Meltdown te-97

by Don Pendleton

Bolan heard the clink of the Ingram on the concrete floor. He moved. Wheeling back away from the door, he sprayed hellfire into the room.

  Eli was bent over, and the bullets skimmed just over his stooped form. At the first sound, he dived for a corner of the room, rolled once and slammed into the wall.

  The four men inside were taken by surprise.

  Bolan's first burst of fire caught Bobby in the throat. Blood spouted from three holes just below his shoulder line. Stunned by the impact of .45 caliber slugs he slammed back into the wall, but refused to fall.

  As Bolan sprayed a figure eight to the left of the dying man, he caught a second punk in the shoulder. The bonecracking slaughter chewed him to pieces before he dropped.

  Bolan stood framed in the doorway, an easy target, but there was no other way. Matt Stevens slipped in behind him. Down on one knee, he sprayed his own death stream into the room like an angry fireman hosing down a three-alarmer.

  The two remaining men had taken refuge behind a standard-issue steel desk. Bolan slammed a new magazine into the Ingram. He drilled the desk with cold fury, working his fire in a wavy line. Hole after deadly hole opened in the flimsy sheet metal. The desk shuddered, slowly sliding back toward the wall.

  Bolan entered the office as Eli retrieved his weapon. Eli walked to the desk and pushed it aside. His shoulders arched, and with a rush he spewed the contents of his stomach. He shook his head as if to clear it, spitting to rid his mouth of the bilious aftertaste. "I don't think I'll ever get used to this," he said.

  But Bolan was transformed. His large frame seemed made of harder steel. The set of his jaw was something Cohen hadn't seen before. The Executioner was all business. He crammed a new magazine into the Ingram and tossed the empty one over the ruined desk. It clanged once and was still.

  Cohen recognized the sound. It was a death knell.

  "So where the hell are they keeping her?" Bolan asked the question as if the walls should answer him.

  "There are a few more rooms down here," Stevens said. "If she's on this level, we should be able to find her."

  "We'd better."

  Cohen said nothing.

  "Let's hit it then."

  Bolan started down the hall, moving away from the elevator bank. He tried the first door, banging it back against the inner wall with a dull echo. He clicked on the light, but the room was empty. Stevens moved on to the next. It, too, was deserted. Cohen came up empty on the third.

  On the fourth try, the door was locked.

  "Check those bastards, Eli. One of them might have a master key." Cohen sprinted back down the hall to the scene of the firefight. In a minute he was back, dangling a key on a heavy metal ring.

  The intricately etched key ground in the lock. The door opened with a cavernous boom. Bolan flicked the light. The room seemed as empty as the others.

  Then something caught Bolan's eye. It was a shoe, lying just to the side of the office desk that occupied one corner.

  The Executioner ran, to the desk and pushed it aside. Rachel was lying on her back, her eyes closed. "I've got her! Give me a hand!"

  He knelt beside the still form.

  "Rachel, Rachel. Can you hear me?"

  Cohen and Stevens pressed in behind him, but Bolan was oblivious to them. He chafed the woman's wrists, then patted her cheeks gently.

  Cohen marveled at the gentleness of the huge hands.

  Too frightened that she might not respond, Cohen turned away. He closed his eyes. His fists were white.

  Then, there was a moan. Music to their cars.

  "Rachel, it's me, Mack." Bolan bent closer, placing an ear to her lips. He noticed they were raw. A large bruise on her check had faded, but it didn't escape his eye.

  "Eli? Is Eli there?"

  "Yes, Rachel, he's here." Bolan's memory returned to another frail form, in another place. That woman hadn't been so lucky.

  He helped Rachel to sit, and Cohen slipped in beside him. Mack Bolan stood while Eli Cohen continued to revive his sister. As he watched the two of them, he remembered the pain of his own sister's loss. So many victims. The war went on and on. And always it was the innocent who suffered. It didn't matter that Rachel had more guts than most, had chosen to fight back. Compared to the animals, compared even to himself, Rachel Peres was an innocent.

  It was she, and those like her, who made the war necessary. And who made it possible to continue. And he would continue.

  For sure.

  Her voice roused him. It was weak, sure, but it sounded no less determined than the last time he had seen her.

  "We have to get a move on," Matt Stevens said. "Judging by that plume of steam we saw on the way over, the reactor is getting hot. Fast. If we're going to take these bastards down, we have to do it now."

  "I know," Bolan said. "Don't worry. We'll take them down. Hard."

  Rachel struggled to her feet, and Cohen assisted her to a seat behind the desk. "Rachel," he said. His voice was so soft that Bolan barely heard it. "We need help. Do you have any idea what's supposed to happen here?"

  "They're going to trigger a meltdown. They're draining the reactor coolant. When they're ready, they'll pull the control rods for the final step."

  "The hostages. What about the hostages? What are they going to do with them? Do you have any idea?"

  "I heard Glinkov talking. I think he said they're going to be put in the building with the reactor. Something about the radiation helping them out."

  "The containment building," Stevens said. "The radiation level is already up in there. That's where that steam came from. If he uncovers the core of that reactor, the radiation will kill anybody inside. And when the fuel burns, that place will be so hot, nobody will be able to get in there for years."

  "That's just what the bastard wants," Bolan said.

  "Enough time to cover his ass. And a shutdown of all the nuke plants in the country."

  "How many men, Eli? How many left?"

  "Twelve, I think."

  "And where the hell is Parsons? And Achison?"

  "I saw Parsons a couple of hours ago," Rachel said. "I don't know where he is now. Or even if he's still alive. Achison is supposed to bring a chopper in for Glinkov's getaway."

  * * *

  Andrey Glinkov watched the dials. The needle on the containment building radiation level was still rising. At ten thousand rems it would be time to move the hostages. The television monitors flickered as they jumped from one image to another. In the bottom of the cooling tower, he could see the water slowly rising. It was highly radioactive waste water leaking from the reactor pressure container. As the core heated, seals and joints on the coolant conduit system began to give, spilling waste water indiscriminately. Radioactive hydrogen was beginning to accumulate at the top of the cooling tower.

  The gas was generated by the breakup of the remaining coolant water. An errant spark would detonate the explosive gas. Unless the volume was large, the four-foot-thick concrete walls of the containment building should be equal to the task.

  Pressure valves released the gas, together with radioactive steam, whenever the pressure grew too great. Already the runaway reactor had begun to leak deadly gas into the atmosphere around the plant. In the cold air, the radioactive steam condensed in small, deadly clouds for a few moments. Then, borne on a stiff winter wind, it vanished into thin air to become a slowly drifting invisible killing zone.

  The temperature gauge was most interesting. It was slowly climbing as the coolant drained away, rushing into the complex of concrete tunnels that honeycombed the earth under the plant. It was already nearly six hundred degrees in the containment building, and the core was hotter still. Glinkov was still unaware of Robbins's ploy. With the evacuation pump out of action, the water was running off at a slower rate than was possible. And the tunnel exits were still sealed.

  From time to time, the Russian glanced at the security monitors, but his hands were full. He had no time to watch what was going on in the bowels of the plant. Had he been
more alert, he might have seen three men and a woman move past one of the cameras on Level 4.

  Had he been more attentive still, he might have seen another shadowy figure as well. This one moved with less urgency, seeming almost lost in its tentative wandering through the maze of underground corridors. He hadn't heard from the hit team waiting for Eli Cohen. It was taking a long time.

  On the other hand, perhaps Cohen had simply taken as long to get below as he had to check the plant perimeter. Death is patient, Glinkov knew.

  Cohen's time would come soon enough. And that would leave one final victim.

  Mack Bolan.

  Surely he wouldn't fail to show. Everything in his KGB files said that he would. A man who dared to chew at the Soviet beast from its very heart as Bolan had done in Moscow itself, wouldn't balk at the opportunity so carefully and generously extended to him here.

  By his own estimate, Glinkov had less than an hour. Achison would be arriving in fifty minutes. By then he would have completed his sabotage of the reactor. The hostages would long since have been sealed in the containment building, to be found God knows when, but certainly long after their discovery would be a threat to him. That left only the assault team itself to deal with.

  They, too, were expendable. Their work finished, some of their number would turn on the others. They would be eliminated quickly and painlessly. He and Achison would finish the job from the chopper.

  Years later, with little left but radioactive bones, no one would care how they had died. They would be written off as victims of the tragic accident of Thunder Mountain — if anyone still cared.

  It was time to check on the hostages.

  Glinkov gestured to the sentry posted outside the backup control room. "How are our guests, Warren? Resting comfortably, I trust?"

  Warren smiled before answering. "Hell, yes. They don't have a care in the world."

  "It will be time to move them very shortly. You had better get the rest of the team. We'll need them for the last part of our operation."

  "Where to?"

  "On Level 4. There's a double-airlock entrance to the reactor containment building down there."

  "What about Cohen?"

  "Don't worry about him."

  "Bobby taking care of him?"

  Glinkov nodded.

  "Too bad. I wanted to waste him myself," Warren said. "That bastard was getting way too big for his boots."

  "I shouldn't wonder," Glinkov said. "Mossad agents are not known for their modesty."

  "Mossad! Are you kidding?"

  "Most assuredly not."

  "Why'd you wait so long to ice him?"

  "He was useful. A man should never lose an opportunity to let an opponent do his work for him. It is most efficient. Even Moscow Center is budget conscious these days. Tools are everywhere, Warren. But it takes a craftsman to recognize them. And an artist to make the most of them."

  "Yeah," Warren said, laughing. "I guess you could teach a course on that subject."

  "Perhaps I will, Warren. Perhaps I will. Even you might learn something."

  "I'll bet," Warren said.

  Glinkov just smiled.

  27

  Fortunately Rachel was resilient.

  She had already regained her energy and now toted an AK-47 taken from one of her captors.

  "We're going to have a real problem upstairs," she said. Her voice betrayed no emotion. Bolan knew it was partly self-control and partly realism.

  "What's the situation up there?" he asked.

  "If they haven't moved anyone, all the hostages are in the secondary control room. I don't know how Glinkov has his team deployed. But I do know there's only one way into that room."

  "Are there guards in with them?"

  "There was one on the door. That's all I saw."

  Bolan turned to Matt Stevens. "Is there any way we can get to the main control room without being spotted, Matt?"

  "Depends on where they are. We can get close, but unless the door is opened from inside, there's only one way in."

  "How?" Bolan's voice cracked sharply. The concrete walls echoed as if it was a pistol shot.

  Stevens reached into his pocket and withdrew a flat plastic security pass. About the size of a credit card, it was magnetically coded. There was a lock on each of the doors. The card would permit him to open them one at a time. "The problem is, this can be overridden. If Glinkov spots me, we're out of luck."

  "Would he be able to tell you were there? Is there an alarm or something that indicates that the card is being used?"

  "No, no alarm. But there is a set of lights on the console. If he sees them, and if he knows what they mean, it's all over."

  "Then we have to keep him busy," Eli said.

  "How?" Rachel demanded.

  "I'm supposed to be dead, right?"

  "So what if he finds out I'm alive and well? Matt, is there any way I can call attention to myself someplace in the plant?"

  "How much attention?" Stevens asked.

  "Lots of attention."

  "Hell, the easiest thing is just call him on the intercom."

  "No good. Too obvious."

  "The TV security monitors," Stevens suggested. "You could take a few of them out. He'd have to notice the blank screens."

  "Listen," Mack Bolan said. "We have to know what we're up against before we try anything. We make one mistake, and we lose it all. Everything."

  "You got any ideas, then, Mack?"

  "Look, we know there's a guard on the control room. We also know there's another guard in the backup control room. That means there are at least ten men someplace in this plant. They have guns, and Glinkov needs them."

  "But how do we find them?"

  "We don't. They find us."

  "But the hostages. As long as Glinkov has them, we can't take any chances. We can't jeopardize their lives."

  "Their lives are already in jeopardy. And Glinkov wants us to worry about them. He also wants to get out of here alive. He can't afford to get caught here. If he kills the hostages before he gets us, he has no leverage at all. None. I think we should hit him head on. Go right to the control room."

  "Then what?"

  "If he knows we're coming, we smoke out the other gunners. We take them down, and our problem gets a whole lot easier to solve."

  "Mack's right," Eli Cohen said. He stood and picked up his Ingram.

  "I don't like it. Those people are friends of mine," Matt Stevens said.

  "You have any other ideas, Matt?"

  "No... I don't."

  "Let's do it."

  Matt Stevens found the group anticontamination suits, which they put on before sprinting for the elevators. Rachel had recovered most of her strength, but she still lagged behind the others. It was beginning. Mack Bolan felt the juices flowing. For the first time since getting into the plant, he felt like a soldier instead of a bag man. Head on, that was the way to deal with slime like Glinkov.

  Glinkov was going to meet a warrior. Bolan knew men like the Russian always counted on caution.

  They used it against you, and then they laughed all the way to their sanctuaries. But this time it would be different.

  Mack Bolan was nobody's victim.

  It was time to play hardball.

  And Mack Bolan knew the rules.

  Back on the main floor, the four soldiers had a quick conference.

  "Look, keep this in mind," Bolan whispered. "Either way, we win. If we get inside the control room before he notices, we've got him. If we don't we smoke out the other goons. Matt, you said there's a second set of doors into the control room, right?"

  "Yeah, but I only have one card."

  "It doesn't matter. Eli, you and Rachel get to that other entrance. Make a little noise. Let him know you're there, but watch your back. If he tries to run, he'll come our way. Otherwise we get to him."

  As they made ready to leave, two of Stevens's men slipped in through the main entrance.

  "Find anything?" Stevens whisper
ed.

  "Nothing. The place is deserted."

  "We'll have our hands full here," Bolan interrupted. "One of the guys go with Eli, the other come with Matt and me."

  "What's going on?"

  "You'll see soon enough."

  "Matt, how long will it take to get to the other door?" Bolan asked.

  "Two or three minutes. Adam knows the way. And now we've got another security card. Adam can get in the other door."

  One of the new men nodded.

  "Okay. Eli, we'll wait five minutes. Then we'll make our move. Make sure he knows you're there. If there's a guard, you'll have to take him down. But don't take any foolish chances."

  Bolan looked at Rachel. She avoided his gaze. The steel in those hard blue eyes frightened her.

  "Right."

  The three moved out, working their way along the darkened corridor to the opposite approach to the control room. While they waited, Bolan and the others were silent. The Executioner was zeroing in on the job ahead. Glinkov was a pro. And he was good. He wouldn't have gotten this far if he wasn't. He was also unpredictable. Despite his calm exterior, Bolan knew he was risking lives, lives that weren't his to risk. But he had no choice.

  To hesitate was to lose. And Mack Bolan hadn't come this far to lose it all at the wire.

  Too much had to be accounted for. Hanley's kids were fatherless. That counted. An innocent guard at the plant was dead. That counted.

  Bolan wasn't going to rest until he could cancel the debt. Completely. Paid in full was the only settlement he would accept.

  * * *

  There was a guard on the door. He was pacing back and forth in front of it, smoking a cigarette. A pile of butts lay against the wall. The man was either bored or nervous. Cohen smiled grimly. In a minute he'd be neither. In a minute he'd be dead.

  The distance was too great to cover without being seen.

  On the other hand, they were supposed to create a diversion. Well, here it comes, Cohen thought.

  The guard continued his pacing. He was heading toward them. At about fifteen feet past the door, he would pivot and move back the way he had come. Pivot, strut. Pivot, strut.

  Cohen timed it perfectly. He had one minute.

  The guard paced, and Cohen watched. And waited.