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  The President reclined in his chair and allowed Brognola to read through the contents of the folder. He studied Brognola’s expression as the head of the Stony Man operation took in the information. The big Fed absorbed the data, processing it in his mind, as the facts were integrated. When he had finished, he closed the folder and placed it back on the desk.

  “You think I’m overreacting to disparate reports?” the President asked.

  “Taken individually, these could be separate,” Brognola said. “Then you look at the whole. Too close. And a connection. We know North Korea’s ambitions. The anti-U.S. stance. Tentative threats against our presence in the Pacific arena. Kim Jong Il kept the pot boiling right up to his death, and Kim Jong Un hasn’t made any attempt to ease the situation. If NK is still determined to maintain its hostile attitude, we have to stay alert, sir.”

  “Hal, I’ll never understand why North Korea is determined to keep rattling its sabers. Hell, I understand their politics. Die-hard pro-Communist, maybe these days even more than China. North Korea is on the edge. Lack of food. A dispirited population. And they still keep throwing money they can barely afford at these overambitious schemes. We offer to help, and all they do is slap our hand away.”

  “Entrenched Communist attitudes,” Brognola said. “They see South Korea growing, but their country on its knees. And there’s the U.S. presence, military and financial. North Korea has a long memory. They would love to have us leave South Korea and allow them the opportunity to take their second strike. They only have their close neighbor China in the background, sending financial aid and supplying special raw materials.

  “The NK regime has an obsessive hostility toward America and seems determined to maintain the status quo. If they could come up with a scary new weapon, I think we all know how that would pan out.” Brognola emptied his cup and gestured in the direction of the coffeepot.

  “Help yourself,” the President said. “The least I can do after bringing you in on Sunday.”

  “Family is used to me disappearing at a moment’s notice.”

  That made the President smile. “Mine too.”

  One of the telephones on the desk rang. The President picked it up, listened, not interrupting, until he had the caller’s full report, then made a brief acknowledgment before disconnecting. “That was Jack Pullman,” he said.

  “Crisis advisor Pullman?”

  The President nodded. “That incident in Hawaii earlier this morning. It has been confirmed as an EMP attack. The blackout had a two-mile radius.”

  “Going to take some time to bring the base back online,” Brognola said. He watched as the President sank back in his executive seat; there was no need to have it described to him that there was more.

  “Pullman also verified the reports on the sunken freighter.” The President tapped the blue folder. “A Coast Guard cutter located five bodies. All identified as Korean. They had suffered high-degree burns from an extremely high-powered electrical discharge. Pullman stressed the extremely high section of the report. Not the kind of discharge that would be generated by anything on a coastal freighter.”

  “If we postulate a theory based on the facts we have,” Brognola said, “maybe we’re looking at a test run that worked but then backfired on the launch source.”

  “My thoughts, as well. Hal, there was no report of any aerial detonation apart from a high-intensity flash overhead just before the base went black. So arguably we could be looking at a nonnuclear EMP device.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any less concerned. If someone is developing this weapon, and we are thinking North Korea, then there’s a new game in town.”

  “We have the intel,” the President said. “The South Korean covert agent I mentioned has been sending in reports of a research site up in North Korea. The South Koreans have been monitoring the situation. Their man has been reporting that pulse technology is what NK has been working on at this place. The South Korea agent’s inside contact has been feeding him up-to-date information. Her last communication confirmed that North Korea was planning a test firing. Due to tight security, she wasn’t told where the test would be carried out, but she was hoping to sabotage the firing.”

  “And Hawaii took the hit?”

  “Everything points to that conclusion,” the President said. “Hal, we need to track this to source and put it out of action. As small as this incident is, the target was the United States of America. That is not an option I will accept. I won’t let another attack on U.S. soil go unpunished, Hal. Next time it could be here on the mainland. This is not to be allowed to happen.

  “I am tired of appeasing these people and giving them the opportunity to strike at us, believing we’re too damn scared to hit back.

  “We have enough to initiate Stony Man missions. You send in your people. No half measures. If it has to be down and dirty, so be it. All it takes, Hal, as much as it damn well takes. Put Stony Man on a full footing. The whole facility. Find who is behind this and bring them down with extreme prejudice. Anything you need, call me direct, and you’ll get it.

  “One additional fact to consider, Hal. Dr. Emanuel Absalom. Greedy rogue physicist. Sources say he signed on to work at the North Korean site a few months ago.”

  Brognola took no longer than a few seconds to make his first requests.

  “I’ll need aircraft standing by to fly the teams to the prime destinations. Phoenix Force to South Korea. Able Team will head for Hawaii and look into the situation there.”

  “I’ll have your rides ready to go by the time you get back to Stony Man.”

  Brognola headed for the door.

  “Hal, anything you need on this. Anything. And wish the teams Godspeed and good luck from me.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  STONY MAN FARM

  As soon as everyone was assembled in the War Room, Hal Brognola, head of the covert SOG, leaned both hands on the conference table and looked over his two specialist teams.

  On his right was Able Team, led by Carl Lyons. The tough blond-haired former L.A. cop had a direct, no-nonsense attitude when it came to dealing with the bad guys. Rosario “the Politician” Blancanales and Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz were his Able Team partners. Both were seasoned warriors who carried a multitude of skills between them.

  Able Team was a trio of hotshots that had the ability to deal with any threat thrown in its direction. They operated for the most part within America’s borders, though from time to time they had worked abroad. In a way they would have a foot in each camp on the upcoming mission. Their bailiwick this time around, though they had yet to be informed, would be Hawaii—overseas but still a part of the USA.

  The other team, Phoenix Force, was a five-man unit led by the hard-nosed, unpredictable, but tactically brilliant, David McCarter. The former British SAS man had built a reputation as a reckless, direct-action commando who had no fear and who would tackle any situation he was presented with.

  His promotion to Phoenix Force’s top position had tempered his wildness to a degree; he still had the ability to go charging in, if a given situation called for it, but he carried his responsibility for his team seriously and would never, deliberately, place them in peril.

  Gary Manning was a Canadian explosives expert and the team’s sharpshooter. Rafael Encizo, a Cuban, was a fiery individual who feared very little. Calvin James, the black warrior with natural charm and varied talents, was a former Navy SEAL and was also the team medic. T. J. Hawkins, a Texan, was the youngest member of the team but was second to none when it came to laying down the hammer.

  Not one of the Phoenix Force men would have hesitated if McCarter had given the order to walk through fire. Their unswerving loyalty was borne out of countless missions where absolute trust in each other had become the norm. It was the unspoken bond that grew between any fighting group.

 
; It was the same kinship that had tied together combat soldiers from the shores of Iwo Jima to the bloody beaches of the Normandy landings, through to Vietnam and beyond. It still held soldiers together in Afghanistan or any hot spot that demanded a U.S. fighting force. As long as men fought together, and sometimes died together, it would continue to exist.

  As Hal cast his eyes across the two groups, aware that he was about to launch them on yet another mission with no guarantees as to their survival, he felt, as he always did, that Able Team and Phoenix Force were the best. Without fanfare, or expectations of plaudits if they returned alive, these selfless men were ready to step up to Hell’s front door and tackle the Devil himself.

  On Brognola’s left sat Barbara Price, an attractive woman who was Stony Man’s mission controller. She had a file on the conference table that would hold all the mission briefings for both teams. In the short time since the President had issued his go for the mission, Price had compiled every piece of information available.

  With single-handed efficiency she had organized transport to the relevant destinations and cleared any possible restrictions that might hamper the teams once they arrived. If it could be achieved, Price would make it happen.

  She had the ability to coordinate complex arrangements and make them look simple. Unflappable, cool in any crisis, she sent the teams out across the globe and, once they were dispatched, would worry about them every step of the way, until they returned to the fold.

  On the opposite side of the table sat Aaron Kurtzman. The Stony Man computer genius nursed a large mug of his infamous coffee, supposedly strong enough to scar stainless steel. Although his body was confined to a wheelchair—due to a spinal injury sustained during an attack on the Stony Man complex a number of years back—his upper body and especially his brain had not been damaged.

  Kurtzman’s mastery of the cyberworld enabled him to control and direct his own team of specialists. Their facility had the most cutting-edge computer systems in existence—though even that never satisfied Kurtzman, and he was constantly updating his equipment in order to stay ahead of the game.

  If information was available somewhere, Kurtzman’s team would find it. What they did was completely covert; Brognola understood how Kurtzman operated.

  To complement the combat teams, Kurtzman would, if necessary, hack into any source he found and extract what he needed, and no one would be any the wiser. He broke every rule in the book big time, circumvented firewalls and snuck into code-protected files; if his unlawful raiding helped on a mission, Kurtzman would use his team without losing a moment of sleep.

  As for Brognola, he turned a blind eye to Kurtzman’s indiscretions. Too much could depend on the final outcome of a mission to worry about bending rules and treading on other agencies’ toes. The bearded cyberguru, known affectionately as the Bear, was also highly protective of the Stony Man operatives. As far as Kurtzman was concerned, they were family, and he was dedicated to keeping them alive.

  For today’s meeting, Price had arranged a video conference with Erika Dukas, a languages expert the mission controller had known at the NSA. Her expertise in Korean was the primary reason for her attendance. Brognola glanced across at the wall screen. “You’re up, Erika.”

  Dukas cleared her throat before she spoke. She was normally a confident young woman, sure of her abilities and skilled at her job.

  McCarter had picked up on her momentary hesitation and caught her attention.

  “No one’s going to bite you, love,” he said lightly. “Well, Carl might, if you tick him off, but we made him take his calm pill earlier, so you should be okay.”

  The irascible Briton’s remark eased Dukas’s tension. Even Lyons offered her a quick smile.

  “Okay, I’ll give you what I’ve learned so far,” Dukas said. “Bear with me, because there’s a lot more I need to do, before we learn exactly what this information offers. My early translations from Chosongul, the written phonetic Korean language, are a little shaky, this style is tough.

  “Whoever gathered this information didn’t lay it out in any order. I’m guessing the data was taken from different sources, so it’s kind of haphazard, written by hand, most likely from computer displays. The copies Hal passed me were from the insider working at the research lab in North Korea.”

  “From what we were told,” Price said, “the agent who gained this information was under a lot of pressure, taking chances to write down the data whenever the opportunity presented itself. And then getting her data to her outside contact who passed it along to his South Korean home base. They liaised with U.S. military intelligence.”

  “Important to this meeting,” Dukas said, “are some key phrases I managed to isolate. Not too hard were references to NNEMP. Nonnuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons. There was a passage describing the requirements for the weapon. And we also have a name. There are a couple references to a Dr. Emanuel Absalom,” Dukas added. “I looked him up, and it turns out he’s a physics specialist from Europe. Worked in a German university before he vanished.”

  “His vanishing act was some four months ago,” Price said. “He was on a watch list, but it appears he took off from his home in Berlin and evaded his watchers with help from the people transporting him out of the country. Since then no sign until his name appeared on Erika’s documents. It now looks definite that he’s involved in this NNEMP deal.”

  “What details do we have on him?” Blancanales asked. “Just for curiosity’s sake.”

  Price flipped over a few pages in her file. “Absalom is in his late forties. No wife, no family. His background is in solid state physics. He was always a loner, according to those who knew him, something of a man with his own agenda. Clever guy but quirky. No particular political leanings.

  “Always looking for the next challenge and doesn’t care where it comes from. He’ll go for whoever offers him the best financial backing.” Price paused before adding, “A mercenary scientist. Absalom is reputed to like women and gambling and takes on these assignments to earn the money to attract them.”

  “Sounds like a reasonable kind of bloke.”

  The comment had come from David McCarter. Heads turned, and the Briton grinned at the response. It took a few seconds before they all realized he had simply made the comment to see their reaction.

  “Constructive input is always welcome,” Price said. “Thank you, David.”

  McCarter leaned forward, face calm again. “I’m guessing this Absalom specializes in the kind of physics that would be of use to anyone wanting to develop advanced NNEMP weapons.”

  Price nodded. “The man would be eminently capable of working in that field.”

  “That’s all we need in the mix,” Hawkins said. “A mad scientist to build the machines.”

  “Erika and I had our heads together earlier and pulled some background to this NNEMP,” Price said, returning to the main subject, with a nod to Erika.

  “NNEMP needs a low-induction discharge,” Dukas explained. “A chemical explosion as the primary energy source.” She grinned. “It’s all very complicated.”

  “Involves the explosion and a capacitor,” Price added. “Either a single-loop antenna, or a flux compression generator. All brought together to produce the electromagnetic pulse.”

  “Hey, hold on there,” McCarter said. “Are you being bloody serious here? Only time I ever heard the words flux and capacitor was in the movie Back to the Future. I hope you aren’t going to tell me there’s an Emmett Brown lurking in the wings.”

  “No, you’re safe, David,” Price said, a faint grin on her face. “No time travel involved here.”

  “Glad to hear that,” McCarter muttered.

  “You have to admit, though,” Schwarz said, “that NNEMP does smack of making time stand still when it shorts out all electrical gizmos.”

  “See,” McCarter agr
eed, somewhat mollified.

  “Okay, guys,” Brognola cut in. “What else do you have, ladies?”

  “NNEMP doesn’t have the power or range that a nuclear blast produces,” Price said. “It’s extremely limited.”

  “But even a limited discharge could have chaotic results,” Kurtzman added. “Consider it dispersed over a city. Power supplies shut down. Think of the effect on hospitals. Transport coming to a stop. No electricity. We depend on that for almost everything. Computers fried, and they control a lot of the power infrastructure. You don’t need a large-radius arc to create one hell of a mess. And what could happen if one of these discharges took place over a military base?”

  “Intel informs us the North Koreans are hot on developing this kind of system,” Brognola said. “And South Korea is desperate to halt the research, which is why they needed to find out where the development base is. They have a lot to be worried about. Apart from U.S. targets, South Korea would also be in the target frame. North Korea would turn cartwheels if it could fry South Korea’s power grid and weapons.”

  “If this gizmo is perfected, we’ll all have a lot to be worried about,” Manning said.

  “Which is where you guys come in,” Brognola said. “Phoenix, you’re heading for South Korea. Liaise with the contact who has the background on the North’s NNEMP development. If you can locate where this development is being carried out, shut it down. If we can link North Korea and the Hawaiian strike, all the better. We need to come down hard on this. That order comes direct from the President.”

  McCarter grimaced. “I guess Able Team gets the choice assignment, then. Sun, warm water and grass skirts.”

  “Hell of an assignment,” Blancanales said. “But someone has to do it.”

  “Shouldn’t we have flipped a coin?” James asked. “Isn’t that what democracy is all about?”