Primary Directive

Blancanales brought the SUV to a rocking halt on the shoulder of the road, and Lyons burst from the vehicle. He reached the side of the semitrailer in less than ten seconds, approaching from the driver’s side. The Able Team leader knelt and raised the Atchisson to his shoulder. The driver’s door opened and a young, Arab-looking male dropped from the tractor-trailer with an AKSU machine pistol in his hands. He never got a chance to use it. Lyons squeezed the trigger and delivered a blast that blew off the terrorist’s lower leg at the knee. The AKSU flew from the terrorist’s fingers and skittered off the shoulder into a steep ditch.

Blancanales went EVA in time to see a terrorist drop from the passenger side just as one of the escort sedans ground to a stop in the middle of the outside lane. Four agents leaped out, pistols in the hands of three, while a fourth toted a short-barreled Remington 870 shotgun. Blancanales saw the automatic rifle in the terrorist’s hands before the marshals did, but his shouted warning came a moment too late. The terrorist leveled an Israeli-made Galil and triggered a sustained burst. The two marshals who had occupied the front seats fell immediately under the onslaught of 7.62 mm lead.

Blancanales whipped out his P-239 and drilled the terrorist with a double tap.

A torrent of autofire buzzed past his head, a few striking the SUV with a metallic clang. The Able Team warrior turned in surprise to see a panel van parked on the inside shoulder of the divided highway, half a dozen terrorists firing on him and the marshals. Blancanales turned and dived inside the SUV, crawling over the console and rolling out the passenger door in a moment of self-preservation. He looked over just in time to see Lyons jump into the cab of the tractor-trailer.

What the hell was he doing? Didn’t he realize they had come under fire? Then Blancanales heard the engine roar to life and he grinned.

C ARL L YONS SLAPPED the wheel of the semitruck in victory as the engine roared to life. He took in the shift pattern diagram at a glance, then dropped the pneumatic-assisted shift lever into Reverse and engaged the accelerator as he used the vertical steering handle to whip the wheel in the opposite direction he wanted to move the trailer. The tractor-trailer lurched into life. Lyons alternated between his rearview mirrors as he moved the trailer into position between the terrorists in the grassy divider and their SUV. Lyons mused how kind it had been of the terrorists to provide such a barricade.

As he heard the rounds begin to strike the back of the trailer another idea popped into his mind. Lyons continued spinning the wheel hard to the left until he could see the terrorist’s panel van appear in his driver-side mirror. Then he moved in the opposite direction and poured on the speed. A moment later he was rewarded with the sound of metal crunching metal as he backed the trailer down the shallow embankment of the divider and directly into the front fender of the panel van. The trailer continued backward until it rode over the hood of the van’s front pickup chassis and crashed into the A-post, effectively crushing the cab of the vehicle.

Lyons leaped from the cab and yelled at the remaining U.S. marshals to get in their vehicle and get out of there. The men complied, and Lyons then called into the lapel microphone of the radio that the team should continue to the safe house. Idiots. Instead of doing their job—protecting the scientists and seeing them safely from points A to B—they were out here with what amounted to popguns trading shots with a crew of hardened al Qaeda terrorists armed to the teeth with automatic weapons.

Lyons stood by as the pair of sedans blasted down the right lane under cover of the semitrailer while Blancanales kept heads down with a barrage of rounds from his pistol. Once they were safely clear, Lyons joined Blancanales behind the cover of the SUV, trading his Atchisson Assault 12 with an M-16/M-203 combo from the floor of the backseat. He passed an M-16 assault rifle to Blancanales.

Lyons reached into the satchel on the seat, withdrew a 40 mm high-explosive grenade and loaded the launcher. Through clenched teeth he told Blancanales, “Time for thunder.”

The Able Team leader flipped the leaf-sight into play, moved to the front of the SUV and broke cover by steadying the weapon on the hood. He acquired a point beneath the semitruck trailer where it met the panel van. The weapon kicked his shoulder, the grenade hitting ground zero and detonating a heartbeat later. Half the terrorists were unable to escape the unexpected delivery of high-explosive charges. Red-orange flames and thick, oily smoke kicked into the sky as the gasoline fumes from the panel-van engine ignited. The intense heat melted tires to pavement as well as flesh from bone.

The three terrorists who managed to escape decided that charging the fortified position of their opponents seemed like a safer strategy than waiting to be incinerated behind inadequate cover. Lyons and Blancanales dispatched the terrorists with unerring marksmanship.

The echo of reports died away and left only a thunderous silence in Lyons’s ringing ears. Neither man left his position for several minutes, although to the combat-weary pair it seemed like an hour. Finally, Lyons twirled his finger to signal his belief they were clear. The pair rose and Blancanales checked the three dead terrorists on the highway for identification while Lyons frisked the pair that had manned the semitruck.

“Nothing. No big surprise there,” Blancanales remarked.

“This also means al Qaeda has someone inside the government’s security net,” Lyons stated.

“We’d better let Hal and friends know as soon as possible.”

“And Gadgets.”

“N O , I UNDERSTAND ,” Hermann Schwarz said. “I’ll keep my eyes open. See you soon.”

Schwarz hung up the phone and sighed, then leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. His backside hurt, his muscles ached and his stomach growled for attention. The Able Team computer wizard looked at the thick, orange curtains as they bobbed in the breeze of the air-conditioning unit vents mounted into the wall below the window.

At some point it had grown dark outside. He climbed from his chair with a groan and went to the refrigerator of the hotel room they had set up for him about a mile off post. He didn’t like being here alone—especially not with his friends in the heat of the action without him—but Stony Man had decided it was better if he kept to himself for the time being. The unit members out of Fort Bliss assigned to work on End Zone were as vulnerable to attack from al Qaeda as the system creators, and they couldn’t afford to lose such a valuable member of the team. Schwarz remained a critical component in this operation given his familiarity with the system coupled with his expertise in electronic surveillance.

Schwarz removed some cold cuts and bread acquired from a nearby deli and went about the task of making a hoagie. After his lunch he got back to business. The system modifications had proved more difficult than he originally assessed but finally the algorithms were complete and he had transmitted them to Kurtzman. It was now basically in the hands of the Farm’s cybernetics experts to complete the original interface. That’s where the real expertise would come in. Schwarz didn’t try to be self-effacing about his abilities but he was generally a hardware man; Kurtzman, Carmen Delahunt, Akira Tokaido and Huntington Wethers were the main players in Stony Man’s technological arsenal, and a hell of an arsenal it was.

Schwarz added some notes to the schematics he’d been studying, then looked at his watch for the fourth time in an hour.

“Come on, Bear,” he muttered. “Call me back.” The harsh ring of the landline startled him and he studied the phone a second before picking it up. “Were your ears burning?”

“What’s that?” Kurtzman replied, although he caught the reference. “Sorry, it took a little more time than I thought.”

“Understood.”

“You got the call from Ironman?”

“Yeah,” Schwarz replied. “Just hung up maybe twenty minutes ago.”

“Barb told me you should be extra careful,” Kurtzman said.

“Tell Mommy I’m fine. Really.”

Kurtzman paused for effect. “Maybe I’ll leave you to tell her that.”

“Chicken.”

“No, smart.”

Schwarz chuckled. “Okay, so give me the scoop.”

“All right, we ran your computations through our database. I also had Akira program some additional software algorithms into the graphics-rendering engine, so that should help you with the analysis part.

“Your idea to mount the tracking domes to the sides and top of that van and run them from a multibattery-supplied power unit’s brilliant. You can then pipe the wireless signal back to us as you follow the designated route and we’ll get that data into the system pronto.”

“How long do you think it will take us to pinpoint their base of operations?”

“Well, if our logistical calculations are correct about what’s a practical geographic boundary for al Qaeda to operate in, I’d be willing to say we can find them within a two-mile square radius in less than eight hours.”

Schwarz whistled his amazement. “Not bad at all, Bear!”

“We aim to please.”

“What about the operation itself? You guys got any further developments on that?”

“Barb’s still running down possible angles that could give us a better idea of Bari’s movements over the past few months, but you already know we’re not sure how soon that will develop some tangible leads, if ever. She did want me to tell you we think he left Washington, D.C., by private transportation headed for Chicago where he then got on the train for Albuquerque.”

“So there’s little doubt he’s heading up this operation.”

“Right.”

“Okay then.” Schwarz sighed. “I’ll get my equipment gathered up and get it transferred to the van. Then I guess it’s wait on Ironman and Pol.”

“When are they scheduled to be there?”

“Ironman said he thought shortly after midnight.”

“Well, you just watch it until then.”

“Okay,” Schwarz replied. “Oh…and, Bear?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell Barb and Hal—No, check that. Ask them to get rid of the watch detail parked outside my motel. I’m sure they’re attracting more attention than helping and I don’t really need a babysitter.”

“I’ll pass the word but I can’t promise they’ll do it.”

“Understood, and thanks. Out, here.”

Schwarz disconnected the call and stared at the phone for a minute. An old clock on the wall ticked through the seconds—loud and annoying in the silence of the room. Schwarz reached his arms overhead, stretched and yawned, then closed the lid on his laptop and disconnected the cord attached to the unit power adapter from the wall socket.

He stood and pulled back the edge of the curtain to check on the two federal agents in the unmarked sedan he’d spotted parked there on his arrival early that afternoon. He didn’t know which agency they were with. NSA? U.S. Marshals Service? Military Intelligence? The sedan sat in the same place, but Schwarz couldn’t see the faces of the occupants because they were beneath a streetlight and the light reflected off the windshield. He let the curtain fall back and returned his attention to his laptop.

Schwarz lifted the computer from the table and then froze. Two trained agents who were assigned to a protection detail would never park their sedan under a streetlight. It would give any enemy observers the advantage because they could see the target was under observation and come up with some alternate plan, not to mention the fact it put the agents at risk.

Schwarz dropped the laptop and rushed to the front door. It swung inward with swift and violent force, and the edge caught Schwarz unawares in the shoulder. He bounced off it like a tennis ball. The Able Team warrior staggered backward but training took over and he rolled onto his back and kicked his right leg over his left shoulder as he tucked chin to chest. He continued through the backroll and came upright on one knee as four al Qaeda thugs charged through the doorway.

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