Deadly Payload

Phoenix Force took off while Manning took another stick of C-4 from his pack and divided it up, setting it on the fuel-filled jerri cans and replacing the gas cap to the tank. He wired them to one central detonator. There was a chance that the APC would hose down the truck with its machine gun at a distance, but either way, the explosion would erase any evidence of Phoenix Force presence in Lebanon.

If militia men did inspect the truck, there was a better likelihood that they would disturb the cans in the back and set off one of Manning’s tripwires, removing another squad of gun-toting militiamen from the Lebanese conflict. Shouldering his sniper rifle, Manning took off after his friends. His long legs fell into a loping pace that ate up distance effortlessly. He slowed to accommodate the others once he caught up with them.

Five minutes after leaving the truck, a fireball flashed, lighting the night behind them. The outline of the APC and two military-style jeeps appeared, backlit by the flowering blossom of their pickup. One of the jeeps flipped and bounced off the APC.

“Seventy gallons of petrol will do that,” McCarter quipped.

Manning knelt and surveyed the blast site with his rifle.

“They tracking us?” Encizo inquired.

“They’re dealing with wounded, “Manning informed them. “We’ll have plenty of time to get out of sight by sunup.”

“Ground cover will obscure us after another two hundred yards, and it’s two hours until sunrise anyhow,” James mentioned.

“That’s no reason to sit around discussing the weather,” McCarter said. “Let’s roll.”

“A LL MANEUVERS GO according to plan,” Javier Cortez said. “At least until contact with the enemy. We’ve got activity in our Middle Eastern and Central American arenas.”

“Someone’s noticed us,” Kovak said. “I see that Tel Aviv is still quiet.”

“The fight was diverted.” Ling Jon spoke up. “An outside group of hackers broke into the network and commandeered the drones. We shut down on first notification, initiated defensive—”

“Their system will have taken a beating from your defenses,” Kovak noted. “What about the other scheduled attacks?”

Ling smiled. “The fuse is lit in the China Sea, and Kashmir is about to rock.”

Kovak took a deep breath and glanced at Cortez. “You’re looking to start every war you can imagine.”

“So many juicy-looking powder kegs,” Cortez answered with a grin. “We’re making a whole new world, Jason.”

“There’s going to be enough of a planet left after China gets set off?” Kovak asked.

“I’m fully aware of what plans Beijing has, and the West’s projected response,” Ling explained.

“Beijing will take the attack as an excuse to make a move on Taiwan. The British and Australian navies will move to protect Taiwan, and of course the United States will throw in. One or two more Chinese ships sunk—”

“And China will take a potshot at the Western navies,” Kovak concluded. “World War Three.”

“Just like the chest-beating in South America,” Cortez said. “Colombia and Venezuela responded exactly as we wanted.”

Kovak looked at the world map. The Engineers’ software was monitoring international tensions. Earlier that day, the Republic of Georgia suffered an attack from Azerbaijan The Azerbaijani government claimed innocence, but the city of Gardabani was hammered by HVAR artillery rockets and antitank missiles launched by unmanned drones. Muslim separatists took the opportunity to start riots across the city, killing police officers and soldiers.

The Russian-controlled Commonwealth of Independent States, already on the edge because of infighting between ethnic groups in the region, was on full alert. The Russian president offered to send a few divisions of troops into Georgia to help enforce the peace, but the leadership in Tsiblisi remembered that Russian troops had swallowed the independent government in 1921. Leery eyes remained locked on Moscow, wondering if this was a ploy by hard-liners who wanted to rebuild the old Soviet empire. And now Beijing was being poked, the sleeping dragon baited with the jewel that was Taiwan. It was no secret that the People’s Republic of China lusted after the independent island nation, and had all forms of contingency plans to take the little country. Taiwan was ready to fight, but it knew that if its Western allies faltered, it would lose the battle and China would be reunited.

With tensions in South America, the Middle East and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Britain and America would be stretched thin, making the road to Taiwan wide and ready. The projected spark of violence between India and Pakistan over Kashmir would leave the globe with a hair trigger.

“This should confuse matters,” Cortez said. “Our previous two hot spots were major oil conflicts.”

“Lebanon?” Kovak asked.

“Syria and Israel border on major oil-producing nations who are members of OPEC. The start of an all-out war between those two would affect Egypt and Saudi Arabia, not to mention the potential of other OPEC states that dislike Israel to step in and join the party,” Cortez said.

“Those countries tried that. Israel beat them down. And we have nukes now, remember?” Kovak reminded the man.

Cortez smirked. “That’s part of what we’re counting on. We’re lighting the match on as many fuses as we can.”

Kovak nodded, looking at the map. “And when the bombs go off, the topography of the world alters. Radically.”

“The Old World, the New World, the Third World, everything breaks down into anarchy,” Cortez explained. “Barbarism and chaos run rampant. Riots infect the streets, governments crumble and, eventually, everyone will look to who has enough power to bring them peace and stability.”

Kovak’s eyes narrowed. “The tank attacks on Israel, a while back. Utilizing Marshall Plan hardware…”

“A test run. Now, we can see how the world responds to our operations, and we can anticipate them,” Cortez said.

“This has been a long time coming,” Kovak noted.

“We needed to build up supplies. The drones for bringing hostilities to the edge and pushing them over,” Cortez continued. “But we have other facilities. Storage areas, set up around the globe, stocked with the kind of firepower we’d need to emerge from the ashes of civilization as the new tomorrow’s government.”

“And forcing nuclear, biological and chemical attacks across the globe thins down the herd you want to run,” Kovak concluded. “After all, you might have a fairly strong organization, but even you can’t rein in six billion humans.”

“No,” Cortez admitted. He smiled. “I don’t blame you for feeling overwhelmed.”

“It’s not every day someone sets the wheels of Armageddon in motion,” Kovak stated.

Cortez chuckled. “Yes. The backup plan.”

Kovak looked at Israel, specifically the Northern District. To many Christians around the world, this was to be the location for the battle of Armageddon, specifically in the Jezreel Valley, not far from the Golan Heights. Several historical battles of Meggido had been fought across the history of humankind.

Jammed in the armpit between Lebanon and Syria, and containing the contested Golan Heights, the Northern District was a lightning rod for tension and violence. Between angry and hostile enemies, this region had seen countless acts of terrorism and posturing, from rocket artillery attacks from Lebanon to massed troops on the border with Syria. On the Israeli side of the equation, angry settlers engaged in brutal vigilante violence against native Arabs, murdering and intimidating countless people.

Kovak had engaged in copious amounts of such intimidating violence until the cowardly government gave in to “peaceful concessions” and gave the land back to the Arabs. Settlers were wrestled and hijacked from their homes. Kovak then realized that the Promised Land had fallen to the forces of evil. He wasn’t the only one, and together, they had formed an unofficial wing of the Mossad called Abraham’s Dagger. Made up of current and former Mossad agents, they took the actions that the government was too weak to commit. Now, hunted by their former comrades, Kovak and his allies were out in the cold.

Their future involved either jail or a shallow, unmarked grave.

Kovak’s loyalty to Israel burned away like gasoline under a blowtorch.

It was time to start over.

That meant forming an alliance with South American Nazis and anti-communist Chinese rebels, among dozens of other splintered cells, disillusioned and rejected. Alone, none of them could have made much of a difference, just a few minutes of carnage-bloodied footage on the evening news.

Together, they were the Engineers of the New Tomorrow.

The world would bathe in blood, and be washed clean by the tide of war.

Kovak looked at Cortez and nodded grimly. The future would involve strange bedmates, but in the end, it wouldn’t matter. The past was up for execution, and after the chaos, he could see the Dagger and the Nazis as allies. Old hatreds had no place when there was a world to rebuild.

They would be too busy trying to fight off mutual enemies.

T HERE WERE TWO GROUPS meeting in the cave when Phoenix Force arrived at their rendezvous. But that was to be expected. Though Israel and Egypt were locked in a “cold peace,” each side watching the other in response to enemy actions, they were at peace, not war. There was a healthy measure of distrust, but there was also a camaraderie between the two nations when it came to fighting terrorism. The same ultraradical Islamic groups that swore to destroy Israel also sought to overthrow the government in Cairo because it was not vehemently Muslim enough, nor willing to crush the tiny nation of Jews to its northeast. Peace talks and diplomacy was a wide-open avenue between the two, and such openness was an anathema to terrorists who wanted nothing less than extermination of a foreign presence in the Arab world.

In the minds of the Mossad and Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate, the ancient history that tied Cairo and Jerusalem together was just that—ancient history. A new era called for new responses and allegiances. While the GID had been formed to respond to the Mossad’s attempts to undermine Egypt’s fighting ability against Israel, the threat of terrorists often threw them together as allies.

“Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?” David McCarter said in greeting at the mouth of the cave. The muzzles of automatic weapons swung in his direction, but the black-and-white checkered keffiyeh dangling in his left hand was the indicator he was an ally. While the keffiyeh was traditional head garb of violent terrorists, holding it like a limp flag in his left hand showed disdain for the cloth in Arab cultural mores. The left was the unclean hand, and primarily holding such a sacred item in a left hand while the right was free was an insult to the PLO and the Fatah movements.

The muzzles pointed to the dirt.

“Bring your people in, King,” the Egyptian leader said. “You can call me Mahmoud.”

McCarter nodded to the Egyptian.

“I’m Reiser,” the Israeli offered.

McCarter made a hand gesture to the rest of Phoenix Force. Encizo and James remained just outside the cave entrance, along with pairs of Egyptians and Israelis who served as perimeter guards, and to keep the others inside polite.

There was tension, but the real concern was an outsider stumbling onto this situation. Considering that most outsiders in the Lebanese countryside were armed members of one of several militia groups, the noise and violence would be considerable, drawing unwanted attention if the alliance didn’t take them down swiftly and silently.

“Have you heard about the latest situations?” Mahmoud asked.

“Pakistan and India?” McCarter inquired.

“Border crossing with troops and air support from these damned drones,” Reiser explained.

“Troops,” McCarter noted with some surprise. “Any positive identification?”

“Most likely insurgents who found Iraq too hot to handle,” Mahmoud stated. “Not much was left for identification. They grabbed their wounded when the Indian fire base they assaulted hit back hard. Drones packed with napalm crashed into the Indian compound, killed the troops and destroyed most of the remains of the fallen assault force.”

“India would love for Pakistan to have made an offensive move,” McCarter commented. “Kashmir has been a sore point between those two for years. It would be the perfect excuse to close it down once and for all.”

“Trouble is, both sides have nuclear missiles,” Reiser reminded him. “With a billion noncombatants in the subcontinent, that solution might be all too final.”

“There’s trouble between Georgia and Azerbaijan,” Mahmoud noted. “Venezuela was also attacked. Maracaibo is in flames, literally.”

“This is much bigger than we thought,” McCarter said. He filled in the Egyptians and the Israelis about the aborted drone attack on Israel.

“Ex-Syrian paratroopers turned mercenary,” Reiser mused. “Deniable, but that wouldn’t matter much to our government if it had succeeded. Every insult must be answered in kind, which would involve firing a nuclear warhead into a Syrian city.”

“Even if they were not guilty of this particular offense,” McCarter added. “Because the world has seen that Syria is anything but innocent of malice toward the Israelis.”

“Just like Colombia and Venezuela are hardly the sweetest of friends, or Pakistan and India, or Georgia and Azerbaijan,” Mahmoud rattled off. “Someone’s taking advantage of deep-seated hostility to start a war or five.”

“Who and why?” Manning asked.

“Someone with ambition.” One of the Israelis spoke up. “Couldn’t help with the other option.”

“Doesn’t narrow the field down much, does it?” T.J. Hawkins quipped.

“That’s why we’re here,” Mahmoud said. “If we figure this out, perhaps we can head off the main insanity.”

“Which means China might be next,” another Egyptian said. “It doesn’t seem like there’s a situation that might lead to a nuclear exchange than something involving Taiwan. The Taiwanese don’t have the bond, but the U.S. and Britain do, and they’d need to have that kind of power to take on Communist China.”

“We’ll keep our eyes peeled in that direction,” McCarter replied. “Good thinking.”

The Briton’s brow furrowed as he remembered a report from Able Team’s Hermann Schwarz, about cheap knock off electronics from China. He hoped the cyberteam at the Farm would figure out that possible connection in the near future. Otherwise, he’d bring it up at their next scheduled teleconference.

That was, if this odd alliance survived long enough to report in.

CHAPTER FIVE

Barbara Price stared at the screen, not believing what she saw—a submarine from the People’s Republic of China floating, belly-up, like a slaughtered whale, flame and smoke bleeding into the sky.

“For too long, we have dealt with the hostile ring that the Communists have wrapped around our tiny island nation. Now the so-called mightiest military in the world will see what power unrestrained truly is!” the announcement said.

The video and voice were coming through a live feed, broadcast over multiple frequencies. It was a slap in the face to Beijing, their navy now one ship smaller, split apart. Considering the number of drones that had been utilized in attacks recently, it was no surprise that they were getting broadcast quality video sent around the world.

“How’s the trace on the signal?” Price asked Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman.

“Uplinks are bouncing all over the place,” Kurtzman said. “We’ve got some trails leading back to Taiwan, but more are scattered all across the Pacific. We’ve even got relay pulses coming from San Francisco and…”

“What?” Price asked.

“Panama,” Kurtzman stated.

“China could take the path of least resistance and use the relays going through Taiwan as evidence for a retaliatory strike,” Price mentioned.

“Which means we have to work fast,” Kurtzman explained.

Price frowned. “Surely with all these attacks going on, utilizing similar MOs, the world would see that it’s being yanked on a chain.”

“Rational leaders would realize that,” Kurtzman said. “But you’ve got these people working on the raw nerves of leaders who have grudges. I mean, how many times have our teams put down agents provocateurs in dozens of other conflicts?”

“Too many to count,” Price answered. She pinched her brow between her eyes and sighed. “You’d think they’d learn by now.”

“The bad guys go with what works,” Kurtzman said. “And we keep stopping them cold, so the world’s leaders don’t get a chance to learn any better.”

“Check on that transmission from Panama. Home in on it,” Price ordered. “I’ve got to make sure that we can keep our government from misbehaving.”

“My eyes are wide open,” Kurtzman said, returning to his keyboard.

Price left the Computer Room and headed to her office. She picked up her phone and began conferring with her contacts in the CIA and NSA, making certain that the word got out about the uncertain origins of the Chinese submarine video. Both agencies confirmed Kurtzman’s findings, though it took some cajoling to get their admissions. Intelligence agencies were notoriously tight-lipped about their information, even among their own departments. Price’s contacts, however, were people she knew when she worked for NSA, and they shared a mutual respect. While the Department of Homeland Defense had been devised to eliminate jurisdictional disputes and information smoke stacking, the reality was that petty rivalries often strangled the flow of intelligence between those who needed to know.

Price’s hot line rang and she picked up. It was Hal Brognola.

“What’s happening, Hal?” she asked.

“The president is working on building a case for Beijing not to take action against Taiwan. Information from the CIA, NSA and the U.S. Navy has given him enough counterindication to work on, but it’s not going to be too easy,” Brognola said. There was a short pause. “Good work.”

“Sometimes intelligence and logic can prevail,” Price replied. The past few hours of wheeling and dealing over the phone had left her with a throbbing headache, but relief flooded her after hearing Brognola’s news. “What about the other fires on?”

“FARC has stepped up action, making it difficult for Colombia and Venezuela to step down. Both sides are on full alert, and it’s hard to tell the difference between terrorist activity and legitimate military action,” Brognola explained. “The National Reconnaissance Office’s notes are that northern and central America are pretty heavily masked. Electronic surveillance is difficult, and orbital cameras are being obscured by all the smoke from Maracaibo.”

“I got the same from Aaron,” Price answered. “We’re doing our best, though, and Able is on the ground.”

“If anyone can shake answers loose, it’s Carl,” Brognola admitted. “Keep in touch with him.”

“I suppose we don’t have to worry about any more international incidents with all this going on,” she said with a sigh. Price checked her screen and received McCarter’s report on the meet in Lebanon. She saw the postscript, and as usual, the men of Phoenix Force demonstrated knowledge and political awareness. The report came in just minutes before the video on the Chinese submarine, and McCarter had voiced concerns about the conspiracy they were in conflict with attempting to spur tensions over Taiwan.

“David can be scary sometimes,” Price murmured.

“Don’t tell me that. I’ve driven with him,” Brognola quipped.

“I mean, he and the others were concerned about China being the next hot spot the drones hit,” Price corrected him.

Brognola clucked his tongue. “Oh, that. Last time I checked, the average IQ of the members of Phoenix was around genius level.”

“Dummies don’t last long in field operations,” Price replied. “I’ll see if there’s anything new on the Chinese front, and see if there’s any breakthrough in Panama.”

“I’ll brief the President on what you’re sending me,” Brognola replied. “He’s headed to New York to speak with the United Nations.”

“Talk about tap dancing on thin ice,” Price remarked. “After the world accused the U.S. of overreacting to Iraq, the President calling for cool heads…”

“There’s no other choice, Barb. Either we get the world to put its sabers down and look for the real cause, or World War Three hits,” Brognola told her. “It’s world-saving time again. And we can’t screw up.”

“I know, Hal,” Price answered. “We’re on it.”

“Never doubted that,” Brognola replied. He hung up.

C ARL L YONS CROUCHED , the SIG 551 Masterkey cradled across his knees as he peered through the foliage at a pickup wending its way across a dirt road. The back was covered with a tarp, and two dirt bikes with submachine-gun-armed riders rolled parallel to it. Two more dirt bikes snarled into view, coming from the direction that Able Team had marched from.

“They’ll know we got out of the SUV,” Susana Arquillo whispered to the Able Team leader.

Lyons nodded toward the riders. “They have radios, so they’ll have reported the lack of corpses back at the drop-off.”

Arquillo looked up. The thick tree canopy overhead blocked the sky, but with some forms of imaging, they might as well have been hiding under clear plastic wrap. Her lips were drawn tight.

“Nothing in the air.” Schwarz consoled her. “We’re okay for now.”

“They won’t have to send aerial scouts for us,” Blancanales countered. “They know they’re our targets. If we’re not charred skeletons in a burned-out vehicle, then we’re on our way to check them out.”

“We’ll be answered by some serious security, in that case,” Arquillo said.

“Good,” Lyons answered.

“That’s good?” Arquillo quizzed.

“The more protection we run into, the more important the base, and the more answers we’ll get after we crack it open,” Lyons explained.

“That’s Ironman,” Schwarz quipped. “He’s a Pollyanna, looking for a silver lining in every cloud.”

“More like a Silvertip hollowpoint in every .45,” Lyons corrected him. “We’ll stick with the road, but keep to the forest. Pol?”

“I’ll take point,” Blancanales answered, accepting the role. The eldest Able Team member was at home in tropical jungles and could lead the group through the densest of rain forests with nimble ease. Schwarz was a jungle warfare expert, as well, but he was busy monitoring a frequency meter to determine enemy activity and watching for drones being directed toward them. With Schwarz glued to his PDA monitor, it was up to Blancanales to watch for more terrestrial challenges.

The Stony Man warriors and their comrade continued parallel to the road the motorbikes and pickup took for a few minutes when Schwarz gave the hand signal for them to stop cold.

Arquillo and Lyons crouched deeply. The leaves of the canopy were thick overhead, but to some forms of detection, they might as well have been standing on barren tundra.

“Tree trunks, break up our pattern,” Schwarz whispered, crawling into the crooked fingers of a tree’s roots for cover. The others did the same, sweeping leaves and mud over themselves. The ambient temperature of the forest floor would allow the leaves and mud to mask their humanoid heat patterns, however, all the metallic gear they carried would provide enough to lock on with focused radar sweeps. Even the pound of metal in Arquillo’s polymer-framed Glock would register.

Schwarz inwardly hoped that because of the low-cost Chinese electronics in the unmanned drones, that they wouldn’t have the technical capacity to operate a focused beam radar sweep. He doubted it, though. The drones were supposed to be untraceable, but the enemy would undoubtedly want prime-quality gear for the UAVs protecting their home base. He braced his SIG and aimed toward where the PDA’s sensors picked up the drones’ approach, ready to empty a magazine of 5.56 mm NATO rounds into the Predator.