The Chameleon Factor

“We couldn’t,” Greene replied flatly. “That’s what worries me. Even our proximity trips wouldn’t work.”

“Damn.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

If they were reduced to visually targeting a flying enemy, they’d be slaughtered. Running stiff fingers through his hair, Kissinger scratched his head as he considered possible countermaneuvers, and came up with nothing.

Tall and lanky, Kissinger was the master gunsmith for the covert warriors of Stony Man, his strong and nimble hands constructing nearly all of their speciality weapons. Guns were his thing, and there were damn few better at his job in the entire world. A 10 mm Megastar pistol rode in his shoulder holster this month, the Magnum automatic being personally tested by the gunsmith for possible use by the field operatives. Unless a weapon carried the Cowboy seal of approval, it never made it into the hands of the Stony Man commandos.

“Our heat-seekers are good, but at short range, they’d never have enough flight time to lock on to the exhaust of an incoming missile or rocket,” Kissinger said at last.

“I know,” Greene rumbled.

“Just trust to the nets,” Kissinger said, glancing at the thick trees surrounding the hidden base, “and keep those land mines armed. Whether it’s helicopters, jet packs or pogo sticks, they got to land sometime.”

“Amen to that,” Greene said, tilting his head to listen to the soft voice coming over the radio. “Heads up, they’re here.”

Almost immediately they heard the powerful throb of rotor blades approaching from the south. The noise rapidly built in volume until suddenly a sleek Black Hawk came into view over the leafy tops of the trees in the park.

Greene and Kissinger watched the helicopter maneuver into a landing.

As the aircraft landed, the two men caught sight of the grinning pilot through the cockpit windows and relaxed. Chief Greene and Kissinger walked from the building bent over against the turbulence of the spinning blades. Before they got halfway there, the side door of the Black Hawk slid open, exposing Able Team and Phoenix Force. Carrying bulging duffel bags, Carl Lyons, Rosario Blancanales and Hermann Schwarz jumped to the ground, and, bent low, hurried to greet their friends.

Smiling with pleasure, Greene and Kissinger shook hands with the team.

“Glad to see you guys in one piece,” Greene shouted. “How did it go?”

“Still in one piece,” Lyons quipped.

Kissinger snorted a laugh. “Damn glad to hear it!”

Just then, the men of Phoenix Force exited the aircraft along with their cargo of destruction. The men were still under the blades when the Black Hawk lifted and circled the Farm once, the smiling pilot giving the men on the ground a thumbs-up gesture before leveling out and departing.

“Nice to see you boys again,” Kissinger stated as the swirling dust settled. “Barb’s waiting in the computer room for a debriefing. Something’s going on in Alaska.”

“Alaska?” Rafael Encizo asked, shifting the strap of the duffel over his shoulder. “Any trouble with the Chameleon test?”

They already knew? Chief Greene shook his head. “Better ask Barb.”

The two teams accepted that and headed for the farmhouse.

Walking onto the porch and up to the front door, McCarter tapped a security code into a keypad and the door clicked open.

The teams headed directly to the basement, taking the stairs rather than the elevator, ceiling-mounted security cameras tracking them along the way. At the landing, Schwarz raised a hand to block a camera, and it gave a nasty warning buzz. Quickly, he took away his hand before the alarms sounded and tear gas began to vent from the ceiling.

“Touchy, isn’t it?” Manning said, amused. “Built-in proximity sensor?”

“Yep,” Schwarz said with a touch of pride. “The best in existence. I helped design them.”

Hawkins frowned. “And if the Chameleon works as promised, they would be about as useful as two paper cups and some waxed string.”

Since it was true, nobody bothered to reply to that.

Exiting the stairwell, the two groups continued on to the tunnel that would take them to the Annex, choosing to walk rather than take the tram.

The Computer Room was abuzz with activity, two men typing madly at computer stations, while a redhaired woman wearing a VR helmet and gloves rode the Internet. At the end of the row of consoles, the fourth computer was dark, the chair empty.

“Anything on the railroads or bus lines?” Barbara Price demanded, crossing her arms.

“Nothing so far,” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman replied, his hands flowing across a keyboard. A former member of the Rand Corporation think tank, Kurtzman was the chief of the electron-riders at the Farm. Although confined to a wheelchair from an attack on the Farm many years earlier, his mind was as sharp as ever. That was, aside from a minor dementia for black coffee strong enough to kill a rhinoceros.

“Ditto with major airlines,” Akira Tokaido added, speed-reading a scrolling monitor. “Every plane is on schedule and accounted for.” Of Japanese and American descent, the handsome young man was often referred to as a natural-born hacker with “chips in his blood.”

“So far,” Price said, biting a lip. “Keep a watch on the private planes. He might try to hijack a Cessna or a helicopter. Are there any crop dusters working in the state?”

“Good idea. I’m on it,” Tokaido said, turning on a submonitor while typing with his other hand.

“What are we looking for?” Lyons asked, dropping his duffel to the floor. It landed with a clank that momentarily caught the attention of the hackers.

“Glad you’re here,” Price stated without preamble.

“Where’s Hal?” McCarter asked, glancing around.

“Already back in D.C. talking with the President,” Price answered, waving the men toward the coffee station along the wall. “There’s plenty of coffee, so help yourself. I expect you’re also hungry, so I had the staff fill the fridge with fresh sandwiches. I can brief you as you eat. You go airborne in fifteen minutes.”

So fast? Lyons started to ask for an explanation, but said nothing. Price was no fool. If she was sending them into the field this quick, then the shit had already hit the fan.

“Ah, thanks, I think. Did Bear make the coffee?” James asked with a worried look.

Without turning in his wheelchair, Kurtzman laughed. “And you call yourselves soldiers.” He brandished a steaming mug. “This’ll put some hair on your chest!”

“Or take it off,” James quipped.

“Also degreases tractor parts,” Schwarz added.

“Heads up!” Carmen Delahunt announced from behind her VR helmet. “I just accessed a NSA WatchDog satellite.”

Right on cue, the main wall monitor fluttered with a wild scroll and settled into a picture of more swirling clouds.

“Damn!” Delahunt cursed. “There’s no break in the cloud cover over western Alaska.” She sounded as if the inclement weather were a personal affront to her abilities as a hacker.

“Carmen, did you really expect clear sky at this time of year?” Price asked. “That’s why the Pentagon set the field test for the Chameleon. No other nation’s satellites could watch.”

“Advanced technology is so damn primitive,” Schwarz said with a flash of a smile.

“Apparently so, this time,” Delahunt muttered, going back into the virtual reality of the worldwide Net.

Going to the kitchenette, Price poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, adding a lot of milk and sugar. “Have you all read the report from Hal?”

“In the Black Hawk coming here,” Lyons replied. “There wasn’t much there.”

“Sadly, it’s all we have,” she said.

“Okay, grab a seat,” Price instructed, gesturing at some chairs pushed along the wall. “We’re truly operating in the dark on this. We know nothing about how the Chameleon operates, power requirements, distance limitations and so on. Every report and file was destroyed in Alaska. All we can do is make some educated guesses. Everybody connected with the project was at that field test or in the laboratory. The missiles from the USS Fairfax killed them all.”

“What was the hoped-for size of the unit?” Schwarz asked, leaning forward in his chair.

“About the size of a paperback book,” Price replied. “But Hal said that the President believes Professor Johnson was field-testing a shoe box version yesterday.”

“The size of a shoe box?” James said, the astonishment plain on his face.

She nodded. “Yes. But once again, it’s only a guess.”

“Still certainly small enough to be portable,” McCarter said, rubbing his chin. “How much did it weigh?”

“We figured it at roughly twenty pounds. But it could be more, a lot more.”

“Barbara, was that Professor Torge Emile Johnson by any chance?” Schwarz asked, scrunching his face.

Blinking in surprise, Price turned. “Yes, it was. So you know him?”

“Only by reputation. I’ve read articles by the man. He was a genius. A real one. Made breakthroughs all the time. SA once called him the Thomas Edison of the twenty-first century.”

“SA?” Manning asked patiently.

“Scientific American magazine,” James explained.

Manning nodded wisely. “Ah, yes. I have the swimsuit issue at home.”

“Oh, shut up,” James growled.

“So what is the mission?” Hawkins asked, leaning against the wall. “We’re supposed to get it back before anybody get hurts?”

“Over three hundred people are dead already,” Price answered sternly. “We want it found, or destroyed.”

Going to the fridge, Blancanales opened the door to find it filled with plates of sandwiches, soft drinks and bottles of juice, so he grabbed sandwiches and an orange juice. It was going to be a long day. He could feel it in his bones.

“What about the off-site backup files?” he asked, resting against the counter to unwrap his food and take a healthy bite.

“The what?” McCarter asked, heading for the fridge. There was no Coca-Cola in sight, only some diet Mountain Dew and several bottles of fruity stuff, and the juice.

Blancanales was chewing, so Schwarz answered. “Every project is vulnerable to accidents, or hackers. So all big corporations, and most government projects, have an automatic recording of everything done in the lab located far away from the building. Just in case.”

“Smart move,” McCarter commented.

“Damn straight it is. The IRS does the same thing, which is why it’s pointless to bomb the place.”

“The Farm, too?” Hawkins asked.

Turning away from his console Kurtzman said, “No, we’re too sensitive. If this place goes, nobody will ever know we even existed.”

“The backup files are a good place to start a search, but once again, we don’t know where they’re located,” Price added grimly. “Only the project head and the Pentagon liaison did.”

“And they’re dead,” Encizo stated.

“Exactly.”

“So our job is to go through the wreckage and find the location of those backup files,” Lyons said, thinking aloud, his eyes half-closed in concentration.

“Yes,” Price said. “Able Team goes in as DOD inspectors. Phoenix Force stays in the background to give you three cover in case of trouble.”

Lyons frowned. Which translated as, his team got killed, but Phoenix Force found the culprit.

“And then?” Encizo inquired.

“Kill the thief.” Price didn’t believe in couching terms. If the men could do the job, then she could damn well say the word.

“Any ID on him yet?” Blancanales asked, then added, “Or her?”

“Not a thing,” Price replied, placing her mug aside on the counter. “Whoever did this is good. As good as anybody we have.”

“Must have been an inside job. Nothing else makes sense,” McCarter stated. He took a drink from the bottle, then went on, “So it’s a mole.”

Lyons shook his head. “Or an ape.”

Ape, yes, Price knew the term. Spies stayed out and relayed information for years. Apes hit hard, blew things up and stole things. “Ape” was slang for an AP, which stood for Agent Provocateur. Secret government soldiers.

“So we’re facing a James Bond type,” Schwarz said without a trace of humor. “Not many of them around these days.”

Blancanales lowered his sandwich. “And for just this reason. Everybody is dead, and the prototype is lost.”

“Maybe lost,” James corrected. “Maybe destroyed in the explosions, or stolen. We don’t know shit right about now.”

“Could be a solo, or a freelance,” Price admitted. “Somebody not affiliated with any government. Just there to steal the Chameleon and sell it on the open market.”

“Or even sell it back to us,” Hawkins grumbled. “If it cost us a billion to make, then we’d certainly pay that much to get it back.”

“At least.”

Rubbing the faint bullet scar on his temple, Encizo sighed. “Hellfire, we really are in the dark on this.”

“That’s why we have to move fast,” Price agreed, “and try to cover every base.”

“What was the name of the company doing the research?” Kurtzman asked over a shoulder.

“Quiller Geo-Medical,” she said, and then smiled at the surprised expressions. “Yes, it means nothing. But it sounds very scientific, and people seldom ask.”

“Or maybe one did,” Kurtzman muttered, then wheeled his chair about. “Akira! Check the IRS tax records for a list of employees. Then cross-check that with the state driver’s-license files at the Alaska DMV. Carmen, I want you—”

“On it,” she interrupted from behind her mask, both hands in their VR gloves caressing the air. “I’ll access the video surveillance cameras at the airports and run a facial check as soon as Akira gives me some faces from the driver’s licenses.”

“He’ll be wearing a disguise,” Price warned. “And this person is damn good. KGB good. Maybe better.”

Delahunt shrugged. “We can adjust for that. It’s our ID software that caught that last group of terrorists trying to sneak out of the country.”

“Where’s Hunt, anyway?” Blancanales asked, glancing at the empty fourth chair at the end of the row of computer stations.

Huntington “Hunt” Wethers had been teaching cybernetics at Berkeley when he was recruited into Stony Man. With wings of gray hair at his temples, and smoking his briarwood pipe, Wethers looked like the stereotypical college professor. Yet he possessed a facility with computers that few other experts had.

“Hunt’s on a special assignment with Mack,” Price explained after a moment.

That was an unexpected answer. “In the field?”

She shrugged. “Mack asks, and he gets.”

Lyons stood. “Good luck to them both,” he said with feeling. There had to be a major problem for Striker to request assistance from anybody, and double so for him to ask for a desk jockey like the professor.

“Better save it,” Hawkins said, pushing away from the wall. “Because I think we’re going to need all of the luck we can get to bust this nut.”

“Alert,” Delahunt announced calmly. “We have a break in the clouds.”

Everybody turned. The main wall monitor filled with a view of western Alaska, then jumped closer in a staggered series of zoom shots until the screen was filled with a real-time view of the destroyed target zone and the smoking ruin of the research lab. The ambulances had come and gone, leaving only chalk outlines everywhere on the ground. Often, there was only the outline of a limb, or a torso, instead of an entire body.

Somebody merely grunted, while another muttered a curse.

“Barbara, tell Jack to get fueled and ready for liftoff,” Lyons ordered brusquely. “We’ll meet him on the front lawn in ten minutes.”

“Cowboy already has your spare equipment ready to go. Along with the proper ID cards, weapons permits, all the usual,” she told him.

Both teams headed for the door, and a grim-faced Encizo tapped in the exit code this time.

“We bloody well could be walking into a trap, mate,” McCarter commented.

As the armored door started to cycle open, Lyons looked backward at the pictures on the wall monitor, the hundreds of chalk outlines amid the smoking rubble.

“No,” he replied in a voice of stone. “They are.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Flight 18, above the North Pacific

The recessed ceiling lights in the 747 flickered for a moment.

“Hey,” a man said, taking the cell phone away from his ear. “What the hell is going on?”

“What’s the matter?” his wife asked, lowering her magazine.

“This damn thing is dead!” he raged, hitting the device.

Gwenneth started forward to talk to the upset passenger, when she noticed that across the plane, a woman was shaking her airphone and also muttering annoyances. Two phones died at the same time? How odd.

“Hu, Yuki,” Gwenneth said to the other flight attendants. “Go calm down the passengers. I’ll report this to the captain.”

Yuki nodded vigorously and started down the aisle, beaming a pleasant smile.

“It’s nothing,” Hu scoffed, sliding another packaged meal into a microwave to be warmed. “Just a coincidence.”

“Maybe,” Gwenneth said, biting a lip. “Or maybe it’s a freak magnetic storm that’ll throw off the navigation and make us hours late. Either way, regulations say that the captain must be informed at once.”

Hu shrugged in a noncommittal manner, and Gwenneth pushed past the man to start for the cockpit. Moving through first class, she stopped as the door to the lavatory opened, almost hitting her in the face. It was Mrs. Coleson, the pregnant American woman from coach.

“You really shouldn’t be here, dear,” Gwenneth started to say, when the woman grabbed her forcibly by the arm and shoved something hard into her stomach.

“I have a weapon,” Davis Harrison growled in his real voice. “Stay calm and you may get to live.”

Her eyes went wide at the realization that it was a man wearing a disguise. Quickly, Gwenneth started to pull air into her lungs for a full-throated scream, but Harrison rammed the gun into her stomach, almost knocking her out. Gasping for breath, Gwenneth felt her eyes well with tears as she fought to draw in a ragged breath.

“Oh, dear,” Harrison said, sounding like a woman again. “You’ve go the flu, too, eh? Here, let me help you sit down.”

Gwenneth tried to fight free from the other person, but his grip was like iron, and every move only earned her another jab in the belly. Her vision was starting to go red from the lack of air, and a wave of weakness swept over her. This had to be a hijacking…terrorists! But how to warn…

Something slammed into her face, and Gwenneth had a brief flash of the steel-plated door to the cockpit before the universe turned black and she tumbled into a warm darkness.

“Yes?” a voice said from the other side.

Dropping the unconscious woman to the deck, Harrison pushed the door open, its electronic lock disabled from the humming Chameleon strapped to his belly. Stepping inside, he swung the deadly Tech-9 about, marking his targets. The crew was three, pilot, copilot and navigator, exactly as there should be. No surprises here. Excellent.

“Hey, that door was locked!” the navigator cried out in confusion, spinning from his console. Then he raised an eyebrow at the pregnant woman holding an automatic weapon of some kind. Shit! A hijacking!

“Nobody move,” Harrison ordered.

The copilot fumbled under his seat, while the navigator snatched a small black box from the wall and lunged forward to thrust the Talon stun gun at the intruder, the silvery prongs crackling with electricity. The Chinese man got only halfway before Harrison fired from the hip.

Hardly any flame or smoke erupted from the muzzle, and only a subdued click was heard, as if the weapon had misfired. But the navigator dropped the Talon as he was slammed backward against his console, blood spurting from his throat.

Harrison fired twice more, only clicks sounding. The navigator writhed under the sledgehammer blows, his chest seeming to explode and a radar screen behind the man noisily cracked as a slug drilled through. Exhaling life itself, the shuddering man fell to the cold deck, blood pouring from the gaping holes in his body.

“Alert, Anchorage!” the pilot said quickly into her throat mike. “Code four, repeat, we have a code four in progress!”

But there was no reply from the airport; not even the soft crackle of static came over her earphones. The radio was completely dead.

That was when she noticed that most of the control board was dead, many of the instruments giving wildly impossible readings. Shit and fire, her ship was in some sort of a jamming field! There was no other possible explanation.

Reaching under the chair, she thumbed a hidden button. Then something hit her shoe, and the pilot glanced down to see a misshapen lead slug on the deck. From the pistol? But there had been no noise. What was going on here?

“That emergency signal will never be heard.” Harrison chuckled, enjoying their confusion. On impulse, he reached up and pulled off his annoying wig.

The pilot scowled at the sight of the hijacker’s bald head, the skin stubbled with hair. Not bald, shaved, details she would need to remember to help convict him in court before the Red Army firing squad blew off his face.

“Don’t hurt anybody else,” the copilot said in Chinese, raising both hands. “We will obey. What do you want?”

The hijacker frowned at the copilot, and the pilot realized he didn’t speak Chinese. That could be useful in the future.

“This is foolish,” the pilot began in English. “Once we move off course—”

“Shut up! Do you need the copilot to fly this plane?”

Not really, no, she admitted to herself. Then the end result of such honesty became horrifying obvious.

“Yes!” she lied, darting a glance at her friend. “Of course. This aircraft is huge!”

Harrison smiled. “You lie,” he whispered, and the strange gun clicked twice more. The copilot jerked backward against the hull, then slumped over in his chair, supported only by the safety harness around his chest. Blood began to dribble from his slack mouth, and a second Talon fell to the deck with a clatter.

“Toy, stupid, useless toy,” Harrison growled in annoyance.

Then the Tech-9 swung to point at the captain. To her, the muzzle seemed larger than the Beijing Tunnel, and she felt the world shrink to a view of its black interior. A drop of sweat suddenly trickled down her face, and a thousand images and feelings flashed through her mind in a single heartbeat: childhood, family, friends, becoming captain.

“Obey me, or die,” Harrison said from somewhere in the distance.

Her attention split in two, the yoke of the jumbo jetliner felt hot in her grip, the elaborate control board only inches away. If it was only her life, she would crash the plane rather than submit. But she was responsible for all the other souls in the aircraft. Honor wouldn’t allow her to abandon them. For the moment, there seemed to be no other choice. Yes, she would obey, and hopefully live, and do her best to keep the passengers alive no matter what.

Then a muscular hand gripped the pilot’s shoulder and squeezed hard, the sharp painted nails digging painfully into her flesh.

“Well?” Harrison demanded, pressing the gun barrel to her right eye.

As if her head weighed a thousand tons, the pilot slowly nodded.

“Very good.” He chuckled and slid his hand down the silken material of her white blouse to cup a soft breast and squeeze with brutal force.

She started to cry out from the pain, then bit back the sound and concentrated on flying the plane as the man lewdly fondled her body. Born and raised a Communist, the pilot didn’t believe in any gods, but she still sent a silent prayer into the universe begging for deliverance from the coming hell.

CHAPTER FIVE

Nome, Alaska

The summer wind was warm, gently rustling the bluebell flowers that grew wild in the fields outside the airport.

The unmarked C-130 Hercules transport was parked all by itself on a secluded landing field as far away from the main terminal as possible. All across the Nome International Airport, the staff, crew and TSA guards were staying far away from the military transport. They had been told when it would arrive, and nothing more. But nobody thought twice about the incident. Alaska was so close to Russia, only fifteen miles at the closest point, that the local population was used to covert military landings, odd troops movements and such ever since the cold war. America and Russia were friendly these days, but the military still kept a close watch on its old foe. Just in case.