Atomic Fracture

Schwartz smiled and said, “You suppose the boys over at the BATFE would approve?”

“Alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives? Of course not,” Lyons growled. “But luckily we don’t answer to those Bureau yo-yos.”

Blancanales stared down at the new rifle as he retraced his steps toward the entrance to the kill house.Lyons watched Kissinger tap several keys on the laptop’s keyboard and knew the armorer was changing the pop-up targets to give his fellow teammate a new challenge. A moment later he saw Blancanales appear on the screen at the starting point.

Kissinger pressed a button on the chronometer on his wrist and shouted, “Go!”

Blancanales carefully navigated his way through a mock laundry room without incident. But as soon as he stepped through the door to a hallway, a full-size target popped into view as if from out of nowhere. Blancanales swung the sound-suppressed weapon that way but didn’t fire.

A little girl stood holding a lollipop to her lips less than ten feet to Blancanales’s left. A second later, the paper target disappeared.

Blancanales moved on, his back against the wall as he navigated the corner past where the girl had stood. The screen in Kissinger’s hand changed again and Lyons could see a large bedroom just ahead of his fellow Able Team warrior. Blancanales had just stepped into the room when another target—this time a criminal-looking guy wearing a striped T-shirt, appeared. He held a large revolver in his right hand. His other arm was wrapped around the neck of a woman whose face looked terrified.

This time Blancanales tapped the trigger and three rounds of 6.8-caliber hollowpoint ammo spit from the weapon. The sound of each round was barely audible over the microphone Blancanales wore in front of his mouth. But three holes appeared in the hoodlum’s face, two inches above the frightened hostage’s head.

When Blancanales said, “Much, much better, Cowboy,” his voice seemed loud by comparison.

The words had barely left his mouth when two new targets raised their heads above the other side of the bed. The first showed only the face and neck. Blancanales passed it by. But the second target rose higher, exhibiting shoulders wearing a desert-tan camouflage BDU blouse. Blancanales turned the YHM that way but hesitated again.

A split second later the target rose slightly higher and the butt of a folding rifle stock could barely be seen. It was still impossible to ID the target as friend or foe, and the Able Team operative held his fire as another second passed.

Then the target behind the bed rose higher and began bringing the weapon up toward the Able Team warrior. Finally, he was clearly the enemy, and Blancanales put a 3-round burst into his head. The camouflaged target dropped down behind the bed.

Suddenly the first target began to rise. It wore the same style BDU desert-tan blouse. But when it rose, Lyons could see that its hands were empty.

Blancanales let it live.

The Able Team warrior moved on through the kill house, shooting the bad guys and rescuing the good. Each new room, each hall and stairway, presented new and increasingly confusing targets. But by the time Blancanales had finished clearing the third floor of the house he had a perfect score.

And while he had not set a new personal record with the unfamiliar weapon in his hands, he had come close.

Lyons was about to speak when the Farm-secured cell phone in the belt holster behind his Colt Python .357 Magnum began to vibrate. Drawing the phone much like he would the revolver, he looked at the screen. He pressed the answer button and held the device to his ear. “Yeah, Hal?” he said.

“If you’re finished playing Cowboys and Indians, I need you back at the Farm,” the Stony Man director said. “I’ve sent Jack to pick you up.”

“What have we got?” Lyons asked.

“Two backpack nukes have disappeared from a nuclear storage facility in Colorado,” Brognola said.

“Okay,” said Lyons. “We’re on our way.” He holstered the cell phone as Blancanales appeared from the kill house and walked forward, holding his new YHM and grinning ear to ear.

The man known as Ironman looked up at Kissinger. “Yankee Hill Machine has made an incredible weapon, here, Cowboy,” Lyons said. “And you’ve made it even better. We’ll take three.” Outside Ramesh, Radestan

* * *

THE MEN OF Phoenix Force and Abdul Ali kept away from the blacktop highway, using the trees and brush lining the roadway to hide them as they made their way toward Ramesh. But along with the natural concealment, they passed a seemingly endless stream of wrecked and burned-out military vehicles representing both sides of the conflict in Radestan. Old and broken-down jeeps—looking as if they’d been left over from World War II and repeatedly repaired—lined the ditch every hundred feet or so. Most still bore the spray-painted eagle-and-scimitar seal of Radestan.

But other vehicles looked more civilian in nature. Well-worn pickups and bullet-ridden sedans—many so old that the paint had worn off and the dull gray primer had become their principal color—were also lying dead in the grass and weeds. All were unmarked and David McCarter reasoned that these had belonged to private citizens before being pressed into service by one of the PSOF rebel factions.

The men of Phoenix Force had each thrown on an abat—the traditional Arab robe common throughout the Middle East—over their blacksuits, and kafiyyehs covered their heads and necks. Led by Abdul Ali, who now carried an AK-47 that rested just beneath his long black-and-gray beard, they slowly made their way through the wrecks and weeds alongside what passed for a highway.

Hawkins had been able to clean enough of the cow manure off his boots to make them wearable again and, for the most part, the snide remarks and needling from the men who had been fortunate enough not to land inside the corral had ceased.

The men from Stony Man Farm and their Radestani guide walked in silence, only speaking when some small anomaly needed to be pointed out, and then in small, hushed voices. In several of the vehicles they passed, corpses still sat behind the steering wheels and in the shotgun and rear seats. Many were upright, their heads partially blown off by enemy gunfire. Those that still had eyes stared blankly into the distance, their souls long gone from their earthly housings. Other bodies were almost headless, while still more appeared to have been burned alive, their blackened arms clawing at the handles inside the vehicles in vain attempts to escape their fiery coffins.

The corpses in the vehicles, and the semi-burned vegetation growing up around them, gave the area an eerie, otherworldly ambience.

While the ground upon which they tread was flat, across the blacktop in the distance stood a high mountain range. Around McCarter’s neck hung a pair of binoculars, which the Phoenix Force leader lifted occasionally to scan those mountains and the terrain in front of them.

The group was roughly a mile from the city when a glint of sunlight flashed from the mountains. The reflected glow lasted only a split second. But McCarter had seen such flashes of light far too many times in the past to not immediately identify its origin.

The reflection had come from the front lens of a scope. A scope mounted atop a rifle held in the hands of a shooter too inexperienced to know that he should keep the scope covered until the last few seconds before firing.

Or a rifleman who did know his business. And actually was only seconds away from squeezing the trigger. The Phoenix Force leader called for an immediate halt. “Sniper,” he said in a quiet voice because sounds, he knew, traveled far in such terrain. Raising the binoculars again, he zeroed in on the spot where he’d seen the flash. The field glasses included an automatic range finger, and they measured the distance at 642 feet. Not a long shot by any means. Even for a slip-shod Radestan regular or a semitrained rebel.

Through the lenses, McCarter could just make out the outline of a man. The sniper’s hide had been set up behind a boulder at the foot of the mountain. It was crude but sufficient to disguise the man in the distance from all but the most highly trained eye.

As he watched the still figure, the Phoenix Force leader thanked God that he was one of those highly trained eyes.

Quickly swinging the binoculars away from the sniper, McCarter moved them downrange to make it appear as though he had not spotted the enemy. With the eyepieces still pressed to his forehead, he said, “Act busy with your equipment.” Then he quickly dropped the binoculars to the end of their strap. “I don’t want him to know I’ve spotted him.” Then, to no one in particular, he added, “Can you see him?”

Calvin James had pulled the twelve-inch blade of his Crossada fighting knife from the Concealex sheath he wore on his left hip. The Crossada was a spear-pointed blend of Bowie knife and Arkansas Toothpick, and one well-placed thrust could drop a man at close range faster than a 12-gauge slug through the middle of the chest. But as McCarter watched, James began pretending to cut away some of the brush in front of him. “I can see something up there,” the former Navy SEAL said in a hushed voice. “What do you want to do?”

McCarter had swung his Rock River LAR-15 Hunter from his shoulder and pretended to be checking the magazine. The weapon sported a unique anodized finish to the aluminum hand guard, upper and lower receivers, trigger guard and charging handle. Referred to as a WYL-Ehide camo finish, from a distance it appeared to be a bronze color. But looking at it closely, the Phoenix Force leader had to smile at its furlike appearance.

The special camouflage had been digitally adopted from an actual photo of a real coyote’s hide.

Designed originally for coyote hunting, McCarter knew the RRA LAR-15 and its 5.56 mm NATO rounds worked equally well when hunting men. And it was far more accurate than the common AR-15/M-16 rifles on the market.

Especially after John “Cowboy” Kissinger finished his own tune-up.

McCarter glanced over to where James was still cutting brush. “I want you to get ready,” he said, finally answering the knife fighter’s question. “I don’t know if he’s government or rebel. But he’s definitely got us in his sights and could start pulling the trigger on us anytime.” Extending the LAR-15’s six-position stock, he kept the barrel aimed at the ground as he pressed it into his shoulder. “I’m going to take him out. But I’ve got a feeling he’s not alone.”

“Affirmative,” James said, transferring the Crossada to his left hand and continuing to swing it at the tall grass. Casually, his right hand moved to the Beretta 92-SB 9 mm on his other hip.

McCarter watched as the others silently nodded their acknowledgment of the order.

“Do you want—?” Rafael Encizo started to say.

McCarter knew there was no time for manners. “Quiet,” he said bluntly.

Encizo was a professional, too. He immediately stopped speaking.

Abdul Ali was the only man not covered by an abat. He didn’t need one to blend in. Still wearing his khaki pants, woodland cammo BDU blouse and checkered kaffiyeh, he came hurrying up from McCarter’s rear. “If he is with the resistance,” said the man with the long gray-streaked beard, “he will recognize me.”

“And if he’s not on our side and he recognizes you?” McCarter said.

Ali shrugged. “It is a chance I must take,” he said.