Arquillo noted.
“She’s clean,” Schwarz declared.
CHAPTER TWO
Gary Manning observed the unknown group on the beach, ignoring the salt drying and congealing with sand in his soaked BDUs. There would be time to change into fresh clothing later, and it was a minor discomfort. The group’s activity was clearer now from their position on the beach. It was a work crew, unloading containers from transport trucks onto a beached barge. His lips drew into a tight line.
“Unmarked containers,” he said. “But the shape is unmistakable.”
“UAV transport crating,” David McCarter answered as he lowered his binoculars. “We lucked out here.”
“Except, if we were lucky, we would have a Zodiac raft to shadow the barge to its destination,” Manning said.
“I’ll contact the Farm,” McCarter suggested. “It’ll be a breach of radio discipline, but they can keep an eye on the craft while we continue our inland push.”
“We’re still going into Lebanon?” Hawkins asked.
“These things were delivered somewhere. And we still have to touch base with Unit 777 and the Mossad. They’ve been noticing some unusual activity in Lebanon.”
“UFO sightings,” Calvin James muttered. “If they weren’t one of the crack units in the region, I’d have thought they’d gone nuts.”
“Unidentified aircraft aren’t always spawned by little green men, hermano ,” Rafael Encizo chided his partner. “And some of those UFOs might have dropped chemical weapons into Syria. I’d still like to keep a tail on them.”
McCarter lowered the satellite radio. “Barb has a Keyhole watching the barge. The Farm isn’t going to lose track of it.”
James nodded. “Which means we can concentrate on keeping up with the trucks.”
“Not necessarily,” Manning interjected. McCarter and James regarded their partner quizzically as the brawny Canadian observed the convoy through his sniper scope. “The trucks aren’t moving.”
McCarter ran a mental tally of the enemy vehicles. There were three tractor-trailer combinations and half a dozen pickup trucks. The pickups had six men a piece, and who knew how many crewed the eighteen-wheelers, but the Phoenix Force commander figured between forty and fifty men for this operation. The rules of engagement for this mission had nominally been to avoid enemy contact, and any unavoidable conflict had to be undertaken with a maximum of stealth. Five against fifty was not going to be a silent struggle, no matter if all of their weapons had been suppressed. The element of surprise only went so far.
“Even more bad news,” Encizo noted as he lowered his scope-equipped MP-5. “That barge didn’t go more than five hundred yards out into the water.”
McCarter glanced back, then watched the trailers. He swept them with his binoculars, eschewing optics for his machine pistol. He lowered them. “They set up a transmission antenna.”
James looked out toward the barge. “We only saw them unload one of the trailers onto the barge, with workers who had come out of the back of a second.”
“The third is a control center,” Hawkins said. He took a deep breath and lifted his binoculars to watch the barge along with James and Encizo. “It’s parked?”
“Looks like they’re setting up to launch the UAVs,” James noted.
“Get on the horn to the Farm,” McCarter said. “We’ve got a major emergency. Rafe, Cal. Time to hit the water.”
Encizo grimaced. “Both of us?”
“I appreciate the offer, but that barge has to be put down before they can launch,” McCarter ordered.
Hawkins looked up from his satellite phone. “Got the Farm.”
“Barb?” McCarter asked.
“What is it, David?” Barbara Price asked.
“Have the Israeli air force go on alert. We’ve stumbled on another bit of provocation,” he told her. “That barge is a floating launch pad.”
“Should we get someone scrambled out to you?” Price asked.
“Syria is on full alert as it is. Any friendly aircraft who’d hit this place would only provoke them and their allies in Lebanon,” the Briton explained.
“What kind of enemy forces are you looking at?” Price continued.
“Thirty to forty ground troops. Lord know how many in the trucks, but a group went out on the barge,” McCarter explained.
Price covered the mouthpiece on her end for a moment, then spoke to McCarter again. “An air strike might make Damascus squirrelly, but we have a way around that.”
“What’ve you got?” McCarter inquired.
“An artillery unit in northern Israel. They lob some explosives across the border into Lebanon every so often,” Price mentioned.
McCarter frowned. “We’re danger close, and I’d like to take one of the trailers intact. If we can get hold of the hardware and servers used to operate their drones, we could slip you chaps into the back door for some deep-down digging.”
“Ten to one’s tough odds, David,” Price said.
“Worse than that,” McCarter admitted. “I sent Cal and Rafe to the barge to sink it.”
“We drop one shell in the vicinity. It’ll cut the odds, and less likely to blow everything to hell.”
The Briton handed the phone to Hawkins and contacted James and Encizo on his Los Angeles SWAT Headset—LASH. “How soon to the barge?”
“Another two minutes,” Encizo said.
McCarter took the phone back from Hawkins. “How far is the artillery site from here?”
Price gave the coordinates.
“A minute and a half flight,” McCarter figured.
“That’s what we figured. Coordinates?” Price asked.
McCarter handed the phone to Manning, who had been observing the operation. The Canadian read off coordinates he figured through his map skills. Manning’s mathematical skills and navigational abilities were second to none, and if anyone had a chance to spot for an artillery shell fired from dozens of miles away without benefits of laser targeting, it was him. Manning gave the Briton the phone.
“Your artillery is on its way,” Price promised. “It’ll be there by the time the others make their move on the barge.”
“What can we expect?” McCarter asked.
“We have a reserve unit dropping some payback on a Palestinian group. You’ll get a 155 mm Copperhead from a Doher,” Price said.
“Cover
