Terror Descending

The peninsula of Quintana Roo was mostly wild desert that stretched to white sandy beaches, occasionally punctuated with the crumbling ruins of Mayan temples perched atop low rocky cliffs. But that was Mexico; Cancun was as peaceful as Quintana Roo was savage.

“Time,” Hawkins reported, not bothering to check the watch under his sleeve.

Without shifting his sight, McCarter reached out to flip some switches, feathering the propellers and dropping two of the four airfoils. Instantly the huge plane slowed as if plowing into a wall of gelatin.

“Hundred feet…eighty…sixty…” Hawkins read off the altimeter. “Watch out—the freaking temple!”

“I saw it,” McCarter growled, speeding past the stone building and then dropping the last two flaps.

“Guess so, since we didn’t just eat sandstone,” Hawkins snorted, hitting a button on the intercom. “Hold on to your asses, boys, this is it. We’re going in!”

Fifty feet away, in the main body of the huge airplane, past a short flight of stairs, three men sat strapped into jumpseats, their camouflage-colored uniforms covered with military equipment.

“Roger that, Taxes.” Calvin James chuckled.

Over the intercom set into the arm of the jumpseat, Hawkins’s reply consisted mostly of four-letter words.

“Only if you buy me dinner first.” James laughed, a strong Chicago accent announcing his own native city.

Over six feet in height, the lanky man was classically good-looking, although oddly sporting a pencil-thin mustache like a movie star from the Roaring Twenties. Ready for battle the instant they touched down, James had an MP-5 submachine gun strapped across his chest and night-vision goggles at his side. A sleek 9 mm Beretta rode high on his chest in a combat holster, and a Randall Survival knife was at his side, the telltale blade of a Navy SEAL. Unlike the others, his camouflage paint was dull gray to mix with his naturally dark skin.

Surrounding the members of Phoenix Force were large pallets bolted directly to the deck, the stacks of equipment trunks lashed tightly into place. Parked fifty feet away at the rear of the plane was a Hummer, the heavy military vehicle tightly cocooned in a spiderweb of restraining belts. Ready for desert combat, the Hummer was painted a mottled array of dull colors, the headlights covered with night shields, and a M-249 SAW machine gun already attached to the firing stanchion, the breech open, the attached ammo box ready for action.

“And…welcome to Mexico!” McCarter announced over a wall speaker.

Instantly the plane shuddered as the wheels bounced off the hard desert sand. A spray of loose particles peppered the aft belly as the C-130 Hercules airplane rose slightly only to touch down once more. The plane shuddered again, then jerked hard and began to crazily jerk around as it bounced along the irregular ground. Everything loose went flying, and the three men in the jumpseats held on for dear life, not fully trusting the safety harnesses.

The noise of the sand hitting the underbelly of the plane grew to hurricane force, then the brakes engaged and the violent shaking rapidly eased until the gigantic craft came to an easy stop.

“Well, I’m delighted to see that correspondence course in flying is really working out well for David,” Rafael Encizo commented, working his jaw to see if any teeth were loose.

Gary Manning grinned, shrugging off his harness and pulling on a black knit cap, trying not to smear his tiger-stripe combat paint in the process.

Standing, Manning swung around a massive rifle. The bolt-action .50-caliber Barrett was a sniper rifle with a range of over a mile, the monstrous 700-grain bullets were the size of a cigar and fully capable of shooting through a brick wall. Many professional soldiers considered the deadly weapon a piece of field artillery, instead of merely a rifle.

“Good news, people,” McCarter announced from the top of the metal stairs. “Bear hacked into a Quest-Star comm sat and found the airfield. It’s five klicks due east, so leave the Hummer, we go on foot.”

“Low and quiet, just the way I like it,” Hawkins stated, appearing from the flight deck. An MP-5 was in his hands, and the plastic tube of a LAW rocket launcher was slung across his back. These days, many soldiers liked the reusable Armbrust, or SMAW, but the Stony Man team much preferred the one-shot LAW. Afterward, they simply tossed away the empty tube, which saved them a lot of time and trouble. Their covert missions were usually fast, furious and short. There was no supply line. They carried everything, which made every ounce saved vitally important.

Going to the side door, McCarter checked outside through the small observation port, then turned to nod at James. He killed the internal lights and McCarter swung open the door, going from darkness into the night. The others quickly followed, readying their weapons.

Gathering outside, the team members listened to the sounds of the desert for a moment, trusting their ears to tell them if anything hostile was in the vicinity. Silence in the middle of a forest or wild glade always meant the immediate presence of humans. Or a major predator. But savage men hidden in the desert were to be feared a lot more than any mountain lion or poisonous reptile.

Slowly, the insect life recovered from the rude arrival of the Hercules, and began to sing their songs once more. An owl hooted in the distance.

Swinging down his night-vision goggles, James dialed for infrared and scanned the vicinity, while Encizo did the same using the Starlite function. That mode augmented the natural illumination of the stars until the operator could see everything as clear as if it was day. The one drawback being that unless the surge protector was engaged, somebody lighting a match or turning on a flashlight, could blind the operator for several minutes until his eyes recovered, leaving him temporarily helpless.

“Clear,” James subvocalized into a throat mike, the word repeated in the earbuds of the rest of the team.

Turning off his goggles, Encizo gave a thumbs-up to the others.

Satisfied for the moment, McCarter flipped up the lid of the compass on his wrist to check directions, then snapped it shut and started off at a run.

The kilometers passed in total silence, the only sounds the soft patting of their combat boots on the dry sand. As expected, the Mexican desert was very chilly at that time of night. The terrible heat of the day had completely radiated away, leaving the landscape bitterly cold, and soon their breath began to fog. There were small chemical packs sewed into the lining of their ghillie suits that would start to generate a soothing warmth for hours if slapped. But the U.S. Marine Corp hot-packs would make the team members light up a thermal scan like fireworks, so the Stony Man operatives simply ignored the low temperatures and concentrated on moving across the desolate and inhospitable Quintana Roo peninsula.

Reaching a low dune, the team went flat and covered the next hundred yards on their bellies. Cresting the top, the Stony Man commandos tried not to disturb the young sage plants that grew thick from the sand, and looked down the other side using monoculars. The world turned black-and-white, the view crystal clear and wire sharp.

“Bingo,” McCarter whispered into his throat mike with grim satisfaction.

Spreading out in front of the men was a wide area of land that had been cleared of all plants. Off to the side were some old cinder-block buildings, the doors were riveted metal, the windows merely ventilation slits, and lots of sand, rocks and plants were piled high on top on the flat roof. Obviously it was protection from an aerial search.

More importantly, just outside the armored door a fire was crackling inside a fifty-five-gallon oil drum, holes cut into the sides to allow the light and heat to escape. Sitting on folding chairs, there were a couple of men in ponchos talking and smoking stubby cigars, assault rifles leaning against the cinder-block wall nearby. One of the rifles was a brand-new AK-101, the other was a much older AK-47. Obviously, one of the men was new and not given the better, more expensive weapon until having proved his worth.

However, the team members still frowned at the sight. Both of the Russian assault rifles were equipped with 30 mm grenade launchers and infrared night scopes, which could be real trouble.

The sound of metal hitting metal came from another cinder-block building; streamers of light escaped from the canvas sheet blocking the wide front door. More fifty-five-gallon drums were situated under a canvas awning, along with a small electric generator. The Stony Man commandos marked it as the garage. Then they spotted another canvas lump and identified it as the proper size and shape for a heavy machine gun, or maybe an auto-mortar. However, there was no way of telling where they were.

A small wooden shack was set off by itself, clearly identifying it as the outhouse. Several yards distant was a bare metal flagpole, the tattered remains of a windsock dangling limply. Even though it was reduced to rags, the old cloth could still give an incoming plane vital information on wind direction.

Just past the flagpole, cutting across the cleared area, was a wide strip of concrete, as incongruous a sight as a buffalo in a ballet. Smooth and flat, the disguised airstrip reached out of sight, and the members of Phoenix Force nodded in admiration at the sight of pictures of more plants and rocks painted onto the landing strip. Clever. More protection from visual tracking. The team could only see the concrete because of the angle and the silvery moonlight. Otherwise, it would have been nearly invisible.

“Hidden in plain sight,” Hawkins muttered, shifting his grip on the MP-5 to screw on an acoustic sound suppressor. “Same as the Airwolves.”

“How come so many criminals are smart enough to make more money honestly, than they ever would as crooks?” Encizo asked softly, attaching a suppressor to his own machine gun.

“Irony?” Manning replied coolly, now moving the crosshairs to mark his targets.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” James replied, sliding a fat 40 mm shell into the launcher attached under the main barrel of his MP-5 weapon. His heart was beating hard in his chest, and the soldier tried his best to regain a professional calm.

“Gary, get me a number on the runway,” McCarter asked, tucking his monocular into a cushioned pouch on his web belt.

“In a second,” Manning replied. Focusing the telescopic sights of the Barrett on the extreme end of the clear strip of land, the tiny digital display on the bottom of the scope gave him the precise distance. Now sweeping the crosshairs to the other end, he added the two readings.

“Ten thousand four hundred and nine feet,” Manning replied grimly, lowering the sniper rifle. “More than enough for a B-52 to land.”

“Or anything else this side of a NASA space shuttle,” Encizo agreed, leveling his MP-5. “Doesn’t mean they’re the terrorists, though. Might just be some drug smugglers.”

“David, want me to put a 40 mm shell into the fuel drums and set the place on fire?” Hawkins asked, resting a finger on the trigger of the grenade launcher.

“Think they’re stupid enough to store the fuel by itself,” McCarter asked skeptically, “and not mixed with the water supply to retard any fires?”

Lowering the weapon, Encizo almost smiled. “Maybe. We’ve seen it done before.”

Reluctantly, McCarter had to concede the point. A few years ago, Phoenix Force had encountered a splinter group of the Libyan Army of God and had put a warning shot into the fuel depot merely to start a blaze as a distraction. However, the previously unknown stockpile of ten thousand gallons of high-octane aviation fuel ignited, blowing the whole base off the map in a writhing fireball of gargantuan size. A genuine one-shot battle. It was a freak event, but the team members remembered it fondly.

The soft purr of a single-engine plane suddenly came from the north.

“That sounds like a Cessna,” Hawkins announced.

“From the sound of those two engines it can’t be much larger than a Skywagon or a Crusader,” James said with a scowl.

“Check the hills to the west,” McCarter brusquely ordered over the throat mike.

“Yep, good call, David. There’s activity in those foothills,” Encizo said, dialing for maximum computer augmentation on the monocular.

“Reinforcements?” Manning asked, swinging the ungainly Barrett in that direction and looking through the nightscope.

“No, just one guy…and he’s looking through Zeist field glasses at the airfield.”

Field glasses? Those were oversize binoculars much too heavy to carry into combat. They were only for a fixed observation point. “Think he’s Mexican Intelligence or CIA?” James asked tersely, his face lost in the cathedral of shadows caused by the moonlight through the tall sage plants.

“There’s no camera and no radio, and he’s got what looks like a…yes, that’s a Barrett Fifty slung across his back,” Encizo declared. “And there’s a Victory motorcycle parked nearby.”

“That’s no cop,” Hawkins stated.

“Not unless he recently won the lottery,” McCarter agreed with conviction. The Victory motorcycle was an expensive bike, mostly because it was one of the best in the world, which made it highly unlikely the man was a law-enforcement agent. However, the presence of the deadly Barrett was the clincher. There was no reason at all for any cop to be carrying a sniper rifle on a stakeout. The man had to be a guard, set to watch the airfield. And the only logical reason for that was to see who arrived to look for the Airwolves and to strike them down from above like Zeus, which might be to the Stony Man team’s advantage.

“Want me to take him out?” Manning asked coolly, lifting the Barrett into a firing stance.

“Not yet, we’re going to burn the rope,” McCarter said, activating the transceiver on his belt. “Rock House, this is Firebird, come in.”

“Roger, Firebird, this is Speed Racer,” a familiar voice replied. “Read you loud and clear. Ten-four.”

“Speed Racer, we need a blanket and right now,” McCarter stated roughly. “We’ve got incoming, and don’t want any outgoing. You savvy?”

There was a brief moment of static.

“Confirm, Firebird,” Kurtzman answered. “I see your Zeus on my Nasty sky eye.”

Nasty. That was this month’s code for the NSA. “Keep him safe and secure in case he rabbits. Confirm?”

“Roger wilco. Consider him deadlocked. Blanket ready to go. Duration?”

“Two should do. Repeat, two is fine.” Saying it twice, meant to hold the blanket for only half the time. If anybody was listening in, that would keep them off the air for two hours, while Phoenix Force could use the radio again in an hour. Every little bit helped.

“Confirm, Firebird. When do you want it delivered?”

“At your earliest convenience, Speed Racer,” McCarter said, but instantly a howling began to wail from his earbuds, and every member of the team involuntarily flinched, their hands racing to kill the com link.

Across the entire peninsula, no radio signals were going anywhere, every transmission killed by the powerful jamming field broadcast by Kurtzman from the equipment on board the Hercules. Not even cell phones would operate due to the additional interference of the Stony Man satellite in high Earth orbit.

Just then, a sleek Cessna Skywagon flew past the airfield, the pilot tripping the engines as identification. Down on the concrete airstrip, a bearded man waved a halogen flashlight and suddenly a double string of red lights appeared, edging both sides of the concrete to give the pilot a visual reference for a landing.

Swinging around, the Skywagon soon returned and touched down lightly, rolling to a stop near the rusty metal pole and bedraggled windsock.

Immediately a trio of armed men exited the cinder-block building. One of them was morbidly obese, while the other two resembled weightlifters, their short-sleeved shirts deliberately cut to give their bulging arms some much needed room. The pilot climbed down from the cockpit of the plane, obviously dressed for comfort in a loud Hawaiian shirt, clam-digger shorts and white deck shoes.

As the trio walked closer, he hailed them with a friendly wave, and then had a few private words with the fat man. Finally some money was exchanged and the now-smiling pilot opened the small passenger door and extracted a plastic-wrapped rectangle about the size of a shoe box. Hundreds more of the same items were stacked inside the Skywagon.

Pulling out a switchblade, the fat man clicked it into life and stabbed the thin blade into the block, then pulled it out and licked the metal clean. After a moment he nodded in acceptance, and the other men started ferrying the blocks from the plane to the garage.

“That’s heroin,” James whispered, checking the chemical scanner is his hand. The DEA device was small, but very powerful, however this was at the extreme limit of its range. The only reason he was getting any reading at all was that the blocks were packed solid with heroin, the pure quill, not yet cut to sell on the street.

Impressed, Encizo stopped himself from whistling. There had to be thirty or forty million dollars’ worth of narcotics in the decades-old Skywagon. No wonder the smugglers kept the airfield staffed 24/7.

“Not good enough for a court of law, but good enough for us,” McCarter declared. “Gary, keep Zeus off our back. Everybody else, let’s go make some noise.”

Hefting the Barrett, Manning nodded. “Got your six, Chief.”

Then, as silent as ghosts, the rest of the team eased down the sand dune to merge with the shadows. Skirting around the dune, the Stony Man commandos separated, each going for a different target. McCarter and Hawkins headed for the Cessna, James the garage, and Encizo the main building.

Nearing the outhouse, Encizo went motionless as the door swung open and a big man exited, zipping up his pants. The Cuban slipped up behind the criminal and thrust a knife into his head directly behind the ear. The bearded man went stiff, galvanized motionless from the incredible pain. Then Encizo twisted the blade and the man slumped, dead before he reached the dusty ground. Retrieving his knife, Encizo moved on and quietly dispatched another man standing nearby smoking a cigarette, obviously waiting for the first fellow to finish and get his own turn in the outhouse.

At the garage, James scratched on the door, and gave a low meow. Muttering something in guttural Spanish, somebody inside tromped over to the door and threw it open, a heavy Stilson wrench brandished in a dirty fist. Seeing the Stony Man commando crouching in the darkness, the mechanic registered shock for only a microsecond before the silenced Beretta chugged twice, sending the man reeling back into the workshop. Moving fast and low, James followed close behind, catching the wrench before it fell. As the door swung shut, the commando was inside. The Beretta coughed several more times, and then silence.

“W HAT WAS THAT ?” a guard sporting a scraggly beard demanded, feeding some scraps of loose wood to the fire in the oil drum.

“Nothing. Shut up,” the bald guard replied, opening the plastic wrapping on a granola bar.

“No, I heard something,” the first guard said uneasily, dropping the rest of the scraps into the drum.

“Probably just the boss chatting up the pilot,” the bald man replied curtly, biting off a piece of the bar. Chewing for a moment, he frowned, then swallowed. “He likes to get the news from home fresh.”

“I don’ think so, amigo,” the guard said, grabbing the AK-101 and working the arming bolt.

Instantly a weapon coughed softly, and both men jerked as their lifeblood splashed onto the dirty cinder-block walls. They staggered into each other and the Kalashnikov discharged a short burst, the 7.62 mm hardball rounds punching through the chest of the dying bald man and coming out the other side.

Unexpectedly there came an answering grunt of pain from the direction of the outhouse, and Encizo staggered into the dim firelight, his hands clutching a red belly just underneath his NATO body armor.

“What the fuck was that?” the fat man demanded loudly from beside the Cessna.

Instantly the pilot drew a huge Redhawk .44 revolver from within his Hawaiian shirt, and the two weight lifters each produced a Steyr machine pistol, clicking off the safety with a thumb.

Realizing the need for stealth was over, McCarter and Hawkins fired their silenced pistols at the guards, and the criminals staggered backward, but did not fall. Then they returned fire with the Steyrs, the muzzle-flashes of the little machine pistols strobing the night.

“It’s a raid!” the fat man bellowed, casting aside the brick of heroin and pulling a Colt .45 automatic pistol into view. “Sound the alarm!”

As if that was a cue, the garage suddenly erupted into flames, the door flying off from the force of the detonation of the C-4 satchel charge set by James.

The blast’s concussion was still moving across the airfield when McCarter and James appeared once more, firing their MP-5 machine guns. The barrage of 9 mm hardball ammo hammered the two musclemen backward, until they tumbled onto the concrete, twitching into death.

Wildly cursing in Spanish, the fat man leveled his Colt and started banging away.

Incredibly, the pilot pivoted at the hip and shot the fat man in the back. Slammed hard by the brutal impact of the heavy Magnum round, the dying man haplessly spun the Colt still firing. The pilot flipped over backward, drilled by a .45 hollowpoint round, most of his face gone, teeth and eyes sailing down the landing strip.

“Man down!” James called from the direction of the cinder-block house.

Turning in that direction, McCarter and Hawkins broke into a fast run. But they were only halfway there when a second man appeared from behind the plane, working the arming bolt on a Uzi machine pistol. As he opened fire, McCarter and Hawkins dived apart, and came up shooting their MP-5 machine guns. The 9 mm rounds tore into the Cessna, and aviation fuel gushed onto the concrete. The second gunman shouted in anger, the Uzi raking the darkness, then the window shattered and his head exploded. A split second later, there came the rolling thunder of the Barrett sniper rifle.

As the body dropped, something round and metallic rolled under the Cessna.

Hitting the ground, McCarter and Hawkins barely had time to take cover when the grenade went off. But instead of an explosion, there was a brilliant flash, closely followed by a searing wave of heat that increased geometrically with every passing heartbeat.

“Thermite!” McCarter cursed, protecting his face with a raised hand. “Bastards are burning the drugs!”

“Kind of a moot point now,” Hawkins drawled, dropping an empty clip and reloading the MP-5 with practiced speed. Then he frowned. “Or do you think—”

A dozen men carrying military ordnance burst out of the cinder-block house firing wildly in every direction. They spread out fast, taking advantage of what little natural cover there was, but the man passing by the outhouse suddenly jerked, the handle of a knife sticking out his neck. Dropping the Webley, the gunner grabbed his neck in both hands, trying to staunch the flow of blood. But the effort was proving to be futile.

“Blue nine!” another man shouted. “Blue nine!” The X-18 grenade launcher in his hands began thumping steadily, sending out a salvo of 30 mm rounds. The canisters hit the ground and rolled, spewing thick volumes of smoke.

Firing their machine guns at the fresh troops, McCarter and Hawkins exchanged a brief look. The drug smugglers used battle codes? Clearly the fat man had not been in charge, but was merely the chemist sent to check the purity of the heroin.

“Black Three!” a burly man shouted, triggering an AK-101 in a long burst.

Crouching, McCarter and Hawkins listened to the noise, getting his position, then triggered their weapons through the weeds. The burly man cried out in pain, and the Kalashnikov stopped firing.