Cold Snap

Hawkins sighed. “I’ll get some early sleep, then check out our gear.”

“Do what you have to,” Manning said, returning to the numbers and trends on the screen. He used his stylus to mark points that might have links to avenues of potential insider trading or hedging of bets toward the economic disruption of Japan. Attacking any of the G8 nations with intent to cause financial ruin was not merely a risky proposition, it was also potentially suicidal. Many of these manipulative plots could backfire, turning a profit into their own nosedive.

The Soviet Union had attempted such a plot against the United States’s economy and found itself taking a bath, destroying the integrity of its own monetary value.

Manning felt bad for Hawkins, as the Texan was a man of action. While the Canadian himself was someone who was equally adept in the rough and tumble of field operations, Manning’s talents could be used, at least in this instance. Like Hawkins, Manning’s brain was always in motion, always looking for patterns that would indicate hidden dangers, but inside the belly of a jet, there was only waiting, at least where Hawkins was concerned.

It couldn’t have been easy, but the Texan closed his eyes and was immediately off to slumber.

If he couldn’t keep his mind active, Manning knew he’d store energy, rest and prepare himself. They’d already been an hour on the plane and T.J. had read up on as much Japanese culture as he could endure, had enough refreshers on common Japanese phrases and been in on plenty of briefing on foreign intelligence services at work in Tokyo, their current destination.

Manning and Hawkins were “stuck” with the job of being boots on the ground in Japan for the certitude that there would be elements of the anti-Japanese conspiracy active in that country. Manning’s business knowledge would give the two of them a head start on looking for angles and leads.

Would it be good enough?

Manning dismissed that thought. It had been enough before. Stony Man worked simply because the covert agency, despite its incredibly small size, utilized every asset it could assemble.

Thinking outside the box, while being intimately aware of the makeup of said container, was one way in which the teams could intercede and defeat threatening forces.

So far, it had worked.

Manning didn’t intend to fail for lack of effort.

* * *

BARBARA PRICE WAS glad that Phoenix Force was off and away, and before the day was over, one half would be in the Ross Sea, seeking out the lethal marauders. Manning and Hawkins were on their way to Japan to seek out potential suspects working within the country. Able Team, at home, was on the hunt for those who’d staged a massacre mere hundreds of yards from the President and a contingent of diplomats.

As it was, the international scene and local press were talking about the White House crisis and how Japanese “big business” had the nerve to murder honest Americans in the middle of its capital city. That point of view was coming from the left, looking for a “good war,” while the right buckled down on how the U.S. administration was antibusiness and was using the crisis for the sake of painting “job makers” as the criminals.

Price wrinkled her nose. Once upon a time, there was such a thing as a news cycle, where events were reported and later analyzed to find meaning. But now, in the parade of propaganda, the truth was lost. American was pitted against American, leading the more paranoid of commentators to foresee a civil war. Such a fomentation of hostility, where one wing of philosophy saw the other as utterly evil, despite evidence of the truth, was an abomination that Stony Man sought to battle. Far too many times the teams had seen an attempt to manipulate public opinion to the point of fracturing societies, to inspire wars between nations. Such trickery was so commonplace, Price had developed an armor against leaping to unfounded accusations. She didn’t develop an opinion without conclusive facts.

The Stony Man intel would never be allowed into a court of law, but their evidence was always succinct and conclusive to the point that when they took action against the guilty, there would be no mistakes. Every time Able Team and Phoenix Force went into action, they battled with clear consciences. Their foes were not scapegoats, but those who actually acted to harm innocent noncombatants or the madmen who sought to secure profit and power from acts of terror and mayhem.

Then again, Price knew that her job wasn’t to sell commercial time to fatten the pockets of media moguls. Her job was to help protect America, her allies, the whole of the world at times. She and the cybernetics crew looked at raw data and events. They could tell that poverty and orphanhood were factors that gave violent gangs and terrorist groups thousands of recruits yearly for their personal shock troopers. Hamas soldiers didn’t stem from Israeli occupation, but from the poverty caused by the strife in the region. Poor and homeless, often growing up without fathers or mothers or both, these young people were ripe for transforming from “victims” into “avengers.”

Smart, devious bastards located a bumper crop of foot soldiers to twist to their cause, and they swooped in, forming modern-day groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Bloods, the Islamic Jihad. Give a man without life a target for his anger, a reason for his failures, and you could fill an army’s ranks. Trailer parks. Occupied slums. Inner cities ruled by drug lords. Nations deprived of education.

Because of this continuum of ignorance, of fanned prejudices and hatreds, Stony Man was perpetually at war.

There were billions of humans on the planet and hundreds of potential holes from which the greedy, the sociopathic and the murderous could draw upon. Finding dupes, already led astray by fake news and overhyped political commentary, turned the world into a factory for fanatics and maniacs.

Price sometimes wished that she could arrange for the cyber crew to crash some of these news stations, bankrupting them and obliterating their influence upon the American public. Liars of left and right persuasions would suddenly have nothing else to work with. Unfortunately such an act would be the ultimate in government censorship.

While the alarmists bellowed “Fire” in a crowded theater, pushing people to trample their neighbors in panic all for a profit, Price would not violate the Constitution in that manner. Freedom of speech also applied to blind stupidity, bigotry and prejudice, as well as lies.

“So we save the world from itself, one brushfire at a time,” Price muttered.

“Feeling disgusted by the news coverage?” Kurtzman asked. The wheelchair-bound genius had rolled past her to a coffeepot to refill his mug with a splash of the black, oily, high-octane gruel they jokingly referred to as coffee. It tasted terrible, but it packed the punch of a rocket launcher, enabling the cyber team to withstand hours of hacking and data research.

Price glowered.

“I know. I know. It’s not news,” Kurtzman amended. “But not everyone has access to raw data like we do.”

“No,” Price answered. “But that’s still not an excuse for willful deception of millions of viewers.”

Kurtzman shook his head, agreeing with her with a simple frown. Thickly bearded and with arms and a chest of solid muscle, the leader of the cyber team had earned the nickname “Bear” long before he’d taken a bullet to the spine. Price was reminded of the tales of Native Americans, granting bears great, nearly mystical wisdom, as well as patience. Kurtzman had a calming effect on her. “Unless we catch these people actively destroying Americans, we can’t go after them. But when they do, we’ll drop on them like a ton of bricks.”

Price took a deep breath. She poured herself a mug of the crap they called coffee. She’d need the energy, despite the fact that she had a thermos of homemade java, creamed and sweetened to her particular biases. “Sometimes, though, you have to wonder if these crazed morons aren’t just deliberately shoveling fuel onto the fire.”

“I know how you feel,” Kurtzman told her. “That’s why I always cast an eye toward that avenue. One day, we’ll strike gold.”

Price narrowed her eyes. “I’ll settle for last blood.”

CHAPTER FOUR (#u9b430416-9e79-5b7d-942a-f655c178c693)

Rosario Blancanales drove the Able Team van, a mobile headquarters for the team that also served as armory, electronics locker, communications nerve center and occasionally the biggest hunk of cover that they could find. The van, on the outside, resembled any other generic professional van, complete with the stylish logo of an official-sounding company. Dark brown, with gold-colored lettering, the delivery vehicle was invisible and unnoticeable in residential and professional neighborhoods. The official term—aluminum walk-in van—had become so much a part of the public consciousness that the vehicles, for all intents and purposes, were ignored, unless rolling up for a specific delivery.

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.