Shadow War. Don Pendleton

by a daily cocaine habit. The blow hurt.

      Gonzales’s head rocked back and he winced at the sudden, stinging pain. He stumbled backward, toes barely in contact with the ground, to the end of his chain and then was unceremoniously swung back toward his abuser.

      Lagos stepped in close as Gonzales stumbled forward, planting his fist in the hanging man’s midriff. Gonzales gasped and the muscles of his diaphragm spasmed painfully. He sucked in a breath, and Lagos snapped the top of his hand, extended in a flat blade, into Gonzales’s vulnerable groin.

      Agony stole Gonzales’s sight. He moaned low as the sharp pain was almost instantaneously replaced by a dull, spreading ache.

       God help me, he thought. It’s just beginning.

      

      C ARL L YONS HELD UP an arm and then sank down on one leg, resting on his ballistic armor knee pad. Behind him the other two members of Able Team, Rosario “Politician” Blancanales and Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz, copied his stance.

      Lyons let his automatic shotgun hang from the strap over his shoulder and pointed out toward the team’s twelve-o’clock position. Through a break in an acre-size lot of soggy timber, busted concrete and twisted rebar sat the low squat shape of an undamaged warehouse. Parked in front of the building, which spilled brilliant white halogen light through its cracks, were a dark, 1970s Dodge van and an H3 Hummer with a shiny black carapace.

      â€œThere they are,” Lyons said quietly. The six foot two, two-hundred-pound man turned his attention back to his target.

      Clutching a Steyr AUG bullpup-designed assault rifle, Schwarz moved into position closer to team leader Carl Lyons. Behind them Blancanales leaned in to hear their conversation as he covered the periphery with his H&K MP-5 SD-3 submachine gun.

      Blancanales put a finger to the communication piece in his ear. “We’re on-site and doing initial recon.”

      â€œCopy,” Barbara Price answered. “Our coverage of local police channels put friendlies way outside your area of operation. Over.”

      â€œRoger. Able out,” Blancanales murmured.

      â€œTwo vehicles,” Schwarz muttered, scanning the structure. “But big vehicles. Anywhere from five to ten guys. All former Zetas.”

      â€œSounds about right,” Lyons said, nodding.

      Their briefing on the last-minute search-and-rescue operation had given them little to go on other than a target—Gabriel Gonzales, CIA confidential informant—and a location gathered by triangulating the man’s cell-phone signal. As part of his payment, the CIA had provided Gonzales, a former Mexican border patrol agent turned narcotic trafficker, with a state-of-the-art cell phone. The CIA had also added the location tracer buried in the body of the lightweight device.

      As valuable as Gonzales might have been to drug-enforcement agencies, the CIA had turned a blind eye to his narcotics profiteering to concentrate on his anti-terrorism capabilities. It was a Faustian arrangement made common by the necessities of a post-9/11 world.

      Gonzales granted the U.S. intelligence community a much-needed window into the realities of the growing, solidifying world of narco-terror. Organizations such as the former Mexican special-forces group turned drug runners, the Zetas and the violent international MS13 gang had begun to overlap with the intelligence agencies of Venezuela and the heroin syndicates of Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

      Wherever there was illicit money to be made, there was an opportunity for black funds to flow into the operational coffers of terrorist organizations. It was a situation that Able Team had faced more than once.

      â€œLet’s move in closer,” Lyons said. “But first scan with your optics. If there are sentries outside, they may well have night-vision gear. We’ll exploit the range of your sniper scope.”

      â€œI see all,” Schwarz whispered as he shuffled forward.

      Schwarz raised the Steyr AUG A3 to his shoulder. The A3 was the carbine configuration of the classic bullpup assault rifle with a shortened 16-inch barrel. The standard factory-mounted sighting optics had been replaced by Stony Man armorer John “Cowboy” Kissinger with a Picatinny mounting rail upon which he placed a 1.5X-telescope containing a circle aiming reticle.

      A low, full moon hung over the scene, providing enough ambient light for the three-man special-operations team to operate without night-vision equipment.

      Schwarz flinched once as the 1.5X magnification qualities of his sniper scope suddenly presented him with vision of a huge rat running lightly along an exposed section of plumbing until it disappeared into the open mouth of an overturned toilet.

      He settled back, ignoring the pungent stench of the flood area. The humidity was stifling and the Able Team commando sweated freely under the black smears of his camouflage grease paint. He scanned the target building in vectors, his brain reducing the activity to simplified angles and precise geometric patterns.

      â€œNothing outside,” he said. “At least not from this angle…Wow, hold on.” A bright set of headlights suddenly appeared out of the ruins on the far side of the building.

      Schwarz turned his weapon toward the new threat stimulus and dampened the passive feed on his scope even further.

      â€œHoly crap,” he whispered. “It’s a McLaren F1!”

      â€œI know I’m going to be sorry I asked, but what’s a McLaren F1?” Lyons asked.

      Without preamble, and in the hushed tones of a small boy describing a cherished toy, Schwarz rattled off the car’s specks. “The F1 was the fastest production car ever made, and they only made one hundred of them. It’s got a 6.1-liter BMW S70 V12 engine, and it’ll go over 230 mph easy, without turbo or supercharges. Price tag? Well north of a cool million, my man.”

      â€œWho the hell would drop that kind of money on such a classic supercar and then drive it into this mess?” Blancanales asked.

      Schwarz shook his head as the metallic-silver supercar pulled in next to the SUVs and the bat-wing doors rose like something out of a science-fiction movie. “Anyone who’d do this is a bad, bad person. I think we’ll have to kill them all.”

      â€œSuits me,” Lyons answered. “I freakin’ hate Zetas.”

      Schwarz let out a low whistle. “Does she look like any Zetas you’ve ever seen?”

      A tiny, delicate foot in a wraparound stiletto heel emerged from the darkness of the McLaren F1 and came to rest on the damp gravel. The leg attached to the thousand-dollar shoe seemed to go on for miles. Even in the poor light and across the distance, Able Team could see it was a million-dollar leg.

      The young woman emerged from the McLaren F1. A sheer white blouse was knotted below her full breasts just above her red plaid miniskirt. Her hair was raven-wing black and hung in long, loose curls over a heart-shaped face.

      â€œOh. That’s very Britney Spears,” Schwarz breathed. “Very ‘I’m Not So Innocent.’”

      â€œPlease,” Lyons said. “It’s ‘Oops…I Did It Again’ and it’s so 2001 it makes me laugh.”

      Blancanales’s head snapped around to stare at the Able Team leader. Schwarz removed his eye from the sniper scope, his mouth hanging open in shock.

      â€œUm, you into pop princesses?” he asked.

      â€œShut up. She’s been all over the news, that’s all,” Lyons snapped.

      Schwarz turned his head toward Blancanales. He could see the stocky Latino preparing a sarcastic riposte and felt his own laughter bubbling up in his throat.