Unconventional Warfare

“See you in a minute,” Delahunt said, and signed off.

Price put her phone away and got into the light electric railcar. The little engine began to hum and Price quickly picked up speed as she shot down the one-thousand-foot tunnel sunk fifteen feet below the ground of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

Things were starting to click, and Price could feel the tingle she had first felt as a mission controller for long-range operations conducted by the National Security Agency. It was there she had made her bones in the intelligence business before being recruited by Hal Brognola to run logistics and support at the more covert Stony Man operation.

It had been quite a promotion, she reflected as the railcar raced down the subterranean tunnel past conduit pipes and thick power cables toward the Farm’s Annex, which was camouflaged underneath a commercial wood-chipping facility.

Stony Man had operated as a clandestine antiterrorist operation since long before the infamous attacks of September 11 had put all of America’s military, intelligence and law-enforcement efforts on the same page. As such, Stony Man operated as it always had: under the direct control of the White House and separate from both the Joint Special Operations Command and the Directorate of National Intelligence.

Stony Man had been given carte blanche to operate at peak efficiency, eliminating oversights and legalities in the name of pragmatic results. It also, perhaps most importantly, offered the U.S. government the ability to disavow any knowledge of operations that went badly. Sometimes the big picture could provide a very cold and unforgiving snapshot.

This left Stony Man and its operators particularly vulnerable to certain types of exposure. One hint of their existence in a place like MSNBC or the New York Times could lead to horrific outcomes.

The electric engine beneath her seat began to power down and the railcar slowed to a halt. She pushed the morose reflections from her mind as she prepared to enter the Annex building.

Things were ready to roll hot; she could not afford to be distracted now. She stood and stepped out of the car. Fluorescent lights gleamed off linoleum floors and a sign on the whitewashed wall read Authorized Personnel Only. Price input the code on the keypad and reached over to open the door to the tunnel.

After passing through the door, she was met by the wheelchair-bound Aaron Kurtzman. The big man reached out a hand the size of a paw and gave her a steaming mug of coffee. She eyed the ink-colored liquid dubiously.

“Thanks, Bear. That’s just what I’ve been missing—something that can put hair on my chest.”

The pair of them had exchanged that same greeting so many times it came to feel like a Groundhog Day moment. Both took comfort from the repetition.

Kurtzman turned the wheelchair and began to keep pace with the female mission controller as they made for the Communications Room.

The former Big Ten college wrestler lifted a massive arm across a barrel chest and pushed his glasses up on his nose beneath a high forehead with a deep horizontal crease. Price had once teased him that the worry line was severe enough for him to be awarded a Purple Heart.

He’d earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He was a Stony Man veteran who had been with the Farm since the beginning, and his wheelchair was a constant testament to his dedication.

“McCarter just called for Phoenix,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “They’ve set up rendezvous with Encizo and James. Carl did the same for Able. They’re in place and ready to transport if we need them. They’ve been informed of the attack on NSA station Lazy Titan and the possibility of a survivor.”

“Good,” Price said. She took a drink of the strong coffee and pulled a face. “I’ll alert Hal, then. All we need is the go-ahead from the President.”

The pair entered the massive Communications Room and into a maelstrom of activity. Price paused at the door like a commander surveying her troops. She liked what she saw.

Kurtzman glided over to his work area, where it looked as if a bomb had gone off. His desk was covered in faxes, paperwork and the exposed wiring of half a dozen devices. Next to his desk, fingers flying across a laptop while monitoring a sat com link, Akira Tokaido bobbed his head in time to the music coming from a single earphone. The lean, compact hacker was the youngest member of Stony Man’s cybernetics team and the heir apparent to Kurtzman himself. The Japanese-American cyberpunk had at times worked virtual magic when Price had needed him to.

Across the room from Tokaido sat his polar opposite.

Professor Huntington Wethers had come to the Stony Man operations from his position on the faculty of UCLA. The tall, distinguished black man sported gray hair at his temples and an unflappable manner.

He currently worked two laptop screens as a translation program fed him information from monitored radio traffic coming out of France.

Carmen Delahunt walked through the door of the Communications Room. The ex-FBI agent made a beeline for Barbara Price when she saw her boss. The only female on the Farm’s cyberteam, she served as a pivotal balance between Tokaido’s hotshot hacking magic and Wethers’s more restrained, academic style.

She finished her conversation and snapped her cell phone shut as she walked up to Price. She pointed toward the newspaper in the mission controller’s hand.

“Since we’re on West Africa anyway you see the article about the new Congo player, General Nkunda?” she asked. “I started running an analytical of our files on that movement and him in particular.”

Price smiled. “You read my mind, Carmen,” she said. “Once we have Phoenix and Able taken care of, why don’t you send me a summary in case anything comes of it.”

“Will do.” Delahunt nodded. “I have to double-check the South American arraignments we made for the team’s extraction with the ‘package’—if it comes to that. It’s nice to be able to tap the resources of larger groups like the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, but coordination is a nightmare.”

“Let me know if anything goes wrong,” Price said.

Delahunt nodded, then turned and began walking back across the floor toward the connecting door to the Annex’s Computer Room, her fingers punching out a number on her encrypted cell phone.

Barbara Price smiled.

She could feel the energy, the sense of purpose that permeated the room, flow into her. Out there in the cold, eight men on two teams were about to enter into danger for the sake of their country. If they got into trouble, if they needed anything, they would turn to her and her people.

She did not intend to let them down.

She made her way to her desk, where a light flashing on her desktop phone let her know a call was holding. She looked over at Kurtzman and saw the man returning a telephone handset to its cradle. He pointed toward her.

“It’s Hal on line one,” he said.

“Thanks, Bear,” she answered.

She set her coffee down and picked up the handset as she sank into her chair. She put the phone to her ear and tapped a key on her computer, knocking the screen off standby mode.

“Hal, it’s Barb,” she said.

“I’m outside the Oval Office right now,” Brognola said. “Are the boys up and rolling?”

“As we speak,” Price answered. “Tell him operations are prepped to launch at his word.”

“All right. Let’s hope this one goes by the numbers,” the gruff federal agent said.

“As always,” she agreed, and hung up.

“All right, people,” she announced to the room. “Let’s get ready to roll.”

Nairobi, Kenya

PHOENIX FORCE MET UP in the capital and transferred to the Sikorsky MH-53 Pave Low helicopter. To them their mission was simple: go in and find a lone American survivor of a brutal attack. It didn’t matter that an entire army of heavily armed insurgents had taken him into a city turned into a hellish fortress.

They would proceed, always moving forward.

FOR ABLE TEAM THE MISSION evolved in a more circumspect manner.

In the back of the Lear jet taking them to the Farm the three-man team relaxed, unwinding from the mission. Thirty minutes into the flight, Stony Man pilot Jack Grimaldi opened the cockpit door.

“I got Barb on secure communications,” he told them. “I don’t think you guys are going home yet.”

“Perfect,” Blancanales said, laughing.

Nicaragua