Kitabı oku: «Neutron Force», sayfa 4
Shouldering his M-16, Schwarz went to the colossal firebomb and pulled the wires free. As he turned, the electronics expert grimaced at the sight of a second firebomb in the kitchen. There was another firebomb at the foot of the stairs.
Fast and silent, the team moved through the first floor, deactivating the explosive charges. Reaching the cellar door, they paused for a wordless conference, but then heard footsteps upstairs on the wooden floor.
Separating into a one-on-one defense formation, the Stony Man commandos walked up the old stairs, carefully keeping to the outer edges where the wood would be the strongest and least likely to creak and betray their presence.
The second and third floors proved to be the same as the first, and the team quickly neutralized the bombs.
Reaching the fourth floor, Lyons paused alongside the railing. He could hear murmuring voices, and somebody was happily whistling. A fierce rage swelled within the man. The bastards were enjoying themselves!
“Hey!” a man shouted. “What the fuck are you doing, asshole?”
Able Team froze, swinging up their weapons for the expected attack. Heavy footsteps stomped closer.
“I wasn’t doing anything, George,” another man replied. But the man was cut off by the sharp smack of a slap, and a rustling sound was made by some small items scattering across the floor.
A glassine envelope went over the edge of the landing, and Blancanales made the catch. Opening his fist, he scowled at a tiny packet full of blue crystals. Interesting.
“You’re a fucking liar, Troy!” the first voice snarled angrily. “I saw you stuffing packs in your pockets!”
“Hey, I only figured—”
Another hard slap sounded, then two more. “If Ravid sent us two pounds of crystal meth to sprinkle around the place, then we use every ounce!” George ordered brusquely. “That son of a bitch knew enough about our strongarm operations to send us to Wadpoole prison for the rest of our freaking lives!”
That caught the team by surprise. These were street toughs blackmailed to plant evidence of a drug lab in the house before burning it down. If the local police found traces of the deadly narcotic in the ashes, their investigation of the blaze would stop right there, assuming it was just case of the drug makers falling out over the business. Ravid. They would remember that name.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Troy mumbled. “I was only just—”
“Shut the fuck up,” George snarled. “Hey, Mike, you wanna remind me why we brought the feeb along?”
“Had to. He’s my cousin,” Mike mumbled. “And don’t call him that word again, get me?”
“Go screw a rolling doughnut,” George replied. “Okay, Troy, get the rest of this crap and meet us on the fifth floor. He said they were all to be strewed around the office.”
“Sure, no problem, eh?”
“Did you put the tanks of ammonia in the basement?” a fourth man demanded. “Nobody’s gonna believe this was a crystal meth lab unless there’s lot of ammonia.”
“Sure thing, Jeff, did that first off,” Troy replied quickly. “Ah…do they really make meth from ammonia?”
“Oh, for the love of…Just pick up the envelopes!”
“Right away! Sure, no problem. Hey, you know me…”
The other men tromped away, and there came the sounds of somebody crawling across the floorboards, sweeping up the packets in their hands. Soon, a bald head appeared over the edge of the fourth-floor landing, and Troy gasped at the sight of the Able Team looking back up, their arms full of military ordnance. The man went pale and froze motionless.
Shaking his head, Lyons pressed a finger to his lips for silence, while Blancanales and Schwarz aimed their assault rifles.
“I surrender!” Troy cried, raising both hands, casting a deluge of packets upon the Stony Man commandos. “Don’t shoot me!”
Muffled curses came from the fifth floor, and all of the arming lights on the cheap detonators strapped to the fuel canisters started blinking.
Furiously, Lyons charged up the stairs and fired. The Atchisson ripped off a short burst, and Troy stumbled backward from the barrage of 12-gauge stun bags.
“Freeze! This is the FBI!” Blancanales shouted, adding a long rip from the M-16 assault rifle into the ceiling. With any luck, the hardmen would simply surrender.
“Fuck you, cops!” George yelled, and a pair of black metallic globes sailed over the railing to hit the fourth-floor landing and bounce away.
“Grenades!” Lyons roared, diving aside, his teammates only a heartbeat behind.
The team was still airborne when the charges cut loose, filling the landing with thundering flame. Still kneeling with his arms raised in surrender, Troy was blown apart by the double explosion.
As they hit the floor, there came a sharp patter of antipersonnel shrapnel smacking into the doors and walls. In a bathroom, a plastic fuel canister ruptured, the pink fluid gushing out to spread along the wooden floor, heading dangerously close to the burning ruin of the smashed landing.
Charging into the bathroom, Schwarz tackled the canister, shoving it into the bathtub. Heading into a bedroom, Blancanales ripped the arming wires off a firebomb and went in search of another.
Rising up from behind the fire, Lyons dropped the drum of stun bags and slapped in a drum of fléchettes just as Jeff jumped down the stairs to land heavily on the splintery wood. Grinning fiendishly, the Boston muscle swept the entire fourth floor with an AK-47 assault rifle, the 7.62 mm rounds slamming into pictures, bookcases and the still bodies of the former occupants.
Ducking behind a wingback chair, Lyons fired a short burst from the Atchisson, the hellstorm of steel slivers tearing Jeff apart, arms and legs going in different directions.
Bracing against the recoil, Schwarz fired a 40 mm round up the stairs. The charge detonated against the ceiling, spraying down a hellstorm of plaster and wooden splinters. Somebody screamed, the noise becoming a demented howl as Mike staggered into view. His upper body was riddled with holes, red blood pumping out in a ghastly spray from the ruptured arteries.
Mouthing obscenities, he sprayed his twin Ingram MAC-10 machine pistols, the 9 mm Parabellum rounds hammering down the stairs in crisscrossing streams of glowing tracers and hot lead. From the bedroom, Blancanales peppered the banister, the 5.56 mm rounds chewing a path of destruction along the polished wood. Still shooting, Jeff retreated to the fifth floor. But just as he disappeared, George appeared and fired a line of tracers rounds directly into the pooled gasoline, dripping over the landing. With a whoosh, it ignited and wild flames raced along the floor going straight into the bathroom and up the wallpaper. Standing in the bathtub, Schwarz turned on the shower and angled the spray onto the walls, but the water did little to hinder the lashing orange conflagration.
“You men up there, get the hell out!” Blancanales shouted, slapping in a fresh clip. “The house is on fire!”
“Lead the way, cop!” George retorted from somewhere above. “I’m not going back to Wadpoole! I’d rather die here with you!”
Lyons shot his friend a hard look and Blancanales frowned from the doorway of the bedroom. It sounded crazy, but many men who had spent decades in jail swore death before returning to the rigid discipline of government cellblocks.
“We need those files,” Lyons ordered, touching his throat mike. He burped a short burst up the stairs. “Think we can cut a deal?”
“No way,” Blancanales replied, cracking the breech of the grenade launcher. He dumped the 40 mm stun bag and thumbed in an AP round. “We have to take them out.”
Another grenade bounced down the ruined stairs and disappeared below. A moment later there came a muffled whomp and then a welling aura of hellish light. Lyons cursed. The grenade had ignited the canisters of fuel! The ground floor, maybe even the second, was on fire, and soon the flames would reach the other canisters. They only had a few minutes before the entire building was an inferno. With us trapped on the top level, he thought.
Turning the Atchisson upward, Lyons emptied the entire drum of 12-gauge fléchettes directly into the ceiling. The fusillade chewed open a gaping hole, and Blancanales and Schwarz instantly triggered 40 mm rounds. Once more, the shells exploded on the next ceiling, and men screamed.
Charging for the stairs, Lyons swept the room at waist level, blowing apart office furniture, computers, blackboards and both of the stumbling hardmen. But as they fell, a skinny blond man hit a radio detonator clipped to his bloody belt.
“Not going back…” George said, then went still.
A split second later, a muffled series of blasts erupted in the lower levels of the house, and the closet across the office was brightly illuminated from within, the door blowing off as the expanding fireball of the hidden incendiary charge cut loose. The only desk was coated with a sheet of flame, the DOD security documents vanishing into ash from the volcanic heat.
Rushing to a file cabinet, Lyons yanked the top drawer open, then quickly backed away as a secondary charge set the gasoline-soaked folders ablaze. In grudging admiration, Lyons was forced to admit that was exactly how he would have done it. They were amateurs, but not fools.
Ramming the stock of his M-16 into a computer, Blancanales smashed the machine into pieces. Using a knife, Schwarz pried loose the hard drive and shoved it into a pocket.
Flames licked out of the stairwell, and the crackling fire raced along the ceiling and walls, the updraft from the hole in the floor feeding the growing blaze.
“Let’s go!” Lyons shouted as a thick cloud of pungent smoke rose up the stairwell. House on fire, files rigged, the book case empty of any technical journals, there was no place left to search in the scant time remaining. Besides, every soldier knew the danger of fighting in civilian homes. The carpeting often gave off toxic smoke that could kill a person.
However, Lyons had barely taken a step when his nose caught a sharp aroma. It was actually rather pleasant, and the man felt oddly good, almost drunk, his heart beating wildly.
“Don’t breathe!” Blancanales cried, exhaling as hard as possible and slapping a hand across his nose and mouth.
With sleepy movements, the Stony Man commandos stumbled away from the hundred melted bags of crystal meth sizzling on the charred floorboards. The fumes were making them feel woozy, almost light-headed. A strange lethargy stole the strength from their bodies, their weapons suddenly feeling as if each weighed a million tons….
Fighting off the weakness through sheer force of will, Lyons aimed the Atchisson carefully, and triggered a long sustained burst at the flaming stairs until the smoky wood was torn into wreckage. It dropped away with a strident crash, and the heat in the office decreased slightly.
“Okay, that bought us a few minutes,” Lyons said, coughing raggedly. He fumbled to reload the autoshotgun with clumsy fingers. “But we have to leave fast—or die.”
More dull explosions sounded from below, the rising smoke becoming thicker, the floor growing hotter beneath their civilian shoes.
Snarling in rage, Blancanales fired from the hip, blowing out the rear windows. Rushing to the sill, he drank in the fresh air and momentarily his head cleared.
Firing to the left, then the right, a coughing Schwarz took out both side windows. The thick smoke thinned immediately, but the roaring fire noticeably increased.
Shuffling to the left window, Lyons saw only a gazebo on the ground five stories away.
Firing the M-16 nonstop, Schwarz blasted away at something outside the right window, then grunted in victory. “This way!” he shouted, slinging the exhausted weapon over a shoulder and hastily climbing through the opening.
Quickly joining their friend, Lyons and Blancanales saw Schwarz grab a dangling power line, a telephone pole at the corner of the property sparking and snapping. Wrapping the thick cable once around his waist, Schwarz rappelled down the side of the apartment building to land hard on the roof of the garage.
As he rushed along the sloping expanse of shingles, Blancanales arrived, then Lyons. Going to the edge, they jumped into the rosebushes, uncaring of the thorns, and fought their way to the front lawn. A heartbeat later, the roof of the garage collapsed, writhing flames licking at empty sky.
Returning to the van, the bedraggled Stony Man commandos piled inside and divested themselves of weapons before driving away. Oddly, there was no wail of incoming fire trucks, police or ambulance. The men solemnly realized that was because there was nobody alive in the neighborhood to report the mounting blaze.
Breaking out bottles of water, the men of Able Team drank deeply, clearing their sore throats, the clean air pouring through the vehicle slowly washing the stupefying effects of the cooking drug from their brains.
“At least we got this,” Schwarz croaked, inspecting the hard drive.
“And even if that is blank,” Blancanales wheezed, “we now have a name. Ravid.”
“Any terrorists called that?” Lyons asked, lowering their speed as he headed for Logan International.
Tucking away the hard drive, Schwarz shrugged. “None that I know.”
“I do,” Blancanales said, pouring water into his open palm and rubbing his face clean. He shook himself dry like a dog coming out of the rain. “Two, actually. There’s a Ravid in Hamas and another in Tiger Force. But it couldn’t be them. Neither group has resources to put a satellite into orbit.”
“Unless they got some major-league assistance,” Lyons returned, settling back into the seat. Anybody who hired thugs to do their fighting, might also have been hired as mercenaries in the first place. Hamas or Tiger Force, were they the real foe? Or was Stony Man facing a cartel of terrorist organizations this time? That would be a nightmare come true. And there was no way to know for sure until the hard drive was downloaded. Hopefully, that could be done on the Hercules.
Changing his mind, Lyons angled onto a highway and went straight past Logan to head for downtown Boston. If they could find the office where George and his crew worked before the word spread of their demise, Able Team might be able to find out exactly who Ravid was. Definitely a long shot, but worth the effort.
Merging with the thickening flow of honking traffic, the Able Team leader just hoped that Phoenix Force was having better luck at the Wake Island laboratory.
CHAPTER SIX
Wake Island, Pacific Ocean
About six hundred miles off the coast of California, Phoenix Force landed its Learjet on the deck of the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier. Quickly transferring to a Black Hawk helicopter, the team continued its journey across the Pacific Ocean.
According to the U.S. Army records, the landing strip on Wake Island was too short to handle a Lear, and the helicopter gunship gave them the option of landing wherever they wished, possibly avoiding an ambush. Or worse, the deadly beam of the orbiting satellite.
Wake Island was an atoll, the crested rim of an ancient underwater volcano. The three curved islands barely covered one and a half square miles. But because of their position, the islands had been an invaluable refueling spot during World War II. In its time, the atoll had been heavily armed with anti-ship cannons hidden in the thick palm trees.
But these days the atoll was all but forgotten. The big guns were long gone, and all that remained of the refueling station was a small airfield for emergency landings that was used only once, or twice, a year. The only paved road was slowly returning to nature, the Quonset huts removed, the tiny jungle allowed to grow freely over the circular atoll. For a while, it had been a U.S. Army weapons research facility for an antimissile program, but the funding disappeared, and so did the Army. These days, two of the tiny banana-shaped islands were tangles of unfettered growth, while the third contained only the short, cracked landing strip, and a heavily fortified concrete laboratory. Code name: Prometheus.
The Black Hawk helicopter moved low across the Pacific Ocean, flying over some pleasure craft, a cruise liner and a fat oil tanker bound for Alaska. Halfway to the isolated atoll, it began to rain, soft and gentle. Wisely, the Black Hawk stayed below the cloud layer. What couldn’t be seen, hopefully couldn’t be attacked. Passive radar was clear, and the active radar revealed no hostile aircraft, only rumbling storm clouds and rain.
The five members of Phoenix Force were jammed into the jumpseats lining the walls, the open space in the middle filled with trunks of ammunition, explosives and assorted supplies. The team needed to be ready for anything.
“Anybody know a Ravid?” Calvin James asked, lowering the radio headphones. His accent was pure southside Chicago. Tall and lanky, the former Navy SEAL was the field medic for the team, and one of the best underwater demolitionists the soldiers had ever seen.
“The head of Tiger Force is Ravid something or other,” T. J. Hawkins said.
“Tiger Force?” Rafael Encizo asked scornfully. “No way those backwater grunts could launch a bottle rocket, much less a freaking satellite.”
A stocky man with catlike reflexes, Encizo was less than handsome, his face carrying the scars of too many battles. But the looks beguiled the razor-sharp mind inside. Slung across his chest was an MP-5 machine gun. Stun grenades festooned his web harness and a compact Walther PPK .38 rode in a high belly holster. A Tanto combat knife was sheathed upside down on his shoulder for fast access, and plastic garrotes dangled from a breakaway catch on his belt.
“Himar comes from India,” David McCarter said from the copilot seat. “Was born there if I remember correctly, and now a south India terrorist group appears from the shadows.”
The leader of Phoenix Force, McCarter was a former member of the elite British SAS. The Briton radiated controlled strength, and every man present owed their lives to McCarter a dozen times over. The bonds of friendship between the Stony Man warriors had been forged on the bloody fields of combat.
Hawkins grunted. “Hell of a coincidence.”
“What kind of files do we have on Tiger Force?” Encizo asked, inspecting the razor-sharp edge of his combat knife for any feathering. Satisfied, he slid the knife into its sheath.
“Pretty sketchy,” James admitted. “They’re small-timers, not really on the world radar.”
“So far,” Gary Manning retorted, working the bolt of his titanic Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifle, then adding a drop of lubricant to the slide. “However, if these guys have a neutron cannon, then I’m really looking forward to meeting them.”
Thunder rumbled outside the craft, the concussion buffeting it slightly.
“Fifteen minutes to the island, David,” the blacksuit pilot announced crisply.
“Anything on radar?” Hawkins asked, checking the clip in his 9 mm Beretta.
“We’re clear,” the blacksuit reported from the front of the craft.
A moment later the blacksuit announced, “There it is.”
McCarter looked hard through the rain-smeared window, but there was nothing to be seen below but endless ocean. “Better be sure,” he demanded, unbuckling his seat belt. “The atoll has three islands, with a lot of water around them. We want the north island, just past the deep water cove.”
“The instruments read dead center, sir,” the pilot said confidently. “I’m on target.”
“Fair enough.” Strapping on a harness, McCarter went to the hatch, slid it back and stepped out of the helicopter.
A few yards down, the catch on his harness engaged and his descent along the rope rapidly slowed. With the downpour blurring the landscape, the leader of Phoenix Force couldn’t see anything. It was like rappelling into an abandoned well.
A shiny refection swelled beneath his boots and McCarter braced for an impact into the ocean, then he caught the dim outline of a nearby building and quickly bent his knees.
With a hard thump, the Stony Man commando landed on a rain-slick parking lot. Immediately, McCarter slapped the release and saw the line swing free as he swung around his MP-5 and worked the arming bolt. A heartbeat later Hawkins landed, closely followed by Encizo.
Clearing the landing zone, the men flipped on their night-vision goggles and scanned for any possible dangers as Manning and James arrived. The Black Hawk promptly began to move away, the sound of the rotors lost in the storm.
Spreading out, the men swept along the parking lot, staying low to the pavement. There were no Hummers in sight, only a vague sensation of a fence to their left and a dark outline of something looming large in front of them like the side of a cliff.
“EM and thermal are clear,” Encizo reported.
“Good. Okay, keep it tight, people,” McCarter whispered. “Gary, you’re on cover.”
“Roger,” Manning replied, stopping where he was and bringing up the long barrel of the Barrett.
The laboratory slowly came into view. A door to the left was situated under a small awning, while a set of large doors were to the right with concrete aprons jutting for truck deliveries. There was no light or movement.
Pausing in the rain just outside the clear area below the awning, McCarter studied the entrance. A drain in the pavement gurgled as the water from the parking lot trickled into it. The name of the project had been scraped off the door, the Plexiglas windows frosted white. There was no sign of a keyhole, but there was a palm lock on the jamb.
Warily, McCarter placed a hand on the sensor pad. It gave an angry buzz, nothing more.
“Stony Base, this is Firebird,” McCarter said into his throat mike. “We need a knock-knock.”
“On it,” Aaron Kurtzman replied through a crackle of static.
“T.J., Cal, check for another way inside,” McCarter ordered.
“On it,” Hawkins replied.
Leveling his dripping MP-5, James went in the other direction and disappeared around the corner of the huge building.
The rest of the team waited patiently. A few minutes later the others returned.
“Found a loading dock, but the steel doors have been welded shut,” Hawkins said gruffly.
“Same with the back door,” James added. “Somebody really doesn’t want people inside this building.”
“What about the roof?” Encizo asked, glancing upward.
James snorted. “The access ladder is gone. Only the bolt holes remain.”
“Firebird One to Stony Base, anything yet?” McCarter asked, shifting his grip on the machine gun. Blowing their way inside was looking more and more likely.
“Not yet,” Kurtzman answered from halfway around the world. “Whoever built the firewalls around these circuits really knew what they were doing.”
Pulling out a wad of C-4 plastique, McCarter admitted he had half expected something like that. Walking under the awning, the big man pointed at the door frame. “Okay, I want a charge there and there,” he directed. “Be sure to—”
“Wait a second,” Kurtzman interrupted. “We might be on to something.”
The team paused expectantly. There came a soft click from the door and it opened a crack.
“There you go!” Kurtzman said with a chuckle. “Anything else?”
“Sure,” McCarter replied, sliding into the dark building. “Find the satellite in space, and make it blow up.”
“I’ll do my best. Stony Base out.”
Careful of where they stepped, the Stony Man commandos moved through a dimly lit lobby. In the ghostly light from the goggles, they saw chairs for guests and a table stacked full of technical magazines, glass panels set into the wall for the receptionist and a couple of doors. An Army lieutenant slumped over the reception desk, a holstered Colt .45 on his hip.
“The poor bastard never even got off a shot,” Encizo said in controlled rage.
“Check everywhere,” McCarter ordered. “If the thieves were here, they must have left traces, a fingerprint, a cigarette butt, something we can use to track them down.”
Nodding assent, the team spread out in a tight search pattern. Going to a closed door, Hawkins pushed it open with the barrel of the MP-5 and saw that it was a modern bathroom, toilet and bidet, plus a small sink. A sergeant lay on the floor, dried soap suds on his hands, the faucet still softly running. Hawkins turned it off with a hard twist. “Sorry, brother,” he whispered.
Checking the closet, Encizo found only cleaning supplies, mops and buckets. Going into the reception area, James checked the video recorder for the security cameras, and wasn’t surprised to find the disks gone.
Moving down a long corridor, McCarter saw a plump rat sitting on the carpeting eating something in its paws. How did a rat get on an island atoll? There was nothing indigenous to the islands but sand and surf.
Switching from UV to IR, the man saw a few more hot spots moving along the baseboards that turned out to only be more rats. The place was infested with them. That didn’t bode well.
Pausing at the next door, McCarter inspected the jamb. There was a line of bullets holes in the thick wood and the lock was smashed apart. The thieves had shot their way inside. He looked around, but there was no brass on the carpeting.
On a hunch, the man took off his goggles and flicked on his flashlight. Something reflected the beam from behind a nearby potted plant, and McCarter bent to retrieve an empty brass cartridge. The thieves had obviously picked up their brass, but missed this one because it rolled away.
In the beam, McCarter could see no manufacture’s name on the bottom, just a lot number. There was a side strike mark for the ejector, so it came from an autofire, possibly an assault rifle. But the caliber was odd. The U.S. armed forces used a standard 5.56 mm round, as did NATO and a lot of other folks. But this was a just slightly larger, maybe a 5.8 mm. That would make it Chinese. The new QBZ-95 assault rifle used a 5.8 mm cartridge.
“Alert,” McCarter said, touching his throat mike. “We may be facing the Red Star.”
Everybody became more alert, if that were possible. Red Star was the counterintelligence group for Communist China. Stony Man had tangled with them several times, and the encounters had always been bloody. Especially that terrible incident at Hoover dam. The Chinese agents killed without hesitation and often tried to hide their escape under a mound of dead civilians. This sort of mass execution seemed just their style. It was even rumored that several KGB agents had found employment with their former enemy when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Chinese operatives were serious hardcases, and fanatical fighters.
The Red Star didn’t give a damn if its covert missions were discovered. Hell, it seemed to McCarter that they welcome the publicity. On the other hand, all of the Stony Man ammunition, grenades, even their boots and MRE packs were totally without identification marks. There were no product numbers, bar codes, or anything that could be used to trace the items back to America, much less the Farm. The CIA did the same thing, as did MI-5 in the United Kingdom and the Mossad.
Pocketing the cartridge, McCarter moved past the swing door and into a vast open area that was a laboratory. Machinery and worktables were in total disarray, file cabinets and desks pushed against the walls in random order. Drawers had been pulled out of the desks, the computers smashed apart, the hard drives removed. The trash baskets were empty and blackboards were wiped clean. The lab had been looted to the bare walls.
That’s when McCarter spotted the corpses, most wearing white lab coats over civilian clothing. Several had clipboards lying nearby, the papers removed from the spring clamps. The pockets of the corpses had been turned inside out, their belongings scattered on the bare concrete floor: keys, wallets, loose coins, pencils, chewing gum, lipstick, cigarettes and butane lighters.
“No cells phones, or anything else that could record data,” Hawkins observed dourly. “Whoever these people are, they know what to do.”
Making an inarticulate noise, James swung his weapon at a dead man whose shirt was moving. A second later a rat appeared carrying away a grisly morsel. His trigger finger tightened, but the Stony Man warrior withheld firing. That wouldn’t help anybody at the moment. Dead was dead, and the rats were only trying to stay alive by doing their assigned role in nature.
Passing a bank of file cabinets, McCarter saw that all of the drawers were open and empty. Cleaned out completely. Himar’s house had been burned to remove any duplicate files, but everything here had been taken by the attacking force.
Crossing a field of smashed electronic equipment, the team’s boots crunched softly on the ceramic chips and capacitors. There were more corpses here, and more rats. The men resisted the urge to crush them under their combat boots.
To the left was a loading dock, chains hanging from the ceiling girders like jungle vines. Softly, the links clinked in a gentle breeze of a broken window.
“Guess the rats couldn’t find any place to go, so they came back,” Hawkins noted, shifting his combat boot away from one of the scurrying rodents.
Plexiglas walls sectioned off a bank of electronic controls, and thick power cables snaked away to a hulking generator in the corner. Set into the concrete was a circular cradle of some kind, more power cables lying impotently on the floor.
McCarter scowled at the arrangement. He was no scientist, but it seemed logical that this was where the neutron cannon had been less than forty-eight hours ago.
“Now how could the thieves have stolen the cannon and gotten it into orbit fast enough to beam down the 747 above Pennsylvania?” Encizo asked.
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