Extreme Arsenal

“They’re setting sail in five minutes. You’ll never catch them,” Reasoner replied.

“Leave it to me,” McCarter said. “What berth?”

“Thirteen,” Reasoner answered.

“Close your eyes, Chris,” McCarter ordered.

The official closed his good eye. “You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”

Silence.

It took Reasoner nearly five minutes for him to get up the courage to see if McCarter was still there.

MCCARTER KNEW that he was going to be cutting it close. Not only was he armed with only a pair of pistols that weren’t ones he was familiar with, and Reasoner’s .357 Magnum revolver, but he was all alone. A takedown of a ship would need at least two more people, as Able Team had proved several times. He’d have preferred to have all four of his Phoenix Force teammates on hand to throw in against the smugglers on the Kobiyashi.

It would have to do. The Phoenix Force leader didn’t want to lose track of the boat. Already the sailors were undoing the moorings. The bow’s rope, big and fat, was being hauled up over the railing while two sailors unwound the stern cable. Crewmen jogged up the gangplank.

“All aboard!” came the call from the deck.

It was now or never.

One more thing slowed the Phoenix Force leader. There was a possibility that the entire crew on the ship wasn’t implicated in the transport of a team of assassins. McCarter was audacious and ruthless, but he wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer and when he fought, he fought against those he knew were killers and had deadly intent. He’d fall back to the handguns as a means of last resort, which meant that he was even further behind the curve.

“Hey! We’re casting off,” a Filipino sailor called to him. The round-faced seaman was stocky, his shoulders betraying a burly strength. “You can’t come aboard.”

“Official business, no time for a chin-wag,” McCarter said as he barely slowed, sidestepping the Filipino.

The stocky sailor grabbed McCarter’s arm and pulled open his jacket to reveal a revolver. The former SAS commando pivoted and broke the Filipino’s nose with the point of his elbow, then plucked the revolver from the man’s waistband. “I told you, no time to talk, mate.”

A second sailor rushed up, but instead of helping out his stunned shipmate, he reached for his own weapon. McCarter sighed and pistol-whipped the man across the jaw with the barrel of the Filipino’s revolver, twisting the newcomer’s handgun out of his grasp. A sweep of his feet across the man’s ankles, and the Briton dumped the man to the ground. With a quick flip, he had a revolver in each fist.

“Anyone else want to slow me down?” McCarter growled.

The other sailors who were handling the moorings looked at the armed man, dressed in black and packing a brace of handguns after three quick strikes. They didn’t want to see what he could do with bullets and took off running. McCarter let them flee and continued up the gangplank.

A figure rushed to the railing and McCarter spotted a submachine gun in his grasp. Uzis weren’t standard issue for security forces on a ship, so he threw himself flat on the slanted walkway. Both revolvers spoke with thunderous reports. Twin .38-caliber slugs chopped into the gunner and threw him onto his back before he could aim. Autofire ripped from the dead man’s assault weapon into the night sky.

“Good news and bad news,” McCarter muttered to himself as he leaped to his feet and raced to the deck. “Good news, now I know who the bad guys are. Bad news, they got bigger guns than I do.”

On deck, he looked both ways and watched as another pair of gunmen burst from the wheelhouse. Their weapons were an odd mix, one carrying a battered AK-47, the other packing another of the compact Bofors CBJs. McCarter took the CBJ gunner in the face with two slugs from his right-hand weapon, and put a bullet from the other revolver through the wrist of the AK man’s trigger hand. The rifleman screamed as he clutched his ruined limb to his chest, his weapon forgotten as it tumbled over the rail.

McCarter rushed toward the wheelhouse and discarded the partially spent revolvers. He skidded to a halt, scooped up the fallen assault rifle, shouldered it and looked for more targets. The wounded gunman above pulled his sidearm and leaned over the railing. The Phoenix Force commander sidestepped before a bullet exploded on the metal at his feet. Then he pulled the AK’s trigger.

Nothing. He racked the bolt and chambered a new round, the old case spinning from the breech. He tried to shoot again, but there was still nothing. The injured guard fired again, twice, but upside down and using the wrong hand, his accuracy was off, not that McCarter left himself as a stationary target. He popped the magazine and saw that the casings were green and rusted from too many years at sea.

As another shot chased him, the Phoenix Force veteran dived behind the bulkhead, leaving the AK-47 behind. Poor weapons maintenance would have gotten him killed. He reached for the alloy-framed Glock G-34 and drew it, the safety snicked off reflexively. McCarter suddenly felt very comfortable with the new handgun. It was blockier than his sleek Browning, but the muzzle thickness helped add to the heft that made the balance feel almost like his confiscated pistol.

The door crashed open and a fat thug with a shotgun burst onto the deck. McCarter didn’t wait for the newcomer to aim, triggering the G-34 twice. High-velocity 127-grain hollowpoint rounds slammed into the big guard, and it was as if the man had hit an invisible force field. The shotgunner collapsed to the walkway with a sigh and a thud. McCarter leaped over the dead man and cut into the door he’d exited.

A black-armored phantom with the same gleaming helmet as he’d encountered the night before loomed at the top of the stairs. McCarter dived into a hallway as armor-piercing slugs smashed the floor where he’d stood instants before. Tucked into a shoulder roll, he somersaulted another few feet and came up facing the stairwell. He let the Glock hang in his left hand, yanked out Chris Reasoner’s .357 Magnum revolver and thumbed back the hammer.

The armored assassin stepped into view and received a hot blast of 125-grain lead, screaming along at nearly 1500 feet per second. The 9 mm might not have penetrated the goon’s armor, and the hollowpoint round didn’t do much better, but the high-powered bullet did flatten the machine gunner. McCarter snapped up the Glock and punched a single 127-grain bullet into the gun of the attacker, wrenching the Bofors autoweapon from the killer’s grasp.

McCarter followed up with a solid kick to the helmeted man’s chin. A sickening crunch sounded and the gunman was stilled. The Stony Man commando’s gamble had paid off. There was no way the automatic weapons and body armor would have gotten through aircraft or train customs, but the bribery at the docks and the nature of boat smuggling would have made it all but impossible for someone to truly check out the ship. Security was tight in the post 9/11 era, but short of dismantling the freighter, there would have been no way to find everything.

The stunned, armored assassin struggled to get up, but McCarter stooped and pulled the helmet off the killer. “Who’re you working for?”

The hit man looked down the muzzle of the 9 mm Glock. “I’m not going to talk.”

McCarter growled and pistol-whipped the armored killer into nerveless unconsciousness. Boots pounded on the metal grating that made up the steps, and he shifted his aim back to the stairwell.

The first gunman into the open caught a .357 Magnum slug in the groin. Pelvis shattered, his legs stopped working and he plopped into a heap in the hallway. Two more guards tripped over the fallen seaman, their weapons clattering as they struggled to stay up. McCarter caught one of the pair as he bent to grab his assault rifle and punched a 9 mm round through the joint of his shoulder and neck. Bone and muscle were destroyed instantly as the hollowpoint tunneled deep and stopped in the sentry’s left lung. The body smashed face-first into the floor and flopped to one side.

“Don’t do it!” McCarter ordered the other gunman as he reached for a revolver under his sweater.

The guard paused for a moment, but a slamming door behind the Briton spun his attention away. He dropped to the ground as another of the thugs cut loose with a charge of buckshot. Pellets zipped over McCarter’s head and crashed into the paralyzed gunner, a salvo of shot blowing him off his feet.

The Phoenix Force leader took out the shotgunner with two shots from the thundering Magnum revolver, then turned to look at the carnage.

“I’m dying, man,” the wounded gunman whispered, blood rasping in his lungs.

McCarter looked helplessly at the bloody chest of the seaman. He was skilled enough in battlefield medicine to stop lethal blood loss from a single bullet wound, but the chopped hamburger that remained in the path of the 12-gauge’s violence was larger than the Briton’s fully spread hand. He tore a wad of cloth from a corpse’s shirt, but by the time he made a compress out of it, the wounded sailor had expired.

McCarter frowned in frustration. He’d come onto this ship to get answers, not to leave behind total carnage. He shook his head in disgust and checked the load on Reasoner’s revolver. Three shots remained in the cylinder, so he stuffed it away as a backup weapon. He checked the load in the Glock and the 17-shot reservoir was still more than half full. He pocketed the partially depleted magazine and fed it a fresh stick.

McCarter holstered the Glock and picked up the Bofors, but cast it aside when he found that the receiver had been smashed by the 9 mm slug he’d punched into it. Instead, he picked up an old battered Sterling. Remembering his encounter with the rotten ammo in the AK-47, he pointed at a wooden crate marked “shoes” and pulled the trigger for a short burst, using the cargo to absorb any ricocheting rounds. The submachine gun burped to the SAS veteran’s satisfaction and he frisked the dead man for spare magazines. He found two more curved 32-round sticks for the Sterling and pocketed them.

He moved to where the latest gunmen had entered the superstructure on the freighter, and saw an assembly of figures heave something long over the side. McCarter shouldered the Sterling.

“Don’t move!” he warned.

A pair of black-clad assassins dived over the railing as another man spun. McCarter triggered a burst into the gunman. Bullets sparked against ceramic trauma plating and the gunman’s helmet, and the Phoenix Force pro rolled back through the door to escape a salvo of 6.5 mm armor-piercing rounds. As it was, only falling to the deck had saved him as the Bofors bullets punched through the steel bulkhead above him.

The torrent of withering fire kept McCarter pinned long enough for whomever was on the deck to escape. When there was a lull in the shooting, he swung out and saw that the railing was clear. Only the churning white water produced by the Zodiac boat’s engines gave any indication where the enemy had gone, and by the time he rushed to the bow of the ship, they were out of range for the machine pistol he carried. Even though he’d fired on the run, there was no sign that the Sterling had done anything. He let the submachine gun hang on its sling and let out a sigh of frustration.

He had prisoners, though.

It was a beginning.

Not a satisfying beginning, but it would have to do.

MCCARTER LIT a cigarette, then took a pull from his can of Coca-Cola Classic. He replayed the interrogation of the armored assassin, mind reeling from the implications of the man’s answers. He tried to push aside what he’d had to do to get those answers.

Phoenix Force had a long career of capturing and interrogating prisoners. While they used mostly psychological trickery to get their answers, bad cop/good cop scenarios and such before they had acquired Calvin James’s medical expertise and the use of drugs, there had been a few times when McCarter had had to bloody his hands.

Combat against armed and capable opponents was one thing. Torture, though, was something that disgusted him. But without a trained medic to monitor heart rate and examine the prisoner for heart defects, the Phoenix Force commander had to do things the old-fashioned way.

“Torture is inefficient,” his predecessor and mentor, Yakov Katzenelenbogen, used to say. “People will say anything to stop the pain, and it’s too time-consuming a process.”

McCarter winced inwardly. He felt like he’d let the old man down, but he’d needed what answers he could get.

Not only was the mission at stake, but now that he understood what was going on, all of Central America was threatened. He closed his eyes and fought down guilt for doing horrible things to vulnerable, defenseless flesh. It was one thing to pop Reasoner’s eardrum and to smash his face into a tabletop a couple of times. A little roughhousing was needed to convince the traitorous scumbag that it was in his best interests to spill information.

The assassin, however, required work. McCarter did what had to be done. Unease bubbled and roiled inside of him as he sifted through the memories of pleading cries for mercy to get to the information about the designated mission of the assassins.

Roberto DaCosta had been assassinated by a hired crew of killers. While the assassin hadn’t known much about who had hired them, he had known that after they left the port, they were to rendezvous with a sea plane several miles offshore to return to Central America for further sweeps.

Whatever happened, someone was going to have to back up the mastermind’s play. Denied his cadre of nearly invulnerable murderers, or most of them, there would be a mad scramble to refill the ranks to continue the operation. McCarter thought about those who had escaped on the Zodiac boat. The motorized raft would have the speed and range to make the rendezvous with time to spare. There would be no way to intercept them, and they would report back to their boss that they were no longer working in secrecy.

McCarter realized that instead of flushing his targets, he might have driven them back underground, deeper into hiding.

The flight would keep him in the chase, but Phoenix Force and Able Team would be busy elsewhere, hunting down leads. He’d contacted the Farm via cell phone, and that would give them a head start. Maybe they would be able to intercept the escaping assassins, though it was doubtful.

It had been pure luck that allowed McCarter to stumble on this operation, and Barbara Price made noises that there was another emergency in the works that would occupy Able Team’s concentration. She didn’t give details over the cell phone. Even though their communications were over secure lines, operational procedure was that she didn’t share information that the Phoenix Force leader didn’t need to know. If Able Team pulled off their mission in time, maybe they could assist afterward.

Until then, Phoenix Force was on its own.

McCarter knew one thing, though.

It was better than being all by himself. While he didn’t feel helpless without his teammates, it would be good working with his friends, the four men he considered his family, once again.

Standing together, the five warriors of Phoenix were truly an irresistible force.

CHAPTER THREE

Yuma, Arizona

Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz looked at the assembled scorched garbage strewed across the tabletop at Yuma.

“We’ve had some of our best tech experts look over this,” General Rogers told the Able Team genius as he poked at a charred circuit board. “Nothing that survived could be identified or traced to a manufacturer. At least not with the technology we have on hand.”

Schwarz shook his head slowly as he picked up the burned circuit board piece. “You’ve cataloged and photographed all the pieces, where they were placed in the remote drone?”

Rogers nodded. “Yes. Our techs are attempting to reverse engineer the design, but the missiles and explosive 20 mm shells smashed the machinery and electronics apart brutally.”

Schwarz looked at his notebook. “You have a very concise description of their sensory and stealth capabilities, however.”

“Mostly through close personal experience,” Rogers stated.

“How close?” Schwarz asked.

Rogers looked at the floor between them, then took two paces back. “About this range.”

Schwarz released a low whistle. “You like to lead from the front, sir.”

The general shrugged. “I’m responsible for my men. It didn’t hurt that I was on the run for my life, but…Son, I don’t know who you’re supposed to be, but these things attacked and killed my people, my friends. This place, for all its secrecy and military regimen, is a home for us. We’re as close to a family as we can get here. Do you know what I mean?”

Schwarz glanced toward the entrance where Rosario Blancanales and Carl Lyons stood. They conducted interviews about the Ankylosaur raid with other members of the proving ground staff. “Heart and soul, General.”

“I want to find whoever’s responsible for this and bring them to justice,” Rogers said. “If you need anything, I’ll make sure you get it.”

“Thank you, sir,” Schwarz replied. “Is it okay if I take some of the wreckage to your lab? I want to work with it.”

“No problem,” Rogers answered.

Schwarz gave the general a reassuring smile. “We’ll get these guys. They might be able to run, but they won’t hide for long. Not from us, sir.”

He picked up several pieces and set them in clear plastic bags.

Rogers and the Able Team genius crossed to the entrance of the hangar, where Lyons and Blancanales both stopped and greeted their friend with a nod. Blancanales reflexively gave the general a smart salute, which was returned.

“Another ex-military man?” Rogers asked.

Blancanales nodded. “For security, that’s about all I can say.”

“I understand,” Rogers answered.

“I’m hitting the lab to look at some of these components. I think I can pick something out of the bits and pieces,” Schwarz said. “Think the two of you can handle the recon without me?”

Lyons rolled his eyes. “No problem. I think we can track a few killer robots without you. Go nerd out and we’ll tell you about the exciting hike we took later.”

Schwarz sighed. “You’re too good to me, Ironman.”

“That’s something I thought I’d never hear.” Lyons grunted. “C’mon, Pol. Saddle up and head ’em out.”

“‘Rawhide,’” Blancanales quipped. He pointed toward the 4-wheeled ATVs and slipped on his helmet. “Able style.”

“Don’t let Cowboy hear you say that,” Lyons said, referring to John “Cowboy” Kissinger, the Stony Man Farm armorer.

“I don’t think Cowboy ever rode a horse in his life,” Blancanales answered.

Lyons threw one leg over the seat and sat down. He revved the engine and slipped on his helmet. “Sure you wouldn’t rather come with us?”

“I don’t think there’s going to be anything in the mine,” Schwarz replied. “But if there is, bring me a few chunks back.”

Lyons nodded. “Have a good time.”

Lyons, Blancanales and the team of MPs rode off on their four-wheelers.

Logic told Schwarz that there wouldn’t be any trouble, but something nagged at him. “General? Could you have someone set the lab up for me?”

Rogers looked after Lyons and Blancanales as they left. “You’ve got that feeling, too.”

Schwarz pulled a spare helmet off the ATV they’d set aside for him. He checked the rifle stuck in the saddle, then made sure his personal weapons were secure. “I’ve learned never to distrust my instincts. As soon as they pulled away…”

“I understand. Don’t waste time gabbing with me,” Rogers told him.

Schwarz fired up the ATV and rushed off to join the rest of Able Team.

THE PLATOON OF RANGERS that Able Team hooked up with had the mine entrance hemmed in. The powerful Fabrique Nationale M-240 machine guns rested on bipods. The 7.62 mm muzzles stared into the darkened cave, ready to unleash a torrent of armor-piercing thunder against anything that made a move out the front. A trio of Dragon antitank missile pods rested on their legs, the big fat tubes similarly aimed. The Dragon warheads had the power to tear apart any modern tank, and if they couldn’t stop the Ankylosaurs, they would at least bring down a huge section of mountainside.

Tons of rubble would stop even the killer robot tanks.

Carl Lyons waited for the Rangers to set up the mighty M-2 .50-caliber machine guns. That would finish the ring of steel that would hem in any escaping drones. He pulled his rifle from the ATV’s saddle sheath and snapped back the bolt, chambering a .50 Beowulf rifle round into his weapon’s breech. The magazine held twelve of the massive rounds in the same space that a normal M-16 would have held a full thirty shots. He traded firepower for purely awesome stopping power. While the .50 Beowulf round was only half as long as the rounds fired by the M-2 machine gun, it was still a significant powerhouse. Kissinger had given Able Team several magazines of tungsten-cored slugs, designed for use against armored vehicles.

Just in case.

Lyons checked the light on the muzzle of his rifle, then looked to the others.

“M-16, Viking style,” Blancanales said. He couldn’t quite hide the tension in his voice.

Schwarz slipped on a pair of Wolf Ears hearing protectors and clicked them on. “Give me a sound check.”

Blancanales and Lyons wore the same hearing protectors. Advanced electronics and padding would prevent ruptured eardrums caused by the thunder of automatic weapons in a cave, but sensitive microphones would pick up softer sounds that could betray an enemy. The three men of Able Team had trained with the Wolf Ears long enough to know that they worked under stressful, nasty and dirty conditions. When they were forced to use full-power, unsuppressed weapons in a tunnel, they often made the effort to wear the hearing protector-amplifiers.

“Testing,” Lyons whispered.

“Yabba dabba doo,” Blancanales spoke softly.

“You guys are confusing me as to which one’s the caveman,” Schwarz quipped.

Lyons slipped his goggles down over his eyes again. He made sure they didn’t displace his Wolf Ears. “Funny. Remind me to laugh later.”

“Whenever I do, you hit me with a newspaper,” Schwarz answered. The Able Team leader only narrowed his gaze. He wasn’t known for his sense of humor, especially this close to a possible engagement.

“Lock and load your rifles,” Lyons ordered as he picked up a large lantern. “I’m on point.”

Blancanales and Schwarz put aside their banter and fell into step behind Lyons. They spread out and stalked into the mine entrance.

Blancanales paused and shone his light on the ground. “This floor has been graded.”

Lyons knelt and ran his fingertips over the hard-packed earth. “No signs of treads. Gadgets?”

“They weren’t hovercraft,” Schwarz replied. “But what dust there is has been smoothed out. Look…There are rails.”

Lyons walked over and tapped his flash hider against the bent metal. “Something heavy rolled over this. There’s gouge marks on it, too.”

Blancanales looked at the scarred and mutilated metal, then stared deeper into the tunnel. “Some other machine?”

“A digger?” Schwarz asked. He moved farther down the tunnel, then squinted through his goggles. “Someone knocked a back door through to Yuma’s testing facility.”

Schwarz pulled out a map from his case and flicked his light on it. “The Bear gave me some maps to help me figure out how the attack drones could have escaped.”

“This mountain range is heavy-duty granite, though,” Lyons said. “Right?”

“Mountains usually occur when tectonic plates collide. The higher the mountains, the newer they are and the more force behind their collision. The Blue Ridge Mountains, where the Farm is located, are very old and worn down, but there are fissures and caves throughout them. Geological surveys try to map them out, but you can’t find them all,” Schwarz answered. “Whoever made this attack had this place geographically staked out.”