Stony Man - Triple Strike Part 17

The phone call he had just received made an am-bush a distinct possibility. The caller had said that he was an American tourist who had seen the villa on his way to San Simone and wanted to know if he could come and take pictures of it in the morning. Nadal declined the man's request, but the call made him realize that while the remote villa offered him security, it also isolated him as a target. If the call had been to check if he was home, it could be a setup.

The lights illuminated the Lancia, and the man came out from under the hood and waved. The terrorist stopped his car a dozen yards away, but left the lights on high. Reaching under the seat, he drew out his Beretta subgun and flicked it off safe before opening the door. Nadal slung the Model 12 at his side with the pistol grip ready at his right hand as he walked forward.

SCHWARZ LAY in the ditch well to the rear of the Lancia, his 9 nun Beretta in his right hand. In his left, he held two of the Farm's special vehicle-tracking bugs. They had been put together by the same company that made the SAR implants for the military, and they worked on the same principle. They activated only in response to a radio signal. That way, they couldn't be detected by a bug sweeper. Now, all he had to do was to get close enough to the terrorist's BMW to attach them.

Lyons was in position to the front of the Lancia, his Colt Python ready in his hand. As much as he wanted to police up all of the Lebanese's men, if the terrorist made a single wrong move, he would settle for just bagging him. A .357 Magnum slug in the right place would do a lot to make Italy a safer place to live.

"I am so sorry I am in your way," Blanca.n.a.les said, gesturing expressively. "I will push my car out of the way so you can get past it."

THE MAN'S ACCENT and halting use of the language told Nadal that he was a foreigner. But it wasn't an American Italian accent, so he relaxed a little.

"I will help you," Nadal offered, making sure that the foreigner saw the Beretta. "You're too kind."

While the Lebanese was helping Blanca.n.a.les push the Lancia, Schwarz ducked out of his hiding place and dashed the few yards back to the BMW. Once he was safely behind the car, he reached up under the left rear fender to place the first bug. After mak-ing sure that the magnet was timfly attached, he slid around the side and put the other one under the right front fender before fading back into the dark.

"Thank you," Blanca.n.a.les said when the Lancia was clear of the driveway. "Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience."

"It's nothing," Nadal said.

Getting back in his car, Nadal kept the Beretta ready in his right hand. He didn't put the weapon back under the seat until he was well out of range.

"DID YOU PLANT THEM, Gadgets?" Lyons asked as he watched the BMW's taillights fade in the distance.

"Yeah." Schwarz slapped at the mud coating his night suit. "I planted the d.a.m.ned things and caught pneumonia in the process."

"We can stop and get you a little medicine on the way back, some of that brandy you were talking about."

"Right. Bribe me and figure that I'll forget all about laying in a muddy ditch for an hour."

"If you two are through," Blanca.n.a.les said as he closed the hood of the Lancia, "we should probably hit the road. Katz is waiting for us."

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

Bosnia

Since leaving the bombed-out forest camp, Major Naslin had kept his drivers moving as fast as they possibly could, but it hadn't been fast enough. He wasn't covering as much ground as he needed to make the rendezvous on time. The roads in the region were the worst paved roads he had ever seen. Years of neglect, as well as war damage, had reduced them to little more than rutted tracks.

Worse than that were the numbers of bridges that had been destroyed. With the mountains to the west supplying snow melt, the region was crisscrossed with streams and rivers. There was a bridge every few miles, and most of them were down. The time it had taken them to find fording places had added hours to the driving time.

To make up for the lost time, they would have to drive through the night and run the risk of having their lights spotted. If the cave base camp hadn't been destroyed, his drivers would be equipped with night-vision goggles and the dark wouldn't be an ob-stacle. But the trucks that had escaped destruction hadn't been equipped before the bombs fell, and the night-vision goggles were buried under tons of rock.

Naslin was riding in the lead vehicle, doing the map navigating, when the Toyota crested a hill. See-ing a military convoy parked on the side of the road below, he quickly ordered his driver to back up and pull off behind the crest of the hill. After putting out security, Naslin went to the top of the hill and watched the vehicles. From the flags flying from their radio antennae, they were French and it was apparent that they were planning to spend the night down there.

The major couldn't believe that the PROFOR unit had chosen to stop where it had. The valley was nar-row here, and the road followed the river that cut through it. A few hundred meters beyond the PRO-FOR laager, the road forked to turn north and that was the road he had to take. Without turning around and going back several miles, there was no way he could get past the UN troops. And to complicate the problem, it would soon be too dark to drive without using the truck's lights.

With the sun going down, the wind had picked up and was blowing from his back. When Naslin reached to turn up the collar of his jacket, he got an idea. It was a dangerous idea, but G.o.d always stood at the side of those who put themselves in danger to bring his revolution.

There was simply no way for him to get past the French unit without getting into a firefight, and there were too many troops down there for him to make a successful conventional attack against them. But with the wind blowing away from him, the chemical rockets in the truck could be used without even having to launch them.

The type of nerve gas in the rocket warheads was called a binary agent. The warhead contained two chambers holding the separate chemicals, each of which was harmless until combined with the other. But when the warhead detonated and the chemicals were mixed together by the explosion, they reacted and produced the deadly gas.

He would send a volunteer down there with one of the rockets, and the man would activate the fuse to detonate the warhead. The man would die a mar-tyr's death, but it would eliminate the PROFOR unit completely.

When he went to ask the technical sergeant in his group about his idea, he learned the bad news.

"The rocket's fuse has a setback arming feature," the sergeant explained. "It has to undergo launch acceleration to overcome the setback and make the fuse active. It's designed that way for safety."

Naslin snorted. Safety during war was for women and Western unbelievers, not for G.o.d's faithful. Is-lam hadn't triumphed by trying to keep its holy warriors safe from harm by putting safety devices on their weapons; only G.o.d could do that.

"What will happen if you tie a grenade to the warhead and set it off? That will break the containers and spread the gas, will it not?"

"Setting off a grenade tied to the warhead will release the chemicals, and they will mix to form the gas," the sergeant admitted.

"Ready one of the rockets with a grenade and find me a volunteer who is willing to do this for the revolution."

"The volunteer will not be able to get far enough away in time to escape the effects of the gas," the sergeant observed.

"The martyr lives at the right hand of G.o.d," Nas-lin reminded him. The sergeant dropped his eyes. "That is true." The man returned in a few minutes with one of his soldiers at his side. This freedom fighter was one of the youngest men in his unit, but his eyes burned. The best martyrs were always the young, the ones with the most to lose by dying early. But Naslin wasn't reluctant to use him for this mission. The young were also filled with the fire of devotion to the cause.

"Do you understand what you are to do for our revolution?" the major asked him.

"Yes, Major." The young soldier stiflened to attention. "G.o.d is great."

"Yes, He is," Naslin agreed. "And He will take you into his Paradise tonight."

"As G.o.d wills."

The volunteer stripped off his field gear and left it with his a.s.sault rifle and grenades. The rocket warhead was the only weapon he would need in this, his final battle, and it would send many more of the unbelievers to h.e.l.l than his AK ever could. After the youth covered his face and hands with mud, the sergeant handed him the prepared warhead. With a last salute, he started down the hill.

Naslin watched the French laager from the crest of the hill through his night field gla.s.ses. They weren't as good as using night-vision goggles, but with the starlight from a clear sky, they gave him a fairly good view. After watching the camp for a few minutes, he tried to spot his volunteer, but couldn't even find his track through the tall gra.s.s and that was good. If he couldn't see him from above, the French couldn't see him from where they were.

THE FRENCH mechanized company had put its armored personnel carders and scout cars into a cir-cular laager for the night. The command-and-control vehicle was in the middle of the circle, and the lights were burning inside as the officers took care of their daily after-action paperwork. Since the day's patrol had been as routine as always, the paperwork was minimal.

The French had put sentries out, but they weren't too far in front of their vehicles. Other guards kept watch from the gun turrets of the scout cars. The sentries wore night-vision goggles and they were alert, but it was peacetime alert. After months of endless patrolling without even a single shot having been fired at them, they weren't battlefield alert. Months of seeing nothing had taught them to expect more of the same-nothing.

The Iranian volunteer made his way through the tall gra.s.s flat on his belly. It was slow going, but time wasn't crucial this night-approaching the tar-get unseen was. He knew that G.o.d was waiting to welcome him to Paradise, but he knew that he had to wait until he was close enough for the gas to be effective.

Raising his head slowly until only his eyes cleared the tops of the gra.s.s, he studied his objective. The sentries were close by their vehicles, and there didn't seem to be any other early-warning devices. Seeing that he was as close as the sergeant had told him to get, he reached for the pin on the grenade.

"G.o.d's great!" the young volunteer shouted in Farsi as he pulled the pin.

The flash of the detonation blinded him, and he gasped when red-hot grenade shrapnel sliced through him. He wasn't in pain very long, however. The explosion tore open the binary warhead of the rocket, and the gases instantly combined to produce the deadly gas.

Two quick breaths of it was all it took to paralyze his nervous system. He died seconds later.

Alarmed by the shout and the grenade's detonation, the French tried to react. But they didn't get to travel three steps before, twitching and shaking, they died in their tracks.

On the command-and-control vehicle, the automated chemical-attack alarm went off, sending its ra-dio warning to the PROFOR headquarters. After the first three seconds, though, no one in the laager was alive to hear it.

FROM HIS POSITION overlooking the valley, Major Naslin saw the flash of the grenade. A second later, the sound of the m.u.f.fled explosion reached him. There were a couple of shouts, but they were quickly choked off. Beyond that, he could see nothing changing in the laager. He knew, however, that men were dying down there.

He thought he smelled a sharp odor on the cool night air, but he knew it was only his imagination. The wind hadn't changed and was still blowing from his back. Were it not, he wouldn't have made the attack. Dying to further the revolution was one thing; dying by mistake was a betrayal of G.o.d's will.

Waiting impatiently, Naslin counted down the minutes until the gas could disperse and it would be safe to drive through the area. The sergeant had said that it would take at least an hour before all traces of the gas would be gone. He hated the delay, but it couldn't be helped. He would make up the time by driving with the lights on.

"Is it time now?" he finally asked the technical sergeant.

The man looked at his watch. "It should be clear. But we will still need to be careful. I will go ahead on foot with the gas detector to check."

"There is no need to do that," Naslin stated. "G.o.d will protect us. Tell the men to load up."

"As you command, Major."

Stony Man Farm "BARBARA?" Aaron Kurtzman's familiar voice cut through Barbara Price's dreaming mind and awakened her. After encouraging the rest of the crew to get some rest when they could, she had taken her own advice. After a long hot shower, she had dressed in fresh clothes then lay down on her bed just to rest for an hour. Apparently she had fallen asleep.

Opening one eye, she hit the intercom b.u.t.ton by the bed in her quarters. "Yes?"

"We just picked up a gas-attack alert from one of the PROFOR units."

"I'm coming down."

With everything focused on the chase of the two trucks still carrying the nerve-gas rockets, Kurtzman's people were going all out to cover the area of operation. And since the chase had moved into the regions patrolled by the UN, that also meant monitoring the PROFOR radio communications.

When Price walked into the computer room, the place was abuzz. "What happened?"

"We're not sure," Kurtzman admitted. "Most of the PROFOR units are equipped with automatic chemical-detector alarms that broadcast a warning, and one of them sounded an alert just a few minutes ago over-" he moved an arrow on the map into a valley with a fiver running through it "-here."

"Has there been anything since then?"

"No. The alarms are set to transmit for a few minutes and then reset themselves."

"Is there any radio traffic from them?"

"No. Their headquarters keeps trying to call them, but no one is answering."

"Do you think that they were attacked?"

"It sure as h.e.l.l looks that way," he said. "I've got the satellite scanning the area fight now, but it doesn't show any movement. I'm getting stationary heat signatures from generators and commo vans, that kind of thing, but that's about all. I'm not picking up any moving warm bodies."

"You'd better tell Striker what's going on," she decided. "If it is a gas attack, I don't want them running into it. And, while you're doing that, I'll go wake up Hal and talk to him. The President is going to need to know about this. It may be time for us to pull out completely and hand this mess over to the UN."

Kurtzman could hear the fatigue in her voice mixed with concern for the Stony Man commandos. She never liked to admit defeat, but there was only so much they could do even under the best of circ.u.mstances. And this situation had gone far beyond the call of duty. "I'11 get the chopper pilot on the pad," he said.

"Do that."

BARBARA PRICE SAW that Hal Brognola was also sleeping fully clothed, but he hadn't bothered to change into fresh clothing before going to bed. He had been kept in the air so much lately that he hadn't even had a chance to set his dirty laundry out to be washed by the Farm support staff. She'd make a point of sending someone up to gather his laundry in the morning. "Hal?"

Brognola muttered something incoherent and rolled over.

"Hal?" Price's voice was more insistent.

"Yeah," he said, finally awake, "what is it now?"

"Aaron thinks that one of the PROFOR units has been hit with a gas attack."

"Oh, s.h.i.t!" Brognola sat up and swung his legs around to put his feet on the floor. "What happened?"

"We're not sure yet, but a French PROFOR con-voy in a night laager just sounded a chemical-attack alarm. It was one of those automatic transmitter alerts, and Aaron picked it up on a routine communications intercept."

Brognola hoped against hope that it had been a malfunction of the equipment and, as unlikely as that was, he had to ask. "Has it been confirmed yet?"

"No," she replied, "but their own headquarters isn't able to get anyone to answer their calls."

"I a.s.sume that it's in an area that could have been reached by the missing Iranian tracks?"

"In fact the target trucks have been parked a cou-ple of klicks away for some time now."

Brognola shook his head. "The President is getting tired of being awakened up and seeing my face the first thing in the morning. It might be different if I was bringing him good news at least once in a while."

"Well, that's why he makes the big bucks and gets to live in the White House. He's the Man, and he gets to make all the big decisions." "Have you alerted Striker yet?"

"Aaron was calling Katz to pa.s.s on the word when I left to come up here."

"How far away from the French laager site are they?" "About a two-hour drive during daylight hours." "Have them move in to confirm the incident if they can," he ordered. "But tell them to be danreed careful. They do have a chemical detector with them, don't they?"

She nodded.

"Good. Tell them that I do not want them to take any unnecessary risks."

She refrained from commenting that the only way to be completely safe around chemical weapons was to not be anywhere near them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

Bosnia