with a load of Ir-192 in its guts.”
McCarter took a deep breath. “When do we take off, Barb?”
“There’s not too much activity now, but the timing of the hit on Burgundy Lake with the launch of the current shuttle mission is just too suspicious,” Price told them. “If it’s Beijing looking to make an official move, or renegades at work, we need to get you in the air now.”
“What’s our ride?” McCarter asked.
“The Gulfstream’s been refueled by naval aviation, but the closest approach to the Chinese launch facility is in Thailand. The Gulfstream’s not set up for HALO, nor a stealth border crossing, so you’ll transfer to a dedicated craft in Thailand, and then infiltrate the Phoenix Graveyard, approximately 250 miles west of Canton,” Price responded. “I’ll arrange for gear to be ready when you get there. Good luck.”
“We’ll need it,” Hawkins muttered.
“All right, team, load up,” McCarter ordered.
CHAPTER FOUR
Yuma, Arizona
Leon Paczesny was turned over to federal Marshals, glad to be away from the big, menacing blond cop who liked to pound on his arm. It had only taken a gentle reminder, dozens of color photographs of the corpses Able Team had created the night before, to ensure that Paczesny was going to keep their part in the apocalyptic border-crossing quiet. Hal Brognola had a Justice Department detachment, independent of the Burgundy Lake investigation, take care of the turncoat. The deal was a simple one. Paczesny would eventually be turned over by Brognola’s baby-sitters, and the traitor would confess to his part in the operation.
In return for not contesting his espionage charges, he’d get to live. It would be an existence in an eight-foot-by-five-foot cell until he was old and decrepit, but it would be life. Any deviation from the deal would result in pieces of Paczesny being mailed to all of his living relatives, each part harvested from his screaming body.
Lyons told the traitor that they had excellent life support machines. He amended the threat with a story of the last fool who blew his free pass to continued existence. With grudging respect, Lyons noted that the turncoat had survived until he was trimmed down to an eyeless, earless, noseless head attached to a torso that had been carved down to just above the navel.
“It was the most incredible six months of my life, slicing a traitorous bastard up like lunch meat,” Lyons confessed.
It was all a lie, but Paczesny didn’t know that.
“Intimidation has a name,” Schwarz quipped after Paczesny left in the back of a Justice Department SUV. “Lyons. Carl Lyons.”
The Able Team leader snorted. “This isn’t a game, Gadgets.”
“No, you sure talk a good nightmare,” Schwarz answered.
“I don’t like it, but when it comes down to saving noncombatants and breaking apart some thug who’s in on a bunch of deaths I can prevent…”
“The needs of the many, bro,” Schwarz replied. He bopped the ex-cop on the shoulder.
Lyons looked at his watch. It was just after dawn. “Please. It’s too early for that Star Trek crap.”
“Speaking of which,” Blancanales interjected, “what’s the plan? Stick around poking at any support structure for the mercenaries who hit Burgundy Lake, or do we go to Florida?”
Lyons frowned. “We’ll spend a few hours here snooping around. We might hit something, but I doubt that the raiders’ backup would stick around longer than sunset.”
“That’s including the guy who ran off,” Blancanales reminded him.
Lyons nodded. “Our mystery opponent took off, and we still haven’t assembled much in terms of ranking on this group. Chances are, the escapee was either the highest ranking, or the most experienced in the marauder party. Either way, that will make him valuable enough to be useful in Florida.”
“A hit on Cape Canaveral would be insane,” Schwarz stated. “The security forces on hand are well-trained.”
“So were the Air Force guards at Burgundy Lake. Besides, we’ve penetrated NASA security before, too,” Lyons countered.
“Okay. We hit the bricks and try to catch our boy on the way out of town,” Blancanales said. “I’d make it a safe bet he’d try a charter flight.”
“Check on it,” Lyons told him. “I’ll be at the battle site. Gadgets, check out the warehouse where the combined task force has the wreckage. A closer look at the stolen technology might tell us if this was an effort to steal and reverse-engineer the thrusters, or just getting it out of the way.”
“Knowing the state of international rocketry research, it’s a good bet that they already have their own version of the operating thrusters Burgundy Lake was working on,” Schwarz agreed. “And where will you be?”
“You don’t run into anything larger than a few homes or a roadhouse until you reach the coast,” Lyons replied. “The north is the eastern suburbs of Yuma, so there’ll be airports, but the only major airfield in Mexico is pretty deep behind the border, about halfway to the coast.”
“Your Spanish sucks, Ironman,” Blancanales mentioned.
“I know enough to get by. I’m just going there to see what they’ve got set up. Bear took a look on satellite and saw only single seaters, but these engines are supposed to be small maneuvering thrusters, so they can’t take up a lot of space on something like a ninety-nine-ton shuttle. Transporting a few examples via a puddle hopper won’t be difficult,” Lyons surmised.
“What about the mercenaries?” Schwarz asked.
“Cessna Stationaires hold six passengers. They dump their assault load out, and they can pack on two thruster prototypes a piece with the 180-pound luggage capacity. I saw only four in the one truck, so given the two we found in the other, we can count three Stationaires, eighteen mercenaries and six thrusters in the air toward the coast,” Lyons pointed out. “That accounts for half the force we eliminated. Don’t forget that in Mexico, whatever flight-plan paperwork exists is literally on paper, not something we could get with a hacker.”
“That’s quite a distance,” Blancanales noted, looking at the aerial photo map Lyons pointed to. “One man, doing it on foot, that’d be a hump, even to the nearest road, which would be Route 8, cutting from Sonoyta to Puerto Penasco.”
“You or I could do it,” Lyons replied. “A disciplined soldier could make Route 8 by sunrise, and there is traffic on the road.”
Schwarz spoke up. “And if he and his buddies thought ahead, they could have had a spot to dump off the heavy vehicles and transfer to less conspicuous rides before they got to the airport.”
He summoned up a satellite map on his PDA and began calculating distances from the previous night’s battle and the road to the coast.
“Foothills?” Lyons asked.
“Yup. Found it. Seriously broken ground where you could stash a used car lot and keep it invisible
