Don Pendleton - Triplecross

“To what end?” Schwarz asked. “What are they trying to accomplish?”

“That’s the question of the day, mate,” McCarter said through the satellite link. “While we were mopping up this village we found something that makes the rest of it seem fairly tame.”

Brognola nodded. Kurtzman tapped another button and this time the image of a balding man in a suit and tie appeared on the screen.

“This is, or was, one Arthur Hughbright. He was fifty-one years old. Until two years ago he had never held a passport. He has no criminal record. He was married, with one child, a freshman at William and Mary. He has consistently filed his income taxes and, according to official government records, he grossed nearly two hundred thousand dollars last year.”

“Not exactly the dossier of an international man of adventure,” said Lyons.

“No,” said Brognola. “What Hughbright did do, however, was write a book that, in trade circles, is considered a bestseller. Specifically, he wrote an industry text on innovative geo-location methods for deep-mining techniques. When he died, he was working for a company called EarthGard, which is based right here in the United States.”

Kurtzman looked at McCarter. “Show them,” he suggested.

McCarter nodded and, next to him, Calvin James held up a suitcase. Inside the suitcase was an array of electronic equipment, none of which was recognizable to Barbara Price.

“What is that gear?” Schwarz asked, looking on with interest. “I don’t recognize it.”

“That’s the problem,” Kurtzman said. “We’re not entirely sure. Until we can courier it back here and take it apart, we’re going to have to consider it an unknown.”

“The suitcase was found with Hughbright,” McCarter added.

“This square was in Kashmir?” Lyons asked.

“He was,” Brognola confirmed. “He was also killed there, most likely by accident, and almost certainly in the cross fire created when the military contingents controlled by Gera and Jamali tried to catch Phoenix Force between them.”

“He looks like he caught shrapnel from an exploding piece of masonry,” said McCarter. “It wasn’t pretty.”

Kurtzman nodded. “We had to use a computer algorithm to reconstruct his dental work and then compare it to records of—”

“I don’t think we need to go into the details,” said Brognola, interrupting. “Let’s stipulate that the results were quite graphic. But this begs the question, what is an American mining expert doing in disputed territory on the borders of India and Pakistan? What is his connection to Gera and Jamali? And what is the equipment he was carrying with him?”

“I’m going to go out on a limb here,” Lyons began, “and guess that it had something to do with ‘innovative geo-location methods for deep-mining techniques.’”

That provoked a snicker from Schwarz.

Price shot the electronics expert a withering glare. “Yes,” she said. “The thought had occurred to us, as well.”

“EarthGard specializes in beryllium mining,” Kurtzman said. “You’ve heard of it but, if you were like me this morning, you’ve never bothered to learn what it’s for.”

“It’s a rare metal,” Schwarz said. “It has applications in the aerospace and defense industries, among others. Highly lucrative.”

“Yes,” Brognola agreed. “If EarthGard is somehow involved in finding and mining beryllium in the Kashmir region, it would explain why a piece of ground that has been the subject of a relatively cold war for the past decades is now a hotly contested proxy battlefield.”

“Meaning it was worth fighting about before,” Lyons said, “but now that there’s money in it, the area is finally worth having.”

“Precisely,” Brognola said. “Both Gera and Jamali have siphoned men and equipment from the regular armies of their respective countries. If we are interpreting the pattern of battles and the protests by both nations accurately, both men are using their rogue military elements to attack legitimate patrols fielded by India and Pakistan. This is bringing both countries to the brink of war. Initially, the Man thought—and I agreed, when we sent Phoenix to Kashmir in an attempt to put a stop to the border flare-ups—that war between India and Pakistan was the whole point. But given the discovery of Hughbright’s body, there is another theory in play.”

“Gera and Jamali are trying to carve out their own little fiefdoms,” McCarter proposed. “They’re not hitting elements of the enemy military to cause a war. They’re hitting them to get them out of the way. Both men see the other side as an obstacle to control of the region. And they know their governments aren’t really in a position to mount an effective resistance. Not with their governments bickering and the region so geographically isolated. So they’re just going to make Kashmir too costly to hold while they take it from within. But each would-be warlord is in the other’s way.”

“Yes,” Brognola confirmed. “That seems likely. It accounts for what would otherwise be simply suicidal behavior. And it’s all we have to go on until we learn more about the EarthGard angle.”

“Here it comes,” Schwarz said quietly.

“Shaddap,” Lyons muttered to him.

“Able Team is going to investigate EarthGard’s extensive network of mining sites and business offices here in the United States,” Price stated. “We’ve prepared a list of these, ranked in terms of size and relevance.”

“The cyber team has also worked up a full history on EarthGard as a business,” Kurtzman said. “We haven’t found anything dirty so far, but we’ve only peeled back a couple of layers. I’ve been working Akira and Carmen all night to see what we can learn, but it is slow going. EarthGard has a lot of very state-of-the-art security at the virtual level...which probably tells us something right there.” Akira Tokaido and Carmen Delahunt were, together with Huntington “Hunt” Wethers, the rest of the Stony Man cybernetics personnel. “We’ll keep on it,” Kurtzman promised, “and update the teams in the field as we learn anything of value.”

“What’s the outlook for local assistance?” Lyons asked. “How many toes are we going to be standing on?”

“Conceivably quite a few,” Price admitted. “Jack Grimaldi is standing by with an Osprey troop transport. He’ll take you where you need, quickly and with a minimum of bureaucracy, so you can check your target list and then move on to the next without any unnecessary entanglements.”

“Hit and git, as they say,” Blancanales quipped.

“Exactly my—” Schwarz started to say again, gesturing with the red-dot sight. A look from Lyons stopped him.

“We’ve generated a priority target list for Phoenix Force,” Price continued. “All of them are locations on the India and Pakistan borders that we calculate will be attractive to Gera and Jamali, either strategically or symbolically.”

“What’s our goal?” McCarter asked.

“You’re to chip away at the enemy until the threat posed by Gera and Jamali has been eliminated,” Brognola answered. “As long as those two are stirring up trouble in their bid to control the region, the threat of full-scale, even nuclear, war between Pakistan and India remains real. It’s our hope that you can neutralize the two generals. If you can render their forces incapable of mounting further campaigns against one another or the border, then we can step in with UN support and renegotiate the ceasefire.”

“Everybody join hands,” Lyons scoffed, “and sing ‘We Are the World.’”

“Something like that,” Brognola said, frowning. “Look, I realize we’re asking a lot of both teams. Phoenix has before it a particularly broad mission, and we have no idea just how deep the EarthGard connection may go.”