Death Dealers

Hunt Wethers fired a report to Price’s tablet. It was from one of the Navy AWACS birds that regularly patrolled just outside Chinese airspace and over international waters. The craft had timed its patrol and observation of the Leizhou Peninsula specifically, knowing there was going to be a test firing of a new genus of the Dong-Feng 21 antiship ballistic missile.

Not coincidentally, the DF-21 variant was purported to possess a maximum velocity of Mach 10. At 35 feet long and 16 tons in weight, not only could it carry enough explosives to kill an aircraft carrier in one shot, it also had nuclear warhead capabilities and a range of 1100 miles.

Of course, the difference between a silo-launched ballistic missile and a more portable option such as the American design was phenomenal. Huge warhead capacities and high speeds were vital ingredients to altering a military balance. The Dong-Feng antiship variants were meant to provide the Chinese navy with utter superiority when it came time to reclaim the island nation of Taiwan. One missile could break an allied carrier apart; its nuclear variant could flash fry an entire carrier group.

Both ways were means of overwhelming any defense against Chinese military expansion.

The American missile system could be mounted on cruisers and fast-attack crafts, land-launched or carried on fighter-bombers. Just because both weapons systems had the ability to break Mach 10 was no reason to try to combine them. DF-2Xs reached Mach 10 because they rode on midrange ballistic missiles, rocket engines that were more than capable of launching satellites into orbit or delivering an MRV warhead. The American design was meant to deliver its warhead at such a high speed, and with such agility and accuracy, that the mass of the missile would provide penetration through even the thickest of hulls.

Of course, with the presence of an auction promising the latest and deadliest hardware, including just the things necessary to take out enemy fleets, Price couldn’t help but feel that more than coincidence was at work here. “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

“Quoting Ian Fleming?” Aaron Kurtzman mused.

“Just trying to make certain I did the right thing allotting a Stony Man crew to this auction,” Price said.

“Two separate styles of carrier-killer test programs are attacked, and then someone advertises it?” Kurtzman asked. “You’ve got good instincts on this, Barb.”

She nodded, looking down at the screen of her tablet. So far, Stony Man had been fully capable of gathering all the information they could about the New Mexico attack, if only because the Sensitive Operations Group had many federal connections, both inside and outside conventional channels. China, however, was a very different situation, and tapping into their information had taken effort and penetration of high-security government systems. That Tokaido had located so much thus far was a sign of his skill and the power of the Farm’s cyber systems.

The auction had been confirmed through multiple sources, as well. Not only did Kevin Reising have his invitation, but there had been a rise in digital currency exchanges—peer-to-peer payments that didn’t pass through legitimate banking functions. That data-cash was being funneled to a website called the Arsenal Europa, which had been touting the auction. Discovering the auction had been the combined efforts of Wethers and Delahunt, both of whom utilized their particular, individual instincts to narrow the search to its confirmed presence.

They’d also managed to home in on a large supply of data-cash in storage under Reising’s accounts. The sums were substantial, well over fifty million dollars, allowing for more than a few high-tech, high-impact weapons. What a soldier for the Heathens outlaw motorcycle club would do with such a supply of cash made Price shudder.

Of course, a previous Able Team operation had established links between the Heathens and the Aryan Right Coalition, a white supremacist group that was actually the action arm of an even more shadowed organization that called itself the Arrangement.

The Arrangement had lost scores of men and millions of dollars in that conflict, but apparently that hadn’t been enough to set back the mystery group. Not if they could pony up that amount of funding to rearm and rebuild their shattered army.

“Hunt, do you have any more information about where Reising’s money came from or where it’s sitting right now?” Price asked.

The tall, slender, black professor looked up from his workstation. “Negative. Trying to dig into this data-cash network utilized by Reising is difficult, which is precisely why he chose it.”

“How so?” Price asked.

“Normally, I’d hope to find a centralized store of information, but the network itself is decentralized. It’s a mobile, mercurial entity. You need to have proper keys to locate your own money and allow transfer of funds. However, even going through those particular encryptions, you cannot access anything else. It’s like sticking your head into a disconnected pond and hoping to find a river to the nearest ocean,” Wethers explained.

“So, we’re up against, essentially, the Mississippi River Delta rather than looking for Lake Michigan,” Price said. “Instead of a box, we’re stuck with just a tube, which in itself doesn’t necessarily lead to another tube, even though it’s all one ever-increasing, ever-branching main artery.”

“Correct. This is the capillary system, which is useless without the arteries and veins, but while we can see an individual capillary, there’s no direct link, so we’re not even certain there is a heart. We could be in any organism,” Wethers explained.

Price winced. “Keep trying. This is the best we’ve got. I want to be able to figure out who Reising wanted to pay, but I also want to know where the money came from.”

“You will find no more tireless crusader and seeker of this information than I,” Wethers told Price.

Price looked at the clock in the corner of her tablet display. It was almost time to talk to Hal Brognola, the big Fed who’d helped to assemble the Sensitive Operations Group, alongside Mack Bolan, and who gave the Farm its legitimacy thanks to his high rank at the Department of Justice. Though not a cabinet secretary, Brognola often had the advantage of the President’s ear.

With that knowledge, she gave her cybernetic crew a quick goodbye and exited the Computer Room.

She opened the encryption on her tablet, clearing the rest of the data from both the screen and its random access memory. It was a paranoid habit, sterilizing the device of the full data she’d been accessing just for a telephone call, but the Farm had battled against major intelligence agencies and conspiracies with considerable hacking abilities.

“Barb,” Brognola said as his video call came through on her tablet.

“Hal.... So far, the capsules inside Carl, Gadgets and T.J. are still reporting normal vital signs,” Price informed him right off the bat.

Brognola had known Lyons and Schwarz for a long time, since even before the founding of the Sensitive Operations Group.

“These are the passive sensors, correct?” Brognola asked.

Price nodded. “We’ve got their location, as well. They simply can’t talk to us and we cannot warn them. Other than that—”

“Remember.” Brognola cut her off. “If things go to hell, you just have to remember, that’s Able Team and Phoenix Force already on the ground. To them, being surrounded just means they don’t have to watch their fire.”

Price smirked. “That’s one positive way of looking at it.”

“What about Blancanales and the rest of Phoenix?” Brognola asked.

“They’re currently in Hong Kong, checking in with David’s old girlfriend, Mei Anna,” Price said.

“Which is very iffy, considering China is an enemy state,” Brognola mused. “Though, technically, we’re working alongside them here.”

“The Ministry of State Security doesn’t know that, and even if they did, there’s still going to be a bit of bad blood between our two agencies if they figure out who McCarter and company are,” Price said. “Just a couple of weeks ago, Phoenix intercepted an MSS ‘fund-raising shipment’ of heroin and destroyed it.”

“If the MSS has more than a rumor of Phoenix Force’s existence, that would be bad. Very bad,” Brognola stated. “But there was no evidence of whom and what attacked that shipment, correct?”

“Correct,” Price returned. “It’s my job to see the worst-case scenario, however. So forgive me if I give you these kinds of cues.”

“It’s a shame that both teams are already deployed. I’d have loved to have someone on the ground in New Mexico just to get some hard data on the actual raid,” Brognola said.

Price could imagine Brognola’s jowled face turning into a grim frown. “So far, the Department of Defense investigators seem to be doing quite well on their own. We’re monitoring evidentiary data and field reports, and doing what we can to track down leads based on that data and feeding it back into the investigation. If something requires a ground response, we can always pull Phoenix off the current operation, or we can see if Striker is available.”

“We don’t usually get that opportunity,” Brognola returned. “But it’s worth a try. Anything on the China attacks?”

“The Gobi desert facility that was struck was the same one that test-fired the Dong-Feng-21 variant in 2013,” Price told him. “So we’re currently operating on the idea that the attackers were after the experimental ballistic missile designs. There’s a bit of disjoint, however.”

“The DF-21 and the American engine prototypes are incompatible,” Brognola concluded.

“Right. The DF gets so fast because it is riding atop an engine that can reach low orbit, while the American design is intended for nap-of-the-earth or wave-lapping altitude at Mach 10, necessitating the complex guidance systems,” Price affirmed. “The cybernetic team is currently aware of this disparity and is looking to see what else might have been there.”

Brognola grunted his receipt of the message. “I hope it’s just a missile system.”

“Just a missile system? The Dong-Fengs are nuclear capable,” Price stated.

Brognola’s grumble of worry was deeper now. “It’s not nuclear warheads that concern me. It’s something that sounds like it’s out of a James Bond novel.”

Price narrowed her eyes for a moment, trying to think of what Brognola was referring to. Then it hit her. “The BWMO—Beijing Weather Modification Office? That does sound like something out of the movies.”

“Like it or not, however, they’ve gotten very good at seeding clouds to produce rainfall,” Brognola stated. “All for the purposes of dispelling hailstorms and counteracting the advent of dust storms that affect Beijing itself.”

Price resisted the urge to open the Stony Man databases while on an outside call. What she did recall from the facts she knew, was that the BWMO utilized missile systems and cannons to seed clouds. With those shells and warheads, they’d been able to irrigate miles of arable land and protect it from hail damage utilizing materials such as aluminum oxide, barium or silver iodide.