Hal Brognola yanked the chewed stogie out of his mouth, worked the dark expression between Kurtzman, Tokaido and Price. He was pretty sure he’d heard them correctly, which was why the Computer Room suddenly looked and felt as if he were deep-frozen in another dimension of time and space. “Wait a second here, people. What is it exactly you three are trying to tell me? That a Russian black op we know virtually nothing about wants Phoenix to do what exactly?”
“Infiltrate a classified Russian base in Far Eastern Siberia and destroy or hijack a reusable launch vehicle armed with nukes,” Price said.
“And that’s all?” Brognola threw out behind a grim chuckle, staring at the mission controller as if she had lost her mind. “And just because he suspects Islamic extremists are collaborating with Russian intelligence inside the base and who are about to storm this compound and fly the thing out of there for mission unknown, but which I assume involves some devastation but on a thermonuclear scale?”
“That’s about the gist of it.”
Kurtzman cleared his throat, jerked a thumb at the series of numbers on his monitor, which made absolutely no sense, the big Fed knew, to anyone but him. “Let me put some pieces of the puzzle together as we so far know them. First, those are numbered accounts in Moscow, Belgrade, Frankfurt and Dallas. Altogether they amount to around two hundred million dollars U.S., but tack on interest, various bearer bonds…”
“I got it. Big money only keeps growing bigger,” Brognola stated.
“Anyway, part of what Phoenix took from the late Zhuktul,” Kurtzman continued, “was a list that compiled not only banks that were laundering his money and that of Colonel Shistoi, but also had chunks siphoned off into accounts belonging to three men Phoenix is now in pursuit of and who we have identified and who have, we suspect, managed to spread the dirty money to our own shores.” Kurtzman hit some keys and split his screen into three faces, pointed at each as he named them. “Beloc Grantkil. Yzoc Luvan. And Heinrich Grumner. The first two are Serb war criminals, presently top lieutenants in the Balayko Family. Along with their boss, Franjo Balayko, they were indicted by the Hague.”
“I’m betting the usual sins. Mass murder, torture, rape,” Brognola groused.
“And with a few rumors of other atrocities I’ll leave to your imagination regarding Muslim women and children and bayonets. The last five years or so, they’ve been busy eluding the long arm of Interpol and the FBI, but they always manage to slip the net while their crime empire just keeps on flourishing.” A dark frown shadowed Kurtzman’s face as he went on. “The original war crimes charges were dismissed. Lack of evidence, or that was the word the world at large got, but which really meant they or hired guns either killed witnesses, bought them off or enough dirty money found its way into hands of the right people, all indications being the corrupted powers responsible for their sudden and mysterious absolution were high-echelon UN officials.
“Now, Grumner was a former attaché to the United Nations and is believed to have been a major cog in the oil-for-food scam. How he and the Iraqis we know about—and who are now toast, thanks to Phoenix—worked it out that oil was slipped into Europe from Iraq via Dagestan is still a mystery, but my guess would be the usual greasing of the skids, from top officials at the UN right down to flunkies of the former Iraqi regime. Grumner has been on a CIA watch list, believed to be an enforcer for a covert ESA program that involves some questionable transfers of everything from liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen to Russia to technicians and special alloys to build a lightweight, hypersonic RLV that can easily take on the added burden of a nuclear payload.”
“Questionable transfers?” Brognola inquired.
“Deals negotiated and completed off the books, midnight runs out of Germany and Belgrade and which were videotaped by the CIA,” Kurtzman answered.
Brognola chomped on his cigar. “And you’re telling me David’s Russian contact beat the truth out of Shistoi, that this Dagestani Saddam has these scumbag VIPs in his country as guests. Again, why?”
Price stepped in. “We won’t know more until Phoenix grabs them up. But all initial indications are that Shistoi and Zhuktul have created a terror pipeline, one that stretches clear to Moscow.”
“And what about this insane ‘job offer’ David’s man in Dagestan put to Phoenix?”
“There may be some frightening legitimacy to the scheme,” Tokaido said. “I’ve cracked a few codes on what Phoenix has sent. The Zenith Project keeps popping up, like the proverbial red flag. The same Zenith Project, I may add, mentioned in NASA mainframes we hacked into and is being currently run out of their sister base, Galileo, just north of Dallas.”
“The same Zenith Project mentioned,” Kurtzman said, “by Shistoi and by Barb’s contacts in the NSA.” Kurtzman tapped his keyboard and another face was framed on the monitor. “Radic Kytol. Another top lieutenant of the Balayko Family. He was being watched by the FBI as he danced his way through some shady ESA and UN contacts in Germany and France. Caught a flight out of Paris about a week ago. Slipped through both JFK then LAX under an alias, but has since disappeared. This shot was passed on to Homeland Security from one of their people at Los Angeles International. By the time they realized how asleep at the switch they were, Kytol was long gone.”
“So, the question is, why is he here in the country?” Brognola said to no one in particular.
“There was a lot of material,” Price said, “on the Force of Truth Webs about their suspicions Galileo had been infiltrated by both homegrown intelligence traitors and foreign gangsters. They even named this Kytol, among a few other high profile bad boys in the Balayko organization and the Vladimir Yoravky Family.”
“The Russian Mob?” Brognola queried.
Price nodded. “What we need to happen, Hal, is for both Phoenix and Able to get us some concrete facts, determine for certain if there is a tie between Serb-Russian gangsters, the ESA, Galileo and an impending Muslim extremist plot to hijack a thermo-nuke-armed RLV.”
Talk about vertigo, it was a lot for Brognola to digest in a few short moments.
The big Fed took a long moment, chewing over all the riddles. At present, what did they have to show for their effort thus far? he wondered. Hunches and suspicions. A pack’s worth of dead hyenas in a country few human beings had ever heard of, and even fewer cared about, which was what actually made the damn place so dangerous in the first place. Add on, then, an unknown number of infernal shadows on the loose with mix and match agendas. Finally, a few strands of pearls from spookland, all of it wanting to add up to dire, nay, apocalyptic scenarios.
In short, they had a hand full of dust.
The big Fed looked at Price, and said, “Speaking of making it happen, what’s the status on Able Team?”
LYONS LOST HIS FEAR of the LAR as soon as the black op dug the HK MP-5 submachine gun from out of its Velcroed web-sling. Buzz cuts One and Two were already gone, grabbing point and surging on, ready to practically walk themselves into the lead net Schwarz and Blancanales would drop, when Number Three, hanging back a few feet and spotting the grim trouble on his flank, went for it. The sight of the laser gun that used to be in their possession, but was now swinging up and drawing a bead, turned the homegrown enemy into a statue, long enough for Lyons to squeeze the trigger and end his Medusa trance. It was all Lyons could do next to contain his own shock and awe as the thread-like beam of white-bluish light cored into his adversary’s forehead. The HK subgun burped out a wild volley, the black op in full epileptic seizures, as superheated light seared on like the most slender spear of fire through his brain, tendrils of wispy smoke curling above his head from where flesh was getting fried. Wild rounds went slashing down the row of videos and smut rags, the brief tempest of debris washing over a few patrons who were instantly thrown into fits of their own, shouting and cursing and belly-flopping to the deck.
Lyons watched as his kill, brain-dead and bug-eyed, melted at the knees in front of his stunned eyes.
SPECTER TEAMS TWO and Three were the responsibility of Specialist A-2 Phillip Cutler. Whatever happened to Specter One would be sorted out in due course, though it all stood to grim logic his present mission was chained to the mysterious events in Virginia Beach. As sole Reprimand leader now—albeit by default through violent death—he took his task of defending national security with all the seriousness of a shipwrecked man, bleeding and floundering in shark-teemed waters but in search of the first available life raft.
But that was his lot.
Whatever had gone wrong and guided him, indirectly, into this moment—well, he was here to make it right and now, determined to steer it all back on course according to his vision, and, if necessary, by blood and thunder. A man without vision and the will to execute such might as well stay in bed.
Cutler was a warrior, a lion, no less, in human flesh. And if he had to bend the rules, dip his hands in a little blood, then so be it.
These Force of Truth snakes were the worst kind of transgressors in his estimation. They were intelligent, for one thing, talented, perhaps even brilliant in their own right, for another. And last but not least, they simply knew too much that no American John or Jane Citizen had any business knowing, nor much less had the capacity and reason to understand what was really happening in the world, without plunging themselves into blind panic. This knowledge could contaminate, corrupt all the weak out there and thrust the ordinary civilian into rebelling against the powers that be.
By God, not on his watch.
The rows of sordid fantasy, he found, formed a maddening maze of sorts, a half ring that fanned out toward the cubicles, and where he now saw the trio in question. HK subgun freed from its Velcro spiderweb holster, he brushed past some guy who was too busy with his face buried in a porn rag to notice Dreamland was moments away from being turned into a living nightmare.
Something then suddenly felt out of place to Cutler, as if he had blindly walked into a trap. Yes, they had him spotted, marking him, no doubt, for what he was, which was Ultimate Justice about to be delivered, but there was some other danger in the vicinity, wandering quick and deep across his radar screen. Impossible, he decided. It was just them—six lions—and a few treasonous hyenas to be devoured on the spot.
It suddenly flickered through his thoughts there were would be legions of do-gooders who would object to his chosen course of action, whining about constitutional rights, demanding his bloody scalp in retribution, and so forth. He could even hear the collective howl in the back of his mind right then, as he chuckled to himself. What’s this about compassion and mercy, understanding and forgiveness?
Not his department.
Time to deliver the wrath of offended national security.
That was his mission, end of discussion.
The ex-DOD hacker, he saw, was already pulling hardware from beneath that Hawaiian shirt, a flaming collage of only God knew what, so loud and dazzling it would have blinded most ordinary men. It made his decision all that much easier, no pang of conscience necessary, but Cutler was good and juiced to go, deciding to bypass any freeze warning or identification of himself as a bona fide U.S. government intelligence agent, and long since before rolling in.
Advancing toward the peep booths, he again sensed empty space behind him, wondering why Doppel-ganger wasn’t practically breathing down his neck, when he heard the familiar burp of an HK subgun.
Just like that, all hell broke loose.
Flincher was banging out .45 rounds, Toteman ripping free a split second behind the ex-DOD target, but turning his HK subgun into a blazing thresher. Magazines and video boxes were being blasted to smithereens beside them from the guy’s hand cannon barrage, when Cutler spied the shadow charging up on his left wing from out of nowhere. Something warned him to spare no moves falling back.
He reacted like a wink of lightning.
And just in time.
Cutler lurched back from the first wave of tracking autofire. He caught a glimpse of some guy who looked more like a banker but swarthy in a Latin way, the eyes of a wolf behind the handsome face. And he came bulling ahead, ripping loose with a mini-Uzi, raking the immediate vicinity, every bit as hell-bent and maybe then some as the killing fever that had just gripped him.
Who the hell was this guy? And was he alone?
Before Cutler could fully register his shock and outrage, blood and ragged chunks of cloth flayed the air, all but betraying the fact to him that Toteman was getting cut to ribbons.
ROSARIO BLANCANALES knew he was as jacked up on adrenaline and fear of the unknown as his teammates. It was such a raw sensation, morphing his senses into some electrified force field where sight and sound seemed to lift him off his feet with invisible guiding wires, he was nearly caught off guard, even though he had two of the ops dead to rights.
Or so he thought.
Holding back on the mini-Uzi’s trigger, the compact subgun gripped in two hands, Blancanales stitched the leading trenchcoat with a rising burst of 9 mm Parabellum rounds. The torrent of lead sizzlers began to chew up the black op, from lower back to a point between the shoulder blades. Despite the lethal hammering, the enemy turned howling mad, taking what appeared two hits from the Dreamland owner’s .45. Red mist blossomed around his spiraling jig, the subgun delivering a long sweeping burst toward a ceiling that up until then Blancanales hadn’t noticed was nothing but a vast lake of glass.
And the sky began to rain glass.
Worse still, the other operative hurled himself back into the fray, hardly missing a heartbeat. The hardman’s HK subgun stuttering around the corner, the enemy swept out a blanket of steel hornets that left Blancanales no choice.
Glass lava drenching the floor around his compass, a few rounds scorched past his cheeks, parted hair as Blancanales took a short running start, then dived through the standing display of cheap thrills.
THAT THE INFERNAL ROCK CLAMOR switched to a country-gal crooner he would have recognized under different circumstances did little to calm the wrath of Carl Lyons.
Dreamland was getting shot to hell and back. That meant innocent bystanders. That meant cops. That meant everybody was pretty much on their own and the enemy bent on standing their ground or going down with the ship now that it hit the fan.
The Able Team leader was locked in on the direction of the opening barrage, whipping around the corner of the next standing bank of lurid sex images, when the fiend in the trenchcoat suddenly grew eyes in the back of his head. Lyons snatched an eyeful of the point man getting diced from two ends, as his own problem pivoted his direction. Absorbing hits, the hardman was spinning, falling next as he was doused by an avalanche of glass that finished his pounding to the deck. A wave of shards exploded for yards in every direction, but the other clone was already throwing out a burst of subgun fire that sent Lyons scurrying out of the lethal eye of the lead storm. Wild rounds streaked past the ex-L.A. detective’s face, kissing close to jaw and earlobe, as Lyons hit the trigger on the LAR. He barely noticed the beam of superheated light flaring on, darting yet more to the side just as the standing display of every degradation known to man was scythed to ragged chunks, bits and pieces of paper and plastic whipping off his face. Lyons was hurling himself farther away from the tracking line of subgun fire when he made out the guy’s scream, then spotted the black op plunge through his own rack, leaving in his wake countless images of naked bodies whirling in the cyclone and a thin trace of smoke. As if his senses weren’t assaulted enough by the relentless din of weapons fire and country twang amped in at ear-splitting decibels, Lyons whiffed the fresh sickly sweet taint of burned flesh.
The Able Team leader then wondered how good he’d scored. He tossed his six a check, was plunging a step or two forward when the top row of the rack beside him puked apart against the business end of a subgun.
DAVID ROSENBERG KNEW this dance of death was inevitable, had suspected as much, and probably since the first day the Force of Truth had gone to work. A mere mortal didn’t mess with the big guns who guarded national security, much less shame them, and breathe to tell about it.
How many black ops, donning trademark trenchcoats and sunglasses, were swarming the building Rosenberg had no way of telling. For all he knew, it could have been anywhere from a full squad to a platoon or more. Between the piped-in music, the racket of weapons fire and his two adopted sons screaming for answers, it all sounded like the end of the Alamo from where he stood.
That wasn’t far from the grim truth.
Somewhere out on the floor the advance team was slugging it out with an unknown party, splitting the unholy racket between weapons fire and guttural animal grunts and bellows. Before he wheeled to bolt down the alley between the first line of peep booths, he glimpsed one—no, make that two shooters now, both wielding mini-Uzis. That their weapons were trained on his lethal dilemma did little, if anything, to calm his fears. One of the two mystery gunmen was racing past the upraised checkout platform at the west edge of the stands. The beefy bald clerk flailed in brief panic, screaming something unintelligible, before common sense and self-preservation took over and he dropped from sight to most likely eat the floor in his walled station.
A microsecond later, Rosenberg ventured a wild guess he was holding on for all he was worth as errant rounds exploded through hanging leather-clad blow-up dolls, vomiting on to shred other adult paraphernalia to swirling rubbish in the next lightning flash of auto-fire. The mystery shooter kept shooting his way forward, both hands now filled with weapons, the compact Israeli subgun and pistol blasting away with double volleys at the three black ops who had crashed the back door and who were now spilling through the archway, armed, angry and letting everyone know about it. A massive auto shotgun, Rosenberg spotted, led their charge, booming out sonic peals, as the black op point man swept the floor with the handheld thresher.
A sharp cry, and Rosenberg saw that Flincher was hit. His ex-DOD pal was reeling back, blood jetting from where half his Aloha shirt was shredded to crimson rags, but whirling and triggering his Colt at the new threat. Another sheared patch of flesh and cloth, and Flincher pitched into the side of a booth where its occupant came flying forth, shrieking and nosediving to the floor.
Flincher hollered, “Go, go!”
Rosenberg didn’t need to be told twice.
A few of the heartier souls were now stumbling forth from their dark closets of depraved indulgence, Rosenberg shouting at Noah and the Kid to run. They were jolted out of paralysis just as an invisible hail of bullets began eating up the booths and doors. Sweeping bursts quickly sheared off slews of ads that beckoned whatever the lurid vicarious thrill, and left Rosenberg with little doubt Flincher was no longer available to cover their rear.
The peepers were in full panic, two, maybe three flinging themselves back into their private infernos of lust, but at least two unfortunate patrons were mowed down, screaming out the ghost as they flopped up in front of his flight path.
Sidestepping the bodies, Rosenberg threw himself into a half-pivot, firing back, Uzi jumping around in his one-hand grasp. He was facing front, gathering speed, when he heard Noah scream. Hot blood spraying his face, Rosenberg stumbled over the body and moved on.
LYONS HIT THE TRIGGER on the .50-caliber Desert Eagle Magnum, grimacing into the whirlish dervish of garbage. He was racing ahead, sure he’d missed the black op as the HK subgun flamed on from the other side, not missing a stroke, in fact, as the tracking line of fire to his six only swept forward, turning more mags and videos into detonating mini-minefields of trash. Holding on to the LAR might prove a hindrance to accuracy, Lyons knew, as he cannoned off two more rounds on the swift sidle, but he wasn’t about to leave the future of cutting-edge superweaponry lying around for some local yokel to grab up and show off to his deer-hunting buddies.
The stampede was thundering off in the distance anyway, figures blurring past in a mad dash between the aisles ahead, but Lyons dropped into tunnel vision as he went for broke. Sonic boom four rent the air, the massive stainless-steel hand cannon doing a wild bucking bronco in the Able Team leader’s gloved hand. Beyond the rain of debris he saw his adversary jerk, the HK still spewing lead but hurled offline and chopping up the display. Lyons knew blood when he smelled it, and so drilled two more armor-piercing high-velocity flesh-shredders through the guy’s chest. The subgun blazed on and up at the ceiling, bringing down more sections of glass, falling shrapnel smashing off Lyons’s head. With laser-focused vision on the black op, it looked to Lyons as if his opposite number was hit by a runaway freight train, the mangled stickman hurtled and taking a full rack with him in his flight.
“ROSENBERG! GET DOWN!”
He was jolted out of his breakneck pace at the sound of the voice of doom. The sound and fury of combat was shredding his senses, but some deep inner voice warned him to heed the warning. Glimpsing the big guy with the silver rifle and mammoth handgun up and thundering, Rosenberg nosedived. He bellyflopped so hard, he flipped, end over end, a human bowling ball that bounced on, the air punched from his lungs, the Uzi flying away. He spotted two trenchcoats, demon figures hosing the area with subgun fire, howling and snarling from the last bank of peep booths. He was slowing, the floor clawing at his stomach, eyes bulging at the sight of his enemies getting scythed to scarlet ruins. They were slammed into the booths as if hit by wrecking balls, subguns flaming for an eternal second before what appeared converging streams of auto-fire followed their fall to the floor.
Rosenberg was setting his sights on the Uzi, crabbed ahead a foot or so, clutching the nylon bag, when he felt the presence of pure wrath rolling over him. The cry was locked in his throat, as he looked up, found a face so furious boiling up out of the smoke that for a second he was sure he was dead. He was frozen with pure terror by what he imagined as no less than the avenging wrath of an angel of death descending for him. The hand that stowed the big gun swept down, tore into his shoulder with such force the cry of pain and fear was punched free from its stranglehold.
LYONS SLUNG Rosenberg to the floor of the van. He let his stare of hot rage melt the Force of Truth commander for a long moment, as Schwarz threw the side door shut with a thud and Blancanales grabbed the wheel, fired up the engine.
“Congratulations,” Lyons growled at Rosenberg, dropping down into a seat next to Schwarz. “You made it out in one piece.”
Rosenberg, torn between watching Schwarz rifle through his bag and Blancanales driving away, asked Lyons, “Who are you guys?”
Lyons let Rosenberg stew in fear. He listened to the shouts beyond the warvan, engines revving to life all over the lot, as peepers kept disgorging from under the neon sign and blinking blonde. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the encroaching sirens. Just in time, Blancanales found a hole between two vehicles charging for the mouth of the lot, slipped through them to a blare of horns. Gently, he swung the van to the right, in the opposite direction of the cavalry, as Lyons spotted the glow strobing over the black hills to the west.
“What do you want?”
Lyons looked at Rosenberg, uncertain how he felt about the man. Five youngbloods were dead, and here Rosenberg was, still breathing, worried about his own future, no less.
“Here’s the long and the short, Rosenberg,” Lyons began. “My friend here is going to boot up your CD. In the meantime, I want you to tell me everything that’s both on that CD and whatever blanks need to be filled in, because I know a smart guy like you has kept a few choice secrets to himself. That’s the deal. Yes or no. Do you want to live?”
Rosenberg nodded. “Yes.”
“Start talking. And I want it all.”