Revolution Device Read online

  STONY MAN

  Ready to take on the most dangerous missions, the covert warriors of the Stony team are the best officers and cyber techs in the world. Working under the radar on special Presidential assignments, the team members would sacrifice their lives to uphold freedom and put an end to terror attacks.

  LETHAL POLITICS

  An electronics-smuggling ring is distributing deadly IEDs to target American soldiers and diplomats, including the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala. It’s only a matter of time before the group, which has ties with Hezbollah and Iranian revolutionists, strikes other U.S. embassies. Infiltrating the smuggling operation in Central America, Stony Man’s Able Team must find a way to shut down the operation, while Phoenix Force goes head-to-head with the terrorists in Iraq before they launch an all-out war and put the lives of millions at stake.

  BLANCANALES YANKED THE BERETTA FREE AND RAN FOR THE ALLEY

  He could hear the vehicles screeching to a halt behind him. Turning, he saw a burly guy climbing out of the backseat of the SUV, a shotgun in his hands.

  Blancanales raised the Beretta and squeezed off three quick shots. One of the Parabellum slugs lanced into the guy’s right shoulder, jerking him around before a second round drilled his chest. His finger pulled the trigger in a death reflex and a blast thundered out of the shotgun’s muzzle. Another of Escobar’s gunners was coming around the other side of the truck, pistol drawn. Blancanales fired off two more shots and the guy ducked behind the hood.

  Blancanales darted a few yards into the alley. He heard the sound of rubber squealing against pavement and assumed more were coming for him.

  What had ignited all of this? Had Ortega given him up? If so, Escobar had probably gone to ground already. That’d make him all the harder to find.

  If Blancanales even lived through the next few minutes.

  Other Titles in this Series:

  #62 DEEP RAMPAGE

  #63 FREEDOM WATCH

  #64 ROOTS OF TERROR

  #65 THE THIRD PROTOCOL

  #66 AXIS OF CONFLICT

  #67 ECHOES OF WAR

  #68 OUTBREAK

  #69 DAY OF DECISION

  #70 RAMROD INTERCEPT

  #71 TERMS OF CONTROL

  #72 ROLLING THUNDER

  #73 COLD OBJECTIVE

  #74 THE CHAMELEON FACTOR

  #75 SILENT ARSENAL

  #76 GATHERING STORM

  #77 FULL BLAST

  #78 MAELSTROM

  #79 PROMISE TO DEFEND

  #80 DOOMSDAY CONQUEST

  #81 SKY HAMMER

  #82 VANISHING POINT

  #83 DOOM PROPHECY

  #84 SENSOR SWEEP

  #85 HELL DAWN

  #86 OCEANS OF FIRE

  #87 EXTREME ARSENAL

  #88 STARFIRE

  #89 NEUTRON FORCE

  #90 RED FROST

  #91 CHINA CRISIS

  #92 CAPITAL OFFENSIVE

  #93 DEADLY PAYLOAD

  #94 ACT OF WAR

  #95 CRITICAL EFFECT

  #96 DARK STAR

  #97 SPLINTERED SKY

  #98 PRIMARY DIRECTIVE

  #99 SHADOW WAR

  #100 HOSTILE DAWN

  #101 DRAWPOINT

  #102 TERROR DESCENDING

  #103 SKY SENTINELS

  #104 EXTINCTION CRISIS

  #105 SEASON OF HARM

  #106 HIGH ASSAULT

  #107 WAR TIDES

  #108 EXTREME INSTINCT

  #109 TARGET ACQUISITION

  #110 UNIFIED ACTION

  #111 CRITICAL INTELLIGENCE

  #112 ORBITAL VELOCITY

  #113 POWER GRAB

  #114 UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE

  #115 EXTERMINATION

  #116 TERMINAL GUIDANCE

  #117 ARMED RESISTANCE

  #118 TERROR TRAIL

  #119 CLOSE QUARTERS

  #120 INCENDIARY DISPATCH

  #121 SEISMIC SURGE

  #122 CHOKE POINT

  #123 PERILOUS SKIES

  #124 NUCLEAR INTENT

  #125 COUNTER FORCE

  #126 PRECIPICE

  #127 PRODIGY EFFECT

  Revolution Device

  This book is dedicated to the intelligence professionals killed or injured in a suicide attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman, Afghanistan, in 2009. God keep.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  PROLOGUE

  Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

  “What brings you to Africa?” Blake Pearson asked.

  One of the men—slim, his black hair shaved down to stubble—looked up from the tablet computer on his lap, his right eyebrow cocked, lips pressed together in a bloodless line, and stared at Pearson for several seconds.

  “Business,” the guy said. He cast his gaze back to his tablet and fell silent again.

  Pearson, the newly installed ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, nodded at the top of the man’s head and bit down on a pointed reply.

  The three men were twenty minutes into what Pearson considered an excruciatingly quiet ride through the capital. A former oil executive, Pearson had spent the past several years as a diplomat. His connections in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, had made him a good fit for a diplomatic post there. After three years, the White House had tapped him to serve as ambassador to Iraq. His command of Arabic and his connections in the Gulf region had made him a natural choice for that job, too.

  When the State Department underwent a post-election game of musical chairs with its Middle Eastern operations, Pearson had found himself without a seat when the music stopped. He’d blanched when his superiors offered him a post in central Africa as a consolation prize. Initially he refused the post because he knew so little about the country or the region. The secretary of state countered that, like his previous posts, the DRC had oil, which made it critical to U.S. interests. They needed someone with his diplomatic and business credentials to man such a significant post.

  He’d always been a sucker for flattery so here he was in the Congo.

  Today’s to-do list included personally traveling to N’Djili Airport, one of the country’s largest airports, to pick up his two companions and ferry them back to the Embassy. The last-minute request had come in a cable from a high-level State Department official and it had seemed shrouded in mystery from the start. The man who’d just spoken had introduced himself as Mr. Jacob.

  Jacob had introduced his fellow traveler—a rangy guy, his pale skin mottled with freckles—as Mr. Taylor. Both
apparently had left their first names back in the United States, because when Pearson asked the question, Jacob changed the subject. He simply asked to be taken to the Embassy so they could discuss some “critical issues best not mentioned in the open.”

  Pearson guessed the two men were CIA or maybe military intelligence. He’d met enough of each during his time in the Middle East to know when spooks were around. Maybe the Lord’s Resistance Army, which had operations in the country, was planning to raise some hell. Maybe some mid-level al Qaeda operative was drifting through the country. Whatever the issue, he’d know soon enough. They’d refused to discuss it until they arrived at the Embassy.

  In the meantime he just needed to sit here, in the air-conditioned comfort of his limousine, while the sphinx brothers studiously ignored him and instead stared at their computers.

  The longer the ride took, the more his irritation grew. He was, after all, the U.S. ambassador. Between private meetings, lunches and dinners with dignitaries, an occasional grip-and-grin photo shoot and the like, his days usually stretched well past the twelve-hour mark. He’d been forced to cancel a slate of appointments to retrieve his new visitors. For his troubles, he’d been treated to a nearly uninterrupted view of their scalps and stony silence.

  Lucky him.

  He could only imagine what other joys the day held for him.

  * * *

  JULES NMOSU PULLED the vibrating phone from his pocket and brought it to his ear.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “They should be at your position in five minutes,” the other man said. “You know what to do when they get there, right?”

  “I do,” Nmosu said.

  “Then do it,” the caller said and hung up.

  Nmosu scowled and slipped the phone back into his pocket. Of course he knew what to do. He’d been planning this operation for months, since shortly after the new ambassador, Blake Pearson, had come into the country.

  For a diplomat, Pearson had proved himself skilled at alienating all the wrong people in the country. From the moment he’d arrived, Pearson had taken a hard line with several local rebel groups, including Nmosu’s militia.

  Nmosu had wondered for some time whether he’d succeed in killing Pearson. The man wasn’t reckless. Nmosu guessed his years in Iraq had taught the ambassador the value of watching his ass. He constantly was surrounded by State Department security agents or contractors. He always traveled in armored vehicles.

  Then Nmosu had found a benefactor who had changed everything. The man was at times arrogant, controlling and condescending. But he wanted Nmosu to succeed. He wanted to see Pearson dead, though he refused to say why. Nmosu cared little about the man’s motives so long as he kept the weapons, money and advice coming.

  He stopped at a small shop where meats, nuts and coffee were sold and stared at the display window. In the glass, he could see at least a partial reflection. He was tall and rail-thin. The skin of his face was drawn tight, to the point where his bones seemed on the verge of poking through. His eyes were sunken and marbled with little red lines. He’d always been unnaturally skinny, but also strong, speedy and aggressive. As a boy growing up in Uganda, he’d excelled at soccer and his well-meaning parents had filled his head full of stories about how one day he would play the sport professionally, or at least get a scholarship, maybe at a famous American or British university.

  That plan hadn’t worked out so well for him.

  His father had a run a meat shop, similar to the one in front of him. One day, a pair of Ugandan soldiers had entered the store and first began taking food from the shelves and then helping themselves to the money in the register. Nmosu’s old man had fought back, telling them to stop.

  They’d rewarded his bravery by firing round after round from their AK-47s into the elder Nmosu. The barrage of 7.62 mm rounds had chewed through his stomach, his chest, his back, like dozens of blades punching through stretched paper. By the time the soldiers had finished their work, his father’s torso had been ground up like the meat he sold. He’d been dead on the spot.

  Though it’d been decades, the image of his father’s bullet-riddled corpse crashing to the floor, the strobe-like flashing of the rifle muzzles, ran through his mind, again and again. It was like a ghost following him through life, rattling chains so often to get his attention that he no longer paid attention to the intrusion. It just flashed across his mind’s eye—a shredded corpse slamming against the floor—and went away.

  At the time of the shooting, he’d been lucky enough to pass out. The sheer terror he’d felt and the truth of what he’d seen had been too much for his young mind to bear. He’d come to later in a hospital. Someone, another mysterious benefactor, had brought him to the hospital.

  After that, the plunge into despair had been fast and sharp. The family had lost the store and their father’s meager income. The soldiers had accused the old man of attacking them, leaving them no choice but to cut him down with a withering barrage of autofire.

  Nmosu had denied this. He’d told his mother the truth. She’d been horrified, but not by the truth. No, what had terrified her was her son’s insistence on telling the truth. After all, honesty wouldn’t buy them justice, but would instead brand a target on their backs.

  It had been at that moment that he’d realized he was alone. If he wanted something in life, whether it was justice or power, he’d have to get it himself. Fortunately, it also was the time when he’d realized there was no justice in the world, so go for the power instead.

  That had been the allure of the LRA for him. He cared little about the group’s philosophy, beliefs and political agenda. He cared even less about their paper-thin pretensions of Christianity. They had the power of life and death. That had been enough to buy his allegiance. That he got to keep the best women from the villages they raided, to plunder their food and other possessions, was a bonus.

  The lust for power had, in fact, driven him to leave the LRA and launch his own group.

  And now this American, with his tough talk, wanted to dismantle what he’d built. Nmosu wouldn’t stand for that. He glanced at his watch and smiled. In just a few minutes he’d show the United States he was here to stay.

  * * *

  THE HUMVEE SLOWED, taking Pearson’s attention from his phone, where he’d been checking emails. Immediately his grip tightened on the phone and his heartbeat kicked into overdrive. Looking up, he glanced through the vehicle’s side windows and saw the cars and trucks in the neighboring lane also slowing to a crawl before stopping altogether.

  Peering through the windshield, he could see that the lead escort vehicle had stopped a few yards short of an intersection. A uniformed police officer was gesturing for them to stop. Looking past the officer, Pearson could see a red sedan, its front end crumpled, standing in the intersection, balancing on its passenger’s side. A black van, steam rolling out from its engine compartment, stood a few yards away, its tattered front end turned toward the oncoming traffic. Uniformed officers milled around the intersection, a couple trying to direct traffic away from the accident scene.

  It’s just a wreck. Pearson forced himself to take a deep breath and hold it for a couple of beats before exhaling.

  “You all right?”

  Pearson looked over at his fellow passengers and saw Jacob eyeing him.

  “Fine,” Pearson said.

  “You were in Iraq, right?”

  “Yes. Fourteen months almost to the day.”

  “Car slows down there, you start thinking roadblock. Then you start thinking, which crazy militia is blocking the road? After that it’s, am I about to become a hostage or star in some freaky al Qaeda snuff video? Am I right?”

  “Very much so.”

  “Understood,” Jacob said. “I spent a couple of years there. Did a lot of traveling.”

  “In the Green Zone
?”

  The corners of Jacob’s lips turned up into a cold smile. “Too civilized for the work I did.”

  “Which was?”

  “Something we’ll talk about at the Embassy.” He turned his attention back to his tablet computer.

  “Of course,” Pearson muttered.

  He turned his attention back to his phone. Scrolling through his email’s inbox, he saw that six more messages had arrived in less than a minute, a couple from the administrators in Foggy Bottom, two from his staff at the Embassy, one from an old contact in Baghdad and one from his wife, Kathleen. His first inclination was to read and respond to the business-related emails first, relegating his wife’s message to the lowest priority. Catching himself, he tapped his index finger on her email. Just then, the Humvee lurched forward, rolling a few feet before veering into a right-hand turn.

  “The police officer directed us to turn,” the driver called over his shoulder.

  Pearson acknowledged the man with a nod. He knew they could drive a few blocks north past the accident and roll back onto the road they’d just left.

  He read the email from his wife: We miss you. Be careful. Attached was a picture of the twins, both clad in their bathing suits, the waters of the Embassy’s pool sparkling behind them.

  Blake—his blue eyes wide and his gap-toothed grin even wider—stared directly into the camera. Ashley, her smile more tentative, eyes narrowed with curiosity, was reaching a small hand toward the lens. Pearson smiled at the picture. Losing his first marriage had been a sucker punch that’d left him reeling. He hadn’t seen it coming, though in retrospect he should have. He’d resigned himself to the life of a divorced workaholic, somehow too defective to pull off a career and a marriage. Meeting Kathleen had changed that for him and he was grateful to have a second chance at a family.

  The Humvee slowed again. Pearson glanced up and saw another police officer directing them to make a left-hand turn. The driver complied and seconds later they were headed in the direction of the Embassy again. Pearson typed a reply: Miss you 2. Home soon.

  He then turned his attention to his other emails.

  “Hey,” Jacob said, “why isn’t the cop directing anyone else down this street?”