French soldiers were quickly muttering into the mikes dangling from cords attached to their epaulets.
Unable to believe what was happening, Perdue watched the wreath of flames spread outward to engulf other planes, Russian, Japanese, American, British; in turn each erupted, chunks of wreckage and human limbs flying away in every direction.
Several more planes on the ground burst apart as they tried to taxi out of the area, adding to the tidal wave of destruction. Bricks sprayed out from the control tower as the building started to buckle in the middle, the tall structure audibly groaning as it eased over, the tons of masonry cascading onto a row of parked cars filled with screaming people.
In the sky, the arriving planes were turning away from the airport, and two of them touched for a brief second, the wings bending before they snapped off. Sharply angling around, the airliners slammed directly into each other and broke apart, the pieces and passengers tumbling downward like a rain from hell.
Steadily increasing in power and fury, the destruction of the airport continued unabated, fires raged out of control in a hundred locations. Sprawled bodies covered the tarmac. A few of the forms pitifully tried to crawl away, but the rest were ominously still.
As bright as daggers from the sun, fiery darts shot across the chaotic airport, and the distant hangars became engulfed in flames.
Galvanized into action, Perdue cast aside her cell phone and dashed for the nearby emergency exit, her every thought on reaching Flight 219. Jean-Pierre had to still be alive. He had to be! As she reached for the handle of the door, the wall changed into blinding light and something hard hit her in the back, stealing the breath from her lungs. Thrown to the debris-covered floor, Perdue tried to rise again, but her legs were numb, unfeeling lumps of flesh below her blood-splattered hem. Everything seemed to slow as she looked down to see a dark red stain spreading across the front of her dress, a long shard of the Plexiglas window sticking out of her belly like a transparent dagger. Her throat tightened, but no sob came. She felt oddly dizzy, and there was no pain. No pain at all. How very strange.
Charging through the wreckage, a PIR soldier carrying a medical bag headed toward her when the floor cracked open wide and he fell out of sight into a smoke-filled crevice. Reaching out for the soldier, Perdue felt herself starting to fall forward into a bottomless abyss.
Less than a minute later Flight 219 descended from the misty sky to flash over the charred ruins of the international airport, the crew and passengers unable to believe the devastation below.
CHAPTER ONE
Stone Man Farm, Virginia
In the spacious War Room, several people sat in the dark around a large conference table, watching a jumbled recording of the dire events that had occurred in France less than six hours earlier. Their faces were grim, and nobody moved or spoke until the last horrific scene of destruction was finally over.
Pressing a button on the remote control, Barbara Price, the Farm’s mission controller, banished the horrific images. Slowly, the room lights brightened to full strength.
“That was recovered from a dozen smashed security cameras at the Marseilles-Provence Airport,” Price said, setting the remote control on the table. “The whole attack lasted less than two minutes.”
Somebody whistled softly, and another bitterly cursed.
“That fast?” David McCarter asked, raising an eyebrow.
“This was no slapdash operation by a bunch of lunatics throwing a homemade firebomb out of speeding car,” Price replied curtly. “This was a surgical attack with military precision, highly sophisticated and extremely well coordinated.”
“These people are as ruthless as mad dogs,” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman growled, running stiff fingers through his wild crop of hair.
Everybody who saw the hirsute goliath quickly accepted his nickname of Bear. Although an expert computer specialist, one of the best in the world, the man had the shoulders of a professional linebacker and the heavily muscled arms of a stone mason, in spite of the fact that he was in a wheelchair. His face was bright and alive, his black eyes sharply intelligent.
Odd for a man living at a government base with nearly unlimited funding, his wheelchair was an older model, the metal struts badly scarred from countless small repairs. But the burly computer expert much preferred the manual chair to any motorized version, as the constant exercise of pushing himself along kept his upper body in excellent shape.
“They’re worse than mad dogs,” Price countered, taking a seat. “That kind of attack would have been random, chaotic. This was deliberate, cold-blooded efficiency, plain brutal mass murder.”
“How many are dead?” asked Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group and Justice Department liaison to the White House. A leather briefcase lay nearby with the lid raised. Inside were stacks of manila folders marked with the telltale red stripe of a Top Secret report.
“We have no idea yet of the death toll,” Price replied, opening a folder and taking out several black-and-white photographs. “Homeland Security had the NSA fly a Keyhole satellite over the area and take some pictures, but there is simply too much wreckage. NATO and the French authorities are still…assembling the bodies.”
“Do they have a rough count?” Brognola asked, glancing at the photos. There was a set of before-and-after shots to help gauge the destruction, but the pairing wasn’t necessary. The area looked like something from the Iraq war, smashed buildings, hundreds of small fires and blast craters in the pavement large enough to see from space.
Folding her hands, Price nodded. “Yes. Approximately four hundred civilians, along with about a hundred military personnel, and maybe twice that in service personnel, but with so many tourists…”
“A blood bath,” Kurtzman muttered.
“Okay, how the hell did these sons of bitches get close enough to the airport to do a bombing run?” Carl Lyons demanded, his ice-blue eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Whatever did this must have been seen on radar, or was the place bombed by a stealth plane?”
The blond giant, a former Los Angeles police detective was the leader of Able Team. Banded cables of muscles stood out on his bare forearms, and a massive .357 Magnum Colt Python revolver rode in a military-style shoulder holster. The other two members of his team were in the garage, listening to the briefing over the intercom while checking the team’s new equipment van.
“Oh, the incoming plane was seen on radar, all right,” Price countered, sliding over another report. “The killers are quite visible. We have the log of the air traffic controllers to confirm that.”
“Was Flight 219 taken over by terrorists and armed somehow?” McCarter asked, glancing at the recon photos.
Called away from a fishing trip, the Phoenix Force leader was in uncharacteristic denims and a red flannel shirt. A pack of Player’s cigarettes was tucked into his shirt pocket, and the man smelled faintly of bug repellant.
“No, Flight 219 had nothing to do with the attack on the airport,” Price said, reaching out to tap a photograph of a jetliner. “They arrived about two minutes after the bombing and were escorted by a wing of Mirage jetfighters to Bordeaux-Mérignac air base where the passengers and crew were, well, vigorously interrogated, would be the polite term, and the plane all but disassembled. However, they were innocent dupes. The terrorists merely pretended
