Without warning, a violent explosion erupted and one of the derricks blew apart, the black crude soaring high into the air before another blast destroyed a second derrick, the blast igniting the column of oil into a towering geyser of flame. Alarms began to howl and men ran in every direction as a dozen more oil wells erupted into vertical flamethrowers.
Unexpectedly, a tool shed was thrown backward as the sand began to bulge upward. Soon, the loose sand flowed away to reveal an enormous metal tube rising from below the desert.
Then the tube broke apart, the two halves of the metal lid folding back. Icy steam hissed into view for a single moment, then a soft rumble began, swiftly increasing into a roar of controlled power. A missile rose majestically into the air, the fiery launch of the illegal rocket hidden from the sight of any NATO WatchDog or Keyhole satellite by the growing conflagration of the burning Saudi oil field.
Unseen by the world, the Unity ICBM lifted swiftly skyward on its long journey to the East Coast of the United States of America.
McHenry County, North Dakota
BRANDISHING ASSAULT RIFLES, a dozen Forge soldiers arrived at the rill. They got a brief glimpse of three gringos wearing gigantic backpacks and covered with weapons when there was a large explosion. Coughing and sputtering, the men recoiled from the whirlwind of sand, then a second detonation tore their world apart. Battered and bloody, only one soldier at the rear of the group survived and struggled to move his broken hand to radio the ambush back to headquarters.
Moving swiftly through the sky, Able Team mentally urged their NASA jetpacks to move faster. They were still a long distance from the Black Rock Mesa, and the fuel supply was dropping fast.
Caught by surprise by the Forge soldiers, Able Team had acted in unison and instantly taken flight, the triple blast from the jetpacks creating a silent hurricane of loose sand. Then Blancanales dropped a satchel charge in the middle of the terrorists and the blast had ripped the enemy apart.
“Come on, baby,” Lyons muttered, trying to make the device move faster by sheer willpower.
Invented by NASA, the jetpacks were worn by astronauts over their spacesuits and used to maneuver in the zero gravity of a high orbit, or even deep space. However, down here at the bottom of the gravity well of Earth, the powerful mono-chemical thrusters had a service life of only ninety seconds.
The U.S. Marine Corps had experimented with the jetpacks, and used them several times successfully in covert infiltrations. So successfully, in fact, that the machines were quickly adopted by the FBI, and then by Homeland Security. The esoteric devices were the main reasons the Stony Man operatives had raided the HSA armory. However, the operator-pilot had to be razor sharp. There wasn’t room for a parachute, so unless the flyer was on the ground when the fuel ran out it was pancake city.
“It’s no good. We’re too far!” Schwarz called over the radio. “Start dropping supplies!”
The other two men paused in consternation, then swiftly obeyed. The rest of the satchel charges went first. That made them move faster across the sky and gave a touch of hope. The bulky flamethrower went next, along with the XM-214 minigun.
The distant ground was flashing below their boots in a blur, as the top of the mesa came into view. Suddenly, a group of Forge soldiers appeared from a clump of bushes working the arming bolts on their assault rifles. Able Team cut loose with their weapons and the terrorists died before getting off a shot.
As Lyons approached the edge of the mesa, the jetpack sputtered slightly. Crushing the joystick in his fist, he tried to get every drop of fuel out of the weakening engine. Just a little bit more…
With a sputter, the jetpack died and Lyons dropped onto the edge of the mesa, the impact of the landing rattling his teeth. Then the dead weight of the jetpack started to make him tip over backward. Slapping the release buckle on the chest harness, the Able Team leader dug in his heels as the equipment came free from his shoulders. He lurched forward to safety just as his teammates landed in a crouch a few yards away.
Unlimbering the Atchisson autoshotgun, Lyons fired twice into the bushes, then reloaded. The first couple of cartridges had been stun bags in case they needed a sentry alive. But Forge knew they were there by now, so stealth was no longer a consideration. Grimly, the former L.A. cop attached a cheesewheel clip to the bottom of the weapon, the aluminum magazine loaded only with stainless steel fléchettes. There was absolutely no chance of any civilians being inside the mesa, so this was going to be a straight-out blitz. Kill everybody they found until reaching the computers. No prisoners, no surrender.
Shrugging out of his jetpack, Schwarz pulled out an EM scanner and swept the area for land mines. Almost immediately the device gave a low warning beep right alongside the man. Warily, he peeked into the nearby weeds and saw a metal hatch, the kind used for a SAM missile pod. Damn, this wasn’t just the secret lab, it was a Forge hardsite! Boosting the power to the scanner, Schwarz redoubled his search for traps.
Checking the suppressor on his Colt Model 1911, Blancanales paused at the sight of ants swarming on a series of dark spots on the rock. He bent closer and recognized spilled blood. And a lot of it. His guess would be that some poor bastard had gotten his throat slashed.
“Clear,” Schwarz declared in relief, tucking away the device.
There was a movement in the bushes and Lyons cut loose with a short burst from the Atchisson. A man cried out and fell into view, the chest of the Forge soldier a gory mash of bones and organs.
Instantly, Blancanales armed a grenade and flipped the bushes. More men cried out in pain.
Rushing to the area, Able Team fired down into the access tube, a couple of Forge soldiers dropping off the ladder to hit more men below until there was a tangle of bodies at the bottom.
Lyons fired a long burst down the shaft, and everybody in the pile stopped moving. Shouldering his M-16/M-203 assault rifle, Blancanales started down the ladder by putting his combat boots on the outside and cupping the metal with fingerless gloves. He dropped away fast with Schwarz standing guard from above. Before he was halfway down, his teammates followed.
Landing in a crouch on top of the tattered corpses, Blancanales moved away from the ladder, his assault rifle sweeping for targets. A thump announced the arrival of his companions.
A squad of men charged around a corner, shoving clips into the assault rifles, and Blancanales fired the M-203. The thumping 40 mm shell vomited a deathcloud of double-aught buckshot tearing off heads, arms and legs. Only the torsos protected by body armor hit the gory floor intact.
Sweeping down the long corridor in a three-man defensive pattern, the team slapped disposable thermometer stickers on the walls. Suddenly, one of them turned a cold blue, and Lyons moved to the door, then stopped when he saw it was actually an airtight hatch made to resemble an ordinary door. There was no latch, only a keypad with a thumbprint scanner.
“Cover!” he subvocalized into his throat mike, hitting the wall.
Blancanales took a position on the other side, and Schwarz knelt in front of the door, swiftly attaching a wiring harness to the scanner. Swinging around his laptop, the man started working the keyboard, his fingers making soft patting sounds. The screen began flashing a wild series of circuit diagrams, microchip connections and command prompts, the images almost blurring together they were coming so fast. There was a subdued clank, and with a hydraulic sigh, the door unlocked to open with a sigh of escaping air.
“Alakazam,” Schwarz whispered, closing the laptop. Now only the thumbprints of Able Team would be recognized by the Forge security computer, and not those by anybody else. The virus was a little something special he had cooked up with Hunt Wethers and Akira Tokaido. This was its first trial in combat, and so far, so good.
The room inside was icy-cold, long banks of Cray supercomputers humming in the swirling mists. Yanking open a service panel, Schwarz shoved in a probe searching for the main feeds. Then he clipped a black box around the bundle of wires and pressed a red button
on top.
“Come on, Bear,” he whispered, waiting for the green light on top to flash. “I know you’ve been playing possum to fake out Forge. There is no way that moving a satellite could take out your team for more than a couple of hours….”
The light flashed twice, then winked out.
“Yes!” Schwarz said in victory, closing the panel and running a tube of military epoxy along the edge. Nobody was getting inside again without a welding torch, which would kill the circuits.
“Well?” Blancanales demanded anxiously from the doorway.
“The Farm now controls the North American uplink,” Schwarz said, closing the door. It sealed with a hiss and loudly locked.
“So they were playing possum, eh?” Lyons said, almost smiling as he slapped a Claymore mine to the outside of the door. “Good, now let’s clean house. Nobody leaves this mesa alive, except for—”
Jerking alert, Blancanales stared at his wristwatch. The biohazard sensor in the compact device had just buzzed on his skin. With bated breath, he waited for the results and the dial blinked a series of tiny yellow LEDs.
The wall vents could be heard softly hissing.
“Nerve gas!” Blancanales cried, clawing a combat syringe from a sleeve. He jabbed the metal tube onto his arm, the needle inside automatically injecting him with the antitoxins for a dozen deadly compounds. A terrible warmth filled his body, and his stomach convulsed, almost making him retch.
Turning, he saw his teammates with the syringes clutched in their hands slowly slumping to the floor. Had they injected themselves or not? There was no way to tell.
Moving as if in a dream, Blancanales reached for the tubes and tried to shove them against his friends again, but everything was so blurry the man wasn’t sure if he was using the correct end.
The noise from the wall vents seemed to get louder.
Falling from his limp hands, the biohazard tube fell to the floor with a clatter and Blancanales lost consciousness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
In the Computer Room, Hal Brognola leaned against the wall, a telephone in his hand. The phone was a dedicated hardline that went directly to the Oval Office, and a soft crackle of static told that the line was open.
“No, sir, Mr. President,” Brognola stated, closely watching the wall monitors for any changes. “Nothing to report from our people in the field yet.”
Barbara Price scowled darkly as she walked back and forth behind the four cyber wizards hunched over their consoles. Somehow, Able Team had managed to seize control of the uplink for the Northern Hemisphere and linked the controls to the Cray supercomputers of the Farm. Excellent news! Now all the men had to do was keep that link operational at any cost.
Unfortunately, restoring the military systems for America, Great Britain, Russia, China and the rest of the world was only half the problem. According to the President, the political situation at the United Nations was almost completely in chaos. Ancient feuds and grudges had come boiling to the surface, and several of the smaller nations had walked out of the Grand Council, and in the Security Council a terrible feeling of war was in the air, like a cold wind from a distant graveyard.
Nobody trusted anybody at the moment. Thus, whatever country suddenly got the control of their missiles and satellites before anybody else would immediately be attacked by every other nation under the natural assumption that they were actually the source of the worldwide technological failures. Missiles would start crisscrossing the globe, and soon entire cities would begin vanishing in nuclear detonations. The end of the world.
The political situation was delicate. One wrong move by Stony Man and billions would die. There was only a single solution to the matter. Everybody, absolutely every nation, not just the Northern Hemisphere, had to regain control of all of their systems and satellites at exactly the same moment. That would defuse the tension, and buy the United Nations diplomats some precious time to calm things down and restore sanity. But if Able Team or Phoenix Force failed in their mission objectives, or if Kurtzman and his people fumbled restoring the GPS network to perfect working condition at the same precise instant…
“Easy does it, people,” Kurtzman said soothingly. “I’ll give you the signal. There’s plenty of time. No worries, eh? Get everything ready, and triple check your landline connections.”
Making no sign that they even heard the man, Tokaido, Delahunt and Wethers remained motionless at their consoles, their hands hovering over the keyboard. Volumes of data flashed by their screen and submonitors at dizzying speed.
Pausing by Kurtzman’s workstation, Price stared at the blank computer monitor bearing the designation for Argentina.
“Come on, David, where the hell are you?” she demanded softly, the words somehow sounding like a desperate prayer.
Firebase Omega, Argentina
WARM AIR FROM THE WALL VENTS banished the cold from the shattered front door as Phoenix Force continued down the spiral stairs checking for traps and video cameras. But the stairs were clean, and after only a few yards, the metal staircase ended in a long tunnel, the walls, ceiling and floor sheathed in a soft metallic substance.
The men glanced at the material and kept moving. They knew what lead looked like. The material was obviously here to keep out radiation from above. There were also discolored bands of lead in the walls, and radiation sensors nearby. Clearly these were blast doors, set to slam shut the second they detected any incoming radiation. But why hadn’t they been closed and sealed yet? Strange.
After several yards, the tunnel sharply angled to the left, and then immediately to the right in a classic antiradiation zigzag. Once past the safety break, the men could clearly hear the voices again, along with a child’s laughter. It sounded like a small boy. There came another antirad zigzag, and the voices could be heard much more clearly. Some people were having an argument.
“But I want to play in the snow!” the boy whined in Spanish. “Please, Mother?”
“Now, Juan…” a woman began patiently.
“I told you before, not today,” a man said firmly. “You can…er, play in the snow tomorrow. But not today.”
Staying close to the lead walls, Phoenix Force crept closer and encountered a second spiral staircase leading downward. Bright lights were coming from the next level. Pulling out a flexible probe, James crouched low and eased a fiber-optic cable along a lens the size of a pencil down the stairs, turning a dial over the edge, using the dial on the handheld control to move the tiny camera lens around. On the screen, there was only confusion, then a clear shot of the lead floor, the ceiling, and then a sandbag nest came sharply into view. A Bushmaster 25 mm minigun was resting on a stout tripod, and a couple of armed Forge soldiers were standing near a pretty young woman, holding the hand of a small boy.
“But, Mom,” the boy insisted, nearly dancing with frustration. He was wearing winter clothing and holding a sled.
The adults all shared knowing looks.
“Obey your father,” the woman said sternly, then she addressed the taller of the soldiers. “I’ll see you tomorrow, my love.”
The private turned his back to give the married couple a moment of privacy as they briefly kissed. Then the woman walked around a corner, dragging the protesting boy along by the hand. A few moments later, there came a dull boom.
“Children!” the private exhaled, wearily shaking his head. “I just can’t understand why anybody would want to have children these days.”
“That’s because you don’t have any.” The corporal smiled contentedly, lighting a cigarette.
“Those are illegal down here, my friend,” the private warned with a stiff finger. “Once the blast doors close, that is.”
“Which is why I asked for guard duty today,” the corporal replied, blowing a smoke ring at a radiation sensor in the gray ceiling. “One final goodbye cigarette.”
“Addict.”
“Shithead.”
Using both hands, Jam
es brought back the fiber-optic cable and tucked it away in a shoulder bag. “On the left,” he reported.
Nodding in acknowledgment, McCarter worked the slide on a silenced pistol and jumped into the hole in the floor. He missed the stairs by a scant inch and landed in a crouch, his weapon coughing a fast three times.
The private was thrown backward, most of his face splattering on the lead wall from the arrival of the soft-lead dumdum round. The corporal lost the cigarette as he was slammed against the opposite wall, both hands clutching his stomach from the bullet slamming into his Forge body armor.
Fighting for breath, the corporal tried to focus his eyes as he heard the sound of running boots. Clawing for the radio on his hip, the soldier found it was gone, along with his Bersa pistol and combat knife. He pulled in a breath to shout and a wad of cloth filled his mouth, carrying the odd flavor of gun oil. Rough hands dragged the huffing corporal erect and lashed his wrists behind his back with plastic cuffs.
Doing a fast sweep with an EM scanner, James declared the area free of hidden microphones or video cameras. Just past the sandbag nest, a branching tunnel ran to the left and right of the main access tunnel, both passageways ending in another antirad zigzag.
“You get a chance for life only because your son is behind that door,” McCarter said in flawless Spanish, nudging the bound man with the hot tip of the Browning Hi-Power.
The Forge soldier grunted in understanding, but his eyes glared in raw hatred.
“Only civilians, your families and children behind those?” McCarter asked, indicating the big doors. “Barracks for the single men in the other direction?”
Breathing slowly, the prisoner did nothing.
Dropping the clip from the Browning, McCarter let the soldier see the soft lead dumdum rounds inside so that he would have no misconception the weapon might be loaded with blanks to merely scare him into talking.
Capital Offensive (Stony Man) Page 27