Читать книгу Triplecross - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

Twin Forks, Utah

The black GMC Suburban waiting at the tiny airfield was a rental from a national chain that Carl Lyons recognized. He assumed that a local courier, coordinating through the Farm, had arranged for the vehicle to be left for them. In both hands he carried heavy black duffel bags, as did Schwarz and Blancanales. Each was full of weapons and ammunition, including loaded magazines, grenades and other explosives. When Lyons reached the truck he set the bags down in the gravel and began searching the nearest wheel well.

The magnetic key box was in the second well he tried. He slipped the key out of the box and put the magnetic holder back where he had found it. An electronic fob was included. He used it to unlock the truck.

“The exciting life of a covert counterterrorist,” Schwarz said as he walked up and dropped his bags.

“Be sure to drop the one with the C4 charges in it extra hard, Gadgets,” Lyons said.

“Good thing the detonators are in the other bag,” the electronic genius said without missing a beat.

“Thrill as they carry heavy things from their plane to their car!” Blancanales intoned, imitating a movie announcer.

The “plane” in this case was a Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, on loan from Special Forces. The VTOL troop carrier was armed with a 7.62 mm GAU-17 minigun. The retractable cannon was belly-mounted and featured a video-equipped remote-control slaved to a display on Jack Grimaldi’s helmet, much like the nose-cannon setup used by Apache gunship crews. The multibarrel cannon was more or less stock, as Cowboy Kissinger referred to it, but the Stony Man armorer had worked with Schwarz to adapt the video and camera equipment so that Grimaldi could fire the minigun while piloting the Osprey.

The massive twin-rotor craft was capable of transporting far more than just the three men of Able Team and their gear, but portions of the interior cargo space had been converted to include auxiliary fuel tanks. These and the weight of the heavy multibarrel cannon in the ship’s belly reduced the aircraft’s cargo capacity considerably. It was still more than sufficient, though, to get Able Team and their weapons where the three men needed to go...and it had the range to move them around the country with speed and maneuverability.

“Everybody get your gear in order,” Lyons said, although the instructions were unnecessary. The three men of Able Team had executed enough missions together that they could work together without speaking, practically reading each other’s minds. Lyons put two fingers to the transceiver in his ear. “Comm check. Check one, check two.”

“I read you,” Grimaldi said in the Osprey. “Check-ins will be by the book, gentlemen. Your transceivers should give you enough range that I can live vicariously through your adventures while I sit here warming the pilot’s seat.”

“Roger that, Jack,” Lyons said. “Pol? Gadgets?”

“Loud and clear,” Blancanales said. “Of course, you’re also standing next to me.”

“Two by four,” Schwarz said.

“Don’t you mean five by five?”

“A two by four is what it would take to knock you down,” Schwarz said.

Lyons looked at him. “Gadgets,” he said, “I never know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Story of my life,” Schwarz answered.

“Get in the truck, Gadgets,” Lyons said.

For this mission, Able Team was operating under full cover of their Justice Department credentials. They wore civilian clothes—Lyons, his familiar bomber jacket and jeans, Schwarz, a T-shirt and cargo pants with a windbreaker, and Blancanales, khaki slacks with a button-down shirt and a blazer. Their weapons were their usual individual kit. Each of them had a spring-assist folding combat dagger. Blancanales carried a Beretta 92-F and an M-4 carbine, while Schwarz wore a shoulder holster that carried his Beretta 93R machine pistol. Lyons, for his part, carried his trusty Colt Python in .357 Magnum. His massive Daewoo USAS-12, as well as a healthy supply of 20-round drum magazines, was one of the items weighing down his duffel bags.

Lyons drove the GMC from the airfield with Schwarz navigating. The GPS coordinates were fed to all three team members’ satellite smartphones. Gadgets simply called up a local map interface and gave the turns to Lyons. A commercial GPS unit would be a liability; the coordinates stored in such a unit could conceivably be an intelligence problem after the fact. The smartphones, by contrast, were encrypted.

They had driven for some distance, making their way to the first of the prioritized EarthGard properties, when Lyons said, simply, “Utah.”

Looking out his window before turning back to his smartphone, Schwarz said, “Yep. Utah.”

“Are you playing Furious Birds or some crap?” Lyons said, glancing at Schwarz’s phone.

Schwarz looked up. “These phones can run more than one application simultaneously—”

“You are playing,” Lyons said. “What’s it called?”

“Maniacal Blue Jays? Aggressive Waterfowl?” Blancanales queried from the backseat. “Gadgets, did you get past the brick level yet?”

“Don’t help, Pol,” Lyons said.

“Turn left, Ironman,” Schwarz said. An enormous road sign they were passing read EarthGard Beryllium, LLC, Next Left. Lyons shot Schwarz a look but said nothing. He spun the wheel over.

The team made its way up a long, winding dirt road. The curve of the road suggested a very large circle, which of course it was; the mine was at the center, and no doubt this was the primary means through which earth-moving equipment and other heavy industrial machinery was moved to and from the mine. The headquarters building was a large affair—larger, Carl Lyons thought, than it probably needed to be for an operation as relatively simple as taking ore out of the ground. He had been noticing the sentries as they’d traversed the winding dirt drive. When he saw the guards grouped outside the building’s entrance, he decided it was too much to be coincidence.

“Doesn’t it look like they have an inordinate amount of security for a mining operation in Utah?” Blancanales asked.

“I was just thinking that,” Lyons said. “Pol, grab one of the smaller duffels and tuck your M-4 and my shotgun in there. Make sure we’ve got plenty of grens and extra mags. Gadgets—”

“You’re going to make me carry it, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Lyons. “Yes, I am.”

A sign at the entrance to the main building parking area proclaimed EarthGard a “carbon neutral enterprise.” Lyons pulled the big Suburban into a parking slot marked Visitors: Reserved For Hybrid/Eco-Friendly Vehicles. As he climbed out of the GMC, a trio of security guards in black tactical gear was already converging on him. Blancanales came around to stand next to Lyons, while Schwarz, with the duffel bag, took up a position on the other side of the truck.

“Awfully militarized for local security,” Blancanales whispered.

“Yeah,” said Lyons. “That too.”

The three guards were large, bearded men with the experienced, self-assured look of independent contractors. Lyons did not get an “amateur security guard” or “wannabe cop” vibe from them at all; what he perceived was the type of lethal potential that men of violence, men experienced in warfare, could sometimes sense in each other. Their uniforms also put Lyons’s sixth sense for combat on alert. They were wearing a commercial brand of “tactical” clothing—including distinctive pants with slash rear pockets and cargo pouches—that were extremely popular with contractors in the sandbox abroad. The front man of the trio wore expensive, mirrored, wraparound sunglasses that cost a week’s pay for most people. The hook-and-loop nametag on his uniform shirt read Kirkpatrick.

Each man held an M-4 carbine worn on a single-point sling.

The two men behind Kirkpatrick were Conyers and Gomez. And if those were their real names, Lyons would eat his shoulder holster. While Kirkpatrick and Conyers looked the parts their names implied, Gomez was clearly Asian, not Hispanic. He was very big for an Asian man, easily massing as much as his partners did.

“These are back-breakers,” Schwarz whispered from the other side of the Suburban. “No way is the operation here legit.” The electronics expert spoke quietly enough that his partners could hear him through their earpieces, but the security team would not be able to listen in.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” Kirkpatrick asked.

“Justice Department,” Lyons said, flashing the credentials Brognola had issued to the team. “We’re investigating an international commerce issue.”

Kirkpatrick exchanged glances with Conyers. Gomez, for his part, simply stared at Lyons as if he could bore a hole through the big ex-cop with nothing but a hostile look.

“I’m going to need to see a warrant,” Kirkpatrick said.

“This identification is all the warrant I need,” said Lyons. He wasn’t really the authoritarian type; he respected the Constitution as much as the next guy. But something was off about these characters and he wasn’t going to play along. The fastest way to get them to cut to the chase was just to push their buttons until they revealed what they were after.

“No entry to unauthorized personnel,” Kirkpatrick said At the words “no entry,” Gomez and Conyers began to fan out in an attempt to flank Able Team.

I don’t like where this is going, thought Lyons, but I can’t say I’m surprised.

“Maybe you don’t understand, Slick,” Lyons said. “We’re with the Justice Department. To go higher than us you have to have a word with the President. Something’s dirty here in Denmark and we’re going to find it. Step aside.”

Kirkpatrick’s stance changed. Lyons saw it; Kirkpatrick saw that Lyons saw it. Both men knew the hammer was about to fall. The “security guard” was getting ready to bring up his M-4. Lyons couldn’t see the selector switch on the weapon, but he had to bet that all three men had their safeties off and rounds in the chambers.

“No entry,” Kirkpatrick said, his teeth clenched, “to unauthorized personnel.” He moved to take a diagonal step back, which was his attempt to get off the attacking line and bring his weapon into play. Lyons was already moving. As Kirkpatrick tried to raise his M-4, Lyons’s Python was in his fist. The snout of the big pistol came up under Kirkpatrick’s chin, below his line of vision. It was an old trick, but a good one. Kirkpatrick was already visualizing Lyons’s death, already taking up the slack in the M-4’s trigger, his expression one of triumph. That changed the moment the barrel of the Python touched the flesh under his jaw.

“Here’s my authorization.” Lyons pulled the trigger.

The top of Kirkpatrick’s head exploded. Lyons pushed the corpse away, watching it fall back as he backpedaled to the only cover available, which was the Suburban. Schwarz and Blancanales had already opened up on the other two gunmen, driving them back toward the double doors of the mining office entrance.

There was a heartbeat’s lull in the firefight as the two security guards dove inside the office. Schwarz ripped open the duffel bag. “Carl!” he called.

Lyons held out a hand. Schwarz tossed him the heavy USAS-12 automatic shotgun. He threw Blancanales’s M-4 to him and then hooked his support hand through the trigger guard of his 93-R machine pistol, using the fold-down foregrip to brace the weapon.

Schwarz and Blancanales advanced on the double doors, covering each other as they left the shelter of the Suburban. Blancanales reached out and tried the door handle, pulling his hand back quickly lest he lose it to a spray of gunfire from the other side. Nothing happened. The door was solidly locked. The walls flexed slightly, however.

“Talk about cheap construction,” Blancanales said.

“It’s a prefab trailer,” Schwarz said. “Big and modular, probably multiple trailer units interconnected. Flimsy. But the doors are held on good.”

“Let’s do this,” Lyons said. He leveled the USAS-12 at the lower set of hinges on the left side and pulled the trigger. The hinge disintegrated under the barrage of 00 Buck. It took less time to blow the second one; Lyons simply raised the barrel and rode out the recoil. He stepped aside as the door fell off.

Bullets flew from inside. The guards were shooting back, the sounds of their M-4 carbines unmistakable. It was said, and Lyons knew it to be true, that the Kalashnikov had a distinctive metallic noise. This was due in part to all the empty space under its receiver cover, which turned the AK into a metal drum when rounds were cycled through it. But the 3 AR platform and its variants also had a distinctive sound, with which Lyons and the other members of Able Team had become very familiar. If you’d heard it enough you could never forget it.

Blancanales’s M-4 had been modified and tuned by Kissinger, as had all their weapons. Blancanales squeezed several long, full-auto bursts. Among the modifications Kissinger regularly preformed was to replace the 3-round-burst mode with sustained full-automatic. The men of Able Team were more than capable of the trigger-control required to avoid wasting ammunition.

“I’d say we’ve got ample verification of hostile contact,” Schwarz noted.

“Affirmative,” Lyons said. Noting Blancanales had the most forward position of the team, he asked, “What’s it look like in there, Pol?”

Blancanales waited for a moment, timing the bursts of fire from inside the mining office. When he judged he could risk it, he moved his head just enough to expose his left eye, then whipped his skull back out of the line of fire.

“Our two friends have backup,” Blancanales related. “I count two more, all armed. No civilians. No noncombatants anywhere in range.”

“Good,” Lyons said. “Gadgets, pull two grenades. No, three.”

“Three?” Schwarz queried.

“Three,” Lyons confirmed.

“Time to blow everybody up,” Schwarz said. He reached into the duffel bag, snaked his index finger through the pins of three grenades and popped all three bombs at once. Then he tossed them in quick succession through the doorway.

“Which did you—?”

“Willie Pete,” Schwarz said quietly.

“And Hell followed with them,” Blancanales whispered.

The white-phosphorous grenades ignited. The screams from within the mining office were beyond horrible. Each grenade carried 15 ounces of white phosphorous and had a burst radius of 34 meters on open ground. Within the corridor of the mining office, detonated simultaneously as a trio, the blasts would create a fiery tunnel of molten death that bored through any human being unfortunate enough to be in the way. The cloud of smoke created was immediate and overpowering.

“Let’s move,” Lyons said. “Secondary entrance to the west.”

“Roger that,” Schwarz said.

“Affirmative,” Blancanales said.

Under cover of the pall of smoke drifting from the flaming charnel house that was now the main entrance, Able Team took up positions around the west entrance. This door, too, was secured, but the thunderous hammer blows of Lyons’s automatic 12-gauge made short work of the barrier. When the three men of Able Team finally entered the building, fire alarms were sounding through the halls. Through the distant screams, Able Team could also hear fire extinguishers being deployed. Schwarz hoped for his enemies’ sake that those extinguishers were chemical models and not simply tanks of water. Water would only scatter the hungry white phosphorous, which would burn until it no longer had oxygen to feed it.

The corridor in which Able stood was comprised of offices, each with a name on a faux brass nameplate on the door. There was no reason not to check them. Lyons signaled to his partners, pointing to the next set of doors. The team worked its way up the hall, kicking in the doors on either side as they went, with Blancanales and Schwarz working the entries and Lyons stationed in the corridor for backup.

Something creaked in the ceiling above. “I think we’re doing some serious damage to this place,” Blancanales said. “It sounds like the roof is coming apart.”

“If the fire spreads to the crawl space above the drop ceiling,” Schwarz noted, “it will move very rapidly. We need to be careful we don’t get cut off.”

“I’ll shoot us an exit, if it comes to that,” Lyons said. “I have slugs if we need them. They’ll carve through the pasteboard this place seems to be made of.”

There was still plenty of ammo left in Lyons’s 20-round drum. He scarcely felt the weight of the heavy USAS-12. The weapon was comforting in his big fists. He liked knowing that he had the option of laying down a cloud of 00 Buck that would shred almost any resistance. Each 12-gauge double-aught shell carried nine pellets, each roughly comparable to a 9mm bullet. To be on the receiving end of most of a drum of those shells was world-changing for just about anyone and anything.

The ceiling creaked again. “That’s not sounding good,” Blancanales warned.

“Keep moving,” Lyons directed. “We’re up against the clock.”

The sweep of the corridor turned up nothing. It was time to take the party closer to the main entrance, where more EarthGard personnel appeared to be active in trying to quell the chemical flames. The prefab office was arranged like a wagon wheel, with a central hub and multiple spokes. They were reaching the hub, opposite the spoke that bore the Willy Pete conflagration, when something felt wrong.

“Gadgets,” Lyons said. “Pol. Look.” He pointed. The security camera set in the wall had been turning, but now it was pointed directly at them. Lyons realized what had been nibbling at the edges of his awareness. There were automatic security cameras in every corridor, and these had been moving mindlessly back and forth when they’d first entered the building. But the cameras had been stopping and tracking them, quietly, as they’d made their way through the structure. And if they were being tracked, that meant the enemy wasn’t nearly as confused and ineffective as Able Team had been led to believe. It meant the enemy—

Lyons looked up.

“Hit the walls!” he shouted. He shoved Schwarz, who was within arm’s reach, against the far wall of the corridor, flattening himself against the fiberboard of the hallway.

Tiles from the drop ceiling rained down, followed by gunfire. The security guards, obviously coordinating with someone operating the cameras from a control area within the mining office, had crawled along above the drop ceiling until they were in position to take out Able Team.

Gunfire chewed up the cheaply carpeted floor. There were three different muzzle-flashes up there. The shooters were braced on the boards that held the ceiling tiles in place. Lyons dropped to one knee, planted the butt-stock of the USAS-12 on the floor and held back the trigger of the mighty shotgun as he walked the barrel from left to right. He emptied the drum while Schwarz and Blancanales pumped bursts of fire into the three men in the ceiling.

Three bloody corpses hit the carpet in rapid succession. One of them nearly striking Schwarz. He started and then looked more closely at the dead man.

“I’ve got another Asian here,” he said. “And over here.” He pointed to the second of the three.

“And this one,” Blancanales confirmed.

“Okay, this just got weird,” Lyons said. “No telling how many more of them could be hiding in the freaking walls or whatever. Pol, time to call in backup.”

“Good idea,” Schwarz said. “This is exactly like that movie with that woman.”

“Gadgets, so help me, if you go off on another science-fiction tangent,” Lyons began.

For Grimaldi’s benefit, Blancanales said, “G-Force, this is Able Team. Do you—”

Lyons nearly ripped the transceiver from his ear as a burst of feedback brought him to his knees. “Son of a bitch!” he roared. Blancanales and Schwarz were both wincing with pain. “What the hell was that?”

Footsteps in the corridor to their immediate left signaled that more personnel were coming up the hallway toward where they stood near the hub. The footfalls were fast, heavy and purposeful. It was the sound of troops moving in for the kill, if Lyons had to guess.

“That was active jamming,” Schwarz said. “Our friends have the means to blanket the RF and shut us out.”

“Does that mean what I think it means?” Lyons asked. “I thought these were satellite phones?”

“The transceivers are RF,” Schwarz said. “For short range.”

“I’ve got movement!” Blancanales announced. He went to one knee and braced his M-4 against the corner of the hallway junction. “Multiple contacts, coming up fast and using the offices for cover. They’re walking up two by two.”

“More over here,” Schwarz said. He pressed himself against the wall near the spoke opposite Blancanales. “Carl, they’ve got us pinned between them.”

“So we’ve got multiple hostiles inbound who have superior position,” Lyons said. “And our only means of calling in backup is hosed.”

“Until we can find the source of the jamming, yes,” Schwarz said. “We’re completely cut off.”

“How does that movie go?” Blancanales asked.

“Everybody dies,” Schwarz said.

The enemy shooters charged.