Season of Harm

A long metal Quonset-hut-style building stood in front of him. McCarter moved quickly to the heavy wooden door at one end. He tried it, but it was dogged shut from inside, apparently. He took one of the high-explosive grenades from his web gear, pulled the pin, let the spoon fly free and dropped the bomb in front of the door before moving around the corner of the building.

The explosion buckled the metal wall of the hut and splintered the door, which fell inward. McCarter plunged in after it, his AK spitting lead as several men inside opened up on him. Bullets tore through the bunks on either side of him; the former SAS commando had blundered into a barracks. He dropped first one, then another, then a third gunman.

“Report!” he said out loud, stalking from bunk to bunk, checking the bodies to make sure none of the fallen men was shamming.

“Found the processing plant,” James said. After a pause, there was an incredibly loud explosion that reverberated through the camp, shaking the walls of the barracks in which McCarter stood. “Processing plant eliminated,” James said. “It’s snowing.”

“Don’t stand around with your tongue out,” McCarter said.

“Clear here,” Encizo reported. “Several shooters down.”

The dull thump of another, smaller explosion reached McCarter’s ears as he cleared the other end of the barracks and exited through that side. Through the twisted wreckage of several small metal huts, he saw another one burst apart. That would be Manning, with his grenade launcher.

“Mopping up,” Manning’s voice said in McCarter’s ear, as if on cue. “No problems.”

“Clear,” Hawkins said.

The Cobra gunship continued to swoop low over their heads, making a series of lazy circles around the camp. The rotor wash swirled the smoke plumes, giving the scene a surreal cast.

“Form up at the center,” McCarter instructed. “What’s left of that wooden structure.” The two-story building in the middle of the camp, which Grimaldi had used as his reference for the chopper run, was obviously older than the metal structures erected around it. It bore the sagging roof and sun-weathered beams of several years in the Thai sun. What was left of elaborate woodwork on the shutters was mostly chipped away, either by time or, in the past few minutes, stray bullets. McCarter nodded approvingly as the members of Phoenix Force emerged from the surrounding area as if they’d been invisible moments before.

He pointed to Hawkins, Encizo and James. “Perimeter,” he instructed.

The three team members took up positions around the hut, like the posts on a three-legged stool, eyes sharp for enemy incursion. Thanks largely to Grimaldi’s opening attack, but also because of the lightning-fast Phoenix Force raid, the camp had become a burning ruin in only minutes. It was far from a secure location, however, and there was no telling how many gunmen might still be running loose and looking for payback.

The old wooden building had one door, which was of the same heavy, sun-bleached wood as the rest of the structure. McCarter motioned for Manning to move in with him. The two men took positions on either side of that door.

McCarter knocked loudly.

The Briton had only moved his hand out of the way a split second before when a shotgun blast tore through the middle of the door. Without missing a beat, Manning pulled a stun grenade from his web gear, popped it and threw it into the ragged hole.

McCarter and Manning closed their eyes and turned away. The blast was loud even outside the building; inside, it would have been deafening. Manning slammed aside what was left of the door with one heavy kick.

“In we go,” McCarter said. “Go high.”

Manning nodded.

They burst through the doorway, weapons ready. A man on the floor was writhing in pain, holding his face. Manning quickly rolled him over and secured him with two pairs of plastic zip-tie cuffs at wrists and ankles.

“I’m headed upstairs,” McCarter said. There was a rickety stairway at the rear of the building. The ground floor itself was one large room, with a wooden table and several metal folding chairs at one end, and a makeshift kitchen at the other. A pool table, one leg gone and replaced by a pair of cinder blocks, sat in the center of the space. The felt was badly ripped.

Three different refrigerators in the kitchen area were connected to a generator, which still chugged quietly in the corner. An exhaust hose led to the outside. One of the refrigerators had been popped open by the blast or simply left open by the man who was now Phoenix Force’s prisoner; it revealed shelf after metal shelf of cold beer.

So it was a rec room, McCarter concluded as he took the stairs two at a time. To men like these, recreation had only a couple of forms. The first was the booze, and the second—

“Bloody hell,” McCarter muttered.

The stained mattress and twisted bedclothes in the center of the floor still boasted human occupants. A gunman wearing only olive-drab fatigue pants stood in the center of the room, with a naked woman held in front of him. The gunner had one arm around the woman’s throat and the barrel of a 1911-pattern pistol to her head. He spit something at McCarter that the Briton couldn’t understand.

“Easy now,” he said in a calm voice. “Let’s not do anything we’ll regret later, shall we?”

“English,” the man said. The girl squirmed and he tightened his arm around her neck. She was wide-eyed with fear and looked badly used; there was an old bruise yellowing on her jaw. McCarter guessed her age at midtwenties, though it was hard to tell. She was probably a local hooker but could just as easily have been kidnapped for the sport of the Triangle gunmen.

“English,” McCarter confirmed. “Speak the Queen’s tongue, do you?”

“I speak.” The man nodded. “You let me go.”

“We might be able to work something out, at that,” McCarter said. “But I tell you what, mate. I’ll lower my gun here—” McCarter gestured gently with the Kalashnikov “—and you let that girl go. There’s no need to hurt her. She’s done nothing to you, now, has she?”

“You let me go,” the man said, pressing the pistol harder against his captive’s temple. “I kill her. You see. I kill her.”

“That’s really not a good idea,” McCarter said. He placed the Kalashnikov on the floor. “You see? Completely unnecessary. My gun is down. Nobody’s trying to hurt you. Just let her go and you can walk downstairs.”

“No,” the man said. “You not alone. You all let me go.”

“Bloody hell,” McCarter muttered again. This one was not stupid, for all his other abundantly evident personal failings. More loudly, he said, “All right. Now look, friend, I’m sure we can come to an understanding—”

In midsentence, McCarter’s hand closed around the butt of the Hi-Power in its holster on his web belt. The gun came up, rattlesnake fast, and McCarter snapped off a shot that took the gunman between the eyes. His head snapped back. The 1911, and the dead man, hung there for a moment as if gravity was suspended…and then both the corpse and the pistol in its hand hit the ground, leaving the shocked girl standing there without a stitch on.

It only took her a few seconds to start screaming.

“Easy,” McCarter said again. “Easy. It’s over. It’s over.” He grabbed her and pulled her to him. “It’s all over now….”

The pearl-handled switchblade the girl had been hiding behind her back came up and snapped open. McCarter, who had been waiting for that, simply side-stepped and popped her under the jaw with a closed fist. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she folded, falling onto the now bloody mattress.

“David,” Manning said from behind him. “Are you all right?”

“Right as rain,” McCarter said, looking down and shaking his head. “Mind the girl, here. She’s one of them, or near enough.” He bent, folded the switchblade and pocketed it.

“I saw,” Manning said. “How did you know?”

“Kept that one arm behind her back even after he went down.” McCarter jerked his head to the dead gunman. “Probably figured to stick me after I gave in to his demands.”

“Triangle operative, you think?” Manning asked.

“No,” McCarter said, “not necessarily. Doesn’t appear to have been treated like just one of the boys, now, does she?” He regarded the unconscious woman as Manning gently rolled her over, wrapped her in a sheet from the bed and secured her wrists and ankles with zip-tie cuffs. “Probably just a local. Threw in her lot willingly with this bunch. Doesn’t matter. Let’s see if there’s anything to see.”

They searched the structure, then paired off in teams while Hawkins guarded the prisoners. Two at a time, they searched what was left of the burning camp, moving as quickly as possible. They found drugs, weapons and paraphernalia relating to both, but no additional intelligence and nothing that could be used against the Triangle.

“All right, lads,” McCarter said, signaling to Grimaldi, who was hovering around in close support. “Let’s clear out. Burn as we go, by the numbers. Move.”

Each team member had incendiary grenades. As they withdrew from the camp, they threw these into any structures not already on fire or otherwise destroyed. The dull, hissing thumps of the grenades going off was followed by the red-orange glow of the chemical flames they spread.

“Everyone to the evac point,” McCarter said.

“Meet you at the airfield, gentlemen,” Grimaldi said. He dipped the nose of the Cobra in salute once, then again, and then was flying away.

“Let’s hope those truck jockeys are where we told them to meet us,” Encizo said.

“Two to one says they’ve cleared out,” James put in, “rather than get caught in whatever heavy stuff they’ll figure is going down.”

“No bet there.” Encizo shook his head.

“Can the chatter, lads,” McCarter said. “If they’re not there, we’ll have a long hike to the airfield. Come on, people. Move.”

“Great,” Encizo said.

Manning smiled, shook his head and took off in the lead, setting a grueling pace.

“Well,” James said, nodding after the Canadian, “you going to let him show you up like that?”

“Bloody hell,” McCarter groused.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Southern Tier of New York State

The rutted dirt road turned and twisted, the rented Suburban bounced and jolted despite its heavy-duty suspension and four-wheel drive.

“We’re approaching the target coordinates now,” Lyons said into his secure satellite phone.

“I’m uploading all of the satellite imagery we have to your phones,” Barbara Price told him. Mission data would be sent to each team member’s wireless unit; they would study the satellite images before making their run.

“You’re certain we’re on the right track?” Lyons asked for the third time.

“Yes, Carl,” Price told him. “NetScythe’s analysis of satellite imaging of that area has resulted in several clusters of probable hits,” she explained. “The chain is a long one and took several hundred hours of data mining to establish, but the Triangle is running at least one chain of drug shipments from New Jersey to the target location, and back again. Multiple distribution points run from that location, too. The satellite data definitely supports your location as a hub of the Triangle’s network.”

“And we’re facing what in terms of opposition?”

“More than likely,” Price said, “a local biker gang reportedly up to its chrome exhaust pipes in the local drug trade. The Grubs, according to what I have here. There have been quite a few reports fired at local, regional and state levels concerning them and their activities, but so far New York’s attorney general hasn’t managed to nail them down, and neither have the Feds.”

“Grubs. Catchy name.”

“Very,” Price said.

“How big?”

“No definite numbers,” Price said, “but there are quite a few bodies on the ground. Unless it’s a racetrack or an amusement park, you can assume anywhere from a dozen to two or three times that number. Completely speculative.”

“Wonderful,” Lyons said. “All right. Just wanted to be sure. Give Hal my love.”

Price laughed. “I might just do that.”

“Able, out,” Lyons said. He closed the connection.

“I always knew you two had something going on,” Schwarz said absently. He was examining the data the Farm had sent to each man’s phone. Blancanales was driving, so Schwarz quickly and quietly gave him a rundown of what they were facing. Lyons brought up the data on his own wireless unit and listened in as Schwarz spoke.

“Okay, Pol, we’ve got a main building here, a double-wide, in the center of this clearing,” Schwarz explained. Lyons examined the photographs provided by the Farm. They were enhanced shots taken from space, the detail provided by NetScythe reportedly enhanced, according to the notation, using the amazing device’s programming logic. “Outlying trailers here and here.” Lyons found the two structures as Schwarz described them. “According to the heat-signature analysis, the double-wide is the cookhouse, almost certainly crystal meth, if local law-enforcement reports are any hint. One of the outlying trailers may be storage for drugs, or may not be. One of them is most certainly the primary residence, where most of the personnel on-site congregate during the evenings. That much is verified by the heat clusters.”

“Bet it smells wonderful,” Lyons grumbled.

“I’ll bet it does, at that.” Schwarz smiled then turned more serious, all business where the work itself was concerned. “How do you want to play it, Ironman?”

“You and Pol,” Lyons said, “will use the cover of the trees surrounding the property, work your way around to either side. West and east. I’m going to take the truck straight down the middle, up the road and to their front door.”

“Uh, Ironman…” Pol started.

“Yeah?”

“Won’t that mean they’ll start shooting at you almost immediately?”

“It might. So?”

“Well, all right. Never mind, then.” Blancanales shrugged.

“On my go,” Lyons said as if the interruption had never occurred, “you’ll move in on the cookhouse. I’ll try to recon the storage trailer and take out the residence trailer while you do that. Expect resistance around and in the cookhouse to be the worst. There’ll probably be plenty of guards.”

“Probably?” Schwarz asked.

“Shut up,” Lyons said automatically. “All right, no sense delaying the inevitable. Let’s hit it.”

Blancanales sped up as much as he dared, bringing the Suburban through the curves in sprays of dust and gravel. When, according to their GPS unit, they were just short of the clearing in which the target trailers stood, Lyons signaled Blancanales to bring the truck to a stop.

“All right,” Lyons said. “Everybody out.”

Blancanales removed an AR-15 from the back of the truck. It would be his primary contact weapon for the operation. Schwarz checked the 20-round magazine in his 93-R machine pistol.

“Ironman,” Schwarz said, looking up at the big blond former cop as the man took the wheel of the Suburban, “be careful.”

“Never,” Lyons said.

“One of these days,” Schwarz started.

“One of these days, nothing,” Blancanales shot back. “He’s indestructible.”

“Wish I was.” Schwarz grinned.

“Go,” Blancanales said. Schwarz nodded. The two men split up, working their way through the trees that surrounded the property.

“Wish I was, too,” Lyons said to no one. He tromped the gas pedal and the Suburban shot forward, the big engine growling.

“Keep it tight, guys,” he said over his transceiver link.

“Got it,” Schwarz said.

“Will do,” Blancanales acknowledged.

Lyons did not have to drive far before he cleared the trees. Emerging at the opening to the clearing, he was confronted by a pair of leather-clad bikers sitting on elaborately chromed choppers. The motorcycles were parked across the dirt road, nose to nose. The men sitting on them were in their midtwenties to early thirties, greasy and unkempt, but the predatory air about them was unmistakable. Lyons saw no weapons, but both wore leather jackets that could conceal just about anything short of a rifle or full-size shotgun.

One of them came up along the driver’s side of the Suburban. Lyons rolled down the window.

“You lost, asshole?” the biker demanded.

“No,” Lyons said. He was very conscious of the other man at the nose of the truck.

“Then you’d best turn your ass around and get the hell out of here, hadn’t you?” the biker at his window said. He reached into his coat.

“You should probably get down on the ground,” Lyons said calmly. “Your friend, too. I’m a federal agent.”

“Oh, really?” the biker asked. He seemed to think that was funny.

“No, really,” Lyons said conversationally. “I’m with the Justice Department.” He held up the credentials he had plucked from his pocket while driving up. “See?”

“Oh, damn it all to—” He clawed a revolver from under his jacket, bringing it up to shoot Lyons in the head.

“Yeah,” Lyons said. The big ex-cop was faster. His Python was already pointing out the window of the truck. It spoke once, with authority, and the biker fell dead with a .357 Magnum bullet hole in his forehead.

Lyons stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The big Suburban pushed the other biker over. He went down screaming, still trying to pull his own gun, as Lyons simply drove over him. The two choppers were more of an obstacle, but the big Suburban powered over those, too, leaving behind bent and twisted chrome as it fought for traction in the dirt.

“Shots fired, shots fired,” Lyons said. “The Grubs drew down on me,” he reported to his teammates, “so assume armed and dangerous. I’ve taken two and am headed toward the buildings now.”

“Roger,” Schwarz said.

“Coming at you,” Blancanales said.

Lyons rolled up to the trailer designated on their intelligence files as the residence building. He leaped from the Suburban, his Daewoo USAS-12 automatic shotgun at the ready with a 20-round drum magazine in place. Several motorcycles were parked in front of the trailer, as well as an old Ford pickup. Lyons ignored the vehicles. With one combat-booted foot, he kicked open the door to the trailer.

The gunfire that poured out was so heavy that he was forced to leap away, landing on his back in the mud in front of the trailer door. The men rushing to kill him, bikers all, were so eager to shoot him that one of them managed to put a bullet in the back of another. That biker fell dead at Lyons’s feet, the Grubs colors on his vest spattered red with his blood.

Lyons fired from his back, hosing the doorway with double-aught buckshot. Men screamed and died.

The big ex-cop pushed himself up and through the doorway, the shotgun leading. He poured on the fire as he encountered several more bikers, some only half dressed as they were roused from fetid bunks by the fighting. Return fire devastated the cluttered, garbage-strewed trailer all around him, but none of it found the Able Team leader. Yet another biker died as a result of friendly fire, however, when Lyons dodged his clumsy knife attack and then yanked the man in front of him to play the part of human shield.

“Knife to a gunfight, pal,” Lyons muttered before firing out the drum of the USAS-12 from behind the dead man.

The small, dark-skinned man moved so fast that Lyons almost didn’t see him until it was too late. Levering the corpse off himself and bringing the shotgun up to acquire the next target, Lyons felt the shock transmitted through his big hands as the smaller man dived from hiding behind one of the bunks that lined the walls of the narrow trailer. He slapped the barrel of the shotgun so hard that Lyons’s palms stung. The weapon was levered from his grasp as the small man snapped a brutal kick into Lyons’s shin and then unleashed a hail of blows with his fists.

Lyons released the shotgun rather than fight for it. He deflected most of the punches, though a few got through and very nearly rocked him. His opponent was small, but all wiry muscle, and he packed a hell of a punch in his small frame.

Lyons got a good look at the man’s face as they fought.

Thawan.

He’d had his doubts as to NetScythe’s ability to point them to targets ahead of the curve. He’d even entertained the notion that they might have stumbled on a local meth gang completely unrelated to the Triangle. The presence of Mok Thawan here, however, clinched it. They were definitely dealing with the Triangle.

Lyons threw a powerful front kick that staggered Thawan. In that instance, Lyons knew that, ultimately, he could take the little bastard if it came to that. It wouldn’t be easy, especially in this confined space, but he thought perhaps he could do the job. He came in, angling for a decent shot. Just one edge of a hand to the neck or a leopard’s paw to the throat and Thawan would be on the floor of the trailer, fighting to breathe. That was all it would take.

The glittering blade of the balisong flashed out and nearly caught Lyons in the face. He fought for room to draw the Python. Thawan anticipated that and slashed him in the arm as he tried to draw the gun, slamming a vicious elbow into Lyons’s midsection as he followed through. Then he was past Lyons and running from the trailer.

“I’ve got Thawan!” Lyons shouted. “He’s running from the residence!”

“Tied up here!” Blancanales shouted back. Lyons could hear the gunfire coming from the cookhouse. The firefight sounded ugly.

“Pinned,” Schwarz reported. “We can take them but we won’t be able to get to you.”

“On it,” Lyons said. He was already running as they talked, scooping up the USAS-12 and bulling his way through the trailer door.

The flash of light that accompanied the blow to his face was so sudden he thought he’d been shot. As his vision turned gray and he began to feel himself falling off the edge of the world, he heard a mocking voice.

“Gun to a knife fight, pal.”

He reached out, wanting to wrap his fingers around Thawan’s throat, hoping to stop the man then and there despite whatever injury had felled him. Then everything was receding and he could feel and hear nothing more….

THE VOLATILE CHEMICALS of a meth amphetamine cookhouse, Schwarz knew, meant that a firefight in a meth lab was a very iffy proposition. Fortunately for him and Blancanales, however, they’d caught the bikers in between runs of the chemical. They had been transferring a completed batch from the cookhouse to the storage trailer when the two Phoenix Force soldiers initiated their hit.

“On your left!” Schwarz called out. He triggered a pair of 3-round bursts from the Beretta 93-R and watched as the two men converging on Blancanales’s position fell where they stood. They were using the heavy workbenches in the cookhouse for cover, hoping that none of the chemicals or equipment on top of those benches suddenly exploded or set fire to the entire trailer. In addition to the bikers they’d seen and dispatched, there were several men who were clearly not Americans. Both Stony Man team members shot several operatives who, from their size and skin tone, could very likely be Triangle operatives from Thailand or Myanmar.

“Come on,” Blancanales said, finally luring the last of the cookhouse guards into the opening and putting a 5.56 bullet in the center of the man’s face. “We’ve got to help Carl!”

“I hear you.” Schwarz nodded. The two men made a cursory sweep of what was left of the cookhouse trailer, making sure no armed men still hid within. They came under fire as soon as they tried to leave, however. There was a shooter on the roof of the residence trailer.

“Sniper!” Schwarz warned.

As bullets ripped into the front of the cookhouse around the door frame, Blancanales very calmly assumed a shooter’s crouch on one knee. He brought the AR-15 to his shoulder and, very carefully, took aim. The gunner was just beginning to track his shots in toward Blancanales when the Politician’s rifle fired. The single shot did its deadly work; the shooter on the roof grunted and was still.