Terror Descending

“Guess so, since we didn’t just eat sandstone,” Hawkins snorted, hitting a button on the intercom. “Hold on to your asses, boys, this is it. We’re going in!”

Fifty feet away, in the main body of the huge airplane, past a short flight of stairs, three men sat strapped into jumpseats, their camouflage-colored uniforms covered with military equipment.

“Roger that, Taxes.” Calvin James chuckled.

Over the intercom set into the arm of the jumpseat, Hawkins’s reply consisted mostly of four-letter words.

“Only if you buy me dinner first.” James laughed, a strong Chicago accent announcing his own native city.

Over six feet in height, the lanky man was classically good-looking, although oddly sporting a pencil-thin mustache like a movie star from the Roaring Twenties. Ready for battle the instant they touched down, James had an MP-5 submachine gun strapped across his chest and night-vision goggles at his side. A sleek 9 mm Beretta rode high on his chest in a combat holster, and a Randall Survival knife was at his side, the telltale blade of a Navy SEAL. Unlike the others, his camouflage paint was dull gray to mix with his naturally dark skin.

Surrounding the members of Phoenix Force were large pallets bolted directly to the deck, the stacks of equipment trunks lashed tightly into place. Parked fifty feet away at the rear of the plane was a Hummer, the heavy military vehicle tightly cocooned in a spiderweb of restraining belts. Ready for desert combat, the Hummer was painted a mottled array of dull colors, the headlights covered with night shields, and a M-249 SAW machine gun already attached to the firing stanchion, the breech open, the attached ammo box ready for action.

“And…welcome to Mexico!” McCarter announced over a wall speaker.

Instantly the plane shuddered as the wheels bounced off the hard desert sand. A spray of loose particles peppered the aft belly as the C-130 Hercules airplane rose slightly only to touch down once more. The plane shuddered again, then jerked hard and began to crazily jerk around as it bounced along the irregular ground. Everything loose went flying, and the three men in the jumpseats held on for dear life, not fully trusting the safety harnesses.

The noise of the sand hitting the underbelly of the plane grew to hurricane force, then the brakes engaged and the violent shaking rapidly eased until the gigantic craft came to an easy stop.

“Well, I’m delighted to see that correspondence course in flying is really working out well for David,” Rafael Encizo commented, working his jaw to see if any teeth were loose.

Gary Manning grinned, shrugging off his harness and pulling on a black knit cap, trying not to smear his tiger-stripe combat paint in the process.

Standing, Manning swung around a massive rifle. The bolt-action .50-caliber Barrett was a sniper rifle with a range of over a mile, the monstrous 700-grain bullets were the size of a cigar and fully capable of shooting through a brick wall. Many professional soldiers considered the deadly weapon a piece of field artillery, instead of merely a rifle.

“Good news, people,” McCarter announced from the top of the metal stairs. “Bear hacked into a Quest-Star comm sat and found the airfield. It’s five klicks due east, so leave the Hummer, we go on foot.”

“Low and quiet, just the way I like it,” Hawkins stated, appearing from the flight deck. An MP-5 was in his hands, and the plastic tube of a LAW rocket launcher was slung across his back. These days, many soldiers liked the reusable Armbrust, or SMAW, but the Stony Man team much preferred the one-shot LAW. Afterward, they simply tossed away the empty tube, which saved them a lot of time and trouble. Their covert missions were usually fast, furious and short. There was no supply line. They carried everything, which made every ounce saved vitally important.

Going to the side door, McCarter checked outside through the small observation port, then turned to nod at James. He killed the internal lights and McCarter swung open the door, going from darkness into the night. The others quickly followed, readying their weapons.

Gathering outside, the team members listened to the sounds of the desert for a moment, trusting their ears to tell them if anything hostile was in the vicinity. Silence in the middle of a forest or wild glade always meant the immediate presence of humans. Or a major predator. But savage men hidden in the desert were to be feared a lot more than any mountain lion or poisonous reptile.

Slowly, the insect life recovered from the rude arrival of the Hercules, and began to sing their songs once more. An owl hooted in the distance.

Swinging down his night-vision goggles, James dialed for infrared and scanned the vicinity, while Encizo did the same using the Starlite function. That mode augmented the natural illumination of the stars until the operator could see everything as clear as if it was day. The one drawback being that unless the surge protector was engaged, somebody lighting a match or turning on a flashlight, could blind the operator for several minutes until his eyes recovered, leaving him temporarily helpless.

“Clear,” James subvocalized into a throat mike, the word repeated in the earbuds of the rest of the team.

Turning off his goggles, Encizo gave a thumbs-up to the others.

Satisfied for the moment, McCarter flipped up the lid of the compass on his wrist to check directions, then snapped it shut and started off at a run.

The kilometers passed in total silence, the only sounds the soft patting of their combat boots on the dry sand. As expected, the Mexican desert was very chilly at that time of night. The terrible heat of the day had completely radiated away, leaving the landscape bitterly cold, and soon their breath began to fog. There were small chemical packs sewed into the lining of their ghillie suits that would start to generate a soothing warmth for hours if slapped. But the U.S. Marine Corp hot-packs would make the team members light up a thermal scan like fireworks, so the Stony Man operatives simply ignored the low temperatures and concentrated on moving across the desolate and inhospitable Quintana Roo peninsula.

Reaching a low dune, the team went flat and covered the next hundred yards on their bellies. Cresting the top, the Stony Man commandos tried not to disturb the young sage plants that grew thick from the sand, and looked down the other side using monoculars. The world turned black-and-white, the view crystal clear and wire sharp.

“Bingo,” McCarter whispered into his throat mike with grim satisfaction.

Spreading out in front of the men was a wide area of land that had been cleared of all plants. Off to the side were some old cinder-block buildings, the doors were riveted metal, the windows merely ventilation slits, and lots of sand, rocks and plants were piled high on top on the flat roof. Obviously it was protection from an aerial search.

More importantly, just outside the armored door a fire was crackling inside a fifty-five-gallon oil drum, holes cut into the sides to allow the light and heat to escape. Sitting on folding chairs, there were a couple of men in ponchos talking and smoking stubby cigars, assault rifles leaning against the cinder-block wall nearby. One of the rifles was a brand-new AK-101, the other was a much older AK-47. Obviously, one of the men was new and not given the better, more expensive weapon until having proved his worth.

However, the team members still frowned at the sight. Both of the Russian assault rifles were equipped with 30 mm grenade launchers and infrared night scopes, which could be real trouble.

The sound of metal hitting metal came from another cinder-block building; streamers of light escaped from the canvas sheet blocking the wide front door. More fifty-five-gallon drums were situated under a canvas awning, along with a small electric generator. The Stony Man commandos marked it as the garage. Then they spotted another canvas lump and identified it as the proper size and shape for a heavy machine gun, or maybe an auto-mortar. However, there was no way of telling where they were.

A small wooden shack was set off by itself, clearly identifying it as the outhouse. Several yards distant was a bare metal flagpole, the tattered remains of a windsock dangling limply. Even though it was reduced to rags, the old cloth could still give an incoming plane vital information on wind direction.

Just past the flagpole, cutting across the cleared area, was a wide strip of concrete, as incongruous a sight as a buffalo in a ballet. Smooth and flat, the disguised airstrip reached out of sight, and the members of Phoenix Force nodded in admiration at the sight of pictures of more plants and rocks painted onto the landing strip. Clever. More protection from visual tracking. The team could only see the concrete because of the angle and the silvery moonlight. Otherwise, it would have been nearly invisible.

“Hidden in plain sight,” Hawkins muttered, shifting his grip on the MP-5 to screw on an acoustic sound suppressor. “Same as the Airwolves.”

“How come so many criminals are smart enough to make more money honestly, than they ever would as crooks?” Encizo asked softly, attaching a suppressor to his own machine gun.

“Irony?” Manning replied coolly, now moving the crosshairs to mark his targets.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” James replied, sliding a fat 40 mm shell into the launcher attached under the main barrel of his MP-5 weapon. His heart was beating hard in his chest, and the soldier tried his best to regain a professional calm.

“Gary, get me a number on the runway,” McCarter asked, tucking his monocular into a cushioned pouch on his web belt.

“In a second,” Manning replied. Focusing the telescopic sights of the Barrett on the extreme end of the clear strip of land, the tiny digital display on the bottom of the scope gave him the precise distance. Now sweeping the crosshairs to the other end, he added the two readings.

“Ten thousand four hundred and nine feet,” Manning replied grimly, lowering the sniper rifle. “More than enough for a B-52 to land.”

“Or anything else this side of a NASA space shuttle,” Encizo agreed, leveling his MP-5. “Doesn’t mean they’re the terrorists, though. Might just be some drug smugglers.”

“David, want me to put a 40 mm shell into the fuel drums and set the place on fire?” Hawkins asked, resting a finger on the trigger of the grenade launcher.

“Think they’re stupid enough to store the fuel by itself,” McCarter asked skeptically, “and not mixed with the water supply to retard any fires?”

Lowering the weapon, Encizo almost smiled. “Maybe. We’ve seen it done before.”

Reluctantly, McCarter had to concede the point. A few years ago, Phoenix Force had encountered a splinter group of the Libyan Army of God and had put a warning shot into the fuel depot merely to start a blaze as a distraction. However, the previously unknown stockpile of ten thousand gallons of high-octane aviation fuel ignited, blowing the whole base off the map in a writhing fireball of gargantuan size. A genuine one-shot battle. It was a freak event, but the team members remembered it fondly.

The soft purr of a single-engine plane suddenly came from the north.

“That sounds like a Cessna,” Hawkins announced.

“From the sound of those two engines it can’t be much larger than a Skywagon or a Crusader,” James said with a scowl.

“Check the hills to the west,” McCarter brusquely ordered over the throat mike.

“Yep, good call, David. There’s activity in those foothills,” Encizo said, dialing for maximum computer augmentation on the monocular.

“Reinforcements?” Manning asked, swinging the ungainly Barrett in that direction and looking through the nightscope.

“No, just one guy…and he’s looking through Zeist field glasses at the airfield.”