“Good to see you, Striker,” the helmeted pilot said.
“Good to be here,” Bolan replied. “Where’s Jack?”
“I just told him I recovered you and the lieutenant, but he’s still inside,” Charlie said. “He says he’s got a bit of a problem.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Here it is! About goddamn time,” Grimaldi muttered.
As embarrassing as it was to admit, once deeper inside the complex, he’d actually gotten lost in the complex of sterile hallways and identical sealed doorways. Tokaido had finally come through, however, and sent him a labeled map, based on the original blueprints.
Now, instead of plain corridors and unmarked rooms, the tiny map of the floor had labels on every room. It also kept track of where he was in the complex, and the quickest route back to the exit.
Other than that small hiccup, moving through the complex had been unusually easy. Everyone else had been running somewhere else once the intruder alert had gone off, and in the crush of personnel, Grimaldi had simply blended with the rest of the security. No one had questioned him as he’d made his way deeper into the complex, but after the third turn that took him nowhere important—although he now knew where the kitchens were—and finding less and less people as he went, the pilot had finally given up. He’d pulled out his smartphone just in time to receive the schematic floor plan of the base. Breathing a sigh of relief, he was pleased to find he was actually only a couple of turns away from the detention cells.
Examining the lock, he extruded a small metal prong from the bottom of his cell phone and swiped it down through the electronic lock, then backed up. The phone contained a program that would analyze and open just about any key card lock program from commercial versions to encoded ones used by the military. This one was no exception, and the door popped open with a soft click.
The room was empty, however, and his investigation of the other five rooms, three on either side of the small corridor, revealed that they, too, were unoccupied. “Now where’s the goddamned laboratory?”
He flipped through the blueprint with his finger, scanning for the lab section and finding it in a complex of large rooms about sixty meters away. Grimaldi quickly plotted out a back corridor path that would get him there in less than two minutes.
He set out at a fast walk, sticking to the walls and ducking out of sight whenever anyone came close. He heard the electronic female voice repeat the “intruder alert” announcement, and then he was just one corner away from the laboratory compound. He was about to round the corner when he heard two voices approach.
“I don’t care where you think you have to be, Kepler said to check the lab, and that’s what we’re gonna do!”
“Fine, but if I catch hell for it later, I’m comin’ after you.”
“Whatever. Now come on.”
Grimaldi raised his MP-7 and pulled out his camera again. Sticking the fiber-optic end around the corner, he saw the corridor in the small monitor. If he’d wanted to, he could have taken both guards out with no one being the wiser.
The guards tromped down the hall, then he heard someone running, and one of them cry out, “Stop right there!” before a veritable crowd of what looked like screeching apes echoed down the hallway. Gun at the ready, Grimaldi peeked around the corner.
The two guards he had heard earlier lay unconscious on the floor as a group of the animals thundered down the hall, away from him. The Stony Man pilot frowned at the sight, but immediately headed to the lab they’d stormed out of.
The interior was a disaster zone, with overturned equipment, scattered papers and shattered glass everywhere. A large window had been completely broken out of its frame, and open, empty cages inside the next room revealed where the apes had come from.
Leading with his weapon, Grimaldi cleared the room, keeping an eye open for a working computer. Stepping over the body of a dead guard, he found one in the back of the room, next to another observation window, this one looking in on dirt, tall grass and a single tropical tree. He got out his phone and plugged it into the USB jack on the computer. Hitting the 9 button on his smartphone three times, the device began scanning, compressing and copying the entire hard drive. At the very least, he thought, I figure Akira and the folks at Stony Man will want to have a look at this.
While he waited, Grimaldi spotted the hypo gun on the table, containing an empty ampoule. Looking around, he found one of the plastic containers on the floor against a table leg, still full of a viscous black liquid. He picked it up and slipped it into his pocket.
His phone beeped twice, signaling it had completed its task. The pilot unplugged the smartphone and slipped it back into his pocket just as another announcement, this one ordering all personnel to evacuate the complex, echoed through the hallways.
That doesn’t sound promising, he thought as he strode toward the door. Looking down the corridor, he was pleased to find it deserted. In the distance, he heard animal howls and a short burst of gunfire.
“Let’s see... What’s the best way to get the hell out of here?” he muttered. The straightest path appeared to take him in the same direction as the sounds. Pausing only to replenish his grenades from the unconscious guards, Grimaldi walked toward the exit, checking each corridor and doorway carefully before proceeding. The complex was completely deserted, with no sign of anyone. Two more turns and he was at the main intersection that would take him to the entrance airlock. But the snorts, grunts and yowls coming from the area indicated he wasn’t the only one trying to get out.
Poking his camera around the corridor again, his eyes widened when he saw more than a half-dozen apes in the airlock. A couple were still inside the corridor and he made out a few others sniffing around the far side.
Just then, Mott’s voice sounded in his earpiece. “Flyboy, this is Dragonslayer. I have visual on Striker and Doc One. Repeat, I have— Holy shit!”
“Say again, Dragonslayer?” Grimaldi asked as he watched the apes start leaving the other side of the airlock.
“I am retrieving Striker and Doc One at main entrance. Truck came out and nearly sideswiped me. Evac base at earliest opportunity. Over.”
“I’d love to, except I’ve got a big, furry obstacle in my way,” Grimaldi replied. “Several apes are still in airlock.”
“One moment, Flyboy—” He heard Mott shouting to someone in the back and then a familiar and very welcome voice came on the radio.
“Flyboy, what are you still doing in there?” Bolan asked.
“Looking for you, what else?” Grimaldi replied. “If you’d told me you were already busting out, I would have waited for you at the door. Now I’m stuck in here.”
“If you fire into the ceiling as you approach, it should spook the apes enough to get them moving out of the base. Charlie will pull up to give them some running room, then we’ll come back down to grab you.”
“Works for me.” Grimaldi checked the load in his MP-7, then gulped and started walking toward the three apes still in the airlock. When he was five meters away, he pointed the muzzle of his subgun at the ceiling and squeezed the trigger. The burst of bullets perforated the tiles as the shots echoed down the hallway. The trio of apes in the airlock jumped as if they’d just gotten goosed and took off out the front door.
Grimaldi kept advancing, scanning left to right for more of the huge animals. Seeing a few scattered around the garage, sniffing at broken vehicles or even the torn-off limbs of the guards, he fired another burst into the ceiling. The apes howled and shrieked, but the majority of them headed for the exit, with Grimaldi herding them, for lack of a better term, along. At the exit, he watched the apes disappear into the jungle and exhaled in relief. The combat helicopter hovered about a hundred meters in the air, and he watched it come back down for him. The moment it was close enough, he slung his weapon, ran to it and threw himself on board
, crawling to the copilot’s seat and slipping on the headset.
“Thanks for the assist, Striker. We heading home now?”
“Not just yet,” Bolan replied. Grimaldi glanced back to see him resupplying. “We’re going after that truck.”
“No problem.” Mott took them up over the tree line, then took off after the escaping truck. The combat helicopter was among the fastest assault helicopters built, and since the truck had to navigate crude, rutted dirt roads, it was no contest. Within minutes they had caught up to the vehicle, which was slewing back and forth as it tried to go even faster on the narrow jungle lane. Even in the pitch-black darkness, the thermal suite picked out the truck as if it was broad daylight.
Mott and Grimaldi saw activity from men in the back, but couldn’t quite make out what was going on. They got the answer a moment later when the olive-green canopy flew off to reveal three men clustered around a heavy machine gun. The canvas top hadn’t even fallen to the ground when they opened fire on the pursuing helicopter.
“What kind of scientists are these?” Mott asked as he dodged the stream of ball projectiles. A few plunked off the undercarriage armor, making Briggs clutch her armrests tightly.
“Are we all right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Grimaldi replied. “She can handle regular .50 caliber, although it’s probably going to mean replacing a panel or two. Good thing they weren’t using armor-piercing or high-explosive.”
“Yeah,” Mott said as he brought the helicopter around again. “Of course, they probably figure a Ma Deuce would be enough to take an ordinary chopper. But the Dragonslayer isn’t an ordinary chopper.”
“Remember, guys, I want the people in the cab alive.”
“Not a problem,” Mott said. “One disabled .50 caliber and truck coming right up.”
Highlighting where he wanted to fire the under-turreted 30 mm chain gun, Mott gave the order even as the heavy machine gun started up again. The large bullets chewed up the back of the truck, punching through the bed and demolishing the rear tires and drive train. Twenty or thirty rounds later, the Browning machine gun was nothing more than a broken hunk of useless metal on the back of the heavily damaged vehicle, its operators blown apart. The truck immediately slowed as the rear tires shredded away.
Even as battered as the vehicle was, the driver still tried to get away on the remaining tires. Grimaldi and Mott glanced at each other with a smile. “Now, for the engine,” the Stony Man pilot said.
One of the remaining guards stuck his upper body out the passenger window of the cab and aimed an automatic rifle at the combat helicopter, hosing it as it moved into position. “He can do that all day. It won’t do anything but scratch paint,” Grimaldi commented. “Us, on the other hand...”
Leading the truck a bit, Mott put a two-second burst into the engine compartment. The hood exploded off the front of the truck as the engine disintegrated under the assault. The vehicle skidded to a stop, with the menacing helicopter coming down to hover fifteen meters off the ground, lighting up the ruined vehicle with an external spotlight.
“All persons inside the truck have ten seconds to throw out their weapons and come out with hands up,” Grimaldi announced over the loudspeaker system. “Failure to do so will force us to open fire. Do not try to run. You’ll just be tired when we catch you.”
Two assault rifles flew out of the passenger window and then two guards and a lab-coated man climbed out of the cab, hands in the air. Grimaldi instructed them to kneel on the ground, which they did, resigned expressions on their faces.
“Dr. Richter, I presume,” Bolan said. “Let’s pick them up.” As he spoke, a series of loud yet muffled explosions could be heard, even over the steady beat of the helicopter’s rotors.
“What the hell was that?” Mott asked, scanning the horizon for the burst of flame that typically accompanied such a blast.
“The logical conclusion is that the base was just destroyed,” Bolan said with a grimace. “Come on. Let’s pick up Richter.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Dressed in shapeless, light blue maintenance coveralls, Reginald Firke parked his small white van in the parking lot at the water treatment plant on Lake Märalen in Lovö, on the northwest side of Stockholm. He got out, removed a small tool kit from the backseat, clipped an identification card on his breast pocket and walked into the main building.
“Standard maintenance check and inspection on filtration unit number three,” he told the receptionist in flawless Swedish, waiting patiently as she scanned his task invoice and compared it to the records in her computer system.
“You’re right on time,” she replied with a smile. “Just let me give you a temporary ID badge.” The printer next to her spit out a laminated card, which she handed to him. “Do you know where you’re going?”
He nodded. “Through those doors and to the back of the facility. The tank I’m looking for is on the left side of the building.”
“That’s right. It’s all marked, anyway. Just let us know if you need anything.”
“I will, but this should only take a few minutes,” Firke replied with a smile and a nod as he walked through the doors leading to the rest of the facility.
The noise from the thousands of gallons of water flowing in from the lake outside through the various pipes and huge filtration tanks was louder than in the entryway. Firke walked down the main corridor, which ran through the middle of two rows of large tanks filled with lake water on its way to becoming tap water. True to his word, he stopped by the filtration unit—manufactured and sold by Stengrave Industries, which was also contracted to supply maintenance and repairs—scheduled for inspection and looked it over. It was in perfect working order. The last inspection had been four months ago and the tank had passed with no issues.
When he was finished with his “inspection,” Firke walked to a staircase and descended to the facility’s lower level. Casually glancing around, he walked over to a steel pipe one-meter in diameter that passed through the wall and outside the plant. A control panel regulated the pressure and flow of the clean water, distributing it into the network that more than 150,000 people used every day.
The plant supplied the bulk of the water to the northern and western parts of the city, including the neighborhood of Husby, which had become predominantly Muslim over the past decade, and which had already born the brunt of riots in the streets in 2013 in the wake of a protest after police had shot an elderly man they claimed had brandished a machete at them. It was, Mr. Stengrave claimed, the perfect place to begin bringing change to the city, then the country, then the world. For his part, Firke couldn’t wait to do the same for his beloved city of London.
A small valve allowed samples to be drawn off to test for contamination. Setting down his tool kit, Firke took out what looked like a small canister of compressed air attached to a small hose. By threading it up through the nozzle, he would be able to introduce the virus into the clean water, bypassing the facility’s numerous testing stages.
With the device ready, all he needed to do was to screw the virus sample onto the socket, which he started to do. He was so engrossed in his work that he failed to notice the shadow that fell over him, until the man it belonged to spoke.
“Firke, put the device in your hands down, then raise your hands above your head,” Mack Bolan ordered.
The wiry, slender man froze upon hearing his name, then slowly looked up at the tall American who now stood in front of him. “You don’t understand. They have to be stopped. They’re a cancer spreading over everything we’ve worked to build for the past two thousand years.”
“Your opinion doesn’t give you or your boss the right to attempt to commit genocide,” Bolan replied, the SIG-Sauer pistol in his hand not wavering an inch. “Set that thing down and raise your hands.”
Firke frowned. “You got Stengrave?�
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“Not yet, but I’m visiting him next,” Bolan replied. “Dr. Richter, however, told us everything we needed to know about him.” He moved the pistol’s muzzle from Firke’s chest to his head. “This is your last warning. Drop what you’re holding and raise your hands.”
“All right, all right, I’m unarmed. Just let me—” Firke lifted the hose as if he was going to set it down, then tossed the device at Bolan’s face. The moment the canister left his hands, he dived for his tool kit.
The gunshot was swallowed by the rush of moving water, although it still echoed around the large room. His hands inches from his bag, Firke slumped over, a red stain spreading on his back. The frangible bullets Bolan was using had fragmented upon impact, but still contained enough power to penetrate his target’s clothes and tear through his chest and heart. Firke’s chest heaved for breath once, twice, and then, with a wheeze, stilled for good.
Bolan stepped over and kicked the bag away. As he’d suspected, the mercenary had been going for his pistol. Next he took out a large plastic bag and carefully nudged the small ampoule next to the fallen canister into it. Only when it was sealed did he call for backup on his radio.
Dr. Bellamy, along with three Stockholm policemen, rushed up to him. Bolan handed the doctor the bag, which he immediately locked in a biohazard case. “Is the area safe?”
Bolan nodded. “There was no way I was going to let him release that into the water supply.”
“I still don’t know why you simply didn’t take him in the parking lot,” Bellamy said. “He had the virus on him. It wouldn’t have risked contamination of the area.”
“There was never any danger of that,” Bolan said. “And I had to throw him off guard enough so that I could confirm that Stengrave is involved.”
“But why? Richter told us everything we needed to know,” Bellamy said.
“He did, but Stengrave and his company have done a damn good job of disassociating themselves from what was going on at that Congo facility. We needed another corroboration source.”
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