in time to watch the others return to Earth a few seconds later.
All except T. J. Hawkins, who had been the last to jump out of the plane, While his chute had opened fine, he seemed to have had some sort of trouble with his steering toggles. Instead of landing outside the corral with the rest of the team, Phoenix Force’s airborne ops expert touched down inside the rustic wooden fence, barely missing one of the cows.
McCarter couldn’t help but chuckle. Neither could the other three Stony Man Farm operatives who were gathering up their chutes next to him. The three men under McCarter’s command knew why their leader had suggested they sail clear of the corral.
It was ankle-deep in cow manure.
Hawkins had seen what was on the ground where he would land, too. And he’d chosen a bone-jarring “stand-up” landing over a roll-through in the cow dung. Even then, his boots sank as if he’d landed in some muddy, foul-smelling swamp.
With a look of disgust on his face, Hawkins pulled in his chute, doing his best to avoid the manure that had clung to the light material. Once he had control of the mess, he climbed over the rickety fence.
“Be sure to walk downwind of me, would you, Hawk?” Gary Manning said.
“Yeah, you probably should keep about a hundred yards behind us on the way into town,” said Calvin James. Rafael Encizo nodded and smiled.
Hawkins was irritated. “Unless things have changed since our briefing,” he said, “we’re due to change clothes anyway before we head into town.” He reached down and pinched the material of his combat blacksuit, pulled the stretchy material out, then let it snap back into place. “These things just might draw a little unwanted attention. They practically scream, ‘We’re Westerners—shoot us.’”
James sucked in a deep breath of air, which caused his nostrils to flare in, then out again. “I’m thinking about shooting you right now myself,” he quipped. “I’m not sure just changing clothes’ll be enough to disinfect you.”
“Of course every cloud has a silver lining,” said Encizo with a straight face. “If we come across any Radestani bomb-sniffing dogs, you’re sure to end their careers.”
Hawkins shook his head and stared first at James and then Encizo. When he spoke, his voice was heavy with sarcasm. “What are you two doing risking your lives with the rest of us when you could be making bundles at the comedy clubs? I mean, I can see you on Letterman, Leno and—”
Before he could finish, the creak of an old wooden door opening came from the small frame house twenty yards away. As if he had heard the conversation and realized it was time for him to make an appearance, a short man wearing khaki work pants and a woodland-camo battle-dress-uniform shirt appeared and walked toward them. The checkered kaffiyeh on his head was held in place by a red agal that rested just above his eyebrows. The two distinct “looks” appeared to contradict each other.
“Dude looks like Lawrence of Arabia guest starring on Duck Dynasty,” James whispered.
None of the men responded, but couldn’t suppress smiles. The comment even seemed to get Hawkins over his bad mood.
A light breeze was blowing through the area, and it caused the khaki-and-kaffiyeh-clad man’s long, stringy gray beard to dance as he approached. Stopping five feet from where Hawkins stood, he looked down at the Phoenix Force man’s dung-covered boots and grinned. “If that is the worst thing that happens to you during your time in Radestan,” he said, “you will be very lucky.” Then, turning to McCarter as if he somehow sensed that the Briton was in charge, he carefully pronounced each syllable of the first line of the code phrases that had been set up by Stony Man Farm.
“Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,” the man said in heavily Arab-accented English.
“Someone’s in the kitchen I know,” McCarter answered immediately. “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah.”
“Strummin’ on the old banjo.” The words sounded strange with a Radestani accent.
Hawkins turned to McCarter and said in a low voice, “Did Hal come up with all that?”
The Phoenix Force leader knew he was referring to Harold Brognola, Stony Man Farm’s Director of Sensitive Operations. He nodded.
Hawkins shook his head. “He’ll have these Arabs square-dancing and making moonshine before it’s all over,” he said, again under his breath.
With their identities established, the old Arab stuck his hand out in greeting. “I am Abdul Ali,” he said. “As you can see, I was told you would come.”
McCarter nodded as he shook the man’s hand. “I understand you were once in the Radestani army?” he said.
Abdul Ali’s shoulders straightened slightly. “I was,” he said. “I rose to the rank of major.”
“So what happened?” McCarter asked. “You don’t look old enough to have retired.”
“I did not retire,” said Ali. “I simply resigned. Our government has become corrupt, and the armed forces have followed in that corruption.”
McCarter nodded. The Farm’s cybernetics genius, Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, had checked Ali out six ways to Sunday and believed the man was truly on the side of the rebels. So until something pointed him away from that view, McCarter would stick with it. “So you’ve been helping train the rebels?”
“We are trying to train them, and organize them into one central force to overthrow the present government,” said Ali. “There are also Special Forces Americans—Green Berets, I believe you call them—in Ramesh who are working with them, as well. But, of course, we are not publicizing that fact.”
“And Russia and China aren’t shouting it to the rooftops, either,” said McCarter, “but they’re supporting the current regime with money, equipment and advisors.”
“That is correct,” said Ali. “It is the same here as it is in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and elsewhere. There may no longer be any Soviet Union, but Russia is up to its same old tricks, as I believe you Americans say.” He paused and blew air out between his closed lips, making them flutter. “It is like the Cold War all over again. As if Russia and the U.S. are playing chess on a giant chessboard and Radestan is just one of the pieces.”
The two men had begun shaking hands during the brief discourse and now they dropped their arms to their sides. “How’s the training been going?” McCarter asked.
Ali rolled his eyes. “Forming the rebels into a cohesive unit has not been easy,” he said. “Most of the time I feel like a junior high school principal or an umpire at one of your American Little League baseball games. They do not take to military discipline very well and one bunch—I call them bunches because they are too disorganized to call them anything else—cannot agree with another bunch on anything past the fact that they all want to overthrow the government.”
David McCarter nodded. “Well, we’ll just have to work with what we’ve got,” he said.
“We’ll be leading the PSOF rebels into battle once we meet up with them. So I hope at least some of the training has rubbed off.”
Ali stared at the Phoenix Force leader with his dark brown eyes. “I was told to meet with
