MacK Bolan No. 62: Day of Mourning (10 page)

"Maybe you oughta take that up with the colonel, mate," McCarter suggested from across the room. "Give the lady a break, as you lads like to say."

"You might also try acting like a soldier," Katz put in. "Your place is with your men, Captain. This will go on your record."

The security officer glared at April.

"I want an answer."

April lifted a cautionary hand to the Phoenix Force men.

"I can handle this, gentlemen." She continued to address Wade. "Colonel Phoenix exercised his prerogative as your commanding officer to rescan your security clearance because of the vital nature of the position you hold. And this man is right, Captain. Your place is out there maintaining the security of this operation. Why are you behaving in this manner?"

Wade looked contrite.

"You're right, of course. Excuse me."

Before Wade could leave the room, a quadrant on an electronic security screen in front of April began to flash frantically, sequenced with an urgent buzzing alarm.

The perimeter of Stony Man Farm was wired for sound with amplifiers containing filters that screened out every sound except movement and voices. These were magnified more than two hundred times within the sixty-meter range of the devices.

"It's a hit," grunted Yakov Katzenelenbogen, starting for the door with his M-16.

"Come on," McCarter growled at Captain Wade as the Briton hustled along with Yakov. "It's time to scrap."

April Rose unleathered her .44 Magnum.

This time she was not to check anything; this time she would use it.

She could not take her eyes off the flashing quadrant on the screen.
They're hitting the airfield.
Stony Man Farm was under attack!

"Stony Man Farm is under attack," Hal Brognola informed the president of the United States. "That's what we got before all communication was cut off."

Brognola, the president and Lee Farnsworth had been joined by Brigadier General James Crawford, retired, for another top-secret Oval Office meeting to discuss the Phoenix situation, which now could only be regarded as critical.

The president scrutinized Farnsworth.

"What can you tell us about this, Lee?"

The CFB boss bristled but held himself in check, considering the source of the question.

"I assure you, sir, neither the Central Foreign Bureau nor I have anything to do with what is happening at Stony Man Farm tonight."

"Tell that to the men of Able Team in the goddamn Hindu Kush," Brognola grumbled.

"Stony Man has been unable to establish communications with those people?" asked the president.

"Afraid so, sir," Brognola reported. "Their contact point is a connection in New Delhi who monitors our signals. We've been unable to contact our man via satellite, of course, and we can't contact him any other way due to the, uh, highly sensitive nature of his cover. Able Team is still set to hit that fortress of The Dragon. Unless they already have, in which case they're all probably dead."

"This is hardball, and they struck out," growled Farnsworth. He turned to the president, his tone softening respectfully. "It just shows how in need we are of paring down our clandestine operations."

The Man glanced at Hal.

"Is there any indication at all of the source of this attack on the Farm, who is responsible?"

"We don't know, sir. Colonel Phoenix is pursuing that area."

"Where is Colonel Phoenix?"

"Uh, we don't know, sir," Brognola admitted.

"We're not the only ones who'd like to talk to Colonel Phoenix," said Farnsworth. "The CIA is out for his hide."

The president sighed.

"I guess I'd better hear the bloody details."

"They are bloody, sir. The Company has an all points issued to its field personnel in the area regarding Phoenix. He walked into a setup the CIA had on some Armenian hit men who showed on the scene yesterday. Phoenix apparently figured the Armenians were tied in with this Stony Man thing, or he thought they might be involved and he wanted to confirm or deny. Several people were killed including one agent. His partner, an older man named Gridell, was wounded. The Company says it would not have happened if Phoenix had kept out of their operation."

General Crawford had listened to all of this without missing a word or inflection. Now he joined the conversation.

"I've known Phoenix longer than any man in this room. I understand the man. I'm on his side one hundred percent. I, uh, actually have a personal interest in this, believe it or not."

The general briefly sketched for the others his encounter with Bolan when he brought Kelly Crawford home.

"I owe the man," the general continued. "But after what happened after he left my home, I must confess the best thing for security purposes would be for the colonel to come in immediately and cease all of this unsanctioned activity."

"Unsanctioned?" Brognola almost shouted. "Then I say we should damn well sanction it! I've known the man we call Phoenix quite awhile myself, and I know he's never killed anyone who didn't have it coming."

"I quite agree," nodded Crawford, "but that is immaterial in this case, Hal. I monitor the D.C. police. Of course they haven't put it together yet but the killer of three men in a black bar and at the scene of another homicide crosstown matches Colonel Phoenix to a
T.
"I have the interests of Stony Man and the CFB in mind, believe me. I helped create both units. Which is why I believe Phoenix must come in. You know the way the media and the eager beavers on the Hill are these days.

"They practically destroyed the effectiveness of our espionage apparatus during the seventies after Watergate to the point where it's barely been built back up to where it once was. And all of that is being jeopardized by Colonel Phoenix running all over D.C. wasting everyone he comes in contact with. If the local authorities stumble on to this, it's over. The press has the Department better wired than we do. No, I'm sorry, Hal. Phoenix must come in."

"And what about Stony Man Farm?" Hal asked the president.

The Man shook his head.

"I'm sorry, Hal. You're asking the impossible. I can't order troops in to protect an installation that doesn't exist. Neither can anyone else. That has always been the case."

Brognola was angry enough to yank out a cigar and light it. Fuck the president if he didn't like smokers and there were no ashtrays. The ashes would have to be dropped on the goddamn floor and if they wanted him to leave, he would be damn glad for the fresh air.

Stony Man Farm.

Under attack.

Mack Bolan.

Out there in the night, and if the Executioner did not obey an order from the Man there would damn well be a liquidation order issued on Phoenix by his own government.

The men of Able Team.

Lyons, Schwarz and Blancanales had already bought it, or soon would, because Stony Man could not warn them of a trap set by The Dragon.

And Hal Brognola.

Who could not help.

He had to get to Stony Man Farm as quickly as possible. He used a White House phone to call April Rose.

"April, it's Hal. I'm coming in." That was all he said before he hung up.

Able Team had trudged their way across the unforgiving Himalayan rocks for five hard days, following the directions of a source they were not sure they could trust in the Pakistani frontier settlement of Peshawar.

Now Able Team was ready to hit.

The Dragon's lair continued the straight rise of a deep gorge that widened into a craggy valley on either side of the Stony warriors. The men crouched against slablike rock at the base of the gorge several hundred feet below the castle.

It was midmorning but an earlier reconnaissance gave the three men reason to believe that this place, the wall above the gorge, was the enemy's weakest point since they expected no attack up the face of the gorge.

The enemy did not know that Carl Lyons had been an avid climber in the Sierra Nevadas. Rosario "Politician" Blancanales and Hermann "Gadgets" Schwarz, the Bolan sidekicks from Nam, had undergone intensive mountain-climbing training during the early days of the Stony Man program.

And all three men were in excellent physical condition.

Able Team's scouting trip of The Dragon's castle and terrain also convinced them of the urgency to strike
now,
daylight or no.

There had been no sign of activity in or around the castle.

It was as if The Dragon, whoever the hell he was, had been alerted or had for some other reason pulled his forces out of the area.

The ancient castle had originally been owned by some long-forgotten warlord. His legacy had found use today at the hands of someone called The Dragon, who trafficked in mass death and destruction for blood money.

The Dragon had to be taken out. The action was authorized by Stony Man.

Able Team must penetrate the castle, but they had to confirm that the enemy had fled. If they had pulled out, Able Team would scramble damn fast to pick up any trail The Dragon might have left.

Each team member was armed with a shoulder-holstered MAC-10 submachine gun and had an M-16 strapped across his back. They were each equipped with climbing picks, ropes and accessories that they unpacked.

"Wonder why you couldn't reach the contact in New Delhi on that radio," Lyons whispered with a nod to the shortwave set Schwarz was carrying.

"Something is going down," said Gadgets. "Our contact has the jitters.''

"He'd answer if Stony Man had any messages for us," said Blancanales.

"What an optimist," grunted Lyons. "All right, men. Let's do it and do it right."

Mack Bolan's Able Team broke off all conversation.

They commenced climbing the face of the gorge.

Not knowing what they would find.

Grimaldi brought the Hughes chopper through the low cloud cover. The clouds would mute sounds of the helicopter's approach.

Bolan and Grimaldi had donned infrared Nite-finder eye shields.

In a night action, the Executioner always tried to think like the enemy.

What was the only conceivably vulnerable point on the Farm, near the perimeter?

"Come in low over the airfield from the north," Bolan instructed the pilot.

Grimaldi tugged the stick to bring the copter in at a low banking approach.

The night suddenly boomed.

The sky lit up briefly as a blast erupted below.

As Grimaldi sailed in, Bolan heard the crackle of automatic-weapons fire and claps from two more HEs.

The chopper emerged from the clouds. Grimaldi piloted them in low enough for the Nitefinders to reveal that the assault had just begun.

The airfield shimmered in an eerie golden glow from the flaming pile of junk that had moments earlier been a helicopter on the runway.

The firelight inadvertently cast flickering illumination on two squads of commandos Bolan could see advancing on the hangars in a wedgelike formation. Two of the commandos were in the process of reloading portable grenade launchers. The six infiltrators charged across the clearing separating the tree line from the hangars.

The illumination was enough for a dozen security troops, waiting behind the hangars, to more clearly see the infiltrators and open up with M-16s.

Bolan made out two members of Phoenix Force, Keio Ohara and Gary Manning, flanking off to either side of the Farm security forces, opening fire with their automatic weapons to catch the commando infiltrators from two new angles of fire.

The commando squads hastily fanned away from each other as the barrage cut down the two point-men.

One of the invaders triggered his grenade launcher.

The side of one hangar disintegrated into a sheet of flame as bodies of soldiers rained to the ground.

Ohara and Manning directed fierce streams of automatic fire at the source of the HE. Another commando spun every which way at once as his head and guts exploded.

The three surviving infiltrators fell back to regroup.

The Hughes chopper zipped overhead with Bolan bracing himself in the open door of the bubble front.

The Executioner unleashed a rain of death from the M-16 Grimaldi always kept in the chopper.

Two of the darting commandos kept on moving, even after the stream of 5.56mm fire decapitated them, sending chunks of their skulls and brains splashing into the air ahead of them.

The third commando had time to turn and look up at the Hughes zooming by, twenty feet above his head. He had time to start tracking the Uzi upward.

But he had time to do nothing else. The downdraft from the rotors made standing unsteady.

Bolan fired another burst from the M-16, and the guy was poleaxed backward off his feet with a shocked expression and no chest.

The troops around the hangars held their fire as the Hughes climbed and pulled away.

"Swing us around the southwest perimeter and back along the eastern side," Bolan instructed the ace pilot.

Grimaldi did that. It took all of thirty seconds for the sweep, for Bolan to analyze Al Miller's strategy.

The infiltrators on the ground simply froze in place amid the shadowy shapes of trees, shrubs and changes in the terrain as the Hughes skimmed by overhead. They had no way of knowing the chopper's occupants were using infrared equipment and could clearly spot every one of them.

The strategy was clear. Miller was operating with three teams on this assault. One team hit the airfield. The other two waited until the airfield alert drew additional security troops. Then Miller's other teams would move in.

Bolan saw sporadic exchanges of fire between commandos and security patrols who attempted to intercept them. But it was too damn dark down there. Bolan saw one terrorist go down. He saw two Farm troopers spin away to the ground under hails of enemy fire.

When the chopper had made a complete circle, Bolan got Stony on the shortwave.

"Striker to Stony Man."

April's voice. "Stony Man. Go ahead, Striker."

"I'm coming in from the outside," said Bolan. "Five infiltrators moving in on the main building from the southwest. They're meeting some resistance. Get them reinforced."

"I'll send Katz and McCarter. Anything else?"

"Eight more moving in from the east. Have Wade send down anyone he can spare from the front gate. I'm moving in on the eight. Over and out."

Bolan felt good hearing April's voice. What a woman.

Grimaldi did not need telling. He swung the chopper in low behind the eight figures advancing from the east.

The commandos were a thousand meters from the main house when they were engaged in a firefight with security troops.

The predawn night of Stony Man Farm crackled with sounds of armed combat, men grunting terse exchanges, the cacophony of battle echoing back from the low cloud ceiling heavy with a rain that would not come.

Shadows darted between shadows.

Flashes of gunfire lanced the thick black air.

As Grimaldi zoomed in, Bolan saw one of the commandos nailed to a tree by a blast of M-16 automatic fire from one of the Stony Man security men.

There was no sign of Wade.

Bolan was back in the doorway of the chopper when the Hughes raced over two wedge-shape squads of commandos and two other men lagging somewhat behind.

The straggling pair would be Miller and his second-in-command.

Miller was the next link in the chain. He had to be taken alive.

Bolan opened fire with his M-16 at the two forward squads. He saw four of the men caught in a withering hail of fire. The other two, and Miller and his man, scattered. Bolan lost sight of Miller behind a clump of trees as the chopper started to climb away.

One of the surviving commandos swung around his grenade launcher, aimed at the receding chopper and triggered.

The chopper rocked and spun as the night erupted for Bolan in a thunderclap of brilliance and spinning sensation.

The chopper was hit!

Grimaldi had been cruising low enough so that Bolan's fall to the meadow would jolt every bone in his body, but not enough to kill him.

Bolan came out of a tumbling roll in time to see the chopper skid to a stop in the clearing several feet away. Grimaldi was able to land the damaged aircraft, but he did not emerge from the disabled Hughes.

Bolan had lost the M-16 somewhere during his fall.

Though he still wore the Nitefinder goggles he did not take time to look for the rifle.

He unleathered his .44 AutoMag and raced toward the chopper while keeping a constant lookout for any movement coming at him. There was none. The Hughes had sustained a hit to its rear end, which was now in flames.

The fuel tank could go at any moment.

Bolan reached the bubble front and found Grimaldi slumped forward against his shoulder-strap harness. The pilot wore a nasty bruise on his temple.

Bolan unhooked the man who had saved the Executioner's hide on so many missions. Jack was breathing.

Bolan kept Big Thunder in his right fist, fanning the night as he hefted the Stony flyboy over his shoulder and jogged away from the fiery wreck.

He went twenty paces when the Nitefinders caught a figure to his left. It was the bastard who'd brought down the chopper. The guy was swinging an Uzi around in Bolan's direction, not particularly careful to stand behind cover because he didn't know Bolan could see him.

Bolan did not slacken his pace as he brought up Big Thunder and triggered a .44 Magnum round that ruptured the guy's head into a reddish mist in the infrared goggles.

Behind them, the Hughes exploded as the fire touched the fuel. A hot invisible wall lifted Bolan and his human cargo off the ground then slammed them back down.

April Rose emerged from the "farmhouse" command post in time to catch Katz and McCarter. She relayed to them Bolan's report of the number and position of infiltrators moving in from the southwestern corner of the Farm.

"Wade's chaps need backup," McCarter grunted, snicking his M-16 into its automatic mode.

"Let's give it to them," growled Katzenelenbogen.

The two Phoenix members hustled off into the night.

April gripped her pistol. She had no intention of returning to the safety of the Stony Man communications room. The farmhouse was adequately guarded.

She turned and jogged back to the grounds on the other side of the house where Phoenix Force member Rafael Encizo was covering Aaron Kurtzman and his men in their final repairs of the sabotaged satellite unit.

The rattle of gunfire and an exploding HE broke the darkness.

She advanced on the tight circle of men and equipment several meters behind the farm building.

April sensed movement to her right.

Crouching, she whirled and fired the Magnum in a two-handed grip. She clearly saw the figure of a commando and heard the sound of a bullet slapping open flesh and bone, and a grunt of expelled breath and the rustle of deadweight tripping backward to the ground.

They were getting close. This one must have circled around from the eastern squads engaged by Bolan and Grimaldi!

April Rose continued cautiously toward Kurtzman, Encizo and the others to see what she could do.

McCarter and Katzenelenbogen came upon heavy fire when they were about one thousand meters from the house.

They found three of Captain Wade's security personnel pinned down and exchanging fire with the enemy across a clearing of dogwood. One security man was sprawled in a lifeless clump where he fell, a dark pool of blood around his head.

"Colonel Phoenix got one of them, sir," a lieutenant reported to Katz. "I think two of them split off to circle around us or the house. That leaves three across that meadow, and we're too damn pinned down to budge or do anything but hold them up."

Katz plucked a grenade from his utility belt.

"The pot needs stirring," he told the soldier who was not outfitted with grenades.

"Give it to 'em, mate," growled McCarter.

The Briton had pitched himself onto his belly alongside the soldiers and was returning fire at the two blasting commandos across the clearing.

Katz pulled out the pin with his teeth. He flung the explosive with his prosthetic right hand. The grenade sailed true. The Phoenix team members and soldiers ducked, covering their eyes.

Ten seconds after the pin was pulled, the HE ruptured the night in a dazzling flash of fire, smoke and roar that flung the shredded remains of two commandos high into the air like the remnants of rag dolls chewed up and discarded by a playful pup.

One commando emerged from behind a rise in the terrain and opened fire with his Uzi. Two of the Stony Man soldiers grunted and were flung back, the tops of their heads blown away.

McCarter, Katz and the lieutenant opened fire simultaneously.

The commando burst apart under the sheet of automatic M-16 fire as if drawn and quartered.

Bolan set down Grimaldi's unconscious form at the base of a towering oak. Jack was still out of it, but he was wearing a .45 bolstered cross-draw at his left hip. He would be okay once he came to. Until then, this appeared to be a safe spot for the stricken pilot.

As Grimaldi had been setting down the Hughes, the rattle of gunfire in the night seemed to Bolan to have closed in toward the main house of the installation.

Guided by his infrared eye shield, Bolan started off through the night in the direction of the farmhouse, across another rolling and dipping ten acres.

He had to find Miller.

Alive.

Who had ordered this attack?

Bolan intended to find out from the commando merc boss.

One way or another.

The Executioner traveled soundlessly for about twenty meters when his peripheral infrared vision caught sight of an Uzi-toting commando who thought he had enough cover behind a tree.

Bolan fired. The .44 headbuster tore through skull-bone and brains and snuffed another existence. The dead commando was kicked back from behind his tree by the impact of the slug. He slammed into another tree behind him. Then he pitched forward to the earth and did not move. The Executioner moved on.

Al Miller could tell his men were being blasted apart by the way the gunfire in the distance, punctuated by a grenade blast now and then, died off to nothing. The farmhouse and the crew around the outbuilding where the satellite repairs were taking place had not yet been attacked. That meant trouble.

The commando leader and Kagor crouched on a knoll northwest of the farmhouse and the cluster of people.

Miller observed the repair crew — a big bear of a man, a Latin American and some soldiers standing guard — and debated the best way for him and Kagor to hit them. Then they could pull out to the west and would have a good shot at getting away even if the hit teams were in tatters.

After the helicopter had been downed — at least Miller now had a good idea where John Phoenix was! — Miller and Kagor had circled around to the north, cutting over short of the Stony Man airstrip and carefully moving west until they reached the knoll.

Miller cursed his bad luck. But he had been in hot-spots such as this one and walked away.

Well, maybe not
this
hot, he thought. Not if Phoenix was still prowling around out there in the night.

Had Phoenix been killed when the chopper crashed?

Miller had a hunch the big man was damn near indestructible!

Kagor, crouched next to Miller, motioned with the snout of his Uzi at the men around the outbuilding.

"What the hell are we waiting for?" he demanded in a whisper. "Looks like we're alone on this one, Top."

"We could still have some backup. Some of the boys could've slipped through. Okay, let's hit this bunch. Be careful, K. Careful for that goddamn Phoenix."

"Phoenix?" snickered Kagor. "He was kil — "

Kagor was interrupted by a stutter of Uzi fire across the clearing from where Miller and he lay watching.