Читать книгу Sky Hammer - James Axler - Страница 9

Chicago, Illinois

The classic rock music of Peter Frampton was blaring over the wall speakers of the control booth. Lost in thought, the blurry DJ was staring out the window of the Sears Tower, and it took quite a while before he finally noticed the jingling instrument.

“Yellow!” he drawled, removing the handrolled cigarette from his mouth. The smoke was sweet and pungent, and highly illegal. “This is WQQQ, all radio, all the time. What can I do for you?”

“Pay close attention, Jew, or everybody dies,” a garbled voice spoke.

The DJ went very still at that and dropped the joint into a nearly empty beer bottle on the sound board. It hissed out of existence.

“What did you just say?” he asked, flipping a switch to record the conversation. Having worked his way up through the ranks, the DJ had started in the news department and knew the sound of a scrambled voice when he heard it. Lots of kooks and nuts called up stations proclaiming everything imaginable, from women sighting Elvis on a UFO, to men claiming to be an alien’s baby. But nobody ever had the coin to get a voice scrambler. That alone meant big bucks, and money plus crazy always spelled trouble.

“I said shut the fuck up, Moses, or we’ll bomb your little shithole of a station just to make the other kike radio stations pay attention. Understand?”

In the control booth, a union technician perked up in his chair at the sound of the voice, and quickly started punching numbers into a red phone dedicated for outside calls only. The DJ tried to wave the man from calling the police, but the engineer paid him no attention.

“My apologies, sir,” the DJ muttered. They thought the radio station was Jewish? The owner of the radio station was a Norwegian, Dave Linderholm, and he had no idea who owned the Sears Tower.

A crackle of static and the voice returned.

“Mind your betters, pig. Now, the wall in Palestine was destroyed by the American Liberation Strike Force,” the distorted voice continued. “And we…”

“Do you mean, the wall in Israel?” the DJ asked, confused.

“Shut up! There is no such country!” The phone crackled. “All of that land belongs to Palestine!”

“Even the parcels they sold to the Jews?” the DJ asked quickly, pointedly trying to egg the caller into saying something that would be banned on the air. That always helped the ratings, and sweeps week was coming up.

“Zion propaganda! Now, unless American ZOG pulls all of its troops back to U.S. soil, our next target will be the UN building!” There was a click and the line went dead.

Quickly shoving another recorded cassette of early heavy metal into the board, the DJ rushed into the engineering booth.

“What a freaking loon,” the DJ exhaled, running nervous fingers through his wavy crop of hair. “Did we get everything?”

“Loud and clear.” The engineer smiled, patting a digital CD recorder on the board. “By the way, what’s a ZOG?”

“Zionist Occupation Government.”

“What’s Zionist?”

“Tell ya later. Did we get a trace on the call?” the DJ asked hopefully, looking at the bewildering display of readouts, gauges, lights and meters. He was the talent, not a freaking atomic brain.

“Sure. It’s useless.” The engineer sighed. “The call came from a rest stop on Route 95, outside of Camden, right over the river in New Jersey.”

Clever. Stop your car, make the call, drive away before anybody can get there.

“Could it have been a fake phone location?”

“For people with a voice scrambler? Sure.” The engineer leaned back in his chair, the springs squeaking in protest. “So what now? Call the news director, or do we sell this directly to CNN?”

“We?” the DJ asked, stressing the word.

“I have the only tape, dude,” the engineer said, patting the recording machine.

The DJ glared at the machine, then shrugged. “Fifty-fifty?”

“Done.” The engineer grinned, extended a hand, and the two men shook.

“So who would you call?” the DJ smiled.

“The FBI, man,” the engineer stated with a wave. “These crank yankers might be the real thing.”

The DJ laughed, then he heard the reverberating drum roll of a Metallica song fading away and rushed back to his board to shove in a commercial for acne cream. When it was over, he shoved in the longest running song he could find, which bought him thirty minutes. Time to contact CNN and get a big check!

Heading back to the engineering booth, the DJ paused at the sight of the 9/11 wall poster of the Twin Towers. Vaguely he seemed to remember that everybody had lots of hint and clues about the forthcoming attack, but nobody had told the FBI.

“Aw, shit.” the DJ sighed and picked up a phone. “Hello, Operator? Please give me the phone number for the Philadelphia division of Homeland Security.” He paused. “Yes, ma’am, this is an emergency.”

“What are you doing?” the engineer demanded, horrified, rushing out of the booth.

“Doing the right thing. We’re ratting these assholes out, and I hope Homeland puts ’em in a cell down in Gitmo. With extra rolls of film.”

The engineer rolled his eyes heavenward. “That guy on the phone was right. You’re an idiot.”

“That may be,” the DJ said, feeling oddly patriotic. “But if you have any porn on the computer, better start purging. Homeland might check it out, and this dump needs you.”

“Sure, who else would work for these wages?” The engineer snorted rudely. Then he returned to the booth and started hastily accessing files on the station’s PC to delete them like crazy.

Trevose, Pennsylvania

“WHAT IS A ZOG?” Zdenka Salvai asked as her commander got behind the steering wheel.

“Something Nazis talk about,” Bella Tokay replied, tucking away the voice scrambler, then starting the stolen car.

The vehicle had been obtained outside of a strip club on Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Camden, located just over the bridge from Philadelphia. Few people told friends that they were going to a strip club, thus they were safe to kill. The owner of the vehicle wouldn’t be missed for a long time. Perhaps days. Eventually his body would be found; a corpse inside a plastic garbage bag soon filled it with fumes, and the bags often popped like balloons. It wasn’t the optimum way of disposing of a body, but it was sufficient for today. They needed only a few hours.

The redhead lit a fresh cigarette. “I hate Nazis,” she stated, puffing out every word. Her long fingers were stained yellow from the constant cigarettes and her teeth were the same. But few men ever noticed that, their vision rarely rising above her ample cleavage. Between her knees was a large object covered with a blanket. Some sort of metallic hose could be seen sticking out from underneath, and there was the faint smell of jellied gasoline.

Tokay laughed. “As do we all,” he agreed, releasing the brake and heading north on Route 1. Bethlehem was far away, but they had plenty of time. On the seat next to the man was a newspaper, the checkered grip of a compact machine gun barely visible beneath it.

“Think they will take the bait?” Petrov Delellis asked from the rear seat. Cradling a bulky X-18 grenade launcher, the giant Hungarian seemed to fill the back of the sedan. There was a clean new bandage on the side of his neck, a gift from the stubborn CIA agent in Paris. A goodbye gift.

“Of course they’ll take the bait,” Tokay replied smugly, steering around a flatbed truck hauling steel beams. “And they’ll waste precious time chasing us around, until the Castle is obtained, and then the boss lets us kill them.”

“We can’t kill them now?” Salvai said with a scowl.

Tokay smiled, cold and mercilessly. “Well, maybe one or two,” he answered.

Sandy Hook, New Jersey

AS GRIM AS EXECUTIONERS, Able Team strode out of the rolling smoke screen, firing their weapons at every step. Ricochets zinged and threw sparks along the concrete wall separating the parking lot from the little museum, and people with guns ducked behind the stout barrier.

Still bodies sprawled everywhere on the asphalt between the rows of cars, including a state trooper without a face, a 9 mm HK pistol still in his hand, unfired. A former Los Angeles cop himself, Carl “Ironman” Lyons felt a visceral surge of rage at the sight, but controlled his temper for the moment and kept going. The dead and the dying didn’t matter right now. Only killing the terrorist bastards who had invaded the beachfront park.

Unfortunately, Able Team had no counterattack plan, no clever tactics or fancy maneuvering. The numbers had fallen, and the three counterterrorists had arrived too late to stop the deadly assault on the vacation spot. Now all they could do was a full-frontal charge with guns blazing.

Moving from vehicle to vehicle, the three Stony Man operatives maintained a steady cover fire with their assault rifles and shotguns. Circling a bread truck, they caught one of the Red Star agents in the process of reloading his AK-47 rifle. The arming bolt had jammed, probably from overheating. The Chinese agent cursed at their sudden appearance and dropped the Kalashnikov to claw for a Norinco pistol at his side.

“Don’t do it, bub,” Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz warned, leveling his M-16 assault rifle.

But if the Chinese agent understood the words, he made no sign, and the deadly Norinco .45 barely cleared leather when Gadgets sent a wreath of tumblers across the man’s chest. The Red Star agent was thrown backward against a car, shattering the side windows with his splayed arms. Gurgling into death, the agent slid to the asphalt, leaving a trail of red across the car. But Able Team was already on the move, constantly trying to stay ahead of the terrorists. A split second later, a Chinese-made RPG streaked out from behind the souvenir kiosk and the Buick erupted into a fireball from the white phosphorus rounds.

Popping up from behind a concrete wall near the public restrooms, a Chinese operative fired a long burst from his machine gun, riding the chattering weapon in a tight figure-eight pattern for maximum killpower. The cars in the parking lot were torn apart by the hellstorm of incoming lead, windshields exploding, hoods buckling, tires bursting, and finally a stray ricochet got a gas tank and a compact car violently detonated into a fireball, spraying shrapnel across a dozen other vehicles.

Taking a stance, Schwarz pumped a shell from the M-203 mounted under the barrel of his M-16. The bomb tracked perfectly, arching high to land on the other side of the concrete seawall. The Red Star agents scattered as thick volumes of smoke rose from the hissing charge. But a salty warm breeze was blowing in from nearby coast, already thinning the protective cover.

“On three,” Lyons said, readying the Atchisson autoshotgun in his arms. He had only a single 40 round drum with him, so every shot had to count. He hadn’t been expecting a firefight! “Okay…three!”

The men broke around another SUV, got onto the dented hood of a station wagon and jumped to the top of the seawall. Two Red Star agents were crouching behind the barrier, their weapons aimed for the open section ten feet away, obviously waiting in ambush.

“Hey,” Rosario “The Politician” Blancanales said softly.

The Communists started to turn and Able Team cut them down. Hopping to the terrazzo flooring, Lyon found a few more civilian bodies, mostly guards. Older out of shape men in clean uniforms, holstered revolvers at their side. This had been a part-time job for them, just something to help stretch their meager retirement pay.

On the nearby beach the corpses of several joggers dotted the shoreline, their blood still staining the waves as they washed over the still forms, giving them a horrible mockery of life.

“Look over there,” Lyons told his teammates.

Through the thinning smoke, the men could see the long barrels of the old WWII cannons rising above the small museum and fast-food stand.

Originally, Sandy Hook had been a large brick tower resembling a lighthouse, a stony keep equipped with muzzle-loading cannons to attack any Imperial British frigates harrowing the guerrilla fighters in the Revolutionary War. During World War II, it became a concrete fortress armed with banks of sixteen-inch cannons that could blow open the hull of any German warship. During the cold war underground installation had been added and Sandy Hook became a Minute Man missile base, designed to knock down Soviet ICBMs. Sandy Hook had long been a bastion of defense for the east coast of the nation, and had seen a lot of fighting, including an invasion of German frogmen near the middle of World War II, saboteurs sent to blow phone lines, collapse bridges, burn down hospitals and movie theaters, and generally inflict as much harm and terror as possible upon the American people. Softening tactics for Hitler. A prelude to invasion. Paving the way. The big guns of Sandy Hook had fired upon the midnight invaders just as they got out of the rubber rafts, and not a Nazi agent reached American soil alive. Or even in one piece.

But that was sixty years ago. These days, the Minute Man missile base had been moved inland, away from the vulnerable beach, and the gigantic cannons had been disarmed, the barrels blocked with a concrete plug, the hydraulic lines removed, the firing pins gone. Once the guardians of the United States, the cannons were reduced to slightly rusty exhibits on public display, relics of the past standing alongside a small outside museum that told of the glory days, with a small gift shop. But the Pentagon Theoretical Danger Team had postulated there was a potential terrorist danger to New York at Sandy Hook. Long ago, when the cannons worked, they had a range of twelve miles, and Manhattan was just over the horizon, nine miles away. But the titanic weapons had been neutralized, disarmed, virtually disassembled. It would take a major undertaking to get them live again. So the Pentagon had placed the museum on the Watch Alert list and then promptly forgot about the place entirely. It was too nebulous a threat to be taken seriously.

Suddenly two men in greasy mechanic’s coveralls appeared on the roof of the restrooms building and started firing assault rifles. Able Team dived for cover behind a painted wooden bench and came up returning fire. The chattering M-16 assault rifles held by Blancanales and Schwarz peppered the structure, driving the enemy under cover. When the firing stopped, they popped back and Lyon’s Atchisson sprang into action. In a bull roar, the weapon discharged 12-gauge shotgun shells in a long burst. The Chinese agents were literally blown apart, their bodies shattered from the hellstorm of steel buckshot.

Even before the corpses tumbled to the ground, Able Team was on the move again.

Early that morning, the first indication that something was amiss had been a radiation sensor hidden in a tollbooth plaza on the Garden State Parkway. Considered the finest road in the world, the GSP actually received visitors from foreign countries to study its construction so that the builders could return to their homelands and try to duplicate the modern marvel. Tourists from New Jersey visiting Portugal, Argentina or Australia often found themselves experiencing déjâ vu as they encountered an exact duplicate of the New Jersey road cutting through the rolling hills of a foreign landscape.

When the cars stopped to pay the toll, one of many along the rather expensive GSP, every vehicle was probed for contraband. Chemical sniffers found a lot of drugs and sometimes a corpse in the trunk. But this day the hidden sensors spiked as weapons-grade plutonium was detected coming off Exit 9.

Quickly, computer records were checked, but since there was no record of such a radioactive source coming onto the superhighway, the state police tagged the report as a possible glitch. The police filed a copy of the report with Homeland Security and a minute later Stony Man knew about it. Since Exit 9 was dangerously close to Sandy Hook, Barbara Price had sent Able Team to do a recon. When the men arrived, they’d expected to find an ore truck full of pitchblende, or maybe a mobile health clinic. Portable X-ray machines used radioactive thulium and often set off detectors by mistake.

Instead, Able Team had discovered a parking lot full of dead tourists and an empty truck that had been full of greasy machinery. But not anymore. Grabbing weapons out of the back of their van, the team got hard and moved in fast. They didn’t like the combination of murder, Sandy Hook and radiation. There was such a thing as nuclear artillery shell….

“Any heat?” Lyons demanded, checking the Atchisson on the run. He wished there were reloads for the hungry weapon, half of the shells were already gone, and this battle was barely ten minutes old.

“Bet your ass, there is,” Schwarz said, firing a burst into some bushes. Leaves flew, but nobody tumbled out dead. Stealth wasn’t a concern, the Red Star agents knew they were here. Schwarz was the electronics expert for the team, and his wristwatch was also a short-range Geiger counter. However, loud clicks during a battle could get a soldier killed, so instead the device vibrated as a warning. At the moment, it was going wild.

“They must be arming the shell,” Blancanales repeated, pausing to roll a dummy grenade into the gift shop.

Inside the building, men cursed in Chinese and came bursting out, firing their weapons. Already in position, Able Team caught the Red Star agents in a withering cross fire and they died to a man.

Then a man and woman stumbled into view from around a corner. The man was carrying a wicker basket and the woman was holding a baby swaddled in blankets in her arms. Neither one was Chinese, they looked more Italian than anything else.

“Don’t shoot!” the man yelled, stepping in front of his wife. “Please! I’ll pay you whatever you want!”

“It’s a trick!” Blancanales cried, raising his M-16.

Dropping the blanket, the snarling woman pulled a compact SDMG machine pistol from inside the plastic doll and started firing. Blancanales blew her away just as the man swung a Skorpion machine gun from behind his back. Schwarz shot the man in the chest to no effect, then Lyons triggered the Atchisson, the maelstrom of double-aught stainless-steel buckshot removing his face and opening the throat and lower belly like a can of spaghetti. Already dead, the Chinese operative spun, his hands instinctively tightening on the weapon, the deadly Skorpion spraying lead randomly as he toppled to the ground. Ricochets went everywhere and Schwarz grunted as a slug hit him in the stomach.

“Goddamn mercs,” he muttered, rubbing his stomach. “The guy must have been wearing body armor.”

“Still hurts like a bitch,” Lyons stated, hefting the Atchisson. Only a few cartridges remained. After that, he was down to grenades and his pistol.

“Bet your ass it does,” Blancanales agreed, checking their flank. Even the titanium and Teflon NATO body armor that the team wore under their shirts still occasionally broke bones when hit by large-caliber weaponry. But a week in hospital was preferable to eternity in the grave.

“Better bed than dead,” Schwarz quipped. “Hey, how’d you know it was a trap?”

“She was holding the baby wrong. The kid would have been dead from strangulation the way she was doing it.”

“Cover me,” Lyons said, knotting a handkerchief around his face. Going to the museum, he checked the door for boobytraps, then swept inside, the Atchisson at the ready.

The place was a shambles, with two whimpering women bound and gagged in the corner. Hostages for the enemy agents to use as bargaining chips if necessary. He had expected something like that. Able Team had fought Red Star before.

Pulling out a knife, Lyon advanced upon them. The older woman fainted while the pretty teenager tried to wiggle away. With a slash, the ex-cop cut ropes from their wrists. Stunned, the teen looked at her freed wrists and then at Lyons, comprehension dawning in her face.

“Don’t y’all worry none, ma’am, “he drawled, affecting a thick Texas accent. “We’re Delta Force.” Sheathing the blade, he snapped an ammonia capsule under the nose of the unconscious woman. She fluttered immediately and then awoke, recoiling in horror.

“It’s okay, Mom!” the teenager said, pulling down her gag. “They’re the U.S. Marines.”

“Really?” the older woman squeaked, having trouble breathing.

“United States’ Special Forces,” Lyons corrected with a brief grin. “Now, y’all follow me outside. Quick, now.”

With joyful tears on her cheeks, the teenager nodded agreement and slipped an arm under the other woman to leverage her off the floor.

“My husband…” the mother started.

Not having found anybody else alive, Lyons looked at the woman and said nothing for a long moment that seemed to last forever. The middle-aged lady went a little pale, then nodded in understanding.

“What about my daddy?” the teen asked, a quaver in her voice.

The mother touched her daughter on the shoulder. “Let’s go,” she said in a calm tone. “Now, dear, no time to waste.”

Going to the door, Lyons whistled sharply. There came an answering whistle and he led the way outside. Schwarz and Blancanales were standing guard near the stairs to the beach, both of them with handkerchiefs tied around their faces.

“Thank you, all,” the mature woman gasped, the cloth strip that had been used as a gag hanging around her throat.

“You’re welcome,” Blancanales said. “Now get!” Turning, he fired a burst at the open sea.

Livid, the two women jerked at the noise, turned and took off at a run. Soon they lost their high heels and continued barefoot much faster.

“Alone?” Schwarz asked, glancing sideways.

Lyons pulled down his mask. “Husband.”

“Damn.”

“Let’s finish this,” Blancanales stated, starting toward the stairs that led to the outside exhibit.

But then he paused. The cannons were no longer visible rising from behind the museum, and just then the floor shook as heavy machinery buried below the ground came to life.

Without a word, Able Team charged. They still had a hundred feet of open ground to cover to reach the guns.

“WHAT IS HAPPENING, comrade?” the mechanic asked, both hands busy in the guts of the hydraulic pump. New lines were attached to the feed and snaked out the door to the middle cannon. More Red Star agents were installing the new firing pin into the weapon, and off by himself, the Beijing technician was unpacking a single artillery shell from a lead-lined picnic cooler.

“Nothing that concerns you,” the colonel snapped, sweeping the sand dunes with a pair of powerful binoculars. “Get back to work.”

“Yes, Commander.”

The colonel knew that everything was going well, but was still unhappy. The parking lot had been cleared of civilians and the museum taken without losing a single man of his cell. The telephones were all disconnected in case they had missed somebody hiding somewhere, and the repairs on the guns were nearly completely. All well and good. But the colonel didn’t like the fact that there was smoke rising from several locations. However, that might have been done to hide the police taking defensive positions, rather than to offer cover for advancing troops. It was highly unlikely that any of the American Special Forces could have arrived yet. This whole mission had been accelerated to lightning speed. Never pause, never rest, go fast, and the lazy Americans would trip over the red tape of their own government.

“Done,” the mechanic said, laying down his wrench and throwing a freshly greased lever.

A light flashed, there was a snap of electricity, and the motor room concrete bunker shook slightly as a pair of ancient motors rumbled into life. The meters on the housing flickered alive, and the guns began to move as the hydraulic pressure reached functional status.

“Excellent.” The colonel smiled. “Well done, Comrade.” Then, drawing a pistol, he shot the startled man in the heart. The body limply collapsed onto the hydraulic hoses, the red blood pumping to spread along the lines between the tiles of the floor.

The colonel gave the corpse a salute, then holstered the pistol. At least the mechanic died well, from an honest Chinese bullet, rather than vomiting his intestines like the fools at the United Nations would soon be doing. The death of that many hundreds of diplomats would throw the world into chaos, and China had carefully laid out plans to take every advantage of the political turmoil. Every member of his cell knew this was to be a suicide assignment. There was no hope of returning home. Glory would be only earned if they accomplished the mission, so they would succeed or die trying.

By now, a man at the cannon was frantically turning guiding wheels to alter the elevation, while a second checked a compass in his hand.

“Left twelve degrees!” he commanded. “Hold! Now, up ten degrees! Hold!” He turned. “We’re on target, Comrade.”

Smiling, the colonel stuck his thumbs in his belt. “Load the shell!” he ordered.

Slowly the technician from Beijing stood, holding the artillery shell as if it were a priceless artifact.

A burly Red Star agent worked the latch and swung aside the breech to make ready. But there came an odd rattling noise from the cannon, as if something had broken loose and was moving freely.

Furious, the colonel advanced closer as three grenades rolled out of the open end of the cannon and landed on the sandy ground.

“Run!” a man screamed, turning to flee when the grenades exploded.

Thundering flame and hot shrapnel filled the area, teeth and broken limbs flying into the air as the hydraulic lines ruptured and pressurized red oil rose like blood from a cut artery. Not yet locked into position, the cannon impotently lowered its muzzle until pointing at the empty beach.

The colonel barely had time to react when the men of Able Team arrived, firing as they climbed over the seawall at different points. The last few Red Star agents collapsed, trying to fire their AK-47 assault rifles in response, but only getting off a few short bursts before falling on top of their weapons.

Pulling his pistol, the colonel shot the Beijing technician before he was torn apart by the incoming American lead, the hardball ammo going through the man to ricochet off the wall behind. As the technician dropped, he let go of the shell and it rolled across the sandy platform to bounce down a sand dune and come to a stop on the beach near some driftwood.

DROPPING A SPENT CLIP, Schwarz reloaded while the others stood guard. Then Blancanales replaced his exhausted clip as Lyons shouldered the empty autoshotgun and drew a .357 Colt Python from his belt. Moving to the edge of the gunnery bastion, Schwarz hopped down to the beach and walked over to the Chinese artillery shell lying near the water line.

“Clear?” Blancanales asked, looking around.

“Clear,” Lyons confirmed.

“Oh, shit,” Schwarz cursed, sitting on the piece of driftwood. “We’re in trouble.”

Weapons out, Blancanales and Lyons rushed over. By the time they arrived, Schwarz had already ripped open a Velcro pouch at his side and was placing electrical tools on the damp sand.

“What’s wrong?” Lyons asked. “That thing can’t possibly be live.”

“Oh yeah, the shell is live,” Schwarz said in a flat monotone. “The damn thing is designed to arm itself after a set number of revolutions after it spirals out a cannon.”

“Rolling down the sand dune did the same thing?”

“Apparently so.”

“Shit!”

“My word exactly.”

“What can we do?” Blancanales said, leveling his M-16 at the shell. It was standard U.S. Army procedure that in case of a nuclear emergency, shoot the bomb. Once the uranium sphere was distorted, even slightly, the device could no longer detonate. One shot and the artillery shell would be dead. The same as Able Team after about ten days of slow dying by radiation poisoning.

“Your call, Hermann,” Lyons said, aiming the .357 Colt Python at the red-and-green-striped shell.

“Make me a hole,” Schwarz ordered, sorting through the tools.

Blancanales fired a burst from the M-16 at the beach, chewing a depression into the sand. Schwarz gently placed the shell into the hole and packed the loose sand around it.

Sitting on the damp ground, the electronics wizard wrapped his legs around the bomb to hold it tight and started working in the recessed side bolts.

“Thought you were supposed to go in through the top,” Lyons said, watching his friend work on the nuclear charge. An explosion on the beach would boil the ocean for a hundred feet, the radioactive steam contaminating a hundred miles of New Jersey, killing thousands of people. There couldn’t be a worse place to set off a nuke than the sea! His hand tightened on the checkered grip of his revolver. Three die, or three thousand. Hell, that was an easy choice. Another ounce of pressure on the trigger was all it would take to get the job done.

“The top? Not this model,” Schwarz said, both hands busy. A sharp snap of breaking metal and Lyons and Blancanales both jumped slightly. The men held their breath as their teammate slid the casing off the nose of the bomb, exposing the complex internal mechanism.

“All the wires are the same color,” Blancanales said with a scowl. “How the hell will you know which one to cut?”

Jamming his knife deep into the device, Schwarz stopped a tiny flywheel from spinning, then ripped out a handful of wires.

“Just got to know what you’re doing,” he said, casting away the circuits. “Whew, that was close!”

“Too close, brother.” Blancanales sighed, raising the assault rifle. “You sure it’s dead?”

“Oh, yeah. Deader than disco.”

“Good.”

“I happen to like disco.” Lyons chuckled in relief. Touching his throat, the big man activated the radio link. “Stony Bird to Nest, all clear. We found a hot egg, but it will not hatch. Repeat, the egg is dead. What was that?” He frowned. “Roger, on the way.”

“Take the bomb, we’ll store it in our lead safe on the van,” Lyons directed, startling briskly for the parking lot.

“We’ve been recalled to the Farm,” Schwarz stated, lifting the core of the bomb out of the shell. It wasn’t a question.

“Yep.” Softly in the background, police sirens could be heard coming this way. The covert team paid no attention. Then the noise abruptly stopped.

“Sounds like they were also recalled,” Blancanales said, glancing at the exposed workings on the mechanism swinging in his friend’s bare hand. But Blancanales wasn’t worried. If Hermann thought it was okay for them to travel with the nuke this way, that was good enough. He trusted the electronics expert with his life in battle, so why not now?

“Just a little diversion by Bear.” Lyons grinned, hoisting the Atchisson to a more comfortable position. “As soon as we’re gone, they’ll be directed right back here, along with the FBI and Homeland.”

“More Red Star?” Schwarz asked.

“Not this time,” Lyons said, avoiding the civilian bodies. “We’ll be briefed on the way to Bethlehem.”

Schwarz balked. “We’re going to Israel?”

“No, Phoenix Force is. We’re going to see some Nazis in Pennsylvania.”

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Steel Town U.S.A. Check. “Who’s in trouble?” Blancanales asked, going around one of his own blast craters, misty smoke still moving along the ground.

Pausing at the entrance to the historic site, Lyons glanced at the clear blue sky. “Who’s in trouble?” he repeated with a growl. “Hell, everybody is, this time.”