The chopper had been more difficult, but even that had not proved much of an obstacle. While old, the machine was in great shape, and the armament it carried was in top condition. Grimaldi had checked it out at the airfield himself. Then he’d made his way by air in support of Phoenix Force’s ground insertion that was utilizing hired commercial trucks. If anyone had noticed him, by eye or by radar, nobody had challenged him. No doubt everyone and his uncle who could in any way be bought off had been paid well enough to look the other way.
Strange bedfellows, the pilot thought. If the men they’d bribed to drive them out here thought anything of the armed men seeking to tangle with the local drug lords, they hadn’t commented on it. No doubt they thought they were pocketing the money of dead men. That was fine; it meant they’d be even less likely to speak of it after the fact, though they’d been bribed well enough for their silence.
It was all part of the shadow war, the type of conflict in which Phoenix Force specialized. Evil criminals of the type found in the Triangle organization were accustomed to preying on others. They did not deal well with coming under sudden fire; they did not grasp that they, too, could become the victims of seemingly random violence. When, suddenly, they found themselves attacked from what seemed all sides by a foe they could not at first identify, they became confused and afraid. For many of them, fear was a new sensation, and one the Stony Man pilot was happy to bring them.
I love the smell of terrified organized crime bosses in the morning, Grimaldi thought to himself.
The AH-1 gunship was a familiar aircraft, one that Grimaldi enjoyed flying. Once the backbone of the United States military’s fleet of attack helicopters, long since eclipsed by the AH-64 Apache, it remained a very dependable, very lethal aerial weapon.
He checked his chronograph, then his GPS unit. “G-Force,” Grimaldi said over the transceiver link, “in position.”
“Roger, G-Force,” McCarter’s voice came back to him. “By the numbers. One, two.”
“One, two, roger,” Grimaldi said.
He angled the nose of the Cobra, allowed himself to pick up more speed and began triggering the hellstorm under his command.
The twin rocket pods unleashed their 70 mm cargo of Mark 4 folding-fin aerial rockets. The M-156 white phosphorous rounds detonated across the poppy field, leaving actinic flashes in Grimaldi’s vision. He worked the chopper back and forth in a zigzagging pattern, making sure his deadly payload did its gruesome work among the flowers.
“G-Force is all go, zero one,” Grimaldi reported as he fired the last of his rockets. The explosions radiated heat; he gripped the controls firmly, controlling the gunship. “Good hunting, gentlemen.”
“Roger,” David McCarter’s voice came through the transceiver link. “Start run two, G-Force. Repeat, start run zero-two.”
“G-Force is go zero-two,” Grimaldi reported.
The gunship gained altitude. Grimaldi allowed the deadly machine to crest the rise at the far end of the now-burning poppy field. Below, in the depression beyond, sat the camp and heroin-processing center. Phoenix Force would be moving in from the perimeter just now; Grimaldi would therefore fight from the center of the camp, moving outward. He overflew the camp, chose his spot and yanked hard on the controls, making the gunship shudder and dance as it dumped its velocity. He brought the killing snout of the helicopter around in a slow arc.
“G-Force is all go, twice,” he said out loud. “Heads down, gentlemen. I repeat, heads down.”
At Grimaldi’s direction, the M-28 turret’s twin M-134 miniguns began spitting 7.62 mm death. The slow arc of the chopper fanned the slugs out as Grimaldi picked his targets, centering on the small, prefabricated, corrugated-metal buildings closest to the center of the camp. Men in olive-drab fatigues, carrying Kalashnikovs, began running for their lives. Something volatile within one of the buildings exploded, shooting shrapnel and flames in every direction and throwing several of the running figures to the ground. Grimaldi kept the pressure on, his gunship’s inventory ticking down in his head, the chopper wreaking havoc in the enemy’s midst.
He began whistling “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” smiling faintly as the Triangle drug plant slowly disintegrated at the touch of his trigger finger.
“YOU HEAR THAT?” Calvin James said.
“Hear what?” Rafael Encizo asked.
“Nothing.” James shook his head. “Thought I heard whistling. Faint, like.”
McCarter chuckled but said nothing.
Phoenix Force waited from cover at the perimeter of the camp, southwest of Grimaldi’s position. They were crouched behind an old bus that had somehow been trucked in and buried half in and half out of the ground to form a makeshift storage bunker. Now that bunker provided them with adequate concealment as Grimaldi softened up the camp.
“Masks on, lads,” McCarter instructed. “The fumes will reach us any minute.” The team members donned their breathing gear. The black plumes from the burning poppy field were visible far beyond the chopper. The staccato drumbeat of the gunship’s nose cannons slapped echoes from the metal buildings around them. Return fire from within the camp was sporadic, but left no doubt that Phoenix Force would encounter armed resistance once they made their foray inside.
Per the mission parameters, they were dressed and armed for plausible deniability. The members of the team each wore Russian surplus camouflage fatigues. Some of their equipment was mundane and readily available on the world market, like their web belts and the Ka-bar Next Generation fighting knives they carried. Their sensitive surveillance, communication and breathing gear was custom-built but untraceable to the Farm or the United States. They also carried folding-stock Kalashnikov rifles. None of the team favored the weapons overmuch, but they were all very familiar with them. Despite their ergonomic flaws and generally sloppy tolerances, the rifles were serviceable, reliable and deadly in their trained hands. The fact that ammunition would likely be readily available in the field was another point in the rifles’ favor, too.
If they needed the extra firepower, Gary Manning also carried a Heckler & Koch HK-69 40 mm grenade launcher and a bandolier of grenades. Each team member also carried a sidearm. Manning had his .357 Magnum Desert Eagle, and McCarter carried his favored Browning Hi-Power. Hawkins, Encizo and James all carried untraceable Glock 17 pistols. Each man’s web gear was laden with a variety of grenades, smoke canisters, extra magazines and a variety of other tools of the trade.
“G-Force, all in, all in,” Grimaldi reported.
“That’s our cue,” McCarter said. As the chopper rose higher above the carnage its pilot had created, Phoenix Force moved in.
Without being told to do so, Encizo and James broke to the left, while Manning and Hawkins moved off to the right. They would skirt the perimeter and take their own paths toward the burning center. McCarter headed straight up the middle, splitting the difference.
It was a straightforward operation. While they would keep an eye out for any intel they might gather on the ground, there were no specific target objectives other than the destruction of this Triangle asset. It was a refreshingly direct drop and smash, McCarter thought. No hostages to rescue, no supersensitive electronic devices to recover, no nuclear warheads to disarm. Just walk in, run about and burn it down.
A gunman in the olive-drab fatigues that seemed to be the uniform of the camp came running headlong from the nearest metal shack, heedless of the danger
