When they finally rolled out onto level ground, David McCarter’s eyes adjusted back to near normal from the dazzling shock effect of what he could only think of as brilliant man-made starlight, but with no visible source of illumination. He began scanning the vast acreage of the walled-and-ceilinged airfield, and was momentarily shocked. The few available photos and word by way of Rushti’s mouth proved a monstrous injustice to the stark reality.
First, McCarter couldn’t dare begin to tally all the jumble of helicopter gunships and transports, the numerous tight groupings of T-72 tanks, BMP fighting vehicles, ZSU-23-4 batteries on mechanized platforms, the scattered dozen or more gargantuan twenty-four-wheeled fuel trucks. With this whole armada of hardware parked up and down near the north and west walls, the Phoenix Force leader was left wondering just how many Russian soldiers were actually on base, and how many pledged their dying breath to the Zenith commander? Forget Rushti, the man couldn’t say if it was ten or a thousand guns ready to be unleashed on the lot of them. Going in—and blinded by the light, so to speak—wasn’t the way McCarter would have normally handled such a precise, surgical undertaking, and what was intended to be a straight heist of a supertech space plane, under conditions of which he was virtually clueless.
Second on the list of X factors, they were all of three hundred feet, maybe more, below ground, all but sealed now inside a vault with walls so white—well, he couldn’t tell the Alpha from the Omega. By bloody Mother infernal Russia! It was as if the halo of light was meant to keep any foot patrol plodding on, and getting nowhere fast, and as if the very expanse of it all was, indeed, stretching off into infinity, calling all armed souls to the nowhere of this white oblivion. Bottom line, though, they were stuck now, and forced to follow through with their quasi-defined role to seize the RLV.
McCarter spotted the commotion near the distant east edge of helicopter gunships, the flaming nozzles of assault rifles casting Russian soldiers to the ground in a flourish of twitching limbs and sharp cries of pain that were all but swallowed up into the seemingly eternal blinding shroud. Whatever answers he was searching for—well, the uncertain task he’d committed the team to was right then in the process of bringing the whole damn ugly truth, and blasting away right to their convoy.
And what was that business Rushti had remarked about timing? McCarter wondered, barreling out the door as the Czar braked the volatile behemoth to a sudden halt and shouldered his way out the other side, armed and as angry as a Stalin-enraged counterattack on the capital seat. Was all this a mere bloody coincidence? A clever plan? Duped into doing the black op’s sordid bidding? Perfect timing, and on whose behalf?
Why worry now? he decided. In short order, brutal decisive action would reveal whatever the hydra.
The Phoenix Force leader found his commandos likewise streaking off the bench, to a man bounding from the cabs now, boots thudding down onto concrete and AK-47s up and tracking the enemy. Rushti was bulling out in front of the cab, McCarter next, spying more bullet-riddled bodies dumped to the deck down the line. Then he glimpsed a bulky package hurled into the belly of a Hokum by a hardman in the east vector.
Whoa!
Oh, but these raging mad marauders! Unless McCarter missed his guess, they were going to blow every piece of flying machine and tracked vehicle to flaming comets. And the enemy—maybe fifteen or so strong—was suddenly charging for what McCarter had been told was the sealed access door to the tunnel that would lead to mission control.
Which meant everyone’s time was running out. Radio remote detonation or timed or…
Return fire began slashing the air, slugs whining off the concrete in a flurry of sparks and stone shrapnel just beyond the danger zone of the hard-charging Hawkins and James. The opposition hardforce, McCarter found, was suddenly bunching up while others shouted warnings to their brethren to the lightning arrival of the new combatants.
It was all ready to fly off the axis in a holocaust, and McCarter ordered his troops to advance for the tunnel door but leapfrog by way of cover, using the line of transports staggered down the south edge and head east. Little question they needed immediate and certain protection behind those steel barricades, but any measure of safe haven now seemed to the Stony Man warrior like an expanding universe none of them would ever see the end of.
“Get to the hangar!” Rushti shouted at McCarter, holding back on the trigger of his assault rifle, his line of tracking fire producing sparks that leaped off the hull of a chopper as four or five of their adversaries braked for cover behind that gunship, AKMs and AK-74s reaching around to pound out the firelit winking tempests of searing lead.
“Rufino! G-Man and Sea Wolf!” McCarter said as he fell in beside Hawkins on the backside of the closest vehicle, steel-jacketed hailstones drumming into the far door, canvas shredded above and just behind his six by the searching torrent of autofire. “Take that tunnel and secure mission control. T.J., you and me are going for the brass ring up top! Sea Wolf, give T.J. that sat link, just in case I need to phone home!” he told James, who slipped the nylon bag off his shoulder and handed it to the ex-Ranger. All of them were tied in with com links, backup tactical radios hooked on their belts, but no way would McCarter get caught short on his end as far as communication went. No, sir, not the way in which this particular Chinese fire drill was coming unraveled, and none of them, McCarter knew, could stay put but for a few moments longer. Any number of wild rounds, an RPG warhead plowing into their rocket fuel-plastique-mined convoy, and they would be turned into vapor and before they were even off the starting block.
“Ruf! Drop a couple of fifty-mil hellos into that rat pack!”
“I’m all over it, Commander!”
“I want you to get to Hangar A and secure that shuttle as we discussed!” Rushti roared over his shoulder at Phoenix Force, veering north and west to lead his Czars on vector where it looked as if he lived in hope to outflank the marauders.
As McCarter gauged the distance to the access door that led to the bank of elevators, Encizo dropped to a knee at the front bumper of the transport truck.
There!
One of the marauders, McCarter spotted, was bursting through the door in question, apparently abandoning his fighting brethren as he went in search of…
The shuttle!
Rearguard, McCarter wondered, or some loose cannon seeking his own safety net?
McCarter intended to find out.
The Phoenix Force leader looked toward Encizo, the tempests of scorching lead flying back and forth, walls and floor raked with sparking fingers and puked by ragged divots. He was hoping the tide was about to be turned in their favor by a quick 50 mm shellacking on the hardforce.
The Cuban warrior was bringing up the Steamroller when the shrill and invisible knives of a doomsday Klaxon exploded in the air, signaling to McCarter that yet more hell was about to break loose.
SPECIAL AGENT TOM Bruce, aka Rosario Blancanales, figured his eagle’s nest firepoint was as near perfect a component in the coming juggernaut in what was the most imperfect of battle strategies. But it was Ironman’s call—and try telling their fearless leader it was the wrong one considering his state of hyperagitation and anger—thus it was their game to win or lose.
More often than not, sheer brazen, in Blancanales’s combat experience, was enough to see Lady Luck give her nod of approval, if only in admiration for the pure audacity of the warrior spirit.
That would be Carl Lyons. Sneak up on the front gate, cold-cock the guard to then be cuffed and stuffed. Walk right up to the front door next, like a one-man army of Huns, announce himself and proclaim his intentions to the bad guys, then see what they were made of.
And Lyons had just signaled his own personal enemy contact, as the rolling thunder of the SPAS-12 washed up the cliffs and rang in the Able Team commando’s ears.
Time to take the stage, and he was no bit player in the drama unfolding.
Blancanales gave the lay of the land another quick scouting, just the same, his opening act taking shape as he took in the action. He was about fifty yards higher than the roofline, and he figured his roost was situated an equal distance on the west side as he was elevated. That put him at what he could only call the sweet zone. He had an open line of fire with Little Bulldozer, coupled with a hawk-eye’s view of both Lyons on the edge of the motor pool as he did the party crowd poolside and on to the Mi-26.
Away with sweet; this was near picture perfect as anything Michelangelo’s brilliant hand could create.
Talk about sweet, however, nightslights had turned the compound into a gleaming bastion where the revelry around the pool was quickly increasing in decibels as the booze flowed and more security personnel made their way into the litter of beauties. To a gunsel they were way too involved and distracted in all their babe-trolling and helping themselves to a nip or two from the bar. Oddly enough, no one was jumping at the sound of the shotgun blast. But Blancanales figured between the loud music and all that pursuit of drunken debauchery…
Wrong!
He saw two of the hardmen near one of the bars squawking into handheld radios, fists filling with machine pistols in the next instant, angry voices of gunmen shouting out orders for the rest to get it in gear. He didn’t need a psychic to read the air of rising panic, as the hardforce started en rush for the back patio doors—
And just as he heard the blistering retorts of autofire from Lyons’s direction. A thunderclap rent the night from near the front of the mansion next, and Blancanales glimpsed the smoke ball billowing up where he suspected Lyons was right then bulling his way into the foyer.
And thus his own cue to get busy.
Blancanales squeezed the trigger on his squat handheld rocket launcher. No sooner was a 40 mm HE round streaking for the deep end of the motor pool, locked on, it looked, to a limousine the size of a small cabin cruiser than the Stony Man warrior turned his sights poolward. Shifting the weapon, he aimed for the center of the sprawling customized waterland, tapped the trigger and directed another HE bomb that was meant to let all players and wannabe playboys know the party was, indeed, over.
IT WAS GUT-CHECK TIME, but McCarter knew his troops were ready, come what may.
There was near-perfect decimation of the first large gaggle of mystery adversaries, as Encizo’s Steamroller dropped down three, then four big 50 mm asteroids into the ring of Hinds and Hokums. Gunmen became like rockets launched off personal platforms, sailing away in their mangled bloody lift-off, little more than ground slabs of beef. From what little the ex-SAS commando glimpsed of what remained of all that human flotsam, one of those hellbombs was a buckshot round. That particular warhead was packed with razor-sharp steel balls, and if they didn’t kill a man outright, he would wish for the mercy of quick death after the fact.
Able now to advance on a weaving but swift course down the front bumpers of the troop transports, McCarter held back on the trigger of his AK-47, adding to Hawkins’s blistering salvo as other streams of autofire pitched in to scythe the howling enemy off their feet. As wreckage winged into the back wall and more bodies cartwheeled from the boiling smoke and dragon sprays of fire, McCarter kept the steel door that led to the hangar in the periphery of his vision.
As the deafening wail of the Klaxon kept spiking his brain, McCarter fanned his left wing with a smoking muzzle. Just in time, he spotted Rushti and comrades clamp lead pincers on a few rabbits bolting their direction, all but skewering four or five fanatics off their feet.
How many more hardmen, though, were zipping all over the compound like raving suicidal madmen? What else was mined? Which doors?
Rushing up to the access door, magnetic swipe card in one hand and Hawkins covering his rear, McCarter briefly thought how he hated to split up the team. There was a dark cloud, it seemed, that hung over his every thought, some mocking voice that didn’t seem to be his own but invading his mind, nonetheless, warning him to proceed with great caution.
McCarter felt the door unlatch, lifted his assault rifle. One last look at his troops, as James used his own access card and parted the big doors to their own tunnel and what would prove—he hoped—an ultimate barricade to the coming conflagration, and the ex-SAS commando kicked the door open with a thundering bootheel. Clear, or so it looked.
It was a narrow corridor, he found, gleaming white, with three cars marked in red stars midway down.
Just as Rushti had told them.
Only what hadn’t the black op…
Never mind, McCarter told himself, reswiping the access card to lock the door shut behind them, as Rushti had instructed.
Phantom trouble could wait, McCarter decided. He flashed Hawkins a grim look, then moved swiftly for the lone Red Star, assault up and searching for live and infernal enemy.
IT WAS ALL Franjo Balayko could do to still the finger around the trigger of the Uzi submachine gun he had moments ago hauled out from the hidden armory in the study. Naturally—other than the Russians and his own roaming wolfpack of seven shooters—the VIPs were in a raging snit, flailing around like headless chickens in the second-floor hallway, eyes bulged with blind panic as they grabbed the arms of their own armed security guards and began blistering their ears with orders. Balayko shook his head in disgust. Unbelievable. A little bump in the road, one lion on the prowl—though there could be more, he knew—and the hyenas were openly displaying their true colors of pure yellow.
No question there was murderous trouble aplenty, as Balayko, heading for the landing of the winding staircase, heard the resounding and repeated thunderclaps of that massive autoshotgun, pounding out doom from what sounded directly below in the foyer. And the madman had apparently hurled a grenade at the frontline guard before invading the hallowed halls of his palace! No United States FBI or Justice man he’d ever heard of would dare act in such a reckless and audacious manner, he could be sure of that. Unless, that was, the rules of engagement had further changed, and unbeknownst to even his UN contacts who were always railing, both private and public, about brutal United States special ops tactics against their enemy combatants and that they shouted out for the whole world to hear all but violated every standard and code of the Geneva Convention.
Oh, but the outrage now! This show of force was no more, no less in his mind than utter blasphemy!
And the wild man below would make full accounting and restitution in great agony and spilled blood.
“Vlad!” Balayko shouted at the Russian boss, behind whom several doors down the hall were flying open and spilling forth ladies of the evening, their shrieks and cries of panic only hurling more fuel into the fiery rage the Serb felt ready to blow in his brain. “I will get you and your people to your cars!”
A stuttering fusillade of subgun fire suddenly replaced the cannon peal, and sounded near in his ears. Balayko swiveled his head, just in time to find two of his soldiers diced across the chest, their Uzis blazing out impotent rounds that scorched divots in the ceiling as they began tumbling down the stairs. Oh, but who was this wild man? He was wondering how many more armed raging bulls were on the premises, when his ears were pricked by what sounded yet more utter pandemonium in the direction of the pool. Disaster from the north!
That settled any lingering question about more rampaging human rhinos.
He needed to get this situation under control, and fast.
Yoravky, a stubby machine pistol in his hands, raced up to Balayko who couldn’t right then say he cared much for what he read as a look of accusation in his eyes. “And what about those cowards?” the Russian boss snarled, spittle flying off his lips as he gestured with his weapon down the hall.
Balayko turned and spotted the VIPs. They were in full and hysterical stampede down the opposite end of the corridor, the pack heading in the direction of what would be the tropical-vegetation wrapped stairs that led to the pool’s east deck. From there, Balayko knew the spineless worms would dash straight for their helicopter, thus leave him—and Yoravky—to hold the bag, take the blame. Only several of them were suddenly taking note of whatever the chaos descending from their proposed flight path, shuddering this way and that, clawing at their hired guns to shove them ahead before they fell in behind their human shields.
“They’re useless,” Balayko told Yoravky. “We must handle this ourselves.”
Yoravky nodded. There was new fire in his eyes, and Balayko could tell the old street soldier was ready to rumble out of the closet.
“And when we do,” Yoravky said, “those gutless jackals who bailed will be held accountable and in the strictest terms.”
Balayko smiled. “It is true, then. Great minds think alike.”
“Is there another way to the drive?”
“Only if you wish to jump about twenty feet from the balcony or perhaps climb down the trellis. And if this wild man got past the gate by force, there could be a small army waiting for us.”
“Comrade Balayko, I have faced down far worse odds in my life than a mere small army of lawmen. More to the point, I am of former KGB stock. I know something about fighting, and even to the edge of death, if need be.”
“Indeed.”
“In that case, I will follow you.”
Balayko hesitated a moment. He couldn’t help but wonder what really waited when they made the driveway. Yes, the local authorities were buried deep in his pocket, and which only served to further inflame his doubt and anxiety as to why—if this was a legitimate United States Department of Justice raid—he hadn’t been warned, and well in advance, considering how much money he paid his personal eyes and ears. All that aside, it was too late now to back out from a plan he himself just suggested. To do otherwise would brand him a coward, no better than the UN and ESA jellyfish on two legs.
Steeling himself, Balayko cradled the Uzi tight to his chest, mentally rekindled the old warrior instincts and desire to shed blood. He shouted the orders, loud and angry, for three of his soldiers to stay behind and occupy the invader, then swept past Yoravky, barreling back into the study for their escape route.
VASILY ZAMIL FEARED the big picture was in danger of being shattered. Or was it simply time to improvise?
If so, then how?
His assault rifle curling out wisps of smoke, Zamil fed his AK-74 a fresh clip, as the last of the four technicians who refused to leave mission control toppled to the floor, their computer terminals reduced to sparking rubbish where a few hasty rounds had chased down one who had chosen to run at the last second.
Half of his force was split, as he watched a large group of those scientists and control techs who wished to voluntarily leave the sprawling command room herded by his troops into an elevator at the far north corner under scathing curses and rough shoves. Of course, the remainder of the workforce would be promptly executed, he knew, once they were up top, then those soldiers would roll their military executive jet, fueled and ready to fly for Iran, out of the other hangar. The five remaining soldiers under his employ were now striding to the monitors, their grim expressions speaking volumes for what Zamil himself felt.
And, no, the GRU major general didn’t like what he saw, not in the least.
Zero Sector was under siege by the Czars, as what appeared to be the last of the Muslim rebels fell, thrashing under long sweeps of autofire. So much for his hired fanatic help that he’d gone through so much money and risk to bring here. He figured he could have done better if he’d marched out a peasant village of old drunken hags with pitchforks to tackle the marauding enemy. Worse still, two key doors had been breached by the invaders, which meant the Czar in charge had somehow gotten his hands on top security clearance cards, and which burned to his mind that someone in Moscow was either on to him, had squeezed information out of his GRU and SVR associates…
Cursing, Zamil wandered his gaze down the bank of monitors that watched the hangar, and the access corridors that led to both mission control and the elevator that was now taking two of the invaders to the hangar. Yet even worse, the flight crew was only now boarding the shuttle, with assisting personnel only now trudging the rest of their gear up the ramp. Then he spotted one of the Muslim rabble roll on-screen, the sight merely compounding his agitation and anxiety. There was a brief exchange between the soldiers, one of the crew and the rebel—which he couldn’t hear—but the fanatic looked to be pleading his case about something. The coward, he thought, had abandoned his role, opting, unless he missed his guess, to either fly on with the crew, as visions of jihad spurred him on, or to stand by, weapon ready, to help make sure the RLV made it safely out of the hangar.
The situation was beyond desperate, Zamil sensed.
It was out of control, building to critical mass.
Zamil hit the intercom button that would boom his voice throughout the hangar. “One of you! Stop whatever you are doing and open those hangar doors!” One of them acknowledged the order with a wave of his assault rifle, then bounded down the ramp. “Look alive! All of you! Two armed men are now coming up in Red Star One!”
That, he saw, encouraged them to pick up the pace. Would there be enough time? Yes, it would take only a matter of seconds to fire up those engines, but with two marauders now climbing…
Zamil pulled the cell unit from his coat pocket, thumbed on the red light that would allow him to begin punching in the access signal. He had been hoping to hold off until he was up top, the shuttle, at the very worst, already rolling down the runway, and further, preferably with him aboard his jet and streaking on behind its exhaust fumes. Yes, the walls around Zero Sector and the access doors were reinforced concrete, double-layered in titanium. Yes, the underground complex was meant to withstand any blast just this side of a full megaton. Yet…
Zamil couldn’t be sure what would happen if he unleashed all that explosive energy now. On top of his extensive minefield—what would be close to five thousand pounds of plastic explosive—the Czars had rolled in five massive tankers which, he knew, were all brimmed to capacity with rocket propellant. Visions of EMP knocking out critical instruments, the ceiling cracking open into a gaping fissure with the hangar floors caving, dropping the shuttle down in one horrific earthquake-like swallow became like screaming demons in his mind. Then there was the payload aboard the craft to consider, and with nuclear explosives there was never any telling…
But those commandos were coming his way, as he saw the last of the Czars racing for the tunnel mouth. They would be the closest to the conflagration. And it would still be a few more seconds before those doors were sealed shut. Oh, but he would have loved nothing more at the moment than to be able to manually override the computerized electronic system and force those doors to remain open. Two problems in that regard, he knew. One—all doors and elevators were tied in to the same override code, and for the express purposes of lockdown, which meant his own elevator to freedom would be paralyzed. Two—lockdown was computer coded for a full forty-eight hours, with no accessing to reverse the process once initiated. To do so required direct and on-the-spot intervention from Moscow, and only after a full and thorough investigation as to why lockdown was implemented in the first place.
Zamil knew what he had to do.
It was his only option. That was, if he wanted to try to crush the invaders before they came blitzing into mission control.
Slowly, he felt his hand raise the cell unit. Then a finger, slightly trembling, reached out and began tapping in the series of numbers.