Читать книгу Drawpoint - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

A bleary-eyed Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman wheeled himself into the War Room at Stony Man Farm, cradling an oversize stainless-steel insulated travel mug in the crook of one hairy arm. He positioned his wheelchair next to where Barbara Price already sat, checking files on her laptop as she glanced up at the large plasma wall screens to which the slim notebook computer was connected. Stony Man’s honey-blond mission controller looked up and raised an eyebrow at Kurtzman.

“Security blanket, Aaron?” she asked, nodding to the mug.

“Life support,” Kurtzman said evenly. He took a long drink from the mug, the smell of his extra-strong coffee reaching Price from where the bearded, barrel-chested cybernetics expert sat. “Want some?”

“No, thanks,” Price said, smiling. Kurtzman’s personal blend was legendary for its power. “I don’t want to burn a hole through my stomach.”

“I haven’t had any,” a disembodied voice said over the War Room’s speakers, “and I’m still working on an ulcer.”

Price tapped a key on the laptop. The harassed face of Hal Brognola appeared on one of the plasma wall screens. He was chewing an unlighted cigar and glanced repeatedly off camera to something that had to have been on his desk. The microphone on his end of the scrambled link picked up the sound of shuffling papers and then the tapping of computer keys. Brognola, as leader of the SOG, was one of only a handful of living human beings—apart from those operators working within Stony Man’s ranks—who knew that the ultracovert antiterrorist operation existed. When it came to the Farm, Brognola answered to the Man himself, the President of the United States. But while Stony Man was the President’s secret antiterror and security arm, it was Brognola’s baby first. The stress, the constant worry, the basic wear and tear of heading SOG and the Farm were evident in Brognola’s face, and had been for as long as Barbara Price had known him.

Price knew at a glance that Brognola was seated in his office on the Potomac, the gray-skies-and-white-marble Wonderland backdrop a stark contrast to the beauty of the Shenandoah National Park. The park ran along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Stony Man Farm—a real, working farm—was named for Stony Man Mountain, one of the highest peaks in the region and roughly eighty miles by helicopter from Washington. The natural beauty in which the base was located belied the brutal ugliness of the situations with which the Farm’s staff so often coped. From the look in Brognola’s eyes it was clear that this day would be no different.

“Good morning, Hal,” Price said. On the other end of the scrambled connection, Brognola managed a smile.

“Barb, Aaron,” Brognola said, nodding. Kurtzman grunted in reply. “Did you get what there was, Bear?”

Kurtzman swallowed and put the mug down on the conference table. “I’ve got Hunt and Carmen data-mining,” he said, “but that’s just to dot the eyes and cross the tees. I spent the night going through what they’ve pulled, organizing it and getting it uploaded to Barb for the brief.”

Price nodded. “Hunt” was Huntington Wethers, the eminently refined black man who was one-third of Kurtzman’s computer support team. Wethers had been a professor of cybernetics at Berkeley before Kurtzman recruited him. Carmen Delahunt, by contrast, was an old-line FBI agent until Brognola had gotten his hands on her. The vivacious redhead’s personality made her an interesting counterpoint to Wether’s quiet dignity. While Kurtzman hadn’t mentioned him, Price knew that Akira Tokaido, the youngest member of Stony Man’s team, was busy working on some hardware with one of the Stony Man team members. Of Japanese descent, Tokaido was never without an MP-3 player blasting heavy metal music into his much-abused eardrums. Price had no idea how he concentrated with that noise ringing in his brain, but he seemed to thrive on it.

“We almost ready?” Brognola asked.

“Bringing up Able now,” Price said. She tapped a few more keys. A second plasma screen came alive with the out-of-focus image of a beefy palm. Price raised an eyebrow again, then shook her head with a smile as the hand was withdrawn. The image resolved itself into that of a very irritated Carl Lyons, obviously staring down into a Web cam of some kind. Schwarz and Blancanales crowded in next to him, their heads almost touching as they verified they were present for the meeting. Lyons shrugged them off, leaving only parts of their shoulders and torsos in view as he glared down at the camera.

“This,” he said tersely, “is really annoying.”

“You’ll live,” Price said evenly. “Can you hear us and see us okay?”

Lyons grunted. “Yes.”

“Wideband scattering-noise projectors in place,” Schwarz said, his face not visible. Price nodded; this would thwart electronic eavesdropping on their location, including directional microphones.

The door to the War Room opened again. Several men entered. Price watched them take seats around the conference table and nod to the images of Brognola and Able Team in turn. The new arrivals were Phoenix Force, the second counterterrorist team run by the Farm, responsible primarily for international operations. The greater scope of their turf was reflected in the larger size of the team—five for Able’s three.

Slouching into his seat, nursing a can of Coke and appearing deceptively casual, was David McCarter, Phoenix Force’s leader. The lean, fox-faced Briton had always been something of a hothead, which had brought him into conflict with Brognola more than once. He had proved a capable leader, however, through countless missions with Phoenix. The former SAS operative smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. Price assumed he’d just finished one before the briefing.

Next to McCarter, making a show of waving away the fumes, was the stockier, more heavily muscled Rafael Encizo. The Cuban-born guerrilla expert was a much squatter, blockier man, but his appearance, Price knew, concealed catlike reflexes.

Demolitions expert Gary Manning, sat on the other side of McCarter, sipping what Price assumed was coffee.

Tall and graceful, Calvin James slipped into a chair next to Manning. The lanky black man, who’d grown up on Chicago’s South Side, was the team’s medic and former Navy SEAL who was also very talented with a knife.

Bringing up the rear was T. J. Hawkins. The youngest member of the team, Hawkins was a former Army Ranger. The Georgia-born southerner’s easy manner and lilting drawl concealed a keen mind and viciously fast fighting abilities.

“All accounted for, Hal,” Price said finally.

“All right,” Brognola said. “Let’s get started.” Price took this as her cue and pressed a button on her laptop, bringing up a map of India.

“Bloody hell,” McCarter muttered.

“Just under forty-eight hours ago,” Brognola said, ignoring McCarter, “an armed raid was staged on a mining facility in the Meghalaya hills, north of Bangladesh, not far from the West Khasi Hills district headquarters, Nongstoin. The facility is jointly owned by UVC Limited and the Indian government.”

“UVC?” Schwarz asked, his head still cut off on screen.

“Uranium-Vanadium Consortium, Limited,” Brognola said.

“I thought India was relatively uranium-poor,” Manning put in.

“Not anymore,” Brognola said. “I don’t yet have all the details, nor are they necessarily relevant, but UVC is using a new sonic-based technology to find and exploit previously untapped reserves of ore, including uranium. The deal they cut with the Indian government apparently stems to long before the ore was actually found in Meghalaya. Their surveyors gambled and construction began on an experimental laser enrichment plant well in advance of the actual mining operation.”

“So just how large-scale is this?”

“Large enough to make India a much bigger player in the nuclear club,” Brognola said. “The Indian government has long maintained a high level of secrecy regarding its nuclear power and weapons programs, but we all know they have nuclear weapons and have had them since the 1970s. A steady source of uranium ore and a steady production of enriched fuel will simply advance their program or programs, and significantly.”

“So the issue is the standoff with Pakistan?” James asked.

“No,” Brognola said. “That would almost be preferable. The issue is that the UVC facility in Meghalaya was relieved of several insulated drums of enriched, weapons-grade fuel. That itself is enough to get us involved. But that’s just the beginning of the problem.”

Price tapped a key on her notebook again. The image of a dark-skinned man appeared, a mugshot from an international criminal database. It was juxtaposed with a second image—that of the same man, eyes closed in death, lying on a slab in a morgue.

“This is Nilambar Chakraborty,” Brognola said.

“It was, you mean,” McCarter muttered.

Brognola spared McCarter a baleful gaze through his camera before continuing. “Chakraborty is a known member of the Purba Banglar Sarbahara Party, a terrorist group operating in Bangladesh. They’ve broadened their territory lately, moving farther and farther north into India and surrounding areas. The PBSP is a vicious, well-financed, anti-capitalist revolutionary group whose ideological origins stem from sympathy for the Chinese Communist movement. Their ultimate aims are vague, but coherent enough. They seek to bring about worldwide socialism, starting with their part of the world, through force of arms.”

“These blokes have been around for years,” McCarter put in. “Starting with opposition to the new Bangladeshi state. And last I knew, they spent most of their time and energy splintering off from one another to form different opposed sub-groups.”

“That was true until perhaps two years ago,” Brognola nodded. “The PBSP has since experienced a surge in growth, tied to global resurgence of various Communist and socialist groups.”

“The political pendulum is swinging around the world,” Encizo said sourly. “As it does, as people foolishly throw in with totalitarian ideologies, the fortunes of terrorist and agitator groups like these go up.”

Price watched Encizo thoughtfully. As a native Cuban he was naturally sensitive to the evil that communist governments could wreak.

The door of the War Room opened. Akira Tokaido entered quietly, carrying what appeared to be a personal data device, and took a seat.

“But wait,” Blancanales said off-camera, imitating a game-show host, “there’s more.”

“Indeed there is,” Brognola said. “Akira?”

“This,” Tokaido said, holding up the electronic device, “was recovered by a security guard who survived the attack on the UVC plant. The device was given to executives at Sugar Rapids Security, who forwarded it through channels to the U.S. Government almost immediately. We got word of and intercepted it before it could disappear into a Washington warehouse somewhere, crated up next to the Ark of the Covenant.”

“Chakraborty was carrying that device,” Brognola explained.

“And this,” Schwarz chimed in, holding up a PDA-size device of his own, “is an identical unit, recovered from the now deceased director of the Illinois chapter of the World Workers United Party.”

McCarter looked from the screen to the device in Tokaido’s hands, then back. “Bloody hell,” he said again.

Tokaido removed the earbud headphones attached to his MP-3 player. Heavy metal noise could be heard through the speakers, even from across the table. The young Asian blushed slightly and switched off the player. He pointed at the device recovered in India.

“This,” he said, “is a sanitized communicator. It has been manufactured with parts that are supposed to be untraceable. It carries no identifying markings, but all I had to do was play with it and look at its internals to understand what it is. It’s a Worldcom Transat Seever.”

“A knockoff, you mean?” Hawkins asked.

“No,” Tokaido said. “It is not a knockoff. It is a genuine WTS and uses the same satellite network and communications protocols. The only difference between this and a commercial WTS is the origins of the parts and the lack of serial numbers on them.”

“Does somebody want to tell me what a WTS is?” Lyons asked, sounding irritated.

“The WTS is the flagship product of Butler Telecommunications,” Barbara Price explained. “It’s the next generation of secure, scrambled satellite phone.”

“Like the units we carry?” James gestured with the secure phone he and all the Stony Man team members carried.

“Much more advanced,” Kurtzman said, “in terms of the bandwidth it can handle and the way the units interface with one another. Your phones connect with us at the Farm for security reasons, and we can transfer data, photos and so forth. The transmissions are coded and secure, yes, but most of that security stems from the fact that you’re communicating with the Farm and not other points of transfer. The Seevers produced by Butler Telecomm are bulky and awkward compared to your duty phones, but they give an agent in the field a means of communicating with any other similarly equipped agent, completely securely, anywhere in the world.”

“Not much need for such a thing among teams that are centrally controlled, such as ours directed by the Farm,” James stated, “but perfect for terrorist cells to communicate and coordinate.”

“Exactly,” Brognola said. “The technology has been the subject of heated debate for that reason. Washington has pressured Butler Telecomm to provide access to the encryption used, for national security reasons. Reginald Butler, president and chairman of the company, has stonewalled the government at every step. He’s become the poster boy for civil liberties in certain political circles.”

“Why do I feel like something is tying all this together?” McCarter said ruefully.

“Able Team was sent to check World Workers United Party because of financial transaction warnings flagged here at the Farm,” Price explained. “The party has received substantial funding from the Earth Action Front, an ecoterrorist group.”

“What Able got, when they looked,” Brognola said, “was three very trigger-happy ‘workers’ who were obviously expecting trouble. The director of WWUP in Illinois had one of these Seevers. We can’t crack its encryption, but we do know that it is operating on the same subnetwork as the unit found in India.”

“So uranium stolen by Bangladeshi Communist terrorists is somehow connected to environmental terrorists and also to an American Communist party,” McCarter said.

“Yes,” Brognola nodded. “Aaron and his team have been up all night sifting through the recovered drives from the WWUP office. Bear?”

“I’m uploading the files to all of your phones now,” Kurtzman said, leaning past Price to tap a few of the keys on her notebook. “Following the money trail, and cross-referencing known associates with current records of terrorist actions that can or could be labeled ‘green’ in nature, not to mention cross-referencing these with NSA, FBI, and CIA files on various World Workers United Party members of interest, we have produced a series of potential domestic targets, ranked in order of priority.”

“Able remains on-site in Chicago to begin local follow-up,” Brognola said.

“Meanwhile,” Kurtzman continued, “I have produced a similar list relevant to Purba Banglar activity worldwide, cross-indexing that with known coalitions of both international Communist and socialist terror groups, and ‘green’ agitator organizations. The trail starts in Nongstoin.”

“And that,” Brognola said, “is where I am sending you, Phoenix.”

“Priorities?” McCarter asked.

“First, the recovery of the enriched uranium,” Brognola said. “That is by far the most significant threat. Second, and this applies especially to you, Able, we need to know just how far and how deep the connection between the WWUP in the United States and these domestic and international terror organizations goes. American politics has long been ripe for infiltration by foreign elements. It looks like it’s happening, and in a big way. I want to know the details—how, who, and why, in that order.”

“On it,” Lyons said.

“Coordinate through Barb to have the Farm deliver anything additional you’ll need,” Brognola said. “I’ll arrange for a liaison with local law enforcement, both in Chicago and wherever the trail ultimately takes you.”

“You sound like you have someplace in mind.”

“I might,” Brognola said. “Reginald Butler has long been a political activist. He’s one of the richest men in America and he’s got a lot to lose. If he’s mixed up in any of this, or even if he’s simply letting his company sell the Seever units to foreign nationals with ties to terror, I want him taken down. That means sooner or later you’ll be paying him a visit at Butler Telecomm headquarters in Atlanta.”

“And me, a local boy, stuck overseas,” Hawkins drawled. “Let me know if you boys want a list of the local hotspots.”

“Could get sticky,” Blancanales said dubiously, leaning in so his face was visible. “Government operatives pressuring an American entrepreneur who’s already complaining about governmental harassment.”

“We don’t exist,” Brognola said. “We do, therefore, what we have to do.”

“Understood, Hal.” Lyons nodded.

“Every second that uranium is out there is a tick on the doomsday clock,” Brognola said gravely. “If it’s not recovered, we’re looking at nuclear Armageddon in the hands of terrorists. On the next threat level, we have to look seriously at the idea our domestic political infrastructure is being compromised by violent terrorists with an international agenda. In either direction, the outlook is bleak, and the threat to the United States potentially terminal.”

“Understood,” Lyons said again. McCarter and the members of Phoenix Force nodded grimly.

“All right,” Brognola said. “Phoenix, we’re in touch with the Indian government and will have some of the red tape untangled before your boots hit the ground there. More information will be made available to you through secure data transfers as and if it becomes available. Get out there, people. Get it done. Hundreds of thousands of lives could ultimately ride on this.”

“Bloody hell,” McCarter repeated.