministry of State Security had been both ally and enemy in the past, as corrupt entities within the agency had been keen on getting funding that didn’t tie directly to Chinese taxpayers. The destruction in society caused by drug-related crime was merely a side benefit. As Phoenix Force’s leader, McCarter had encountered enough American and British-run rogue operations to know that “his side” was no more innocent than the Red Chinese. Even so, the MSS was primarily concerned with the state, not the countries in competition with them, and certainly not foreign citizens.

McCarter finally reached the bar where he planned to meet Mei Anna. Ever since first working together in a mission to Hong Kong a few years ago, McCarter and Mei had been attracted to each other and had maintained a long-distance romance. It was one of the longer intimate relationships the Briton had engaged in, made slightly more difficult because of Mei’s professional obligations, not to mention McCarter’s constant vigilance and need as a member of Phoenix Force. Even so, Mei proved to be invaluable in dealing with Chinese situations; her linguistic skills were, naturally, better than McCarter’s own smattering of understanding.

He sidled up to the bar and ordered a bottle of Tsingtao for himself. While on the scene in Hong Kong, none of the team was armed, at least in terms of firearms. McCarter still had a folding pocket knife, as well as various flat, polycarbonate utensils. One was a D-shaped hand device that had a smaller projection straight out the back of the D. When McCarter wrapped his hand around it, a short cylindrical point jutted between his middle and ring fingers. That tip would concentrate the force of the Briton’s punch to the point where it could shatter bone. Neither it nor his concealed knife would be a match for an AK-47 blazing away at him, but if McCarter couldn’t go toe to toe, he’d fight from ambush and concealment. One broken trachea could equal a rifle and thirty rounds in his hands to even up the odds.

It was an absolute worst-case scenario, but Phoenix Force was always called in when the worst went down anyway. It was intellect, preparation and prowess that made up for lack of manpower and firepower in these desperate instances.

“Hey, stranger.” A soft, gentle voice spoke to his right.

McCarter swiveled on his seat, broadly grinning, his smile a beam as he beheld Mei Anna. She was deceptively small and sweet-looking, her hair in a pixie cut, a shoulder-padded jacket hanging open to reveal the silk slip that displayed her décolletage and would likely draw eyes away from what surprises she had on hand for an emergency. He slipped off the stool and slid his arms under hers, stooping so that their lips met, briefly yet intensely.

McCarter rose from the kiss and she followed it with a tight hug. In an instant his jacket pocket grew heavier and Mei gave him a quick wink.

“What’s new, Tiger Lily?” McCarter asked with a grin. On the few moments when they either weren’t working together or lost in the throes of intimacy, Mei and the Briton took a little time together to watch favorite movies. The rewritten espionage thriller redubbed as a comedy that McCarter referenced was one of those. So much so, it had become their unofficial greeting.

Mei climbed onto the stool next to McCarter, raised two fingers and didn’t even have to voice her order. McCarter returned to sitting, as well, taking a sip from his beer. The bartender returned with a pair of cocktails and an extra bottle of beer.

“You know these are delicious, so I can’t tell you they are new,” Mei said, lifting her cocktails. “Bring your beer, we’ll head to a booth.”

The bar itself was active but not crowded. There was certainly a good screen of background noise, but with no throng of bodies pressed together, the two of them could move easily to a quiet booth and not fear that the press of humanity could listen in on them.

As soon as they scuttled into the booth, side by side so that McCarter could wrap his arm around her shoulders, so he could feel the warmth of her against him, he set a quick kiss on the top of her head, enjoying the smell of her hair. She looked up at him, almond-shaped, deep brown eyes regarding him with affection. He could also feel a tension in her.

“What’s new is some seriously screwed-up stuff,” Mei said softly. “I’m assuming this sudden date is because of the troubles near Beijing?”

“Gobi Desert testing institute,” McCarter said. He reached into the pocket that Mei had filled and felt the outline of a small revolver, already snugged into a pocket holster. Hook and loop material clutched the inside of the jacket pocket so he couldn’t draw the revolver and look like an idiot pulling the leather sheath with it. “Thanks, by the way.”

Mei wrinkled her nose. “I couldn’t bring a Hi-Power...couldn’t fit it in my clutch.”

“So what happened up north?” McCarter asked.

Mei held her tongue for a moment, looking as if she didn’t want to say exactly. “Have you heard of the Beijing Weather Modification Office?”

“Yup,” McCarter answered. He didn’t say that Price had thrown him an encrypted text mentioning the possible involvement of the agency before he arrived at the bar. “Personally, I always wondered why they assigned almost forty thousand blokes to a rainmaking operation.”

“They are effective,” Mei returned. “They’ve done a hell of a lot of work.”

“And some of it might just be weaponized weather?” McCarter asked.

Mei nodded.

“Far be it from me to be skeptical, especially in the wake of taking out the Dragon’s Eye, a laser that could have leveled Taiwan, but how can cloud seeding and hailstorm busting be that much of a threat?” McCarter asked. “I realize that playing around with the climate on the scale of the nation of China could affect world climate patterns, but no rainstorm is going to take out an aircraft carrier group.”

“No, you would need something along the lines of a hurricane,” Mei returned.

That hit McCarter like a lump of iron slag in the stomach. “Hurricane? How?”

“In Taiwan, we were aware of the possibilities that China was working on a Massive Ordnance Air Burst explosive as a possible aircraft-carrier-killing missile. Enough to destroy the ship and perhaps cripple the support craft around it, without being an actual nuclear attack,” Mei said.

McCarter was familiar with the MOAB, a thermobaric explosive that came in two parts. One being a burst that diffused inflammable fuel or explosive dust over a large area, while the second ignited the aerosolized cloud, which itself would detonate. With a large dome of fire detonating, it would produce enormous pressure. In the twentieth century, they’d called the bomb a Daisy Cutter, since the detonation would cut every living thing down in the area, all the way down to the daisies. “I’ve had Gary make one or two of those.”

“I figured,” Mei responded. “Are you here alone?”

“I left them behind. I don’t need a bloody set of chaperones for a date with my girl,” McCarter answered.

Mei smiled. “You know that I have my own support crew around the place.”

“Especially the bartender,” McCarter noted. “Unless Taiwan took over the Russians’ telepathic research.”

Mei stuck out her tongue. It was meant to be a defiant gesture, but to David it was just unbearably cute. He leaned in and took a quick taste, lips crushed against hers. He didn’t want to break the kiss, but there was still business to attend to.

Mei cleared her throat. “The Dong-Feng can carry Multiple Individual Reentry Vehicles—I’m sure you remember MIRVs from the days when the USSR and dinosaurs roamed the Earth.”

McCarter gave her a poke in her stomach. “Was that an age joke?”

Mei chuckled. “Just making certain you’re paying attention and not undressing me with your eyes.”

“My eyes and ears can work independently, love,” McCarter said. “Right now, my eyes are snogging the hell out of your naked self.”

Mei smiled, then poked him in the center of the forehead. “Well, ears, pick this up. MIRVs can have any sort of warhead. Nuclear. Conventional. MOAB. Cloud seeder.”

McCarter suddenly felt himself focus, sitting a little straighter. “Seed the clouds over the ocean. And then do something that could increase the water temperature over a vast area.”

“Like, say, the thermobaric cloud from a MOAB,” Mei said. “What isn’t superheated gets vaporized by the blast, adding to the humidity. The sudden lack of air pressure sucks in more air...”

McCarter frowned. “Boom! One hurricane bomb.”

“Made from readily available materials, not just the Dong-Feng family of missiles,” Mei said. “The mathematics and physics of it are just way outside of my limits.”

“But if you hire thirty-seven thousand weather scientists and mathematicians, they could do the grunt work,” McCarter returned. “Damn.”

He started thinking about why the marauders would have wanted a Mach 10–capable engine and a guidance system meant to defeat radar when it clicked with him.

If you fired a ballistic missile, it would definitely show up on radars around the world. But, if you could take the individual components of different warheads and put those on the ends of the rockets, you could deliver all that firepower without giving away the fact that an ICBM was launched toward you to drop a hurricane on your doorstep, or let your original location be known. That had been one of the most troublesome contentions of tracking the origin of the two different attacks, as the missile blasts preceding them had followed a nap-of-the-earth course.

He’d have to run the general idea past people who were far smarter than him. McCarter was smart, but he was far from being a rocket scientist. These things sounded possible, and there was a United Nations resolution and treaty to prevent the weaponization of weather. Unfortunately, the United States was not a signatory, and neither were many other countries.

While all of this ran through his mind, he finished the cocktail that Mei had bought for him—his taste buds agreeing with her that it was delicious. He stroked her hair, squeezed her hand and hugged her tighter off and on. The time he put into thinking about the possibilities of the Chinese and American weapons systems combined felt all too long, and he was coming nowhere close to a solution, while the time he spent reveling in the warmth and human contact he shared with Mei was like the flicker of an instant.

He recalled what Gary Manning had said about Einstein and time relativity. “A second with your hand on a hot stove is like an eternity. A day with a girl you love is like a fleeting instant.”

Of course, McCarter liked the pool-table description of time and space interacting, too.

“So, why did you give me the pocket rocket?” McCarter asked.

Mei smirked. “Don’t I always... Oh, the revolver.”

“Cheeky girl,” McCarter chuckled.

“The informant who relayed the tidbits about the ‘hurricane’ missile was reported as having committed suicide,” Mei said. “He threw himself out of a fourth-story window. And when that didn’t work, he curb-stomped himself.”

“Curb-stomped. Figuratively?”

“Literally,” Mei answered.

McCarter wrinkled his nose. The literal act of a curb stomp was to set someone’s head and upper jaw against a hard, raised surface. Then, the person was either kicked in the neck, or a foot was brought heavily down. The result ended with torn cheeks, a crushed lower jaw and a skull messily separated from neck vertebrae. It was one of the most brutal means of murder McCarter had ever seen, one that even he hadn’t used in battle.

“You’re covered, right?” McCarter asked.

Mei nodded. “I’m paranoid as hell. And I’m surrounded by my people.”

McCarter could see the flicker of fear in those dark, almond eyes. He knew from personal experience that only the most brash of fools was never afraid.

“I’ll do you a solid, love,” McCarter murmured, lips close and brushing her ear.

“You’re not going to make yourself bait,” Mei said. “That’s insane.”

“Insane is my middle name,” McCarter countered. “Besides, if I can find the bastards who killed that informant, I could get a better handle on who made the theft.”

“And what if it’s MSS plugging a leak?” Mei asked.

“Then the Commie buggers have it coming for building a goddamn fleet-killing hurricane bomb.”

McCarter took out his phone and transmitted a file to her device.

“Call my lads,” McCarter told her.

“And what do I say?” she asked.

McCarter stood and adjusted his jacket, making certain the revolver was still firmly in its pocket holster. “Hunting season is open.”

* * *

ROSARIO BLANCANALES leaned on his cane, standing and admiring the Cenotaph, a memorial to the honored dead of both World War I and World War II. The 1940s had been a vastly different time, when Hong Kong was more or less homogeneous and still clung to a mix of old ways and new British fads that filtered in with Great Britain’s protection as a colony in Her Majesty’s empire. During the second conflict that the Cenotaph commemorated, Hong Kong had suffered greatly from Japanese incursion. Citizens starved, medics even under the neutral protection of the Red Cross had been murdered, and more than ten thousand women and girls had been brutally raped. Those names were not carved into this tower of stone, but there was still a brief, powerful prayer for them.

“May their martyred souls be immortal and their immortal spirits endure.”

He could not read the Chinese characters in which the inscription were made, but he knew the meaning. Standing there, he could see that spirits did endure.

Because of all the corporations that called Hong Kong home, because of the cultural impact that it had on the world, even the 1997 transfer of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China had done little to dim the neon, the glory and the wild mayhem that was this grand old city. On every level, from the lowest of underground crime to the peaks of wealth and power, the city was simply too vibrant, too energetic, to have been tamped down by Communist rule, to the point where fried chicken and pizza had infiltrated the mainland.

Blancanales’s phone came to life. He answered it. “Hola, amigo!”

“What’ve you got for me?” He heard McCarter on the other end.

“Just a bit more news about the weather,” Blancanales replied. Over their secure, encrypted devices, the two had mapped out the way this conversation had to go. They then switched to disposable cell phones for the sake of seeming secure, all the while leaving their conversation open to prying ears.

The two were acting as bait, especially since McCarter had told him of the efforts to silence those in the know about the raid on the Weather Modification Office’s technology test area along the Gobi Desert.

There was a good chance it might have been the government who killed the man, but his manner of death was brutal and hand-to-hand, the work of someone who knew better than to pack firepower in this country. Someone who did not want the handiwork traced back to them. That didn’t make sense, even for the Ministry of State Security, who would have no problem shooting someone for the crime of treason.

No, crushing someone’s skull with a boot stomp was the act of their enemy, killing without leaving signs of weapons or nationality.

So Blancanales and McCarter traded discussion. The Phoenix Force leader had been seen leaving the contact of the murdered man: Mei Anna. They were hoping that someone would be on his scent, listening to his phone calls, something that could be done with a phone-cloner unit, a device small enough to slide into a pocket.

Right now McCarter was approximately ten blocks away, walking in Blancanales’s direction.

And Blancanales, despite his salt-and-pepper hair and the cane he leaned on, looked good playing the part of an old man. The cane was a martial arts weapon. Blancanales was an experienced practitioner of bojutsu—not jitsu but jutsu—the practice of the use of the short staff or cane in actual combat, not the art.