Season of Harm

Phoenix Force was first into the room, led by David McCarter. The lean, hot-headed Briton was sipping from a can of soda and muttering something under his breath. It was, Price thought, probably a complaint of some kind that he would be more than happy to air during the briefing.

The former SAS operator was followed by quiet, solid demolitions expert Gary Manning. The big Canadian and former member of an antiterrorist squad with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was in turn chatting with Cuban-born guerilla expert Rafael Encizo. The deadly Encizo moved with a quiet grace that was an interesting counterpart to Manning’s comfortable, solid gait.

Behind the two men, Calvin James, the dark-skinned, wisecracking product of Chicago’s South Side, said something Price couldn’t hear that made Manning smile and caused Encizo to laugh out loud. The former SEAL and expert knife fighter had a cutting sense of humor, as he was fond of saying. It was an old but dependable joke. James was followed by former Ranger and born-and-bred Southern boy T. J. Hawkins, whose easygoing manner and comfortable drawl masked a dynamic and keen-minded soldier.

Together, the five men of Phoenix Force were the Farm’s international warriors, taking the fight for justice from America’s shores to the rest of the world. The three men of Able Team, Stony Man’s domestic counterterrorist operators, were close on their heels. The trio took the remaining seats around the now-crowded conference table.

Blond, crew-cut, bull-necked and ever gruff, Able’s leader, Carl “Ironman” Lyons, looked to be in a typically cross mood. Lyons had little patience for these briefings, which Price knew usually reminded the former L.A. police officer of the bureaucracy he’d left behind so many years before. Next to him, trying and failing to banter with him, was Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz. Schwarz was an electronics expert whose devices and designs had supplemented the Stony Man teams’ gear on more than one occasion. Schwarz was more than an electronics whiz, though; he was also an experienced counterterror operative and veteran of countless battles.

Quietly considering all assembled was Rosario “Politician” Blancanales. The normally soft-spoken Hispanic was a former Black Beret and an expert in the psychology of violence and role camouflage. As such, Price had noted many times before, he tended to hang back, observe and gather data before saying anything. When he finally spoke, it was normally worth listening to him.

“All right,” Price said. “Hal, you’re ready?”

“Yes, go ahead.” Brognola nodded on the plasma screen.

Price touched a key on her notebook computer. The plasma screen opposite Brognola, visible to all at the table, came to life. The image it displayed was that of a small, dark-skinned man wearing an open BDU blouse over a novelty T-shirt. He carried a .45 in one hand. The image was somewhat grainy and had clearly been enhanced, but the face of the man—and the cruelty evident on it—was clearly visible.

“This,” Price said, “is Mok Thawan. This photo was taken seconds before Thawan executed a gravely wounded FBI agent.”

Delahunt swore under her breath. The rest of the Stony Man personnel nodded or simply took in the image, saying nothing.

Price pressed another key. The image changed to that of a large interior space littered with empty tables—and dead bodies. “Camden, New Jersey,” she said. “This warehouse was the target of an FBI task force pursuing what is believed to be one of the largest retail piracy rings operating in the United States. According to the data assembled by the task force members beforehand, this site was a clearinghouse for the smuggling of illegally manufactured and copied DVDs.”

The image changed again as Price touched the key once more. She scrolled through several photos of the dead FBI agents, whose bodies had been marked with evidence tags. Empty shell casings littered the floor.

“What is that dust everywhere?” McCarter asked, sipping his Coke.

“That,” Price said, tapping a couple of keys and bringing up some close-up shots, “is heroin.”

“Bloody hell,” McCarter said.

“Not long after the shoot-out,” Price explained, “local police responded. They found what you see here. Dead FBI agents, stripped of their weapons. An empty warehouse. And heroin residue everywhere.” She entered something on the notebook computer and scanned the file on her screen. “The police reports indicate that all of the agents were shot except one, who had his throat cut. There was nothing else in the warehouse except a few empty boxes and several shattered plastic DVD cases. Whoever was operating there, whatever the extent of their activities, they pulled up stakes and got out of there fast and completely.”

“So the Bureau raided what they thought was a fairly tame retail piracy operation,” Blancanales said, “and instead got heroin smugglers?”

“That’s just the beginning of it,” Price said. She switched the image on the plasma screen back to that of Mok Thawan. “Thawan is a known quantity, with an Interpol dossier a mile long. Specifically, he figures prominently in organized crime centered in southern Asia. He’s an enforcer for a group that calls itself the Triangle.”

“The Triangle runs heroin from Thailand and Burma to the United States,” Brognola said. “Just about every major law-enforcement agency, foreign and domestic, is aware of its activities, but precious little has been done about it up to now.”

“Why is that, Hal?” Schwarz asked.

“A combination of factors,” Brognola said, sounding weary. “Corruption in the local governments, especially in Thailand. There is some evidence that the Burmese government is directly involved, too, but it’s less overt, which might mean it’s even worse.”

“If they bother hiding it, there’s something to hide,” Encizo said.

“Exactly.” Brognola nodded. “The Triangle is also incredibly violent. They respond with ruthless, overwhelming force whenever threatened. This bloodbath in New Jersey is nothing compared to the slaughter of government troops in Thailand last year, when a joint DEA-Interpol task force got close to the Triangle’s operations there.”

“If they’re so big a problem,” McCarter interrupted, “why haven’t we targeted them before now?”

“Until recently,” Brognola said, “they’ve been ghosts. International law enforcement has been a step behind the Triangle for the past three years. Several attempts to penetrate the organization with undercover agents have also failed.”

“Every one of the agents has turned up dead or gone missing entirely,” Price explained. “Interpol claims to have at least one agent unaccounted for, but nobody’s heard from him or her for at least six months.”

“Likely swimming with the fishes,” McCarter concluded.

“The massacre in New Jersey has the Man agitated,” Brognola said, “and for good reason. The sad but direct fact of the matter is that we cannot allow government agents to be killed en masse on U.S. soil, not without mounting a response.”

“You don’t mean to tell me this is about making a statement?” McCarter demanded. “Bloody Christ, Hal! Is that what we’ve come to now?”

“You know better than that, David,” Brognola said sternly. “There are certain political realities, yes,” he explained, “but what’s changed is that we finally have a way to track the Triangle and get out in front of their operation.”

“Bear and his team—” Price nodded to Kurtzman, Tokaido, Delahunt and Wethers “—have conducted an extensive investigation into financial accounts and networks known to be linked to the Triangle.”

“By ‘extensive,’ she means ‘illegal,’” Wethers said with a faint smile.

“Very.” Price glanced at Brognola, whose expression had gone sour. “Using Interpol and U.S. federal agency records as the jumping-off point, we’ve gotten to know the Triangle intimately, exposing portions of its operation, identifying links in the poppy production and heroin trafficking, and discovering certain key facts.” She looked to Delahunt.

“First,” Delahunt said, “the Triangle operates a conventional bootlegging ring that appears to smuggle several different consumer products. Counterfeit designer clothing, the DVDs found in New Jersey, consumer electronics…it’s very extensive, perhaps the biggest ever to operate internationally.”

“The Triangle is piggybacking the distribution of the heroin on the smuggling of their retail goods,” Price said. “They’re using the same network, but sheltering the more serious criminal activity with the bootlegging.”

“It’s brilliant,” Blancanales put in. “Vice is always easier to understand than legitimate commercial activity. It offers a unique shield, for if the smuggling is discovered, those exposing it will be tempted to stop at the piracy, thinking they’ve found what there is to find.”

“Bloody right,” McCarter said. “Nobody trusts a guy who says he’s got nothing to hide. But if you think you’ve found him out—”

“You stop looking for whatever else he might be doing,” Blancanales finished. “Multiply that across an entire organization and you have a very clever strategy for covering the true depths of a criminal enterprise.”

“Trickery of that type goes only so far, of course,” Brognola said. “That’s why the Triangle is so ready and willing to do violence to shield its activities. When discovered, they immediately hit, and hit hard, then fade from view. The method has served them well until now.”

“What’s changed, Hal?” Schwarz asked.

“I’ll answer that,” Price said. She tapped a couple of keys and an exploded-view mechanical drawing of a satellite appeared on the plasma screen opposite Brognola. “This,” she said, “is NetScythe. It’s an experimental military spy satellite developed by DoD in conjunction with some of the more brilliant boys and girls at NASA.”

“What does it do?” Schwarz asked.

Price nodded to Tokaido.

“It is really very amazing,” Tokaido said, pointing to the plasma screen. “NetScythe uses a combination of fuzzy-logic algorithmic processing, digital satellite imaging and an advanced telescopic array very much influenced by the Hubble Space Telescope. This allows it to track targets on the ground, very specific targets that correspond to complicated threat or interest profiles developed by analysts on the ground.” He pointed to himself, to Wethers and to Delahunt. “By inputting our target criteria and our warning flags, we can have NetScythe track Triangle assets on the ground, from space. When those assets move, be they people, vehicles or people and vehicles moving to and from specified target profile locations, NetScythe’s heuristic meta-analysis can predict where those assets may move to next.”

“Bloody hell,” McCarter said. “The thing predicts the future?”

“In a way, perhaps,” Hunt Wethers said. “It’s a bit more complicated and not quite as definitive as that, but essentially, it will tell us how to get ahead of the Triangle’s operatives in order to target components of its organization. Much more important, analysis of the target assets may tell us where the links in the Triangle’s chain are located. We can use what we know to learn what we don’t know. With several Triangle assets designated, we can find others of which we were previously unaware.”

“It’s the break we’ve needed to dig into the Triangle and root it out,” Brognola said. “But there are other considerations at play.”

“Which brings us to the second very important piece of information we uncovered.” Price nodded once more to Delahunt.

“The Triangle is funneling money, and large quantities of it, through several holding companies and multiple banks,” Delahunt said. “The money is finding its way to Aleksis Katzev.”