to those kids and see if you can find any commonality between their illnesses outside the fact they go to the same school,” Brognola said. “I don’t think the doctors are looking hard enough for it. That’s part of your mission. The more important part will be to get close to Delmico and stay close.”
“You’ll be operating as FBI agents,” Price said. “You’re just there to look things over and ensure this isn’t an anthrax-related issue or something else that could evolve into a pandemic.”
“How clever,” Lyons grumbled.
“Aw, cheer up, Ironman,” Blancanales said, punching his friend in the shoulder. “It’s St. Louis, home of the Gateway Arch and Anheuser-Busch. You’ll have a great time!”
“Yeah,” Schwarz added. “What could possibly go wrong?”
CHAPTER FOUR
David McCarter knelt in a large, mushy patch of moss that had started life on a nearby large rock and spread beneath the shade of a massive pine. Dry breezes rustled the leaves in the upper branches of the tallest trees, causing sun spots to reform and reshape themselves.
Phoenix Force had come to a stop on a precipice that overlooked the crash site. The plane lay about fifty yards below them in a massive clearing with its port side visible; its jagged, broken hull jutted silent and still from the ground. The entire T-shaped tailfin had been smashed inward against one of the largest trees McCarter had ever seen. The port wing had been snapped from the plane, probably on impact. The deep gouges in the soft terrain of the clearing bore evidence of exactly where the plane had come down and how it had ended up in such an odd position.
McCarter brought a pair of binoculars to his eyes, although he didn’t really need to see it up close to know they had found the missing bird. Markings all along the plane clearly identified it as a NATO aircraft. McCarter squinted to make out the large, white writing just below the cockpit windows obscured by mud and grass: GpCpt W. M. Blythe, RAF.
“W. M. W—” McCarter lowered the binoculars. “Welby Blythe? Aw, bloody hell.”
Encizo immediately noticed the faraway look in the Briton’s eyes. “What is it, David? Look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“Nothing,” McCarter said, shaking himself back to the present. “It may be nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing, Chief,” Hawkins pressed.
“Let’s just drop it for now, okay, mates?” McCarter snapped.
Manning broke the uncomfortable silence that followed McCarter’s uncharacteristic reaction and nodded toward the plane. “I’d say the fastest way to get there would be to rappel straight off this overlook.”
“Agreed,” McCarter said. “Set it up.”
The five men shrugged out of their day packs and immediately began to prepare for a rappelling operation. Manning and McCarter had the most experience with it, so they would take belay man and safety positions, respectively. Manning quickly retrieved two ropes and tied them to the base of a thick trunk nearest the knoll in a double figure-eight knot. McCarter and Hawkins nailed in pitons while Encizo and James cinched themselves into rappelling harnesses.
When they were ready, Manning donned his own harness and went down the side of the treacherous rocky outcroppings. Despite the danger of sharp and jagged rock protrusions, Manning made his controlled descent in as carefree a fashion as if he’d been sipping cocktails beneath a poolside cabana. The Canadian was about as rugged as they came.
McCarter assisted James as he straddled the ropes and prepared to go down next. The fox-faced Briton put his hand to his mouth. “On belay!”
“Belay on!” Manning echoed.
“On rope!” James shouted.
“Rappel on!” Manning replied.
“Rappelling!” James called, and he pushed away from the cliff.
The Phoenix Force warriors continued in this way: next came Encizo, then Hawkins and finally McCarter. One by one they went down the ropes, and soon all were reunited at the bottom. The Phoenix Force commander ordered the team to fan out as they approached the plane. While he couldn’t exactly have called their rappelling operation stealthy, he didn’t think it safe to assume the plane crash had been the product of an accident. Given its cargo, McCarter could understand Stony Man’s reservations in leaving this to outside agencies. It would either turn out to be something or it wouldn’t, and if they relied on foreign powers to deal with the situation, it could turn out to be a huge public embarrassment.
Encizo and Hawkins approached on the starboard flank, Manning and James on port and McCarter up the center. They emerged from the brush after a low-pitched whistle from the Phoenix Force leader, and converged rapidly on the plane. McCarter reached it first. He knelt just aft of where the shattered wing had broken away, and swept the area with the muzzle of his MP-5 SD-6. Nobody rose to challenge him.
McCarter watched with interest as Manning and James approached the plane roughly parallel to its nose cone. They moved silently, dwarfed by the hulking shell of the Starlifter’s fuselage. McCarter signaled them to skirt the nose of the plane while he moved in a crouch beneath it and came up on the side of the Encizo-Hawkins team a moment later. What he saw at that moment caused his jaw to drop. A better portion of the plane’s body had been completely cut away by torches. The charred remains of humans were scattered throughout the plane. Some of them were unrecognizable, but McCarter quickly spotted one body attired in clothing that had partially survived the scorching. The sleeve of the corpse’s shirt bore the patch of the Special Air Service.
The remainder of the carnage sickened the Phoenix Force warriors. They had seen such things many times, but none of them could ever say they had grown accustomed to it. Flies and other insects buzzed lazily around the bloated bodies. They could see dried patches of blood on the interior of the port-side fuselage. The back end had been mangled, twisted and mashed into an unrecognizable collage of metal and fiberglass. The cargo, if there had been any, was long gone.
James whistled softly. “Looks like something out of Hotel Rwanda. ”
“I’d say this was no accident,” Hawkins said.
“Yeah, but what the hell did happen?” Manning wondered.
“Whatever’s happened here, it was no bloody accident,” McCarter replied. “And whoever’s behind it is damn sure not friendly.”
Encizo walked away for a minute as James and Hawkins climbed up and into the fuselage to make a more thorough inspection. Hawkins brought out his digital camera and took shots of the most important elements. Stony Man would need that as proof positive for the President and his advisers. Kurtzman would also be able to use it as evidence in detecting who had committed such an atrocity.
Encizo returned a minute later. “I looked at the other side of the plane, and also went to study that broken wing. It’s clear they went down due to a double-engine failure, but there’s little doubt as to why. There are unoxidized cordite burns on both the port engines.”
McCarter looked straight to Manning. “Explosives?”
The Canadian nodded and in a matter-of-fact tone replied, “Probably.”
“Plus,
