LITMIR.BIZ

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them to the Farm, right away. I’ll do the same. Then I’ll talk to Barb.”

      “Then what?” Blancanales asked.

      “We roll on the next target by priority, unless we hear otherwise. And we might. Guys, I don’t like where this is heading.”

       CHAPTER FIVE

      “Hal, I don’t like where this is heading,” McCarter said. “You don’t mean to say you’d leave those people?”

      “I’m saying,” Brognola said patiently over the scrambled, secure satellite phone connection, “that we have mission priorities here. Will saving the deputy commissioner’s family further the mission, or will it stop us from getting to the heart of this?”

      “Bloody hell, Hal!” McCarter spit. He paced back and forth outside the Range Rover, which was still parked to block the dirt road to the cement plant. The rest of Phoenix Force looked on, weapons at the ready. Gopalan remained a prisoner inside the Range Rover.

      “David, I’m not insensitive to the issues at play,” Brognola told him. “But the reports coming in from Able only confirm that this goes as deep as we feared. We’ve cross-checked the IDs of the arsonists Able took down outside Chicago. Some are locals, young people with ties to environmentalist groups. The other dead are Russian-born mercenaries, one of whom is former military.”

      “What the hell are Russian mercs doing working with green firebombers in the United States?”

      “We don’t know the full extent of it yet,” Brognola said, “but it’s clear that the operation in India to hit the uranium plant, the political activities of World Workers United Party, and the terrorist activities of the Earth Action Front and the Purba Banglars are all likely linked. It’s the how and the why we don’t yet have. What we do know is that somehow the Earth Action Front is alerted to our interdiction efforts.”

      “The Farm is compromised?” McCarter asked.

      “No,” Brognola said. “But by your own account, you were anticipated in Nongstoin. If they weren’t waiting for you, they were waiting for someone, and they knew to mobilize fast. The question is, how? How deep does this go, and how far?”

      “What are you saying, Hal?”

      “I’m saying exactly what I said before. I’m saying that there is a conspiracy afoot here, David,” Brognola said. “As we know, it is one that links international ecoterrorism to politics in the United States, generally. Specifically, the group or groups responsible for the uranium seizure, starting with the Purba Banglars and continuing with the EAF, are the same groups, or somehow working for the same groups, that are funding the WWUP in the U.S. They’re using hardware in common. They’re armed and they’re obviously ready to use lethal force, which says they’re no longer biding their time or trying to blend in quietly. We’d have to be blind not to see the potential.”

      “So you definitely think the uranium is coming to the States,” McCarter said.

      “I do,” Brognola said. “We don’t yet know who’s orchestrating this. But the identifications of those you took down in Nongstoin have come back. With two exceptions, they’re locals, all of them known Purba Banglars or mercenaries known to work for terrorist groups regardless of affiliation. Two of them, however, came back as Earth Action Front operatives. Both of your EAF specimens were last reported active in Europe, in fact.”

      “So the two terrorist groups aren’t just fellow travelers. They’re working in common.”

      “Yes,” Brognola said. “And let’s not forget that one is a green group, while the other is Communist. For them to be working together tells me there’s some umbrella objective, something uniting them. And if they’re importing assistance all the way from Europe, and the groups are sharing advanced technology here and in the States, that speaks to heavy financing. All of it means this operation runs deep and wide. Just as we feared.”

      “Not good,” McCarter said.

      “Not good,” Brognola echoed. “And that is why we can’t afford to assign priorities incorrectly. You’re the field commander; it’s your call. Will rescuing the deputy commissioner’s family get us closer to the uranium? Will it help us stop it from coming to the U.S.?”

      McCarter stopped and considered that. He trashed the cigarette he’d been sucking on, exhaling a plume of blue-white smoke as he retrieved the butt. “Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, it will, Hal, and I believe that. I’ll be straight with you. I don’t want to leave them hanging. But we’re dry here, and this was the most likely prospect. If we can take one or more of these blokes alive, we might be able to get ahead of the rest of this lot. They might be able to tell us where to look next, give us a better shot than an educated guess. I admit, I’m following my nose, Hal. But you know how it can be in the field. I want to see how deep this rabbit hole goes.”

      “Okay. Do you know where the family is being held?”

      McCarter looked to the Range Rover, where Gopalan stared out from the side window fearfully. “Not yet,” he said. “But I will in a moment.”

      T HE SLUM TO WHICH an only too eager Gopalan directed Phoenix Force was as miserable as any the team members had seen in their extensive counterterrorist operations abroad. It had taken relatively little persuading to make the man talk. McCarter had simply leveled his Hi-Power at the Indian’s head and thumbed the hammer back, then asked the question. Whatever loyalty Gopalan had for the Purba Banglars, it hadn’t gone very far when his own neck was on the line. Whatever the man had been paid—McCarter would dearly have loved to know where the money was coming from, ultimately—hadn’t bought much loyalty, either.

      They’d dropped Gopalan with the local Indian military police. Whether that would do any good was anybody’s guess. For all the Phoenix Force leader knew, Gopalan would be on the streets again in minutes, depending on how loudly money talked and how badly infiltrated with Purba operatives, or sympathizers, the local authorities were. Certainly the Purba Banglars had no difficulty placing an operative in the deputy commissioner’s office, where their interests could be monitored district-wide. Silently, McCarter cursed the bureaucracy that worked to the advantage of terrorists like these. If Phoenix Force had just come in and made their hit on the targets identified for them, rather than tipping their hand by following through with all the governmental and diplomatic rigmarole, things might have gone differently. But there was nothing to be done about that now. As for Gopalan, he would unlikely amount to much and had given them everything he was likely to know. He probably deserved a bullet in the brain, but the members of Phoenix Force were not cold-blooded murderers. No, giving him to the local authorities was the best route. Whatever happened to him thereafter was irrelevant to the mission at hand.

      What they found inside the hovel at the street address Gopalan had given up might change the Briton’s mind. But he hoped not. There was actually a very good chance that Jignesh’s family was alive and well, at least for now. They’d hardly be much use as leverage against the deputy commissioner if they were dead. Jignesh had a lot of stones, McCarter had to admit, cluing in the team despite the danger. McCarter hadn’t told Brognola, of course, but he did feel a certain obligation to Jignesh for that. The man had put his own family on the line to stop Phoenix Force from walking blindly into a trap, knowing it was the right thing to do for his country. There was real courage there, and the way he’d done it had been fairly smart, too. A man like that was not likely simply to take the Purba Banglars’ word for what had been done with the hostages. No, he’d more than likely insist on regular proof they were alive and well. So that meant there was a good chance they still were—though perhaps not for much longer now that their activities had been exposed.

      They parked the Range Rover in a fetid alley a block from the target, after taking a route around the area to survey the neighborhood. James’s sharp eyes picked out two different snipers on the rooftops. There were bound to be other guards, at ground level, but these were better hidden or simply not in evidence as the team made its recon of the area.

      “Remember,

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