Manning had little time to act. He chose his targets from a pair of vehicles parked in the grass near the bay doors. There was a tricked-out Hummer and an old Honda on blocks, no rubber on its rims.
Manning picked the Honda. He gave gas to the Mercedes SUV and plowed head-on into the little car. The front end of the SUV sent the Honda flying off its blocks, and it tumbled unsteadily over the ground.
Manning rolled down the windows. He could hear the distant burst of gunfire, and maybe he heard the hush of quiet engines—or maybe not.
He nudged the front end against the Honda and gave it a shove. The Honda rolled awkwardly. There were obviously more problems to the suspension and simply missing tires but Manning pushed it aggressively until it veered away and went broadside.
Manning reversed the SUV then drove into the Honda, shoving it toward the road-runway.
The nose of the aircraft emerged from the bay.
Manning couldn’t risk losing the Honda again. If he kept the thing moving along steadily he would get it onto the road in time.
If he was too slow, then his only option would be to put the Mercedes SUV itself on the runway to stop that aircraft from taking off.
He wasn’t sure if Cello’s SUV was armored against .50-caliber machine-gun fire and he didn’t want to find out.
Then the Honda veered off course yet again, just ten feet from the runway.
Manning saw the aircraft make a forty-five-degree turn to face down the runway, and he thought he could see the face of the man in the cockpit, lit by the glow of the cockpit controls.
Manning reversed the SUV as the small jet accelerated abruptly. The pilot knew Manning’s intention and simply planned to outrace him.
Manning stomped on the gas and plowed hard into the broadside of the little Honda and pushed the little car at the road.
The two tail-mounted engines were already at full thrust, and the rush of wind turned to a whine, and the aircraft sped over the pavement while Manning fought for every foot. The bare rims were plowing earth and the Honda was shuddering violently. The small jet was already just a few feet away. Manning took a gamble. He reversed a little and accelerated, hard, fast, and slammed the front end of the SUV into the junk Honda. And he didn’t stop. One way or another there was going to be something there to stop that jet.
The Honda jarred against the pavement and rolled onto its side on the surface of the runway.
Manning for a fraction of a second could see the look of horror on the face of the pilot. Manning yanked the SUV into Reverse and gassed it hard. The SUV recoiled from the runway.
But suddenly the aircraft was steered into a sideways skid, and it crunched up broadside against the upturned Honda.
Fuel spilled from multiple penetration points. The hatch burst open. A man leaped from the cockpit as flame swept over the body of the jet.
But he left the aircraft seconds too late. Spilling fuel soaked his clothing, and the man danced while flames engulfed his body. He dropped and rolled on the grass desperately, slapping himself and shouting wordlessly, but the spilled fuel would not be quenched for many long seconds.
Then he got to his feet, clothing burned, his skin cooked across his chest and bare arms and shoulders and neck. His eyes were white with agony, but when he saw Gary Manning loping across the grass to intercept him, the man attempted to flee.
Manning sprinted after the figure and shoved him between the shoulder blades. His hand came away with a crust of burned flesh. He shook it off and approached the fallen man.
The man’s eyes rolled violently back and forth and he shook his head spasmodically. His violent actions broke open a crust of burned skin, and his blood flowed out by the pint.
Ali Zordun was drained and dead within seconds.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Manning was disgusted to realize that he had burned his hand on Zordun’s cooked flesh. The charred crust wouldn’t shake off.
He used his left hand to reach over his head and detach the lipstick cam from his headset. He touched the LED light on the cam and held it over the face of the dead man.
“Stony,” he requested, “take a look at this.”
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
BARBARA PRICE WAS NO stranger to violent death, but even she was shocked by the image that popped up, in brilliant color and vivid detail, on the huge plasma screen in the War Room. Carmen Delahunt gasped and put her hand over her mouth. Akira Tokaido stood and grinned from ear to ear.
“Got ’im!”
“Is this our man, Stony?” Manning asked.
Price examined the steaming, blackened corpse displayed on the screen, trying to concentrate on the relatively unscathed face.
She knew that face. It matched the photo in their files.
“That’s him. Ali Zordun,” Price said.
“Problem solved, Stony,” Manning said.
If only it were that easy, Price thought.
“Stony,” Manning said, “I could use a first-aid kit.” Then he added, “And a hospital burn unit...”
* * *
THE NEWS NETWORKS worldwide were beside themselves. They didn’t know what to make of the unexpected news coup staged by, of all things, a weather network. All over the world, people were turning to a dedicated live station established by Worldwide Weather News to view live video streams from around the world. Every time a stealth aircraft took to the air, its location could be viewed by millions of TV watchers worldwide.
Enthusiastic viewers helped raise alerts, and several of the planes were apprehended or destroyed. A cocaine shipment from Africa to France was met at an isolated landing site by a hundred French police officers and a thousand onlookers.
A cargo of heroin was forced down in a cornfield in southern Illinois and burned on the spot. The farmer who owned the field was on the news, describing how he was standing in his living room, watching the aircraft on his TV, then running to the porch to watch it land in his field.
There was even a sighting of an aircraft leaving the scene of the military buildup off Taiwan. The aircraft had put down quickly on mainland China. The government of China denied that such a plane had ever existed.
* * *
“THE TECHNOLOGY IS USELESS. China won’t try to use it again. They’ll be happy to forget the entire fiasco,” Brognola reported from his office in D.C. “They’re claiming that the activity in the South China Sea was a scheduled military exercise. The focus never was on Taiwan. That’s what they’re saying. The buildup has been entirely dispersed as of today.”
“Any recriminations coming out of Beijing?” Price asked.
“None. I don’t know that they ever even suspected U.S. involvement.”
“You can’t ask for a better conclusion than that,” Kurtzman said.
“What about their attack on Brezius?” Price said.
“The Chinese aren’t going to say anything about that,” Brognola said. “But the administration sure is. The President wants to know how a bunch of U.S. Special Forces, all with honorable discharges, ended up on the Chinese payroll.”
Price said, “Is the administration surprised by it? We’ve seen this kind of thing before.”
“The administration is—alarmed. By the way, Brezius got his immunity. On the condition he keeps his mouth shut. He’s even been offered employment with a National Reconnaissance Office branch. He’s going to accept the NRO position, whether he wants to or not. There’s going to be a high degree of attention paid to his activities for the next decade.”
“I’m glad he got a break. He was cooperative,” Price said. “After we saved him from being killed.”
“Yeah. A real trouper,” Brognola growled. “What happened to the facilities in Pingtung? I assume the Taiwanese have taken care of it?”
Price nodded. “They did a very complete job. Our friend from the CIA made a drive-by. She reports both facilities were leveled. She thinks they’re going to turn the sites into parks. Taiwan doesn’t want China to have any suspici
ons that they tried to exploit that technology.”
“And Phoenix?” Brognola asked.
“Gary burned his hand. Not much damage but a very serious risk from infection. He had pieces of Mr. Zordun heat-fused to his own skin.”
Brognola grimaced.
“His hand was surgically scraped, and he’ll be on an antibiotic IV for days. In fact, the rumor mill says he’s got an extraspecial nurse taking care of him.”
On the big plasma screen, Brognola raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
Antai Tain-Sheng Memorial Hospital
“TAIWAN HAS THE BEST hospitals I’ve ever been in,” Gary Manning said. He was sitting in an easy chair, in civilian clothes, and the only sign of his infirmity was a bandaged right hand and an IV feeding into his arm.
In his left hand he had a remote for the flat-screen TV on the wall.
“They’ve got ESPN channels here that I’ve never even heard of. Ever hear of an ESPN curling channel? All curling, all the time, channel 678.”
T. J. Hawkins glared at Manning, trying to figure out if he was lying.
A cafeteria tray rolled into the room, propelled by Cello Jiahua. She was all smiles for the men of Phoenix Force, but it was a bigger, better smile for Gary Manning.
“I found you a better tray,” she announced. She lifted the cover from the cafeteria tray that was already positioned next to his chair, wrinkled her nose at the contents and moved it aside. She pushed her tray into its place and pulled a six-pack of cold Cokes from the bottom shelf. She put the six-pack in McCarter’s hands.
“Mr. M.”
“Thanks.” McCarter began to break off Cokes and pass them around.
As they watched soccer out of Brunei, Manning ate his Cello-approved lunch happily, with Cello herself perched comfortably on the arm of his easy chair. Encizo inspected the lunch tray that had been deemed unsuitable for Manning and devoured it without complaint.
Calvin James leaned close to Encizo and said, “Ever heard the term reverse jailbait?”
Encizo chewed his rice and nodded. “Mena Suvari–type. She’s thirty-three but looks sixteen.”
“Yeah.”
Cello cast a glare at Encizo and James. “Don’t you guys have to get back to the United States or something?”
“Yeah,” McCarter said, “this afternoon. You’ll have to be on your own for a few days, Gary. Sure hope you’ll be okay.”
“I’ll survive,” Manning said. “This is the nicest hospital I’ve ever been in.”
“So you’ve said.”
The other four members of the Phoenix Force commando team left the hospital, on their way to the airport.
“What exactly is it that makes this such a fantastic hospital?” Cello asked.
“Cable TV.” Manning waved at the flat-screen TV. “Recliner. These are all good things. Beds are way more comfortable than U.S. hospitals.”
She folded her arms.
“But,” Manning said, “I think the best part is definitely the reverse jailbait.”
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781460304068
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Perilous Skies (Stony Man) Page 26