Fireburst

by Don Pendleton

  “Agreed. All we can do is stay sharp, and be ready to move the instant something is learned.”

  “Okay, if I’m going to be chasing clouds, then I’ll need some help on this,” Bolan said. “Any chance of getting Able Team or Phoenix Force?” The two teams were the other field operatives of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, Virginia.

  “Sorry, they’re both out of contact at the moment.”

  “Okay,” Bolan stated. “If the Stony Man teams are unavailable, I have some people I can call in.”

  “Expect trouble?”

  “Just prepared for it. You know me.”

  Brognola chuckled. “Yeah, I do. All right, stay in touch, and watch your ass.”

  Turning off the laptop, Bolan grabbed his gear and loaded it into the speedboat. He started the outboard motor and headed out. He had a long way to travel, and speed was of the essence.

  In the distance, thunder softly rumbled.

  He only hoped it wasn’t already too late.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bern, Switzerland

  A thick blanket of glistening snow covered the jagged mountains surrounding the valley, puffy white clouds drifting lazily along the granite tors and snowcapped peaks.

  Joyful singing could be heard coming from both the church and the synagogue. A frozen lake reflected the majestic Alps, the image slightly distorted by the laughing people skating arm in arm. Numerous people in snowmobiles scooted along the gentle hills, and a deadly serious snowball fight was raging out of control at the elementary school.

  The town of Bern was a combination of the old and the very old. A stone tower attached to city hall boasted a gigantic clock with human-size figures that came out and performed a robotic dance every hour on the hour. There was an artesian well in the town square where people still drew water, even though they had modern plumbing, and there was the jingle of bells as teams of horses pulled colorful sleighs along the snowy streets.

  Every wooden building was decorated with ornate carvings, every brick structure painted with highly stylized hex symbols of good luck and prosperity. The satellite dishes were concealed in the nearby woods, the cables laid under the ground so that they wouldn’t mar the appearance of a classic Swiss village, and the fully functional Second World War antiaircraft cannons were well-hidden inside concrete bunkers designed to resemble stone cottages. As with just about everything else in the mountainous country, nothing was precisely what it seemed to be at first glance.

  Just down the block from the town square was a crowd of people in heavy parkas and gloves. Standing politely behind the bright yellow “danger” tape, they talked in hushed whispers and took endless pictures with their cell phones.

  On the other side of the barrier, gray smoke rose from the mounds of hot ashes and burned timbers that used to be a small bookstore. The firefighters had gone home hours earlier, and the chief constable of the village had trundled back to the station to write a report on the incident.

  Suddenly, there was the roar of an engine, and a shiny Harley-Davidson motorcycle charged across the new bridge spanning the frozen lake. Revving the twin-V88 engine to maximum, the driver banked low around a corner, both wheels slipping in the ice under the snow in spite of the winter spikes. Cursing vehemently, the driver fought for control of the bike, and managed to right the Harley before jouncing over a frosty granite curb. For a split second, man and machine were airborne, then they came down hard, skittering along the slippery sidewalk until coming to a ragged halt at the danger tape.

  Many people in the crowd frowned at the rude arrival of the outsider, but said nothing, merely moving aside to give the stranger a better view of the wreckage. Sitting on the purring motorcycle, the driver did nothing for several minutes but stare at the gaping black hole in the ground only a few yards away.

  Turning off the Harley, the man kicked down the stand and walked to the edge of the pit, still trying to comprehend what he was seeing.

  “Impossible,” he muttered, lifting his visor. “This is impossible!”

  Just then, cries of surprise rose from the skaters on the lake as a BMW snowmobile rocketed across the frozen expanse. Narrowly missing the scattering villagers, the big machine zoomed straight up the bank onto the snowy street and across the village green.

  At breakneck speed, the driver dodged the well and several children and slammed through a snowman, reducing it back into its basic component. Blinded by the explosion of flakes, the driver zigzagged down the street, nearly clipping several parked cars and another snowman before crashing into the granite cornerstone of the local bank. Stone chips went flying, the fender crumpled, and the engine sputtered into silence. However, the driver managed to stay in the seat just long enough to ride out the recoil before hopping off and yanking open a rear compartment to haul out a bulky toolbox.

  The driver was clearly a woman, and wearing the incongruous outfit of a ball gown and a thick puffy winter jacket. Satin slippers jutted from a pocket, and she was wearing heavy black snow boots.

  “Damn it, Della, it took you long enough to get here,” the driver of the motorcycle said, removing his helmet.

  “Shut up, Zander. I live farther away than you do,” Della Gotterstein countered, striding toward what remained of the bookstore. “How bad is the damage?”

  “Total,” Zander Meyers stated.

  She scowled. “Bah, that is not possible.”

  “See for yourself!” Meyers said, making a sweeping gesture.

  Pushing her way through the rapidly thinning crowd, Gotterstein halted at the danger tape to stare down into the charred hole.

  “Good God,” she whispered, setting down the toolbox to remove her own helmet. A wealth of golden hair cascaded to her trim waist.

  “Told you,” Meyers said, running a hand over his thick hair, the expensive toupee shifting ever so slightly.

  “How in the… I mean…what could…” She glanced around at the surrounding building, then swallowed hard. “Is this an echo?”

  Meyers frowned at that. Echo was code for a terrorist attack. “To be honest, I have no goddamn idea.”

  Displeased, Gotterstein pursed her lips at the blasphemy, but held her tongue. The man was an electronic genius, and that was all that mattered at the moment. His ridiculous belief in evolution was his own private affair.

  As the last of the crowd politely departed, Meyers and Gotterstein ducked under the tape to walk carefully into the smoky crater. Only stacks of ash remained from the thousands of burned books, but there were also several puddles of congealed plastic, as well as a lot of melted wiring, and what might have been fried circuit boards. They were in such poor condition it was hard to tell.

  “What do you think?” Meyers asked hopefully.

  “Are you expecting a miracle?” Gotterstein retorted angrily, kicking over a bookcase. Underneath was a smashed keyboard. “Neither of us can repair this. There’s nothing left of the bank’s mainframe. It does not exist anymore!”

  “Sadly, I concur.” Meyers sighed as a light snow began to fall. The flakes vanished with a hiss as they landed on the broken timbers and smashed bricks.

  “Billions of euros lost,” Gotterstein said, glancing at the sky. “Are you sure this was not an echo?”

  “According to the preliminary report from the fire department, this was caused by lightning,” Meyers said, turning up his collar.

  “Bah, impossible!” the woman scoffed. “The Swiss banking
consortium had us install every safeguard known to modern science. No amount of lightning could have done this!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! It would take hundreds of bolts to smash through all of our shielding, antistatic defenses and Faraday cages!”

  “So maybe there were hundreds of bolts.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “Then how do you explain it?”

  “I…I cannot.”

  “Let’s check the garage,” Meyers said, starting back toward the street.

  The snowy town seemed deserted as the man and woman crossed the street to an old barn. The side door was painted to resemble wood, but up close it was clearly welded steel. Unlocking the door, they stepped inside and waited. After a few moments, the ceiling lights automatically flickered into life.

  Proceeding along a bare concrete tunnel, they passed several massive cannon emplacements and ammunition bunkers. The air of the disguised fortress was stale, and the dust on the floor showed that no one had been inside the building for years.

  At the end of the tunnel, they each inserted a special key into a pair of slots and turned them in unison. There was a low hum, and the wall broke apart to reveal a computer workstation.

  Sitting alongside each other, Meyers and Gotterstein both ran a systems check, then started furiously typing for several minutes. Slowly, the room began to warm as the wall vents started sending out waves of heat.

  Situated around them on the walls, a dozen plasma screens strobed into operation and began scrolling complex electrical schematics, data flow charts and endless lines of binary code.

  “Dead?” Meyers asked without looking up from his work.

  “Dead,” Gotterstein muttered, brushing back a curl from her face. “But essentially undamaged.”

  “Excellent!”

  “Agreed. The links are burned out. Those line fuses we installed last year apparently did the trick. The computer is off-line, but there has been no loss of memory, function or data. We can get this up and running in a couple of hours, and nobody will be the wiser that every bank in Switzerland temporarily lost all of their financial records.”

  “I concur,” Meyers said, leaning back in his chair. Then he grinned widely. “Score one for the good guys, eh?”

  “Praise Jesus!” She laughed.

  Trying not to roll his eyes at the religious nonsense, Meyers said nothing. The woman was an expert at writing code and fixing hardware, a rare combination these days. Her only flaw was a ridiculous belief in supernatural mumbo-jumbo.

  “I’ll call my wife and let her know I’ll be late for dinner,” Meyers said, rummaging in a pocket of his heavy coat.

  “Late for dinner tomorrow,” Gotterstein countered, extracting her own cell phone. “I’ll call our contact at FINMA and give him a preliminary report.” She referred to the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, which oversaw Swiss banking.

  “Be sure to tell him what a difficult job it is, but we’re more than capable of handling the repairs.”

  Glancing sideways, Gotterstein stroked a finger behind her ear, then displayed it to the man to show that it was bone-dry.

  Chuckling, Meyers hit speed dial. As the connection was made, the whole fortress shook as thunder boomed directly overhead, the noise echoing among the cannons and bunkers.

  “Thunder snow.” Gotterstein laughed, both thumbs tapping on the miniature keyboard of her phone. “God, that takes me back to my youth. Haven’t heard it in years.”

  “Me neither,” he said with a worried expression as the thunder sounded again. Louder, longer and much closer.

  “Della, let’s get out here,” Meyers said, quickly standing. “If the primary computer across the street actually was burned out of existence by lightning, then perhaps—”

  Just then, he was interrupted by a terrible crackling noise as a lightning bolt crashed onto the barrel of an antiaircraft cannon. The surge of power arced off the melting breech to reach down the tunnel and hit the control station. Still holding their cell phones, both Meyers and Gotterstein died instantly, without even knowing what had just happened.

  Another bolt arrived, igniting the corpses, exploding the controls and flashing along the wiring. The power surge failed to reach the main CPU buried safely deep underground. But a third bolt hit, followed by a fourth, fifth, sixth… . The bombardment went on and on, arcing finally across the gap in the line fuses and burning out the main servers.

  Instantly, every file was erased. But the attack continued, bolt after bolt, until the mainframe was on fire, the CPU a charred husk and all of the primary circuits melting.

  Halogen gas hissed from the ceiling to try to extinguish the blaze, but the lightning flowed along the swirling fumes to spread along the fire-suppression system and reach into every room of the fortress. Almost immediately, a dozen of the bunkers full of high-explosive shells were reached, the combined reverberations echoing along the mountains and hills for a hundred miles.

  Along the Amazon

  MOTORING ALONG THE AMAZON River, Bolan landed at a trading post several miles downstream and caught a tramp steamer. A few hours later he reached Beln where a rental plane was waiting. Checking over the plane to make sure that it hadn’t been tampered with in any way, Bolan took off and landed in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, by early afternoon.

  Changing his clothes in the plane, Bolan then proceeded to the security station. Customs inspectors in Brazil were far less stringent than in America, especially since his diplomatic passport made Bolan legally untouchable, and his hunting permits were all in order. Over the years, he had found a dozen different ways to move military ordnance across borders. In third-world nations a simple bribe often did the trick. Brazil wasn’t in that class anymore, and was rapidly on the way to becoming the first of the new superpowers. He would have to be more discreet. However, posing as a diplomatic aide for a politically neutral country like Finland, always facilitated Bolan’s ease of entry, or a quick exit.

  “I did not know that Finland had an embassy in our country,” the inspector said in halting English.

  “As a courtesy, I will refrain from mentioning that to the ambassador,” Bolan said with a dignified sniff.

  On the floor were several bags, an arsenal of ammunition and hunting rifles nestled inside soft gray foam.

  “No, no! I only meant that I… Here is your passport, sir,” the inspector said quickly to cover the gaff.

  Slowly accepting the passport, Bolan tucked it away inside his white linen suit, then stared at the minor airport official in disdain, turned and walked away. So far, so good.

  However, Bolan noted that the security cameras in the ceiling tracked his every step through the concourse, so he stayed rigidly in character until renting a car and driving away.

  To throw off any possible tail, Bolan drove to an expensive hotel and switched to a different car from another rental agency. Then he did it again, exchanging the luxury car for an inconspicuous van.

  Now far less noticeable, Bolan traveled to a storage-locker facility outside town, and paid for three adjoining units. As he unlocked the doors, he noticed a group of men playing a game of soccer in the grassy field across the street. They seemed a little old not to be working at this time of day, so Bolan watched them for a while. Located in remote locations, storage units were a favorite target for street gangs. However, the men played hard, and when they broke for beer, Bolan continued unloading the van.

  In the first a
nd third units, he installed a proximity sensor rigged to call his cell phone if the units were activated by an intruder. In the middle unit, he stashed the steamer bags, arming himself with a shoulder holster and Beretta. He left the body armor behind, but did don a thick undershirt of ballistic cloth. The resilient material would stop most shrapnel and small-caliber bullets. The impact would still break his bones, but he wouldn’t die immediately. That wasn’t much, but where he was going next it was all that he could risk wearing.

  Driving back toward town, Bolan got a text message from Brognola about the lightning strikes in Bern. Temporarily, the ten largest banks in the world had no way to record a money transfer. The soldier knew that could have only a single purpose. The terrorists were preparing to sell the weapon. He scowled at that. First, they killed every expert in the field, then they made it impossible for the banks to reveal any details about a purchase.

  Bolan noted sourly, maneuvering through heavy traffic, that these were Swiss banks, financial institutions world famous for never telling anybody anything at all.

  Reaching the outskirts of the city, Bolan was immediately snared in rush-hour traffic. Exercising extreme patience, he spent the next two hours crawling along, dodging taxicabs, pedestrians, trucks and work crews, while listening to the radio for any news about recent attacks until he finally reached the Grand Imperial Casino and Resort.

  Dominating the downtown area, the Grand Imperial rose from the surrounding office buildings and apartment blocks like a queen standing among hobos. The entire twenty stories glittered with neon lights in every possible color of the spectrum.

  Music played from hidden speakers in the neatly trimmed hedges; a water fountain that looked suspiciously similar to the famous one in the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas sprayed high columns of water in perfect time to the music. But then, William “The Gorgon” Kirkland wasn’t known for being low-key, or overly concerned with the niceties of the law. His redeeming feature was a fanatical devotion to justice. Kirkland and Bolan went back a long way.