Act Of War. Don Pendleton

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      R EACHING THE FIRE EXIT , Schwarz slid a video probe under the door. On the screen of his laptop, there was nobody visible in the parking lot.

      “Clear,” he said, withdrawing the probe and deactivating the alarm.

      A split second later there came a muffled sound of gunshots from above and then some sort of crash.

      “Oh, no, it isn’t,” Lyons said, the former police detective feeling oddly pleased at how swiftly the FBI was handling the matter.

      With a soft click, the fire door swung open and the Stony Man team left the building. Strolling casually to their van, the men checked the seals to make sure nobody had breeched the vehicle, then climbed inside and slowly drove away.

      Easing into traffic, Lyons headed toward Memphis again, while Blancanales removed his sunglasses and passed out baseball caps. The men of Able Team would have to change their appearance, just in case somebody had gotten a glimpse of them at the hotel. A complete change of clothing was usually not necessary; simply altering one or two items was good enough in most cases.

      “They found the video pickup,” Schwarz said, lowering the lid of his laptop and sliding it into a recharging port built into the vehicle’s wall.

      “Already?” Blancanales asked, arching an eyebrow. “That was fast.”

      “They had an EM scanner of a type I’ve never seen before,” Schwarz replied, worrying his mustache.

      “Never?”

      “Nope.”

      That was disturbing news. There wasn’t much in the world of electronics that Schwarz didn’t know inside and out. Blancanales took down the M-16 assault rifle and removed the 40 mm stun bag from the grenade launcher to replace it with an armor-piercing shell of high explosives.

      “If they’re that good, then these won’t work,” Lyons said, tossing the cap into the rear of the van and unclipping a microphone from the dashboard. The device resembled a cheap CB radio, nothing a would-be thief could possibly be interested in trying to boost. In reality it was a military transponder of astonishing power.

      “Jungle Cat to Rock House.” He spoke into the mike. “Uncle Hoover has joined the party, and wants to borrow a Finn. Any chance you can get them to visit Antarctica?”

      “Negative, Jungle Cat,” Kurtzman replied crisply. “I was just about to call you with the news. The earlier ID was a fake, planted by wax wing. These are not the real McCoy. These are not, repeat not, Uncle Hoover. Do you copy?”

      Merging with the traffic, Lyons grunted at that. Wax wing, Icarus. Damn. Fake FBI agents. To pull off a stunt like that would require some serious hacking. And one mother of a powerful computer. No matter how good a computer expert was, not even Kurtzman could break into the DOD database without at least a Cray Supercomputer at his command. Only in the movies did somebody hack the White House with a regular PC.

      “Confirm, Rock House, we will bank the Finn and remove any troublemakers from the game. Copy?”

      “Roger,” Bear replied, and the radio went silent.

      “Fakes!” Schwarz said furiously, reaching for his laptop then pulling his hand back. If the enemy had fooled Kurtzman for a whole ten minutes, there was nothing he could do to hack their location of a portable. It would be like hunting elephants with a derringer. Absolutely useless.

      “Okay, our best bet is to find Gallen before these assholes do, and get him safely out of the state,” Lyons said. “Pol, if our boy hasn’t gone to Graceland, what else is there in this town for an Elvis fan to do? A wax museum, film retrospective, anything like that?”

      “I’ll check the Zagat,” Blancanales said, pulling out a PDA and opening the electronic version of the international travel guide.

      “And I’ll have Jack warm up the Herc for an immediate takeoff,” Schwarz said, pulling out a cell phone. “He already has the documents on board for an emergency departure ferrying a living heart to be transplanted to Seattle.”

      “Works for me.” Twisting the wheel to maneuver around a bright red sport cars that looked like an oversize toy, Lyons turned onto Broad Street, then cursed as construction made him take a detour.

      “Oh, hell, there’s a hundred places!” Blancanales complained, using a thumb to scroll the tiny screen. “The Elvis Musical Museum, Elvis Miniature Golf Course, Elvis Dry Cleaner’s, the Elvis Karaoke Bar…”

      Under his breath, Schwarz muttered something about itching like a man on a fuzzy tree, and his partner shot him a stern look.

      “No, wait, Gadgets has a good idea there,” Lyons said, looking over the crowds of people streaming by on the busy sidewalks. “Which bar has the best Elvis impersonator? The absolute cream of the crop?” It would be a million to one chance of running across Gallen this way, but experience had taught the man that such things did happen, and only a fool would not take advantage of every opportunity coming his way.