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Deadly Payload
DON PENDLETON’S
Stony Man® AMERICA'S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Special thanks and acknowledgment to
Douglas P. Wojtowicz for his contribution to this work.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
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
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
Jason Kovak ran his fingertips across the smooth shell of the unmanned aircraft, a smile coming unbidden to his lips. It was a simple machine, with a standard propeller engine mounted under a housing that protected it from detection by thermal imagers. Even so, it ran much more coolly than a rocket thruster. The powerful computer in its bulbous nose would steer according to data flowing from its forward-looking radar, avoiding collision with terrain. That was only on autopilot, while utilizing an artificial intelligence program. Inside the sloped head there was also a tight beam transceiver, capable of picking up signals from a thousand miles away to be directed by remote control. Riding beneath wing mounts on two hard points were six high-powered missiles, their noses fitted with television cameras for precision fire.
“How many do we have?” the Israeli asked.
“Enough for what you wish,” Cortez answered. His handsome, tanned features and black, silken suit reminded Kovak of an unmasked Zorro.
Kovak nodded. “We’ll need quite a few. With some optional payloads. You’re sure you can get enough?”
“Generosity, promises whispered,” the Argentinian said, stroking his neatly trimmed pencil mustache. “I have my means.”
Kovak nodded. “I won’t dig too deeply, then.”
“This is a big step for your side,” Cortez said.
“My side?” Kovak asked. “I don’t have a side anymore. Not after we’ve been betrayed.”
“And so you’re turning to us,” the Argentinian concluded. “You can’t get much more anti-Israel than our consortium.”
“Israel and the Arab nations are partners now,” Kovak said. “Bedfellows, seeking out peace accords when for millennia they’ve assailed the land promised to our people. They forget the Holocaust. It was a blip in history, done by a German madman long dead.”
“So you’re going to destroy your country?” Cortez asked. “Not that we mind. After all, Mossad’s been hunting the Consortium’s family and membership for decades.”
Kovak chuckled. “There’s a little sting, I’ll admit. But the Mossad is a joke, knuckling to political correctness and cowardice. The Consortium isn’t on an anti-Jew kick now, because it has other problems. Both of us have other things to worry about. Betrayals, weakness and weakened, corrupted leadership that needs a slap in the face to wake up. We have the same goal. We are one, building a better future.”
Cortez nodded and held out his hand to the Israeli. “A world without our different headaches.”
“Engineering the new tomorrow,” Kovak said, referring to the name of the alliance. “If anyone wishes to stop us, they’ll run face-first into a united front.”
T HE FIRST STRIKE of the united front known only to a few as the Engineers of the New Tomorrow came at dawn at a terrorist camp just five miles north of Damascus, Syria, in the mountains that formed a natural border with Lebanon. The camp was used by Syria to train and arm members of the Popular Front for the Righteous Liberation of Lebanon, a splintered offshoot of the Palestinian forces in the Lebanese countryside.
The strike was preceded only instants before by the soft hum of propeller-driven unmanned aerial vehicles, which drew the attention of the sleepy camp guard. The guards were used to being buzzed and observed by the Americans with their Predator drones, but every so often the Pentagon wanted to look as if it was taking a more offensive stance, and dropped a couple Maverick missiles into their backyard. Nothing that would obliterate the widely dispersed camp. Still, the groggy guard called out a warning, but by the time the words left his mouth, it was too late.
The first three rounds were white phosphorous, which burst thirty yards above the ground. They had been perfectly spaced and timed, clawing trails of burning waxy smoke spreading wide and arcing down into the unprepared camp. Half-dressed men, hearing the cries of alarm from the sentries, had burst from their tents and run right into the searing rain. As the WP struck their flesh, whether or not it was exposed or protected by clothing, it melted through, destroying skin and muscle until it burrowed down to the bone.
The lucky ones passed out immediately, while dozens of others ran screaming in horror at a pain that could only be torn out on the point of a knife. Lebanese insurgents and Syrian advisers twisted and writhed, grinding into the muddy ground, trying to drown the burning fragments of white phosphorous, but once exposed to air, the deadly element was unquenchable. Flesh around the fragments cooked and peeled away from bone in a slow, murderous torture.
The second wave of missiles from the UAV drones came unheard, the screams of the wounded and dying filling the air until the shrill rattle of 77 mm artillery rockets was right on them. These landed amid the semipermanent prefabricated buildings where supplies were stored. Thermobaric warheads struck with earth-shattering force, ripping Quonset huts to pieces and destroying anything and anyone still inside. Assault rifles and rocket launchers meant to slay the enemies of Syria in Lebanon were turned to pulped and mangled piles of wreckage.
A lone round sizzled into the communications hut and scoured it from existence with a blast equal to six sticks of dynamite. A radioman inside was cut off in midrequest, begging for help and support from the Syrian military when he and the hut were blasted into oblivion. The largest piece remaining of the Syrian communications officer was the size of a pencil eraser.
As smoke roiled into the sky, the circling drones whirled into position to launch phase three. Like hightech vultures, the quartet of drones pumped out a sheet of staggered rockets. It would have seemed overkill had it been conventional explosives or white phosphorous, but instead, cakey yellow clouds erupted from each artillery rocket strike. The ugly ocher fog spread across the camp. The cries of the wounded suddenly fell silent as the cloud washed over them.
One rocket round had landed, unexploded, its fuse apparently having malfunctioned. While the manufacture was undeniably American, the writing on the side was Arabic. The unmanned drones themselves were identical