War Tactic

“It’s good to know that RhemCorp is committed to keeping the world a greener place,” Schwarz said, looking up at the bulb.

“Shut up, Gadgets,” Lyons and Blancanales said in unison.

“Not for nothing,” Schwarz continued, ignoring them both, “but I really enjoy these pre-interrogation banter sessions.”

“If I had a dollar for every time we’ve been captured and worked over by some goon squad,” Lyons began.

“I do,” Blancanales said. “I’ve been investing my captured-by-goons dollars. I’m going to leave Able and retire early. Now seems like a good time.”

“Don’t you start, Pol,” Lyons warned. He opened his mouth to say more but the door to the storage room was thrown open. In it, framed by the scant light from the overhead bulb, stood a man in a gray Blackstar Corporation T-shirt and a pair of tiger-striped fatigues. The pants were bloused into polished combat boots, probably steel-toed. Lyons took special note of the chromed .45-caliber automatic in a drop-holster on the man’s thigh. The man was big, as big as Carl Lyons, with swollen biceps and sinewy forearms to match. He cracked his knuckles through the half-fingered leather gloves he wore.

“Well, well, well,” the newcomer said. His head was shaved smooth, his features craggy and thick. His jaw was square enough to cut diamonds. “Three little pigs, trussed up as nice as you like. Feel flattered, little piglets. I’m a commander in the Blackstar Corporation, which means you rate the big guns.”

“You got the wrong room, Tinkerbell,” Lyons said. “Stripper-gram delivery is down the hall.”

That brought a frown to the Blackstar man’s face. “The name,” he said, his tone low and menacing, “is Fitzpatrick, Jason J. ‘Jay’ to my friends and the lovely ladies I always leave wanting more. And to you, I answer to ‘God.’ Because that, my little pigs, is what I am—God of your universe, until you beg me to kill you.”

“Oh, no,” Schwarz said. “He’s going to douche us to death.”

Fitzpatrick quietly closed the door. He turned and fixed Schwarz with a stare Lyons could only describe as bloodthirsty. That was bad. Lyons had seen that type before. Fitzpatrick was probably a vet, but one of those who had done his tour or tours just at the edge of crazy. There were always men who took a war zone to mean that there were no rules…and that meant there was no need for humanity. Fitzpatrick had the look of a man who enjoyed killing…and who knew he did because he’d indulged the urge. As the big Blackstar man came closer, Lyons noted the clip of a folding knife in his left-hand front pocket.

“Say that again,” Fitzpatrick said to Schwarz.

“Are those weight-lifting gloves?” Schwarz said, looking up at the Blackstar man. “Please tell me those aren’t weight-lifting gloves. Nobody is that gigantic a douche nozzle.”

Lyons winced despite himself. He saw Fitzpatrick draw back his hand; saw the motion telegraphed from a mile away. Then the big Blackstar mercenary pimp-slapped Schwarz so hard that, for a moment, Lyons feared his partner’s jaw might be dislocated. The Stony Man Farm electronics expert did his best to ride the momentum of the strike, but there was only so much he could do strapped to a chair. Blood sprayed from Schwarz’s lower lip.

“You’re going to find,” Fitzpatrick said, “that I’ve got no sense of humor. No sense of humor at all.”

“That explains the dude-bro body spray,” Schwarz said.

“Stop it, damn you!” Lyons barked. Schwarz turned to Lyons and managed a bloody grin. Fitzpatrick did the same then slapped Schwarz across the face again. This time, the electronics whiz did not manage a witty retort. Lyons felt fire begin to smolder deep in his stomach.

“Now,” Fitzpatrick said, “this is relatively simple. You came onto this property representing yourself as federal agents. You claim knowledge of Mr. Rhemsen’s export activities. Obviously you have connections. I want to know what those connections are. I want to know exactly what government agency is looking into Mr. Rhemsen, and I don’t for a second believe it’s the Justice Department. Who are you with? Intelligence? CIA? Homeland Security? NSA?”

“NSA,” Schwarz said, spitting blood. “And we need to talk to you about all the porn you’re downloading on your wireless phone.”

This time Fitzpatrick cuffed Schwarz on the side of the head. It was a casual blow, almost contemptuous, but there was a lot of muscle behind Fitzpatrick’s strikes. Schwarz could not take that kind of punishment for long.

“You’re a coward,” Lyons heard himself say.

“What’s that?” Fitzpatrick said. He sounded genuinely curious. Fixing his attention on Lyons, he took a step closer. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re the leader of this little band of heroes, aren’t you? You have the look.”

“You want to beat on somebody, Tinkerbell,” Lyons said, “you beat on me. Only a coward picks the skinniest guy in the room.”

Fitzpatrick looked at Blancanales, then back to Lyons. “I don’t know,” he said. “The gray-haired fellow there doesn’t look much more substantial. But I have this thing about beating up senior citizens.”

“I doubt it,” Lyons said.

“Okay, you got me,” Fitzpatrick replied. “I don’t care who I beat up. But you’re missing the point, hero. This isn’t a fight. It isn’t even schoolyard bullying. This is an interrogation. You’re going to tell me who you work for. You’re going to tell me what the government knows. And when you’ve finished telling me, I’m going to kill you quickly, and you’re going to be grateful.”

“Fat chance,” Lyons said.

“I’m sorry,” Fitzpatrick said. He flexed his fingers together, cracking all his knuckles at once. “I might have given you the idea that we were debating that. We aren’t. I’m telling you exactly what’s going to happen. I like to skip to the end.”

“Funny,” Schwarz said. “We were just talking about that.”

“Enough,” Lyons growled. He admired his partner’s courage, but now was not the time. Provoking this psychopath was just going to make things worse.

“Still,” Fitzpatrick said, “I get your point. And, yeah, this is hardly sporting.” He drew his folding knife from his pocket. Lyons realized it was one of Able Team’s knives, taken by the Blackstar guards when Lyons and his team were searched and then tied up. Fitzpatrick snapped open the blade with a flick of his wrist, ignoring the thumb stud that would have let him snap it open more securely and with less grandstanding. The Blackstar man examined the edge against the tip of his finger. “Nice and sharp,” he said. He went for Schwarz again.

“Over here!” Lyons shouted, straining against his zip ties hard enough to make his chair shift beneath him. The wood of the chair creaked in protest. “Over here, you son of a bitch! Try me!”

“Cool your jets, Captain Ham-hands,” Fitzpatrick taunted. “See? I can make funny jokes, too. You like jokes, little man?” He was talking to Schwarz now. “You’re going to love this one.”

Lyons braced himself for what was to come. The men of Stony Man Farm were no stranger to the types of horrors that could be visited on an imprisoned man. In years past, when the Mafia had held sway, it was nothing to their torturers to carve up victims so badly that a mercy killing was the only option. It was an art with some of those jackals. Fitzpatrick didn’t have that kind of finesse, but he was probably no stranger to stabbing helpless victims. Able Team’s leader told himself that he just might have to watch Schwarz die in front of him.

“You do this,” Lyons said, “and you’re going to die with your neck under my boot.”

“I’ll do what I can to live with the fear of that,” Fitzpatrick said. He reached out and, in one smooth slash, cut the zip tie securing Schwarz’s left wrist.

Lyons’s jaw dropped.

Fitzpatrick wasn’t finished. He cut the tie securing Schwarz’s other wrist, then the ones at the Stony Man commando’s ankles. Stepping back, he struck a martial arts pose and beckoned with one hand. “Come and get it, little man.”

“Perry,” Lyons cautioned, using his cover name. “Don’t.”

“Sorry, boss,” Schwarz said. “But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t kick this jackass in the—”

Fitzpatrick danced close as Schwarz was rising from the chair, lashing out with something concealed in his left hand. The tick-tick-tick of the electric transformer was unmistakable. The Blackstar man had just lit up Schwarz with a stun gun that he had concealed on his person. The effect was immediate: Schwarz’s muscles clenched and he went weak in the knees. Fitzpatrick grinned and threw down the little black plastic box.

To his credit, Schwarz did not fall, but Fitzpatrick followed the jolt with a knee to the Able Team operative’s groin. As the electronics expert doubled over, the Blackstar commander drove both his massive elbows down onto Schwarz’s back, knocking the much slimmer man into the floor.

“Stop this!” Blancanales called out.

“You’ll get your turn,” Fitzpatrick said. He threw a savage kick to Schwarz’s ribs. Schwarz grunted in pain and tried to roll out. Then he was up, on his feet, shaking but game, his hands raised and ready. “Hey, we’ve got a player!” Fitzpatrick said. “Come on, boy. Show Uncle Jay what you’ve got. I promise, I won’t cripple you so badly that you’ll have to have somebody feed you for the rest of your life. But then again, my promises usually don’t mean jack.”

“You are such a dick,” Schwarz said, and kicked Fitzpatrick in the face.

It was a good kick, and Schwarz might have laid low a smaller man with it, but he was weakened from the stun gun and had already had his brain knocked around inside his head for a few rounds. Fitzpatrick absorbed it, shook it off and slammed a Muay Thai round kick into Schwarz’s flank that dropped him to the floor again.

“Tell me what I want to know,” Fitzpatrick said to Lyons. He stood with his foot on Schwarz’s chest as Schwarz gasped for air. “If you don’t, I’m going to beat this man to death in front of you. I’m guessing that the idea of that bothers you a lot, big man. You hero types, you live and breathe for this kind of thing. Seeing your buddy get his guts stomped out…well, I’m betting that’s more than you can handle.”

“You’d be surprised,” Schwarz started to say, trying to form another verbal jab. Fitzpatrick cut him off, raising his boot and slamming it down, driving out what little air Schwarz had in his lungs. Schwarz wheezed in pain.

“He’s cute, in a stupid sort of way,” Fitzpatrick said. “Every squad’s got one of this guy. The guy who’s always cracking jokes. The guy who never takes anything seriously. And you know what happens to that guy, big man? One day he gets fragged, and nobody much cares, because everybody is sick and damned tired of hearing him talk all the time.”

“I’m pretty sick and tired of hearing you talk,” Lyons said. He kept his voice low. It was a struggle to maintain his self-control. He wanted to punch this Fitzpatrick into a bloody bag of meat.

Schwarz was still stirring on the floor, so Fitzpatrick kicked him in the head. Schwarz grew still, his limbs slack. He was still breathing—Lyons could tell that much—but he was clearly out cold. Well, that was probably for the best. Unconsciousness was Schwarz’s best friend right now, especially because it meant he couldn’t run his mouth and take any more punishment.

“I think we’ve exhausted the entertainment value of that one,” Fitzpatrick said. He went to Blancanales, whose eyes followed the knife carefully before landing on the stun gun still on the floor. “Oh, you’re thinking about that, aren’t you, Gramps?” the Blackstar commander said. “You think that little battery-powered toy is going to put me down? You’re going to have to do that on your own. And you’re going to have to do it while your team leader watches you get your—”

Blancanales slammed the heel of his palm up under Fitzpatrick’s jaw before raking his fingers back down the man’s face. In World War II jargon, the maneuver was called a chin jab, and if Blancanales hadn’t been trying to do it while rising from the chair in which he’d been held, it might have done some serious damage. As it was, Blancanales’s full body weight was not supporting the strike. Fitzpatrick hissed in displeasure and slammed an elbow into the side of his opponent’s head. Blancanales went down but, thanks to his training, managed to perform a shoulder roll and come up again.

Fitzpatrick was ready for it. As Blancanales rolled through the fall, Fitzpatrick stuck to him like a shadow and when Blancanales started to rise again, the bigger man slammed the butt of his chromed pistol into the back of Blancanales’s skull. The Able Team warrior made no sound as he dropped to his hands and knees, stunned. Fitzpatrick stopped long enough to grin smugly at Lyons.

“Pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you, Tinkerbell?” Lyons said. “Beating up a couple of guys who can barely stand because the circulation to their hands and feet has been cut off for an hour. Yeah, you’re a real macho guy.”

Fitzpatrick kicked Blancanales, but it wasn’t a rib-cracker this time. Blancanales was able to roll away from the kick. The Blackstar man dropped on top of Blancanales anyway, wrapping one thick arm around his captive’s throat. Dazed as he was, Blancanales didn’t appear to have much of a chance, not the way this “fight” had been set up against him from the start. Fitzpatrick tucked his arm into the crook of his other limb and wrapped one hand around the back of Blancanales’s head in a classic rear naked choke. It wasn’t long before Blancanales was unconscious. Fitzpatrick dropped the commando and stood, once more facing Lyons.

“Just you and me now, champ,” he said.

“I’m game for a main event,” Lyons said. “Cut me loose and I’ll show you a few things.”

“You keep calling me Tinkerbell,” Fitzpatrick said. “You saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Tinkerbell’s a fantasy,” said Lyons. “That’s what you are. A fantasy. A legend in your own mind. I’m going to break you, Tinkerbell. I’m going to show you that the real life ain’t nothing like the badass fantasy you’ve built for yourself.”

“I gotta admit,” Fitzpatrick said, “that I did not see that coming. It was about the last thing I’d thought you’d say. And now I’m going to leave you alone in here with your buddies.”

“Come on!” Lyons shouted. “What are you afraid of, you coward?”

Fitzpatrick laughed. “You probably think you’ve got me figured out, big man,” he said. “But, news flash. You don’t. Much as I’d like to kick your behind all around this room, that’s not the game. Making you watch me beat up these two, now that’s the game. I’m going to come back every half hour, give or take. Just long enough for your guys to shake it off each time I clean their clocks. Of course, it’s going to get worse as I go. Pretty soon they’ll be lucky if they still remember math. Some teeth are going to come out. And before we’re done I may start cutting off fingers, just for the fun of it.”

“Keep talking,” Lyons warned. “Just keep talking.”

“I want you to think about that,” Fitzpatrick said. “I want you to think about what I just did, and what I’m going to do. Wait for twenty minutes. A guy like you probably can do it in his head. I don’t care if you count it off. Just wait for it. And when I come back, know that I’m going to keep taking your little boys apart until you give me the information. It’s not a lot to ask. It won’t even get anybody else killed. Are their lives—” he gestured to Blancanales and Schwarz “—worth what you’re withholding?”

The big Blackstar man took the time to strap the two Able Team operatives back into their chairs. Then he left, closing the door behind him.

Lyons blew out a sigh of relief.

Schwarz opened one eye. “Is he gone?”

Blancanales opened both of his. “I thought that guy would never shut up.”

“He talks almost as much as Gadgets,” Lyons said.

“Hey,” Schwarz complained. “That’s not fair. I think he cracked my ribs.”

“First good news I’ve heard all day,” Lyons teased.

“Then get ready for the second good news,” Blancanales said. There was a click. Blancanales shifted in his chair and, suddenly, his hands were in front of him, unrestrained. Using the folding knife he had lifted from Fitzpatrick’s pocket during the fight, he cut the fresh zip ties securing his feet. Then he cut Schwarz’s bonds and went to free Lyons.

“Gadgets,” Lyons said, “you still owe me twenty bucks.”

“Pol, can I borrow twenty bucks?” Schwarz said.

“Depends,” Blancanales answered. He held up the brown leather billfold he had also picked from the Blackstar commander’s pocket. “How much cash you figure a guy like that carries on him?”

CHAPTER FIVE

“Captain!” shouted McCarter over the klaxon. “Keep your people working on the repairs. We’ll handle the threat out there!”

The Filipino captain seemed unconvinced, but stopping his ship from sinking was foremost on his mind. He said something that McCarter either couldn’t understand or could not hear—it was indecipherable to the Briton—and turned back to his repair team. McCarter, meanwhile, held his Tavor tighter to his body and rushed back up the gangway to take the ladder to the deck. James hurried close behind.

Once on the deck, McCarter immediately started taking fire. He ducked back, using the metal shell around the gangway for cover. “Look out! Contact forward!”

James scooted up around his team leader and managed to make the deck before sparks caught on the metal. Bullets rang like angry bees around both men. James was fast, though, faster than the enemy gunfire. He dodged in and around the structural outcroppings on the deck, using them for cover, working his way to the left. McCarter took the cue and started working toward his own right. The gunfire was coming from the bow, whereas they were currently amidships.

Abruptly a storm of wind and sea spray caught him in the face. He looked up, following the noise. The Sikorsky shot past, flying laterally, as Grimaldi lined up the nose. Then the great chopper’s guns and grenade launcher opened up, targeting a section of the water itself. McCarter watched, amazed, until the gunfire from forward of his position drove him back behind the cover of the next “step” in the deck layout.

“G-Force!” he called, pressing his transceiver against his ear. “Come in! What are you doing?”

There was still no reply. McCarter had thought perhaps something about the structure of the ship had interfered with their signal, perhaps depending on where Grimaldi was positioned relative to McCarter and James. But now, on the deck, with line of sight to the chopper, he still could not raise a signal. What the bloody hell was going on?

“David,” said James in his earbud, “I’ve got eyes on them. They’re hiding behind a railing about five meters from the bow. The area just to the left of the gray tarp. I’m seeing some grappling hooks, too. Looks like not all the pirates were blown up when we took out that first launch.”

“Makes sense,” McCarter responded. “The rats found the nearest sinking ship.”

Just then, another set of explosions rocked the damaged Filipino vessel. McCarter was drenched once more with spray. What he saw, when he looked to the sea once more, was bewildering for a moment. Grimaldi was still strafing the water and sowing the waves with 40 mm grenades. Then there was yet another explosion, bigger than what a grenade or even a series of grenades going off could create.

That cheeky bastard, McCarter thought. He’s detonating whatever those submersible torpedo weapons are. He’s keeping them off us.

There was no way to explain what was interfering with his communications with the chopper, but Grimaldi was obviously alive and doing fine…or as fine as a man could do while taking fire in a combat zone. There was small-arms fire coming from the second motor launch, the one that survived, and that boat was now making fast circles well wide of the Filipino ship. The idea, McCarter imagined, was to keep the launch out of range of the Filipino ship’s guns and to avoid becoming a target for the Sikorsky.

McCarter tried to gauge just how many men might be aboard that launch. It couldn’t be that many, given the boat’s size. If the fast-attack boat had carried a limited payload of Thorn rockets, that might explain why the crew had turned to whatever those torpedo-like devices were. He made a note to scan back through his dossier in the Farm’s mission brief to look for other technical specs on RhemCorp weaponry. So far, the Thorns were the only ones that had been used in previous attacks, and thus those were the only ones McCarter had bothered to familiarize himself with.

A shipment of rockets was one thing; weapons could go missing, and frequently did, when they were shipped overseas. But if the pirates were equipped with a full array of RhemCorp’s catalog, that looked very bad for Harold Rhemsen and his company.

None of which made a damned bit of difference right now, McCarter considered as the ship on which he was currently taking fire might sink out from underneath all of them at any minute.

“How many shooters do you have?” McCarter asked James. He did his best to work his way up toward the bow. The deck of the Filipino ship descended from the bridge area to the bow in graduated steps, each step bordered by a metal railing and whatever structural reinforcement was required for the equipment built into that area. This translated into plenty of cover, but it also meant the shooters near the bow could keep laying down bullets relatively unhindered from farther down the deck.

“I’ve got eyes on two,” James said. “No, scratch that. Three. One looks half scorched, but he’s mobile. They’ve all got Kalashnikovs and they look plenty mean.”

“They’ve got nowhere to go unless they take down this ship,” McCarter said. “If they can’t make it safe for the other launch to swing back and pick them up, they’re out of luck. I think the penalty for piracy, even internationally, is still hanging around these parts, mate. Can’t say I blame them.”

“Yeah.” James said nothing more for several moments, giving McCarter time to get into position.

Finally the Briton judged he was as close as he was going to get to the pirate boarders. Around them on the deck, fires still continued to burn, although the Filipinos had all disappeared. They were below, trying to keep the ship afloat. Hopefully none of the fires up here would get bad enough to seriously endanger the boat before they could be attended to.

From where he was now positioned, McCarter could see the tops of the three pirates’ heads. One of those heads was shaved bald and looked very red, then very black. Those were nasty burns. Shock and exposure might kill that man before somebody could put a round through his dome. For now, though, the pirate was mobile and fighting.

“I’ve got them, too, now,” McCarter advised James. “On my mark, I want you to lay down enough fire on the left to drive them over to the right. There’s a gap in the railing there. Just crowd them, mate. Drive them toward the gap. I’ll do the rest.”

“Affirmative,” James said.

“Now!” McCarter ordered.

James’s Tavor started belching 5.56 mm death. The Stony Man commando squeezed measured bursts from the weapon, which Phoenix Force had used many times before. The compact design and modular ergonomics made the rifle a favorite among combat troops. It was comfortable and accurate. The red-dot optics offered good, fast, target acquisition, and the rate of fire was quick enough to be truly fearsome.

From his position, McCarter was basically guessing. In combat, you took what you could get. Much like a hunter who ascertains his target then fires at the shadow where his target will be, McCarter simply waited for what light he could see through the gap to disappear. He did not need much. A single moment was all it would take.

There it was.

McCarter fired, just once, then once again for good measure. The shadow disappeared from the gap. That would be his pirate target falling away from the section of railing that had betrayed him.