Perilous Skies (Stony Man) Read online

  The man touched the radio with his thumb and talked again. He got an answer—again. That didn’t seem right to Calvin James. With the Structure 30 vandals out of commission, who could he be communicating with?

  James saw the faintest movement of a shadow off to his right and peered over to where Hawkins could just barely be discerned in his own alcove, looking down at the man with the radio.

  This section of Mexican jungle was eerily quiet. The jungle stilled the wind, there was no machinery or electricity or buildings to create an electronic hum. Calvin James could not even risk speaking into his own headset without fear of being overheard by the gunmen below. Maybe it was time to take them out....

  There was movement at the far end of the central plaza. The pair of gunners burst out of Structure 21 on the acropolis, found cover behind the remains of a stone statue, then jutted out simultaneously to look for signs of trouble, covering the plaza with automatic weapons. There was nothing for them to see. One gunner turned to face Structure 33. By then, Calvin James had taken his place again behind the statue of the king and he went unseen. He assumed Hawkins would’ve done the same. The man below them spoke into his radio. It was in Spanish, but the tone of voice told Calvin James that he was reporting no sign of trouble.

  The second man at the acropolis, still scanning the plaza, dropped his gun, lifted one leg and toppled over. His cry echoed up and down the plaza, bouncing off the buildings of Chilan. He rolled off the rock and collapsed in the grass at the foot of the statue, leaving a bloody red streak on the rock. He was wiggling and holding his bloody ankle.

  The man just below Calvin James shouted into his radio, but the second man at the statue ignored him, jumped on top of the statue and fired wildly into the plaza. His bursts of gunfire kicked up dust and rock and thudded into stone ruins, filling Chilan with more noise than it had heard all day.

  * * *

  DAVID MCCARTER WAS impressed with the bulky suppressor provided to him by his good friend “Cowboy” Kissinger. The Stony Man armorer knew a thing or two about weapons—how to build them, how to improve them, how to make them more deadly and even how to make them quieter. He couldn’t make them silent—a “silenced” firearm was a movie myth. The best you could do was muffle the bang. But John Kissinger’s improved suppressor for the Heckler & Koch MP-5 did the job better than David McCarter would have thought possible. He had fired it while the two men were busy talking on the radio and they never knew they were being shot at until one was pegged in the leg.

  McCarter could have circled around to get a clean shot at the second man at the acropolis, but didn’t want to expose himself to the pair at Structure 33. He would wait it out.

  “Cal?” he radioed. “Proceed as is convenient.”

  * * *

  GARY MANNING HEARD the ruckus out front and moved to the front door to see a wounded man screaming at the base of the statue. Hearing the comment from David McCarter, he ducked back into the blackness.

  “I can get a clean shot at number two from the upper level if you need me to take him out,” he told McCarter.

  “Negative,” McCarter responded. “We want to keep these guys alive, remember?”

  “All of them?” Manning asked. “Isn’t that overkill, so to speak?”

  “Just following orders, mate. But wouldn’t hurt for you to be in position, just in case.”

  “Understood,” Manning said, snatching at his sniper rifle and nodding to Rafael Encizo as he headed up. A small gap in the collapsed wall at the rear had created an irregular but easy stairway to the upper level. The second level had also been roofed in, but the roof had largely disintegrated over the centuries, collapsing onto the floor. Manning picked his way quickly through the rubble and took up a position looking down onto the central plaza of Chilan. His sniper rifle gave him enough power to take potshots at the kings in the honeycomb wall at the far end of the plaza, and easily take out the man crouching behind the statue not a stone’s throw away.

  It was an easy shot. One pull of the trigger, Gary Manning thought, and one less piece of slime kid killer in the world. One round. They could take it out of his salary....

  He didn’t do it. There was a good reason not to. But he really, really would have liked to.

  * * *

  AT STRUCTURE 33, under the gaze of dozens of ancient Mayan kings, the two vandals were now stationed at the front, together, taking some efforts to stay behind the rock wall but unclear as to how to proceed. One of them radioed, and the man at the acropolis—the one who wasn’t screaming and writhing on the ground—answered them. Conversation was brief, but the result was that the pair at Structure 33 stayed where they were.

  T. J. Hawkins went unnoticed by the distracted pair as he crept across the easy foot- and handholds along the back side of the wall and emerged into the alcove to stand elbow to elbow with Calvin James.

  One of the men below spoke harshly. There was a brief argument, then the second man moved back under the entranceway.

  T. J. Hawkins understood enough Spanish to translate.

  “He told him to get back to work,” he said to James.

  “Is it my imagination, or was he radioing somebody else earlier?” James asked.

  Hawkins looked a little blank. “I couldn’t overhear all that they were saying.”

  More radio conversation came from below. Calvin James squinted at the man at the acropolis, to see if he responded. It didn’t look like he did.

  “There,” James whispered. “I don’t think he’s talking to that dude.”

  “I don’t think so,” Hawkins agreed. “Hard to understand what he’s saying.”

  There was hammering going on directly below them and Calvin James judged that he could contact McCarter without being overheard. He touched his headset.

  “I think there’s a fourth party listening in,” he said.

  “Structure 30 is secure. The only two left are at the acropolis,” McCarter responded. “The guy on the ground and the one behind the statue.”

  Calvin James felt uneasy about that conclusion. “Could there possibly be somebody else inside that aircraft?”

  Hawkins made a sound of disbelief. McCarter sounded similarly doubtful. “Even six guys inside of that thing seemed impossible. I can’t imagine that they could have one more person in there,” McCarter stated. “Let’s prepare to take out the rest of them and wrap this up.”

  “Understood,” Calvin James said, although he still didn’t feel easy about it.

  Hawkins was enjoying himself climbing around on the big wall of kings of Structure 33. Now, this was the kind of tourist activity he could enjoy. He had a feeling that the Mexican government wasn’t about to open up the ruins to climbers.

  He made his way down hand over hand and touched the ground in under a half minute, then he edged along the rock wall to the main entrance and turned the corner. He held the barrel of his weapon at gut level, not two paces away.

  The working man raised his head to see that he was covered with the business end of an M-16 aimed at his gut. It was too close to miss, but not so close that he could have grabbed for it. Hawkins nodded to the ceiling, and the man dropped his hammer with a clang and raised his hands in the air. He opened his mouth, started to speak, but when Hawkins shook his head, the man closed his mouth again and was silent.

  Calvin James had found a large chunk of loose stone. It was more or less round, and more or less solid. It was heavy. He dropped it.

  “Hey,” he shouted.

  The man with the gun turned fast, saw his partner a few steps away with his hands in the air, realized that the shout had come from above him and looked up just in time to see the massive stone home in on his head. He didn’t have time to move or to make a noise before it cracked against his skull and broke it.

  His weapon fell to the ground and he fell alongside it. The huge hunk of stone came to a rest, face up at Calvin James.

  Only then did Calvin James realize that the head-size hunk of stone was
actually a head. A head of one of the other statues had found its way into the alcove of the king James had been spending time with.

  It looked undamaged by the fall. Still—oops.

  T. J. Hawkins had his own prisoner trussed up, wrists behind his back, and threw him to the ground alongside his limp companion. Calvin James made it to the ground and checked for a pulse on the one with the cracked cranium. He was still alive, and James had his wrists bound in seconds.

  “Really, Cal?” Hawkins said, nodding at the angry-looking face of the Mayan king. “That’s got to be really bad karma.”

  “I just thought it was a piece of rock,” James said apologetically.

  The radio made a questioning noise, and Hawkins snatched it off the belt of his prisoner. He could see the man now. He appeared to be hiding behind his stone pile in a crouch.

  “I think he saw that, boys,” McCarter said through the headset. “You all secure?”

  “We’re fine,” James responded. “Let’s get on with this.”

  The prisoners’ radio squawked again. It was the voice of the man hiding behind the pile of rubble up at the acropolis. He obviously assumed that his companions were incapacitated at Structure 33 and at Structure 30. But he was talking to somebody.

  James knew he’d been right.

  “McCarter, dammit, there’s somebody else around here,” he affirmed. “He’s not reporting to home base. He’s talking to another party.”

  “No signs of life in the aircraft,” McCarter replied.

  From the ruined roof of Structure 30, Gary Manning added, “Our friend at the acropolis has his eyes on the skies. He’s watching for another aircraft. I’d say we’ve got another one coming.”

  * * *

  DAVID MCCARTER SWORE under his breath, and touched his headset again. “Stony!”

  “Here, Phoenix,” Barbara Price said, her voice calm and in control. Price was the Stony Man Farm mission controller. Naturally, the Farm had been monitoring all of their communications, but the nature of the probe made it advisable that the Farm not interfere with the activities of the commandos on the ground at Chilan.

  But now Stony Man Farm’s input was needed.

  “Stony, we have another damn airplane in the area,” McCarter said.

  “We are not seeing anything, Phoenix,” Price responded.

  “Did you see the first one?”

  “Negative. No radar. No reliable satellite.”

  “So there could be thirty of those things flying around over the treetops right now?”

  “Unfortunately there could be, Phoenix,” Price confirmed.

  “Christ,” McCarter growled. “We’re not calling in G-Force for pickup if we’ve got another one of those planes flying around here unseen and undetected.”

  “We need to get him on-site as soon as feasible, Phoenix,” Price said. “We need time to get the stealth jet secured for airlift.”

  “I’m not gonna get Jack shot down by some asshole drug runner in a plastic plane!”

  “Understood, Phoenix,” said Stony Man Farm’s mission controller.

  McCarter could now hear the urgent voice of the man at the acropolis. He was still shouting into his radio.

  “Rafe?” he said into his mike. “What’s he saying?”

  * * *

  ENCIZO WAS STANDING just inside door three of Structure 30—the door on the west side of the building, closest to the acropolis. Inside the foot-deep lintel he was out of the line of sight of the guy behind the statue, but he could hear the men shouting.

  “He needs a pickup,” Encizo told McCarter.

  The wounded man at the base of the statue tried to stand, but his ankle bent sideways and he collapsed again. There was a grotesque gargle and fresh screaming.

  The man with the radio spoke more urgently.

  “He would like to be picked up very soon,” Encizo said in a dry deadpan. “Everybody is dead except him and Perez, and he is going to shoot Perez dead himself if Perez doesn’t stop wailing like a little girl. Everything has gone to defecation. Someone’s mother is a prostitute and that person had better come and pick him up at once or he is going to hunt down the other man’s prostitute mother and kill her and then engage in sexual relations with her. I’m cleaning up the language a little.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” McCarter said. “Does it sound like he’s talking about one airplane or thirty?”

  “I can’t tell,” Encizo said. “There’s nothing to indicate that there’s more than one.”

  “That’s not helpful,” McCarter snapped.

  “Hold on,” Encizo said.

  The man on the radio had lowered his voice. The wounded man at the base of the statue had stopped crying and was simply moaning quietly. For a moment the city of Chilan had gone silent again. Which was likely what the Mayan kings wanted—for everyone to just shut up and leave them alone.

  “They’re giving him an ETA,” Encizo advised. “Twenty seconds.”

  * * *

  BLOODY HELL, MCCARTER said in his own head, and stepped out from his cover behind the trunk of the plaza tree to search the skies. He scanned the jungle above Structure 33, which was where the first little stealth jet had emerged from. He saw nothing. He looked in the other direction, over Structure 30, across the Usumacinta River, across the vast tracts of jungle on the other side of the border in Guatemala. He saw nothing. Of course, he heard nothing.

  He contacted Encizo. “Where from?”

  “Unknown,” Encizo said.

  * * *

  CALVIN JAMES JOGGED through the entranceway at the bottom of the King’s Wall and stared out over the tops of the trees again. There was one tall upper canopy tree, and the first plane had flown in almost directly over it. There had been less than thirty feet of daylight between the upper branches and the belly of that aircraft when it came in. But now there was nothing. He clambered up the King’s Wall until he stood in the alcove of his old friend the extraterrestrial king again. Here he could see over the canopy for a mile or more.

  The morning heat of southern Mexico was cooking the jungle and raising steam. The tiny stealth jet was colored like a hazy sky, and was made invisible. At first James thought he saw movement, decided it was only heat haze and then changed his mind again.

  “Incoming!” he announced into his headset.

  Rafael Encizo bellowed in response, “Cal, get the fuck—!”

  * * *

  “I SEE THEM! I SEE THEM!” said the man at the acropolis into his radio. “They are at the King’s Wall. Shoot just as you clear the trees! Kill those fuckers!”

  Encizo got it—the man was telling the pilot where to target Calvin James and T. J. Hawkins. Encizo shouted into his mike again, “Cal, get the fuck—”

  That was as far as he got before he heard the rattle of heavy machine-gun fire and saw the starlight twinkle of heavy rounds firing from above the jungle canopy. He then witnessed the shape of the small stealth jet materialize, a hazy gray against the hazy gray in the sky, and there was an explosion of stone from the King’s Wall of Structure 33.

  * * *

  GARY MANNING WAS HORRIFIED for a half heartbeat. The aircraft-mounted machine gun unleashed on the King’s Wall. The shower of stones thrown off by the heavy rounds. The plummeting body of a black man, in the same camos he was wearing now. His friend. Calvin James. Crashing to the stone steps leading up to Structure 33.

  Manning swore savagely to himself. He should have killed that little son of a bitch the moment he had him in his sights. Orders or no orders, he should’ve just gunned that little prick down. And then he wouldn’t have been able to radio to that goddamned plane where to target their machine guns, and maybe he wouldn’t have just had to witness his friend Calvin James getting shot out of that goddamned wall.

  Order or no orders— “Hey, asshole!” Gary Manning shouted at the drug dealer not a stone’s throw away. The man spun and faced him. Gary Manning triggered the sniper rifle, felt the kick into his shoulder and watched the man at th
e acropolis open up at the neckline. Blood splashed in a dark puddle behind him. The man collapsed into it.

  “Take cover,” ordered McCarter from far down the central plaza.

  Gary Manning realized that for a moment he’d actually forgotten about the aircraft. It was not coming in for a landing; it strafed down the center of Chilan, the heavy machine-gun fire stitching all the way down the main plaza and homing in on Structure 30. Gary Manning was lying prone, with no roof to protect him, amid the rubble of stone, and would be highly visible. The jet, slow as it was, was already on top of him and he heard the fanlike rush of the engines and the rattle of the guns, and he propelled himself off the surface and flipped to the side as the trail of rounds cut into the stone where he had been lying.

  Then it was gone, rushing across the river and into the jungles of Guatemala. For a moment, the roof of Structure 30 was silent.

  Then Gary Manning struggled to his feet, his body screaming at him. It was not a gunshot. If one of those large-caliber rounds had slammed into him it would’ve ripped off a good chunk of flesh—at least—and he probably would’ve bled to death in seconds. No, he had landed on a carved corner piece of fallen rock, which had stabbed into his lower back. He would be bruised as hell.

  Which was better than being shot. He snatched up the sniper rifle and nearly collided with Rafael Encizo, who grabbed him by the shoulders.

  “You okay?” Encizo demanded.

  “I’ll live. What about Cal?”

  * * *

  CALVIN JAMES WAS FACE-DOWN on the stone steps, limp and bloodied.

  “Talk to me, buddy,” Hawkins ordered.

  But when James pushed his eyes open the first thing he saw was the head of the Mayan king not two feet away from his own. The king looked—satisfied.

  “Payback is a bitch,” James said, and pushed himself onto his hands and knees, then turned to sit on his rear. The great King’s Wall, out of which he had just fallen, tilted alarmingly to the right, straightened, then leaned to the left, like some cheap special effect in an earthquake movie out of the 1970s.