Stealth Sweep

The President frowned

“Why would Shen-wa want Snyder alive… Ah. So that he’ll know what we know about the Red Star, and can make preparations against our responses in advance.”

“And Snyder might know if Shen-wa is the person behind these attacks, and possibly his location,” Brognola stated.

“Striker certainly has courage, breaking into a Red Chinese maximum-security prison just to ask a man a question.”

“Whatever gets the job done, sir,” the big Fed said as a dark shadow swept past the window.

As a second shadow appeared, Brognola dived forward and tackled the President to the floor just as something exploded outside, the titanic force of the blast rocking the White House.

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

—General Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964

No matter the obstacles, I’m determined to carry on the fight, my solemn tribute to the men and women, soldier and civilian, who give their all to protect the innocent, and strive for the ultimate goal of peace.

—Mack Bolan

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

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Oskemen Valley, Kazakhstan

Impatiently, death waited to be released.

The rumbling sky was the color of oiled steel, and a cold rain fell in a heavy mist upon the rocky landscape. Jagged granite peaks soared high enough to rip through the dark storm clouds, a thick forest of pine trees glistened with moisture, and muddy creeks gurgled along twisting ravines until leaping off cliffs to unexpectedly become waterfalls.

With a low mechanical growl, a massive diesel locomotive slowly arched over a rocky foothill, the huge engine briefly eclipsing the crescent moon as it rested on the horizon. As the long freight train began the serpentine descent into the darkness below, a dull thump sounded from one of the sealed cargo carriages, then the corrugated roof blew off to sail away into the dripping trees. A moment later, a dozen spheres abruptly rose from inside the carriage on an exhalation of compressed air. Shooting high into the misty rain, the spheres snapped out curved wings and glided away from the chuffing locomotive just as it disappeared into a brick-lined tunnel.

As they skimmed low over the treetops, the outer covering of the strange devices crumbled away like dry ash to reveal sleek falcon-shaped machines, the wings and angular bodies painted a flat, nonreflective black. There were no running lights, no exhaust, no sound of an engine, and the machines sailed through the stormy night as silent as ghosts.

Spreading out in a search pattern, they circled the rolling foothills several times until visually confirming their location, then sharply banked away from one another and streaked away in different directions at nearly subsonic speeds.

SET ON TOP of a huge pile of broken slag was the curved white dome of a Kazakhstan military radar station, the outer protective surface oddly resembling a giant golf ball. Inside, the freshly painted walls were covered with amazingly lewd centerfolds from hardcore Spanish and Ukrainian sex magazines, along with posters of the white sandy beaches of the Caspian Sea to the far west. The coast was naturally rocky; the sand had been flown in by the Soviet Union government to create a private beach for its upper echelon. But now everybody had access to the little resorts. It was one of the more benign legacies of the brutal political regime.

Wrapping a dry cloth around the worn wooden handle, Sergeant Aday Meirjan lifted the softly bubbling pot. “Tea?” he asked over a shoulder.

“Thanks!”

“Sugar?”

Hitching up his new gun belt, Private Dastan Alisher frowned. “What am I, a barbarian?”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Meirjan chuckled, topping off the pair of cracked ceramic mugs.

Hanging from the domed ceiling, clusters of humming fluorescent lights brightly illuminated a curved bank of controls, glowing radar screens and squat, utilitarian radio transmitters—the softly beeping heart of the radar station. Near the exit was a bubbling samovar, the delicious aroma of freshly brewed tea mixing with the stink of ozone wafting off the high-voltage transformers powering the antiquated electrical equipment. Positioned alongside the door to a cramped washroom was a hand-carved wooden gun rack filled with an assortment of weapons: old WW II German-made 9 mm “grease guns,” a pair of American Browning Automatic rifles, crude AK-47 assault rifles and glistening new AK-105 assault rifles equipped with grenade launchers and telescopic sights. On the floor below were crates of ammunition for each weapon. It was a miniature United Nations of death-dealing man stoppers.

Listening to the gentle beeping of the radar screens, the weary soldiers leaned back in their heavily patched chairs and took appreciative sips of the strong tea, the sweet brew bringing much needed freshness and clarity to their tired minds and limbs. This had been a long shift for both of them, and their time in Fort Purgatory was not over yet.

Located in the barren western region of the nation, Oskemen Valley was a good fifty miles from the gleaming skyscrapers and raucous discotheques of Oskemen City, and an equal distance from the horribly radioactive wastelands of the old Soviet Union nuclear test sites. While the radar station carried the official title of Listening Post 47, unofficially it was better known as Purgatory, a dead zone caught between heaven and hell.

Only a decade or so earlier, the valley had been the military foundry of the Soviet Union, with dozens of busy factories and manufacturing plants turning out an endless supply of missiles, torpedoes and artillery shells. But with the collapse of the USSR, the Russian soldiers fleeing back to their homes had taken everything they could sell for quick cash on the black market. Almost overnight, Kazakhstan had become an independent nation, and a major world power, equipped with hundreds of abandoned underground silos full of thermonuclear ICBMs.

The Kazakhstan government neatly removed itself from the deadly nuclear crosshairs of the rest of the world by simply giving the United Nations all fourteen thousand of their remaining Soviet nuclear weapons. It was a political tactic nobody had ever thought of using before.

Concentrating what limited resources the country possessed on constructing schools and repairing roads, Kazakhstan still maintained a strong conventional army, with hundreds of radar stations positioned along important passes through the steep mountains to keep a careful watch on the despised Russians to the north, and the equally distrusted Chinese to the east. Every other country along its borders could be safely ignored, as they lacked the technological ability to seriously threaten Kazakhstan.

Once they’d finished their tea, Alisher refilled the mugs this time, while Meirjan checked the steadily beeping radar screens. The noise would most likely drive most civilians mad, but to a soldier it was the beautiful music of peace. The rainy skies above the valley were empty of any aircraft, rockets or incoming missiles. Although why in the name of God anybody would want to invade the isolated valley, the sergeant had no idea whatsoever. But it was his job to guard the place, not ponder the intricacies of international politics.

“Anything coming our way?” Alisher asked, passing his sergeant a steaming mug and reclaiming his seat.

“Not in the sky,” Meirjan stated confidently.

“So, tell me about your pet project,” Alisher asked. They needed to talk about something to pass the time.

“Are you really interested?” Meirjan asked, arching an eyebrow.

Alisher gave a polite smile. “No, just bored.”

Sgt. Meirjan shrugged. “Fair enough. I found the parts stuffed in a truck, ready to be hauled back to Moscow.” He rose from his chair and walked to the main console. Set among the array of standard circular screens was a hexagonal one tinted a dark blue. Luminous arms swept around the circular screens as the dish mounted on the roof steadily rotated, but on the hexagonal screen a luminous bar moved up and down in counterpoint.

“Can’t be very important if they left it behind,” Alisher stated with a sniff. “Strange looking thing.”

“The Soviets also left behind several thousand working nuclear weapons,” Meirjan reminded him brusquely.

The private snorted. “True enough. How does it work?”

“By combing an active radar beam with a passive sonic receiver, sort of like sonar.”

“What is that for, flying submarines?”

Glancing sideways, Meirjan frowned. “My guess is that the Soviets wanted something to detect American stealth bombers by the noise of their engines.”

“Oh. Kind of useless in the rain, isn’t it?”

Reluctantly, Meirjan began to agree, when suddenly the blue screen started to blare a warning tone. Stepping closer, he frowned as a pair of small objects appeared on the blue screen. They were coming in low, arching around the huge Soviet factories just like birds, but moving way too fast.

“What are those, Sarge?” Alisher asked curiously, taking a sip from the mug.

“Don’t know yet,” Meirjan growled, dropping into a chair and adjusting the controls. The Doppler radar screens were clear of any airborne traffic. But the stealth radar clearly showed incoming craft. Wiping a hand across the blue screen to dislodge anything on the glass, he blinked as more objects appeared out of nowhere. Two were diving straight for the SAM—surface-to-air missile—bunkers, whereas another pair was going to the fuel depot, and the rest were heading for the radar dishes hidden on the mountainside…and the disguised listening station.

“Those look like ARMs,” Alisher said slowly, setting down his mug. It missed the table and noisily crashed to the floor. Neither soldier noticed.

“Yes, they do,” Meirjan muttered, trying to fine-tune the controls.

“Is…is this another intelligence test for the new guy?” Alisher asked, a surge of hope in his voice. “Like that bucket of steam the colonel asked me to get last week, or that hoop snake you wanted me to kill?”

“Maybe…” Meirjan said hesitantly, a hand poised above the alarm button. The Doppler radar was still clear. The logical explanation was that these weird blips were merely a glitch in the software, or better yet, just a practical joke from one of the other watch officers stationed at the post during the day. He relaxed a little at that thought. Yes, of course. What else could they be? That made a lot more sense than a salvo of antiradar missiles appearing out of thin air!

Just then, the first pair of blips reached a radar dish on the nearby mountainside. Immediately, that screen went blank, the foggy window facing that direction brightened with a flash, and there came the sound of a distant explosion.

“Those are missiles!” Meirjan snarled, flipping the red toggle switch.

Instantly, a howling siren cut loose outside, and whole sections of the control board came alive as the SAM bunkers, and electric miniguns hidden in the forest, cycled into action. But Meirjan bitterly cursed as their targeting systems swung harmlessly past the salvo of incoming missiles. Sweet Jesus, they couldn’t find them! Every radar screen was clean and green; only the experimental stuff registered the enemy ARMs.

His heart pounding wildly, Meirjan briefly glanced at the exit door. Then he spit a virulent oath and tore the cover off the control board to try and jury-rig a connection between the Soviet X-radar and the defensive-fire control system. With luck, it would take only a few moments….

“Red flag! Red flag! HQ, this is forty-seven, we have hostiles,” Alisher crisply said into a microphone, his hands quickly adjusting the controls on the old radio. “Repeat, we have—”

Just then, the entire universe became filled with white-hot pain for the two soldiers, but it lasted for only a second.

SPREADING RAPIDLY across the misty sky, the missiles slammed into the open concrete bunkers, detonating all of the surface-to-air missiles in the honeycomb launcher. The roiling explosion ripped the fortification apart, setting off the rest of the missiles, supposedly safe behind a fireproof wall. The combination blast ripped the night apart, the halo of shrapnel spreading out for ten thousand yards.

As sleepy soldiers stumbled about the barracks, grabbing boots and Kalashnikov assault rifles, another machine crashed to the ground directly before the front door, the explosion blocking the entrance. Then two more crashed in through the glass windows and detonated in midair. The fiery blast blew a hurricane of body parts out the windows only an instant before the massive stores of ammunition in the basement levels were triggered.

The roof was designed to withstand a direct hit from World War II artillery shells, but the new bricks walls weren’t and they actually bulged out slightly before shattering into total annihilation. Chunks of men, masonry and machines sprayed across the landscape, the civilian cars in the nearby parking lot peppered by steaming pieces of their former owners.

Only moments later, the remaining four SAM bunkers were obliterated, closely followed by the fuel depot, the rooftop Gatling guns, the main armory, and then a parking garage draped in heavy canvas. Briefly, the array of T-80 tanks, and a hundred other assorted military vehicles were exposed to the elements before the winged machines streaked in through the open sides of the structure to slam directly into the armored door protecting the massive stores of shells for the military behemoths.

Accelerating constantly, the first flying machine slammed full-force into the resilient barrier, merely denting it slightly and setting off a howling alarm. Then a second one hit, widening the dent into a breech, and the third punched through the seriously weakened door. As it fell aside, three more of the black machines swooped inside, moving almost too fast to see. A startled corporal wildly fired his AK-101 at the bizarre invader flying by his post, but missed it completely.

“Hello, headquarters?” a lieutenant sputtered into a telephone. “This is Oskemen Valley, and we are under attack by—”

Reaching the main storeroom, the machines found their targets, held a brief electronic conference and then promptly exploded. A deadly halo of burning thermite and stainless-steel buckshot filled the interior, killing a dozen more soldiers and rupturing thousands of rounds of assorted ammunition stored for the mothballed Soviet tanks. The first series of explosions ripped away the fireproof curtains and set off the sprinklers. Then the hammering concussion and tidal wave of white-hot shrapnel reached the main stockpile of military ordnance.

In a stentorian thunderclap, the entire five-story garage was torn from its foundation and lifted into the misty rain on a staggering column of writhing flame and black smoke.

Fifty miles away, in Oskemen City, an amateur astronomer stationed on the roof of the Amanzholov University caught a glimpse of the rising mushroom cloud in her telescope, and fell to her knees, begging for deliverance from the coming apocalypse.

After only a few minutes, a dozen raging bonfires dotted the rugged mountain valley. Everything of any military value was gone, completely eradicated with pinpoint accuracy. However, the roads and bridges were unharmed, along with the huge abandoned Soviet Union weapons factories. Only the windows were gone, the dirty glass shattered by the powerful shock waves.

As the military fires raged unchecked, a warm air rushed through the dark buildings, blowing away the years of accumulated dust from the forges, cranes and conveyor belts sitting patiently in the darkness….

CHAPTER ONE

Baltimore, Maryland

A rosy dawn was just beginning to crest above the horizon in the east, but the shoreline highway was still dark, the heavy traffic an incandescent river, an endless stream of headlights and brake lights. The expensive cars streamed by, the yawning drivers hidden behind tinted windows.

Keeping one hand on the wheel, Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, changed lanes as he downshifted gears. “Are we talking about a ‘stolen arrow’ scenario?” he asked, glancing at the cell phone clipped onto the polished mahogany dashboard. A newspaper lay on the passenger seat, the checkered grip of a big pistol just barely visible beneath it.

“I can’t say more on an open line,” the voice of Hal Brognola replied over the stereo speakers positioned around the luxury car.

“Understood,” Bolan growled. “See you in fifteen.”

“Make it ten,” Brognola countered, and disconnected.

Taking the next off ramp, Bolan merged into the city traffic.

A few minutes later, the soldier turned a corner and saw the flashing neon sign for the Blue Moon Café. It spite of its proximity to the luxurious Crystal City Mall, this was a genuine, old-fashioned, greasy spoon diner that never closed. The coffee was perfect for degreasing tractors, and the pot roast could be used to patch tank armor, but the chili was spectacular. Best of all, the customers were a wide assortment of humanity, so the occasional predator went unnoticed. Bolan had met Brognola there on a few occasions.

A handful of cars stood in the parking lot, most of them positioned directly on the white lines of a space to make sure nobody dinged the smooth finish of the doors. Parking the sleek McLaren away from the other vehicles, Bolan turned off the softly purring engine and got out, deliberately leaving the keys in the ignition and the door unlocked. Crystal City wasn’t the best neighborhood, and he knew that by morning the expensive car would be gone, stolen and stripped into parts, completely erasing his tracks, and the vehicle’s connection to the Colombian drug lord he had permanently borrowed it from the previous day. If there was one thing the Executioner had come to rely upon, it was the insatiable avarice of humanity.

Pausing for a moment, Bolan patted his windbreaker to memorize the exact position of every weapon he carried: a switchblade knife in his pants pocket, a Beretta 93-R slung in shoulder leather under his left arm, a .357 Magnum Desert Eagle under the right, spare ammo clips in the pockets. Satisfied, he moved across the parking lot, his shoes crunching on the loose gravel.

A swatch of bright light streamed from the entrance of the diner, and as Bolan approached, the shadows near a rusty garbage bin shifted.

“Hey, mister, is this yours?” a raggedy old man asked, proffering a shiny alligator skin wallet. “I found it near the curb, and—”

Instantly stepping aside, Bolan felt something move through the darkness exactly where his head had just been. Brushing back his windbreaker, he drew the 93-R.

“Move along,” he whispered in a voice from beyond the grave.

Hesitantly, the two men paused, lead pipes clenched in their scarred hands. Then they looked into his cold eyes, and quickly eased away until the shadows swallowed them whole.

Holstering his weapon again, Bolan then walked around the Blue Moon diner twice, purely as appreciation, to make sure no professionals had it under surveillance. Those two fools were of no real concern, just a couple of muggers.

Going inside, Bolan found the diner packed with people hunched over tables and industriously eating. There was a constant clatter of silverware, a dishwasher chugged somewhere unseen, and a radio thumped out a stream of golden disco music from yesterday. The smoky air was rich with an enticing mixture of smells, including coffee.

Bolan took a table in the corner with his back to the red-and-white tile wall, getting a direct view of both the front and rear doors.

After a few minutes, a waitress walked to his table with an order pad. She was an aging beauty with titian hair that came from a bottle, and magnificent cleavage that seemed natural. Her name tag said Lucinda. The plastic had been cracked and repaired with tape.

“What’ll you have?” she asked, making the sentence one word.

“Chili and coffee, both hot,” Bolan said.

Lucinda tried to push the Midnight Special, but Bolan pushed back, and they didn’t quite come to blows before she relented. Tucking a well-chewed pencil behind an ear, she walked away in defeat, dodging tables and the fumbling hands of drunks.

The diner was busy, the customers a mixture of truck drivers, college students, pimps, clerks, tourists and a couple of slick willies who might as well be wearing a placard to announce their profession as the independent salesmen of recreational pharmaceuticals. Several of the pimps had some of their female employees along as company, so there was a lot of dyed hair and bare skin on display, but everybody was cool. The Blue Moon was neutral territory, the Switzerland of the Maryland underworld.

A scrawny Latino boy, who seemed far too young to be working at that hour, came over with a steaming mug of coffee, and got Bolan started just as a couple of state troopers entered by the front door. They sauntered past the soldier, joking with the fat guy behind the counter, and ordered some meat loaf sandwiches to go.

The cops departed just as Lucinda returned with his chili, along with a basket of sourdough rolls that Bolan hadn’t ordered, but deeply appreciated. He thanked her, and she accidentally-on-purpose bumped him with her bare thigh a few times before realizing that Bolan was simply being nice and not making a pass. Lucinda grudgingly accepted the rejection and walked away.

Not his type, Bolan noted, using a napkin to clean the spoon. However, even if he had been interested, he still would have done nothing. There were certain people in the world that a wise man only treated with respect: the very old, the very young, and anybody who would be left alone with your food for a significant length of time.

As expected, the chili was delicious, rich and meaty. Taking his time, Bolan ate slowly, keeping a close watch on the clock hanging slightly askew on the badly painted wall. The ten-minute mark had come and gone, and he was getting ready to go hunt for his friend when Hal Brognola strolled in through the front door.

Instead of his usual three-piece suit, the stocky Fed was wearing a loose vest, a red flannel shirt, denims and work boots to try to blend into the neighborhood. More important, his hair was mussed, and there were scratches on his cheek.

To Bolan, the man looked haggard, as if he was chronically short on sleep. But that was an occupational hazard in D.C.

Slung over Brognola’s shoulder was a laptop that probably cost more than what most people in the diner made in a month. As he went past the other customers, some of the pimps viewed the device with marked interest. Then they saw the Justice man glance back, and quickly returned to their meals.

“Sorry I’m late,” Brognola said, taking the opposite chair at the table. “I ran into an old friend.”