Cold Snap. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ applying their knowledge, picking up hints and clues as to whom or what could have been behind the attack.

      Certainly the Secret Service detail had given some details of the attackers, but Schwarz had military experience that allowed him to see things outside the box that law enforcement could think of. Hell, Schwarz had experience that allowed him to survey a battle and pick up almost impossible details thanks to his razor-sharp mind.

      The whole universe was a box the genius could maneuver around and examine, peering into individual compartments and collating them with the barest threads of coincidence.

      In the meantime Lyons had been to more than enough murder scenes to have an intuitive feel for the kind of attackers. Already he had a sense of focused rage. The men behind the attack were disciplined, firing short bursts, staying in cover and never staying still long enough to become a target. But there was something extra here. There was an underlying anger, a hatred of the protesters that went beyond the need to create dead bodies for the sake of a political message.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ