War Tactic. Don Pendleton
PROFIT PIRATES
Tensions between China and the Philippines are on the rise, and a series of pirate attacks on Filipino ports and vessels only makes things worse. Phoenix Force discovers that the pirates are armed with American weapons. As they struggle to neutralize the threat on the sea, Able Team must hunt down the mastermind behind the attacks before the United States is forced into war.
STONY MAN
The best military fighters and cyber techs from around the world, the Stony Man teams are on the front lines of America’s war against terror, wherever it takes them. These elite black ops warriors put their lives on the line in the name of freedom.
“NOW, GARY, NOW!”
Manning made no reply. He didn’t need to. The automatic grenade launcher began spewing 40-millimeter death at the already crippled motor launch. The grenades blew the little boat to cinders, biting off great chunks of it, as if the vessel were being devoured from stern to bow. The flaming bodies that were thrown into the sea bore horrible testament to the destruction.
McCarter turned his attention back to the boat that was still moving.
Grimaldi did the same. He was harrying the motor launches to keep them from targeting the Filipino ship again with their handheld rockets.
From what McCarter could see of the men on the decks, they didn’t look military. At least, they weren’t wearing uniforms. But there was more. Military men had a certain bearing and, from what little he could see through the smoke, the sailors on the motor launch didn’t have it. They were casual. Pirates, or maybe civilian contractors. But how would such men get their hands on the latest high-tech weapons from the US, weapons whose export was strictly controlled?
Either RhemCorp was careless or RhemCorp was dirty. But they didn’t yet know which.
War Tactic
Don Pendleton
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
The South China Sea
Yanuar Wijeya squinted at the ship in the distance as he stood on the bow of the Penuh Belut, a rust-eaten, twenty-five-meter dhow, or Arab freighter, that served as the mother-tender to his two fast-attack motor craft. Salt spray flecked his face. In his gnarled fingers he held a pair of binoculars, only one half of which still worked. The other set of lenses was badly cracked and stained. With one eye closed, he could see his first mate, Mhusa, in the lead fast-attack vessel. The deceptively soft popping of gunfire, mild at this distance, told him that his men were already taking fire from the Filipino freighter.
The freighter was a large one, many times the size of his own craft. While it could have outrun the Penuh Belut, it had no chance to flee the motor craft. The captain of the Filipino vessel had opted to turn and fight rather than let Mhusa’s crew use the freighter for target practice.
Wijeya wore combat boots without laces on otherwise bare, callused feet. His cut-off jeans were bleached yellow-white from dirt, oil and the pitiless sun. The handle of a machete jutted from the MOLLE-equipped scabbard on his back, which also bore a pistol-grip shotgun. In the rhinestone-studded