Triplecross

“No worries, Hal,” Blancanales said. “We’ve played the game before. We’ll try not to break too much that you might have to pay for.”

“It isn’t you I worry about, Pol,” Brognola said. He cast a meaningful glance in Lyons’s direction. The big ex-cop chose that moment to study an imaginary spot on the ceiling, whistling tunelessly to himself.

“We’ll keep you informed, Hal,” Price said.

“Good,” Brognola said. “Good luck, Able. Keep an eye on them, Barb.” He cut the connection.

“Let’s move, boys,” Lyons said, standing. “We’ve wasted enough time on our behinds.”

“Jack will be waiting for you at the landing pad area,” Price directed. “Cowboy has prepared a full complement of gear from the armory.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Lyons returned. He strode out of the room with Blancanales close behind. Price moved to follow, but before she did she stopped and watched Schwarz. The electronics expert looked left, looked right and then leaned over the table. He then clipped the red-dot sight to Kurtzman’s coffee mug.

“I’d check the windage and elevation on that before you fire it,” Schwarz said, grinning. He left quickly.

As she walked down the hall after the chuckling Schwarz, Price thought she heard Kurtzman talking to himself in the conference room.

“Swift and terrible,” Kurtzman muttered to himself. “Swift and terrible.”

CHAPTER THREE

Twin Forks, Utah

The black GMC Suburban waiting at the tiny airfield was a rental from a national chain that Carl Lyons recognized. He assumed that a local courier, coordinating through the Farm, had arranged for the vehicle to be left for them. In both hands he carried heavy black duffel bags, as did Schwarz and Blancanales. Each was full of weapons and ammunition, including loaded magazines, grenades and other explosives. When Lyons reached the truck he set the bags down in the gravel and began searching the nearest wheel well.

The magnetic key box was in the second well he tried. He slipped the key out of the box and put the magnetic holder back where he had found it. An electronic fob was included. He used it to unlock the truck.

“The exciting life of a covert counterterrorist,” Schwarz said as he walked up and dropped his bags.

“Be sure to drop the one with the C4 charges in it extra hard, Gadgets,” Lyons said.

“Good thing the detonators are in the other bag,” the electronic genius said without missing a beat.

“Thrill as they carry heavy things from their plane to their car!” Blancanales intoned, imitating a movie announcer.

The “plane” in this case was a Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, on loan from Special Forces. The VTOL troop carrier was armed with a 7.62 mm GAU-17 minigun. The retractable cannon was belly-mounted and featured a video-equipped remote-control slaved to a display on Jack Grimaldi’s helmet, much like the nose-cannon setup used by Apache gunship crews. The multibarrel cannon was more or less stock, as Cowboy Kissinger referred to it, but the Stony Man armorer had worked with Schwarz to adapt the video and camera equipment so that Grimaldi could fire the minigun while piloting the Osprey.

The massive twin-rotor craft was capable of transporting far more than just the three men of Able Team and their gear, but portions of the interior cargo space had been converted to include auxiliary fuel tanks. These and the weight of the heavy multibarrel cannon in the ship’s belly reduced the aircraft’s cargo capacity considerably. It was still more than sufficient, though, to get Able Team and their weapons where the three men needed to go...and it had the range to move them around the country with speed and maneuverability.

“Everybody get your gear in order,” Lyons said, although the instructions were unnecessary. The three men of Able Team had executed enough missions together that they could work together without speaking, practically reading each other’s minds. Lyons put two fingers to the transceiver in his ear. “Comm check. Check one, check two.”

“I read you,” Grimaldi said in the Osprey. “Check-ins will be by the book, gentlemen. Your transceivers should give you enough range that I can live vicariously through your adventures while I sit here warming the pilot’s seat.”

“Roger that, Jack,” Lyons said. “Pol? Gadgets?”

“Loud and clear,” Blancanales said. “Of course, you’re also standing next to me.”

“Two by four,” Schwarz said.

“Don’t you mean five by five?”

“A two by four is what it would take to knock you down,” Schwarz said.

Lyons looked at him. “Gadgets,” he said, “I never know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Story of my life,” Schwarz answered.

“Get in the truck, Gadgets,” Lyons said.

For this mission, Able Team was operating under full cover of their Justice Department credentials. They wore civilian clothes—Lyons, his familiar bomber jacket and jeans, Schwarz, a T-shirt and cargo pants with a windbreaker, and Blancanales, khaki slacks with a button-down shirt and a blazer. Their weapons were their usual individual kit. Each of them had a spring-assist folding combat dagger. Blancanales carried a Beretta 92-F and an M-4 carbine, while Schwarz wore a shoulder holster that carried his Beretta 93R machine pistol. Lyons, for his part, carried his trusty Colt Python in .357 Magnum. His massive Daewoo USAS-12, as well as a healthy supply of 20-round drum magazines, was one of the items weighing down his duffel bags.

Lyons drove the GMC from the airfield with Schwarz navigating. The GPS coordinates were fed to all three team members’ satellite smartphones. Gadgets simply called up a local map interface and gave the turns to Lyons. A commercial GPS unit would be a liability; the coordinates stored in such a unit could conceivably be an intelligence problem after the fact. The smartphones, by contrast, were encrypted.

They had driven for some distance, making their way to the first of the prioritized EarthGard properties, when Lyons said, simply, “Utah.”

Looking out his window before turning back to his smartphone, Schwarz said, “Yep. Utah.”

“Are you playing Furious Birds or some crap?” Lyons said, glancing at Schwarz’s phone.

Schwarz looked up. “These phones can run more than one application simultaneously—”

“You are playing,” Lyons said. “What’s it called?”

“Maniacal Blue Jays? Aggressive Waterfowl?” Blancanales queried from the backseat. “Gadgets, did you get past the brick level yet?”

“Don’t help, Pol,” Lyons said.

“Turn left, Ironman,” Schwarz said. An enormous road sign they were passing read EarthGard Beryllium, LLC, Next Left. Lyons shot Schwarz a look but said nothing. He spun the wheel over.

The team made its way up a long, winding dirt road. The curve of the road suggested a very large circle, which of course it was; the mine was at the center, and no doubt this was the primary means through which earth-moving equipment and other heavy industrial machinery was moved to and from the mine. The headquarters building was a large affair—larger, Carl Lyons thought, than it probably needed to be for an operation as relatively simple as taking ore out of the ground. He had been noticing the sentries as they’d traversed the winding dirt drive. When he saw the guards grouped outside the building’s entrance, he decided it was too much to be coincidence.

“Doesn’t it look like they have an inordinate amount of security for a mining operation in Utah?” Blancanales asked.

“I was just thinking that,” Lyons said. “Pol, grab one of the smaller duffels and tuck your M-4 and my shotgun in there. Make sure we’ve got plenty of grens and extra mags. Gadgets—”

“You’re going to make me carry it, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Lyons. “Yes, I am.”

A sign at the entrance to the main building parking area proclaimed EarthGard a “carbon neutral enterprise.” Lyons pulled the big Suburban into a parking slot marked Visitors: Reserved For Hybrid/Eco-Friendly Vehicles. As he climbed out of the GMC, a trio of security guards in black tactical gear was already converging on him. Blancanales came around to stand next to Lyons, while Schwarz, with the duffel bag, took up a position on the other side of the truck.

“Awfully militarized for local security,” Blancanales whispered.

“Yeah,” said Lyons. “That too.”

The three guards were large, bearded men with the experienced, self-assured look of independent contractors. Lyons did not get an “amateur security guard” or “wannabe cop” vibe from them at all; what he perceived was the type of lethal potential that men of violence, men experienced in warfare, could sometimes sense in each other. Their uniforms also put Lyons’s sixth sense for combat on alert. They were wearing a commercial brand of “tactical” clothing—including distinctive pants with slash rear pockets and cargo pouches—that were extremely popular with contractors in the sandbox abroad. The front man of the trio wore expensive, mirrored, wraparound sunglasses that cost a week’s pay for most people. The hook-and-loop nametag on his uniform shirt read Kirkpatrick.

Each man held an M-4 carbine worn on a single-point sling.