Doom Prophecy

“Fairly young, too,” Schwarz added. “At least the past thirty-five years.”

“That means any conflict from Vietnam all the way through the first Gulf War,” Hawkins finally said. “Not counting soldiers who were forced to sit by and watch ethnic cleansing in places like Mogadishu or Bosnia.”

Brognola kept scribbling down notes as his two action teams threw out suggestions. While the Stony Man cybernetics team was among the best technical minds in the world, the eight commandos in front of him were far more than just mere gunmen. They were eight of the sharpest minds in the U.S.’s counterterrorism community, each of them having investigative and intelligence experience around the world. When they set their brilliant minds to work on the same project, there were few problems that they couldn’t solve.

“It might not be thinned down much,” Brognola said. “But you guys have given me a head start. I’ll run these ideas past Bear and the crew.”

“Chances are they’ve already picked up on Ka55andra’s symbolism,” Schwarz noted.

Brognola glanced over to the Able Team electronics genius. “And I suppose they’d know the Iliad.”

Schwarz shook his head. “You didn’t study that in school?”

Brognola rolled his eyes. “I got a D in literature.”

Schwarz shrugged. “And Cassandra was featured in a couple of Shakespearian plays…”

“All right!” Brognola snapped. He looked at his teams, then chuckled. “I bullshitted my way through the exam on that.”

The Able Team and Phoenix Force commandos laughed as they got up from the War Room table, their files committed to memory.

Lyons tossed Brognola a short salute. “That’s why you sit here dealing with the bureaucrats and getting ulcers, while the rest of us engage in stress-relieving exercise.”

“Politician” Blancanales raised an eyebrow. “Stress relieving, Ironman?”

“Forget it, Pol,” Schwarz chided. “Ironman’s in a world all his own.”

“Must be one hell of a planet,” McCarter noted as he lead his Phoenix Force partners out of the War Room.

FIFTEEN HOURS LATER David McCarter watched out the window as the transport jet seemed to lazily amble into a landing. He was stiff from sitting so long on the transatlantic flight, but at least he’d managed to catch a catnap. He glanced over at Manning and Hawkins who were gathering their duffel bags and equipment cases together.

McCarter took a moment to check his Browning Hi-Power in its holster. He sighed as he looked at the plastic magazine poking out of its butt; however, it was a concession he’d agreed to make. The other members of Phoenix Force had decided to carry Glock 34 Tactical pistols, at least for now. They convinced McCarter that the new, long-slide version of the ubiquitous Glock handguns were reliable and accurate enough for their needs. They wanted to have McCarter share in the upgrade to a lightweight autopistol with a 17-round magazine.

The SAS veteran, however, would never give up his beloved Browning Hi-Power. The gun was nearly a part of him. So the other members of Phoenix Force had convinced him to try the next best thing. Stony Man’s master armorer, John “Cowboy” Kissinger, had taken a Browning Hi-Power and altered the magazine well to accept Glock magazines. The unit, like all of Kissinger’s creations, was extremely reliable. Also, the dust cover under the Browning’s long, sleek barrel had been modified—built up to accommodate a mounting rail for gun lights, exactly like the Glock 34s that the other members of the team were using. Minor changes, but the handle still felt the same and the gun was just as accurate. The addition of an Insight Technologies XM-6 tactical light and laser illuminator unit was something that McCarter wanted to add to an assault pistol anyway.

The Phoenix Force leader shrugged. He’d have to get used to the updates of his beloved old Browning. He still had the familiar feel and controls of the classic autoloader, but also benefitted from twenty-first-century handgun designs. In a business where “change or die” was a mandate, McCarter felt he could make a few compromises. Plus, having a reliable, 17-shot magazine for his handgun, as opposed to the old 13-round clips that had to be down by one to insure that they worked, was something that he could get used to.

The transport rolled to a halt on the tarmac and McCarter was the first one to the door, carrying his bags. The door slowly opened. Hydraulics released the airtight seal and he looked out along the airstrip, seeing the green-black strip of jungle just beyond the fence. The sun had just risen, but it was already getting hot. They stepped out of the air-conditioned cabin and onto the rollaway steps; he was struck by humid, muggy heat that clung to his skin.

“Best put on your hats, lads,” McCarter called back, adjusting his black, baseball-style cap. “It’s a scorcher!”

Though he’d felt hotter sun in the deserts of Oman, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the jungle humidity was stifling. He couldn’t sweat fast enough to cool down, as the air was already saturated with moisture. But it was nothing new for the Phoenix Force commander and he bounded down to the tarmac to greet Colonel Jeff Stewart, who rose from his military-style jeep.

“Get in the jeep,” Stewart said without ceremony. Not a large man, he was lean and wiry, with dark eyes and a long nose.

McCarter didn’t take the comment as rudeness or impatience. He scanned the tree line again, then glanced back at Manning. The Canadian’s sharp eyes naturally sought out places where a stealthy rifleman could hide. As Phoenix Force’s usual sniper, Manning could anticipate where the enemy would most feel comfortable setting up a lethal, long-distance shot.

Manning continued to keep watch as Hawkins grabbed the Canadian’s gear and threw it in the back of the jeep. Once they were loaded up, the barrel-chested sniper came down the steps and slipped into the vehicle. The driver floored it and pulled away as the transport plane crawled along the tarmac toward its hangar.

“We’ve got company,” the burly, soft-spoken Canadian said.

“The plane’s moving and so are we,” Stewart stated.

“It’s not enough,” Manning answered. “Incoming!”

The asphalt behind them erupted in a fountain of flame, dust and stone chunks. McCarter whipped around and saw the telltale crater of an RPG rocket, a cottony cloud trailed from the impact zone, stretching back four hundred yards to the tree line.

Manning and Hawkins opened their rifle cases as McCarter pulled his updated Browning.

“Everyone else has to deal with lost luggage when they fly internationally,” the Briton snarled as automatic rifle fire crackled from the perimeter. “We get shot at in the bloody airport!”

“They’re out of range for your pistol, David,” Hawkins called out. He shouldered his M-486 rifle. Converted by John “Cowboy” Kissinger to the new Special Forces standard caliber 6.8 mm SPC round, the bigger, heavier bullet made the short-barreled rifle a precision killing machine, even at six hundred yards. With the Aimpoint scope mounted on the rifle, the Southern-born Phoenix Force shooter could easily pepper a target with a salvo of lead.

Hawkins swung his M-486 toward one set of targets. Two men were busily reloading an RPG rocket. Hawkins was about to trigger the rifle when one of the grenadiers suddenly jerked at the same time a crack sounded near the Southerner’s shoulder. He turned to see Manning adjust his aim and tag the second RPG man with a single shot from his Heckler & Koch MSG-90.

“Three more, eleven o’clock,” Manning whispered to Hawkins. He gave the American a wink and swung to engage more targets with his marksman’s rifle.

Hawkins picked up on the targets that his Canadian partner pointed out to him and ripped into them with a trio of short bursts. The 6.8 mm round performed as it was designed to. At 450 yards, the rifle slugs smashed into the marauders and nailed their corpses to the ground. Meanwhile, Manning calmly picked off single shots.

McCarter watched the proceedings as he pulled his own M-486 out of its carrying case. He fed it a fresh magazine and realized that most of the marauders were still five hundred yards out, and still closing with the airfield. Sentries reacted to the newcomers, but even so, the combined rifle work of Manning and Hawkins took away targets as they appeared.

The Phoenix Force leader shouldered his weapon and spotted that another group had penetrated the perimeter at ninety degrees to the main force. He judged, with the aid of his scope, that they were about 350 yards away. They had cut through a gully that was overseen by two guard towers. A quick glance confirmed for McCarter that the guards in the towers were dead, sniped from the ditch before they’d had a chance to react.

“They’re a diversionary force,” McCarter called as he swept a line of long-range slugs across the new attackers. Since they were now only a little over three hundred yards from the jeep, they were well within range for their AK-47s. “T.J.!”

“I’m on you, boss,” Hawkins snapped back.

Manning turned and gave them cover fire. Between the efforts of the Phoenix Force trio, the squad of marauders trying to rush the airstrip was caught in a triple salvo of Stony Man lead. Enemy rifle fire skipped and skidded across the tarmac, the attackers aiming too low, their weapons falling short of the jeep, at least until one bullet ricocheted into the wheelbase of the vehicle. Tire blown out, the driver struggled to keep the 4X4 from lurching, but McCarter, Manning and Hawkins were hurled from their positions.

McCarter slid out of the shotgun seat, centrifugal force tossing him around like a doll. He hit the tarmac and rolled instinctively, feeling the breeze of the jeep’s fender barely miss the small of his back. If he hadn’t gotten out of the way, his vertebrae would have been crushed and he’d be left, paralyzed on the airfield. His M-486 clattered out of his reach, bouncing several yards away.

Even the sturdy Manning had trouble staying seated, but he’d managed to hold on to his rifle.

McCarter looked up, sore from his impact on the concrete. He watched the marauding gunmen grow closer, rifles chattering. He started for his M-4 when a bullet bounced off the tarmac and whizzed too close to his thigh.

The enemy was getting their range, and the Phoenix Force leader was caught, unarmed.

CARL LYONS FLASHED his federal badge as he entered the former offices of HedSpayce, Inc., but even as he walked in from the street, the sight of white outlines where San Francisco police officers had fallen tore at his soul like a vulture at carrion. He was no stranger to murder scenes, and by far, he’d seen enough murdered policemen in his days as a cop and as the leader of Able Team. Seeing the first murdered cop was too much for Lyons. To him, cop killers were among the lowest of scum.

Inside the large warehouse loft office, evidence technicians and photographers were hard at work. Lyons frowned.

The description of the criminals, from the surviving officer who first responded to the scene, were unusual. One was a giant of a man, with a shock of red hair. Another was the exact opposite, a four-foot-tall dwarf carrying an odd little silver bottle-like weapon that sliced through squad car doors as if they were tissue paper. The third was a tall, scrawny, snakelike man who moved with boneless grace and speed, dodging and weaving out of the path of oncoming bullets while he cut loose with a pair of handguns.

The Able Team leader was a workaholic, constantly studying rap sheets and files on known terrorists, mercenaries and criminals. In his line of work, he had to know his enemy. The trio’s descriptions nagged at Lyons’s memory as he squatted, sticking a pen through the casing of a long, narrow bullet.

“We’re trying to figure out what kind of ammunition that is, sir,” a technician wearing white, paper coveralls said. “Do you have any idea?”

“It’s 5.7 mm X 27 mm,” Lyons answered as he examined at the casing.

“We thought it might be some kind of rifle round. What kind of gun uses that?” the tech asked.

“It’s a new, proprietary round from Fabrique Nationale. The reason you guys never came across it is because it’s issued to police departments and special military units for the FN P-90 submachine gun and the Five-seveN pistol,” Lyons explained. He squinted at a pair of ring-shaped imperfections on the casing. He looked at the floor and saw several empty links.

“Do you know if there’s any gun that has belt links for the 5.7?” the technician asked.

“No production weapon that I know of,” Lyons answered. He looked at a metallic half ring on the floor. “May I?”

The tech handed Lyons a pair of latex rubber gloves and the ex-cop put them on. He picked up a belt link. “Too small to get any prints.”

Lyons nodded toward a fingerprint kit the evidence cop carried. He dusted the link, but it was clear of whorls and swirls. “The dwarf was said to have a belt-fed gun that cut through even police car doors.”

“Right. The 5.7…?”

“It’s armor-piercing. Designed to cut through body armor. A Crown Victoria wouldn’t stand a chance,” Lyons replied.

“Scary shit in the hands of a bad guy.”

“Looks like the dwarf was smart enough to wear gloves when he was preparing his ammunition,” Lyons muttered. He stood and looked at the crime scene. The floor was peppered with markers where empty cartridges ejected and littered the floor.

“You color coded the markers,” Lyons noted.

“Right. Yellow for those weird cases,” the tech began. “Red for the 9 mm ammo. Blue for the 12-gauge shells.”

Lyons looked at the floor. “Do you have an example of the 9 mm and 12-gauge?”

“Sure, but—”

“I’ll just make an imprint on a piece of paper,” Lyons answered.

The tech nodded and got a couple pieces of notepaper and a pencil.

While he ran the pencil across the bases of each cartridge through the paper, he thought about the crime scene.

This had a mixed feel to it. As an investigator, Lyons developed a sense of how a murder took place, just by standing at the scene. Even before the days of evidence markers, he could feel the vibes from a crime. Here, the vibes were mixed. This was at once an act of passionless slaughter and a thrill kill committed by madmen.

The dwarf stayed still. He could see the shape of his fallen brass, and he stood still, spraying the office with precision bursts. Like a turret. No chasing after victims. No exposing himself to more danger than he had to. The little guy was a pro, and he was at the center of things.

All his brass of the one with the 9 mm pistol was centered around a bloodless tape outline.

“Who was killed here?” Lyons asked.

“Amanda Cash, owner of the company. She was strangled and her neck was broken,” the technician said.

“Do you have a photograph?”

The tech handed over a copy. “We’re using digital cameras, and printing up with a mobile printer.”

“Good quality. Very useful,” Lyons said. He looked at the woman’s face. He remembered that this was Carmen Delahunt’s friend, and he shoved a pang of regret deep into the recesses of his subconscious and let his analytical mind take over. There, the regret for his friend’s loss could smolder, building into a flame to add to his fury over the loss of fellow officers. There, his mind could harden, and he’d be in the right frame of mind to handle this trio of mystery killers. He could hone that anger, that rage, into a razor-sharp precision edge with which he could rip through the murderers. His friends and superiors often described Lyons as a berserker, but that wasn’t the case. While his rampages could be legendary, his fury was controlled. He’d never take an innocent life, he’d never harm anyone on his side. He’d talk and grumble a good show, but when it came down to the line, the powder keg of retaliation burning down in the middle of his powerful frame was as focused as a laser, despite its destructive force.

Berserkers didn’t care who they hurt. Lyons took his rampage of revenge and laid every ounce of seething anger and hatred on top of the guilty. And he washed it away completely in his torrent of action. He never let it stick with him, and after every battle, he cleansed his mind. No lingering bitterness stayed, nothing to harden his mind and soul against the suffering of those he put his life on the line for. Everything gouted out of him like a stream of napalm, immolating his foes.

He looked at Cash’s face, keeping his conscious mind clear, analytical. She was racked with fear and sorrow. Her bulging eyes and furrowed brow showed that she watched most, if not all, of her friends, partners and co-workers slaughtered by the three-man wrecking crew. The freak who strangled her wanted her to watch, wanted her to feel that loss. It wasn’t enough for her to suffer only an instant with a 9 mm bullet in her head. It wasn’t enough to live through the agony of being strangled to death. Lyons knew that the killer wanted her to watch shock after horror after atrocity. The murderer probably fired over her shoulder and allowed her see where every one of his bullets stuck home.

It had to have been the thin man, the one who was like a snake. He may have looked scrawny, but it took a hundred pounds of force to shatter bone. To do that with one arm, it took strength that could only be surpassed by the giant, who waded into the cubicles after tossing a human being like a missile. But the snake, he was a constrictor. He loved the feel of a squirming victim against his chest. If he hadn’t been a killer for hire, he’d have become a serial killer.

That left the giant. The man-mountain had waded in, and that told Lyons two things. One, he trusted the dwarf’s aim. Two, he was like Lyons in that he preferred his violence at point-blank range. That was where their similarities ended, however. The mammoth who stampeded through the cubicle farm was a beast who unleashed a murderous rage upon unarmed, helpless victims. He reveled in being splattered with blood from contact-range shotgun blasts, and enjoyed the feel of bodies crushed in his massive fists.

Amanda Cash was just one of five victims who didn’t die of gunshot wounds, but as opposed to the pretty redhead, the others died swiftly. Smashed to pieces by being hurled through office equipment or having their necks broken by savage twists or brutal punches. The titanic killer was a professional, and thorough, shooting his victims in the head to make sure they were down, but there was a lethal fury at work in this killer, a desire to crush and pulp those smaller and weaker than he was.

Lyons got an imprint off the linking ring, and the 5.7 mm casing before he left. The papers would be faxed to Stony Man Farm in an effort to trace the ammunition lots that the murderers used. It would provide some kind of clue, but looking at the trio’s work, the Able Team leader had figured out the identities of the murderers.

Linn “Gremlin” Keller, a miniature master designer of weapons, embittered by shady business practices. He sold his skills as not only a gunsmith and arms supplier, but also as a killer.

David Lee Haggar was called The Mammoth when he was in the underground fight circuit. He reveled in killing with his hands, but also enjoyed the splash of gore present when a shotgun exploded in a victim’s face. After being wanted for several deaths in the ring, he decided to make his living as an assassin, hooking up with the tiny Keller, who designed weapons for the titan’s massive paws.

And the thin man was Jacob “The Snake” Cannon. Exbiker, meth dealer, with a rap sheet that pointed toward him being a serial rapist and an unashamed cop killer. The wild-card madman had to have hooked up with the other two, feeling a kinship with them.

Lyons had figured out who they were, but he didn’t know where they were or where they would strike next.

The only thing he knew for sure was that he was going to lead Able Team against them, and bring them down hard.

He owed the San Francisco Police Department, and Carmen Delahunt, that much.

CHAPTER THREE

Calvin James and Rafael Encizo stood on the prow of the small launch as it chugged through the junks moored in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. The sprawl of floating boats was as much a city as the landlocked skyscrapers and shantytowns that gleamed like a blaze of diamonds on the shore. James and Encizo had both ridden in the passenger seats of F-14 fighters, ferried from Langley airfield to Japan, where they met up with the Tokyo headquarters of the U.S. Homeland Security task force.

There, State Department, CIA and other agency personnel gathered under one roof to coordinate their overseas Southeast Asia efforts. While the “Axis of Evil” focus was on the Middle East, there were still threats from China, North Korea and the Asian heroin trade that kept the Pacific branch of Homeland Security busy on a daily basis. As well, in the Philippines and Indonesia, offshoots of Muslim extremist groups engaged in bombing and murder campaigns against the allies of the United States.

It was just more evidence that terrorism wasn’t simply a matter of a simple skin color or religious creed. Madness and carnage festered like a cancer in the hearts of enough people that there would always be a need for men like Phoenix Force, Able Team and their counterparts in thousands of law-enforcement agencies around the world. That gave James a small pause as they continued navigating the maze of anchored junks in the harbor. What started for the slim black man in a Navy recruitment center years ago as a chance to join the military to escape the thugs running rampant through the streets of Chicago, to get a medical degree and make something of himself, became a different kind of surgery. Instead of closing wounds, James found himself on a crusade, cutting away the tumorous infestations of violent, hate- and greed-driven murderers who unleashed their illness upon the world. Instead of healing the sick, James was engaging in preventative medicine, hunting killers and terrorists before they could slaughter or maim innocents.

However, the one weakness in the Stony Man crusade was that they had to know where the symptoms of terror and crime were evident. People had to suffer and die for the men of Phoenix Force to spring into action to protect further victims.

It was a form of triage, James thought, making sure his FN P-90 hung under his coat, out of view to prevent the harbor residents from panicking at the sight of men with guns. He didn’t like the fact that with that form of triage, he had to wait for people to be hurt, to die.

Every loss still hurt, but James was glad for that hurt. It meant he still cared. The day he stopped sympathizing with the victims of terrorism and crime was the day he knew his career was over. He knew deep down that it was a very real possibility, drummed into him by his deceased mentor and former commander, Yakov Katzenelenbogen. The reason Phoenix Force, and by extension their counterparts in Able Team, were so much better than any other special operations unit, was that they had been chosen because they believed in a cause. They had a passion to protect the innocent that drove them to fight impossible odds on a daily basis. Sure, they received government paychecks, but they were only employees in the sense that they were given the opportunity to engage in a crusade to protect America, and the whole world, from the barbarian hordes laying siege and preying off its suffering.

Now, the sky dark, stars rendered invisible by the fierce glow of Hong Kong’s city lights, James and Encizo were finishing their trek to hook up with a defector from AJAX who had approached the Homeland Security task force.

Her name was Terremota, an Argentinian woman who was known to be a demolitions expert. The nomme du guerre she worked under literally meant “Earthquake” in Spanish. Terremota promised to divulge the secrets of AJAX’s worldwide terror network, if only she could be granted asylum from her partner.

It had been a crash course, but James had learned about Wilson Sere. Sere was a self-proclaimed modern-day ninja, a master of disguise and deception, as well as of martial arts and modern weaponry. The record of kills attributed to him was impressive, and he was known to be responsible for the deaths of at least thirty American intelligence operatives and military personnel since the beginning of AJAX’s reign of terror. Terremota, herself, was no saint. Her bombs had wounded hundreds, and claimed over forty lives in concert with Sere.