Seismic Surge - Don Pendleton

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that will cause the La Palma landslide.”

      The Briton grit his teeth, eyes alight. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy giving it to whoever we manage to catch hold of.”

      Manning winced, but let that flash of the old David McCarter pass. Even at his worst, the feisty ex-SAS man was hardly cruel, and was only ruthless to the point of ending a battle before it could harm bystanders. He might shoot a man in the back of the head, but only to keep a stray shot, or an intentional salvo of bullets from slaughtering innocents. When it came to handling murderers and other assorted thugs, if there was a personal bent toward McCarter’s duty, he was willing to go beyond the doctrine of using the minimum force necessary to end a conflict.

      “All right, does everyone have their assignments?” Manning asked.

      Officially, McCarter was the team leader. But Manning had a better bedside manner with teammates, and was generally the British warrior’s scientific adviser and the cooler head off which he could bounce ideas. Every member of Phoenix Force was a close friend to his teammates, but Manning and McCarter were especially close friends thanks to their cultural similarities—Canada and Britain sharing an allegiance and a loyalty to the Royal family, as well as both being original members of Phoenix Force. While Encizo, the other original veteran of the team, joked that the two bickered like an old married couple, it was their similarities and the sharp contrast of temperaments that made the two of them an effective team.

      McCarter didn’t look particularly happy, but he nodded at Manning, thanking him for focusing on the present.

      “We’ve got ’em,” Hawkins said.

      “T.J., I’ll need you to delay in hooking up with Cal and me,” McCarter said. “Head to Tarajal and scope out the scene there. You can coordinate and reunite later.”

      “Why not me?” Encizo asked.

      “I want this done from land. Someone who could fit in,” McCarter said. “You’re a little too memorable. T.J., on the other hand, can be completely nondescript and act the role of someone new stumbling into town.”

      Hawkins shrugged. “I’ll take care of things. Take my weapons bag with you. If it goes sideways, I don’t want to be tempted to risk overkill.”

      “Pistols and knife, just in case,” McCarter admonished. “We’ll keep a hold of the bigger stuff. If you need something with more oomph...”

      “Y’all are doing it wrong,” Hawkins concluded with his wry Texas grin.

      McCarter nodded in assent. “We hold off on the shooting, at least until we get the lay of the land. That doesn’t mean we can’t kill any of these Option Omega bastards, but we do it quiet. Broken necks can be made to look more like accidents than bullet holes.”

      Hawkins nodded.

      “One last word of advice, though.” McCarter paused. “We’re planning to keep a low profile. But you know what military planning is...”

      “It’s what you have in mind until you actually run into the enemy,” Hawkins answered.

      “Stay sharp, lads. This is going to get bloody.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      The men of Able Team had bound and separated their two prisoners, isolated from each other by nothing more than a strip of duct tape over eyes and mouths, preventing communication between them. Rather than immediately asking them questions, the three Stony Men preferred to work smart, letting them speculate on their own about their fate.

      Thanks to fingerprinting and analysis of their equipment, the trio were able to gather some useful information on the two gunmen. They got names.

      One was Stephen Baxter, drummed out of the U.S. Army Reserve for selling equipment out the back gate of his base. He then worked as hired muscle for Tonberth Security. There was little surprise to the fact that Tonberth was a contractor for the Jeopardy Corporation. However, the guns and communications were not linked to any purchases made by Tonberth, and Baxter was no longer employed by the company, having been let go for the same reason as his dismissal from the USAR.

      The other gunman was Emmanuel Rosca, a Mexican national, although his fair skin and blue eyes painted a picture of him as someone from a family of pure European blood. Lyons knew this kind of man, especially if he were a violent, gun-toting thug. Able Team had once fought a conglomerate of Latin American racists, the Fascist International, who felt it their birthright, by dint of their European blood, to command those who were descended from the native Central and South American Indians or those who had “sullied” their whiteness by lying down and creating generations of “mud people.”

      The group had considered itself the Reich of the Americas, and Able Team had waged a long, brutal war with this particular breed of bigot.

      It was no surprise to Able Team, then, when Rosca’s background turned up a series of dropped charges of violence or convictions on lesser crimes in Mexico, always avoiding prosecution for hate crimes or terrorist acts. Rosca had been rumored to have been a lieutenant in Los Soldados Blancos, the White Soldiers, but it was nothing that the Mexican authorities could actually pin on him. He’d disappeared about a year ago.

      The correlation of the White Soldiers to Option Omega, a connection established by Stony Man Farm, was only cause for more concern.

      “What’s the approach?” Lyons asked Blancanales.

      Rosario Blancanales had been called the Politician, or Pol for short, because of his way with words and ability to convince people to follow his suggestions, not because he was a liar who slung mud. Blancanales was one of Stony Man’s best interrogators, showing an uncanny skill at delving into someone’s wants and fears and utilizing diplomacy to open doors that even Carl “Ironman” Lyons couldn’t kick down. “I’m going to start with Rosca.”

      Lyons glared at the Mexican bigot as he squirmed, wrists and ankles bound, eyes and mouth sealed off with duct tape, ears rendered numb by headphones pumping white noise.

      “I know,” Blancanales added, reading the enmity that Lyons held for Rosca’s predecessors. Lyons had been captured, tortured and brainwashed by the Fascist International, a month-long ordeal that occurred in the wake of one of his best friends being murdered by those self-same “liberators.” “Carl, I know that this is one group that you wouldn’t mind resorting to killing with a thousand cuts. But we need answers.”

      Lyons nodded. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t even feel like executing the bound-up little bitch. Killing helpless prisoners isn’t my way.”

      “I know that,” Blancanales said. He glanced at Rosca. “Though, mind if I let you build up a head of steam before I begin chatting him up?”

      Lyons smirked. “Oh, I don’t need to build up a foul mood. I installed a tap for that years ago.”

      Blancanales chuckled. “I figured as much. Gadgets and I’ve been getting pints off of you for years.”

      “The fear of a psychopath, ready to rock,” Lyons growled. His good humor only added a frenzied mania to his angry appearance.

      It was time for Blancanales to begin his work at dismantling the White Soldier’s defenses.

      * * *

      HERMANN SCHWARZ WASN’T called Gadgets as an ironic statement of his technical ineptitude. The man was an electronics engineer and innovator, having done much of the development of some of the surveillance and communications systems that kept the teams in constant communication with their headquarters in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

      Having gotten hold of the communications carried by the mercenary team that had attacked them, Schwarz was on the job. This wasn’t a toil for him, either. His was the kind of inquisitive mind that had dismantled and reassembled everything from the smallest robot toy to the most complex, top-of-the-line personal computer ever since he’d developed the coordination to operate a screwdriver.

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