Exit Strategy

“The last time we were in Mexico, I managed to catch a newscast about AccionObrar. The similarities to Stony Man made me curious enough to delve further,” Manning noted.

Hawkins frowned. “Being a Texas boy, I looked into Accion Obrar because they were allegedly behind unseating paramilitary gangs operating on both sides of the border. Just in case we had to deal with Los Sigmas or Los Omegas or some group like that.”

“The new hotness is Los Lictors.” Hermann Schwarz spoke up. Schwarz was Blancanales’s longtime friend and a fellow survivor of Bolan’s death squad. Balancing electrical engineering and Ranger training made Schwarz, nicknamed “Gadgets,” one of the top ten fighting elite in the country alongside his fellow Able Team warriors. “For those of us on Able Team who aren’t fluent in Spanish, that’s ‘the officers’ or ‘the magistrates.’”

Lyons met Schwarz’s gaze at his friend’s usual razzing. “How illuminating.”

“He’s up to five-syllable words, Gadgets! Cheese it!” Blancanales stage-whispered across the table. The humor, so close in the wake of the loss of several blacksuits, was meant to distract from the pain. These men were law enforcement professionals and gallows humor was a means to keep laughing instead of crying. For that, Lyons was glad for his friends’ antics, though it didn’t ameliorate the anger he felt for the murderers of the blacksuit marshals.

“This is particularly disturbing in that we have little idea who could have betrayed the location of the Castillos,” Huntington Wethers, the third member of the Farm’s cyber crew, noted. A tall African American who looked born to be a college professor, complete with corduroy jacket and pipe, Wethers was a mathematical genius and a man who was meticulous in seeking out information on the web. This didn’t mean that he was slow; indeed, he was able to process raw data in bulk, but he was thorough. “The setup arranged by Hal, utilizing ‘in-house’ resources, was kept away from agency heads specifically.”

“The potential for a mole to intercept was minimized, but there’s never a sure thing where more than one person is involved,” Brognola grumbled. “So, we have a list of who could have let slip about their security.”

“A list we’re going through with a fine-tooth comb,” Akira Tokaido said. No irony was lost that the young Japanese American’s spiky punk hairstyle only saw a comb to further splay and launch it toward the ceiling. Where Wethers was meticulous, Tokaido was punk rock and thrash metal, making wild leaps of deductive logic, though his mathematical and coding capabilities were not haphazard.

Where speed and intuition were required, Tokaido was an F-22 Raptor pulling 9 Gs to outmaneuver his opponents. Wethers was more the aircraft carrier sailing along at 35 knots but with eyes and ears everywhere. Delahunt was the bridge between the two, using her own investigative instincts to seek handholds of information to scale impregnable fortresses of mystery.

“I pity your quarry, mates,” McCarter quipped.

“Eventually they become yours,” Delahunt said. “And when they do, that’s when things get...satisfying.”

Gary Manning raised an eyebrow at Delahunt’s breathless final word. The red-haired ex-cop was a beautiful woman, regardless of age, and even her toughness never marginalized her feminine allure.

Manning turned toward the big Fed, hoping to keep his mind clear. “You don’t think that it’s a direct link to the government, do you, Hal?”

“No,” Brognola returned. “The crew has been digging deep and hard, looking for threads that might have exposed the blacksuit witness security detail, and those assignments are showing up in the system. It’s not an actual mole inside WITSEC, either.”

“More like a worm in the computer systems,” Tokaido acknowledged. “I’m picking up the damage left behind and Hunt and I are trying to locate and end it.”

“As well as to perform some forensic work on the worm so we can learn where it came from,” Wethers added. “Its elusive nature confirms that a genius put it together, or even a team of geniuses.”

“Say, the best hackers a Mexican covert agency could put together?” Lyons asked.

Wethers nodded in affirmation.

“Accion Obrar is a fairly blunt name for a so-called top secret government op,” McCarter said.

Lyons tilted his head. “It seems more like a terrorist group. In fact, I think some French commies could sue for stealing the title ‘Action Directe.’”

“It’d make targeting them easier,” McCarter mused.

Lyons smirked. He turned back to Brognola. “We’ll be babysitting the kids? Because you know that they’ll still be a target.”

“That, and I know you want a crack at the thugs who killed so many of our blacksuits,” Brognola confirmed. “Weapons free. No rules. No referee.”

“Using the kids as bait is going to be tough.” Blancanales spoke up. “But, sadly, this wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had to do it.”

“And we haven’t lost one of our protectees yet,” Schwarz interjected. “We won’t let them down.”

“You said the father was killed and the mother is missing,” McCarter said. “She might be on her way back to Mexico?”

Brognola indicated the Briton was right with a nod. “The most likely place they’ll put her is El Calabozo sin Piedad. So, right now, our priority is for Phoenix to head to Mexico to get her out of there.”

Rafael Encizo grumbled, drawing McCarter’s attention. “I’ve heard rumors about that place. It’s on a scale of the Cuban prison I was kept in as a teenager.”

In his youth, Encizo, the last of the original founders of Phoenix Force, had fought against the Communist dictatorship in his native Cuba. Only by breaking his jailer’s neck and stealing a boat did he escape to the United States. One of the few members of Stony Man’s action teams not a military veteran, Encizo’s lifetime of work as a salvage diver and as a special consultant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration in Florida had forged him into a highly capable combatant. Officially the oldest of Phoenix Force, he was a swarthy and incredibly strong man for his diminutive height of five-eight. Not the most muscular member of Phoenix—that was Manning—his strength was still considerable, as were his skills with knives. “The worst part is that this is a prison in a friendly nation to ours.”

“Cuba’s on the friendly list now, after all this time,” James offered. He was Encizo’s closest friend on the team, the two spending long stretches of off time scuba diving as well as practicing sparring with their chosen knives. “But, yeah, Mexico is supposed to be a democracy.”

“If Mexico were working so well as a democracy,” Hawkins interrupted, “people wouldn’t be flooding across the border illegally to escape poverty, corrupt governments and the cartel wars.”

The Texan didn’t often offer his opinion on a crisis unless he felt strongly about it. Raised in a border state, Hawkins had a lifetime’s worth of perspective on illegal immigration, and could tell the difference between the criminals who exploited desperation and those seeking escape from turmoil in Mexico or other Central American nations. He caught a knowing nod from the three members of Able Team who had engaged in their own operations against corruption in El Salvador, Guatemala and some of the harsher Mexican states.

Then again, the people of Stony Man were in a position of experience and education, having intimate familiarity with the forces of corruption that trampled humans with their clumsy steps.

“Since we’ll be breaking into an official Mexican prison, I don’t think we’ll be able to head across the border with our arsenal in diplomatic luggage,” McCarter said to Brognola.

“Sadly, no. You’ll be working without a net,” the big Fed agreed. “Unless you happen to have some contacts down there. We’ll arrange a HALO jump for you, if necessary.”

“The day the five of us can’t skirt border security without a parachute insertion is the day we’re retiring as a team,” McCarter countered. “Sorry, T.J.”

Hawkins shrugged. As the team’s jump master, he was usually the one who prepped them for such intrusions, the same as James and Encizo took the bulk of the preparation work for underwater operations. “No skin off my nose on how we get there, boss. We just need to get there before Amanda Castillo is irreparably damaged.”

“We are on the clock,” Brognola said.

“Is that why Barb’s not here?” McCarter asked. “Burning up the phone lines looking for alternate approaches?”

“Making use of every asset we can.” Brognola affirmed the mission controller’s absence. “I don’t have to tell you that this is going to be one of the stickiest things we’ve had to deal with in a while. One wrong move and we could have a war flare-up on our border.”

“We’re never called in when the options are clear and easy,” Schwarz said. “That’s why they call it the Sensitive Operations Group.”

Brognola’s scowl didn’t bode well for the continuing discussion.

“Something else amiss?” Manning asked.

Brognola nodded. “Somewhere in the mix, the attackers on the Arizona safe house left a trail of breadcrumbs that ties the blacksuits to the Farm and this operation. So far, we’re still an unsubstantiated rumor, but a Congressional Oversight Committee is being assembled for the express purpose of finding out who created this enormous screwup.”

“The blacksuit training program and you are out in the open and vulnerable on this,” Lyons said. “And considering the kind of political infighting that’s been wrecking Congress over the past five or so years, if they learn that you have the ear of the President...”

“They will come down on us. They’ll use it to crush him and weaken the nation even further in international eyes,” Brognola confirmed. “It’s not me that I’m worried about, but our sudden vulnerability is too coincidental with the Castillo situation for it not to be a direct attack.”

“People have come at the Farm with armed force before,” McCarter observed. He glanced over to Lyons, remembering one instance where virtual reality hypnosis had turned Able Team into one such assault force. “But this time they’re going after our underbelly.”

Lyons narrowed his eyes. “We’ve been making more than enough enemies and ruining more conspiracies. And the one that has the deepest-digging fingers is the Arrangement.”

“White supremacists and Mexican drug gangs?” Tokaido asked.

“You remember the Fascist International in our files,” Lyons offered. “There are plenty of pure-blooded Mexican and other Central American ‘whites.’ More than enough to keep us steadily busy all this time. Our last outing with them was more than enough to cause them a lot of pain and discomfort in the media.”