Don Pendleton: Triplecross

STONY MAN

Whenever duty calls, America’s most elite black ops and cyber tech group is ready to deploy. Stony Man Farm acts under orders from the President to save innocent lives by taking down one terrorist at a time—even if it means losing their own lives in the process.

WAR FOR SALE

Tensions erupt between Pakistan and India after Pakistani soldiers are found massacred in an Indian village, along with the body of an American—a businessman who had no reason to be there. Phoenix Force must stop ongoing battles in the area—skirmishes led by two rogue generals. When Able Team investigates the mining company that employed the dead American, the men are attacked by a group of mercenaries. With relations between Pakistan and India hanging in the balance, the Stony Man teams are faced with daunting missions…and the knowledge that failure could trigger a nuclear war.

POL CHECKED HIS M4, DREW THREE QUICK BREATHS AND BROKE COVER

“Go, go, go!” shouted Lyons.

The three men of Able Team charged the cafeteria, their guns at their shoulders, gliding in a combat crouch that gave each of them a stable firing platform. Their weapons barked; there were still a few men left mobile after the Osprey’s attack. Most of those in the cafeteria now, however, were dead or dying. A few moaned. The floor of the cafeteria was awash in blood.

“Clear,” Lyons said.

“Clear,” Gadgets responded. He turned to Pol and his eyes widened. “Pol! Your six!”

Pol spun around, dropping low, trying to get himself out of the line of fire. The man drawing down on him held an AR15. Pol snapped off a shot that punched through the man’s thigh, toppling him, causing him to lose his grip on his weapon.

“Secure that guy!” Lyons ordered.

Pol was already on the move. He dashed to the wounded shooter, kicked the man’s gun away and put the barrel of his own M4 under the man’s chin.

“Do not move,” he ordered. “Do not attempt to take any hostile action or I will blow your brains all over this floor.”

Triplecross

Don Pendleton

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Siachen Glacier Region, Pakistan

Hakim Janwari shivered under his winter-camouflage BDUs. He pulled his face wrap tighter, flexing his fingers within his gloves, worried about the frostbite that crept, almost like a disease, from man to man. So many had been affected. He personally knew five men who had lost entire fingers. Janwari lived in constant fear of coming home to his wife less whole than when he had left her.

If he came home at all.

He adjusted his goggles. Already they were encrusted with ice again, making it difficult for him to see. His legs felt leaden as he struggled to raise his boots, to take step after step, to march onward toward a goal he no longer understood on a field of battle he did not care about.

Ahead and to his left, barely visible through the wind-driven snow, a Chinese-built Type 88 main battle tank struggled to move forward. The tanks simply were not built for this terrain. The cold and the driving snow created a deadly, icy paralysis in man and machine alike. The cold was killing both, slowly but surely, here at the top of the world.

The Siachen Glacier region was called the world’s highest battleground for a reason. Pakistan and its hated enemy, India, had fought each other here intermittently for more than three decades. What they were fighting to achieve, Janwari could no longer say. What his government thought it earned by sending men and weapons of war into this frozen hell, Janwari was afraid to ask.

He could feel his legs beginning to grow warm. That was a bad sign. Cold was the only constant here. The illusion of warmth signified his body trying to compensate. It was the first sign that it—that he was succumbing to the dreaded cold. He knew the process well by now.

From within his parka he struggled to remove the rugged GPS unit. The aluminum housing of the electronic box made him wince even through his gloves. It was so cold. Everything was so very cold.

He was forced to scrape another layer of frost from his goggles before he could read the GPS unit. What it would tell him, he already knew very well. He and the men of his unit were just beyond the Line of Control, sometimes called the Berlin Wall of Asia, somewhere between the Karakoram and Ladakh ranges and below Karakoram Pass. They had not yet crossed over into Shaksam Valley.

The Line of Control was the demarcation between territory held by India and territory held by Pakistan in what was once Jammu and Kashmir. This landlocked “princely state” had once boasted a Maharaja, whose pretensions of neutrality had not lasted much longer than the 1947 Indian Independence Act. This was when British India was officially divided into Pakistan and India.

Torn by localized rebellions and plunged into armed conflict, the region had been ripped apart from within by insurgents who favored either India or Pakistan. The legacy of Kashmir was one of violence. Recently, an uneasy ceasefire had been called, and held, for some months. But that was over now.

The coordinates finally resolved. The GPS device was sluggish. It was difficult to acquire a clean line of sight to the satellites overhead through this weather. Janwari supposed he should be grateful he was able to take the reading at all.

He was not. The coordinates were not nearly different enough. They should have covered three times as much ground during the waking hours. They had made very poor distance in this weather. Janwari had begged his superiors by radio to allow the men to camp, to seek the relative warmth of their storm shelters, while waiting out the worst of the current weather. But the higher-ups would not listen. They had told him to carry on, to follow his orders.

He did as he was told.

From the pouch on his waist he took one of the last of his flares. He was not sure what they would do tomorrow, when the last flare was used. Perhaps he would be reduced to firing in the air and hoping his men could hear the shot over the howling wind. At the moment he was too cold to care. He popped the cap on the flare, held the tube away from his body and pulled the release cord to fire the flare. He could not smell the acrid fumes through the snowstorm.

The glowing green star that floated to the ground on a silken parachute was almost beautiful. He watched the flare descend, willing the ache in his shoulders to go away, knowing that if he was not within shelter soon, the cold would take the ache and everything else readily enough. Too readily he understood the siren song of the deathly cold. It sang to a man about the end of pain. It told a man everything would finally be all right. It was the easiest thing to do...simply let go, close your eyes and let the cold take you.

Janwari forced himself to open his eyes wide. No. He would not give in. He would not let the glacier have him. He would not die in these frozen mountains.

To his left, Hooth and Gola began setting up the shelter. Simple as it was, it was harder in the searing cold. Still, they were practiced. Their lives had revolved around this ritual for the past five days, plodding through pointless “patrols” and then setting up the portable shelter every night. Often Janwari helped them, although strictly speaking, they were his subordinates and he was not required to do so. This night he could not bring himself to move from the spot on which he was now rooted. He waited as they erected the shelter, then followed when they beckoned him to enter.