satisfied, he eased in a drum of 12-gauge cartridges and clicked on the safety. “Besides, they hate Delacort with a passion that can only be measured in kilotons.”
“The enemy of my enemy, eh?” Blancanales asked, tucking the Colt into a shoulder holster. “Come on, let’s get out of this filthy car and get dressed. I’m covered with fake brains.”
Grinning wickedly, Schwarz opened his mouth to speak.
“Not a fucking word, Gadgets,” Blancanales warned sternly.
The man feigned shock. “Who, me?”
Exiting the battered SUV, the team retrieved duffel bags from restraining straps on the walls of the truck and pulled out designer suits, expensive Italian shoes, Rolex watches and fat plastic containers of moist towellettes. Stripping to the skin, the men washed off the fake blood and began to get dressed again, starting with imported silk shorts. They needed to appear rich, and there was no telling how detailed a search Delacort might have his bodyguards perform.
“So, who are we this time?” Schwarz asked, splashing on some expensive French cologne.
“We’re mercenaries called Red Five,” Lyons replied, slipping on a designer shirt. “We’re a radical splinter group of the Aryan Nation.”
Pulling up his pants, the man stopped. “We’re stinking Nazis?”
“Aryans,” Blancanales corrected. “Not Nazis.”
“The difference being…?”
“I’ll get back to you on that.”
“Swell,” Schwarz muttered, buckling his belt.
“How long before we contact Delacort?” Schwarz asked.
“This evening,” Lyons replied, sliding on a pair of sunglasses. “Any sooner and he might become suspicious. We get only one chance at this, so we have to play it low and slow.”
“And if he doesn’t know anything about the Airwolves’ military ordnance?” Blancanales asked, sliding a gold signet ring onto his hand. Clenching his fist, the ring blossomed into a flower of razor blades. Easing his hand, the ring snapped shut, returning to the appearance of mere jewelry.
“Then we convince him to find out,” Lyons said coldly.
CHAPTER THREE
Quintana Roo, Mexico
Swiftly, the massive C-130 Hercules airplane glided through the clear sky like a winged mountain. David McCarter had turned off the huge engines as the coastline of Mexico came into sight, and was now dead-sticking it, flying the colossal warplane with his hands on the yoke, directed by instinct and years of training.
Strapped into the copilot’s seat, a tall, lean man in a military jumpsuit was using both hands to operate a military image enhancer. More than merely magnifying a view of the ground below, the device also scanned in the ultraviolet and infrared spectrum. Boasting window-in-window capability, the display screen showed a real-time view of the ground below, plus a series of static shots, the view constantly shifting as the cameras focused briefly on anything hot enough to register as a potential threat.
Thomas Jackson Hawkins had been raised in Texas, and was outlandishly proud of the fact. A genial man who smiled a lot, Hawkins spoke slowly, but moved with lightning-fast reflexes when it was time to kill. A former member of the elite Delta Force, Hawkins was trained in quiet kill techniques, but much preferred a thunder and lightning blitzkrieg.
“Okay, thermals read clean again. Aside from a campfire some kids built, there’s nothing down there but a coyote. No sign of any motorized traffic or other campfires.”
“Good to know,” David McCarter stated, putting his full attention on the stygian darkness ahead.
The former SAS commando knew that the bustling city of Cancun was only a few miles to the east, but the electric glow of the famous vacation spot was completely swallowed by the sheer distance, along with the endlessly shifting mountains of rolling sand dunes. The Phoenix Force leader felt like he was flying with the windows painted back, the night was so dark. His muscles were starting to ache from the strain of being constantly ready to dodge an outcropping.
The peninsula of Quintana Roo was mostly wild desert that stretched to white sandy beaches, occasionally punctuated with the crumbling ruins of Mayan temples perched atop low rocky cliffs. But that was Mexico; Cancun was as peaceful as Quintana Roo was savage.
“Time,” Hawkins reported, not bothering to check the watch under his sleeve.
Without shifting his sight, McCarter reached out to flip some switches, feathering the propellers and dropping two of the four airfoils. Instantly the huge plane slowed as if plowing into a wall of gelatin.
“Hundred feet…eighty…sixty…” Hawkins read off the altimeter. “Watch out—the freaking temple!”
“I saw it,” McCarter growled, speeding past the stone building and then dropping the last two flaps.
“Guess so, since we didn’t just eat sandstone,” Hawkins snorted, hitting a button on the intercom. “Hold on to your asses, boys, this is it. We’re going in!”
Fifty feet away, in the main body of the huge airplane, past a short flight of stairs, three men sat strapped into jumpseats, their camouflage-colored uniforms covered with military equipment.
“Roger that, Taxes.” Calvin James chuckled.
Over the intercom set into the arm of the jumpseat, Hawkins’s reply consisted mostly of four-letter words.
“Only if you buy me dinner first.” James laughed, a strong Chicago accent announcing his own native city.
Over six feet in height, the lanky man was classically good-looking, although oddly sporting a pencil-thin mustache like a movie star from the Roaring Twenties. Ready for battle the instant they touched down, James had an MP-5 submachine gun strapped across his chest and night-vision goggles at his side. A sleek 9 mm Beretta rode high on his chest in a combat holster, and a Randall Survival knife was at his side, the telltale blade of a Navy SEAL. Unlike the others, his camouflage paint was dull gray to mix with his naturally dark skin.
Surrounding the members of Phoenix Force were large pallets bolted directly to the deck, the stacks of equipment trunks lashed tightly into place. Parked fifty feet away at the rear of the plane was a Hummer, the heavy military vehicle tightly cocooned in a spiderweb of restraining belts. Ready for desert combat, the Hummer was painted a mottled array of dull colors, the headlights covered with night shields, and a M-249 SAW machine gun already attached to the firing stanchion, the breech open, the attached ammo box ready for action.
“And…welcome to Mexico!” McCarter announced over a wall speaker.
Instantly the plane shuddered as the wheels bounced off the hard desert sand. A spray of loose particles peppered the aft belly as the C-130 Hercules airplane rose slightly only to touch down once more. The plane shuddered again, then jerked hard and began to crazily jerk around as it bounced along the irregular ground. Everything loose went flying, and the three men in the jumpseats held on for dear life, not fully trusting the safety harnesses.
The
