Terror Descending

CHAPTER TWO

Columbus, Ohio

Walking along the deserted streets, Armando Delacort kept an easy pace, his five bodyguards maintaining a tight formation around the millionaire arms dealer. Their suits bulged from the Uzi machine pistols slung under their jackets, and their heads were shaved in a military buzzcut, giving the men an oddly similar appearance. None of them wore jewelry, and all of them had multiple scars on their hands and faces telling of many battles fought hard and won. After the unexpected retirement the previous year of his Manhattan business rival, business had been booming.

Dressed in white linen as if this was the tropics, Delacort showed no sign of his inner demons, and coolly radiated the sort of easy affluence that only the truly rich and powerful could master. However, childhood habits died hard, and there was a switchblade knife tucked into his hip pocket, a pair of brass knuckles in his vest and a brand-new, state-of-the-art Glock 18 tucked into a tailored shoulder holster.

The weapon was a marvel, justifying the boastful claim that Glock was the premier weapons designer in the world. In appearance, it was absolutely identical to the Glock 17, a simple semiautomatic pistol. But just a touch on the trigger of the Eighteen, and it chattered off seventeen 9 mm rounds in slightly under two seconds. Two seconds! Absolutely incredible. Privately, the arms dealer was eagerly looking forward to the first reasonable excuse to use the new weapon, to see how well it did in combat.

Smiling contentedly at the sun, Delacort ambled along, savoring the clean morning air. As always, the city streets were mostly empty at this ungodly hour of the day, the sun just cresting over the top of the Hyatt Sports Stadium clearly announcing that it was barely 10:00 a.m. All of the commuters were at work, the mob of students attending the four local colleges were in class, and any shoppers were at the upscale shops located far uptown.

Whistling a tune, Delacort sauntered along the sidewalk, taking his time and almost feeling sorry for the hordes of people who had to eke out a living in the daily grind. Few people understood that life was like a fine wine—it should be savored and enjoyed, not gulped like water or guzzled like soda pop!

“Baa…baa…” Delacort said, imitating a sheep at a passing couple on the other side of the street. The man and woman gave no sign that they had heard, but they did hurry around the corner and out of sight.

Chuckling softly to himself, Delacort paused for only a second to check the oncoming traffic, of which there was none, before crossing Main Street even though the traffic light was red.

Straight ahead, on the corner of High and Main streets, the international arms dealer smiled at the sight of the Anchor Café, the green-and-white-striped awning fluttering in the gentle breeze above a score of wrought-iron tables and chairs, which were surprisingly comfortable. Taking a seat at an empty table, Delacort smiled at the other patrons, then snapped his fingers for service. For anybody else, this would only result in them being the last person in the café to get service, but Delacort was feared, and a big tipper, so the staff fought over who got to handle the Little King of Columbus.

“Good morning, sir!” a pretty young waitress said, hurrying over with a menu.

“Good morning, Susan.” The arms dealer smiled, handing it right back. “Eggs Benedict, please, with bacon on the side. Coffee, black, whole wheat toast with orange marmalade and a date tonight? I have tickets for…well, anything that would please you, my dear.”

Taking down the order on her pad, Susan giggled at the pass and calmly walked away without responding. The woman knew full well that the big man did not mean it, even if she had been interested in a brief dalliance with him. This was just a game he played with the staff to amuse himself, that was all. Which suited them fine. There were rumors about some of the other games he liked to play, and only a suicidal lunatic would go to bed with a man whose tastes ran in the direction of silk ties and whips.

Shifting his chair so that the back was to the brick wall, Delacort reached out a hand and a bodyguard passed over a folded newspaper. Nodding his thanks, the arms dealer went straight to the political page. However, there was no more information about the terrorist attack on the airport in France, so he folded the paper and placed it aside. Ah, well, such is life. He always got a vicarious thrill reading about what his clients did with the munitions he sold. The arms dealer knew it was foolish, but if he could not do the killing personally, then at least he could have a note of satisfaction that his weapons were being handled by professionals.

Just then the wail of a police siren caught his attention, and the bodyguards moved fast to close around their employer as a black SUV screeched around the corner. A blond giant was behind the wheel, another man sitting alongside apparently having trouble loading some sort of a shotgun. In the backseat, two more men were firing handguns out the open windows of the SUV at the flock of police cars in hot pursuit.

Instantly everybody in the café started to scream and run for cover, but Delacort knew professionals at a glance, and stayed where he was to enjoy the show. Instinctively the arms dealer identified each of the weapons in sight—Atchisson 12-gauge autoshotgun, Colt .45 pistol, Model 1911 and a classic 9 mm Beretta. Whomever these criminals were, they knew guns, that was for certain. Naturally, the cops were all armed with a boring and predictable 9 mm Glock. A nice enough weapon, if safety, not death, was your main concern.

Wheeling around an island in the wide street, the men in the SUV hammered the police cars with a hail of hot lead, the rounds slamming off the sides of the vehicles, smashing a sideview mirror and shattering a headlight. The cops answered back with their service-issue Glocks, the 9 mm rounds hammering the back of the SUV but failing to achieve penetration.

That piqued his interest and Delacort raised an eyebrow. The SUV had armor plating? Exactly who were these men?

As the cars raced around the island once more, one of the men in the SUV shot out a store window, showering the street with glass. But the resilient tires of the police cars went over the sparkling shards without blowing a tire.

One of his bodyguards grunted at the tactic, and Delacort agreed. It had been a good try, and his respect for these men increased. Mentally, he wished them well. Careening off the side of a parked laundry truck, the SUV fishtailed out of control for a moment, then straightened and took off down Main Street. A police helicopter appeared over the Prudential building, distracting Delacort for a split second, and when he looked back the man saw a female police officer jerk backward as blood erupted from her ruined throat. Grabbing the ghastly wound with both hands, she fell to the ground, her Glock dropping to the street and clattering away to disappear into a sewer grating.

“Sons of bitches!” another cop bellowed, thumbing a switch on his Glock before pulling the trigger.

Incredibly, Delacort thought the weapon had exploded, then he realized it was a Model 18, exactly the same as the one under his jacket. Chattering away, the machine pistol discharged in a continuous roar and the SUV, flipped up. A tire blew, a window shattered and the head of the man loading the shotgun seemed to get hit as blood splashed across the inside of the windshield.

“Good shot,” Delacort noted with a chuckle as bank bags jounced out of the open trunk to hit the pavement and break open. Stacks of bills went everywhere, and a police car plowed through them, sending out a corona of loose bills that the breeze took and began to spread across the intersection like manna from heaven.

Numerous civilians who had been crouched in hiding, now insanely charged into the street to grab whatever they could. More bundles fell from the speeding SUV. But Delacort noticed that these came from the men in the rear seat and were not the bank bags in the trunk. What in the world could those be?

Black smoke exploded from two of the bundles, and then the rest banged loudly, throwing numerous small objects across the pavement.

Plowing throw the smoke, the police cars suddenly lurched of out control as all of their tires blew at exactly the same instant. Riding on only the rims, the drivers fought to control the screeching vehicles as showers of bright sparks were thrown up behind them like fireworks. Forcing the cars to a stop, the police inside jumped out before the crippled vehicles rocked to a halt, and took off on foot. But the SUV was impossibly distant by now, and the snarling men angrily holstered their weapons. A few of them started to shout orders to the civilians dashing around, grabbing at the whirlwind of money, while older and obviously wiser cops started to speak into their radios.

Kneeling on the pavement, a policewoman with a spreading bloodstain on her arm, lifted something small and metallic-looking from the street.

“And what the fuck is this?” she demanded of nobody in particular, turning the object over to inspect it from every angle.

As his bodyguards relaxed their defensive postures, Delacort smiled in amusement, recognizing the item as a caltrop, a primitive device invented by the Romans to stop the advance of barefoot enemies, but it worked equally as well against modern-day cars. It was a small triangular piece of wood with sharp nails driven through to point outward from each side. No matter how they fell, if a tire went over one, the nails deflated it, and that was the end of the chase. Well, against the police, or the FBI, Delacort noted mentally. The CIA and Homeland had puncture-proof military tires. Against those, a thousand caltrops would be as ineffectual as throwing spitballs.

“Still, I wonder if those would sell well wholesale,” the arms dealer muttered, snapping his fingers for the waitress once more before returning to the newspaper. He was hungrier than ever now, and sure that the staff would come out of hiding eventually.

T AKING A CORNER on two wheels, Lyons angled sharply into a parking garage and took the ramp to the second level at breakneck speed. Smashing aside a row of bright orange safety cones, the Stony Man commando slammed on the brakes as the back of a huge Mack truck came into view.

Decelerating quickly, Lyons had the SUV down to only 50 mph when he hit the sloped sheet of corrugated steel leading into the open rear of the cargo truck. The front end crashed against the metal, throwing the people inside hard against their seat belts, the bloody mannequin in the passenger seat—Bloody Bob—flopping wildly. As the interior of the truck filled his sight, Lyons threw the SUV into Reverse. The transmission gave a metallic groan, then slammed the vehicle to a halt, a barrage of shrapnel blowing out the bottom as gears shattered under the abrupt change in direction.

Rocking slightly back and forth on the shock absorbers, the men in the SUV clawed at their seat belts as the blacksuits from the Farm dropped the access ramp, then swung the doors closed. Darkness descended with a strident clang.

Only a few seconds later there came the sound of a police siren racing past the truck, then fading into the distance as the cops streaked along the ramps of the empty garage, going higher and higher.

“Well, that was interesting,” Hermann Schwarz said, wiping his mustache clean with a palm. The hand came away streaked with crimson, none of it from him. “You know, I’ve had fun before, and this isn’t it.” Standing average height, and sporting plain brown hair, Schwarz was an ordinary-looking man, and there was nothing about him to show that “Gadgets” was one of the top electronics experts in the world.

“You can say that again, brother,” Rosario “The Politician” Blancanales muttered, brushing back his wavy crop of salt-and-pepper hair. Built along a more stocky frame, Blancanales had been a Black beret before joining the Stony Man team, and although an expert in psychological warfare, he radiated physical strength the way a furnace did heat.

Schwarz glanced forward. “Carl, how’s Bob doing?”

“He’s dead,” Lyons said, reaching over to shake the human-size mannequin. At the touch, more red fluid gushed from the wound in its head, and a few more plastic teeth sprayed forward to bounce off the dashboard, sounding like rattling dice.

“Damn. Don’t think I can fix him this time,” Schwarz said with a frown. “And still make him appear human.”

“Fair enough. He’s ready for permanent retirement,” Blancanales agreed, placing his Colt 1911 on the seat. “Let him rest in peace.”

“Rest in pieces, you mean,” Schwarz said, chuckling as he reached under the seat to extract a briefcase.

In the front seat, Lyons merely grunted at the feeble joke as he pulled the Atchisson shotgun from the stiff fingers of the mannequin and started wiping the weapon down with a damp cloth to remove the sticky theatrical blood. Personally, Lyons was glad the charade had come off without a hitch. Time was short, and with no other place to start an investigation, this desperate plan was their only way to try to find the Airwolves, and their pretend streetfight could have gone wrong in a hundred different ways. Thankfully there had been no real accidents. The cop who had died in the police car chasing them had only been the sister of Bob, Dyin’ Donna, operated by Schwarz by remote control.

In a muted rumble, the big diesel engine of the Mack truck lumbered into life, revving a few times to build power before smoothly moving forward.

Now that the team was in motion once more, Schwarz opened the briefcase and tucked the partially loaded Beretta into the soft gray foam, followed by the Colt. Then the man extracted a duplicate pair of weapons, only these were adorned with tiny splotches of yellow paint to mark them as real weapons. Passing the Colt to Blancanales, Schwarz briefly inspected the Beretta before slipping in a magazine of live ammunition.

Rubbing off the yellow paint, Blancanales did the same to his Colt. Long ago, the team had learned that using blanks in their weapons to simulate a firefight would not fool professionals. The guns looked the same and sounded the same, but the blanks shot out a feeble spray of sparks from the end of the muzzle instead of a hot lance of flame the way a live round did. That was the kind of mistake that could easily cost lives. So for these kinds of maneuvers, the Stony Man operatives used theatrical weapons acquired from a Hollywood production company.

The safe weapons were identical to real guns, but the interior of the barrel was throttled down to only a slim passage so that the quarter-charge of powder in the cartridges sent off a very realistic-looking muzzle flash. There was even enough of a kick to operate the complex loading mechanism and cycle in the next round. Which was how a studio had its pampered movie stars dramatically fire off machine guns in a film without them looking foolish, or worse, accidentally killing somebody. Blanks sent off wads of cardboard, supposedly harmless, but under the right conditions, they could break bones, and occasionally the cheap brass in the cartridges shattered, sending out a deadly spray of razor-sharp metal that killed every bit as easily as hot lead.

With a jounce, the truck exited the parking garage and started along High Street, heading northward. The police cars howled in the distance, moving east along Main Street.

“Mighty nice of the local cops to help us out on this,” Schwarz said, threading a sound suppressor onto the barrel of his Beretta before holstering the weapon.

“Anything to help Homeland Security,” Lyons replied, inspecting the Atchisson for last vestiges of the fake blood. When satisfied, he eased in a drum of 12-gauge cartridges and clicked on the safety. “Besides, they hate Delacort with a passion that can only be measured in kilotons.”

“The enemy of my enemy, eh?” Blancanales asked, tucking the Colt into a shoulder holster. “Come on, let’s get out of this filthy car and get dressed. I’m covered with fake brains.”

Grinning wickedly, Schwarz opened his mouth to speak.

“Not a fucking word, Gadgets,” Blancanales warned sternly.

The man feigned shock. “Who, me?”

Exiting the battered SUV, the team retrieved duffel bags from restraining straps on the walls of the truck and pulled out designer suits, expensive Italian shoes, Rolex watches and fat plastic containers of moist towellettes. Stripping to the skin, the men washed off the fake blood and began to get dressed again, starting with imported silk shorts. They needed to appear rich, and there was no telling how detailed a search Delacort might have his bodyguards perform.

“So, who are we this time?” Schwarz asked, splashing on some expensive French cologne.

“We’re mercenaries called Red Five,” Lyons replied, slipping on a designer shirt. “We’re a radical splinter group of the Aryan Nation.”

Pulling up his pants, the man stopped. “We’re stinking Nazis?”

“Aryans,” Blancanales corrected. “Not Nazis.”

“The difference being…?”

“I’ll get back to you on that.”

“Swell,” Schwarz muttered, buckling his belt.

“How long before we contact Delacort?” Schwarz asked.

“This evening,” Lyons replied, sliding on a pair of sunglasses. “Any sooner and he might become suspicious. We get only one chance at this, so we have to play it low and slow.”

“And if he doesn’t know anything about the Airwolves’ military ordnance?” Blancanales asked, sliding a gold signet ring onto his hand. Clenching his fist, the ring blossomed into a flower of razor blades. Easing his hand, the ring snapped shut, returning to the appearance of mere jewelry.

“Then we convince him to find out,” Lyons said coldly.

CHAPTER THREE

Quintana Roo, Mexico

Swiftly, the massive C-130 Hercules airplane glided through the clear sky like a winged mountain. David McCarter had turned off the huge engines as the coastline of Mexico came into sight, and was now dead-sticking it, flying the colossal warplane with his hands on the yoke, directed by instinct and years of training.

Strapped into the copilot’s seat, a tall, lean man in a military jumpsuit was using both hands to operate a military image enhancer. More than merely magnifying a view of the ground below, the device also scanned in the ultraviolet and infrared spectrum. Boasting window-in-window capability, the display screen showed a real-time view of the ground below, plus a series of static shots, the view constantly shifting as the cameras focused briefly on anything hot enough to register as a potential threat.

Thomas Jackson Hawkins had been raised in Texas, and was outlandishly proud of the fact. A genial man who smiled a lot, Hawkins spoke slowly, but moved with lightning-fast reflexes when it was time to kill. A former member of the elite Delta Force, Hawkins was trained in quiet kill techniques, but much preferred a thunder and lightning blitzkrieg.

“Okay, thermals read clean again. Aside from a campfire some kids built, there’s nothing down there but a coyote. No sign of any motorized traffic or other campfires.”

“Good to know,” David McCarter stated, putting his full attention on the stygian darkness ahead.

The former SAS commando knew that the bustling city of Cancun was only a few miles to the east, but the electric glow of the famous vacation spot was completely swallowed by the sheer distance, along with the endlessly shifting mountains of rolling sand dunes. The Phoenix Force leader felt like he was flying with the windows painted back, the night was so dark. His muscles were starting to ache from the strain of being constantly ready to dodge an outcropping.