Orbital Velocity

Just wait and see who’s calling in, Lyons thought. He fished along his belt for a small sheath that contained a compact Bushnell night-vision monocular. The device had a 4x magnification, which would allow him to get a better look at the man with the phone.

The man was clad in a denim jacket, and through the green tint of the night vision, Lyons could see what appeared to be sigrunes on his neck. Normally, Lyons wouldn’t know about arcane, occult designs, but the sigrunes were on a list of identifying tattoos for the southern California Reich Highwaymen, a widespread gang of thugs enlisted by the prison-based White Pride Defenders as muscle for their outside operations. The makeup that covered the lightning-bolt S’s on the man’s neck was very different from his normal skin color under the light magnification, and the dark ink underneath showed through. In regular vision, even under good light, Lyons knew that the man would have covered himself so as not to be noticed.

Lyons grit his teeth, then checked his PDA, sending a text message off.

“Any signs of neo-Nazi activity in London or Moscow?” Lyons asked.

“Jakkhammer Legacy in London,” came the reply almost instantly. “Suspect RNCG organizing rioters in Moscow.”

Lyons furrowed his brow in concern. Sightings of three different local neo-Nazi groups in relation to threats to G8 nations was a disturbing trend. He quickly took a snapshot with the PDA and entered the text CRLR. He got the rapid message and its attachment off as quickly as possible as he heard his quarry’s phone ring.

Lyons listened in.

“Your phone is compromised. Ditch it,” came the terse order. “Pull back for Plan B.”

The Reich rider looked up from the cell, then dropped it to the tarmac, his boot heel crushing the device. Lyons cursed, but even this bit of activity had given him information about his enemy. They were able to monitor their phones, and somehow had picked up on the fact that their line had been cloned. Sophisticated technology plus a white supremacist biker gang with national prison ties added up to the kind of opposition that Lyons couldn’t help but welcome.

Whatever the biker’s contingency plan, Lyons hoped that they only had one mode of communication that they felt was secure. As it was, the Reich rider turned and jogged to the VOR transmitter building. The boxy red-and-white base of the building with its conelike tower was an unassuming little place, but it could hide at least three more men inside. Lyons was going to have to ask about Plan B before he got to the others.

Lyons exploded from his hiding space with the speed that had made him a star football player in high school and college. Powerful legs propelled him along like a human rocket, and he caught up to the anxious neo-Nazi biker before he could make out the thump of feet or the trainlike pants of breath escaping the ex-cop’s nose and mouth. The denim-clad gang member turned just in time for Lyons’s brawny arm to catch him right across the throat. Momentum and velocity slammed the Reich rider to the ground hard, his head bouncing on the tarmac.

Breath released in a subdued “oof,” thanks to the force that Lyons had applied to his throat, and his face was clenched up in a painful wince. The undercover biker must have hit the back of his head hard on the ground, which was fine with the Able Team commander. A little pain was a handle with which he could convince his prisoner to talk. He didn’t have much time before whoever the motorcycle thug had come here with came looking for him.

“Plan B?” Lyons growled, drawing his Protech automatic knife. A simple press of the button and the five-inch serrated blade flickered into being right before his prisoner’s eyes. Shock registered on the man’s face as he tried to squirm away from the razor-sharp cutting edge that ended in a wicked needle tip.

The biker had trouble getting enough breath to speak louder than a harsh whisper thanks to Lyons’s weight and the placement of his forearm. There was also an enraged madness flickering behind Lyons’s eyes, informing the downed criminal that if he cried out for help, the burly warrior would slice his face off and leave him to die slowly.

“I’m not asking again,” Lyons said, resting the edge of the knife against the biker’s left eyebrow. One flick of the wrist, and the biker knew he would be blinded and mutilated. It was a basic, inborn fear. The blind rarely lasted well in the days before the modern world. The biker himself not only had the gruesome mental images of his eyes punctured running through his mind, but also the realization that he would be ostracized by his circle of acquaintances. Riding with the gang would be out of the question, as well, as he would have failed his brothers. There was also no guarantee that Lyons wouldn’t take out the other orb, too, leaving him blind. He would lose the life he’d known for the past decade or so.

“We’re supposed to meet up with another group. They tell us the location when we call them,” the man said.

“You guys are too tight not to have a password on hand,” Lyons mentioned. “A code word to let them know everything is all right.”

“I don’t have that,” the thug confessed. “Bones does.”

“Which one is Bones?” Lyons asked.

“He has a baby skull on a necklace,” the biker told him.

“How many others?” Lyons asked.

“Two,” the prisoner confessed. “Don’t mess my eyes up, man.”

Lyons nodded, but that didn’t preclude reversing the blade, then punching the pommel of the knife against his temple. The steel-reinforced fiberglass handle was less fragile than the small bones of the human hand, which broke easily when punching a man in the skull. Out cold, the biker wouldn’t be much of a threat now.

Lyons rose from the ground and scanned the VOR station. One thing in his favor was that few such transmitter buildings had windows installed. Unfortunately, such structures had very limited numbers of entrances. In this case, there were two, parallel to each other. Lyons could try to go through the front door, but that would leave him a target for armed men inside. Three-to-one odds wasn’t new for the Able Team commander, and indeed, he’d handled far worse.

Lyons preferred to fight smart, as well as hard. He scooped up the unconscious biker and put him in the luggage cart’s driver’s seat. The cart itself was hardly a step up from a riding mower, except with an engine that let it pull thousands of pounds of luggage a day. Lyons strapped the biker in, started the engine, then steered toward the VOR station’s door. His final act was to push his former prisoner’s foot against the accelerator.

He was setting bait, getting the bikers inside the building as bunched up as possible. A slow-moving cart bumping against the side of the station would draw curiosity, while anything faster striking the structure would send everyone packing.

With the cart set up, Lyons jogged along in its shadow, easily keeping up as he moved in a crouch behind the low-speed hauler. It struck one of the doors and crunched to a halt, its wheels grinding against the ground and causing the door to rattle. Lyons slipped out of sight behind the hauler and the unconscious biker.

Sure enough, the door opened a crack. Then a little farther. Lyons stayed hidden in the shadows, his do-rag tugged down to hide the glint of his blond hair in the ambient light.

“Toady? Toady, what the fuck? You drunk again?” a voice challenged.

“What’s up?” another asked.

“Damn fool passed out riding a goddamned luggage trolley around,” the man at the door said. Lyons saw a bone-white globe around the man’s neck. He stepped out into the open, and the other two men joined him.

Lyons had set his bait well, as Bones stuffed his big shiny stainless revolver into his waistband. The three of them walked closer to Toady in his perch, and one of the bikers leaned over the dashboard, looking for the ignition to stop the cart’s unrelenting “assault” on the locked door.

“Of all the—” Bones began.

Lyons didn’t let him complete his curse toward his fallen comrade. With a lunge, the big ex-cop burst into view, his forearm crashing against Bones’s jaw with the force of a sledgehammer. Lyons wanted the skull-wearing freak out cold and out of the fight to prevent the possibility that the other two could keep Bones from speaking. The biker toppled backward like a felled tree, but Lyons didn’t hear him fall, as he was too busy concentrating on other problems. One of the bikers was stooped over to catch Bones, but the last of them reached for a black 1911 he had tucked into his belt.

The handgun made him a target for Lyons, who lashed out with mae geri, the Shotokan front kick. Lyons had been a karateka for several years, since just before he’d joined Able Team, and his familiarity with the blunt, direct Shotokan style had proved to be more than an edge in countless fights at home and abroad. The blow struck the biker in the stomach, just below his navel, driving the wind from his lungs and folding him over reflexively. Thus positioned, Lyons automatically transitioned to a ushiro empi chop, bringing his elbow down savagely on the enemy’s back.

The gunner struck the ground face-first, mouth and nose gushing blood as they rocketed against the concrete. Lyons flipped the man onto his back and plucked the 1911 from his waistband. He dumped the magazine and worked the slide to eject the one in the pipe. He followed with a press of the thumb and a flick of the slide stop out of the frame. Now the weapon was useless, in two pieces and tossed away in two directions.

“Think you’re hot shit?” said the biker who’d lunged to Bones’s aid.

Lyons regarded the opponent who was reaching for his own iron. With a suiki uki block, Lyons scooped the man’s hand away from the handle of his sidearm, and he followed it up with his one-knuckle fist, his favorite punch in the art. With his knuckle projecting like a spearhead, he struck the biker in the breastbone with enough force to halt his breathing. Lyons stiffened his hand for a shuto strike and plunged the hardened blade of flesh and bone into his foe’s sternum. Fetid breath escaped from the man’s lungs, but Lyons withdrew and stabbed into the man’s clavicle, right at the juncture of nerves and blood vessels running along the side of the neck.

The biker was unconscious within moments.

Lyons turned and saw Bones struggle to get to his hands and knees. Lyons swept the biker’s hand out from under him. A quick frisk revealed that his shiny .44 Magnum was accompanied by a claw hammer, a favorite biker weapon. He threw both of them aside and hauled the stunned criminal to his feet.

“Come on, Bones,” Lyons said. “We’re going to talk about Plan B, and about that skull around your neck.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia

Hermann Schwarz entered the cybernetic paradise that was known as the Stony Man Farm War Room. He paused, looking at the wall of digital LCD monitors that offered a tapestry of views from around the globe. Workstations sprawled out, each indicative of their owner, all of whom were at work right now. There was an optional side station that Schwarz and Manning had appropriated for themselves whenever they were working at the Farm. The Canadian utilized the station simply for research on his varied fields, from ballistics to structural physics. Schwarz, on the other hand, fiddled and experimented with computer codework, constantly updating and improving the efficiency of the programs that he ran on his personal cell phone and the combat Personal Data Assistants that he’d assigned to his comrades in the action squads Able Team and Phoenix Force.

Right now, his Able Team partner and friend Carl Lyons was in Los Angeles, already in town on a rare moment of much-earned leave. With the veiled threat against Russia and the rest of the G8, Lyons had gone back on duty immediately. Schwarz was watching his combat PDA, knowing that it was possible that he’d be called to action to deal with problems along the coast.

In the meantime, Schwarz was working with the rest of the cybernetic team at the Farm in an effort to backtrack the kinetic shafts that had struck Moscow. They surely weren’t the only ones trying to figure out the trajectory of the deadly missiles, but at least they could act on that information almost as soon as they received it, as opposed to a more conventional agency, which needed at least four hours of logistics and even more time for intricate planning.

It wasn’t that Able Team and Phoenix Force could ever be accused of going off without a plan. However, the two Stony Man Farm teams had enough experience and skill, as well as the ability to think unconventionally, that they could be called upon at a moment’s notice. They trained for as many contingencies as possible, honing and refreshing their skills in the time between their missions. Their intelligence, training and the technology they were able to fall back upon had all combined into a cohesive catch-all for whatever they could face.

That had been proved by the events in London less than an hour ago, when two members of Phoenix Force had been the deciding factor in what could have been a tragedy, containing mass violence and allowing innocent civilians to escape from seething, violent soccer hooligans. Schwarz made certain to listen in on Lyons’s conversation with Brognola, though the big Able Team leader had gone silent as the VOR station at LAX was mentioned.

Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman turned his attention toward Schwarz. “You come up with anything yet, Gadgets?”

Schwarz looked at Bear, the Stony Man cybernetics expert, and shook his head. He was still running mathematical calculations in his mind, but the Able Team electronics genius was the kind of a person who could mentally multitask with remarkable ease. When his teachers complained that he, as a youth, seemed to be antsy and distracted in class, he realized that it was because the lessons they gave him only occupied a small fraction of his brain power. He needed other distractions. Schwarz would hum to satisfy the part of his mental focus that needed music, while he idly designed circuits or performed complex equations as mere doodles. He literally had designed some of his gadgets in his sleep, the burning intellect trapped in his skull looking for something to do even as he dreamed.

In one way, it was a godsend for the brilliant technician. The burning need to create, to tinker, to modify and program allowed him to live in the moment, to focus on nothing and thus able to experience everything. There were times when he seemed to have an almost paranormal danger sense, but while the genius believed in the possibility of ESP, he knew the truth was a matter of being able to reconcile his conscious and subconscious minds. The human subconscious was vastly aware of the world around it, but very few people had tuned their upper mental faculties to pay attention to those background cues. Schwarz’s subconscious awareness was a directly accessible part of his mind, allowing him to process the sound of a scrape as either a breeze blowing a twig or a boot sole scuffing concrete.

“The nearest I could make out was that we’re looking at an eastward launch,” Schwarz replied. “The people who fired those darts were using Earth’s rotation to add to the relative velocity of those missiles. And who knows how many times they orbited the planet before they struck.”

“Given an equatorial launch, we could assume two or three cycles around the earth to angle in on Moscow,” Kurtzman replied.

“Maybe more, since those darts came in almost directly from the east,” Schwarz mused. Something caught his eye in his peripheral vision, and he turned his head, focusing on it.

“What is it?” Kurtzman asked.

“Something on the world map,” Schwarz said, getting up and walking toward the plasma screens. He headed toward the monitor panel that contained northern, equatorial Africa. It was a small flicker in Cameroon.

The monitor screen kept watch for anomalies that would add up to flags for potential problems that would end up in Stony Man’s lap. The computer would look for trends in increased criminal or terrorist activity, either smuggling or intensified violence. Then it would take regular census numbers of American or allied agents in those areas. Operatives who had not reported in for three consecutive days raised the flag.

“What do we have in Cameroon?” Schwarz asked.

“Nothing for CIA or NSA as far as we can tell,” Barbara Price spoke up from her liaison station. She frowned. “I’m checking Department of Defense.”

“You think this might be relevant?” Kurtzman asked.

Schwarz pointed at the proximity of the African coastal nation to the equator. “What were we just talking about, launchwise?”

Kurtzman grimaced. “Barb, what is the DoD looking at?”

“Two operatives were sent to the Congo to look into reports of kidnapping among the local population,” Price answered. She looked up. “Modern-day slavery, and in that region, slaves equal diamond mines.”

“Not necessarily in this case,” Schwarz said, “But then, there had to be something done to fund a potential launch pad.”

“Construction teams for a launcher,” Price murmured. “The Congo is akin to a million square miles…”

“One point four million square miles to be exact,” Schwarz corrected. “That’s just for the river basin, which is one of the top three largest unspoiled rainforests in the world.”

“Even with satellites, it’s going to take a lot of time to look through all that jungle,” Price noted, taking a deep breath. “And it’s not as if we have a lot of eyes in the sky looking down at the Congo.”

“Things are more interesting with piracy off the Horn of Africa or around the Mediterranean,” Kurtzman added. “Reallocating orbital surveillance for something that’s only a hunch is going to take a lot of effort and might raise too many flags.”

Schwarz turned, regarding Kurtzman. “I know it’s just a hunch, but everyone else is looking to the sky and pointing fingers at China and the U.S.”

“The only two countries with the resources to launch orbital bombardment satellites,” Price noted. “Though we’re concerned with something in the U.S. Lyons informed us that the Reich Highwaymen were skulking around LAX.”

“Reich Highwaymen in the U.S., Jakkhammer Legacy in England,” Schwarz mused. “Anything on our Nazi watch?”

“There’ve been funds flying around the backtrails, but nothing that points in any solid direction,” Carmen Delahunt spoke up. “All we know is—” she looked at her screen, her green eyes flashing as she did some quick math “—the amount of money in the stream is increased.”

“And no old artifacts or gold has turned up,” Schwarz stated.

“That’s true, but violence has increased in Europe among diamond smugglers,” Delahunt replied, anticipating Schwarz’s next supposition.

The Able Team genius frowned. Being right while he grasped at rumors and hints to form a plan of action was no victory. While he’d put together circumstantial evidence for where Stony Man should direct its attention for the origins of their unknown enemy, the conspiracy seemed to have links to violent, neofascist, racial supremacist groups from Moscow to Los Angeles. Putting boots on the ground in Africa would do nothing to stem the tide of mayhem that humans could cause, as opposed to the destruction wrought by throwing giant crowbars at cities from orbit.

Able Team had encountered the adherents of racial intolerance in the U.S. and engaged them in brutal combat. They were bloodthirsty and ruthless in their ideology, and recently the white supremacist scum had gone from supplementing their income with drug dealing and weapons smuggling to becoming full-time players, exercising their greed at easy money, power and prestige.

The Reich Highwaymen were symptomatic of this trend, being among the most successful smugglers across the border between California and Mexico. There were also five warrants for RHM members wanted for questioning in regard to twenty murders.

That’s just what the police knew. Unreported killings, in Schwarz’s experience, would be exponentially more.

“See if the Highwaymen have any friends here on the east coast,” Schwarz suggested. “It’s not as if the FBI and the CIA aren’t following more obvious, less arcane leads, right?”

“It could just be that you’ve got a bias against those gangs,” Price noted. “We could be spinning our wheels for an old grudge against a particular type of biker.”

“What was that about Jakkhammer Legacy?” Schwarz asked. “British neo-Nazis who are the strong-arm behind the British Imperial Revival Society? Looking for the day when all the brown peoples in the world know their place, and it’s usually toiling for a white limey?”

“You’re fast on the research,” Kurtzman noted.

“I heard Barb talking about it with David,” Schwarz said.

“A worldwide fascist conspiracy, and they’re working out of darkest Africa,” Price said.

“Using black slaves to mine diamonds and build launch pads,” Schwarz added. “Can you think of something a white supremacist wouldn’t like more than having Africans work themselves to death for their purposes?”

Price shook her head reluctantly. “Racist bastards… For once I completely agree with Carl about dealing with them.”

“Shoot first, ask questions, then finish shooting,” Schwarz explained for the computer experts in the War Room.

A phone warbled. Price picked it up. “Gadgets, it’s Pol.”

“Pol” was short for “Politician,” the nickname for the diplomatic and smooth-talking Rosario Blancanales, the third and final member of Able Team. When Lyons had activated and stayed on station in Los Angeles, the ex-LAPD cop had suggested that someone go on alert in Washington, D.C., preferably working from street level to avoid duplicating the efforts of federal agencies who were looking at terrorist groups and foreign governments. Lyons had been a beat cop, and while he had the advantage of electronic, satellite and internet-scoured information, he had never given up on the reliability of rumors and chatter on the mean streets. Blancanales, an affable, nearly chameleonlike person who could disarm an enemy with his words and his hands, had volunteered, leaving Schwarz free to utilize his particular skills.

Somewhere Blancanales had come through, prying loose some nugget of information that would give Stony Man Farm an edge.

Schwarz punched the speaker phone button, so that Blancanales could be heard by the rest of the War Room staff. “What’s the news, Pol?”

“I stumbled my way to a town just a mile past Chevy Chase,” Blancanales answered. “Don’t tell Carl, but his primitive, stone-age cop ways still work.”

Schwarz grinned. “A town?”

“Barely a town, actually. Basically, it’s the runoff from an interstate. It’s got some fast-food restaurants, two major gas station franchises and a bunch of small rest stops catering to the nomadic sort,” Blancanales explained.

“Bikers and truckers,” Schwarz translated for Price. She rolled her eyes, exasperated by the assumption that she hadn’t learned the verbal shorthand utilized by the field teams.

“I work at a desk for a few hours a day. I’m not a hermit stuck on an island,” Price responded.

“Anyway, there’s a congregation meeting. It looks as if they’re getting set for a holy revival,” Blancanales said. “Be nice if you got here.”

“Is Jack or Charlie around?” Schwarz asked, referring to Jack Grimaldi or Charlie Mott, Stony Man’s two resident pilots.

“I’ve had Charlie keep a helicopter on standby,” Price said. “Get to the pad, and he’ll take you up as soon as you get there.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes, Pol,” Schwarz said. “Tell Barb your exact location so Charlie can take me there as the crow flies. Need party favors?”

“I’m pretty well strapped. Just bring plenty of ammo,” Blancanales replied.

Herman Schwarz raced out of the War Room.

It was time to ask some questions, Able Team style.

The Congo

JOHN CARMICHAEL TRIPPED but recovered his balance by hugging a tree trunk. The trouble with doing that in a rainforest was that creatures started crawling along his arm, making a beeline for his shoulder and neck. It took five hard, quick slaps to make certain everything had been either knocked off or crushed, and the smashed insects that clung to his dark arm left behind a gooey mess that attracted hungry flies. He mopped the stuff off his arm, not wanting to catch a bite from a tsetse fly or some infection from a disease-ridden set of insect mandibles.