center of the hold, held in place by thick canvas moorings, a testament to the skill of the loading crews. Blythe moved around them to the passenger bench on the starboard side of the craft and stopped abruptly.
Bodies were strewed everywhere. It appeared that a large part of the jump bench had completely dislodged from its moorings and been tossed every which way. Acting as a lever, it had obviously tossed around the SAS team members secured to it like so many rag dolls. The unforgiving metal edges had dismembered a couple of the men, the impact had been so great, and something that flew through the hold had even decapitated one man. Only two of the nine men who had been seated there even moved, and on closer inspection Blythe could tell one man was on his way out just by the way he breathed.
Blythe stepped past the grisly scene and moved rapidly toward the back, hopeful at least some of his loading crew survived. He found he could not squeeze past the last container in line. The entire rear of the Starlifter C-141 had folded into itself, crushed by some unseen force, the same force that had stopped the cargo ship cold. Blythe ducked to see if he could detect movement, cupped his hand to his mouth and called out, but only the echo of his voice in the cavernous hold returned—it seemed almost as if the echo answered of its own life to mock him.
Blythe turned and started toward the fore section when he heard the clang of metal followed a moment later by a hissing noise. Blythe turned his eyes for the ceiling, attempted to determine the source of the noise, but he couldn’t pinpoint it. It grew more pronounced and familiar, and Blythe stood still for several minutes as if bound in some sort of suspended animation. He felt tired, more tired than he ever had before in his life, and he couldn’t imagine how this whole situation could become worse.
Blythe shook off the weariness and marched toward the front of his plane with renewed purpose. As he reached the section beyond the foremost cargo container, he saw the remainder of sparks spitting through the wall of the fuselage just a moment before an entire section of wall fell inward. Men dressed in camouflage, weapons held at the ready, charged through the glowing rim of that gaping hole.
Blythe didn’t bother to try reaching for his sidearm. He knew how it would end if he attempted to resist the shadowy figures. They continued to pour through the hole, one upon the other, like locusts invading the harvest.
Somewhere in that outpouring a man stepped through the opening who possessed the regality of a monarch and wore a presence of exclamatory command authority. Blythe guessed the man’s height at about six and a half feet. Muscles rippled across his abdomen, for all intents appearing they might tear through his black T-shirt. Equally sculpted pectorals, biceps and triceps formed mountainous lines that reached to a bulging neck and strong, chiseled face. Shoulder-length brown hair and a trimmed beard framed that face. A patrician nose jutted from jade-colored eyes masked behind the yellowish tint of bifocals. The man rested his sledgehammer-size fists on a narrow waist that veed straight to hips and legs in camouflage fatigue pants. The man wore midcalf paratrooper boots with steel toes polished to a mirrorlike glisten. A military web belt encircled his hips, and he wore a sidearm in quick-draw fashion on his left thigh.
“You are now a prisoner of the Germanic Freedom Railroad,” the man announced. “Your life, as your cargo, is now forfeit at my discretion.”
Blythe could barely contain a squeal of outrage. “Now look here, I don’t give a goddamn who you are! You have seized an aircraft belonging to Her Majesty’s Royal Air Force under the command of NATO forces. And I can guarantee they’ll come quickly looking for us! You would be best to leave things be!”
The man stepped forward and leaned close to Blythe’s ear, his breath hot on the officer’s neck as he whispered, “I know exactly what I have seized, Group Captain. In fact, we’ve been expecting you.”
CHAPTER ONE
David McCarter sat on a large rock, a Player’s cigarette in one hand and a sweating can of Coca-Cola in the other.
The Phoenix Force leader chewed absently at his lower lip while he studied the lush foliage that ran along the base of Monti Sirino, about twenty miles from the Golfo di Policastro, Italy. A mission from Stony Man, the ultracovert operations unit of the United States government, had brought them here less than forty-eight hours earlier. With their mission complete in record time, McCarter and the other members of Phoenix Force could look forward to a long-needed week of R & R.
McCarter glanced over his shoulder as the turbofans on the twin Rolls-Royce engines of the C-20 Gulfstream whined into preflight action. The time had come for them to get the hell out of there. He took a last, long drag before he crushed the cherry against a rock, field stripped the remainder and dropped the butt in his pocket. It wouldn’t do to have someone find the thing and extract his DNA.
The fox-faced Briton’s boots crunched on the refined gravel of the makeshift airstrip. The running lights glowed faintly in the half light of dawn, most of the sunlight peeking over the horizon still obscured by trees and tall grasses at the base of the mountain. McCarter glanced at his watch before rushing up the narrow steps and into the plane. He looked toward the cockpit, wishing he would see the familiar figure of Jack Grimaldi there, although he knew he wouldn’t. Grimaldi, Stony Man’s top gun and usual pilot for Phoenix, was back in Washington recovering from a hell-raising mission in Afghanistan.
McCarter downed the last of his Coca-Cola in a few swallows, crushed the can and tossed it into a nearby waste receptacle.
“Oh, baby!” a voice called from the cabin. “You’re such a stud. Come over here and give us some love!”
McCarter turned toward the sound of the voice. The fresh and eager visage of T. J. Hawkins gazed at him in mock adoration. Thomas Jackson Hawkins was a straightforward guy with a heart of gold and a Texas accent so smooth it could melt the wills of even the strongest women.
“Don’t write checks your body can’t cash, youngster,” McCarter quipped. “I’ve been doing this kind of thing since just about before you were born.”
“You two settle down or I’ll have to separate you,” Calvin James said from beneath the skullcap pulled over his eyes.
McCarter didn’t doubt the streetwise black man from the south side of Chicago could do it. A former medic, Navy SEAL and member of a San Francisco SWAT team, James had proved his skills as a formidable warrior time and again. When the chips were down, McCarter could think of few men he’d want more by his side.
“Can’t we all just get along?” asked Rafael Encizo.
McCarter jammed a finger in Hawkins’s direction. “He started it.”
“Shut up! ” James demanded. His lack of sleep was taking a toll.
McCarter took a seat and clammed up. He could see the wisdom in resting. The return flight to the States would be long and tedious. McCarter didn’t like being cooped up that long; he enjoyed stretching his legs, which made it difficult to keep still with all that pent-up energy.
Once their plane got airborne, McCarter’s eyes drooped and he laid his head back, eager for a one-or-maybe-two-hour snooze….
M C C ARTER’S EYES SNAPPED open as he felt his pager vibrate against his thigh. He rose quickly from his seat.
“Get it in gear, mates,” McCarter said. “The boss’s calling.”
Everyone knew what he meant. Stony Man, more specifically Barbara Price or Hal Brognola, was signaling that a secured satellite uplink would connect to the high-tech communications systems
