Splintered Sky. Don Pendleton

been shot. Everyone else is dead. Burgundy Lake Testing Facility,” the woman gasped. “Help me.”

      Her strength gave out and her fingers loosened on the phone. She could hear the dispatcher’s voice, tinny through the tiny speaker, and she held on, saying, “I’m awake” every few seconds until she saw the flashing glare of red lights.

       CHAPTER ONE

       Ten miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border

      Hermann Schwarz watched the stars sprayed across the black night as Jack Grimaldi piloted the Hughes 500 NOTAR across the Texan sky. The inky-black background with the glittering field of pinpoints reminded the Able Team electronics genius of one of his lifelong dreams–to soar among the stars. And he had been one of the lucky few who had done just that.

      Schwarz’s other lifelong dream was more pedestrian. He wanted to help people. Though he was one-third of one of the world’s most highly experienced and blooded combat teams, the ultimate goal of Able Team wasn’t to engage in bloodshed. It was to protect the citizens of the U.S. Schwarz had been called an assassin by various enemies, but the term “assassin” implied a callous disregard for human life. Certainly, he had a measure of ruthlessness, but it was only displayed against opponents who were demonstrably hostile and violent. While he had no qualms about shooting heavily armed men in the back to end their potential to harm himself, his partners or noncombatants, Schwarz was not murderous.

      Killing was just an aspect of his job, just as much as tinkering on new electronic surveillance devices and security countermeasures. Schwarz turned from the starry night sky back to his Combat Personal Data Assistant, a compact little computer that provided the gadgeteer with a suite of powerful tools to make his work easier. He kept the illumination low on the monitor as he scanned the screen. Its powerful satellite modem, akin to the satellite phones, allowed him Internet access even without a WiFi source for miles around, even though a backup transceiver would allow him to piggyback on someone else’s modem if necessary. The CPDA was connected to Stony Man Farm, thousands of miles away in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, allowing him to be plugged into the network run by Aaron Kurtzman and the cyberwizards of his team.

      “Hey, Nerd Man.” Carl Lyons spoke up, interrupting Schwarz’s reveries. “You getting this?”

      “I am,” Rosario Blancanales announced, answering for his friend. He had a pair of light amplification binoculars scanning out the window. “To the north.”

      “Minimal profile on the terrain radar,” Lyons answered. Sitting shotgun in the Little Bird helicopter, his hard blue eyes scanned the screens devoted to the Forward Looking Infrared–FLIR–and Terrain Looking Radar, both keen electronic sensors installed in a bulbous nose projecting from the front of the helicopter’s teardrop shape, lending it the appearance of a porpoise whose snout had been punched off center. “But we’ve got headlights on the FLIR.”

      “Low-light headlights,” Blancanales said. “Probably Ultra-violet or IR illumination to make it easier for them to run dark. I didn’t see the vehicles directly, but I saw the ground lit up.”

      Schwarz looked to where Blancanales was sweeping the horizon. He ran his stylus over the CPDA, popping open a window that displayed a satellite view of their immediate surroundings.

      Lyons turned in his seat and Blancanales leaned over. They all saw, through the IR imaging of a National Reconnaissance Office satellite, a cone of illuminated terrain with tiny stars of light one after another.

      “IR beacons so they can follow each other,” Lyons suggested.

      “This way only one vehicle has to have its illuminators on, but the others can follow,” Schwarz said. “We got lucky. If you hadn’t seen the ground lit up by IR lights and given Bear a heading, we’d have completely missed them.”

      Schwarz’s mind continued to race, analyzing the situation. This night, Able Team was in the air, racing to intercept a smuggling operation that the Farm had heard whispers about. Someone had been monitoring Border Patrol schedules, tailing Jeeps as if looking for holes. This was something more than just a coyote operation snooping for a gap in the defenses. The human smugglers bringing illegals across the border didn’t need to track the USBP’s agents and vehicles, and wouldn’t even dream of tickling their computer system with hacker fingers in cyberspace.

      Whatever this operation was about, it wasn’t smuggling illegal immigrants. Able Team had come into conflict at the border several times before, and it could have been anything from a large shipment of drugs to nuclear weapons.

      Schwarz’s headset warbled with a beep from his communicator. He keyed the com unit, hearing Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman’s voice in his earphone. He immediately switched it so everyone in the helicopter could hear their support back at the Farm.

      “We’ve got a call. Someone hit Burgundy Lake Testing Facility,” the Stony Man cyberwizard said. “Nine-one-one call center got the news five minutes ago. A lone survivor says that the raiders just bugged out.”

      “We believe we have their convoy in our sights,” Lyons announced. “And you already know Gadgets has them highlighted on satellite imagery.”

      “Affirmative,” Kurtzman returned. “Still creepy how that little box of his keeps him plugged into our network.”

      Schwarz smirked. “You know me, I’m five bucks and a nuclear weapon short of controlling the world.”

      “Which is why I’ll never pay you back anything you lend me,” Blancanales quipped. “Burgundy Lake, that’s not far from the border, relatively speaking. This has got to be a part of what drew our attention down here.”

      “What are they testing there?” Lyons inquired.

      Schwarz tapped the CPDA screen a couple of times with his stylus. “They’re on a NASA grant. High-efficiency rocket thrusters.”

      “Give the man a cigar,” Kurtzman stated. “You’ll put us out of business with that thing, Gadgets.”

      “Nah. I’m just piggybacking on Carmen’s workstation. She pulled up the information a moment before she got it to you,” Schwarz stated.

      Kurtzman chuckled. “So you let us do all the work, and you look brilliant.”

      Lyons snorted. “It’ll take a lot of work to make Gadgets look anything close to brilliant.”

      Schwarz lifted his middle finger to inform Lyons that the Able Team leader was still number one in his book. Lyons grinned and turned to Grimaldi. “Jack, see that wash down there? It’s the only path through these foothills that’ll give the convoy a quick route south. Land us right there. We’ll set up an ambush.”

      “Good spot,” Grimaldi mentioned. He grimaced with regret. “Wish this thing had some guns on it.”

      “Take off and pull back to an overwatch. We might need a quick pickup, but the convoy could have the firepower to deal with aircraft.”

      Grimaldi swung the Little Bird around, depositing Able Team at Lyons’s suggested position. It was several miles ahead of the convoy, but still in their path. The helicopter had been set up for quiet running with engine baffles and sideways projecting speakers that canceled out the racket of the rotor by interrupting the noise with the same sound, aimed back at the rotors at a perpendicular angle. When the two sound sources crossed, they nullified each other, rendering the aircraft no louder than an idling automobile.

      There was no doubt that the convoy was up to no good. A line of trucks running on “invisible” headlights and tail beacons at night were the tactics of thieves and smugglers, not of innocents. Burgundy Lake was less than twenty miles north of the border, but directly to the south there was a range of uneven hills without anything more than a goat trail wending through them to cross into Mexico. Schwarz pulled his CPDA from its pocket on his load-bearing vest, checking on the satellite view from above. Something was wrong.

      Lyons looked over his shoulder at the small but crystal-clear screen.