Triplecross. Don Pendleton

readily available. What would justify so much hardware? Assuming the shooters believed Able Team represented the federal government, the guards had been awfully quick to shoot down agents whose deaths could bring a world of trouble down onto the mine.

      Not that Lyons intended to die here today.

      They reached a split in the crawl space where two prefabricated sections were joined. The connection formed a T-shape that led left and right. If Lyons’s bearings were correct, they were headed to the opposite end of the building, with the hub behind them. That put the left turn north and the right turn south. He took the left and glanced back over his shoulder to make sure his men were following.

      “Gadgets!” he called.

      Schwarz came up alongside him with Blancanales trailing. As they crawled through the ceiling, the footing beneath them became more firm. Lyons looked down and realized the drop ceiling frame had given way to plywood. The terminus of the wing they were navigating had been reinforced. There was no immediate exit.

      “Ironman?” Schwarz asked.

      “In a minute,” Lyons answered. He withdrew the folding combat dagger from the pocket of his jacket and snapped it open. “Dig!”

      “Should have made that left turn at Albuquerque,” Schwarz muttered. He snapped open his own blade while Blancanales did likewise. All three men began stabbing at the plywood, taking large chunks out of the wood. Soon they had created a hole large enough for the three of them to slip through, although Lyons’s broad shoulders would be a tight fit.

      “Down?”

      “Not until they get closer,” Lyons answered. “Did you text the Farm?”

      “You thought of that, too?” Schwarz asked, grinning. More seriously he said, “Yes. They’re relaying our request for air support to Jack.”

      “Then we just have to try not to get dead until the air cavalry arrives,” Lyons said.

      Rays of light from the fixtures below punched through the darkness of their space just short of the exit they’d created. The three men of Able Team rolled aside, pressing themselves against the sides of the upper walls. Schwarz groaned as Lyons’s bulk practically crushed him against the vertical boards of the trailer.

      “Thanks, Ironman,” he gasped. “I didn’t know you cared enough to shield me from bullets.”

      “Shaddap, Gadgets,” Lyons said. “And hand me a flashbang.”

      Schwarz handed over the grenade. Lyons pulled the pin, released the spoon and dropped the weapon through the hole, making sure to put some spin on it to get it rolling toward the enemy. All three Able Team members closed their eyes, covered their ears and opened their mouths to equalize pressure.

      The vibration of the powerful flash-bang grenade shook the plywood beneath them and set Lyons’s ears to ringing. The explosion was Able Team’s cue to act. They dropped down to floor level, Lyons first, his two teammates following.

      Several uniformed guards struggled to bring their weapons up. At least one man’s ears were bleeding. All were squinting hard, trying to see through the blinding flashes that had been left in their vision. Blancanales brought his M-4 to his shoulder and snapped off two rounds into the head of each one. He moved like a machine, firing and swiveling, until all the hostiles were down.

      “Let’s take this party outside,” Lyons said. He turned, knelt and emptied the drum of his USAS-12, dropped it, reloaded and repeated the process. The ringing in his ears was worse now, but not so bad that it would stop him from fighting. He threw kick after powerful kick at the ravaged wall until it gave way, creating a hole the men of Able Team could simply walk through.

      Lyons’s boots hit the arid soil outside.

      Behind the modular headquarters building was a mine structure of some kind. Enclosed shafts of wood radiated from the configuration. Lyons assumed there were conveyors inside. He knew little about the actual mechanics of a beryllium mining operation and, insofar as none of those specifics interfered with his mission, he didn’t care. But the shafts above were shifting now and he could hear footsteps on the wood.

      “They’re on the roof line!” Lyons called. “They’re using those conveyors!”

      Able Team scrambled to position themselves as much directly below the enclosed shafts above as they could. Gunfire began to rain down on them from the shooters on the roof. Lyons cursed under his breath. That was probably how they’d gotten into the drop ceiling in the first place. The firebomb entrance had driven the security forces to some roof access and they’d circled back around under cover of the building’s false ceiling.

      All of that added up to something not on the level. Ignoring the fact that these guys were armed to screw all and completely okay with murdering a quantity of unknown law-enforcement agents, there was no way the sheer volume of security here was part of any legitimate operation. Lyons didn’t know how valuable beryllium was on the open market, but he had to assume you didn’t need a private army to protect it from all comers.

      So what was going on here?

      They were just scratching the surface of this mission and he didn’t like where they were going. He didn’t like it one bit.

      It was time to take it to the bad guys. “Pol,” he said, “give me a rifle grenade into the center of the nearest walkway. My eleven o’clock.”

      Schwarz reached into the duffel, found the rocket-shaped weapon and tossed it to Blancanales, who affixed the STANAG Type 22 mm rifle grenade to the flash-hider of his M-4. Then he brought the weapon up, aimed and pulled the trigger.

      The grenade exploded on impact, shredding the wooden slats of the covered walkway, sending debris and dead men falling from the sky. Lyons barely moved out of the way fast enough. A corpse hit the dirt only feet from his previous position.

      Renewed fire began from the remainder of the roof line. Lyons signaled his partners to follow him and then took up position behind a support leg that was nothing so much as a stacked wood-and-reinforced-concrete column. The column was just what the doctor ordered when it came to cover and concealment. The angle, for the roof gunners, was a poor one, while the concrete and wood absorbed bullets nicely.

      “Cozy,” Blancanales said as the three men put their backs to the column. Gunfire ate away at the opposite side, but it was much wilder now, less focused and directed. There were shouts of outrage mixed in, too, which would be expected from any group of men, even paid mercenaries, who had lost so many comrades in so short a time.

      “I swear that’s Chinese,” Blancanales said.

      “There’s English mixed in, too,” Schwarz said. “One of those voices is as Southern as Southern gets. He sounds like an angry version of that big rooster from the cartoons.”

      “I say, I say,” Blancanales said. “You-all are gonna pay for shootin’ my friends.”

      “Yeah,” Schwarz said. “Just like that.”

      “There are times when I hate both of you,” Lyons said.

      “We know,” Schwarz said. “It’s part of your charm.”

      The next voice they heard, however, was amplified by an electric bullhorn.

      “You down there,” the bullhorn’s operator shouted. “Surrender and you will not be harmed.”

      “Oh, that’s rich,” Lyons said. “I guess they top out with warning shots around three or four thousand.”

      “Some people hold on to resentment,” Schwarz said.

      “So help me, if you’re quoting movies at me again,” Lyons said.

      “No,” Schwarz said, managing to look unconvincing. “I really cherish these firefight moments we have.”

      “Hate,” Lyons said. “Seething, white-hot hate.”

      “You don’t mean