War Tactic Read online

  “How so?” Brognola asked.

  “I can answer that,” Schwarz offered. He was quietly typing with his thumbs on his smartphone again, but he did not even look down as he spoke. “Financial fraud is like trolling the internet. The longer you have to set up your dummy accounts, the older they’ll be when somebody looks at them, and the more legitimate they’ll appear.”

  “Spoken like a man who has done his fair share of online trolling,” Kurtzman commented, spearing his colleague with a disapproving eye.

  Schwarz flushed slightly. Kurtzman picked up for him. “The point is,” said Kurtzman, “everything about Rhemsen could be made up, but if it was established long enough ago, it’s going to take a while for us to find evidence of that.”

  “I still say we just roll in there and arrest him,” Lyons said. “He’s going to lie. And then we’re going to leave. And when we come back he’s going to try to kill us. Let’s just cut to the end.”

  “Five bucks says he tries to kill us right way,” Schwarz said.

  “You’re on,” said Lyons. He turned away from the electronics expert as the monitors switched from the picture of Rhemsen to the feed from Brognola’s office.

  “If I could continue…” Brognola cleared his throat again. “Obviously, I need you to use some discretion. Able Team will be operating under the auspices of Justice on this, since the origin of the US-made weaponry has nothing to do with China itself. But of course the two are connected, if only because the raids are being conducted using these illegally obtained rocket systems.”

  “XM-Thorns,” Schwarz declared, apparently scrolling through data that had been uploaded to his phone. “Nasty stuff. Very compact. Very light and very powerful.”

  “Yes,” Brognola agreed. “That’s part of what makes this so urgent, separate from the greater political concerns where China is involved. Bear has transmitted complete mission dossiers to all of your secure smartphones, including the specifications for the recovered weaponry, the target lists and real-time updates as our satellite imaging provides new data for Phoenix.” He looked down at his watch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get to that meeting.”

  “We’re on it,” McCarter stated. “Wheels up in five.”

  “Thanks, Hal,” Price said. “Stay safe.”

  “This is Wonderland,” Brognola responded. “Nobody’s safe. Good hunting, all of you.”

  The screens went blank and then returned to the test pattern. Lyons stood and gestured to his Able Team colleagues.

  “Let’s move, ladies,” Lyons grumbled. “I’ll draw an SUV from the motor pool and have Cowboy fill it with things that explode.” He was referring to John “Cowboy” Kissinger, the Farm’s armorer.

  “Catch you later,” Schwarz said to Price and Kurtzman. Blancanales nodded. The two men followed their team leader into the corridor, leaving Price and Kurtzman alone in the briefing room.

  Kurtzman pushed his chair away from the table. Just as Price, too, started to rise, the image on the conference room screens once again became that of the purple, spherical monster chasing candy through its puzzle maze. Kurtzman sighed heavily and put his head in his hands.

  Price hurried out, hoping she could make the control room before she started to laugh.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Fayetteville, North Carolina

  “Level twenty-one,” Schwarz announced triumphantly. He went through the motions of a little victory dance in the passenger seat of the old Chevrolet Suburban, something he had been developing for the past several levels. Or at least, that was what he had been telling Blancanales and Lyons. From the driver’s seat, Lyons shot him a sidelong glance.

  “You can quit that anytime,” he growled.

  “No, I really can’t,” Schwarz said. He had his secure satellite smartphone in his hands and was once again playing the candy monster game. He did not look up as he spoke. Blancanales, as he often did, pretended not to hear the exchange, instead watching out the window of the SUV.

  The old Suburban was one that had been in the Farm’s motor pool rotation for a while. It had steel running boards, which you hardly ever saw on big SUVs these days. It even had a few patched bullet holes that Blancanales had noticed when Lyons had first brought the vehicle around. He knew that, regardless of its appearance, the old truck would be well maintained by the mechanics at Stony Man Farm. Not for the first time it occurred to him how fortunate they all were to be able to take the maintenance of their vehicles and weapons for granted.

  The resources of the Farm were extensive, but they were not limitless. Brognola went through a number of different legal and political gymnastics in Washington to divert the funds from various black bag project budgets to pay for the Farm. It helped that the President of the United States was in on the Sensitive Operations Group’s existence, of course. The Man always saw to it that budget expenditures manipulated by Brognola were signed off as they came up. But it was still an ongoing battle, not just coordinating a venture as elaborate and as dangerous as the Farm’s counterterrorism efforts, but also making sure the budget money flowed where it needed to flow. Blancanales understood very well the politicking and people wrangling that must come with the job. He was glad the tasks did not fall to him.

  “Level twenty-two!” Schwarz whooped and moved his arms in a tight circle like a sorority drunk at a nightclub.

  “I am going to throw that thing out the window,” Lyons threatened. “You’ve been doing that for the past two hundred miles.”

  “I could go back to ‘I spy with my little eye,’” Schwarz said. “I spy—” he began.

  “Pol,” Lyons said without turning to look back at Blancanales. “I want you to take out your Beretta, put it to the back of my head and put me out of my misery.”

  “You can make it, Ironman,” Blancanales said encouragingly. “Maybe focus on the mission. Count to ten and think of England.”

  “One,” Lyons muttered. “Two. Three…”

  They were outfitted with their usual complement of personal weapons, as well as some of the latest goodies from Stony Man Farm’s armorer. Lyons was carrying his customary Colt Python in a shoulder holster under his bomber jacket, while Blancanales and Schwarz had opted for light windbreakers to conceal their pistols. Blancanales had long ago become very comfortable with the Beretta M-9, while Schwarz often opted for the Beretta 93-R machine pistol. His slightly oversize, select-fire pistol also rode in a shoulder holster. His twenty-round magazines were also compatible with Blancanales’s weapon, should it come to that.

  In a large duffel bag in the back was Lyons’s tremendous automatic shotgun, a drum-fed Daewoo USAS-12. There was also a cut-down Colt 9 mm SMG for Schwarz and a short-barreled M-4 carbine for Blancanales. Plenty of loaded magazines, grenades, explosive charges and other hardware had been provided—Blancanales wondered, sometimes, how many blacksuits spent their days just thumbing ammunition into magazines for the Farm’s counterterror teams—as had been an M-32 six-round 40 mm grenade launcher. The modified Milkor MGL-140 with a fore-grip, collapsible modular buttstock, recoil pad, and quad-rail Picatinny fore-end could empty a half dozen grenades on target in less than three seconds. Their grab bag of firepower from the Farm also included plenty of Hellhound breaching/antipersonnel rounds and DRACO thermobaric grenades. Blancanales would have to check to be sure, but he thought their load-out also included some buckshot rounds—each grenade boasting twenty-seven 00 buckshot spheres that could blow a cone almost a hundred feet across at almost 900 feet per second.

  It was a pretty typical bag of tricks for Able Team.

  Each man also carried a tactical one-hand-opening folding knife with an integral guard, sizable chunks of steel that had been honed to razor edges. Blancanales had been resisting the urge to play with the one issued to him. It was clipped inside his right front pocket.

  “Level twenty-three,” Schwarz announced. He turned to regard Lyons smugly. Lyons kept his eyes on the road, but Blancanales thought he could see the big
former cop’s shoulders tense. Lyons might not really snatch the phone and pitch it out the window, but he seemed to be giving it some serious thought.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Lyons said, still staring straight ahead. His knuckles grew less white on the steering wheel as he spoke. “We hit the parking lot and break out the heavy hardware. Gadgets, you break left, cover the left side of the lobby as we head in. Pol, you break right. Watch the flanks while I drive up the center. You’ll lay down covering fire as I—”

  “Wait,” Blancanales said. “What?”

  “Uh,” Schwarz said. “Ironman?”

  “What?” Lyons said, sounding annoyed.

  “Are you…are you planning to just roll in and shoot everybody?”

  “Well, what else?” Lyons said. “Obviously he’s the bad guy. He’s going to try to kill us as soon as he figures we have enough evidence to take him down. So, like I said at the briefing, we just cut to the end. It will save a lot of time and hassle.”

  “You’re not serious,” Schwarz argued.

  Lyons sighed. “No. I’m not. But it got you to put down that damned game for thirty seconds, didn’t it?”

  Blancanales looked at Schwarz, who looked at Lyons. Lyons looked at both of them before turning his attention back to the road. Then Carl “Ironman” Lyons began laughing. It was a deep, hearty laugh.

  “You had me going,” Blancanales admitted.

  Schwarz blew air through his mouth. “Yeesh,” he said. “Remind me not to get on your bad side, Ironman.”

  “You’re already on it,” Lyons said. “You and that candy monster whatchamacallit.”

  “Level—” Schwarz started.

  “You announce what level you’re on one more time,” Lyons warned, “and I’m going to throw you out of this truck at seventy miles per hour.” Schwarz wisely chose not to comment further. “Twenty bucks says this Rhemsen character tries to punch our tickets the moment he thinks he can’t get away with his lies.”

  “You’re on,” Schwarz said. “We’ve seen too many corrupt captains of industry. Sooner or later one of them’s bound to be a patsy.” He looked back at Blancanales. “You want in on this action, Pol?”

  “I know better than to get in the middle of you two when you’re bickering,” Blancanales said.

  “This isn’t bickering,” Lyons said. “I’m not bickering.”

  “I might be,” Schwarz said.

  “Might?” Lyons shot him another side-eye.

  Blancanales could not help but grin. It was not too much longer before the windshield-mounted GPS announced the turn for their destination. Lyons pulled onto the RhemCorp property and rolled up to the guest parking spots near the front. He was careful to back the old Suburban in for a fast getaway, should it come to that. While he was doing that, Blancanales sent a scrambled text to the Farm from his satellite smartphone, alerting Barbara Price and mission control that they were on-site and preparing to make contact with Harold Rhemsen.

  “Check it,” Schwarz said as they exited the vehicle. He jerked his chin toward the guards at the front door. There were two outside the building, one on either side of the ornate double doors. Both had Brugger and Thomet MP-9 submachine guns with extended barrels and skeletonized stocks. The weapons had red-dot optics and fore-grips with built-in weapon lights.

  “That’s a lot of hardware for civilian contractors on American soil,” Blancanales noted.

  “There’s still time to break out the bigger guns,” Lyons said. “I’m game.”

  “Now you’re just teasing,” Schwarz put in.

  “Come on,” Lyons said. “Let’s go through the motions.” He reached under his bomber jacket and adjusted his shoulder holster. As they neared the security guards, the insignia on the two operatives’ uniforms became visible.

  “Blackstar,” Schwarz mumbled under his breath.

  “Well, that’s just great,” muttered Lyons. “How many legit businessmen would sign on with those ghouls? Want to give me that money now, Gadgets?”

  “I’ll pay as I go,” Schwarz quipped.

  Blancanales frowned. Blackstar was a notoriously discredited military contractor and mercenary supply outfit. Government oversight committees were even now investigating Blackstar’s parent company for war crimes in both Iraq and Afghanistan. If RhemCorp was employing armed mercenaries for security, that did not bode well. Blancanales was tempted to think Lyons’s plan to just knock the place over might be a good idea.

  Lyons eyed the two Blackstar men hard as Able Team passed between them. The trio of counterterror operatives emerged in the lobby of RhemCorp. It was an unremarkable space, not overlarge. The building itself was similarly nondescript. Able Team had seen some pretty lavish and indulgent office structures in their time working on United States soil. Whatever sort of power-broker Rhemsen was, he wasn’t the kind of man given to ostentatious displays of wealth.

  Lyons, with his teammates close behind, strode up to the reception desk. The receptionist was an older woman, her face lined and haggard. Blancanales watched as Lyons tried and did not quite succeed in hiding his reaction when she looked up from paperwork in front of her.

  “Yes? May I help you?” she asked. Her voice was piercing and nasal. It was the kind of voice television comedians put on for a laugh. Evidently this was the one she’d been born with.

  “Agents Perry, Tyler and Hamilton,” said Lyons. “We’re with the Justice Department.” He flashed her the Justice credentials Brognola’s office had issued to Able Team. Lyons had no idea what names were actually written on the credentials. In situations such as this he just offered the first three names that came to mind. He could always disclaim these as cover identities if someone started to ask questions and demanded to closely examine the identification cards. The badge contained in the ID holder was completely legitimate. Able Team’s operatives were, for all legal purposes, fully authorized operatives of the United States Justice Department. Brognola would back them up on that, no matter what.

  “Do you have an appointment?” asked the receptionist.

  “No,” Lyons answered. “It’s a matter of national security. Have Mr. Rhemsen greet us in the lobby. We need to speak to him privately.”

  “I’ll see if he’s in,” she said, reaching for the telephone on her desk. The big former cop reached out and laid a heavy paw on the handset in its cradle.

  “He’s in,” Lyons said. “No runarounds. No excuses. No meetings that can’t be interrupted. Get him down here. Now.”

  Something in Lyons’s expression caused the receptionist’s already pale face to turn gray. She looked at the handset, waited for Lyons to release it and picked up the phone. She pushed only a single button, waited a moment and then said, “Sir. You had better come down. Right away.”

  Moments later the single elevator in the lobby chimed. When the doors slid open, the man who slithered out was wearing a suit that was probably worth as much as Able Team’s SUV. Blancanales was momentarily taken aback. Rhemsen’s face was a ghastly mask of too-smooth flesh stretched across his skull in a way that made him look like a snake. His eyes, under hooded lids, were very blue—too blue to be natural. He was obviously wearing colored contacts.

  “Gentlemen,” Rhemsen said, showing a thousand-watt smile full of capped and brilliantly white teeth. “I understand there’s a rather urgent matter that demands my attention.”

  “You might say that,” Lyons said. “Justice Department. We need to talk to you about some weapons systems RhemCorp manufactures.”

  “I can’t imagine you would have anything else to talk to me about,” said Rhemsen. “Come with me, gentlemen. We’ll go straight to my office.” He gestured for them to follow him to the elevator.

  Able Team stepped in with Rhemsen in the lead. There were several security guards milling around in the lobby, and as Rhemsen put his hand in front of the electric eye of the elevator, two of the goons started to walk over.

  “Nope,” Lyons said. “Your Blackstar Bunnies
can wait in the lobby.”

  The shadow of something unpleasant passed across Rhemsen’s plastic face, but he managed to hide it right away. “Of course, gentlemen,” he said smoothly. At a hand motion from him, the guards suddenly discovered very interesting and invisible things to occupy them on either side of the elevator doors.

  Rhemsen took his hand away and looked at Schwarz, who was standing closest to the control panel.

  “Uh…floor?” Schwarz asked, looking glib.

  “The one labeled ‘P’ for ‘Penthouse,’” said Rhemsen.

  Schwarz pushed the button. The elevator began to move, silently and swiftly. Quiet saxophone music began to filter in through the elevator speakers.

  “I’ve never heard an elevator version of ‘Soul Finger’ before,” Schwarz commented.

  “You still haven’t. I think that’s ‘Girl from Ipanema,’” Blancanales said.

  Lyons glared daggers at them both. The elevator reached its destination.

  “I assume this has something to do with my Thorn missile systems,” said Rhemsen. “I assure you, gentlemen, I am the victim of a smuggling ring. I’m very aware of export controls and other regulations that the government puts on restricted hardware.”

  The doors opened. Blancanales was amazed to see that Rhemsen’s office was oval in shape. It was, in fact, a reasonably accurate replica of the office of the President of the United States. Framed on the wall were, not the paintings of the President and the Vice President, or even the President and the First Lady, but Harold Rhemsen dressed as some kind of Napoleonic general. On the desk, which was itself a replica of the President’s, was a gold placard. It read, The Buck Stops At My Bank Account. To say it was all a little megalomaniacal would be an understatement.

  Rhemsen seated himself at his desk and opened a desktop humidor. “Cuban cigar, gentlemen?” He grinned that electric smile again. “Apologies. A bad joke. Cuban cigars are, of course, illegal to import. These are, somewhat regrettably, Honduran, but I assure you they are of fine quality.”