Terror Descending. Don Pendleton

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      “You can say that again, brother,” Rosario “The Politician” Blancanales muttered, brushing back his wavy crop of salt-and-pepper hair. Built along a more stocky frame, Blancanales had been a Black beret before joining the Stony Man team, and although an expert in psychological warfare, he radiated physical strength the way a furnace did heat.

      Schwarz glanced forward. “Carl, how’s Bob doing?”

      “He’s dead,” Lyons said, reaching over to shake the human-size mannequin. At the touch, more red fluid gushed from the wound in its head, and a few more plastic teeth sprayed forward to bounce off the dashboard, sounding like rattling dice.

      “Damn. Don’t think I can fix him this time,” Schwarz said with a frown. “And still make him appear human.”

      “Fair enough. He’s ready for permanent retirement,” Blancanales agreed, placing his Colt 1911 on the seat. “Let him rest in peace.”

      “Rest in pieces, you mean,” Schwarz said, chuckling as he reached under the seat to extract a briefcase.

      In the front seat, Lyons merely grunted at the feeble joke as he pulled the Atchisson shotgun from the stiff fingers of the mannequin and started wiping the weapon down with a damp cloth to remove the sticky theatrical blood. Personally, Lyons was glad the charade had come off without a hitch. Time was short, and with no other place to start an investigation, this desperate plan was their only way to try to find the Airwolves, and their pretend streetfight could have gone wrong in a hundred different ways. Thankfully there had been no real accidents. The cop who had died in the police car chasing them had only been the sister of Bob, Dyin’ Donna, operated by Schwarz by remote control.

      In a muted rumble, the big diesel engine of the Mack truck lumbered into life, revving a few times to build power before smoothly moving forward.

      Now that the team was in motion once more, Schwarz opened the briefcase and tucked the partially loaded Beretta into the soft gray foam, followed by the Colt. Then the man extracted a duplicate pair of weapons, only these were adorned with tiny splotches of yellow paint to mark them as real weapons. Passing the Colt to Blancanales, Schwarz briefly inspected the Beretta before slipping in a magazine of live ammunition.

      Rubbing off the yellow paint, Blancanales did the same to his Colt. Long ago, the team had learned that using blanks in their weapons to simulate a firefight would not fool professionals. The guns looked the same and sounded the same, but the blanks shot out a feeble spray of sparks from the end of the muzzle instead of a hot lance of flame the way a live round did. That was the kind of mistake that could easily cost lives. So for these kinds of maneuvers, the Stony Man operatives used theatrical weapons acquired from a Hollywood production company.

      The safe weapons were identical to real guns, but the interior of the barrel was throttled down to only a slim passage so that the quarter-charge of powder in the cartridges sent off a very realistic-looking muzzle flash. There was even enough of a kick to operate the complex loading mechanism and cycle in the next round. Which was how a studio had its pampered movie stars dramatically fire off machine guns in a film without them looking foolish, or worse, accidentally killing somebody. Blanks sent off wads of cardboard, supposedly harmless, but under the right conditions, they could break bones, and occasionally the cheap brass in the cartridges shattered, sending out a deadly spray of razor-sharp metal that killed every bit as easily as hot lead.

      With a jounce, the truck exited the parking garage and started along High Street, heading northward. The police cars howled in the distance, moving east along Main Street.

      “Mighty nice of the local cops to help us out on this,” Schwarz said, threading a sound suppressor onto the barrel of his Beretta before holstering the weapon.

      “Anything to help Homeland Security,” Lyons replied, inspecting the Atchisson for last vestiges of the fake blood. When satisfied, he eased in a drum of 12-gauge cartridges and clicked on the safety. “Besides, they hate Delacort with a passion that can only be measured in kilotons.”

      “The enemy of my enemy, eh?” Blancanales asked, tucking the Colt into a shoulder holster. “Come on, let’s get out of this filthy car and get dressed. I’m covered with fake brains.”

      Grinning wickedly, Schwarz opened his mouth to speak.

      “Not a fucking word, Gadgets,” Blancanales warned sternly.

      The man feigned shock. “Who, me?”

      Exiting the battered SUV, the team retrieved duffel bags from restraining straps on the walls of the truck and pulled out designer suits, expensive Italian shoes, Rolex watches and fat plastic containers of moist towellettes. Stripping to the skin, the men washed off the fake blood and began to get dressed again, starting with imported silk shorts. They needed to appear rich, and there was no telling how detailed a search Delacort might have his bodyguards perform.

      “So, who are we this time?” Schwarz asked, splashing on some expensive French cologne.

      “We’re mercenaries called Red Five,” Lyons replied, slipping on a designer shirt. “We’re a radical splinter group of the Aryan Nation.”

      Pulling up his pants, the man stopped. “We’re stinking Nazis?”

      “Aryans,” Blancanales corrected. “Not Nazis.”

      “The difference being…?”

      “I’ll get back to you on that.”

      “Swell,” Schwarz muttered, buckling his belt.

      “How long before we contact Delacort?” Schwarz asked.

      “This evening,” Lyons replied, sliding on a pair of sunglasses. “Any sooner and he might become suspicious. We get only one chance at this, so we have to play it low and slow.”

      “And if he doesn’t know anything about the Airwolves’ military ordnance?” Blancanales asked, sliding a gold signet ring onto his hand. Clenching his fist, the ring blossomed into a flower of razor blades. Easing his hand, the ring snapped shut, returning to the appearance of mere jewelry.

      “Then we convince him to find out,” Lyons said coldly.

       CHAPTER THREE

       Quintana Roo, Mexico

      Swiftly, the massive C-130 Hercules airplane glided through the clear sky like a winged mountain. David McCarter had turned off the huge engines as the coastline of Mexico came into sight, and was now dead-sticking it, flying the colossal warplane with his hands on the yoke, directed by instinct and years of training.

      Strapped into the copilot’s seat, a tall, lean man in a military jumpsuit was using both hands to operate a military image enhancer. More than merely magnifying a view of the ground below, the device also scanned in the ultraviolet and infrared spectrum. Boasting window-in-window capability, the display screen showed a real-time view of the ground below, plus a series of static shots, the view constantly shifting as the cameras focused briefly on anything hot enough to register as a potential threat.

      Thomas Jackson Hawkins had been raised in Texas, and was outlandishly proud of the fact. A genial man who smiled a lot, Hawkins spoke slowly, but moved with lightning-fast reflexes when it was time to kill. A former member of the elite Delta Force, Hawkins was trained in quiet kill techniques, but much preferred a thunder and lightning blitzkrieg.

      “Okay, thermals read clean again. Aside from a campfire some kids built, there’s nothing down there but a coyote. No sign of any motorized traffic or other campfires.”

      “Good to know,” David McCarter stated, putting his full attention on the stygian darkness ahead.

      The former SAS commando knew that the bustling city of Cancun was only a few miles to the east, but the electric glow of the famous vacation spot was completely swallowed by the sheer distance, along with the endlessly shifting mountains of rolling sand dunes. The Phoenix Force leader felt like he was flying with the windows painted back, the night was so