Don Pendleton - Unified Action

Lyons used the seconds to readjust himself and leap onto the masked figure. His hand caught her wrist just behind where the gun butt filled her palm. He surged forward, snapping his elbow around and driving it into the side of her head.

The masked female slumped under the blow, stunned. The compact automatic dropped out of her hand and fell loudly on the floor. Schwarz rushed into the room ready to back Lyons up. He looked down and saw the sprawled figure on the floor as Lyons pushed himself up.

“She go night-night?” he asked.

“Like a baby,” Lyons replied, and picked up the pistol.

Out in the front room they heard the door being thrown open violently. Lyons spun and lifted his handgun.

“We’re fine, Pol,” Schwarz called out.

“Glad to hear it,” Blancanales replied. “Guess I jumped to the wrong conclusion after seeing you walk into a building right before there’s a gunshot.” Blancanales walked in and looked down at the unconscious figure on the ground. “Dios mios, Ironman, we don’t have time for you to start dating.”

“You’re getting to be a real old lady,” Lyons muttered.

“Speaking of ladies,” Schwarz said, “maybe we could ask this one some questions?”

“Suits me.” Lyons nodded, and stuck the gun behind his back. “Let’s get her up and put her in a chair.”

Blancanales took her mask off to check the extent of Lyons’s blow, and an attractive woman with mahogany skin and Caribbean features was revealed. Her head was covered with close-cropped, tight-knit rows of dark hair pulled back severely from her handsome face. Her temple was swelling where it had made contact with the sharp end of Lyons’s elbow.

The woman came awake, still dazed while the three men pushed her down into a deep, comfortable chair in the living room that was so soft it would be impossible to quickly rise from. She sought to argue and perhaps fight, but Lyons laconically showed her her own pistol and she sat quietly, shooting daggers with her eyes.

“Anything?” Lyons asked after Blancanales had finished searching her.

The Puerco Rican nodded and held up empty hands. “Nothing.”

Lyons nodded. “Check the room she was tossing,” he instructed.

The big ex-cop regarded his prisoner while Blancanales moved back to the bedroom where they had first jumped the thief. Schwarz moved behind the woman and took her hands up, rolling her fingers across a glass he had taken from the kitchen, then setting it just out of reach on the table.

The woman squawked in protest at the liberty taken and spit out a long line of vulgarities. Lyons smirked in admiration at her profane grasp of the English language.

“Nice. You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“My mother’s dead, you Yaquis pig-screwing bastard!” the woman snapped.

Lyons didn’t believe her for a second. “Everyone’s got a hard luck story, sister. What’s your name?”

“None of your business.”

“Sure, you break into the house of my friend, try to steal stuff, and it’s none of my business. But that’s fine, little girl, we’ll know who you are in a moment.”

At the kitchen table Schwarz was quickly mixing a small amount of commercial glue taken from desk supplies in the apartment with common tap water. He worked methodically while the computer next to him began warming up.

“Where’s your badge?” the woman demanded, trying to turn the tables.

Lyons smiled at her and lifted one big, blunt finger to his lips. “Sshh. You felt my badge upside your head just a minute ago.”

“Someone will have heard that pistol shot,” she warned. “They will call the police.”

“In this neighborhood? In the middle of a riot? For a car backfire?” Lyons shook his head gently and the girl slumped into the chair.

Blancanales came back into the room carrying a black canvas backpack. “She found the safe,” he said, and dumped her pack out onto the table next to where Schwarz was working.

“She crack it?” Lyons demanded.

“Nope, but she would have,” Blancanales answered. “I found this.”

The Puerto Rican Special Forces veteran lifted out a black electronic device the size of a commercial Pocketbook computer with two coaxial cables dangling from it. The implement was a top-of-the-line digital safecracker. Lyons let out a long, slow whistle of appreciation.

“That’s not exactly gear I would associate with a common street burglar,” he said.

The woman looked away. From the kitchen table behind her Schwarz scanned his fingerprint sample into the safehouse computer. “I’m sending it through now,” he said into his com link.

The Stony Man supercomputers would compute a match at speeds that far outstripped the power of the field station equipment.

“Why don’t you save me some time, lady,” Lyons snapped. “No one’s buying the burglar act.”

“Who are you?” the woman asked, voice steady.

Lyons opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by Schwarz, the man’s voice thick with sardonic irony.

“Who are we, Ms. Felicity Castillo?” Schwarz laughed. “As of now, we’re your contacts.” He turned toward Lyons. “She’s one of ours.”

Lyons got a look of disgust on his face. “I already hate this fucking town.”

Kyrgyzstan

“Phoenix to Stony Man,” McCarter said. There was only silence in answer. Surprised by the lack of response, McCarter put his finger up against his communications device, tapping it slightly. “Stony?” he repeated.

There was still no answer. He looked over to where Calvin James squatted in the dark, weapon at the ready. James looked at him expectantly and the Briton nodded once.

“Phoenix to Stony,” James tried. The medic shook his head. “Nothing.”

Each of the remaining team members attempted to make contact, but none of their geo-sat uplinks were working. In the space of a heartbeat Phoenix Force found itself cut off from the outside world.

McCarter turned toward the hulking form of Gary Manning. “Jammer?”

The big Canadian Special Forces veteran nodded his head slowly. “Sure. It’s possible. But it’d have to be a little more upscale than we’d expect from a crew of local clowns like the ones we’re supposed to hit. I suppose it’s just as possible we have low-earth-orbit interference.”

“The plot deepens,” Encizo muttered.

“We still going to make the meet?” Hawkins asked.

McCarter nodded. “I’ll put Hawkins out on flank in an overwatch position. Manning will move forward, then set up the machine gun for a secondary angle of fire. The rest of us will go in paranoid.”

“Let’s do it,” James agreed.

Phoenix Force moved out in a slow accordion formation toward their RZ, or rendezvous point. U.S. intelligence had set up a meeting with a local indigenous asset who would provide them with materials and transportation their rapid response infiltration had made impossible to bring with them.

In this case a local smuggler friendly to Western money had agreed to supply them with a heavy-bodied diesel engine truck of the type used by local military units. Calvin James carried a fanny pack filled with local currency in the sum of eighteen thousand U.S. dollars.

Such pay-to-play operations were inherently dangerous for obvious reasons, but were common in tribal regions removed from the influence of a centralized government. Cold hard cash had become as much of a tool in the paramilitary operators’ arsenal as carbines and shape charges.

The three-man fire team consisting of McCarter, James and Encizo slid into position behind a screen of sturdy mountain shrubs with oily, cold-resistant leaves and sticklike branches. Ahead of them they saw the old truck sitting beside the dirt road that eventually led into town.