Читать книгу Act Of War - Don Pendleton - Страница 11

The Isle of Sardinia

It was a moonless night and the stars were bright in the heavens. Sitting on a rock, the man in loose clothing was cleaning his fingernails with a pocketknife when he went stiff, his eyes going wide in shock. His hands twitched from the effort to grab the AK-47 assault rifle laying across his lap, but they refused to obey even the most simple command.

There was pain, searing pain, at the back of his head, and the guard realized that he had been stabbed in Death’s Doorway, the tiny fissure located near the right ear. Slide in a thin blade right there and your victim was paralyzed, twist the blade and they died instantly, like turning off a light switch. Click, dead. The guard had done it many times over the years to policemen, judges, even a few women who had refused to cooperate, but he never knew how much it hurt. The pain filled his body like electric fire. It was beyond agony! But he couldn’t make a sound. Not a sound.

Then there was pressure from the blade, a flash of light and eternal blackness.

With a soft exhalation, the dead man slid off the rock onto the white sandy beach, the assault rifle splashing into the blue sea.

“One down, fifty to go,” T. J. Hawkins whispered, wiping the blade clean before sheathing it. A decorated member of the elite Delta Force before joining Stony Man, Thomas Jackson Hawkins, T.J. to his family and friends, was a big man, lightning-fast in his movements and a stone-cold killer on the battlefield.

“Firebird One, this is Texas. The clubhouse is open,” Hawkins said, touching his throat mike.

As silent as ghosts, more men rose from the scraggly juniper bushes of the low hillock and approached the rocky rill, moving from shadow to shadow. Past the hillock rose huge sand dunes that extended for miles. This section of Sardinia was often called the Sarah of Italy. Others called it purgatory, the gateway to hell.

Carefully studying the coastline, David McCarter kept the Barnett crossbow steady in his grip, the blackened tip of the arrow as reflectionless as the sky above. A quiver of arrows for the crossbow was strapped across his back and a MP-5 machine gun was slung at his side, the barrel tipped with a sound suppressor.

There was a tunnel straight ahead of the Stony Man team, a dark recess going straight into the bowels of the earth. Sardinia was famous for its gold mines, the island honeycombed with a warren of passages. But McCarter knew this abandoned mine was a dead end. The slavers were a lot smarter than that. They had been plying their trade for decades, and nobody had ever gotten closer than the length of a knife blade before.

Until this night, McCarter thought grimly. A former member of the SAS, David McCarter was the leader of Phoenix Force, a former SAS commando and an Olympic-class pistol shot. Every man on the team owed his life to McCarter a dozen times over, and had repaid the debt in equal numbers. Their bonds of friendship had been forged in fields of blood.

On the surface, the island of Sardinia was a tourist’s paradise, the fjords filled with more yachts and pleasure craft than all of the fishing boats of the entire chain of twenty-three islands combined. The beaches were made of the purest white sand, as pristine as newly fallen snow, and the sea was almost supernaturally clear. During the daylight, it was possible to look all the way to the bottom of the shoals and see the wrecked stone columns from the time of the Roman Empire.

However, the criminal elements of Sardinia began to kidnap young women from Italy, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Spain and Sicily, hauling them away to a secret location. There they were brutalized until their spirits finally broke and they learned to accept their new position as sex slaves. Branded like cattle, the girls, mostly teenagers, were sold on the world sex market to high-priced whorehouses in Bangkok, harems in Arabia and South America or to millionaire sadists seeking fresh victims for their private torture rooms. If the girls refused to obey, or tried to escape, they were brutally killed.

Italy lost an estimated thousand teenage girls a year to the monstrous slavers. Numerous ships had been caught at sea, and occasionally some girls were rescued alive. But the slavers disliked witnesses, and often tossed them overboard still locked in their heavy steel chains.

If the flesh merchants were arrested by NATO forces, they went to stand trail in the world court. If taken by the Italian military, the slavers were executed at sea with a bullet to the back of the head. Nobody had ever accused the Italians of being soft on crime. But the lure of huge profits was too strong an incentive, and in spite of everything the UN, Interpol, Italy, Greece and Turkey could do, the foul practice continued.

There were few villages along Costa Verde that afforded privacy to anybody who did not wish to be observed. Far out to sea, Arlentu Mountain was a basalt fortress rising on the horizon from the last volcanic eruption hundreds of years ago. It was a landmark for passing ships to find the safe deep-water harbors. The mountain was also an excellent way for the slavers to navigate without using radar or radio beacons, which might give away their position.

Pulling a palm-size computer from a pocket of his combat suit, McCarter checked the position on the blinking red dot. The slavers were smart, he’d give the bastards that, but not smart enough. A raiding party had captured a water-skiing party that morning, and one of the guests was the daughter of a American senator, with a low-jack chip embedded into her earlobe. It was a precaution that some politicians and the members of their families, took against kidnapping. The chip had been steadily emitting a pulse, giving her exact location. Unfortunately, her father had been in conference until noon and only learned of her disappearance then. The senator immediately called the President, who then called Stony Man. Hours later Phoenix Force was moving through the night, tracking a tiny blip that hopefully still was attached to a living woman.

“There are no proximity sensors in the area,” Rafael Encizo said, checking the EM scanner in his hand. “We’re clear to proceed.”

Encizo was a short stocky man, with catlike reflexes. Slung across his chest was an MP-5 machine gun, and stun grenades festooned his web harness. A compact .38 Walther PPK rode in a high belly holster, a Tanto combat knife was sheathed upside down near his shoulder for fast access and plastic garrotes dangled from a breakaway catch on his belt.

“Are we heading for that?” Calvin James asked suspiciously, his accent pure southside Chicago. “Jails make a good cover for covert ops. Nobody wants to go near them, and any trouble can be attributed to an attempted escape.”

Rising far to the south, the black outline of a Sardinia penitentiary stood against the starry sky, a stoic reminder that not everybody on the island was involved in the black market of selling human beings. Like everywhere else, most of the people were just trying to make a living and protect their families. But not all.

“Trail goes this way,” McCarter said, checking the locator.

“Just hope we’re tracking a girl and not merely an ear,” Gary Manning stated, working the slide on a KGB Special pistol.

Satchel charges hung from both sides of his combat suit, while a standard-issue MP-5 submachine gun was slung across his chest. Usually, he carried a .50-caliber sniper Barrett rifle, whose titanic cigar-size bullets could shoot through a brick wall. But that was for open terrain, and the work tonight was going to be close quarters, probably hand to hand. Which is why he was also carrying disposable plastic garrotes, stun grenades and the KG-B Special.

Actually, the automatic pistol was simply a Beretta 9 mm with an oversize ejector port to prevent jamming. But the bullets were truly unique. Invented long ago by the KGB, the shells carried half-charges that propelled a miniature piston forward inside the casing to slap the soft-lead bullet forward. However, the 9 mm piston then jammed into the narrow 7 mm mouth of the casing virtually welding into place from the heat and friction. That stopped all of the propellant gases from escaping, along with any noise. The KGB Special wasn’t a silenced gun, but carried silenced bullets. The only sounds made were the click of the falling hammer and the click of the piston. The subsonic rounds had a pitiful range and poor penetration. But for this kind of a soft probe, where silence was vital, it was pure death, especially in the talented hands of Gary Manning.

Suddenly soft bells began to tinkle, and the Stony Man commandos dropped into combat posture, snicking off the safeties of their weapons. A moment later a deer strolled into view from around a boulder, its leather collar studded with tiny bells.

“A pet?” Encizo asked, easing his finger off the trigger of his submachine gun.

“No, the island is full of them,” James replied, checking behind them in case this was a diversion. “They roam free by the thousands, like reindeer in Iceland.”

As the deer began to walk along the sandy beach, Hawkins gave a hard grin. “Which is why there are no remote sensors. They’d be going off every five minutes with these things wandering around.”

“All the better for us,” McCarter said, comparing the vector graphic on the device to the terrain around them. “Okay, this way. I’m on point, T.J. and Gary cover the flanks. One meter spread, silenced weapons only.” First and foremost, this was a rescue mission. Get the girls out alive. Afterward, there could be a reckoning with the slavers, but not before. The image of the criminals throwing their “goods” overboard flashed into his mind, and a rage filled the former British soldier. He checked the arming bolt on his MP-5 submachine gun.

Easing through the jumbled array of boulders dotting the landscape, Phoenix Force slipped through the moonless night, watching for sentries and trip wires. There were sure to be additional safeguards aside from the one sleepy guard.

The salty smell of the sea became sweetened by the perfume of the maccia shrubs and myrtle. The team jerked their weapons upward at an odd noise, then relaxed when it was only a vulture winging by overhead. They only hoped it wasn’t an omen.

Following a dried riverbed of smooth stones, the Stony Man team soon reached a big granite tower set alongside a low hill, partially hiding it from the beach. All around them rose granite cliffs, impossible to climb. It was a box canyon, with the stony riverbed the only entrance.

“Mine,” Hawkins whispered into his throat mike.

Everybody froze.

Dropping to one knee, Hawkins moved aside the loose stones to reveal a squat land mine. Only the burnished pressure plate had been exposed, a small coin set among the loose stones. Pulling a garrote from his belt, Hawkins cinched it tight through the locking safety and heard the mine disarm. The weight trigger had been set to maximum, probably so that one of the wandering deer wouldn’t set the charge, but an escaping girl would have her legs blown off. Nasty.

A few yards away McCarter whistled softly, and bent to neutralize another. Then Encizo did a third, followed by James. Proceeding with extreme care, the team cleared a wide path down the middle of the riverbed until finally reaching an ancient Roman pavilion. Marble stairs rose from the riverbed and led directly to a large stone tower, which dominated the box canyon.

Spreading out, the Stony Man commandos checked for traps, but reached the crumbling fortress without incident.

Apparently, the granite tower had once been a tourist attraction, as there was a sign announcing the prices for a guided tour. But now the entrance was blocked. A weathered sign printed in Italian, Sardinian, French and Japanese listed the structure as dangerously unstable, about to collapse at any moment. The message was clear: keep out or die.

“Bullshit,” James muttered, holstering his pistol and running a scan of the door. He found no electronic sensors and went to work on the lock. A moment later they heard a subdued click and the door swung aside, revealing only darkness.

Donning their night-vision goggles, the team switched from starlite to UV and slipped into the ruin. The night vanished, replaced with a black-and-white view of the world in sharp detail.

The inside of the granite tower had been reinforced with concrete plastered on the walls. Rubber mats lined the ancient stones, and winding stairs led to the tower and down to the basement. Checking their weapons, Phoenix Force descended into the bowels of history.

The center of the stone steps was worn from two thousand years of bare feet, sandals, boots and sneakers. Small recessed niches dotted the wall. Most of them were empty, but a few contained modern Coleman lanterns. Reaching a landing, McCarter saw a short, plump statue of a naked woman sitting in a niche, the smiling figure holding a spear and a sheath of wheat. That was the mother goddess, protector of women and children. The Briton felt repulsed at the thought of the crying prisoners dragged past the ancient idol as some sort of horrible joke. Or was it more than that?

Going to the statue, McCarter switched from UV to infrared. Sure enough, the navel of the plump little goddess glowed faintly. Still warm from the touch of a human hand. Gently, the Stony Man commando inserted a finger into the navel and felt the stone give slightly.

Across the landing, there was a click and a section of the smooth concrete wall separated. Also switching to infrared, Hawkins inspected the door and pressed a palm to the only glowing area. There was a second click and the door swung aside, revealing a long narrow tunnel cut through the rock of the hill.

His weapon at the ready, Hawkins took the point position again and moved swiftly into the passageway, holding his pistol in a two-handed grip.

The last to enter, James pulled out a small block of C-4 from the satchel charge, shoved in a radio detonator and hid the explosive wad alongside the secret door. Just in case.

Exiting the tunnel, Hawkins found a huge room carved into the rock. Wooden pallets were placed in orderly lines along opposite walls and large cisterns stood in the corners.

“This was the barracks for the soldiers,” McCarter stated, glancing around. The place was enormous, suitable for a small army. He spotted small brass placards on the walls showing where racks for spears and swords used to be located. Now there were only rough outlines left by the smoke of primitive candles.

“Some sort of a museum exhibit,” Manning observed warily. There was no concrete down here. The walls were raw stone, covered with a ripple pattern of chisel marks from the artisans who had hammered the room into existence two thousand years ago.

“I don’t like this,” Encizo muttered, looking around quickly. There didn’t seem to be any other way out of the barracks. “Which means that either we missed something or else…”

A ghostly whimper interrupted the thought, closely followed by a man’s cruel laugh.

This was it! McCarter realized, the knowledge sending adrenaline pumping through his veins. The slavers were right on the other side of the stone walls. But where was the bleeding entrance?

Switching his goggles from UV to IR, Hawkins saw nothing unusual. He knew the team was missing something obvious, but what? They could start tossing grenades, but the moment they started, the jig was up for the girls.

Removing his goggles, McCarter pulled out a flashlight and clicked on the bright halogen light. Sweeping the beam around the barracks, he saw the hidden door immediately. Every one of the brass plaques on the wall was above a sleeping pallet, except one located on a black wall, the brass tarnished and dirty.

Clicking off the light, McCarter pressed the plaque and the nearby pallet slid aside silently on greased tracks. Worn stone steps led down again. The sound of laughter was louder.

“Just like Afghanistan,” Hawkins whispered, readying a stun grenade. When the Soviet Union had invaded the ancient country, their battle tanks had been meet by booby traps designed centuries ago for Roman war chariots. Hinged sections of road opened wide and a tank dropped fifty feet onto solid granite. What killed horses two thousand years ago, only stunned the crew of the tank. But before they could recover, the Afghans poured gasoline through the air vents of the armored transport and burned the Soviets alive. Grisly, but effective.

Moving swiftly along the flight of stairs, the commandos found themselves descending into a huge natural cave. The floor below was lined with rows upon rows of steel cages, young woman lying inside on piles of dirty straw.

Like animals in a zoo, James noted, feeling a furious coldness swell deep inside.

Several of the prisoners were weeping, the sound echoing slightly off the hard walls of the cave. Reaching the floor, McCarter switched to IR again, searching for any hot spots. Immediately he saw the rectangle of a door set into the far wall, the outline glowing with warmth. Jackpot.

The Stony Man team headed that way, moving past the rows of cages in the dark. The smell from the dirty straw was foul. There were no bathroom facilities for the prisoners. Obviously another part of the process designed to break their spirit. The soldiers hardened their hearts and concentrated on the mission. If the team started freeing the girls, some would began to shout, alerting the slavers. The only way to release them all was to take out the Sardinians first.

A soldier’s burden, Hawkins thought grimly, trying to ignore the sobbing teenagers.

A guard armed with a cattle prod was sleeping in a chair beside the door. Manning and James grabbed his arms as McCarter clapped a hand across the man’s mouth and slit his throat with a fast slash of a Gerber combat knife. The guard awoke drowning in his own blood and thrashed wildly for a few moments before going still.

With the sound of the dead man’s life dripping onto the floor, Encizo went to the door and ran a check with the EM scanner. It was clean, no traps this time.

Hawkins took point again and tried the latch. It moved easily and the door swung aside on loud creaking hinges. Damn! The big Southerner brought up his MP-5 fast, but the next room was empty.

As their goggles adjusted to the bright electric lights, the Stony Many commandos saw rubber mats on the rock floor making paths through the torture chamber. There was no other word for the place. Gleaming steel tolls hung from hooks on the walls, and heavy wooden stocks, looking like something from the Middle Ages, were situated over rusty drains. Ripped clothing was piled to the side, mostly T-shirts and swimming suits. A stainless steel surgical table was filled with personal items, rings, eyeglasses, hair clips and such. Video cameras were mounted on tripods to record the humiliating strip, and the air was redolent with the smell of pine disinfectant. A hose lay coiled in a corner, the nozzle trickling water down a drain.

This must be where the girls were first taken to be stripped of everything from the outside world. A wooden butcher’s block was surrounded by the remains of cell phones that had been smashed into useless rubbish, and the hopper of a nearby shredder was filled with the remains of wallets and credit cards. The last hope of escape was destroyed right before the helpless captives.

Across the room was a door made of burnished steel.

Moving in that direction, the team tightened their grips on the weapons as the metal door opened and out walked a whistling man with a coiled whip in his hand. The slaver paused, registering shock at the unexpected sight of a group of armed soldiers inside the underground base, then McCarter shot him in the face with the crossbow.

The barbed quarrel came out the back of his head, and the dying man wheezed in pain as he eased to the rubber mats on the floor. Already at the door, Hawkins kept it from closing completely with a knife blade, while Encizo and James pulled the rings from grenades.

A guttural voice laughed harshly and several men responded in Sardinian. The words almost made sense, the language was so close to Italian, but there were just enough differences to render it incomprehensible.

“Please,” a young woman cried out in English. “My father is a senator! He’ll pay anything you want for me! Anything!”

“We make more, you go Sudan,” the first voice said in halting English. “Big show, daughter American senator.”

There came the sound of ripping cloth, and the young woman screamed.

Instantly, Hawkins pulled open the door, Encizo and James tossed in their grenades, and the rest of Phoenix Force moved in with their weapons firing. A group of men was clustered around a young woman dressed only in bra and panties. They turned at the noise, cursed and shoved her aside to claw for the handguns in their belts.

Aiming carefully, McCarter put an arrow through the throat of a bald man holding a fistful of blouse, then dropped the weapon and pulled around his MP-5. Hawkins shot a Sardinian in the forehead, then rocked back as an incoming round hit him in the belly.

On the count of eight, the stun grenades detonated while still rolling along the floor, the bright flashes filling the room. Blinded by the light, the Sardinians began to shoot wildly, one of them blowing the face off the slaver standing right alongside. The glowing streaks of tracer rounds filled the air.

Over near a video-mixing board, two men worked the bolts on their Kalashnikov assault rifles, chambering rounds. Encizo took out one, Hawkins the other. The Sardinians died with their life blown out the backs of their chests.

Shooting as carefully as if he was at a gun range, Manning placed four rapid head shots in a row, taking out the men clustered around the console.

Diving forward, James tackled the terrified girl to the floor to get her out of the line of fire, trying to keep her covered with his body. He grunted as a bullet hit his back, the NATO body armor under his fatigues deflecting the slug with a sharp whine. Screaming hysterically, the girl began pummeling the Stony Man operative with her soft fists.

“Delta Force, ma’am,” James grunted as he took another bullet in the back. “You want to shut the fuck up and let us rescue you?”

Instantly she stopped struggling and looked into his face, tears of hope welling in her eyes. He could see that she had been badly beaten, her nose broken, and there were teeth missing, fresh blood smeared on her cheek and shoulder.

“Kill them,” she begged with a sob in her voice. “Please kill them all.”

“That’s the plan,” James replied, pulling out his Beretta and firing directly into the groin of a man coming their way loading a shotgun. Dropping the weapon, the slaver shrieked and tried to get away. James shot the man in the back, then again in the spine as the bleeding gunner started to slide limply down the wall.

A few moments later it was over and Phoenix Force quickly reloaded their weapons before going into the next room. Rising stiffly, James hauled the girl back to the entrance, hustling her away to safety. The first part of the mission was done. Now came the hard part—burning out this nest of vipers.

Kicking open the door, McCarter found a short corridor lined with curtained alcoves. It reminded him of a brothel he had raided once in Hong Kong. The implications were horribly clear, and he shoved the stubby barrel of the machine gun into the first sex room, seeking a target. A naked girl was strapped to small bed, a naked man trying to get a handgun free from the tangle of his clothing draped over a chair. McCarter stitched the slaver from groin to face, then departed while reloading. They’d come back later for the prisoners. This wasn’t over yet by a long shot. The element of surprise was gone, and the Sardinians would start fighting back for real at any second. Every tick of the clock was a mark against the Stony Man commandos. This had to be a blitz.

Standing in a doorway, Hawkins was holding back a curtain and firing his MP-5 in short bursts, the spent brass arching away to bounce off the wooden jamb. Men screamed from within the alcove, followed by silence.

Going to the next curtain, Encizo paused and the fabric started to jump from the outgoing lead. He waited until the firing stopped, then swept in low, catching the bare-chested slaver as he dropped a spent clip from his Skorpion machine pistol. The little Cuban stroked the trigger and sent a wreath of 180-grain, steel-jacketed vengeance into the slaver.

Cringing behind a chair, a middle-aged woman stared at the act with a growing expression of delight. As the Sardinian fell, she leaped forward to pull a knife from his belt and attacked the riddled corpse in mindless fury.

Finishing another alcove, McCarter paused at the sight of his reflection moving in a wall mirror. Acting on a hunch, he fired into the glass, and a man fell out holding an AP grenade. As it rolled into sight, McCarter saw the ring was still attached. That had been too close! The NATO body armor they wore was good, but it didn’t make a man invulnerable to head shots or concussion damage. Warily, the Briton checked inside the closet for any more hardmen and found a flight of stairs leading deeper into the earth. Patting his chest, the Stony Man commando found that he was out of stun grenades. Returning to the room, he grabbed the AP grenade from the floor and tossed it down the stairs. As the lethal sphere bounced men shouted in fear and there came the sound of running boots.

Jumping down the short flight, McCarter landed in a crouch and saw a rough-hewn tunnel filled with men holding guns. Dodging to the left, the Phoenix Force leader opened fire with the MP-5, mowing them down. A few of the slavers fired back, the rounds ricocheting off the rock walls. When the clip was empty, McCarter pulled his 9 mm Browning Hi-Power and waded into the dying bodies, finishing off anybody who wasn’t obviously dead.

Clearing out the last alcove, Manning reloaded his MP-5 just as a fat man rushed around a corner blasting away with an M-16. Coolly, Manning took out the fellow with a burst in the chest, then moved past the falling body to sneak a peek around the corner.

About a dozen men were opening plastic crates. A couple Sardinians were donning NBC suits, and the rest buckling on harnesses for XM-214 electric miniguns. Just one of those weapons could chew the Stony Man team into hamburger, and if the hardmen released VX gas into the prehistoric warren, everybody would die, including the girls still trapped in the cages.

“They’ve got VX and miniguns,” Manning subvocalized into his throat mike, arming his last stun grenade. He couldn’t risk rupturing the nerve-gas canisters.

Staying low, Encizo joined Manning just as a roaring hellstorm of lead blasted out of the room as the miniguns chewed a deep gap into the corner and wall, throwing off an explosion of splinters. In unison, the two Stony Man commandos tossed their stun grenades around the corner, then quickly retreated.

As the grenades flashed into a triple flare, the slavers walked through the blinding light, firing their weapons everywhere, the spinning barrels of the miniguns vomiting high-velocity lead.

Crossing the streams, the Sardinian criminals chewed twin paths of destruction along the hallway and into the alcoves. Most of the curtains had been torn down, and they could see inside with no trouble. Still hacking at the corpse, the middle-aged woman was torn to bits.

Marching over the bodies of their fallen comrades, the two gunners proceeded into the studio, searching for the enemy, assuming it to be the Italian army again. But they could hardly believe the fools ever found their base, much less got this far inside. But the studio was also empty. Easing his grip on the firing handle, one of the Sardinians asked a muttered question. But the other man merely shrugged, uncertain of what to do next.

In the destroyed hallway, two of the bodies lying under the torn curtains raised into kneeling positions, and the Stony Man commandos cut loose with their MP-5 machine guns at point-blank range. The Sardinians flew backward from the concentrated barrage, their miniguns briefly firing to hammer at the stone ceiling before going as silent as the dead slavers.

Walking forward, Hawkins administrated a shot directly into the face of each Sardinian, just to make sure. Then Encizo pulled the power cords from the miniguns, rendering them inoperable.

“Okay, let’s finish this,” Manning said, slinging his machine gun. Pulling a Desert Eagle from a holster on his hip, the man clicked off the safety. His KGB Special didn’t have anywhere near enough stopping power for this next part.

Slinging their machine guns, Hawkins and Encizo prepared their own handguns as they walked down the hallway, past the alcoves. There was a fast flurry of gunfire, then three slow deliberate shots.

Appearing in the smashed mirror, David McCarter carefully studied the war zone outside the alcove before emerging with his MP-5 in one hand and a thick book tucked under the other arm.

As he moved followed, the members of his team came around the corner.

“All clear?” McCarter asked.

The soldiers nodded.

“Well, I found the sales ledger,” McCarter announced, tapping the fat volume with the hot barrel of the machine gun.

“Great,” Hawkins muttered, working out a jam from his MP-5. “Then let’s get out of this shithole.” Saving the girls had been the mission priority, but this was the prize. The names and address in the book would send dozens of men and women to the gas chamber. Or whatever method of execution their assorted countries used to execute criminals in these so-called enlightened days. Hawkins had seen enough death in his career to understand that making somebody wait ten years on death row was a cruel and unusual punishment. A bullet to the back of the head was swift and painless, carrying much more mercy and compassion than the cannibals of society ever showed to their victims.

“I’ll call in the rescue planes. Find some blankets, spare clothing, anything like that, and go help Calvin open the cages,” McCarter directed. “And be gentle. The girls have been through double hell. If anybody doesn’t want to leave her cage, then just unlock the door and let her be. To them, we’re just another bunch of ugly guys with guns.”

“Ugly?” Manning almost smiled at that, then he turned to Hawkins. “Must be talking about you.”

Finally clearing the jam, Hawkins gave a snort. “Ugly in Texas is beautiful everywhere else in the world.”

“I’ve been to Dallas, brother, and that dog won’t hunt.”

“Yeah, right.”

“How about we bring along a peace offering?” Encizo suggested, reaching down to grab a dead Sardinian by the collar. He lifted the bloody corpse off the floor. “To show our goodwill.”

“Now you’re talking sense,” Hawkins said, slinging the machine gun.

As the Stony Man operatives walked away, dragging the dead slavers along behind, McCarter worked the transceiver on his belt. The civilian cell phones would never have worked this deep underground, but the team had left a repeater unit hidden in the bushes on the surface. “Rock House, this is Firebird One,” he said, touching his throat mike. “The clubhouse is clear, and the goods have been recovered.”

“Excellent. Any breakage?” Barbara Price said, her voice wavering slightly from the interference of the surrounding rock.

Resting the hot barrel of the MP-5 machine gun on his shoulder, McCarter looked sideways at the woman in the alcove. “Yes,” he said in a flat voice. “Send body bags along with the medics.”

“Confirm. Sorry to hear that.” Price sighed. “I’ll contact the NATO frigate waiting offshore and have the prisoners picked up ASAP. As soon as the rescue helicopters arrive, proceed to your former staging area and wait for further instructions.”

“Something local?” McCarter asked, pulling a cigarette from the packet of Player’s in his shirt and lighting up. He pulled in the dark smoke with little satisfaction. Maybe they hadn’t gotten all of the slavers, and another nest of the vipers had been found. That’s fine by me. Let’s end this filthy practice, once and forever, he thought.

“Nothing local. We’ve got hot soup with breakage,” Price said tersely. “Coffeemaker will relay details over a more secure line.”

Coffeemaker had to be Kurtzman. “What kind of breakage?” McCarter asked, getting a bad feeling.

“Not over an open transmission.”

That made McCarter raise an eyebrow. Open? These radios were protected by 254-byte encoding! The situation had to be really bad.

“Confirm,” he stated, exhaling a long stream of smoke. “You sending Sky King?”

There was a crackle of background static. “Negative. Look for a man in dark clothing.”

A blacksuit from the Farm would be bring them a plane, the leader of Phoenix Force translated. “Understood. We’ll be ready. Over.”

“Over and out,” Price repeated, and the radio went silent.

Dropping the cigarette to the floor, McCarter crushed it under a boot, then went to inform the rest of the team. Their long night was over, but it sounded like an even longer day was just beginning.