Unified Action

“Why don’t we take a taxi?” Schwarz offered.

“We don’t have any cash and I didn’t think to rob those clowns from the airport,” Lyons replied.

“We barter?”

“What? Not weapons?” Lyons demanded.

“Why not? You said it yourself—we either do what we have to do to save the American or we go home now. We’ve been put in an imperfect situation. We can either keep a moral high ground or, you know, actually succeed at the goddamn mission.”

“We got a cell phone,” Blancanales leaned forward and pointed out. “I can use that and the lead officer’s pistol to get us a ride, I think. If you want, I can use my pocket knife to juke the fire pin so that it looks all right but will snap when fired.”

“I doubt they’ll even look as long as there are bullets in the clip,” Schwarz argued. “If you want we could just toss the recoil spring altogether. No harm no foul…sort of.” He grinned through his mustache.

Lyons nodded once. “Let’s do it.”

Within half a block of deciding to act, Blancanales had expertly sabotaged the 9 mm pistol. When they found a driver in a battered silver Kia Sophia taxi three minutes later, Blancanales was forced to add the keys to the jeep into the mix but Able Team had secured a driver.

They quickly pulled down a narrow dirt lane overhung with laundry and the curious eyes of the slum’s inhabitants. Using their own lightweight jackets as makeshift covers for their longer weapons, Able Team left the government jeep behind and piled into the cramped confines of the taxi.

The driver was in his sixties, scar-faced, with arthritis-gnarled hands and flawless British-accented English. The man watched his passengers with a wary eye but quickly navigated the car away from the scene.

Within seconds Able Team was driving into the heart of an urban firestorm of riots and military police units.

Kyrgyzstan

ABOVE THE CENTRAL ASIAN HILLS clouds began to form, casting dark shadows on the already dark terrain. On the ridgeline above the narrow mountain road Phoenix Force lay in wait, five ambush predators waiting for their quarry.

Weapon muzzles tracked the approach as gleaming headlights appeared on the twisting road. The engines snarled as the vehicle operators ground the gears up the steep grade.

Watching through his night-vision goggles, McCarter felt a professional satisfaction as he surveyed his ambush site. It was a perfect amalgamation of satellite imagery and tactical experience. It was a lethal kill box.

The operation was designed to neutralize an informational node terrorist cell propagating chaos and unrest in underdeveloped and weak countries. The traveling team were graduates of al Qaeda training camps in the former Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The command-and-control instructors educated local radicals in logistics, administration, financing and target selection, ruthlessly turning clumsy, disorganized gangs of killers into streamlined, corporate models of murderous efficiency.

Phoenix Force was about to execute their own lessons in murderous efficiency.

“Wait for my call,” McCarter said smoothly. “On my call, strike our predetermined targets.”

“Copy,” Hawkins answered.

“Copy,” Encizo acknowledged.

“Copy,” James echoed.

“Copy,” Manning finished.

Below the ex–SAS commando the terrorist convoy ground past. He watched the scout vehicles crawl past his position, close enough now to see the glow of the occupants’ cigarettes. Fifty yards down the line, the last truck brought up the rear. The convoy commander had allowed the rough terrain to cause his drivers to bunch up too closely together.

It was a fundamental mistake McCarter intended to exploit.

Slowly, McCarter lifted the butt of his AKS and nestled it into his shoulder. His trigger hand found the curve of his 30-round magazine and his finger lay on the smooth metal curve of the M 203’s trigger as his free hand grasped the grenade launcher by its grooved tube.

To either side of him he could feel the men of his unit tensed and poised for his command, ready to unleash a heavy curtain of hellfire on the terrorists below him. He moved his boot slightly and dislodged a stone.

The pebble slid free of the initial lip of the ledge and slid downhill, dislodging a miniature avalanche of gravel that petered out halfway down the incline grade. McCarter let the pent-up air in his lungs escape in a slow hiss as he squeezed his trigger.

The recoil of the shot rocked his carbine back into his shoulder as the round discharged with its signature bloop sound. As the first-strike signal, McCarter had reserved the right to call his target on site instead of taking an assigned target as they’d discussed in their mission workup.

Due to the heavy firepower potential of the 20 mm antiaircraft gun in the last truck, he made the decision to put his first HEDP into it. With surprise, aggression of action, command of terrain and superior training Phoenix Force held the upper hand in the conventional military ambush. If there was any possible game changer then it was the heavy weapon serving as the convoy tail gun.

His round arched into the night, its velocity low enough that he could just trace the arc of its movement as it sailed out across the length of a soccer field toward the truck.

In the next instant there was a flash of light, followed by the thump of the HE round going off. Then men started screaming as fire rolled up in a brilliant orange ball toward the sky and the battle began.

Keyed to the actions of their team leader, both Calvin James and Rafael Encizo reacted instantly, triggering their RPG-7s within breaths of each other. The twin warheads streaked out from the overhang in flashes of ignition fire on traverses almost 180 degrees apart. Encizo fired his round toward the hood and cab of the rear truck already struck by McCarter’s 40 mm round, while James angled his into the undercarriage of the lead pickup.

The RPG rounds struck the convoy almost simultaneously. The rockets hammered home with ruthless force. James’s round was an inch low and struck the hard gravel road exactly between the front and rear driver’s-side tires. The round detonated, spreading a lethal umbrella of shrapnel and flame that first shredded then ignited the vehicle’s fuel tank.

The secondary explosion was massive, picking up the light sports utility vehicle and its armed tribesmen and flipping them upside down in a bonfire of orange flame and roiling black smoke. Bodies spun like pinwheels as limbs were ripped free and thrown next to scorched torsos.

Encizo’s round cut across the distance at a sharp angle with a screaming, swooshing sound as distinct as any human voice. The rocket skipped off the angled hood of the old Soviet-era truck and skimmed into the windshield. Flames shot out the truck cab through windows in all four directions.

The expanding concussion wave of the exploding RPG warhead ripped back through the dash and hammered into the truck’s massive engine block, igniting the vehicle’s fluids.

With two well-placed applications of ballistic high explosives, Phoenix Force had effectively pinned the convoy in place on the narrow mountain road. The remaining terrorist troops were left with nowhere to run, no where to escape, and the surrounding terrain made a counterattack virtually impossible.

Manning opened up with his RPK, the weapon hammering out a long burst of 7.62 mm ComBloc rounds that he stitched down the exposed side of the trapped vehicles from one burning truck to the next. His rounds perforated the thin metal of the light-skinned trucks, hammering out divots and burrowing into scrambling, screaming, frantic flesh. His burst broke bones, opened wounds and split skulls as the hapless terrorists twisted and danced under the withering fire.

On the opposite end of the spectrum Hawkins turned his sniper optics on, the nighttime target range as brilliantly lit as a summer day in his home state of Texas. He fired, rode the recoil, adjusted his aim and fired again with an industrial efficiency so smooth it was almost appalling.

First he killed the drivers, then he allowed himself the luxury of picking out a diversity of targets, even killing a struggling terrorist for no other reason than to spare the burning man an agonizing death. Once he saw a terrified and panicked gray-bearded elder desperately attempting to work the buttons on his sat phone. Hawkins used the 4-power magnification of his PSO-1 telescopic sight to put a single 7.62 mm round from his Dragunov SVD through the man’s thick, low forehead.

Blood rushed like a river from a cracked dam as the man crumpled and fell away, his satellite phone dropping to the ground from lifeless fingers.

“On ropes!” McCarter shouted.

Both Encizo and James fired their second volley and Phoenix Force prepared to launch its final assault on the convoy.

CHAPTER FIVE

Dominican Republic

The cabdriver was skilled and as interested in avoiding trouble as Able Team. He circumnavigated the trouble spots and police checkpoints throughout the city until he was able to drop them off within blocks of their objective.

Moving quickly down narrow alleys and across vacant lots, Lyons led the team by as surreptitious a route as possible under the circumstances. The U.S. government safehouse was a single-bedroom walkup in an older building set above a fruit warehouse.

The locals watched them with open curiosity, and Lyons noticed the prolific presence of machetes immediately.

“Blending in is going to be a problem,” Schwarz noted, voice dry.

“You think?” Blancanales replied, equally sarcastic.

“Could be one of the problems our missing agent had,” Lyons pointed out.

“Only in the tourist-heavy areas would he have been able to blend in,” Schwarz agreed. “Screw it, we ain’t gonna be invisible so we might as well get inside and gear up.”

“True,” Lyons said. “I was tired of all this sneaking around anyway.”

Blancanales rolled his eyes in humor as the team crossed the busy street and approached the outside staircase leading to the safehouse.

Lyons’s apprehension grew as he moved closer to the building. If elements within the Dominican government were responsible for the agent’s disappearance, then they would have the resources to keep the location under surveillance.

Seeming to read his mind as they crossed the cracked sidewalk, Blancanales spoke up. “According to the Farm, this place isn’t believed to be compromised.”

“Virginia is a long way from here,” Lyons replied evenly, his eyes searching the rooftops.

From a few blocks over there was a sudden burst of weapons fire, and in response the crowd loitering on the street grew animated.

“Fuck it,” Schwarz said. “A police patrol could come by at any minute. We need to get out of sight for a while.”

“Let’s go.” Lyons turned his head and spit. “Just to be safe, Pol,” he said, “why don’t you hang at the bottom of the stair while we check the place out—watch our six, see if anything shakes loose.”

“You got it, amigo,” Blancanales said.

The former Green Beret peeled off from his friends and wandered down toward the end of a foul-smelling alley toward where an ancient Chevy flatbed delivery truck was parked next to a row of overflowing garbage cans.

Lyons walked forward. The staircase was an ancient, weathered structure obviously decades old. It ran up a story then doubled back under a covered flight of steps, where it ended at an awning-overhung porch. The door set there was dark. From inside the alley the sounds of the street, of automobiles, conversations and blaring radios was muted and sounded farther away by some trick of acoustics.

Lyons moved up the staircase slowly, making little noise. Taking his lead, Schwarz followed his example. Below them Blancanales glanced up, established their position, then scanned the area for signs of trouble.

At the door Lyons paused and looked down. He frowned at what he saw and ran a finger over the door latch, noting the scratches obvious on the faceplate. His proximity sense clanged like a submarine klaxon.

He turned his head on a neck as muscled as a professional boxer’s and put one big, thick finger to his lips in warning. Schwarz nodded once, hand poised on the railing. With his other he alerted Blancanales that something was amiss.

Carl Lyons reached out slowly and pushed against the unlatched door. It swung open to reveal a short, dark entranceway. The light of the setting Caribbean sun pushed a cluster of shadows backward. From farther within the apartment the Able Team operatives heard the slight sound of movement. Lyons closed his right hand into a massive rock-hard fist and stepped softly forward.

Schwarz slid slowly forward behind Lyons, turning sideways into a loose karate stance. Moving quietly, the two men penetrated the apartment safehouse. Schwarz saw a modestly furnished but modern space. It boasted a flat-screen television on a far wall next to a window, curtains drawn, which faced the street outside. The TV was the center piece of a loose half circle of furniture including a couch and chairs next to a pedestrian dining set.

Beyond that space was a small kitchen, and running past the open service areas of the apartment was a hallway, leading, presumably to bedrooms and living spaces in the rear of the government residence.

Just behind a closed door down the hallway the sounds of movement were clearly audible now. Schwarz pulled his face into a frowning mask. Common sense suggested that if the intruder was Dominican police or intelligence, the perpetrator would not have inserted without backup.

Having discovered no one serving overwatch either outside the building or inside, all indications pointed toward some other unknown and likely criminal actor. Which raised a lot more questions than it answered, both Lyons and Schwarz realized. They also realized common sense dictated that their unseen adversaries would be equipped with firearms.

Walking heel-toe and rolling their weight forward to avoid making any noise, the two men tested the floor-boards for telltale squeaks before each step. From behind the closed door all movement suddenly ceased. Instantly the hyperprimed commandos froze, ears straining to catch any sound.

The figure came through the doorway like a hurricane touching shore. The door flew open, triggering immediate action from Lyons and Schwarz. Schwarz twisted and dived, rolling over one shoulder and out of the hall. He came to his feet like an acrobat and reached for one of the wooden dining-room chairs standing near at hand.

Reacting without thinking, Carl Lyons sprang forward and off to one side, desperately trying to create and exploit an angle in the tight kill box of the narrow apartment hallway.

The figure swung around the frame of the open door in a swift buttonhook maneuver. Lyons had an impression of a short dark figure with a slight build, hands wrapped around the butt of a black automatic pistol.

He struck the hardwood floor, spun over one shoulder and came up inside the interloper’s extended arm. He twisted at the waist as he rose and lashed out with his arm, striking the figure’s nearest elbow with a heel-of-the-palm strike.

The grunt was feminine, and Lyons was stunned to realize his assailant was female. His strike threw her arms to the side and the hands holding a Glock pistol struck the wall. He reacted instantly, striking downward with a knife-edge blow that hammered into the woman’s wrist and knocked the gun to the floor.

With surprising reflexes the perpetrator spun and slammed a knee into the ex–LAPD detective’s groin. He rolled one of his thighs inward to block the blow. Fingers raked at his eyes. He responded with a windmilling block followed by a straight punch like a power jab.

The woman threw herself backward, avoiding the blow easily. She catapulted into the bedroom she’d just emerged from. Lyons surged forward, following hard on her heels. She did a back handstand, then came down in a crouch. Her hands flew to where her pant leg met the top of her dark hiking boot.

Realizing she was grabbing for a holdout weapon, Lyons scrambled to close the difference. Even as he lunged he knew he wasn’t going to make it in time. The figure came out of her crouch with a silver Detonics .45-caliber automatic in her gloved hands.

Kyrgyzstan

ENEMY VEHICLES FLARED like bonfires in violent conflagrations. Gary Manning raked the milling al Qaeda combatants with his machine gun as Hawkins methodically executed every gunman who came into his crosshairs.

Having used RPGs to disable every vehicle in the convoy, both Calvin James and Rafael Encizo traded their rocket launchers for Soviet-era submachine guns. Moving quickly under the cover fire, David McCarter prepared to lead the assault element down the cliff face to overwhelm any resistance.

“Move! Move! Move!” McCarter barked.

As one, the three-man fire team surged forward over the lip of the incline. The deployed lines were flung out in front of them. They ran face-first in an Australian-style rappel down the steep incline, one hand running the guideline, the other firing their weapons from the hip using a sling over the shoulder of their firing hand to steady the muzzle.

The loose gravel gave way in miniature avalanches under their feet as they sprinted down, the incline ropes whizzing through the gloves on their hand. The light from burning vehicles cast wild shadows and threw pillars of heat up toward them. It felt as if they were running straight into the open mouth of hell.

A figure with an AKM assault rifle appeared out of the smoke. Encizo shifted his muzzle across his front and caught the man with a short burst in the torso, putting him down. Without missing a stride, the Cuban-American combat diver vaulted the body and came off his rope onto the road.

McCarter ran up beside him, his AKS nestled in his shoulder and spitting bullets with a staccato burst. Another bearded terrorist absorbed the burst and crumpled. James came off his rope and took up his sector of fire, providing security on the far flank.

“Be advised,” Barbara Price’s voice cut in. “We have too much ground smoke and ambient heat for orbital imagery. We have no eyes at the moment.”

“Copy,” McCarter acknowledged. He turned toward Encizo and James. “Let’s start at the lead vehicle and work our way down.”

From above them Manning’s machine gun had fallen silent. Hawkins’s sniper rifle barked once, then was still.

At every vehicle they found dead terrorists and burning corpses. The ambush had been unleashed with brutal efficiency, leaving no survivors after the initial assault. Satisfied, McCarter informed Stony Man, then called his overwatch element down to the road.

“We’re ready for phase bravo,” he said simply. A burning truck at his back cast his sharp features in a slightly diabolical light. “Form up and let’s roll.”

Immediately, Phoenix Force formed a loose Ranger file, each soldier putting twenty yards between themselves. Calvin James, in the lead, took a GPS reading, noted the time and then set out up the center of the road at a fast clip.

For the next phase of the operation Phoenix Force would conduct an overland march for movement to target. To keep cover of darkness, they would have to maintain a tight pace. Their margin of error had been whittled down to a very slender gap.

In the hands of the IMU terrorists was an American contractor tasked with controlling Predator drones in the border region.

With terrorist reinforcements stopped while still en route, Phoenix Force was now prepared to make the overland hike to the location and free the American contractor who was being held hostage.

James set a rugged pace, leading the men straight up the road until they had crested the rise and started down the other side. Using a pace count perfected over long years of patrol and special reconnaissance missions he led them three miles before reorientating himself and cutting cross-country.

Following James’s navigation, while McCarter doubled checked the GPS landmarks, Phoenix Force cut across the rugged terrain. As they dropped in altitude from the high mountain pass, sparse vegetation gave way to temperate forest. Saw grass and chokeberry bushes became interspersed with stands of thick dogwood and copses of coniferous trees, providing good cover for their movements as they drew closer to their target.

Finally, James called a halt at the team’s predetermined rally point. The group huddled close together in the lee of a stand of tamarack pines. Below them an adobe-style walled compound was set on a stretch of valley floor in the middle of a small village. The road they had followed for part of their insertion after the ambush cut in from the west and ran directly through the hamlet. This late at night the only lights showing came from the compound. Overhead a low-pressure front had rolled in and stacked up like dirty cotton candy against the mountains.

Hawkins adjusted the ambient light levels on the passive receiver of his sniper scope, bringing the compound into a starker relief. Beside him Gary Manning had swapped out his night-vision goggles for IR binoculars, allowing him greater ocular clarity of the target site.

“I got three sentries,” the Canadian muttered softly.

“That’s my count,” Hawkins confirmed. “Two at the east-facing driveway gate and one walking the wall to the rear of the compound.”

McCarter keyed his com set. “You still have eyes or has the pressure front cut us off?”

“Be advised,” Price replied immediately, “cloud cover has obscured our imagery.”

“Understood.” McCarter clicked off. “Any sign of the hostage?”

“Negative,” Hawkins said.

“If the intel is spot-on, then he’s down in the basement,” Manning added, still scanning the scene with his IR binoculars.

“Shaking thing to bet a life on,” James said.

“I agree,” McCarter replied. “I think we’re going to have infiltrate silent and identify before we commence with the takedown.”

“The approaches are rough, just like the satellite showed. Coming down the hill on the far side will bring a damn avalanche down with us,” Encizo put in.

“Yep,” McCarter agreed. “I was hoping once we got on location we’d catch a break.” He eyed the steep terrain surrounding them and funneling downward toward the terrorist compound and village. It was unforgiving. “But it looks like our luck is holding true to form.”

“Straight down the road?” James asked.

“Straight down the road,” McCarter answered.

Dominican Republic

CARL LYONS FLUNG himself to one side, and the Detonics Combat Master went off like a hand cannon in the confined space. The heavy .45-caliber slug snapped through the air and burned down the hallway before burying itself in a wall.

Hermann Schwarz spun around the wall and threw the chair in a rough lob. It arced out and landed, bouncing awkwardly. The interloper jerked back, flinching away from the flying furniture.

Lyons used the seconds to readjust himself and leap onto the masked figure. His hand caught her wrist just behind where the gun butt filled her palm. He surged forward, snapping his elbow around and driving it into the side of her head.

The masked female slumped under the blow, stunned. The compact automatic dropped out of her hand and fell loudly on the floor. Schwarz rushed into the room ready to back Lyons up. He looked down and saw the sprawled figure on the floor as Lyons pushed himself up.

“She go night-night?” he asked.

“Like a baby,” Lyons replied, and picked up the pistol.

Out in the front room they heard the door being thrown open violently. Lyons spun and lifted his handgun.

“We’re fine, Pol,” Schwarz called out.

“Glad to hear it,” Blancanales replied. “Guess I jumped to the wrong conclusion after seeing you walk into a building right before there’s a gunshot.” Blancanales walked in and looked down at the unconscious figure on the ground. “Dios mios, Ironman, we don’t have time for you to start dating.”