Don Pendleton - Doom Prophecy

David McCarter had a strong stomach, but when the horde of bloodred monstrosities fell upon the captive Special Forces soldiers, the Briton had to look away and shake his head. In the SAS, he’d seen countless atrocities committed against captured soldiers and policemen, and as a member and leader of Phoenix Force, he’d been at ground zero to several more. Every time he saw them, revulsion steeled him to fight harder against the madmen who sought to turn the world into their charnel house.

At the other end of the War Room table, a massive fist smashed down hard. Carl “Ironman” Lyons, Able Team’s commander, had given in to his anger.

“That’s what you’ll be going up against, David,” Hal Brognola affirmed, ignoring Lyons’s outburst.

“Africa,” McCarter said. He looked at his mission plan. “Well, I’d like to at least have Calvin with me on this.”

Brognola glanced over to Calvin James. He was a tall, lanky black man, one of the first replacement members of Phoenix Force and their first American teammate. “I wish I could keep Phoenix Force together, but we don’t have enough manpower to keep the teams intact and handle what we think are the three hot spots in the AJAX hunt.”

McCarter sighed. “We can’t call Mack in on this?”

Brognola shook his head. “He’s gone hunting. He’ll be back when he can, but I want AJAX stopped immediately.”

McCarter sighed. “All right. Phoenix has split up before to take on missions. But once you find the gobs who’ve been snuffing those State Department boys…”

“We’ll be right on the first flight to the Sudan,” James answered.

McCarter winked at his longtime teammate. “Don’t make me have to bail you out, Cal.”

Rafael Encizo spoke up. “We’ve got Japan nailed down.” The stocky Cuban’s swarthy face split with a wide smile. He glanced over to James, who looked troubled. “You okay, amigo?”

“I just wish I could be in three places at once,” James said. “I hate leaving David in Africa without a brother to back him up. And Able Team’s going to San Francisco where a lot of cops were killed by the creeps who wiped out HedSpayce.”

McCarter frowned. When he first met Calvin James, he was a member of the San Francisco SWAT team. The ex-Navy SEAL had left behind the streets of Chicago where too many of his family had been lost to heroin and its abusers. Still, even after leaving the military, James wanted to do something to see that no one else suffered like his sister and mother. Putting on a badge was James’s first step in that crusade, but soon the ex-SEAL was called to join another war, taking the place of the fallen Keio Ohara. James still kept ties with the San Francisco police department, and helped vet blacksuits for Buck Greene from that department. McCarter had lost enough friends and partners to know how much James wanted to be part of the team that got even for the slaughter of his fellow lawmen.

“Cal, look at that ugly brute that just dented the table,” McCarter said. Rosario Blancanales and Hermann Schwarz, Lyons’s partners on Able Team, chuckled at the Briton’s description of their friend.

James looked at Lyons out of the corner of his eye. He made a face. “Do I have to?”

“Kin-A you have to.” Lyons grunted, slipping into caveman mode.

James looked over, and McCarter continued. “I know you want to do mean, nasty things to those cop killers and freaks who murdered twenty unarmed office workers. I know you’re dying to unleash every horror under the sun upon them. But, Calvin, you’re only human.”

Lyons snorted ferociously.

“That ugly bugger, he’s a bloody nightmare come to life. Do you honestly think there is a worse punishment on Earth than sending him after them?” McCarter asked.

“Well, since you put it that way,” James answered. “I know I sure wouldn’t want to see him as the last thing before I went to hell.”

McCarter gave his friend a clap on the shoulder. James would have gone to Japan and done his duty anyways. Still, it was good to relieve some of his tension and doubts.

“You done with the Mac and Lyons show?” Brognola asked, feeling a little impatient.

McCarter looked at Lyons and raised his eyebrows. The blond ex-cop nodded. “Thanks, Carl.”

“Anytime,” Lyons responded.

“Now that we’re done with that,” Brognola said, “any questions?”

Gary Manning, a broad, barrel-chested Canadian, raised his hand. “The Predator that knocked down the Pave Hawk that Kensington and his team were on. Has anyone been able to check to find out how it was tampered with?”

Brognola took a deep breath, chewing his cigar. “Unfortunately, the central processor unit was destroyed on impact with the Pave Hawk.”

“So we’re up a creek without a paddle on that,” T. J. Hawkins drawled. McCarter rubbed his chin as he looked at photographs of the wreckage.

“Why?” Hermann Schwarz asked, and looked across the table to Manning, Phoenix Force’s demolitions expert.

“Not only did the Pave Hawk veer off course after losing radio contact with their base, but the Predator that was assigned to watch their target followed them. You’d think that the drone’s crew would have picked up on any interference,” Manning responded.

Schwarz ran his index finger through his mustache and thought about it for a moment. “Well, Ka55andra, the leader of AJAX, appears to be a hacker. She could have overridden the Predator’s command codes.”

“From where?” Manning asked.

“With the right satellite hookups, anywhere on the planet,” Schwarz answered. “But she’d have to be a wizard to override its control systems.”

“She does claim to be a prophet,” Blancanales answered.

“A prophet of doom, just like the original Cassandra,” Hawkins stated.

“The original Cassandra?” Brognola asked.

“It’s in Homer’s Iliad, and various other myths,” Encizo cut in. “Cassandra was given the power of prophecy by Apollo because he had fallen in love with her. Unfortunately, she didn’t love him, so he cursed her so that no one would ever believe her prophecies. Since then, Cassandra’s name has come to take on the meaning of a prophet of doom.”

Blancanales shrugged. “Didn’t you read the Classics in school, Hal?”

Brognola’s nose wrinkled. “All right. I’ll have the cybercrew look up more about her. There might be something more to her background that might suggest a motive for our cyberwitch.”

Lyons shrugged. “Well, the warrior Ajax, during the sacking of Troy, attacked and raped Cassandra in the temple of Athena. Later, the goddess Athena smashed his ship with a thunderbolt to sink him. When that didn’t work and Ajax clung to a rock, Poseidon split the stone with his trident and drowned him.”

Brognola glared at Lyons out of one eye.

“Oh, come on. It was a movie just a couple of years ago,” Lyons answered.

Brognola grumbled and shook his head.

“So we might have a rape victim as the mastermind coordinating the assault on Homeland Security?” Blancanales asked. He looked like he’d taken a bitter bite at the thought.

“Not just a rape victim,” Schwarz answered. “She had her home destroyed by Ajax. Burned to the ground, the survivors scattered to the winds, her family slaughtered.”

“And she’s blaming the Department of Homeland Security?” Manning cut in.

“Someone high up, at least,” James said. “A director, a deputy director…”

“All of whom are powerful politicians who have enough power to sweep any scandal under the rug,” McCarter mused.

Hawkins scratched his chin with his thumb, his eyes focusing on the table. He glanced over to Encizo for a helpful suggestion.