Sky Hammer

Instead, Able Team had discovered a parking lot full of dead tourists and an empty truck that had been full of greasy machinery. But not anymore. Grabbing weapons out of the back of their van, the team got hard and moved in fast. They didn’t like the combination of murder, Sandy Hook and radiation. There was such a thing as nuclear artillery shell….

“Any heat?” Lyons demanded, checking the Atchisson on the run. He wished there were reloads for the hungry weapon, half of the shells were already gone, and this battle was barely ten minutes old.

“Bet your ass, there is,” Schwarz said, firing a burst into some bushes. Leaves flew, but nobody tumbled out dead. Stealth wasn’t a concern, the Red Star agents knew they were here. Schwarz was the electronics expert for the team, and his wristwatch was also a short-range Geiger counter. However, loud clicks during a battle could get a soldier killed, so instead the device vibrated as a warning. At the moment, it was going wild.

“They must be arming the shell,” Blancanales repeated, pausing to roll a dummy grenade into the gift shop.

Inside the building, men cursed in Chinese and came bursting out, firing their weapons. Already in position, Able Team caught the Red Star agents in a withering cross fire and they died to a man.

Then a man and woman stumbled into view from around a corner. The man was carrying a wicker basket and the woman was holding a baby swaddled in blankets in her arms. Neither one was Chinese, they looked more Italian than anything else.

“Don’t shoot!” the man yelled, stepping in front of his wife. “Please! I’ll pay you whatever you want!”

“It’s a trick!” Blancanales cried, raising his M-16.

Dropping the blanket, the snarling woman pulled a compact SDMG machine pistol from inside the plastic doll and started firing. Blancanales blew her away just as the man swung a Skorpion machine gun from behind his back. Schwarz shot the man in the chest to no effect, then Lyons triggered the Atchisson, the maelstrom of double-aught stainless-steel buckshot removing his face and opening the throat and lower belly like a can of spaghetti. Already dead, the Chinese operative spun, his hands instinctively tightening on the weapon, the deadly Skorpion spraying lead randomly as he toppled to the ground. Ricochets went everywhere and Schwarz grunted as a slug hit him in the stomach.

“Goddamn mercs,” he muttered, rubbing his stomach. “The guy must have been wearing body armor.”

“Still hurts like a bitch,” Lyons stated, hefting the Atchisson. Only a few cartridges remained. After that, he was down to grenades and his pistol.

“Bet your ass it does,” Blancanales agreed, checking their flank. Even the titanium and Teflon NATO body armor that the team wore under their shirts still occasionally broke bones when hit by large-caliber weaponry. But a week in hospital was preferable to eternity in the grave.

“Better bed than dead,” Schwarz quipped. “Hey, how’d you know it was a trap?”

“She was holding the baby wrong. The kid would have been dead from strangulation the way she was doing it.”

“Cover me,” Lyons said, knotting a handkerchief around his face. Going to the museum, he checked the door for boobytraps, then swept inside, the Atchisson at the ready.

The place was a shambles, with two whimpering women bound and gagged in the corner. Hostages for the enemy agents to use as bargaining chips if necessary. He had expected something like that. Able Team had fought Red Star before.

Pulling out a knife, Lyon advanced upon them. The older woman fainted while the pretty teenager tried to wiggle away. With a slash, the ex-cop cut ropes from their wrists. Stunned, the teen looked at her freed wrists and then at Lyons, comprehension dawning in her face.

“Don’t y’all worry none, ma’am, “he drawled, affecting a thick Texas accent. “We’re Delta Force.” Sheathing the blade, he snapped an ammonia capsule under the nose of the unconscious woman. She fluttered immediately and then awoke, recoiling in horror.

“It’s okay, Mom!” the teenager said, pulling down her gag. “They’re the U.S. Marines.”

“Really?” the older woman squeaked, having trouble breathing.

“United States’ Special Forces,” Lyons corrected with a brief grin. “Now, y’all follow me outside. Quick, now.”

With joyful tears on her cheeks, the teenager nodded agreement and slipped an arm under the other woman to leverage her off the floor.

“My husband…” the mother started.

Not having found anybody else alive, Lyons looked at the woman and said nothing for a long moment that seemed to last forever. The middle-aged lady went a little pale, then nodded in understanding.

“What about my daddy?” the teen asked, a quaver in her voice.

The mother touched her daughter on the shoulder. “Let’s go,” she said in a calm tone. “Now, dear, no time to waste.”

Going to the door, Lyons whistled sharply. There came an answering whistle and he led the way outside. Schwarz and Blancanales were standing guard near the stairs to the beach, both of them with handkerchiefs tied around their faces.

“Thank you, all,” the mature woman gasped, the cloth strip that had been used as a gag hanging around her throat.

“You’re welcome,” Blancanales said. “Now get!” Turning, he fired a burst at the open sea.

Livid, the two women jerked at the noise, turned and took off at a run. Soon they lost their high heels and continued barefoot much faster.

“Alone?” Schwarz asked, glancing sideways.

Lyons pulled down his mask. “Husband.”

“Damn.”

“Let’s finish this,” Blancanales stated, starting toward the stairs that led to the outside exhibit.

But then he paused. The cannons were no longer visible rising from behind the museum, and just then the floor shook as heavy machinery buried below the ground came to life.

Without a word, Able Team charged. They still had a hundred feet of open ground to cover to reach the guns.

“WHAT IS HAPPENING, comrade?” the mechanic asked, both hands busy in the guts of the hydraulic pump. New lines were attached to the feed and snaked out the door to the middle cannon. More Red Star agents were installing the new firing pin into the weapon, and off by himself, the Beijing technician was unpacking a single artillery shell from a lead-lined picnic cooler.

“Nothing that concerns you,” the colonel snapped, sweeping the sand dunes with a pair of powerful binoculars. “Get back to work.”

“Yes, Commander.”

The colonel knew that everything was going well, but was still unhappy. The parking lot had been cleared of civilians and the museum taken without losing a single man of his cell. The telephones were all disconnected in case they had missed somebody hiding somewhere, and the repairs on the guns were nearly completely. All well and good. But the colonel didn’t like the fact that there was smoke rising from several locations. However, that might have been done to hide the police taking defensive positions, rather than to offer cover for advancing troops. It was highly unlikely that any of the American Special Forces could have arrived yet. This whole mission had been accelerated to lightning speed. Never pause, never rest, go fast, and the lazy Americans would trip over the red tape of their own government.

“Done,” the mechanic said, laying down his wrench and throwing a freshly greased lever.

A light flashed, there was a snap of electricity, and the motor room concrete bunker shook slightly as a pair of ancient motors rumbled into life. The meters on the housing flickered alive, and the guns began to move as the hydraulic pressure reached functional status.

“Excellent.” The colonel smiled. “Well done, Comrade.” Then, drawing a pistol, he shot the startled man in the heart. The body limply collapsed onto the hydraulic hoses, the red blood pumping to spread along the lines between the tiles of the floor.

The colonel gave the corpse a salute, then holstered the pistol. At least the mechanic died well, from an honest Chinese bullet, rather than vomiting his intestines like the fools at the United Nations would soon be doing. The death of that many hundreds of diplomats would throw the world into chaos, and China had carefully laid out plans to take every advantage of the political turmoil. Every member of his cell knew this was to be a suicide assignment. There was no hope of returning home. Glory would be only earned if they accomplished the mission, so they would succeed or die trying.

By now, a man at the cannon was frantically turning guiding wheels to alter the elevation, while a second checked a compass in his hand.

“Left twelve degrees!” he commanded. “Hold! Now, up ten degrees! Hold!” He turned. “We’re on target, Comrade.”

Smiling, the colonel stuck his thumbs in his belt. “Load the shell!” he ordered.

Slowly the technician from Beijing stood, holding the artillery shell as if it were a priceless artifact.

A burly Red Star agent worked the latch and swung aside the breech to make ready. But there came an odd rattling noise from the cannon, as if something had broken loose and was moving freely.

Furious, the colonel advanced closer as three grenades rolled out of the open end of the cannon and landed on the sandy ground.

“Run!” a man screamed, turning to flee when the grenades exploded.

Thundering flame and hot shrapnel filled the area, teeth and broken limbs flying into the air as the hydraulic lines ruptured and pressurized red oil rose like blood from a cut artery. Not yet locked into position, the cannon impotently lowered its muzzle until pointing at the empty beach.

The colonel barely had time to react when the men of Able Team arrived, firing as they climbed over the seawall at different points. The last few Red Star agents collapsed, trying to fire their AK-47 assault rifles in response, but only getting off a few short bursts before falling on top of their weapons.

Pulling his pistol, the colonel shot the Beijing technician before he was torn apart by the incoming American lead, the hardball ammo going through the man to ricochet off the wall behind. As the technician dropped, he let go of the shell and it rolled across the sandy platform to bounce down a sand dune and come to a stop on the beach near some driftwood.

DROPPING A SPENT CLIP, Schwarz reloaded while the others stood guard. Then Blancanales replaced his exhausted clip as Lyons shouldered the empty autoshotgun and drew a .357 Colt Python from his belt. Moving to the edge of the gunnery bastion, Schwarz hopped down to the beach and walked over to the Chinese artillery shell lying near the water line.

“Clear?” Blancanales asked, looking around.

“Clear,” Lyons confirmed.

“Oh, shit,” Schwarz cursed, sitting on the piece of driftwood. “We’re in trouble.”

Weapons out, Blancanales and Lyons rushed over. By the time they arrived, Schwarz had already ripped open a Velcro pouch at his side and was placing electrical tools on the damp sand.

“What’s wrong?” Lyons asked. “That thing can’t possibly be live.”

“Oh yeah, the shell is live,” Schwarz said in a flat monotone. “The damn thing is designed to arm itself after a set number of revolutions after it spirals out a cannon.”

“Rolling down the sand dune did the same thing?”

“Apparently so.”

“Shit!”

“My word exactly.”

“What can we do?” Blancanales said, leveling his M-16 at the shell. It was standard U.S. Army procedure that in case of a nuclear emergency, shoot the bomb. Once the uranium sphere was distorted, even slightly, the device could no longer detonate. One shot and the artillery shell would be dead. The same as Able Team after about ten days of slow dying by radiation poisoning.

“Your call, Hermann,” Lyons said, aiming the .357 Colt Python at the red-and-green-striped shell.

“Make me a hole,” Schwarz ordered, sorting through the tools.

Blancanales fired a burst from the M-16 at the beach, chewing a depression into the sand. Schwarz gently placed the shell into the hole and packed the loose sand around it.

Sitting on the damp ground, the electronics wizard wrapped his legs around the bomb to hold it tight and started working in the recessed side bolts.

“Thought you were supposed to go in through the top,” Lyons said, watching his friend work on the nuclear charge. An explosion on the beach would boil the ocean for a hundred feet, the radioactive steam contaminating a hundred miles of New Jersey, killing thousands of people. There couldn’t be a worse place to set off a nuke than the sea! His hand tightened on the checkered grip of his revolver. Three die, or three thousand. Hell, that was an easy choice. Another ounce of pressure on the trigger was all it would take to get the job done.

“The top? Not this model,” Schwarz said, both hands busy. A sharp snap of breaking metal and Lyons and Blancanales both jumped slightly. The men held their breath as their teammate slid the casing off the nose of the bomb, exposing the complex internal mechanism.

“All the wires are the same color,” Blancanales said with a scowl. “How the hell will you know which one to cut?”

Jamming his knife deep into the device, Schwarz stopped a tiny flywheel from spinning, then ripped out a handful of wires.

“Just got to know what you’re doing,” he said, casting away the circuits. “Whew, that was close!”

“Too close, brother.” Blancanales sighed, raising the assault rifle. “You sure it’s dead?”

“Oh, yeah. Deader than disco.”

“Good.”

“I happen to like disco.” Lyons chuckled in relief. Touching his throat, the big man activated the radio link. “Stony Bird to Nest, all clear. We found a hot egg, but it will not hatch. Repeat, the egg is dead. What was that?” He frowned. “Roger, on the way.”

“Take the bomb, we’ll store it in our lead safe on the van,” Lyons directed, startling briskly for the parking lot.

“We’ve been recalled to the Farm,” Schwarz stated, lifting the core of the bomb out of the shell. It wasn’t a question.

“Yep.” Softly in the background, police sirens could be heard coming this way. The covert team paid no attention. Then the noise abruptly stopped.

“Sounds like they were also recalled,” Blancanales said, glancing at the exposed workings on the mechanism swinging in his friend’s bare hand. But Blancanales wasn’t worried. If Hermann thought it was okay for them to travel with the nuke this way, that was good enough. He trusted the electronics expert with his life in battle, so why not now?

“Just a little diversion by Bear.” Lyons grinned, hoisting the Atchisson to a more comfortable position. “As soon as we’re gone, they’ll be directed right back here, along with the FBI and Homeland.”

“More Red Star?” Schwarz asked.

“Not this time,” Lyons said, avoiding the civilian bodies. “We’ll be briefed on the way to Bethlehem.”

Schwarz balked. “We’re going to Israel?”

“No, Phoenix Force is. We’re going to see some Nazis in Pennsylvania.”

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Steel Town U.S.A. Check. “Who’s in trouble?” Blancanales asked, going around one of his own blast craters, misty smoke still moving along the ground.

Pausing at the entrance to the historic site, Lyons glanced at the clear blue sky. “Who’s in trouble?” he repeated with a growl. “Hell, everybody is, this time.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Edwards Air Force Base

The red Corvette hummed along the empty highway of the California desert. Dark clouds blanketed the early morning sky and heat lightning sizzled now and then. But no rain. Not yet, anyway.

Yawning behind the wheel, Mike Toddel was alternating sips of hot chocolate from a travel mug and bites of a cheese sandwich.

Taking a turnoff, he continued for a couple more miles until reaching the outer perimeter of Edwards. Glowing like a pearl against the rosy dawn, the air base was brightly illuminated by halogen lamps just inside the electrified fence.

Add a couple of Falcons and this would make a great postcard, Toddel thought with a chuckle.

Shifting gears, he slowed at the front gate and drove up to the guard kiosk. This separate section of the AFB was under maximum security, with armed men on station, guard towers, dogs patrolling the fence, gunship helicopters moving in the dim air and more SAM batteries hidden under concrete bunkers than even Toddel knew about. And he repaired their radar!

Stopping at the wooden bar blocking the entrance, he flashed the guard his access badge. “Hey, Harold.” He smiled. “Looks like a hell of a storm coming, eh?”

“Sir, would you please show me you pass again,” Sergeant Harold Adler demanded crisply, one hand resting on the holstered 9 mm pistol at his side.

He called me “sir”? That was when Toddel noticed another guard inside the kiosk wearing body armor and holding a massive M-60 machine gun, pointed his way. As the corporal in the kiosk worked the arming bolt, the linked brass dangling from the deadly weapon tinkled like distant wind chimes.

“Ah, sure thing, Sarge,” Toddel muttered, doing as requested. “Something wrong? President here or something?”

Checking the pass against a list on a clipboard, the sergeant returned it and gave a salute. “Thank you, sir. Proceed to Hangar 19. They’re waiting for you, sir.”

Without comment, Toddel worked the clutch to shift gears and drove away, wary of the speed bump just inside the fence. What was going on here?

The base was full of airman, technicians and officers rushing around. A light burned in every window and there was a circle of black cars parked around the flight tower on the airfield.

Turning past a dark PX, Toddel headed toward Hangar 19 when lightning flashed, very bright and without thunder.

Suddenly a violent explosion obscured the hangar. Stunned, Toddel watched as a column of black smoke rose to form a spreading mushroom cloud. He panicked for a moment, then remembered that any large explosion would create that formation.

What the hell had happened? It looked as though lightning had struck the fuel storage tanks or maybe the munitions depot. He hoped everybody in the hangar was all right. The windows were bulletproof glass and the thick walls were solid concrete with brick on both sides. A bazooka couldn’t dent that hangar.

Braking to a halt so hard it stalled the engine, Toddel could only stare agape as the desert wind moved the smoke to show the fiery hole in the ground. The hangar was gone. Completely gone! Along with all of the experimental F-22 Raptor antisatellite fighters stored there.

Yellow Sea, North Korea

GREASY WATER SLAPPED listlessly against the hull of the Sargasso Queen. Anchored five miles offshore, the vessel was large, a monster of its kind. Old, but still serviceable. She rested low in the ocean, clearly loaded down with goods to be delivered. However, the vessel was anchored into position with four chains, any one of which would have been sufficient for an oil tanker twice its size. The registry listed the Sargasso Queen as a cargo ship, but it was going nowhere. Ever.

Watching from the shore, David McCarter nodded with satisfaction that while the vessel was covered with rust spots, there wasn’t a barnacle on the hull. Why remove one, but not the other? Maybe so that the ship was in good shape, but didn’t look that way? Seemed likely.

While his team got the equipment in order, McCarter counted six machine-gun nests along the deck, the weapon emplacements disguised with canvas sheeting to try to resemble lashed-down packing crates. The radar was brand-new, and there were depth-charge launchers, rocket batteries and a lot of searchlights. The ship was a fortress. During the day, McCarter had counted more than a hundred men on board, three times what a craft of that size needed, and all of them armed with AK-47 assault rifles. Not exactly standard issue for the merchant traders, even in Communist North Korea.

Just then a passing cloud blocked the moonlight and the Stony Man commandos quickly came out of hiding to slide into the waves. Adjusting their rebreathers, the team started swimming with the currents, slowly approaching the vessel. Visibility was only a few feet, but they knew from orbital photographs taken by NSA spy satellites that the underwater defenses were impressive. The sea floor around the ship was studded with sonar sensors, along with hundreds of chained mines. A submarine might be able to blow a path through those with torpedoes, but no enemy warship could possibly approach without being detected and destroyed. Only men could do that job.

Checking a GPD, McCarter stopped the team a safe distance from the mines, and Calvin James activated a box on his chest harness. The device vibrated against his ribs as it generated the sounds of a large school of tuna. That should fool the sonar, but now came the hard part. Switching on scooters, the Stony Man team started into the minefield, the small military waterjets in their hands pulling them along as silent as ghosts.

Slowly the murky depths resolved into a forest of mines, the huge metallic balls chained at different heights to form an imposing barrier. Up close, the spheres were festooned with seaweed that hung off them like Spanish moss on a tree. The dull surfaces of the mines were covered with trigger studs, and they swayed slightly to the motion of the ocean currents. Two of them clanged together, the noise unnaturally loud in the water. The men tensed, but then relaxed when there was no detonation. Obviously the mines were safe from contact with each other.

Something large flashed by them and McCarter bit back a curse at the sight of a pair of dolphins. The damn things had come hunting for tuna! Pickings had to be very slim in the sea for them to come this close to land. McCarter started to turn off the sound generator, but stayed his hand. If he did, that would expose them to the sonar. Damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t. Only one chance, go faster!

Playfully swimming all around the team, the dolphins kept searching for the elusive tuna and bumped into the humans several times. Thankfully there was no explosion. Pulled along by the whispering waterjets, the men of Phoenix Force tried not to think about what would happen it they did that to a mine.

A last array of mines formed a dotted wall in front of the team, the spheres packed almost too close together for the scooters to traverse. Turning sideways, the Stony Man team shot through at full speed and reached clear water. A moment later the dolphins arrived, happily chattering to each other in their incomprehensible language.

James killed the generator and the dolphins paused in confusion, then rose to the surface for a breath of air and came back down to disappear into the minefield.

Ahead of the team loomed the cargo ship, the thick anchor chains extending into the dark depths.

Turning off their waterjets, the men let the scooters float in place as they climbed aboard and proceeded to the belly of the ship. Stopping there for only a moment, the men moved on to the rear of the ship. No video cameras were discernable; the zone was clear.

Reaching the propellers, Phoenix Force removed its swim fins and attached them to their belts. Swimming slowly upward, they moved among the huge propellers. If the blades started turning, the five would be chopped to pieces, chum for the sharks. But the propellers stayed motionless, and soon the team reached the hull of the vessel.

Opening bags at their sides, the men donned sophisticated climbing gloves. Slow and silent, the five shapes moved along the thickest part of the hull where the soft pats of the gloves wouldn’t be heard by anybody in the engine room. Soon the surface shimmered above, the waves dancing with moonlight, and they rose like ghosts from the bay, moving hand-over-hand up the flat stern of the enormous vessel. Their wet suits were camouflage-colored orange, red and brown in irregular patterns. From a distance they should appear as just more rust spots. The effect was heightened by irregularly shaped backpacks and satchels that each man had strapped to his body.