Hostile Dawn

“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.”

AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Ron Renauld for his contribution to this work.

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

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.”