Mind Bomb

STONY MAN

Operating under covert Presidential directives, the elite black ops group known as Stony Man is bound by honor to risk the ultimate price to uphold freedom.

MENTAL MELTDOWN

Following a series of suicide bombing attacks along the U.S.-Mexican border, the relatives of a dead female bomber attack Able Team, descending from social to homicidal in a matter of seconds. Clearly these bombings are far more than random killings. Searching for an answer to the seemingly psychotic episodes, the black ops group discovers someone is controlling these people’s minds with a new drug that leaves them catatonic or dead, after first giving them the extraordinary urge to kill. While Able Team follows leads in the U.S., Phoenix Force heads to investigate similar bombings in the Middle East. With numerous civilians already infected by the drug, they must eliminate the source before the body count of unwilling sacrifices mounts.

“ROCKET! ROCKET! ROCKET!”

Small arms began crackling and popping outside. Lyons heard the distinctive thud of an RPG launching off its tube and the hiss of the rocket motor igniting. He rolled behind the couch, covered his eyes and jammed his thumbs into his ears. By some miracle the rocket-propelled grenade hit the doorjamb rather than the door itself. The house shook and windows shattered.

“Enough of this less-than-lethal garbage…” The Ironman snapped in a drum loaded with lead.

James bounced up but immediately dropped back down. “Incoming!”

Pol dived to put the kitchen between him and the blast. Lyons and James leaped for the hall. The grenade hit the front door, which dissolved in an orange flash. Superheated gas and shrapnel expanded to fill the living room and the heat wash rolled through the house. Lyons sat up, yawning against the ringing in his ears. Gadgets spoke from his concealed position. He’d set up a small suite of minicameras to watch the house perimeter.

“You got twelve guys hitting the front. Five more are breaking off and flanking for the back.”

“Copy that, Gadgets. Hold position, wait for the shot. Pol…don’t let ’em in.”

Mind Bomb

Don Pendleton

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

EPILOGUE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

Rosario Blancanales came out of the coroner’s office shaking his head. Carl Lyons sat behind the wheel of a bottle-green Renault 12 Estate and rolled his eyes behind his mirrored sunglasses. “Goddamn wild-goose chase.”

It was July. It was noon. And it was 110 degrees. The city was a blast furnace and felt ready to blow.

Carl “Ironman” Lyons, the leader of Able Team, had to give Juárez some credit. The city had managed to fall from being the number-one murder capital of the world to number two. Yet violent turf battles between the Juárez and Sinaloa cartels still rocked the barrios, and there was genuine war in the streets between the cartels and the army and state police.

Juárez had managed to drop to number two in murder overall, but the city still managed to be the number-one murder capital for women in all of the Americas. Juárez’s profoundly disturbing and mostly unsolved strings of kidnapping, torture, rape and murder of its young women continued unabated. Throw in total governmental corruption from top to bottom and the Paso Del Norte had just about seen it all.

But it had never before encountered suicide bombers, which was why Able Team was on the scene. The supersecret US covert operations team was dispatched only for the most urgent and dire situations. Only the President and a very select few of the Man’s advisers even knew of the existence of the highly trained, deadly team based out of Stony Man Farm, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of rural Virginia.

Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz, the third member of Able Team, sat quietly in the backseat watching their six, but Lyons could just about hear him thinking the same thing.

Blancanales put on his happy face as he climbed into the car. “How you boys doing?”

Lyons peered over his mirror sunglasses. “I’m in Mexico. In July. Driving a French station wagon without air conditioning.”

Blancanales grinned. “Well, at least it’s a dry heat!”

“Carl?” Schwarz rolled a sweating grape Fanta bottle across his brow. “Shoot him.”

Lyons considered it. “We got nothing?”

“It makes no sense.” Blancanales sighed. “None of the bombers has any connection that I can find. They come from all walks of life. Different ages and sexes, different parts of town. Go to different churches. The only thing they seem to have in common is that they’re all Mexican nationals. I swear it’s almost like they were picked at random.”

Lyons shook his head. “People don’t randomly strap on suicide vests.”

“No, they don’t,” Blancanales agreed. “And I hate to pull the barrio-boy race card, but homicide bombing isn’t a Latin MO. Something is wrong with this. All of it.”

Schwarz twisted open his bottle of pop. “Anyone?”

“Cherry,” Lyons declared.

“Tamarind.” Blancanales nodded. “Thank you.”

The three Able Team commandos sat in the vintage 1980s French station wagon and drank soda.

Schwarz had been turning his considerable intellect on the problem. “Blackmail is the only angle I can see. The cartels or someone had something on the bombers, or were threatening their families and coerced them.”

“To strap on a bomb and check out? In public?” Lyons snorted.

Blancanales shook his head. “It’s thin.”

“So thin I want to buy it a sandwich,” Lyons concluded. All three men were warriors, but Blancanales and Schwarz were soldiers. Lyons had been a homicide detective. He had kept his cop’s nose when he joined Able Team and often still approached situations like a detective.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Schwarz conceded. “You got anything better?”

Lyons turned to Blancanales. “We got anything better?”

Blancanales glanced up the street. “We got him.”

As a black Lincoln Navigator with tinted windows appeared at the intersection at the top of the street, Schwarz made a bemused noise. “And we got them.”

Lyons checked his rearview and saw a black Nissan Titan pickup that wore tinted windows, as well. “Looks like we got our first lead...”

Schwarz polished off his pop and reached into the duffel at his feet. “Sticking your head out to see who tries to blow it off is Phoenix MO. I thought us Able guys were supposed to be smart ’n’ stuff.”

“Not smart enough to get a decent car,” Lyons growled. Stony Man Farm had arranged for the CIA to position a clean, no-questions-asked vehicle at the safe house. When this was all over, Lyons was of a mind to track down the asshole spook in question to have a serious Q and A about what the hell species of farm animal manure they had between their ears. In the meantime, Lyons arranged a smile on his face that could have sold toothpaste. He held up his cherry Fanta and waggled it at the SUV watching them. “Hey, morons. Hi. Yeah. Yeah, you. I’m gonna kill every last one of you.” Lyons nodded and grinned like an idiot. “Except one and he’s gonna wish I had.”

Schwarz toasted a fresh purple bottle at the pickup behind them. “It’s true! He’s gonna! I’ve seen his work!”

Blancanales sighed and polished off his pop. “Can we go now?”

Lyons jerked the wheel and put the pedal to the floor. The R-12 Estate took its time, its 63 horsepower time, and lurched rather than lunged into traffic. Horns blared, tires screamed and traffic veered around the wallowing Renault. Lyons snarled in disgust. “Oh, for God’s sake!” He ignored the mayhem all around and took a straight line for the side street. The two black, V8-powered 4x4s lunged like hounds off the leash.

“There’s a third vehicle somewhere. They’re going to go for a pin,” Blancanales advised.

Lyons kept the pedal down, waiting for something in the car to respond. “You think?”

Schwarz hurled his empty pop bottle out the window and Blancanales and Lyons followed suit. There was almost no chance broken glass would do anything to the huge off-road tires of their adversaries, but it might cause some flats in the surrounding traffic to get in their way. “Shot” would have been charitable but the Renault finally managed to “scoot” up the alley and squirt into the next cross street.

A second Titan pickup came screaming up a few seconds short on timing to trap Able Team in the alley. Lyons turned straight into them. He played chicken for two seconds and then cranked the wheel and jumped up on the sidewalk. The only good news was that it was noon and hardly anyone was out walking on the heat-shimmering pavement. Lyons shot past his opponent. The pickup screamed in a beauty of a bootlegger’s turn.

The Able Team leader grimaced. “He’s good!”

Schwarz watched the Lincoln boil out of the alley behind them. “We’ll never make the safe house.”

Lyons agreed. “No shit.”

“Slow and steady wins the race,” Blancanales opined.

“Well, we’re already driving a French turtle, Pol! Any other suggestions?”

“Slow and steady. Drive slower and shoot steady.”

“Finally he talks my language.” Lyons limboed back over his seat and the passenger bench as Blancanales slid into the driver’s seat. He rolled into the wagon bed and unzipped his gear bag. The Able Team leader drew the massive Atchisson semiautomatic shotgun and removed the 24-round drum magazine. Velcro tore as he opened the bag’s side pockets of specialized ammo. He took out an 8-rounder.

The Navigator came roaring out of the alleyway behind them. The SUV’s starboard grille was crumpled, and smashed headlights hung by wires from the impacts but nothing seemed to be slowing the leviathan SUV down. Pinning prey in traffic with large SUVs and trucks and then filling the target car with lead was a favorite tactic of Mexican sicarios. This was a full-blown professional hit.

The Nissan Titan and the Navigator locked ranks and tore after them. The third pickup would be screaming through traffic trying to get ahead of the action.

Lyons tapped his magazine to make sure the rounds were still correctly seated. The face of the top three-inch Magnum shell was not crimped like buckshot nor did it present the sunken flat face of a slug. It gleamed like quicksilver and looked nothing so much as the nose cone of a missile. The tip was the point of a tungsten-steel long-rod penetrator. The gleaming, spiral-grooved metal around it was hard-cast lead. The rod was designed to tear through the engine block of a vehicle. The hard-cast lead would shatter like shrapnel and tear apart hoses, belts and small moving parts. John “Cowboy” Kissinger, the Stony Man armorer, had designed the round from the ground up to kill cars.

“Pop the back!”

Blancanales laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

Lyons put both his feet against the hatch frame and aimed between his boots. “Cover your ears!”

“Shit!”

“Madre de—”

The Atchisson detonated like doomsday in the confines of the Renault. The hatch glass literally atomized outward from the kinetic energy.

The armor-piercing round slammed into the gleaming grille of the Navigator. The Navigator’s hood flew. Bits of flame burst upward as gasoline and oil suddenly went places it wasn’t supposed to. The giant SUV swerved blindly and rammed a telephone pole.

Lyons yawned to clear his ears and took aim at the Titan. The 12 gauge kicked him like a mule as he put two quick shots through the pickup’s grille. The Titan fishtailed wildly and came on. Lyons raised an eyebrow. “Nissans, who knew?” He flipped his selector to full-auto and let her rip slightly left. Three rounds tore through the grille and hood, the last two walking up the driver’s-side windshield. The Titan went from fishtail into full spin and rolled.

Blancanales stood on the brakes. Gears ground as he rammed the car into Reverse and hit the gas. The Renault actually had a little torque in reverse and shot backward. “Carl, I want at least one in talking shape and we need to get out of here fast.”

Lyons snapped out his empty magazine and snapped in a 24-round drum. He leaped out and strode toward the crashed Lincoln, steam shooting out of its radiator.

Mexican cartel muscle often deactivated the air bags on their usually stolen vehicles so they could ram, crowd and pin their targets without pause. And since they might have to jump out, they never wore their seat belts. Mexican cartel muscle spilled out the doors of the SUV like broken drunks.

The Able Team leader tenderized them. He’d snapped in a drum Dutch-loaded with rubber slug baton rounds and rubber buckshot. Lyons proceeded to give each cartel man a 2-round burst—first a slug, followed by buck. The killers deflated beneath the brutal double blows and collapsed to the pavement.

An assassin popped up out of the sunroof screaming and trying to bring an Uzi in either hand to bear. Lyons squeezed off a round. The buckshot was rubber but the fist-size cloud pulverized an eye and smashed out teeth. The multiple blows to the skull probably hadn’t helped, either. The killer flopped back boneless over the luggage rack.

As sirens wailed in the distance, Lyons ran a practiced eye over his fallen opponents. He watched as one man emerged from the flipped Titan. His face was a bloody mess and he moved as though he was swimming in molasses. Nevertheless he was making a very determined effort to crawl away. “That one has spirit,” he grumbled.

Lyons walked up upon his man. The crawler screamed as the Able Team leader gave him a rubber round in each arm and leg. The killer twitched like a landed squid. Lyons scooped him up into a fireman’s carry and carried him to the Renault. “Fat moron...” He potato-sacked him through the blown-out back window and dived in. “Go!”

CHAPTER TWO

The Safe House

Carl Lyons lifted his head from cleaning his shotgun and sniffed the air. Schwarz’s hand went to his pistol. “What?”

“I smell coffee and doughnuts.”

Schwarz rolled his eyes at the former cop. “You smell them in your sleep.” Nonetheless, Schwarz rose and took up his pistol. Lyons clicked a fresh drum into his shotgun as Schwarz hit the buzzer and the door clicked.

Blancanales walked into the little patio and set a cardboard tray of café con leches and churros on the wrought-iron table between the guns. “You know? I’m a confirmed Starbucks man, but I am really liking the Cielito Querido coffee.”

Lyons inhaled several ounces of espresso and scalded milk without swallowing and grabbed a banana-size, sugar-rolled pastry. “Tell me you got us a new car.”

Blancanales gave Lyons a look of mock hurt. “Of course.”

“What kind?”

“Another thirty-five-year-old station wagon.”

“No damn—”

Blancanales gestured like a professional hand model at the door he’d left open. Lyons leaned out to stare at the big, boxy, ancient beast parked outside. The original ox-blood paint job had faded to a dull brown. The fake wood paneling on the doors now looked like very well-weathered bamboo where it wasn’t peeling.

Schwarz’s brows bunched. “Ford Granada?”

“Indeed, a GL, with a rebuilt 302 V8. She runs like a top. Someone had the good taste to remove the electric rev limiter—over 300 horsepower under the hood. She handles like a tank. But, should we step on the gas—” Blancanales tossed Lyons the keys “—the girl will go.”

Lyons caught the key ring. “I take back all those things I said about you.”

“I should hope so. What do we have on our prisoner?”

Schwarz had been chatting to the Farm on his laptop. “We have one Señor Oribe ‘BolaBolo’ Uribe.”

Blancanales shook his head at what was to come. “Bowling ball?”

“Yeah, it’s some kind of Mexican slang contraction of bola de bolos. You’d know better than me. Depending on whether you are a man or a woman, sometimes regardless, Uribe takes a bowling pin and inserts it into a body cavity. Which orifice? That depends on what you’ve done and how angry he is with you.”

Blancanales set down his coffee. “Is it too late to say too much information?”

“Then, while you contemplate this intrusion he takes a ten-pound ball and starts pulverizing fingers and toes with an overhand no release. He’s famous for going from frame to frame to get answers. We have a video of him playing a ‘ten frame’ game on an informer. It ain’t pretty.”

Blancanales made a determined effort to go back to enjoying his coffee. “Don’t need to see it.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to.” Lyons jerked his head toward the safe house basement stairs. “He’s wearing a luchador mask in the video, but the idiot took off his shirt during the proceedings. His physique and tattoos are a lock.”

“A wrestling mask?” Blancanales scoffed.

Schwarz handed Blancanales a tablet. Blancanales scanned Uribe’s jacket and mug shots. “That does appear to be our boy.”

Able Team was of a mind.

“They went for a pin,” Schwarz observed.

Lyons nodded. “Didn’t shoot at us much.”

“And they brought along a cartel torturer and interrogator,” Pol concluded.

“So why would the cartels be involved in seemingly random suicide bombings, much less any after-the-fact gringo investigations?” Schwarz asked.

“Dunno.” Lyons looked to Blancanales. “Let’s ask him.”

“Good idea.” Blancanales smiled. “Give me the keys. Finish your coffee. I’ll be back in about an hour.”

Lyons tossed him the keys. “Where you going?”

“Shopping.”

* * *

URIBE SAT IN the cellar in his underwear, handcuffed to a pipe. Despite the massive blunt trauma on his arms and legs, his wrists were bruised and abraded from trying to pull the pipe free of the wall. Neither the cast-iron drainpipe nor Uribe was going anywhere. Uribe was built like a middleweight who had given up boxing and taken up hot-dog eating competitions. His shoulders, chest and arms were still muscled but he had a gut that looked as though he’d swallowed one of his bowling balls, and he was bowlegged. Religious tattoos that the Catholic church would frown upon intertwined with Juárez cartel symbols that crawled down his arms, chest and stomach. He had a face like an Aztec statue with a crew cut.

Lyons sat in a chair opposite, giving him the hard stare over a folding card table. To Uribe’s credit he hadn’t started blubbering and spilling.

Blancanales came down the steep steps with a duffel bag over his shoulder, followed by Schwarz. Able Team was fairly sure Uribe had not gotten any kind of look at Blancanales. Uribe proved it by looking Blancanales up and down and spitting on him. “¡Raza traidor!”

“Race traitor?” Blancanales smiled without an ounce of warmth. He was the lord of role camouflage and he affected a perfect Mexico City accent with both his Spanish and his English as a second language. “I am venganza de la raza, Bowler. I am the vengeance of our race, and for what you have perpetrated against La Raza?” Blancanales reached into his bag and set a bowling pin on the table. “You attacked these gringos. They learned who you are, BolaBolo. They have delivered you unto me.”

Uribe blinked.

“You are going to pay.” Blancanales set a large tube of personal lubricant next to the bowling pin.

Uribe paled with shock. “No...”

Blancanales reached into his duffel and pulled out a vintage leather bowling bag. He unzipped it to reveal a scratched and ancient eleven-pound bowling ball. Blancanales nodded at Schwarz. “Set up the camera. This goes out live.”

Uribe went white.

Blancanales lifted his chin at Lyons. “Take off his chonies.”

Uribe threw up the churro and pineapple Fanta he had been given. He screamed and gagged at the same time. “No! No! No!”

Lyons ripped off Uribe’s tighty-whiteys with a yank. Schwarz set up a small video camera on a desktop tripod as Blancanales squeezed clear lubricant over the top of the bowling pin like he was topping an ice cream sundae. “Turn him over. Head down, ass up.”

Uribe screamed and kicked. Lyons effortlessly grabbed his ankles and brutally spun him facedown. The killer keened like a rabbit being killed as the Able Team leader kicked him into position. Schwarz scoffed as Uribe was kneeled up into a scary uncle. “Someone’s been in lock-up before.”

“No!” Uribe moaned. “Anything!”

“Any what?” Lyons snarled. “Name anything you can do for me except bleed out from internal injuries!”

“Anything!” Uribe shrieked. “I’ll tell you anything!”

Blancanales stared down at Uribe, as cold as a medieval executioner. “This man is mine.”

The Bowler threw up again. His voice cracked into a ragged soprano range as he shrieked at Lyons. “Anything!”

Lyons kept his face neutral. Playing the “good cop” was an extremely rare experience and he intended to enjoy it. “Why?”

Uribe shuddered. “Why what?”

“Why are you here?”

The whites of Uribe’s eyes were like a deer’s in the headlights. “You brought me!”

“Why did I bring you here! Why am I talking to you! Talk to me or Señor Venganza has his way!”

“I’m just a sicario!”

Sicario was the Latin-American term for cartel muscle and killer. The term was as ancient as the Bible. “You’re a torturer, a disappearer and a learner of secrets.”

“We were paid! Anyone who came asking! About the bombers! To take them! Find out who they were. Who they worked for. Then make them disappear!”

“Who paid you?” Lyons demanded.

“I don’t know. The orders came from the top.”

Lyons believed him. “New Juárez Cartel?”

“Yes!”

“Who gives you orders?”

Uribe shuddered in shame. “El Guillotino.”

“Bowling Ball and the Guillotine...” Schwarz muttered. “Love these Juárez guys.” He picked up the bowling ball. “Give him the ten pin, flip him, spread him and let’s see if I can pick up the split.”

“No!”

Lyons stared implacably at the cowering, naked killer. “What’s El Guillotino’s name?”

“Eladio Manzo!”

“Tell me about the bombers.”

“The bombers!” Uribe wept in fear and confusion. “Fanáticos! Psychos!” The torturer started to rise. “Who knows—”

Lyons drew his Colt Python and cocked it. “Head down, ass up!”

Uribe whimpered and resumed the position.

“You’re saying the bombers weren’t working for the cartels?”

Uribe actually looked shocked.

Lyons considered the quivering waste of skin in front of him. He tended to believe him. Lyons had been on both ends of some very rough interrogations, but he was not a torturer. He suddenly dropped to his heels beside Uribe. BolaBolo shrieked like he no longer had a pair. Lyons deemed his subject ready. “You wanna live?”