Don Pendleton - Ramrod Intercept

“Find Santa Monica Boulevard,” Lyons answered. “That will get us in the general vicinity of Century City. I think it’s time we paid their boss a visit. Assuming he keeps longer work hours than the hired help.”

Lyons was scrunched up beside Gadgets, and their two songbirds were in back. The plastic cuffs had already been snapped on their wrists, and Lyons read the fear on their expressions as they sat on the floor.

“Right, you two are in a world of hurt.”

“Are you cops?”

“Not exactly. Right now we’re the only thing that stands between a bunch of guys like the ones we left back there in the alley, and your permanent retirement from DYSAT.”

“You want us to talk about what we know?”

“You sound like a smart young man.”

“What’s in it for us?”

Lyons chuckled. “Now you’re sounding not so smart. All I’m telling you on a deal, is that it depends on what we hear. Bottom line, that’s not my call to make.”

He was about to unleash the flurry of questions when the phone with its secured line beeped from its hookup on the console. Schwarz fielded the call. Lyons waited, heard Gadgets grunting.

“Yeah…uh-huh…right…just a second…”

“It’s Hal,” Schwarz said, his hand over the mouthpiece. “He said we have a green light—sort of.”

“What the hell’s sort of?”

“There’s conditions. What do you want me to tell him about our situation?”

“The truth.”

THE TRUTH SENT Brognola digging out the packet of antacid tablets. He washed three of them down with coffee, then moved deeper across the Computer Room. Akira Tokaido and Hunt Wethers stopped their cyber sleuthing on pertinent background data on the key DYSAT players long enough to catch the grim update on Able Team.

“Carl says it was self-defense,” Brognola said. “Schwarz says his guy came in, likewise blasting.”

“The bad guys know they’re targeted,” Kurtzman said from his workstation. “Maybe that’s good. Now that the opening guns have sounded, the top dogs will get nervous, maybe try and pack up their toys, whatever the latest shipment, and bull ahead.”

“Or pull up the drawbridge,” Price stated.

“I don’t think it’s exactly what the President had in mind,” Tokaido put in, “when he alluded to turning up the heat a notch. But we all know Carl can get a little antsy.”

“Well, antsy or whatever, the heat is on, people,” Brognola said. “The only question is who burns first.”

“And the DYSAT lab facility in Idaho?” Wethers asked. “Is it still hands off?”

“For now. Okay, where are we?”

Brognola checked the large monitor that displayed a tract of the Indian Ocean where the minisub was taking Phoenix Force to the Madagascan shore. Tokaido commented on the visual capacity of the state-of-the-art high-energy X-ray laser tracking beam that was monitoring the minisub and anything else moving in the water from space. Just like an X-ray it outlined the sub, twenty feet below the surface in a hazy gray frame.

“Two more minutes and they’re out the hatch,” Price announced. “They’re right on schedule.”

“The problem is that damn Russian satellite,” Brognola groused. “We’re going to be blind soon, and we won’t have another satellite pass over until they’re wheels up in the Spectre.”

“Five hours before it has to move on,” Kurtzman said. “And we still can’t get any answers from our side or any contacts we have in Moscow why a Russian satellite is up ONI-1’s rear. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way. Over the phone.”

“Hal, I know I’m getting a little ahead of the program,” Wethers said, “but I’ve been poring over the sat imagery of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. At some point I think we need to address it again. I mean, I have a clear and growing military buildup, far exceeding anything the Iranians have done to date. The key islands in the strait, Larak, Henqin, Sirri, Qeshm and the Greater Tunb Islands…well, they’ve moved in an additional sixteen pieces of antiaircraft hardware, including surface-to-air missiles. Now, one-third of the world’s oil supply is tankered through the Strait of Hormuz. I’m not pushing any panic buttons, but we’re looking at some connection between DYSAT, Sudan, the Iranians in Madagascar and the latest renewed military buildup on the islands. Say the Iranians pull the trigger? A 130 mm gun is more than plenty to sink any one of twenty tankers that pass through the strait every day. A wall of fire, a massive oil spill would shut the strait down. I don’t even want to begin to imagine the damage to the economic infrastructures of Europe, Japan, and, of course, the United States.”

And thus phase two.

“The President’s aware, Hunt, of the potential enormity of the problem. Depending on what happens with Phoenix in Madagascar, and if Striker’s able to link a few of the missing pieces together…let’s get Phoenix through Phase One. The Strait of Hormuz situation remains on the back burner.”

Brognola was watching the X-ray beam tracking the minisub when he saw it. It came at the minisub, from the south, moving through the water, on a collision course.

Kurtzman muttered a curse as he recognized it for what it was. “How close are they to shore?”

“Three hundred yards still,” Tokaido said. “Oh, my God.”

Brognola nearly lost his grip on the coffee cup, fingers clenching so hard around the cigar he nearly snapped it in two. “Please, people, someone tell me that’s not what I think I think it is.”

It was the dreaded demon, the alpha and the omega, he thought, of any SEAL’s worst nightmare.

It was a white shark, and it was a big one.

Calvin James nearly leaped off the bench, as soon as the thud struck the hull from above, the black ex-SEAL scrambling toward the control console when—

He froze, heart lurching into his throat as he caught sight of the massive tail slowly stroking, fanning the murk, back and forth, out to the port side. Yellow light from the minisub outlined the creature, framed its white underbelly from which it got its name.

The sub’s driver, a blacksuit brought from the Farm, watched until the distant darkness swallowed up the great fish, his eyeballs nearly popping out of his skull.

Gone but hardly forgotten.

“Sir, that was at least a sixteen—”

“No,” James said, “more like an eighteen footer, four, maybe five tons. A submarine with teeth.” The former SEAL turned and read the grim fear on the faces of his comrades in Phoenix Force.

T. J. Hawkins was watching the dark gloom, intent as hell, as if the behemoth might come back for another look at the minisub, or worse—ram its head straight through the reinforced glass bubble. “Cal, I’m thinking they probably never told you what to do about something like that in BUDs.”

“Pray.”

Rafael Encizo, donning his frogman suit like the other commandos, said, “Beyond the Our Fathers and the Hail Marys, what’s the plan?”

David McCarter, the leader of Phoenix Force, stepped up to the control console, reading the depth gauges. “How close can you get us to shore?”

“Another fifty, sixty yards tops, then I’m cutting it close to hitting the bottom.”

And, of course, they were warriors, with a mission on the table. No one, even if the thought fleeted through his mind, was about to say out loud, “Hell, no, I won’t go.”

“So, that leaves us how far a swim?” Gary Manning wanted to know.

“A little less than a hundred yards.”

“Fire the torpedo,” McCarter told the blacksuit. “All right, mates, everybody has a knife. We swim in a staggered formation. Slow and easy. Give yourselves six feet apart, I’m thinking, breaststroke it in, blade in one hand.”