Domination Bid Read online

  Grimaldi heard a squelch in his ears as the voice of McCarter came on. “Nice work, Eagle One! The bloody drinks are on me when this is done.”

  “Gratzi,” Grimaldi replied.

  “And be advised, the driver seems to be getting away.”

  “Roger, but alas no. He just thinks he is.”

  “Copy that.”

  * * *

  AS THE CHOPPER buzzed from the scene to deal with the would-be getaway driver, the men of Phoenix Force approached the devastation with caution. Fires from clothing and the smell of burning human flesh caused a nauseating cloud to roil into the comparatively tranquil night sky. All that really remained were divots of charred ash and clay, the telltale remnants of the rocket impacts, and bodies strewed around in various modes of dismemberment.

  Death had been Madari’s sword and he’d reaped that which he’d yielded without regard, nothing more or less to it. As the flames dispersed and McCarter got close, he looked for confirmation that Madari had indeed perished in the attack. He didn’t get it, but something in his gut told him it was truly over. He wished some sense of satisfaction would come, but it didn’t. The past days had been a whirlwind of blow and counterblow, little more. While he wanted to find closure, he couldn’t.

  And that was the most frustrating feeling of all.

  * * *

  Norfolk, Virginia

  AT DIRECTION FROM the Oval Office to the deputy director of Homeland Security, the ICE agents at the airport had been told not to attempt to seize Madari’s plane or to apprehend anyone aboard. Instead they were to wait for the arrival of three men who, when they finally made their appearance more than three hours later, smelled like smoke. And death.

  The lead ICE agent who had originally questioned Madari squinted at them. “You guys been fighting a war or something?”

  “Something,” Schwarz said with a grin.

  “How about we skip the twenty-questions game and you bring us up to speed,” Lyons said in a flat and icy tone. He was in no mood to cross swords with another agency at present. After briefing Major Braden and leaving the Cyclops compound, Able Team had hustled to the airport.

  “We’ve had the plane under observation since the orders came down to wait for your arrival.”

  “Any idea how many are inside?” Blancanales asked.

  The agent shook his head. “No, but we’re guessing at least three.”

  “Pilots?” Lyons inquired.

  “No. We actually took them into custody in the pilot lounge to prevent them from returning to the plane. We didn’t want it to take off.”

  Lyons nodded. “Very shrewd. Nice work, but we’ll take it from here.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  It was Schwarz who said, “Maybe we’ll book a flight to Acapulco.”

  The agent looked puzzled at first. “Huh? Oh…ha. I get it.”

  “And you’d probably wished you hadn’t,” Blancanales said.

  “Okay,” Lyons told his friends. “Let’s nut up and do this.”

  * * *

  ABLE TEAM FIGURED a rear approach would serve best to reach the plane undetected. As far as the occupants were concerned, they had no reason to suspect anything was wrong, so company wasn’t expected.

  Lyons carried a 12-gauge combat shotgun. Blancanales and Schwarz had opted for pistols, and Blancanales carried a tear gas canister in the cargo pocket of his fatigue pants. Lyons had point with Blancanales behind him and Schwarz covering rear flank. They moved soundlessly across the tarmac, single-file, with Schwarz facing the opposite direction and being guided by Blancanales’s hand on his shoulder.

  Lyons held up a fist when they reached the tail of the plane that brought them to a halt. He then turned to converse in a whisper with the other two. “What do you guys think?”

  “Seems quiet enough,” Blancanales replied.

  “Can you see the door?” Schwarz asked.

  “It’s open and the step-ramp is down and locked,” Lyons said.

  “Sounds as if they weren’t preparing to leave in a hurry.”

  Blancanales reached into his cargo pants and withdrew the tear-gas grenade. “Shall we?”

  Lyons nodded and gestured for Blancanales to take up point. They continued in similar fashion with Lyons in the middle now. While the scattergun made the best weapon for an op of this nature, he didn’t want to risk blowing a hole in Blancanales’s back. As they neared the door, Lyons crouched and duck-walked under the plane, moved parallel up the starboard side and then crouched and returned to the side of their original approach.

  Lyons now faced toward the rear of the plane, shotgun held low but at the ready.

  Schwarz had his Beretta 93-R aimed at a high point in the doorway of the aircraft.

  Blancanales made his way to the foot of the ramp. Keeping to the side, he risked a glance up but didn’t see any movement. The plane was fairly large but chances were good that the tear gas canister would bring any occupants out quickly and with minimal risk to the Able Team warriors.

  Blancanales nodded at Lyons and then yanked the pin on the tear gas canister. Lyons raised three fingers and counted backward. When he reached zero, Blancanales lobbed the canister overhand and it bounced off the top step and rolled through the hatchway. A loud pop ensued, drawing a shout from the interior. Other voices joined in a chorus of surprise as the plane rapidly began to fill with smoke, some of it gushing from the door but most staying inside.

  Able Team readied their weapons and when the first occupants emerged, choking and wiping their eyes, they started screaming for the men to get their hands up. One man after the next debarked until it came to the fourth man. He reached into his waistband and yanked at a pistol. Lyons shouted a warning and then raised the scattergun and squeezed the trigger. The 12-gauge shell filled with No. 2 and 00 shot blew a fist-size hole in the guy’s chest. His weapon flew backward and into the smoky plane. The body stood erect a moment and then teetered off the steps facedown, making several dull thumps before it settled into a heap at the base of the steps.

  The other men began to shout protests, fearful they’d get blown away in the same fashion. Blancanales and Schwarz kept trying to out-shout them, waving their arms for the men to get on their bellies.

  “Face down!” Blancanales kept saying.

  They couldn’t be sure the men even spoke English but the waving and gun pointing seemed sufficient to communicate their desire. After the men were neutralized, Schwarz and Blancanales relieved them of their side arms while Lyons kept one eye on them and the other on the hatchway.

  Lyons was about to suggest they clear the plane when another man emerged. He was tall and lanky, but sickly looking in a strange sort of way—as the kind of look in men who suffered horrific childhood diseases. In his hand was the pistol the Libyan terrorist had lost when he’d stupidly resisted. This guy wasn’t Libyan, though, as became apparent to the Able Team commandos.

  Lyons raised his shotgun. “Stop, Dratshev! Don’t be stupid.”

  Schwarz and Blancanales had no choice but to keep their pistols trained on the three men on the ground. They couldn’t risk losing any of them. Lyons would just have to work through this one on his own.

  “If you’re going to kill me, I wish to hell you’d do it and get it over with,” Dratshev said.

  Oddly, the scientist sat on the top step, fished into his coat pocket and withdrew a single cigarette. He studied it a moment, coughing and squinting as the tears welled in his eyes. They could hear him wheezing now, fighting for air. Obviously he suffered from some sort of respiratory problem and the tear gas had exacerbated the condition.

  Dratshev cursed under his breath at noticing the cigarette was cracked halfway down. He bit off that end, spit it away and then lit it. He took a deep breath but immediately began to cough and involun
tarily he spit the cigarette out. It bounced down the steps in a shower of sparks and the eyes of all three followed its path just a moment.

  When they looked at Dratshev he had the barrel of the pistol pointed to his own head.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Lyons demanded.

  Dratshev’s expressed remained morose and in the dim light his eyes appeared only more sunken. “It is no use. I’ve dedicated my life to science and this is the end it has bought me. I let my curiosity get the better of me and it cost lives. Now Madari has left me to die in this stinking dung hole instead of in my homeland. Though even that’s a farce since my own country betrayed me.”

  “Look,” Blancanales said, keeping his voice calm and steady. Lyons forced himself not to smile—always the Politician. “Look…Dr. Dratshev. It doesn’t have to be like this. We know you were coerced. That should count for something. You can help us—you can undo what you’ve done. Nobody understands these weapons better than you. If you die, it dies with you.”

  “Maybe—” Dratshev’s voice choked and he broke into another fit of coughing. Then he continued. “Maybe that won’t be such a bad thing. There are worse hells in this life than you may ever know, sir. And I cannot, for one, be a part of them.”

  “Dr. Dratshev, please don’t—”

  The crack of the pistol took all present by surprise. The side of Dratshev’s head seemed to crumple in a spray of blood, bone and brain matter. The pistol clattered down the steps and his body slumped at a cruel angle before sliding backward into the hatchway. His sightless eyes were still open as his face disappeared from view.

  “Damn,” Lyons muttered. He looked at Blancanales. “Sorry, Pol. There wasn’t anything you could have done. Some things are just beyond our control.”

  Blancanales nodded but Lyons could see it was of no comfort—empty words for an empty victory.

  “Well,” Schwarz said, “at least for now Madari’s reign of domination had come to an end and America can sleep a bit easier tonight. Hell, we can all sleep a bit easier tonight.”

  “Yeah,” Carl Lyons replied. “And that has to count for something. Right, Pol?”

  “I guess it does at that, Ironman,” he replied.

  * * * * *

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  ISBN-13: 9781460340912

  First edition October 2014

  Domination Bid

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Matt Kozar for his contribution to this work.

  Copyright © 2014 by Worldwide Library

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