LITMIR.BIZ

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boiling. Though he was part of the Stony Man Farm operation, he was still a veteran of the United States Army, and the death of brother soldiers always struck him hard. And unlike Carl Lyons, who mastered his berserker’s temper long ago, Schwarz got very cold when he got angry.

      “We’ll take care of this,” Blancanales told him. “That’s our job. Revenge for the good guys…semiofficial style.”

      “Prosecution to the max,” Lyons added. He picked up the C-4 to take it to the Rangers at the entrance. “I heard you two talking. We’re going overland?”

      Schwarz nodded. His lips were drawn tight, trying to control his emotions.

      “I’ll see if we can get a pilot,” Lyons replied. “Gadgets…”

      Schwarz glanced up.

      “They’re dead. They just don’t know it,” Lyons reassured.

      Schwarz nodded tightly, as if the muscles in his neck were coiled to the breaking point. “I gotcha, big guy. Prosecution to the max.”

      THE CANYON WAS too tight to land a UH-60, but a Hughs 500D “Little Bird” could set down nicely. The pilot was a clean-cut kid named Lieutenant Tim Sarlets.

      “You boys call for a ride?” he asked.

      “Yeah,” Schwarz replied. He climbed into the shotgun seat. He had one of his radio monitors in his lap, and looked at the Army pilot. “We’re going to be doing a little circling, triangulating a radio signal. Think you can do that?”

      “Sure thing,” Sarlets answered. “Any other requests?”

      “Keep us low,” Lyons told him. “We don’t want whoever we’re triangulating to spot us coming.”

      Sarlets gave the big, blond ex-cop a short salute. “Roger that. I kind of figured you didn’t want to be seen.”

      “I like this guy. Can we keep him around?” Blancanales asked.

      “We’ll have to ask the boss,” Lyons responded.

      Loaded up, the men of Able Team strapped in and the Little Bird rocketed skyward.

      CARL LYONS PERCHED in the open side-door of the helicopter. In the darkness below, somewhere, a radio transmitter broadcast a signal that was intended to kill dozens of American soldiers on their home soil. On top of a massacre by armored juggernauts, the tragedy would have been compounded as more brave men died and the trail to the murderous masterminds would have been closed off by a collapsed mountain.

      His knuckles flexed white around the grip of his Beowulf M-4. He’d replaced the magazine of tungsten-cored antimatériel rounds with a load of 350-grain jacketed hollowpoint bullets. Even against a living opponent who wore body armor, they’d shatter bones and mangle muscle behind Kevlar. Through the night-vision goggles attached to the helicopter helmet, the terrain beneath him was a weird, alien world of green hazy stone and deep shadows. He spotted movement and shouldered the Beowulf, but held his fire as a goat trotted out of a dark recess. Lyons lowered the rifle and shook his head.

      “Anything yet?” he asked, impatience gnawing at his core.

      Schwarz looked up from his map. He marked off another zone where the radio signal started to fade. “One more sweep, Ironman.”

      “Good.” Lyons grunted. He double-checked the 40 mm high explosive round in the M-203 launcher stored under the barrel. Just because it was unlikely that they would run into the deadly drones that swept down on Yuma didn’t mean he didn’t want to have something that could devastate the slaughtering robots.

      Schwarz’s murmurings, readings of the field monitor as he registered signal strength, were a low drone, a constant reminder that this was slow, tedious work. Lyons strained his ears, listening for the readings. He picked up Gadgets’s mutters of a lower signal strength and tensed even before the electronics genius made his announcement.

      “That’s the box,” Lyons stated. He pointed toward a ripple of shadows and outcroppings. “Sarlets, put us down. We’re on foot from here.”

      “I’ve got no clean spots to land. This is rough terrain,” the pilot answered.

      “That’s good news,” Blancanales replied. “They couldn’t bring heavy antiaircraft along.”

      “How about a crane helicopter?” Schwarz asked.

      Lyons shook his head. “This place is too close to Yuma to pull that kind of—”

      “The drones were invisible to radar,” Gadgets reminded him.

      The Able Team leader’s jaw set firmly as he scanned the shadowy terrain ahead. “If they had stealth robot tanks, then they could build a stealth helicopter.”

      A red light buzzed on the control console. “We’re hot! Target radar lock!” the pilot announced as he wrenched the helicopter hard.

      Strapped in, Lyons felt jerked like a puppy on a leash. Out of the darkness, he saw a flaming halo growing in intensity and following the aircraft’s movements as the chopper thrashed.

      He knew exactly what the flaming halo was—the rocket exhaust of an antiaircraft missile, the lethal shaft of its warhead forming the black void in the center of a hellfire ring.

      Death shrieked at the men of Able Team on a jet of flame.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Virginia

      T.J. Hawkins sighed and slipped his Glock 26 into its hip holster. A second, identical tiny Glock was holstered at his ankle, and two 12-round magazines were clipped to his belt. He looked over to Calvin James as the man checked the loads on his .45-caliber Colt Commander and his backup short-barreled Colt Python.

      “Jet Aer G-96 in an ankle sheath,” James told Hawkins.

      “We’re going to CIA Headquarters. They’re just going to try to take our weapons away anyhow,” Hawkins replied. “Why do we have to run this drill every time we go out armed?”

      Gary Manning and Rafael Encizo both shook their heads as they made sure of their weapon loads.

      James, a tall, black man, held up his hand to the others. “T.J. hasn’t done as much legwork as we have, guys. Just because we’ve had some pretty soft travels for the past few years with him on military flights and not a lot of street-level investigation…”

      Manning, a brawny Canadian, nodded. “I know. You were dropped in without being told how cold the water was with us. Since the majority of our activities lately have been paramilitary operations, T.J. hasn’t been given much exposure to the classic Stony Man Tourist Luck.”

      “Stony Man Tourist Luck?” Hawkins asked.

      Encizo, a handsome Cuban, grinned widely. “Whatever can come out of the woodwork will come out of the woodwork.”

      “Terrorists at the airport,” James began.

      “Thuggee assassins with strangling scarves,” Manning added.

      “Don’t forget wolves,” Encizo admonished Manning. “Of all the times to have been without my PPK…”

      “And ninjas,” James stated.

      “Like cucarachas.” Encizo spit.

      “This is CIA Headquarters, guys. Not downtown Beirut,” Hawkins explained. “Sometimes I think McCarter’s feeding you paranoid pills.”

      “We tried,” James said with a sigh.

      Manning slipped a magazine full of .357 Magnum slugs into the grip of his Desert Eagle and stuffed it in his shoulder holster. “No knives. But I have an Impact Kerambit wrench in my right front pocket.”

      The others nodded.

      “Come on,” Manning ordered. “T.J., you drive.”

      Hawkins

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