Deadly Payload

The thrum of engines sounded overhead as the UAVs took up an orbit. There were two of them, Schwarz’s monitor picked them out as they described a lazy circular arc overhead, setting Able Team and their ally perfectly in the middle. The electronics genius scowled.

“Found us,” Schwarz said. He still stayed close to the tree trunk, but the mulch of the forest floor was no longer needed. “But these aren’t armed.”

“The last time they hosed us down from the air, they got bupkis,” Lyons growled. “This time, they want confirmed kills. That means…”

The buzzing snarl of dirt bikes rose to a crescendo in the distance, but then stopped. Blancanales gestured toward where he placed the enemy’s last position. His SIG, equipped with an M-203 grenade launcher, swept the forest.

Lyons squirmed out of most of his gear and laid the SIG Masterkey beside it. The only metal he had left on his person was his combat knife and his Kissinger-tuned 1911 pocket revolver and spare ammunition. It was still a significant amount, but the Able Team leader had been briefed well by Schwarz about the radar capability of the Predator drones. His sheathed magazines, pocketed revolver and battle knife, under radar-absorbent ballistic nylon, would provide a negligible signal for the drone to pick up. He threaded a suppressor onto the barrel of the .45 auto and nodded for the others to do the same.

The implication was clear.

His teammates dumped their gear except for their handguns and knives.

Arquillo was about to do the same, but Lyons shook his head.

“You’re our anchor,” he told her in a low whisper. “I know you’re okay with fighting, but this isn’t going to be self-defense. This is going to be slaughter.”

Arquillo frowned as she gripped her .45. “I can handle myself.”

Lyons shook his head. “If things go tits up, I need someone with a real weapon, not a handgun, giving us cover fire.”

The CIA agent’s eyes narrowed. “Because I’m a woman?”

“Because you’re not a member of our team, and you haven’t done what we have,” Lyons said. He stalked off into the forest, his modified-for-silence .45 a dark, grim bit of high-tech in his fist.

T SO K U KILLED THE ENGINE on his Kawasaki and slid off its seat. The heat was stifling, but it was a familiar cloak. While the rain forest here smelled different, strange plants and animals compared to the jungles of Thailand where he served as chief of security for heroin plantations, it was familiar territory. The rules were the same as back in Thailand, even if their aerial cover was far more sophisticated. Somewhere above the treetops, rotating around their target site, the Raptors, Predators updated and renamed by the Engineers of the New Tomorrow, kept high-tech eyes on their prey.

He clutched his Heckler & Koch G-36 K, a fine, sturdy piece of hardware that was as well suited to the jungle as his old AK-47. While his shirt stuck to him with damp sweat and sticky humidity, his vest didn’t add an unwanted burden of extra heat while providing a layer of protection against even full-powered rifle slugs. ENT had gone to great lengths to give Tso all he needed to be successful in this new environment.

Tso pulled his out GPS monitor. The Raptors had picked up his team on its radar, the steel in their weapons and gear giving them away to invisible high-frequency beams. There was some scattering of the signal, tiny blips away from their main targets, four people who had wandered into the jungle.

No, they hadn’t wandered. They’d survived one of ENT’s distracting traps and a strafing run. The Mercedes SUV left burning at the cliff was mute testimony that the strangers weren’t wayward tourists. It was a quality, expensive piece of equipment, and charred gear in the back indicated that the four of them were well-armed and looking for trouble.

Tso sneered as he silently answered that the fools had found trouble.

Using hand signals, Tso had his men spread out. They were a mix of Filipino, Thai, Mexican and Colombian, all experienced in jungle operations, and ENT had trained them together to form a cohesive team to the point where they could communicate entire thoughts with gestures and glances. FARC had made the mistake of trying to enter their territory, and the ragtag terrorists, forty strong, had fallen to the well-honed ENT security force under Tso, despite two-to-one odds. Tso hadn’t lost a single member of his team.

Tso had seven men with him, leaving the others to protect the base. If anything happened to this group, Aceveda would lock down the facility. The Thai commander didn’t think that this group could handle two-to-one odds, but they had managed to survive a Raptor attack involving machine guns and an antitank missile. Firepower wasn’t everything, and Tso was under no illusion that even his team’s level of training made them invincible.

There was a soft cough off to his right and Tso hit the ground hard. A Filipino ENT sentry also fell, but not out of survival reflex. The ENT gunman’s face had been obliterated by a suppressed pair of bullets, smashing his cheekbone and ejecting his brains out the other side of his skull. One glassy eye stared at Tso, unblinking in its accusation.

There was no room for silent communication now. Not with hostile marauders in their midst.

“Ambush!” Tso bellowed, slithering into the foliage as slugs dug up mud near him. He triggered his G-36 K, slicing a wide arc in the forest before reaching the cover of a tree trunk. Other assault rifles chattered, and Tso could see their muzzle-flashes in the dimness of the canopy’s shadow. “Check fire! Check fire!”

The ENT commander slung his rifle. The weapon would give his position away. The rifles they selected for this operation were chosen for their compactness, but that same short barrel also produced a flare that would point right at him. Even with the muzzle brake taming the explosive gases to a mere spark, it was still bright enough to give away his position. Tso pulled his pistol and looked for movement in the trees. His team was smart enough to set their assault rifles aside, going to handguns in the darkness. A pistol wasn’t a preferred weapon, but with stealthy ambushers, their long-arms would prove to be a hindrance, giving aid to the enemy.

Thumbing back the hammer on his pistol, Tso took to the shadows, hunting the demons of the forest.

C ARL L YONS DELIBERATELY MISSED the apparent leader of the enemy strike force, throwing away ammunition in the course of forcing Tso to reach cover. He rammed a fresh magazine into the butt of his .45 and snicked on the safety. He wanted the Asian alive, or at least in good enough condition to survive a couple of questions. From his position in the middle of a patch of shadowy, moss-encrusted roots, he was invisible, the 1911’s suppressor rendering his low-flash ammunition invisible to view from Tso. The direction of the bullet impacts in the ground might have drawn the commander’s attention, but his assault rifle spit wide of the mark.

“Loudmouth’s mine,” Lyons whispered over his LASH radio.

“Roger,” Schwarz answered. “Remaining three fair game.”

Lyons slid a phosphate-coated Ka-Bar fighting knife from its sheath. A dull black, even to its razor-thin, flesh-slicing edge, it was a shard of night hidden among the shadows. Tso and his crew would obviously be alert for the sound of a suppressed handgun. Even though the muzzle-flash was swallowed by the steel tube, and the roar of the bullet was reduced to a cough, there was still enough sound for a nearby opponent to lock on to a target. Wiping out half of the investigating force had been easy with the initial shots, and even from cover, Able Team had been relatively secure against return fire.

The ex-cop saw Blancanales glide from behind a tree and wrap a muscle-knotted arm around the throat of a Hispanic gunman. The Colombian’s eyes went wide as the former Black Beret’s forearm closed over his throat, cutting off his air. Blancanales didn’t give the ENT sentry a chance to strangle to death, even though his grasp had been tight enough to crush the man’s windpipe. Another black-bladed combat knife punched through the bone and cartilage of the Colombian’s breastbone, spearing through the thick trunk of the aorta beneath it. The point had missed the guard’s heart by an inch, but with a wicked twist and a hard rip, the knife had rendered the blood pump useless by severing the major artery. Blood pressure dropped like a rock and the Puerto Rican’s victim didn’t even have the strength for one final thrash, his arms and legs dropping limply like wet noodles to the forest floor. Dark, cold eyes stared lifelessly at Lyons as he circled behind a second of Tso’s commandos.

Lyons lurched from the shadows, his hand wrapping around the Asian’s face, palm clamping over the gunman’s mouth while he slammed his Ka-Bar into his reedy, brown neck. The thick Bowie-style blade carved through arteries and windpipe in one savage intrusion. Lyons cranked on his knife handle as if it were a cantankerous stick shift, pulling the knife forward.

The wiry little Asian tried to scream, his arms flailing into the big ex-cop’s face, and the guard’s windpipe resisted the Ka-Bar, hanging on with rubbery tenacity. Unable to pull the knife forward, Lyons twisted the blade around and shoved back. His adversary’s eyes rolled crazily as the phosphate-coated edge crunched and ricocheted between vertebrae, parting cartilage. Nearly decapitated, the ENT soldier’s corpse fell instantly still. Lyons wiped the blood off his blade and looked for the team’s commander.

The Thai security commander’s handgun revealed him, bullets cracking loudly. Lyons whirled and spotted Schwarz, diving for cover, pulling the body of his last ENT victim along with him as a shield. Tso howled in rage and reloaded his handgun.

Lyons let his knife fall and lifted his silenced .45. He aimed low, striking the ENT guard in the rear.

Contrary to comedy, anything more than a load of bird shot in the gluteous maximus was guaranteed to cause major injury. One of Lyons’s 230-grain hollowpoints rounds, stopped cold, deforming as Tso’s pelvic girdle absorbed its forward momentum. Unable to deal with 350 pounds of force, the hip bone shattered. The second round tore through fatty tissue and muscle to burst Tso’s bladder, ripping out a half-inch chunk of groin muscle. Either wound would have made it impossible for the Thai to stand upright. Together at once, they dropped the ENT commander to the forest floor in blinding agony.

Blancanales rushed to the wounded man, kicking the gun out of his hand before checking his wounds.

“He’ll live?” Lyons asked.

“Missed the femoral artery, but he’s bleeding badly,” Blancanales said. He pulled a small tube from his medical pack and poured a black silt into Tso’s groin wound. It was gunpowder, and the Able Team medic ignited it with an electric lighter.

The Thai gunman thrashed in agony as his bloody wound was cauterized shut, damaged blood vessels sealed off as they cooked instantly.

Lyons leaned onto Tso’s throat, his hands clamped on either side of his neck.

“Speak English?” Lyons asked.

“Go to hell,” Tso answered.

“Good enough for me,” Lyons replied. “We’re going to have a little talk.”

Tso coughed violently. “Or what? You’ll torture me? Didn’t you hear that torture was illegal?”

“How long do you think it’ll take for you to die in this jungle?” Lyons asked.

Tso’s eyes narrowed.

“You’re a cripple. There’s no way you can walk out. And even if you could crawl one hundred miles to the nearest city, I’m pretty sure you’ll succumb to a few dozen infections. You’ll never go anywhere on your two feet regardless,” Lyons stated.

“You cauterized my gunshots,” Tso said, his voice a nervous warble.

Lyons rolled his eyes and pulled his Ka-Bar. The blade sliced into Tso’s upper arm, opening the skin. “How many cuts do you think we’ll need, Pol?”

“Just that one,” Blancanales replied. “Any more, and we’d run the risk of jaguars finding and finishing him off too soon.”

Tso’s features paled instantly.

“You know,” Schwarz said, “the cats aren’t the real threat. I’d be more concerned about ants or maggots.”

“Actually, the maggots would be helpful,” Lyons told Schwarz. “Maggots only eat necrotic flesh and leave healthy, uninfected tissue alone.”

Schwarz nodded. “There’s that. But you’re talking about garden-variety maggots. There are flesh-eating larvae in these jungles that burrow down and even gnaw into living bone.”

Tso grimaced. “You wouldn’t do that…”

Lyons frowned. “You just said, we Americans can’t torture you. And you’ve done nothing for us to give you a quick, clean death.”

The Thai looked at the hard-faced members of Able Team.

“Nice try,” Tso said. “I’d find a way to make it quick for—”

The sound of his shoulder dislocating and separating exploded across Tso’s consciousness like an atomic blast. A red curtain of blood replaced his vision, his ears resonating with the rumbling echoes of his cracking bones and popping cartilage. He returned to reality, the taste of his sour bile in his mouth, the stench of vomit next to his head. He didn’t remember throwing up, but it had to have been while his consciousness disconnected. His arm was a limp, useless mass of twisted muscle and bone.

There was no one to be seen around him.

“Hey…” he croaked. His throat was raw from yelling, or maybe the acid in his bile searing unprotected esophagus.

There was no answer and he twisted, looking around.

“Hey! Hey! I’ll talk!” Tso shouted.

The forest was empty, except for the corpses of some of his men. He tried to roll and crawl, but with only one arm and a shattered pelvis, he was helpless, motionless. All he could do was clutch at leaves and roots, unable to pull his lifeless limbs along. He saw the handle of his pistol poking out of some leaves and reached for it. Fingers sank into mud and he pulled. It seemed to take an eternity to shift only an inch, and two of his nails had been pried out by the roots due to his efforts. Bloody tips stung as they sank into the dirt for more leverage and haul himself closer to the pistol.

He was drenched with sweat, and his cut was burning from the effort. Tso looked at the puckered brown skin, seething with infection. With another tug, he felt the rubber grips of his pistol and he pulled it closer. It felt lighter, and he looked at the magazine well.

Empty.

Maybe there was a round in the chamber. He thumbed back the hammer and pressed the muzzle to his temple. The trigger tripped and the hammer fell with a loud clack.

Tears cut through the sweat and grime on his cheeks.

They’d left him with an empty gun, to taunt him with the faint hope of a swift end.

“There are twelve more men at the base,” Tso called as loud as he could, feeling something pop in his throat. “Twelve men, with machine guns, and motion detectors as well as UAV drones!”

Tso took another deep breath and repeated his cry.

He shouted his report five more times, for a total of seven, when he heard the crunch of wet leaves under boots. His throat tightened as he looked up to see Carl Lyons standing over him. He held a 9 mm pistol by the barrel, handle presented for the Thai.

Tso reached up, swallowing. His fingers wrapped around the grip. He turned it over, and there was no magazine in place.

“You’ve got one shot,” Lyons told him. “Use it wisely. We won’t give you another.”

Tso nodded. “My people will tear you apart.”

The ENT commander tilted the barrel of the pistol between his lips and pulled the trigger, getting the hell out of Panama.

CHAPTER SIX

The covert conference had reached its conclusion long before, giving McCarter time to report in to the Farm. The Mossad and Unit 777 operators were calling in, as well. All three teams were resting, burning away the morning hours so that they would travel in the heat of the day. It was harder going for all three groups, but fewer people would be out, and Phoenix Force and its allies would be less obvious.

McCarter’s neck hairs rose and he looked toward Gary Manning who had tensed up at the cavern’s entrance.

“Drone,” Manning whispered, his HK sniper rifle gripped firmly.

That awoke the entire group. Squinting, the Phoenix Force commander could barely make out the tiny speck against the sky. Though they were painted white, the Predator drone was difficult to see, the colorless hull blanking out against the halo of sun-blazed sky or clear blue. Manning’s face was set in a grimace of disgust.

“What’s wrong?” McCarter asked.

“It’s been following an orbital path around the cave for at least two minutes,” Manning replied. “And it had been following that course when I first saw it. I should have noticed it earlier.”

“You’re only human,” the Briton said.

Manning quirked an eyebrow. “I’m supposed to be better.”

“How did you even notice it?” Mahmoud asked. “It’s keeping the corona of the sun at its back.”

“Sharp eyes,” Manning answered. He shook his head. “It’s high enough that it can’t be heard, and staying near the sun keeps it secure against thermal imaging. I’d caught odd movement in my peripheral vision, so I used an old eclipse-gazing trick.”

Manning pointed to his cap. Small, circular vent holes near the crown to allow the seventy-five percent of body heat expelled through the head and shoulders to escape unhindered, was part of most headgear. He took the cap off and held it over a map that he’d put face down. He kept his fingers over all but one of the pinholes, and a disk of light showed on the map in his broad shadow. A dart-shaped object crossed the disk of light.

“Son of a bitch,” Reiser growled. “How did they know…”

Rafael Encizo spoke up, “One of your men is missing.”

“Kohn?” another Israeli asked. “He was supposed to be watching the mouth of the cave from the wash running past.”

“He’s long gone,” Calvin James interjected. “I don’t see any sign of him anywhere.”

Mahmoud looked at Reiser, his lips pulled tight. Dark eyes studied the Mossad commander for a moment. “Your suspicions were correct.”

Reiser sighed. “Let’s move…”

“We’d be right in the open,” Manning countered. “And our allies tell us that those drones can be armed with anything. One of our teams encountered machine-gun fire from the drones.”

Mahmoud looked up toward the sun, but the harsh glare made it impossible to see anything. He turned away. “They’ve also attacked with rockets, and this cavern would make a handy tomb with one warhead.”

“Who did you suspect Kohn of working for?” McCarter asked Reiser.

“There’s an organization made up of former and current intelligence officers and private citizens,” Reiser began.

“Abraham’s Dagger?” McCarter prompted.

“You’ve encountered them before?” Reiser asked. “I lost a good friend investigating those bastards.”

“Not personally,” McCarter replied. “But I do know of two operations they’ve been involved with. A Palestinian refugee camp, and the attempted assassination of several UN relief workers.”

“Abraham’s Dagger lives up to all the bad press the Israeli government gets,” Mahmoud stated. “They’ve caused Egypt enough headaches.”

“We try to do damage control,” Reiser said. “Trouble is, they have the unspoken approval of too many hard-liners in charge. The Dagger did enough to seem legitimate and supportable, but then they go and kill children of terrorists or people who could link them to atrocities.”

“That explains hitting a terrorist camp in Syria, but a flight of drones was sent toward Israel with bellies full of chemical weapons,” Hawkins reminded them.

“The Dagger has felt betrayed by the proper government,” Reiser told him. “A major terrorist attack, killing thousands, would give them all the support they’d need to make whatever first strikes they wanted. Naturally, they’d get all of their supporters out of the target area so that the Dagger’s agenda could be hawked in the aftermath.”

“Scary bastards,” Hawkins rumbled.

A Mossad commando scurried across the wash and crouched near the mouth of the cave. “We’ve got an unknown force coming toward us.”

Manning shouldered his MSG-90 and scanned the horizon with its high-powered scope. “Armored personnel carriers and jeeps.”

“An advance party, commandos on foot, are working their way closer,” the Israeli told them.

“Kohn’s buddies,” Reiser said with a sneer. “I’m going to kill that little fanatic…”

“Save it,” Mahmoud told the Mossad commander, putting a calming hand on his shoulder. “We should get out of the cave.”

McCarter looked at Manning. “Got a good withdrawal route?”

“Two. The other would take us right down the throats of the advancing force,” Manning stated. “But all have cover against that Predator up top.”

McCarter looked at the horizon. “We’ll take that route.”

“You’re going to hold them off?” Reiser asked. “No. We’ll all withdraw.”

“Actually, we weren’t intending on holding them off,” James said, knowing his commander. “We’ll knock a few answers out of those chumps.”

“He’s right,” McCarter said. “We might have a chance to interrogate an enemy prisoner or three.”

“He never takes the easy route,” Manning added. “You two withdraw and go on to your phase of this operation. We’ll contact you if we learn anything.”

Mahmoud nodded. “Allah be with you, my friends.”

McCarter’s eyes narrowed, a mirthless grin tightening his lips. “God’s going to sit this one out. We’ve got the devil’s work to do, mate.”

C APTAIN Z ING H O , a North Korean officer, heard the American woman’s voice on the phone and took a deep breath, his stomach flip-flopping. It had been a while since a mysterious warrior had given him a new lease on life, saving him from a massacre in an illegal chemical weapons lab. The tall man in black protected him, and later, a group of computer hackers smoothed over all the wrinkles left by association with Major Huan. Now, as a military attaché in the North Korean consulate in Beijing, he had been contacted by the tall warrior’s allies, given access to a fistful of information.

“We need to make certain that cool heads prevail here,” the woman said to him. “The documents in your e-mail will help with that.”

“North Korea, being the voice of reason?” Ho asked.

“It’s a long shot. Just present it to the ambassador,” Barbara Price informed him. “You know that Ambassador Chong is a good man. So do we. He could do a lot to defuse the situation.”

Ho nodded. “Nobody wants China to go to war with the British and American fleets over Taiwan. Too much chance of things going nuclear. And we’re right in the backyard in case a few megatons fall short.”

He paused for a moment. “But, won’t your contacting me show up on the Chinese government’s radar?”

“You know that deal with the search engine and the Chinese government?” Price asked.

“You’re kidding me,” Ho said.

“Nope. Putting the blocks on those searches also gives us a lot of wiggle room for covert communication. The same scrambling encryptions are protecting every e-mail and Internet broadband phone communication that we are putting through,” Price answered.

Ho took a deep breath, feeling safer now. “You arranged that?”

“More of taking advantage of a blind spot,” Price told him.

Ho looked at his printer. Sheets piled up in the output tray. Even at eight pages a minute, it seemed to take forever. “Tell your man…thanks again.”

“He doesn’t do it for the gratitude,” Price explained. “But when I see him again, I’ll let him know.”

“Provided the world doesn’t turn into a smoking crater,” Ho muttered.

“The documentation you have will go a long way toward cooling that off,” Price returned.

With the overview finished and a CD-ROM burned containing actual records, Ho was ready.

“Thanks,” Ho said.