"Zip."
He typed in more codes. Another line flashed. "No UFOs."
He typed in a third code into the computer.
"No unexplained phenomena," "Sting" told them.
"Too bad, Mr. Federal," said Sergeant Bragonier. "Looks like it's back to the Air Force—"
The young cowboy stopped them. "Wait. I'll key in Miscellaneous. Some people not experienced with these machines think computers are smart. Sorry, it ain't that way. They don't think, period. Only record. Put in a mistake, they record the mistake, forever. Therefore, I think . . ."
Typing the numbers of individual reports, "Sting" flashed through screens of green letters and numbers. One made him laugh. He pointed it out to the other men.
"We got a wacko tourist from Washington, D.C. Bit off some chicken heads."
Sergeant Bragonier laughed. "Probably one of our esteemed congressmen. In a cocaine seizure. Only way to explain what happens in Congress."
"Here's an interesting one." "Sting" pointed to a report displayed on the screen.
The sergeant interpreted the codes and abbreviations for Encizo. "A hit-and-run driver. . .drunk . . . speaks only Spanish. Hmmm. . . reason it's cross-filed in miscellaneous is because they can't imagine what he hit. He's got a dent and skid marks on the roof of his van. But the van hadn't rolled over, they know that for sure."
Encizo reached for a phone.
25
Carolina Coast
Saturday
3:30 p.m.
(2030 Greenwich mean time)
PARALLELING THE COURSE Of the tanker Al Karem, the Coast Guard cutter maintained a separation of two miles. Beyond the range of the Al Karem's rifles and machine guns, the crew of the USS Jefferson waited for the unnamed "specialist from Washington." The crew monitored the maritime frequencies, meanwhile kept their vessel's single 4-inch cannon aimed at the terrorists.
In the clear cold weather, the American crewmen stood on the deck watching the distant ship. Through binoculars, they saw the Palestinians and Hispanics running on the decks, throwing back hatches.
Gunners on the superstructure started to aim bursts or single shots at the Coast Guard cutter.
From time to time, slugs clanged into the Jefferson. Pelicans and sea gulls following the cutter dived into the water where bullets splashed, thinking the crew had thrown garbage. The Coast Guard men, most of them teenagers, crouched behind steel and laughed at the danger.
Flying in fast from the west, Bolan leaned against his safety strap and watched the crewmen on the Jefferson wave to him. The helicopter's pilot took the Huey troopship in a circle around the cutter.
The voice of the Jefferson's captain spoke through the Huey's intercom.
"Colonel Phoenix? Is that Army, Air Force, or Marines?"
The Huey's door gunner, listening in on his headset, looked over at the black-clad colonel. Bolan wore his battle suit, the nylon combat armor still crusted with dried slicks of blood and mud from the assault on the Esperanza Youth Rehabilitation Camp. He carried the M-1 6 / M-203 over-and-under hybrid assault rifle/grenade launcher. A bandoleer of 5.56mm magazines crossed his chest. He had a bandoleer of 40mm grenades belted around his waist.
Trusting that Bolan would not hear him, the door-gunner covered his microphone and shouted across the Huey to the other gunner, "Colonel Phoenix of the Spook Patrol!"
The Stony Man warrior ignored the captain's question and asked one himself. "Any communication with the tanker, Captain?
"Nothing. The only response we get is bullets. I got a coded message from Washington pre-empting my authority in this deal. So you give the word, Colonel, and we'll put some four-inchers past that scum bucket's bow. They'll understand that communication."
"What I want you to do is load smoke rounds," Bolan commanded. "Stand ready to put the first round into the bridge, then walk the rounds forward. I want that ship smoked solid while I board it."
"What are you talking about, Colonel? Board that tanker? Did you bring a platoon of Marines with you?"
"No, sir. But those terrorists won't surrender—" "You are going to assault that ship? Alone? Isn't that a mite overconfident?"
"I need prisoners, and I intend to take some. Get that smoke loaded, Captain. I'm hitting it in—"
As Bolan spoke, he saw a tongue of flame flash from the Al Karem. A rocket shot toward the Jefferson.
"Get your crew off the decks!" Bolan roared. "Seal up! Sound a chemical warfare alert!"
The captain did not answer. The rocket soared high and wide, exploding in the ocean several hundred yards behind the helicopter and cutter. A flock of pelicans rose from the ocean in a thrashing of white wings.
"I don't think I'll bother, Colonel," the captain told Bolan through the ship-to-chopper intercom. "Their targeting ability is not exactly threatening my ship."
A cloud of greenish mist drifted over the explosion-churned water. Bolan watched pelicans fly through the mist, then fall out of the sky.
"Captain, I suggest you reconsider—"
Sirens sounded below him. Bolan saw the crewmen clear the Jefferson's decks. The cutter veered to the west as a second rocket flashed from the Al Karem.
"Loading smoke, Colonel Phoenix!"
Bolan spoke through the intercom to the Huey's pilot. "Start a wide circle aft of that tanker, as if you're giving it a look-over from a safe distance. When the first smoke round hits it, go straight for the superstructure. Look for a deck or platform where I can exit. When I'm on the ship, clear out. Gunners, hit anything that moves."
The second rocket screamed past the Huey to explode a thousand yards away. Another green cloud spread over the ocean's surface.
"Yes, sir. One wide, wide circle coming up."
The Huey banked as the pilot's voice continued. "Tell me, sir. What is that they're shooting at us?"
"You see the birds dying?" Bolan asked. "What do you think?"
"Jesus...."
Bolan slipped off his headset and shouted across to the gunners. "You got some rope back here?"
They nodded. One gunner reached into a gear compartment. He pulled out a hundred-foot coil of 5000-pound-test nylon line.
Bolan took the line and secured one end of it, then double-checked his knots. He planned to slide down to the Al Karem if masts or wires barred any other approach.
Slapping the end of his M-16 / M-203's box magazine to check the seating, Bolan snapped back the actuator to strip the first cartridge; then he set the safety. He unlocked the M-203 and shoved in a 40mm buckshot round; he flipped down the grenade launcher's safety. By touch, he counted the Italian MU-500 grenades in his thigh pockets.
He looked at the Al Karem and saw the muzzles of auto weapons sparking as the Palestinians directed their fire at the Huey. Bolan continued, his equipment check, securing the Velcro flap on his AutoMag, putting the long nylon loops of plastic handcuffs in the front pockets of his battle armor.
The teenaged door gunners stared at him. He gave them a quick command through the intercom. "Check your weapons. Load and lock."
Their hands fumbled at the cocking handles of the M-60D machine guns. One gunner, in his nervousness, snapped the cocking handle back twice. The cartridge bounced off the helicopter flooring, rolled out the side door.
On the Coast Guard cutter, the 4-inch cannon boomed. The shell shrieked into the Al Karem. Phosphorescent yellow smoke clouded from a lower deck. A second shell slammed into the superstructure as the Huey banked.
The pilot weaved and bobbed at a hundred miles an hour, taking the Huey up to a hundred feet, then dropping down to skim the water. He banked the troopship from side to side.
Shells from the cutter screamed into the Al Karerm. A yellow cloud obscured the bridge. It poured out of shattered ports. A crewman threw open a door and staggered from a cabin, smoke billowing out the open door. Two Palestinians, one carrying a heavy machine gun, the other two boxes of cartridge belts, ran for the aft railing. A shell slammed into the deck and enveloped them in yellow smoke. Ano
ther shell hit amidships.
"Colonel, I can't risk the bridge!" the pilot shouted through the intercom. "Looks like they got VHF and long-wire antennas all over—"
"Swing around the far side," Bolan ordered. "We'll try the prow. Tell the captain to keep putting in smoke."
"But we'll be in his line of fire!"
"Put me down there and you can lift out."
Slugs hammered the Huey's aluminium. A ricochet whined past Bolan. The door gunner behind the black-suited Stony Man looked down at a gash in his boot. Blood poured from the AK wound in his foot.
Soaring up, then dropping to within feet of the water, the pilot banked the Huey around the stern of the Al Karem . A Palestinian at the railing lifted an AKM.
The door gunner beside Bolan sprayed .308 NATO. The Palestinian fell back as the helicopter flashed past.
Rotor storm whipped yellow smoke. Bolan watched the ship pivot beneath him, the Huey holding a tight circle. Then he looked directly down at the main deck.
Instead of the pipes and valves needed to move liquid cargo, he saw an open hold. Canvas painted the same gray as the decking had been rolled away to expose rocket launchers. Hundreds of long tubes lay in racks made of welded angle-iron. He could not identify the type of rockets or country-of-origin. Nor did he see any radar dishes or antennas indicating a rocket-guidance system.
A single rocket shot away as he looked, streaking toward the Jefferson.
There was no guidance system. The rockets and launchers had not been designed for the pinpoint accuracy needed to destroy warships and combat aircraft. The technicians who had modified the Al Karem and fabricated the rocket launchers had no intention of waging war, only committing mass murder.
The crude rocket launchers and their binary gas warheads had only one target: the capital of the United States of America.
Palestinians in keffiyehs , Hispanics in denim work clothes jerked Kalashnikov rifles to their shoulders. Bolan hit the side door's edge as the pilot banked the Huey into a wild S-turn, the ocean dropping away, blue sky appearing.
Bolan looked through the opposite side door and saw ocean. The pilot whipped through the S, the Al Karem suddenly ahead of the Huey again.
"More smoke!" Bolan shouted into the intercom.
"Going past again, Colonel. You tell me when you think you can offload. I don't think you'll make it."
The door gunner next to Bolan, entrusting his life to his safety strapping, leaned from the side door and poured continuous fire at the decks and railings of the old ship. Hot brass showered Bolan. A gunman appeared at a railing; he died. Another one staggered sideways, blood pumping from a shattered arm.
But other terrorists put their Kalashnikov sights on the Huey hurtling toward them. Slugs punched steel, some screeching across the helicopter's sheet metal to shatter Plexiglas.
Beside Bolan, the teenaged door gunner suddenly lurched, his left leg kicking backward. Wounds to his calf and thigh spurted blood into the slip wind. The teenager fell back, clutching at his bleeding leg, the gyrations of the helicopter throwing him against the rear bulkhead. Only his safety webbing saved him from falling to the ocean.
As blood poured through his hands, the young soldier's panicked eyes looked to Mack Bolan.
Bolan had seen those eyes a thousand times—as teenaged Americans died in I Corps rice fields, as fourteen-year-old VC conscripts died entangled in the wire of fire bases, when his brother Johnny looked up from a hospital bed.. . .
The other door gunner continued firing, blood puddling around his wounded foot. The Huey hurtled onward. The pilot was determined to follow Bolan's orders.
The wounded gunner struggled to sit up. His hands reached for the twin grips of his weapon.
Bolan knew these young men would die before they failed him. But he could not throw their lives away. If it was Grimaldi who piloted the Huey, or if he fought with the hard-core warriors of Able and Phoenix, men who had already had some years of life, Bolan would chance it. But not with these kids. He shouted into the intercom.
"Pull up! Get out of range. You got two wounded back here."
"And one up front. . . "
The Huey went straight up. The G-force pressed Bolan against the flooring as he slid through blood to the wounded door gunner. Linking two of the plastic handcuffs end-to-end, he looped them around the gunner's thigh and pulled the plastic bands tight to slow the flow of blood.
He put the boy's hands over the more serious of the two thigh wounds. "Press hard, we'll have you in hospital in fifteen minutes."
He spoke into the intercom. "Pilot, put me through to the captain of the Jefferson."
"Yes, sir."
"Well, Colonel, how's it going?"
"It's going down. High explosive. Sink it."
"You do have the authority to order that, right?" "Your commander briefed you?"
"That he did. And it will be my pleasure. . . " "Pilot, take us to a thousand feet. Circle that ship."
"We're there now."
Bolan took the M-60D. Resetting the machine gun's rear sight, he aimed for the racks of rockets far below him. He squeezed off long bursts.
Figures on the deck of the Al Karem ran for cover. Sweeping the lines of .308 NATO over the deck, Bolan shot out the first belt. As he threw open the feed cover to insert another length of cartridges, the first high-explosive shell tore through the tanker's bridge.
Another punched into the crew quarters. Bolan continued firing at the rocket launchers as the pilot held the slow circle. A shell hit the main deck.
The captain's voice returned to the intercom. "Say, Colonel, how about a missile?"
"Put it amidships, at the waterline."
Bolan heard the captain issuing orders to his crew. "Stand by . . ."
Bolan put a last burst into the terrorists, then held his fire. He reached to the wounded door gunner and helped him sit up.
"This is it."
A streak of fire left the Jefferson. Skimming along the sea surface, the high-tech, computer-guided missile took only seconds to cross the miles separating the two ships.
Flame blossomed from the holds of the Al Karem. An instant later, the sound of the blast reached the helicopter.
Smoke and flame rose from the holds. As they watched, secondary explosions popped like strings of firecrackers. At the stern, a group of terrorists dropped a lifeboat into the water.
A greenish haze spread around the Al Karem. The terrorists in the lifeboat went strangely still. A man struggling in the water sank beneath the surface. On the burning ship, nothing moved.
"What do you think, Colonel?" the captain asked. "You think that was worth three hundred fifty-eight thousand dollars of the taxpayers' money?"
The AI Karem rolled onto its side. Explosions continued inside the hull.
"You realize, Captain," Bolan cautioned him, "that this didn't happen."
"Yeah, guess not."
Bolan took a last look at the Hydra death ship. "Pilot, let's get these men to a hospital."
As the helicopter turned for the Carolina coast, the Al Karem, gutted and lifeless, slipped into the depths.
26
Nicaragua
Saturday
5:30 p.m.
(2330 Greenwich mean time)
ROTORTHROB BLASTED the late-afternoon quiet. Lyons threw himself down under a pine's shadow. He scrambled through the dust and pine needles to the trunk. He searched the network of branches and sky above him for the helicopter. A buzz sounded from his hand-radio.
"It's passed," Blancanales told him. "It came over the top and followed the ridge line. You see it?"
"No, just heard it, all of a sudden," Lyons answered. "Noise fading now."
"It went straight north. Another of those French helicopters."
When the helicopter's throb diminished into the distance, Lyons got to his feet. His black cotton jump suit was muddy where the dust mixed with his sweat. Hot afternoon sunlight slanted through the pines, a slash of light across the b
lack cotton of his shoulder. Even with the altitude and winds, sweat poured from his body. He stepped into the shadow and keyed his hand-radio again.
"How far to the river?"
"Coming up real soon," said the voice of Blancanales.
"Hope so."
"That monster heavy?"
Lyons laughed. "You talking about my Black Beauty? She is my true love. Over and out."
Adjusting the wide padded sling of the M-249, Lyons strode through the woods, scanning the hill-sides and gullies, listening for the sound of pursuers. He glanced at the trail behind him every few seconds. Sometimes he stopped to watch and listen from concealment. Then he jogged ahead.
Blancanales and Gadgets made excellent time despite the stretcher. Maria slept, or stared around them at the terrain. She still clutched her M-1 across her chest.
At one point she pointed to the charred stumps of pines in the woods around them. "Here, my father and brothers and everyone work. In the revolution, the Guardia Nacional kill schoolteacher, burn school. My father cut wood for new school here."
Laying back in the stretcher, she closed her eyes against the heat and pain. "We make school. Government sends Cuban, who teach only Marx. ¿Somoza o Fidel? ¿Que es la diferencia? It is not revolution when you change kings."
"Tell it to Jane Fonda," Gadgets joked.
"We know all about 'people's democracies,' " said Blancanales. "Hey, smell it?"
"What? A people's democracy?"
"The river. Maria, you know the area—"
"Yes," she replied. "Soon is a road. Then the lake. There is fish. And boats."
Blancanales signalled to Gadgets to stop. He keyed his hand-radio. "Ironman, we're here. Time to plan our boat ride."
ROCK AND ROLL BLARED from the lieutenant's tape player. He pulled off the highway. He looked in the rear-view mirror that was edged in white plastic fuzz and saw the prison truck following him.
Lurching over the rutted side road, the lieutenant swerved from pothole to pothole, guiding the 1957 Chevy's undercarriage safely around rocks. The road cut over an utterly denuded hillside, every pine and oak gone.
The Chevy and the truck continued over the hill-crest. On a ridge, an army work crew had cut the trees. The lieutenant's chain gang would not cut the wood for sale as firewood. The work of the counter-revolutionaries made money for the people. And more money for the lieutenant.
Super Bolan - 001 - Stony Man Doctrine Page 17