Kitabı oku: «The Chameleon Factor», sayfa 4
“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.
With a strong whine of hydraulics, the rear of the C-130 Hercules transport disengaged, and cycled down to the ground to form a ramp. Deep inside the mammoth plane, headlights flashed on, and soon a civilian SUV rolled into view and bumped down the ramp to reach the tarmac.
Driving a few yards away from the aircraft, Carl “Ironman” Lyons parked the SUV and waited for the rest of the team to drive out. The vehicle was a dark green in color, so dark it appeared to be black. The windows were tinted, and the license plates carried government numbers.
What couldn’t be seen was the composite armor lining the SUV, and its hidden arsenal of weaponry in the ceiling, walls and seats.
Suddenly the massive engines of the Hercules coughed into life, the four great propellers rotating in spurts and then accelerating into a steady blur. Then the rear hatch began to cycle upward as the airplane prepared for takeoff.
Setting the parking brake, Lyons scowled. What the hell was going on now?
The side door near the tail swung open and a pair of duffel bags was tossed onto the tarmac, closely followed by Blancanales and Schwarz. Even as the two men grabbed their bags, the C-130 released its brakes and started to taxi forward, heading for an empty runway. The two men walked toward the SUV, and by the time they arrived, the Hercules was airborne and disappearing into the clouds.
“Trouble?” Lyons asked from behind the wheel.
Blancanales opened the rear hatch and tossed in his bag. “Yes and no,” he replied. “We caught the squawk from the Farm that a China Air 747 has crashed in the Koryak Mountains of Russia only an hour ago.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Lyons said with a grunt. “What has that got to do with us?”
“Its destination was New Delhi,” Schwarz said, adding his duffel to the pile of equipment and packs in the rear of the SUV. “And it left Ted Stevens Airport in Anchorage two hours after the attack on Quiller Labs, about six hours ago.”
As the men climbed into the vehicle, Lyons did some fast mental math. “So it’s hundreds of miles off course. And how did it penetrate that deep into Russian airspace without being challenged or shot down?”
“Only one way that Barb can guess,” Blancanales said, snapping on his seat belt.
“The Chameleon,” Lyons growled. “Our ape must have hijacked the plane, then killed the crew, jumped out and let it crash to hide that he was ever there.”
“Or it could be a diversion,” Schwarz offered, pulling the 9 mm Beretta from his shoulder holster and dropping the clip to check the load before reinserting the clip. “But I don’t read our ape that way.”
Adjusting his DOD identification badge on his suit jacket, Blancanales nodded. “Agree. Our boy is fast and furious. Not really into fancy tricks. He’s more the lead-pipe type.”
“Anything from the pilot, or civilian cell phones?” Lyons asked, starting the engine again. The big V8 purred into life, and he slipped the shift to start driving for an access road.
“Not a peep,” Schwarz replied. “And the emergency beacon didn’t activate until the plane was already tumbling out of the sky.”
“You mean once it was out of range of the jamming field of the Chameleon,” Lyons said grimly.
“That’s the idea, yes.”
“Gadgets, could the ape have used the Chameleon to mask itself and smuggle it on board past airport security?” Blancanales asked frowning.
“He could have smuggled an Abrams tank past security with that thing,” he answered. “But it would have to be operating at very low power. Full force it would interfere with the operation of the controls regulating the jet engines, and the plane would—”
“Crash,” Blancanales interrupted. “Goddamn it, maybe the passengers rushed the bastard and that’s exactly what happened!”
Pennsylvania all over again. Conversation stopped as only a few hundred yards away, a 707 roared into the sky. Even as it ascended, a small two-seater Cessna daintily arrived to touch the ground on another landing strip. In spite of the fact that it was so close to the Arctic Circle, the Nome airport was always busy with the combined civilian and military traffic, but its safety record was equaled by few other airports.
“So unless we can find the backup files here, this is going to be a race between McCarter and the Russian air rescue service,” Lyons stated as the SUV bumped over a small crack in the road. There had been an earthquake in November 2002 that rocked all of Alaska, and the damage was still being repaired on a priority basis.
“Which is why they took off with us still on the field,” Blancanales agreed.
“Jack isn’t going to try to fly Phoenix Force there, is he?” Lyons demanded. “He’d never get past the Russian radar.”
“Damn right he couldn’t. Their EM umbrella is tight,” Schwarz stated with conviction. “Without the Chameleon, there’s no way to fly into Russian national airspace without getting a SAM up your ass. Maybe two.
“Unless you do it at a height of six inches,” he added.
Slowing down at a locked gate, Lyons waited for the armed TSA guards to leave the kiosk. He showed the woman his ID. She gave no reaction, but spoke into her radio, and then waved them past.
Taking a turn onto an access road, Lyons raised an eyebrow at that. “They’re going to try a deadman’s run?”
“Only way to get there fast enough,” Blancanales said, pulling an M-16/M-203 combo from his duffel. “Our ape might not have jumped, and the damaged Chameleon could still be on the plane. They have to get there first, at any cost.”
Damn. Then Grimaldi would be taking McCarter to Ketchikan Island. The Coast Guard should have what the team needed. If not…
“Check your equipment,” Lyons directed. “We’ll be going to the testing area first. That’s the last place where anybody would hide their backup files.”
“Then why are we going?” Blancanales asked, puzzled, slapping in a clip. Then his face brightened. “Because it’s the best place for them to ambush us.”
“This crazy son of a bitch is trying to take the pressure off Phoenix Force,” Schwarz snorted, thumbing a fat 40 mm round into the breech of his M-203 grenade launcher. He closed the breech with a solid metallic snap. “Fair enough. Let’s rattle the trees, Carl, we got your six.”
Merging with the outgoing traffic, Lyons said nothing as he checked the .357 Colt Python under his jacket and sent the SUV heading for the coastal highway outside of Nome.
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