Terror Descending. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ sight,” Price finished. “Bear, have your team start a global search. Find their satellite and backtrack it to their ground base.”

      “On it,” Kurtzman stated, hitting a button on the intercom to issue some terse instructions to his team in the Annex’s Computer Room.

      “You know, whatever we do, we’ll need a diversion to keep the enemy off balance and looking in the wrong direction,” Lyons said, clearly thinking out loud. “Bear, how many abandoned airports are there in North America?”

      That caught the chief hacker off guard. “Let me check,” he replied, and worked his laptop for a moment. “Okay, according to the last FAA survey, there are 1643 abandoned airfields.”

      “Damn. Are there any long enough to land a 707?”

      In growing understanding, Kurtzman grinned and worked the keyboard again. “That would be 603, including the Nevada Salt Flats, where you could land Mt. Rushmore.”

      “Hal,” Price said, “please contact the President immediately, and ask him to have the Air Force bomb those old airfields, then send in regular Army ground troops to check the ruins.”

      “To make them think we’re desperate,” Brognola said with a grin.

      “It’s worth a try,” she admitted.

      Without a word, the man rose and went to a wall phone. “Give me a secure line to the White House,” he demanded. After a brief wait, he spoke in a subdued whisper for several minutes, then hung up the receiver.

      “Done and done,” Brognola announced. “Now what?”

      “What exactly did the Airwolves hit the airport with?” Lyons asked, staring hard at the pictures of destruction.

      Setting aside her mug, Price checked a page on a clipboard. “Let’s see—air-to-ground missiles, rockets, cluster bombs, smart bombs and iron bombs.”

      Looking up, Kurtzman started to ask what those were, then stopped as he suddenly remembered that with the creation of smart bombs, old-fashioned bombs that had no guidance systems or any electronics, had been renamed dumb bombs, then finally iron bombs. Politically correct weapons. The very idea made his butt hurt.

      “Any chance the French gathered enough parts to figure out where the weapons came from?” Brognola asked. “The Sûreté has some of the best criminal forensic people in the business.”

      “They do,” Price replied. “We made the missiles. Or rather they were U.S. Air Force issue. The rockets were British, the cluster bombs Russian and iron bombs from Italy.”

      “Mixed ordnance,” Lyon said, rubbing his jaw. “Sounds like these bastards were using whatever they could get.”

      “Or else that’s what they’re trying to make us think,” McCarter responded. “This might actually be China, or some new group trying keep hidden. Remember the Brigade, or Unity?”

      Clearly, everybody in the room did, and their faces grew more stern, if that were possible.

      “Okay, there is no way that we’re going to track them through the munitions,” Price stated. “Unless they’re idiots, they’ve been stockpiling for years.” Adding some sugar to her coffee, the woman stirred it slowly. “But we might be able to find them through the sales of the munitions.”

      “Through the weapons dealers who illegally sold them the bombs,” Lyons said. “Armando in Ohio would be the man to check with first. He’s the dirtiest arms dealer in the U.S. We can put the squeeze on him. Maybe he’s heard something. These guys have a network. We can go in as buyers…no, as sellers, and see what we can dig up.”

      “The best way to follow the money—” Brognola added sagely “—is to be the original source.”

      “Damn straight.”

      “Want some blacksuits for backup?” Price asked.

      “Yes, a dozen should do,” Lyons said. “And Bob.”

      He wanted Bob? Crossing her arms, the woman almost smiled in understanding. “Fair enough,” Price said out loud. “Good luck. Report when possible.”

      Rising, the big man nodded to the rest of the Stony Man warriors.

      “We’re still using Bloody Bob?” Kissinger asked incredulously.

      Price shrugged. “He’s never failed us before.”

      Taking the remote control, Brognola brought up the fuzzy picture of the B-52 bomber. “This is an old plane, been around for over sixty years,” Brognola said slowly, testing the words as if they were creaking wooden boards under his feet. “How many of them are still in service around the world?”

      “Couple of thousand,” Kissinger said calmly.

      Kurtzman scowled. “That many?”

      “Unfortunately, yes.” The armorer shrugged. “The damn things fly forever, if you have enough spare parts.”

      “Buy enough parts from enough different sources and you could probably build a B-52,” Brognola said with conviction, sensing a possible vulnerability in the enemy.

      Suddenly alert, Price almost smiled. “And exactly where do you buy replacement parts for a B-52 heavy bomber?”

      Thoughtfully, Kissinger chewed a lip. “Well, there is a place called the Boneyard out in Arizona. That’s where the Air Force stores their old, and new, B-52 bombers, along with a lot of their other off-line or obsolete war planes.”

      “Sounds like the Boneyard is a good place to start a search…No, forget that,” Price corrected herself. “It’s much too obvious a source. That would be the last place the terrorists would get any parts.”

      “If we’re talking about black market war planes, that would be either Miami, the Sudan or Mexico,” McCarter announced. “And Homeland Security has the Miami group so heavily infiltrated that those boys can’t sell a wing nut, much less an entire war plane, without Washington knowing about it. There is a huge market for airplane parts, especially for military planes, and even more so for jets of any kind. The money involved is so good that a lot of drug dealers have switched from heroin to smuggling airplane parts.”

      “And the CIA has done the same with Sudan,” Brognola added. “Which leaves Mexico.”

      “The Quintana Roo connection?” Price suggested.

      “The very place I was thinking about,” McCarter said. “Out in the Yucatán Peninsula, there was an airfield built secretly during the reign of Mario Madrid, the so-called king of Cancun.”

      “He was a narcoterrorist, right?”

      “One of the first. The son of a bitch killed hundreds of Interpol agents, CIA operatives, police, Mexican federales . It’s said that he shifted more cocaine and heroin than we will ever know. The Mexican police finally took him down.” Price smiled. “With a little help from us and Mack.”

      “To keep an airfield hidden, it would have to be located somewhere out in the desert,” Brognola said. “Maybe СКАЧАТЬ