Triplecross

“Awfully militarized for local security,” Blancanales whispered.

“Yeah,” said Lyons. “That too.”

The three guards were large, bearded men with the experienced, self-assured look of independent contractors. Lyons did not get an “amateur security guard” or “wannabe cop” vibe from them at all; what he perceived was the type of lethal potential that men of violence, men experienced in warfare, could sometimes sense in each other. Their uniforms also put Lyons’s sixth sense for combat on alert. They were wearing a commercial brand of “tactical” clothing—including distinctive pants with slash rear pockets and cargo pouches—that were extremely popular with contractors in the sandbox abroad. The front man of the trio wore expensive, mirrored, wraparound sunglasses that cost a week’s pay for most people. The hook-and-loop nametag on his uniform shirt read Kirkpatrick.

Each man held an M-4 carbine worn on a single-point sling.

The two men behind Kirkpatrick were Conyers and Gomez. And if those were their real names, Lyons would eat his shoulder holster. While Kirkpatrick and Conyers looked the parts their names implied, Gomez was clearly Asian, not Hispanic. He was very big for an Asian man, easily massing as much as his partners did.

“These are back-breakers,” Schwarz whispered from the other side of the Suburban. “No way is the operation here legit.” The electronics expert spoke quietly enough that his partners could hear him through their earpieces, but the security team would not be able to listen in.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” Kirkpatrick asked.

“Justice Department,” Lyons said, flashing the credentials Brognola had issued to the team. “We’re investigating an international commerce issue.”

Kirkpatrick exchanged glances with Conyers. Gomez, for his part, simply stared at Lyons as if he could bore a hole through the big ex-cop with nothing but a hostile look.

“I’m going to need to see a warrant,” Kirkpatrick said.

“This identification is all the warrant I need,” said Lyons. He wasn’t really the authoritarian type; he respected the Constitution as much as the next guy. But something was off about these characters and he wasn’t going to play along. The fastest way to get them to cut to the chase was just to push their buttons until they revealed what they were after.

“No entry to unauthorized personnel,” Kirkpatrick said At the words “no entry,” Gomez and Conyers began to fan out in an attempt to flank Able Team.

I don’t like where this is going, thought Lyons, but I can’t say I’m surprised.

“Maybe you don’t understand, Slick,” Lyons said. “We’re with the Justice Department. To go higher than us you have to have a word with the President. Something’s dirty here in Denmark and we’re going to find it. Step aside.”

Kirkpatrick’s stance changed. Lyons saw it; Kirkpatrick saw that Lyons saw it. Both men knew the hammer was about to fall. The “security guard” was getting ready to bring up his M-4. Lyons couldn’t see the selector switch on the weapon, but he had to bet that all three men had their safeties off and rounds in the chambers.

“No entry,” Kirkpatrick said, his teeth clenched, “to unauthorized personnel.” He moved to take a diagonal step back, which was his attempt to get off the attacking line and bring his weapon into play. Lyons was already moving. As Kirkpatrick tried to raise his M-4, Lyons’s Python was in his fist. The snout of the big pistol came up under Kirkpatrick’s chin, below his line of vision. It was an old trick, but a good one. Kirkpatrick was already visualizing Lyons’s death, already taking up the slack in the M-4’s trigger, his expression one of triumph. That changed the moment the barrel of the Python touched the flesh under his jaw.

“Here’s my authorization.” Lyons pulled the trigger.

The top of Kirkpatrick’s head exploded. Lyons pushed the corpse away, watching it fall back as he backpedaled to the only cover available, which was the Suburban. Schwarz and Blancanales had already opened up on the other two gunmen, driving them back toward the double doors of the mining office entrance.

There was a heartbeat’s lull in the firefight as the two security guards dove inside the office. Schwarz ripped open the duffel bag. “Carl!” he called.

Lyons held out a hand. Schwarz tossed him the heavy USAS-12 automatic shotgun. He threw Blancanales’s M-4 to him and then hooked his support hand through the trigger guard of his 93-R machine pistol, using the fold-down foregrip to brace the weapon.

Schwarz and Blancanales advanced on the double doors, covering each other as they left the shelter of the Suburban. Blancanales reached out and tried the door handle, pulling his hand back quickly lest he lose it to a spray of gunfire from the other side. Nothing happened. The door was solidly locked. The walls flexed slightly, however.

“Talk about cheap construction,” Blancanales said.

“It’s a prefab trailer,” Schwarz said. “Big and modular, probably multiple trailer units interconnected. Flimsy. But the doors are held on good.”

“Let’s do this,” Lyons said. He leveled the USAS-12 at the lower set of hinges on the left side and pulled the trigger. The hinge disintegrated under the barrage of 00 Buck. It took less time to blow the second one; Lyons simply raised the barrel and rode out the recoil. He stepped aside as the door fell off.

Bullets flew from inside. The guards were shooting back, the sounds of their M-4 carbines unmistakable. It was said, and Lyons knew it to be true, that the Kalashnikov had a distinctive metallic noise. This was due in part to all the empty space under its receiver cover, which turned the AK into a metal drum when rounds were cycled through it. But the 3 AR platform and its variants also had a distinctive sound, with which Lyons and the other members of Able Team had become very familiar. If you’d heard it enough you could never forget it.

Blancanales’s M-4 had been modified and tuned by Kissinger, as had all their weapons. Blancanales squeezed several long, full-auto bursts. Among the modifications Kissinger regularly preformed was to replace the 3-round-burst mode with sustained full-automatic. The men of Able Team were more than capable of the trigger-control required to avoid wasting ammunition.

“I’d say we’ve got ample verification of hostile contact,” Schwarz noted.

“Affirmative,” Lyons said. Noting Blancanales had the most forward position of the team, he asked, “What’s it look like in there, Pol?”

Blancanales waited for a moment, timing the bursts of fire from inside the mining office. When he judged he could risk it, he moved his head just enough to expose his left eye, then whipped his skull back out of the line of fire.

“Our two friends have backup,” Blancanales related. “I count two more, all armed. No civilians. No noncombatants anywhere in range.”

“Good,” Lyons said. “Gadgets, pull two grenades. No, three.”

“Three?” Schwarz queried.

“Three,” Lyons confirmed.

“Time to blow everybody up,” Schwarz said. He reached into the duffel bag, snaked his index finger through the pins of three grenades and popped all three bombs at once. Then he tossed them in quick succession through the doorway.

“Which did you—?”

“Willie Pete,” Schwarz said quietly.

“And Hell followed with them,” Blancanales whispered.

The white-phosphorous grenades ignited. The screams from within the mining office were beyond horrible. Each grenade carried 15 ounces of white phosphorous and had a burst radius of 34 meters on open ground. Within the corridor of the mining office, detonated simultaneously as a trio, the blasts would create a fiery tunnel of molten death that bored through any human being unfortunate enough to be in the way. The cloud of smoke created was immediate and overpowering.

“Let’s move,” Lyons said. “Secondary entrance to the west.”

“Roger that,” Schwarz said.

“Affirmative,” Blancanales said.

Under cover of the pall of smoke drifting from the flaming charnel house that was now the main entrance, Able Team took up positions around the west entrance. This door, too, was secured, but the thunderous hammer blows of Lyons’s automatic 12-gauge made short work of the barrier. When the three men of Able Team finally entered the building, fire alarms were sounding through the halls. Through the distant screams, Able Team could also hear fire extinguishers being deployed. Schwarz hoped for his enemies’ sake that those extinguishers were chemical models and not simply tanks of water. Water would only scatter the hungry white phosphorous, which would burn until it no longer had oxygen to feed it.

The corridor in which Able stood was comprised of offices, each with a name on a faux brass nameplate on the door. There was no reason not to check them. Lyons signaled to his partners, pointing to the next set of doors. The team worked its way up the hall, kicking in the doors on either side as they went, with Blancanales and Schwarz working the entries and Lyons stationed in the corridor for backup.

Something creaked in the ceiling above. “I think we’re doing some serious damage to this place,” Blancanales said. “It sounds like the roof is coming apart.”

“If the fire spreads to the crawl space above the drop ceiling,” Schwarz noted, “it will move very rapidly. We need to be careful we don’t get cut off.”

“I’ll shoot us an exit, if it comes to that,” Lyons said. “I have slugs if we need them. They’ll carve through the pasteboard this place seems to be made of.”

There was still plenty of ammo left in Lyons’s 20-round drum. He scarcely felt the weight of the heavy USAS-12. The weapon was comforting in his big fists. He liked knowing that he had the option of laying down a cloud of 00 Buck that would shred almost any resistance. Each 12-gauge double-aught shell carried nine pellets, each roughly comparable to a 9mm bullet. To be on the receiving end of most of a drum of those shells was world-changing for just about anyone and anything.

The ceiling creaked again. “That’s not sounding good,” Blancanales warned.

“Keep moving,” Lyons directed. “We’re up against the clock.”

The sweep of the corridor turned up nothing. It was time to take the party closer to the main entrance, where more EarthGard personnel appeared to be active in trying to quell the chemical flames. The prefab office was arranged like a wagon wheel, with a central hub and multiple spokes. They were reaching the hub, opposite the spoke that bore the Willy Pete conflagration, when something felt wrong.

“Gadgets,” Lyons said. “Pol. Look.” He pointed. The security camera set in the wall had been turning, but now it was pointed directly at them. Lyons realized what had been nibbling at the edges of his awareness. There were automatic security cameras in every corridor, and these had been moving mindlessly back and forth when they’d first entered the building. But the cameras had been stopping and tracking them, quietly, as they’d made their way through the structure. And if they were being tracked, that meant the enemy wasn’t nearly as confused and ineffective as Able Team had been led to believe. It meant the enemy—

Lyons looked up.

“Hit the walls!” he shouted. He shoved Schwarz, who was within arm’s reach, against the far wall of the corridor, flattening himself against the fiberboard of the hallway.

Tiles from the drop ceiling rained down, followed by gunfire. The security guards, obviously coordinating with someone operating the cameras from a control area within the mining office, had crawled along above the drop ceiling until they were in position to take out Able Team.

Gunfire chewed up the cheaply carpeted floor. There were three different muzzle-flashes up there. The shooters were braced on the boards that held the ceiling tiles in place. Lyons dropped to one knee, planted the butt-stock of the USAS-12 on the floor and held back the trigger of the mighty shotgun as he walked the barrel from left to right. He emptied the drum while Schwarz and Blancanales pumped bursts of fire into the three men in the ceiling.

Three bloody corpses hit the carpet in rapid succession. One of them nearly striking Schwarz. He started and then looked more closely at the dead man.

“I’ve got another Asian here,” he said. “And over here.” He pointed to the second of the three.

“And this one,” Blancanales confirmed.

“Okay, this just got weird,” Lyons said. “No telling how many more of them could be hiding in the freaking walls or whatever. Pol, time to call in backup.”

“Good idea,” Schwarz said. “This is exactly like that movie with that woman.”

“Gadgets, so help me, if you go off on another science-fiction tangent,” Lyons began.

For Grimaldi’s benefit, Blancanales said, “G-Force, this is Able Team. Do you—”

Lyons nearly ripped the transceiver from his ear as a burst of feedback brought him to his knees. “Son of a bitch!” he roared. Blancanales and Schwarz were both wincing with pain. “What the hell was that?”

Footsteps in the corridor to their immediate left signaled that more personnel were coming up the hallway toward where they stood near the hub. The footfalls were fast, heavy and purposeful. It was the sound of troops moving in for the kill, if Lyons had to guess.

“That was active jamming,” Schwarz said. “Our friends have the means to blanket the RF and shut us out.”

“Does that mean what I think it means?” Lyons asked. “I thought these were satellite phones?”

“The transceivers are RF,” Schwarz said. “For short range.”

“I’ve got movement!” Blancanales announced. He went to one knee and braced his M-4 against the corner of the hallway junction. “Multiple contacts, coming up fast and using the offices for cover. They’re walking up two by two.”

“More over here,” Schwarz said. He pressed himself against the wall near the spoke opposite Blancanales. “Carl, they’ve got us pinned between them.”

“So we’ve got multiple hostiles inbound who have superior position,” Lyons said. “And our only means of calling in backup is hosed.”

“Until we can find the source of the jamming, yes,” Schwarz said. “We’re completely cut off.”

“How does that movie go?” Blancanales asked.

“Everybody dies,” Schwarz said.

The enemy shooters charged.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jammu, Kashmir

“That’s it,” Hawkins said, peering through a pair of compact field glasses. “The dossier on Jamali says his personal logo is the Pakistani military insignia superimposed on a red field.”

McCarter, crouched next to Hawkins on the ridge overlooking the small encampment of Jamali fighters, nodded.

“That’s how they confuse the issue,” Encizo added. “Gera does the same thing. He uses the Indian military symbology, but next to a series of black slashes to signify territory conquered. If you’re not looking for the differences you’ll just identify their rogue elements as part of the main Pakistani and Indian militaries. It’s a nasty tactic. Sure to put the two countries at each other’s throats, just as it’s done.”

“Well, not for too much longer,” McCarter vowed. “We’re going to put the hurt on them both.” He turned to Encizo. “Is the Farm still tracking that contingent of Gera’s forces?” he asked.

“Yes.” Encizo nodded. “We have real-time satellite surveillance on them. They’re a ways out yet.”

“Text Barb and ask her if we can get some generic chatter spliced into their local airspace,” McCarter directed. “Something that will make Gera’s people wonder what’s going on and give them the itch to investigate. We can do that, can’t we?”

“As long as there’s a way for Bear to reach out through the ether and touch them, yes,” Encizo said. “Why?”

“I want to draw Gera’s people here,” McCarter explained. “Give both contingents a bloody nose at the same time.”

“What happens if we overplay it?” Manning asked. He was crouched alongside James. The MRAP vehicles were parked in the shadow of a tall stone outcropping that was dusted with snow. Rather than gang-bust their way through the camp below in the vehicles, McCarter had opted for an infiltration on foot. The plan was to destroy the Jamali scouting party from within. This would give them a chance to gather any intelligence there was to be had, while putting them up close and personal with Jamali’s forces. Such men operated on the basest of animal levels. They understood fear and they understood strength. McCarter was going to put them on notice by showing them the latter and, in so doing, instilling a healthy dose of the former.

“Concern noted, mate,” McCarter said, nodding again. “And you’re right—if we don’t time this right, we end up caught between the two forces, which nobody wants or needs. So let’s be brisk in dealing with Jamali’s men. Remember—we want to make an impression.”

Manning loaded the grenade launcher of his Tavor.

“Forty mike-mike makes an impression, all right,” James said “So do those RPGs you’re lugging around.” Manning had the heavy rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his back, together with the launcher. He was large enough to be able to carry that load without it inhibiting his mobility. There weren’t a lot of men with his combat time who could boast that, even in circles as elite as the one in which Phoenix Force traveled.

“Let’s move, lads,” McCarter said.

Half crouching, gliding along from heel to toe, the men of Phoenix Force spread out and began descending, traversing the decline and closing on the scouts’ camp. Jamali’s men had a pair of Toyota trucks with machine guns mounted in the beds. They also had a canvas-covered, six-wheeled troop truck. These were parked at three points around the camp, forming a triangle, while the scouts had erected tents in the intervening space. They had set sentries, too, but not enough of them. McCarter had been watching them walk their patterns and had deliberately timed Phoenix Force’s movements to take advantage of a gap in their coverage.

“Grenades, get ready,” McCarter said softly. His words left a trail of frozen vapor that crystallized on his face. He pulled his mottled cold-weather neck wrap tighter around his face. The generic camouflage pattern of his fatigues matched that of his scarflike wrap, which was really just a big square of fabric folded over on itself several times. The gloves McCarter and the rest of the team wore were easily some of the most expensive on the market. They were durable and they insulated the hand but did not add too much bulk, allowing the soldiers of Phoenix Force to fight in cold weather without giving up too much dexterity.

Someone within the perimeter of the camp shouted an alarm. Phoenix Force had been spotted. McCarter had been counting on that. They had done what they needed to do, which was put themselves in the scouts’ midst before the enemy gunmen knew what was happening to them.

“Fire,” McCarter ordered.

His four teammates opened up with their 40 mm grenade launchers. Two grenades each struck the front of the first pickup and the rear of the second. Each vehicle was shoved aside by the explosions. The mounted machine guns were torn and bent and the vehicles themselves were rendered inoperable. The gas tank of one of the trucks exploded in a brief orange fireball.

Phoenix Force broke formation. The veteran counterterrorists ran for cover, threading their way through the tents of the scout camp, firing their Tavors in measured bursts. McCarter no longer felt the cold once the battle started. He stopped feeling anything at all except alert and awake, focused on the battle that now unfolded in front of him.

That was always how combat had been for him: a focusing of his mind to an almost painful acuity, giving him the data he needed to assess the threats before him and deal out force, mete out violence, as was required for the task at hand. Dispassionate, his trainers in the SAS had called it. It was all well and good to be angry, to let anger, even hatred, fuel your battle. But when it came to actually taking a man’s life—or the lives of a hundred men, for that matter—you had to maintain your detachment. You had to see them as what they were: targets, obstacles to be removed. That was why McCarter took no pleasure in removing even men like these, brutal though both Jamali’s and Gera’s rogue forces were reported to be.

It was simply time to remove some obstacles.

“T.J., Gary, left,” McCarter instructed. “Rafe, Calvin, right. Flank them and walk them toward the center. I’ll come straight up the middle.”

A chorus of affirmatives sounded through his transceiver. McCarter used the wreckage of one of the pickups to shield him from enemy gunfire as he took up his position. The flames from the second truck nearby were hot enough that he felt them as he waited on one knee. No time to cozy up to a campfire now, though, he reflected. The smell of gasoline was strong where the closer truck had been wrenched apart.

It was only in the movies that every vehicle was made of flashpaper and nitro, ready to blow up at the first bullet that glanced off its fuel tank. Most of the fuel in McCarter’s cover vehicle was now soaking the snow beneath the pickup’s wreckage. Even if it caught fire, it would just make McCarter’s brief stay that much more comfortable. But even without the risk that his cover would erupt into flying shrapnel without warning, he had plenty of bullets to worry about.

The Pakistanis were fielding Kalashnikovs by the truckload, from what he could see. As he watched, one of the Jamali fighters sprang up from the perforated remains of his tent with an AK in either hand. Screaming what McCarter assumed were bloodthirsty oaths, the fighter blazed away from the hip, bracing the stocks of the AKs between his body and his elbows, letting the muzzle rise carry his twin streams of bullets to hell and gone.

McCarter let his Tavor lie at the end of its single-point sling. He pulled his Browning Hi-Power, thumbed back the hammer and took careful aim.

The dual-wielding soldier was still screaming when McCarter’s carefully aimed 9 mm bullet tunneled through his forehead and blew a hole through the back of his skull.

“Close it up, lads, close it up,” McCarter said, knowing his transceiver would carry his words to the others. He stood, ready to push forward, cutting through the center of the encampment as he’d said he would.

“David,” Calvin James warned, “you’ve got a wild one headed your way.”

“Wilder than dual-wielding assault rifles?”

“On your two o’clock,” James said.

But McCarter already saw the Pakistani soldier coming. The man held what looked like a battered Makarov pistol in one hand and in the other...

“Bloody hell,” said McCarter softly. “Is that a fireman’s ax?”

The other Phoenix Force members began engaging new targets. Automatic weapons fire from the Tavors filled the air, met by diminishing return fire from the scouts.

McCarter hit the snow and rolled as bullets filled the air where he had been standing. His charging attacker emptied the Makarov and actually threw the pistol through the air as McCarter struggled to regain his feet. It was a move the Briton hadn’t seen outside a cowboy movie in a long time.

From his back in the snow, McCarter brought up the Browning and fired three times. He struck the attacking soldier in the chest, but the gunshots weren’t enough to bring the man down. The Phoenix Force leader felt the air being forced from his lungs as the Pakistani shooter collided with him, crushing his ribs and shouting in pain and anger. McCarter shoved the Hi-Power into the man’s torso and pulled the trigger, but the slide was out of battery. He smashed the weapon against the side of the Pakistani’s head and pushed with his off hand, rolling them over just as the enemy soldier tried to bring the fire ax down.

The gunfire all around the two men, cutting through the small encampment, increased in pitch. The Briton had seen some strange weapons carried into battle by men who had their idiosyncratic favorites. A fire ax was not the most unusual one he had seen, but it was a rare thing. It was also long and deadly, with a rear spike as long as his hand.