Stony Man - Triple Strike Part 6

Slipping silently out of his chair, Blanca.n.a.les snapped down his night-vision goggles and reached for his SPAS a.s.sault shotgun. He had hoped to get out of there clean, but he was ready if it came to a fire fight.

Lyons could hear the sound of voices approaching the garage, speaking a foreign language. He couldn't tell how many men were out there, but there were too many of them to simply overpower. If these guys were connected to the Iranian commandos as he suspected, a firefight was in the offing.

He quickly took up a position against the front wall away from the door while Blanca.n.a.les crouched behind a drum against the back wall in a cla.s.sic L-shaped ambush.

No sooner were they in place than the door opened and five men walked in. They closed and locked the door behind them before turning on the overhead lights. Seeing the move, the Able Team commandos slipped their night-vision goggles up so the sudden glare wouldn't blind them.

"Freeze!" Lyons shouted in English. Thanks to Hollywood and television, almost everyone in the world knew that one distinctly American word.

This time, though, it didn't work. All five of the men were armed, and they responded by pulling their pieces. One gunman had his Beretta minisubmachine gun on a sling at his side, and it snapped up, spraying lead.

The long burst went wild, and Lyons's .357 Colt Python barked in response. The Magnum round took out the submachine gunner by blowing the back of his head off. Blanca.n.a.les's 12-gauge SPAS roared at the same time, the buckshot slamming another thug against the wall.

Scrambling for cover, one of the three remaining gunmen started to dive behind a gray Fiat sedan parked near the far wall. One of his partners screamed something and waved his hands urgently.

Almost in midjump, the gunman skidded to a halt and reversed direction. His change in plan, however, was fatal. Lyons caught him halfway to cover with two rounds from his Python. The .357 Magnum slugs slammed him sideways as they tore through his rib cage and smashed his heart.

Pivoting to the left, Lyons spun to face the gunman whose spray of 9 mm lead had driven Blanca.n.a.les to the ground. He tripped the Colt's hammer two times in rapid fire and saw the rounds punch two close-s.p.a.ced holes in the upper left quadrant of the target's jacket.

Finding himself suddenly alone, the last gunman tried to make a break for it. Ripping off a long burst from his little Beretta subgun as he ran, he sprinted for the closed door. Had the gunners left the door unlocked, he might have escaped the carnage in the garage. But when he was forced to stop to open it, Blanca.n.a.les's SPAS belched buckshot.

At that range, the lead b.a.l.l.s didn't have time to spread out much, and they hit him in an eight-inch pattern. Any one of the b.a.l.l.s would have been enough to kill him, and the entire load tore him open like he'd run into a buzz saw.

"Check them out," Lyons said as he turned to the cars parked against the wall.

He couldn't get the image out of his mind of the one gunman diving for cover behind the Fiat and then running away from it. The car would have provided him a h.e.l.l of a lot better cover than where he had tried to go, so there had to be a compelling rea-son why he had turned back from it. Walking over to the car, Lyons shone his flashlight inside.

The bottom cushion of the back seat had been removed, and a plywood box had been installed in its place. A cl.u.s.ter of electrical wires ran out from under the floor carpet into a hole in the front side of the wooden compartment, and the ends of the wires had detonating caps attached to them.

The car had been rigged to be a bomb, and only the blocks of RDX explosive were missing. With the timers and firing wires in place, all the terrorists needed to do was put the explosive charges in the compartment, fit the wires and lay a blanket over it. Then it would be ready.

"I got their wallets and papers," Blanca.n.a.les said after frisking the last of the bodies.

Lyons holstered his Python. "This d.a.m.ned thing is rigged as a car bomb, but I'm going to leave it for the Italians to mess with. Let's go."

Warbling police sirens were sounding in the distance when Lyons started the Lancia and drove away from the garage. It had been a good evening's work, and he was ready for a cup of coffee.

Stony Man Farm BARBARA PRICE NOTICED that Hal Brognola looked a little more ragged than usual when he stepped out of the chopper at the Farm's landing pad. He usually showed the signs of a mission more than the rest of the Farm team, but this time, he seemed a lot worse for wear.

As always, Brognola kept silent on the short walk from the landing pad. After keying the security code into the main door, Price opened it for him and stepped aside to let him enter first. No sooner had his foot crossed the threshold than he started to talk. "We have a problem."

"We sure as h.e.l.l do," she agreed. "But I'm not sure that we're talking about the same problem."

"The President is concerned about the Iranian Schwarz encountered in Italy. He thinks that the mission has been compromised."

"That's the same topic as the problem we came up with, but a different location." "What do you mean?"

"Well, Aaron came up with what looks like hard evidence that the Islamic freedom fighters mentioned in the Dayton Accord didn't leave Bosnia as they were supposed to."

That stopped the big Fed in midstfide. "But we saw them leave Sarajevo. They got on the planes," he said. "And the UN international observers signed off on it."

She smiled slowly. "We saw somebody leave town, true. But Aaron says he has proof that the guys who marched onto those planes weren't the guys they were supposed to be. Plus he did a little snooping in the files and came up with what the Islamic commandos have been doing since they didn't leave."

"And that is?"

She shrugged. "The same thing they were doing before the cease-fire-killing Serbs and Croats."

"I need to see this ASAP."

"It's waiting in the War Room."

The key players were waiting around the confer- ence table when Brognola and Price walked into the War Room. No one looked as bad as he did, but it was obvious that they had been working long hours and drinking too much coffee.

"What's this about those Islamic freedom fighters?" Brognola growled as he popped two antacid tabs from the fresh roll in his jacket pocket.

"The bottom line is that they didn't leave as per the Dayton Accord," Aaron Kurtzman stated.

"Who the h.e.l.l did leave, then?"

"My best bet is that they were students who were headed for graduate work at the University of Teh-ran's school of murder and mayhem. I think that we can expect them back on the scene after they've learned the finer points of terroristic slaughter."

Brognola closed his eyes as if he were trying to make the world go away.

Kurtzman antic.i.p.ated the next question. "I know that the UN weenies certified that all of the so-called Islamic freedom fighters had been shipped out, but it simply didn't happen and I can prove it."

"The President will need to see that proof."

"It's ready for him."

"And what is this about their still being active in Bosnia?"

"I'11 let Hunt give you the background. He's the one who tracked it."

Dr. Huntington Wethers was usually the best-dressed man at Stony Man Farm. He always looked like the distinguished academic he had been before Kurtzman lured him away from the ivory towers of academia. Today, though, he looked as scruffy as any of the overworked cybernetics team. The long hours and Kurtzman's brew were beginning to take their toll on him, too.

"When this came up," Wethers said, "something started nagging at the back of my mind. During the war, we kept getting field intelligence that the so-called freedom fighters were operating as mobile search-and-destroy teams targeted against leaders and functionaries of the other two factions."

"They were a.s.sa.s.sinating them," Brognola said, cutting through the jargon.

"In short, yes. And apparently they were rather successful at it. They were hitting the infrastructure and high level-"

"And you think that they're back at it?" Brognola asked.

"I'm convinced they are," Wethers replied, nodding. "About a month after the so-called return of the Iranians, mysterious deaths started to occur again in Bosnia. We could attribute this to happenstance, except that none of the victims have been Muslims. All of them have been Serbs and Croatians."

"Do we have any hard evidence of this or do you expect me to take statistics to the Man?"

Wethers looked offended. Even though he was well aware of their limitations, statistics were holy to him. As far as he was concemed, if the world paid more attention to statistics, it would be a better place to five. "We have the men who attacked Schwarz in Italy and the Islamic troops Phoenix Force and Striker ran into as hard evidence."

"That doesn't mean that there are Islamic hit teams operating in Bosnia."

"This does, though." Wethers. .h.i.t the b.u.t.ton that flashed a newspaper up on the screen.

"Can you give that to me in English?" Brognola asked dryly. "My Serbo-Croation is a bit rusty."

"This came out of a Serb paper last week, and it says that the mayor of one of the contested towns was ambushed by gunmen on his way home and killed. This time, though, there were witnesses who claimed that they heard the attackers shouting to each other in what sounded like the Arabic language."

"Who were these witnesses?"

"A British observation team seconded to the UN mission. And they went on to say that the attackers were wearing desert-camouflage uniforms and green berets."

"Okay, okay," Brognola said. "I'll take it up with the President."

"I told Striker about the attack on the guys in Italy," Price told him. "And the guys are taking ex-tra precautions."

"How's the search going for the Night Owl crash site?" Brognola asked.

"Not well," Kurtzman said flatly. "I worked out the most likely area that the plane came down in, but they haven't been able to get there yet. The last call from Katz, however, said that they thought they were closing in on it."

"Make sure he keeps us informed."

Bosnia As KURTZMAN HAD SAID, the search for Hammer's crashed Night Owl wasn't going well. For one thing, the pilot had only the vaguest idea where he had been when he had been forced to eject from the stricken plane. Nor did he know where he had landed and been captured. All he had to go on was an estimate of the length of time it had taken his captors to drive him to the fortress. Even with so little information, however, it wasn't as hopeless as it sounded.

Hammer knew that he had been taken in a west-ward direction to reach the castle. That meant that he had been captured to the east of it. Since he had been on an outward-bound leg of his search for Lacy's SAR beacon, the TR-3 had been heading east at the time of the collision. Wherever the plane had come to earth, the wreckage would have to be to the east of the fortress.

The other problem that the Stony Man Team was dealing with was the string of Bosnian teams who were searching the mountains for them. They had to make sure to keep out of sight and not to leave a trail. Nonetheless, they were covering a lot of ground, but had little to show for it so far. Bolan had asked Katz to have the Farm check the satellite runs over the area to see if they could spot the crash site, but to no avail. The problem was that the radar-defeating structure of the plane that kept it from being spotted in the air worked as well when it was on the ground. Even broken up, the carbon-fiber- composite wings and fuselage didn't give good radar returns. The optical scanning also failed to spot it because of the dense forest cover. This was one time that a high-tech approach had to take a back seat to old-fashioned footwork.

"That's the d.a.m.ned problem with terrain-following radar," the pilot grumbled during a break. "When you don't see the ground, you can't remember anything."

"You were flying at night," Hawkins reminded him. "So you wouldn't have seen diddly anyway."

"You'd be surprised what you can see at night up there," Hammer said. "And I wish the h.e.l.l I was up there now."

"This infantry stuff starting to get to you, fly-boy?"

"I don't see how in the h.e.l.l you guys do this day in and day out."

"You'll get used to it."

"Not in this lifetime."

With the enemy search parties in the hills, the Stony Man team was even being careful to keep out of sight at night. Since the guard at the fortress Hawkins had killed had been wearing night goggles, that meant that the others could be using them, too. They couldn't make fires to heat rations and had to sleep in the rocks to block their bodies' heat signatures from night-vision devices.

"We'll give this another day or so," Bolan told the pilot when they halted for the evening. "And then we're going to have to start thinking seriously about getting out of here. As you know, we didn't come equipped for this kind of mission. With the numbers of men looking for us, we can't afford the exposure. Sooner or later, someone's bound to spot us and we'll be forced into a fight we can't win."

Hammer saw the truth in Bolan's words. The commandos had gone the extra mile and then some to try to find the crash site. But the fate of his downed aircraft still loomed large in his thinking. He wouldn't be comfortable until he was satisfied that it was useless to anyone.

Aviano Air Base, Italy "KATZ," SCHWARZ CALLED out from inside the CP, "the Bear's on the line. I think he got the files decoded."

The majority of the information they had pirated from the garage computer had been security coded. Since Schwarz didn't have the programs to try to break the codes, he had forwarded them to Stony Man for the computer-room crew to work on. Breaking cyber-codes was one of Kurtzman's favorite pas-times. In his off moments, he worked on them like other people did crossword puzzles.

Sliding in front of the video pickup, Katz saw that Kurtzman was grinning. "I take it you broke it. What's in there?"

"Mostly it's political garbage," Kurtzman said. "The usual ranting and raving of Islamic extremists. But there's also information about weapons shipments and terrorist cells. This group has been in place for some time now, and they've had a pipeline directly to Tripoli."

"The Libyans again?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Did you find anything about whoever is in charge of this mob?"

"Not his real name," Kurtzman answered. "But he goes by the nom de guerre of 'the Lebanese' so we can a.s.sume that he's from Lebanon, probably from Beirut."

The long civil war in Lebanon had produced hundreds of young Arabs who blamed the self-inflicted misfortunes of their homeland on the West. The terrorist states of Syria, Iran and Libya had welcomed many of these men and had provided them with new homes, as well as employment. The problem was they were employed as terrorists.

"I'11 get right on this stuff," Katz said, "and get back to you as soon as I've gone through it."

"Better make it quick," Kurtzman urged. "Barbara and I haven't told Hal about Lyons's raid yet."

CHAPTER TEN.

Stony Man Farm

As soon as Hal Brognola woke up the next morning, along with his coffee Barbara Price served him a briefing on Able Team's venture into counterterror-ism in Italy.

"What in the h.e.l.l does Lyons think he's doing?" Brognola snapped. "He knows that Able Team isn't supposed to be taking action. We didn't work up a legend for them, and they're only supposed to be helping Katz run the CP for the Bosnian operation."

A "legend" was the cover story for an agent operating in a foreign country and was an essential part of the Farm's operations. Without carefully prepared legends, the operatives were vulnerable if they were picked up by local police or intelligence services. The last thing Stony Man needed was for one of its men to go through a chemical interrogation and re-veal information on the Farm. The shock wave could bring down the presidency.

"But Katz thinks they're onto something," Price argued. "And since he's the man on the ground, he authorized their mission. If what they suspect is true, the PROFOR operation at Aviano is in real danger."

Brognola shook his head. This was supposed to have been a simple s.n.a.t.c.h job to get one of the President's advisers out of a jam. Piece of cake-a good troop of Girl Scouts should have been able to take care of it. Twelve hours in and out, no sweat. But no, that would be too simple. Instead, the mission had turned into some kind of Armageddon scenario with Islamic commandos, crashed stealth planes, terrorists and car bombs.

The world was going to h.e.l.l in a handbag and he had Ironman Lyons and his merry band of tricksters hulling their way around northern Italy like characters in a made-for-TV action-adventure flick. The President was going to have his head if he didn't get this under control ASAP.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go back to the beginning. What prompted this exercise anyway?"

Price quickly ran through the facts about the two dead Italian gunmen who had tried to kidnap Schwarz and Katz's desire to learn more about them.

"So," he summed up from memory, "as a result of their little foray off the reservation, we have a half a dozen Iranian terrorists KIA and a car bomb in custody, right?"