Perilous Skies (Stony Man)

by Don Pendleton

  He snapped out his orders to Hawkins. The young Texan crawled out of the copse of trees and quickly crab-walked through the undergrowth across the dark field.

  “Cal, Manning—stay put,” McCarter ordered. “You’re outnumbered on every side. We’re going to try to draw off some of those troops.”

  * * *

  HAWKINS KEPT A CLOSE EYE on the marching line of Chinese hardmen as he circled the south side of the valley and found cover among some old decorative shrubs now overgrown and ungainly. He unsnapped a pack of rounds for the M-203 mounted on his M-16.

  The night was eerily quiet, considering the number of men with violent intentions who were on the move in this still and peaceful field.

  Time to get their attention, Hawkins thought.

  Time to raise some hell.

  He started off with the illumination round, triggered it, and before it had completed its arc he fired a second one. The rounds deployed via parachute and turned brilliant, bathing the valley in illumination. The encroaching Chinese were alarmed by the sound of the rounds being fired, but that was nothing compared to what happened when the lights came on. They had been moving in darkness and in silence for all this time, and suddenly found themselves under the stage lights, completely exposed and easily targeted. The Chinese found themselves with just one logical response—they dropped down, to minimize themselves as targets, and peered into the night for their enemy.

  Easy targets, indeed. Hawkins thumbed in an M-406 high-explosive round and triggered it. The HE sailed into the lighted zone and detonated amid a trio of crouched Chinese attackers, killing two instantly and sending a third flopping to the ground, where he moaned, attempted to rise and fell limp. The nearby attackers were scrambling away on hands and knees when the second HE hit the ground in their midst. Several attackers were in the kill zone. One of them shouted a warning as the round hit and he leaped away as the round detonated. The blast hit him in the back and tore him open. Nearby companions suffered shattered bones and massive head damage while their exposed flesh was ripped apart. They went to the ground without hope of ever rising again. Another man dived for the ground, hoping that the blast would roll over him, but he was too close; the concussive force crushed his rolling body.

  From his position on the south side of the valley, Hawkins had just enough range in the M-203 to reach the attackers on the north side of the warehouse. He stuck in another parachute round and sent it sailing over the heads of the attackers, and they, too, found themselves in the spotlight of the brilliant white flare. Seconds later, the high-explosive rounds began to land in their midst. By then the entire north wave was in retreat, and when a third round hit the ground the shrapnel chased after them and further mutilated the already fallen bodies.

  * * *

  GARY MANNING AND Calvin James crept alongside the warehouse, making their way to the front and out into the open. On either side of them, fifty feet away, the flares had landed and were sputtering out in the tall grass, giving them enough darkness to allow for an escape.

  Manning went to ground and pulled James with him as a pair of gunners emerged from the front of the warehouse and faced in both directions. A third man emerged between them and fired directly in front of the building. If they’d been any closer, James and Manning would’ve caught some of the buckshot. The man was firing blind, hoping to scare off the attackers, and managed to miss the pair of Phoenix Force warriors.

  Now the other two men started firing into the dark night. One was pumping a shotgun, blasting up the grass, the other cocking a hunting rifle and firing off rounds over the tops of the shadowy undergrowth.

  The man in front, the one with the combat shotgun, was holding his fire and peering out into the darkness, looking for a target. Maybe he saw the crouched shapes of Manning and James, and maybe he was still firing blind, but when he directed his shotgun in their direction it was time to fight back.

  Manning triggered his M-16, cutting the man down. James turned his weapon on the one with the hunting rifle, now rapidly pivoting in their direction, and cut into him. And the one with the pump shotgun was taken down virtually simultaneously by Manning and James before he could duck back inside the warehouse.

  A torrent of machine-gun fire came through the half-open door to the warehouse. It ripped into the plywood and showered the fallen bodies with wood splinters. The rounds whacked at the weeds around James and Manning. James instinctively aimed at the invisible source of that machine-gun fire and triggered his own weapon. The machine gun turned off, as if with a switch.

  For a moment they seemed to be in the clear. James and Manning leaped to their feet and raced eastward, on a path to rendezvous with the rest of Phoenix Force.

  They dropped hard when volley after volley of automatic rifle fire came from the north. Flora turned into confetti, and Calvin James found himself hugging the earth to stay under the bullets.

  * * *

  DAVID MCCARTER WAS BLIND now to James and Manning’s predicament, his night-vision goggles useless. All he knew was what he’d seen in the last bit of sputtering flarelight—Manning and Hawkins were hurrying across the valley one moment, pinned down by multiple gunners the next.

  “Phoenix,” Barbara Price said.

  “Not now, Stony,” McCarter snapped.

  “Listen, David!” Price insisted. “We have a stealth aircraft on its way to your position. From what we can tell, it is one of the Very Light Jets.”

  “Great,” McCarter said through gnashing teeth. “Bloody great.”

  The Chinese configurations—from what little they knew of them—didn’t include VLJs. “In all likelihood, it’s coming to protect the warehouse,” Price said.

  “ETA?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Stony,” McCarter said. “What are the chances of us getting cooperation from the Chinese?”

  “Cooperation?” Price responded.

  “I know it sounds mad, but we got a real mess here,” McCarter said. “Cal and Gary are pinned down or just down. The Chinese are firing at us, the warehouse is firing at us, but we and the Chinese are both sitting ducks when that stealth aircraft gets here. We want the same damned thing. We want to destroy that warehouse. If you have any sort of line into the Chinese special operations, now is the time for some instant detente. We could stop killing each other, get the job done and get the hell out of here.”

  “I’d say it would take months to negotiate,” Price said.

  ‘“But can you do it in the next few minutes?” McCarter demanded.

  “It can’t hurt to try,” Price said.

  Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  BARBARA PRICE DID IN FACT have contacts in the Chinese military, but they weren’t people she liked, or who liked her or were likely to respond to any request. In fact, there was zero chance she could find anyone in the Chinese military who would admit to knowing anything about this operation—let alone jump to acquiesce to a request for instant international cooperation.

  She spun her chair and practically shouted across the War Room, “Akira!”

  The Japanese hacker rose up from behind a distant display cluster, and for a moment Price had the amusing image of a groundhog emerging from a golf course with a wide-eyed, questioning look on his face.

  “I need to get a message into China’s Ministry of State Security at their office in Shanghai. I have this number, but I know for a fact that it’s inactive. I also know that there are other active numbers at this location.” She was speaking carefully, quickly and clearly. If this was going to be done, and if it was going to work, it had to be done right the first time. The seconds were ticking away.

  “I need you to hack in and ring one or more numbers at the same location. If you can get me in and get someone who can speak fluent English, I will talk to them. But I need it now.”

  She read off the old phone number. This contact was now dead, and when he was alive he had never been cooperative or even civil. But he had been a high-level intelligence off
icer, and if she could reach someone of similar rank...

  Akira Tokaido took the number and sank down below his displays without a word, like the gopher going underground, and Barbara Price bit her lip. This could be a waste of time, and right now, with Phoenix Force in the middle of a firefight, there might be other ways she could assist. How long would this take? Could it possibly be done quickly enough to beat the stealth plane that was en route to the warehouse in Malaysia?

  A hack like this could take hours—

  “Got it,” Tokaido barked from across the room.

  Price snatched up her phone. “Hello?”

  “Who is this? Why are you calling here?”

  “I’m calling from the United States government.”

  “Why would you call here?”

  “I know for a fact that I’m calling an office of the Ministry of State Security Operations, Special Forces.”

  “This is an office building for product export services,” the man said belligerently.

  “Listen to me,” Price said, “and you and I may be able to help each other out. There is a situation ongoing at this moment in Malaysia. There are more than two dozen Chinese Special Forces on the ground, engaged in a firefight. There is a good chance that they are moments from being wiped out by a stealth aircraft attack. We have men on the ground engaged in the same battle. It is a stalemate. We can break the stalemate by working together. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “This is absurd!” The man was obviously Chinese, but also obviously fluent in English. He had the accent of one of the high-profile British universities.

  “Of course it’s absurd!” Price snapped back at him. “But it might save lives on my side and on your side. And it might achieve what we both need to achieve. The destruction of a warehouse in Malaysia filled with stealth aircraft. You know what I’m talking about. You want that warehouse destroyed, and so do we. If we all get wiped out in an aerial attack, then neither of us gets what we want. Now, we have two minutes and counting before your men start taking machine-gun fire from above. I’m giving you this intelligence for free. But someone there has got to have the balls to make a decision—right now.”

  “Wait,” the man said.

  Price fumed. She was furious with herself. This was a useless gesture and a waste of time. The Chinese would never cooperate with some unknown United States intelligence agency, particularly one that they were known to be engaged with at that very moment. Totalitarian government officials did not act impulsively.

  She could hear the man speaking on another line, in rapid-fire Chinese.

  He came back on the line. “I am acting as liaison and translator.”

  “Yes?” she asked, almost desperately.

  “What is it you want?”

  “Cease the attack on my men in that valley in Malaysia. If your men pull back, mine will pull back, and we can all take cover before we are wiped out from the air. Altogether. It is for mutual benefit. And then we can see about destroying that warehouse and everything inside. That is what we both want.”

  She was practically shouting at the man. And then she heard him translating rapidly into another phone.

  And then her line went dead.

  Sungei Paitan, East Malaysia

  “JAMES, MANNING, do you hear me?” McCarter said.

  Manning offered some sort of a response, but at the same moment another wave of automatic rifle fire came from the north side of the valley and the transmission halted. More of the Chinese troops were moving into the valley, filling it with gunfire, and for the first time began using grenades themselves.

  * * *

  A STAND-ALONE GRENADE launcher was erected on the north side of the valley and triggered in the general direction of the warehouse. The round hit the ground and detonated brightly, and by then the man had fired a second round. The next round detonated a hundred yards closer to where they had seen James and Manning go to ground. The next grenade would land right on top of them.

  Encizo jammed the sniper rifle on the tripod, flopped behind it and sighted the man behind the grenade launcher, cursing at the flashes of chaotic light. He pulled the trigger.

  Luck, and maybe desperation, guided his hand. The soldier at the Chinese grenade launcher was firing the grenade that would land on James and Manning’s position, but then he keeled over onto the launcher as it triggered. The high-explosive round detonated against his body and obliterated it.

  And yet he was replaced almost instantly by another wave of gunners who emerged from the trees and rose up from the ground. They put down more suppressing fire, cutting a broad swath across the valley, determined to hold this ground. McCarter’s estimate of the Chinese forces was now at least double his original guess of twenty-four.

  “Hawkins!” McCarter shouted into his headset mike.

  * * *

  HAWKINS GRUNTED IN RESPONSE as he was falling to the ground. He twisted and fired a burst behind him, where yet another wave of Chinese commandos emerged. They recoiled from the unexpected fire and sank to the ground, and Hawkins thumbed in another HE and placed it dead center of the group. The man in the middle of the pack disintegrated. His partners were merely hacked apart by the explosive force of the round. Most of the wave was dead in a heartbeat—and more were behind them in the jungle, scrambling for position.

  “I got an unknown number of unfriendlies coming up behind me.”

  “You need to get your ass back here and we’re all going to have to give cover to Manning and James if we want to pull them out of there.”

  “On my way.”

  * * *

  ENCIZO FLATTENED HIMSELF as more rounds buzzed at the trees that gave him and McCarter scant cover. He judged that he was out of range of any sort of a precise hit, so he rose up behind the tripod-mounted rifle again, looked for the muzzle flashes and pecked at them with high-velocity sniper rounds. It was impossible to see in the darkness if he was scoring any hits; the confusion of lights and flashes was too much.

  Then a pair of Chinese soldiers jogged into the field and faced down Encizo’s sniper rifle. In front of them they held shields, like police riot shields, and when the pair stopped, the shields formed a solid wall in front of their crouched bodies. Encizo reloaded the sniper rifle and aimed for the shields, finding them to be easier targets but also finding them impenetrable to his rounds. He could see when he actually scored a hit because it jerked the shield in the soldier’s hand.

  The soldiers were pros, and they waited until he had used up his rounds before they picked up and rushed forward again, trying to get themselves close enough to target Encizo with their own weapons. David McCarter spotted another knot of Chinese soldiers waiting at the tree line, watching the encounter, waiting for this pair of shielded soldiers to remove the resistance the Phoenix Force pair represented. Then they would be free to move in and take the warehouse, and likely take down Manning and James in the process.

  The pair of commandos paused again, crouched behind their shields and held their ground. For a moment there was a kind of eerie quiet over the battlefield. Encizo was holding his fire, knowing there was no value in chipping away at their riot shields. Then he witnessed another shield raised up between the pair, and this one was slotted to allow a shoulder-fired rocket launcher to get through. Encizo triggered his weapon in rapid succession, but he wasn’t going to stop them from sending a round directly at himself and McCarter.

  But someone else was going to stop them.

  * * *

  CALVIN JAMES ROSE painfully into a crouch in the darkness of the valley, unseen and unlooked for by the Chinese commandos, and he had an unshielded side shot. He triggered the M-16 and cut into the soldiers, and kept firing as the first man fell and the rounds chopped into the second commando, and then the third. They collapsed together, and their shields fell atop them.

  Then the Chinese group in waiting rushed forward, finding a new target within their range, and unleashed a barrage of automatic fire at Calvin James as the
Phoenix Force commando fell back to ground.

  McCarter could only hope that he had wormed his way far enough through the undergrowth to avoid the onslaught. And he saw, to his dismay, still more Chinese soldiers gathering at the tree line.

  Sometimes, regardless of your skill in battle, you could be overwhelmed by numbers.

  But there had to be away to extricate that pair without getting any Phoenix Force warrior killed in the process. He was beginning to think it would take some sort of a miracle.

  And that was when the firing stopped.

  * * *

  THE MEN AT THE TREE LINE seemed to step back into the shadows. They were still there—McCarter could still feel their eyes and he could still see the occasional glint of metal or an LED—but the Chinese were holding back. All around the Chinese could be seen slinking away, out of the exposed valley and into the cover of the jungle.

  The valley was filled with a potent and almost poisonous silence.

  “Stony,” McCarter said into his mike, “the Chinese are pulling back. Did you do it? Did you actually get the Chinese to play along?”

  “Stony here,” Price said. “I don’t know. They just hung up on me.”

  “Cal? Gary?”

  “Stay put. We’re making our way out.” Gary Manning was speaking in a tense, carefully modulated voice. It was as if no one dared to speak out loud.

  “Are either of you hurt?” McCarter demanded, his eyes roving the dark undergrowth that filled the valley, unable to see his two missing commandos.

  “Almost there,” Manning said.

  And still the cease-fire held. From the south, the bushes rattled slightly, but it was Hawkins who emerged, eyes scanning back the way he had just come, his M-16 in one hand and a handgun in the other.

  He came to a halt in a low tense crouch alongside McCarter.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  McCarter didn’t even hear him.

  “Manning!” he barked.

  Manning seemed to materialize out of a low bush ten feet away from McCarter, crawling slowly and dragging something heavy.

  Dragging Calvin James.