Stony Man - Triple Strike Part 8

Inside, both Lyons and Schwarz had taken cover behind the wooden furniture crates. The stuffed furniture would soak up bullets almost as well as a thick mattress. "We're set," Lyons answered.

The two cars, both BMW sport sedans, skidded to a halt, and almost a dozen men poured out with weapons in their hands. The raid on the garage had taught these guys to be prepared. But exactly how prepared they were for what they were walking into remained to be seen.

"You have nine of them on the way in," Blanca.n.a.les whispered over his comm link. "And they're packing."

"Copy," Lyons answered. "You take care of any of them that get away."

Lyons didn't plan to give their visitors a chance to prove their good intentions. The fact that they were packing was proof enough that they were who he thought they were. Legitimate businessmen didn't come calling with heat in their hands. He waited until they were all inside the warehouse, but he didn't yell out for them to freeze this time. The last time he had tried that, it hadn't worked and he saw no reason to waste his breath.

Lining up his Python's glowing night sights on the last man through the door, he thumbed the hammer back for a smoother first-round, single-action shot. The roar of the Colt .357 would be the signai for the action to begin.

Tripping the Python's hammer, Lyons didn't wait to see if his first round had connected. Before the shot had even echoed away, he fired again.

Schwarz didn't lag more than a microsecond be-hind his teammate. His Beretta Model 12 submachine gun swept the area in front of him, dumping a full magazine of 9 mm slugs in one burst. When he ducked to change magazines, Lyons snapped off two more quick shots.

Though they had been caught flat-footed, the terrorists responded well. Ignoring the cries of their wounded and dying comrades, they dropped for cover and returned fire.

Lyons and Schwarz were on the floor offering as small a target as possible as they picked their shots. With Schwarz's subgun spitting flame to cover him, Lyons snapped open the cylinder of his Python, fed it six rounds from a speed loader and snapped it shut as he thumbed the hammer back to get back in ac-tion.

His first round scored on a man trying to edge around to the right.

When the bolt on Schwarz's Beretta locked back on an empty magazine, he felt a tug at his sleeve and wood splinters from the crate stung his cheek. d.a.m.n! One of them had worked his way along the side wall.

"Flash-bang!" he warned as he pulled the grenade from his pocket. Pulling the pin, he closed his eyes and rolled the bomb across the floor.

Three seconds later, he had a fresh magazine in his subgun when the inside of the warehouse lit up like a football stadium at a night game. The detonation that accompanied the flash charge was deafening, stunning the attackers.

In the brief glare of the grenade, Schwarz spotted his flanker and st.i.tched him with a 6-round burst. The man screamed as he was slammed back against the wall.

According to the muzzle-flashes, only four men remained in the fight and they were trying to pull back.

Lyons and Schwarz each scored one more. But in the brief flurry of gunfire, the other two made it out the door.

"Two of them coming your way," Lyons shouted to Blanca.n.a.les.

"I'm on them."

When the front door slammed open, the two men who raced out of the warehouse moved right into Blanca.n.a.les's line of fire.

"Halt!" he called out loudly in Italian as he sighted in on them.

He shouldn't have wasted his breath. The two gun-men spun at the sound of his voice and started firing into the dark. He had no choice but to respond in kind.

The SPAS roared on semiauto, spitting out a bar-rage of double-aught buck that swept the s.p.a.ce between the car and the front of the building. Nothing made of flesh and blood could stand up to that kind of firepower, and the last two terrorists went down.

After six 12-gauge rounds had spoken, all was quiet. The two gunmen lay sprawled on the gravel, bleeding from multiple wounds.

"You okay, Pol?" Lyons called over the comm link.

"Clear out here," Blanca.n.a.les answered.

"The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds mined my jacket," Schwarz stated. "Someone shot a hole in it."

"Let's check them out," Lyons said as he got to his feet, the Colt still ready in his hand. The air was thick with the reek of blood and burned cordite, but it was like perfume to him. Smelling it meant that once more, he was alive and his opponents weren't.

"Are we going to hit that other garage tonight?" Blanca.n.a.les asked as he loaded fresh buckshot rounds into the magazine of his SPAS.

"No," Lyons replied. "I think we've done enough damage for one night. We'll save the garage for another time in case we need to send the cops another message."

"If they don't get this message," Schwarz said, "they need heating aids."

"Gadgets, check those cars while Pol and I go through the bodies and the office files."

As THEY HAD EXPECTED, Schwarz discovered that the small sedans had been rigged as car bombs. But un-like the one they had found at the garage, the first one he looked at had the blocks of explosive in place and the detonators attached. All anyone needed to do was set the timer and it would go off.

"This first one is fully rigged," Schwarz called out over the comm link. "Do you want me to activate the timer and let it go off after we leave?"

Lyons shook his head. "No. I don't want to risk damaging the surrounding buildings. When the cops get here, they'll get the message without our having to rub it in."

"I can disable it and leave a 'bang, you're dead' charge behind to make sure that they notice it."

Now Lyons grinned. Using b.o.o.by-trapped, non-lethal charges to send a message worked wonders to wake people up. There was something about almost being blown to bits that was more effective than actually killing someone.

"Go ahead, but make sure that you kill that bomb."

"No sweat. I'll cut off the detonators and put the flash charge on a trembler."

After finding that the other three Fiats were also loaded with explosives and ready to go, he disabled them, too, before rigging the first car with the flash charge.

Leaving the terrorists' weapons with their bodies, the trio went out by the side door and locked it be-hind them and reactivated the alarm.

Tim NEXT MORNING at the Aviano air base, the aftermath of Able Team's raid on the terrorists' warehouse resulted in increased security measures. Once Able Team was safely away from the scene, Katz had informed the Italian police about the gun battle and they had responded to find the bodies and the car bombs that had been left for them. Apparently, as Schwarz had planned, someone tripped his little b.o.o.by trap and, while no real damage was done, ex-cept to a couple of officers' shorts, they got the message.

The result was frantic activity at Aviano. Warbling European police sirens sounded every few minutes as more and more tracks and vans full of troops and police poured into the air base. Italian and NATO units of every description were stampeding into any cleared area they could find, trying to set up their command posts. The air police were working overtime trying to keep the runways cleared so opera-tional flights could continue.

Katzenelenbogen joined Lyons in the open door of the Stony Man CP building. "You boys certainly seem to have started people thinking about base security around here," he commented as he watched the chaos outside the chain-link fence.

"We sure as h.e.l.l got someone's attention," Lyons said, grinning. "I haven't seen such a rat screw since the Democrats invented the free lunch."

"That was the purpose of the exercise, wasn't it?" Katz said. "To wake these people up and point them in the direction of the coffeepot?"

Lyons shook his head. "Now we need to give them all downers before they hurt themselves." Katz laughed.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

All Nadal wasn't the kind of man who was going to let the setbacks at the warehouse and the garage get in the way of accomplis.h.i.+ng his mission. An Israeli air force attack on an apartment building in Beirut twelve years earlier had made sure of that. Ever since the day when he had been dug out of the rubble of the collapsed apartment more dead than alive, the only survivor of his family, his life had been a gift from G.o.d, who had saved him from death at the hands of the Yankee imperialists and their Israeli dogs so that he could do his bidding.

After Nadal recovered from his injuries, he considered his future and how he could repay G.o.d for his life. It was apparent to anyone with half a brain that Lebanon was doomed to drown in its own blood. Egged on by foreign interests, the embittered sectar-ian infighting had shattered his country and showed no signs of ending in his lifetime. If he stayed in Beirut, he would be drawn into the fighting. But there would be little chance that he would ever have the opportunity to strike a blow to avenge his family.

To fight against the Great Satan, he needed to find powerful allies, and the only two Islamic nations that were strong enough to stand up to the Americans were Iran and Libya. As a s.h.i.+te, Nadal favored the imams of Tehran, but he knew that the Libyans were more active in the war against the Yankees and decided to throw in with them. Getting to Libya wasn't a problem, and when he arrived, he presented himself to the authorities and was accepted as a freedom fighter.

He had done well at the Libyan desert training camps he was sent to. Many of the other freedom fighters in training had been Palestinians, but there had been several Lebanese like himself. There had also been men from a dozen other freedom-loving nations, and not all of them had been Islamic. Libya welcomed all men who were willing to put their lives on the line in the never ending battle against the evil of Western imperialism. Irishmen, Germans, a few Americans and several Latin Americans trained be-side him as he learned the skills of a holy warrior.

Nadal had a gift for learning languages. In the camp, he had helped teach Arabic to the foreigners and helped translate instructions. His language skills had been noted, and after the training camp, the Libyans picked him to go to Italy to set up a network of agents and to stockpile weapons for future operations.

The longtime ties between Italy and Libya, her one-time colony, had made his entry into the West relatively easy. Regardless of the UN economic sanc-tions against his adopted homeland, trade between the two nations hadn't ended. Nor had the smuggling of contraband going both ways been in any way cur-tailed; the Sicilian Mafia made sure of that. High-tech equipment and manufactured goods were still going south to Libya in exchange for drags and weapons.

Nadal had been in Italy for two years now, and his organization was one of the largest Libyan terrorist cells in all of Europe. His dealings with the Mafia had provided enough money for him to recruit dozens of Italians in all walks of life to augment his intelligence base. As a result, there was little that went on in southern Europe that he wasn't made aware of. Since the beginning of the Bosnian truce, he had been the major conduit for intelligence information about the UN PROFOR operations to the Islamic world.

This unexpected attack on his organization and the destruction of the car bombs had set back his plan to attack the Aviano air base, but it hadn't ended it. Among the stockpiles of weapons he had built up over the months were mortars and RPG rocket launchers, and they would serve in place of the lost car bombs. He would have to use more of his men than he had planned, but the attack could still take place on time.

His agents on the Aviano workforce had given him up-to-the-minute reports of the increased security measures that the NATO and Italian forces had taken at the base. But those measures would only protect them against a car-bomb attack. In a standoff attack using RPGs and mortars, the increased manpower would provide only more targets, not security. And the more targets he had, the greater the body count would be. Even without the car bombs, when he was done, the NATO air base at Aviano would be out of action for some time.

This was the first chance he'd had to strike at his enemies and he would let nothing stand in the way of his long-awaited vengeance. A few quick phone calls sent his orders to the leaders of the units that would carry out the attack. More calls alerted the units that would provide the covering fire for the a.s.sault group while it made its getaway.

Though he usually kept himself far from the actions of his agents, Nadal decided that he would watch when his men made this attack. When the history of the Islamic triumph over the decadent Western world was written, this attack would be a major event and he wanted to witness it himself. He also wanted to see the infidels die as so many of his coun-trymen had.

"You KNOW," Carl Lyons said as he and Yakov Katzenelenbogen continued to sift through the material Aaron Kurtzman had forwarded, "from what I'm reading here, car bombs should be the least of our worries."

"I couldn't agree more. These people seem to have enough small arms and crew-served weapons stockpiled to equip a light-infantry battalion, and they didn't go to all of the trouble of smuggling them in-country for nothing. They're planning to do something spectacular with those weapons sooner or later."

Lyons looked thoughtful. "If those car-bomb attacks were planned to coincide with something in Bosnia, do you think that they'll call them off or go to Plan B and use the infantry weapons?"

Katz got a faraway look in his eyes. He had fought Arabs almost all of his life, losing an arm in the service of Israel during the Six Day War. He spoke the language like a native and was as familiar with their thinking processes as any non-Arab could be. But, as he had told Lyons, the mercurial minds of Islamic fanatics were impossible to second-guess. Rational thought was always the first casualty whenever a man thought that G.o.d was on his side.

"I know you guys think that I can get into an enemy's mind," Katz said, "but all I do is lay out as many of the possibilities as I can think of and hope that I choose the right one. If we were facing West-emers here, I'd be inclined to say that your raid would have set their timetable back if not canceled it altogether.

"But-" he raised a cautionary finger "-we're dealing with Islamic fanatics this time. We have Bosnians, Iranians and now Libyans that we're dealing with. That's quite a stew of Islamic fanaticism to try to get through to find the sc.r.a.ps of rational meat in the bottom of the pot."

He shrugged. "I haven't got the slightest idea what they're going to do, and I couldn't even begin to guess. All I'm willing to bet is that whatever it is, it will be nasty and will indiscriminately kill a lot of people. That has always been their trademark, and I don't see it changing anytime soon."

"That's a sucker's bet," Lyons replied. "But I think you're right. The question is, is there anything we can do about it? Will it do any good to warn the authorities?"

"If we were in the States, I would say yes. But we're not. We have to go through too many layers of bureaucrats, and I'm not confident that our warnings will do any good. Our best bet is to hunker down, take every precaution we can to survive any attack and do everything we can to help the Stony Man team short-stop this thing. Whatever it is.

"We have the RPG screen," Katz continued, referring to the chain-link fence surrounding their small building. "Maybe we can get some sandbags from the military and build a mortar bunker inside the CP. That way, we should be able to survive an attack with anything short of artillery."

That wasn't what Lyons wanted to hear. He wanted Katz to pull another rabbit out of the hat as he had so many times in the past and come up with a plan to turn this situation around. Being a target wasn't one of his favorite things to be. And sitting around waiting for something to happen was what had gotten them into this in the first place.

"Whatever they're planning," Lyons said, "rather than just sit around here waiting for it to happen, I think that we should try to shut it down before it happens. At the very least, Rosario and I can go out there and provide some early warning if they do de-cide on making a ground attack on the base."

"That might not be a bad idea," Katz agreed. "With all of the NATO forces guarding against car bombs coming into the base, I'd bet no one is watching the approaches."

"I'll see if I can get us a van and find a place to park it."

Bosnia MORNING FOUND the Stony Man warriors in the rocks where they had spent the night. After spotting the enemy patrol in the area of the cliffs, they had been forced to keep moving until they found a safe hiding place to spend the night.

"Are we going back to the cliffs?" Major Ham-mer asked McCarter and Bolan as they shared a cold breakfast of MREs.

Bolan nodded. "I think it's worth taking a good look at. We'd have done it last night if that patrol hadn't shown up."

Hammer put the discarded wrappers of his rations into the pockets of his flight suit. "I'm ready when you are."

It took almost two hours for the team to get back to its observation point at the top of the cliffs. And when it arrived, the plain below wasn't empty. Several small pickup trucks and two dozen troops had gathered as if they were waiting for something to happen.

"We've got a plane coming in from the south,"

Manning warned, "and it looks like it's going to land."

Hammer's trained eyes instantly identified it. "What the h.e.l.l is that doing here?" he said. "That's one of ours, a C-130 Hercules!"

"Everybody and their brother are flying those now," McCarter accurately stated, "including a lot of people who aren't too friendly to us."

"I knew that was a landing strip," Encizo said as the turboprop transport dropped its flaps and landing gear and lined up with the long cleared area in front of the caves.

"It's Iranian air force," Manning reported as he read the red, white and green insignia rondels on the plane's fuselage with his field gla.s.ses.

"That answers the question as to why one of America's finest airplanes is landing here," the Cu-ban said when he saw several more pickups drive out of the fortress. 'Tll bet it's a resupply bird, and the locals are waiting to off-load its cargo."

It was no news that the Iranians had been supply- ing the Bosnian Muslims with weapons and equipment. But this was the first time that anyone had actually seen a resupply flight come in.

When the desert-camouflage C-130 reached the end of the gra.s.s landing strip, it turned before coming to a halt with its tail facing the caves. When the rear ramp descended, more than a dozen troops poured out the back. They were wearing desert-camouflage battle dress that looked out of place in the greenness of Bosnia, but they looked to be well armed as they fanned out to secure the plane.

With a word of command from a man who looked to be an officer, the Iranian troops headed to the base of the cliffs at a dead run. The troops that had been waiting for the plane busied themselves off-loading the cargo and putting it in the trucks.

FROM THE TOWER of his fortress, Dragan Asdik watched Naslin's Iranians off-load the transport and carry the supplies to the trucks. Usually the supply missions were flown at night to keep the Iranian involvement in Bosnia as secret as possible. The lure of the wrecked Yankee spy plane, though, had made the Tehran imams overanxious. Asdik didn't like the change from the routine that had worked so well for so long. But this was only one more indication that the Bosnians were the junior partners in this venture.

Though the aid and supplies were welcome in the fight against the Serbs and Croatians, Asdik would be glad when Bosnia was strong enough to go it on her own. Tehran's arrogance was wearing thin. As the man who was in charge of the secret airstrip and the stockpiling of the supplies that were being flown in, he had more day-to-day contact with the Iranians than anyone else in the Bosnian government. He hoped, though, that as soon as the Iranian master plan was put into action, he could go back to being a simple fighting man and leader of other fighting men, instead of a clerk.

As soon as the cargo-laden tracks were on their way back to the castle, the Iranians started bringing material out of the caves to reload the plane.

"I'LL BE d.a.m.nED!" Hammer was indignant when he saw what the Iranians were doing. "They're loading up the wreckage of my plane."

During the transfer of cargo, the Iranian pilot kept the inboard port-side turbine running to provide internal power while the troops labored to load the jag-ged pieces of the crashed Night Owl into the cargo hold. There was no hope of ever returning the Night Own to the air, so the Iranians weren't being careful about how they handled their valuable cargo.

Hammer winced when he saw one of them take an ax to one wing panel to shorten it so it would fit inside the transport plane. "Morons," he muttered. "All they needed to do was to fold the wing panel. It's designed to fit inside a C-5A."

Hawkins shook his head as he surveyed the scene below. "Man, there's no way the seven of us can go down there and kill all of those guys and get that plane of yours back. There's just too many of them."

"We've got to do something." Hammer looked like he was about to explode. "That's the most advanced spy plane in the world they're stealing. Even in pieces, it's worth millions and I'm the guy who signed that sucker out. I'll have to stay in the Air Force for five hundred years just to make the interest payments if I don't take it back where I got it."

"Striker," McCarter said thoughtfully, "I think that Hammer and I might be able to sneak down there if the rest of you give us a little diversion."