Don Pendleton: Cold Snap

Lyons could tell just by looking at the wound patterns on the bodies in CSI digital photographs transmitted to his tablet.

It was one thing to shoot a man to end his life.

It was another to destroy the face of a human being, or to ravage the genitals of another with gunfire. There was both racial and sexual rage at work.

The three black men who were victims of gunfire—two protesters and one D.C. policeman—had been shot, but then also laid into with gunfire that shredded their genitalia. Lyons also noticed the destruction of the breasts of each of the women who had been shot. Five total. One woman survived by the grace of being hit from the side, the curve of her ribs deflecting bullets from her internal organs.

Lyons clenched his jaw.

The FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit investigators were going over the scene and Lyons stood with them. The back and forth showed a level of violence reserved for hate crimes. Whoever was involved in the shootings had wanted to emasculate the black men in their sights, but at least two of the shooters displayed a deep misogyny, attacking the most feminine parts of the female protesters’ anatomy.

Schwarz came closer to Lyons and the two Able Team investigators got to talking.

“This looks like a coordinated military assault,” Lyons said.

“Looks like it indeed,” Schwarz replied. “You’ve noticed the precision of the shooting, even in the instances where they’re punishing their targets of opportunity.”

Lyons nodded.

“The shooters have great marksmanship, but there’s cruelty in there,” Schwarz admitted. “This wasn’t typical combat. I’m betting you noticed the injuries on the blacks and the women?”

“BSU is in agreement,” Lyons told him.

Schwarz shook his head. “The vibe of this attack is all wrong for a hired kill. It’s something pretty damned sick. These aren’t ex-military, but they have been organized by a military mind. Their commander has found a hatred he could focus into a tool of opportunity.”

“Paramilitary group. Not private security—too many of them are actual military or police. Someone with this kind of bigoted rage is not going to last too long on a force or in the service with that bubbling below the surface,” Lyons said.

Schwarz shook his head. “For all the flack private military companies get, they have some strict psychological and background checks for their hires. Given the different cities, the different working conditions, bigots are not going to cooperate well with professionals no matter what their skin color.”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be with them,” Lyons added. “Add money, training and skill, and we’ve narrowed down the field considerably.”

“White group. Definite cash. They’re using actual 5.56 mm, not civilian .223 Remington,” Schwarz noted. “And the missile looks like an FGM-172B.”

“English,” Lyons said.

“One of the two warheads developed for the SRAW—short-range assault weapon. It’s a multipurpose fragmentation munition designed for anti-personnel as well as use against thin-skinned targets,” Schwarz said. On his tablet, he called up the detonation of the police car as recorded on multiple surveillance cameras that watched the scene.

“We don’t have good visuals on the shooters. Their heads were covered, as were their eyes, and they were driving fast enough to not give cameras time to focus,” Schwarz added. “They could be any nationality short of Pakistani in skin tone. Also, no apparent tattoos visible, even with short sleeves.”

“Skinhead gangs, bikers and such trend toward that, but only if they’ve actually been in prison,” Lyons mentioned. “These could be free-born fanatics.”

“I was thinking the same,” Schwarz answered. “Like the Cosmic Church, which fostered the National Resistance.”

“Which in turn gave birth to our dear friends, the Aryan Right Coalition,” Lyons growled.

“We’ve got work to do on narrowing this down,” Schwarz said. “I’m sending the data we’ve collected through to the Farm.”

Lyons nodded. “Good. The sooner we get to smack answers out of someone, the sooner we get started.”

Schwarz managed a weak smile. “Anyone tell you that you’re sexy when you’re a bloodthirsty avenger?”

“Not this week,” Lyons answered. “But it’s only Tuesday.”

CHAPTER THREE

It was early evening when three members of Phoenix Force and Dragonfin went wheels up from Langley Air Force Base on board the C-17 Globemaster.

The C-17 was on loan from the United States Air Force Reserve, and the paperwork for the flight stated that the craft was taking supplies to MacMurdo Station, off the Ross Ice Shelf where the Saburou Maru had been attacked and sunk. With that cover, every subsequent trip would be off the books.

David McCarter overlooked the Dragonfin, running his fingers across its smooth, flat-black hull. The boat had originally been scheduled to auction after the Drug Enforcement Agency had captured it from drug smugglers. Its hold had carried two tons of cocaine. Even with all of that bulk, with its twin motors it was capable of 80 miles per hour. It was a new generation of cigarette boat.

Catamaran, McCarter reminded himself, not cigarette. The lads would have a fit over you misidentifying their little canoe.

His friends Calvin James and Rafael Encizo, both sturdy sailors—James tall and raw-boned, Encizo stocky and stout—had been overjoyed at the acquisition of a “go-fast” boat by Stony Man Farm.

Go-fasts were originally meant, and still utilized, in sports racing, but as with all things legal and legitimate, greedy men saw other uses for them. For years, drug smugglers had utilized the amazingly fast, low-profile craft for ferrying tons of drugs across international waters. While not as fast as a helicopter, “go-fasts” were still far swifter than any cutters or interceptor boats except for those craft also based on racing designs. For pure racing purposes, stripped down to cockpit, fuel cells and engines, the design on this particular catamaran hull projected a top speed of more than 200 miles per hour.

This particular beast had been specifically designed for long-haul smuggling and defense of its contraband. It was meant to counter U.S. Coast Guard Deployable Pursuit boats. To add to the survivability of cargo and space, Dragonfin was a twin-hulled craft. On the bottom there were two slim-line keels, where the Mercury drives were housed. Each was capable of 1,000 horsepower. For long range, the engines were equipped with four 200-gallon fuel cells. With a relatively sedate cruising speed, those cells would give it phenomenal range, but when it came to putting the throttle to full, they would tear along, as equipped, at more than 180 miles per hour. They sacrificed about thirty miles per hour with combat turrets for M-2 Browning machine guns, Mk 19 automatic grenade launchers and an M-242 Bushmaster 25 mm cannon, all operated by remote control.

With those weapons installed, Dragonfin could engage targets at up to almost two miles.

Aside from the turrets, Dragonfin had also been upgraded with a Kevlar polymer coating on the hull, which served to minimize the radar signature of the craft on top of the waves. Its sleek, almost space-fighter-looking design would also be hard to make out against the ocean, thanks to the dark blue mottled-camouflage patterns set into the coating. When they’d first seen it, it had been painted jet black by the smugglers, which almost was good enough.

Almost, however, hadn’t kept the boat from being captured or appropriated by Stony Man Farm.

Underneath, there were streamlined housings for torpedoes, and Dragonfin had four of those deadly fish held in reserve just in case their targets had more than two inches of rolled homogeneous steel armor. The most important addition, however, was a communications system that would keep them in satellite contact with Stony Man Farm, allowing them real-time satellite imagery and telemetry to track any target they needed.