Smyrnoi rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was very tired. He was also very worried.
Mikhailov took out his phone and began calling the numbers that would bring the full might of their reserve forces into play.
* * *
Jang Mung-Jun managed to open the door of the roadside diner with shaking hands. He hoped, in the relatively dim light of the diner, that no one would notice the blood on his clothes.
He couldn’t stop his hands from trembling. Whether it was adrenaline dump, fear or horror and shame at his failure, he didn’t know.
His car, the last of the vehicles operable, was in the parking lot among several other civilian vehicles. If a police officer happened past, the battle damage and bullet holes pocking the Mercedes would be immediately suspicious. There was nothing to be done but call for extraction. He went to the pay phone on the wall at the back of the diner—he had been warned not to expect these, but there one was—and dialed using the calling card he had been issued with his fake travel documents.
It took long minutes for the connection to go through. The line buzzed, popped and beeped. Eventually the stern voice of Commander Choi’s SSD controller answered.
“This is the emergency line,” she said in Korean. “Why are you calling?”
“This is Jang. Six five, six three two, six zero. I must abort,” he stated. “Commander Choi... I do not know if he is dead or if he is merely captured. I am alone. I must abort.”
The controller was silent for several minutes. Finally she said, “You did not call here.”
“What?”
“Do you want those you love to suffer the penalty for your failure?” the voice asked. “I am not without compassion. I will not file a report. Do not call here again. Do not stain the SSD with your failure.”
The line went dead.
Jang stared at the receiver and put it back in its cradle. He stumbled to the front of the diner and sat on one of the stools.
“You want coffee?” asked a man in a white apron behind the counter.
“Yes,” Jang said, not looking at the man. “Yes, please.” He reached into his pocket and found only the two-dollar Canadian coin. He slid this across the counter.
“We don’t take Canadian,” the man told him.
“I...”
“You leave your wallet in the car?” the man asked. “That’s okay. Here.” He put a cup of coffee in front of Jang. “Just run out and get it when you get a chance.”
“Thank you.” Jang sat, staring, unsure of what to do next. Finally he took a sip of his coffee. It was not very good. The man was busy with someone at the other end of the diner. Jang took the toonie out of his pocket and placed it on the counter.
He wouldn’t need it anymore.
The North Korean walked out of the diner and headed to the badly damaged Mercedes. I’m in shock, he realized. I am not thinking rationally.
He had answered to Commander Choi for his entire career. Now Choi was gone. Alive or dead, his superior had failed. He was disgraced. He might even take his own life to save his family from the shame. It was time Jang did the same.
He felt no fear. His heart was gripped by a tremendous sense of sadness. Opening the door of the Mercedes, he climbed behind the wheel and fired up the engine. A belt squealed, but the car started. He did not need to go far, anyway. He drove the car to the very far edge of the parking lot, as distant from the building as he could get. There were no other cars here. He parked, switched off the car, and threw the keys out the shattered driver’s-side window. They hit the pavement with a clatter.
He put his arm on the sill of the open window. The Daewoo K-7 was hidden under the seat. He took it out, removed the magazine and thumbed out all the rounds but one. Then he put the magazine back into the weapon and cocked it, chambering that single cartridge.
A man walked past in the parking lot, circled the Mercedes and opened the passenger door. For the briefest of moments, Jang thought perhaps Commander Choi had found him. But the man who got in had a face Jang recognized from his mission briefing.
“Put it down,” Farhad Dabiri ordered. The Iranian assassin was holding a silenced, small-caliber pistol in his hand.
Jang placed his submachine gun on the dashboard, put his hands in his lap and turned to the assassin. “So shoot me. I lose nothing. Your name is...Dabiri,” he said.
“I have become concerned, of late, that I am becoming too well known.” The assassin sighed. “You are simply proving that out. Yours was the only tracking device still functioning from within your group.”
“Tracking device?”
“It isn’t important,” Dabiri said. “A dead man need not trouble himself with such things.”
“You mean to kill me?”
“What would be the point?” Dabiri asked. “Your government will do that.”
“We are trying to kill Octavios,” Jang said. “Is that not your goal, as well? Why do you not help me? We want the same thing.”
“We wanted the same thing,” Dabiri corrected him, “although your friends the Russians were short-sighted about those matters. But you...you are the last of a bunch of failures. You will not kill Octavios. I came to see for myself what happened. Now I know.”
“Now you know.”
Dabiri shook his head. “There is nothing more you can do to help me. Farewell. This is a bloody business we are in.” He opened his door, got out and walked away.
Jang watched the man go. He supposed he had wasted enough time. He took the K-7 from the dashboard, put the barrel deep into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Chapter Thirteen
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
Aaron Kurtzman rolled his chair from the industrial-strength pot of coffee back to his main workspace. Multiple monitors faced him, as did multiple keyboards. From his workstation he had full access to the endless cybernetics realms over which the Farm, and the Sensitive Operations Group, held dominion. On his screens was a complex overlay of transmission signals, some of them quite odd. The base signal was sporadic, subject to fluctuations one did not normally see. Cross-referenced with the pattern supplied by Mack Bolan’s new Israeli friend, it was becoming curiouser and curiouser.
Barbara Price appeared in the door to the cybernetics bay, where Kurtzman and his computer experts all had separate workstations. The rest of the team was elsewhere, for the moment; it was just Price and Kurtzman. The two had known each other—and Mack Bolan—for a long time.
“What have you got, Aaron? You look intrigued.”
“I am intrigued.” The cyberwizard sipped from his coffee mug, a gigantic model with tactical rails built into it. The joke was that you could mount it to an assault rifle. Kurtzman had received this latest version as a gift from one of the blacksuits who’d appreciated his nuclear-strength java as much as Kurtzman valued its restorative properties.
“This signal,” Kurtzman said, “is passive.”
“You say that like I know what it means.”
“I mean this signal isn’t a signal at all. It’s a reflection. I guarantee you Striker has gone through everything that guy could be carrying, anything that might be a bug or a homer or a tracker, right? And we know our boy is thorough when he’s searching somebody.”
“He certainly is.”
“Well, Striker didn’t find anything on Octavios because there’s nothing to find. Whatever they’re using to track him, whatever this signal profile is built around, it’s coming from a satellite overhead. Or I should say, it’s being beamed from a satellite and bouncing off Octavios somehow. That’s why the signal fluctuates. It’s like if you were looking for the reflection of a flashlight coming from a handmade mirror with flaws in its face. Well, the human body isn’t a reliable reflector, especially if it’s moving. But it’s reliable enough.”
“Can you isolate the satellite?” Price asked. “Hack into it? Or even target
it?”
“Whoa, whoa, easy, tiger,” Kurtzman cautioned. “First things first. I’ve got to find it. That’s the thing. The signal is a reflection. There’s no way to trace it back to the source in a straight line because we don’t know what angle the source comes from. We know the reflection’s vector, but since we don’t know the shape of the reflector, so to speak, we don’t know how the signal is hitting it.”
“So it’s impossible?”
Kurtzman took another long swallow from his coffee mug. “Nothing is impossible. Difficult, yes. Annoying, sure. But not impossible. But you’ve got to give me time.”
“Then what?”
“Once we’ve isolated the satellite,” Kurtzman said, “I’ll either take it down from inside or I’ll call in a favor with the SDI gang.”
“Nobody calls it that anymore,” Price told him.
“Yeah, well, it’s still shooting stuff in space using orbiting missile platforms. Reminds me of the eighties. I almost hope I can’t crack it. It’d be fun to blow up something in space.”
“You’re incorrigible. Don’t stay up all night. It’s getting late.”
“I make no promises.” He finished his coffee and swiveled to wheel his way back to the coffeemaker. “Now shoo, lady. I’ve got to concentrate.”
“Say no more.” Price left him to his business.
Outside Pittsburgh
“So, are you going to tell me where we’re going?” Hazan asked. Bolan had found an isolated stretch of road near a copse of trees, pulled the battered Malibu off the highway and set up camp beyond the tree line. He had dug a Dakota fire pit to conceal the flames and was boiling water for instant coffee. They’d already eaten some of the rations the Farm had provided—to supplement the snacks Bolan and Octavios had purchased at the big-box store.
“You make a lot of assumptions with this ‘we,’” he said.
“You make a lot of assumptions about what Israeli Intelligence knows and doesn’t know, Cooper,” she countered. “For example, I know that there is a US black site hidden inside a warehouse in an industrial park in Philadelphia. Does your proximity to that location have anything to do with that? It is only a few hours’ distant by car.”
Bolan considered her words. There was really no reason not to let her know, if she knew the site was there. He’d be confirming that by walking her in, but she was an ally. The Farm had quietly transmitted to his secure phone several follow-up files about the young woman. Bolan had gone through them all as they sat, rested and ate.
Octavios, who had announced he wasn’t hungry, was sleeping in the back of the Malibu. Bolan had double-checked the state of the leads implanted in his chest. Thanks to the antibiotics, the infection had abated somewhat. They still did not look as healthy as Bolan would have preferred, and Octavios had gone from greenish to deathly pale. He’d dismissed the matter as “changes in the ambient light,” but Bolan new better.
“My destination is the secure facility in Philadelphia, yes,” Bolan said. “Octavios will be safe there. Nobody’s going to get in to get at him, he’s not going to be able to get out, and the personnel within all have the highest security clearances. Our people will get hands-on with his transmitter and disable the data bomb before it can go off.”
“The data will still be out there,” Hazan said.
“It will,” Bolan said, nodding. “But I know some pretty good computer experts.” He thought of Aaron Kurtzman. “With the hardware in hand, they may be able to divine its secrets and ferret out where the data is hiding. In the cloud, or whatever.”
She laughed again. “You don’t sound like you’re very fond of computers.”
“I deal in hardware, not software.”
She nodded. “If your site is so close by,” Hazan said, “why aren’t we going there now? We could be there well before dawn.”
“Because I’d rather not paint it with a target.” Bolan jerked a thumb toward the Malibu. “Until my people can figure out what to do about how people are tracking him, we’re not going anywhere near Philadelphia. Well. Not anywhere more near Philadelphia. Besides, there’s a lot of abandoned real estate in Pittsburgh. You’d be amazed what online satellite maps can show you.”
“Why do I get the impression,” she said, “that you do nothing without a plan?”
“Not if I can help it. Done right, planning a mission beforehand looks a lot like luck. Or magic.” He took out his secure smartphone, dialed the Farm and turned on the speaker function.
“Striker,” Price said, “is your lady friend with you?”
Bolan met Hazan’s eyes. “She is.”
“Please thank her for the intel she transmitted to us through you. I’m only sorry that it didn’t come through regular channels.”
“If it had come through regular channels,” Hazan said, “there’s no telling who might have gotten hold of it. We intercepted it, after all.”
“I wasn’t implying anything,” Price stated. “Striker, the team is working on it. We’ll let you know when we have a solution.”
“Thanks, Base,” Bolan replied. “There are some things I need to arrange.”
“Not another construction project, I hope?” said Price. “Not only did that cost a fortune, but the cleanup at that location has been extremely involved. You...really did a number on them. Even our mutual friend was a little taken aback.”
“Hal,” Hazan said. “She’s talking about Hal Brognola.”
Bolan imagined he could see Price turning red on the other end of the audio connection. “Regardless,” she said, “we’re standing by to provide you with whatever you need.”
“I’ll transmit exact coordinates in a text. As well as some notes and a complete list of what I’m asking for. But I’m letting you know now because I need you to arrange to have some specific backup waiting for me in the wings.”
“I understand, Striker. Good hunting, as usual. And be careful.”
“Striker out,” he said, disconnecting.
“‘Striker.’ Such a dramatic name. This is truly what your people call you?”
“It’s just a code name,” the soldier stated. “We all have them. What’s yours?”
She smiled. “At one time, it was ‘Raven,’ but the practice has fallen out of favor in Mossad.” She looked at him for a moment. “You have been doing this for a long time?”
“Camping?”
“Working for your government,” she said. “What are the current euphemisms? ‘Troubleshooting.’ Or perhaps ‘wetwork.’”
“I’m not an assassin.”
“Then what do you call what you do?” she asked. “A single man wades into a field full of men whose deaths he has planned. Despite unexpected odds, he emerges victorious and even untouched. What are you if not a killer?”
“I’ve killed,” Bolan said, “but only because it was necessary. When it served justice. When it was the right thing to do. That’s who I am. I make wrong things right.”
“The man from Justice,” she said, “who is judge, jury, and executioner.” She paused, watching his face in the dim light from the fire pit. He could not hide the faintest of grins. “What,” she said at last, “is so funny?”
Outside Pittsburgh
There was no turning back from this.
Farhad Dabiri watched from his vantage on a hill overlooking the freight yard. A two-story office building, offset from the center of the area, was bordered by a tall, barbed-wire-topped perimeter fence. The one entrance in and out of the freight yard was guarded by a private security officer, a man in a polyester uniform who was not even armed. Or at least, the gate had been guarded by such a man, before the Russians invaded his beat and murdered him.
Dabiri had used his tracking equipment to acquire the Russians and trace them to this spot. The location had confused him at first, given that Octavios and his captor were nowhere in sight. But
the Russians had pulled out all the stops. They were using the freight yard, under cover of darkness, to stage a massive number of troops. Dabiri was shocked at just how many of them there were.
Mikhailov, the commander, must have reacted badly to having his forces so severely beaten. Dabiri had seen the aftermath of the killing field the American agent had somehow orchestrated. The Iranian was at a loss as to how the man knew of such a location, or why that field had been strewed with the type of vehicle traps normally reserved for tanks.
Then again, it was the Americans. For all Dabiri knew, they spent their weekends reenacting guerrilla sieges on replica tanks. Any country whose citizens periodically reenacted their own civil war was not quite sane. There was no telling what they could consider amusement or the lengths to which they would go to experience it.
Dabiri considered what he knew of the Russians, what he had known of the North Koreans, and the dossier he had on the Israeli agent who had been dogging the SSD. Everybody knew everybody. It was a wonder any of them was considered a covert operative at all.
Somewhere in the darkness, if you traveled far enough, you would come to city streets. To homes. In those homes, fat, dumb Americans slept ignorantly in their beds, with no knowledge of the secret wars being fought mere blocks away. Dabiri wished he could sneak into all their homes, like their holiday figure. What was its name? The magical man who stole into people’s houses at night and left them gifts. Dabiri would like to appear in the home of every American and give each one the gift of death. A single bullet behind every ear.
How many Americans were there now? Hundreds of millions, surely. He would need a few hundred million bullets. There was so much work to do.
The idea made him chuckle.
In the freight yard below him, the Russians were moving around frantically. They had captured the yard to have sufficient space and privacy in which to unload their tractor trailers. Attached to the backs of the trailers, some of them flatbeds, were heavy ramps. They were offloading from the flatbeds a series of BPM-97 Vystrels—heavily armored trucks that the Americans called MRAPs. The mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles bore mounted 12.7 mm Kord heavy machine guns.
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