Читать книгу Terror Descending - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

Stone Man Farm, Virginia

In the spacious War Room, several people sat in the dark around a large conference table, watching a jumbled recording of the dire events that had occurred in France less than six hours earlier. Their faces were grim, and nobody moved or spoke until the last horrific scene of destruction was finally over.

Pressing a button on the remote control, Barbara Price, the Farm’s mission controller, banished the horrific images. Slowly, the room lights brightened to full strength.

“That was recovered from a dozen smashed security cameras at the Marseilles-Provence Airport,” Price said, setting the remote control on the table. “The whole attack lasted less than two minutes.”

Somebody whistled softly, and another bitterly cursed.

“That fast?” David McCarter asked, raising an eyebrow.

“This was no slapdash operation by a bunch of lunatics throwing a homemade firebomb out of speeding car,” Price replied curtly. “This was a surgical attack with military precision, highly sophisticated and extremely well coordinated.”

“These people are as ruthless as mad dogs,” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman growled, running stiff fingers through his wild crop of hair.

Everybody who saw the hirsute goliath quickly accepted his nickname of Bear. Although an expert computer specialist, one of the best in the world, the man had the shoulders of a professional linebacker and the heavily muscled arms of a stone mason, in spite of the fact that he was in a wheelchair. His face was bright and alive, his black eyes sharply intelligent.

Odd for a man living at a government base with nearly unlimited funding, his wheelchair was an older model, the metal struts badly scarred from countless small repairs. But the burly computer expert much preferred the manual chair to any motorized version, as the constant exercise of pushing himself along kept his upper body in excellent shape.

“They’re worse than mad dogs,” Price countered, taking a seat. “That kind of attack would have been random, chaotic. This was deliberate, cold-blooded efficiency, plain brutal mass murder.”

“How many are dead?” asked Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group and Justice Department liaison to the White House. A leather briefcase lay nearby with the lid raised. Inside were stacks of manila folders marked with the telltale red stripe of a Top Secret report.

“We have no idea yet of the death toll,” Price replied, opening a folder and taking out several black-and-white photographs. “Homeland Security had the NSA fly a Keyhole satellite over the area and take some pictures, but there is simply too much wreckage. NATO and the French authorities are still…assembling the bodies.”

“Do they have a rough count?” Brognola asked, glancing at the photos. There was a set of before-and-after shots to help gauge the destruction, but the pairing wasn’t necessary. The area looked like something from the Iraq war, smashed buildings, hundreds of small fires and blast craters in the pavement large enough to see from space.

Folding her hands, Price nodded. “Yes. Approximately four hundred civilians, along with about a hundred military personnel, and maybe twice that in service personnel, but with so many tourists…”

“A blood bath,” Kurtzman muttered.

“Okay, how the hell did these sons of bitches get close enough to the airport to do a bombing run?” Carl Lyons demanded, his ice-blue eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Whatever did this must have been seen on radar, or was the place bombed by a stealth plane?”

The blond giant, a former Los Angeles police detective was the leader of Able Team. Banded cables of muscles stood out on his bare forearms, and a massive .357 Magnum Colt Python revolver rode in a military-style shoulder holster. The other two members of his team were in the garage, listening to the briefing over the intercom while checking the team’s new equipment van.

“Oh, the incoming plane was seen on radar, all right,” Price countered, sliding over another report. “The killers are quite visible. We have the log of the air traffic controllers to confirm that.”

“Was Flight 219 taken over by terrorists and armed somehow?” McCarter asked, glancing at the recon photos.

Called away from a fishing trip, the Phoenix Force leader was in uncharacteristic denims and a red flannel shirt. A pack of Player’s cigarettes was tucked into his shirt pocket, and the man smelled faintly of bug repellant.

“No, Flight 219 had nothing to do with the attack on the airport,” Price said, reaching out to tap a photograph of a jetliner. “They arrived about two minutes after the bombing and were escorted by a wing of Mirage jetfighters to Bordeaux-Mérignac air base where the passengers and crew were, well, vigorously interrogated, would be the polite term, and the plane all but disassembled. However, they were innocent dupes. The terrorists merely pretended to be the flight so that they could get close enough to bomb the airport.”

“How is that possible?” Brognola asked, frowning. “Aside from the radar, there are call signs, encoded transmissions and ident signals—”

“All of which were perfectly duplicated by the invaders,” Price said curtly. “So there was no reason why the tower should not have given the fake Flight 219 permission to approach and land.”

“Only they didn’t land,” Lyons said. He was starting to get an idea where this was going, and liking the situation less and less by the moment.

“No, they simply dropped a maelstrom of ordnance while flying past the airport at slightly over a thousand feet.”

“A thousand feet is pretty close,” McCarter said. “Anybody get a good look at the craft? Was it a stealth bomber?”

“Good Lord, no,” Price said. “This was a much older vehicle. Smaller, and more compact. A Boeing 707.”

Startled, Brognola arched an eyebrow. “Do we have confirmation on that?”

“Yes, Hal, we do,” Price said, touching the remote control once more. “This was recovered from the smashed cell phone of a dead woman waiting for Flight 219 to arrive.” The wall screen came to life showing the blurred image of something flying high above the airport, a dotted line of black objects tumbling from a belly hatch, while fiery darts launched from weapons pods hidden between the turbojets on the wings.

“That’s not a 707,” Lyons stated with growing conviction. “Look at where the wings are positioned. That’s a B-52 heavy bomber!”

“Impossible. It can’t be,” Brognola countered, squinting at the wall screen. “There are windows along the sides. A B-52 doesn’t have any side windows. Then again, those are double engines, not singles. Barbara, is that a B-52?”

“Yes, although it was modified to resemble a Boeing 707,” Price replied, tapping a switch. The screen split into a side-by-side view of two different jet planes. “Carl was correct. It’s a B-52 bomber. Those windows are only painted onto the fuselage.” She adjusted the controls and the picture zoomed in to show a tight shot on an aft window. “See? The paint has streaked a little on a couple of them from the force of the wind shear. The hulls of the two planes are similar enough to fool even combat pilots. The B-52 is based upon the basic design of the 707.”

“Which is a tough enough bird, as it is,” McCarter added.

“But surely any trained pilot…” Brognola started, then stopped. “No, forget that. The general shape of the two planes is very similar, and any differences, wing position, double engines, would be undetectable at a thousand feet, much less ten thousand.”

“And the standard cruising height is thirty thousand.”

Standing quietly in the corner, John “Cowboy” Kissinger merely grunted at the news. The master gun-smith maintained every weapon on the Farm, along with those used by the field teams. He had nothing to add to the meeting at the present, but was already mentally calculating what kinds of explosives and specialty ordnance the field teams might need.

“Unfortunately, there’s more,” Price stated, pressing a button on the console. Silently sheets of paper slid out of slots set into the table in front of each person. “At the exact same time there were similar attacks on a civilian airport in China, as well as an American AFB just outside Nome, Alaska.”

“Any connection to the three locations?” Brognola asked tersely.

“None that we are aware of.”

“Damn.”

“Agreed.”

“So this is not just a grudge with France, but a worldwide strike on both civilian and military targets.”

Price nodded. “Yes.”

The single word sent chills down the backs of the Stony Man operatives. An attack this widespread meant a major organization, thousands of personnel and nearly unlimited funds.

“If a Chinese airport hadn’t been hit, I would have assumed they were behind it all,” McCarter said. “Any chance they hit their own territory as a diversion?”

“At the cost of billions in collateral damage?” Price queried. “No way, David. It’s not the Chinese. The Red Star wants these Airwolves even more than France does.”

“You know, I would have thought that hacking into the electronic system of a major airport, and doing it fast enough to ‘impersonate’ an arriving plane, would have been flat-out impossible,” Brognola said, thoughtfully twisting his wedding ring. “Obviously, I was wrong.”

“We all were,” Price admitted. “Nobody thought this could happen.”

“Which makes the big question, how was it done?” Lyons asked irritably.

“Something like this would require a top-notch team of samurai,” Kurtzman said, then saw the puzzled expressions, and quickly explained. “ Samurai is our term for an expert hacker, the very best in their field.”

Frowning, Kurtzman continued. “They’d also need a really good supercomputer. A Cray Mark IV might do, but I would have gone with an IBM Blue Gene or a Dell Thunderbird.”

Nobody made a comment on the bizarre observation. The best way to find a terrorist was to learn how to think like one. The tactic required a special kind of mental flexibility that many ordinary police officers simply could not accommodate. For an operative working for Stony Man, it was practically a requirement.

“All of which these wolves in sheep’s clothing obviously have,” Price said, rising from her chair to walk to the side table. The woman poured herself a mug of steaming coffee and took a sip. “Broadcasting the correct codes and ident signals, these people are, for all intents and purposes, invisible, innocently mixed in with all of the other planes until they attack.”

Lyons grimaced. “In a single day, the military has been thrown back to visually tracking incoming planes by using binoculars, and against a supersonic jetfighter no one would have a clue!”

“Even if somebody got a visual on the B-52,” Brognola said slowly. “They’d think it was just a 707, and without the flight log of the tower to check, how could anybody know the incoming flight was actually supposed to be something else!”

“Mathematics,” Kurtzman said suddenly.

Everybody turned to look at him. Hunched over, the man was feverishly working a handheld calculator.

“The math on these attacks doesn’t work out right,” Kurtzman repeated, looking up and placing the calculator on the table. “To hack into the tower, get the ident for a plane, and the flight path, then slip in just ahead of the plane, would require supercomputers.”

“You already told us that,” Brognola stated, then suddenly looked alert. “And there’s not a plane in the world large enough to carry one of those into battle. It can’t be done! A supercomputer is huge, but very delicate.”

“They also weighs tons, and require a lot of constant technical support,” Price added, setting her mug aside. “Just taking off from the ground would crash a supercomputer.”

Kurtzman nodded. “Most likely.”

“Which means the Airwolves must have a ground base somewhere,” McCarter added, grimly intent. “That might be mobile, on a ship maybe, but it gives us a target to find. Take out the computers, or even the comm sat—”

“And they’re visible again, flying in plain sight,” Price finished. “Bear, have your team start a global search. Find their satellite and backtrack it to their ground base.”

“On it,” Kurtzman stated, hitting a button on the intercom to issue some terse instructions to his team in the Annex’s Computer Room.

“You know, whatever we do, we’ll need a diversion to keep the enemy off balance and looking in the wrong direction,” Lyons said, clearly thinking out loud. “Bear, how many abandoned airports are there in North America?”

That caught the chief hacker off guard. “Let me check,” he replied, and worked his laptop for a moment. “Okay, according to the last FAA survey, there are 1643 abandoned airfields.”

“Damn. Are there any long enough to land a 707?”

In growing understanding, Kurtzman grinned and worked the keyboard again. “That would be 603, including the Nevada Salt Flats, where you could land Mt. Rushmore.”

“Hal,” Price said, “please contact the President immediately, and ask him to have the Air Force bomb those old airfields, then send in regular Army ground troops to check the ruins.”

“To make them think we’re desperate,” Brognola said with a grin.

“It’s worth a try,” she admitted.

Without a word, the man rose and went to a wall phone. “Give me a secure line to the White House,” he demanded. After a brief wait, he spoke in a subdued whisper for several minutes, then hung up the receiver.

“Done and done,” Brognola announced. “Now what?”

“What exactly did the Airwolves hit the airport with?” Lyons asked, staring hard at the pictures of destruction.

Setting aside her mug, Price checked a page on a clipboard. “Let’s see—air-to-ground missiles, rockets, cluster bombs, smart bombs and iron bombs.”

Looking up, Kurtzman started to ask what those were, then stopped as he suddenly remembered that with the creation of smart bombs, old-fashioned bombs that had no guidance systems or any electronics, had been renamed dumb bombs, then finally iron bombs. Politically correct weapons. The very idea made his butt hurt.

“Any chance the French gathered enough parts to figure out where the weapons came from?” Brognola asked. “The Sûreté has some of the best criminal forensic people in the business.”

“They do,” Price replied. “We made the missiles. Or rather they were U.S. Air Force issue. The rockets were British, the cluster bombs Russian and iron bombs from Italy.”

“Mixed ordnance,” Lyon said, rubbing his jaw. “Sounds like these bastards were using whatever they could get.”

“Or else that’s what they’re trying to make us think,” McCarter responded. “This might actually be China, or some new group trying keep hidden. Remember the Brigade, or Unity?”

Clearly, everybody in the room did, and their faces grew more stern, if that were possible.

“Okay, there is no way that we’re going to track them through the munitions,” Price stated. “Unless they’re idiots, they’ve been stockpiling for years.” Adding some sugar to her coffee, the woman stirred it slowly. “But we might be able to find them through the sales of the munitions.”

“Through the weapons dealers who illegally sold them the bombs,” Lyons said. “Armando in Ohio would be the man to check with first. He’s the dirtiest arms dealer in the U.S. We can put the squeeze on him. Maybe he’s heard something. These guys have a network. We can go in as buyers…no, as sellers, and see what we can dig up.”

“The best way to follow the money—” Brognola added sagely “—is to be the original source.”

“Damn straight.”

“Want some blacksuits for backup?” Price asked.

“Yes, a dozen should do,” Lyons said. “And Bob.”

He wanted Bob? Crossing her arms, the woman almost smiled in understanding. “Fair enough,” Price said out loud. “Good luck. Report when possible.”

Rising, the big man nodded to the rest of the Stony Man warriors.

“We’re still using Bloody Bob?” Kissinger asked incredulously.

Price shrugged. “He’s never failed us before.”

Taking the remote control, Brognola brought up the fuzzy picture of the B-52 bomber. “This is an old plane, been around for over sixty years,” Brognola said slowly, testing the words as if they were creaking wooden boards under his feet. “How many of them are still in service around the world?”

“Couple of thousand,” Kissinger said calmly.

Kurtzman scowled. “That many?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” The armorer shrugged. “The damn things fly forever, if you have enough spare parts.”

“Buy enough parts from enough different sources and you could probably build a B-52,” Brognola said with conviction, sensing a possible vulnerability in the enemy.

Suddenly alert, Price almost smiled. “And exactly where do you buy replacement parts for a B-52 heavy bomber?”

Thoughtfully, Kissinger chewed a lip. “Well, there is a place called the Boneyard out in Arizona. That’s where the Air Force stores their old, and new, B-52 bombers, along with a lot of their other off-line or obsolete war planes.”

“Sounds like the Boneyard is a good place to start a search…No, forget that,” Price corrected herself. “It’s much too obvious a source. That would be the last place the terrorists would get any parts.”

“If we’re talking about black market war planes, that would be either Miami, the Sudan or Mexico,” McCarter announced. “And Homeland Security has the Miami group so heavily infiltrated that those boys can’t sell a wing nut, much less an entire war plane, without Washington knowing about it. There is a huge market for airplane parts, especially for military planes, and even more so for jets of any kind. The money involved is so good that a lot of drug dealers have switched from heroin to smuggling airplane parts.”

“And the CIA has done the same with Sudan,” Brognola added. “Which leaves Mexico.”

“The Quintana Roo connection?” Price suggested.

“The very place I was thinking about,” McCarter said. “Out in the Yucatán Peninsula, there was an airfield built secretly during the reign of Mario Madrid, the so-called king of Cancun.”

“He was a narcoterrorist, right?”

“One of the first. The son of a bitch killed hundreds of Interpol agents, CIA operatives, police, Mexican federales . It’s said that he shifted more cocaine and heroin than we will ever know. The Mexican police finally took him down.” Price smiled. “With a little help from us and Mack.”

“To keep an airfield hidden, it would have to be located somewhere out in the desert,” Brognola said. “Maybe Mack would know where, but he’s busy in Tennessee right now.”

“No sweat,” Kurtzman stated with conviction. “I’ll personally run a search through the CIA and NSA spy satellites. I’ll find the airfield for you, David, long before Phoenix Force lands in the capital city of Chetumal.”

Standing, McCarter pointed a finger at the chief hacker and shot him by dropping a thumb. Kurtzman deflected the imaginary round with a palm, and both men grinned.