Читать книгу Deadly Payload - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

It didn’t take long for Phoenix Force to grab the hard drives out of the controllers’ computers. They just ripped open the casings and sliced the IDE cables. The hard drives were durable and fit into Manning’s backpack.

While Manning and McCarter were tearing apart CPUs, James, Encizo and Hawkins were repairing the tires of one of the pickups. The Toyota pickup was a bit old and weathered, but an inspection showed that the vehicle was in good running condition. All it took was a tire change, and it would be back in action. The pickup would be less conspicuous than the covered trailers, as well as having the benefit of maneuverability.

Hawkins scrounged the other vehicles and found spare gasoline canisters.

“All set?” Manning asked James as he topped off the pickup’s tank.

“Yeah,” James replied. “Time to go?”

Manning looked at his watch. “We’ve got a minute.”

“Okay,” James said, screwing the cap on the jerri can.

“No, we’ve got a minute to reach minimum safe distance,” Manning explained.

“Aw heck. We were supposed to be coming in quietly,” James muttered.

McCarter slid behind the wheel and started the engine. Hawkins and Manning squeezed into the front with the Briton, while Encizo and James clambered into the truck bed. Encizo’s and James’s darker coloring would be less conspicuous in the Lebanese countryside than the other members of the team, who looked distinctly European.

Manning’s estimate of a minute to reach minimum safe distance was spot-on. Utilizing distract mechanisms already in the trailers, as well as some “Eight-balls”—one-eighth of a stick of C-4 plastic explosives—Manning had wired the drone operations centers well. The trailers ripped violently apart, but there was little flash. Electronics and corpses were ground to bits by the detonations.

While Manning had done his demolitions work, McCarter took fingerprints from the dead, utilizing a fingerprint scanner. Now, as he drove, Hawkins plugged the scanner into the sat-phone-linked laptop and uploaded information to Stony Man Farm.

“Barb, see if these are current Syrian operatives,” McCarter had text-messaged along with the data file.

Hawkins looked up from the laptop. “Bear says that it’ll take a few hours for them to check the records for certain.”

“To narrow it down, tell them the unit we saw on the sentries. They might have been veterans of the same group,” McCarter suggested.

Hawkins typed that message back to the Farm’s Computer Room. It took only a few moments to get a reply.

“Bear says thanks. He’ll see what he can get on the sentries,” Hawkins said.

“How’s our schedule, Gary?” McCarter asked.

“At this rate, we should be five minutes early to our meet with the Egyptians,” Manning answered.

“Of course, that doesn’t take into account running into local factions.”

“Just a little more drama for the evening in that case,” McCarter said. “We won’t stay and fight.”

Manning was about to say something when McCarter sailed the pickup three feet into the air after plowing through a rut in the road. The truck plopped down and shook Phoenix Force around.

“Not that we’ll be running into anyone with antiaircraft weapons.”

McCarter grinned. It was a long-standing joke between the two that the British pilot drove as if he expected vehicles could fly. Manning had grown used to his driving, but he still held on to his seat with white-knuckled strength. From the bed, Encizo and James grumbled and complained through the cab’s rear window.

“Hey, David, we don’t have seat belts back here!” James growled.

McCarter kept up the breakneck pace. Drivers weren’t known for cautious pace in the Lebanese countryside, and the Briton was following suit. “When in Rome” was a savvy strategy for blending in. It wasn’t as if there were highway patrolmen on these dirt roads. No headlights were visible on the horizon in any direction. Manning scanned out the windows for operating lights on any aircraft, but the sky was merely sprinkled with immobile stars.

“Anything back there?” McCarter asked.

“Just two rattled people,” Encizo complained. “No lights on the horizon.”

“Give a shout if you see something,” McCarter said.

“Who the hell’s gonna catch up to us?” James asked.

“You know our luck,” Manning quipped.

Hawkins shook his head. “Probably a rocket-assisted APC.”

“Don’t tempt fate,” Manning cautioned.

Something sparked in the distance, a star of light on the ground. It wasn’t a single headlight, and moments later, the snap-crack of bullets lashing past the truck filled the air. Machine-gun rounds hurtled by so quickly, Phoenix Force could hear the breaking of the sound barrier.

McCarter killed the headlights and swerved hard, breaking off their previous course. The Toyota pickup jerked and jostled as it rolled over rough ground and clumps of vegetation. Encizo and James were silent in the back, holding on for dear life so they wouldn’t be ejected when the truck hit the next bump.

The star of gunfire turned into a sidelong flare, tracer rounds scratching streaks of red in the black night. Whoever the gunner was, he was searching for Phoenix Force’s pickup. The teardrop-shaped muzzle-flash fattened and turned into a circle, bullets raking the ground around the pickup. McCarter hit the brakes and drove toward the machine gun. The arc of fire swung past and sliced into the night. Bullets had drilled into the pickup’s bodywork, and the windshield sported three new white spiderwebs where bullets ricocheted off.

The weapon was a light machine gun, the rifle rounds at the extreme limit of their normal range, lacking the power to smash the safety glass.

“Everyone okay?” McCarter asked, skidding the pickup to a halt.

“Yeah,” James said, crawling out of the bed.

Manning and Hawkins piled out of the cab, the Canadian went prone behind a bush and locked his sniper rifle’s scope on the distant gunner.

“What is it?” Hawkins asked, sliding beside him.

“An armored personnel carrier,” Manning grumbled. “Not the one you ordered, though. Just the good old-fashioned roll-along. No rocket boosters.”

Hawkins grimaced. “Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you.”

“Too much information there, T.J.,” James joked. “Whatever happened to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’?”

Hawkins winced, remembering Aaron Kurtzman’s nickname.

McCarter threw the American members of Phoenix Force a harsh glare, then leaned to Manning.

“Is it alone?”

The big Canadian swept the terrain around the APC. “It’s an old Soviet-style APC, so it could either be Syrian or Syrian allied. The ground is uneven around it, and I can’t see anything else. Range out is 750 meters, give or take.”

“I said we wouldn’t stand and fight, but driving in the dark without headlights is starkers, even by my standards,” McCarter said. He consulted his map, illuminating it with his refilter flashlight. The low frequency of light put out by the ruby-colored lens wouldn’t travel far to betray their position, especially at that range. He did a quick bit of reckoning. “We can leave the pickup and continue on foot.”

“Double time,” Hawkins said, looking over McCarter’s shoulder.

“Get on the link to the Farm and tell Aaron that we ran into some interference,” McCarter ordered.

“Shit, “Hawkins muttered. “David…”

McCarter looked at the laptop screen and clucked his tongue. “The paratroopers were dishonorably discharged. Syrians were dealing drugs to their fellow soldiers. They were assigned to operations here in Lebanon. And we’ve dealt with enough heroin coming out of the Bekaa Valley to know who they could have hooked up with.”

“Drug dealers attacking Israel?” James asked.

“Muslim drug dealers,” Encizo corrected. “The Jihad has used narcotics money to supply terrorist groups with almost bottomless funding.”

“The kind of funding that can afford ten heavily armed UAV drones and two eighteen-wheelers loaded with computer software,” Manning added.

“There’s no solid confirmation that those paratroopers went into the Lebanese heroin trade, yet,” McCarter said. “We’ll have to check on that once we make our rendezvous.”

“The APC is moving,” Manning announced.

“Headed our way?” James asked.

“A straight beeline,” Manning said. “Give me a few moments. Move on ahead, I’ll catch up.”

Phoenix Force took off while Manning took another stick of C-4 from his pack and divided it up, setting it on the fuel-filled jerri cans and replacing the gas cap to the tank. He wired them to one central detonator. There was a chance that the APC would hose down the truck with its machine gun at a distance, but either way, the explosion would erase any evidence of Phoenix Force presence in Lebanon.

If militia men did inspect the truck, there was a better likelihood that they would disturb the cans in the back and set off one of Manning’s tripwires, removing another squad of gun-toting militiamen from the Lebanese conflict. Shouldering his sniper rifle, Manning took off after his friends. His long legs fell into a loping pace that ate up distance effortlessly. He slowed to accommodate the others once he caught up with them.

Five minutes after leaving the truck, a fireball flashed, lighting the night behind them. The outline of the APC and two military-style jeeps appeared, backlit by the flowering blossom of their pickup. One of the jeeps flipped and bounced off the APC.

“Seventy gallons of petrol will do that,” McCarter quipped.

Manning knelt and surveyed the blast site with his rifle.

“They tracking us?” Encizo inquired.

“They’re dealing with wounded, “Manning informed them. “We’ll have plenty of time to get out of sight by sunup.”

“Ground cover will obscure us after another two hundred yards, and it’s two hours until sunrise anyhow,” James mentioned.

“That’s no reason to sit around discussing the weather,” McCarter said. “Let’s roll.”

“A LL MANEUVERS GO according to plan,” Javier Cortez said. “At least until contact with the enemy. We’ve got activity in our Middle Eastern and Central American arenas.”

“Someone’s noticed us,” Kovak said. “I see that Tel Aviv is still quiet.”

“The fight was diverted.” Ling Jon spoke up. “An outside group of hackers broke into the network and commandeered the drones. We shut down on first notification, initiated defensive—”

“Their system will have taken a beating from your defenses,” Kovak noted. “What about the other scheduled attacks?”

Ling smiled. “The fuse is lit in the China Sea, and Kashmir is about to rock.”

Kovak took a deep breath and glanced at Cortez. “You’re looking to start every war you can imagine.”

“So many juicy-looking powder kegs,” Cortez answered with a grin. “We’re making a whole new world, Jason.”

“There’s going to be enough of a planet left after China gets set off?” Kovak asked.

“I’m fully aware of what plans Beijing has, and the West’s projected response,” Ling explained.

“Beijing will take the attack as an excuse to make a move on Taiwan. The British and Australian navies will move to protect Taiwan, and of course the United States will throw in. One or two more Chinese ships sunk—”

“And China will take a potshot at the Western navies,” Kovak concluded. “World War Three.”

“Just like the chest-beating in South America,” Cortez said. “Colombia and Venezuela responded exactly as we wanted.”

Kovak looked at the world map. The Engineers’ software was monitoring international tensions. Earlier that day, the Republic of Georgia suffered an attack from Azerbaijan The Azerbaijani government claimed innocence, but the city of Gardabani was hammered by HVAR artillery rockets and antitank missiles launched by unmanned drones. Muslim separatists took the opportunity to start riots across the city, killing police officers and soldiers.

The Russian-controlled Commonwealth of Independent States, already on the edge because of infighting between ethnic groups in the region, was on full alert. The Russian president offered to send a few divisions of troops into Georgia to help enforce the peace, but the leadership in Tsiblisi remembered that Russian troops had swallowed the independent government in 1921. Leery eyes remained locked on Moscow, wondering if this was a ploy by hard-liners who wanted to rebuild the old Soviet empire. And now Beijing was being poked, the sleeping dragon baited with the jewel that was Taiwan. It was no secret that the People’s Republic of China lusted after the independent island nation, and had all forms of contingency plans to take the little country. Taiwan was ready to fight, but it knew that if its Western allies faltered, it would lose the battle and China would be reunited.

With tensions in South America, the Middle East and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Britain and America would be stretched thin, making the road to Taiwan wide and ready. The projected spark of violence between India and Pakistan over Kashmir would leave the globe with a hair trigger.

“This should confuse matters,” Cortez said. “Our previous two hot spots were major oil conflicts.”

“Lebanon?” Kovak asked.

“Syria and Israel border on major oil-producing nations who are members of OPEC. The start of an all-out war between those two would affect Egypt and Saudi Arabia, not to mention the potential of other OPEC states that dislike Israel to step in and join the party,” Cortez said.

“Those countries tried that. Israel beat them down. And we have nukes now, remember?” Kovak reminded the man.

Cortez smirked. “That’s part of what we’re counting on. We’re lighting the match on as many fuses as we can.”

Kovak nodded, looking at the map. “And when the bombs go off, the topography of the world alters. Radically.”

“The Old World, the New World, the Third World, everything breaks down into anarchy,” Cortez explained. “Barbarism and chaos run rampant. Riots infect the streets, governments crumble and, eventually, everyone will look to who has enough power to bring them peace and stability.”

Kovak’s eyes narrowed. “The tank attacks on Israel, a while back. Utilizing Marshall Plan hardware…”

“A test run. Now, we can see how the world responds to our operations, and we can anticipate them,” Cortez said.

“This has been a long time coming,” Kovak noted.

“We needed to build up supplies. The drones for bringing hostilities to the edge and pushing them over,” Cortez continued. “But we have other facilities. Storage areas, set up around the globe, stocked with the kind of firepower we’d need to emerge from the ashes of civilization as the new tomorrow’s government.”

“And forcing nuclear, biological and chemical attacks across the globe thins down the herd you want to run,” Kovak concluded. “After all, you might have a fairly strong organization, but even you can’t rein in six billion humans.”

“No,” Cortez admitted. He smiled. “I don’t blame you for feeling overwhelmed.”

“It’s not every day someone sets the wheels of Armageddon in motion,” Kovak stated.

Cortez chuckled. “Yes. The backup plan.”

Kovak looked at Israel, specifically the Northern District. To many Christians around the world, this was to be the location for the battle of Armageddon, specifically in the Jezreel Valley, not far from the Golan Heights. Several historical battles of Meggido had been fought across the history of humankind.

Jammed in the armpit between Lebanon and Syria, and containing the contested Golan Heights, the Northern District was a lightning rod for tension and violence. Between angry and hostile enemies, this region had seen countless acts of terrorism and posturing, from rocket artillery attacks from Lebanon to massed troops on the border with Syria. On the Israeli side of the equation, angry settlers engaged in brutal vigilante violence against native Arabs, murdering and intimidating countless people.

Kovak had engaged in copious amounts of such intimidating violence until the cowardly government gave in to “peaceful concessions” and gave the land back to the Arabs. Settlers were wrestled and hijacked from their homes. Kovak then realized that the Promised Land had fallen to the forces of evil. He wasn’t the only one, and together, they had formed an unofficial wing of the Mossad called Abraham’s Dagger. Made up of current and former Mossad agents, they took the actions that the government was too weak to commit. Now, hunted by their former comrades, Kovak and his allies were out in the cold.

Their future involved either jail or a shallow, unmarked grave.

Kovak’s loyalty to Israel burned away like gasoline under a blowtorch.

It was time to start over.

That meant forming an alliance with South American Nazis and anti-communist Chinese rebels, among dozens of other splintered cells, disillusioned and rejected. Alone, none of them could have made much of a difference, just a few minutes of carnage-bloodied footage on the evening news.

Together, they were the Engineers of the New Tomorrow.

The world would bathe in blood, and be washed clean by the tide of war.

Kovak looked at Cortez and nodded grimly. The future would involve strange bedmates, but in the end, it wouldn’t matter. The past was up for execution, and after the chaos, he could see the Dagger and the Nazis as allies. Old hatreds had no place when there was a world to rebuild.

They would be too busy trying to fight off mutual enemies.

T HERE WERE TWO GROUPS meeting in the cave when Phoenix Force arrived at their rendezvous. But that was to be expected. Though Israel and Egypt were locked in a “cold peace,” each side watching the other in response to enemy actions, they were at peace, not war. There was a healthy measure of distrust, but there was also a camaraderie between the two nations when it came to fighting terrorism. The same ultraradical Islamic groups that swore to destroy Israel also sought to overthrow the government in Cairo because it was not vehemently Muslim enough, nor willing to crush the tiny nation of Jews to its northeast. Peace talks and diplomacy was a wide-open avenue between the two, and such openness was an anathema to terrorists who wanted nothing less than extermination of a foreign presence in the Arab world.

In the minds of the Mossad and Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate, the ancient history that tied Cairo and Jerusalem together was just that—ancient history. A new era called for new responses and allegiances. While the GID had been formed to respond to the Mossad’s attempts to undermine Egypt’s fighting ability against Israel, the threat of terrorists often threw them together as allies.

“Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?” David McCarter said in greeting at the mouth of the cave. The muzzles of automatic weapons swung in his direction, but the black-and-white checkered keffiyeh dangling in his left hand was the indicator he was an ally. While the keffiyeh was traditional head garb of violent terrorists, holding it like a limp flag in his left hand showed disdain for the cloth in Arab cultural mores. The left was the unclean hand, and primarily holding such a sacred item in a left hand while the right was free was an insult to the PLO and the Fatah movements.

The muzzles pointed to the dirt.

“Bring your people in, King,” the Egyptian leader said. “You can call me Mahmoud.”

McCarter nodded to the Egyptian.

“I’m Reiser,” the Israeli offered.

McCarter made a hand gesture to the rest of Phoenix Force. Encizo and James remained just outside the cave entrance, along with pairs of Egyptians and Israelis who served as perimeter guards, and to keep the others inside polite.

There was tension, but the real concern was an outsider stumbling onto this situation. Considering that most outsiders in the Lebanese countryside were armed members of one of several militia groups, the noise and violence would be considerable, drawing unwanted attention if the alliance didn’t take them down swiftly and silently.

“Have you heard about the latest situations?” Mahmoud asked.

“Pakistan and India?” McCarter inquired.

“Border crossing with troops and air support from these damned drones,” Reiser explained.

“Troops,” McCarter noted with some surprise. “Any positive identification?”

“Most likely insurgents who found Iraq too hot to handle,” Mahmoud stated. “Not much was left for identification. They grabbed their wounded when the Indian fire base they assaulted hit back hard. Drones packed with napalm crashed into the Indian compound, killed the troops and destroyed most of the remains of the fallen assault force.”

“India would love for Pakistan to have made an offensive move,” McCarter commented. “Kashmir has been a sore point between those two for years. It would be the perfect excuse to close it down once and for all.”

“Trouble is, both sides have nuclear missiles,” Reiser reminded him. “With a billion noncombatants in the subcontinent, that solution might be all too final.”

“There’s trouble between Georgia and Azerbaijan,” Mahmoud noted. “Venezuela was also attacked. Maracaibo is in flames, literally.”

“This is much bigger than we thought,” McCarter said. He filled in the Egyptians and the Israelis about the aborted drone attack on Israel.

“Ex-Syrian paratroopers turned mercenary,” Reiser mused. “Deniable, but that wouldn’t matter much to our government if it had succeeded. Every insult must be answered in kind, which would involve firing a nuclear warhead into a Syrian city.”

“Even if they were not guilty of this particular offense,” McCarter added. “Because the world has seen that Syria is anything but innocent of malice toward the Israelis.”

“Just like Colombia and Venezuela are hardly the sweetest of friends, or Pakistan and India, or Georgia and Azerbaijan,” Mahmoud rattled off. “Someone’s taking advantage of deep-seated hostility to start a war or five.”

“Who and why?” Manning asked.

“Someone with ambition.” One of the Israelis spoke up. “Couldn’t help with the other option.”

“Doesn’t narrow the field down much, does it?” T.J. Hawkins quipped.

“That’s why we’re here,” Mahmoud said. “If we figure this out, perhaps we can head off the main insanity.”

“Which means China might be next,” another Egyptian said. “It doesn’t seem like there’s a situation that might lead to a nuclear exchange than something involving Taiwan. The Taiwanese don’t have the bond, but the U.S. and Britain do, and they’d need to have that kind of power to take on Communist China.”

“We’ll keep our eyes peeled in that direction,” McCarter replied. “Good thinking.”

The Briton’s brow furrowed as he remembered a report from Able Team’s Hermann Schwarz, about cheap knock off electronics from China. He hoped the cyberteam at the Farm would figure out that possible connection in the near future. Otherwise, he’d bring it up at their next scheduled teleconference.

That was, if this odd alliance survived long enough to report in.