the overhead monitor the political map showed Colombia. The spy camera tightened its resolution even further and suddenly the POV began descending at a rapid rate.
To the onlookers it seemed as if they were in the nose of a plane as it dive-bombed through wispy patches of clouds toward the earth below.
“Hawk and Eagle, we are green light go,” Price said. “I repeat, we are green light go.”
“Copy,” Grimaldi answered.
“Copy,” Lyons said.
Price looked to the wall. On one side of the image, scrolling vertically were GPS coordinates blinking rapidly next to numerical sets of longitude and latitude readings.
Patches of green and brown, at first unidentifiable, formed into a jungle canopy over a series of rolling hills. On the southeast side of the screen a broad, fast-moving river cut through the trees. Up the sheer plateau from the water, a brown dirt road cut out of the rugged geography.
From his position at his workstation Akira Tokaido manipulated the sat image. The camera view settled on a flat area of the map. At first the location appeared to be nothing more than dense brush where the road ended.
“Toggling to IR,” Tokaido informed the room.
His thumb struck the appropriate key and instantly the crystal-clear picture on the screen changed to a swirling mesh of colors based on radiant heat that made the monitor appear like a watercolor canvas.
On the screen the figures beneath camouflage netting showed up immediately. Roughly two dozen individuals moved around, spread over an area the size of a soccer field.
Several bright spots indicated where industrial furnaces were active and in one section of the field several large vehicles sat clustered in parallel rows. Cool rectangular blobs revealed Quonset huts and long, narrow buildings of concrete and wood.
The tension in the room grew as they waited for the field teams to strike. Barbara Price leaned forward and grabbed the backrest on an office chair. She squeezed it hard until her knuckles shone white from her grip.
Then, on the screen, all hell broke loose.
CHAPTER THREE
Colombia
Carl Lyons lifted his Bushnell binoculars and scanned the FARC camp below. Able Team’s position was located right above the only road leading into the terrorist outpost. This was a hammer-and-anvil operation, with Able Team serving as the anvil.
The readout on the range finder built into the optics showed 204 meters. Sweat trickled down Lyons’s body, sliding over his feverish skin to collect at his armpits, navel and groin. He was a big man and heavily muscled, which made the heat a burden to him. He was growing crankier by the second.
Behind him in the brush Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz slapped a mosquito. The Able Team electronics genius was crouched next to a 80 mm mortar. Lined up in front of the squat weapon’s base plate were six rounds: two high explosive, two antipersonnel, two white phosphorous. He lowered a compass and quickly adjusted the angle of the tube based on his reading.
On the ground a tripod-mounted electronic device hummed softly. The size of a Power-Book it had an antenna dish set in the top that slowly rotated. On loan from the Pentagon through the DARPA—Defense Advance Research and Projects Agency—program, the XM-12 was a field-portable scrambler unit capable of disrupting digital signals in addition to radio waves.
Out in front of Schwarz and Lyons the third member of Able Team lay belly-down on the soggy ground. Ex-Special Forces sergeant Rosario Blancanales had his right eye suctioned up close against the rubber cup of his sniper scope.
“You heard the lady,” he growled. “Let’s do this thing.”
“Phoenix inbound,” Grimaldi informed them over the com link. “Adios, assholes,” Blancanales muttered to the narcoterrorists. Behind him Schwarz picked up the first HE round.
In the reticule of his scope the Puerto Rican’s crosshairs were settled on a bearded FARC soldier manning the machine gun position at the entrance to the camp.
The man wore dark khaki fatigues stained with sweat. His tangle of long, greasy black hair was kept back by a shapeless black beret, and he wore a 9 mm Browning Hi-Power in a belt holster opposite the sheath for a wicked-looking machete.
He laughed, and blunt, very white teeth stood out like neon against his walnut-brown complexion. On his web gear he carried a sat phone, which had first alerted Blancanales that this was a leader. Two other soldiers, much younger and beardless, stood around listening to the older man talk, M-16 A-2 assault rifles in their hands.
Blancanales slowly released his breath and felt his world narrow to the crosshairs of his scope. The FARC leader’s fatigue shirt was open to the belly, revealing an expanse of curly black hair across his lean chest. A gold chain hung down between the man’s pectoral muscles. Blancanales’s crosshairs centered there.
From the valley there was the sudden sound of an approaching helicopter. The man snapped his head around at the noise. The M-21 sniper rifle with folding paratrooper stock coughed once as Blancanales squeezed the trigger in a slow, controlled movement.
Across two hundred yards he saw the FARC leader jerk as the 7.62 mm NATO round struck him. In the sniper optic Blancanales saw blood halo out behind the man in a fine mist. The target half spun, crumpled to his knees, then fell forward on his face.
The two sentries standing next to the dead man swept up their weapons. They turned toward the sound of the helicopter, spun back toward the road from where Blancanales’s round had come. They brought their M-16s to their shoulders and started shouting in Spanish.
Lyons opened up with his cut-down M-60E.
He had the machine gun supported on a fallen log and fed from a green plastic, 200-round drum magazine. The weapon roared to life with a stuttering thunder as hot shell casings arced out of the receiver and spun to the forest floor.
The earth in front of the FARC sentries erupted in a series of geyser spouts as he walked his fire in on them. Behind him Schwarz released his hold on the mortar round, dropping it smoothly into the tube. It went off with a throaty bloop. Lyons’s rounds struck the two men.
The heavy-caliber bullets buzzed into the FARC sentries, hacking them up like spinning axes. They spun and jiggled like marionettes dancing for a puppeteer. They staggered, dropping their weapons, then flopped to the ground still quivering.
Schwarz’s 80 mm HE mortar round struck the camp dead center of the FARC motor pool. A black Ford Excursion with its roof cut off and massively oversize tires exploded. A ball of black smoke and orange flame mushroomed out. The vehicle was picked up off the ground and spun end-over-end, crumpling an old school bus repainted OD-green. Two five-ton Oso-12 trucks had their windows blown out, and a FARC soldier walking past was picked up and thrown like a rag doll.
Blancanales drew down on a running soldier and pulled his trigger. The man fell in a tangled heap.
Lyons eased up on his machine gun and activated his throat mike.
“Eagle, this is Hawk,” he said. “The front door is sealed. Deploy.”
“Copy,”
