With a dismissive wave, Armanjani stood. “That is not our concern,” he declared, walking slowly from the steel room.
CHAPTER SIX
Haifa, Israel
Strolling along the brick-lined tunnel, Deborah Stone whistled a classic Broadway show tune and thought about a hot bubble bath. It had been a very long day in the archives, and she deserved a small treat. After all, today was her birthday!
When first recruited into the Mossad, she had foolishly thought her job would involve danger, excitement, travel to foreign lands and being seduced by handsome counterspies.
Hefting the sheaf of reports, Stone sighed. In truth, most of her work involved sorting HUMINT reports and filing requisition requests. It was boring but vital work in the defense of her homeland.
Unfortunately, she was forbidden to talk about the work to family or friends. Which meant that she couldn’t even have the therapeutic release of ordinary bitching and moaning. Stone knew that dentists had the highest percentage of suicides, and hadn’t been surprised to learn that the next highest was intelligence operatives.
Passing a security checkpoint, Stone was surprised to find the guard missing from his post. That was a very big deal in the agency. However, the steel gate sealing off the side tunnel was still firmly locked, so she naturally assumed that the man was simply in a stairwell catching a smoke.
Debating the matter, Stone decided to let the minor breach of security slide. Everybody deserved a second chance. If it ever happened again she would have to report him to the chief.
Shifting the stack of reports tucked under her arm, Stone continued on to the board room. The chief and the executive council were waiting for these reports.
Pushing open the ornate wooden door, Stone recoiled as a searing blast of heat washed out of the room, carrying the reek of ozone, burning carpet and roasted flesh.
Still carrying the reports, Stone rushed over to a fire alarm, broke the glass and flipped the switch. Instantly halogen gas issued from vents in the ceiling, and a strident alarm began to clang steadily.
As the gas extinguished the blaze, she anxiously waited for somebody to arrive. When that didn’t happen, Stone suddenly noticed exactly how quiet the base was—no chatter from any of the offices, no clacking of keyboards, no laughter. There was only a deep stillness permeating the air, broken only by the crackle of the fire.
Pulling in a deep lungful of air, Stone cut loose with a blood-curdling scream. The noise echoed along the hallways and empty offices invoking no response. Where was everybody?
Hurrying down the smoky tunnel, Stone burst into the private office of the unit’s director.
“Sir, please excuse…” Which was as far as Stone got. The room was full of what resembled mummies sitting around the big desk. Both male and female, the mummies were wearing the charred clothing of her coworkers, right down to the melted remains of Solomon Goldman’s truly awful toupee.
In the middle of the singed table was a melted puddle of goo on a platter that might have been an ice cream cake, and there were several wrapped gifts scattered about on the floor, as if the mummies had tossed them aside for some bizarre reason.
Even stranger, the desktop computers were flashing random bits of nonsense on their flickering screens, the coffeemaker was loudly gurgling even though the reservoir was empty, and the clock on the wall was running backward. Transfixed, Stone couldn’t believe what she was seeing. What had happened here? It was almost as if the base had been hit by a tactical nuclear weapon!
Just then, the emergency light in the corner came on, the beams much brighter than she ever remembered. They continued to increase in power, reaching nearly blinding levels when the bulbs shattered, and the battery pack burst into flames. Unexpectedly, the carpeting began to smolder, thick dark fumes rising from the melting plastic to curl about in the air like living things.
Exhaling completely, Stone slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from breathing in the toxic fumes, and turned to sprint away for the emergency exit.
Slamming aside the door, Stone dropped the stack of reports as she bolted up the stairs to the top level.
Bursting out the double doors, she stopped at the sight of death and destruction. There were several large burn marks on the wooden floor and along the brick walls. The big aquarium was softly boiling, the fish inside floating on the surface. Fried human bodies were strewed about the floor, some of them holding weapons, while others were crouched behind furniture as if trying to hide from an invader. Was that it? Had Hezbollah found the agency? To be honest, she would have expected far worse destruction than this.
Just in case, Stone clawed for the 9 mm Jerico pistol holstered behind her back. Clumsily, she clicked off the safety and worked the slide.
Just then, a stark white light filled the room from outside, and one of the heavy plastic windows exploded, sending out a shotgun blast of jagged pieces of the resilient bulletproof material.
As she retreated backward, an aluminum ladder melted before her startled eyes, and the stacks of nearby paint cans popped like chestnuts in a microwave, splattering the room in multicolor splendor.
Suddenly, every alarm the agency possessed cut loose, warning of fire, floor, radiation, poison gas and a dozen other impossible hazards. The noise was deafening, and Stone cringed, covering her ears until the racket stopped.
Outside, thunder rumbled again.
Pulling out her cell phone, she felt that the casing was warm and Stone instinctively threw it out the shattered window. As the phone hit the sidewalk, a crackling bolt of lightning lashed down to vaporize the device.
With a feeling in her guts as if the cable had just been cut in an elevator, Stone holstered the pistol and glanced at the front door only a few yards away. A cool rain was falling outside, reducing visibility to only a few yards. She couldn’t even see the parking lot, much less the highway and farms beyond.
The decision made, Stone spun and dashed pell-mell down a side corridor. Going outside would be suicide; her only hope was to go deeper into the base, as far underground as possible, which meant the vault.
For ease of access during the day for the people putting away files, the half-ton door wasn’t locked. If she could just make it inside, she stood a fighting chance against whatever had hit the agency! Some new kind of energy weapon? she wondered.
Thunder rumbled ominously outside, shaking the framed photographs on the cracked walls. That added speed to her flight, and she dove forward to land sprawling inside the vault.
“Emergency shut-down alpha, kappa, alpha!” Stone shouted desperately.
For a long second it seemed as if nothing would happen. Then Stone heard a low thumping of working hydraulics, and the massive door rolled shut with a deafening boom. Seconds later a crackling explosion sounded and the vault door visibly shook, the locking wheel turned a bright cherry-red in color. Scrambling to the farthest corner, Stone crawled onto a wooden pallet filled with cardboard boxes of plain paper. If this was lightning, then she had to get off the metal floor fast or get electrocuted!
“Contact Tel Aviv!” Stone shouted at the ceiling, hoping the emergency circuits were still working. “Request immediate extraction, and—”
Without any warning, lightning exploded from the locking wheel to slam into the file cabinet. The self-destruct charges attached to the sealed folders promptly detonated, spewing out a snowstorm of disintegrated documents, and making every hair on her body stand painfully stiff.
The entire vault trembled slightly as a glowing red spot appeared on the opposite wall, then another bolt crackled from the locking wheel to slam into the floor only inches away.
Braced for death, Stone was startled when the light faded away. However, the aftereffects of the strike were amazingly painful. Every muscle was sore, her teeth ached, the titanium pin in her shoulder from an old bullet wound was uncomfortably warm, and the wooden pallet felt warm under her bare buttocks. Holy Moses, I’m freaking naked! she thought.
Quickly, Stone checked for any burns or cuts, but she was undamaged. Except for the fact that all of her clothing was strewn about the vault in tattered pieces.
Fighting off a wave of panic, Stone laughed nervously. She had heard that lightning could blow the clothes off whatever poor bastard it hit, but nine times out of ten the target was reduced to a charcoal briquette. Only the thick metal walls had to have made the difference.
Just then, the vault shook again, much harder than before, and a glowing red spot appeared in the middle of the floor. She watched in horror as it slowly changed into orange on the way to a blazing-white, nearly hot enough to melt through. Then she cheered in victory as it began to cool back into orange.
“Is that all you got?” Stone screamed defiantly at the unseen storm.
As if in reply, a fast series of lightning bolts slammed into the building again and again, the terrible noise steadily increasing in fury and power until it sounded like the end of the world… .
Kandy, Sri Lanka
RATTLING AND CLANKING OVER every pothole, bump and rock, the U.S. Army M-1114 O’Garra-Hess armored vehicle charged along the jungle road, leaving a wide trail of churned earth in its wake. The up-armored Humvee was usually equipped with a 7.62 mm machine gun, this rented civilian model only came with air-conditioning and a rather surprisingly good stereo system. But that was turned off at the moment. This far into the northern jungle of the island nation, Bolan and the others were staying alert for anything suspicious in the lush foliage. As with so many other Third World nations, the rule of law usually ended where the paved streets did. Space was a little tight inside the vehicle because of the three BMW motorcycles stacked in the back, but nobody was eating elbow.
Prepared for combat, Bolan and his companions were wearing camouflaged fatigues, their chests oddly angled from the level four body armor underneath. Designed with overlapping ceramic plates, the NATO body armor was proof to anything short of a .50-caliber round, and cushioned trauma pads underneath offered serious protection from impact damage.
Bolan and the others were also wearing throat mikes with compact transceivers clipped to their belts. But those were turned off at the moment. Radio silence was vital for this mission. The target this morning was the White Tigers, a radical splinter group of the infamous Tamil Tigers. Officially, the White Tigers had been disbanded a few years ago under a United Nations peace treaty. In reality, the leaders had simply gone underground, and were still waging their war against the Sri Lankan government for reasons lost in an ocean of blood.
Following a curve in the road, Bolan just managed to squeeze past a troop of Sri Lankan soldiers marching through the steaming jungle. A mixture of men and women, the soldiers were carrying a wide assortment of weaponry: AK-47 assault rifles, M-16 assault rifles, Uzi machine guns, Browning Automatic Rifles and MP-5 submachine guns. Basically, anything that the government could get in bulk.
“How big is the Sri Lankan military?” Montenegro asked, thumbing 12-gauge cartridges into a Neostead shotgun.
“About half a million,” Bolan answered, keeping a tight grip on the wheel as he downshifted to take a steep hill.
Tilting back his cap, Kirkland gave a low whistle. “That is a lot of ground-pounders for an island about the size of Brooklyn.”
“Not when you consider how many terrorist groups they have,” Bolan countered, shifting again to accelerate along a smooth patch of dirt road.
“True enough,” Montenegro grunted. Aside from several terrorist organizations that operated out of the jungle, there were also roving bands of criminals that assaulted and robbed anybody foolish enough to leave the safety of the city.
“Sure would be nice if we had a machine gun,” Kirkland stated, watching the bushes, ferns and tall grass blur past the armored windows.
“You have a machine gun,” Montenegro retorted, cradling the Neostead shotgun in her arms.
“I meant mounted on the roof,” Kirkland replied, adjusting a chest harness. “The two-fourteen here is for getting up close and personal, not rattling the trees.”
Affectionately, he patted the XM-214 electric machine gun resting on his lap. The six-barrel weapon was mounted on a chest harness to help distribute its considerable weight. There was a belt of battery packs, and a backpack of ammunition that used an enclosed Niagara belt to feed the special 5.56 mm rounds into the breech of the rotating man-killer. The XM-214 had to be fired in very short bursts, or else it would run out of ammunition in only a few minutes.
Lying on the floor was a bolt-action rifle, the barrel tipped with an oversize sound suppressor. The Zastava Black Arrow was one of the best sniper rifles in the world. Chambered for a .50-caliber round, it was a man-stopper of the first order, with an accurate range of roughly a mile, and fully capable of blowing holes in most armored limousines and bank trucks.
“I prefer flexibility,” Montenegro retorted, hefting the Neostead.
Invented in South Africa for crowd control, the bizarre weapon had a pair of ammunition tubes mounted on top, each holding six 12-gauge cartridges. What made the shotgun unique was a switch that let the operator alternately feed from one tube or the other. Thus, one tube could be packed with deadly fléchettes, while the other contained harmless stun bags, allowing the operator to choose between kill or capture. However, for this mission, Montenegro had packed the tubes with a scenario load designed to get the dirty job done as fast as possible.
Passing the crumbling ruins of a temple, the up-armored Humvee jounced along as the land rose and fell into steep ravines, waterfalls and rivers appearing in no discernable pattern.
“Pretty landscape,” Kirkland noted.
“And dangerous,” Montenegro added.
He grinned. “Okay, pretty dangerous.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Chuckling, Bolan suddenly slowed to touch his earbud. “This is Striker, go ahead, Base.” He said nothing for a few minutes, then grunted. “Confirm, Base, I’ll inform Casino and Amazon.”
“God, I hate that code name,” Montenegro muttered under her breath.
“Where did they hit now?” Kirkland asked.
“A fertilizer warehouse in Israel.”
“A fertilizer warehouse?” Montenegro said thoughtfully. “Any chance it was just outside of Haifa?”
“Mossad?” Kirkland asked. “Damn, these guys got guts. The Mossad never forgives and never forgets. How much damage was done?”
“In Israel the warehouse was flattened. There was only one survivor,” Bolan said.
“The terrorists are upping the ante. We have to pull this mission off double-time,” Kirkland grimly added. “Time is not on our side.”
“If it ever was,” Bolan said, then snarled a curse and wildly veered into the jungle.
Crashing through bushes, he plowed the armored vehicle over a small tree
before swinging back onto the dirt road.
“Spot a landmine or something?” Kirkland asked, releasing his grip on a ceiling strap.
“Just a dead elephant blocking the road,” Bolan replied accelerating once more.
“Think it was a trap?” Montenegro asked, squinting at the sideview mirror. Covered with feasting birds and rats, the huge corpse lay like a grisly mountain of mottled flesh amid the lush greenery.
“I didn’t before,” Bolan stated braking to a fast stop. “Get hard, people!”
Straight ahead of them was a pair of old Saracen ACPs parked at right angles to the road. Each of the vehicles had a Browning .30-caliber machine gun mounted into a cupola, and a Bren .303 light machine gun.
Equipped with six wheels, the British-made armored personnel carriers were backed by a steep cliff on the left and a deep ravine on the right. There was no way past, or around the obstruction, or the armed men standing partially hidden amid the tall bushes.
“Think they’re legit?” Montenegro asked softly, keeping her expression neutral.
Kirkland snorted. “Not a chance.”
“Agreed. Sri Lanka hasn’t used a Saracen in decades,” Bolan noted. “And the government insignia is missing from the doors. That’s a capital offense in their army.”
“Okay, I only count ten men,” Montenegro whispered, unlocking her door.
“But each Saracen could hold ten, maybe twelve,” Kirkland added, as the six barrels whirred into operation once more. “Which means there are more hiding.”
“The elephant?” Montenegro asked out of the corner of her mouth.
“More than likely,” Bolan replied. His instincts said that these men were hijackers, street criminals just out to rob tourists. But until they made a move, there was nothing he could do. Low on manpower, the Sri Lankan government often had the military do police work. Bolan had no desire to kill cops.
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