Don Pendleton - Power Grab

“Have you got it?” Lyons asked.

“Tracking a firm trace signal,” Schwarz reported.

Blancanales shooed an attractive young woman in a halter top out of his way, somehow managing to be charming while doing it, and Lyons shook his head. Blancanales could get lucky in the strangest places.

They searched up and down each aisle. All the crap on the tables was starting to look the same, as far as Carl Lyons was concerned. Then, suddenly, the device in Schwarz’s hands seemed to light up like a Christmas tree. He stopped, examining a table covered in old, obsolete video game consoles that looked like they had been rolled down a hill and then run through a rock tumbler.

“Here!” Schwarz said. “It’s right here!”

Lyons realized then that he was pointing with the scanner at a gunmetal-gray box on the table that he had first thought to be one of the console games. It was, on closer inspection, one of the Iranian smart bombs.

Blancanales and Lyons took up stations on either side of Schwarz, covering a flank. The three men had worked and fought together for so long that very few words needed to pass between them; they knew their jobs, and they knew how to protect their own.

“Leave the area immediately,” Lyons ordered the few brave souls who still stood and watched, milling around nearby. “You won’t be in any danger if you leave immediately, but this device could produce noxious fumes. You don’t want to inhale them.”

The crowd moved off. Schwarz shot Lyons a look. “‘Noxious fumes’? Underselling the whole nerve-gas thing, aren’t you?”

“Shut up, Gadgets,” Lyons said. He smiled, though. This was an old game they played. Both men knew they didn’t want to create a panic—or any more of a panic than they had already caused with their arrival. Already he could hear police sirens in the distance. If Price was doing her job, and she of course would be, the Farm would even now be relaying orders to the local authorities, instructing them to maintain a cordon around the target site but not to interfere with the government agents operating within it.

The locals always hated that, and Lyons didn’t blame them. He’d worn the badge and been part of the thin blue line himself. Nobody liked the jurisdictional crap from the Feds. There was simply no other way, and this was going to play out again and again as Jack Grimaldi ferried them into and out of one municipality and then the next. They were going to stomp a lot of feet before this was over. The alternative was wading through the usual bureaucratic red tape, and he was not going to allow that. People would die before the folks keeping chairs warm with their asses figured out what had to be done to keep the populace safe from Ovan’s terror network. He supposed he couldn’t blame the local law enforcement for not understanding the threat of a network they didn’t know about; Ovan and his terrorists were classified government information, their existence a closely guarded U.S. intelligence secret at this point.

By the time Able and Phoenix were done with Ovan, it was Lyons’s hope that no American civilian would ever need to hear of Ovan’s network. The men in it, and perhaps Ovan himself, would be extinct.

Schwarz, careful to keep the scanner device trained on the box as he approached it, was already holding down a switch, and Lyons thought he could hear a high-pitched whine coming from the scanner. Schwarz then placed the unit in contact with the smart bomb and pressed several more buttons. Lights began to cycle in a definite pattern.

“This bomb,” Schwarz said, “is fully active. According to the scanner it hasn’t completed its acclimation algorithm.”

“It’s what now?” Lyons asked absently. He was watching for threats over the barrel of his Daewoo.

“The bomb has to do a bunch of computer sampling,” Schwarz said, still holding the scanner in contact with the device. “The CIA first told us about it, and Akira and I verified in testing with devices not carrying explosive charges. When it’s placed, it has to go through an orientation phase, if you want to call it that, so its computer brain can get its bearings. It can’t be moved during the orientation or the calibration is all screwy and it just goes off at a random interval.”

“That what happened to the three puddles they pulled out of that shopping mall?”

“No way to tell,” Schwarz said, “but it’s the most likely explanation. Of course, we don’t know for certain that trying to deactivate the bomb like this won’t set it off.”

“We don’t?” Lyons asked. He caught the wink that Schwarz shot Blancanales, though.

“How long does it take?” Blancanales asked. He waved off a pair of women in shorts and tank tops who were starting to edge closer from the hedgerow parking lot. “Please, ladies,” he ordered. “Move along.”

“Still pulling the chicks, eh?” Schwarz said without looking up from his work.

“You know it,” Blancanales said smoothly.

The status LEDs on Schwarz’s scanner suddenly turned green. There was a metal clicking noise from inside the bomb casing. Schwarz looked at Lyons, then to Blancanales, and placed the scanner back in a padded pouch on his web gear.

“What are you—?” Lyons started to say.

Schwarz reached out and pressed the buttons on either side of the case. He opened the bomb like a suitcase and let the top rest against the table, revealing the inset spheres of the explosives.

Blancanales whistled.

Schwarz reached inside and, as Lyons winced, pressed a catch that released each of the spheres. Then he removed them. A contact wire trailed from each sphere. Schwarz produced a multitool from his web gear and used the wire cutters to snip the wires just aft of the connection to each sphere. Then he placed the spheres gently back in their receptacles.

The Able Team electronics genius pointed to the bomb case.

“The bouncing betty balls here,” he said, “have simple contact switches connecting their fuses to the computer’s brain. When they’re expelled from the bomb through breakaway hatches in the outer casing, they pull free from the fuses, and that’s what causes them to go off. They’re harmless now.”

“Really?” Lyons asked.

“Well, as harmless as a sphere of plastic explosive laced with solidified nerve toxin ever gets. I’m not saying I’d leave them out for the neighborhood kids to play with.”

“Good call,” Lyons said. “Let’s collect those and get the hell out of here.” He was grateful for the chopper still beating the air in the field nearby, its rotor thrum a heartbeat to the action here in the market. Getting on that chopper and flying away meant they wouldn’t have to deal with any awkward questions from the local law enforcement.

“Wait!” Schwarz said. He pulled the scanner from his web gear; it was beeping. “I’m getting…yes, I’m getting another localized signal. It’s not a full trace, just back-scatter, but it’s strong. The profile fits that of a device that’s online but not activated.”

“Another device…here?” Lyons asked.

“Yes, somewhere close.” Schwarz nodded.

“Go,” Lyons ordered. “Find it.”

Schwarz was off again, the scanner in his hands pointed in front of him. His M-16 was still slung and he used his free hand to pull the Beretta 93-R to allow him to track and shoot at the same time.

“This way,” Schwarz directed.

They followed the electronics expert as he made his way into the hedgerow parking lot. Here, winding rows of man-tall shrubbery separated each curving dirt path. Cars were parked on either side of the paths, and to exit the market, drivers would have to take a circuitous route through the twisting rows and back around the rear of the market to reach the nearest paved road.