Drawpoint

“Out of the car, out of the car!” Lyons shouted. “Hands where I can see them! Hands!” A dazed Timothy Albert staggered out of the Taurus. His airbag had not deployed, and his forehead was bloody. He had something in his left hand. His other arm was behind his back.

“Drop it!” Lyons yelled. The barrel of the Python never wavered. “Drop it, now! Get your right hand where I can see it!”

Albert glanced at the device in his hand as if seeing it for the first time. Something like recognition flashed across his face. Then his right hand came up. The Smith & Wesson’s short barrel lined up on Lyons’s chest.

The gunshot rang out. Crimson blossomed, soaking Albert’s chest. The .357 Magnum bullet from Lyons’s Python did its deadly work, dropping the politico-turned-gunman in a tangled heap. The body slumped against the creased rear fender of the Taurus and the .38 clattered to the pavement.

Lyons advanced, checking side to side and glancing to his rear as he kept the Python trained on Albert. When he was certain Timothy Albert wouldn’t be shooting at anyone ever again, he spared a look at Schwarz and then at Blancanales. “We clear?” he asked.

“Clear,” Schwarz replied said. He and Blancanales had taken up positions to form a triangle with Lyons around the damaged Taurus.

“Clear,” Blancanales stated.

“All right,” Lyons nodded. “Gadgets, grab a flare from the truck and direct traffic around us. We don’t need any more rubbernecking than we’re already getting.”

“On it.”

“Pol,” Lyons said. “Give me a hand here.” He knelt over the body. Blancanales, watchful for other threats and mindful of the traffic still streaming past, came to join him. The big former L.A. cop had picked up the device Blancanales had at first thought to be a phone. “Check it out,” he said. “That’s no phone. It’s not a PDA, either.”

“Strange,” Blancanales said, taking the device and turning it over in his hand. “It almost looks like a miniature satellite link.” The roughly square device had a tubular antenna running the length of its slim body, with a full miniature keyboard, a mike pickup and a tiny camera. It was much heavier than he would have thought to look at it. The device’s heft made Blancanales wonder just how much microelectronic black magic was hidden inside it.

“What do you suppose it does?” he asked.

“That’s Gadgets’s department,” Lyons said. “But I wanted you to get a look at it before he takes it.”

“True.” Blancanales laughed. “Once he’s got his mitts on it, we’ll never see it again.”

“Why do you think I sent him to direct traffic?” Lyons cracked a rare grin.

“I heard that,” Schwarz said over the earbud transceiver.

CHAPTER TWO

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

A bleary-eyed Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman wheeled himself into the War Room at Stony Man Farm, cradling an oversize stainless-steel insulated travel mug in the crook of one hairy arm. He positioned his wheelchair next to where Barbara Price already sat, checking files on her laptop as she glanced up at the large plasma wall screens to which the slim notebook computer was connected. Stony Man’s honey-blond mission controller looked up and raised an eyebrow at Kurtzman.

“Security blanket, Aaron?” she asked, nodding to the mug.

“Life support,” Kurtzman said evenly. He took a long drink from the mug, the smell of his extra-strong coffee reaching Price from where the bearded, barrel-chested cybernetics expert sat. “Want some?”

“No, thanks,” Price said, smiling. Kurtzman’s personal blend was legendary for its power. “I don’t want to burn a hole through my stomach.”

“I haven’t had any,” a disembodied voice said over the War Room’s speakers, “and I’m still working on an ulcer.”

Price tapped a key on the laptop. The harassed face of Hal Brognola appeared on one of the plasma wall screens. He was chewing an unlighted cigar and glanced repeatedly off camera to something that had to have been on his desk. The microphone on his end of the scrambled link picked up the sound of shuffling papers and then the tapping of computer keys. Brognola, as leader of the SOG, was one of only a handful of living human beings—apart from those operators working within Stony Man’s ranks—who knew that the ultracovert antiterrorist operation existed. When it came to the Farm, Brognola answered to the Man himself, the President of the United States. But while Stony Man was the President’s secret antiterror and security arm, it was Brognola’s baby first. The stress, the constant worry, the basic wear and tear of heading SOG and the Farm were evident in Brognola’s face, and had been for as long as Barbara Price had known him.

Price knew at a glance that Brognola was seated in his office on the Potomac, the gray-skies-and-white-marble Wonderland backdrop a stark contrast to the beauty of the Shenandoah National Park. The park ran along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Stony Man Farm—a real, working farm—was named for Stony Man Mountain, one of the highest peaks in the region and roughly eighty miles by helicopter from Washington. The natural beauty in which the base was located belied the brutal ugliness of the situations with which the Farm’s staff so often coped. From the look in Brognola’s eyes it was clear that this day would be no different.

“Good morning, Hal,” Price said. On the other end of the scrambled connection, Brognola managed a smile.

“Barb, Aaron,” Brognola said, nodding. Kurtzman grunted in reply. “Did you get what there was, Bear?”

Kurtzman swallowed and put the mug down on the conference table. “I’ve got Hunt and Carmen data-mining,” he said, “but that’s just to dot the eyes and cross the tees. I spent the night going through what they’ve pulled, organizing it and getting it uploaded to Barb for the brief.”

Price nodded. “Hunt” was Huntington Wethers, the eminently refined black man who was one-third of Kurtzman’s computer support team. Wethers had been a professor of cybernetics at Berkeley before Kurtzman recruited him. Carmen Delahunt, by contrast, was an old-line FBI agent until Brognola had gotten his hands on her. The vivacious redhead’s personality made her an interesting counterpoint to Wether’s quiet dignity. While Kurtzman hadn’t mentioned him, Price knew that Akira Tokaido, the youngest member of Stony Man’s team, was busy working on some hardware with one of the Stony Man team members. Of Japanese descent, Tokaido was never without an MP-3 player blasting heavy metal music into his much-abused eardrums. Price had no idea how he concentrated with that noise ringing in his brain, but he seemed to thrive on it.

“We almost ready?” Brognola asked.

“Bringing up Able now,” Price said. She tapped a few more keys. A second plasma screen came alive with the out-of-focus image of a beefy palm. Price raised an eyebrow again, then shook her head with a smile as the hand was withdrawn. The image resolved itself into that of a very irritated Carl Lyons, obviously staring down into a Web cam of some kind. Schwarz and Blancanales crowded in next to him, their heads almost touching as they verified they were present for the meeting. Lyons shrugged them off, leaving only parts of their shoulders and torsos in view as he glared down at the camera.

“This,” he said tersely, “is really annoying.”

“You’ll live,” Price said evenly. “Can you hear us and see us okay?”

Lyons grunted. “Yes.”

“Wideband scattering-noise projectors in place,” Schwarz said, his face not visible. Price nodded; this would thwart electronic eavesdropping on their location, including directional microphones.

The door to the War Room opened again. Several men entered. Price watched them take seats around the conference table and nod to the images of Brognola and Able Team in turn. The new arrivals were Phoenix Force, the second counterterrorist team run by the Farm, responsible primarily for international operations. The greater scope of their turf was reflected in the larger size of the team—five for Able’s three.

Slouching into his seat, nursing a can of Coke and appearing deceptively casual, was David McCarter, Phoenix Force’s leader. The lean, fox-faced Briton had always been something of a hothead, which had brought him into conflict with Brognola more than once. He had proved a capable leader, however, through countless missions with Phoenix. The former SAS operative smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. Price assumed he’d just finished one before the briefing.

Next to McCarter, making a show of waving away the fumes, was the stockier, more heavily muscled Rafael Encizo. The Cuban-born guerrilla expert was a much squatter, blockier man, but his appearance, Price knew, concealed catlike reflexes.

Demolitions expert Gary Manning, sat on the other side of McCarter, sipping what Price assumed was coffee.

Tall and graceful, Calvin James slipped into a chair next to Manning. The lanky black man, who’d grown up on Chicago’s South Side, was the team’s medic and former Navy SEAL who was also very talented with a knife.

Bringing up the rear was T. J. Hawkins. The youngest member of the team, Hawkins was a former Army Ranger. The Georgia-born southerner’s easy manner and lilting drawl concealed a keen mind and viciously fast fighting abilities.

“All accounted for, Hal,” Price said finally.

“All right,” Brognola said. “Let’s get started.” Price took this as her cue and pressed a button on her laptop, bringing up a map of India.

“Bloody hell,” McCarter muttered.

“Just under forty-eight hours ago,” Brognola said, ignoring McCarter, “an armed raid was staged on a mining facility in the Meghalaya hills, north of Bangladesh, not far from the West Khasi Hills district headquarters, Nongstoin. The facility is jointly owned by UVC Limited and the Indian government.”

“UVC?” Schwarz asked, his head still cut off on screen.

“Uranium-Vanadium Consortium, Limited,” Brognola said.

“I thought India was relatively uranium-poor,” Manning put in.

“Not anymore,” Brognola said. “I don’t yet have all the details, nor are they necessarily relevant, but UVC is using a new sonic-based technology to find and exploit previously untapped reserves of ore, including uranium. The deal they cut with the Indian government apparently stems to long before the ore was actually found in Meghalaya. Their surveyors gambled and construction began on an experimental laser enrichment plant well in advance of the actual mining operation.”

“So just how large-scale is this?”