Don Pendleton - Cold Snap

However, Able Team’s van was made of much more than aluminum. Inside the outer shell there were sandwiched layers of Kevlar weave and carbon fiber sheets. It wasn’t Chobham armor, but Carl Lyons and Stony Man Farm armorer John “Cowboy” Kissinger had fired at the interior plating with everything up to a .50 BMG rifle and the shell held together.

In terms of a communications suite and computer center, Hermann Schwarz and the rest of the Stony Man cybernetics crew had developed the “Suitcase.” Utilizing solid-state drives for instant startup and file access, as well as lack of vulnerability to electromagnetic interference, the case contained the most powerful satellite uplink in the smallest size possible. There were few places on Earth the team couldn’t reach twenty-four hours a day.

Combined with powerful processors and having a satellite computer link to the Farm, the case could provide real-time data and electronic intel from anywhere around the globe. A second variant of the Suitcase had been installed on Dragonfin, the rocket-fast catamaran Phoenix Force had taken to the Ross Sea.

Surveillance devices were stored in the van in out-of-the-way cabinets behind a camouflage made from cartons, wires and stray screws and bolts. Firearms and ammunitions were similarly obfuscated. The Able van was as close to a golf bag full of rifles as Blancanales once joked about. Sniper rifles, full-auto M-4s, grenade launchers, SMGs, shotguns and pistols were set up for each of the team members, including sufficient ammunition for each. The heavy armor was not merely for protecting the team if it came under attack, it was also to shield and protect cakes of high explosive and compact shoulder-mounted munitions.

The last thing that Stony Man Farm needed was a van equipped with so much firepower to take a wrong bullet or a bad hit and blow up half a city block. It helped that the high explosives were kept in a fireproof container and that modern plastic composition explosives didn’t detonate due to shock or to heat. The detonators were even better protected and would only generate sufficient force to activate the C-4 if inserted within the puttylike explosive.

Blancanales was not unarmed. He had his Able Team-issued sidearm, a Smith & Wesson MP-45 with a threaded muzzle addition and a knob to protect the threads. In a moment, if necessary, he could put a suppressor on the M&P and be ready for stealth without giving up stopping power. Since he was on driver duty, he wore it in a shoulder holster, balanced out by three 10-round magazine pouches on the other side under his jacket, with the option of swapping them out for 14-shot extended mags.

Blancanales had originally been a fan of the Colt Government Model .45 for his military career, but the MP’s thumb safety worked exactly the same as his locked-and-cocked Colt, held three more cartridges in the magazine than the Colt and was much lighter and handier than the steel-framed pistol. With the trigger made crisp yet reliable, the handgun was accurate. The only thing he’d given up was a half inch of barrel length, which was returned to the pistol by its suppressor-ready pipe.

It wasn’t a rifle, but Blancanales didn’t feel under-gunned with more than forty rounds of hot .45 ACP hollowpoints ready to launch at the flick of his thumb.

Tucked down next to his leg and well out of sight from anyone peering into the cab of the van, Blancanales had a longer range weapon: a KRISS submachine gun, also in .45 ACP. With the presence of its folded shoulder stock, it had the potential for better accuracy at longer range. In its stowed condition, it was the size of a small briefcase. With the stock snapped out, it was twice as long, but a stable, tack-driving weapon capable of hammering out bursts of heavy slugs that could knock down a target with authority out to 150 yards, much like the old Tommy guns and M-3 Grease guns of World War II, except in a lighter, more concealable package.

Out of sight, but not far from reach, was the main weapon Blancanales would employ if things went wrong. It was similar to the M-16 he’d utilized as a Ranger, but the official U.S. Army designation was the Squad Designated Marksman Rifle—SDM-R for short. It was not a compact weapon, complete with the full 20-inch barrel that originally rode on the M-16, which gave Blancanales confidence in its 5.56 mm rifle round. That length gave it an effective range of 660 yards, which the ACOG—advanced combat optical gunsight—on top could easily handle using its 1.5-6x magnification.

Having reached their destination, Blancanales hung back in the van, this firepower on hand, keeping overwatch for his partners, Hermann Schwarz and Carl Lyons, as they approached the small clubhouse. The two men were Caucasian, Schwarz with tousled brown hair and a thick mustache, Lyons tall, blond and blue-eyed. Even with his skin burned to a deep tan, Lyons was an Aryan’s dream.

However the men in the clubhouse were members of the Heathens Motorcycle Club, an all-white outlaw gang that stretched from Maryland to New York with more than five hundred members. Blancanales had learned all the facts about the Heathens thanks to Lyons’s nearly obsessive need to study up on their potential opposition.

The Heathens had formed ties with the White Family, another East Coast gang started within the prison system of Maryland. White Family members released from prison could always find a safe haven at a Heathens clubhouse if they couldn’t reach an appropriate Arrangement compound. The Arrangement was the name chosen by the Maryland “alumnus” of the federal prison system, and where they recruited young, disenfranchised white men and women to the cause of a “strong, free society.”

That wouldn’t have been a reason to hate them, but the Arrangement wanted a society where all Hispanics were treated as if they weren’t American-born citizens, like Blancanales’s younger siblings or other naturalized citizens such as himself. Yes, he and his family had come to America on a rubber raft, braving a rough, terrible ocean, but they’d immediately gone to the effort of achieving citizenship.

The Heathens were in a serious conflict with the Khan’s Hispanic biker gang from down the coast, so their allegiance with the Arrangement was their ticket toward armed conflict. The Arrangement benefited, as they were able to cook tons of meth that the Heathens readily distributed. The Heathens also were able to bring in the kind of weaponry the Arrangement could utilize in its war for national “purity.”

Lyons and Schwarz were each adorned with motion-picture-quality tattoo appliqués on their arms and necks, identifying them as part of the RLR West Coast gang Lyons had blown through on a prior mission—the Reich Low Riders. It was a risky proposition, but the two of them were rough and tumble, and had gone through this ruse before. The presence of the adhesive, skinlike swatches that made them look all inked up, would help. Few in law enforcement would actually attempt to wear prison tats.

And if things didn’t work out, well, Blancanales was Able Team’s designated marksman and well-equipped for the task.

But Able Team was there for information, not a body count.

* * *

ON POINT, CARL LYONS stank of sweat and gasoline. He was clad in dingy, dirt-ground jeans, scuffed boots and a hole-riddled T-shirt underneath the denim vest that sported his colors and Los Angeles “rocker.”

Hermann Schwarz had gone for a leather jacket rather than the denim vest. He also had spurs clamped to the heel of one of his boots. The stirrup that connected the spur to the boot was solid steel, as was the bar surrounding the multi-tined star on its axle.

Lyons knew men who wore spurs. A spin kick with one of those would slice a face in two or rend someone ear to ear. It was the perfect accessory for a biker thug, and Schwarz was adept with kicks. Even as they walked in, more than one set of eyes dropped to the jingling metal on Schwarz’s right boot. Cold recognition flared in their faces.