Extreme Instinct. Don Pendleton

Five ballistic cloth was a foot soldier’s very best friend. Tomorrow his bruises would hurt like hell, but right now his job was to keep low, move fast and stay alive.

      With the stink of propellant and old blood in his nostrils, Lyons spit the foul taste from his mouth, and eased in his last ammo drum from the Atchisson. After this, he would be down to the Colt Python. Even worse, these last cartridges were all fléchette rounds, stainless-steel razor blades would mince a grown man into hamburger in a split second. Not exactly what he would have chosen to capture an opponent. However, that gave him pause. Fair enough.

      Drawing the massive handcannon, Lyons dashed sideways, triggering both weapons. The sniper attempted to aim the Barrett just ahead of the running man, and make him run into the deadly blast, but Lyons constantly changed direction until he reached the temporary safety of a headstone, only to roll into the shallow runoff from the waterfall. Half a heartbeat later, the headstone detonated like a bomb.

      Thumbing in a fat HE shell, Schwarz launched it high into the sky and it hit on the far side of the hill, the roiling blast achieving zero results.

      Taking a moment to catch his breath, Blancanales spun around the granite slab to fire his own grenade launcher. The 40 mm stun bag disappeared into the trees yielding no effect. But a large swatch of leaves was gone, leaving a deadly gap in the protective cover of the lush greenery.

      Understanding what the man was doing, the other Stony Man operatives now attempted to do the same, their stun bags ripping away the leafy boughs until something metallic was seen nestled amid the thinning foliage.

      Thumbing in a loose cartridge, Lyons scowled at the sight. Son of a bitch, that was an Auto-Sentry! With the knowledge that there was no living opponent in the tree, he unleashed the full might of the Atchisson. Leaves exploded into the air in a whirlwind of destruction, and something man-size fell to the ruins of the fountain.

      Giving the fallen machine a wide berth, the Stony Man operatives warily checked for any other Auto-Sentries in the trees and bushes on the hillock. When satisfied that they were alone, the men approached the Sentry. They scowled in open disapproval at the sophisticated device. The video camera was still attempting to aim the lethal Barrett toward them, a LAW rocket launcher clicking futilely. The antenna was gone, so the deadly machine was merely attempting to perform the last command it had received.

      “Whoever installed this here was watching through the camera until activating the jammer,” Schwarz said, swinging around his laptop. “They waited until those poor folks back there were in the proper position, and then killed each one, making sure the bodies fell behind cover to not warn anybody pulling into the parking lot.”

      “Ruthless,” Blancanales muttered in open disgust.

      “Monstrous,” Lyons amended, resting the hot barrel of the Atchisson on a broad shoulder. “They were watching the cemetery through that video camera, until we arrived. Then they put the Sentry on automatic, and activated the radio jammers.”

      “And burned out the transponder,” Schwarz added glumly, lifting a piece of melted electronics. “There’s no way we can track them through this.”

      “Wait a second. Those are blocks of C-4 inside the Sentry,” Blancanales said with a frown. “If this thing was designed to explode and destroy any possible evidence if somebody captured it, then why didn’t it?” Slowly he smiled. “Oh, right.”

      “Exactly,” Schwarz agreed, patting the laptop. “They were jamming us, but we were also jamming them.”

      Lyons almost smiled. “You’re a devious man, Gadgets.”

      Blancanales snorted. “Never saw an Auto-Sentry equipped with multiple weapon systems before. That also something new, Gadgets?”

      Attaching some wires to an exposed circuit board, the man shrugged. “Nothing I ever heard about. Must be a modification they did. Clever idea, though.”

      “Yeah, clever as hell,” Blancanales muttered, glancing back at the dead people sprawled in the ruined shrubbery. From this angle, he could see that the team had missed several corpses scattered around the hillock.

      Typing some commands into the laptop, Schwarz grinned in satisfaction. Reaching past the twitching Barrett, the man yanked out some wiring, and the Sentry went dark and still. Instantly, the jamming field went off the air.

      “Sky King to Rock Hounds. ETA, four minutes.” Grimaldi’s voice blared in their earbuds. “Repeat, ETA three minutes.”

      “Sky King, this is Hollywood,” Lyons said quickly into his throat mike. “The party is over. Return to base. We’ll—” He glanced down at the van in the gravel parking lot. The chassis was dented, but still serviceable. Even the Lexan plastic windows were intact. However, all four of the tires were flat. “We’ll grab a cab, and be there soon.”

      “What happened to your roller skate?”

      Lyons grimaced. “Somebody brought a firecracker to the party.”

      “Ah, understood, Hollywood,” Grimaldi continued smoothly. “I’ll have Bear call off the local cops, and send a couple of blacksuits to recover what’s left of the van.”

      “Much appreciated,” Lyons said, listening to the howl of sirens growing steadily louder.

      “All a part of the service, Hollywood.” Grimaldi chuckled. “This is Sky King, returning to blacktop. See you soon. Out.”

      “Over and out,” Lyons said, brushing back his blond hair.

      The three men waited expectantly for a few minutes until the police sirens abruptly stopped. In the ringing silence, the decimation of the cemetery somehow seemed even worse than before.

      Loosening the clips and wires, Schwarz returned the laptop to his shoulder bag, then began ripping out the circuit boards from the Sentry.

      “All right, anybody feel like checking the grave of the Russian janitor?” Lyons asked, clicking the safety on the Atchisson.

      “I’ll do it,” Blancanales snorted, swinging up the M-16 assault rifle. Sweeping the rows of headstones, he found a fresh mound of dirt, checked the name on the headstone and then fired a single round. Instantly the grave exploded, blowing a geyser of dirt and rocks toward the clouds.

      “Yeah, thought so,” the man muttered, lowering the assault rifle. “You would have to be a fool to booby trap an entire cemetery, but not the main reason we came here.”

      “And whatever else these people are, they’re not fools,” Lyons agreed dourly, bending to recover one of the empty 25 mm rounds for the big Barrett.

      Inspecting the bottom, the man was not surprised to see there was no lot number on the brass. There was no way to trace the ammunition. The Stony Man team used something similar in their weapons, as did the CIA, Navy SEALs, Homeland Security, British MI-5, the Mossad, a lot of folks who wanted to keep their involvement in clandestine operations out of the public scrutiny.

      “Then again, maybe they are,” Schwarz muttered in a measured tone, extracting a tiny microprocessor from the morass of wiring and holding it triumphantly to the noon sunlight.

      FIVE MILES AWAY in nearby Boca Raton, an armed man on the roof of the tallest downtown building released the telescope. When the transponder signal of the Auto-Sentry stopped broadcasting, that meant the jammer was in operation, which meant the balloon had gone up at the Bonaventure Cemetery. However, he was safe. No matter what sort of advanced military opticals the invaders might have with them, there was no way for anybody to find him this far away without astronomical-grade equipment, the kind that could not be transported without a hundred men and a fleet of trucks.

      Pulling a PDA from his belt, the man thumbed in a coded text message, then sent it out over the Internet as a microsecond T-burst. The message was simple and concise. “Package delivered, goods en route.”

      Tucking away the device, the man wiped his prints off the big telescope and headed for the elevator. Time to go home. Briefly, the mercenary wondered