Silent Arsenal

HERMANN SCHWARZ was getting antsy. He was sitting at the bank of monitors in the War Wagon, surveying M Street and the door to the bar, the picture piped in through a minicam, no larger than a pinhead, fixed to an antenna. A twist of the dial and he could monitor the entire street for several blocks, the high-tech eye doubling as an instant camera, able to take night snapshots, infrared lens capable of coming on with the flick of a switch.

“I don’t like it, Pol. Our fearless leader’s been in there too long. You know Carl, some places tend to bring out the beast in him, and that’s saying something.”

Blancanales had the wheel, his head rolling side to side as he surveyed the street. “He can give new meaning to bull in a china shop, I’ll grant you that.”

The whole setup was screwy, but they had already killed enough time hashing it over until they both knew it began to sound like a bunch of bellyaching. Still, that didn’t mean they had to like it.

A former cop partner of Ironman’s, Schwarz thought, dropping out of the sky, smelling and looking like he needed detox more than walking around in public, hunting down his runaway daughter. This Evans guy back in their suite, drinking their booze, watching 3000 Miles to Graceland, when that should have been them. They were on R and R, sure enough, but Schwarz was waiting for the phone with secured line to start ringing off the hook any second, Brognola or the Farm’s mission controller, Barbara Price, wondering why they had absconded with the supertech War Wagon to go tooling around downtown D.C. What would he tell them, provided, of course, he could even bleat out a word during the ass-chewing?

“Gadgets, I think there might be a problem. Start shooting pics.”

After all of two seconds, watching as bodies began streaming out the door, suits harried and hustling off into the night, Schwarz read the body language, loud and clear. They were fleeing from a human wrecking ball.

“Pol, how come I get the weird feeling Carl made contact and the words ‘please and thank you’ weren’t part of his vocabulary?”

“Gadgets, Pol!”

Tac radio in hand, Schwarz punched on, in sync with Pol’s, “Yeah!”

“Get your fingers out of your asses and your heads out of Graceland. Four assholes and a chippy in a mink coat should be out front by now!”

Schwarz spied the party in question as they swung away from the front door, began marching down the sidewalk toward a waiting limo. Schwarz began snapping pictures even as Lyons barked for him to do just that. “I’m on it!”

“I’m especially interested in the guy who looks like van Gogh. You see him?”

“I’ve got him,” Schwarz answered.

“What’s the situation?” Blancanales needed to know.

Schwarz heard the name of the hotel and the suite number.

“You know where it is?”

“It’s in Crystal City,” Blancanales answered.

“I’ll follow in my car, but you get there first, you wait,” Lyons growled. “We just went tactical, so get yourselves strapped in to some serious hardware. On the ride, Gadgets, you can stay busy giving me a computer sketch of van Gogh sans the goatee and shades. You copy?”

“Roger.”

Schwarz took one final shot of the limo’s plates as the vehicle lurched ahead, gathered speed and shot past them. Blancanales was cranking on the engine, dropping it into gear when Schwarz spotted Lyons bulling his way out onto the sidewalk. “Hey, Carl. You want me to take a shot of you for our scrapbook?” Schwarz cut off their leader’s voice just as he launched into a tirade.

Blancanales was throwing the rig into a hard turn to give pursuit when Schwarz said, “Hey, Pol, I just thought of something.”

“What?”

“When we write our memoirs I think I’ll call it, 3000 Miles to the Farm. What do you think?”

“We’re both going to be 3000 miles to nowhere if we don’t do what Carl wants.”

Just then the red line beeped. Schwarz stared at it as though it were a viper coiled to bite, said, “I think no truer words were ever spoken.”

“Are you going to answer that?”

Schwarz slowly punched on, attempted his best winning, innocent voice. “Yes?”

“You three want to explain yourselves?”

It wasn’t real hard to read the tone. Schwarz knew Barbara Price wasn’t asking how they were feeling.

“THEY WHAT? They’re doing what?”

After so many years in the same office at the Justice Department and climbing the ranks, certain perks now came with the job. Brognola’s spacious office was soundproof, bugproof, with recently installed bullet-and-bomb-reinforced windows. There was a small conference table, a couch for sleeping, a personal workstation, a giant TV built into the wall. All things considered, they were the creature comforts necessary for a man who spent most of his professional hours on his feet and on the edge.

With perks, however, came more responsibility and worries. Translate added worry to the human factor.

He wasn’t thirty seconds on the satellite link to the Farm, catching the sitrep from Price, when he was chomping on half a pack of Rolaids. He heard how Gadgets, with his infinite knowledge of high-tech, had most likely accessed the code panel in the barn where the War Wagon was housed. He heard about the task for a friend Lyons had undertaken, how the leader of Able Team needed a few more hours, they might be on to something big. Working at light speed to relay the data handed off by Sunglasses, Brognola feared a long night ahead for all of them.

“This isn’t the first time they’ve pulled some bull-headed nonsense like this,” Brognola noted. “Goddammit! Those three could test the patience of the Virgin Mary. I tell you what. If I end up having to bail them out of some police problem, they can bet their black bank accounts their next vacation will be in North Korea.”

“That might be worth some serious consideration.”

“I need them front and center in the War Room when I land at the Farm—no more than three hours from now. If that vehicle doesn’t return in the same condition they took it, they will rue the day they pulled this stunt. I mean, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth, and it won’t be from either of us.”

“I’ll pass that on.”

“Are you getting this?”

“It’s coming through. We’ll get right on it. Can you give me a quick rundown on what we’re looking at, Hal?”

“The way it was told to me, we might be looking at the beginning of Armageddon.”

“That’s quick enough.”

CHAPTER THREE

Their tail of the limo to Crystal City was a jagged blur of white light and angry noise for Rosario Blancanales. Even with radar jammer and GPS monitor guiding the way, it was a miracle of sorts, he thought, no cops had roared up their bumper. The limo’s driver set the pace, however, flying along, whipping past other vehicles, oblivious or indifferent to potential speed traps. It left Blancanales to wonder if they’d been made, where they were really going, what, if anything, they had to hide. Somehow the Stony Man warrior maintained a quarter-mile distance to their target.

It was a juggling act, no mistake, manning the wheel, shooting through town on I-395, rocketing next down Route 1, needle pushing eighty, slipping on the custom-webbed rigging to carry the mini-Uzi, wondering which asp would bite first. There was Lyons on the tac radio, snarling out the game plan, which was about as simple and crazy as it came; crash the suite’s door, bull-rush inside, no fix on numbers, but if it was armed, it went down.

Then there was Barbara Price, the Farm’s mission controller, someone they didn’t want on their ass if this night went to hell. Her calm but cold voice still chimed its potential death knell in his head as she laid down the law in no uncertain terms—back to the Farm in three hours sharp, not even bug splatter on the windshield, do not get nabbed by police. She left the threat of consequences—regarding their AWOL status and return of the War Wagon in mint condition—open to the imagination. This, as bizarre coincidence had it, as he shot them past Arlington National Cemetery.

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