Scowling fiercely, the prisoner flexed his arms to test the plastic handcuffs then nodded ever so faintly.
“Family quarters?” McCarter asked again, gesturing with the pistol.
Easing his defiant stance, the corporal nodded.
“Okay, seal it,” McCarter ordered out of the side of his mouth.
Hawkins and Manning moved past the break and found a set of sliding metal doors sheathed in lead. Manning sniffed and caught the faint trace of a woman’s perfume and the sickly sweet aroma of bubblegum.
“Smells like Akira was here,” Hawkins said in dark humor, pulling out welding patches from a shoulder bag.
Hiding a smile under his woolen ski mask, Manning helped the man slap the U.S. Army patches directly onto the seam of the two doors. Designed by tank crew for emergency repairs on armor, the patches were composed of soft iron with alternating strips of epoxy and thermite paste underneath.
As the patch adhered firmly to the two doors, Hawkins yanked off the activating strip from the side, and the minuscule amount of thermite briefly flared, softening the iron until it started to flow down the lead. Then the thermal charge died away, and the combined metals began to cool and harden. The patch was only a crude weld, but opening these doors would now be difficult without an acetylene torch or high explosives. Manning slapped on two more, while Hawkins added a couple to the tracks on the concrete floor. No matter what happened next, there weren’t going to be any civilians wandering through the middle of the battle. The UN Peacekeepers could release the women and children later. If there was a later for the world.
“Now, as for you,” McCarter said, tapping the bound man with the sound suppressor. “Why are the outer blast doors still open?”
The Forge soldier was good, but his eyes still widened in fear at the question.
“They were waiting for somebody,” Encizo said thoughtfully. “Somebody important enough for even the little kids to know he wasn’t here yet…Oh shit, it’s Calvano!”
“That Cessna!” McCarter growled. “He must be on the Cessna doing a final recon of the perimeter before sealing off the base!”
At the English name of the plane, the Forge soldier kicked out a boot at Encizo and tried to escape, but McCarter clubbed the fellow on the back of the head with the Browning. He crumpled with a sigh, a tiny trickle of blood seeping through his hair.
“He’ll live,” Encizo said, kneeling to briefly check the unconscious man.
Charging into view, Hawkins and Manning appeared from behind the zigzag with their weapons sweeping for targets.
“Got brave, I see,” Hawkins noted, loosening his grip on the FN-2000.
“Yeah, he grew some extra balls when we figured out Calvano is on the Cessna,” the Cuban said, grabbing the man by the collar and dragging the limp body out of sight behind the sandbags.
“The Cessna must have skis instead of wheels,” Manning rationalized, casting a glance at the spiral staircase. “Which means Calvano is going to use the clearing where the Pegasus landed before.”
“And see the remains of the front door,” James added with a dour expression. “No way he’ll come inside…No, wait, this guy is a field general, not a desk jockey. He won a ton of medals in combat. General Calvano is going to lead the charge right down this corridor.”
“A Cessna that size doesn’t hold a lot of people,” McCarter said, still holding the Browning. “We’re talking six, maybe ten, guys at the most.”
Looking blandly to the right corridor, Encizo added, “And a couple of hundred from below.”
“Hundreds? Nothing I hate worse than a fair fight,” Hawkins said in a pronounced Texas drawl. “What’s the plan?”
“Rafe, mine the stairwell,” McCarter said, holstering the pistol and bringing up his MP-5 machine gun. “Gary, bust the Bushmaster. T.J., jam those external blast doors so that we can leave. Calvin, with me. We have a computer to find.”
Without comment, everybody went to work.
Going to the first rad break, James checked around the zigzag with the fiber-optic cables again. “Clear.”
Sweeping into the next tunnel, McCarter saw a series of blast doors ending at an elevator. There was another 25 mm Bushmaster minigun suspended from the ceiling, a red light blinking from a small video camera on top. Remote control.
With no other choice, McCarter pulled the Browning and fired once. The cough was barely audible, but the crash of the video camera lens sounded like an explosion.
Instantly, the Bushmaster came online, the deadly weapon sweeping the corridor, but nothing else happened. The operators obviously unsure if there was a technical problem, or not, and having no wish to fire upon their returning leader.
Advancing toward the machine, McCarter pulled out a wire cutter and snipped the power cables, killing the Bushmaster, while James slapped a couple of welding patches onto the floor to block the blast doors. Then easing to the sides of the elevator doors, the men set off smoke grenades and placed them on the floor. Minutes passed.
Suddenly there came a musical ding and the elevator doors parted.
“What the…there’s a fire out here!” a man said, breaking into a ragged cough.
Swinging into view, McCarter fired the Browning and the four men inside the elevator died with shocked expressions. Leaving the bodies where they fell, McCarter and James waited until the rest of the team joined them, then once again did nothing as the doors automatically closed.
After a few minutes, the elevator started to descend, summoned back to whatever level the technicians had originally left from. Pulling off their ski masks, the Stony Man operatives donned gas masks and set off several BZ canisters, the elevator filling with the mildly hallucinogenic fumes.
With another ding, the doors separated and the BZ gas rolled forth, making the group of men standing in the corridor recoil slightly. One started to raise his assault rifle, and McCarter shot him in the belly, the man doubling over to moan and gasp in pain, sounding as if he was merely choking on the thick fumes. Then the rest of the team moved swiftly into the gas cloud, using fists and rifle stocks to silently remove the Forge soldiers from the equation.
Going to a wall panel, James broke the lock with a small pry bar and ran a quick check on the exposed cables with an EM scanner.
“Well?” McCarter asked, trying to watch both directions of the corridor at the same time.
“Useless,” James cursed, pocketing the device. “These are auxiliary cables. But the Cray must be close. They feel cold, and that doesn’t travel far along wiring.”
Scowling, McCarter started to ask a question when there came the crackle of an intercom from somewhere close by in the BZ gas. “What’s with all the smoke?” a man demanded in oddly accented Spanish. “Is there a fire?”
Moving through the thickly swirling mists, McCarter and Hawkins went toward the new voice and weren’t surprised to find a large window set into the whitewashed brick wall.
Pressing their faces to the glass, they discovered it was icy-cold, and in the room beyond was a huge Cray supercomputer, along with a small dark-skinned man in a turtleneck sweater sitting at a complex console. Suddenly, they understood completely why Forge called their chief hacker Snake Eater.
Ever so gently, McCarter lightly rapped the window with the barrel of his MP-5 machine gun. The short man inside looked up at the tiny noise, then recoiled in horror.
“You!” Mongoose gasped, just as McCarter and Hawkins began to fire the weapons point-blank at their old foe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Black Rock Mesa
Sluggishly coming awake, Lyons felt something cold go around one of his wrists and instantly could tell it was a steel handcuff.
Reacting instinctively, the former L.A. detective jerked his arms apart to keep from being shackled and lashed out with an elbow. A startled cry announced a hit, and the Able Team leader charged at the nearest blur. The man was still weak, but his strength was returning fast. Slamming the other person onto the ro
ck wall, he rammed a knee into the guy’s crotch, then butted hard with his forehead. With a death rattle in his crushed throat, the other man fell limply to the floor.
His vision starting to clear, Lyons saw his teammates lying nearby, their hands already lashed into place. And across the corridor were three Forge soldiers wearing gas masks. One of them worked on the Claymore mine attached to the cold door. Two others turned toward him.
Risking everything, Lyons started forward, but both of the armed soldiers expertly leveled their FN-2000 assault rifles. The man reluctantly stopped, his heart pounding.
“Hold it, gringo!” a sergeant commanded, raising the assault rifle slightly. “Private, bind his hands properly!”
As Lyons slumped his shoulders in defeat, the other soldier pulled out a set of the disposable plastic cuffs. They were military design, more than capable of restraining a gorilla, much less the weakened Stony Man operative.
But as the Forge private touched his arm, Lyons moved fast. Spinning, he grabbed the barrel of the sergeant’s assault rifle and yanked hard. The motion made the sergeant inadvertently pull the trigger, and the stuttering assault rifle stitched the private across the chest, red blood spraying into the air.
With a curse, the sergeant released the weapon and clawed for a Bersa pistol at his hip. Swinging up the rifle by the barrel, Lyons slammed the stock against the side of the big man’s head. There was a ghastly crunch and the sergeant dropped the Bersa, then collapsed alongside the fallen gun.
Throwing a pair of pliers as a distraction, the third man pulled a Bersa and fired. The slug missed Lyons completely. He replied with the FN-2000, the 5.56 mm rounds tearing the technician apart.
Taking a knife from one of the fallen men, Lyons sawed through the bonds that restrained his teammates when a tall, lanky man walked around the corner. Immediately, Lyons recognized the fellow as Professor Reinhold, the brains behind the hacking of the GPS network.
“Freeze!” Lyons bellowed in his best cop voice.
But the professor dived to the side and came up firing the dropped Bersa. The 9 mm round knocked the assault rifle from Lyons’s grip, a second round slamming into his chest. The Able Team leader grunted from the impact on his NATO body armor, and kicked the gun from the grip of the scientist. Even as the weapon went sailing away, Reinhold seemed to crumple, then rose, driving both fists into Lyons’s stomach. Again, he only grunted from the martial arts blow, and tried to knee the man in the face. Reinhold blocked with a forearm and dived sideways ramming an elbow into his adversary. The sledgehammer blow knocked the air from his lungs, and he grabbed for the gas mask, yanking it free and hurtling it away.
Grinning in amusement, Reinhold angled his body oddly and lashed out with an open hand. The move almost caught Lyons by surprise. The gas had no effect, eh? Swaying out of the way just in time, he felt the fingernails of the Forge scientist scrap his throat.
On the floor, Blancanales and Schwarz began to stir sluggishly.
Circling each other, Lyons and the professor each made a couple of tentative grabs that were blocked, then Reinhold kicked a pistol off the floor, sailing it past Lyons’s head. He didn’t even try for a grab, but instead dived for the dropped knife. He came up in a roll, and steel clashed on steel as Reinhold blocked with a hidden blade of his own.
Slashing for throats and groins, the two men moved in a deadly ballet of thrust and parry. The professor got a crimson cut along the side of his neck, Lyons’s blade missing the vital carotid artery by less than a millimeter. Then Reinhold sliced the Stony Man operative across the chest, only the NATO body armor preventing it from opening his stomach. But he pinked the man on the wrist, and they retreated slightly, panting for breath and looking for the other to make a deadly mistake.
Bobbing and weaving, Lyons lashed out with a kick, the steel toe of the U.S. Army combat boot catching the other man in the ribs. Bones cracked, and the professor winced noticeably. Then Reinhold flipped his knife in the air, catching it by the blade and whipping it forward. Lyons tried to dodge, but the blade slammed deep into his shoulder, an inch away from the body armor. Hot blood oozed from the wound. Stumbling backward, Lyons tried to do the same, but Reinhold caught the spinning blade and threw it back, this time hitting Lyons in the upper thigh. Crumbling to the floor, the Able Team leader grabbed the handle jutting from his flesh, but didn’t try to pull it free. That would only make the wound bleed ten times worse, and probably kill him.
Yanking the trick wallet from his pocket, Lyons didn’t pretend to beg for clemency, but simply fired the two booming .44 rounds from the derringer. They drilled into the wall alongside the professor, tiny rock chips flying.
Pulling a pen from his shirt pocket, a grinning Reinhold pressed the button on top and a six-inch steel spike clicked into view from the bottom, a drop of greenish fluid appearing from the needle-sharp tip. Poison!
Moving in for the fast kill, Reinhold suddenly jerked backward as machine-gun fire filled the corridor. Dropping the trick ice pick, Reinhold hit the wall hard and spun away from the incoming bullets to sprint around the corner and out of sight.
“Carl, are you hurt bad?” Schwarz asked, kneeling by his friend. Blood was everywhere, and he wasn’t sure how much of it came from Lyons.
Ripping open his parka, Blancanales pulled out a small field surgery kit and flipped open the top, but Lyons smacked the med kit away.
“N-no t-time,” he whispered hoarsely, slumping against the cold door, the Claymore mine only inches above his stubbled scalp. “S-stop him…b-before…” The man went limp.
Slowly standing, Schwarz understood. Before he blew up the computers controlling the uplink.
Pausing for only a split second, the two Able Team warriors looked down upon their friend, then turned and took off down the corridor at a run. All for one, and one for all, was a child’s game. This was the real world, and the mission came first. They didn’t like it, but it was part of a soldier’s burden.
Reaching the end of a long corridor, they found three elevators, but only the middle one in operation. Ignoring the obvious trap, they hit the emergency stairs and raced pell-mell into the bowels of the rocky mesa.
BURSTING OUT OF THE ELEVATOR, Reinhold headed straight for the armed soldiers standing behind a low barricade of sandbags.
“Intruders!” the professor yelled, gesturing vaguely. “Kill anybody who gets off the elevators!”
“Is…is this another test?” one of the guards asked suspiciously.
“Code nineteen!” the professor snarled, limping past a section of the area lined with Claymore antipersonnel mines. Past them was the armored door to Command and Control. Wasting precious time cycling through the elaborate locking mechanism, the professor squeezed through the truncated portal before it had finished opening completely.
“Peterson, shut down the computers!” Reinhold yelled, lurching across the room, leaving a crimson trail on the terrazzo flooring. “Sabot, activate the self-destruct!”
“Are you insane?” Erica Sabot asked, rising from her wheeled chair.
“Code nineteen!” he snarled, reaching a weapons cabinet. The professor didn’t bother to use his key, but simply smashed the glass with his bare hands and grabbed an HK G-11 caseless rifle from the rack. Checking the power level of the batteries, he clicked off the safety just as there came a familiar hum of working hydraulics.
In horror, the professor turned to see the armored door swing open, revealing a commando holding a laptop, wiring connected to the sensor pad, and another one working the arming bolt of an M-16 assault rifle. Red blood was splattered on the wall behind them, and there was no sign of the armed guards.
Swinging around the G-11, Reinhold jerked wildly as Blancanales shot first, the 5.56 mm rounds peppering the man’s bulletproof vest, but doing no harm. Then Schwarz fired his 9 mm Beretta, the Black Talon cop-killer rounds stolen from the HSA neatly blowing through the vest and coming out the back of the startled man. Bloody gobbets of flesh smacked agai
nst the Lexan plastic wall overlooking the huge Cray supercomputer.
As the professor fell into a pile of his own intestines, several people began to scream hysterically. One man tried to hide behind a chair, and a raven-haired woman yanked open a desk drawer to haul out a Bersa pistol.
“Don’t do it!” Blancanales warned, then put a short burst into the ceiling.
Her beautiful face contorting into a snarl, Erica Sabot release her grip and the gun dropped back into the drawer.
“Is this command and control?” Schwarz demanded, holstering the Beretta and sliding the M-16/M-203 combo assault rifle off his shoulder.
Too furious to speak, Sabot dumbly nodded.
“Are there any civilians in the mesa?” Blancanales demanded, shaking her by the arm.
Angry, Sabot tried to pull away, but the man tightened his grip until she flinched.
The rest of the technical staff was still screaming, several of them trying to hide under their consoles.
“I said, are there any civilians in the mesa?” Blancanales repeated urgently. “Any hostages, prisoners, noncombatants?”
“W-we don’t t-take p-prisoners,” she said in halting English.
“That’s not something to brag about, lady,” Schwarz snapped, grabbing her by the collar and hauling the woman over to the main console. “Release the nerve gas.”
She stared at him in total confusion. “What was that?” Sabot asked in whisper.
Blancanales fired the M-16 and the chair next to her spun wildly, smacking into the console and rolling away to crash into a file cabinet.
“Don’t make me say it again,” Schwarz ordered, placing the fluted barrel of the M-16 to the back of her neck. “Now release the nerve gas. All of it. Flood every level!”
“Or we’ll find somebody who will,” Blancanales added ominously.
Defiant words rose in her throat, then Sabot caught sight of Reinhold lying on the terrazzo floor, his blood following the rectangular outlines in the polished concrete. Whoever these people were, negotiation wasn’t an option.
Capital Offensive (Stony Man) Page 28