Silent Arsenal

For their generosity, these Germans had a proposal, and they had chosen him to be ruler of all Somalia. Why him? he’d asked. They had grunted, shrugged and answered, “Why not?” Did he wish to remain a nomad in the desert with a few old AKs, some rusty technicals and indulging wishful thinking about greatness? Of course not, he’d countered. What did they want in return? They had claimed nothing more than a possible base of operations when the other clans were wiped out and he controlled the destiny of his country. They had a weapon, the first group had claimed, one that was as potentially devastating as any weapon of mass destruction.

Now that he had seen the almost instant and clear catastrophic effects of this invisible killer, Abadal had questions, most of which were based on concern for his own safety. He found their leader; the tall, muscled one named Heinz with the bullet head and black leather jacket, and walked up to him.

“Ah, my Somali friend. What do you think?” he said, admiring the view as shriveled figures in rags thrashed throughout the camp. “As good as promised, I hope?”

“Tell me something. This virus in the food, can it be spread to others who have not eaten it? Can it be caught through the air? By touch?”

“First of all, this was an experiment. Our way of showing you the future that, uh,” he said, voice thick with his native tongue, “we are prepared to place solely in your hands. Second, it is a biologically engineered parasite, not a virus, taken from the female Anopheles mosquito.”

“I am seeing an outbreak of malaria?”

Heinz shook his head, chuckled. “Yes and no. The details are very complex, scientific jargon you would neither understand, nor do you need to concern yourself with. And if you are worried about contamination, you will only become infected two ways. If you eat what is basically pig slop made from simple microyeast or you come into direct contact with bodily fluids.”

“Blood?”

“That would be a bodily fluid.”

The German was talking to him like a child now. Abadal scowled. “But you said you can deliver an airborne plague, that you have the vaccine.”

“That is true.”

“When?”

“Shortly. I will consult with my superiors. But, I must tell you, there may be a few more conditions before we are prepared to hand this country over to you. A plague that is spread deliberately…well, it is something that requires serious planning, contingencies to be thought out, and so forth. There is also the question of loyalty, compensation, reward and the like.”

And there it was, Abadal thought, suspecting all along it was too good to be true. “So there is more in it for you than using my country as simply a base for whatever your intentions.”

Abadal heard the quiet laugh again as Heinz told him, “A man of vision such as yourself surely must understand personal greatness and glory comes with a price.”

“And what will mine be?”

“We will be in contact with you. In the meantime, I suggest you thoroughly sanitize the area as we discussed.”

Abadal clenched his teeth, angry that the German, this arrogant foreigner who had come to his land as if he owned it, would just walk away, dismissing him, a flunky. “You realize I could either decline your offer…or take what I want from you.”

Abadal watched as the German kept walking, smiled at the death being spread below, then laughed out loud. “Yes, perhaps you could do just that, my Somali friend, but there would yet be another price to pay.”

THE HORROR BEGAN just after nightfall.

She was struggling to keep up with the man who told her his name was Mawhli. Beyond his name, she knew nothing about him, but if promised flight to Kenya…

At the moment safe passage into the unknown future was her only option.

Nahira Muhdu stumbled, Mawhli turning at the sound of her cry. He caught her before she was flung into a headlong tumble down the steep incline for the wadi, a fall that might have ended any hope of escape with broken bones or her son crushed in her arms.

There was screaming behind her, brief hideous wails that chilled her to the bone. She gasped when she saw the tongues of fire, glowing waves shooting from hoses extended in the hands of shadows moving away from the technicals, a ring of death that encircled the camp.

“There is nothing you can do for them, Nahira.”

“Why?”

“Only God knows that.”

“Then he knows he cannot allow such evil men to go unpunished.”

“I believe that, also. Come, we must hurry!”

She hesitated, sick to her stomach, the stench of burning flesh carried to her nose on the wind, the heat from the fires touching her face. The breath of Satan. She turned, began following Mawhli into the wadi, melting into the darkness. She prayed for the life of her son, for safe passage into Kenya, then asked God for something she would have never believed herself capable of doing.

Nahira Muhdu asked God to deliver retribution against the warlord and his murdering beasts.

CHAPTER ONE

“Sixteen years old, and Boise is the closest she’s been to a big city. Hops a Greyhound and I find out about this two months ago—no clue, no threats, no kiss-my-ass. Not even Mrs. Evans number three—Ilsa of the SS I tell ya—with all her keen female intuition, saw this bomb dropping. And here I was, thinking I was father of the year. The cop the press maggots used to call Dirty Harry on Steroids, lower than the lowest now. I can’t even hold my family together. Three-time loser, huh. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking?”

“That’s not what I was thinking, Jim. And I’m not the enemy.”

“Right, yeah, you’re a buddy, ex-cop, once my partner.”

The man he knew from the old L.A.P.D. days was on an angry roll, fueled by whiskey and the torment of the day, steaming more mad at the world with every snarl and speck of flying froth. Carl “Ironman” Lyons figured the best thing to do was to let him vent, expend all the fury before he started firing off his own questions.

“Fuck me raw. I keep asking myself why? It’s like some sick tape I keep running through my head, all these horrible images of everything that could happen to her. Wandering the street, maybe on drugs, some pimp… Goddammit, Carl. All I wanted was for her to have a decent life—you know, clean air, big sky, small town. No drugs, no crime, no gangs, a little slice of peace and sanity to grow up in, not drowning with all the other human turds in that toilet we knew, Los Angeles. We know the city can eat up someone her age. And with her looks… You see a picture of her, you’re looking at an angel, a goddamn princess. Now I track her here, one of my worst fears comes true. I find out she’s been dancing in a strip joint, for God’s sake.”

Lyons didn’t believe in coincidence or fate, didn’t cater to psychic babble or all those crystal-ball hotlines that mapped out someone’s destiny, cradle to grave, fame and fortune and bliss on earth written in the palm of the hand. A former detective of the Los Angeles Police Department and currently a commando working out of Stony Man Farm—an ultra-covert intelligence agency nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains—he believed in action, truth and just the facts. But, he had to admit, bumping into another cop he had partnered with for more than a year in a police department clear on the other side of the country—a man he hadn’t seen, heard from nor thought about in well over a decade—was on the hinky side of coincidence.

But there Jim Evans had been, seconds away from either getting bounced on his ear out of the bar or breaking the joint up with collateral damage to doormen and patrons, a guest stint in a D.C. jail with the kind of unsavory characters he loathed, had busted up and feared his daughter falling into league—or bed—with. Bizarre fluke or some guiding cosmic hand, Lyons couldn’t help but wonder, just the same, about the events leading up to the chance encounter.

After three days decompressing from the latest mission, Lyons had rounded up the other two-thirds of Able Team for a quick getaway until duty called again. Restless, feeling confined at Stony Man Farm in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, Lyons, the leader of Able Team, had piled the three of them into the oversize War Wagon—which wasn’t supposed to leave the Farm’s premises for a mere joyride—then driven them to the Key Bridge Marriott where he’d paid for a penthouse suite for a week. Still restless, tired of watching Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz and Rosario Blancanales enthralling themselves with the same movies on cable or playing computer games until he was sure they were bug-eyed, he had set out by himself for a few belts and beers, a tour of downtown D.C. strip joints on the play-card, fantasies of getting lucky urging him on. Cheap thrills had a way of bringing trouble to Lyons, and this time out had proved no different. It had been touch-and-go back at the titty bar, wrestling Evans free of the bouncers, packing the ex-L.A. detective, drunk and belligerent, into his Lexus rental, trying to get both the story and the facts straight.

Lyons, sensing Evans about to launch himself on the verbal rampage again, was not sure he was willing to sit through another diatribe. Judging from whiskey fumes strong enough to gag a buzzard, one cloud of cigarette smoke after another blown out in long, angry exhales, he didn’t see the man calming down anytime soon. Add the snail’s pace the Stony Man warrior was forced to keep the rental creeping through Georgetown and Lyons found his own aggravation level rising.

He looked over at Evans, found a wrinkled, leather-faced, heavier version of the cop he’d once known. With his black Stetson, sheepskin coat and cowboy boots, Evans in his Wild West garb was damn near a circus act in a coat-and-tie Beemer and Evian town that looked down its nose at anyone who didn’t fit the yuppie and PC parameters. Then again, Lyons, with his knee-length black leather trench coat, aloha shirt alive and flaming with palm trees, flamingos and scantily clad island girls, with white slacks and alligator shoes… Well, he knew he didn’t have much room to judge the fashion show. In fact, he recalled one of the musclebound punks with an earpiece back at the bar tagging him “Don Ho” and ordering him to get his buddy, Wyatt, back home to the ranch.

Kids these days, he groused to himself, no respect for their elders.

Evans, he recalled, hadn’t been a particularly good cop, nor a bad one, at least not the renegade he was purported by the press to be when Lyons had worked with him. There were rumors of brutality, charges of racism, L.A. media making a big stink over a couple of questionable shootings before the man had transferred to Lyons’s division. They had gone through some doors together, solved some tough cases, but Lyons had never found himself ready to cozy up to the man, on or off the job.

He had never been able to put a finger on his feelings toward the man, supposed he was just plain mean-spirited, with or without a badge, the whole world crap, not a decent human being anywhere, a borderline bully out to control, dominate or punish. He wasn’t the kind of man Lyons would sit down with and drink a few beers, but Evans had jumped in front of a bullet for him, getting seriously wounded in the process, commendations eventually pinned on both of them.

What was this moment supposed to mean? he wondered. Was Fate, after all, calling in a marker? Was some cosmic force urging him to extend a helping hand, if not for Evans, but for the innocent life of a young girl? Whatever the emotional quandary, it was a rare day on the planet, he figured, when just about any man’s intentions and motives were altruistic.

So far, Lyons had the gist of why Evans had come to town. Up to a point he supposed he could understand the man’s pain and anger over a runaway child. Hadn’t he once been married? It was true, he had a son, Tommy, but he hadn’t spoken to either the ex or his boy—now fully grown—in quite a while. What was he feeling now? What was he thinking? Did he regret the path in life he’d chosen, sloughing off whatever responsibilities as a father he should have seen through? If so, why? Because it was a big bad savage world out there, after all, and his skills as a warrior were more needed for the greater good of humankind, instead of raising a family? Was he on the verge right then of doing some voyeuristic dance through another man’s broken family life? Was he thinking he could and should help Evans find his daughter, despite his true feelings for the guy?

Lyons jostled through a bottleneck of vehicles playing bumper cars, lurched ahead as a light turned red and a few horns blared their ire at him.

“Did you report her missing?” Lyons asked when Evans fell silent.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Hell, I was embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to know, or think I’d failed as a father. Judy, even though she’s not Deirdre’s real mother, somehow found plenty of ways to want to blame me, but that’s another stinger to pull out of my hide at some point. Didn’t come right out and say it, but she had her way of telling me she’s my problem, I deal with it. How do you like that?”

Another marriage made in hell, Lyons thought. “Seems you picked up the trail pretty quick.”

“She left with an older girl, a Susan Barker. I heard she’d been hanging around with her. Susie’s something of the town good-time girl, nice way of saying she’s just a whore. I own a bar—maybe I told you that—and I hear things. One rumor led to another. I had a talk with this girl’s sometime boyfriend.”

“And a little chat with the boyfriend pointed you east to this fair city?”

“Let’s just say I got a few answers the old-fashioned way. And, my daughter absconded with a couple of my credit cards. Easy enough to track them both to a motel here—the bills started coming in—but Susie’s sometime squeeze filled in a few blanks about their little jaunt to D.C. Seemed Susie filled Deirdre’s head with a lot of nonsense about how they could make it big here, she had friends in the area, some kind of big shots in the entertainment business. I already had my head crammed with visions of pure assholes she’d come here and get scammed by, or worse. Only I get the impression it was something more than just…stripping for a bunch of assholes who oughta be home with their wives and kids. Just today I found Susie holed up in some crack motel up New York Avenue, staked it out, followed Susie to work, where you found me. She goes by the name of Candy. Get this. Walk in, like a regular asshole, I see my daughter’s picture on the wall in this dump, goes by Dee-Dee. The bastards—no better than pimps—had her all dolled up in some cowgirl outfit.”

“Did you, uh, run into your daughter back there?”

Evans scowled. “No. I was told she was off tonight.”

“I got the impression you were making a hard pitch.”

“Yeah, like telling the manager he’s got a sixteen-year-old girl taking her clothes off in his place, and if he didn’t want the cops shutting him down or my fist doing a rectal probe, he’d better tell me where my daughter was. That’s where you entered the picture.”

Lyons cleared his throat, already knew the reaction he’d get when he dropped the bomb. “I have to ask, Jim. Are you leaving anything out?”

“Such as?” Evans growled.

“Kids run away from home for a reason.”

“Why don’t you just come out and ask it, Carl, instead of tap-dancing on my nuts.”

“Okay. Was there any abuse?”

Lyons found his former partner staring at him, steady, no sign of anger or resentment.

“No. None whatsoever of any kind. But I understand you asking. I may be a mean SOB on the streets, but I take care of my kids, never raised a hand to them or touched them in any way. End of story.”

Lyons fell silent, wondering how far he should go with this. Then Evans asked, “If you don’t mind me asking, what are those two cannons you’re packing? Couldn’t help but notice. I figure you’re into something needs punch like that.”

The question didn’t catch Lyons off guard, but he felt uncomfortable with the sudden glint in Evans’s eyes—the Stony Man warrior sure his former partner was entertaining ideas about going vigilante if he discovered any more dark secrets about his darling DeeDee. They were twin .45s, butts-out, stainless-steel, the double bulging package obvious beneath his coat, Lyons knew. But he had the bogus Justice Department ID just in case the issue of concealed weapons was pushed by any law on the prowl. The twins had been made by John “Cowboy” Kissinger, the Farm’s resident weaponsmith. With fifteen Rhino or body-armor-piercing rounds in each clip, Lyons had let Kissinger talk him into trying out hardware other than the .357 Magnum Colt Python he usually carried. Lyons told Evans what they were, but left out the details.

Evans chuckled. “We might have lost touch over the years, but I figured you put in your twenty, retired, maybe got yourself a boat, move up north like a lot of L.A. cops do when they leave the job, maybe write crime novels.”

“I did. Retire, that is. But sitting still on a sailboat or in front of a keyboard isn’t my speed.”

“So what are you doing to keep busy these days?”

“I do freelance security work.”

Evans nodded, looked at his cigarette, savvy enough to know not to push the subject. He paused, working on his smoke, then said, “Know what I’m thinking right now, Carl? I’m thinking I played a bad hand back at that toilet bowl, blew any chance maybe getting Susie to talk, find my daughter. My gut tells me she’s into something way over her head, and you could see I was in no mood or shape for any subtle approach.”

“So I saw.”

“I don’t mean to sound like some judgmental prick, but you actually enjoy going to those kinds of places? What is it? Some kind of Peeping Tom jolt, look but don’t touch, the lonely guy’s masturbatory fantasy in living color?”

“I guess it beats sitting around watching sitcoms every night.”

“Suppose there was a time I did, too.” Evans grunted, Lyons thinking he could almost read the man’s thoughts regarding another chance encounter if he hadn’t been there ready to tear the place apart. Whatever he was chewing over, the anger faded from his eyes. “You, uh, you doing anything special the next couple of days?”

“You’re thinking you’d like me to pick up where you left off tonight.”

“That’s what I’m asking. Maybe you can make some inroads, talk to Susie, at least steer me in the right direction if you learn something. Right now, with a load on, and being too close to it, I’m no good to anybody.”

“I agree, but when I start something, I like to finish it my way, my terms.”

Lyons wished the night had turned out the way he’d originally envisioned, Evans’s world, safe and tucked in back in Idaho, but here he was, boxed in the spotlight. He debated the matter, wanted to tell the man he was on his own, but a combo of chivalry, guilt and a vague sense of being a good guy got the better of him.

“If I do,” he told Evans. “I can’t make any promises you’ll get whatever the end result you want. And, if I do, I have a couple of conditions, no questions, no tirades, no strings. You don’t like what I find, go off half cocked, you’re on your own. Don’t even call me for bail money.”

“Whatever they are, I’ll live with the terms. And I’ll pay you whatever you think is right for your time and trouble.”

“This isn’t the ‘Rockford Files.’ I don’t need your money. Consider this returning a favor for when you took a bullet for me.”

“Fair enough. So, you’ll help?”

“Give me a second,” Lyons said, juggling cell phone and the wheel as he turned them onto Key Bridge, a Volvo cutting him off with horn blasting and the middle-finger salute shot his way.

Seven, eight trills, Lyons gnashing his teeth over the delay. Then he heard Schwarz come on, his teammate forced to nearly shout over a background score for a shoot-’em-up he knew they’d been watching every time it came on Cinemax and HBO.

“This better be good, Carl.”

“I knew it! I can hear your five Elvis impersonators shooting up the Riviera Casino clear across goddamn Key Bridge. How many times you two clowns need to watch 3000 Miles to Graceland? Figure by now you must know every word of dialogue by heart. It’s becoming kind of obsessive-compulsive, don’t you think?”

“I’m partial to the Kurt Russell part. I see you as that psychopath, Murphy, especially when you go down in a hail of SWAT bullets at the end, bleeding out to ‘I Did It My Way.’”

“You’re going to see my foot up your ass if you don’t turn off the TV and look alive! I’m bringing up company.”

“I bet you’ve been out trolling the nudie bars. I sure hope you don’t come through the door with just one chippy, me and Pol—”

“It’s a cop I know from the L.A.P.D. We’re going to work—tonight—and I’ll buy you clowns the DVD for Christmas. You can watch 3000 Miles to Graceland all you want but only on your time.”

“You promise?”

Lyons punched off, found Evans treating him to a curious look. “Despite what you just heard, they are professionals.”

HAL BROGNOLA WAS no fan of spook games, intrigue or mystery. Just the same, he was moving in a shadow world this night, prepared to meet a faceless, nameless emissary shipped out by the President of the United States to get the particulars on a brewing but unnamed crisis.

Beyond his public role as a high-ranking federal agent in the United States Department of Justice, he did, however, lead a double life as director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm. Brognola was also the liaison to the President of the United States, the chief executive’s go-to man in the Farm’s world of high-stakes covert operations.

The Man sanctioned nearly all of the Farm’s missions, the dirtiest of wet work against enemies to national security, either of the foreign or homegrown variety. There was direct contact, usually by phone, between Brognola and the President before the starting flag was waved, the utmost protocol of secrecy maintained where it regarded Stony Man Farm and the Justice man’s netherworld role behind the public face.

So he had some reservations about the rendezvous, the normal channels bucked, unknown entities operating as cutouts. The Man had sounded terse, even abrupt, earlier when he’d called him at his Justice Department office on the secured line to begin casting shadows over what Brognola suspected would become a long night melding into even longer and tense days ahead. But if the President—who had everything to lose if the Farm was exposed—trusted the setup, who was he, Brognola figured, to question his judgment? The crisis was either so serious and the President too busy…

Brognola shut down his reservations, got a grip on what was actually normal professional anxiety and paranoia. In his business, reality was rarely as it appeared.

He proceeded across the Mall, vectoring for the Red Castle of the Smithsonian, flanked and dwarfed by the distant dome of the Capitol and the Washington Monument. It was a short walk from the Justice Department building in the Federal Triangle, and a check of his watch showed he was on time. At this late hour, the museums along Jefferson Drive were shut down to the public. No traffic, vehicular or human, in the area, but there had been a series of armed robberies around the Mall lately, which had thinned the herd of after-work walkers and joggers to virtual extinction. Briefcase in hand, Brognola was mindful of the weight of the Glock .45 shouldered beneath his suitcoat, figured there were enough rounds to split the difference between muggers or spooks with malice of heart.

He was unwrapping a cigar when he spotted the trio of black vehicles rolling his way. They parked curbside in front of the Smithsonian. Government plates, black-tinted windows all around, two unmarked sedans sandwiched a limousine. Doors opened and four suits with earpieces got out, scanned the street, the Mall, before one of them beckoned for Brognola to climb into the limo. The sunglasses were a little much, he supposed, figured the shades for intimidating intent.

The big Fed crossed Jefferson, squeezed through the doorway, claimed an empty section of cushy seat beside a minibar. The door closed and Brognola found another pair of sunglasses across the well. He had a full head of coiffed black hair, cashmere coat, but beyond that the guy was nondescript. Another civil servant. Yet there was something in his silence, the way Brognola found himself measured, wishing he could see the emissary’s eyes…