The revolution had been kind to the lieutenant. Rising from a start as a teenaged pimp serving national guard officers, to informer, to assassin and street fighter, he finished the war in the army of liberation. He bribed a colonel in the new government for a commission in the Sandinista army. Posted to a remote garrison, he proceeded to build his financial future. He took the responsibilities of employing prison labor, of the sales of "surplus" military rations, and of supervising the use of the nationalized estates of wealthy exiles. Soon, when the economy collapsed and a coup threw out the Communists, the lieutenant would retire from the army and devote his full attention to his enterprises. But now he bossed chain gangs.
Parking at the edge of the road where he overlooked the long narrow lake, the lieutenant switched off the tape player and left the Chevy. He glanced at his watch, then at the sun, low over the mountains. There was perhaps an hour's work before dark.
He took a Marlboro from his silver cigarette case as he watched the guards unload the prisoners. Chains linked the prisoners' ankles. The prisoners ex-national guard soldiers, the sons of Somoza officials, and minor businessmen—climbed from the truck, whereupon soldiers with Kalashnikov rifles herded them into line distributing tools.
A prisoner stumbled, dropped a saw. When the middle-aged, paunchy man bent to pick it up, a soldier kicked him onto his face. All the soldiers laughed. The lieutenant did not. He snapped his fingers at the soldier and motioned him back. The prisoner scrambled to his feet. The lieutenant gave the businessman one of his American cigarettes, then pointed him toward the tangle of downed pines. The businessman gave the lieutenant a nod of thanks.
The lieutenant could not allow maltreatment of the convicts. He hoped someday to do business with these now-imprisoned bankers and merchants. How else could he advance in life? The study of Marx and Engels earned no profits. A million revolutionary slogans bought nothing.
All heads looked up at the sound of the plane. Its pontoons almost touching the pines, a blue-and- white seaplane roared over the mountain's crest. The lieutenant saw the pilot in the cockpit. Seconds later, the plane cut chevrons into the bright mirror of the lake.
"Somocistas!" a soldier shouted.
"Yanqui imperialistas!"
The lieutenant called out to the truck and had the driver bring him the field radio. The driver lugged the heavy radio and batteries to the Chevy. The lieutenant sat on the Chevy's bumper and turned on the set. Several hundred meters below the road, he watched the seaplane taxi in a half-circle. A small boat left the shore.
Flicking the power switch repeatedly, the driver tried to turn on the radio. The lieutenant held the handset to his ear, waiting for a frequency.
A soldier fired his Kalashnikov at the tiny plane and boat. Then all the other soldiers fired. The lieutenant laughed. Trying to hit something 500 meters away with one of those sheet-tin and plywood Russian rifles? A joke. Maybe if they had American M-14s or German G-3s. . .
Blood and flesh exploded from the back of a soldier. High-velocity slugs kicked dust on the hillsides below and above them. Slugs buzzed past. Soldiers staggered back with blood gushing from small-calibre wounds. Throwing himself into the dirt, the lieutenant felt the weight of the driver and radio fall on him. He shoved the man away. His hand came back gory. The driver choked to death as blood filled his lungs.
The lieutenant took cover behind the Chevy. Slugs punched through the body of the car. Slugs shattered its windows. One of his dashboard ornaments, a plastic figurine of Fidel Castro, flew from the vehicle. The lieutenant looked at the splintered figurine at his feet, with its ridiculous pink face and brown beard, and kicked it away.
How could he get another Chevy? As the unseen machine gunner hammered the young officer's car to junk, the lieutenant considered the thousands of Nicaraguan cordobas and American dollars he would need for another car.
It was not fair. Why couldn't the machine gunner restrict his fire to the Russian truck? The government had hundreds of those ugly wrecks. Why his Chevy? Couldn't the counterrevolutionary firing from the lake see that he destroyed a classic American auto?
The lieutenant wept at the injustice of war.
BRASS AND BELT LINKS flying in the slip wind, the cartridge casings collecting on the seats and rolling onto the cabin floor, Lyons finished the belt and pulled the M-249 into the plane. It had been a long and arduous journey to get both himself and the weapon to the river, and thence to meet up with Grimaldi and the plane. But it was worth it. A thousand feet below them, the Nicaraguan army truck burned.
"All right!" Lyons exclaimed, laughing. "Black Beauty does it again. My true love. Makes the world safe for democracy. We're going to go down in history."
Grimaldi turned to the ex-LAPD cop-gone commando. "Before you get out the party hats, crazy man," he said, "I got your next assignment for you. An attack platoon left the camp yesterday. You didn't get them all. The terrorists made it to Los Angeles."
Lyons's laughter died.
Blancanales and David tended to Maria. She sprawled back in a seat, watching the mountains and valleys below her color with the light of sunset. The plane bucked through updrafts. The lurches caused her face to contort with pain. Blancanales wiped her face with a sponge.
"You'll be okay," he told her. "We'll take you to a hospital in the States. You and David. Everything's arranged. The war's over for you. You'll be safe in the States."
"No!" she shouted at him. "The war over when my country free! War never over. I come back." Sadly she looked down to the mountains of her home.
"I come back."
27
Texas
Saturday
6:00 p.m.
(0100 Greenwich mean time)
PLASTIC DOMES, SUN-FLASHING SPIRES, the rusting steel skeleton of an unfinished high-rise hotel rose from horizon to horizon in the central range of Texas. No ranches, no farms, no homes broke the desolation of the dust and scrub brush around The City of Big Top.
The sprawling network of theme parks and amusement centres, interconnected by the plastic tubes of elevated monorail lines, and surrounded by seas of black asphalt parking lots, appeared to be a lost city, the gaudy abandoned capital of an unknown people.
A wide expressway linked Big Top to the small town of Junction, twenty-five miles away. Now, as the sun began to set on the straight line of the horizon, only one pickup truck travelled the eight-lane expressway. Encizo saw no other cars or trucks as Sergeant Bragonier—a faded denim jacket concealing borrowed battle armor—drove on to Big Top.
The other men of Phoenix Force, reinforced by the Special Weapons and Tactics squad from Good fellow Air Force Base, waited in Junction, only minutes away by helicopter.
Sergeant Bragonier of the Texas Highway Patrol had offered to act as unofficial liaison with the state's law-enforcement agencies. Encizo and the sergeant, dressed as ranchers, with fence wire and truck tires and stock feed in the back of their pickup, reconned Big Top for Phoenix Force.
"Arab oil money built it," the sergeant told Encizo. "Out here in the middle of nowhere. Some sheikh wanted to outdo Disney World. Never you mind that no one wanted to come to the middle of Texas to go to the biggest circus in the world. After all, who says no to easy money?
"The Arabs pulled the state into it. Said they needed a highway linking Big Top to the interstate, for all the millions of tourists in cars. They built most of the parks and attractions, started the Holiday Inn, surveyed the site for an international airport—they expected tourists from all over the world. . .
"Then the price of oil went down. The Arab money stopped. The state said they'd finish the project, then tried to sell it. Finally, they laid off the construction workers. Trailer parks disappeared as thousands of men and their families moved on out of here.
"So this is what we're stuck with now. They used to have a guard company patrolling the place, keeping kids and vandals out. I had to come out here one time when the guards caught someone dismantling one of the domes—th
ose things are big, the biggest can fit a football field.
"Later on, the sheikh got himself another guard company. Foreigners. Arabs and Hispanics. And Africans. The rent-a-cops griped about the foreigners taking their jobs, but I never thought anything about it. Figured if the sheikh wanted his own men guarding his property, good enough.
"Haven't been out here since. Nobody has. Except maybe people sightseeing. That drunk Mexican probably took a wrong turn to end up out here—"
Encizo broke the sergeant's monologue. "The plane could have landed on this freeway. One of the wheels hit the roof of his van. Perhaps."
An Air Force high-altitude photo-recon plane had transmitted video images of parallel lines marking the windblown parking lots around Big Top. But Phoenix Force could not risk confirming the information in helicopters.
Encizo and Sergeant Bragonier confirmed it from a pickup truck. "Look at these skid marks. . . "
Long black smears streaked the expressway's smooth asphalt. The pickup passed over the marks. As they neared Big Top, the steel frame of the unfinished high-rise hotel loomed before them. Encizo scanned the horizontals and verticals for movement.
The red light of the setting sun painted the rusted steel crimson. Something flashed. Encizo flinched, thinking he had seen the muzzle-flash of a weapon pointed at him. But no bullets struck the truck.
A sun-flare off binoculars? Encizo studied the skeletal hotel, but could identify nothing in the grid-work of steel and shadow.
"Look over there. . . " With a nod, the sergeant indicated a parking lot.
Eight feet of chain link fence encircled Big Top and the parking lots. At one section, footprints and the tire tracks of cars marked both sides of the fence. Lines in the dust and sparse shrub—three bands of parallel lines—curved from the expressway, across the roadside, to that section of the fence. Then the lines continued through the windblown dust and debris of the parking lot.
The bands continued straight across the parking lot's hundreds of acres of asphalt to a geodesic dome of steel and day-glow orange plastic.
"The plane is there," Encizo stated matter-of-factly.
Fatigued by days of continuous action and travel and anxiety, the Cuban veteran of a hundred battles made a mistake.
Lifting the microphone of the long-range Texas Highway Patrol radio, Encizo uttered seven words. "Phoenix Two reporting. It is there. Over."
Only after he spoke did he remember the highway patrol radio, unlike the Stony Man radios, had no electronic encoding. As the only source of transmission in this area, his message could have shouted out their identity. He cursed his exhaustion, warned the sergeant.
"Maybe I have made a problem for us. I forgot this radio, your radio is not like—"
Flame flashed from the top floor of the skeletal hotel. A rocket-propelled grenade shrieked into the expressway only a few feet to the side of the pickup.
Asphalt shrapnel shattered Encizo's window, spraying tempered glass into the interior of the pickup.
Reacting instantly, Sergeant Bragonier whipped the steering wheel from side to side. Encizo grabbed the radio mike again.
"RPG! They're shooting."
Yakov answered. "We come immediately. Over."
The pickup swerved over all four lanes as automatic fire from the hotel pocked the expressway. A slug hit the truck's cargo bed like a hammer smash.
Another RPG hit the expressway. The RPG-7 warheads, designed for penetrating armor and concrete, punched deep into the asphalt and roadbed as their cone-shaped charges exploded.
Fortunately for the two men in the pickup, most of the explosion went downward and straight up. Hunks of asphalt clanged into the truck's hood and side panels, but no real shrapnel.
Accelerating, braking, swerving, the Texas Highway Patrol officer exploited his long experience of chasing suspects on the highways and roads of Texas. As RPGs exploded around them and high-velocity auto fire pocked the asphalt and ricocheted, Sergeant Bragonier left the hotel behind.
A blast rocked the truck. Out of control for an instant, the pickup skidded sideways at eighty miles an hour. The sergeant expertly steered into the skid, then fought the wheel as the truck fishtailed violently.
"Faster! A mile, two miles!" Encizo shouted.
He knew what had hit them. If a Soviet RPG-7 misses a target, the warhead continues to its maximum range, 900 yards, and self-destructs. The fireball and concussion of a self-destructing warhead had almost done the work of a direct hit.
The sergeant looked in his rear-view mirror. "We're burning! The load's on fire."
Encizo looked through the shattered rear window and saw the tires in their load belching black smoke into the evening sky.
A flame flashed behind them, the blast shock of another self-destructing RPG hitting Encizo in the face like a fist. He clung to the edge of the open window, the tempered glass remnants crunching in his grip as the truck whipped from side to side.
Cars pursued them! Encizo saw the muzzles of auto weapons flashing. An AK slug punched through the pickup's cab and starred the windshield.
Grabbing his M-16/ M-203 assault rifle/ grenade launcher from the floor of the cab, Encizo loaded a 40mm high-explosive grenade into the launcher. He snapped back the actuator to chamber a 5.56mm round in the M-16.
"When I say," Encizo shouted, "drive straight for the count of two, then—"
"Go to it, federal! Just tell me when you want to make your shots."
As the truck lurched and swerved, Encizo stuck the M-16/ M-203 out the back window, sighted through the flame and smoke.
"Now!"
The wild swerving stopped, the sergeant holding the wheel steady while Encizo fired.
Squeezing the M-203's trigger, Encizo sent high explosive into one car's windshield. He whipped the rifle to the side, sprayed out thirty rounds of 5.56mm slugs at the second car. Windows shattered, glass sparkling in the air.
The 40mm had hit the gunmen of the first car. Speeding out of control as the dead driver's foot jammed the accelerator, the car drifted across one barrel of the expressway and hit the gravel separating the northbound from the southbound lanes. The car flipped sideways and tumbled. Doors opened, bodies flew out—one man still holding an AKM, another already dead.
But the second car still pursued them.
Reloading his weapon as the sergeant swerved to evade the fire of the AKs, Encizo saw arms extend an RPG launcher from the car.
"Hit the brakes!"
Deceleration threw him against the dash. White smoke from the skidding tires and the foul soot from the burning tires filled the pickup's cab. The terrorist car skidded past them, gunmen leaning from the side windows trying to bring their AKMs in line. On the other side of their car, the RPG launcher shot a rocket uselessly into the air.
Flooring the accelerator, the balding, middle-aged highway-patrol motorcycle officer gave a rebel yell. He held the pickup steady and ahead as Encizo braced his hybrid assault rifle on the passenger door, sighting on the terrorists.
Over the rifle sights, Encizo saw the man with the RPG loading another rocket in the launcher. He waited as the rocket man inside the car pulled off the warhead's safety cap and cocked the launcher's hammer.
Encizo laughed as he shot the 40mm frag into the car. Thousands of tiny razors ripped the gunmen, a second explosion coming an instant later as the RPG's warhead blasted a gaping hole through the roof of the car.
Twice dead, the terrorists died a third time as their car whipped sideways, overturned and rolled. Metal slammed and tore, and doors and weapons and bodies were scattered over the expressway. Before the terrorists' car came to rest, gasoline whooshed aflame.
Sergeant Bragonier gave another rebel yell. He slowed the pickup to a stop.
"Damn fine shooting, even if you are a federal. Now you take the wheel, 'cause I want to shoot too." "The fire, man! We're on fire, too!"
"Oh, yeah...."
Scrambling from the pickup, Encizo saw he could do nothing. The tir
es burned in balls of sooty, choking flame. The sergeant ran to the tailgate and jerked it down.
"Let's go!"
Back in the pickup again, the Texan screeched the tires as he accelerated in reverse. Speeding backward for a hundred yards, he jammed on the brakes.
The bed's load flew from the tailgate. The burning tires rolled along the expressway to bounce into the scrub brush.
The sergeant gave Encizo the driver's seat, and he took up the M-16/ M-203. With the speed and assurance of long familiarity, he loaded a 40mm high-explosive round.
"I'm also a sergeant in the National Guard," Sergeant Bragonier explained to Encizo. Scanning the road for cars, he saw none.
"Damn," he muttered.
Encizo laughed. "Be patient. This may be a long night.. . . "
Helicopters approached from the south.
FROM THREE THOUSAND FEET, Yakov scanned the huge amusement park with binoculars. He saw the tire tracks from the expressway cross the parking lot to the orange dome. Searching for the terrorists, he swept the binoculars over other areas.
The setting sun flashed from glass and chrome spires, but left the streets and squares in deep shadow. He saw a single form dash from one building to another, but no one else. He knew there could be a thousand enemies hiding in Big Top.
To the north, past the towering unfinished hotel, a car burned on the highway. Yakov let the binoculars hang by the strap around his neck as he took the hand-radio from his combat-uniform's web belt.
"Phoenix Two. Report."
"We have you in sight. We are waiting one mile north of the hotel."
"Where is the enemy?"
"They fired rifles and rockets from the hotel. Two cars came out. But they are dead."
"What nationality are they?"
"I saw one Palestinian. The others. I don't know."
"Wait for instructions. Over."
Super Bolan - 001 - Stony Man Doctrine Page 18