Season of Harm

As the two other Able Team members watched, Blancanales made a slow, careful circuit of the entire main level of the casino. While not the largest or the nicest gambling house in Atlantic City by any means, the Drifts was still a fairly elaborate establishment. It took some time, and Blancanales knew his work well enough not to push too hard. Hurrying would look suspicious. He had to search the casino without looking like he was searching the casino, being careful not to raise any suspicions.

“There,” Lyons said finally. “There’s another one.”

“Another one?” Schwarz asked, looking at him.

“Pol,” Lyons instructed, “without looking like you’re doing it, back up three paces and slowly pan right.”

Blancanales took his time. He managed to make the move look natural, from what the two in the truck could see. The scan from his camera eventually took in what Lyons had noticed. He pointed to the screen.

“That guy?” Schwarz queried.

“That guy,” Lyons said. “That’s the second big mother in a black turtleneck and black jeans I’ve seen tonight, just standing around. They’re not dressed like casino security.” They had seen the official security guards working the casino; those guards wore matching maroon blazers.

“Sure looks like a guard,” Schwarz agreed. “What’s he guarding?”

“Pol, can you tell what he’s pretending not to cover?” Lyons asked.

Blancanales moved around slowly, taking in the guard from two different angles, then moving farther down the corridor just off this corner of the casino. Finally he found a remote corner where, Lyons figured, there was no one to overhear.

“There’s a fire door at the end of the hallway, opposite the guard,” he reported, whispering. “There’s also a camera focused on that door.”

“Take another look around,” Lyons said. “Let’s be sure.”

Blancanales did so. He worked his way across the casino again, paying special attention to the darkest corridors and corners. When he was satisfied that the door he’d seen was the only one guarded in that manner, he reported as much. Lyons nodded to Schwarz. During Blancanales’s sweep, they had counted a total of three of the black-clad incognito guards. Two of them were surreptitiously guarding the front and rear entrances, in both cases doubling up on the more overt casino security personnel. The lone guard in front of the camera-equipped door was therefore unique.

“How do you—” Blancanales said, then stopped. Schwarz and Lyons watched as a pair of women in micro-mini black dresses flounced past him.

“Not bad,” Schwarz remarked.

“Hookers,” Lyons said.

“As I was saying,” Blancanales said once they were out of range, “how do you want to play it?”

“I’d like to know what’s beyond that door,” Lyons said, “but I’d rather not tip our hand just yet.”

“All right,” Blancanales said. “But we’ll only get one shot at this. It might get hairy on the way out.”

“If it does, so much the better,” Lyons said. “We’ll back you up.”

“Easy for you to say, Ironman.” Schwarz poked him in the ribs.

“Zip it,” Lyons growled.

The two watched as Blancanales moved along the corridor, essentially flanking the lone guard while staying out of what was likely to be the mounted camera’s field of view. He affected a drunken stagger, if the sudden swaying of the video feed was any indication. Then he was stumbling into the guard.

“Hey,” the guard said, sounding disgusted. “Get the hell off me, asshole.”

“Whereza baffroom?” Blancanales slurred.

“Not here, stupid.” The guard reached out to give Blancanales a shove. To Lyons and Schwarz it looked as if he was reaching right for the camera.

Blancanales lashed out with a sudden, vicious edge-of-hand blow to the side of the man’s neck, staggering him. Blancanales followed up with a knee to the man’s groin and then a relatively light blow to the back of the head. The guard dropped like a stone.

“Remind me not to piss off Pol,” Schwarz cracked.

“I said shut up,” Lyons said absently. It was an old act between the two of them, and one neither man had to think about consciously.

Blancanales dragged the guard into the corridor he was guarding, careful to stop short to stay out of the mounted camera’s field of view. Lyons and Schwarz watched as their teammate quickly searched the man, after first checking his pulse.

“He’s not dead, is he?” Lyons asked.

“No,” Blancanales said quietly.

“Proceed,” Lyons instructed.

Blancanales found a 1911-pattern .45-caliber pistol in the man’s waistband, under his turtleneck. He also found a key card. He tucked the .45 into his own waistband, where Lyons knew it would keep Blancanales Beretta 92-F company. Then he moved quickly to the door, swiped the magnetic key card and popped the door open.

“Go fast, Pol,” Lyons said. “Whoever’s watching knows you’re not supposed to be there.” He checked the loads in his Colt Python before replacing it in its shoulder holster. “Get ready, Gadgets.”

“Roger,” Schwarz said. He set the video unit on the console between them and drew his 93-R. Then he checked the machine pistol’s 20-round magazine.

On the small color screen, Blancanales was making his way down a stairway. It was dimly lighted by small red light bulbs set within metal grates along the cinder-block wall. All pretense of the supposedly lavish gambling establishment had been dropped here. Whatever this was, wherever it led, no attempt had been made to disguise it.

Blancanales stopped at the bottom of the stairs. He was facing a pair of metal double doors. Pushing past these, he found himself in an empty anteroom. There was another set of doors. These were locked, but the electronic lock pad on the wall matched the one that had been installed at the top of the stairs. Blancanales used the key card again, sliding it through, and was rewarded with the metallic click that signaled the door unlatching.

He pushed the door quietly open.

At least a dozen men looked up at him.

On the screen, the scene was clear enough, in the split second Lyons and Schwarz had to observe it. The basement, which was lighted by overhead fluorescent lights, was filled with long, low tables. Men sat at these tables, weighing and dividing individual portions of white powder into smaller plastic bags. Several other men holding shotguns and rifles, a mixture of Mini-14s, AR-15s and even Ruger 10/22s, stood around the room at intervals watching over the process.

“Who’s he?” one of workers asked.

“Hey, that’s not—” another said.

Blancanales ran for it.

The first bullets struck the doors behind him as he cleared the next set of double doors.

“Go, go, go!” Lyons ordered. He grabbed the Daewoo shotgun as he piled out of the truck. Schwarz was close behind with his 93-R. The two men ran through the traffic outside the Drifts, dodging honking vehicles as they made for the entrance to the casino.

“I’m coming up the stairs,” Blancanales reported through their earbud transceivers. “The sewing circle I just interrupted is hot on my trail.” There was some static, suddenly, over the connection.

Gunfire.

Schwarz and Lyons burst through the front doors of the casino, Lyons leading the way with his Daewoo at port arms. Customers scattered. A woman screamed at the sight of the big Able Team leader with the massive automatic shotgun in his arms.

“Stop!” a uniformed security guard yelled. He walked up to Lyons. “You there, you can’t come in here with that!”

“Buddy,” Lyons growled, “you’d best back up.”

The security guard reached out, placing a hand on Lyons’s shoulder. “I said stop!”

Lyons butt-stroked him, lightly, slamming the Daewoo’s stock into the side of his head. He folded over with a grunt. “Told you,” Lyons said.

Schwarz had the 93-R in both hands and was covering the crowd. “Everyone out!” he said. “Proceed to the exits in an orderly fashion! We are federal agents!”

The casino’s patrons didn’t need to be told twice. They started hurrying toward the main exit, giving the Able Team commandos a wide berth. A couple of the uniformed guards looked as if they wanted to say something, but they were apparently unarmed and seemed to Lyons to be just what they were supposed to be—civilians hired to watch for pickpockets and roust the occasional drunk.

“Gadgets,” Lyons said, bringing the Daewoo up to his shoulder as they approached the corridor Blancanales had entered, “find me those other covert guards.”

“On it,” Schwarz said. He broke from Lyons and began sweeping the wing they had just passed.

As Lyons neared the hallway, he fought the urge to react as Blancanales came bursting through the fire door. Blancanales had his 92-F in his left hand and the captured 1911 .45 in his right. As the fire door slammed, bullets ricocheted from the opposite side. They did not go through.

“You all right?” Lyons asked calmly.

“Never better.” Blancanales smiled. “But we’ve got a nest of hornets down below.”

“Positions?”

“Bottom of the stairwell.” Blancanales jerked a thumb toward the fire door.

“Good,” Lyons said, hefting the Daewoo. “Get ready on the door.”

Blancanales stowed the 1911 and transferred the 92-F to his right hand. “You sure?”

“Yes,” Lyons said. He grinned. It was not a pleasant smile.

Somewhere behind and to the left, they heard a shotgun blast, followed by the chatter of Schwarz’s 93-R.

“That’ll be Gadgets ferreting out our friends,” Lyons said. “Back him up after I go.”

“Will do,” Blancanales said. “Triangle operatives, you figure?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Lyons said. “Triangle or not, they’ve got a heroin distribution center in the basement.”

“Could have been baking powder.”

“More power to them if it was,” Lyons said. “Okay, in three.”

Pol nodded and gripped the fire door’s handle.

“Three…two…one…now.”

Blancanales ripped open the fire door and triggered several shots down the stairwell. Lyons dived through, flat on his belly with the Daewoo in front of him. He threw himself with such force that he slid down the steps, holding the trigger of the Daewoo back as he did so. The buckshot rounds ripped up the doors at the bottom of the stairwell, tearing through the gunmen who waited in front of them.

The gunners screamed and died horribly. Lyons was up and charging as soon as he hit the bottom of the stairs. He slammed a combat-booted foot against the double doors, mowing down a gunman with an Uzi pistol who was waiting in the anteroom. He dropped the now-empty drum magazine in his USAS-12 and swapped in a 10-round box.

Another kick parted the doors separating him from the basement area. He dived through the doors, narrowly avoiding the answering fusillade. The workers were running and ducking for cover, but the gunmen guarding them and the product on the tables were cutting loose with everything they had. Full-automatic weapons fire converged on Lyons’s position. He surged to his feet and, in a half crouch, carved through the ranks of the enemy gunmen like a shark swimming through a school of fish.

Bullets raked the table to his left, shredding plastic bags of heroin before shattering a set of electronic scales. Lyons triggered a blast that knocked the gunmen down and out forever.

Moving heel-to-toe in a combat glide, Lyons kept up his pace, staying calm and deadly in the middle of the fire-storm. Each time his shotgun blasts found an enemy, the remaining shooters were that much more demoralized, firing that much more wildly. Finally, as the second to last man fell with a load of double-aught buck in his face, the last of the guards cut and ran for the doors.

“Oh, no, you don’t, you little scumbag.” Lyons let the USAS-12 drop, since it was empty, and drew the Colt Python from his shoulder holster and leveled it at the fleeing man. “Stop! Federal agent!”

The running man paused, spun and brought up a snubnose revolver. Lyons double-actioned a .357 Magnum round through his chest. The dead man never got off a shot.

“Lyons clear. Basement secure,” Lyons announced.

“Gadgets clear,” Schwarz said.

“Blancanales clear,” Blancanales reported. “Two down up here, Carl. We weren’t able to take them alive, unfortunately.”

“Understood,” Lyons said. He surveyed the drugs scattered around the room, and the dead men among the living. “Everyone over there,” Lyons directed, pointing with the barrel of the Python. “Against the wall.”

One of the workers looked at him, wide-eyed, and said something in rapid-fire Spanish.

“Pol, did you hear that?” he asked. “I’ve got several prisoners down there. They look to be noncombatants.”

“Just barely,” Blancanales said. “He says…Well, he says a lot, but it boils down to, ‘we just work here.’”

“Yeah,” Lyons said. He herded the workers. “Come on, people. Go.”

“I’m on my way down,” Blancanales reported over the transceiver link.

“Good,” Lyons said. “I could use a translator.”

“I’ll stay up here and mind the store,” Schwarz said. “It looks like the Justice Department identification Hal gave us is going to get a workout.” The sirens were barely audible over the transceiver link.

“All right,” Lyons said. “Run interference with the Atlantic City PD for us. Pol and I will work our way through these jokers, see if there’s anything to be found.”

“Any computers down there?” Schwarz asked.

Lyons double-checked, scanning the room carefully. He retrieved his Daewoo as he did so, holstering the Python and swapping box magazines in the shotgun. “Doesn’t look like it,” he said. “We’ve got a pile of drugs, some dead guards and not much else.”

Blancanales entered the room, stepping over the dead body near the doors. He took out his secure satellite phone, part of the standard kit issued by the Farm, and took a digital photograph of the dead man. He would do the same for the others; it was standard procedure. The photos would be transmitted to the Farm for analysis, run through international crime databases using facial-recognition software. Identifying the gunmen might give them some connection to the Triangle’s operation.

“Dead end?” Blancanales asked.

“Dead men,” Lyons corrected. He jacked a round into the chamber of the USAS-12. “But us? We’re just getting started.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Thailand

Jack Grimaldi whistled “Flight of the Valkyries” to himself as the Cobra gunship came in low and slow over the landscape, moving up on the isolated poppy field that was Phoenix Force’s first target. As Grimaldi flew, he listened to the radio chatter over his earbud transceiver. The little device linked him via relay from the chopper’s electronics to the rest of the team on the ground. Phoenix Force was moving into position to attack the camp located at the east end of the poppy field. From the satellite surveillance imagery provided by NSA security satellites as well as NetScythe, it was apparent the camp included a full processing facility. Hitting the field and the processing plant would deal the Triangle a significant blow, sending a clear message.

Insertion of the team, including acquiring the Cobra gunship and making sure it was in position, had been relatively easy. While there was no way to count on the support of the government, especially given the covert nature of the operation, the Farm had plenty of discretionary funds to throw around at times like these. The Stony Man team had bribed their way over the Thai border and easily past Customs. The chopper had been more difficult, but even that had not proved much of an obstacle. While old, the machine was in great shape, and the armament it carried was in top condition. Grimaldi had checked it out at the airfield himself. Then he’d made his way by air in support of Phoenix Force’s ground insertion that was utilizing hired commercial trucks. If anyone had noticed him, by eye or by radar, nobody had challenged him. No doubt everyone and his uncle who could in any way be bought off had been paid well enough to look the other way.

Strange bedfellows, the pilot thought. If the men they’d bribed to drive them out here thought anything of the armed men seeking to tangle with the local drug lords, they hadn’t commented on it. No doubt they thought they were pocketing the money of dead men. That was fine; it meant they’d be even less likely to speak of it after the fact, though they’d been bribed well enough for their silence.

It was all part of the shadow war, the type of conflict in which Phoenix Force specialized. Evil criminals of the type found in the Triangle organization were accustomed to preying on others. They did not deal well with coming under sudden fire; they did not grasp that they, too, could become the victims of seemingly random violence. When, suddenly, they found themselves attacked from what seemed all sides by a foe they could not at first identify, they became confused and afraid. For many of them, fear was a new sensation, and one the Stony Man pilot was happy to bring them.

I love the smell of terrified organized crime bosses in the morning, Grimaldi thought to himself.

The AH-1 gunship was a familiar aircraft, one that Grimaldi enjoyed flying. Once the backbone of the United States military’s fleet of attack helicopters, long since eclipsed by the AH-64 Apache, it remained a very dependable, very lethal aerial weapon.

He checked his chronograph, then his GPS unit. “G-Force,” Grimaldi said over the transceiver link, “in position.”

“Roger, G-Force,” McCarter’s voice came back to him. “By the numbers. One, two.”

“One, two, roger,” Grimaldi said.

He angled the nose of the Cobra, allowed himself to pick up more speed and began triggering the hellstorm under his command.

The twin rocket pods unleashed their 70 mm cargo of Mark 4 folding-fin aerial rockets. The M-156 white phosphorous rounds detonated across the poppy field, leaving actinic flashes in Grimaldi’s vision. He worked the chopper back and forth in a zigzagging pattern, making sure his deadly payload did its gruesome work among the flowers.

“G-Force is all go, zero one,” Grimaldi reported as he fired the last of his rockets. The explosions radiated heat; he gripped the controls firmly, controlling the gunship. “Good hunting, gentlemen.”

“Roger,” David McCarter’s voice came through the transceiver link. “Start run two, G-Force. Repeat, start run zero-two.”

“G-Force is go zero-two,” Grimaldi reported.

The gunship gained altitude. Grimaldi allowed the deadly machine to crest the rise at the far end of the now-burning poppy field. Below, in the depression beyond, sat the camp and heroin-processing center. Phoenix Force would be moving in from the perimeter just now; Grimaldi would therefore fight from the center of the camp, moving outward. He overflew the camp, chose his spot and yanked hard on the controls, making the gunship shudder and dance as it dumped its velocity. He brought the killing snout of the helicopter around in a slow arc.

“G-Force is all go, twice,” he said out loud. “Heads down, gentlemen. I repeat, heads down.”

At Grimaldi’s direction, the M-28 turret’s twin M-134 miniguns began spitting 7.62 mm death. The slow arc of the chopper fanned the slugs out as Grimaldi picked his targets, centering on the small, prefabricated, corrugated-metal buildings closest to the center of the camp. Men in olive-drab fatigues, carrying Kalashnikovs, began running for their lives. Something volatile within one of the buildings exploded, shooting shrapnel and flames in every direction and throwing several of the running figures to the ground. Grimaldi kept the pressure on, his gunship’s inventory ticking down in his head, the chopper wreaking havoc in the enemy’s midst.

He began whistling “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” smiling faintly as the Triangle drug plant slowly disintegrated at the touch of his trigger finger.

“YOU HEAR THAT?” Calvin James said.

“Hear what?” Rafael Encizo asked.

“Nothing.” James shook his head. “Thought I heard whistling. Faint, like.”

McCarter chuckled but said nothing.

Phoenix Force waited from cover at the perimeter of the camp, southwest of Grimaldi’s position. They were crouched behind an old bus that had somehow been trucked in and buried half in and half out of the ground to form a makeshift storage bunker. Now that bunker provided them with adequate concealment as Grimaldi softened up the camp.

“Masks on, lads,” McCarter instructed. “The fumes will reach us any minute.” The team members donned their breathing gear. The black plumes from the burning poppy field were visible far beyond the chopper. The staccato drumbeat of the gunship’s nose cannons slapped echoes from the metal buildings around them. Return fire from within the camp was sporadic, but left no doubt that Phoenix Force would encounter armed resistance once they made their foray inside.

Per the mission parameters, they were dressed and armed for plausible deniability. The members of the team each wore Russian surplus camouflage fatigues. Some of their equipment was mundane and readily available on the world market, like their web belts and the Ka-bar Next Generation fighting knives they carried. Their sensitive surveillance, communication and breathing gear was custom-built but untraceable to the Farm or the United States. They also carried folding-stock Kalashnikov rifles. None of the team favored the weapons overmuch, but they were all very familiar with them. Despite their ergonomic flaws and generally sloppy tolerances, the rifles were serviceable, reliable and deadly in their trained hands. The fact that ammunition would likely be readily available in the field was another point in the rifles’ favor, too.

If they needed the extra firepower, Gary Manning also carried a Heckler & Koch HK-69 40 mm grenade launcher and a bandolier of grenades. Each team member also carried a sidearm. Manning had his .357 Magnum Desert Eagle, and McCarter carried his favored Browning Hi-Power. Hawkins, Encizo and James all carried untraceable Glock 17 pistols. Each man’s web gear was laden with a variety of grenades, smoke canisters, extra magazines and a variety of other tools of the trade.

“G-Force, all in, all in,” Grimaldi reported.

“That’s our cue,” McCarter said. As the chopper rose higher above the carnage its pilot had created, Phoenix Force moved in.

Without being told to do so, Encizo and James broke to the left, while Manning and Hawkins moved off to the right. They would skirt the perimeter and take their own paths toward the burning center. McCarter headed straight up the middle, splitting the difference.

It was a straightforward operation. While they would keep an eye out for any intel they might gather on the ground, there were no specific target objectives other than the destruction of this Triangle asset. It was a refreshingly direct drop and smash, McCarter thought. No hostages to rescue, no supersensitive electronic devices to recover, no nuclear warheads to disarm. Just walk in, run about and burn it down.

A gunman in the olive-drab fatigues that seemed to be the uniform of the camp came running headlong from the nearest metal shack, heedless of the danger and failing to look around himself. McCarter let him go right on by, drawing a bead with his AK and pressing the extended metal stock to his shoulder.

“Hey,” McCarter called, his voice only slightly muffled by his breathing mask.

The gunman turned and tried to bring up a pistol. McCarter shot him neatly through the chest. Two more men, one carrying a shotgun and the other a Kalashnikov of his own, came fast on the heels of their dead comrade. McCarter snapped his AK to full auto, held the weapon low and squeezed off a burst that cut the men down in their tracks.

Gunfire was audible from several different parts of the camp now. There were more firefights, to McCarter’s ear, than there were contingents of Phoenix personnel. That was good; it meant that the men guarding the camp were panicking, firing blindly around themselves without clear targets. Filling the environment with lead made it decidedly unsafe, but scattered, unaimed fire was something with which the team could easily cope. A disorganized enemy was no better than sheep, to be carved up and brought down by McCarter’s wolves. They’d done it many times before.