Читать книгу Season of Harm - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

Thailand

Jack Grimaldi whistled “Flight of the Valkyries” to himself as the Cobra gunship came in low and slow over the landscape, moving up on the isolated poppy field that was Phoenix Force’s first target. As Grimaldi flew, he listened to the radio chatter over his earbud transceiver. The little device linked him via relay from the chopper’s electronics to the rest of the team on the ground. Phoenix Force was moving into position to attack the camp located at the east end of the poppy field. From the satellite surveillance imagery provided by NSA security satellites as well as NetScythe, it was apparent the camp included a full processing facility. Hitting the field and the processing plant would deal the Triangle a significant blow, sending a clear message.

Insertion of the team, including acquiring the Cobra gunship and making sure it was in position, had been relatively easy. While there was no way to count on the support of the government, especially given the covert nature of the operation, the Farm had plenty of discretionary funds to throw around at times like these. The Stony Man team had bribed their way over the Thai border and easily past Customs. The chopper had been more difficult, but even that had not proved much of an obstacle. While old, the machine was in great shape, and the armament it carried was in top condition. Grimaldi had checked it out at the airfield himself. Then he’d made his way by air in support of Phoenix Force’s ground insertion that was utilizing hired commercial trucks. If anyone had noticed him, by eye or by radar, nobody had challenged him. No doubt everyone and his uncle who could in any way be bought off had been paid well enough to look the other way.

Strange bedfellows, the pilot thought. If the men they’d bribed to drive them out here thought anything of the armed men seeking to tangle with the local drug lords, they hadn’t commented on it. No doubt they thought they were pocketing the money of dead men. That was fine; it meant they’d be even less likely to speak of it after the fact, though they’d been bribed well enough for their silence.

It was all part of the shadow war, the type of conflict in which Phoenix Force specialized. Evil criminals of the type found in the Triangle organization were accustomed to preying on others. They did not deal well with coming under sudden fire; they did not grasp that they, too, could become the victims of seemingly random violence. When, suddenly, they found themselves attacked from what seemed all sides by a foe they could not at first identify, they became confused and afraid. For many of them, fear was a new sensation, and one the Stony Man pilot was happy to bring them.

I love the smell of terrified organized crime bosses in the morning, Grimaldi thought to himself.

The AH-1 gunship was a familiar aircraft, one that Grimaldi enjoyed flying. Once the backbone of the United States military’s fleet of attack helicopters, long since eclipsed by the AH-64 Apache, it remained a very dependable, very lethal aerial weapon.

He checked his chronograph, then his GPS unit. “G-Force,” Grimaldi said over the transceiver link, “in position.”

“Roger, G-Force,” McCarter’s voice came back to him. “By the numbers. One, two.”

“One, two, roger,” Grimaldi said.

He angled the nose of the Cobra, allowed himself to pick up more speed and began triggering the hellstorm under his command.

The twin rocket pods unleashed their 70 mm cargo of Mark 4 folding-fin aerial rockets. The M-156 white phosphorous rounds detonated across the poppy field, leaving actinic flashes in Grimaldi’s vision. He worked the chopper back and forth in a zigzagging pattern, making sure his deadly payload did its gruesome work among the flowers.

“G-Force is all go, zero one,” Grimaldi reported as he fired the last of his rockets. The explosions radiated heat; he gripped the controls firmly, controlling the gunship. “Good hunting, gentlemen.”

“Roger,” David McCarter’s voice came through the transceiver link. “Start run two, G-Force. Repeat, start run zero-two.”

“G-Force is go zero-two,” Grimaldi reported.

The gunship gained altitude. Grimaldi allowed the deadly machine to crest the rise at the far end of the now-burning poppy field. Below, in the depression beyond, sat the camp and heroin-processing center. Phoenix Force would be moving in from the perimeter just now; Grimaldi would therefore fight from the center of the camp, moving outward. He overflew the camp, chose his spot and yanked hard on the controls, making the gunship shudder and dance as it dumped its velocity. He brought the killing snout of the helicopter around in a slow arc.

“G-Force is all go, twice,” he said out loud. “Heads down, gentlemen. I repeat, heads down.”

At Grimaldi’s direction, the M-28 turret’s twin M-134 miniguns began spitting 7.62 mm death. The slow arc of the chopper fanned the slugs out as Grimaldi picked his targets, centering on the small, prefabricated, corrugated-metal buildings closest to the center of the camp. Men in olive-drab fatigues, carrying Kalashnikovs, began running for their lives. Something volatile within one of the buildings exploded, shooting shrapnel and flames in every direction and throwing several of the running figures to the ground. Grimaldi kept the pressure on, his gunship’s inventory ticking down in his head, the chopper wreaking havoc in the enemy’s midst.

He began whistling “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” smiling faintly as the Triangle drug plant slowly disintegrated at the touch of his trigger finger.

“YOU HEAR THAT?” Calvin James said.

“Hear what?” Rafael Encizo asked.

“Nothing.” James shook his head. “Thought I heard whistling. Faint, like.”

McCarter chuckled but said nothing.

Phoenix Force waited from cover at the perimeter of the camp, southwest of Grimaldi’s position. They were crouched behind an old bus that had somehow been trucked in and buried half in and half out of the ground to form a makeshift storage bunker. Now that bunker provided them with adequate concealment as Grimaldi softened up the camp.

“Masks on, lads,” McCarter instructed. “The fumes will reach us any minute.” The team members donned their breathing gear. The black plumes from the burning poppy field were visible far beyond the chopper. The staccato drumbeat of the gunship’s nose cannons slapped echoes from the metal buildings around them. Return fire from within the camp was sporadic, but left no doubt that Phoenix Force would encounter armed resistance once they made their foray inside.

Per the mission parameters, they were dressed and armed for plausible deniability. The members of the team each wore Russian surplus camouflage fatigues. Some of their equipment was mundane and readily available on the world market, like their web belts and the Ka-bar Next Generation fighting knives they carried. Their sensitive surveillance, communication and breathing gear was custom-built but untraceable to the Farm or the United States. They also carried folding-stock Kalashnikov rifles. None of the team favored the weapons overmuch, but they were all very familiar with them. Despite their ergonomic flaws and generally sloppy tolerances, the rifles were serviceable, reliable and deadly in their trained hands. The fact that ammunition would likely be readily available in the field was another point in the rifles’ favor, too.

If they needed the extra firepower, Gary Manning also carried a Heckler & Koch HK-69 40 mm grenade launcher and a bandolier of grenades. Each team member also carried a sidearm. Manning had his .357 Magnum Desert Eagle, and McCarter carried his favored Browning Hi-Power. Hawkins, Encizo and James all carried untraceable Glock 17 pistols. Each man’s web gear was laden with a variety of grenades, smoke canisters, extra magazines and a variety of other tools of the trade.

“G-Force, all in, all in,” Grimaldi reported.

“That’s our cue,” McCarter said. As the chopper rose higher above the carnage its pilot had created, Phoenix Force moved in.

Without being told to do so, Encizo and James broke to the left, while Manning and Hawkins moved off to the right. They would skirt the perimeter and take their own paths toward the burning center. McCarter headed straight up the middle, splitting the difference.

It was a straightforward operation. While they would keep an eye out for any intel they might gather on the ground, there were no specific target objectives other than the destruction of this Triangle asset. It was a refreshingly direct drop and smash, McCarter thought. No hostages to rescue, no supersensitive electronic devices to recover, no nuclear warheads to disarm. Just walk in, run about and burn it down.

A gunman in the olive-drab fatigues that seemed to be the uniform of the camp came running headlong from the nearest metal shack, heedless of the danger and failing to look around himself. McCarter let him go right on by, drawing a bead with his AK and pressing the extended metal stock to his shoulder.

“Hey,” McCarter called, his voice only slightly muffled by his breathing mask.

The gunman turned and tried to bring up a pistol. McCarter shot him neatly through the chest. Two more men, one carrying a shotgun and the other a Kalashnikov of his own, came fast on the heels of their dead comrade. McCarter snapped his AK to full auto, held the weapon low and squeezed off a burst that cut the men down in their tracks.

Gunfire was audible from several different parts of the camp now. There were more firefights, to McCarter’s ear, than there were contingents of Phoenix personnel. That was good; it meant that the men guarding the camp were panicking, firing blindly around themselves without clear targets. Filling the environment with lead made it decidedly unsafe, but scattered, unaimed fire was something with which the team could easily cope. A disorganized enemy was no better than sheep, to be carved up and brought down by McCarter’s wolves. They’d done it many times before.

A long metal Quonset-hut-style building stood in front of him. McCarter moved quickly to the heavy wooden door at one end. He tried it, but it was dogged shut from inside, apparently. He took one of the high-explosive grenades from his web gear, pulled the pin, let the spoon fly free and dropped the bomb in front of the door before moving around the corner of the building.

The explosion buckled the metal wall of the hut and splintered the door, which fell inward. McCarter plunged in after it, his AK spitting lead as several men inside opened up on him. Bullets tore through the bunks on either side of him; the former SAS commando had blundered into a barracks. He dropped first one, then another, then a third gunman.

“Report!” he said out loud, stalking from bunk to bunk, checking the bodies to make sure none of the fallen men was shamming.

“Found the processing plant,” James said. After a pause, there was an incredibly loud explosion that reverberated through the camp, shaking the walls of the barracks in which McCarter stood. “Processing plant eliminated,” James said. “It’s snowing.”

“Don’t stand around with your tongue out,” McCarter said.

“Clear here,” Encizo reported. “Several shooters down.”

The dull thump of another, smaller explosion reached McCarter’s ears as he cleared the other end of the barracks and exited through that side. Through the twisted wreckage of several small metal huts, he saw another one burst apart. That would be Manning, with his grenade launcher.

“Mopping up,” Manning’s voice said in McCarter’s ear, as if on cue. “No problems.”

“Clear,” Hawkins said.

The Cobra gunship continued to swoop low over their heads, making a series of lazy circles around the camp. The rotor wash swirled the smoke plumes, giving the scene a surreal cast.

“Form up at the center,” McCarter instructed. “What’s left of that wooden structure.” The two-story building in the middle of the camp, which Grimaldi had used as his reference for the chopper run, was obviously older than the metal structures erected around it. It bore the sagging roof and sun-weathered beams of several years in the Thai sun. What was left of elaborate woodwork on the shutters was mostly chipped away, either by time or, in the past few minutes, stray bullets. McCarter nodded approvingly as the members of Phoenix Force emerged from the surrounding area as if they’d been invisible moments before.

He pointed to Hawkins, Encizo and James. “Perimeter,” he instructed.

The three team members took up positions around the hut, like the posts on a three-legged stool, eyes sharp for enemy incursion. Thanks largely to Grimaldi’s opening attack, but also because of the lightning-fast Phoenix Force raid, the camp had become a burning ruin in only minutes. It was far from a secure location, however, and there was no telling how many gunmen might still be running loose and looking for payback.

The old wooden building had one door, which was of the same heavy, sun-bleached wood as the rest of the structure. McCarter motioned for Manning to move in with him. The two men took positions on either side of that door.

McCarter knocked loudly.

The Briton had only moved his hand out of the way a split second before when a shotgun blast tore through the middle of the door. Without missing a beat, Manning pulled a stun grenade from his web gear, popped it and threw it into the ragged hole.

McCarter and Manning closed their eyes and turned away. The blast was loud even outside the building; inside, it would have been deafening. Manning slammed aside what was left of the door with one heavy kick.

“In we go,” McCarter said. “Go high.”

Manning nodded.

They burst through the doorway, weapons ready. A man on the floor was writhing in pain, holding his face. Manning quickly rolled him over and secured him with two pairs of plastic zip-tie cuffs at wrists and ankles.

“I’m headed upstairs,” McCarter said. There was a rickety stairway at the rear of the building. The ground floor itself was one large room, with a wooden table and several metal folding chairs at one end, and a makeshift kitchen at the other. A pool table, one leg gone and replaced by a pair of cinder blocks, sat in the center of the space. The felt was badly ripped.

Three different refrigerators in the kitchen area were connected to a generator, which still chugged quietly in the corner. An exhaust hose led to the outside. One of the refrigerators had been popped open by the blast or simply left open by the man who was now Phoenix Force’s prisoner; it revealed shelf after metal shelf of cold beer.

So it was a rec room, McCarter concluded as he took the stairs two at a time. To men like these, recreation had only a couple of forms. The first was the booze, and the second—

“Bloody hell,” McCarter muttered.

The stained mattress and twisted bedclothes in the center of the floor still boasted human occupants. A gunman wearing only olive-drab fatigue pants stood in the center of the room, with a naked woman held in front of him. The gunner had one arm around the woman’s throat and the barrel of a 1911-pattern pistol to her head. He spit something at McCarter that the Briton couldn’t understand.

“Easy now,” he said in a calm voice. “Let’s not do anything we’ll regret later, shall we?”

“English,” the man said. The girl squirmed and he tightened his arm around her neck. She was wide-eyed with fear and looked badly used; there was an old bruise yellowing on her jaw. McCarter guessed her age at midtwenties, though it was hard to tell. She was probably a local hooker but could just as easily have been kidnapped for the sport of the Triangle gunmen.

“English,” McCarter confirmed. “Speak the Queen’s tongue, do you?”

“I speak.” The man nodded. “You let me go.”

“We might be able to work something out, at that,” McCarter said. “But I tell you what, mate. I’ll lower my gun here—” McCarter gestured gently with the Kalashnikov “—and you let that girl go. There’s no need to hurt her. She’s done nothing to you, now, has she?”

“You let me go,” the man said, pressing the pistol harder against his captive’s temple. “I kill her. You see. I kill her.”

“That’s really not a good idea,” McCarter said. He placed the Kalashnikov on the floor. “You see? Completely unnecessary. My gun is down. Nobody’s trying to hurt you. Just let her go and you can walk downstairs.”

“No,” the man said. “You not alone. You all let me go.”

“Bloody hell,” McCarter muttered again. This one was not stupid, for all his other abundantly evident personal failings. More loudly, he said, “All right. Now look, friend, I’m sure we can come to an understanding—”

In midsentence, McCarter’s hand closed around the butt of the Hi-Power in its holster on his web belt. The gun came up, rattlesnake fast, and McCarter snapped off a shot that took the gunman between the eyes. His head snapped back. The 1911, and the dead man, hung there for a moment as if gravity was suspended…and then both the corpse and the pistol in its hand hit the ground, leaving the shocked girl standing there without a stitch on.

It only took her a few seconds to start screaming.

“Easy,” McCarter said again. “Easy. It’s over. It’s over.” He grabbed her and pulled her to him. “It’s all over now….”

The pearl-handled switchblade the girl had been hiding behind her back came up and snapped open. McCarter, who had been waiting for that, simply side-stepped and popped her under the jaw with a closed fist. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she folded, falling onto the now bloody mattress.

“David,” Manning said from behind him. “Are you all right?”

“Right as rain,” McCarter said, looking down and shaking his head. “Mind the girl, here. She’s one of them, or near enough.” He bent, folded the switchblade and pocketed it.

“I saw,” Manning said. “How did you know?”

“Kept that one arm behind her back even after he went down.” McCarter jerked his head to the dead gunman. “Probably figured to stick me after I gave in to his demands.”

“Triangle operative, you think?” Manning asked.

“No,” McCarter said, “not necessarily. Doesn’t appear to have been treated like just one of the boys, now, does she?” He regarded the unconscious woman as Manning gently rolled her over, wrapped her in a sheet from the bed and secured her wrists and ankles with zip-tie cuffs. “Probably just a local. Threw in her lot willingly with this bunch. Doesn’t matter. Let’s see if there’s anything to see.”

They searched the structure, then paired off in teams while Hawkins guarded the prisoners. Two at a time, they searched what was left of the burning camp, moving as quickly as possible. They found drugs, weapons and paraphernalia relating to both, but no additional intelligence and nothing that could be used against the Triangle.

“All right, lads,” McCarter said, signaling to Grimaldi, who was hovering around in close support. “Let’s clear out. Burn as we go, by the numbers. Move.”

Each team member had incendiary grenades. As they withdrew from the camp, they threw these into any structures not already on fire or otherwise destroyed. The dull, hissing thumps of the grenades going off was followed by the red-orange glow of the chemical flames they spread.

“Everyone to the evac point,” McCarter said.

“Meet you at the airfield, gentlemen,” Grimaldi said. He dipped the nose of the Cobra in salute once, then again, and then was flying away.

“Let’s hope those truck jockeys are where we told them to meet us,” Encizo said.

“Two to one says they’ve cleared out,” James put in, “rather than get caught in whatever heavy stuff they’ll figure is going down.”

“No bet there.” Encizo shook his head.

“Can the chatter, lads,” McCarter said. “If they’re not there, we’ll have a long hike to the airfield. Come on, people. Move.”

“Great,” Encizo said.

Manning smiled, shook his head and took off in the lead, setting a grueling pace.

“Well,” James said, nodding after the Canadian, “you going to let him show you up like that?”

“Bloody hell,” McCarter groused.