Sky Sentinels

Never a good thing.

As silence returned to the plateau, the Phoenix Force leader looked back at the Rat again. “Any idea who we’re facing?” he asked.

“My guess would be brigands,” Spengha said. “Iranian soldiers would have come down the trail en masse. And the Kurds are farther to the south. At least I think they are.”

“How old is that bit of intel, mate?” McCarter asked.

“Two days,” the Rat said.

McCarter’s teeth tightened as he blew air out between them. Two days was like an eternity when it came to war. More than enough time for the entire picture to change. The Kurds might have moved north during that time. And he wasn’t so sure about the Iranian regulars, either. Iran’s red-scarfed Revolutionary Guard—the troops Lyons and his men were now facing back in the States—actually outnumbered the country’s regular army both in size and influence.

So he wasn’t nearly as sure that they weren’t facing legitimate Iranian soldiers as the Rat seemed to be.

McCarter had been wearing a black floppy boonie hat during the climb. But now he yanked it from his head. Draping it over the barrel of his M-16, he slowly poked the hat up over the boulder.

Almost as soon as it became visible from behind cover, a shot rang out. The hat twirled on the rifle barrel before he pulled the rifle back down beside him. “Well,” he said more to himself than to the Rat, “whoever they are, they’re still there.”

The Rat nodded his head vigorously. “We must go back,” he said. “We will get killed if we try to continue.”

“We’re not going back,” the Phoenix Force leader said. “We’re going into Iran, we’re going to find the hostages, we’re going to get them out safely and we’re going to find out if that little wanker of a president really does have nuclear weapons.” He looked the Rat in the eyes. “Now, you stay here.”

Without waiting for any sort of reply, David McCarter dived away from the boulder and rolled across the plateau toward where Calvin James had taken cover behind another large boulder. He threw a wild 3-round burst toward the enemy as he rolled, and felt the heat of return rounds sizzle past his body as he moved.

But a moment later he was safely ensconced behind the same rock as James.

The gunfire continued for a moment, then settled down again.

“Cal,” McCarter said as he rose to a sitting position next to James, “I believe we have a job for a man of just your talents.”

The well-trimmed mustache on the black Phoenix Force commando’s face spread wide into a smile.

He already had the twelve-inch blade of his double-edged Crossada out of its Kydex sheath.

C ALVIN T HOMAS J AMES had grown up on Chicago’s South Side where knife fighting was more important than any subject or sport offered by the school system. It was a matter of survival. You either got good or died trying.

And while he had plenty of scars to remind him of past altercations, Calvin James was still alive.

Slowly, the Phoenix Force warrior descended back down the rocks, staying out of sight below the plateau where the other men were still lurking. He knew he had to stay invisible if he was to be successful on this private mission McCarter had just handed him.

James was counting on the enemy staying focused on the plateau. He just needed to move far enough to the side that he could navigate his way up the mountain until he located and identified them.

Finally, when his instincts told him he was low enough to be out of sight, James moved to the left side of the mountain pass, then slowly began to scale the side of the mountain. His eyes stayed one step ahead of his body, always searching for the next hand- and foothold, be it a crevice in the rocky mass or the stub of a tree lacking enough water to grow to its full potential. Every so often, he came to a ledge wide enough to stand on, and he used such places as rest stops, keeping a close look at the chronograph on his wrist and forcing himself to wait a full two minutes before moving on.

It was a true test of strength, skill and patience but soon he had drawn even with the small plateau from which he’d started. Here and there, he could see an arm or leg among the rocks, and knew they belonged to one of his Phoenix Force brothers. But they weren’t moving. And there still had been no gunfire since he’d left.

James moved on, the muscles in his shoulders and arms beginning to pump now as blood rushed into them and his legs. When he came to another ledge wide enough for a breather, James looked back down to see that the rest of the men of Phoenix Force and the Rat were completely out of sight. He had begun timing the rest stop when a pebble rolled down the side of the mountain and bounced off his head before falling on.

James looked up to see the boots and pant legs of a man ten feet above him and perhaps a yard to his right. Above the pants, the man wore a brightly striped robe that was cinched at the waist by a gun belt.

James froze in place.

The enemy was using the same strategy that he was. The only difference was that their recon man was coming down the side of the mountain instead of going up.

James watched closely as the man descended toward the same small ledge upon which he was standing. Luckily, the head above the robe was looking over his right shoulder as he made his way down, and appeared totally oblivious to the fact that James was even there.

So the Phoenix Force knife expert slowly withdrew the Crossada from its Kydex sheath, hoping the inevitable swooshing sound it made would not be loud enough to catch the ears of the man above him.

While the swoosh sounded as loud as a tornado in James’s mind, it went unnoticed.

The Phoenix Force warrior waited until the man had both feet on the ledge before moving a step to his right and hooking the Crossada around his throat. Pulling him in tightly, he whispered, “I hope you speak English. Because if you make any sound at all, it’ll be a race to see if you bleed to death before you get killed by the fall you’ll also be taking.”

The man remained silent.

“Okay,” James said, pressing the razor edge of the huge fighting knife a little harder into the man’s throat. “In the quietest voice you can possibly muster up, tell me if you speak English.”

“I speak English,” the man whispered in a jittery voice.

“Good,” James said. “Then tell me who you are.”

“We are what you call Kurds,” said the man, his voice still shaking. “And we thought you were either Iraqi or Iranian troops. Which is confusing because we are now speaking English and your voice sounds American.”

James hesitated a moment, then slowly withdrew the knife from the man’s throat and sheathed it once again. He turned the Kurd around to face him, and shook the man’s hand. “We are Americans,” he said. “At least, I am. But we’ve got a Canadian and Englishman along with us, too. We’re an international force, and we’re not after you.”

The man still looked frightened and skeptical. “So, what do we do?” he said.

James frowned for a moment, then said, “How far away are the rest of your men?”

The Kurd’s dark brown eyes looked directly into those of Calvin James. “Not far,” he said. Then, guessing at what James already had in mind, he said, “They will be able to hear me if I shout.”

“Then shout your little heart out,” said James. “Tell them we’re friendlies, and we want a meeting with your leader.” He paused for a moment, drawing in a breath of the thinning mountain air. “But first, what’s your name?”

“My name is Mehrzad” the Kurd said.

“I’m James,” the Phoenix Force warrior said, then shook the man’s hand again to ensure that he knew they were, indeed friendly. “Now, call out to your men.”

Mehrzad’s voice cracked slightly as he shouted out in a dialect of Arabic. Silence followed his words, then a voice called down the mountain.

After the next exchange, James said, “My turn.” Looking down toward the plateau where his fellow warriors waited, he yelled, “These are Kurds, guys. They thought we were Iranian or Iraqi.”

“I’m not sure which is the bigger insult,” McCarter’s voice called up the mountain.

“I say we kill them just for that,” Hawkins drawled.

“Some of them speak English, Hawk,” James yelled back. “And they may take you literally and not understand that you’re making a joke.” He raised his voice even louder on the word “joke” in case other English-speaking Kurds above had heard the exchange. T. J. Hawkins was Phoenix Force’s newest member, and while he was as good at fighting as any of them, he occasionally let a careless sentence slip out of his mouth.

McCarter’s voice came up the mountain again. “Tell them we’re laying our rifles down, Cal. And ask them to come on down to meet us on the plateau.”

“I heard him,” Mehrzad said. Then the Kurd translated the Phoenix Force leader’s words in a loud voice.

Above, James heard low mumbling and grumbling as the Kurds tried to decide if he and the rest of these strangers could be trusted. Mehrzad spoke again, then James watched as the members of Phoenix Force rose from behind the boulders and laid their M-16s against the rocks, finally stepping out into full view.

A few moments passed, then the heads of more Kurds began to appear above them. They all moved toward the pathway that led to the plateau.

James realized he had been less than ten yards below where several men had been hiding behind an outcropping in the rocks. If Mehrzad had not come down the mountain first, James would have been filled with automatic fire as soon as he’d climbed even a few more feet.

Calvin James raised his eyes toward the sky and grinned from ear to ear. “Thanks,” he said.

Then he and Mehrzad made their way across the mountain to join the rest of the Kurds going down to meet Phoenix Force on the plateau.

C ARL L YONS leaned back in his reclining chair on board the Concorde and pressed a button on the control panel to his side, answering the call from Hal Brognola. “Lyons here, go ahead. We’re all listening. Where are you?”

“I’m on my way back from dropping Phoenix Force off in Iraq,” Brognola explained. “Here are the facts as they stand right now. Another squadron of Pasdarans have taken over an entire shopping mall on the Kansas side of Kansas City. There’s no runway close by that even Grimaldi can set the Concorde down on, so I’ve arranged for a Kansas City chopper to be ready for you when you set down at Kansas City International.”

“Great,” Lyons said. “But I want Jack flying it.”

“I’ve pulled some strings and arranged that, too,” Brognola said over the speakerphone. “They weren’t all that happy about turning their bird over to somebody they didn’t know. But I convinced them it was a good idea.”

Lyons chuckled under his breath. Hal Brognola had the ear of the President any time he wanted it, and he suspected the Stony Man director might have had the Man call himself. “How long ago did they take the mall over, Hal?” he asked.

“Shortly after 1300 hours,” Brognola said. “It’s Sunday, so it hadn’t opened until noon. They gave it an hour to fill up with customers—a lot of them churchgoers who’d stopped in on their way home from services. The first communication to the KCPD came in at 1312.”

“You suppose they did that on purpose?” Lyons asked.

“I’m certain of it,” Brognola said. “They told the KC cops that themselves.”

As the Concorde flew on, Lyons frowned. “Did they have demands or was it like the church—just bleed the news media for all the publicity they can and then kill everyone including themselves?”

“No, they actually had one demand this time,” Bro gnola replied.

Lyons waited to hear it.

“They want every Muslim prisoner in county jails, state and federal penitentiaries all over the country released,” he said.

“They aren’t asking much, then,” Lyons said sarcastically.

Brognola snorted over the line. “That’s sort of the way the Man looked at it.” He paused, then went on. “We know that they know that nothing of that sort is going to happen. Even if it did, they’d just wait and then carry on with what they’ve begun at the mall.”

“What does the Iranian president say?” Lyons asked.

“Javid Azria isn’t making any excuses. He openly admits that these are all official Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen who’ve snuck into the country over the last few weeks and are now carrying out his specific orders.”

“He’s asking for war,” Lyons said.

“No doubt about it,” Brognola came back.

“That madman can’t believe he’s got a chance of winning against the U.S.,” Lyons said.

“No,” Brognola agreed. “But the joint chiefs are in session and they think they’ve figured out what Azria’s large picture looks like.”

“And?” Lyons urged.

“Azria has vowed to wipe Israel off the map,” Brognola said. “That’s a direct quote.”

Lyons snorted sarcastically again. “Minor change from the old ‘push them into the sea’ threat we’ve been getting since the end of World War II,” he said.

“Well,” Brognola said, “this time it looks like they plan to carry through with the threat. Like I was about to say, the joint chiefs are all in agreement that Iran intends to force America’s hand. They’re prepared to take massive air strikes just like Afghanistan and Iraq did in order to draw us in, then bog us down on the ground like we already are in those two countries.”

“Hundreds of thousands of Iranians who don’t have a thing to do with this are going to die if that happens, Hal,” the Able Team leader noted.

“I know that, the President knows that and so does Javid Azria. But he doesn’t care about that.” Brognola stopped talking long enough to take a breath, then went on. “Life’s cheap to him. All life except his own.”

“Okay,” said the Able Team leader. “Anything else we need to know?” He glanced out the window at the clouds below the Concorde as he waited for an answer.

“Yeah,” Brognola said. “Striker came across some interesting side intel in Bosnia. Evidently, there’s a Russian connection somewhere inside this whole mess.”

“A what connection?” Lyons wasn’t sure he’d heard right.

“You heard me correctly. Some kind of Russian connection.” The Stony Man director was chomping hard on the end of his stump of cigar. “Striker doesn’t know any more, and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with his own mission there. It was just something he picked up along the way and passed back to us in case it helped.”

“It helps confuse me even more than I already was,” said Lyons.

“Me, too,” Brognola said as Lyons felt the Concorde begin a rapid descent. “But it might start to make sense somewhere down the line.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Lyons said. “Anything else we need to know?”

“Probably a lot. But that’s all I have for now. I’m sure you’ll find out yourself when you get to K.C.”

“We’ll keep you informed,” Lyons said. “And thank Striker for me.” He disconnected the call.

The flight from Oklahoma City to Kansas City, Missouri, was almost an up-and-down hop for the Concorde, and Lyons saw that it was only a little past 1500 hours on his wrist. As they deplaned to the runway, they saw the marked KCPD helicopter waiting for them on the ground, blades whirling as it warmed up for flight.

In a way, it felt like Oklahoma City all over again. But the mall was going to get a lot more complex than the church had been. It was far bigger, and there were thousands more places for men—or explosives—to hide.

Jack Grimaldi was the last one out of the Concorde but he raced past the men of Able Team as Lyons, Schwarz and Blancanales began pulling equipment bags out of the storage compartment. Lyons saw the air ace say a few words to the KCPD pilot inside the chopper, and then the uniformed man reluctantly stepped down.

Grimaldi patted him on the shoulder as he took the man’s place at the controls.

It took a little less than four minutes for Grimaldi to get them over the tall downtown buildings of Kansas City, Missouri, to the Kansas border and then to Shawnee Mission, Kansas. Actually, Shawnee Mission was a region rather than a suburb, made up of several independent smaller towns that, if combined, would have taken over from Wichita as the state’s largest city.

“There’s the mall,” Grimaldi said, nodding toward the bubble windshield in front of him. “Carpenters Square.” He turned to glance at Lyons. “Want me to do a fly-over?”

Lyons nodded silently, frowning slightly as he looked out the side window of the chopper. Below, he saw what looked almost like a replay of the scene at the church they’d just come from. Blue-and-red lights whirled above both marked and unmarked squad cars, and the sirens were blasting so loud he could hear them all the way up in the helicopter. Most of the marked units were from Kansas, but some of the Missouri officers had crossed the state line as backup, too. Such was usually the case when a residential area spanned more than one jurisdiction—the cops on both sides knew each other and worked together frequently.

The mall itself appeared to be in a classic cross configuration, with two long hallways that intersected in the middle. At one end of the north-to-south hallway stood a large, three-story Dillard’s store. At the other was a JC Penney.

Kohl’s and Jan and Jeni’s Sportwear made up the tips of the other long strip of stores.

“Take her down a little lower,” Lyons told Grimaldi. “I want to get a look at the entrances and exits.”

Grimaldi nodded and dropped the bird in the air, hovering a few feet off the ground and almost directly in front of one of the entrances into Dillard’s. Through the glass, the Able Team leader could see several men with red scarves around their necks looking back at him. As he watched, one of them raised his AK-47 and fired.

But Jack Grimaldi had seen the man, too, and he twisted the chopper slightly in the air, not unlike a boxer sliding off a punch. The 7.62 mm bullet struck the windshield of the chopper and careened off, leaving only a tiny scratch in the glass to show where it had been.

That scratch was directly in front of Carl Lyons’s nose.

The radio suddenly blasted with screeching and scratching. Grimaldi adjusted the squelch as a stern voice said, “KBI-1 to Missouri chopper—whatever your call name is!”

Lyons lifted the radio microphone from where it was clipped below the control panel and said, “Just call us AT,” he said. “AT-1, 2 and 3. I’m 1.”

“Well, whoever you are, get your ass out of there,” said the same KBI voice. “They’ve just called and said if you don’t land or fly away they’ll ignite the whole mall right now!”

“Affirmative,” Lyons said. He nodded at Grimaldi, who immediately raised the helicopter straight up in the air. He glanced down at the mike, as if it might actually be the man he’d just talked to. Whoever the guy was, he sounded as if he was used to being obeyed.

Carl Lyons’s best guess was that KBI stood for Kansas Bureau of Investigation, a state investigative unit. And KBI-1 would undoubtedly be the director.

But he didn’t sound as if he was going to be as easy to get along with as Dwayne Langford had been back at the church.

“AT-1 to KBI-1,” Lyons said into the mike. “What’s your 10–20?”

“We’re set up at the edge of the parking lot, north side,” the surly voice came back. “There’s a place where you can land over here, and I’m ordering you to do just that right now!”

Grimaldi turned to the Able Team leader again. “Want me to land?” he asked.

Lyons nodded. “I’m not sure this clown’s ego could take it if we didn’t.”

Grimaldi laughed and turned the chopper that way.

A few seconds later they were coming down on the asphalt parking lot next to one of the SWAT vans parked around the mall. Lyons saw the same hectic activity that he’d seen outside the church in Oklahoma City, with flashing lights and sirens blaring, with every SWAT team and other unit anxious to get started but not knowing how or where.

As the chopper’s rails met the ground, a man in a dark blue shirt and bright red tie approached with a look of anger on his face. He reached out and opened Lyon’s door with one hand, and would have grabbed the Able Team leader by the arm and dragged him out if Lyons hadn’t intercepted his other hand first. Twisting the man’s wrist into a classic jujitsu hold, the Able Team leader watched the anger on the man’s face turn to a grimace of pain as he exited the chopper on his own.

“Well, we’re certainly off to a great start, aren’t we, Mr. KBI-1?” he said as he finally released the man’s hand.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation director was too proud to rub his wrist where it had come close to snapping, so he stood upright and at attention as he said, “Okay, you’re under arrest for resisting an officer.” He turned to look at Schwarz and Blancanales as they exited the helicopter behind Lyons. “What happens to you two remains to be seen.” He ran his eyes up and down the blacksuits all three Able Team warriors wore, looking for any trace of a patch or insignia.

But, of course, he found none.

“What in the hell kind of dress-up is that?” he demanded. “Who do you represent, anyway? You’re not Missouri cops. The chief would have called me himself.”

Lyons had faced such irritating bureaucrats throughout his entire former career as a LAPD officer. He had never had any patience for pompous little jackasses like this man then, and if there had been any change in his attitude at all, he had even less now. “I get one phone call, don’t I?” he said sarcastically, pulling the satellite phone from its case on his belt. Quickly he tapped in the number to Stony Man Farm. “Since you didn’t get a call from the Missouri chief, I’ll let you talk to our chief.”

“Right,” said the Kansas director with the same sarcastic tone the Able Team leader had used.

It took less than ten seconds for Lyons’s call to be transferred to Hal Brognola.

The man in the red tie frowned in confusion as he took the phone from Lyons. It didn’t take long for Brognola to read the riot act to the KBI director. “Yes, sir,” was all he said before his face turned red and he handed the instrument back to Lyons.

“Thanks, Hal,” the Able Team leader said, and then disconnected the line again.

“All right,” said the man Lyons knew only as KB-1. “My name is Markham. Bill Markham. What are your plans and how can we help?” The words sounded as if they hurt coming out of his mouth.

“You can give us a rundown of exactly what’s going on,” Lyons said. “Then, unless one of my men or I tell you different, you can stay out of our way.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Iranian president Javid Azria rolled up his prayer rug, nodded to the staff with whom he had shared afternoon prayers and returned to his office, closing the door behind him. Alone and out of sight, he tossed the rug carelessly onto a padded armchair as he moved behind his desk. As he dropped down into his chair, he felt a grin creeping across his face.

The entire United States, including their president, was still in shock. The Americans simply couldn’t fathom the fact that a country such as his own was openly defying and attacking them at will.

And rather than denying the attacks or blaming them on terrorists, Iran was taking credit for them.

Azria opened the humidor on his desk and took out a long, thick, Cuban cigar. Snipping off the end with a tiny guillotinelike cutter, he stuck the cigar in his mouth and picked up the heavy marble lighter on his desk next to the phone. The cigars had been a gift from his most recent ally, and although smoking was forbidden by the Koran, he liked the Cubans and indulged in one every afternoon and another in the evening. The rest of his staff studiously ignored this small transgression on his part.

As he circled the end of the cigar around the flame in front of him, Javid Azria’s eyes caught sight of the painting on the wall to his left. It depicted Cyrus the Great in battle, a long scimitar in his right hand as he beheaded what was obviously a Jewish peasant. The painting was, of course, an artist’s rendition. Photography had still been centuries away when Cyrus had ruled the Persian Empire, so no one really knew exactly what the man had looked like.