He had teased Schwarz because that’s what the men of Able Team did, but deep down, he was also really angry. Fitzpatrick was a bastard and then some, and Lyons was going to get some payback before this mission was over. He’d made a promise to that big son of a whore, and he meant to keep it.
It was going to feel good to knock over Rhemsen’s factory.
“Pol,” Lyons said, “make sure that M-32 is ready back there. Gimme the DRACO thermobarics. I want to make an impression.”
“There will be Blackstar troops there, I’m betting,” Schwarz said.
“You’re already into me for twenty bucks,” Lyons argued. “You let me do the betting. But, yeah. They’ll be there. And as far as I’m concerned, these Blackstar guys are shoot-on-sight if they don’t lie down and comply right away. We’re going to announce our intention to arrest Rhemsen and any other members of senior management we choose. The goon squad can either comply or they can fall down dead. Those are going to be the choices.”
“I love it when you talk tough, Ironman.”
“Play your candy monster game or something, Gadgets,” Lyons said. Something in the distance caught his eye. “There. Look there. That’s the entrance to the industrial park, and there’s a RhemCorp logo. And unless I’m mistaken, those two silver SUVs have Blackstar’s corporate insignia on the doors. Which means the goons inside are probably trigger-happy.”
“Let’s go say hello,” Schwarz said. He racked the slide on his Beretta 93-R. “I feel like I want to introduce myself to some Blackstar guys.”
“I hear that,” Lyons said.
The two SUVs were parked on either side of the road, clearly meant to challenge anyone who might choose to pass. That squared with what Lyons would expect of RhemCorp’s heightened security. Batten down the hatches, gents, because the US gub’mint is coming to get us. Yeah, that was how they would think. And they were just arrogant enough to think they could sit out there in front of God and anybody and not face any consequences.
Was he mad about what had happened to his teammates? Hell yes he was. But what he was about to do would set it all right in his mind. He drew the Colt Python from its shoulder holster and let his hand fall to his lap, below the level of the window. Schwarz climbed up front, into the passenger seat, and held his Beretta out of view. Lyons hit the buttons on his console and made sure both panes of glass were rolled all the way down.
They drew abreast of the two Blackstar trucks. One man was standing outside. There was another pair of men in one vehicle, and a single passenger in the other. The man on foot walked up to Lyons’s side of the truck and held out his hand.
“This is restricted private property,” the guard said. “Nobody comes through without an appointment. Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” Lyons answered. “I have a ‘hands-up.’”
“A what?” the guard asked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean get your hands up, pal, because I’m with the United States Justice Department and I’m here to arrest you.”
The guard’s hand twitched toward the pistol in the high-ride belt holster at his side. Lyons snapped up the Python and punched a single .357 Magnum hollowpoint round through the center of the man’s face.
Schwarz started spraying 3-round bursts into the cab of the opposite truck. The two men inside were spread throughout the interior before they could bring up their own weapons. Lyons, climbing out of the Suburban, watched the remaining Blackstar guard shift to the driver’s seat, fire up the engine and practically burn rubber pulling away. He fled in the direction of the RhemCorp property.
Lyons took a half step to the right and widened his stance. He bent his knees, dropping lower, and extended both his arms. Thumbing back the hammer of the Python, he took a deep breath, let out half of it and held the rest. His finger took up slack on the trigger. A little more. A little more…
The shot, when it rang out, surprised him, as it was meant to do. The bullet took the driver in the head. His SUV heeled to the right and struck one of the trees lining the road.
Lyons holstered his Python and went to the rear of the Suburban. From the big duffel in the back, he took his Daewoo 12-gauge shotgun and loaded a drum magazine. “Pol,” he said. “Get on that Milkor M-32. I want to make an impression. Gadgets, take the wheel. You’re going to drive.”
Schwarz did as Lyons instructed. He looked up as Lyons climbed onto the running board on the driver’s side. Blancanales took the one opposite. As Lyons jacked a round into the chamber of his massive automatic shotgun, Schwarz said, “I know what’s missing.” He poked at the radio for a moment before finding a station he found acceptable, then jacked up the volume. The pounding strains of a Southern-rock song vibrated the Suburban’s speakers.
“Let’s take care of business,” Schwarz said. He stomped the accelerator.
The Suburban surged forward. Schwarz did his best to keep the ride stable, with his team members hanging off the sides, but safety wasn’t the primary goal here. It was rapidity of target acquisition. The private drive leading to the RhemCorp factory twisted and turned a bit up again. There were two more patrol SUVs parked close to the main lot by the structure.
“Get ready to get down,” Schwarz cautioned.
Lyons shot Schwarz a quizzical glance.
“Sorry,” the Able Team electronics whiz said. “Got a little excited.”
“Justice Department!” Lyons bellowed, his voice carrying across the parking lot. “Put down your weapons and put your hands on your heads!” He turned to Blancanales and said, “Pol, if they shoot—”
Gunfire crackled from the two trucks.
“Got it,” Blancanales said. He triggered four rounds from the Milkor. The revolving grenade launcher chunk-chunk-chunk-chunked toward the enemy, ripping apart the trucks fore and aft, blowing apart the men inside. A great pall of black smoke drifted across the parking lot as the vehicles blazed bright, burning and throwing sparks. Schwarz narrowly avoided the two blazing wrecks as he guided them toward the main building.
“Pull us up alongside the front door,” Lyons ordered. “Put my side to them. I haven’t emptied a drum in a while.”
“Oh, man,” Schwarz said. “That thing is so damned loud.”
“What?” Lyons said.
“I said that thing is so… Oh. Okay. Ha-ha,” Schwarz said.
“And you thought you had all the jokes,” said Lyons. As Schwarz brought the driver’s side in line with the front of the building, Blackstar troops were scrambling to mount a defense. There was a quartet of men taking up position in front of the big, mirrored-glass doors fronting the building.
“Good thing I’ve already got bad luck,” Lyons declared, holding back the trigger of his Daewoo.
The USAS-12 jumped and bucked in Lyons’s big fists. The weapon disgorged its payload of mixed 00 Buck and rifled slugs, a deadly combination that gave Lyons both crowd-clearing firepower and reasonable accuracy at greater distances. He had individual magazines tucked away in the duffel bag that were either one or the other, but right now he was feeling that Kissinger’s “party mix” was called for.
Mirrored glass fell like rain. Blood flowed. The men in front of the doors were torn apart, their shots going wide or high, their lives ended in less time than it took to consider the finality of their foolhardy stand.
Lyons reached into the truck through the open window and took his canvas war bag, which was full of ammunition and explosives. He slung it across his chest. Then he stepped over the corpses and walked through the shattered front doors. Blancanales and Schwarz fell in at his flanks, walking a few paces behind, covering him from the side and also the back. They, too, had retrieved their heavier weapons from the truck. Schwarz had his Colt SMG and Blancanales had his M-4.
“Can I do the yell?” Schwarz asked.
“Knock yourself out,” Lyons said as Blackstar men piled out of an elevator into the factory’s shabby lobby. He loaded a fresh drum into his shotgun.
“Justice Dep
artment!” Schwarz hollered. Already, the Blackstar guards were pointing guns, raising barrels and preparing to fire.
“Duck,” said Blancanales.
Schwarz and Lyons hit the deck. Blancanales fired out the remaining grenades in the Milkor, but this time, he wasn’t using DRACO rounds or even conventional high explosives. This time he had loaded shotgun rounds. The massive cone of metal pellets shredded the men piling out of the elevator, turning the lobby and the elevator shaft beyond into a heaping pile of bloody meat. The elevator doors tried to close, opened again, tried to close again. A warning bell began to chime.
There were too many broken, dead men blocking the doors’ electric eye.
“I, uh, guess we’ll take the stairs,” Schwarz suggested.
“The building specs include two floors,” Blancanales pointed out, looking at his smartphone. “Heavy manufacturing on the ground floor, offices above.”
“Then we go from low ground to high,” said Lyons, “while making sure nobody skips out. Gadgets, cover the stairs. Pol, watch my back. I’m going to take the manufacturing area and clean it out.”
“We don’t know how many Blackstars are in here,” Blancanales cautioned.
“Well, it’s a lot fewer now,” Lyons growled. “I’ll count while I shoot if it makes you feel better.”
Blancanales shook his head. “Just sayin’, Ironman.”
“Got it. All right, let’s move out.”
“Not once,” Schwarz said, sounding disappointed.
“What?” Lyons asked. “Not once what?”
“Not once has telling them to give up, we’re the Justice Department, actually worked.”
“Let’s go,” said Lyons. “We’ve got people to meet and stuff to shoot.”
“The stuff is usually people,” Schwarz argued.
“Shut up, Gadgets,” Lyons said.
CHAPTER NINE
“Fire!” McCarter shouted.
Garry Manning sent a 40 mm grenade hurtling toward the closest of the pursuing trucks. The round blew apart the grille and front bumper, shredding the flimsy sheet metal and sending portions of the engine through the passenger compartment. Unfortunately, the alleyway widened at that point, allowing the second vehicle to come around and take up the chase. Now the pursuit vehicle was weaving left and right, moving perilously close to the houses on either side of the street.
“I can’t take another shot,” Manning said. “Not if they’re going to keep doing that. I might hit one of the houses.”
“Small arms!” McCarter directed. Manning started firing short bursts from his Tavor. McCarter, from the passenger-side window, did the same. “T.J., how is Ocampo?”
“It’s not real bad,” Hawkins said. “He’s starting to come around.”
Well, that much was a relief. As for the rest, it wasn’t good. McCarter cursed under his breath. While it could be much worse, they were still very much on the defensive. No battle could be won this way. They needed to find a way to seize the initiative, put their pursuers on the defensive.
“Gary,” McCarter said. “Get out.”
Manning looked back at McCarter. Then recognition flashed across his face. He nodded, once. “Got it,” he said. Throwing open the rear doors of the Volkswagen bus, he jumped out and hit the road, managing to stay on his feet. A smaller man wouldn’t have been able to manage it. Encizo, meanwhile, moved up to cover the rear with his rifle at the ready.
“I’m circling,” Manning reported through his transceiver. “Getting around behind them.”
“Too right,” McCarter said. “Calvin, slow it down. Make us a tempting target. Let them get in close. They’ll be too focused on us to notice Gary lurking back there.”
“Hang on,” James said. “This is going to get nasty.” He braked and the bus squealed in protest. The vehicle was in very poor repair, its engine rattling away as if the hamsters were getting tired on their giant wheel.
The pursuing truck full of gunmen loomed closer. Muzzle-flashes blossomed at either side as shooters leaning out the windows took aim at the Volkswagen. Bullets ricocheted off the old metal bus, shattering the mirror on McCarter’s side and forcing him to duck back inside for a moment.
“Anytime, Gary,” McCarter said.
“Roger,” came Manning’s voice through the transceiver link.
The sound of the grenade launcher was lost in the din of the combat outside. Its effects were anything but unnoticed. The rear of the chase vehicle exploded in a bright yellow-orange fireball, throwing the truck up off its rear axle, knocking it aside. Manning wasn’t finished, however. He reloaded and fired another grenade, blowing apart the front of the truck and scattering the gunmen inside across the alleyway.
Manning reappeared not long after. James slowed and let the big Canadian climb back aboard the bus. They drove another couple of blocks.
“There.” McCarter pointed again. “That garage. Pull in there.”
“Hope nobody’s home,” James said.
“We’ll do what we can for them,” McCarter said. “But right now we need to get off the street.”
The rickety garage door was open, so James just pulled the van right inside. Manning leaned out of the rear doors and stretched to pull the door down. When it was closed, James cut the engine, as much to keep them from choking on fumes as to kill the noise from the wheezing, underpowered engine.
“You two check the house,” McCarter directed Encizo and Manning. “The rest of us will stay here with Ocampo until you clear it.”
The two Phoenix Force commandos nodded and left the vehicle.
The door to the house was locked, but Manning easily snapped it open by placing the blade of his knife between the doorjamb and the lock plate.
“What is happening?” Ocampo asked quietly.
McCarter turned to the wounded Filipino. “I’m afraid we’ve run into a spot of trouble,” he explained. “The hostile force that attacked us was clearly gunning for us specifically. The guy with information about the pirate activity in this area was either a complete dupe or unwitting bait in the trap. A force of heavily armed men, professional soldiers, has targeted us. We’ve eliminated several of them, but I suspect there are more—an unknown quantity of hostiles hunting us through this neighborhood.”
“My men?” Ocampo asked.
“I’m sorry, mate,” McCarter said. “I don’t know their status. I do know I saw some of them fall when the hostiles broke through the cordon.”
It was a delicate thing. Ocampo could choose to blame Phoenix Force for bringing this battle to his turf, or he could channel that anger into a desire to get the shooters who had attacked his men. It would be a hell of a lot easier for Phoenix Force if he blamed the gunmen and not McCarter’s men.
Ocampo eased the pistol from his belt. He checked to make sure a round was chambered. “We will…we will make sure these men pay for their crimes.”
“Too right,” McCarter said. “Hawk, bind that wound again. We don’t want it coming loose.”
“Got it,” Hawkins said.
Ocampo groaned as Hawkins tended to him.
“It’s a through-and-through,” he said. “If we can keep him from bleeding out or going into shock, we’re doing pretty good.” He took his portable med kit from the thigh pocket of his fatigues and began looking for single-use ampoules. Selecting the ones he wanted, he pointed toward McCarter. Ocampo looked away and Hawkins jabbed him with the needle.
Ocampo laughed. He looked back at Hawkins. “I am not so weak that I must be distracted like a little boy.”
“I wasn’t trying to offend anybody,” Hawkins drawled.
“Rest easy, American,” Ocampo said. “I am not offended. And I have been shot before.”
“You have?”
“This is, as they say, not my first Rodeo Drive.”
“Rodeo,” Hawkins corrected.
“Yes,” Ocampo said. “Some years ago I was part of the force of medics, engineers and their security personnel sent into Central South
Iraq under Polish command. A ‘humanitarian contingent,’ we were called. We suffered wounded during that time, but lost no one. Not officially. It was bad business. And I was one of the wounded.”
“I remember that affair,” McCarter said. “The insurgents took a hostage, didn’t they? A truck driver named Angelo de la Cruz. They demanded that Filipino troops withdraw from Iraq.”
“And to our national shame, we did that very thing,” said Ocampo. “He was the father of eight children, and I do not begrudge him his freedom. But this giving in to terrorist demands…it is a very bad signal to send, is it not?”
“Yeah,” Hawkins said. “That’s true.”
“House is clear,” Encizo said through his transceiver. “Nobody’s home, David.”
“All right, lads,” McCarter said. “Let’s set up shop. Stay away from the windows. Let’s make as little noise as possible. Come on, Lieutenant. Let’s see if we can’t find you someplace better than the back of an ancient hippie bus.”
Hawkins and McCarter helped Ocampo into the house. Once inside the modest dwelling, they found the bedroom and propped Ocampo up on the bed. From there he had a reasonably good view of the street from the bedroom window. He held his pistol at the ready, obviously determined to do what he could.
“Watch the back and the garage,” McCarter told Manning. “You two—” he nodded at Hawkins and James “—take up station at either end of the bedroom hallway and we’ll watch the front from the living area.” Motioning to James, he added as they moved, “Lock that front door.”
James threw the bolt on the door. The living room was as shabbily furnished as everything else in the house. There were a few framed family photos on the wall: a man, his wife, their two kids. Wherever the family was right now, McCarter was glad it was not here. He hated the thought of damaging their home, of occupying it, but it was necessary for the team’s survival and the success of the mission. There was a glass jar sitting on a crate being used for an end-table next to a threadbare sofa. The jar had change in it. McCarter smiled.
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