Cold Snap. Don Pendleton

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      Schmied was enjoying the crumbs torn off into the water by scavengers tearing at the bloody carcass. Now that the blood was in the water, every opportunist in the ocean was circling, looking for a bite of that thick, succulent blubber.

      Schmied blinked and laughed at himself. The allusion to the dying whale must have been unavoidable, given the targets of those first anti-shipping missiles.

      “Mr. Schmied?” Lee asked.

      “I’m sorry,” the “banker” answered. “I just had a mental image cross my mind.”

      “Oh?” Lee inquired. “What mental image?”

      “Japan as a wounded whale. And you and I, Mr. Lee, are the sharks waiting to dig in for the feast.”

      Lee smiled. “I see.”

      “I just want to know what we can do to tie in the Iranians to one side or the other,” Schmied said. “They will be an unavoidable link in the chain.”

      “Trust me, Mr. Schmied,” Lee offered. “We have the perfect personages to take the fall for this.”

      Schmied tilted his head. “Let me guess. Iran is currently one of the nations exporting liquid natural gas to Japan, having doubled it in 2013. Someone is attempting to hurt Iran’s petro-bucks, which means we can cast suspicion on Israel.”

      Lee’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “How very perceptive...”

      Schmied waved it off. “You sit behind a desk like this one, you know which way the money flows. Besides, one of the problems with Japan in international circles is its ignorance of Iranian sanctions. If anyone wanted to hurt Iran, taking a few points off the yen would be one of the best ways to do it.”

      Lee chuckled. “Most canny.”

      “Yeah.” If there was one thing Schmied didn’t appreciate, it was smoke being blown up his ass, and Lee seemed to have backed a foundry chimney between Schmied’s cheeks.

      The business speak was on autopilot, all the while allowing the AVNF president to channel his thoughts into what dilemma he’d run into if he hadn’t kept the Chinese under tight wraps. So far, the Gehenna commandos were lost in the wind. It was a shame that a proud American warrior patriot had to take escape-and-evasion precautions in the land of his birth, but then Schmied realized that America, as it stood now, was very far from that. So-called conservatives were engaging in invasions of privacy and propriety that they accused their liberal counterparts of doing.

      Schmied had an enemy of his country, moving in close, assuming that he was clueless.

      So Schmied would feed the bastard all the rope he needed. And, in the process, an economic powerhouse that had drained American money for decades would end up crippled. He had little doubt a political rival would take the blame, forcing the United States to become stronger, to stand up under its own power.

      “I suppose you’ll be needing something to show Iran as a victim, as well,” Schmied said.

      “We have something in line for that,” Lee answered.

      “Just make certain it’s clean,” Schmied told him. “We’re skating a dangerous edge here.”

      The Chinese “businessman” nodded in agreement. “Don’t worry.”

      Schmied bristled. “Don’t worry” was the lie spoken by a man seeking to undermine you; a deception intended to disarm and leave vulnerable. The day that Schmied wouldn’t worry was to be the minute he stopped breathing.

      Lee’s breathing would end long, long before that.

      * * *

      THE D.C. METRO POLICE were all too cooperative with Carl Lyons, Rosario Blancanales and Hermann Schwarz as the three men of Able Team arrived on the scene. The flash of Justice Department Special Agent badges garnered cooperation from the police who’d turned this stretch of side street into a crime scene.

      Lyons, the Able Team leader, was a big man; six feet in height, fair hair contrasting against weathered skin that was drawn tautly across a broad-shouldered, muscular frame. The former Los Angeles police officer had very little body fat and his jacket was cut perfectly so that he could conceal a pair of powerful handguns—a Smith & Wesson .45 auto in a shoulder holster and an alloy-framed, 8-shot .357 Magnum revolver tucked into a pancake holster—just behind his right hip. Lyons was not someone who was known for taking half measures, and though he regretted leaving the long guns behind in the Able Team van, the two big guns were backed up by two Airweight revolvers, a knife around his neck, with another folding blade in his trousers’ pocket and a Taser in a cross-draw holster.

      Just because the violence had exploded and faded only a couple of hours before did not mean lightning would not strike twice.

      Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz was smaller than Lyons, shorter by two inches, but lighter than the former football player by a good piece. Schwarz was the definition of average, everything spectacular about him hidden beneath slender limbs, brown hair and brown eyes. Schwarz had been part of the elite U.S. Army Rangers, but his physique was one of sleekness and efficiency. He had strength in his arms and legs, but it was not tied up in the same bulging, rippling mass of musculature that the Able Team leader’s bulk was carved from. Even so, Schwarz’s greatest ability was his mind. He was a certified genius, having a vast array of scientific skills, being versed in areas of expertise as diverse as nanotechnology and various Eastern Tao’s.

      Lyons likened Schwarz to a hyperactive puppy, always throwing himself into each new project with glee and boundless energy. Whether it was designing a new homing system for a missile, hacking features in computer and telephone operating systems or discussing philosophy with Blancanales, Schwarz was rarely calm and still. Even when he said not a word, the genius was thinking, observing, applying his intellect with the skill and precision of a surgeon, dissecting the universe around him down to the last molecule.

      Rosario Blancanales was the eldest of the three men. He looked older thanks to his weathered features, displaying more wrinkles than the others and his premature gray-white hair. However, doubts of the man’s fitness for duty were dispelled by watching him move with grace and energy. Smooth of tongue and easy in manner, Blancanales often served as the spokesman and the negotiator for Able Team, earning him the dubious title of “Politician.” Blancanales had been through the Green Berets’ Robin Sage, and while he was no slouch in the application of force and violence, he was also masterful in the use of diplomacy and conversation.

      Able Team possessed a dynamic of mind, body and spirit that turned the trio into one of the finest covert action teams in the world.

      Once more, Lyons looked at the chalk outlines of murdered brothers behind the badge. D.C. cops and Secret Service personnel had lost their lives while attempting to prevent the cold-blooded murders of a group of reactionary protesters irate at Japan’s appeal to the White House in the court of world opinion.

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