War Tides. Don Pendleton

at face value. If Price and Brognola were convinced that the IUA was extremely dangerous, then that was good enough for Able Team. Lyons opened a slide-away panel that released by punching in a code on the keypad set in the face of the heavily armored weapons safe.

      “What’s your pleasure?” he asked Schwarz.

      “I’ll take the G-11.”

      A good choice indeed, Lyons noted. Manufactured by Heckler & Koch, the G-11 sported a fifty-round magazine positioned horizontally above the barrel. It chambered 4.7 x 33 mm DE11 caseless cartridges, which eliminated the need for any extraction or ejection mechanism and this minimized muzzle rise. This in turn provided a tremendous increase in first-hit probability, particularly in the hands of a marksman like Schwarz.

      Blancanales called for the Beretta SCS-70/90. This weapon only differed from the assault rifle version by sporting a folding, tubular metal butt and slightly shorter barrel. Blancanales preferred it for these features in addition to the fact it fired 5.56 x 45 mm NATO rounds at a cyclic rate of six hundred rounds per minute with a muzzle velocity exceeding 900 meters per second.

      Lyons decided a combat shotgun would not do this time, and opted for a trusted M-16 A-3/M-203 combo. He’d grown accustomed to earlier variants of this weapon while serving on the LAPD, and come to appreciate it over the years for its reliability and accuracy. Not to mention that if they were going up against some terrorist hardasses, the Able Team leader wanted some extra oomph in his arsenal, which the M-203 grenade launcher promised to provide.

      Each of the Able Team warriors also carried his preferred sidearm and plenty of extra ammo. They weren’t expecting trouble—assuming the terrorists had done what they came to do and were probably long gone—but they were damn sure ready for it.

      When they pulled up in front of the address where the vehicles had been registered, Lyons took shotgun position and looked out the window. The darkened structure loomed in the hazy afternoon light. The crumbling facade of the factory didn’t surprise Lyons in the least since he’d already convinced himself and his colleagues that the place would probably be abandoned. Neither did it surprise him to see the many broken windows, with glass strewed across the rutted parking lot. What really frosted Lyons was the audacity of the terrorists to have parked their vans out front in broad daylight. It was as if they were saying, “You moronic Americans are too stupid to track us down, so we aren’t even going to bother trying to hide our transportation.”

      Well, Able Team had a message for them.

      “Ballsy of them to just park right out front,” Blancanales said as if he could read his friend’s mind.

      “Think they’re not expecting company?” Schwarz asked.

      “No,” Lyons said. “I can’t buy that.”

      “I smell a trap,” Blancanales offered.

      “Me, too,” Schwarz said.

      “Well, we’re not going to find out sitting around out here,” Lyons said.

      Blancanales grunted and then put the van in gear and turned into the parking lot. He increased speed when he passed between the once stately chain-link gates that now dangled uselessly from their fence poles. Immediately the air came alive with autofire, and muzzle-flashes issued from the darkened interior of windows on the second floor. Most of the rounds missed but those that did hit ricocheted off the reinforced Kevlar and stamped-steel body of Able Team’s customized van—the latest in bulletproof technology being tested by Stony Man.

      Lyons jacked the charging handle of his assault rifle and said, “Let’s play ball.”

       CHAPTER THREE

      Namibia, Africa

      The road from Walvis Bay to Windhoek, national capital of Namibia, had seen its share of world history, and if the pain in David McCarter’s backside was any indication, it had seen more history than repairs in certain parts.

      Windhoek, on the other hand, sported all the conveniences of most modern cities. Not that this had been McCarter’s first visit to the region. It had taken the South-West Africa People’s Organization, aka SWAPO, twenty-two years to bring independence to this area and another two within the United Nations to convince South Africa to end its regional administration. Since 1990, the country had been governed under a democratic constitution headed by a president and national assembly. And while McCarter spoke a little Afrikaans, very little, the official language thankfully remained English.

      “Dr. Brown, let me be the first to welcome you to the Republic of Namibia,” said Dr. Justus Matombo, chief medical adviser to the national assembly.

      “It’s our pleasure, Doctor,” McCarter replied, shaking Matombo’s hand.

      Matombo wasn’t a terribly large man, although he had unusually thick forearms. The black skin of his forehead glistened only slightly with sweat in spite of the air-conditioned offices within the government building on Lossen Street in downtown Windhoek. His eyes were an unusual shade, almost slate blue, a testament to the mixed ethnicity that ran throughout the entire population. The ancestry in Namibia traced its roots to Dutch rule hundreds of years ago, so such ethnic mixes were the norm rather than the exception.

      McCarter introduced the men accompanying him as his “medical colleagues” in turn; not all were physicians like himself. The only other “doctor” among them was a tall, lanky black man with a pencil-thin mustache who specialized in hematology. Calvin James nodded in greeting as he shook Matombo’s hand. The remaining three men were “scientists” with varying specialties in different areas. “Biologist” Rafael Encizo, “nuclear radiation specialist” Thomas Jackson Hawkins and finally “geologist” Gary Manning rounded out the five-man team.

      The cover and credentials for the Phoenix Force operatives implied they worked for the World Health Organization. Matombo didn’t have a clue he faced five of the most dangerous combat veterans in the world. Dangerous to the thugs and criminals who terrorized nations and oppressed the innocent, that is. To those who could not protect themselves from the animals that preyed on the helpless, the five men of Phoenix Force were beacons of hope, justice and protection in a world filled with injustice and violence.

      “I cannot tell you,” Matombo continued, “how very grateful we are for your assistance.”

      “The details were sketchy,” McCarter said as Matombo escorted them to a meeting room. “We sort of got just a small understanding of your problem as they rushed us onto a plane. Could you elaborate more on the current situation, mate?”

      After Matombo had shown them into the room, arranged for refreshments and they were comfortably seated at a conference table, he related the story.

      “About two weeks ago, a local medical facility in the city of Lüderitz received three patients with radiation sickness. All in the same day.”

      A weighty silence fell on the group as they briefly exchanged looks that ranged from surprise to genuine concern. The gravity of Matombo’s tone got attention from every man at the table.

      “The story was written off originally as some kind of accident with a medical device, but given the compelling nature of the radiation poisoning, the medical center alerted my office,” Matombo continued.

      “What did you do?” James asked.

      “I sent a team down there immediately,” Matombo replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “The data they began to send back gave me and the entire presidential cabinet cause for concern, not to mention the medical community of specialists. Then one of the members of the team mysteriously disappeared. He hasn’t been heard from since. It was at that point I decided to recall them.”

      “Only they didn’t make the return trip,” McCarter interjected.

      That much Stony Man had alerted Phoenix Force about when they diverted their return from another mission and sent them straight to Namibia. When a CIA officer working inside the country got wind of the incident, he made notification to his handler, who in turn