Season of Harm

THE GUNSHIP GAINED ALTITUDE

Grimaldi allowed the deadly machine to crest the rise at the far end of the now-burning poppy field. Below, in the depression beyond, sat the camp and heroin-processing center. Phoenix Force would be moving in from the perimeter just now; Grimaldi would, therefore, fight from the center of the camp, moving outward. He overflew the camp, chose his spot and yanked hard on the controls, making the gunship shudder and dance as it dumped its velocity. He brought the killing snout of the helicopter around in a slow arc.

“G-Force is all go, twice,” he said aloud. “Heads down, gentlemen.”

The M-28 turret’s twin M-134 miniguns began spitting 7.62-millimeter death. The slow arc of the chopper fanned the slugs out as Grimaldi picked his targets, centering on the small, prefabricated, corrugated metal buildings closest to the center of the camp. Men carrying Kalashnikovs began running for their lives. Something volatile within one of the buildings exploded, throwing shrapnel and flames in every direction. Grimaldi kept the pressure on, his gunship’s inventory ticking down in his head, the chopper wreaking havoc in the enemy’s midst.

He began whistling “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” smiling faintly as the Triangle drug plant slowly disintegrated at the touch of his trigger finger.

Season of Harm

Don Pendleton

Stony Man®

America’S Ultra-Covert Intelligence Agency

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

Camden, New Jersey

Agent Marie Carrol surveyed the decaying buildings and littered streets through the passenger window of the SUV. The city of Camden always depressed her. It wasn’t simply that the Bureau had repeatedly ranked the city of nearly eighty thousand people as one of the most dangerous in the country. No, what bothered her about Camden was the crushing sense of hopelessness. Like Newark, Camden was also one of the poorest cities in America, but she’d seen both crime and poverty before. Something about Camden was different, as if a cloud of misery hung over the place, and could not be dispelled even by the sights and attractions of the relatively prosperous waterfront. She’d seen it all before, from the Adventure Aquarium to the USS New Jersey, and she wasn’t impressed.

Ironically, the warehouse to which their small convoy traveled was in the Urban Enterprise Zone, whatever that was supposed to mean. She had no doubt that their quarry had a bustling urban enterprise under way. Too bad that it was completely illegal.

Carrol looked at her reflection in the tinted window glass. She wasn’t doing too bad, she thought. Not yet forty, her auburn hair still all her own color. Smooth features, a few laugh lines. She filled out her suit fairly well, too, if she said so herself; the time in the gym every other night was paying off. The ring still on her finger was a sore point with her mother, who told her she was clinging to the past; Jim was gone and the divorce was long final. There was no point dwelling on it, her mother kept telling her. Well, she’d come to terms with it in her own way, and on her own time. Carrol sighed as she watched the streets of Camden slide past.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” said her partner, Agent Michael McCray. McCray, as the senior agent with the task force, was in charge of the operation. He drove with casual ease. They had two trucks of FBI agents behind them, not to mention plenty of guns, and Carrol felt absolutely ridiculous. All this hardware and all these agents to take down a room full of DVD pirates. It was obvious to Carrol that McCray wasn’t worried, and why should he be? He knew as well as she did that this was about making an impression, about looking good for the cameras. They didn’t have any press with them, but that would change as soon as they secured the warehouse and spread the loot out to make a good show for the press conference. It was the usual dog and pony show, and if the tables were piled high with cocaine or guns, the display made sense enough. It was hard to think they were really keeping the homeland safe from organized crime, however, by busting traffickers caught red-handed with illegal copies of Showgirls.

Public relations, that’s what it was. The word had come down from above that they were to keep an eye open for the on-camera benefits, generate some positive press for the Bureau. With half the nation downloading movies illegally, Carrol wondered what taking down a room full of old-style DVD burn-and-bootleggers was going to accomplish.

“Marie?” McCray prodded. “What’s the matter, not talking to me?”

Carrol turned to him and frowned. She sighed again. “No, Mike.” She shrugged under her seat belt. “It’s just…you know. The assignment.”

“I know it’s not terribly exciting,” McCray said. “But indications are that this is just the tip of the iceberg. You know that. We take down the crew here in Camden, see who rolls over and then take the investigation up the chain. Eventually we get them all.”

“In theory,” Carrol said. “But they’re still just movie pirates.”

“What’s the matter,” McCray said, chuckling, “do you wish they were heroin smugglers?’

“I’d feel like we were doing something more important.”

McCray nodded. “Well, I suppose we would, at that.” He shifted in his seat. The senior agent was a big man with snow-white, close-cropped hair, craggy features and a tie cinched tight around his thick neck, over a shirt whose collar appeared just a bit too small. “But this is an important assignment. This bootlegging ring has its fingers in several different industries, if the preliminary reports are correct. They’re taking in what could be millions of dollars. That’s no small thing, no matter how dull the operation itself might be.”

“I know, Mike.” Carrol nodded. “Just permit a little griping ahead of time.”

McCray chuckled again. “Fair enough,” he said. “Look at it like a wedding you don’t want to go to. You’ll be glad you did when it’s over. And it’ll take longer for the photos afterward than for the ceremony itself.”

Carrol laughed despite herself. “Okay, Mike.”

“At least I’ll be home at a decent hour,” McCray said. “Ellen has really been riding me about the overtime.”

He picked up the walkie-talkie in the cup holder in the center console. “McCray to Two and Three,” he said. “We’re a block away. Everybody get ready.”

“Two, ready,” came one response.

“Three, roger,” came the second.

“Ready to do some good?” McCray winked at Agent Carrol.

“Let’s not get carried away,” Carrol said. She laughed again; McCray’s sense of humor was hard to resist.

Agent McCray brought the SUV to a halt along the curb fronting the warehouse. The half-dozen FBI agents who made up the rest of the task force piled out of their trucks, some toting AR-15 rifles, some carrying Glock pistols. Two of the agents carried a portable battering ram. Doing her best to keep her expression neutral, Carrol joined McCray as the two walked purposefully up the cracked asphalt walk to an access door at the side of the warehouse. Both agents drew their Glock sidearms.

“Do it.” McCray nodded.

The two agents with the battering ram took position, braced themselves and swung the heavy metal cylinder.

The door lock broke easily and the agents swarmed in. The two lead agents dropped the ram and let their fellow agents cover them, drawing their own weapons as the team spread out to control the space within.

“FBI! Nobody move! Federal Bureau of Investigation!” the agents announced themselves. Men and women froze, putting up their hands and staring in confusion.

The warehouse was a large rectangle, with tall, painted-over and dirt-smeared windows dominating the long ends of the box. A catwalk and what was apparently a partial upper level ran along the outer perimeter. Carrol spotted a metal staircase at the back of the warehouse floor that led to the upper level.

The floor itself was a maze of tables and benches. On each of these were piles of DVDs in various states of packaging. Carrol recognized a set of burning machines on a table at one end of the room. The machines were humming away, still automatically copying whatever disks were placed within them. On other tables, color-photocopied labels were being cut and placed in plastic sleeves on clam-shell DVD cases. Cardboard boxes were everywhere, piled two and three deep under the tables and next to them, forming narrow aisles through which the workers had to navigate.

The workers blinked in confusion as the FBI agents moved among them, searching and securing them. Most of them did not appear to speak English. A few spoke in Spanish or broken English; Carrol wondered what a background check would turn up.

“Bonarski, Gerdes,” McCray ordered. “Up the stairs and secure the upper level.”

“Sir,” another agent called. He had opened one of the cardboard boxes stacked under the table closest to him.

“What is it, Harney?” McCray asked.

“Sir, I knocked over that plastic bin of DVDs. Look what was inside it…and inside this.” He pointed at an overturned plastic container and at the cardboard box just unsealed.

McCray came over and peered inside the carton.

“Holy shit,” he said.

The box was full of large plastic zipper-lock bags stuffed with white powder. McCray bent, removing a small pocket knife from his suit jacket. He snapped the blade open and poked it into the bag. Careful not to inhale the powder, he raised the coated blade to his nose and let its odor travel to his nose.

“Heroin,” he said. He looked up. “Watch them,” he ordered the agents, indicating the confused workers. “And check those other boxes.”

“Here, too, sir,” Agent Harney called. “Packed full. Every box.”

Agent Carrol looked around the warehouse in amazement, counting the cardboard packages. “Mike, if every one of these boxes is full of heroin…”

“Still think a DVD piracy ring isn’t worth busting?” McCray grinned back at her. He lowered his Glock as she did the same. “This has to be millions of dollars of heroin. Maybe more. I’ve never seen so much in one place.”

Suddenly, Carrol felt very anxious. “Mike, what have we stumbled onto here?” She scanned the room, her fingers clenching as she half raised her weapon once more.

“Easy,” McCray said. “Easy, now. Sometimes luck just works on our side. Relax, Marie.”

“I know, I know,” Carrol said. She couldn’t help it; she couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong.

“Bonarski! Gerdes! What have you got up there?’ McCray looked up to the catwalk. When there was no answer, he called again, “Gerdes? Agents Gerdes and Bonarski, report, damn it.”

The only response was a corpse that came flying over the catwalk.

Carrol felt her heart leap into her throat. The body that struck the floor, scattering workers and bringing up the heads of the workers and the assembled FBI personnel, was that of Agent Gerdes.

The ghastly expression on his face left no doubt that he was in fact dead. His throat had been cut from ear to ear.

“All agents—” McCray began to order.

“That,” a voice shouted in accented English, “will be quite enough!” Punctuating the words were the sounds of a dozen assault rifles being cocked. The barrels of the Kalashnikov rifles suddenly appeared over the catwalk railing, wielded by small, deadly-looking men who appeared more than ready to use them.

“Drop your weapons!” McCray ordered.

“You,” said the man who had spoken previously, “are in no position to make demands.” He appeared at the railing, holding a gun to Agent Bonarski’s head.

He was a small man, perhaps five feet, four inches, with a swarthy complexion and vaguely Asian features. To Carrol he looked Filipino, or maybe Thai. He was dressed much the same as the other armed men now looking down from the catwalk, sporting a mixture of civilian clothes and castoff military uniform. Specifically, he wore cut-off BDUs, unlaced combat boots and an open and very faded olive-drab fatigue blouse over a Rock-and-Roll Café T-shirt. A red-and-white bandanna was tied over his skull, knotted above his forehead. He was chewing an unlighted cigarillo. The hammer of the .45-caliber pistol in his hand was jacked back, and a very nervous Agent Bonarski was sweating as the barrel was jammed into his temple.

“Do not hurt that agent!” McCray commanded. “Identify yourself!”

“You may call me Thawan.” The man smiled, his face a mask of petty cruelty. “And you may also call me master of your fate. Drop your guns.”

“I can’t do that.” McCray shook his head. “I’m ordering you to stand down, mister!”

“Such arrogance,” Thawan said. “It does not surprise me. Do you, American, have any idea what you have walked into this day?”

“I’ve got an idea,” McCray said. “Now put down those guns!”

“No,” Thawan said. He chewed on the cigarillo, switching it from one side of his mouth to the other. “You are about to die, American. It can be quick and clean. It can also be very, very messy.”

“Sir…” Agent Bonarski said.

“Silence!” Thawan hissed. He pressed the .45 more tightly against Agent Bonarski’s head. “American,” he said to McCray, “think carefully about the choice I give you.”

“Drop your weapons!” McCray ordered again. “I am an authorized representative of the federal government and I will not tell you again!”

“You poor, sad little man.” Thawan’s smile broadened. “Messy, then.”

The .45 went off, and Agent Bonarski’s suddenly lifeless body fell from the catwalk.

Hell erupted.

The agents on the warehouse floor began firing their weapons as the men above held back the triggers on their Kalashnikovs. Full-auto weapons fire echoed through the cavernous space, drowning out all other sound.

The wave of heat and light and pressure broke over Agent Carrol as the gunfire surrounded her. Time slowed. As she moved, raising her Glock and firing round after round, she felt as if she were trying to move through water, her every action encountering impossible resistance. Her eyes widened in horror as she watched blood blossom on Mike McCray’s chest. He staggered under the onslaught of dozens of rounds, dropping his weapon and falling to the floor.

Carrol acted on instinct. She emptied her Glock in the direction of the catwalk as she ran for the cover of the nearest benches, diving beneath one and colliding with the cardboard cartons of drugs and DVD cases. She grunted as her shoulder hit the stack of boxes, then rolled, bullets tearing up the table above. Several rounds struck the cartons, scattering fine white mist in every direction as the bags of heroin were punctured.

From her position, Carrol could see the exit, the very door whose lock the team had broken so casually just minutes before. It was so close and yet so impossibly far. With bullets striking the table, the floor, and burning through the air all around her, she pushed herself to her feet and ran for the door, her Glock useless and locked open, no thought of reloading or fighting back. Blind flight instinct kicked in as the chaos around her became total. She saw another of the armed agents die scant feet away as she ran.

If only she could make the car. If only she could get to the radio. If only she could call for backup. There was still a chance.

The hammer blow to her chest felt like a cinder block against her ribs. Her knees buckled. She felt herself falling, the floor taking a thousand years to come up, everything happening so slowly…

She saw stars in her vision as the floor hit her face. The pain was a distant sensation, hardly significant. Some part of her was able to process that she had been shot. How many times and how badly she didn’t know. She felt warm blood on her cheek; she tasted it in her mouth. She thought, as she floated, disconnected from her body, that she had broken her nose in the fall. She tried to push herself to her feet and could not. She couldn’t feel her legs.

The agent who had gone down in front of her stared back at her, eyes glassy in death. Carrol tried desperately to think, to act, as her mind clouded over with pain and then numbness. Her hand struggled to find the inner pocket of her suit jacket.

The gunfire died away. Thawan’s men filed down from the catwalk and began moving from body to body. A single shot rang out, and then another, from opposite sides of the warehouse. The shooters were killing the survivors. Those workers unharmed in the gunfight were being herded to one side of the workspace. The wounded workers were shot dead with the same casual disregard the gunmen had shown the FBI agents.

“Now, move, move,” Thawan was ordering the remaining workers, who looked at him with wide-eyed terror. “Collect the boxes. Collect the drugs. Everything must be packed and made ready for shipment. Gig!”

One of the gunmen, an even smaller, misshapen man with a scar across his face, hurried forward, cradling his Kalashnikov.

“Yes, boss.”

“Call for the trucks. We must move up the timetable.”

“That will take time, boss. The schedule is complicated. We will have to rearrange the drops.”

“Gig Tranh,” Thawan said with an exaggerated sigh, “did I ask for your opinion?”

“No, boss.”

“Then do as I tell you!” Thawan shouted, waving his .45 to punctuate the point.

“Yes, boss.” The small man scuttled off, pulling a wireless phone from his BDU jacket as he did so.

“You and you,” Thawan pointed to the nearest frightened workers. “Come here. You will help me search the bodies. We will take everything of value. Guns, ammunition. Their wallets. Their watches. Also, I want their badges. One never knows when such things will be of value.”

Agent Carrol, against the increasing, crushing weight of her limbs, managed to drag her own wireless phone from her jacket. Thawan was moving back and forth across the hazy field of her vision. She had one chance. She could feel her life slipping away; could feel her hold on consciousness ebbing. From what little she could see from the floor, it did not appear that any of the other FBI agents had survived. If they had, they would be killed. It was only luck that nobody had gotten to her yet.

She had to live long enough to let someone know, to get out word of what had happened. If only Thawan would move back into view…

Thawan stopped, turned and looked straight at her.

She snapped the picture with her phone’s camera option.

“Well, well,” Thawan said. He walked to her deliberately, not hurrying, seemingly not at all concerned. “What do you think you are doing?”

Carrol could feel her vision turning gray at the edges. The sound of Thawan’s voice was hollow in her ears, as if he spoke through a metal pipe.

She hit Send, transmitting the MMS message to the first contact in her phone’s address book.

Thawan reached down and snatched the phone from her. He took notice of the empty Glock still clutched in her other hand. Contemptuously, he kicked her pistol aside. Then he examined the phone.

“Well,” he said, shaking his head, “it appears you will not be calling for help. Even if you had, pretty lady—” he smiled, showing rotted, uneven teeth “—it would do no good. We will be gone before anyone arrives. You have died for nothing.” He dropped the phone to the floor and stomped it with one booted foot. It took several tries, but he was finally able to crush the phone, snapping it into several pieces.

“You…” Carrol managed to say, her breath coming in short rasps now. “You…won’t…”

“Won’t what, pretty lady?” Thawan smiled. “Won’t get away with it? Won’t escape? Won’t walk over the bodies of your dead fascist pig brothers and escape? I will, and more.” He squatted and took her face in his left hand. His right still held the .45. Holding her chin and jaw, he moved her head from side to side. “Such a shame. Such a waste. You are really not so bad-looking, you know? We could have had some fun, my boys and I. But no,” he said and let her go. She collapsed, now staring directly at the ceiling. “No, you are too far gone. But not so far gone that I will not help you there.”

The last thing Agent Carrol saw was Thawan standing over her, the barrel of the .45 impossibly large as he aimed it between her eyes.

The muzzle-blast was very bright.

CHAPTER TWO

Stony Man Farm

In the War Room at Stony Man Farm, the stern-looking and apparently disembodied face of Hal Brognola stared from one of the plasma wall screens, twice as big as life. Across from the screen, seated near one end of the long conference table, Barbara Price tapped keys on a slim notebook computer.

“How about now, Hal?” she asked.

“Yes, I can hear you.” Brognola nodded, his disembodied voice amplified by the wall speakers positioned around the room. Price tapped a key to lower the volume slightly, bringing the big Fed’s virtual presence to something closer to normal. The microphone on Brognola’s end of the scrambled connection was producing some feedback, which Price eliminated with the stroke of a key.

“You forgot,” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman said, rolling into the room in his wheelchair, “to ask him to say, ‘Testing, one, two, three.’ Hardly a dignified state in which to find the director of the Sensitive Operations Group.”

“What can I say?” Brognola said, his voice dry. “I’m a man of the people.”

Price nodded. The big Fed was broadcasting from his office on the Potomac, roughly eighty miles away in Washington, D.C. Even through the scrambled link, she could tell that Brognola was forcing the humor. The strain was visible around his eyes. It would not be the first time she had seen his image on the screen and worried for his health. Brognola drove his people hard, but he drove himself much harder.

Kurtzman rolled into position next to Price’s chair and put his heavy stainless, industrial-size coffee mug on the conference table. “It’s a mystery to me,” he said, “how the settings on that connection change from conference to conference.”

“Goes with the territory, Bear,” Price said. “The first rule of technology is that anything that can malfunction will do so just before the meeting.”

“Sounds familiar, at that,” Kurtzman grunted. The head of the Farm’s cybernetics team—not to mention a computer genius in his own right—took a long swallow from his mug of coffee.

The rest of the computer support team filed in, heralded by the dull roar from the MP3 player whose headphones were jammed into Akira Tokaido’s ears. The young Japanese computer expert was, as always, listening to heavy metal at eardrum-bursting decibel. He wore a leather jacket and an eager expression.

After Tokaido was Carmen Delahunt, who looked unusually somber this morning. Price knew why; the normally vivacious redhead was formerly with the FBI. She was speaking in hushed tones with fellow cybernetics team member Huntington “Hunt” Wethers. The refined, graying black man said something to which Delahunt only nodded. The pair took seats on either side of Akira, making way for the personnel crowding the corridor behind them.