Don Pendleton - Power Grab

Schwarz began moving back and forth among the rows of parked cars, spooking even more civilians. Lyons and Blancanales urged them to get back beyond the police cordon, the flashing lights of which he could see beyond the hedgerows.

“Get out of here!” Lyons snarled at one group of teenagers.

Schwarz moved like a dog following a scent, this way and that, watching the telltales of the scanner unit rise and fall. At the end of the furthest hedgerow, Lyons put a hand on Schwarz’s shoulder and told him to stop.

“What?” Schwarz asked.

“There,” Lyons said. He pointed.

Sitting at the end of the parking lane was a battered black cargo van. The windows were tinted, darker than was probably legal, and a cardboard sun screen bearing the cartoon image of a giant pair of sunglasses obscured the front windshield.

The van rocked slightly to the left, then the right.

“Signal’s coming from there,” Schwarz confirmed. “And obviously there’s someone in there.”

“Or a lot of someones,” Lyons said. He nodded to Blancanales, who nodded back and broke away, moving around to cover the rear right quarter of the vehicle. “Now for the part I hate.”

“What part is that?” Schwarz asked from his position at the front of the van.

“The part where they start shooting after I demand they come out,” Lyons said. “You in the van!” he roared at full volume.

Lyons was hitting the dirt even before the shots came, but they came. The hollow metallic clatter of a Kalashnikov beat the interior of the van like a drum. Bullets sprayed from the rear windows and even blindly through the body of the vehicle. The engine started.

“Go for the tires,” Lyons ordered.

Blancanales and Schwarz immediately fired into the front and rear tires of the vehicle, which was already moving. The dirt and gravel beneath the shredded wheels flew up in great plumes as the vehicle’s powerful engine urged it forward. Lyons pushed himself to his feet and jogged ahead; the van might be moving, but it wasn’t doing so very quickly. Lining up his shot carefully to prevent catching his partners’ positions, he lowered the barrel of the USAS-12, flicked the weapon’s selector switch to full-auto and held back the trigger.

Heavy 12-gauge slugs poured from the barrel of the weapon. Lyons rode out the tremendous muzzle-rise of the weapon, firing from the hip, watching the heavy slugs tear apart the grille of the van. The hood was blown up on its hinges as the engine screamed in torment. The van shuddered to a halt.

The sliding door was shoved aside, as the rear doors were thrown open.

“Here they come,” Lyons said, his words carried to Able Team by his transceiver.

“Got it,” Blancanales said.

“Let ’er rip,” Schwarz said.

The terrorists spilled out, almost falling over each other. There were three of them. The one who scrambled out the side door was easy pickings; he tried to level his Kalashnikov at Lyons. The big cop let his USAS-12 fall to the end of its single-point sling and withdrew his Colt Python with deadly speed, pulling through double-action to send a Magnum round punching through the man’s face.

Schwarz and Blancanales fired short, measured bursts of their own, dropping their adversaries. Lyons holstered his Python and reloaded a new drum magazine in his shotgun. He advanced on the van.

“Check them!” Lyons said. “If anybody’s still alive we need medical attention rolling.” A live prisoner might mean valuable intelligence about the terrorist network Ovan was fielding. Lyons didn’t like the idea that technology was their only lead in this mission. The cop in him told him they needed something else, some human element, some information that would give them an edge over their enemies. With only an electronic leash to lead them around, they were vulnerable. If they lost the initiative he wasn’t sure they’d be able to get it back, and that worried him. Too many lives were riding on this…and the terrorist attack on the mall was already all over the news, cycling through the twenty-four-hour cable networks. More attacks would raise public response to the level of panic. Nobody wanted that…and Able Team, thanks to their one-of-a-kind gizmo and the Warlock network, were the three men standing between Ovan’s terrorists and complete chaos in the United States.

No, he didn’t like the idea at all. But he would do his job, and so would Blancanales and Schwarz. They always did.

“Nothing here,” Schwarz said.

“Mine’s dead,” Blancanales reported.

Lyons didn’t bother to look at his man; there was no surviving the head shot that gunner had suffered.

Inside the van, he found another one.

The gunman was slumped in a corner of the cargo area, a Makarov pistol on the floor beside him. There was a bullet hole in his temple and a spray of blood on the interior of the van above and behind him.

In his free hand was a cell phone. A voice on the other end was still speaking.

Lyons picked it up and listened. He handed it to Schwarz, who listened. The connection was terminated from the other end.

“Probably Turkmen,” Schwarz guessed. “Not in my repertoire.”

Lyons pocketed the phone. “Jack,” he said. “Are you reading us?”

“Loud and clear,” Grimaldi answered from the chopper.

“Have a courier detailed to meet us, soonest,” he said. “Coordinate with your flight plan, however we can work it out. I’ve got a cell phone here that I want analyzed.”

“Will do.”

Lyons glanced into the back of the van. Two of the suitcase-size bombs were inside. “They’re not active?” he asked.

“Not according to this,” Schwarz said, pointing the scanner at the bombs.

“Then let’s pack them up and get back on the chopper,” Lyons said, looking around. “We’re only just getting started.”

Tehran, Iran

The Volkswagen diesel microbus pulled up to the curb as the men of Phoenix Force, completely unarmed and traveling under the false papers of Canadian reporters from a fictional news outlet, left Imam Khomeini International Airport. Named for the leader of the 1979 Iranian revolution, the airport had been closed and reopened several times in the scuffle over whether or not the facility was run by foreign contractors. David McCarter remembered reading some years back that the airport’s runway had supposedly been built over ancient subterranean waterways and was therefore somehow unstable. Nothing had given way when their Kish Air flight from Dubai had landed, however. McCarter was grateful for that, and grateful that they were done bouncing around all over the globe to complete their successful transit into hostile territory. He grew tired of the secret-agent games and sometimes wondered if they ever truly fooled anyone for long.

Unarmed as he was, McCarter knew a moment’s concern when he sat in the passenger seat of the van. If the man meeting them wasn’t who he was supposed to be, there would be little they could do about it.

“Hello,” the man behind the wheel said as he guided the van away from the loading and unloading area. “My name is Ghaem Ahmadi. I am officially a well-placed operative within the Iranian Internal Security force.”

“Officially?” McCarter asked.

“Unofficially, Uncle Sam asks me to extend his greetings on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency.” Ahmadi smiled. He had a gap-toothed grin set wide in a smooth, olive-skinned face. His dark eyes and round face gave him an almost somber look, as if he was in mourning, and the smile that creased his features seemed incongruous. He wore nondescript civilian clothing and a light windbreaker, much as the members of Phoenix Force did.

“Pleased to meet you,” McCarter said. “A little birdie tells me the weather here’s doing okay lately.”