Читать книгу Armed Resistance - Don Pendleton - Страница 13

CHAPTER SEVEN

An estimated fifty-two thousand people lived in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The city bordered the northern edge of Camp Shelby and like any military town it provided adequate housing needs to officers and other select personnel who chose to live off post. U.S. military billets were great for single enlisted men, permanent party and the like, but they weren’t decent fare for a family man like Colonel Jordan Scott. The Scotts had acquired a split-level townhome in a peaceful neighborhood on the west side of Hattiesburg off I-59.

Sunset had passed by the time Able Team cruised through the neighborhood in their military sedan, a loaner from the HQ Company motor pool. Flashing a badge at a middle-aged woman in a jogging suit—the figure that filled it out could get a guy to thinking—bought Rosario Blancanales the information he needed regarding the Scotts. Lyons now watched the front door and windows of the house through binoculars as Blancanales picked his teeth with a pocketknife and stared down the street. Schwarz sat in back, snoring loud enough that it started to grind on the nerves of his two comrades.

Lyons lowered the binocs. “What do you think about that woman’s story regarding the van?”

“Sounds like pay dirt, you ask me,” Blancanales replied with a shrug.

Lyons shook his head. “A van matching the description of the one that hit us is parked out front of Scott’s house the day before yesterday, but she doesn’t remember seeing anybody inside? Something feels wrong about it.”

“What?”

“It’s too convenient,” Lyons replied as he lifted the binoculars to his eyes. “Good fortune rarely drops right into our lap. I don’t like it.”

“Maybe whoever’s behind this weapons smuggling doesn’t know anybody’s on to them.”

“After the assault they launched against us this morning?” Lyons reminded his friend.

“Okay, you got me there.”

“What are you two grumbling about now?” Schwarz muttered from the back. “Can’t you see I’m trying to get my beauty rest?”

Blancanales tipped his head so he could make out Schwarz’s shadow in the rearview mirror. “A hundred years of uninterrupted slumber couldn’t help you, amigo.”

“Hold up,” Lyons cut in. “Vehicle coming. Looks like a van.”

The warriors were parked far enough away that the sweep of the vehicle’s lights didn’t illuminate their faces. They waited silent and unmoving, wondering if the van would continue past the Scott residence, but no such luck—the van turned sharply into the driveway and the headlights winked out.

“Now, this is interesting,” Blancanales said evenly. “Looks like some more of our friends.”

“What’s the play, Ironman?” Schwarz asked.

Lyons thought through it with a measure of debate.

“Should we take them?” Schwarz asked, wide-awake now.

“I don’t want to jump the gun,” Lyons replied. “If they risked coming back to Scott’s residence for a reason and we hit them early, we might not find out why. We should wait it out and see what they do.”

“What if Scott’s inside the residence?” Blancanales inquired. “Or his wife and kids?”

“We’ve been watching the place for the last two hours,” Lyons pointed out. “There hasn’t been any movement. I don’t think anybody’s there. The fact they’ve played their hand gives us all the more reason to wait.”

“Agreed.”

Blancanales followed that with a sigh, but Lyons didn’t try to question it. He understood they were anxious to get answers and he was, too. The irony was that his partners were usually the reserved ones and typically had to hold their leader back. But something in Lyons’s gut told him that if they engaged the enemy too soon, not only would they attract a lot of unwanted attention but it stood to reason a firefight would end in a bunch of dead terrorists; that wouldn’t put them any closer to finding out what had happened to Jordan Scott. It might also precipitate Scott’s death if he was operating as an unwilling accomplice or being coerced to cooperate.

For all Able Team knew, Scott and his family were now hostages. If whoever was behind this weapons-smuggling ring figured government agents were on to them, they might simply kill Scott and his family, cut their losses and flee. In that scenario, it would be damn near impossible to track them. Part of Phoenix Force’s success in Sudan depended on Able Team getting to the bottom of whatever the hell was happening at this end of the pipeline, and Carl Lyons had no intention of letting them down.

The shadowy figures silhouetted in the streetlamp, six in all, exited the van and moved up the drive in leapfrog formation. They traversed their course with the practiced efficiency of professionals. Lyons noted this and filed it away. The enemy had been trained well, something the Able Team warriors had agreed upon following their first encounter at Camp Shelby. The questions they’d directed to the one in custody had revealed nothing. Their prisoner had been resolute, silent, unwilling to share information of any kind. Lyons had proposed applying more direct methods of information extraction, but being he was under the protective custody of military police they didn’t think it wise to deviate from standard operating procedures.

Able Team had enough problems without adding “torture” to the equation.

Even a search by Stony Man hadn’t pulled anything up on their prisoner, and that had Lyons on edge. Obviously they were dealing with some sort of black-ops unit, which didn’t concern him nearly as much as the fact they had managed to implement such an operation inside the United States undetected. Since 9/11, the FBI, in concert with other units attached to Homeland Security, had done a crack job in detecting these types of threats and neutralizing them before they became a problem. They had apparently missed the boat this time. That was okay; a situation like this was exactly why the special operations group at Stony Man Farm existed. Lyons and the rest prided themselves on doing the job nobody else could do, faith that had been placed in them by Brognola and the rest, and Lyons had never questioned their reasons for existing. Of course, they had a consummate role model in the hardened and relentless personage of Mack Bolan.

Lyons scratched his chin and watched with interest as the enemy unit moved out of view. “Okay, we’ve waited long enough.” He turned to Blancanales. “You stay here and be ready if they try to bolt. Gadgets and I will take out the wheelman first. Let’s see what taking away their mobility will do.”

“Roger that,” Blancanales said.

“Here.” Schwarz passed an AA-12 shotgun to Lyons from the backseat as the Able Team leader double-checked his Colt Anaconda .44 Magnum revolver before holstering it in shoulder rigging.

Lyons took the weapon and quickly inspected it in the dim light, the weapon forestock gleaming with a light coat of fresh oil. Originally designed as the Atchisson Assault Shotgun, the manufacturing patent of this newer model had been turned over to Military Police Systems, Inc. It included an 8-shell box magazine—also capable of sporting a high-capacity drum magazine for vehicle mounting—with a cyclic rate of 300 rounds per minute. The model had been modified by Stony Man’s elite armorer, John “Cowboy” Kissinger, with a 12.6-inch barrel, nearly a half inch shy of the military-grade version. The shells were a preferred mix of No. 12 lead and double-0. The weapon also sported antipersonnel capabilities by chambering a special Frag-12 round stabilized by a 19 mm fin that distributed fragmentation using a small charge of RDX explosive.