Atomic Fracture

* * *

THE MEN OF Phoenix Force and Abdul Ali kept away from the blacktop highway, using the trees and brush lining the roadway to hide them as they made their way toward Ramesh. But along with the natural concealment, they passed a seemingly endless stream of wrecked and burned-out military vehicles representing both sides of the conflict in Radestan. Old and broken-down jeeps—looking as if they’d been left over from World War II and repeatedly repaired—lined the ditch every hundred feet or so. Most still bore the spray-painted eagle-and-scimitar seal of Radestan.

But other vehicles looked more civilian in nature. Well-worn pickups and bullet-ridden sedans—many so old that the paint had worn off and the dull gray primer had become their principal color—were also lying dead in the grass and weeds. All were unmarked and David McCarter reasoned that these had belonged to private citizens before being pressed into service by one of the PSOF rebel factions.

The men of Phoenix Force had each thrown on an abat—the traditional Arab robe common throughout the Middle East—over their blacksuits, and kafiyyehs covered their heads and necks. Led by Abdul Ali, who now carried an AK-47 that rested just beneath his long black-and-gray beard, they slowly made their way through the wrecks and weeds alongside what passed for a highway.

Hawkins had been able to clean enough of the cow manure off his boots to make them wearable again and, for the most part, the snide remarks and needling from the men who had been fortunate enough not to land inside the corral had ceased.

The men from Stony Man Farm and their Radestani guide walked in silence, only speaking when some small anomaly needed to be pointed out, and then in small, hushed voices. In several of the vehicles they passed, corpses still sat behind the steering wheels and in the shotgun and rear seats. Many were upright, their heads partially blown off by enemy gunfire. Those that still had eyes stared blankly into the distance, their souls long gone from their earthly housings. Other bodies were almost headless, while still more appeared to have been burned alive, their blackened arms clawing at the handles inside the vehicles in vain attempts to escape their fiery coffins.

The corpses in the vehicles, and the semi-burned vegetation growing up around them, gave the area an eerie, otherworldly ambience.

While the ground upon which they tread was flat, across the blacktop in the distance stood a high mountain range. Around McCarter’s neck hung a pair of binoculars, which the Phoenix Force leader lifted occasionally to scan those mountains and the terrain in front of them.

The group was roughly a mile from the city when a glint of sunlight flashed from the mountains. The reflected glow lasted only a split second. But McCarter had seen such flashes of light far too many times in the past to not immediately identify its origin.

The reflection had come from the front lens of a scope. A scope mounted atop a rifle held in the hands of a shooter too inexperienced to know that he should keep the scope covered until the last few seconds before firing.

Or a rifleman who did know his business. And actually was only seconds away from squeezing the trigger. The Phoenix Force leader called for an immediate halt. “Sniper,” he said in a quiet voice because sounds, he knew, traveled far in such terrain. Raising the binoculars again, he zeroed in on the spot where he’d seen the flash. The field glasses included an automatic range finger, and they measured the distance at 642 feet. Not a long shot by any means. Even for a slip-shod Radestan regular or a semitrained rebel.

Through the lenses, McCarter could just make out the outline of a man. The sniper’s hide had been set up behind a boulder at the foot of the mountain. It was crude but sufficient to disguise the man in the distance from all but the most highly trained eye.

As he watched the still figure, the Phoenix Force leader thanked God that he was one of those highly trained eyes.

Quickly swinging the binoculars away from the sniper, McCarter moved them downrange to make it appear as though he had not spotted the enemy. With the eyepieces still pressed to his forehead, he said, “Act busy with your equipment.” Then he quickly dropped the binoculars to the end of their strap. “I don’t want him to know I’ve spotted him.” Then, to no one in particular, he added, “Can you see him?”

Calvin James had pulled the twelve-inch blade of his Crossada fighting knife from the Concealex sheath he wore on his left hip. The Crossada was a spear-pointed blend of Bowie knife and Arkansas Toothpick, and one well-placed thrust could drop a man at close range faster than a 12-gauge slug through the middle of the chest. But as McCarter watched, James began pretending to cut away some of the brush in front of him. “I can see something up there,” the former Navy SEAL said in a hushed voice. “What do you want to do?”

McCarter had swung his Rock River LAR-15 Hunter from his shoulder and pretended to be checking the magazine. The weapon sported a unique anodized finish to the aluminum hand guard, upper and lower receivers, trigger guard and charging handle. Referred to as a WYL-Ehide camo finish, from a distance it appeared to be a bronze color. But looking at it closely, the Phoenix Force leader had to smile at its furlike appearance.

The special camouflage had been digitally adopted from an actual photo of a real coyote’s hide.

Designed originally for coyote hunting, McCarter knew the RRA LAR-15 and its 5.56 mm NATO rounds worked equally well when hunting men. And it was far more accurate than the common AR-15/M-16 rifles on the market.

Especially after John “Cowboy” Kissinger finished his own tune-up.

McCarter glanced over to where James was still cutting brush. “I want you to get ready,” he said, finally answering the knife fighter’s question. “I don’t know if he’s government or rebel. But he’s definitely got us in his sights and could start pulling the trigger on us anytime.” Extending the LAR-15’s six-position stock, he kept the barrel aimed at the ground as he pressed it into his shoulder. “I’m going to take him out. But I’ve got a feeling he’s not alone.”

“Affirmative,” James said, transferring the Crossada to his left hand and continuing to swing it at the tall grass. Casually, his right hand moved to the Beretta 92-SB 9 mm on his other hip.

McCarter watched as the others silently nodded their acknowledgment of the order.

“Do you want—?” Rafael Encizo started to say.

McCarter knew there was no time for manners. “Quiet,” he said bluntly.

Encizo was a professional, too. He immediately stopped speaking.

Abdul Ali was the only man not covered by an abat. He didn’t need one to blend in. Still wearing his khaki pants, woodland cammo BDU blouse and checkered kaffiyeh, he came hurrying up from McCarter’s rear. “If he is with the resistance,” said the man with the long gray-streaked beard, “he will recognize me.”

“And if he’s not on our side and he recognizes you?” McCarter said.

Ali shrugged. “It is a chance I must take,” he said.

It was one heck of a risk, McCarter knew. Every second that passed was another second during which the sniper might fire and kill one of them. But the Phoenix Force leader knew it was a risk they had to take. He waited another full second, using the time to take in a deep breath and let half of it out again.

This could not be a common countersniper shot, the Phoenix Force leader thought as he prepared to act. They were lucky that the man in the mountain had created such a bad hide to begin with, and even luckier that he hadn’t caught the Phoenix Force leader staring back at him through the binoculars. If he had, he’d have already fired at least once, then moved. And if he saw McCarter’s LAR-15 Hunter barrel aimed his way, it would tip him off just as readily.

Taking too much time after he’d aimed the rifle would definitely cause the sniper to change positions.

Slowly, McCarter adjusted the red-dot scope on the top of the LAR’s Picatinny rail. Ali’s presence had not resulted in action by the sniper so the Phoenix Force leader waited no longer. Suddenly and without further ado, he swung his rifle barrel up and toward the mountain 642 yards away. He could see only the blurry outline of the would-be sniper’s head, shoulders and whatever rifle he held in his hands. Sighting in on the middle of the dark figure, he squeezed the trigger and felt the Hunter jump slightly in his hands.

Through the scope, McCarter saw the sniper’s head explode like a watermelon dropped from a ten-story building.

But a second later an explosion of a different type took place.

As if from out of nowhere, men bearing a variety of assault rifles, sawed-off shotguns and handguns suddenly shot up fifty feet farther down the line of brush and wrecked vehicles. And, unlike McCarter, they had no reason to hesitate.

The first dozen rounds or so seemed to come at exactly the same time, sounding like one gigantic explosion.

“Down!” McCarter yelled. It was an unnecessary order. The men of Phoenix Force and Ali had all dropped into the grass behind vehicles of their own accord.

McCarter felt his elbows sink into the damp earth just behind what had once been a Radestani army jeep. He’d had no time for an actual head count of the enemy, but a quick skim caused him to estimate roughly two dozen.

Those were the adversaries he could see. There could be more—many more, in fact—that had simply been a little slower rising and showing themselves.

In any case, Phoenix Force and their companion were outnumbered. Greatly.

But that was hardly a new situation for the men from Stony Man Farm.

John “Cowboy” Kissinger had performed his weapon-smithing magic on the Rock River LAR-15 and given it the capacity to shoot semiauto, 3-round burst or fully automatic fire. McCarter switched the selector to the latter mode as he rose briefly and held the trigger back, spraying the men farther down the roadway with a hailstorm of 5.56 mm rounds. It was not the wild firing act of panic or frustration to which less-seasoned warriors might have resorted. McCarter simply wanted to open the show with a bang. Or, more precisely, with a lot of bangs. And to make sure the enemy knew they were in for a fight.

Two of them died learning that fact as the Hunter’s barrel swept across the mass of men.

McCarter ducked into the weeds, his shoulder against the rear of a jeep as return fire flew over his head. Around him he could hear the roar of the other men’s rifles as they, too, maintained their assault on the enemy. For a brief moment his mind traveled back to the firing range at the Farm where the men of Phoenix Force had tested and evaluated dozens of rifles and add-on combinations before choosing what they liked best. All of the test weapons had been variants of the AR-15 that had been made by different companies and tailored to fit specific needs, likes and dislikes. Each had its own subtle—and sometimes not-so-subtle—differences from the others.

A short lull came to the firefight, and McCarter recalled each of his team’s favorite rifle. Manning had liked the Bushmaster. Encizo had stuck with his tried-and-true Colt. James had fallen in love with the titanium Nemo—a rifle that cost one hundred thousand dollars on the open market and was worth every penny. And Hawkins had cast his vote for a Spike’s Tactical.

But McCarter had known they would be on their own, and Murphy’s Law always applied: things would go wrong. Equipment, no matter how well made, sometimes broke down and carrying spare parts for five different weapons was out of the question. So he had chosen the LAR-15 for all of them. And none of the Phoenix Force warriors had objected very much. After all, they knew that it was a case of men fighting men—not specific weapons fighting other weapons. And the men of Phoenix Force were more than capable with any rifle placed in their hands.

So now the coyote-hide-camo rifles began throwing massive amounts of jacketed hollowpoints down the road toward the men who had sprung the sudden attack.

But were they hitting anyone? McCarter wondered. And if they were, were they killing government soldiers or People’s Secular Opposition Forces rebels?

There was only one way to find out. Keep fighting. And do your best to stay alive. And in the end, it really made little difference. While there was an attempt being made to train and unite the scattered PSOF factions, at the moment some of them were every bit as much the enemy as the Radestani regulars. Each faction had its own selfish agenda. And if any of them actually took over the government, they would immediately begin a campaign of genocide directed at the other factions.

McCarter had seen similar situations in other parts of the world. And he knew they could not allow that to happen here.

Rising again, the Phoenix Force leader aimed his new weapon over the jeep and peered above the scope. Phoenix Force’s war in Radestan was, and promised to continue being, an extremely confusing situation. But then all wars were confusing, McCarter reminded himself. And as he fired at the attackers, one man near the front finally gave away their identity by screaming out, “Allahu Akbar!” McCarter was slightly surprised but hardly shocked. The men attacking them were not government soldiers. But they weren’t one of the rebel factions, either. The men trying to kill the warriors of Phoenix Force and Abdul Ali were part of the al Qaeda terrorist faction Phoenix Force had been warned was waiting in the wings, preparing to take over the country as soon as the regulars and rebels had killed each other off.

McCarter cut loose with a 3-round burst from the Hunter, secure now that he was shooting at a faction of “bad guys” in this strange three-way war. Yes, all wars were confusing. This one just happened to be more so.

It was totally, one hundred percent, completely screwed up.

The Phoenix Force leader fired again and a trio of rounds ripped into the chest of the man who had yelled. A terrorist wearing a brown cloth safari-style hat took all three of the Phoenix Force leader’s rounds in the face, all but eliminating his head. For a second, the hat seemed to hover above the neck in midair. Then it fell straight down to land on the man’s shoulders before the body slumped out of sight and into the tall grass.

Around him, in the grass and behind the trashed vehicles, McCarter could hear the return fire from the rest of his team and Abdul Ali. Phoenix Force’s RRA LAR-15 Hunter rounds were easy enough to distinguish from the AK-47 explosions from both Ali and the al Qaeda shooters opposing them.

McCarter fired another burst, then dropped to his knee again behind the abandoned jeep. Following the time-proven strategy that you never showed yourself to the enemy more than once in the same place, he knee-walked his way to the right bumper. Leaning his face around the edge, he kept the rest of his body behind the vehicle and extended the LAR-15 at arm’s length. His body still completely covered, he risked only his hands and arms as he used his thumb on the trigger, firing a long full-auto burst blindly in the general direction of the enemy.

McCarter jerked his arms and the rifle back out of sight, immediately edging his face around the jeep’s bumper. His blind assault had done the job he’d wanted it to do, causing the enemy combatants to shrink back into hiding long enough for him to make a quick survey of the situation.

One man, however, had not been intimidated by the full-auto blast. He had dark skin and wore a bright red shirt that looked as if the sleeves had been chopped off at the shoulders with a machete. McCarter switched the selector on his LAR-15 to 3-round burst and squeezed the trigger again, this time with his eyes fixed on the center of the man’s chest.

Black holes appeared in the red cloth of his shirt as the man danced like a marionette on the end of the strings of a mad puppeteer. As he fell to the ground, another attacker—this one wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt—caught more rounds from one of the other Phoenix Force men. The AK-47 in the man’s hands flew up into the air as one of the hollowpoints apparently hit a nerve, causing his arm to rise. Red blotches appeared on the white shirt—two in the chest and one in the shoulder—as he joined his red-clad comrade in death.

Blood seeping from the bullet wounds in the red shirt had made black splotches. In the white shirt, the holes had turned red. But white or red, either way, someone needed to teach these attackers something about camouflage. Red and white did little for concealment in an environment made up of green-and-brown vegetation and rusted-out vehicles.

McCarter took a deep breath as the firing around him continued. As safe as could be expected behind the old jeep’s engine block, his eyes flashed 180 degrees through the tall grass in the vacant spaces of this automobile graveyard. As was the case in so many Third World countries, vehicles so old or used that no American would have them anymore had been shipped to Radestan. Here, locals had brought them back to life using everything from home-manufactured replacement parts to bailing wire in an effort that was, ironically, called “Yankee Ingenuity.” But even the work of such desperate mechanics had its limits, and eventually the scraps had been abandoned.

McCarter caught himself shaking his head in dismay. It seemed that everywhere he looked he saw a make and model of automobile he had not seen since he’d been a child. Other vehicles had ceased being produced before he had even been born.

As he prepared to lean around the jeep and fire again, the Phoenix Force leader saw James rise slightly behind the remnants of a 1965 Dodge Dart GT. A few spots of gold paint could still be seen on the old car’s body but ninety percent of the vehicle now sported nothing but gray primer. James’s big Crossada was back in the sheath on his hip, and the former Navy SEAL was leaning over the GT’s hood with his LAR-15. Sputtering 5.56 mm rounds through the barrel, the Hunter danced slightly in his hands as he fired a full-auto stream across the car at some target that was out of McCarter’s vision.

Dave McCarter’s attention was focused so intently on the enemies in the tall grass in front of him that he almost missed the crunching sound of footsteps to his rear. But instinct and training took over, and before he even realized what he was doing he had whirled around. Still on his knees, McCarter caught a glimmer of blue through the brown-and-yellow stalks behind him. And in less time than it would have taken to write it up in a report, he knew that no one on his team, nor Abdul Ali, had been clad in anything blue.

His finger pulled back on the trigger.

McCarter’s Rock River rifle choked out rounds and a trio of hollowpoints disappeared into the grass. He heard a low, guttural grunting sound, then the fleck of blue descended beneath the dead foliage. As the explosions from the AK-47s and Phoenix Force’s LAR-15s died down, the former British SAS man slung his rifle across his back, drew his Browning Hi-Power and crawled forward.

By the time he reached the body with the blue T-shirt, the gunfire had stopped completely. Behind him now, McCarter could hear the quiet chatter of his own men. They were moving slowly through the grass and around the abandoned vehicles, checking to make sure there were no survivors to “pop back to life” and kill them.

The man in blue who had crept toward the Phoenix Force leader from the rear had been gut-shot, then fallen facedown in the mud. McCarter had to have passed by him to the side as he’d moved forward. But the shooter had gone unseen in the underbrush. At some point, he’d regained enough strength to rise and attack from the rear.

The Phoenix Force leader knelt and checked him out closer now. An exit hole the size of a softball gaped upward from between the man’s shoulder blades. Multicolored masses of flesh, blood and bone had exited and some of it still lay on the man’s back as if dumped there. The Phoenix Force leader reached down, grabbed the shooter’s shoulder and rolled him over onto his back. He frowned slightly as he saw that two of the three rounds he had fired at the grass-hidden blue seemed to have missed.

But that didn’t matter much. One bullet had found its mark dead center in the middle of the T-shirt. It was far smaller than the one in the dead man’s back, as was to be expected for an entry wound. But between the two holes in the man’s body, the 5.56 mm hollowpoint had done its job.

The heart had to have been mangled beyond recognition.

The roar of the rifles on both sides of the skirmish was now a thing of the past. McCarter rose, turned around and walked back to join the rest of the men who had regrouped around an ancient Dodge Charger. “Everybody okay?” he asked.

Everyone nodded.

“Good,” said the Phoenix Force leader. “Then let’s get on in to Ramesh.” He paused and wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his sleeve. “The real fighting’s about to begin.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Charlie Mott, Stony Man Farm’s second pilot, was almost as good with wings as Jack Grimaldi. At least he was good enough to get the men of Able Team from Stony Man Farm to Colorado Springs, Colorado, in what might well have been record time—even for a Learjet.

If the flight had been official. But of course it wasn’t. There would be no record of the trip since as far as the vast majority of the world knew it had never taken place. To everyone outside the Stony Man Farm family, except for the President of the United States, there wasn’t even an Able Team in existence. Just as there was no Mack Bolan or Phoenix Force or Stony Man Farm in general.

Carl “Ironman” Lyons, Able Team’s former LAPD detective, felt himself smile inwardly. In a weird way, the whole Stony Man Farm crew—Mack Bolan, the teams, the blacksuits and the specialized computer, forensic and other support staff—reminded Lyons a bit of J. Edgar Hoover’s attempt to convince the public that there was no such thing as the Mafia. Of course there were three major differences.First, the now deceased FBI director’s nonexistent Mafia had boot-legged countless gallons of illegal liquor, then billions of dollars of illegal narcotics throughout the country. And they’d been responsible for more murders than could be counted. But Hoover’s propaganda had been put out over a half century earlier—at a time when the general public still had at least a little faith that some politicians were honest. Faith in politicians—be they Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal—had all but vanished in recent years.

The second difference was that keeping Stony Man Farm a secret had actually worked.

Third—and most important of all—was that unlike the Mafia, the crew at Stony Man Farm worked for the good of mankind rather than conscienceless monetary profit.

Lyons glanced over his shoulder at the two men behind him in the jet. Like the Able Team leader himself, the men wore dark business suits. Blancanales was decked out in a deep navy-blue. Schwarz wore his usual gray. Lyons himself had chosen a black suit with gray pinstripes. He had never been high on bling. Nor was the Able Team leader the type to laugh out loud very often. Even his smiles were few and far between. But the sight of his fellow warriors masquerading as FBI agents instead of wearing blacksuits or BDUs made the corners of his mouth curl up slightly.

As the jet’s wheels hit the tarmac Lyons’s thoughts turned to Hal Brognola. As the Director of the Sensitive Operations Group, the covert operations arm of the U.S. Justice Department, Brognola worked as Stony Man’s liaison to conventional law enforcement. So, wearing his DOJ hat, he had called ahead to make sure that two real FBI agents out of the Colorado Springs field office would be waiting for them when they landed.

Now Lyons saw them off to the side of the runway, both leaning against the doors of two near-identical Chevrolet sedans.

The Learjet rolled almost to a halt before making a sharp left turn and taxiing onto a concrete access road. A moment later Mott stopped the plane just in front of the waiting men and cars.