Adjusting the computerized controls on the optics, Mendoza tracked the lieutenant as she followed a bike trail through the park to avoid the open streets. The dorsal fin–shaped blade on top of the weapon contained a host of optical systems, telescopic, infrared and even a Starlite function, which allowed a gunner to clearly see the enemy in virtually no light at all. Just the faint glimmer of the distant stars above was enough.
Suddenly, an old man walking his dog was startled by the appearance of the lieutenant on her BMW, and seemed to be shouting at her. Pulling a silenced pistol from within her jacket, Caramico shot down the civilian along with his dog, and kept going.
“You should have saved him for me.” Mendoza chuckled softly. “The elderly have little life remaining, so they cling to what’s left with fierce determination.”
“You are a sick bastard,” a gruff voice said in Spanish from behind him, and he heard a metallic click-clack. “Now drop the weapon or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
Instantly the big sergeant went motionless. There was no mistaking the ominous sound of a hammer being thumbed back into the firing position on a revolver.
CHAPTER SIX
Badlands, North Dakota
Reaching out a trembling hand, Edward Greenbaum grabbed hold of a jagged rock barely jutting from the sheer rock face. Testing the outcropping to make sure it could hold his weight, Greenbaum then carefully shifted his spiked boots and rose another few inches up the side of the towering mesa.
As he had read numerous times in journals and Web sites, North Dakota had some of the most barren and inhospitable regions on the face of the earth. In his younger days, Greenbaum had been to both the Sahara Desert and Antarctica. But for his money there was no larger expanse of nothingness than good old North Dakota.
It made the Nullabor Plains of Australia look like Disneyland, Edward noted, then forced his attention back to the climbing.
Some fools said mountaineering wasn’t a sport, but it took more guts to climb a mountain than charge a defensive line in football. There were rules and laws preventing the fullbacks from inflicting too much damage. Even in hockey, there were referees and a penalty box. But mountains had no restrictions or limitations, and did everything in their power to kill off a climber. Shifting rocks, crumbling cliffs, high winds, blazing sun. Once when a line broke, Greenbaum had been forced to stand still as a colony of ants climbed through his clothing biting all the way.
“Not a sport, my ass,” the man growled, pulling out a piton and using the hammer attached by a lariat to his belt to drive the steel pin into the rocks.
Gingerly testing the piton, he then clicked on the coupling attaching his rope to the new anchor, and eased the tension in his legs to rest for a minute. But suddenly, there was a sharp crack, and the rock beneath his boots broke away from the cliff face.
Instantly tightening his handholds, the man felt adrenaline surge through his body as his left leg swung free into space. Stay calm, he urged himself. Use fingers and palms. Heart against the stone. Use your body to stay in place. Friction is your friend!
Minutely adjusting his position, Greenbaum found a secure footing and stayed in place for several minutes just breathing in the cool, dry air. Whew, safe again, he thought. That had been close.
Wisely, the man had assaulted the penumbra side of the mesa. The morning sun casted cool, dark shadows, which meant he would sweat less, need less water, stay strong longer, and the rocks were less likely to sheer away.
Taking a judicious sip from the water tube at his collar, Greenbaum continued the perilous climb. Foot by foot, yard by yard, the man grimly moved across the side of the mesa, following the zigzag path of crevices and cracks. It was high noon when he finally saw the top of the Black Rock Mesa. Victory!
Reaching out, Greenbaum took hold of the edge and tried to lift himself, and felt it move slightly only a heartbeat before the rock splintered. As his handhold came loose, the man swung away from the rocks desperately clawing at the empty air. Digging in with his left hand, he spread his legs wide in an effort to brace himself fast. Eight hundred feet below there was only sand and rock. With his heart pounding wildly, Greenbaum tried to banish that thought as he felt the rope around his waist tighten, and then abruptly loosen. The piton had come free!
Frantically reaching for the cliff, Greenbaum unexpectedly heard footsteps crunching on the loose windblown sand and from out of nowhere a gloved hand reached down and grabbed his wrist in an iron grip.
“Hold on, I’ve got you!” a man shouted from above, the blazing sun casting his features into blackness. “Don’t let go!”
“Don’t get too close to the edge!” Greenbaum warned in response, tightening his hold on the stranger’s forearm. The muscles beneath the cloth were like a bundle of steel cables. A fellow climber? he thought. Had to be. There was no other way to reach the top of Black Rock Mesa aside from using a helicopter.
Now with an anchor, Greenbaum levered himself upward, and got an elbow over the cliff. Another hand reached out to grab his climbing vest, and the climber let go with his left hand to claw the irregular surface of the mesa until finding a new hold.
Grunting in unison, the two men strained to the task, but the mountaineer was finally hauled over the precipice and onto solid ground.
“Thanks….” Greenbaum wheezed, breathing in the delicious smell of the hot sand and relishing the sheer joy of not holding on to anything for a second.
“No problem,” the other man said with a chuckle. “Drink?”
A military canteen came into view, but Greenbaum waved it aside and got his own, savoring the vitamin-enhanced sport drink.
“Can’t believe that I made it,” he said, lowering the canteen and wiping his mouth dry on a hairy arm. “That was one bitch of a climb.”
“A real bitch,” the stranger replied, crossing his massive arms. “I would not have believed it possible that anybody could climb this thing. Madre mia, this is eight hundred feet high!”
“Nine hundred and ten.” Pouring some of his drink into a palm, Greenbaum wiped down his dusty face. “So how’d you get up here?” he asked, squinting at the other fellow. “And who are you?”
“Reinhold, Sigerson Reinhold.”
“Ed Greenbaum.” He paused. “Er…Sigerson?”
Brushing back his hair, Reinhold shrugged. “Parents, what can you do, eh?”
Chuckling, Greenbaum rose to his feet. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I have a cousin named Hyman Bender. And the millionaire who created the Learjet, John Lear? He named his kids King and Chanda.”
“No!”
“God’s truth.”
Laughing to the obvious lie, Reinhold took a look over the edge of the mesa. “So where’s the rest of your party?” he asked, sounding concerned. “Are they on the other side? Or at your base camp?”
“There’s nobody else,” Greenbaum said, raising a hand to shield his face from the sun. Now that he could see the other fellow, he was a big man, wide shoulders and narrow waist like a professional dancer. “I always climb alone. It’s more fun that way.”
“Fun?” Reinhold turned from the open air. “Way out here? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Usually, no,” Greenbaum admitted honestly. “But Black Rock Mesa is rather famous for being…How did you get up here again?”
“Helicopter,” Reinhold said, flashing a smile. “Well, we really should get you back down to your truck.”
“Motorcycle,” Greenbaum corrected. “A sweet little Beamer Explorer. A ride down would be great. Don’t often have that kind of an option. Just let me catch my breath first and do a scan.”
The other man blinked. “A scan?” he repeated in confusion.
“Didn’t make it to the top to go home empty-handed,” Greenbaum said, pulling out his cell phone and activating the digital camera to take a panoramic view of the flat-top mesa for his Web site. Once on his Web site, this was going to become wallpaper for ten thousand climbers around the globe.
&
nbsp; “Hey, folks!” Greenbaum called cheerfully, starting to turn in a circle. “Welcome from—”
A shot rang out and he felt a numbing blow to his hand.
In shock, Greenbaum saw the shattered remains of the cell phone fly away to bounce off the rocky ground and scatter over the edge of the mesa, spraying into the dry winds.
Spinning furiously, he gawked in surprise at the four men in camouflage-colored uniforms rising from behind a small pile of weeds and boulders.
“What the hell is going on here?” Greenbaum demanded angrily.
One of the men growled something in what sounded like Spanish, and Reinhold replied. Spreading out, the four men then worked the arming bolts on strange-looking assault rifles. Greenbaum knew something about weapons; he often read military adventure novels. But these things resembled something from a sci-fi movie, sleek and compact, with two different-size barrels.
“What is the Army doing all the way up here?” he demanded, suddenly feeling nervous. “Your helicopter break down or something?”
Without speaking, the grim men advanced, their weapons pointed directly at him.
“Look here, guys, if I stumbled onto some sort of Green Beret training mission, I can just go back down the mesa,” the mountain climber offered, licking dry lips. There was a folding knife at his hip, good for cutting rope, but about as useful as a throw rock against these kinds of weapons. “Now, I’m a loyal American. I can keep my trap shut if this some kind of a cover thing. No problem there! You can trust me!”
Softly, the wind whispered across the top of the mesa, carrying away all of the accumulated heat of the distant sun.
Resting the stock of the FN-2000 assault rifle on a hip, one of the uniformed men spoke in Spanish again.
“Because I didn’t want to waste half a day having you wash this fool’s blood off the rocks below,” Reinhold explained brusquely. “Now we know he is alone, and riding a BMW motorcycle. There is no need to torture a man, if he will give you the needed information willingly. It is wasteful and inefficient.”
Utterly stunned, Greenbaum snapped his head toward the man who had rescued him only moments ago. Torture. What the hell was going on here?
Slinging the assault rifle over a shoulder, one of the soldiers pulled out a knife; the edge shone mirror-bright in the harsh sunshine.
Instantly alert, Greenbaum moved fast and kicked some dirt into the face of the soldier. Dropping the blade, the man staggered backward rubbing his eyes and cursing. Diving forward, the mountaineer grabbed the blade and came up slashing in a killing technique he hadn’t practiced in twenty years. But the years spent in the dojo proved their worth, and a second man fell back, his hands gushing blood, the assault rifle tumbling free.
Grabbing the unfamiliar weapon, Greenbaum fumbled to find the safety, when Reinhold slammed the edge of his hand into his exposed throat. Hacking for air, the climber lost the weapon. But then Reinhold frowned as Greenbaum dropped into a Judo stance and lashed out a fist, thumb slightly extended for a killing blow to the throat. The professor nimbly dodged the blow, moving amazingly fast, and dropped into a crouch to sweep out a leg and send his adversary to the ground. He hit with a martial-arts cry, slapping the rock to absorb the force of the fall, and rolled over into a defensive stance.
The remaining two soldiers moved forward, but stopped at a command from their leader.
“Mine!” Reinhold snapped, lashing out a boot, the steel toe smashing directly into the bruised throat once more.
Unable to breath at all, Greenbaum scrambled away from the men, ripping open his jacket to reach for the pull-cords of the parachute strapped to his back. Gotta escape! Jump, catch the winds, dodge their bullets, move-move-move! he thought.
The mountaineer was only yards from the edge, leaning into the wind, when he collided with two more men in the strange desert uniforms. They seemed to come from out of nowhere. Then Greenbaum saw that their uniforms were different from the other soldiers, and hope filled his face for an instant. Until he saw their cold eyes and knew death had arrived.
Adrenaline fueled his muscles, and Greenbaum jumped for the edge, but was tackled hard to the rocky ground by one of the new arrivals. He rolled over to try to take both of them off the mesa, but more soldiers arrived, punching and kicking until he fell, panting, to the hot sand. Every part of his body hurt. Blood seemed to be everywhere, and the world was slowly spinning.
“Edward, Edward.” The professor sighed in disappointment. “May I call you Ed? Alas, I truly dislike bloodshed. And you can still leave here alive.” Reinhold paused to rub his bruised arm. “We know the man you are climbing with is an escaped convict. We only want him, not you, Ed. Not you. Stop protecting your friend. Tell us where he is, and you go free.”
Dribbling blood from his mouth, Greenbaum looked up in fervent hope. “You…got wrong guy,” he mumbled, more crimson bubbling out with every word. “Don’t have a climbing partner…work alone. I’m…not the guy…you want.”
Inhaling deeply, Reinhold nodded. “See? All you have to do is ask correctly and civilians will tell you anything you need to know.”
In spite of the pain, Greenbaum couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Another trick? “No, wait! I lied! I have a climbing partner….”
Pulling a big automatic pistol from inside his shirt, the professor smiled. “No, you don’t,” he whispered, and shot the man in the side of the head. Blood and brains exploded across the sandy rocks, a few drops flying off into space and carried away by the dry wind.
“How many times do I have to tell you, always make sure the civilian is alone,” Reinhold stated, holstering the 9 mm Bersa pistol. “Then you can execute the intruder.”
One of the soldiers replied in fluent Spanish. They understood English, but their accent was so pronounced, it had been deemed wiser to not even have them attempt to pass as American soldiers. Even in California, it was painfully obvious these were foreigners.
“Yes, that’s why I didn’t simply let him drop before,” Reinhold replied impatiently. “He might have reported to a Dakota park ranger which mesa he was planning to climb. If they came here and found a body—well, a stain at the bottom—then there would be an investigation. More rangers, maybe even police. But if a climber goes into the Badlands and simply disappears, it will be days before the authorities decide to check on his whereabouts. And by then, this will be over.”
Still rubbing sand from his eyes, another soldier spoke.
“Yes, it will be good to go back home,” the professor agreed. “Now take the body down the elevator and drive his vehicle off a cliff far away from here.”
As the Forge soldiers got busy, Reinhold went to the collection of boulders and lifted a steel hatch painted to resemble the sandy rock. Climbing down the access ladder, the professor descended deep into the subterranean complex.
At the bottom of the ladder, the professor stomped his boots on the concrete floor to get off the sand. Tiny dust clouds billowed behind him as the man headed for the elevator banks. There were three sets of doors, but only the one on the left worked. The others were death traps for invaders. Readiness was all, as the general liked to say. True words, indeed.
Hitting the button for the communications center, Reinhold relaxed as cool air started blowing from the wall vents. Irritably, he rubbed the calloused edge of his aching hand. He never thought the short American would have proved to be such a formidable opponent. Rock-climbing enthusiasts were a lot tougher than expected. He’d have to make a mental note to remember that in the future. The man had been good. He grinned. Just not good enough.
Glancing at the security mirror set in the corner, Reinhold brushed back his prematurely thinning hair. He was middle-aged, but not weak. A strong mind deserved a strong body.
Gently slowing to a stop, the elevator doors opened with a pneumatic sigh and Reinhold walked past the armed guards standing behind a low barricade of sandbags. A lot of the equipment inside the mesa had been extremely difficult to smu
ggle into America, so it made only good sense to use as many natural materials as possible. Sandbags were one of the best barriers to gunfire, and a lot easier to transport than sheets of Lexan plastic or titanium-steel armor plating.
Passing a section of the tunnel lined with Claymore antipersonnel mines, the professor remembered how long it had taken Forge to find a suitable mesa, and then finish off the natural caves to make enough room for the power generators, barracks, storage facilities and uplink equipment. The FBI and Homeland Security were always on the prowl for munitions coming over the borders, but nobody thought twice about electrical equipment. Almost everything else had been purchased openly, or through a series of blind drops, unmarked cars passing each other in an empty parking lot in the middle of the night.
Bemused, the man smiled at the memory. It had taken three long years, but now Forge had a fully functional firebase situated smack in the middle of the continental United States.
A viper hidden in their bosom that would strike down the fat Americans, once and forever, Reinhold thought, showing a half grin. Their greed had destroyed the natural balance of the world, so it seemed only fitting for them to take the blame for the awful repairs about to begin.
The end was coming, nothing and nobody could stop that now. If there was some other way it could have been done, the professor would gladly have suggested the solution to the general. But this was the only answer. Billions of lives would be lost, but that would save a billion more.
Reaching an intersection, Reinhold nodded to the armed guards behind the next sandbag nest. One smiled and nodded, the other frowned.
“Password,” he said in rather good English.
“What? Get out of my way, fool, I have no time for this nonsense,” Reinhold began, starting forward.
Capital Offensive (Stony Man) Page 10