Cold Snap. Don Pendleton

jet, allowing him to spend time working on his tablet computer, checking stock news, paying particularly close attention to the Tokyo exchange. While the Farm’s cybernetics crew was giving a token effort toward monitoring any unusual purchases or sell-offs in relation to Japan’s economy, they were also working on trailing the money for the hired gunmen, analyzing intel on fugitives and scanning the Antarctic and Pacific oceans for signs of the marauders and their Iranian-owned, Chinese-designed, ship-killing missiles.

      Manning knew that if there was one thing the members of the Stony Man action teams were chosen for, it was for more than just their raw ability to aim a gun and fire. The members of Phoenix Force and Able Team had among their numbers experts in multiple fields. Here, though they were a tad underutilized, Manning’s business acumen would come in handy.

      He looked in parallel market listings, utilizing his data from the S&P Asia 50, which allowed him glimpses at Japan’s Topix and Nikkei 225, and the dozens of markets in Singapore, such as the FTSE group. Singapore would likely be the source of insider trading on any pan-Asian economic assault, since the FTSE had twenty markets in Southeast Asia itself, covering China as a proxy.

      Being thorough, he also glanced at Australia’s S&P indexes. There were plenty of forces in the world market that would like to see Japan take a few shots to weaken the yen, and not all of them had to do with Communist China, which had its own trinity of indexes for international trade. Capitalism, Manning found, was still a major factor on what should have been the worlds behind the Iron and Bamboo curtains. Money and resources still made the world go around, still got things done, and no amount of socialist idealism—of which the Soviet Union was hardly an exemplar—changed the balance of supply and demand.

      There was movement behind Manning and he looked into the face of the Texan joining him on this journey to Tokyo. Even Thomas Jackson Hawkins, with his staunch military background—as both a member of the 75th Rangers and the Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta—had skills far and beyond merely being a gunman. It had been a while since Phoenix Force had had an electronics expert on the team, and Hawkins was up to date on twenty-first-century communications technology, as well as being one of the finest parachutists and airborne deployment specialists in the world. Hawkins was also the youngest member of the team, the most recent addition to the five-man “foreign legion” of the Sensitive Operations Group.

      Hawkins chewed on some gum, which Manning was glad for. Inside the jet’s cabin, Hawkins’s preference for a pinch of “chaw” would have made him more than a little nauseated. Fortunately, T.J.’s training and discipline allowed him to swap out the ugly chewing tobacco for something that didn’t smell so much, nor require a cup to spit the gooey sap into.

      Gary Manning was the second oldest member of Phoenix Force, right after Rafael Encizo, but he looked as if he only had five years on Hawkins due to the fact that Manning was a fitness fanatic. Underneath Manning’s suit, tailored to make him inconspicuous and innocuous, his body was sculpted muscle from regular five-mile, early morning runs and weight-lifting sessions where he could bench press up to 515 pounds. At six feet, with close and neatly trimmed hair, Manning’s age was indistinguishable, even by friends who knew him closely.

      “You have the body of an eighteen-year-old football player and the brains of a seventy-year-old banker, hoss,” Hawkins noted, looking at the trade numbers scrolling across Manning’s tablet screen. “You have to give me an app for that.”

      Manning shrugged. “I didn’t become a millionaire by not knowing my way around the market, Hawk. And no, import-export was not a code name for drug dealing.”

      Hawkins smirked. “Never crossed my mind, Gary. Picking up any trends?”

      Manning frowned as he pored over the numbers. “Some of these economic moves are pretty damn subtle, so I have to go over months of data.”

      Hawkins nodded. “Stop all this thrilling action. My heart can’t take it.”

      “Did I mention I was a millionaire?” Manning asked. “I like going over data.”

      Hawkins shrugged. “How many hours until Tokyo?”

      “Ten,” Manning returned.

      Hawkins sighed. “I’ll get some early sleep, then check out our gear.”

      “Do what you have to,” Manning said, returning to the numbers and trends on the screen. He used his stylus to mark points that might have links to avenues of potential insider trading or hedging of bets toward the economic disruption of Japan. Attacking any of the G8 nations with intent to cause financial ruin was not merely a risky proposition, it was also potentially suicidal. Many of these manipulative plots could backfire, turning a profit into their own nosedive.

      The Soviet Union had attempted such a plot against the United States’s economy and found itself taking a bath, destroying the integrity of its own monetary value.

      Manning felt bad for Hawkins, as the Texan was a man of action. While the Canadian himself was someone who was equally adept in the rough and tumble of field operations, Manning’s talents could be used, at least in this instance. Like Hawkins, Manning’s brain was always in motion, always looking for patterns that would indicate hidden dangers, but inside the belly of a jet, there was only waiting, at least where Hawkins was concerned.

      It couldn’t have been easy, but the Texan closed his eyes and was immediately off to slumber.

      If he couldn’t keep his mind active, Manning knew he’d store energy, rest and prepare himself. They’d already been an hour on the plane and T.J. had read up on as much Japanese culture as he could endure, had enough refreshers on common Japanese phrases and been in on plenty of briefing on foreign intelligence services at work in Tokyo, their current destination.

      Manning and Hawkins were “stuck” with the job of being boots on the ground in Japan for the certitude that there would be elements of the anti-Japanese conspiracy active in that country. Manning’s business knowledge would give the two of them a head start on looking for angles and leads.

      Would it be good enough?

      Manning dismissed that thought. It had been enough before. Stony Man worked simply because the covert agency, despite its incredibly small size, utilized every asset it could assemble.

      Thinking outside the box, while being intimately aware of the makeup of said container, was one way in which the teams could intercede and defeat threatening forces.

      So far, it had worked.

      Manning didn’t intend to fail for lack of effort.

      * * *

      BARBARA PRICE WAS glad that Phoenix Force was off and away, and before the day was over, one half would be in the Ross Sea, seeking out the lethal marauders. Manning and Hawkins were on their way to Japan to seek out potential suspects working within the country. Able Team, at home, was on the hunt for those who’d staged a massacre mere hundreds of yards from the President and a contingent of diplomats.

      As it was, the international scene and local press were talking about the White House crisis and how Japanese “big business” had the nerve to murder honest Americans in the middle of its capital city. That point of view was coming from the left, looking for a “good war,” while the right buckled down on how the U.S. administration was antibusiness and was using the crisis for the sake of painting “job makers” as the criminals.

      Price wrinkled her nose. Once upon a time, there was such a thing as a news cycle, where events were reported and later analyzed to find meaning. But now, in the parade of propaganda, the truth was lost. American was pitted against American, leading the more paranoid of commentators to foresee a civil war. Such a fomentation of hostility, where one wing of philosophy saw the other as utterly evil, despite evidence of the truth, was an abomination that Stony Man sought to battle. Far too many times the teams had seen an attempt to manipulate public opinion to the point of fracturing societies, to inspire wars between nations. Such trickery was so commonplace, Price had developed an armor against leaping to unfounded accusations. She didn’t develop an opinion without conclusive facts.

      The