Don Pendleton - Hostile Dawn

“You have something?” Barbara Price asked.

Tokaido nodded. “Our paramilitary one-stop-shopping center migrated just a few miles from Barstow. They’re in Hesperia.”

Carl Lyons fielded the young hacker’s heads-up on the location of Army Gideon’s new quarters.

“Any word if they’ve been in contact with Ahmet or Nouhra?” Schwarz asked as he clipped frag grenades to an ammunition belt already loaded with magazines.

“No,” Lyons reported, “but they just got their mitts on a handful of Gustav rocket launchers. If that’s not special orders for our perps, I don’t know what is.”

“Hesperia’s less than a half hour away, tops,” Blancanales said. “Maybe we can beat the shoppers there and be waiting for them.”

“Not that it matters at this stage,” Schwarz said, “but I keep wondering who they plan to take out with these rocket launchers they keep trying to get their hands on.”

“Beats me,” Lyons said, “but I’m guessing innocent bystanders.”

AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Ron Renauld for his contribution to this work.

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

EPILOGUE

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

Winter had come early to the Blue Ridge Mountains. The peaks were capped white, and the overnight snowfall had left three inches of fresh powder at the lower elevations. As Barbara Price waved to the security detail manning the front gate to Stony Man’s Shenandoah Valley compound, she saw one of the blacksuits maneuvering a trailer plow down the long driveway leading to the main house. The gabled structure looked, to the eye, much like any number of other isolated manors she’d passed on the drive from Baltimore, where she’d just spent a rare four-day weekend away from her duties as mission controller for the Farm’s Sensitive Operations Group. It had been good to get away, but Price was dedicated to her work and looked forward to padding her clipboard with the latest intel and logistics data needed to oversee covert operations being carried out by the men of Able Team and Phoenix Force.

A portion of the Farm’s private landing strip had been plowed clear, as well, and Price had just eased her Jeep Cherokee to a stop near the house when she saw a Bell 206 Long Ranger helicopter flutter down from the leaden skies overhead, raising up clouds of dry snow as it zeroed in on the clearing. After tucking her shoulder-length, honey-blond hair inside her parka, Price stepped out into the crisp, twenty-degree morning air. She strode past the dormant snow-covered produce gardens, reaching the chopper just as Hal Brognola was disembarking. Brognola, SOG’s director of operations, was a tall, middle-aged man with graying temples and well-earned furrows creasing his broad forehead.

“How was your vacation?” Brognola asked Price as they headed toward the house.

Price smiled. “Four days is a ‘breather,’ not a vacation. But we take what we can get.”

“Isn’t that the truth.”

“In any event, I’m recharged and ready to go.”

“Glad to hear it,” Brognola replied, “because we’ve got a full plate.”

The Sensitive Operations Group administrators passed through two checkpoints before reaching an underground tunnel that linked the main house with the Farm’s Annex, a newer facility housed within the facade of a wood-chipping mill set on the east end of the property. They traversed the thousand-foot-long passageway in an electric cart, its muted purr allowing Brognola to bring Price up to date without raising his voice.

“We’ve still got the men working two fronts,” Brognola explained. “Able Team’s out in California, just north of L.A., near Barstow.”

“The sleeper cell?” Price asked. “What would al Qaeda be doing up there?”

“We’ve got a lead that they’re trying to get their hands on some explosives,” Brognola said.

“From under whose counter?” Price wanted to know.

“Some paramilitary outfit,” Brognola explained. “We intercepted something off their message board that sounded like a deal in the making. Unfortunately there were no details on a time or location, so we’re going to have to sniff around and hope they tip their hand.”

“I take it there was nothing about what al Qaeda has in mind if they can load up.”

“Negative,” Brognola admitted. “We still think they’re targeting L.A., but since they’re roaming around up there it might be they’ve got their eyes on the aqueduct. It’s always been vulnerable, and there are tons of places up there where they’d have easy access to it.”

“Turn off the faucet before it reaches L.A.?”

“That’s one theory,” Brognola said. “CIA thinks they could be targeting the freeways, and the Bureau’s hunch is there might still be something to all that talk about hitting a shopping mall.”

“Any one of those would be a nightmare,” Price said with a shudder that had only partly to do with the lack of heat in the illuminated passageway.

Reaching the far end of the tunnel, Brognola and Price left the cart and headed to the next security checkpoint.

“As for Phoenix Force,” the SOG director continued, “they’re in Damascus. A Hamas sect just kidnapped an American reporter for U.S. Global News. ”

“I read about that,” Price confessed. “He was looking into claims that Iran’s shuttling nuclear materials to Syria one step ahead of IAEC inspectors.”

“Not only that,” Brognola said. “He was running with the theory that they were using the same conduit Hussein used to smuggle WMAs out of Iraq back before we came sniffing around.”

“There’s a Pulitzer in there somewhere if he can prove it.”

“Provided he lives to write about it,” said Brognola. “We need to hope Hamas is trying to interrogate the guy and didn’t just whack him. Otherwise they’re going to be lying in wait for Phoenix.”

Damascus, Syria

T RAREQ C REEK N URSERY , located on hilly terrain two miles west of the Old City in Damascus, had been shut down for nearly a year. Most of its inventory had been transferred to a newer, larger facility closer to the Syrian capital’s suburban sprawl, but rainfall and a steady supply of water from mountain-fed streams that wound through the abandoned parcel had allowed those plants and large shrubs left behind to thrive. The overgrown, unpruned foliage had provided adequate cover for the men of Phoenix Force as they closed in on their target, a large greenhouse set back toward the rear of the nursery. Ivy and bougainvillea had overrun the greenhouse, covering most of its dust-caked glass panels. Parked next to the outbuilding was a late-model Subaru station wagon. It matched the description of the vehicle used by Hamas terrorists who, less than twelve hours ago, had kidnapped U.S. Global News reporter Walter Ferris in the parking lot outside the Damascus Venata Hotel.