LITMIR.BIZ

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nearby beach the corpses of several joggers dotted the shoreline, their blood still staining the waves as they washed over the still forms, giving them a horrible mockery of life.

      “Look over there,” Lyons told his teammates.

      Through the thinning smoke, the men could see the long barrels of the old WWII cannons rising above the small museum and fast-food stand.

      Originally, Sandy Hook had been a large brick tower resembling a lighthouse, a stony keep equipped with muzzle-loading cannons to attack any Imperial British frigates harrowing the guerrilla fighters in the Revolutionary War. During World War II, it became a concrete fortress armed with banks of sixteen-inch cannons that could blow open the hull of any German warship. During the cold war underground installation had been added and Sandy Hook became a Minute Man missile base, designed to knock down Soviet ICBMs. Sandy Hook had long been a bastion of defense for the east coast of the nation, and had seen a lot of fighting, including an invasion of German frogmen near the middle of World War II, saboteurs sent to blow phone lines, collapse bridges, burn down hospitals and movie theaters, and generally inflict as much harm and terror as possible upon the American people. Softening tactics for Hitler. A prelude to invasion. Paving the way. The big guns of Sandy Hook had fired upon the midnight invaders just as they got out of the rubber rafts, and not a Nazi agent reached American soil alive. Or even in one piece.

      But that was sixty years ago. These days, the Minute Man missile base had been moved inland, away from the vulnerable beach, and the gigantic cannons had been disarmed, the barrels blocked with a concrete plug, the hydraulic lines removed, the firing pins gone. Once the guardians of the United States, the cannons were reduced to slightly rusty exhibits on public display, relics of the past standing alongside a small outside museum that told of the glory days, with a small gift shop. But the Pentagon Theoretical Danger Team had postulated there was a potential terrorist danger to New York at Sandy Hook. Long ago, when the cannons worked, they had a range of twelve miles, and Manhattan was just over the horizon, nine miles away. But the titanic weapons had been neutralized, disarmed, virtually disassembled. It would take a major undertaking to get them live again. So the Pentagon had placed the museum on the Watch Alert list and then promptly forgot about the place entirely. It was too nebulous a threat to be taken seriously.

      Suddenly two men in greasy mechanic’s coveralls appeared on the roof of the restrooms building and started firing assault rifles. Able Team dived for cover behind a painted wooden bench and came up returning fire. The chattering M-16 assault rifles held by Blancanales and Schwarz peppered the structure, driving the enemy under cover. When the firing stopped, they popped back and Lyon’s Atchisson sprang into action. In a bull roar, the weapon discharged 12-gauge shotgun shells in a long burst. The Chinese agents were literally blown apart, their bodies shattered from the hellstorm of steel buckshot.

      Even before the corpses tumbled to the ground, Able Team was on the move again.

      Early that morning, the first indication that something was amiss had been a radiation sensor hidden in a tollbooth plaza on the Garden State Parkway. Considered the finest road in the world, the GSP actually received visitors from foreign countries to study its construction so that the builders could return to their homelands and try to duplicate the modern marvel. Tourists from New Jersey visiting Portugal, Argentina or Australia often found themselves experiencing déjâ vu as they encountered an exact duplicate of the New Jersey road cutting through the rolling hills of a foreign landscape.

      When the cars stopped to pay the toll, one of many along the rather expensive GSP, every vehicle was probed for contraband. Chemical sniffers found a lot of drugs and sometimes a corpse in the trunk. But this day the hidden sensors spiked as weapons-grade plutonium was detected coming off Exit 9.

      Quickly, computer records were checked, but since there was no record of such a radioactive source coming onto the superhighway, the state police tagged the report as a possible glitch. The police filed a copy of the report with Homeland Security and a minute later Stony Man knew about it. Since Exit 9 was dangerously close to Sandy Hook, Barbara Price had sent Able Team to do a recon. When the men arrived, they’d expected to find an ore truck full of pitchblende, or maybe a mobile health clinic. Portable X-ray machines used radioactive thulium and often set off detectors by mistake.

      Instead, Able Team had discovered a parking lot full of dead tourists and an empty truck that had been full of greasy machinery. But not anymore. Grabbing weapons out of the back of their van, the team got hard and moved in fast. They didn’t like the combination of murder, Sandy Hook and radiation. There was such a thing as nuclear artillery shell….

      “Any heat?” Lyons demanded, checking the Atchisson on the run. He wished there were reloads for the hungry weapon, half of the shells were already gone, and this battle was barely ten minutes old.

      “Bet your ass, there is,” Schwarz said, firing a burst into some bushes. Leaves flew, but nobody tumbled out dead. Stealth wasn’t a concern, the Red Star agents knew they were here. Schwarz was the electronics expert for the team, and his wristwatch was also a short-range Geiger counter. However, loud clicks during a battle could get a soldier killed, so instead the device vibrated as a warning. At the moment, it was going wild.

      “They must be arming the shell,” Blancanales repeated, pausing to roll a dummy grenade into the gift shop.

      Inside the building, men cursed in Chinese and came bursting out, firing their weapons. Already in position, Able Team caught the Red Star agents in a withering cross fire and they died to a man.

      Then a man and woman stumbled into view from around a corner. The man was carrying a wicker basket and the woman was holding a baby swaddled in blankets in her arms. Neither one was Chinese, they looked more Italian than anything else.

      “Don’t shoot!” the man yelled, stepping in front of his wife. “Please! I’ll pay you whatever you want!”

      “It’s a trick!” Blancanales cried, raising his M-16.

      Dropping the blanket, the snarling woman pulled a compact SDMG machine pistol from inside the plastic doll and started firing. Blancanales blew her away just as the man swung a Skorpion machine gun from behind his back. Schwarz shot the man in the chest to no effect, then Lyons triggered the Atchisson, the maelstrom of double-aught stainless-steel buckshot removing his face and opening the throat and lower belly like a can of spaghetti. Already dead, the Chinese operative spun, his hands instinctively tightening on the weapon, the deadly Skorpion spraying lead randomly as he toppled to the ground. Ricochets went everywhere and Schwarz grunted as a slug hit him in the stomach.

      “Goddamn mercs,” he muttered, rubbing his stomach. “The guy must have been wearing body armor.”

      “Still hurts like a bitch,” Lyons stated, hefting the Atchisson. Only a few cartridges remained. After that, he was down to grenades and his pistol.

      “Bet your ass it does,” Blancanales agreed, checking their flank. Even the titanium and Teflon NATO body armor that the team wore under their shirts still occasionally broke bones when hit by large-caliber weaponry. But a week in hospital was preferable to eternity in the grave.

      “Better bed than dead,” Schwarz quipped. “Hey, how’d you know it was a trap?”

      “She was holding the baby wrong. The kid would have been dead from strangulation the way she was doing it.”

      “Cover me,” Lyons said, knotting a handkerchief around his face. Going to the museum, he checked the door for boobytraps, then swept inside, the Atchisson at the ready.

      The place was a shambles, with two whimpering women bound and gagged in the corner. Hostages for the enemy agents to use as bargaining chips if necessary. He had expected something like that. Able Team had fought Red Star before.

      Pulling out a knife, Lyon advanced upon them. The older woman fainted while the pretty teenager tried to wiggle away. With a slash, the ex-cop cut ropes from their wrists. Stunned, the teen looked at her freed wrists and then at Lyons, comprehension dawning in her face.

      “Don’t y’all worry none, ma’am, “he drawled, affecting a thick Texas accent. “We’re Delta

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