Читать книгу Unified Action - Don Pendleton - Страница 7

Southern Caribbean

The NA-265—60 Saberliner Jet cut through the air at well over 500 mph. Below the forty-four-foot wingspan wisps of clouds obscured the view of the Caribbean Ocean. To the west the sun was setting in an explosion of reddish-yellow light.

The civilian jet was flown by a skeleton crew of three pilots from the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine service, while in the passenger area the three operators of Able Team lounged after being picked up after a mission in the Uruguay capital of Montevideo.

Big, blond and built like a nightclub bouncer, Carl Lyons reclined in one of the plush seats and stared out the window. Wearing civilian clothes and tan, thick-soled hiking boots, he looked rumpled, dirty and tired. One knee of his jeans was stained with blood splatter and his hands smelled like cordite. He set down his can of soda and crossed one size-twelve boot over his knee.

He noticed absentmindedly that the toe and tread of his boot were flecked with brain matter. He turned to look at the mustached, sandy-haired man sprawled in the seat across the narrow aisle from him.

“You think you used enough Semtex in that last satchel charge?” Lyons asked, voice dry.

Hermann Schwarz shrugged as he opened a can of soda. He took a long drink, then shrugged again.

“Don’t know,” he admitted. “I mean, the door came open. Right?”

“Every ass clown in that FARC hit squad came out the opening looking like fruit in a blender,” Rosario Blancanales pointed out.

“Did I tell ’em to carry a suitcase full of grenades?” Schwarz countered.

“Barb’s going to be pissed we didn’t recover any intelligence artifacts,” Lyons pointed out. The leader of Able Team referred to Barbara Price, the mission controller at their organizational headquarters, Stony Man Farm.

“I’m really more of an engineer and less of an archaeologist,” Schwarz answered.

“Who said anything about archaeologists?” Lyons demanded.

“It was a play on the dual use of the term ‘artifact’ you mentioned,” Blancanales explained.

“Thank you,” Schwarz said.

“It was also stupid and obvious,” Blancanales continued.

“Thank you,” Lyons said.

The digital speakers of the Saberliner’s PA system cut on and the pilot’s voice, sounding well modulated and distant, cut in. “I got an alert from HQ,” the woman said. “You have a fragmentation order. Please access the communications display in your table.”

“Speaking of Mama Bear…” Blancanales grinned.

Reaching out a single blunt finger, Lyons jabbed it into the console button. A section of the desktop slid back to reveal a recessed screen and keyboard. A red light next to a digital camera blinked on and the blank image on the screen snapped into resolution, revealing the attractive features of the honey-blond Stony Man mission controller, Barbara Price.

“Good work in Uruguay,” Price said. “I’ve got something new for you.”

From behind the television Blancanales snorted in laughter. “I wish she’d knock it off already with all the chitchat and get to business.”

“No shit,” Schwarz muttered.

Lyons scowled in their direction out of habit. “Go ahead, Barb,” he said.

“Hal just got a request through the Justice Department,” Price started, referencing Hal Brognola, the director of the Sensitive Operations Group which oversaw Stony Man Farm and its teams. “An investigative liaison for the FBI assigned to the Dominican Republic went missing twelve hours ago.”

“I’m not tracking,” Lyons said with a frown. “This doesn’t sound like an Able operation.” Looking down, he saw the blood splatter on his boot. “At all,” he added.

“We have three major problems,” Price began.

“Here it comes,” Schwarz said.

“One, the agent’s mission was twofold. Ostensibly he was helping with money-laundering operations used by international drug cartels. For that assignment he was given a Dominican counterpart. Partway into that investigation he came across evidence of corruption within the nation’s security services.”

“Gasp.” Blancanales shook his head.

“He was instructed to keep a low profile and to build a file to be turned over to the State Department. He went to meet a confidential informant and failed to make his last two check-ins.”

“Surely the Feds have protocols for that?” Lyons pointed out.

“They do,” Price answered. “The problem is that six hours ago police forces opened fire on an eighteen-year-old boy in a Santo Domingo ghetto. The police claimed the boy was resisting arrest, but witnesses claim he was unarmed. It turned out the boy was the son of the president’s chief political opponent.”

“Uh-oh,” Schwarz said. “The plot thickens.”

“Street gangs loyal to the opposition party immediately began rioting. The government responded with force and the unrest has now spread to all major parts of the city. The consulate is locked down. Nonessential personnel have been choppered out to Navy ships offshore. The city is locked down under martial law and the State Department has declared the Dominican a nonpermissive area.”

“Meaning no unescorted diplomats or government personnel,” Lyons finished.

“The government has refused to give sanction to any retrievals or investigations by us until the civil unrest has been contained,” Price said.

“And all the evidence wiped clean,” Blancanales added.

“Your pilot has been given her new flight instructions. You’ll touch down at the auxiliary executive airport just outside of town. To clear customs you’ll have to come out of this plane without the gear you used in Uruguay. Someone from the consulate will be waiting for you. Carmen has just sent the coordinates to a joint CIA/DEA safehouse to Schwarz’s BlackBerry. Go there, equip and go over what files we got on the missing agent’s case.”

“Sounds good,” Lyons said and nodded.

“Remember,” Price added. “We have no Dominican liaison for you. We do not have permission to operate. The city is locked with riots and under martial law. As far as we are concerned, the FBI’s contacts in Santo Domingo are compromised. This is going to be hairy.”

Schwarz looked at his teammates. “What’s new?” he asked.

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

INSIDE THE communications center of the underground Annex, Barbara Price clicked off the screen to the communications relay station and slowly turned in her chair. She saw Aaron “Bear” Kurtzman, leader of the Stony Man cyberteam, waiting for her. The burly man was sitting comfortably in a motorized wheelchair outfitted with an array of computer uplinks and interfaces.

There were two steaming mugs of coffee in his huge paws. He leaned forward and handed one to Price, who took it gratefully. She sipped at the coffee and looked up in surprise.

“This is great!” she sputtered. “You made this?”

Kurtzman grinned from behind his mug, suddenly self-conscious. “Yeah…I really don’t know what happened.”

“Is Phoenix in the conference room?”

“McCarter and James are,” Kurtzman replied. Price rose and began walking. “The rest of them are at the equipment cages getting gear ready for the airlift.”

“Good,” Price said, exiting the communications center.

Kurtzman followed the woman as she strode quickly down the hallway, pulling an iPhone free. Carmen Delahunt, the red-haired ex–FBI agent, came up and offered Price a form.

“Requisitions needs your signature for the AT-4s,” the woman explained.

Price shifted her phone to the crook of her shoulder and scrawled her name across the form. On the phone the connection clicked into place.

“Go for Brognola,” Hal Brognola said in his usual gruff voice.

“What are you doing?” Price asked.

She began walking again and the motor of Kurtzman’s chair whined as he followed her down the hall.

“Trying to ram our budget past the cabinet,” he replied. “You realize we use more ammunition than the entire United States Marine Corps in a year?”

“Even now?”

“Even now,” the big Fed said drolly. “What can I do for you? Able en route?”

“Able’s scrambling for the Dominican,” she confirmed.

She spun on her heel and shoved open the door to the Annex conference room, barging in to see Phoenix Force leader David McCarter and team medic Calvin James waiting for her.

“Phoenix?” Brognola demanded.

“That’s why I’m calling,” Price replied.

She pointed a finger at Kurtzman, then at the wall and the tech administrator worked a sequence on his chair-mounted keyboard. Instantly the plasma wall monitor sparked into life and went to its default setting of a global atlas.

“What do you need?”

On the screen the geographical image was overlaid with two thin red lines, one for latitude and one for longitude. Wherever the two lines intersected, a box formed, capturing the terrain and political information of any spot on the planet. Kurtzman worked a mouseball on his keyboard.

“Before I scramble Phoenix,” Price continued, “I need to know if I’m going to get overflight permission from Uzbekistan or if we have to get a plane capable of maintaining enough altitude to avoid detection during the insertion.”

“Just a second,” Brognola said. “Let me call a general at Stratcom to sense the general impression before I try to get it authorized.”

“I’ll hold,” Price said.

Calvin James, former Navy SEAL, turned toward the Phoenix Force leader, David McCarter. “We’re going to Kyrgyzstan.”

McCarter, a former British Special Air Service commando, shook his head. “Nah, Tajikistan. They’ve been having problems north of Kabul lately.”

“Kyrgyzstan,” James replied stubbornly.

“Twenty spot on it?”

“Done.” James shook the fox-faced Briton’s hand.

On the screen the lat and long lines settled over central Asia. The political lines showing the border of Kyrgyzstan with China on the right and Tajikistan on the south and Kazakhstan to the north and west showed up. Then the mountain range in the southeast of Kyrgyzstan was pulled up in vivid relief reading.

“Pay up, limey.” James smirked.

McCarter scowled good-naturedly. “I’ll get you in a bit.”

“You’re worse than Hawkins about paying up.”

“All right,” Price interrupted. “While I’m waiting for Hal to check this angle, we’ll move forward. This operation is a supplementation to an operational focus initiated by Joint Special Operations Command. We’re going to be performing direct-action missions based on information fed us by the Intelligence Support Activity,” Price explained, referencing the Pentagon unit tasked specifically with providing tactical information to special operations forces independent of civilian intelligence agencies. “What do you know about Kyrgyzstan?”

James shrugged. “There are clashes going on between progovernment and opposition forces. The government is threatening to balkanize, making the whole area highly unstable. There’ve been increased activity of extremist groups in the area. Most especially the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU, a terror group with direct links to al Qaeda.”

“Those are our boys,” Price said. “We have good intel they’re planning attacks on U.S. government facilities in the region. JSOC has had to shift too many assets south into Pakistan because of increased Taliban activity in the northwest border region there. They asked if we could send you boys to war.”

McCarter sat up. “Straight fights?”

“Is anything you do straight?” Kurtzman asked.

McCarter looked at him. “I’m not quite sure how to take that, mate.” He paused, then lifted an eyebrow. “Are you flirting with me, Bear?”

“Yes. Yes, I am,” Kurtzman said and nodded.

“If we’re done playing eHarmony.com do you think we could get back to the briefing?” Price asked.

“We’re going after bad guys?” James asked.

“Hunter-killer operation, search and destroy,” Price confirmed.

“I’m so happy,” McCarter replied.

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

THE SABERLINER BANKED hard as it made its approach.

Out their windows the members of Able Team could see several columns of thick, black smoke roiling up as the city burned. Dominican politics started at the street level and worked its way up. Public housing units and neighborhoods were carved into voting districts, and political workers utilized street gangs and corrupt police to intimidate voters and manipulate precincts.

Democracy in the Dominican Republic, much like ghetto-level law enforcement, was an exercise in violence, bribery and fraudulent activity on such a widespread scale that it was endemic to the nation.

The smooth, well-modulated voice of the pilot broke over the speaker. “I just received permission to land at the executive auxiliary airport,” she informed them. “But I’ve been advised that customs has shut down the gates as a result of the rioting.”

“Damn it,” Lyons muttered. “Nothing can ever be simple.” He paused. “Ever.”

Blancanales turned toward the speaker and addressed the pilot. “How soon can you do a turn-around and be in the air?” he asked.

There was a pause then a slight buzz of feedback as the pilot opened the channel again. “Ten or fifteen minutes,” she replied. “Just long enough for the ground crews to turn the plane around. There are no other planes scheduled ahead of us.” She clicked off then added, voice dry, “We’re apparently the only ‘executives’ stupid enough to land in Santo Domingo in the middle of chaotic civil unrest.”

“I don’t suppose you have, um…contingency items on board?” Schwarz asked.

“We’re not that kind of ride, gentlemen,” she answered. “We get things done by flying under the radar.”

“Ha-ha.” Lyons scowled.