Don Pendleton: Mind Bomb

“Even for around here.”

Korkaz led them to a rusting yellow school bus. He clambered inside and yanked up a hatch in the floor. A short flight of wooden steps led down into darkness. The Druze hit a switch and cheerfully bright track lighting illuminated a low but spacious bunker full of crates.

“So you want to go into Lebanon?” Korkaz asked.

“No, I don’t.” Phoenix Force had operated in Lebanon on a number of occasions. They had found answers there. Usually at terrible cost, and they were answers that nobody wanted to hear. “But I have to. What’ve you heard?”

“Nothing good. Killings. Inexplicable ones. Bad ones, even for this—how do you say?—neck of the woods.” The Druze suddenly grinned disarmingly. “I would not go there unarmed were I you.”

“So what have you got?”

“I have something for you. I am not sure if it fits the bill, but you may recognize it from your salad days of youth.” Korkaz opened a crate and McCarter felt a twinge of nostalgia as he gazed upon the contents. Korkaz nodded. “No one wants submachine guns anymore. Everybody wants PDWs and ARs.” Korkaz sighed at the dully gleaming cast-steel weapons. “Dying breed.”

McCarter took up one of the submachine guns. The Sterling was a weapon he was well familiar with. Unlike most automatic weapons the magazine curved out from the left-hand side rather than down from the bottom, which made it look vaguely like one half of a backward crossbow. The beer-can-thick, fattened, black metal tube of a built-in sound suppressor modified the barrel of this example. The weapon was a Sterling Mk-5. McCarter had carried just such a weapon during his stint in the British SAS. “Brilliant. Where’s it from, then? India?”

Korkaz blew out a long, thin stream of smoke. “Iraq. Republican Guard security detail.” The Druze nodded at James. “Got them from some Yanks a while back.”

McCarter pulled out a massive wad of Euros. “I’ll take them, and every spare magazine you have. Pistols?”

“Browning Hi-Powers, manufacture.”

It was all old-school British gear and what McCarter had been weaned on. “I have a lad who is something of a sharpshooter. You have anything with a scope sight? Preferably sighted in?”

“I might have something, but most likely old.”

“That’ll do.” McCarter sighed hopefully. “Got any grenade launchers?”

“I wish.”

McCarter’s cell rang. He didn’t recognize the number. He answered in a neutral English language accent. “Hello?”

“The Minerva Hotel. You have ninety minutes. If you are not there, there will be no further communication.” It was the same woman’s voice with the same accent he couldn’t identify.

The line went dead. Korkaz and James looked at McCarter expectantly. McCarter shrugged at Korkaz. “You know the Minerva Hotel?”

The Druze nodded. “I do, Hezbollah took unofficial ownership a decade ago. The IDF has bombed it dozens of times. It is mostly a pile of rubble with a rats’ nest of tunnels beneath that put my poor cellar to shame.”

McCarter just didn’t see his job getting any easier. “You wouldn’t have any hand grenades?”

Korkaz stroked his beard. “There might be a few Indian manufacture Mills bombs lying about.”

“I’ll take all you have.”

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