Oceans of Fire

by Don Pendleton

  “If I had to bet, I’d say they’re suspicious.” Tokaido squirmed under the Ironman’s gaze. “And…”

  “And what?”

  “And I don’t think it’s from me and T’s angle.”

  Lyons would’ve been irritated except that Akira was so embarrassed he couldn’t meet his eyes. “All right. So the enemy sent a cybernetic team. What can they find?”

  “Nothing. I mean…I think. I mean, I was the ghost in the machine. I wasn’t even a whisper.”

  “T?”

  “Crime-scenewise, we didn’t leave a trace. I ran a full sweep on entry and exit. Unless they have portable infrared equipment that can detect that Akira’s ass was on that office chair thirty-six hours ago, they got nothing.”

  Lyons calculated the odds. “Akira’s right. The robbery sent up a red flag. We’ll have to assume they’ve alerted all parties concerned. T, get Pol and Gadgets off the beach and ready to roll. Akira, get hold of Barbara and tell her that Phoenix should expect heightened security if not some kind of welcoming committee in Saudi.”

  Lyons’s phone rang. He checked the number and his worst suspicions began confirming themselves. “Yeah.”

  “Señor Blondie? It is Rafa.”

  Rafa was a Bonaire street urchin. Lyons had given him and a gang of his confederates a hundred gilders and a cell phone to play soccer in the field across the street from the hotel and alert him of anything suspicious.

  “What have you got, Rafa?”

  “A dozen men have gotten out of two vans. They are all wearing long coats and walking toward the hotel. Some are going around the back.” Rafa paused. “I think they have guns.”

  “Thanks, kid. I live through this, you got another hundred coming.” Lyons punched a button and Schwarz answered the phone.

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re getting hit, here at the hotel. Dozen men, long coats, front and back. I need you and Pol, pronto.” Lyons kept the line on as he held out his hand. “Tino!”

  Tenari reached into a bag and pulled out a pair of Mossberg M-9200 A-1 semiautomatic shotguns and tossed one to Lyons. In years past the weapon had become a favorite of Special Forces operatives on drug interdiction missions in Central America and picked up the nickname of the “Jungle Gun.” The big ex-Air Policeman had become intimately familiar with the weapon before taking a job with the Farm.

  Tokaido stared in trepidation. “What’s happen—”

  Lyons unlocked the folding stock of the brutally shortened shotgun and racked the bolt on a three-inch Magnum shell. He caught the bandolier of ammo Tenari tossed him and slung it over his shoulder. “We’re gonna get hit. Cowboy up, kid.”

  Tokaido drew his Walther PPK uncertainly.

  “T, you wear Akira like underwear. Back me from the doorway.”

  Lyons strode out into the hallway. The hotel was Dutch-Colonial architecture, tall and narrow, and Able Team occupied two of the four rooms on the third floor. Lyons phone peeped at him and he pushed a button. “What is it, Rafa?”

  “I followed the men inside. They’re going up the elevator.”

  “How many men?”

  “Six.”

  “Anyone with them?”

  “No, they shoved a lady out. Two men are watching the stairs.”

  The ornate doors of the elevator rattled and the needle above climbed from 1 to 2. “Thanks, Rafa.” Lyons punched a button. “Pol, what’s your ETA?”

  “Ninety seconds, Ironman.”

  The floor indicator needle came to rest on 3.

  Lyons raised his shotgun to his shoulder. “The party will be starting without you.”

  “Affirmative.”

  The elevator bell pinged and the door rattled open. For a split second six men in long coats gaped in horror down the muzzle of the 12-gauge. Lyons could see each man low-holding some kind of silenced automatic weapon with the stock folded. The lead man flinched and tried to bring up his weapon. “Che—!”

  The Jungle Gun thundered in the Ironman’s hands.

  The range was five feet. The magnum buckshot loads had no time to spread as they left the barrel. All twelve double-aught buckshot struck their target in a pattern the size of a human fist. The lead assassin flew back into his fellows as his sternum disintegrated. Lyons swung the front sight of his shotgun to his next target. The elevator car and the men inside it were sprayed with bone, brain and blood as Lyons’s second load of buckshot all but beheaded his opponent.

  Lyons jerked back out of the doorway as men screamed in Spanish and began spraying lead. The Ironman took two steps back and dropped to one knee. One of the killers shoved his weapon around the elevator frame. The silenced weapon coughed on full-auto as he blindly sprayed the hallway, searching for Lyons. A line of bullets stitched the stucco of the far wall. The Ironman put his sight on the weapon three feet from his face and fired. The Jungle Gun punched back brutally against his shoulder. The enemy submachine gun flew down the hall as did most of the hand holding it. The assassin reeled out of the elevator clutching his spurting stump and another killer leaped out with him.

  The Able Team leader folded Stumpy in two with a blast of buckshot. The man behind him raised his weapon but he didn’t see Tino Tenari lean out of the doorway down the hall. The blacksuit’s weapon detonated and the assassin lurched forward as he took the pattern of buck between the shoulder blades. The killer’s feet flew out from under him like he’d been clotheslined as the Ironman’s blast took him beneath the clavicles.

  The elevator pinged as one of the two living men within hit the down button and the doors started to rattle closed. Lyons shoved the barrel of his rifle between the closing doors and fired his last round. He dropped the spent shotgun and stepped back. Dozens of answering rounds from the silenced machine guns cratered the wall across from the elevator. Lyons drew his .357 Magnum Colt Python revolver as the elevator doors banged against the fallen shotgun. He cocked back the hammer and sighted at the Jungle Gun as the doors tried to close. A foot snapped forward to kick the shotgun out of the doors and Lyons fired. He was rewarded by a scream as the tip of the dress shoe disappeared in a splatter. The shotgun slid across the floor and the doors pinged closed.

  “You all right?” Tenari boomed.

  “Two hostiles still in the elevator, heading down. You?”

  “Yeah.” Tenari glanced at Tokaido. “What’s happening on our six?”

  “I…” Tokaido suddenly turned to the window as he heard steel rattle. “I think someone’s coming up the fire escape.” He ran to the window and looked down. A half dozen men in long coats were pounding up the narrow metal gantry. “They’re coming up the fire escape!”

  “Shoot ’em!” Tenari roared.

  The lead man raised his submachine gun like a giant pistol. Tokaido shoved his Walther PPK in front of him in a two-handed Weaver stance. As he squeezed the grips, the Crimson Trace laser sight winked into life. It was daytime, but the back of the hotel was shaded and a ruby-red dot appeared like magic in the middle of the killer’s forehead. John “Cowboy” Kissinger’s words rang in Tokaido’s head.

  Shoot them until they fall down, kid.

  The little Walther’s report was little more than a pop compared to the cataclysmic reports of the short-barreled shotguns, but Akira squeezed the trigger and the PPK began rapidly pop-pop-popping! in his hands. The killer’s forehead smeared and he collapsed back into his fellows.

  Tokaido flinched as the weapon suddenly stopped shooting and smoke oozed from the empty chamber. He fumbled for the spare magazine in his pocket as one of the men farther down the fire escape leaned out and aimed his weapon.

  “Reload!” Tenari’s hand clamped on Tokaido’s collar and yanked him back into the room. Bullets spattered against the window frame and ceiling as the man below fired upward. Tenari shoved his shotgun out the window and it began to boom like an automatic cannon. Sparks shrieked along the guardrails and steel steps of the fire escape as the big Samoan sent sixty buckshot pellets down the stairs in less
than five seconds. The killers jammed into the fire escape’s narrow confines shuddered and died.

  Tenari’s shotgun racked open on empty. One survivor leaped to the street. The big man dropped his shotgun and went for his pistol. The fleeing assassin landed badly and came up limping as he bolted for freedom.

  He stopped short as Rosario Blancanales appeared in the back alley, blocking his flight with his Government Model .45 in his hand.

  The assassin stood, leaning on his good leg with his hands white-knuckled around his automatic weapon. Blancanales’s voice was friendly but his eyes were as hard as the East L.A. streets he’d been raised upon. “Don’t do it, friend,” he said in Spanish.

  The killer’s brows bunched, eyes flicking, calculating. He locked gazes with Blancanales, glowering and growling gutter Spanish to screw up his courage as they stood, weapons leveled in a Mexican standoff.

  The man moved and the Able Team commando’s .45 barked in rapid fire in his hands. The heavy, flat-head slugs hammered the hired killer backward. His weapon chipped brick on the back alley wall and then fell to the cobblestones in a clatter. The assassin fell a second later.

  Blancanales slapped in a fresh magazine and swung up his Colt to cover the fire escape. His bull-like shoulders sagged slightly. He’d wanted a prisoner.

  “T! You all right?”

  “Yeah, we still got two coming down the elevator and there are two more inside watching the stairwell!”

  Blancanales clicked open his phone and hit the Able Team conference call button. “Gadgets, you got two more coming down the elevator, I’m coming in through the back.”

  “Roger that.”

  Blancanales kicked open the back door of the hotel and ran through the small kitchen. The staff gasped and cowered behind crates of produce as he rolled through with his smoking .45 in his hand. Guests and staff were screaming throughout the building. He moved into the dining room and fresh screaming broke out as Schwarz’s .40-caliber Beretta Elite began firing in rapid double taps in the lobby. A man in a long coat, bleeding from the arm and shoulder, staggered through the double doors. Blancanales put his front sight on the man’s chest dead to rights.

  “Freeze!”

  The man struggled to bring up his gun. “Puto—”

  Blancanales’s Colt boomed three times in rapid succession and sent the man falling back through the swing doors. Schwarz crouched in the lobby, using the front desk for cover. His pistol pointed unwaveringly at the elevator. Two men lay unmoving in pools of blood.

  Blancanales stayed in the dining room door frame. “What have you got, Gadgets?”

  “One guy’s still in the car. He’s got a wounded foot, but he’s still salty.”

  Lyons spoke over the conferenced phones. “Did you say a wounded foot?”

  “Yeah, he came limping out of the elevator and when I started firing he thought better of it and limped back in.”

  There was a moment of silence. The screaming had died down and Pol and the two men could hear the gunner in the elevator car gasping. Lyons spoke after a moment’s reflection. “Pol, these guys speak Spanish?”

  “Two of them did. The one in the alley was Argentine. I could tell by the way he swore.”

  “Pol, would you be so kind as to tell the asshole in the elevator that if he doesn’t surrender in three seconds I’m going to drop a grenade down that shaft and send him to hell so he can rejoin his toe.”

  “Ah.” Blancanales sighed with pleasure at the metaphor. Somewhere beneath the Ironman’s stony exterior lurked the soul of a poet. He called out happily. The threat sounded even more beautiful in Spanish.

  The man in the elevator began moaning and mumbling.

  “What’s he say?” Lyons inquired.

  The wounded man was mumbling in Portuguese but he’d clearly gotten the message. “He’s talking to himself, mostly, and God and Jesus and Mary. I think he’s about ready to crack.”

  “Start counting.”

  “Uno!” Blancanales called out. “Dos!”

  The man in the car moaned.

  “Tre—”

  “No!” The word was a shriek.

  “Throw out your weapon!” Blancanales snarled. “And speak English!”

  A submachine gun slid from the elevator into the middle of the lobby. “Don’t shoot! Please! Don’t shoot!”

  “Come out slow! Hands in the air!”

  “Don’t shoot!” The killer was a heavyset man with thick black curls cut tight against his skull. He was sweating with fear and pain. He limped out, using only the heel of his right foot. The leather toe of his shoe was bloody and shredded. Schwarz came out from cover, and threw him to the floor and began hog-tying him.

  They had a live one.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Desert

  “Your excellency?” David McCarter took a seat in front of the sheikh. “We have a problem.”

  The sheikh was sweating. He sat in a small room with a single shuttered window, handcuffed to a folding chair. On a platter beside him was some pita bread, goat cheese and zartar spice. A small pot of mint tea sat cooling beside the food. The sheikh had refused to eat. He glared at McCarter with as much dignity as he could muster. “You have detained me illegally. I demand to be released immediately.”

  McCarter ignored the comment. “The problem is this. There seem to be some Russian nuclear devices missing and the money trail, sir, leads to you.”

  “I do not know what you are talking about. I am a Saudi citizen and a member of the royal family. I am a victim of foreign aggression on Saudi sovereign soil. You American—”

  Manning sighed off to the side. “I told you, I’m Canadian.”

  “And I’m English, then, aren’t I?” McCarter suggested helpfully.

  “Slave states.” The sheikh spit. “Sending your soldiers wherever the Great Satan tells you.”

  “Your Excellency—” McCarter pulled his chair closer to the sheikh “—as I’ve told you, we have nuclear devices missing.”

  The sheikh lifted his chin and stared down his nose at McCarter. “This means nothing to me.”

  “What it means to you is this. I’m out of time. I can’t send you to Guantanamo Bay.” The sheikh flinched at the name of the U.S. military base in Cuba where they often sent suspected terrorists. “Nor,” McCarter continued, “do I have seventy-two hours to engage in standard field interrogation protocols.”

  “I have no idea what you mean, you—”

  “It means we are going to have to use more direct methods to obtain the information.”

  The sheikh paled as he stared into McCarter’s eyes. “You would not dare.”

  “No, Your Excellency. I wouldn’t do it. It isn’t who I am, or the sort of thing we do.”

  “Then you will release me at once and—”

  “But I know people who do, indeed, do that sort of thing.” McCarter jerked his head at the sheikh, letting his anger deliberately kindle. “Get him bloody up, then.”

  “What? You—”

  Manning and Hawkins stalked forward. Food flew and crockery broke as Hawkins kicked the food and tea out of the way and the two men yanked the sheikh up by the elbows. McCarter stormed over to the window and ripped the shutters open. “Bring him over here.”

  Hawkins and Manning marched Jaspari to the window. The Briton cuffed the sheikh’s headdress from his head, grabbed him by the hair and thrust the man’s head out the window. “Do you know where you are, Sunshine? Take a look. Take a real good look.”

  The sheikh grimaced. The sun was beginning to set. The helicopter in which he had spent a long, blindfolded ride sat in a flattened area a few dozen meters away. Nearby was parked an old Jeep and a fuel truck. Beyond that rolling desert surrounded the little house on all sides. A dusty, one-track road leading south.

  “The Nafud,” the sheikh declared. “How dare you behave so in the kingdom! I will—”

  “No, you’re not in the bloody Nafud.” McCarter grinned unpleasantly. “You’re in
the Negev.”

  The blood drained from the sheikh’s face.

  “Oh, that’s right.” McCarter nodded. “You’re in Israel.”

  “I…” The man trembled slightly as the sum of all his fears unfolded in front of his eyes.

  McCarter cocked his head slightly. “I have it on very good authority that you, personally, last year, offered one thousand U.S. dollars to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers for every Israeli citizen they managed to kill.”

  The Saudi began to shake uncontrollably.

  McCarter forcibly craned the man’s head around to look past the corner of the house. In the distance the lights of a town were beginning to shimmer on. “That’s the city of Eilat. The Mishmar Hagvul maintains a brigade there, as I recall.”

  Jaspari flinched as McCarter invoked the infamous Israeli border guard. They were made up mostly of Druse Arabs and Bedouin trackers with full Israeli citizenship. Druse and Bedouin Israelis were excused National Service, which meant those in the border guards were all volunteers. They despised “urban” and “oil rich Arabs” and the terrorists they sponsored. Palestinian terrorists infiltrating Israel far preferred to be captured by regular Israeli Defense Force or police personnel.

  “The Mossad also has a sizable station in Eilat, as well, and they’d just love to have a crack at you, wouldn’t they, then?” McCarter yanked the man back. “Sit him back down!”

  Manning and Hawkins manhandled Jaspari back to his seat. McCarter went to a small writing table in the corner and took out a piece of paper, a marker and a stapler. He began reciting out loud as he wrote in large letters, Hello, my name is Sheikh Harith Jaspari.

  “That should do, then.” He rose from the writing table. “Hold him.”

  Manning and Hawkins held the sheikh in place by the shoulders. He shrieked in outrage as McCarter stapled the four corners of the note to his robe. The Briton nodded to himself. “Lovely. Now drive him into Eilat and drop him off outside Mishmar Hagvul headquarters. Then drop a dime on the Mossad station. Let them know what the border guards have.”

  Encizo nodded. “How do you want me to phrase it?”