Stony Man - Triple Strike Part 7

"So far," Price said. "But I don't think that's the end of it. Aaron is working on the data Schwarz stole from their computer, and he thinks that there is still a threat to the air base. From what he and Katz have been able to figure out so far, the plan is to infiltrate a dozen or more vehicles laden with enough explosives to take out the entire air base. The first bomb is to go off next to the building housing their firefighting equipment and emergency vehicles."

"Cute touch," Brognola murmured. "Someone's been working overtime on this one."

"Then," Price continued, "they're going to take out the flight line, the pilots' ready room, the fuel storage area and the ammo dump."

"What, no bomb in the officers' club? They might as well unleash a nuke on the place and have done with it."

"I think they would if they could get their hands on one. ' '

"If this a.s.sessment is correct," Brognola said, "and for the sake of argument, I'll accept that it is, this is a major escalation of terrorist activity in an area that's been quiet for a long time. Why does Katz think that they're going to do this?"

"So the PROFOR air a.s.sets won't be able to in-tedere with their activities in Bosnia."

Brognola had worked with Katzenelenbogen for a long time and knew that the Farm's tactical adviser wasn't p.r.o.ne to flights of fancy. If he thought that he had proof of this, it had to be taken seriously. The question was how to deal with it without creating another UN/NATO mess. Simply putting the cards on the table would create a storm of unimaginable proportions.

More than likely, everyone would be so up in arms about the clandestine American operation that had uncovered this plot that they would ignore the threat itself. In the councils of the UN, placing blame al-ways took precedence over doing anything useful. Not for the first time, he wished that the U.S. would cut itself loose from the UN and let the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds screw up the rest of the world by themselves.

"What's Katz's input on how we should handle this?"

"Well," Price replied, "he thinks that we probably don't have enough lead time to run it through the PROFOR chain of command in time for anything to be done. He's suggesting that we send an anony-mous tip to NATO warning of the attack while Able Team tries to short-stop it." "There'll be h.e.l.l to pay if anything goes wrong." "There'll be h.e.l.l to pay if we don't get this shut down ASAP," she said, pointing out the obvious. "The Italians don't have a good track record at counterterrorist operations, and the UN is completely useless. If the NATO forces tighten security at the base, it may limit the damage in case we can't get it stopped."

"If this gets screwed up, it's going to cost all of us our jobs, you know that, don't you?"

She smiled. "Probably. But at least I'll know that I went down fighting terrorism, not UN bureaucrats."

He sighed. "Tell them to do it."

"I already did."

Brognola took a deep breath. "You know, Barbara, someday you're going to jump the gun on me one too many times and I'm going to fire you my-self."

She shrugged. "I've always wanted to start an Avon dealers.h.i.+p."

"Dammit, I mean it."

"When I screw up-" she locked eyes with him "mI expect to be fired. But until then, I have a job to do and I'm going to do it the best way I know how. And sometimes that means getting a jump on the opposition by acting sooner rather than later."

Brognola hated it when she was right. And that was almost all of the time. "Okay, okay," he said in surrender. "But if you keep me informed, I'll be able to cover your a.s.s if something doesn't work out."

Price smiled. "I'll keep that in mind next time, Hal."

Brognola shook his head.

Aviano Air Base, Italy "OKAY," Yakov Katzenelenbogen said, turning to Carl Lyons, "we're sanctioned to operate here, and the Farm has posted your cover stories. Now when you get busted by the Italian police, I'll be able to get your b.u.t.t out of jail sometime before the next millennium." "What's our cover this time?" Schwarz asked. "You're Justice Department, DEA, and you're tracking a gang of Middle Eastern heroin smug-glers."

'Tll bet we'll find that, too, before we're done with this," Schwarz predicted. "These guys have to get the funds to pay for this somehow."

"Just stick to busting car bombs," Katz said, "and leave the rest of it to the locals. They're going to be angry at us enough as it is."

"Only if they find out what we're doing."

"It's going to be hard to cover up a dozen more bodies and as many car bombs."

Schwarz shrugged. "Maybe they'll think that it's just the Mafia or the Red Brigades acting up again."

' 'Right."

"Okay," Lyons said, "let's figure out what we're going to do and where we're going to do it. What do you have for us?"

"I have a couple of likely targets," Katz answered. "After running the E-mail addresses on as many of the messages as we could recover, we located two places nearby that may be worth checking Out."

"Do you know what they are?"

"One of them's another garage, and the other's a warehouse."

"Let's get it, guys," Lyons said to his partners.

"It'll be dusk in a hour or two, and I want to get to work as soon as it's dark."

Bosnia "I GOT SOME TREE DAMAGE up here," Gary Manning reported from the point position. "It looks like something heavy came down through here."

"Wait," David McCarter said. "We're coming up."

The Stony Man team and Major Hammer had been on the move again since first light and had covered a lot of ground. So far, they hadn't seen any sign of the enemy patrols and had been able to move fast. There were no guarantees, though, that they would be able to do this for long. The ball was in the en-emy's court.

"I think I've found the crater," Manning called a few minutes later, "but it's empty. Someone beat us to it."

The trees surrounding the hole in the ground bore mute testimony to the fact that something had slanuned into the earth in the not too distant past. The broken treetops and slashed-off branches showed the path the stricken spy plane had taken right before it had impacted. Since it hadn't rained since the Stony Man commandos had jumped into the mountains, none of the evidence had been washed away. But beyond the damage to the trees and the impact crater in the ground, only scattered sc.r.a.ps remained.

Someone had hauled almost everything away. Considering what the TR-3 Night Owl represented, it wasn't surprising.

Now that the cold war was over and the Russians were no longer bankrupting their shaky economy try-ing to keep up with the American aeros.p.a.ce industry, the United States was the undisputed leader of the aviation world. But while there was no other nation that could afford to do the research that had gone into the design and development of an aircraft like the TR-3, some other country would be able to steal the spy plane's secrets if it could get its hands on the wreckage.

"There was a plane crash here, all right," Air Force Major John Hammer said as he picked a small sc.r.a.p of metal off the ground and turned it over in his hand. "And I think that it was mine."

"How's that?" McCarter asked.

He held out the chunk of aluminum. "See the markings? They're in English, and that sickly green paint is good old USAF zinc chromate primer."

"I thought your plane was made of some kind of plastic."

"Only on the outside. Inside, where it counts, it has as much metal as a regular fighter." "Now what?" McCarter asked him.

Hammer looked at the small metal sc.r.a.p in his hand. 'Tll be d.a.m.ned if I know. But I'd still like to find out what they've done with it so we can destroy it."

"I've got an idea." Hawkins pointed to tire tracks in the floor of the forest. "Let's follow the tracks and see if we can find out where they took it. Maybe we can recover it."

Based on the tracks that had been left, it looked like at least three or four small trucks had been used to haul the pieces of the wreckage away. On top of that, there were boot prints of well over a dozen men in the well-trampled area. A blind man should be able to find out what had happened to the wreckage.

"We might as well," Bolan said. "Hal is going to want to know what happened to it so he can tell the Air Force."

A LITTLE OVER tWO hours later, the Stony Man team and Hammer found themselves back at the ridgeline overlooking the castle. The vehicle tracks had taken them to a road that cut through a break in the cliffs. The dirt road led downhill to the plain around the fortress, the last place they wanted to go again.

"We'll never be able to distinguish the tracks on that road," Hawkins said as he scanned the road through his field gla.s.ses. "But I know that they took that d.a.m.ned thing down there."

"Did Aaron come up with any information about the geology of this area?" Manning asked.

McCarter looked at him like he had two heads. "What does geology have to do with a missing plane?"

"It's wreckage, not a plane," Manning reminded him. "And it's easier to hide." "What do you mean?"

"Well, we're a.s.suming that the Bosnians took the wreckage, and the question is where they put it, right?"

McCarter nodded.

"Unless it all ended up as confetti like that chunk Hammer found, I don't think they could have gotten it through the gate of that fortress." Bolan turned to Hammer. "What about that?" The pilot shrugged. "It's hard to tell. But from other crashes I've seen, there should have been some pretty big pieces of it left no matter how hard it hit the ground. At least the jet engines would have survived almost intact, and they're ten, twelve feet long. Also, as you saw, there was no fire at the site, so there should have been some pretty big pieces left."

"Do you think they could have taken the wreckage into the castle?"

Hammer looked at the fortified main gate with its ma.s.sive but narrow gate and shook his head. "I re-ally doubt it."

"That's what I said," Manning interjected. "And that's why I asked about the geology of the area."

When McCarter's face looked blank, the Canadian continued. "In this part of the world, most of the mountains are limestone." He reached down and picked up a rock chip. "Like this. And as our newest recruit knows, limestone formations usually contain large caves that have been carved by the ground-water, right, T.J.?"

"I don't know much about geology," Hawkins admitted, "but I can say that leastways they have pretty big limestone caves in Georgia."

"You're saying that they put the pieces of the plane in a cave?"

"If it's still here and hasn't been moved on," Manning stated. "There's no other place to hide it around here. I don't think that they'd just stack it up in a big pile somewhere for the satellites to spot."

McCarter sighed. "Okay, I'll ask Katz to see if the Farm has any reports of caves in this area."

"And this cave would be guarded, right?" James had been following the conversation over the corem link from his security position to the left of the group.

"More than likely," Bolan said. "What do you have?"

"I just spotted a couple of the opposition in a guard post at the base of the cliff about five hundred yards to the left of us. There's nothing I can see for them to be guarding down there, but I can't see if there's a cave from here. We'll have to go down to get in position to take a look."

"Think it's worth trying, Striker?" McCarter asked Bolan.

"I think we should," Bolan replied. "We still may be able to get to it." "Heads up, guys," Encizo broke in over the comm link. "We've got a patrol coming down the road."

"Okay," McCarter said. "Let's get out of here. Fade to the left."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Aviano Air Base, Italy Since they were operating in a foreign country, Able Team didn't suit up in combat blacksuits and a.s.sault harnesses. That would be a little too obvious and would automatically draw unwanted attention from anyone who spotted them. Instead, dark pants, black turtlenecks over their Kevlar bulletproof vests and dark jackets worked almost as well. In that garb, they could pa.s.s for local working men once they ditched their hardware.

Their Beretta weapons were not out of place in Italy, either, nor was Blanca.n.a.les's SPAS-12 a.s.sault shotgun. The two things that the Italians made best were fast cars and reliable firearms. Authorities checking cartridge cases and recovered bullets would not be surprised to see that they came from Italian weapons.

After a quick meal of freeze-dried rations with seconds on coffee, the trio made a final check of communications gear.

'Tll be monitoring your comm links," Katz said, "so I want you to keep talking so I'll know what you're doing. Also, that way if you get grabbed by the cops, I'll know about it and can start working on springing you."

"We're not going to get caught, Katz."

"I've heard that one before."

LYONS DECIDED that the first stop on theft evening's itinerary would be the warehouse location Katz had uncovered rather than the new garage. Since it was probably the larger of the two buildings, it was the most likely place for them to find what they were looking for. Exactly what that was, he didn't really know. But more car bombs or other instruments of destruction were high on his list of expectations.

The warehouse was an hour's drive away in a small coastal town on the Adriatic. Lyons was glad to see that the business district was away from the residential area, which meant if something went wrong, they should be able to make their getaway before the local police showed up.

At first glance, the warehouse looked good. It sat far enough away from the other industrial buildings in the area that terrorists could conduct their clandestine business out of sight of prying eyes. Its isolation also made it perfect for what Lyons had in mind. The outside security lights were on, but that was a drawback that could be quickly overcome. The single-story building's windows had been painted over, though, so they couldn't see if the interior lights were on or if anyone was inside. But once they killed the power, it wouldn't matter. Anyone who was working in there would make his or her presence known then.

After studying the warehouse for half an hour and making mental notes on its layout, the three men were ready to make their move. On the way in, Ly-ons stopped the Lancia by a power pole and killed the headlights.

Since Italy was famous for its urban power out-ages, cutting the power wouldn't cause the same cri-sis that it would in the States. If people were working late in the surrounding buildings, they would simply go home and wait for the line to be repaired. All it took was two 9 mm rounds from Schwarz's silenced Beretta in the pole's transformer and the lights went out throughout the area.

"That should be good for all night," he said when he got back in the car. "I doubt anyone's going to come out and fix it until tomorrow."

After parking the Lancia in a lot behind one of the other buildings, Able Team walked the short distance to the warehouse. The parking lot in front of the building was empty, and no one had come out to see why the lights had gone out, so it wasn't likely that anyone was working inside.

Bypa.s.sing the front door because it was too obvious, they went around the comer of the building to a side entrance they had spotted earlier. If they tripped an alarm going in, they didn't want to leave signs that they had gone in the front way. With Ly-ons and Blanca.n.a.les standing guard, it took less than a minute for Schwarz to pick the security lock in the door.

Another modem touch the Italians could use were electronic security locks. European key locks were just too easy to pick. But, even though they'd had a basic lock, Schwarz didn't fail to check for the presence of a security system. He knew he couldn't count on the opposition to be as stupid as he wanted them tobe.

"d.a.m.n," Schwarz muttered when his suspicions were continned by a small red diode inside a panel by the side of the door. "They've got this place wired and the alarm's running on backup batteries." "Can you bypa.s.s it, Gadgets?" Lyons asked.

"No sweat." Schwarz reached into his pants pocket for his electronic lock pick set. A few snips and a couple of bypa.s.s wires later, he stepped back. "That should do it."

With their night-vision goggles over their eyes, the trio slipped through the door. Inside, most of the broad expanse of floor was empty except for some large wooden crates stacked against one wall. Examination of an opened crate showed that it con-mined stuffed leather furniture, and the crate bore markings indicating that it had originated in Algeria. The s.h.i.+pments could be legitimate. But since Libya and Algeria were next-door neighbors, the crates could contain more than just cheap furniture. It was too easy to hide explosives or drugs in the seat cush-ions.

More important than the crates, however, were the four small Fiat sedans lined up against the other wall. Judging from what they had discovered on their raid of the garage, it was a good guess that they had found another car-bomb factory.

Lyons was headed to check out the cars when Blanca.n.a.les called from his security position at the front windows of the warehouse. "We've got company coming. Two cars and they're coming on fast."

"d.a.m.n!" Schwarz whispered. "That alarm must have sent a signal when we killed the power and it switched over to the backup batteries."

The trio had been through this drill so many times that their response was automatic.

Checking the magazine load in his SPAS, Blanca.n.a.les slipped back out the side door and took up a position around the comer from the front of the building. "I'm in place," he whispered over the comm link.