Critical Effect

CHAPTER FOUR

David McCarter knelt in a large, mushy patch of moss that had started life on a nearby large rock and spread beneath the shade of a massive pine. Dry breezes rustled the leaves in the upper branches of the tallest trees, causing sun spots to reform and reshape themselves.

Phoenix Force had come to a stop on a precipice that overlooked the crash site. The plane lay about fifty yards below them in a massive clearing with its port side visible; its jagged, broken hull jutted silent and still from the ground. The entire T-shaped tailfin had been smashed inward against one of the largest trees McCarter had ever seen. The port wing had been snapped from the plane, probably on impact. The deep gouges in the soft terrain of the clearing bore evidence of exactly where the plane had come down and how it had ended up in such an odd position.

McCarter brought a pair of binoculars to his eyes, although he didn’t really need to see it up close to know they had found the missing bird. Markings all along the plane clearly identified it as a NATO aircraft. McCarter squinted to make out the large, white writing just below the cockpit windows obscured by mud and grass: GpCpt W. M. Blythe, RAF.

“W. M. W—” McCarter lowered the binoculars. “Welby Blythe? Aw, bloody hell.”

Encizo immediately noticed the faraway look in the Briton’s eyes. “What is it, David? Look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“Nothing,” McCarter said, shaking himself back to the present. “It may be nothing.”

“It doesn’t sound like nothing, Chief,” Hawkins pressed.

“Let’s just drop it for now, okay, mates?” McCarter snapped.

Manning broke the uncomfortable silence that followed McCarter’s uncharacteristic reaction and nodded toward the plane. “I’d say the fastest way to get there would be to rappel straight off this overlook.”

“Agreed,” McCarter said. “Set it up.”

The five men shrugged out of their day packs and immediately began to prepare for a rappelling operation. Manning and McCarter had the most experience with it, so they would take belay man and safety positions, respectively. Manning quickly retrieved two ropes and tied them to the base of a thick trunk nearest the knoll in a double figure-eight knot. McCarter and Hawkins nailed in pitons while Encizo and James cinched themselves into rappelling harnesses.

When they were ready, Manning donned his own harness and went down the side of the treacherous rocky outcroppings. Despite the danger of sharp and jagged rock protrusions, Manning made his controlled descent in as carefree a fashion as if he’d been sipping cocktails beneath a poolside cabana. The Canadian was about as rugged as they came.

McCarter assisted James as he straddled the ropes and prepared to go down next. The fox-faced Briton put his hand to his mouth. “On belay!”

“Belay on!” Manning echoed.

“On rope!” James shouted.

“Rappel on!” Manning replied.

“Rappelling!” James called, and he pushed away from the cliff.

The Phoenix Force warriors continued in this way: next came Encizo, then Hawkins and finally McCarter. One by one they went down the ropes, and soon all were reunited at the bottom. The Phoenix Force commander ordered the team to fan out as they approached the plane. While he couldn’t exactly have called their rappelling operation stealthy, he didn’t think it safe to assume the plane crash had been the product of an accident. Given its cargo, McCarter could understand Stony Man’s reservations in leaving this to outside agencies. It would either turn out to be something or it wouldn’t, and if they relied on foreign powers to deal with the situation, it could turn out to be a huge public embarrassment.

Encizo and Hawkins approached on the starboard flank, Manning and James on port and McCarter up the center. They emerged from the brush after a low-pitched whistle from the Phoenix Force leader, and converged rapidly on the plane. McCarter reached it first. He knelt just aft of where the shattered wing had broken away, and swept the area with the muzzle of his MP-5 SD-6. Nobody rose to challenge him.

McCarter watched with interest as Manning and James approached the plane roughly parallel to its nose cone. They moved silently, dwarfed by the hulking shell of the Starlifter’s fuselage. McCarter signaled them to skirt the nose of the plane while he moved in a crouch beneath it and came up on the side of the Encizo-Hawkins team a moment later. What he saw at that moment caused his jaw to drop. A better portion of the plane’s body had been completely cut away by torches. The charred remains of humans were scattered throughout the plane. Some of them were unrecognizable, but McCarter quickly spotted one body attired in clothing that had partially survived the scorching. The sleeve of the corpse’s shirt bore the patch of the Special Air Service.

The remainder of the carnage sickened the Phoenix Force warriors. They had seen such things many times, but none of them could ever say they had grown accustomed to it. Flies and other insects buzzed lazily around the bloated bodies. They could see dried patches of blood on the interior of the port-side fuselage. The back end had been mangled, twisted and mashed into an unrecognizable collage of metal and fiberglass. The cargo, if there had been any, was long gone.

James whistled softly. “Looks like something out of Hotel Rwanda. ”

“I’d say this was no accident,” Hawkins said.

“Yeah, but what the hell did happen?” Manning wondered.

“Whatever’s happened here, it was no bloody accident,” McCarter replied. “And whoever’s behind it is damn sure not friendly.”

Encizo walked away for a minute as James and Hawkins climbed up and into the fuselage to make a more thorough inspection. Hawkins brought out his digital camera and took shots of the most important elements. Stony Man would need that as proof positive for the President and his advisers. Kurtzman would also be able to use it as evidence in detecting who had committed such an atrocity.

Encizo returned a minute later. “I looked at the other side of the plane, and also went to study that broken wing. It’s clear they went down due to a double-engine failure, but there’s little doubt as to why. There are unoxidized cordite burns on both the port engines.”

McCarter looked straight to Manning. “Explosives?”

The Canadian nodded and in a matter-of-fact tone replied, “Probably.”

“Plus, let’s consider the fact the other side of this plane is intact,” Encizo continued. He stepped up to the edge of the massive opening and ran the edges carefully between his fingers. “This puppy was cut, probably with an acetylene torch. There’s no way this happened as the result of the crash.”

“David,” James called from the plane. McCarter looked up and the medic jerked his head in the direction of the cockpit. “I think you’re going to want to see this.”

McCarter hoisted his body up and into the plane, moving past James in the direction of the cockpit. He stuck his torso through the cockpit door and studied the interior. The copilot’s head dangled awkwardly from his neck, and a safety harness suspended his slumped body. Both men in the navigator’s chairs were dead, one with a considerable amount of dry blood on and around him, which made it damn difficult to determine cause of death. A quick inspection of the other man revealed a bullet hole between the eyes. The whole enclosure smelled of death. McCarter turned and walked back to where his comrades stood and waited for him.

McCarter jumped to the ground and said, “Captain’s missing.”

James nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

“You’re sure?” Hawkins asked.

“I was serving as crew and mission specialist aboard these puppies while still working with the SAS, T.J.,” McCarter said. “Crew complement for these birds is four. There are three bodies in that cockpit, and none of them is wearing the rank of a group captain.”

“I saw one had been shot execution-style,” James noted. “You think the pilot might have been in on this?”

McCarter shook his head. “No bloody way, mate. He’s either among the burned bodies there, or whoever took the cargo took him, as well.”

“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Encizo said. “We’d better get Hal up to speed on this pronto.”

The air suddenly filled with the whip-crack reports of automatic weapons fire, and the Phoenix Force warriors wasted no time getting bellies to the ground. Bullets buzzed over their heads, a few burning the air with a whine as others ricocheted off the broken skin of the aircraft. McCarter and Manning crawled beneath the plane for cover while Encizo, James and Hawkins rose and sprinted for the shelter of the wood line. A fresh salvo of rounds took out tree limbs and zinged overhead, raining leaves on the warriors.

Hawkins happened to grab the cover of the same giant fallen log as Encizo. “Guess this removes any doubt about hostiles involved.”

“I’d say so,” Encizo retorted as he unslung his MP-5 and put the weapon in battery with a quick jerk of the charging handle. “Well, we can’t afford to sit here and wait. They still have David and Gary pinned down.”

“Agreed. I’m open to suggestions,” Hawkins replied.

“We should head along the tree line, see if we can outflank them.”

“Roger that.”

Encizo looked a few lengths over and spotted James, his back to a tree trunk, readying his own weapons for action. He managed to get the warrior’s attention and, using a series of hand signals, communicated the plan. James returned it with the okay signal and indicated he’d provide covering fire. It would require time to get into a flanking position, and James couldn’t afford to expend all of his ammo, even if Manning and McCarter could provide additional support. Still, he only had to keep them occupied a few minutes.

Encizo and Hawkins got to their feet, moved deeper into the darkness of the woods, then set off at a furious pace. James watched them go, counted to three and dashed from the cover of the tree to the back of the plane. He happened to be carrying Phoenix Force’s squad weapon, the Colt M-16 A-2. While it used the gas-driven, rotating Stoner bolt, it had a loaded weight nearly three pounds lighter than an empty M-60 E-3 machine gun. Its high-capacity box magazine, wrapped beneath the magazine well just aft of the heavier barrel and thicker hand guards, held a hundred rounds of 5.56 mm NATO ammunition.

James dropped to his stomach, flipped down the bipod and steadied the weapon by locking the butt against his shoulder and pressing his cheek to the stock. He set his sight post on the general area where he spied an occasional muzzle-flash and returned fire. The reports hammered in his ears as the weapon dispensed a cyclic fusillade of 700 rounds per minute at a muzzle of velocity of 900 meters per second.

The intensity of fire decreased with James’s assault, and during two sustained bursts he called for Manning and McCarter to get out of there. The pair didn’t have to be told a second time. James continued to lay down covering fire while his comrades jumped to their feet and rocketed for the edge of the woods.