Читать книгу Unified Action - Don Pendleton - Страница 10

Dominican Republic

The cabdriver was skilled and as interested in avoiding trouble as Able Team. He circumnavigated the trouble spots and police checkpoints throughout the city until he was able to drop them off within blocks of their objective.

Moving quickly down narrow alleys and across vacant lots, Lyons led the team by as surreptitious a route as possible under the circumstances. The U.S. government safehouse was a single-bedroom walkup in an older building set above a fruit warehouse.

The locals watched them with open curiosity, and Lyons noticed the prolific presence of machetes immediately.

“Blending in is going to be a problem,” Schwarz noted, voice dry.

“You think?” Blancanales replied, equally sarcastic.

“Could be one of the problems our missing agent had,” Lyons pointed out.

“Only in the tourist-heavy areas would he have been able to blend in,” Schwarz agreed. “Screw it, we ain’t gonna be invisible so we might as well get inside and gear up.”

“True,” Lyons said. “I was tired of all this sneaking around anyway.”

Blancanales rolled his eyes in humor as the team crossed the busy street and approached the outside staircase leading to the safehouse.

Lyons’s apprehension grew as he moved closer to the building. If elements within the Dominican government were responsible for the agent’s disappearance, then they would have the resources to keep the location under surveillance.

Seeming to read his mind as they crossed the cracked sidewalk, Blancanales spoke up. “According to the Farm, this place isn’t believed to be compromised.”

“Virginia is a long way from here,” Lyons replied evenly, his eyes searching the rooftops.

From a few blocks over there was a sudden burst of weapons fire, and in response the crowd loitering on the street grew animated.

“Fuck it,” Schwarz said. “A police patrol could come by at any minute. We need to get out of sight for a while.”

“Let’s go.” Lyons turned his head and spit. “Just to be safe, Pol,” he said, “why don’t you hang at the bottom of the stair while we check the place out—watch our six, see if anything shakes loose.”

“You got it, amigo,” Blancanales said.

The former Green Beret peeled off from his friends and wandered down toward the end of a foul-smelling alley toward where an ancient Chevy flatbed delivery truck was parked next to a row of overflowing garbage cans.

Lyons walked forward. The staircase was an ancient, weathered structure obviously decades old. It ran up a story then doubled back under a covered flight of steps, where it ended at an awning-overhung porch. The door set there was dark. From inside the alley the sounds of the street, of automobiles, conversations and blaring radios was muted and sounded farther away by some trick of acoustics.

Lyons moved up the staircase slowly, making little noise. Taking his lead, Schwarz followed his example. Below them Blancanales glanced up, established their position, then scanned the area for signs of trouble.

At the door Lyons paused and looked down. He frowned at what he saw and ran a finger over the door latch, noting the scratches obvious on the faceplate. His proximity sense clanged like a submarine klaxon.

He turned his head on a neck as muscled as a professional boxer’s and put one big, thick finger to his lips in warning. Schwarz nodded once, hand poised on the railing. With his other he alerted Blancanales that something was amiss.

Carl Lyons reached out slowly and pushed against the unlatched door. It swung open to reveal a short, dark entranceway. The light of the setting Caribbean sun pushed a cluster of shadows backward. From farther within the apartment the Able Team operatives heard the slight sound of movement. Lyons closed his right hand into a massive rock-hard fist and stepped softly forward.

Schwarz slid slowly forward behind Lyons, turning sideways into a loose karate stance. Moving quietly, the two men penetrated the apartment safehouse. Schwarz saw a modestly furnished but modern space. It boasted a flat-screen television on a far wall next to a window, curtains drawn, which faced the street outside. The TV was the center piece of a loose half circle of furniture including a couch and chairs next to a pedestrian dining set.

Beyond that space was a small kitchen, and running past the open service areas of the apartment was a hallway, leading, presumably to bedrooms and living spaces in the rear of the government residence.

Just behind a closed door down the hallway the sounds of movement were clearly audible now. Schwarz pulled his face into a frowning mask. Common sense suggested that if the intruder was Dominican police or intelligence, the perpetrator would not have inserted without backup.

Having discovered no one serving overwatch either outside the building or inside, all indications pointed toward some other unknown and likely criminal actor. Which raised a lot more questions than it answered, both Lyons and Schwarz realized. They also realized common sense dictated that their unseen adversaries would be equipped with firearms.

Walking heel-toe and rolling their weight forward to avoid making any noise, the two men tested the floor-boards for telltale squeaks before each step. From behind the closed door all movement suddenly ceased. Instantly the hyperprimed commandos froze, ears straining to catch any sound.

The figure came through the doorway like a hurricane touching shore. The door flew open, triggering immediate action from Lyons and Schwarz. Schwarz twisted and dived, rolling over one shoulder and out of the hall. He came to his feet like an acrobat and reached for one of the wooden dining-room chairs standing near at hand.

Reacting without thinking, Carl Lyons sprang forward and off to one side, desperately trying to create and exploit an angle in the tight kill box of the narrow apartment hallway.

The figure swung around the frame of the open door in a swift buttonhook maneuver. Lyons had an impression of a short dark figure with a slight build, hands wrapped around the butt of a black automatic pistol.

He struck the hardwood floor, spun over one shoulder and came up inside the interloper’s extended arm. He twisted at the waist as he rose and lashed out with his arm, striking the figure’s nearest elbow with a heel-of-the-palm strike.

The grunt was feminine, and Lyons was stunned to realize his assailant was female. His strike threw her arms to the side and the hands holding a Glock pistol struck the wall. He reacted instantly, striking downward with a knife-edge blow that hammered into the woman’s wrist and knocked the gun to the floor.

With surprising reflexes the perpetrator spun and slammed a knee into the ex–LAPD detective’s groin. He rolled one of his thighs inward to block the blow. Fingers raked at his eyes. He responded with a windmilling block followed by a straight punch like a power jab.

The woman threw herself backward, avoiding the blow easily. She catapulted into the bedroom she’d just emerged from. Lyons surged forward, following hard on her heels. She did a back handstand, then came down in a crouch. Her hands flew to where her pant leg met the top of her dark hiking boot.

Realizing she was grabbing for a holdout weapon, Lyons scrambled to close the difference. Even as he lunged he knew he wasn’t going to make it in time. The figure came out of her crouch with a silver Detonics .45-caliber automatic in her gloved hands.

Kyrgyzstan

ENEMY VEHICLES FLARED like bonfires in violent conflagrations. Gary Manning raked the milling al Qaeda combatants with his machine gun as Hawkins methodically executed every gunman who came into his crosshairs.

Having used RPGs to disable every vehicle in the convoy, both Calvin James and Rafael Encizo traded their rocket launchers for Soviet-era submachine guns. Moving quickly under the cover fire, David McCarter prepared to lead the assault element down the cliff face to overwhelm any resistance.

“Move! Move! Move!” McCarter barked.

As one, the three-man fire team surged forward over the lip of the incline. The deployed lines were flung out in front of them. They ran face-first in an Australian-style rappel down the steep incline, one hand running the guideline, the other firing their weapons from the hip using a sling over the shoulder of their firing hand to steady the muzzle.

The loose gravel gave way in miniature avalanches under their feet as they sprinted down, the incline ropes whizzing through the gloves on their hand. The light from burning vehicles cast wild shadows and threw pillars of heat up toward them. It felt as if they were running straight into the open mouth of hell.

A figure with an AKM assault rifle appeared out of the smoke. Encizo shifted his muzzle across his front and caught the man with a short burst in the torso, putting him down. Without missing a stride, the Cuban-American combat diver vaulted the body and came off his rope onto the road.

McCarter ran up beside him, his AKS nestled in his shoulder and spitting bullets with a staccato burst. Another bearded terrorist absorbed the burst and crumpled. James came off his rope and took up his sector of fire, providing security on the far flank.

“Be advised,” Barbara Price’s voice cut in. “We have too much ground smoke and ambient heat for orbital imagery. We have no eyes at the moment.”

“Copy,” McCarter acknowledged. He turned toward Encizo and James. “Let’s start at the lead vehicle and work our way down.”

From above them Manning’s machine gun had fallen silent. Hawkins’s sniper rifle barked once, then was still.

At every vehicle they found dead terrorists and burning corpses. The ambush had been unleashed with brutal efficiency, leaving no survivors after the initial assault. Satisfied, McCarter informed Stony Man, then called his overwatch element down to the road.

“We’re ready for phase bravo,” he said simply. A burning truck at his back cast his sharp features in a slightly diabolical light. “Form up and let’s roll.”

Immediately, Phoenix Force formed a loose Ranger file, each soldier putting twenty yards between themselves. Calvin James, in the lead, took a GPS reading, noted the time and then set out up the center of the road at a fast clip.

For the next phase of the operation Phoenix Force would conduct an overland march for movement to target. To keep cover of darkness, they would have to maintain a tight pace. Their margin of error had been whittled down to a very slender gap.

In the hands of the IMU terrorists was an American contractor tasked with controlling Predator drones in the border region.

With terrorist reinforcements stopped while still en route, Phoenix Force was now prepared to make the overland hike to the location and free the American contractor who was being held hostage.

James set a rugged pace, leading the men straight up the road until they had crested the rise and started down the other side. Using a pace count perfected over long years of patrol and special reconnaissance missions he led them three miles before reorientating himself and cutting cross-country.

Following James’s navigation, while McCarter doubled checked the GPS landmarks, Phoenix Force cut across the rugged terrain. As they dropped in altitude from the high mountain pass, sparse vegetation gave way to temperate forest. Saw grass and chokeberry bushes became interspersed with stands of thick dogwood and copses of coniferous trees, providing good cover for their movements as they drew closer to their target.

Finally, James called a halt at the team’s predetermined rally point. The group huddled close together in the lee of a stand of tamarack pines. Below them an adobe-style walled compound was set on a stretch of valley floor in the middle of a small village. The road they had followed for part of their insertion after the ambush cut in from the west and ran directly through the hamlet. This late at night the only lights showing came from the compound. Overhead a low-pressure front had rolled in and stacked up like dirty cotton candy against the mountains.

Hawkins adjusted the ambient light levels on the passive receiver of his sniper scope, bringing the compound into a starker relief. Beside him Gary Manning had swapped out his night-vision goggles for IR binoculars, allowing him greater ocular clarity of the target site.

“I got three sentries,” the Canadian muttered softly.

“That’s my count,” Hawkins confirmed. “Two at the east-facing driveway gate and one walking the wall to the rear of the compound.”

McCarter keyed his com set. “You still have eyes or has the pressure front cut us off?”

“Be advised,” Price replied immediately, “cloud cover has obscured our imagery.”

“Understood.” McCarter clicked off. “Any sign of the hostage?”

“Negative,” Hawkins said.

“If the intel is spot-on, then he’s down in the basement,” Manning added, still scanning the scene with his IR binoculars.

“Shaking thing to bet a life on,” James said.

“I agree,” McCarter replied. “I think we’re going to have infiltrate silent and identify before we commence with the takedown.”

“The approaches are rough, just like the satellite showed. Coming down the hill on the far side will bring a damn avalanche down with us,” Encizo put in.

“Yep,” McCarter agreed. “I was hoping once we got on location we’d catch a break.” He eyed the steep terrain surrounding them and funneling downward toward the terrorist compound and village. It was unforgiving. “But it looks like our luck is holding true to form.”

“Straight down the road?” James asked.

“Straight down the road,” McCarter answered.

Dominican Republic

CARL LYONS FLUNG himself to one side, and the Detonics Combat Master went off like a hand cannon in the confined space. The heavy .45-caliber slug snapped through the air and burned down the hallway before burying itself in a wall.

Hermann Schwarz spun around the wall and threw the chair in a rough lob. It arced out and landed, bouncing awkwardly. The interloper jerked back, flinching away from the flying furniture.

Lyons used the seconds to readjust himself and leap onto the masked figure. His hand caught her wrist just behind where the gun butt filled her palm. He surged forward, snapping his elbow around and driving it into the side of her head.

The masked female slumped under the blow, stunned. The compact automatic dropped out of her hand and fell loudly on the floor. Schwarz rushed into the room ready to back Lyons up. He looked down and saw the sprawled figure on the floor as Lyons pushed himself up.

“She go night-night?” he asked.

“Like a baby,” Lyons replied, and picked up the pistol.

Out in the front room they heard the door being thrown open violently. Lyons spun and lifted his handgun.

“We’re fine, Pol,” Schwarz called out.

“Glad to hear it,” Blancanales replied. “Guess I jumped to the wrong conclusion after seeing you walk into a building right before there’s a gunshot.” Blancanales walked in and looked down at the unconscious figure on the ground. “Dios mios, Ironman, we don’t have time for you to start dating.”

“You’re getting to be a real old lady,” Lyons muttered.

“Speaking of ladies,” Schwarz said, “maybe we could ask this one some questions?”

“Suits me.” Lyons nodded, and stuck the gun behind his back. “Let’s get her up and put her in a chair.”

Blancanales took her mask off to check the extent of Lyons’s blow, and an attractive woman with mahogany skin and Caribbean features was revealed. Her head was covered with close-cropped, tight-knit rows of dark hair pulled back severely from her handsome face. Her temple was swelling where it had made contact with the sharp end of Lyons’s elbow.

The woman came awake, still dazed while the three men pushed her down into a deep, comfortable chair in the living room that was so soft it would be impossible to quickly rise from. She sought to argue and perhaps fight, but Lyons laconically showed her her own pistol and she sat quietly, shooting daggers with her eyes.

“Anything?” Lyons asked after Blancanales had finished searching her.

The Puerco Rican nodded and held up empty hands. “Nothing.”

Lyons nodded. “Check the room she was tossing,” he instructed.

The big ex-cop regarded his prisoner while Blancanales moved back to the bedroom where they had first jumped the thief. Schwarz moved behind the woman and took her hands up, rolling her fingers across a glass he had taken from the kitchen, then setting it just out of reach on the table.

The woman squawked in protest at the liberty taken and spit out a long line of vulgarities. Lyons smirked in admiration at her profane grasp of the English language.

“Nice. You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“My mother’s dead, you Yaquis pig-screwing bastard!” the woman snapped.

Lyons didn’t believe her for a second. “Everyone’s got a hard luck story, sister. What’s your name?”

“None of your business.”

“Sure, you break into the house of my friend, try to steal stuff, and it’s none of my business. But that’s fine, little girl, we’ll know who you are in a moment.”

At the kitchen table Schwarz was quickly mixing a small amount of commercial glue taken from desk supplies in the apartment with common tap water. He worked methodically while the computer next to him began warming up.

“Where’s your badge?” the woman demanded, trying to turn the tables.

Lyons smiled at her and lifted one big, blunt finger to his lips. “Sshh. You felt my badge upside your head just a minute ago.”

“Someone will have heard that pistol shot,” she warned. “They will call the police.”

“In this neighborhood? In the middle of a riot? For a car backfire?” Lyons shook his head gently and the girl slumped into the chair.

Blancanales came back into the room carrying a black canvas backpack. “She found the safe,” he said, and dumped her pack out onto the table next to where Schwarz was working.

“She crack it?” Lyons demanded.

“Nope, but she would have,” Blancanales answered. “I found this.”

The Puerto Rican Special Forces veteran lifted out a black electronic device the size of a commercial Pocketbook computer with two coaxial cables dangling from it. The implement was a top-of-the-line digital safecracker. Lyons let out a long, slow whistle of appreciation.

“That’s not exactly gear I would associate with a common street burglar,” he said.

The woman looked away. From the kitchen table behind her Schwarz scanned his fingerprint sample into the safehouse computer. “I’m sending it through now,” he said into his com link.

The Stony Man supercomputers would compute a match at speeds that far outstripped the power of the field station equipment.

“Why don’t you save me some time, lady,” Lyons snapped. “No one’s buying the burglar act.”

“Who are you?” the woman asked, voice steady.

Lyons opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by Schwarz, the man’s voice thick with sardonic irony.

“Who are we, Ms. Felicity Castillo?” Schwarz laughed. “As of now, we’re your contacts.” He turned toward Lyons. “She’s one of ours.”

Lyons got a look of disgust on his face. “I already hate this fucking town.”