Czytaj książkę: «Death Dealers»

Death Dealers

Don Pendleton

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

Blackness engulfed Dr. Robert Baxter’s vision as what felt like the weight of a mountain range lay upon his back. He tried to shift himself, squirming his way through the cracks that surrounded him. It was midnight-black in there, and as he tried to take a breath, he could feel the pressure of the rubble around him. Fear gripped him, but he flexed his fingers, dug his toes in and inched along.

He could feel the scrape of pebbles and dust against his bare chest. Somewhere in the explosions that had rocked him and the rest of the Naval Weapons Testing Ground, he’d lost his shirt and laboratory coat. His glasses were gone, so even if there were light, he couldn’t have seen much farther than the crook of his elbow.

He was forced to stop when he encountered a hunk of reinforced concrete that was far too big to move. Baxter wished that he had the strength to shove such things aside or to flatten himself like putty and slip between the gaps. Hell, at this point, he would have been happy just to be able to see anything

Come on, Baxter, you’re a rocket scientist. Use your goddamn brain.

The trapped man ran his fingers along the flat surface, testing and touching it. He reached up, following the face of what seemed to be a wall. Fingertips jammed into the corner and Baxter winced as he pulled his hand back across the slope, feeling his knuckles scoured and abraded by whatever was there. However he could tell that there was at least a few inches more room in that gap. There was a section of rebar exposed on the ground, so he clamped both fists around it, pulling himself out of the crevice holding him tightly.

Tugging himself out was arduous and he could feel his slacks tugged, snagged. His back and shoulders, his stomach and chest, all felt the snarled hooks, the poking and gripping talons of what must have been a million little nails gouging at his naked skin. Finally he was loose. He slumped into the rut next to the flat slab.

It must have been a column. If it were wall, he’d have felt the seams between the cinder blocks.

If something could knock down a column that thick, then whatever had struck the building must have been incredibly powerful. He started pulling himself farther along. His legs were still in the crack behind him. Baxter had turned enough that his shoulders could get to their full breadth, his back pressed against the flat, smooth concrete behind him. He had to get his feet loose, and the snarls and splinters that bedeviled his chest and back were now ripping his slacks. One shoe was already gone and the other now popped off, snagged on some outcropping.

Baxter folded his knees to his chest, feet finally freed from the sandwiching weight he’d slithered away from. He let his legs extend beneath him, enjoying the relative roominess of his new prison. Here, he was able to breathe; he could reach down and up. The space ahead seemed to tilt slightly higher, broadening, giving him more than sufficient room to begin crawling anew, but Baxter wanted to wait, to catch his breath.

However he knew that waiting here until he gathered up more of his strength was just him not wanting to make the effort. This place was safe, it was cozy, but it was merely the illusion of comfort. He needed to get out into the open air.

Baxter rested his forehead against his wrist, swallowing. The rocket scientist was not a people person, living inside his skull most of the time, applying his formidable intellect to the calculations necessary to produce the kind of high-efficiency engines that would make the U.S. Navy’s missiles into the fastest things in the air. His latest effort had broken Mach 10 with a simulated 235-kilogram military-grade Pentolite warhead. At 7000 miles per hour, there were few things that could intercept such a projectile, especially given his comrade’s work on computer guidance and threat-avoidance algorithms.

Since Exocets had proved capable of devastating warships with warheads lighter by 70 pounds, the new design would be more than adequate to take on an enemy navy, everything up to an aircraft carrier.

That kind of math was a deeply internal thing; it was his haven, his safety. It was akin to this little slot underneath tons of rubble, a concrete shell that cradled and sheltered him in blissful darkness and silence. When dealing with other humans, he was much more at the mercy of prejudices, biases, illogic. The variables introduced in such interactions were not neat, tidy, like physics and mathematics. The laws of Newton were something he turned back to when the concept of networking was simply controlled madness and appeasing those without vision that penetrated down into the truth of reality.

Baxter couldn’t help but think of how he looked right now. Reduced to slacks that were shredded and torn, totally distressed, he looked like one of his childhood heroes. Disheveled, mousy-brown hair, long, scrawny limbs, barefoot and shirtless, Baxter was likely a dead ringer for a certain purple-trousered nuclear scientist, freshly awoken from his alter ego’s gamma-powered rampages. The rocket scientist regretted having gotten so far into science, though.

“Get moving,” Baxter barked to himself. He began squirming along. He set rocks to mark the distance he moved through the crawl space, measuring his height against the distance he moved, counting the seconds necessary to make such a journey. It took twenty seconds to crawl five feet, the distance from his shoulder to his foot, so he estimated his approximate position in the base.

Math was his refuge. He wished that he could rely on something more, something better, actual sight with which to measure, but at least the counting of seconds, the counting of lengths of his body, kept his mind occupied. With focus, he would not give in to fear and despair. Baxter knew that the best means of coping was to concentrate on what could be changed.

Slowly, surely, the space he crawled through grew larger, roomier. He laid himself flat on his belly, pausing and cradling his head between his forearms. Baxter let his thoughts drift to the sight of a man walking on coals of flame, with the caption “doable.” A contrasting image, another man walking on strewed children’s building blocks, was captioned “impossible.”

“Great,” he murmured. He rolled onto his side, finding all new misshapen rocks that poked and prodded his ribs. He grit his teeth, wishing for release.

Just one moment. I don’t care that the science sucks. Just one instance of gamma strength.

He pushed against the roof above him. Suddenly it began to shift and his heart rate shot into high gear. This wasn’t a delusion that he was somehow hefting the weight of the rubble atop him; it was panic in the horror that somehow he’d upset a delicate balance and was now going to crush himself into a fine paste.

“No!” Baxter screamed.

Light streamed down, burning his unaccustomed eyes. He folded up, waiting for the irresistible, implacable weight crushing his bones, squeezing the juices from him. Nothing came through, though. No pressure increased upon him; even through clenched eyelids, he could see the gleaming light of midday.

“We found him!” a voice shouted.

Baxter tried to open his eyes, but the sun was too bright. He could only squint, but gloved hands hooked under one of his arms, dragging him to his feet.

“Dr. Baxter?” He heard the voice in his left ear.

“Yes,” he answered, coughing. The ground felt wobbly beneath him. “Yes, I’m Robert Baxter.”

“We found him!” someone shouted again.

“You’ll be all right,” the man told him, draping something over his shoulders. The ravages upon his back and shoulders were not too rough that he couldn’t tell a blanket. It was unusual to feel so bare and cold in the desert, but it was winter. The winds were brisk, whipping around him.

“We’re getting you on a helicopter, sir,” the man added, guiding him along. He tried to get a better look at the soldier helping him out. Stark shadows showed over the man’s face, down the length of his body. This wasn’t the light of the sun and he remembered, before the churning darkness, that it was night when the explosions rocked the testing facility. Even so, he kept walking.

This was a nighttime rescue.

“How did you find me?” Baxter asked.

“You have a subcutaneous RFID chip embedded in your skin,” the soldier told him, helping him step up and onto a helicopter. Baxter felt the cushions compress beneath him and he leaned against the back of his seat. The knowledge of a chip in his body stunned him, he couldn’t remember when he would have had such a device introduced, unless it was part of the physical he’d had.

“Rob?”

Baxter could barely make out the sound of his name being spoken, had only a hint of what the voice sounded like, but even through the rumble of the helicopter’s engines and the slap of rotors against the air, he could tell it was a woman speaking to him. He forced his eyes open wider, looking to see another bundled figure sitting across from him inside the cabin of the aircraft.

Her normal flip now hung down, stringy and matted, from sweat and distress. Her blue eyes were veined in red, bags hanging beneath them. And yet the sight of Beatrice Chandler, the computer wizard whose guidance systems were the other vital ingredient in the Mach 10 missile prototype, still stirred Baxter’s feelings. As worn out, as out of sorts as she was, she was a beautiful, wonderful sight. His heart tripped, skipping a beat, and he reached out a hand to hers. She wrapped her delicate fingers around his. “Bea!”

Baxter turned to the soldier who’d guided him into the helicopter, then nodded toward the seat next to the woman.

“Go ahead!” the soldier shouted over the din of the chopper.

Baxter switched seats and snuggled against her. He lifted a part of his blanket, like a mother bird extending her wing, and enclosed Chandler’s shoulders, pulling her closer to him. Her hair was stiff and salty with sweat, but he still kissed the dome of her head, still pressed his cheek against her greasy locks. She slid one arm around his waist, laid one hand on his chest.

For a man who didn’t have much in terms of people skills, the contact between his body and hers was a godsend. Beatrice was a fellow scientist. She, too, lived a life of order, of logic and reason, and for that very reason, he could never feel alienated by her, never be betrayed by a sudden shift of whimsy.

“What happened?” Beatrice asked into his ear, the caress of her lips so close and intimate it distracted him from the situation at hand. Chandler had asked him a question, though, and as a scientist it was Baxter’s duty, his drive in life, to provide an answer to any question to which he could respond.

“The base was attacked. Something moving at a similar velocity to our prototype design, perhaps several, penetrated the testing center’s antiballistic defenses,” Baxter replied. “I was in Radar Twelve, calculating the velocity and course of our test motor when one of the first struck.”

Chandler looked up at him, her blue eyes wet and welling with tears. “You’re hurt.”

Baxter looked down at his chest, noting the crisscrosses of crimson lines, as if some inept, maddened artist had tried to add detail to him with a red marker. “Fortunately when the roof came down, I was placed such that I would not be crushed. Unfortunately conditions conspired so that any passage I made necessitated the shedding of clothing.”

Chandler managed a weak smile and then rested her head against the crook of his neck.

It was so comfortable with her this way, Baxter almost didn’t notice the soldier’s movements across from him. The man pulled a hypodermic needle from a small box in his lap.

Now, inside the chopper, with the interior lights of the aircraft providing clearer illumination, he was able to ascertain the appearance of the man. The attention to detail that grew from his intellect and aspirations to being a rocket scientist showed him that the camouflage pattern worn by this infantryman was all wrong for the Naval Weapons Testing Institute’s uniforms. If this was someone from outside the Navy, perhaps an Air Force pararescue team, then why were the patches on the man’s sleeves so studiously identical to the normal naval infantry assigned to the base?

Also, he noted, the features of the man were Chinese, not Caucasian. Baxter thought back, trying to recall inflections of the soldier’s English, seeking out further incongruities.

“Who are you?” Baxter asked, stiffening. He was now on full alert. Though he sat straighter, he knew it was nothing more than the bluff of an animal making itself seem larger to deter predators from attacking. Strength ebbed from his limbs, what musculature there had been already strained to the limits by crawling through the cracks in the rubble of the collapsed Radar Twelve center.

“We’re taking you somewhere safe,” the soldier with the hypo stated. “Now, I’ll be putting this in you just to keep you calm. There’s no point in allowing you to be distressed for the upcoming journey.”

“To where? China?” Baxter asked.

The soldier smirked. “What gave it away?”

“The digital camouflage,” Baxter said.

Chandler stirred at his side, looking back and forth between Baxter and the soldier.

Another pair of men stepped through the side doors of the helicopter, effectively bracketing them in.

“Rob, what are you talking about?” she asked.

“We’re being kidnapped,” Baxter told her.

Chandler’s eyes went to the faces of all three of their rescuers.

Ethnic diversity in the United States’ military was one thing, but with each of these men being Asian and wearing the wrong digital camouflage patterns, Baxter’s mind was now clearly focused. He tried to assemble plans of escape, but none of them would work without a sudden infusion of at least fifty pounds of muscle mass; even then, most of them would also entail gunfire chasing him and likely striking Chandler.

Baxter extended his arm, lowering his gaze. Chandler straightened in her seat. “Can’t we do anything?”

“They’re trained and they’re armed,” Baxter told her. “We’re both defenseless, thanks to military protocol regarding civilian contractors on government premises. Even if I had enough energy in me left to disarm one of these men, the others would stop me. And harm would likely come to you, as well.”

“So what do we do?” Chandler asked.

“Submit. And hope someone comes to search for us,” Baxter said.

He felt the bite of the hypodermic needle press into his arm. Waves of numbness emanated from that epicenter, spreading up to his shoulder then splaying out. His heartbeat calmed, slowed, and his head grew fuzzy, the world around him more and more indistinct.

They’ll try to get the engine designs out of you. That was his first thought as his consciousness slithered along the slope of oblivion that engulfed him, tugging him back down into the darkness he’d only escaped minutes ago.

Why would they need our designs? Baxter’s mind, even in the last stages, the final throes of consciousness, was sharp and keen as ever. The attackers on the base would not need to utilize his engine designs because the missiles that had struck the base were approximately two-thirds the velocity of the ones he’d worked on. It was under Mach 7, still slower than a thirty-four-foot mammoth such as the Indian Shaurya missile, which could blow past 5700 miles an hour. There would be no doubt that such a weapon, with a payload of more than one ton of explosives, would easily devastate anything on the sea or land using a conventional warhead. There was also the ability to carry small nuclear tips.

The only problem with the Shaurya-size missile was the launch. It required either a transporter erector launcher such as the Soviet MAZ 7917—a truck whose civilian nickname was “Volat” or “Giant” in Belorusian—or an underground silo.

The one the U.S. Navy was working on was to be, at most, two-thirds the length and weight, and transportable on the decks of fast-attack boats as small as 200 tons.

Baxter’s thoughts turned toward the Chinese and their proposed super ship killer, and that these soldiers were Chinese.

Questions about the Asian kidnappers wisped away like smoke. There was nothing left to come to mind as he blanked into unconsciousness, hefted into the night sky on a helicopter.

CHAPTER TWO

The ceiling fan rotated slowly and Carl Lyons’s night vision had accustomed to the shadows so that he could even make out the wicker patterns inlaid into the paddles as he lay on his back. The Hawaiian night was full of the songs of insects and birds outside the open windows, but their tunes carried from the surrounding jungle, making this calm, warm night, silvery-blue moonlight cascading through gossamer drapes, seem far more warm and welcoming than it had any right to be. He was in this hotel under the name of Karl Long, also known as Stone among the Heathens Motorcycle Club of California.

This was an undercover operation for Stony Man Farm, and Lyons wasn’t here solo. In other hotel rooms were his two partners: fellow Able Team member Hermann Schwarz and Phoenix Force’s Thomas Jefferson Hawkins. Lyons would have felt more comfortable here in Hawaii with Able Team as a whole, cohesive unit, with the third member of the squad, Rosario Blancanales, as part of this deception. However, as Lyons was supposed to be a former member of the Heathens, and an up-and-coming bit of new blood in the Arrangement, hanging out with a Hispanic man, even if he was a blue-eyed “true Spaniard,” would have been suspicious. So Able Team had brought in Hawkins as a replacement.

All three men would be quite passable as members of a white supremacist movement. Lyons was tall, blond and Nordic. A twenty-first-century Viking warrior with a day’s worth of rough stubble on his chin and the faded tattoos running down his neck, arms and chest proclaiming his allegiance to the white race. The tattoos were fake, etched into his skin with a biological dye that would fade to nothingness after a month. Until then, the big blond ex-cop would have to endure the presence of obscene hatred and twisted, almost-blasphemous religious symbolism scoured across his skin.

That was part of why he couldn’t sleep tonight, why he allowed himself to be absorbed into the slowly rotating fan blades as they barely churned the night air in his room.

This was far from the first time Lyons had gone undercover, and also far from the only time he’d ever had to don the hideous mannerisms of a bigot to do his job. What kept him awake was more than disgust for the identity he’d slipped into, and more than paranoia that made him keep a Colt Python under his pillow, within easy reach of his right hand.

It wasn’t paranoia if you were surrounded by representatives from dozens of gangs around the world, all assembled for a global auction by handwritten invitation—one that Able Team had uncovered while cleaning up loose ends from a prior crisis. It had looked handwritten but in truth had been merely printed, the cursive script the product of a font. No one would be able to perform a handwriting analysis on the mechanized scribbling on paper, and there were also no fingerprints except for those of Kevin Reising, the man who’d received the letter.

Reising was currently still listed among the living, but in hiding. The truth of the matter was that his corpse was nothing but charred ashes, with a .45-caliber slug where the brainpan should have been. The announcement of the man’s death would not be released until after there was no longer a need for the current undercover identities of Karl Long, Herman Shore and Thomas Presley.

By then the organizers of this event, a sale for everything from handguns to long-range missiles, would be dead and gone. The host organization of this auction went by the name of Abalisah, and this hotel was far from the beaten trail, on a small island of the archipelago. With a title that was Arabic for devils, it was a sure sign that things were not going to be safe and calm. The man who was the face of the auction was a tall man who could have been anything from European to Middle Eastern. His skin was well tanned, but he had no accent, no truly identifiable features. He was called Jinan.

“Do what you will,” Jinan had said over a loudspeaker, his voice distorted by a modulator. At least it might have been, but it also could have been a simple computer program or just a schmuck hired to read a sheet of paper put before him. “You have been allowed to keep your sidearms, your knives, your poisons. I merely wish your money, so if you cannot outbid your enemy, perhaps you can steal from him or perhaps murder him. The only things that I forbid are attempts to steal my property or attacks upon my personal staff.”

Anything goes, Lyons thought, sliding his fingers under his pillow and around the handle of Colt Python, feeling the diamond-checkered grips against the palm of his hand. Surrounded by enemies, dozens of whom Lyons recognized from their Interpol profiles accessed at Stony Man Farm, he and his partners were in deep.

There was a rap at the door and Lyons sat up. He looked over and saw that it was closing in on three in the morning. He hadn’t placed any orders with room service. By the same token, he couldn’t imagine why someone out to blow him away would knock politely at his door. Out in the hall, he heard more knocks on different doors and softly spoken words even as they were opened.

Lyons got out of bed, not bothering to put on pants or underwear. It was perfect weather for lying in bed, no covers, naked and enjoying the sea breeze wafting through the window. A pair of undershorts wouldn’t make him any less vulnerable to gunfire or a knife. Still, his cop training took hold as he stood behind the doorjamb while he turned the knob to his door. If a bullet were to cut through the door at his moment, it would slice into empty air, not his chest.

The door swung open, silent on well-oiled hinges, and Lyons caught a hint of jasmine in the air as he looked into the hall. It was lit, but not so bright that it made his eyes hurt as they adjusted. Instead of a killer in the hall, there was a woman standing there. He couldn’t tell her age as she stood in front of him in the doorway.

Her skin was deeply bronzed, bare shoulders in sharp contrast to the cream-hued cloth that looped around her neck and then came down to cradle her full, soft breasts. The fabric draped to one side and knotted over her hip, exposing the curve of silken flesh beneath. The light caught a glint of gold from a small ring that adorned her navel while that same light cast an undeniable silhouette, leaving no doubt that the filmy fabric was the only thing between her bare skin and the sultry evening air.

Once more, Lyons hated the skin he was forced to wear, the tattoos of white power with hateful slurs branded, if only for a month, on his flesh. However, as he returned his gaze to her face, he saw that she wasn’t a black woman. He tried to place her, either as Hispanic, or perhaps a Pacific Islander, but her large brown eyes and full sensual mouth were most definitely not Asian or Caucasian.

“Mr. Long, my name is Sanay,” she said. Her accent was as unidentifiable as her features, and Lyons couldn’t help but think that the branches of her family tree had roots in different parts of the forest. There was a hint of British in it, but her voice was as elusive in its origins as her appearance. “I am your gift for tonight from Master Jinan.”

“Master Jinan,” Lyons repeated, looking her up and down. Was this some kind of test? After all, Karl Long was an Aryan thug, an outlaw motorcyclist whose racist pedigree had been cemented with a violent assault on a La Sombra prisoner that had left him brain damaged and with an amputated arm. It wasn’t murder, which would have meant that Long could never leave prison, but it was a show of strength and unity among the Arrangement. “What makes your boss think that I’d have interest in a little brown thing like you?”

Lyons smirked, hating the words that poured from his lips but also knowing full well that Long was spending prison time for the assault and rapes of Filipino, Polynesian and Hispanic women. Even her age, a little north of thirty, and her diminutive five-foot height, matched Long’s taste in victims.

Abalisah’s researchers were good, uncannily so, to have pulled up those kinds of facts about him. So even as Lyons made his dismissive challenge to the girl, Sanay stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. She glanced down to the cocked pistol in Lyons’s hand and then to the growing arousal obstinately making itself known despite his bravado. Her dark, slender fingers gave him a light brush, the tips of her nails tracing lines over his tightly packed abs before she cupped her palm over his pectoral muscle.

“Abalisah knows all the darkness in this hotel. Yours. Mine. Everyone’s,” Sanay whispered, pressing closer to him. Her other hand glided over Lyons’s hip and she explored his body in the darkness.

She was barefoot and she rose to the tips of her toes, lips barely able to press against his collarbone, brushing lightly, tongue darting out to taste his skin.

Lyons hooked his arm under hers, and he flexed, lifting her higher. He was able to hold her up with only one arm, bring her mouth to his, lips so soft and inviting that Lyons could easily forget himself as he carried her toward the bed. Sanay helped Lyons, bracing her thighs against his hips, her slender arms draped around his neck.

The Able Team commander still couldn’t get rid of a knot of dread in his stomach, even as he joined with Sanay, exploring her wonderful caramel skin, her dark, firm nipples, velvety soft lips and warm, tender tongue in her mouth.

* * *

THE LIGHT OF dawn would not pour through Lyons’s westward-facing balcony, but he did notice the graying skies as sunrise approached.

He lay still, Sanay, the exotic, beautiful woman entangled around him, a trickle of wet drool having dried and crusted on his chest. He couldn’t see her; his eyes were mere slits, only open enough to register the increasing light of day.

Lyons could feel her moving, stirring from his chest and crawling off him. He continued breathing deeply, as if asleep.

Maybe the women were sent to these rooms as spies.

Sanay quietly moved to the nightstand, where he’d placed his pistol the night before, and lifted the revolver. When Lyons heard her check to see if the weapon was loaded, he acted without thinking. He clamped his hand down hard over hers, pinning her finger inside the trigger guard. He heard the ugly pop of her index finger, but even as that happened, he drove the heel of his palm against her jaw in a Shotokan karate stroke.