скачать книгу бесплатно
“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.
