War Tactic

by Don Pendleton

  “Right-oh,” McCarter said. “Let’s light them up, boys! Fire!”

  Encizo and Hawkins opened up with the machine guns as the chopper made one low pass over the oil rig. The bullets scattered the enemy below. A few of the gunners on the rig returned fire with Kalashnikovs as the chopper cleared the rig and began to wheel around. The turn brought the grenade launcher side of the chopper into play.

  “Target the outlying structural points, Gary,” McCarter instructed. “We don’t want to bring the rig down. We just want to make things inhospitable for the personnel aboard her.”

  “Inhospitality, coming right up,” Manning said. That brought a glance from his teammates, to which Manning responded with the first broad grin any of them had seen him offer. “Oh, come on,” he said. “I can’t be the big, strong, quiet one forever, can I?”

  “Fair enough,” McCarter said.

  The 40 mm grenade launcher unleashed hell.

  Explosions rocked the outer edges of the oil rig, scattering the gunmen on its decks and pelting them with molten shrapnel. Once more, Grimaldi brought the chopper in low and slow, giving Hawkins and Encizo time to work their guns over the deck. Shells rained down from beneath the weapons as 7.62 mm bullets raked the deck plates over and over. From their vantage in the chopper, they could hear the deck men screaming. More gunfire from below began to burn through the air, some of the rounds tagging the skin of the already abused fuselage.

  Grimaldi kept them moving, pitching and sliding in a stomach-churning, yawing motion that made them a harder target to hit. For a second time he brought the grenade-launcher side to bear on the target, and Manning did his terrible work once more, choosing his targets with care and blasting enemies to pieces below. Several craters were blown into the deck of the oil rig, but Manning was cautious and hit nothing that was structurally important. He was also careful to avoid the power-generation pod, as damage to that unit would affect those who depended on power service from the platform.

  “Oil Platform 227,” Grimaldi said into his radio. “Oil Platform 227, come in. This is Security One. Repeat, this is Security One. You are ordered to surrender immediately or we will recommence attack.” He brought the chopper up, flying a lazy circle around the perimeter of the rig, careful to stay well out of range of the types of antiair weapons they had encountered thus far. He had complained about all the rewiring that had been necessary to shield the chopper’s systems from electrical interference and to repair the damage done previously. McCarter imagined he was not eager to go through that again.

  “This is Captain Yanuar Wijeya,” said the voice that came back to them over the static-filled transmission. “I am in command of Platform 227. Break off your attack or there will be…consequences.”

  “Jack,” said McCarter. “Patch me in.”

  Grimaldi pressed a pair of buttons on his control console. He nodded to McCarter. “You’re live.”

  “Captain Wijeya,” McCarter said. “My name is David. I am the leader of a squad of men whose job it is to clear you lot off that platform. We are going to circle around and deprive quite a few of your number of their lives. Will that be all right with you?”

  “We shall see about that,” Wijeya said. The line went dead.

  “Now, Jack,” McCarter said. “Calvin, get ready on those countermeasures!”

  James sat in the seat next to Grimaldi and wired to the console in front of him was a piece of equipment not standard issue on a helicopter. The countermeasures pod they had mounted beneath the big chopper was a tight fit on the belly of the bird, but now James was ready to activate it.

  “Ready,” James said.

  “Tempt them good, Jack,” McCarter directed. “I think I’ll get him warmed up for you. Jack, push me live on the transmitter again.”

  “Go again,” Grimaldi said.

  “Captain Wijeya,” said the Briton. “I believe I met a mate of yours on a Filipino freighter not far from here. Chap by the name of Mhusa. Big black fellow. One eye. How did he lose that eye, I’m wondering?”

  There was no response.

  “Maybe he’s not listening,” James offered.

  “Oh, he’s listening, all right,” McCarter said quietly. More loudly, so the microphone would pick him up, he said, “It was a shame he had to die like he did. Seemed like an educated man. From the sound of your English, you’re not uneducated yourself. Were the two of you friends? My guess is, you were. He was very loyal to you, Captain. Right up until the moment I put a bullet through his brain.” McCarter drew his hand across his throat, signaling Grimaldi to cut the transmission.

  Grimaldi did so and then pushed the chopper even closer to the platform, making sure their pass was fast enough. Just as McCarter suspected, it was then that the men on the rig broke out all their antiair weapons. They had been saving them, holding them back so they would have the element of surprise. It’s what McCarter would have done in their position. But now, enraged, Wijeya would be directing his troops to throw everything they had at the helicopter.

  Plumes of smoke rose from the oil rig. Whether they were high-explosive Thorn rockets or the electromagnetic pulse devices didn’t matter. James triggered the countermeasures pod. A blanket of explosive flares fanned out from the belly of the chopper, forming a barrier that detonated the missile rounds.

  “Now, Gary!” McCarter shouted. “Fire at will! Guns, fire! Fire!”

  The fusillade that Phoenix Force laid out cut down countless enemy shooters on the deck of the oil rig. Grenades and shrapnel from their explosions sowed even more confusion among the enemy’s ranks. The gunners fell in droves, forming a swath of corpses that radiated from the landing platform. Using this gap, this no-man’s land of death and destruction, Grimaldi brought the chopper down hard, landing as quickly as he dared. The bone-jarring impact shook Phoenix Force in their seats.

  The moment the skids were on the platform, Phoenix Force was moving, their weapons ready. The five commandos disembarked and hit the deck. Grimaldi took off again, pushing for the sky with all possible speed, creating a downdraft that nearly blew the Phoenix Force men off their feet. He was aloft and putting distance between him and the rig before the Blackstar men and pirates still alive could manage another salvo of antiair ordnance.

  Fires were blazing now. They were minor; they would not threaten the structural viability of the rig. McCarter brought his Tavor to his shoulder, picked a target in his red-dot sight and put the man on the deck.

  “Let’s move, lads,” he said. “Drop anything that moves.”

  Phoenix Force had landed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Atlanta, Georgia

  “You cried,” Schwarz said. “You actually teared up.”

  “I did not,” Lyons said emphatically. “You were deprived of oxygen. You were hallucinating.”

  Schwarz sat in the passenger seat of the Suburban, tapping away at his phone, once more playing his candy monster game. He had been gleefully announcing his level progress again, but this time, Lyons had let it go. There was a red ring around his neck, created by the steel cable of the man-trap device. It had choked him unconscious, but Lyons and Blancanales had freed him before it could kill him, and he seemed no worse for wear. He actually seemed, to put it mildly, quite aware that his teammates were grateful he was still alive, and he was determined to mine that fact for amusement for as many miles as he could.

  “Is it too late to put him back in that thing?” Blancanales asked.

  “We should have brought it with us,” Lyons grumbled.

  “We could turn around,” said Blancanales. “We could seriously just go back, pick it up. It’s not that far out of the way.”

  “I think I saw that building on that show,” said Lyons, pointing. “You know, they said it was the CDC?”

  “That’s not the CDC, Ironman,” Blancanales said.

  “I know that,” Lyons said, driving skillfully through the busy Atlanta traffic. “I’m saying that on that show they used that building to
say it was the CDC because it looks like it could be.”

  “Which show?” Blancanales asked.

  “You know,” Lyons said. “The one with that guy.”

  “Oh, right,” Schwarz said. He did not look up from his smartphone. “That guy. The one with the shirt. Who was always going places and doing things.”

  “Yeah,” Lyons said. “That’s the one.”

  The building to which they were traveling had been isolated by the Farm and determined to be Rhemsen’s likely fallback headquarters. According to Kurtzman, the trail of financial transactions that formed the maze of Harold Rhemsen’s banking activity ultimately led to this location in Atlanta. It would have taken weeks’ more sleuthing to determine this if they’d had to find it on their own, but with the city of Atlanta as the starting point, it had been much easier to nail down that part of the operation.

  Kurtzman and his team had also used the trap set at Hilton Head to identify the data cut-outs and other masking elements Rhemsen had used to set up Able Team the first time. They had compared this data to that set and determined that this time their intelligence was genuine. Kurtzman himself had personally verified it, spending a long night with a pot of his industrial-strength coffee and his bank of computers, cross-checking every piece of data, following it back to its source to make sure it wasn’t some manufactured piece of misdirection.

  Lyons tried to play it off as if it was all in a day’s business, but he was furious. Not only had Rhemsen been dirty from the get-go, validating his urge to walk onto the man’s property and immediately begin taking names, but multiple times now the forces of RhemCorp had deliberately targeted both Able Team and Phoenix Force. During their drive to Atlanta, Lyons had conferred with the Farm, bringing Price up to date on everything that had happened. The news from Phoenix Force’s portion of the mission showed that Rhemsen and his people were as aggressive as ever. This was not just a mission, as far as Lyons was concerned. This was personal. Rhemsen had chosen to go to war with Able Team and Phoenix Force directly.

  Carl Lyons was going to give him that war.

  What was eating at him most was the feeling of utter helplessness he had confronted while staring down at Schwarz trapped in that murderous device. Yes, it had worked out. And, yes, thanks to the Farm they had been able to determine what to do to disengage it, but if both Lyons and Blancanales hadn’t been there, if the Farm hadn’t been able to relay them the information they’d needed, if the wires Schwarz had worried might be detonator lines had actually triggered explosives when Lyons blew them with his shotgun… There were so many ways that everything could have gone wrong, and Schwarz would have been killed in the nastiest way possible.

  There was the question of whether this headquarters to which they now were headed would boast any civilian workers. That seemed likely, even if it was a secret facility. So just razing the entire building was out. Lyons vowed to himself that if it were within his power to do so without endangering possible innocents, he would call in an air strike and be done with it. To hell with Harold Rhemsen, whoever he really was, whatever he was really trying to do. To hell with Blackstar. To hell with Jason Fitzpatrick. He was going to keep his promise to that big bastard. Oh, yes, he was.

  According to the GPS in the Suburban, they were nearing the target address. Lyons slowed the truck as they approached what looked like a ten-foot-high stone wall. Unless he missed his guess, it was reinforced concrete faced with fake rock to make it look less like a prison and more like an upscale gated community.

  “If I was trying to keep an entire manufacturing facility secret,” Schwarz mused, peering out the windshield, “so that I could manufacture weapons that I intended to sell on the international market to contraindicated buyers, I think I would put my factory building behind a big wall.”

  “Yeah,” Lyons said. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “When you weren’t thinking about how much you would miss me if I got killed,” Schwarz said. He batted his eyelashes at Lyons for comic effect.

  “Gadgets?”

  “Yes, Carl?”

  “Shut up.”

  Lyons parked the Suburban across the street from the main gate to the RhemCorp facility. The gate was a steel-strut affair complete with an outside guardhouse. There was movement in the guardhouse, which itself was little more than a wood-and-glass structure that resembled a phone booth. As Lyons watched, a pair of silver SUVs bearing the Blackstar logo pulled up and into position. The men were carrying AR-pattern rifles and wore load-bearing vests full of gear. There were half a dozen security guards.

  “Well,” Lyons said, “looks like they’re not going to come quietly. Hand me the bullhorn.”

  From the back of the truck, Blancanales found the bullhorn in the supplies organizer. He handed it to Lyons as he stepped out of the Suburban.

  The big former cop put the device to his face, switched it on and flinched as a squeal of feedback cut through the air.

  “That’s telling them, Carl,” Schwarz said.

  Lyons shot him a vicious look but made no comment. Into the bullhorn, he said, “You there. We’re with the Justice Department. And you goons are working my last nerve. Lie down on the ground with your hands on your head or I swear to God I’m going to just blow you all up.”

  The Blackstar men exchanged glances. Then they took up positions behind their trucks, aimed their rifles and began to pop off rounds. Bullets struck the pavement and ricocheted from the dented metal skin of the Suburban.

  Lyons, standing straight up and down, making no attempt to take cover, breathed a heavy sigh.

  “Carl! Get down!” Schwarz called from inside the truck. Blancanales poked the barrel of his M-4 out the window, using the frame of the truck to brace it, and started to line up the shot.

  “Ironman, they’re shooting at us,” Blancanales added.

  Lyons turned without saying a word. He walked deliberately to the back of the truck, threw open the tailgate and opened the concealed ordnance drawer in the back. From it he took a collapsible LAWS rocket. The light antitank weapon snapped open when he pulled its pin and yanked on the halves of the tube. Sights snapped open as he did so.

  “I,” Lyons said, punctuating his words with his steps as he started to walk toward the street and away from the truck, “am…so…very…sick…of all of you!” He snapped the LAWS to his shoulder and pressed the top-mounted switch. A plume of smoke marked the progress of the explosive rocket as it hurtled across the street, caught the first of the silver SUVs and blew it apart. A secondary explosion enveloped the neighboring vehicle as its gas tank was punctured by flaming shrapnel.

  Most of the enemy Blackstar gunners were killed in the explosion. A single man, on fire and screaming as he died slowly on his feet, ran from the truck, moving blindly down the street. Blancanales said, “Want me to pop him?”

  “No,” said Lyons. He dropped the empty LAWS tube, drew his Python and thumbed the hammer back. Then he carefully lined up his shot and pulled the trigger. The burning man’s head snapped back and he dropped. The smell of burning flesh was awful.

  “Wow,” Schwarz said.

  Lyons climbed back into the Suburban. “Put on your seat belts,” he said.

  “I hate it when he gets like this,” Blancanales said.

  “I love it when he gets like this,” Schwarz said. The two Able Team members secured their shoulder belts as Lyon did the same.

  Lyons slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and threw the truck into Drive. The massive Suburban very nearly burned rubber as its powerful engine shot them forward with all the low-end torque the truck could offer. They picked up speed as they crossed the street, bounced over the curb and knocked the corner of one of the burning SUVs out of the way. Metal shrieked on metal.

  The nose of the Suburban met the gate.

  The three Able Team members were jerked in their seats as their forward progress was stopped. Lyons grunted as his seat belt dug into his chest. The engine was racing, the Suburban st
ruggling to keep pushing. But the gate, instead of falling, had simply bent.

  “That hurt,” Blancanales said. “What now, Ironman?”

  “Lather,” Carl Lyons said. He threw the Suburban into Reverse and stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The truck howled in protest and began to rocket back. Then Lyons slammed his foot on the brake, shifted again and said, “Rinse.” Then once more his foot held the pedal to the metal. “Repeat!” he shouted.

  This time, when the nose of the Suburban met the tortured, twisted metal gate, it ripped the gate from its hinges. The truck bounced and jostled over the remains of the fallen barrier, its tires slipping. Lyons jammed on the brakes again and switched to four-wheel drive. Then he was shoving the truck forward again, abusing the hell out of it, venting his rage and frustration at everything that had happened to Able Team during this mission.

  Through the open window of the Suburban, the barrel of a rifle came poking in. A Blackstar guard had walked up to the truck while they were temporarily stalled and was now holding the barrel of his gun at Lyons’s temple.

  “All of you freeze!” the guard shouted. “Get out of the vehicle now!”

  Lyons ducked forward, snaking his one arm up under his other arm. Flattening his stomach against the steering wheel, he leaned as far over as he could and pulled the trigger of the Colt Python still in its shoulder holster. The round blew a hole through the back of his bomber jacket, through the door of the Suburban, and into the Blackstar guard. He fell, gurgling, choking on his own blood, his look one of utter disbelief. He never managed to pull the trigger of his AR.

  Lyons tossed the weapon out onto the pavement.

  “You’re a little on edge, aren’t you, Carl?” Schwarz asked, pretending to sound casual. “You know, relaxing with a video game might—”

  “Gadgets,” Lyons said. “I will pistol-whip you. As God is my witness, I will pistol-whip you.”

  Schwarz stared at the roof of the truck and started whistling.

  With the Suburban in four-wheel drive, Lyons hauled up the winding road that led to the RhemCorp building. He drove like a man possessed, not caring how it looked, not caring if either of his partners thought he was mad. He was mad. He was furious. He was ready to explode.