Don Pendleton: Close Quarters

STONY MAN

An elite covert special ops team, Stony Man acts only under presidential directive. Backed by a sophisticated unit of cybernetics and weapons experts, Able Team and Phoenix Force fight terror across the globe. They operate with impunity, driven by grit and the instinct of true warriors dedicated to protecting the innocent.

TERROR TRAIL

When Peace Corps volunteers working in the jungles of Paraguay are kidnapped and brutalized by a mysterious new Islamic terrorist group—and political maneuvering fails—Stony Man gets the call. Its dual mission: an under-the-radar jungle rescue and a hunt along the Iranian shores and backstreets of Tehran for the terrorist masterminds. With the enemy’s hard-line agenda poised to fuel the powder keg of Middle East instability, Stony Man moves in against long odds that are only getting longer. Surrounded and outgunned, they’re willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to succeed.

“We’re talking a religious coup of incomprehensible proportions.”

“Do I smell a change in plans, then?” McCarter asked Price.

“Not for you,” she replied. “But we wanted you to have a better idea of what you’re up against. We’ll be taking care of the rest of this through Able Team.”

“And how exactly do you plan to do that, if I might be so bold as to inquire?”

“We’re sending them to Tehran to handle the matter personally,” Price said.

“Wait. Let me make sure I just heard you correctly. You’re sending Able Team into Iran?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, bloody hell,” McCarter said. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Well, the decision’s already been made by the President, and Hal’s in complete agreement. I had my own reservations, but it didn’t seem like the issue was up for debate. Not now anyway.”

“Have you told Able Team yet?”

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jon Guenther for his contribution to this work.

Close Quarters

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

Paraguay, South America

Sweat stung his eyes.

The collar of a khaki shirt chafed his sunburned neck.

The stifling, oppressive heat of the jungle threatened to overtake him.

His lungs burned and his legs ached with every stride.

Christopher Harland had been running through the dense jungle for the past half hour as if his life

depended on it—because it did. He didn’t know the identity of his pursuers, but there was no doubt about what would happen if they caught him. That was all the incentive he needed to run this race—giving up was tantamount to a prolonged and painful death. Or worse, even, as his pursuers might actually subject Harland to the same things to which they had subjected his trusted colleagues, his friends, even a woman he loved.

Who the hell knew about their fates? He couldn’t even be sure of his own at this point.

Harland’s lungs threatened to give out on him. He heard the crash of the small armed unit as they closed the distance. He couldn’t keep this pace forever. No amount of track and field at Rutgers could have prepared him for it. He could only thank his coaches now for the training, although the repeated wind sprints at the time hadn’t seemed all that useful to most of the members on his team.

Harland’s flagging endurance ceased to be a concern as he felt something snag his ankle. He stopped and turned to see what it was, but got no further in his inspection—the sensation of his body leaving the ground proved as distracting as it was disconcerting. The world around him seemed to swirl in a haze of reds and blacks, stars popping in front of his eyes from the abrupt change in orientation.

Harland coughed as he fought for air. It felt as if his heart might explode in his chest. Would that be such a bad way to go? Not as bad as the way he’d exit this world at the hands of the figures who emerged from the jungle shadows. Most of them were dark-skinned but not in a mestizo way. These faces implied a more exotic place of origin, most likely somewhere in the Middle East or northern Africa. Harland had learned quite a bit from his ethnic studies in college.

Harland’s head hammered as he dangled helplessly from the tree. As he spun he could see that at least a dozen men had been chasing him. Why? Was he really a target of that importance or was it merely that they didn’t want him to get away? Clearly these men were operating in secret here, although Harland couldn’t imagine who they were or why they’d be interested in him. He’d heard the stories of Americans being kidnapped and held for ransom or missionaries murdered for proselytizing, but this situation seemed much different.

Harland opened his mouth and gulped air. He thought about speaking to them, but before he could decide his body suddenly plummeted to the ground. He cursed as putting out a hand to break his fall sent shooting pains up his wrist, resulting in what was more likely a sprain than a fracture. Either way, it hurt and he wished these men would either kill him outright or let him go instead of toying with him.

It wasn’t to be.

In a minute that seemed more like an hour, two men grabbed Harland and hauled him to his feet. They shoved him against the gnarled trunk of a giant tree, the surface biting into his skin like sandpaper. They pinned his arms behind him, and then Harland felt something thick and smooth being inserted under his right armpit and drawn across his back until it extended out the opposite side under his other armpit. The men then jerked Harland’s arms down, causing a fresh wave of searing pain to travel up his arm from his injured wrist. They bound the stick to him with thick cord at shoulders and forearms and then spun him.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, first in English and then in Spanish.

That bought him a slap across the mouth. “Shut up!”

Harland’s face stung and he surmised the striker had left a red welt.

Without another word his captors each grabbed one end of the stick and lifted just enough that Harland had to walk almost on his tiptoes to accompany them. He’d probably managed to make it at least a couple of miles from the Peace Corps encampment—walking all that distance back in this fashion would not be pleasant. Then again, what was pleasant about any of this?

His forced march turned out to be even more grueling than he’d suspected it would be, and Harland was exhausted by the time they reached the volunteer camp. Or what was left of it. The wooden buildings that had been home for the past three months were now smoldering hulks, their insides gutted by fire and the exteriors little more than charred, smoking frames. Only the concrete pads on which they’d been built had managed to survive. Harland noticed an odd, thick haze—a mix of orange and green in the late-afternoon sunlight filtering through the jungle canopy overhead—had fallen on the camp. It wasn’t caused by the smoke. This was some sort of natural phenomenon he’d never experienced before and he wondered if it had something to do with the fire.

The men half dragged, half walked Harland across the remains of the encampment until they reached the one building that had remained untouched: the camp mess. A man stood there, dressed in camouflage khakis like the others. A belt with a mixture of shotgun shells and high-velocity rounds encircled his waist in some kind of military webbing. His boots were highly polished and muscular arms bulged taut against the rolled-up sleeves of his uniform shirt. While the other men wore black berets, this one wore a blocked utility cap with gold wreaths braided along the brim and some kind of circular emblem on its crown.