from the short barrel.”
Blancanales nodded. “I’ll go back and give it one shot,” he said. “But if it isn’t quiet enough...” His voice trailed off for a moment. “I’m not sacrificing my hearing for it.”
“I think you’ll be happy with it,” said Kissinger. “Yankee Hill’s making some with permanent suppressors. But I’ve altered several so you can take them off if you want to create noise and confusion.”
Blancanales lifted the rifle slightly in his hands. “Not much heavier than the unsuppressed model,” he said. “The suppressor titanium?”
Kissinger nodded. He cradled the laptop in his left arm long enough to hold his other fist to his mouth and cough. “Adds about eight inches to the barrel length. You put that on the end of the standard M-16 and you’ve got 22 to 24 inches beyond the receiver. That’s bumped the weapon up to sniper length—without sniper rifle accuracy.”
Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz, Able Team’s electronics expert, joined the group and studied the look on Blancanales’s face.
Blancanales wasn’t convinced. “It doesn’t look like a problem on this 10-inch barrel,” he said. “It’ll still be relatively easy to maneuver inside tight spaces. But a 10-inch tube means a sacrifice in sight radius.”
“That’s what the optics are for,” Kissinger said, pointing to the scope.
Schwartz smiled and said, “You suppose the boys over at the BATFE would approve?”
“Alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives? Of course not,” Lyons growled. “But luckily we don’t answer to those Bureau yo-yos.”
Blancanales stared down at the new rifle as he retraced his steps toward the entrance to the kill house.Lyons watched Kissinger tap several keys on the laptop’s keyboard and knew the armorer was changing the pop-up targets to give his fellow teammate a new challenge. A moment later he saw Blancanales appear on the screen at the starting point.
Kissinger pressed a button on the chronometer on his wrist and shouted, “Go!”
Blancanales carefully navigated his way through a mock laundry room without incident. But as soon as he stepped through the door to a hallway, a full-size target popped into view as if from out of nowhere. Blancanales swung the sound-suppressed weapon that way but didn’t fire.
A little girl stood holding a lollipop to her lips less than ten feet to Blancanales’s left. A second later, the paper target disappeared.
Blancanales moved on, his back against the wall as he navigated the corner past where the girl had stood. The screen in Kissinger’s hand changed again and Lyons could see a large bedroom just ahead of his fellow Able Team warrior. Blancanales had just stepped into the room when another target—this time a criminal-looking guy wearing a striped T-shirt, appeared. He held a large revolver in his right hand. His other arm was wrapped around the neck of a woman whose face looked terrified.
This time Blancanales tapped the trigger and three rounds of 6.8-caliber hollowpoint ammo spit from the weapon. The sound of each round was barely audible over the microphone Blancanales wore in front of his mouth. But three holes appeared in the hoodlum’s face, two inches above the frightened hostage’s head.
When Blancanales said, “Much, much better, Cowboy,” his voice seemed loud by comparison.
The words had barely left his mouth when two new targets raised their heads above the other side of the bed. The first showed only the face and neck. Blancanales passed it by. But the second target rose higher, exhibiting shoulders wearing a desert-tan camouflage BDU blouse. Blancanales turned the YHM that way but hesitated again.
A split second later the target rose slightly higher and the butt of a folding rifle stock could barely be seen. It was still impossible to ID the target as friend or foe, and the Able Team operative held his fire as another second passed.
Then the target behind the bed rose higher and began bringing the weapon up toward the Able Team warrior. Finally, he was clearly the enemy, and Blancanales put a 3-round burst into his head. The camouflaged target dropped down behind the bed.
Suddenly the first target began to rise. It wore the same style BDU desert-tan blouse. But when it rose, Lyons could see that its hands were empty.
Blancanales let it live.
The Able Team warrior moved on through the kill house, shooting the bad guys and rescuing the good. Each new room, each hall and stairway, presented new and increasingly confusing targets. But by the time Blancanales had finished clearing the third floor of the house he had a perfect score.
And while he had not set a new personal record with the unfamiliar weapon in his hands, he had come close.
Lyons was about to speak when the Farm-secured cell phone in the belt holster behind his Colt Python .357 Magnum began to vibrate. Drawing the phone much like he would the revolver, he looked at the screen. He pressed the answer button and held the device to his ear. “Yeah, Hal?” he said.
“If you’re finished playing Cowboys and Indians, I need you back at the Farm,” the Stony Man director said. “I’ve sent Jack to pick you up.”
“What have we got?” Lyons asked.
“Two backpack nukes have disappeared from a nuclear storage facility in Colorado,” Brognola said.
“Okay,” said Lyons. “We’re on our way.” He holstered the cell phone as Blancanales appeared from the kill house and walked forward, holding his new YHM and grinning ear to ear.
The man known as Ironman looked up at Kissinger. “Yankee Hill Machine has made an incredible weapon, here, Cowboy,” Lyons said. “And you’ve made it even better. We’ll take three.” Outside Ramesh, Radestan
* * *
THE MEN OF Phoenix Force and Abdul Ali kept away from the blacktop highway, using the trees and brush lining the roadway to hide them as they made their way toward Ramesh. But along with the natural concealment, they passed a seemingly endless stream of wrecked and burned-out military vehicles representing both sides of the conflict in Radestan. Old and broken-down jeeps—looking as if they’d been left over from World War II and repeatedly repaired—lined the ditch every hundred feet or so. Most still bore the spray-painted eagle-and-scimitar seal of Radestan.
But other vehicles looked more civilian in nature. Well-worn pickups and bullet-ridden sedans—many so old that the paint had worn off and the dull gray primer had become their principal color—were also lying dead in the grass and weeds. All were unmarked and David McCarter reasoned that these had belonged to private citizens before being pressed into service by one of the PSOF rebel factions.
The men of Phoenix Force had each thrown on an abat—the traditional Arab robe common throughout the Middle East—over their blacksuits, and kafiyyehs covered their heads and necks. Led by Abdul Ali, who now carried an AK-47 that rested just beneath his long black-and-gray beard, they slowly made their way through the wrecks and weeds alongside what passed for a highway.
Hawkins had been able to clean enough of the cow manure off his boots to make them wearable again and, for the most part, the snide remarks and needling from the men who had been fortunate enough not to land inside the corral had ceased.
The men from Stony
