Arctic Kill

by Don Pendleton

  “Find us an office, then,” the Executioner said. “Dr. Ackroyd and I have several things to discuss.”

  Ferguson complied, and swiftly enough that Bolan knew for certain the agent had been expecting this. Fifty years was too long to keep a secret. Ackroyd seemed to feel the same way—he started talking as soon as they were alone and Bolan had closed the door.

  “It’s not a weapon. I know that’s what you’re thinking, but it’s not,” Ackroyd said. The old man hunched forward, his fingers intertwining nervously. “It’s not a weapon. It’s too dangerous for that, frankly.”

  “Then what is it?” Bolan asked.

  “It’s death. Pure, concentrated death,” Ackroyd said softly. He closed his eyes. “I wasn’t just a biologist. My specialty was paleobiology. You know what that is?”

  “Like paleontology?”

  “That’s bones,” Ackroyd said. “I dealt with the things that didn’t have bones—single-celled organisms, mostly, and—ah—microbacteria. Vinson dealt with the bones.” His eyes opened. “We found it in the rocks or under them, rather, up near Noatak, in Alaska. There was a mud shelf, perfectly preserved. Traces of plant life, some bits of decayed animal matter.” He paused, and then elaborated, “and by animal matter I mean a body.”

  “A human body?” Bolan asked.

  “An ice mummy,” Ackroyd said. He snorted. “A government survey team found it. It was curled up in a ball, preserved in the mud and ice. We’d never found one that close to the Arctic before. Like a baby waiting to be born. There were plenty of microbacteria in that husk. We thought it was the biggest find of the century. Nobel Prizes all around.” He smiled bitterly. “What we found was what Vinson—a Norwegian—dubbed Ymir—the Ur-plague. Cooper, you know what ‘Ur’ means?”

  “It was one of the first cities,” Bolan said. He felt a glimmer of satisfaction as Ackroyd looked at him in surprise. The old man smiled weakly.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Legend has it that Ur was the city at the mouth of the Euphrates from which all other cities sprang. And Ymir is—was—the first global pandemic, we thought. Still think, to be honest,” Ackroyd said. “It was the great-granddaddy of the Black Plague, the first swing of God’s own scythe. All the others came from it, the way the giants of Norse mythology all descended from Ymir. And we dug it up, warmed its bones—literally—and almost let it loose...” The old man trailed off, and his gaze went glassy, as if he were looking back into the past, lost in his own memories.

  Bolan didn’t even try and imagine what Ackroyd was seeing at that moment. He’d witnessed enough in his life that he didn’t need to picture specifics. Terror, blood and a creeping dread, as the realization of their own mortality set in. Ackroyd coughed and blinked then continued, “Vinson died. A couple of the others did, as well, before we realized what we were dealing with. The progression from initial infection to full-blown symptoms to becoming contagious is...terrifyingly rapid. A few hours and you’re a biological hazard. Twenty-four hours after that...” He gestured helplessly. “We were lucky that it wasn’t exactly a subtle bastard. If you had it, you could tell pretty quickly. It was just so damn fast there wasn’t much that could be done. We’d woken a demon, and there was no King Solomon around to stick it into a bottle.” Ackroyd looked at Bolan, and his eyes were full of agony. “It shouldn’t have still been viable. But somehow, it was. And it was hungry after so long in that ice.” The old man blinked back tears. He licked his lips. His voice had gone hoarse. “In the end, we managed to contain it. We quarantined the infected. When they...succumbed, we locked it all down. We had to burn everything that wasn’t sealed up—clothes, notes and equipment.”

  “And HYPERBOREA,” Bolan pressed.

  “We left it. It wasn’t on any maps, and it was too far out in the wild for anyone to bother with. Or at least it was back then. I recommended that we sink it—damn thing was basically a repurposed oil rig from the pipeline, you know, and situated right on an isolated tributary of the Noatak River. I told them to blow up the supports and let the base sink down into the water basin, taking Ymir with it. But they didn’t. I don’t know why.”

  “Waste not, want not,” Bolan said softly.

  Ackroyd looked at him sharply. Then, grudgingly, he nodded. “Probably. Even then, there was talk about trying to turn it into a weapon. We were among the best and brightest brains America had, and we were in a theoretical arms race with the Reds—space flight, archaeology, it was all the same to the boys on the Potomac, just one more knife in the bear’s hide. The only reason we were out there was to thumb our noses at them. Nobody was supposed to have anything that close to international territory, but if they had raised the alarm about us, we would’ve known they were out there, as well. But it wasn’t the Reds who woke up Ymir. It was us. There’s no way that thing can be turned into a useable weapon. It’s too virulent. But if it gets out, if it spreads south...”

  “What’s your best guess?” Bolan asked.

  “Sixty, seventy percent of the people on this planet will be dead inside a month.” Ackroyd said it flatly, and Bolan knew it was no guess. Ackroyd had calculated those figures over and over since he’d left HYPERBOREA. Every day, the old man’s mind had delved into the monstrous mathematics of a global pandemic. Every day, he had charted new maps of Hell.

  “That’s what they want, you know,” he added. He grabbed Bolan’s wrist in a surprisingly strong grip. “They don’t want to control it. Those men are suicide bombers. They want to let it out and then they’ll carry it south and east and west because they’re xenophobic, self-aggrandizing assholes who think it’s part of some Nazi prophecy and all the good white folks will be spared. But it’ll spread and it’ll mutate as it spreads—because that’s what viruses do—and melanin content or geographic genetic markers won’t make a damn bit of difference. As a species, we’ve evolved past needing whatever antibodies our ancestors developed to fight it, and we’ll pay for that in fire and blood. It’ll kill us, Cooper. It’ll scour the Earth like a Biblical plague, and whoever survives won’t be in any shape to set up a new society, Thylea or otherwise.”

  Bolan had no reply. In all the years of his War Everlasting, very rarely had he faced a threat of such magnitude. It seemed inconceivable, and the sheer weight of it all settled heavily on his shoulders. Grimly, with every iota of will that was his to call upon, Bolan thrust the horror of it aside. Death was death, whether one man’s life was at stake or millions, and it was the Executioner’s duty to bring justice to the dealers of death.

  “You have to stop them, Cooper,” Ackroyd said.

  “I will,” the Executioner replied. He stood. “One way or another, I will.”

  Chapter 10

  Brognola and Ferguson were waiting for him out in the corridor. “Nasty, ain’t it?” the latter said. Bolan looked at him. Ferguson held up his hands. “I know, I know, but you’ve got to understand, once something has been denied long enough, a sort of gridlock develops. No one wants to talk about it or take responsibility, because it could blow wide open. Every time a bit of space debris gets too close or this season’s bird flu mutates, people go nuts. They panic. And we have to run around taking care of that panic.”

  “CYA,” Brognola supplied.

  Ferguson shrugged. “What do you want me to do, Hal? Frankly, it was hard enough keeping Ackroyd in what amounted to unofficial witness protection. We did it for all of them, all of the survivors. Set them up for life, wherever they wanted to go. Ackroyd wanted to live somewhere hot.”

  “Your unofficial witness protection didn’t seem to do them much good,” Bolan said. It came out more harshly than he’d intended, but Ferguson didn’t flinch.

  “No, it didn’t. Which is why I passed a mash note to Hal as soon as we got wind of something going on,” he said.

  It made sense in retrospect, Bolan thought. Who else would have known to leak information
to Brognola but the one man who had the full picture?

  “No one wants to ask the questions they’d have to ask if I had authorized an official response. No one wants to deal with this, Cooper. They just want it to go away.” He looked unblinkingly at the Executioner.

  Bolan felt his opinion of the man curdling. “You want me to do your dirty work.”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here? There’s dirty work that needs doing, so you do it,” Ferguson said. “I don’t care why these assholes want HYPERBOREA. ‘Why’ is irrelevant. I just want them stopped.”

  Brognola held up a hand. “We all want them stopped. But I have a feeling we’re running low on time. Everything about this has been set to a schedule—regular phone calls, credit transactions, everything.”

  “Which means we need to find out what the schedule is and what’s next on the list,” Bolan said. His eyes narrowed. “Where’s Sparrow?”

  “We’ve got him in another office. We’re waiting for a trained interrogator....” Ferguson said.

  “You’ve got one. Take me to him.” Ferguson hesitated. Bolan could practically see his thoughts. “I’m not going to torture him,” he said quietly. “But I can get him to talk. And we need him to talk now.”

  Ferguson grunted. “Yeah,” he said. He scratched his cheek and added, “Come on.”

  There were two agents guarding the office when they arrived. Bolan had taken the time to grab his KA-BAR combat knife as well as the files on Ogilvy’s murder—which Ferguson had willingly provided—and the newly arrived dossiers from several of Brognola’s European contacts. He’d scanned them all quickly on the walk, picking out the important points. Bolan tucked the files under his arm and went into the room. The door closed behind him with a soft click. There were no windows. The only furniture in the office was a table and two chairs, one of them sprawled next to the door, as if Sparrow had kicked it away.

  Bolan dragged the chair across the linoleum, causing the steel casters to squeal. Sparrow jerked in his chair, his handcuffs rattling. He’d been restrained further; a chain ran from his handcuffs to the ones around his ankles. He grimaced unhappily as he caught sight of Bolan. “You,” he said.

  “I’m getting tired of that,” Bolan replied. “Cooper.”

  “What?”

  “My name is Cooper. Yours is Sparrow. There. Now we’re introduced.” Bolan grabbed the table and shoved it aside, so that his chair was separated from Sparrow’s by only a leg’s length of empty floor. “I know who you are. I’ve read your file. Well, both files—Interpol sent over your European one an hour ago. And the FBI and BATF have a filing cabinet on the little commune you came out of.” The Society of Thylea had kept a lower profile than most extremist groups, but they weren’t as secret as they liked to claim. They had too many fingers in too many pies to avoid leaving substantial traces, and Kurtzman had begun tracking those leads back to their sources. Eventually, they would find the money men behind the whole operation, of that Bolan had no doubt. He was looking forward to it.

  Sparrow’s expression contorted. “You can’t make me talk—Vril-YA!” The shout hung awkward and limp in the air before dissipating. Sparrow deflated into sullen silence.

  “I don’t intend to make you do anything,” Bolan said. “I’m not you.” He pulled the files out from under his arm and dropped them on the floor at Sparrow’s feet. “I’m not going to torture you the way you tortured Agent Ogilvy. According to the Bureau, you and your pals kept him alive for four days. Or, rather, he held out for four days. They made them tough in Frank’s day. I bet it took you two days to even get him to make a sound.” Bolan spun his chair around and sat down, his elbows braced across the back. “No, Sparrow, I’m not going to lay a finger on you.”

  Sparrow smirked. That faded as Bolan continued, “If I were, I would start with your feet.” He drew his knife and sent it hurtling down with such force that the blade sank into the floor. Sparrow blinked, swallowed and tried to shrink back into his chair. His eyes were drawn inexorably to the knife, as if it exerted a gravitational pull. It was one thing to face off against a man on even ground, but it was something else again to show bravado while handcuffed to a chair in a dim, bad-smelling back-room office. Bolan leaned over and tapped the pommel of the knife. “After your feet, I’d start on your shins. Then your thighs, and then your shoulders, arms and finally, hands.” Bolan continued in that vein for several minutes, keeping his voice even and almost bored-sounding as he described the most grisly tortures his years of experience could conjure. The Executioner had been tortured more than once and he knew what he was talking about.

  Sparrow’s eyes got wider and wider, until they were fairly starting from his head. Oh, you must have been fun to play poker with, Bolan thought, watching the other man’s face. Sparrow had no way of knowing that there was no man less likely to employ torture than the Executioner. Sometimes unpleasant methods were necessary to extract pertinent information, but this was not one of those situations, and Sparrow was not such a hard case. He was tough, but he was also running on fumes. Bolan was a good judge of character, and he had pegged Sparrow for a rapidly deflating balloon. He had the air of a man who was desperately trying to stay on his feet as the sand shifted beneath him.

  Finally, Bolan said, “But I’m not going to do any of that to you, Sparrow. And do you know why?”

  Sparrow’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he warbled, “W-why?”

  Bolan leaned forward, tipping his chair. Sparrow flinched back, but Bolan’s big hand shot out with the speed of a striking snake, and his fingers clamped across the back of the other man’s head. With a gentle squeeze, he jerked Sparrow close. “Because you’re going to tell me everything I want to know right now.”

  And he did. Words spilled out of Sparrow’s mouth like a torrent. Bolan sat and took it all in, rarely interrupting, just listening. Then, when Sparrow was done, Bolan retrieved his knife, rose and left him sitting hunched over in his seat.

  In the corridor, Bolan said, “I’m going to need transport. Sparrow said the others will be leaving as soon as they realize he’s not going to show up. He said there’s a bush pilot waiting for them at Merrill Field, in Anchorage.”

  “That makes sense. It’s a general-use airfield,” Ferguson said, nodding. “A lot of pilots out there make their living ferrying groups into the bush.”

  “Well, Sparrow’s boss—Mervin—has apparently hired one. We’re still in the layover window, but I reckon we have about four hours before they’re in the wind.” Bolan sheathed his knife. “It’ll take three to get there.”

  “No time to scramble Lyons or the rest of Able Team for backup,” Brognola said sourly. He met Bolan’s gaze. “Guess you’re still at bat, Striker.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Bolan said, and he meant it. There were times when it was useful to be part of a team, but this wasn’t one of them. One man could act with more speed than a group, even a group as effective as the Stony Man–based Able Team, and if there was ever a situation that required speed, this was it.

  “We can roust a cargo flight and probably get you there in two, two and a half,” Brognola said, thinking quickly. “Did he give you descriptions? Hell, did he tell you where they were planning to go?”

  “Close enough,” Bolan said. He looked at Ferguson. “I need to know exactly where HYPERBOREA is, just in case I can’t catch them.”

  “How will you get out there?”

  “Hopefully I won’t have to,” Bolan said. “If I do, I’ll improvise. Can you make some calls?” he asked Brognola. “We need to give the Feds some warning, just in case it all goes to hell.”

  “I’ll get on it. By the way, I brought your cold-weather gear, just in case,” Brognola said. “It sounds like you’re going to need it.”

  Chapter 11

  Merrill Field, Alaska, three hours later

 
Ida Blackjack leaned against the DHC-6 Twin Otter and gave Saul Mervin her best fish eye. The woman was slim, but not skinny, and of Inupiat heritage. She put Mervin in mind of the actress Irene Bedard. Black hair, cropped short, was hidden beneath a stained handkerchief, and smudges of oil and grease marred her features and jumpsuit. She methodically wiped her hands with a rag that was more dirt than cloth. “You said there’d be two more.”

  “Plans change,” Mervin said.

  “Huh.”

  Mervin cocked his head. “The pay will be the same.”

  “Damn right,” Blackjack replied, flinging the rag across her shoulder. “You want me to take you into the middle of nowhere, I expect to be compensated.” Her gaze slid past Mervin to where Kraft leaned against the hangar door, arms crossed. “Your pal doesn’t talk much.”

  “He is my employee, and no, he does not,” Mervin said. He clasped his hands behind his back and tried not to let his irritation show. “Is this the plane?”

  “Yep,” Blackjack said. She knocked her knuckles against the metal frame. Mervin examined the aircraft, facts swimming across his mind. The Twin Otter was a Short Takeoff and Landing utility aircraft, with two engines and a passenger capacity of nineteen. It was a stereotypical bush plane, capable of breaching the far reaches of the Arctic, where other craft couldn’t go. In short, it was exactly what was required to complete the task at hand.

  It had taken the Society of Thylea years and money and blood to discover the existence of HYPERBOREA. They’d heard rumors, conspiracy theories—an American research base, clinging like a barnacle to the outer rim of the Arctic, the purpose and eventual fate of which was the subject of much speculation.

  But Mervin, with his amazing brain, turned speculation to fact. Kraft had tracked down every living soul who had possessed even the slightest scrap of information regarding HYPERBOREA and its devilish secret. Finally, Mervin had assembled the pieces that had been so painstakingly gathered and the secret of HYPERBOREA was revealed.