Ramrod Intercept

“We’re here and the troops are tired of sitting around, cooped up on a sub, Chief, thumbs up the old sphincter. We’re gone. I’ll phone home as soon as we hit the beach.”

“Good luck, and godspeed,” Brognola muttered, but he was talking to dead air.

“Torpedo just went ashore,” Akira Tokaido announced, but no one in the Computer Room looked hardly relieved by that minuscule piece of good news.

Brognola watched the monitor as, one by one, the five white ghostly shapes of Phoenix Force left the hatch and started swimming for the bottom. A hundred yards, he thought, the length of a football field. It might as well be a hundred miles.

THE END OF THE LINE, of course, for each and every man or woman was death. The journey along the way shaped, forged and revealed a man’s character before the Grim One rolled the dice and the man crapped out, ticket yanked.

No problem, as long as a man was somewhat in control of the journey, and could die on his feet, in battle, with honor intact, he thought. Thomas Jackson Hawkins, as a warrior, never had a problem with the concept of his own death. He never dwelled, much less brooded, on the idea of a world without him tomorrow. He was in the business of death, after all, preferably dispensing it, but he knew someday, somewhere he would go down and not rise up. As a warrior, dying in combat was accepted going in, part of the high-stakes game of being a balls-to-the-wall commando. Combat to him was as natural as breathing.

The problem he had, as he breaststroked ahead, knife in hand, was being chomped in two by a creature three times his length and fifteen to twenty times his weight. Something as old as the earth itself, which knew no fear, and had no known enemies.

Something that had put the fear of God into him, and any human being, he imagined, who had ever laid eyes on it. It always galled him, he thought, when some skipper and National Geographic types hit the waters off Australia or South Africa, in search of man’s greatest fear, camera ready, Budweisers in hand. Spouting off—in nervous laughing voices from the safety of their deck—how white sharks were misunderstood, weren’t really the ferocious man-eaters the uneducated believed them to be. All of it just myth, you see, fabricated by folks with too much time and imagination on their hands. So, why, then, he wondered, did they always go down into the water in titanium-reinforced cages?

Call it twenty, twenty-five yards tops of visibility on the flanks, with James and Encizo beside him, Manning and McCarter on the far outsides, the big Canadian and the former SAS commando lagging a little behind, doing a slow circle to watch their rear.

Ten inches of steel against a submarine with teeth. Man alive, he thought, they had to be crazy.

It was a straight plunge of roughly thirty feet to the ocean’s bottom, the halo of yellow light from the minisub losing its glowing shield the more distance he put from the craft…and closer to shore. Could the monster home in on the hammering of his heart? Could it smell the undeniable and understandable fear, leaking out in great streams of sweat beneath his wet suit?

Don’t think about it. He knew he wasn’t alone.

Small comfort, to be damn sure.

The sandy bottom began to run off on a gradual downward slant, and he was thinking another fifty yards or so.

An eternity still.

He decided to look back, found McCarter falling behind, eyeing their rear through his mask, as if he sensed its presence.

And the massive shadow of the great beast appeared, materialized out of the darkness beyond the minisub. For some reason the monster was taking another look at the minisub, holding, some black demonic apparition, then slowly worked its massive body around the craft. Hawkins felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked at Encizo, the Cuban shaking his head, indicating with his knife they keep moving.

Not a problem. But why was McCarter trailing them? he wondered. What the hell was he doing?

A moment later Hawkins saw the ex-SAS commando fall back in, resume stroking with a renewed burst of energy.

IF THE MONSTER CAME for them, McCarter decided he would sacrifice himself if that meant the others could reach shore in one piece. He knew they wouldn’t allow that, not if they wanted to get up the next day and look themselves in the mirror. But if the creature started ripping him limb from limb, he could only hope primal fear and good sense would take hold of the others and send them shooting like human bullets for the beach.

It was a false hope they would leave him to die one of the most horrible deaths he could imagine, but the mission was more important than the life of any single man on the team.

Still the behemoth appeared more curious about the minisub, circling the craft, nudging it with its great torpedo head. He gave the blacksuit submariner a mental salute. The guy was staying put, lighting the way to shore.

Nothing but steel balls. There was never any doubt.

McCarter turned toward shore, figuring another thirty yards or so, arms sweeping, legs scissoring. The team had pulled ahead, with James and Hawkins looking back, peering at him, aware, most likely, of what he was thinking if it went to hell. A few more strokes and McCarter was in line, but craned his head around every few yards. It wasn’t much longer and he felt his knees scrape bottom, his head poking out of the surface. Twenty yards and they surfaced to a man. As luck would have it, they caught a decent wave, and began stroking now like Olympic swimmers as they rode it into shore.

Rebreathers were out and tanks were stripped off. The heavy breathing of Phoenix Force slashed the calm quiet of the beach as flippers were removed and they made solid land.

McCarter gave the smooth glass surface out to sea a search. No giant fin knifing out of the water, just a soft glow of light beneath the surface where the minisub was parked. He checked the troops, and his chuckle carried a heavy note of grim relief. “Anybody have to change his shorts first?”

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

BROGNOLA COULD BREATHE again, but it would take a few minutes, he knew, before the trembling left his hands. McCarter was on the satlink. “All present and accounted for. We’re changed, locked and loaded. Titan on the way back to the mother ship.”

“Grimaldi will be wheels up in two minutes, David,” Price said. “We’ll monitor your march and alert you to any locals or army units on the prowl.”

“Well, in that case, we’d better shake and bake. A tenklick hike will be cutting it close to sunrise.”

“Understood,” Price said.

“Shouldn’t be a problem moving double-time. I can still smell the adrenaline after our close encounter with Jaws. We’ll be in touch. Out.”

Brognola lifted the stogie in a shaky hand. “Air drops. For a while, at least, only air insertions. That, folks, was way too close for this old guy’s heart.”

They were smiling, nodding, but their relief, Brognola knew, sweet as it was, would prove short-lived.

The worst was yet to come. Getting in might have proved the easy task.

Century City, California

“YOU BOYS AREN’T really telling us much more than we already know.”

Lyons was laying the evil eye on Grogan and Caldwell as Blancanales punched in the access code that lifted the door to the underground parking garage.

The van was rolling, going down into the subterranean labyrinth where the office of DYSAT was housed in Century City. Schwarz was monitoring the police bands with his scanner, had informed Lyons units were already on the scene of the carnage back in the alley. No firm ID on suspects. No description of their vehicle.

The way Lyons figured it, from there on it was time to crank up the heat, put some serious fire to the tails of the so-called board of directors. Grogan had put in the call to the boss. The man in question, James Lake, ex-colonel in the Air Force air commandos, was hunkered in his office, calling the shots.

Literally.

“What more do you need to know?” Caldwell sputtered. “We accessed the classified files, it was something of a fluke, an accident. We found out they’re using a cutout in Thailand to ship the merchandise from there to Port Sudan. The microchips are prototypes, samples.”

“And this Benny Goodman…”

“Godwin,” Grogan corrected.

“Whatever. This clown somehow lifted the samples and is sitting on them at his girlfriend’s place in Malibu.”

“Along with the information we downloaded about the operation,” Caldwell added.

“What’s our next move, Carl?” Blancanales asked.

“Find a space in DYSAT’s turf and park it. Me and you are going to have a little chat with the board of directors.”

“How come the sound of that puts me a little on edge?” Blancanales said.

“Because these assholes are traitors. Because I can’t stand traitors. From now on, we do it our way, and if the President squawks he squawks. Hey, what’s the problem anyway? These guys tried to draw first blood. We have ‘official’ status as special agents of the Justice Department. I can walk up to the guy’s office now and start slapping the crap out of him, if I want, threaten him with about twenty-five to life and back it up.”

Lyons watched through the windshield as Blancanales motored deeper into the garage, found DYSAT painted on a stretch of concrete, slid into a space that was isolated from other vehicles.

“You’re going to need my magnetic swipe card to get through the door,” Grogan said.

“Where is it?”

“In my wallet.”

Lyons was his usual gentle self, clawing a talon into Grogan’s shoulder, shoving him around and bending him over a little to yank the wallet out of his back pants pocket. He found the card, slipped it in the pocket of his windbreaker, dumped the wallet in the guy’s lap.

“Then what?”

“Well, you have to go up the steps to the lobby. You can’t take the elevator from down here.”

“Meaning a rent-a-cop encounter.”

Grogan grunted. “He’ll want to see your ID.”

“No problem.”

“He’ll call up to Lake.”

“Again no sweat.”

Lyons reached into the weapons bin and handed an Ingram MAC-10 to Blancanales. “Gadgets, you’re on baby-sitting detail. If we get a bunch of attitude from these clowns when we go up, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Meaning it’s hit the fan,” Schwarz said, sporting a grim smile.

“Let’s rock, Pol.”

CHAPTER FIVE

James Lake knew the end of DYSAT would come, had to, in fact, and from the very beginning when he’d helped conceive it, put the pieces together and get it launched as part of the Pentagon’s Special Access Programs. It was designed to go down in flames on purpose, make certain an avalanche of badges and subpoenas came crashing down on DYSAT, all the sound and fury of the Justice Department, trumpeting out the intimidation, offering guys immunity in the Witness Protection Program and the like. But also in mind from the start would be the final conflagration, stoked and brewed to critical mass, while he skipped out the door, all the way to the bank.

The genius of it all was it had been worked out by his own cunning and the toil of spilled blood on his hand.

Everything in life ended. Everyone died. Survival was not necessarily for the fittest.

Survival was simply survival. They said that after the big one dropped, only the cockroach would inherit the earth. Mindful of that disgraceful tidbit, just how special could man be?

Not very, he thought.

If there was no hope for humankind, there was also no redemption, and certainly no salvation. Armageddon was inevitable; it just needed a decent shove in the right direction to ignite the fuse.

He sat in his large, deep-cushioned swivel chair, scanning the massive office suite, an amused smile tugging at his mouth. Beyond his teakwood desk, the size of three grand pianos, Grandahl and Preuter were busy on their secured cellulars, trying like hell but failing to dial up their hitters. He wanted to believe no news was good news, but the whole deal was unraveling fast. He could feel it, a noose dangling over his head, ready to drop and put the squeeze on.

It was time to clean up the garbage and bail.

Yes, he had wanted this whole venture to fail from the start. Failure, he once heard said, was often the measure of a man’s success, but he never bought into that loser’s philosophy. Granted, he had failed in three marriages, with seven children he never saw spread all over the country, but what could he say? Women were women, and a man needed far more in life than the comfort and stability of some suburban purgatory.

A man needed conquest, honor and respect. It was either the bliss of heaven or the agony of hell; nothing in between was acceptable. And, no mistake, never again would he fail at anything. DYSAT was his baby, and if he had given it life, he could most certainly take it away. He had always believed the real power in the world came from the left hand of darkness anyway, the true father of light. Even the devil, he believed, had real feelings and needs. It was simply a question of having those wishes honored by the legions of faithful subjects. Meaning they had to be prepared to not only sacrifice their lives for him, but also sell him their very souls.

Still, he often thought life would have been much simpler, easier if he had been, say, a biker. Riding in the wind. A big middle finger jammed in the eye of society at large. Wheeling and dealing guns and dope… Well, he could at least claim he was something of an arms dealer, an outlaw, to be sure.

And outlaws only had to care about and look out for number one, which was why his stint as an Air Force air commando had been brief to the point of ridiculous. Search-and-rescue missions didn’t mean much more than a gob of flying phlegm when a man didn’t care if human beings lived or died. On then to a number of years working as a special black operative, guarding classified Air Force installations where they were building the future of super high-tech. Grooming contacts and, of course, quietly removing any thorns in his side on his climb to the top.

Well, Jim Lake had finally arrived. His big deal was on the table, in the wings, ready to fly. The college kids had been nothing more than pawns, mere toilet paper, he thought. Bring them on board, unleash a few secrets, here and there, fat salaries so they could indulge their every whim and petty earthly desire. He always knew a couple of them would have cracked under the strain of uncovering knowledge of high-tech espionage, state-of-the-art goodies being delivered to so-called enemies of the United States. Truth was, he had counted on them to go running, pants wet, to the Feds. By the time the real law figured it out, he would be long gone, a whopping numbered account overseas, engineering grand schemes to bring on some doomsday from a remote tropical paradise. It would be a sort of in-their-face gesture, proving to every American man, woman and child, from the hallowed classified halls of the Pentagon all the way to Silicon Valley, that Jim Lake was just a little smarter, tougher and, yes, better looking than they were.

That Jim Lake wasn’t only his own man, but a god among mere mortals to be worshiped.

He was scanning the bank of security cameras hung from the ceiling over his desk when he spotted the two men in the lobby. The bigger one was haggling with the security guard, flashing a wallet packet, looking as if he were poised to fly over the desk and start slapping the man. A Fed, on the muscle, only if that guy was a Fed he was Gandhi.

“Gentlemen, I believe we’re about to have company.”

“I don’t like the looks of those two,” Grandahl said, craning his neck some to stare up at the camera bank. He was fingering his goatee, running a nervous hand over his shiny dome. “I can’t raise Morton or Roswell. We should have heard from them by now. We know the Justice Department was set to bag—”

Lake sounded a long deep chuckle, a hollow knell that seemed to swell up the suite with the sound. “Relax. We’ll deal with them. It’s time we wrapped this up anyway. We have one more pigeon out there on the run to take care of. We have a backup security force in town, which you just put out the call to, on standby.” He leaned up, smoothed out the arms of his silk jacket, punched a button on his phone. “Giddell, I’ve got company on the way. They look rather unpleasant.”

“Yes, sir, I saw them, too.”

“Stand by but make yourself available next door. There’s going to be some noise, then we’re bailing.”

“Understood, sir.”

Lake wheeled back a few inches, reached under his desk and slid the Uzi submachine gun from out of its special mounting. He checked the load, cocked the bolt, then took a peek at the Beretta 92-F in shoulder rigging. If it wasn’t enough, there was an arms cache in a hidden wall panel, twelve paces to his right.

“When we’re finished here,” Lake told his hitters, “we go pay this little snip Godwin a visit. I’m hearing he got his filthy paws on the Ramrod Intercept microchips and data manual. Without those, gentlemen, my deal may fall through. If I can’t retrieve them, our whole timetable will be altered.”

“Meaning?” Grandahl asked.

“Meaning we’ll have to go the lab in Idaho and pick up another batch. I had planned to do that anyway. One last shipment has already been arranged through a CMF.”

“A classified military flight,” Grandahl said, nodding. “Sweet.”

“Standard procedure. Look alive, they just hit the elevator.”

Of course, he took the obligatory alerting phone call from the security guard.

“They had badges, Mr. Lake, looked official, meaning they looked real enough to me. Special Agents from the Justice Department, they’re telling me. Carl Lemmon and Rosario Bocales. I—”

“Not a problem, there was nothing you could do. I’ll handle it. Thank you.”

Jim Lake leaned back and sounded off another death knell chuckle. Life, he thought, was just about to get real interesting.

And what was real gain, true triumph on the way to glory without risk?

WHEN LYONS AND BLANCANALES stepped off the elevator to the DYSAT floor, they found yet more cameras monitoring their every step.

Lyons led the march toward the mammoth teak doors with the gold-plated Jim Lake, President hung as large as a Vegas neon sign. He could feel Pol’s nerves mounting as they closed on the doors, the mirrored walls reflecting their grim looks, the cameras catching them on the roll. Lyons felt his own personal time bomb ticking away in his gut.

It was time to start spreading the misery around, kick a few of the top dogs in the teeth.

“How come I feel like raising a middle finger salute to one of those?” Lyons growled.

“How do you want to play this?”

“Straight and to the point. Just follow my lead.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

They reached the DYSAT gates to the inner sanctum. Lyons was about to bang on the door when a chuckle that sounded as if it came from the bowels of hell filtered out the small intercom beside the doors.

“It’s open, ‘Agents’ Lemmon and Bocales. Please, enter. Please, fear not.”

Lyons considered going through the door with his Colt Python out so they could get quickly beyond any friendly preamble. He opted to leave the big piece where it was for the moment, until he got a firm read on what was what. He led Blancanales through the door and found himself moving into a sprawling suite fit for a king. Big leather couches. Wet bar, giant-screen TV. Two inches of white carpet, wall to wall. Long black marble conference table. Soft white light fell from the ceiling, framing a handsome face he recognized from the Farm’s intel pac on Jim Lake. As he moved deeper into the suite, he was somewhat curious why a former Air Force colonel would wear his jet-black hair down to his shoulders, like some wanna-be hippie or biker. Go figure how the mind of a traitor, or an insane demon worked, he thought.

He took a measure of the two other men standing off to the side of the desk. One was a Van Gogh–type gunslinger, goatee, but no hair on his head, the face gaunt and weathered, the eyes sunken black pieces of coal. The other guy was a buzz-cut issue like the men he’d gunned down in the alley. The eyes of both men warned Lyons they had itchy trigger fingers.

Lyons took up turf in front of the desk, hauled out his Justice credentials. And Lake gave him that deep chuckle, in his face.

“Please, don’t insult me.”

“How’s that?” Lyons growled.

“Okay, we’ll play it your way for the moment. What can I do for you, Agent Lemmon and Agent Bocales?”

JIM LAKE KNEW a bulldog when he saw one. In fact, wildmen were the only kind he wanted to hire on as security. Guys, yes, who could go through a door loud or quiet, in search of blood and wearing somebody’s guts for a necklace, either way they charged in. No fear, just do it. To even consider losing made a man a loser before the proverbial feces even hit the fan.

The one called Lemmon wasn’t the kind to tap dance or dream of losing. “Here it is, Colonel,” the big guy said, with a contemptuous note dropped on “Colonel.” “Three of your buzz-cut Dirty Harrys were eighty-sixed. They tend to want to shoot people on sight to make their day. They tend to seem to not care if they’re civilian or like us, with the Justice Department, which already dumps you in a world of feces. This is what we know, and this is what we’re going to do. We know you’re running a scam to unload high-tech weapons and technology overseas somewhere. We know you were using your executives and think tankers to draw out the wolves, my guess is so they could be scapegoats when you left Dodge. You’ve gone for broke, and you lost. Now we have two of your employees who want to turn songbird under our care and protection.”

Lake knew what had to be done. He steepled his fingers, rubbed his eyes and blew out a long breath.

“What? Am I boring you assholes?”

“Uh, Agent Lemmon, let me speak frankly, so we can get past all this macho posturing and palavering.”

LYONS SENSED the whole mood change around him. It was as if a dark veil had dropped over Mr. Chuckles, some rage clamped down on before then, churning over now, building heat, the pot of his black soul simmering. Van Gogh and Buzz-cut Issue had to have been clued in to the sudden shift in Lake’s demeanor, and Lyons read the squaring of the shoulders for what it meant.

It was set to blow, loud and hot. It was going to get messy, and the mere fact Lake was prepared to go for it told Lyons the guy had backup somewhere, ready to bolt town to pick up the pace on whatever his dark agenda.

“Well, Agent Lemmon, I guess there’s not much left to say, except I can’t recall the last time I saw a G-man walking around in rubber-soled combat boots. I didn’t know government issues, the official kind, trooped around with compact submachine guns in special swivel rigging beneath oversize windbreakers. To answer your suspicions, yes, I have a deal, a major deal in the works that could change the entire destiny of the world. Yes, my employees were nothing more than human chess pieces to be moved around at my wish, to take the fall, as you put it, while I fly off into the sunset. You know what my problem is—”

“I’m not your shrink, Colonel. I didn’t come here to listen to how you were an abused child and all you need is a little love.”

The big chuckle again. “My problem is I don’t like wrinkles in my plans, large or small. My problem is, when I don’t get my way or what I want, I become extremely agitated.”

And Lyons was already searching out some immediate cover, aware he and Pol were caught in the coming cross fire. It was something in Lake’s look and voice, a new darkness sinking to still lower depths, that warned Lyons to make a scramble to save his skin.

The Able Team leader was in the air, flying over a couch as the Uzi appeared, like some sorcerer’s trick, in Lake’s hands.

CHAPTER SIX

The Uzi subgun was out and flaming 9 mm parabellum rounds before either Blancanales or Lyons could free his own hardware. Lake beat them to the punch. Instead of standing his ground in some grandstand suicide play, pulling iron and blasting back at the face of death where he stood his ground, he opted to take a running dive over the conference table. The sprint and flight stole him a few precious moments. Only pistols were barking now, chiming in the deafening symphony of weapons fire, hot lead scorching the air, seeking out his scalp like angry hornets.