Sky Hammer

The five men reached the gunwale, then paused as a sailor walked by smoking a cigarette. Pulling on night-vision goggles, McCarter turned on the Starlite function and clearly saw that the man was dressed in civilian clothing. But his boots were regular North Korean army, and an AK-47 was strapped to his back. As the disguised soldier threw the butt of the cigarette overboard, T. J. Hawkins gave a low whistle, the kind men use to get the attention a pretty girl.

Curious, the North Korean soldier glanced over the railing and looked down. Instantly Rafael Encizo rammed a Tanto combat knife directly into the man’s jaw, pinning his mouth shut so that no possible cry of warning could be given. Drowning in his own blood, the North Korean flailed, clawing at his throat, then went limp. Carefully, he was dragged over the railing and tied with ropes to be lowered into the water without a splash. As the corpse reached the sea, the rope was released and the body sank from the weight of his boots and assault rifle.

Easing over the railing, Phoenix Force reached the deck and crouched, listening for any potential source of trouble. But the great vessel was silent; there was only the sound of the waves below. Everything else was still.

Staying in a bunch to keep a low profile, the team donned dry sneakers from their packs and opened watertight bags to remove Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine guns, each barrel tipped with an acoustical sound suppressor. The weapons carried a flip clip, bound together with the service man’s best friend, duct tape. Warily, the men made sure that the clip carrying the half-load rounds was inserted into the machine guns. The reduced charge seriously lowered the firepower, but helped the suppressors do their job. The other side of the flip clip was standard ammo, armor-piercing, full charges. Just in case the suppressors failed.

The sound of soft footsteps came from around the housing and Phoenix Force dropped behind the canvas sheet covering a machine-gun nest.

Lightly resting a finger on the trigger of his MP-5, McCarter tracked the sailor strolling along the deck, an AK-47 on his back, both hands shoved into the pockets of his peacoat for warmth. It was obvious to the former SAS commando that the North Koreans weren’t expecting any trouble this night. Too bad for them.

It had been known for some time that Kim Jong-il, the dictator of North Korea, had been trying to manufacture biological weapons to use against the democratic people of South Korea and the hated United States. Several labs had been found by the CIA and blown out of existence by NATO. But Kim kept trying to duplicate his success with a nuclear weapons program. Half of the trapped population of impoverished nation subsisted on starvation rations, but their “glorious leader” spent billions on creating weapons that might never be used, for a war that only he wanted.

“Which way?” McCarter whispered, staying low.

Pulling a personal computer from a pocket on his thigh, Encizo checked the glowing map of the boat. It was a compilation made from the structural blueprints of the dockyard where it had been constructed and a lot of guesswork based upon orbital photos and passive thermographic readings from shore.

“Left,” the little Cuban said, starting forward.

Proceeding along the deck, the five-man team kept close to the painted metal walls, pausing every now and then as somebody walked along the gunwale. The guards expected that any trouble would come from outside, and kept watching the sea, the sky and the distant shoreline, the small fishing villages and military slave camps twinkling patterns in the night.

Soft light came from a series of portholes and the Stony Man operatives ducked low beneath them. Faintly, they could hear soldiers laughing and a television set blaring with a translated American sitcom.

Maneuvering past the cargo hold, Phoenix Force passed a couple of guards on patrol and a pair of soldiers out on errands, one of them carrying a silver tray covered with spotless white linen. The delicious aroma of roasted duck wafted behind the steward, lingering in his wake. Weapons poised, Phoenix Force watched the fellow cross the deck and disappear into the main salon a hundred feet away.

“That wasn’t spam on a shingle like they feed the troops,” Calvin James observed, easing his gun hand. “Guess it’s good be to the king.”

“Pity the general in charge is awake,” Hawking quipped, checking the rigging on the cargo hoist for any suspicious motions. “But at least we now know that Le-Wan isn’t belowdecks. That had to be for him.”

James nodded in reply. Good point. Where ever Le-Wan was located, that’s where Kim Jong-il would have the bulk of the troops to protect his nephew.

“Be nice if Yi was belowdecks.”

“Amen to that, brother.”

“Gary, over here,” McCarter said, tapping an access panel in the wall.

Sliding the panel back, Manning found a fuse box, well protected from the corrosive salty air. Jimmying the lock, he swung the door aside. A bank of circuit breakers was inside, all of them clearly marked as to function. Opening the electrical panel, Manning exposed a complex nest of wiring. Checking the breakers, Manning clipped thin gauge wires to their backs, then snipped the bypassed circuits. The master console in the control room would still read the lines as live, but they would die the first time they were turned on and resetting the circuit breaker would do nothing to help. Manning pressed a gray-colored wad of C-4 to the back of the breakers and slid in a radio detonator. The whole ship might be protected by the Faraday Cage effect running through the hull, but this was located out in the open. Closing the board, he swung the door shut and pushed the access panel back into place.

Phoenix Force proceeded to the lower deck. Down here the air was much warmer, the smell of the sea was gone and there was the continuous sound of some sort of machine. Large steel gates were folded back against the walls, and arms lockers were everywhere. James and Manning hid more C-4 charges behind the weapons dumps as Encizo rigged a couple of the gates. Just a little insurance for the future. Hopefully, getting off the vessel was going to be just as quiet as it was getting on. But a wise soldier always planned for what an enemy could do, not for what he might do.

Loosening the light bulbs in the ceiling as they went along the hallway, Phoenix Force left darkness in its wake. That would be suspicious to a passing soldier, but far less revealing than actually spotting the team.

Hawkins took point while James read off the signs on each door. He was fairly proficient in Vietnamese, but only knew a few halting phrases in idiomatic Korean. However, it was enough. Sterile Room. Animals. Contaminate. Storage. Supplies. Laboratory.

Bingo!

Bending, McCarter softly scratched at the bottom of the lab door. After a few minutes, a grumbling person stomped over and threw it wide. The angry soldier was armed with a broom, clearly prepared to do battle with a rat. His face registered shock at the sight of the five intruders, and McCarter rose to hit him in the throat with an open-handed blow. The soldier dropped the broom and back away, hacking for air.

Moving fast, Phoenix Force stepped into the room and Manning closed the door while Encizo fired a single round from his MP-5. The weapon gave a chuff sound and the choking man crumpled into the corner.

Spreading out, the team secured the room, then did a fast search. The room was an office of some kind, containing desks, papers, computers, printers and tall green file cabinets. Double doors marked with warning signs in Korean filled the left wall and the air carried the antiseptic smell of a hospital.

Going to the desk, Manning checked, but every drawer was locked. Accepting that, he fixed a couple more blocks of C-4 from his dwindling supply onto the file cabinets and set the timers for twenty minutes.

“Make it fifteen,” McCarter directed, stuffing some papers from the Out basket into a watertight pouch strapped to his chest.

Manning did as requested, as Encizo and James kept watch on the corridor and Hawkins checked out the double door at the far end. Through the round glass windows, he could see another set of doors. Past those he could vaguely discern some sort of a laboratory, but the angle was wrong for any details. Could be empty, could have a hundred armed troops inside. There was only one way to know for sure.

“Okay, it’s showtime,” McCarter declared, closing the pouch. “Let’s find the professor.”

Walking through the double set of doors, Phoenix Force found the inner room was indeed a full biological weapons laboratory. Two large tables were covered with bubbling experiments, the complex array of gurgling glassware reaching several feet high. Locked cabinets covered the walls, aside from the life-size portrait of Kim Jong-il. There was an autoclave, centrifuge, lots of cages for the test subjects and an Oriental man eating a sandwich. But no guards. The old man was tall and slim, with white hair and glasses. He wore a gold wedding ring. It looked like their target from behind, but could be a trick.

“Yi,” McCarter said, announcing their presence.

The professor looked up from his meager repast and went pale. “No. No! I am loyal to our glorious leader!” he cried, dropping the sandwich and raising both hands. “Don’t kill me! I love North Korean! Death to the Americans!”

“We are Americans,” McCarter said, removing the night-vision goggles to expose his face.

The terror vanished to be replaced with joy. “Then get me the hell out of here, cobber,” Yi stated, switching to English as he slid off the lab stool. “These people are bloody insane.” He started their way, beaming a smile.

“Lift your shirt, please, Professor,” Hawkins urged politely, aiming his MP-5 at the man.

Stopping in his tracks, Yi sighed and did as requested. The man’s chest was marred by a large area of puckered scars, a gift from an early experiment in chemistry gone bad back at Perth University in Australia.

“Sorry, had to be sure,” Hawins apologized.

Professor David Allen Yi lowered his shirt. “You thought I might be a fake? A stand-in or something?”

“Been known to happen,” McCarter said, picking up a glass pipette used for drawing blood. Suddenly he threw the pipette to Yi and the professor caught the glassware with his left hand. Confused, he stared at the pipette, then frowned at McCarter.

“A good test,” Yi noted with strained patience. “Autonomic responses are difficult to fake. Yes, I’m left-handed. Now, is that enough proof, or do you also want some blood and a stool sample?”

“Maybe later.” McCarter grinned in spite of the situation. The old Aussie scientist was as tough as Barbara Price had said. It had to have taken a lot of men to kidnap him from the Woomera Military Hospital last year. Canberra was going to be delighted have the cranky genius back safe and sound.

James went over to an autoclave full of sealed bottles. Each was filled with a greenish fluid. “That it?” he asked.

“Sadly, yes,” Yi said grimly. “Moonfire. The worst nerve gas I ever made, or even heard about. It kills, fast and horrible. Moonfire is not so much a war gas as it is a terror weapon. No solider who ever saw it work would ever risk going anywhere near again. Dear God, I must have killed dozens of people with the clinical test alone! But I…they…”

“Torture?” McCarter asked softly.

Yi turned away, unable to speak.

“Any man can be broken, Professor,” James said gently. “It’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

The professor could only shake his head, obviously reliving the deaths of his unwilling test subjects. Kim Jong-il and his cruel nephew enjoyed finding new ways to dispose of their political enemies. His tests had thus served two purposes for the dictator: revenge and entertainment.

Opening a satchel, Manning started placing explosive charges around the room. Joining him at the task, James directed the placement of the C-4.

Keeping the inner door open with a foot, Encizo watched the outer set of doors while Hawkins stayed close to Yi. Pushing back the tight sleeve of his wet suit, McCarter checked his watch. Five minutes to go.

“Please hurry,” Yi pleaded. “If they catch me with you, it’ll mean the work camps at Pyongyang. Nobody lasts there very long.” He frowned. “Although, I’m sure it seems like a bloody eternity to them.”

“You’re too valuable for that,” McCarter stated bluntly.

“The hell I am. To be honest, I’m surprised at the rescue,” Yi said, rubbing his face. “It would have been much easier to kill me.”

“The incredible we do immediately,” Hawkins said, “the impossible takes a few days.”

“Besides,” McCarter added, “you’re the best man to make a counteragent to Moonfire.”

A short whistle from Encizo caught everyone’s attention. “Company,” he said, working the bolt on his weapon.

The Stony Man operatives instantly moved into defensive positions behind the lab tables, dragging the reluctant professor along with them. McCarter slung his MP-5 and swung a Barnett crossbow from behind his back to load an arrow. It clicked into place just as the double doors to the sterile lab burst open and in walked a short, fat man surrounded by a dozen guards armed with AK-47s.

“Doctor, your work has been so excellent this past week, I prepared a special treat for you,” Kim Le-Wan declared loudly, carrying the silver tray covered with a white linen cloth. But then his smile vanished at the sight of the armed strangers in the lab.

“Kill them!” Kim screamed, tossing aside the tray and diving behind a soldier.

The North Koreans and Phoenix Force all brought up their weapons and Yi moved between them. “Stop!” he screamed in Korean. “Fire those in here and we all die!”

The military guards paused, unsure of what to do, and McCarter fired. Across the lab, Kim rocked backward as the barbed arrow slammed deep into his face. For a moment he weaved drunkenly, only a tiny trickle of blood inching down his features. Then the miniature explosive charge detonated and the man’s head exploded into a million pieces, bones and pink brains spraying outward in a ghastly cascade. Screaming obscenities, the guards raised their Kalasnikovs like clubs and charged.

Releasing their MP-5 machine guns, four members of Phoenix Force threw the knives they had been hiding. Three of the North Korean soldiers dropped to the deck, clutching their throats, while the fourth clasped a hand to the side of his head, teeth clenched in pain as blood poured from the horrible gash where his ear used to be located. The grisly object was pinned to the wall like some sort of demonic butterfly, still shaking from the impact. Then the two groups mixed, the green military uniforms of the North Koreans mingled with the slick rust-colored wet suits of the Stony Man commandos.

Assault rifle slammed against machine gun, the owners wresting for supremacy for a moment, then the men dropped the useless weapons and went hand-to-hand. Pulling out a curved knife, a guard threw the blade, but James deflected the incoming missile with his Randall fighting knife. The blade hit the floor and skittered away, and James advanced, slashing with the military knife, the spine of the blade tight against his palm.

McCarter fired again, feathering a guard’s temple. The man went down with a sigh as if he were going to sleep. Hawkins kicked a guard in the groin, then opened the fellow’s throat with a backhand slash. A muscular guard launched a Tiger Claw at Encizo, but he swayed backward out of the reach of the blinding martial-arts strike, then turned sideways and buried the heel of his sneaker into the man’s solar plexus. As the air woofed out, the guard doubled over, and the Cuban brought down the edge of his hand in a Little Leaf strike, adding the full force of his entire body to the blow. The North Korean’s neck snapped and he dropped to the deck dead, his twitching body only slowly accepting the irrefutable fact.

Loading and firing, McCarter killed a third, a fourth, then the Koreans were upon him, and he joined the battle. His hands dripping blood, Manning moved on to a new opponent, leaving a corpse behind, the empty eye sockets of the man staring at eternity.

Dropping to the deck with his face smashed apart, a dying guard fumbled for the pistol at his belt. Accidentally, he fired the weapon while it was still inside the holster. The round missed his boot and ricocheted off the steel deck to musically zing off a wall. Then there came a shattering of glass and a sizzling green mixture spewed onto a stainless-steel table, instantly discoloring the resilient metal.

“Masks!” James barked, slapping the emergency filter over his nose and mouth. Every member of the Stony Man team followed suit.

A second later the North Koreans started writhing in agony. Holding a spare mask, McCarter raced for Professor Yi, but it was too late. The old scientist began to violently shake. Turning, Yi grabbed a beaker and smashed the glass to slice open his own throat before the real pain began.

“There is no…counteragent…” He gurgled and fell to the floor.

Helplessly, Phoenix Force watched the scientist die, and in only a few moments they were the only people still standing in the misty green laboratory. Ever so slowly, the toxic fumes started thinning, moving with the air currents into the humming wall vent of the ventilation system.

“Okay, burn the place,” McCarter barked, pulling out a fat canister. “Leave nothing behind for them to work with.”

Moving to the double doors, the team pulled out grenades, yanked pins, released arming levers, threw and turn to run. They were in the office when the lab exploded into flames, the searing wash building into a roaring inferno as the thermite cooked. The metal tables sagged, the walls began to buckle. Sprinklers in the ceiling gushed to life, but the water only served to increase the fury of the chemical blaze, the thermite feeding off the oxygen in the water to fuel its rampaging endothermic reaction.

“That should do it,” Hawkins said, wiping his face with a sleeve.

Somewhere onboard the ship, a siren started to howl, then abruptly stopped, the surge of power feeding the device causing the rigged wiring of the circuit breaker panel to blow.

“Okay, let’s go,” McCarter barked, slinging away the crossbow, and bringing up his MP-5. The team made the deck unchallenged.

A series of muffled explosions sounded from belowdecks and new sirens took up the Klaxon call of warning.

“Do it,” McCarter ordered, sealing his wet suit closed and sliding the mouthpiece of his rebreather into place.

With a ripping noise, Encizo opened a Velcro-sealed pocket, pulled out a small cylinder. He flipped the top aside with a thumb, squeezed the body until a red light glowed, and pressed down hard on a small button.

A faint shiver went through the entire vessel as the two armor-piercing demolition charges that had been placed on the keel detonated. Hot gases bubbled up from below the ship on both sides. The ship gave a groan of tortured metal.

Heading starboard, Phoenix Force fired at anything in its way. Guards were torn apart by the assault, flinging their rifles skyward in death. As the team leaped over the dead and the dying, the Sargasso Queen shook again, harder this time, and a gout of roiling flame rose from the main smokestack, brightening the mist for a full second.

Heading for the gunwale, McCarter felt the ship start to tilt to port. Yi was dead, the lab ruined, the Moonfire destroyed, files burned. The rescue mission was a failure, but they had destroyed the Moonfire lab. Now all they had to do was get out of here alive.

“Hello, Smoky. This is Bandit. Over,” James said into his throat mike, one hand firing his MP-5, the other changing the frequencies on the box on his belt. “Smoky, this is Bandit, 10-45! Repeat, 10-45!”

“Roger, Bandit, copy. This is Uncle Smoky,” Jack Grimaldi replied over their earphones. “My eggbeater is on the way to Check Point Charlie.”

“Negative,” McCarter snapped. “The Berlin Wall is coming down, hard and fast. See you at Bikini Zuma. Repeat, Bikini Zuma! Do you copy?” Check Point Charlie was the bow of the ship, where they were hoping to escape with Professor Yi. Zuma Beach was their hidden camp on the rocky shoreline.

“Check. Out,” the pilot replied crisply, and the earphones went silent.

With a loud snap, one of the anchor chains broke, the length of links whipping out of the water to come crashing down across the forecastle, crushing men and machines alike. High-pitched screaming told of somebody still alive in the wreckage.

Grabbing the railing to hop over, Rafe grunted and fell to the deck as a North Korean shot him in the back. The rest of Phoenix Force retaliated with concentrated gunfire from their 9 mm machine guns and the enemy soldier went to his maker in several pieces.

“Shit, my rebreather is gone,” Encizo cursed, releasing the chest harness. The device dropped off his frame and hit the deck to move away with a scraping noise.

“We can share,” James offered, hefting his bulky rebreather.

“Got your six, brother,” Hawkins confirmed, his MP-5 firing along the railing to take out soldiers coming their way. The men fell like bowling pins, several of them going overboard.

“Dump everything!” McCarter ordered. “Move it, people!”

As the deck continued to rise, the men removed their excess equipment. By now, every loose item on board was starting to sliding to port, and the shouting of the North Koreans was taking on a hysterical note. Another anchor chain broke, the whipping metal crashing down upon the rocket battery with thundering results. The Sargasso Queen shuddered.

Scrambling over the angled gunwale, the Stony Man commandos dropped into the water and started swimming across the surface. Speed was important now, not stealth. Everybody on board the sinking vessel was too busy to bother shooting at them now.

Minutes later, the five reached a pebble beach. Rising from the waves, McCarter turned just in time to see the burning ship do a death roll, water and flames blowing out of the gaping hole in its belly like a whale surfacing for air. Something in the engine room exploded, probably the boilers from all the steam mixing with the smoke, and the ship loudly groaned as it cracked in two to begin a short voyage to the bottom of the cold Yellow Sea.

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