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Stony Man Farm, Virginia

Barbara Price, Stony Man Farm’s mission controller, seated herself at the large conference table in the War Room, smoothing the slitted thigh-length skirt of the business suit that did nothing to hide her contours. The honey-blonde, model-beautiful Price did not look as if she had been awake since the earliest hours of the morning, but then neither did Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman. As the Farm’s cybernetics expert propelled himself into the room, turning smartly with a practiced motion of his wheelchair, he looked bright-eyed and alert. Clutched in one massive hand was an oversize insulated aluminum travel mug that was, no doubt, freshly filled with his stomach-roiling house blend of overpowering coffee. Kurtzman busied himself with the uplink controls set in the wall next to the giant plasma screen that dominated that end of the briefing room.

The men of Phoenix Force and Able Team filed in moments later, talking quietly among themselves or, in the case of Able Team leader Carl Lyons, sitting stone-faced and watching the room with cold blue eyes while silently sipping coffee from a disposable cup. The big, blond ex-cop, who had more than earned the nickname “Ironman” from his teammates, was flanked by Able Team members Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz and Rosario Blancanales.

Schwarz, who pushed his wire-framed glasses up on his nose while reaching for a coffee cup of his own, was a computer expert in his own right. He was also a veteran field operative. Many enemies had underestimated the slim, unassuming Schwarz…and had died because of it. Blancanales, for his part, looked calm and confident. He always did. The gray-haired, dark-eyed, soft-spoken Hispanic, a former Black Beret, was known among the men as “the Politician” for his ease with blending in with others, making them believe what he needed them to believe.

David McCarter, team leader of Phoenix Force, seated himself next to Blancanales and gave him a neighborly jab with one elbow, uncharacteristically cheerful by his usual standards. He emptied the aluminum can of Coca-Cola from which he was drinking and set it on the table with a loud, metallic ring. The lean, fox-faced Briton, a former SAS commando, had changed considerably in his time as leader of Phoenix, Price thought. While still something of a hothead, he took his job seriously and had led his fellow counterterrorist operatives to victory in mission after dangerous mission.

The other Phoenix Force veterans filled the opposite side of the conference table. There was Rafael Encizo, the stocky, well-built Cuban-born guerilla expert. Next to him hulked Gary Manning, the burly, square-jawed Canadian who served as Phoenix Force’s demolitions expert. A former antiterrorist operative with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Manning was the sort of solid, dependable soldier Price was always glad to have on hand. He was quiet, stable and more than willing to speak his mind if it was necessary.

To Manning’s left sat Calvin James, the lanky knife fighter and former SEAL who would always be the son of Chicago’s mean streets. Price mentally chided herself for indulging in such poetic phrasing, even privately. Still, looking at James and watching the muscles play under his dark skin, it was hard not to see him as some kind of predatory animal. Easygoing as he was, he was one of the most dangerous men she had ever met, and that was saying something, considering the company he kept. It occurred to Price that she sat in a room with some of the most experienced warriors on the face of the Earth. There was just one exception, and she would see him soon enough, when he returned from whatever mission had called him away most recently.

Beyond James, just pulling out a chair for himself, was T. J. Hawkins, formerly of the Army Rangers and the youngest member of Phoenix Force. Hawkins’s Southern drawl and easy manner belied his abilities as a fighter. He could hold his own with any of the men of Able Team or Phoenix Force, which was why he had been added to the latter’s ranks.

Also on hand was Akira Tokaido, the brilliant computer hacker who, with Carmen Delahunt and Huntington Wethers, formed the rest of Kurtzman’s cybernetics contingent. Tokaido took the chair next to where Kurtzman was stationed and placed an item on the table in front of them both. The device was about the size of a large universal remote control and bore several LEDs, buttons and knobs, all labeled in neatly printed black permanent marker.

Price unfolded her slim notebook computer, waiting as it connected wirelessly to the secured network that controlled the flat plasma screens on the wall of the briefing room. As she did so, the careworn face of Hal Brognola suddenly appeared on the screen at the end of the room. Larger than life-size, the face of the director of the Sensitive Operations Group stared out at them with hound-dog sincerity from behind his desk, the scrambled transmission emanating from his office on the Potomac. The big Fed was chewing something, which Price knew was probably an antacid. Dark circles under his eyes betrayed the sleepless night he had no doubt just had.

Not for the first time, Price wondered if Brognola’s job was slowly killing him. The man from Justice answered directly to the President, but the covert antiterrorist organization that was Stony Man Farm—from the hidden base in Shenandoah National Park, where they now sat, to the network of resources and assets that included the black-operations soldiers sitting in front of her now—was Brognola’s baby before it was anyone’s. The troubles of the world rested squarely on Brognola’s shoulders before they weighed down anyone else.

“Good morning, Hal,” Price said.

Brognola huffed something that might have been a “good morning” of his own. He was looking away from the camera and thus from the microphone when he did it. He found the papers he was looking for and then looked into the lens of his own camera again. “Let’s get started,” he said.

Price nodded and then looked to Kurtzman, who lowered the lights in the War Room by fifty percent. Price tapped several keys on her notebook computer. The plasma screens on the walls that did not bear Brognola’s image came to life with the pictures of three men.

“Now there’s a respectable-looking lot,” McCarter muttered.

“You’re looking at Nargoly Pyragy, Kanzi Nihemedow and Gandosi Burdimedezov,” Brognola said. “Turkmen nationals who, according to our intelligence networks, were part of a terror network run by the recently ‘elected’ leader of Turkmenistan, officially known as ‘President for Life Nikolo Ovan.’”

“‘Were’?” Hawkins drawled.

“Were.” Brognola nodded. “Because just over eight hours ago, they blew themselves up rather spectacularly in a shopping mall in upstate New York.”

Price tapped more buttons and the images shifted to show video footage of a sea of police cars, fire engines, emergency vehicles and SWAT vans parked in front of the blackened entrance to what could have been a shopping center in any part of the United States. A sharp-eyed Calvin James sat forward in his seat.

“Why am I seeing hazmat response teams in that shot, Hal?” he asked.

“Good catch,” Brognola said. “This was no ordinary terrorist bombing,” he explained. “Aaron?”

Kurtzman nodded and addressed the assembled operatives. “From the point of view of a terrorist,” he said, “the hardest part about perpetrating a successful bombing is not finding the materials to make a device. It is not even planting the device, in most cases. It is detonating the device at a time when the explosion will do more than just property damage. In other words, the hard part is figuring out how to kill the most people.”

“Timers,” Tokaido chimed in as if on cue, “are imprecise. If the bombers are going to be long gone before the bomb explodes, they can’t control the conditions at detonation. In Iraq especially, our military have become adept at dealing with one of the ways terrorists circumvent this problem, by using wireless phones to detonate roadside bombs when their spotters see victims in range. Signals of that type can be jammed, and specific locations can be hardened permanently against such technology.”

Schwarz nodded knowingly. Price knew that he had been on hand assisting Kurtzman and his team for the past few days, in anticipation of the problem they were now forced to confront directly.

“But what if,” Kurtzman said, picking up the narrative again, “terrorists developed a ‘smart’ bomb, a bomb that can ‘learn’ over time by sampling its environment and determining the optimum conditions for detonation?”

“You’d have the ultimate terrorist weapon,” Schwarz interjected. “A bomb that you can set, leave behind and trust to figure out for itself how to murder the most people.”

“Exactly,” Brognola said. “And that is just what we’re dealing with.”

It was Price’s turn to address the operatives. She keyed in several more images that were timed to display as she spoke. “Our intelligence and surveillance networks have known for some time that Iran was sponsoring, with just enough plausible deniability to stop world governments from intervening, the production of terrorist bombs and other weapons for use in hot spots like Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems, however, that they’re not satisfied with making things worse. A team of Iranian scientists, whose location we have not yet been able to determine, has developed and has been producing, for six months now, these smart terror bombs.”

“The bombs are shielded against explosives’ detection methods using specially sealed canisters prepared and then cleansed prior to deployment,” Tokaido said at Price’s nod. Pictures of a briefcase-size weapon containing three inset spheres appeared on the plasma screens. “Central Intelligence Agency operatives have recovered at least two of these devices from potential terror sites abroad, and it was thanks to the CIA that we received the initial hard data that confirmed what our data network sweeps have been turning up as chatter for several months now.”

“Each bomb,” Kurtzman said, “has electromagnetic, heat, motion and sound detectors, among other sensors, all of it connected to a powerful microcomputer that is devoted solely to figuring out when the most victims will be within range of its payload.”

“It’s that payload, Calvin,” Brognola said, “that is the reason for the hazmat response.”

James nodded grimly.

“The bombs,” Tokaido said, pointing at schematics that appeared on the screens as Price called them up, “contain three sealed bouncing betty spheres. They’re extremely innovative. The plastic explosives are shaped breakaway charges that produce deadly shrapnel, and they’re interlaced with a low-level nerve gas, a chemical-warfare agent that ensures the blast radius has an effective kill zone of close to a hundred percent.”

“Bloody hell,” McCarter said softly.

“And then some,” Brognola acknowledged. “The blast radius, fortunately, is only about a hundred yards, but it was enough to demolish a good portion of the shopping mall you see here.” The image on the secondary screens returned to the video footage of the upstate mall.

“How many dead in that attack?” Blancanales asked.

“Fortunately, only the terrorists,” Brognola said. “There were some wounded among the responding police, but no fatalities. Our assets locally have interviewed law enforcement and the one witness we have, a security guard who seems to be the luckiest bastard in a polyester uniform for miles. In his debriefing, he said that two men who had apparently broken in after hours attacked him and tried to stab him to death. Apparently he used a knife of his own to cut his way out of the situation and flee.”

“Three cheers for American ingenuity,” McCarter said.

Brognola ignored that. “Something about the attack made our security guard think terrorists instead of burglars, probably because New Yorkers in general are understandably nervous about that kind of thing. He called the cops, the cops sent in SWAT and a gun battle ensued. It was anything but one-sided.”

“How so, Hal?” Blancanales asked.

“The terrorists were fielding fully automatic weapons,” Brognola said. “The locals say the last of them was trying to surrender when the bomb exploded. The three shooters were the only ones within the blast zone, thankfully, and the locals were smart enough to pull out before they got too much exposure to the toxin. Apparently somebody on hand was worried about conventional chemical weapons or perhaps even a dirty nuke of some kind. Whatever their fears, they got out of the way, and that’s what saved them.”

“If we’re going up against these bombs,” James said, “are we looking at dealing with chemical warfare?”

“The toxin used has a very short chemical half-life, to misuse the terminology,” Schwarz explained. “Clear the blast zone and wait ten minutes, and there’s no danger. That’s the only thing working in our favor here.”

“What does a new superbomb created in Iran have to do with a Turkmen terror network?” Carl Lyons interjected. “Please tell me the answer isn’t what I think it is.”

“Sorry.” Brognola shook his head. “It is. The bomb used in the attack was, according to our analysis after the fact, the very same bomb the Iranians have developed. Once intelligence services identified the three dead terrorists, the Man gave us the go-ahead to move on this.”

“So we’re hitting Iran?” McCarter asked.

“Unfortunately,” Brognola sighed, “nothing is ever that simple.” He waited while Price cued up several more images: pictures of men dressed in formal suits, as well as one man in paramilitary garb.

“This,” Brognola said of the latter, “is Nikolo Ovan. He’s essentially a warlord. His ultranationalist party has swept to power in the last year and seized control of Turkmenistan, militarizing it and terrorizing the Turkmen people. Ovan fancies himself the next Stalin or something. He’s motivated, intelligent, and very, very brutal. His leadership of Turkmenistan threatens the stability of the entire region.”

“Recent discoveries of new, more extensive deposits of natural gas,” Price said, causing a map of Turkmenistan and its neighbors to display on the screens, “have made Turkmenistan more economically powerful than it has ever been. Our intelligence sources tell us Ovan is negotiating with his neighbors, particularly Iran, to build a pipeline to them and trade in sales of the gas.”

“I take it he doesn’t want Euros,” Hawkins said.

“No,” Brognola said. “Ovan wants weapons, specifically weapons of mass destruction. He’s been able to purchase enough of them to get them into the hands of the terrorist network he’s building. Bad as that is, it could become much, much worse. The CIA tells us that Ovan wants to negotiate a steady supply of these bombs. That, coupled with the buying power a pipeline deal would give him, would make Ovan a real player on the world stage. We can’t allow that.”

“Ovan hates the West,” Price said. “He’s a socialist who sees everything about the Western, capitalist world as evil incarnate. His state-controlled television station broadcasts a steady stream of invective and propaganda against the Western world in general and the United States specifically. We know he’s been in talks with several dictators of minor countries to see whom he can bring aboard his terror network, too.”

“Make no mistake,” Brognola said, “Ovan is in this for the long term. He’s not just some kill-crazy tin-pot dictator, the type that rises and falls over the course of a summer. He has real plans for something like long-term domination of his region and ultimately the world through terror and violence. If he’s allowed to implement them, he’ll be that much more difficult to stop.”

“So we’re hitting Ovan?” Lyons asked impatiently.

“Again, it’s not that simple.” Brognola shook his head. “The two men you see here with Ovan,” he went on, indicating the men in suits, “are candidates for the presidency of Iran.”

“This,” Price said, causing one of the pictures to glow brighter, “is Khalil Khan. He’s the moderate candidate. A series of increasingly turbulent uprisings has prompted calls for yet another election in Iran. The hard-line incumbent, Mohammad-Hossein Magham, is doing everything he can to squelch the press, including attempting to cut off access in Iran to certain social networking sites on the internet, blocking all but Iranian-controlled news media in the country and threatening those news outlets that don’t side with him or who dare even to report on the dissidents. Our CIA assets in Iran report that Khalil Khan has a very good chance of winning, if he lives to see election day…and if Ovan doesn’t influence the election otherwise.”

“It’s almost a repeat of the Ahmadinejad-Mousavi election,” Brognola said. “Khan’s a pro-Western moderate who wants to bring his country into the modern world and improve its human rights record. Magham’s a dictator who’d just as soon crush the dissidents and run the country like a prison camp, but he’s sensitive to world attention and media coverage. He doesn’t just want to run the country—he wants people to acknowledge that he’s right to run the country.”

“Enter Ovan again,” Price said. “We have covert intel that says Ovan’s terror network is led by two men. These are his sons, half brothers Karbuly and Ebrahim Ghemenizov.”

The secondary screens displayed images of a large, bearded man with wild eyes and a thin, balding, sallow man whose eyes shared the other’s slightly unstable look. “We have reason to believe Karbuly is heading up the domestic terror network that directed the actions of the three dead terrorists in New York,” Price said. “There are unconfirmed reports that Karbuly has been spotted at multiple locations here in the Northeast United States. We think the botched attack, in which the terrorists either set their bomb incorrectly or perhaps used a defective weapon, was the opening salvo in Ovan’s long-range plans to hurt the West as he jockeys to better his economic and strategic position worldwide. From the terrorist chatter we’ve intercepted, we also think he’s trying to show the Iranians just what he can bring to the table. They hate us, too, remember, and if he can show the hard-line Iranian government that he’s a real force to be reckoned with, they’ll be eager to cut a deal with him.”

“Ebrahim Ghemenizov is half Iranian by birth,” Brognola said, “and the CIA places him in Tehran. Their people believe that Ovan, through Ebrahim, has been behind several terrorist attacks on supporters of Magham.”

“But Magham’s the hard-liner,” James said. “Why would Ovan hurt the candidate who’s more likely to sell him the weapons?”

“It’s true that Khan would put a stop to the weapons program,” Price said, “or at least we hope he would. Magham is behind the program. But he’s also working in complicity with Ovan to help stage the attacks on his own supporters. The idea is to create, and spread through the media, the idea that Khan’s followers are violent murderers who cannot be trusted. So far the tactic is working. Those few polls we can get that aren’t skewed by Magham’s government show that, while he’s still running behind Khan, the moderates’ lead has diminished since the attacks began.”

“On the world stage, meanwhile,” Brognola said, sounding especially weary, “the Man is worried that we can’t simply hit Ovan and cut this off at the source, because all of the evidence we have is covert intelligence. We can’t afford to point to any more satellite photos of WMD factories that turn out to be anything but…and we can’t afford to move against Turkmenistan in an official capacity, not even as a black operation, unless we can turn public opinion against Ovan and show the world he’s got his hands in the terror attacks in Iran. If his involvement is exposed, the Iranians will scream bloody murder about the interference, and Magham’s fate will be sealed. That’s especially true if his own involvement in the plot is outed.”

“So what are we doing?” Lyons asked.

“A WMD-equipped Ovan would be a nightmare for us all,” Brognola said. “His terror network, at this point, quite possibly rivals al Qaeda. But more years of hard-line rule under Magham does no one any favors, either. We need to expose the terror link in Iran and do what we can to ensure an honest victory for Khan, while putting a stop to Ovan’s terror network and removing him from power.”

“Oh, is that all?” McCarter snorted, half grinning. Brognola rolled his eyes fractionally but ignored the comment.

“Gadgets, working with Aaron, Akira and our friends at the CIA who provided the sample bombs,” Brognola said, “have performed extensive analysis on the bombs, and there’s a vulnerability we can exploit. The devices have a unique electromagnetic signature that changes as they go active and increases as they reach their full sensor capabilities.”

“The signature is difficult to pin down among the background noise of the electromagnetic spectrum,” Schwarz said, “but it can be detected.”

“The Pentagon has, overnight, retasked its Warlock network of surveillance satellites,” Brognola said. “They’re going to provide us with the detection we need to home in on each terrorist attack site. Able Team, using this intelligence, will intercept the cells before they can carry out the series of attacks we believe to be imminent.”

“That’s where this come in,” Tokaido said, holding up the handmade device.

“Gadgets and Akira have built this scanner-jamming unit,” Price said. “It reads the bombs’ signals at close range and retards the function of the processors in the bombs. It can be used, at extreme close range, to deactivate it, provided you can hold it on target long enough.”

“The problem is,” Schwarz explained, “you’ve got to get close enough and point the unit directly at the bomb as you approach to prevent it from going off. Then you’ve got to touch it to the casing and hold it there until it gives you the all-clear that the bomb has been neutralized. The rest happens within the bomb’s processor as it interacts with the wireless signal from our unit.”

“Are you saying,” Lyons asked him, “that the bombs could go off because they sense us coming?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Schwarz confirmed. “Also this device is one of a kind. There isn’t time to build more, nor to test this one. So nobody drop it.” He looked at Blancanales and then back to Lyons.

“Wonderful,” Lyons said.

“Phoenix,” Price said, “will deploy to Iran. The CIA has operatives placed within Iranian security who will conduct you from there. You’ll enter the country as Canadian journalists and then fall off the radar to conduct your operation covertly with the CIA’s assistance. Able Team will use the Warlock surveillance feed to perform terrorist interdiction here.”

“The goal,” Brognola said, “is to stop the terrorist attacks centered in Tehran and, if possible, uncover Ovan’s network there. We also want to prevent an outright assassination of Khan if we can. If you can expose the terror connection there, we’ll redeploy you to deal with Ovan directly. If you can’t get anything on him, however, there’s little we can do except find and destroy the source of the Iranian bombs so that Ovan cannot continue to make use of them. Able, meanwhile, will deal with the threat at home using the more direct approach.”

“At least there’s that,” Lyons said.

“Jack Grimaldi is standing by,” Price said, referring to Stony Man’s senior pilot, “and he’ll hop you from target to target. The Warlock network has produced a priority list, and the signals we receive will help redirect you once you get closer to each potential strike point.”

“All right, then,” McCarter said. He stood. “What are we wasting time here for?”

“Good luck,” Brognola said. “And good hunting.”

Price lingered as the rest of the teams filed out, their conversations growing louder and more businesslike as they began to discuss the missions ahead of them. Kurtzman shot a salute to Brognola as he wheeled in front of the screen, and Brognola nodded in acknowledgment.

“You okay, Hal?” Price asked, stopping Brognola as he reached for the disconnect button.

“I’m always okay, Barb,” Brognola said. “You know how it is. This job is never easy.”

“I do,” Price said. “Just…take care of yourself, Hal. We all count on you.”

“And the country,” Brognola said, “counts on them.” He pointed at his camera, and Price knew he meant the soldiers who had just left. Brognola’s extended finger came down on his unit’s disconnect button. His screen went blank.

“Another day,” Price said to the empty room, “another mission to save the world.”

She shook her head. Enough introspection. There was a lot of work to do.