Fireburst

by Don Pendleton

  “Absolutely,” Kirkland replied, wiping his knife clean. “Go check, and we’ll wait here.”

  “You first,” she muttered, never taking her gaze off the oily surface of the swamp.

  “It’s dead. But more importantly, we can use the presence of the gator to our advantage,” Bolan said, pushing an anchor over the side. The concrete block hit with a splash and settled to the bottom.

  Outraged birds called out from the trees, a green snake slithered past the boat, and somewhere in the distance an alligator bawled.

  Checking over the equipment, and especially their weapons, the three people slipped into the black liquid. The water rose only to their waists, but the bottom of the swamp was incredibly slippery. It was like trying to walk across marbles.

  “Stay sharp for sink holes,” Bolan said. “They sometimes go thirty feet deep.”

  “If you go down,” Montenegro added, “just exhale a little and follow the bubbles. Those will lead you to safety.”

  All of the assorted creatures in the swamp became quiet at the approach of the humans, and several birds took flight as the team passed. That was a dead giveaway that outsiders were near, but since there was nothing they could do about it, Bolan and the others continued onward, staying alert for trouble under the black water and danger from above.

  “Rumor has it there are land mines hidden in the mud, along with motion detectors and sonar sensors.”

  “There hasn’t been anything detected so far,” Montenegro said, constantly checking the EM scanner in her hand. “But then with all of the wildlife in this swamp, the guards would be out here every ten minutes thinking it was an invasion of Navy SEALs, or maybe a herd of elephants.”

  “So, we’re safe?”

  “Well, I didn’t say that,” Montenegro demurred as the meter on the scanner flickered, indicating a proximity sensor under the water.

  Moving fast, she locked on to the pulse, duplicated it, and bounced it right back. For one long second, she thought the trick didn’t work, then the needle on the meter dropped to the side, showing no presence of a live magnetic field. Whew!

  Taking the lead, Montenegro wandered them all about the swamp, dodging land mines and sensors. If too many of the devices stopped working that would be as bad as one of them going off. There had to be no pattern to their approach. Chaos was the key to safety.

  A long mile passed in silence before they gratefully walked out of the swamp and onto dry land.

  Staying low in the bushes, Bolan and the others crept forward to peer out from between the prickly leaves. The interlacing tree branches blocked the moonlight, so they slipped on night-vision goggles and dialed for computer augmentation. Instantly, the darkness vanished, replaced by a clean green-and-white view of the Alabama wetlands.

  “Target acquired,” Bolan whispered, giving a brief smile.

  Directly across a small inset of swamp was a smooth concrete wall that continued for hundreds of yards in both directions until eventually curving away out of sight. The base of the wall was studded with sharp spikes, several of them adorned with the rotting carcass of some small animal. Bare electric wires topped the wall, and the sides were festooned with coils of concertina wire.

  Tall wooden guard towers rose on the other side, and they were equipped with searchlights and heavy machine guns. But the towers seemed to be empty, at the moment, anyway.

  “What’s over there?” Bolan asked, turning on his night-vision goggles.

  “Sewer pipe,” Montenegro stated, adjusting the controls on the handheld scanner. “But don’t go near it! The interior is packed with Claymore mines rigged with sensors to blow if anything registering human temperature gets close.”

  “Can you jam them?” Kirkland asked.

  She snorted. “Not all at the same time.”

  “And the front gate would be suicide,” Kirkland said, then he turned. “Which means it’s up to you, Tarzan.”

  Nodding, Bolan dug about in the equipment bags until finding what he wanted. Climbing into the top branches of a banyan tree, he prepared a crossbow, aimed and fired. Whizzing through the night, the arrow slammed into another tree inside the compound, a black line trailing loosely behind. When nobody responded to the presence of the line, Bolan quickly hooked the crossbow onto the tree and cinched the line tight. Then he slipped on a pair of leather gloves and stepped off the branch. Silently, he slid down the zipline, passing over the wall and going past the guard tower. When he was near the end, Bolan let go and hit the ground in a roll, coming to a stop on his feet, a gun in his hand.

  “Holy shit, who the fuck are you?” a man demanded, casting away a lit cigarette. He was wearing the uniform of Swampfox Security, and was carrying a holstered automatic, radio, tear-gas canister and a taser.

  Kicking the man in the throat, Bolan took the stun gun away from the choking guard and zapped him twice in the chest before dragging the unconscious body into the bushes. A few minutes later Kirkland arrived, closely followed by Montenegro.

  Bolan and the others studied the rows of buildings edging a central courtyard. All of them were dark and silent, but when they switched their goggles to infrared, the buildings glowed with hot spots. One large rectangular building showed numerous people lying down in neat rows. Clearly, that was the barracks.

  The next building was the armory, the body heat of a large pack of guard dogs dimly illuminating the racks of assault rifles, rocket launchers and just about everything else imaginable.

  Then they found a small brick building, centrally located, with a pole flying the American flag, as well as the flag of Swampfox Security. There were iron bars on every window, the front door was sheathed in steel, and the entire building was tightly enclosed in a web of UV beams, trip wires and proximity sensors.

  “Could be the officer’s club?” Kirkland asked, loosening both of his pistols. The big-bore Webley had joined with a Tokarev trauma pistol, a nasty weapon that fired rubber bullets using a half charge of powder. They hit with the force of a baseball bat and broke bones almost every time.

  “Only one way to find out,” Bolan replied, easing forward.

  The security was good, but not perfect, and in only a few minutes, they were inside the building and moving through the stygian darkness. The lower levels were office space, with lots of desks and manual typewriters, but no file cabinets, wall safes or computers.

  “Collar or cuffs?” Montenegro asked, deactivating an ultraviolet laser beam zigzag across a flight of stairs.

  In the movies, spies and thieves would use a mirror to redirect the beams. But that didn’t work in the real world. Well, not anymore. It worked for years, then computers got better, the sensors more sensitive, and if fifty percent of a beam failed to reach the target receptor, the alarms sounded, and the antipersonnel mines automatically detonated.

  “Cuffs,” Bolan decided. “The way I read Barrington is that he would always want to look down upon his kingdom.”

  “Zeus on high, eh?” Kirkland said softly. “Then show us the way, fearless leader.”

  Proceeding up the wooden stairs, Bolan kept his weight on the extreme ends where the wood would be the strongest and the least likely to creak. The second floor proved to only be a dining hall, the third was an indoor shooting range, and the door to the fourth floor opened onto a living room, complete with entertainment center, fish tank and fireplace. The walls were covered with gilded certificates of achievement for Edgar Barrington, sports trophies for the man, and a lo
t of framed pictures with him shaking hands with movie stars and famous politicians.

  “I think my nose is going to start bleeding the air is so thin in here,” Kirkland muttered.

  Suddenly, Bolan held up a closed fist. Instantly, Kirkland and Montenegro went silent. Across the living room, an open doorway showed a kitchen, and a thin beam of light was coming from underneath a closed door.

  Easing their way closer, Bolan and Kirkland stood guard while Montenegro checked for traps, explosives, pressure plates and everything else she could.

  “Clear,” she said, stepping back.

  Pulling out the keywire gun, Bolan filled the lock with stiff wire, then twisted it hard. The lock disengaged with a soft click, and the door swung aside on oiled hinges.

  The bedroom was large, with a lot of mirrors on the walls and deep shag-pile carpeting from another decade. There was an empty gun cabinet on the wall, as well as a lot of deer antlers used as decorations, and a stuffed grizzly bear stood in the corner.

  Lying on a circular bed was a young woman wearing a pink slip and reading a hardback book. She was beautiful with long blond hair and a lush figure that the slip did nothing to hide.

  Above the bed was a framed photograph of her in a white dress and Edgar Barrington in a black tuxedo. They were standing at the altar of a church, and people were throwing rice. That was when Bolan noticed the chain shackled to the woman’s ankle, the other end set into a steel bar bolted to the floor.

  “If you’ve come to kill Edgar, you missed him,” she said casually, turning a page. “If you plan to rape me as revenge for something he did, feel free. My so-called husband won’t give a damn, and I haven’t been touched by a real man in years.”

  “What if this is a rescue, Mrs. Barrington?” Bolan asked, sliding back his goggles so that she could see his face.

  Slowly, she lowered the book, a dozen different expressions crossing her face in rapid succession.

  “Emily,” she said softly, then added, “Do I know you?”

  “No, but we’re not friends of your husband,” Kirkland stated, removing his own goggles. “May I assume that taking you away would piss him off no end?”

  Her face flickered into something that was almost a smile. “He would go ballistic!”

  “Well, that’s a good enough reason all by itself,” Montenegro said, kneeling on the floor to start working on the lock.

  “However,” Bolan continued, “we would like something in return.”

  “Anything! Name it!” Emily cried, her cheeks flushing with excitement. “I’ll do whatever you wish if you promise to get me out of here! There’s millions in the safe behind the fish tank, and—”

  “We want Edgar’s files,” Bolan interrupted.

  Sighing deeply, Emily slumped her shoulders and opened the book once more. “Be sure to close the door on your way out,” she mumbled, the sound turning into a sob. “Nobody can see the company files b-but Edgar. They’re stored in a biometric vault that is located inside the armory, surrounded by guard dogs twenty-four hours a day, and covered with explosive charges.”

  Just then, Montenegro grunted in victory as the lock broke apart, and she moved to the shackle clamped on the woman’s slim ankle.

  “We can find a way in,” Kirkland said confidently.

  “What are you looking for that’s so important?” Emily asked listlessly, “His tax records? Black-market arms sales? Illegal drug shipments? Trophies from the people he’s tortured to death?”

  Bolan arched an eyebrow. Obviously, Edgar was a lot worse than he had ever imagined. When this was over, he would have to return and have a short, loud, one-sided conversation with the Swampfox billionaire.

  “If all of that is in the main vault, then what is in that wall safe?” Kirkland asked, pointing at the wedding picture.

  “A rigged shotgun, and nothing else,” Emily said. “Just another trap.”

  Kirkland gave a half smile. “I’m almost starting to admire the lunatic.”

  “Don’t be deceived. Edgar would take you apart like a watch if he captures you alive.” Lowering her slip, she partially exposed her breast. The company logo of Swampfox had been burned into the flesh. Branded like cattle.

  Bolan was repulsed. Farm animals weren’t treated this badly, and Barrington did this to his own wife? The man was clearly insane. If Edgar teamed up with the snake charmers, the world would be in for a new kind of hell on Earth.

  “Oh, he has got to die,” Montenegro growled, both hands busy.

  “First, we need those files,” Kirkland corrected, going to the window to keep watch on the compound below.

  “After which, we blow his head off?”

  “I have no problem with that.”

  With a click, the second lock came free and the chain rattled loosely to the floor.

  “What are you searching for exactly?” Emily asked, massaging her scarred ankle. “I can tell you everything needed to put my dear husband in jail for life!”

  Looking steadily at the woman, Bolan decided to take a gamble. “We looking for anything there is on a former member of Swampfox who went by the name Amir Bull.”

  “Zafar?” Emily gasped, smiling for the first time. “Are…are you from the major? Did he send you?”

  Turning fast, Bolan stared at the woman. The major? But before he could ask the obvious questions, a siren started to howl outside, building rapidly in volume and power until the windows were shaking.

  “God help us,” Emily gasped in horror. “He’s back! Edgar is back early!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Tavira, Portugal

  As dawn crested the ocean horizon, the streetlights of the little fishing village went dark, and smoke began to rise from a hundred stone chimneys as the workday began.

  Situated on a low cliff, Tavira overlooked a small peninsula that extended into the Atlantic Ocean. The shore was lined with tidal pools and irregular boulders that had broken off the face of the cliff over the millenium. Flapping furiously, a flock of seagulls hovered above a peninsula, their forward speed perfectly matching the push of the morning wind. Gentle waves crested on the golden sands of the irregular beach while countless tiny crabs scuttled along the rocks and tide pools in search of food.

  Situated in the middle of the peninsula was a nameless steamship, the rusty hull ever so slightly tilted to one side. Roughly seventy years earlier, a terrible storm had deposited the vessel at that location, the crew long gone, along with any documentation of ownership. Even the name had been burned off the hull by fire. The cargo hold had been empty, and the hull badly breached, the jagged ends of the opening bent inward, which made many of the locals believe the vessel had been the victim of an attack by a Nazi submarine.

  But that was ancient history. Nowadays, the rusting hulk was merely an eyesore, rubbish on the beach that was too big to haul away for junk, and too old for anybody to want to salvage. Bird nests festooned the sagging metal decks and corroded smoke stacks, the salty spray from the sea steadily washing away the streaks of filth dribbling down the sides of the hull and slowly finishing the destruction begun during a dark and stormy night so very long ago.

  Moving in low and fast, two helicopters appeared in the sunny sky, both of them heading for the nameless wreck. Coming out of the dawn was a sleek Black Hawk and a Chinese-made Z-10 attack helicopter, bearing the name and logo of a commercial shipping company. Neither of the helicopters was armed in any way, and the identification
numbers along their fuselages glistening with fresh paint.

  Approaching the wreck, the Black Hawk and the Z-10 hovered in the air for a few minutes, the turbulence of the multiple spinning blades sending the squawking seagulls flying away, and even disturbing the golden sands just enough to make the tiny crabs turn rapidly in circles until disappearing underground.

  With exaggerated grace, the helicopters landed on opposite ends of the peninsula, their blades continuing to spin at full speed, instantly ready to leave in case of trouble.

  Maintaining strict radio silence, the two pilots did nothing until the swirling sands settled, then binoculars were used to visually scan the ocean, wreck, cliff and village. A few minutes later, the side hatches were pushed open and two people got out of each helicopter. A pair of men in business suits exited the Z-10, and Major Armanjani and Dr. Khandis left the Black Hawk. Nobody was openly wearing weapons, and everybody was carrying a briefcase.

  Walking slowly across the warm sand, Armanjani studied the people coming toward him. One was older, while the other was bald. They looked like ordinary civilians, which meant they were actually Red Star agents. That wasn’t good. A wise negotiator would have sent one scientist and one guard.

  The two groups stopped in the middle of the sandy beach, then had to wait a minute for the gulls to quiet down before they could talk.

  “It rains in Russia today,” Armanjani said in a French accent.

  “But it never rains in America,” the older Red Star agent replied in a thick German accent.

  “Except on Thursday.”

  “Which is a holiday.”

  “Enough! Your masters were satisfied with what we did to the mountain?”

  The first Red Star agent smiled, while his bald counterpart didn’t. “Yes, it was most impressive.”

  “Thank you. Do you have the money?” Khandis asked, trying to keep the eagerness out of his voice.