Just then, a trooper carrying a combat shotgun rushed around a corner and paused to gawk at the sight of the strangers. Dressed in camouflage ghillie suits and IR goggles, the Stony Man operatives looked like invaders from Mars.
Caught in the act of reloading, Encizo moved fast, lashing out with a steel-tipped combat boot to kick the man in the groin, then the belly and throat. With a muffled grunt, the terrorist collapsed unconscious.
“This way,” Encizo directed, slapping in a fresh clip and jerking his weapon to the right.
Crossing the street, Phoenix Force reached a small brick building. Taking flanking positions, McCarter and Hawkins stood guard while James went to work with a key-wire gun on the lock. It yielded in less than a minute, and they quickly slipped inside. But the offices were empty, dark and deserted.
Briefly checking with an EM scanner, McCarter got no reading of an electromagnetic field from either computers or an uplink. The only thing of interest was a poster on the wall of a pretty Spanish girl in a string bikini skiing down a snowy mountain.
Grunting in annoyance, McCarter shoved the scanner into a cushioned pocket on the leg of his ghillie suit, and moved outside with the rest of the team close behind.
“Where next?” Hawkins started to ask, but turned to fire his MP-5 in the middle of the sentence.
High overhead, a Forge soldier was swinging a flamethrower their way, the lance of reddish-yellow fire moving along the street in hellish majesty, the lashing flames splaying along the black asphalt. As the rest of the team hammered at the soldier with 9 mm rounds, his chest suddenly burst open. The flamethrower died away as the dead man went flying backward. A few seconds later, the boom of the distant Barrett arrived.
“Thanks,” McCarter whispered into his throat mike, working the arming bolt to clear a jam from the ejector port.
“Screw that, you’ve got incoming!” Manning replied curtly. “Big steel, three o’clock and moving fast!”
The men of Phoenix Force spun around just as a lumbering Gavin APC turned the corner. The halogen headlights briefly illuminated the team in harsh clarity before they dived for cover. Instantly, the coaxial chain gun on the side of the Gavin unleashed a barrage of 12.7 mm rounds. Then the chattering weapon exploded into pieces, the distant Barrett announcing Manning’s deadly marksmanship.
There was movement inside the Gavin and the armored top hatch flipped open, a Forge soldier grabbing for the 25 mm Bushmaster cannon. Expecting that move, Phoenix Force tore the man apart with concentrated volley fire, and Hawkins flipped a grenade into the air. It hit the hatch and rattled down into the APC. The enemy gunners inside cursed in horror, then the Willie Peter charge flashed and the anguished voices went silent forever.
“This is taking too bleeding long,” McCarter growled, checking his wristwatch. “Everybody spread out and find the base security bunker. They’ll know the location of the uplink array.”
Without comment, the Stony Man operatives took off in different directions, swiftly disappearing into the murky shadows.
THE DOUBLE DOORS to the security office slammed aside, and a rumpled man in a bathrobe strode into the room with a monstrous .50 Desert Eagle pistol in his fist.
Looking up from their consoles, the Forge soldiers said nothing, and went straight back to work, issuing fast orders over their VOX mikes, directing men and machines in a rescue mission for the wounded, and trying to block the two holes in the fence with anything that could be found. Wearing helmets and body armor, armed guards stood nervously in the corners, twisting their hands on the FN-2000 assault rifles, clearly wishing they were outside and mixing in the fight. Grenades festooned the web harness on their chests, and one man carried an XM-214 minigun.
“Shut off those damn alarms!” General Calvano shouted. “OD, what is happening on my base?”
“We’re being attacked by unknown forces, sir!” the Officer of the Day announced. “Mortar fire from the hillside, along with a sniper.” The man paused awkwardly.
“And?” the general prompted harshly. “Speak, man, or I’ll have your balls for breakfast!”
“There have been some reports of commandos actually inside the base,” the soldier continued doggedly. “But nothing confirmed yet.”
“Reports from where?” Calvano demanded suspiciously, walking along the banks of video monitors.
Most of the screens in the woods surrounding the base showed nothing of interest, a moonlit forest glen, a babbling brook, the main access road. But an entire row of screens was blank, the feeds terminated, and several more displayed the burning bridge collapsed into the Otonio River, and the ruin of the front gate.
Dead bodies were strewed everywhere, blast craters dotted the landscape and dozens of soldiers were running about firing their weapons. One corporal was moving through the cars in the parking lot, smashing windows with the butt of his gun and turning on the headlights. The rows of beams were starting to brighten the smoky gloom, showing more dead soldiers and the same burning buildings.
“From where? All over, sir,” the soldier reported, swallowing with difficulty. “The old offices, Storage Shed 5, the abandoned barracks—”
“The cold spots,” Calvano interrupted, tucking the Desert Eagle into a pocket of his robe. Somebody was trying to find the supercomputer that ran the uplink. “All right, recall everybody outside the base! I want a wall of men surrounding the—”
Something flashed across the video screen showing the parking lot and several cars violently exploding, flipping into the air and turning over to crash on their crumpled hoods from the sheer force of the detonation. All of the headlights winked out, and darkness returned with a vengeance.
“That was a LAW rocket,” the general stated in cold certainty, advancing upon the console as if about to attack the screen. He paused in the realization of what he was doing, and stood casually erect. Always be calm in front of the troops, especially when everything was going to hell. “OD, are there any people still on the roofs?”
“No, sir, all dead.”
“All?” Calvano bellowed, arching an eyebrow. “How is that possible?”
“My best guess is a Barrett rifle, sir,” the soldier began, gesturing at the blank screens. “Every shot kills one, or two, of our troops. Even the men wearing heavy armor.”
“What about the Gavins?”
“I have six blocking the holes in the fence. Three are being held in reserve, and one is not responding.”
“That means it’s been destroyed,” Calvano muttered, furrowing his brow.
Then he scowled. “You there, private! Zoom in on that screen!”
The soldier did as requested, until the view of the foggy intersection filled the monitor.
“That’s a smoke grenade,” the general stated, pointing at an object lying on the pavement. “And not the model we carry.”
Just then a loud bang drew his attention to a monitor. Puzzled, the general stared at the sight of the buckled door to the garage coming free from the hinges and falling to the ground. Now why in the world would the sniper use the Barrett to smash down the door to the garage? Unless…
“Get the Gavins out of there!” Calvano barked. “Now! Right now!”
A security officer hastily began speaking into the VOX throat mike when another LAW rocket streaked across the tumultuous base and went straight through the man-size opening. A muffled blast filled the garage, then a moment later the entire building erupted, the windows exploding and the roof rising on a staggering fireball as the emergency stores of gasoline and munitions simultaneously ignited.
“So much for the reserve Gavins,” Calvano snarled, hunching his broad shoulders. “OD, get the Ashanti helicopters into the air! Bomb those hills until the forest is leveled! But kill that sniper!”
“Already on the way, sir!” the OD reported in grim satisfaction, cracking his knuckles.
Glancing at the side monitor, Calvano smiled at the sight of four black ghosts rising into the air from the small helipad in t
he center of the firebase. Recently purchased on the black market by Snake Eater, the sleek Italian gunships were armored killers, carrying more firepower than a dozen Gavins. Then he sharply frowned as one of the helicopters turned on its running lights as required by standard safety precautions.
“Combat mode, idiot!” the general snarled, reaching for the screen. He turned around. “OD, have that moron go black at once!”
But before the soldier could act, the distant Barrett spoke once more. The windshield shattered and the helicopter wobbled, then listed sideways and touched rotors with a second. In a shattering microsecond, the sixteen spinning turboblades of the two gunships were shredded into shrapnel. The deadly halo of fiberglass and steel radiated outward to hammer the other two gunships. Both exploded, and in ragged order, the four crippled helicopters dropped a hundred feet to crash on the concrete helipad. The blast shook the beleaguered base, shattering windows, the detonating fuel and ammo of the gunships combining to form a writhing mushroom cloud that rose to mask the silvery moon. Illuminated from below by the scattered fire, the roiling cloud made it look as if the military compound had been nuked.
“Mother of God,” a private whispered, making the sign of the cross.
“OD, warm up the Pegasus,” Calvano ordered, tightening the sash on his robe. The base was lost. Time to leave. They would continue the Great Project from their main firebase in the Andes. “And sound the retreat. Everybody is to gather at the parade ground in five minutes, or be left behind.”
Everybody knew what that meant and quickly began issuing the recall orders into the VOX throat mikes.
“But, sir, the bridge is gone,” the officer said, nervously glancing at a flickering screen showing the fiery ruins in the valley. “Our people across the river can’t get back here in that short a time!”
“Yes, I know,” Calvano said, pulling a chain from around his neck. A small hexagonal key was attached.
The OD stood. “Sir, please, there must be another way!”
“No, there is not.” Calvano sighed, going to the main console and inserting the key into a hole. Twisting hard to the right, then the left, there came a soft hiss and a panel slid aside on the control panel, exposing a sheet of glass with a keypad underneath.
Smashing the glass with his balled fist, the general tapped a long code sequence into the keypad, then pressed his thumb to a sensor plate. Immediately, every video screen in the security office was filled with bright light, and the room trembled as the tons of high explosives situated under the fake uplink dish hidden inside the copse of pine tress thunderously detonated.
As the reverberations slowly faded, nobody spoke for a long moment, the grim reality of the situation turning their faces hard as stone.
“Our brothers have made the ultimate sacrifice,” Calvano loudly announced, massaging his cut fist to make the blood flow faster. The glass had sliced his bare flesh, but that was a small price to pay to maintain the goodwill of his troops. “Now we must do our part,” he continued, brandishing the bloody fist. “We’ve lost a battle, but not the war! Death to America! God bless Argentina!”
Rising from their seats, the Forge soldiers repeated the rally cry and exited the control room in an orderly fashion. The emergency drill had been practiced only a couple of times, nobody ever thinking it would come to pass. But this was fast becoming a night of impossible events.
As the OD closed the door behind the last soldier, a strong smell of burning plastic tickled his nose, and several of the consoles began to glow a dull red from deep inside. The magnesium charges had already destroyed the feeder circuits to the controls, rendering them inert, removing any possibility of an enemy tech trying to deactivate the automatic self-destruct. Thirty seconds after that, the thermite charges inside the walls would cut loose and the entire brick building would be swiftly removed from existence.
Twisting the key in the lock to jam the door solidly in place, the Forge officer turned and raced along the access tunnel to rejoin the general and rest of his brothers. Firebase Alpha was lost, and dozens of Forge soldiers were dead. Just incredible. But nothing could stop the Great Project, and when the coming nuclear war was finally over, Forge would emerge from their underground bunkers to seize control of Argentina and lead the way to a cleaner, saner world of peace and prosperity! But at the moment, there was other work to accomplish first.
Bursting out of the tunnel, the OD paused, then grabbed an assault rifle from a dead Forge soldier lying sprawled on the sidewalk. Checking the clip, the officer worked the arming bolt and headed into the swirling smoke for the parade ground. Everything depended on the general now. But time was short.
Three minutes to go, and counting.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Havana, Cuba
The tropical sky was heavily overcast, the black clouds threatened to unleash a torrential rain at any moment. But that did nothing to mar the excitement on the parade grounds.
Numbering more than fifty thousand strong, the entire Revolutionary Armed Forces were assembled in full combat regalia, their rapt attention turned upon the old man looking down on them from a review stand. His hair and beard were gray, his back slightly stooped from age, and a cane was held in his left hand. But his lined face burned with the same revolutionary fervor that let him seize control of the island nation more than fifty years ago. His voice was still strong, steeled by the strength of his political convictions.
“Are you prepared to fight for victory?” the president for life shouted into the microphone, his words booming across the crowded field. “To repel the invaders and force them into the sea?”
The endless rows of Cuban soldiers roared in response, shaking their AK-47 assault rifles in the air.
Stroking his gray beard, the president smiled and gave the massed troops a brisk salute. Taking that as their cue, the military orchestra surged into action playing the national anthem of the tiny Communist nation.
A thousand diesel engines revving in unison, the 1st Rocket Brigade began to roll into motion, the former Soviet Union MRL trucks moving past the review stand in a stately procession.
Adjusting his grip on the cane, the president nodded in frank approval. It had taken him decades to smuggle enough parts past the American Navy to repair the machines, but now they were fully operational, ready for battle. The rockets were crude by modern standards, lacking heat-seekers and GPS guidance. Just plain rockets, the warheads packed with twice the recommended amount of C4 high-explosive, along with an outer layer of steel fléchettes. More than deadly enough to blow Guantanimo Base off the island. His island! Leasing the land to the Americans was merely a political sham. He traded them oil for freedom, like those fools in the Middle East. But no more!
“I am no man’s dog,” he snarled, quickly changing that to a beaming smile at the troops below. Then a flotilla of ships would haul the advanced troops to the nearby Florida keys, seize control of the secret Hawkins missile bases there and turn the weapons upon Washington and New York. Any attempt by the Americans to repulse his troops would result in untold civilian deaths. After that, a second wave would attack Haiti, Jamaica and every other island in the area forging a huge United Cuba.
True, his air force was weak, only 250 jetfighters, and half of those were more than ten years old, but the MiG jetfighters he possessed would fight to the death for their president. Besides, there were SAM bunkers located around the entire coastline, and there were over a thousand gunnery emplacements hidden around the island nation, 53 mm and 67 mm antiaircraft rapidfire cannons in the countryside, and powerful 100 mm howitzers located smack in the middle of every major city. Nothing could penetrate the defensive umbrella of hammering AA fire that covered his beloved Cuba. Plus, the army had ten thousand Stingers to help them in the coming air battle. U.S. Army Stinger missiles, the very best. The Cubans would turn their own weapons against the Americans. Fire fought with fire.
Now the filthy capitalist pigs would know how it felt to have invaders on their sov
ereign soil, the president thought defiantly, his chest swelling with pride. Let them drown in the sour bile of frustration!
As soon as the world war began, America would be far too busy defending itself against the other nuclear superpowers to bother with tiny Cuba. And that would give the island president a brief window to burn the hated Americans off his island, and establish a firebase of his own in Miami, supported by the Hawkins missiles in the keys. The cowardly American president certainly would never have the nerve to use thermonuclear weapons on his own soil.
“Victory, or death!” the old man shouted into the microphone, and the troops bellowed their agreement. Yes, the plan was perfect, and the time was coming. In a day, maybe less, vengeance would be his at last! And there was nothing anybody could do to stop the coming invasion. Nothing!
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
SLOWING DOWN SLIGHTLY, Carl Lyons took an exit and drove into downtown Sioux Falls. The traffic was sparse at that time of the day, a few newspaper trucks dropping off stacks to convenience stores, a couple of pickup trucks piled high with boxes of new computers, a yawning man on a motorcycle and a handful of assorted civilian cars, the drivers talking on cell phones and drinking from plastic coffee mugs. Thankfully, there were no police in sight.
As it turned out, Trinity had brought along three Hummers full of supplies, most of which had been given to the other mercs. After disarming a couple of traps, Lyons took the best of three Hummers, reclaimed his fellow teammates on the highway and headed north on Route 29. Keeping a careful watch on the skies when state police helicopters appeared in the distance, Lyons drove the Hummer off the interstate and took refuge under the trees of an apple orchard until the coast was clear once more. Their cell phones had begun working a few miles ago, which seemed to indicate that only the East Coast Comsats had been moved. Briefly, Blancanales tried a number dedicated to a restricted government landline, and found it jammed solid with calls. But that had been expected.
Capital Offensive (Stony Man) Page 22