Rolling Thunder

“They’re keeping a tight lid on the armor specs,” Price interjected, “but we suspect they’re using a combination of titanium and plastic along with some variant of the depleted uranium used on the Abrams. Whatever the mix, they’ve brought the weight of the tank down to under thirty tons. That’s roughly half the weight of an Abrams, but it still has an RHA rating of over 1000. On top of that, apparently the frame has built-in pockets that act as ballast tanks when they’re filled with gas.”

“Let’s not get bogged down with too many specifics,” Brognola suggested. “That’s not the issue.”

“Thank God,” Kurtzman deadpanned. “You’re starting to lose me.”

“Amen,” Blancanales said. “Let’s cut to the chase. Akira says somebody’s snatched one of these tanks. My guess is that’s where we come in.”

“Right you are,” Brognola replied. He moved to one of the monitor screens built into the wall behind him. Kurtzman had already cued up a detailed map of northern Spain. Using one of his signature cigars as a pointing stick, the head Fed indicated a spot along the coast of the Bay of Biscay. “Gamuso Armorers were building the FSATs here in Zamudio, an industrial sector on the outskirts of Bilbao,” he went on. “They were field-testing one of the prototypes yesterday afternoon when there was a raid of some sort on the test grounds. We have conflicting reports, but somewhere between twenty and thirty people were killed, most of them members of Gamuso’s training crew. Bottom line—the prototype is now missing and assumed to be in the hands of the perpetrators.”

“Who’s that?” Blancanales asked.

“The Basque Liberation Movement,” Price interjected. “They’re a splinter group of Euskadi Ta Askatasuma. The ETA.”

“Can you shorthand that a little?” Blancanales asked.

“I’ll try,” Price said. “The ETA is Spain’s answer to the IRA. They’ve been clamoring for a separate Basque state for years, and they’ve racked up fair-sized death toll in the process, mostly through car-bombings and kidnappings. The Navarra cell is the most violent of the batch, and apparently they splintered off last year because they thought the ETA was going soft.”

“Specifically,” Brognola added, “there was a falling out after the head of the Navarra cell was gunned down by a Basque counterterrorism unit known as the Ertzainta. We don’t need to focus on the Ertzainta right now.”

Price nodded and resumed. “The head of Navarra’s cell was Carlos Rigo. He was a widower with two grown sons and a daughter. The children took over the cell and demanded that the ETA drop everything it was doing and go after the men who killed their father. When the ETA balked, they decided to go it alone and formed the BLM. They managed to get their revenge, then they dropped out of sight.”

“Until last night,” said Brognola. “Now they’re back in business, and if they’ve got their hands on this tank like we think, they’ve just turned themselves into a force to be reckoned with.”

“Assuming they know how to use it,” Blancanales said.

“I think that’s a safe assumption,” Brognola countered. “They were off the radar more than six months, and my guess is they spent most of that time planning this heist. Why would they go to all that trouble unless they were sure they’d know what to do with the tank once they got their hands on it?”

“Fair enough,” Blancanales conceded, “but still, it’s only one tank, right? I don’t care how high-tech it is, it’s not like they’re suddenly armed to the teeth.”

Brognola shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong, Pol. You see, one of the upgrades Gamuso made when they took over the development program was a retractable missile launcher. A modified Scud system to be exact. Only it’s not restricted to your usual HEAT or AA rounds.”

Blancanales sat upright in his seat, already dreading the worse. “Nukes?” he murmured aloud. “It can fire nukes?”

Brognola nodded gravely. “I’m afraid so.”

“But it wasn’t armed with warheads when they stole it, was it?” Kurtzman asked.

“No,” Brognola said, “but there’s a small item that’s been kept classified since the raid. At roughly the same time the raid was carried out, there was a power brownout inside the Gamuso facility. During all the commotion, somebody managed to gain access to the arms depot. They only had a three minute window of opportunity, but they made the most of it. Once the power was back on and security checked the premises, they came up two missiles short.”

“Both of them nukes,” Blancanales guessed.

“Yes,” Brognola confirmed. “Both missiles had nuclear warheads compatible with the tank’s launch system.”

“Inside job,” Kurtzman speculated.

“That seems a lock,” Brognola concurred. “Spain’s AMI already has the place barricaded and is interrogating all personnel. They also have the militia laying a dragnet within a hundred-mile radius of the test grounds. And their counterterrorist forces are honing in on all known BLM strongholds throughout Navarra.”

“Sounds like they’re covering all the bases,” Blancanales said. “And I hate to say it, but, bad as this all sounds, it seems like an internal problem. Why are we being brought in?”

“Good question.” Brognola turned his attention back to the monitor, this time pointing his cigar at the northeast coastline of Spain. “This Friday there’s a NATO conference being held in Barcelona. Dealing with the ETA and BLM is near the top of the agenda, and both Spain and France have already gone on record asking the other member nations for help. The President has already promised our support.”

“So the Basques want to retaliate by heaving a nuke at the conference?” Blancanales said, his voice tinged with skepticism. “Sounds like overkill, don’t you think?”

“We can’t rule it out,” Brognola insisted. “Put yourselves in their shoes a minute. Say you’ve got some global heavyweights about to gang up on you. Are you going to sit back and wait for them to make the first move? Or are you going to strike first, figuring it’s now or never?”

Blancanales nodded. “I’d go with Plan B.”

“There you have it, then,” Brognola said. “The President was on the phone all night trying to have the conference canceled or at least moved out of Spain, but he’s been overruled. Apparently the other countries feel they can’t run from these separatists and then expect to sound credible when they talk about standing up to them.”

“True,” Blancanales said, “but what’s the population of Barcelona? A million? Two million? Three? That’s putting a hell of a lot of people at risk for the sake of posturing.”

“Like it or not, that’s the hand we’ve been dealt,” Brognola said. “Phoenix Force will probably be landing in Bilbao within the hour. They’re going to scope out the best plan of attack there and await orders. Pol, I want you and Jack to fly to Barcelona and see what you can come up with there. If we turn up any leads on the tank’s whereabouts, we’ll change focus and move inland in hopes we can head it off.”

“And if we aren’t able to head it off?” Blancanales asked.

“I think you’ve already touched on the consequences,” Brognola said. “If they get that tank close enough to lob a nuke at Barcelona, we could have casualties in the millions….”

CHAPTER TWO

Cordillera Cantabriea Mountains,

Vizcaya Province, Spain

“Looks like we’re gonna hit the ground running, big time,” T. J. Hawkins said as he double-checked his parachute gear.

“Fine by me,” replied Rafael Encizo, who was preparing to roll open the side door of the MC-130H Combat Talon that had transported Phoenix Force from North Korea. They were flying at less than twenty-five hundred feet over the easternmost fringe of the Cordillera Cantabriea Mountain Range, some eighty-five miles south of Bilbao. Standing alongside Hawkins and Encizo was former SEAL Calvin James, the group’s medic. He, too, was suited up and ready to jump once the Talon reached their hastily determined insertion point. The other two members of the commando force, Gary Manning and David McCarter, were up front in the plane’s cockpit. It was Manning, the big Canadian, who several minutes before had fielded the call from Spain’s Agency of Military Intelligence about the sighting of a twenty-man BLM force moving through the mountains. Ground troops were reportedly on the way to the area, but Providence had given Phoenix Force an opportunity to have the first crack at the purported masterminds behind the recent theft of the top-secret FSAT-50 battle tank. According to AMI, this particular group didn’t have the tank with them, but there was a chance they were in possession of the twin nuclear warheads stolen at the time of the tank heist.

“All set?” James called out to Hawkins and Encizo.

Hawkins nodded as he slung an M-60 machine gun over his shoulder. James and Encizo were both armed with M-4 carbines, the latter’s rifle supplemented with a submounted 40 mm grenade launcher. For backup, all three men had M-9 Berettas tucked in shoulder-strap web holsters.

“Let’s do it,” Encizo said.

James yanked the door along its rollers and staggered slightly as wind howled its way past the opening. He leaned forward and stared down through a smattering of thin-rib-boned clouds at the rolling green mountains below. Their insertion point was a broad meadow flanked on three sides by mountain peaks. The BLM was reportedly three miles away, trekking a path downhill from the northernmost mountain range; the peaks would likely block their view of the parachutists as they made their drop. James hoped their luck would hold out. If they could land undetected, it would give them an opportunity to position themselves before the enemy reached the meadow. In a situation like this, it was crucial to make the best of any advantage.

Manning’s voice suddenly crackled through the small speaker mounted over one of the cargo holds. “We’re there, guys. Give yourselves a ten-count, then go give ’em hell. We’ll hook up with you as soon as we set this bird down.”

The three paratroopers lined up before the open doorway. James counted down, then lunged out of the plane. He immediately paralleled his body with the ground below and extended his arms and legs outward, slowing his fall. It felt for a moment as if he were flying. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Encizo and Hawkins were airborne as well, framed against the sky above him, similarly spread-eagled. The Talon had flown on and was already banking to the right, ready to dip behind the nearest mountain peak and begin its descent toward a remote, long-abandoned airstrip dating back to days when there had been plans to develop one of the neighboring valleys into a resort community. There, according to plan, McCarter and Manning would rendezvous with the arriving Spanish militia. There were supposedly a few mountain-worthy Jeeps in the convoy, and Manning had been told that a pair of AH-1Q Cobras were additionally being diverted to the site from a military air base in Bilbao. Using Jeeps and choppers, it would hopefully be possible to move quickly and have the ETA forces surrounded by the time they reached the meadow. The trick, obviously, would be to capture or neutralize the enemy without detonating its lethal cargo.

As he drew closer to the meadow, James spotted a few dozen sheep grazing in the tall grass fifty yards to his right, watched over by a young boy and a large black sheepdog. He tugged at his shroud lines, trying to veer as far away from them as possible. The boy had already spotted him, however, and soon the dog had turned and begun charging through the grass toward him, barking loudly.

“Beat it, Lassie,” James muttered under his breath as he prepared to touch down. “You’re blowing our cover.”

The dog continued to yelp, but the moment James hit the ground, it stopped in its tracks, apparently intimidated by the size of James’s quickly collapsing chute. James tumbled expertly and was already unhitching the chute harness when he rose to his feet. He jerked at the lines and hissed at the dog, sending it chasing after Hawkins and Encizo.

Once he’d gathered up the chute and bunched it into a ball, James stuffed it beneath a nearby bush, then strode quickly toward the young shepherd, putting a finger to his lips. The boy, no more than eleven years old, took a tentative step back. A black beret was cocked at an angle on his head, and his hands were clenched around an old Steyr SBS Forester rifle. The weapon was nearly as big as he was, but James had the sense that the boy knew how to fire it.

James had learned to speak Spanish while growing up in a Chicano neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, but he knew that the boy most likely spoke Basque, a language as dissimilar from Spanish as it was from English. Still, he needed to say something to calm the boy. The last thing he wanted to do was to have to draw on him.

“¡Hola!” he called out softly, holding his hands out at his sides. Continuing in Spanish, he said, “Don’t be afraid. We come as friends.”

The boy’s expression remained unchanged and he continued to aim the rifle at James. Finally he spoke, not in Spanish or Euskara, but in English.

“Why should I believe you?”

James was momentarily taken aback. By now Hawkins and Encizo had landed and were headed toward him, the sheepdog barking at their heels. The boy took another step back, fanning his rifle back and forth to keep all three men covered.

“He doesn’t trust us,” James told the others out of the side of his mouth.

“I gathered that much.” Encizo stopped alongside James and sized the boy up, then offered a disarming smile. “Your papa taught you well,” he said. “Atzerri otserri, eh?”

It was the boy’s turn to be surprised. He kept his rifle aimed at the men but slowly lowered the barrel as he called out to his dog. The dog fell silent and scampered to the boy’s side, then sat on its haunches, tongue trailing from its mouth as it caught its breath.

“Where the hell did you learn how to speak Basque?” Hawkins asked Encizo.

“There was a Basque janitor at my high school,” Encizo said. “We got to know each other with all the time I spent in detention. I picked up a few phrases.”

“What was the one you just ran by him?”

“‘The alien’s land is a land of wolves,’” Encizo said.

“Well, tell him the wolves he ought to be worried about are gonna be here any second.”

Encizo turned his attention back to the boy, who’d clearly been listening to the conversation.

“What other wolves?” he asked. “BLM?”

Encizo nodded. “Yes,” he explained. “There are perhaps two dozen of them, and they’re armed. You need to get out of the way and take cover while we—”

Encizo’s voice was drowned out by the thundering echo of a single gunshot. A split second later, the sheepdog howled and toppled onto its side briefly. As it tried to get back on its feet, blood began to glisten on its fur where it’d been shot. The boy stared down at the dog and was crying out its name when another shot ripped its way through the nearby grass a few feet to his right.

James instinctively lunged forward and pulled the boy to the ground as he cried out to the others, “Ready or not, here they come….”

PEERING OVER the boy’s shoulder, James stared past the scattering flock of frightened sheep. More than a dozen BLM gunmen, all wearing trademark red berets, had appeared at the edge of the meadow. Four of them walked carefully alongside a slow-moving ATV, each holding a rifle in one hand while they used the other to steady the vehicle’s cargo, a large, rectangular wooden crate loosely tethered in place by shock cords. Given the crate’s dimensions, James could understand why AMI suspected it might well contain the missing warheads.

THE OTHER SEPARATIST fighters had fanned out and were scrambling up into the nearby foothills, which were strewed with rocks and boulders. The terrain provided ideal cover; in fact, it was the same area where Phoenix Force had planned to take up position in hopes of pinning down the BLM forces once they reached the meadow. Now, unfortunately, the Basques had beat them to the higher ground, and it was Phoenix Force that had been placed at the disadvantage.

The gunner who’d fired the first shot was crouched on a low promontory thirty yards up the mountainside. He was lining up James in his sights, but before he could get off another shot, James hurriedly brought his M-14 into play and fired an autoburst across the meadow, driving the man to cover.

As he scanned the foothills for another target, James noticed, for the first time, a small stone hut concealed in the shade of two large chestnut trees less than fifty yards from where the BLM was swarming. A split-rail fence encircled the hut, and a rusting metal water trough sat near the pen’s open gate. Just beyond the corral’s perimeter, a crude knee-high wall of stacked boulders had been erected behind the house to act as a barrier against rockslides from the mountain.

“Is that where you’re staying?” James whispered to the boy.

The boy nodded fearfully. James ducked as another shot whistled past, then asked the boy, “Is anyone inside?”

“My papa,” the boy replied. Tears began to well in his eyes. “He’s sick. I was tending the sheep so that he could sleep.”

James looked over his shoulder and quickly passed the information along to Encizo and Hawkins, who’d both taken cover behind a cluster of boulders rising up through the grass a few yards behind him.

“I’ll try to get to him,” Hawkins replied. He fired his carbine into the foothills, then split away from Encizo, rolling down into a shallow ditch. Once he’d crawled back up to where he could see the enemy, he called back to James.

“I don’t know, Cal. They’re a hell of a lot closer to the hut than we are. Getting there ahead of them’s gonna be tough.”

“We need to try.” James turned to Encizo. “Give them a grenade or two but stay clear of that crate they’re hauling.”

“Sure thing.”

Encizo leaned back as a spray of gunfire chipped the boulders he was crouched behind, then countered with a round from his M-14 before turning his attention to the carbine’s submounted grenade launcher. James, meanwhile, huddled close to the boy, whose gaze was still fixed on the sheepdog, which now lay still in the grass.

“I’m sorry,” he told the boy, “but there’s nothing we can do for him now. You need to get down in the gully with my friend, okay? Crawl all the way and keep your head down. I’m going to check on your father.”

The boy sobbed faintly and wiped back a tear, then grabbed his rifle and followed James’s instructions. As small as he was, he still presented a target for the enemy, and bullets began to slant down toward him from the foothills.

“Hurry!” Hawkins called out to the boy as he rose and fired back at the enemy. One of his rounds found its mark and a would-be sniper sprawled forward, dropping his rifle. His beret snagged on the lower branches of a nearby shrub and came off as the man hit the ground and rolled a few yards before coming to a rest. Hawkins didn’t waste any time admiring his handiwork. He reached out and grabbed the boy’s right arm, helping him into the ditch.

“Stay low, amigo,” Hawkins told him.

The youth was still crying, but his expression had turned from fear to anger. He crawled lower into the ditch, but stayed put only for a moment. Once Hawkins had turned his attention back to the gunmen in the hills, the boy rose to crouch and raised his rifle into firing position. He quickly took aim and fired off a single shot.

“Hey!” Hawkins cried out. “I told you to stay down!”

The boy ignored Hawkins and fired off another shot. Hawkins look toward the foothills and saw, to his amazement, that the boy had connected with both shots, dropping two men who’d been making their way toward the stone hut.

“I’ll be damned,” Hawkins murmured under his breath.

He turned to grudgingly compliment the boy’s shooting, but the youth had broken into a run, bent over as he followed the ditch’s meandering course toward the distant hut. Enemy gunfire slammed into the earth around him, but he refused to stop, much less turn back.

“That kid’s trying to get himself killed!” Hawkins called out to James. But James didn’t hear him; he was already on the move himself, zigzagging through the grass, sidestepping several of the startled sheep.

Behind him, as promised, Encizo covered James’s advance by firing the first of his 40 mm grenades. He’d followed James’s warning and aimed away from the ATV, targeting instead a group of gunmen firing from positions among the heaviest concentration of boulders in the foothills. The strategy paid off. The grenade’s initial blast quickly took out one gunman, and two others were brought down soon after by a combination of shrapnel and flying rock.

“Way to go, Rafe,” Hawkins called out to him.

“We’ve still got our work cut out for us,” James shouted back. As he readied another grenade, he glanced back at the trailhead by which the terrorists had entered the meadow. The driver of the ATV shut off the engine and joined the men who’d been escorting the wooden crate. All five of them huddled on the far side of the vehicle, using it for cover. A stand of chestnut trees blocked their view of James and the young shepherd, so they directed their fire at Hawkins and Encizo.

James put on a burst of speed and was about to catch up with the boy when spotted two guerrillas scaling the retaining wall behind the stone hut. They boy saw them, too, and he cried out in horror as they circled the hut and disappeared behind the structure.

“Papa!”

“Get down!” James yelled as he caught up with the boy. “Let us handle this!”

The boy, however, shook his head determinedly without breaking his stride. “Papa!” he screamed again. “Wake up!”

They were rushing together through the open gateway of the pen surrounding the hut when gunfire erupted inside the enclosure.

“Papa!” the boy wailed yet again.

James lengthened his stride and outraced the boy to the hut. The building was less half the size of a one-car garage, and it looked to James as if the front doorway was the only way in. Figuring the gunfire had likely been directed through a rear window, he bypassed the doorway and approached the far side of the hut, carbine at the ready. As he turned the corner, James froze. Less than ten yards away, one of the Basques stood facing him with a 9 mm Uzi subgun held out before him, finger on the trigger.

Both men fired simultaneously.

James winced as three rounds slammed into his side like jabs from a red-hot poker. He staggered to his right, crashing into the side of the hut. The other man had taken a volley to the chest. Dropping his gun, he pitched forward, landing face-first in the dirt.

Grimacing, James stepped over the body and inched toward the rear of the hut. His side felt as if it were on fire, and he could feel blood seeping from his wounds, but he tried to put the pain out of his mind. He’d taken a few steps when he heard scuffling out near the retaining wall. Whirling, he spotted yet another gunman crawling over the barrier. He emptied the rest of his magazine, bringing the man down, then tossed his carbine aside and backtracked to the man he’d killed moments before, snatching up his Uzi. He was beginning to feel light-headed from the loss of blood, but he forced himself to move on. Rounding the back of the hut, he was about to let loose with the Uzi when he saw another Basque lying in a pool of blood just below a small rear window. James approached cautiously. Once he was sure the man was dead, he peered in through the window.

The shepherd boy had entered the hut and was embracing his father, who held in his right hand the old Smith & Wesson revolver with which he’d apparently shot the man lying at James’s feet. The old shepherd was clearly weak on his feet, but it didn’t look as if he’d been shot. He spoke to his son reassuringly, but James couldn’t make out what the man was saying. There was a odd thundering in his ears, and soon a field of stars began to cloud his vision. When he felt his knees buckling beneath him, James grabbed at the windowsill for support, but his fingers wouldn’t cooperate. As he began to fall, his world faded to black.