Neutron Force
PROCEEDING DOWN THE CORRIDOR, Price and Brognola passed several blacksuits, one of them working on an air-conditioner vent, another pushing a cart stacked with cases of shiny new shells, each about the size of a tube of toothpaste.
“When did we acquire a Vulcan minigun?” Brognola asked curiously as they got into the electric cart that would take them to the Annex.
“That’s not for the Vulcan. Those are 25 mm rounds for the new Barrett rifle.”
“Rifle?” Brognola repeated. “Barrett has invented a 25 mm rifle? How new is that?”
“Couple of months.” Price almost smiled. “Cowboy is bench-testing one at a rock quarry a couple of miles from here. Our gun range was too small for this monster. If it passes his approval, then it will be added to the arsenal of both teams.”
“A 25 mm rifle?”
“Cowboy says it shouldn’t be harder to control than a Barrett .50-caliber.” She paused. “Or getting kicked in the groin by a Mississippi mule. But you know Cowboy.”
“Yeah,” Brognola agreed. “He should know.”
“Or so he says.”
Reaching the entrance to the Annex, Price and Brognola exited the cart and proceeded on foot to the Computer Room.
Inside, the atmosphere of the room was cool and quiet. A coffeepot burbled at a coffee station and muffled rock music could be heard coming from somewhere.
Several workstations faced an array of monitors on the wall. One of the screens showed a vector graphic map of the world, blinking lights indicating the state of military alert for every major nation. Another monitor swirled with ever-changing weather patterns of the planet as seen from space. The remaining screens were dark.
Four people occupied workstations: a powerfully built man in a wheelchair, a young Japanese American wearing earbuds, a middle-age redheaded woman and a distinguished-looking black man with wings of silver at his temples.
“Aaron, where are the teams?” Price asked, heading for the Farm’s senior cyberexpert.
“In the ready room checking over their equipment and weapons,” Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman said, turning to face the mission controller. “When Hal arrives without advance notice, I figure we’re in deep shit.”
“You figured correctly,” Brognola grumbled, placing the laptop on Kurtzman’s desk.
“Is Striker in trouble?”
“Everybody is in trouble,” Price answered brusquely.
“Meaning?” Kurtzman demanded with a frown.
“Do you know about the crash of VC-25?”
He frowned. “No.” The 747 had crashed? Obviously the President was okay because Hal hadn’t called the plane Air Force One. “Was it shot down? Rammed in midair?”
“There’s no mention that anything happening to the jumbo jet on the news services,” Huntington “Hunt” Wethers announced. A pipe jutted from his mouth, but no smoke rose from the briarwood bowl.
“Nobody knows about the incident other than a select handful of people in the American and Canadian governments,” Brognola stated, extracting a disk from the laptop. “And it’s part of this mission to make sure that nobody ever learns the truth.”
“Why not?” Carmen Delahunt asked.
“We’d never be able to handle the riots,” the big Fed said, passing the disk to Kurtzman.
At the fourth console, Akira Tokaido vaguely heard the conversation. He was slumped in his chair, apparently sound asleep. Both Brognola and Price knew that the young man was hard at work. Tokaido would rather be running the massive Cray Supercomputers located on the refrigerated floor below than doing anything else in the world. Even breathing and eating. The Japanese American was a modern-day Mozart with computers, a natural hacker. There was very little Akira couldn’t get done online, and he pushed the envelope further every day.
“Riots?” Kurtzman asked, taking the disk and sliding it into a slot on his console. The center screen came it life and Top Secret seals flashed by in a blur like a diesel-powered rotoscope.
“See for yourself,” Price stated, looking at the wall monitors. According to the computerized maps, the world was at peace. There were a few scattered battles here and there, but nothing major. She wondered how long that would last if the news of the neutron satellite got out. That underwater arcology Japan was building would be overrun with people fighting and killing to get inside.
Kurtzman leaned closer to the monitor. The encryption on the disk was fantastic, the only data file he had ever encountered that had more was the dossier on the Farm. As the files grudgingly opened and slowly loaded, he grabbed a ceramic mug and took a fast swig of hot coffee. A neutron cannon in space? Sweet Jesus…
Running his slim fingers across the keyboard like a concert pianist, Akira Tokaido continued his Internet search. There were a lot of heavily encrypted transmissions going out these days, t-bursts they were called, and every one of them had a fake ID and source code. A t-burst was the newest scourge of the Internet, a computerized version of a blip transmission over a radio, a massive amount of information condensed into a small tone that lasted for only a second, sometimes even less. So far, the young hacker couldn’t trace where they were coming from, or worse, where they were going. Obviously something big was going down in the cyberworld, and that was always trouble. Twice he had caught the garbled word “tiger” inside a picture code and logged it for further investigation.
“Everybody stop whatever you’re doing and access these files,” Kurtzman commanded. “And do it fast, people.”
The members of the cybernetic team did as requested, their curious expressions quickly turning grim.
“Help yourselves to coffee,” Kurtzman told them, reading the incredible material scrolling on the monitor.
“Ah…did Carmen make the coffee, or you?” Price asked warily.
“Me, of course.”
“Pass,” the woman snorted, crossing her arms. Strong wasn’t the word normally used for Kurtzman’s hellish coffee.
As they started reading the files, Wethers and Delahunt began to scowl deeply. Typing while he read, the former professor pulled up the passenger list of the crashed plane, while Delahunt fondled the air with the cybernetic gloves she wore, opening files. At the front of the room, one of the wall screens began to display reports on boronated armor, while another blossomed into a vector graphic of satellites orbiting Earth.
There were thousands of them, Price noted dispassionately. Needle in a haystack? she thought. Try a drop of water hiding in the ocean!
Skimming the pages, Kurtzman had trouble believing what he was reading. It would take a major world power to muster the resources to build a neutron cannon. The question was which one, and did it have control of the cannon now? If some terrorist group like al Quaeda, or Hamas, had control of the weapon, Washington would already be a death zone.
“A focused beam of neutrons,” Wethers muttered, taking the pipe from his mouth and tapping his chin with the stem. “Amazing, simply amazing.”
“And we have no idea who might be behind this?” Delahunt asked.
“Aside from the usual suspects, none at all,” Brognola admitted honestly.
“I’ll start a search for any other incidents of people dying without signs of violence,” Delahunt said. “Now that they know the weapon works, the thieves will start using it.”
Just then, a picture of Dr. Himar appeared on a wall monitor. A middle-aged man, short gray hair, black suit and a bolo string tie. The newspaper shot was of Himar receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics.
“Hunt, check the records of the public dossier,” Kurtzman commanded, slaving his console to the others. “Find out who might have accessed any data about Himar under the Public Information Act.”
“Over how long a period?” the professor asked.
“Ever.”
“No problem,” Wethers replied, his hands moving across the keyboard.
“Akira, get me his DNA and run a match on the remains in the morgue,” Price directed. “Himar might not really be dead.”
“On it,” Tokaido replied, both hands busy.
“A duplicate?” Brognola asked in concern, coming closer. “You think that a Nobel Prize-wining physicist could be a traitor?”
“Let’s see if we can find him and ask,” Price stated roughly.
“Bear, how long will it take you to breech the firewall at the Department of Defense?”
“To get files on Himar, and—Prometheus? Is that what the President said?” the burly man asked. His monitor gave a beep. “They’re just downloading now.” The man scanned the scrolling images. “Okay, Himar has a home in Braintree, Massachusetts, but his DOD lab is on Wake Island. His research, code-named Prometheus, is based there.”
The other side of the world. Price nodded. It was a smart move to keep his private and professional life as separated as possible.
“Wake Island,” Brognola mused. “Isn’t that an old missile testing range in the South Pacific?”
“North Pacific. Guess Himar wanted the laboratory isolated and far away from civilization in case something went wrong.”
“Or else he wanted privacy,” Price retorted. “All right, send Able Team to his house for any private files or papers. Phoenix Force will recon the lab. Send the details to Jack Grimaldi, and have Homeland Security tell the ground crew at Dulles to start warming up a Hercules and a Learjet.”
Braintree was close enough for Able Team to use the Hercules so that they could arrive with their equipment van. But Phoenix Force had a long way to travel to reach Wake Island. The tiny landmass was so far away that it was only technically part of the United States.
“And remind our guys to be doubly careful,” Brognola told her. “The only way to survive a neutron beam is to not get hit.” With any luck, NORAD would locate the enemy satellite and the USAF would blow it out of the sky before a major city was destroyed. However, the top cop had a bad feeling in his gut that time was short, and that this was going to get real bloody, real fast.
CHAPTER FOUR
Calais, France
An unseen dawn arrived above the small coastal town. The overcast sky was dark with storm clouds and a torrential rain mercilessly pounded the sprawling array of homes, shops and hotels.
In spite of the early hour, the night’s festivities were still going strong in Calais, the numerous hotels filled with drunken, happy tourists. Lining the old town’s refurbished waterfront, hundreds of expensive yachts were moored at their slips against the inclement weather, and several cruise liners dominated the brightly illuminated public docks. Nearby restaurants were alive with colored lights and pulsating music. Old men and young women were laughing and singing, and the smiling waiters served a nonstop flow of steaming dishes from the kitchens to the tourists.
But on the outskirts of the city, the drab fishing docks were filled with a different kind of excitement. There was no singing or dancing, but hearts were light as calloused hands moved ropes and nets, preparing for the day’s hard work. The deep water report had just arrived and the sea bass were running.
Shouting orders, big men in yellow slickers moved around the sodden dock and trawlers, hauling ropes and nets. Powerful engines sputtered into life among the ranks of squat vessels, the dull exhaust pipes throwing out great clouds of rank diesel smoke. A bell clanged from the church tower in town, announcing the time. A man cursed; thunder rumbled. Somewhere a dog barked and oddly went silent. But nobody paid the incident any attention. Fishing was more than their business, it was their calling, the blood in their veins, and Frenchmen knew that the sea bass didn’t care if it was raining or if there were tourists in town spending money as if it was the end of the world. The fish followed the deep water currents and the fisherman followed the fish. Nothing else mattered. Unless there was a hurricane blowing, the fleet went out.
Chains rattled as heavy anchors were hoisted. Radar swept the storm from a hundred ships trying to map the roiling clouds above the choppy waves. Trucks arrived from town delivering ice to the poorer vessels, while the others started refrigerators in their holds, making everything ready for the day’s catch.
As the ice trucks pulled away from the docks, five large men appeared like ghosts from out of the torrential rain. Their boots thudded heavily on the damp planks, and the men appeared to be slightly hunchbacked in their black overcoats. The wide brims of their slouch hats drooped slightly from the unrelenting downpour, efficiently keeping the rain from their hard eyes, and also masking their features from the busy crowd of hardworking fishermen.
Marching in an almost military-like manner, the group of strangers moved past the trawlers until they reached the end of the dock. Moored at her usual place, a brand-new catamaran, the Souris, was rocking slightly from the force of the storm, her crew shouting through cupped hands at one another as they tried to be heard above the motors and thunder.
Lightning flashed in the sky as the five men climbed on board the fishing trawler without a hail, or even the common decency to ask permission. This was a major breech of nautical etiquette anywhere in the world, and a fighting offense in most French dockyards. Nobody but a fool, or a lunatic, ever did it twice.
As the deck rose and fell to the rhythm of the waves, two of the strangers stayed near the open gate of the gunwale, while the others labored to extend the corrugated steel gangplank to the dock. They moved awkwardly, as if unsure of exactly what to do, but it only took a minute before the task was accomplished.
Pulling a cell phone from his coat pocket, one of the men hit a speed-dial button and spoke briefly. Immediately, there came a soft beeping from the land and a big Volvo van began driving backward along the wooden dock, the boards creaking slightly from the unaccustomed weight.
Startled by its arrival, the angry fishermen scrambled out of the way of the vehicle, vehemently cursing with their gloved hands as only the French can do really well.
As the beeping van rolled onto the gangplank, the strangers opened the rear doors and exposed a large canvas-wrapped object strapped tightly to a bright orange shipping pallet. The rest of the interior of the vehicle was filled with loose blankets and foam to cushion the bulky cargo.
On board the Souris, a young crewman raced up the exposed stairs to the bridge.
“Skipper, we have guests!” he exclaimed breathlessly.
Smoking a briarwood pipe, the captain didn’t look up from studying a chart of the ocean currents. “Guests?” he muttered around the worn stem. “What the devil are you talking about, lad?”
“Them!” the lad declared, pointing down at the middeck.
“Them who?” the captain demanded, leaving the chart to stride over to the aft window of the bridge.
The front windows were equipped with wiperblades, but the rear weren’t, and the captain squinted through the rain. Dimly, he could see people moving around. “Did we order anything?” he demanded suspiciously. “Extra ice, perhaps? In case the refrigeration unit breaks again?” The refrigeration unit was almost older than the trawler.
“No, sir,” the lad replied, catching his breath. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Strange,” the captain mumbled. “Maybe they have the wrong ship.”
“I tried to ask who they were, Skipper…” the lad began.
But the captain had already slipped on his slicker and marched into the downpour. Time was short, the fleet would move out soon. As with anything else in life, it was always first come, first served. And after some unexpected repairs to the navigational equipment, he needed this catch to be huge. The sea bass were running exceptionally rich these days, and an early start held the promise of beating the corporate vessels to the day’s catch. Timing was everything.
Keeping a firm grip on the railing alongside the perforated stairs, the captain clumped down to the deck and approached the strangers. He knew instantly they weren’t sailors. The men kept trying to regain their balance, instead of moving with the motion of the sea.
Elegantly raising a single eyebrow, the captain crossed his arms and glowered at the landlubbers. “What is going here?” he demanded loudly. “Who are you people?” The man was furious at the interruption. He had no time for government inspectors or lost tourists.
There was no response from the strangers.
“I asked you a question!” the captain roared. “And this is my ship, so you damn well better answer fast, or by God—”
Turning slightly, one of the strangers pulled a Browning .22 automatic pistol from within his overcoat and fired. There was barely a sound from the acoustical sound suppressor, barely a muted cough. But the captain recoiled, a neat black hole in the middle of his forehead. He stumbled backward, and then tumbled over an electric winch to hit the deck. He shuddered once, then went still.
“Skipper!” the young crewman screamed from the doorway of the bridge, then started to rush down the stairs.
Looking up, the gunman fired again and the lad doubled over. Clutching his bloody stomach, he pitched off the stairs to hit the deck in a ghastly crunch of breaking bones.
“What was that, eh?” a crewmen shouted from the stern of the boat, his outline blurry from the combination of rain and salty spray.
Calmly, the rest of the strangers pulled out Browning .22 automatic pistols, the hexagonal shape of the sound suppressors giving the weapons a futuristic appearance.
“Is somebody hurt?” a different crewmen asked, placing a hand above his eyes to shield them from the blinding downpour.
Another of the strangers fired this time, and the sailor was slammed backward, crimson spraying from the ruin of his throat. The rain washed it away, but more kept pumping in a geyser of red life.
“Zoot!” a huge crewman shouted, dropping a coil of rope and pointing with a massive hand. The man stood well over six feet in height, and his slicker seemed barely able to contain his muscular frame.
The five strangers fired in unison at the giant, red blood puffing from his slicker as the barrage of .22 rounds hammered into him, forcing him constantly backward until he went over the side with a horrible scream and disappeared into the storm. But his death cry alerted the rest of the crew, and a dozen more men climbed from the hold and hatchways of the Souris.
Quickly reloading, the strangers opened fire, driving the fishermen under cover. Starting to realize that something was horribly wrong on board their beloved ship, the sailors frantically scrambled for anything to serve as a weapon: boathooks, an ax, a length of steel chain.
Two of the strangers took up defensive positions near the van, while the others spread out in an attack formation and advanced, their guns at the ready.
Shouting a rally cry, the fishermen charged, waving their weapons with grim intent. But they never even got close. The strangers gunned them down without a qualm, putting an additional bullet into the left eye of each fallen man to make sure he was dead. Nobody was spared.
The strangers began a systematic sweep of the deck, killing everybody they found. An elderly man raised his hands in surrender and was shot in the heart, his twitching body tossed over the side while he still gasped out his last breath.
Hearing a faint shout for help from above, one of the strangers near the van tracked the noise, then aimed his pistol high and emptied the clip. There came an answering cry of pain and a body fell from the crow’s nest to impact on the main winches that operated the heavy nets. The results were ghastly.
Smoking a cigar, a fat man wearing a grease apron appeared in a hatchway holding a Veri pistol. At the sight of the bloody corpses sprawled on the deck, the cook raised the flare gun and fired. The magnesium charge shot across the Souris like a comet, but the strangers expertly dodged out of the way and the sizzling flare ricocheted off the van to disappear into the sea.
A man working on nearby trawler saw the flash of light and tensely waited for a cry for help. Had somebody fallen overboard? Was there a fire in the engine room? When nothing happened, the fellow dismissed the matter and went back to shifting bales of nets. Somebody had to have accidentally shot off the flare gun. That’s how people get killed! Wasn’t anybody concerned about safety anymore? The fisherman wondered.
On board the Souris, the strangers finished the reconnoiter of the catamaran, removing the last few crew members hiding in the bilge, then reloaded their weapons, smashed the radio just in case they had missed somebody and finally returned to the main deck. Time was short, and there was a precise schedule to keep today.
Now that they had some privacy, the five men started to release the chains from the trawler’s boom arms normally used to haul aboard the heavily laden nets full of wiggling fish. Carefully, they attached the array to the orange pallet, and gingerly hauled the bulky mass out of the Volvo, and maneuvered it to the middeck. When it was in position, they pulled out pneumatic guns, firing steel bolts though the flanges on the pallet to permanently attach it to the wooden deck. Then the chains were removed and used to secure the pallet to the mast and several stanchions for additional security.
At last satisfied to the security of the pallet and its precious cargo, the men tossed the bolt guns overboard. In the heavy downpour, the canvas-covered pallet was merely a dark lump set among the other irregular shapes of the boat.
Checking his watch, one of the strangers went to the bridge and started the engines. Meanwhile, one man attached a strong rope to the bumper of the cargo van as the other rolled down the windows of the vehicle, released the hand brake and deliberately set the transmission into neutral.
Returning to the Souris, the strangers replaced the gate in the gunwale and started casting off the mooring lines. With a sputtering roar, the diesel engines came to life belowdecks and the little trawler began to move out to sea.
As the rope attached the van grew taut, the vehicle began rolling backward along the dock and dropped into the choppy waters with a tremendous splash. Ready at the gunwale, a stranger waited until the water started to pour into the open windows and the vehicle started to sink before slashing at the attached rope with a curved knife. The taut rope parted with an almost musical twang and the sinking van was soon left behind, the salt water efficiently removing the last traces of their presence from the stolen vehicle.
Dimly heard through the storm, shocked voices could be heard from the other trawlers, and people started running on the dock. Flares were fired into the sky, but their brilliant light was consumed by the torrential rain. Life preservers were tossed into the sea in the mistaken belief that people may have been in the van. But the only passenger was the dead owner, who had made the foolish mistake of stopping at the wrong parking lot in Paris and politely offering a stranger a lift.
Holstering their silenced weapons, the killers in control of the Souris gave no notice of the growing commotion while they pulled out assault rifles, the barrels tipped with bulbous 37 mm rifle grenades. Warily, the team watched the storm for any signs of the local police, or the much more dangerous French navy.
But the coastline was clear, and soon the frantic dockyard faded into the rain. Slowly building speed, the trawler chugged into the raging storm, heading across the channel toward England. Muttering curses, the big man at the controls tried to coax more speed from the old diesel engines. There was an important rendezvous to keep, and nothing could get in the way.
CHAPTER FIVE
Logan International Airport, Boston
The huge C-130 Hercules transport lightly touched down on the asphalt, the tires squealing at the contact. It rose slightly, only to touch down again, skipping along the runway until finally rolling along the pavement. Reaching a cross strip, the huge military aircraft paused, the propellers spinning with a subdued roar, then it turned and moved along the ground, heading for an isolated hangar at the extreme edge of the airport.