Capital Offensive

Capital Offensive
Don Pendleton

Dedicated to a seek-and-destroy mandate when presidential directive sends them into the heat of battle, the cyber and commando teams of Stony Man hit hard and fast to remove threats of global magnitude.Now a secret terrorist organization has hacked its way into defence satellites–opening a trapdoor to Hell… America stands virtually defenceless as global security is compromised and nations prepare for the final conflagration that will end civilization. Stony Man gets a lead on a rogue Argentinean general and his twisted vision of a scorched and reborn planet Earth, but tracking the technology and the masters of destruction is a race where seconds count…and the loser will be humanity itself.

Capital Offensive

Don Pendleton

STONY MAN

AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

Special thanks and acknowledgment to

Nick Pollotta for his contribution to this work.

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

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Sonora, Texas

Loose gravel crunched under the tanker truck’s tires as it slowly rolled out of the darkness.

“Hold it right there!” the guard called out, raising a palm. With a stern expression, the big man stood at the entrance to the brick kiosk. “Right there, I said!”

With hissing air brakes, the massive vehicle rocked slightly as it came to a complete stop directly in front of the locked gate of the electrified fence. Coiled lengths of razor-sharp concertina wire along its top glistened in the reflected glow of the headlights.

On the side of the tanker was the name and logo of a famous fuel company, but the guard knew that was probably false. Everything short of an ice-cream truck had delivered materials to the desert warehouse. After working there for a year, nothing surprised the man anymore. Although dressed in civilian clothing, the U.S. Marine corporal was wearing a canvas military gun belt with a .45 Desert Eagle pistol at his hip.

Keeping a hand near his weapon, the Marine could see there were two people inside the cab, a big man sitting behind the wheel and a woman resting her head against the passenger-side window. The raven-haired beauty appeared to be sound asleep; he could hear her softly snoring.

Cautiously loosening the Desert Eagle, the corporal cast a wary glance at the delivery schedule tacked to a corkboard inside the brick kiosk and saw there wasn’t a shipment due to the government warehouse for another couple of days. That wasn’t unprecedented. Set behind the electrified fence, the massive Quonset hut that served as a warehouse was little more than a junkyard for spare parts and obsolete equipment. Whenever anything got upgraded, or outright replaced, the old equipment was sent here, to be labeled, numbered, indexed, stacked, listed and forgotten. There wasn’t anything inside the warehouse worth stealing unless a person was looking for antiques. Everybody in his platoon considered standing guard here a punishment detail. Death by boredom. Although exactly who it was the soldier had annoyed he honestly had no idea.

“You folks lost?” the corporal asked, smiling politely. His relief had told him how a bunch of folks with cameras had stopped by once foolishly thinking this was the entrance to the famous Sonora Crystal Caves. It took him a full hour to convince the civilians that this was just a warehouse and not a tourist attraction. Civilians, he thought, were just about as useless as lips on a brick.

“Nope, not lost. Got a priority delivery,” the driver said, flipping down the visor and pulling loose a sheath of papers held in place by a rubber band.

The corporal tensed at the action. But the driver stayed inside the cab and held the papers outside the window.

“A delivery at this hour?” the corporal asked suspiciously, slightly easing his stance.

The driver shrugged. “Hey, I just work here, brother.”

A fellow Marine, eh? The corporal smiled. “I hear that.” Accepting the papers, he quickly checked the documents and everything seemed to be in order. Just another load of miscellaneous equipment for the junkyard.

Tucking the papers into the pocket of his shirt, the corporal grabbed the stanchions supporting the sideview mirror and pulled himself onto the corrugated steel step and looked inside the cab. He didn’t want to, but regulations were regulations, even out here in the middle of nowhere.