Hostile Dawn. Don Pendleton
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TOKAIDO YANKED OUT HIS EARBUDS AND PUMPED HIS FIST IN THE AIR
“You have something?” Barbara Price asked.
Tokaido nodded. “Our paramilitary one-stop-shopping center migrated just a few miles from Barstow. They’re in Hesperia.”
Carl Lyons fielded the young hacker’s heads-up on the location of Army Gideon’s new quarters.
“Any word if they’ve been in contact with Ahmet or Nouhra?” Schwarz asked as he clipped frag grenades to an ammunition belt already loaded with magazines.
“No,” Lyons reported, “but they just got their mitts on a handful of Gustav rocket launchers. If that’s not special orders for our perps, I don’t know what is.”
“Hesperia’s less than a half hour away, tops,” Blancanales said. “Maybe we can beat the shoppers there and be waiting for them.”
“Not that it matters at this stage,” Schwarz said, “but I keep wondering who they plan to take out with these rocket launchers they keep trying to get their hands on.”
“Beats me,” Lyons said, “but I’m guessing innocent bystanders.”
Hostile Dawn
Don Pendleton
Stony Man ®
AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Ron Renauld for his contribution to this work.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
Winter had come early to the Blue Ridge Mountains. The peaks were capped white, and the overnight snowfall had left three inches of fresh powder at the lower elevations. As Barbara Price waved to the security detail manning the front gate to Stony Man’s Shenandoah Valley compound, she saw one of the blacksuits maneuvering a trailer plow down the long driveway leading to the main house. The gabled structure looked, to the eye, much like any number of other isolated manors she’d passed on the drive from Baltimore, where she’d just spent a rare four-day weekend away from her duties as mission controller for the Farm’s Sensitive Operations Group. It had been good to get away, but Price was dedicated to her work and looked forward to padding her clipboard with the latest intel and logistics data needed to oversee covert operations being carried out by the men of Able Team and Phoenix Force.
A portion of the Farm’s private landing strip had been plowed clear, as well, and Price had just eased her Jeep Cherokee to a stop near the house when she saw a Bell 206 Long Ranger helicopter flutter down from the leaden skies overhead, raising up clouds of dry snow as it zeroed in on the clearing. After tucking her shoulder-length, honey-blond hair inside her parka, Price stepped out into the crisp, twenty-degree morning air. She strode past the dormant snow-covered produce gardens, reaching the chopper just as Hal Brognola was disembarking. Brognola, SOG’s director of operations, was a tall, middle-aged man with graying temples and well-earned furrows creasing his broad forehead.
“How was your vacation?” Brognola asked Price as they headed toward the house.
Price smiled. “Four days is a ‘breather,’ not a vacation. But we take what we can get.”
“Isn’t that the truth.”
“In any event, I’m recharged and ready to go.”
“Glad to hear it,” Brognola replied, “because we’ve got a full plate.”
The Sensitive Operations Group administrators passed through two checkpoints before reaching an underground tunnel that linked the main house with the Farm’s Annex, a newer facility housed within the facade of a wood-chipping mill set on the east end of the property. They traversed the thousand-foot-long passageway in an electric cart, its muted purr allowing Brognola to bring Price up to date without raising his voice.
“We’ve still got the men working two fronts,” Brognola explained. “Able Team’s out in California, just north of L.A., near Barstow.”
“The sleeper cell?” Price asked. “What would al Qaeda be doing up there?”
“We’ve got a lead that they’re trying to get their hands on some explosives,” Brognola said.
“From under whose counter?” Price wanted to know.
“Some paramilitary outfit,” Brognola explained. “We intercepted something off their message board that sounded like a deal in the making. Unfortunately there were no details on a time or location, so we’re going to have to sniff around and hope they tip their hand.”
“I take it there was nothing about what al Qaeda has in mind if they can load up.”
“Negative,” Brognola admitted. “We still think they’re targeting L.A., but since they’re roaming around up there it might be they’ve got their eyes on the aqueduct. It’s always been vulnerable, and there are tons of places up there where they’d have easy access to it.”
“Turn off the faucet before it reaches L.A.?”
“That’s one theory,” Brognola said. “CIA thinks they could be targeting the freeways, and the Bureau’s hunch is there might still be something to all that talk about hitting a shopping mall.”