by Gar Wilson
The day of the «party» was typical, pleasantly cool with a breath of wind, and low-hanging clouds banding the mountain peak like the collar of a priest.
Inside the main building Katz crossed briskly to the conference room, which actually served as the War Room of the paramilitary Phoenix Force, as well as that of Able Team and Mack Bolan, the famed Executioner.
Admitted by a security code, Katz entered to see two of his teammates on either side of the long conference table. To his left sat Gary Manning and David McCarter. At six feet, both of them towered over his own five feet nine inches.
They were both a couple of decades younger than himself, but they wouldn't dream of calling him the "old man." Time and again they had watched him in the field where he fought as hard as any of them. In fact, the younger men often tired first.
And he had experiences, many years' worth of fighting experiences, to call upon when the battle got rough.
To his right sat the last two members of the team. Closest was Rafael Encizo. Pushing forty, he was the shortest man on the team, a survivor of Cuba's barbarian rule by Fidel Castro. Like Katz, his body was scarred by some of the world's most brutal terrorists and killers who operated from both inside and outside of established governments.
Next to him sat the kid of the outfit, twenty-nine-year-old Calvin Thomas James. He was the only man on the Force who had been born in the United States. He was also the most recent replacement and the only black.
Federal agent Hal Brognola was Stony Man's White House liaison, and he paced about impatiently while he waited to get everybody's attention.
"Katz," he said with a nod. "I'm glad you were able to get here so quickly. I was about to begin. Won't you have a chair?"
Katz nodded and settled into his unofficial position at the end of the table closest to the entry.
"I have a pleasant surprise for all of you," Brognola said with pride.
He was fondling a cigar with a loving smile. That was a good sign. When he was angry or had a mission that he dreaded to assign, the big Fed chewed unlit stogies, biting the wet, shredded ends as he completed a phase of his presentation.
"This assignment you are going to like."
Katzenelenbogen squeezed his heavy eyebrows down over his light blue eyes. He ran a hand over the top of the gray hair that made him look slightly older than he really was.
"Any mission ordered from Stony Man is not an invitation to the waltz," Katz said, not without a touch of sarcasm. He raised his prosthetic arm on the table and let it bang against the highly polished wood surface.
"Mack Bolan doesn't take vacations," Gary Manning said.
His statement was not precisely correct, but the Farm was a living legacy of Bolan, the Executioner. Bolan had dedicated his life to fight evil: the Mafia, Vietnamese Communists who still held POWs as prisoners, terrorists, and any other lethal scum that could not be scrubbed away by the slow machinery of the law.
Katz and the others in the room were an extension of Bolan's relentless crusade.
They were the Phoenix Force regulars.
The five of them were field soldiers, a sort of foreign legion that roamed the world as a minuscule invisible extension of the American military that normally protected the U.S.A. and her allies.
They were surgeons who could remove a mob of terrorists or a fanatic dictator without a massive display of military power that could ignite World War III.
"Are you trying to say you're sending us out on a holiday, old chum?" David McCarter leaned back in the casual appearance he liked to affect. The veneer masked the natural and deep suspicion he held for almost everyone. Suspicion served a professional fighter well. Today McCarter's eyes glowed with skepticism. He conceived the invitation as a trick.
"Better than a picnic." Hal Brognola continued to smile.
Gary Manning possessed a dry wit, and he ventured a guess. "You're sending us to Arabia to guard a harem of girls who are not getting enough attention from the elderly sheikh." He showed a hint of a smile.
A brilliant man with a degree in stress mechanics, Manning had a look that some people associated with the outdoorsman type. His cheekbones were high, his brows heavy, his chin square, and his front teeth displayed a somewhat unsightly gap in the middle.
He had spent much of his adult life involved in violence. One of the few Canadians to serve in Vietnam, he had been cited for bravery behind enemy lines.
Later he had been trained by West Germany's elite GSG squad for service in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. When there were no longer enough terrorists fighting the linguistic war to keep him occupied in Canada, he had drifted into the Phoenix Force.
He liked opportunities to flirt with danger. More important, as a member of the Force he was able to satisfy an inner need. The Force gave him the opportunity to actually do something about injustice.
Mack Bolan, who had been instrumental in assembling Phoenix Force, had recognized Manning as a natural team member from their first meeting.
Manning showed the determination of an oak tree where most men bent with the wind. Most read the accounts of fanatic assaults on civilization and clucked their tongues. They thought they did enough just by abhorring the slaughter by murderers and dictators and bloody revolutionaries who only wanted to supplant the existing government with their greed for power.
That wasn't enough for Manning. He just had to do something a lot more concrete.
When the offer came to join the Force, Manning grabbed for it. When the most recent call had caught up with him, he was tired of his lodge in the Canadian bush and tired of training. Recently there had been too much time between missions, and he wasn't thrilled by the prospect of a "picnic."
Neither were the others.
Brognola shook his head. He evidently failed to understand his troops as well as he thought. "I'm serious. I'm sending you on a vacation, all expenses paid."
This time the derisive sound came from the Cuban, Rafael Encizo. A scar beneath his mouth gave him a menacing appearance that helped provide space for him at bars and other crowded gatherings.
Actually all his battle scars were covered by his clothes. He'd suffered the facial wound in a neighborhood tumble when he was a teenager. His squarish Indian face was marked by determination and confronted opponents with a tough, antagonistic look.
After his Bronx cheer, Rafael leaned back and folded his arms over his trim waistline.
The head Fed took stock of the group again, searching for an answer to an elusive puzzle. Katz, McCarter, Manning, Encizo and Calvin James. They were a powerful strike force. When not working, most of them reentered the ordinary world, but when they gathered at headquarters they were not interested in talk about vacations. They expected action.
Brognola knew that, but prolonged the game a little longer. "Now listen — I am sending you on a vacation. With a regular tour group. Guide and all. To one of the world's most unspoiled resorts."
Calvin James tried to be a wiseass. "Tierra del Fuego," he guessed.
The city he suggested claimed to be the most southerly town in the world. Only a small mountain and a few miles of ice-littered water separated it from the ice cap and the South Pole.
"No, no, no. I'm sending you to Yalta."
McCarter moved forward in his seat. Beneath the surface, he was short-tempered, and he seemed ready to lash out at what he perceived as nonsense. "Vacation in Yalta? The Russian Yalta? Come along there, governor. Square with us."
"You'll like Yalta. The locals love American tourists there, any kind of tourist who brings in the hard currency that Russia needs to buy anything from outside its satellite nations."
"Who'd be stupid enough to buy rubles?" Katz asked.
"Precisely. So with practically all of the Uncle Sam dollars you want, you'll be staying right on the beach at the Hotel International, which has hundreds of lavishly furnished rooms, a dinner theater that can hold a thousand people for one of the world's greatest floor shows on a stage bigger than we
have anywhere in the country.
"And get this. A private beach with no Russians allowed except for Politburo members and top KGB officials. A mile of sand sprinkled with bikini-clad sunbathers from all over the world."
"Why would we want to share a beach with KGB officials? Still, I smell a sales pitch here," Calvin James mused as he drummed his fingers against the tabletop.
"Like the pitch Roosevelt got at Yalta more than forty years ago," Katz mused.
"What?" The younger men looked to him for an explanation.
"A bit of history," he said. "Near the end of World War II, President Roosevelt went to Yalta and ended up giving Joseph Stalin a free hand to take over Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia. Oh, you guys are a little young to give a damn about that."
"Yes, well," Brognola returned to his subject. "About this vacation…"
"Hal, I hope this is not another of your subterfuges," McCarter interrupted.
"No. Don't thank me. It's all on the National Security Council's budget. You'll have practically every day of your vacation to do with as you want."
"Now comes the price," Gary Manning said with a prudent nod of his head.
"It's a simple task, actually. One man could do it, but I thought you men would like to vacation together for a change."
Brognola pushed a button. A large screen slid down from the ceiling, and a slide projector cast a photo on the silver fabric. Occasionally the view changed as computers extrapolated from the actual picture.
"Shot from a satellite?" Katz inquired.
"Yes."
Encizo squinted. "Looks like an innocent little town to me."
"It is." Brognola manipulated several buttons until the roof view concentrated on a small segment of the town. The viewer could distinguish cars from trucks, stores from houses. However, every structure was partially obscured by trees and brush, or roof angles left much to the imagination.
"An ordinary Russian village, but the houses don't fit the patterns we are accustomed to. Nothing ominous, mind you. Just curious details."
McCarter was impatient. "Didn't those dorks over at NSC get an angle shot?"
"Impossible. The village is surrounded by a forest of tall trees."
Katz had grown more interested. "Heat sensors, high tech stuff?"
"Everything has been tried. There is absolutely no energy source or other telltale sign that suggests this is anything more sinister than a typical Russian village."
Manning snorted impatiently. He had been called in from his wilderness cabin where he had been putting on the last touches of the A-frame roof. "Then what are we doing here, if there's nothing different about the place?"
The man at the front of the room switched slides. "Ah, but there is a difference." This time the screen showed a great expanse of forest. Even the valley where the village lay was quite heavily wooded.
"One month," Brognola said. "The boys at the White House missed the change for God knows how long. But when they got on the ball, they discovered an interesting point. The woods were thinned and every structure built within a one-month span."
Encizo shook his head. "You're saying the Russians built that entire town in thirty days."
"Yes."
"Impossible." He did not believe what he was being told.
Katz interjected a thought. "It could be a movie set, nothing but shells of buildings. All facades."
"Negative."
"Portable buildings," Calvin James suggested. "They use a lot of portable buildings at schools these days. As enrollment shifts, they can move the temporary buildings to the part of town where more classrooms are needed."
Brognola picked up a file folder and slid it down the table. He knew Katz would be the one to spend the most time studying the report.
"We can detect a normal population. The buildings have the expected mass. They are not empty shells. The photo experts claim they could detect enough furniture being brought in to furnish every residence. We've calculated the amount of food brought in. The amount of garbage trucked away. So it is a real town. Real people live there.
"But it was built and populated in thirty days."
"Why?" Encizo asked. "It could be done, of course. Bring in busloads of carpenters. Prefabricate most of the work elsewhere and assemble it on the spot. But why?"
"That's the assignment, Encizo. All you have to do is find out what the town is really like. Vacation in Yalta. Two weeks in the sun. First thing, though, one or more of you can sneak away from the group and take a jaunt. The village is only twenty miles from your hotel. Have a look, see if there is anything unusual about the place that does not show up on our satellite pictures."
"And?" Katz asked.
"And nothing. Well, there is a sense of urgency."
"I knew it," Katz said.
"Yeah, now comes the problem," Manning said.
"It doesn't constitute a problem. It's just… well, there was this kid CIA agent. He was supposed to look at the place since he was in that area, anyway."
"It's just that he never came back," Encizo suggested.
"Yes, that's meaningful in itself, but there is something else that's important. It was the last message he sent. He said there was great urgency that we… Well, that's the problem, see. His message was fragmented. Apparently he tried to tell us about the town, but all that came through was that it was urgent, a matter of days."
"What was urgent?" Katz asked.
"That's what I just told you. He saw or learned something about the town or the people and tried to tell us we had only a couple of days to react. The kid was a little too deep into cloak-and-dagger stuff. But the President wants it checked out. And he doesn't want the CIA involved. If a second CIA man got caught in that area, it would embarrass the President. We're not closely linked to the White House, so he wants us to have a look, in a hurry, like right now. Is that clear?"
Katz said slowly, "I suppose. I just don't understand the urgency."
"The President of the United States will be in Venice, Italy, next week to greet the most brilliant computer experts in the free world who are now making a goodwill appearance in Russia…"
"A show-off appearance, I would say," McCarter interrupted. "If America was not so far ahead of the Communists in the computer field, we couldn't hope to defend ourselves."
"Yes, well, they will be giving Russian experts a few scraps of way-out computerese to show good faith. Then they sail for Venice and their climax with the President."
"Climax with the President?" Encizo picked up on the double meaning.
Brognola was not amused. "Not funny."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Brognola."
"At the village, you look. You don't take pictures. You don't call me on some line you think is safe. You don't carry any weapons."
"No weapons?" Manning and McCarter spoke in unison.
"Absolutely no weapons, no matter how well you think they are concealed. And that goes for the gun barrel you use in your mechanical arm, Katz. The mission does not warrant taking any unnecessary chances. If you're taken into custody, the worst they can say is that you didn't stay with your Intourist guide. The Russians won't scare off other tourists for a minor breach of that nature. And your papers are perfect. Unless you pull something stupid like arming yourselves with poison darts, you will be dealt with at the local level where you will never be connected to Phoenix Force."
"And we don't call you when we've seen the town?" Katz asked for reassurance.
"Absolutely no calls unless it's a doomsday warning. The mission is not critical. I'll debrief you upon your return. Does everyone understand? You peek at the town. Then you enjoy your vacation. Follow orders and absolutely nothing can go wrong."
James shrugged his shoulders. "That seems easy enough. How about you guys?"
"Yeah, I guess," Encizo replied, but he seemed troubled.
"Manning?" Brognola asked.
"Yes."
"McCarter?"
"I love a mystery. A little town sp
rings up almost overnight. Sounds intriguing."
"Katz."
"Why does this seem too simple?" Yakov Katzenelenbogen said.
"Because you're accustomed to intrigue, boxes inside of boxes. That's why this is exactly what this team needs. An easy assignment for a change."
Katz leaned back in his chair. He entwined his fingers behind the back of his neck and stared at the slide on the screen.
"Too simple," he said.
"Ah, Katz." Encizo started to look forward to the vacation. "What can happen?"
"I can't think of a single problem."
"See, you admit it."
"It's when I can't foresee the problems that I worry."
"Relax," Brognola told him.
Katz finally stopped bringing up his concerns. He sensed danger in anything he did not understand, but he couldn't refuse a mission simply because he was at a loss to come up with a reason for objecting.
Later, when he could be alone, he would go through mental gyrations to look for a trap. But in the end he would quietly agree and fly Pan-Am like any vacationer.
* * *
Up to their present predicament, nothing had gone wrong.
But now, as he stood on the edge of the woods overlooking the town, Katz glanced from one corpse to another and wished he had dug deeper before they had left the States.
He no longer believed there was anything innocent about the town they had come to see and knew that Phoenix Force was in a tight fix.
Katz gave a mournful nod of his head. "Vacation?" he asked of no one in particular, then turned away from the bodies and stepped from the woods.
3
Stoically, Katz dragged the last body deeper into the forest while Gary Manning and David McCarter covered the tracks. They sacrificed the advantages of burying or covering the dead in favor of time.
Finished, they stood bathed in the glowing sunset, contemplating their next move.
"A picnic," Gary Manning mumbled. "Like picnicking with a pack of grizzly bears."
McCarter bitched, too. "Brognola called it a holiday. Gotta be Argus-eyed just to survive this vacation. Five dead, and God knows what happens when the police or the KGB stumble across our trail."