Contagion Option

by Don Pendleton

  Wonsan, North Korea

  AS ENEMY RIFLE FIRE tore into the communications shack, Bolan raced along on all fours. He speared through the doorway, his blacksuit blending into the darkened depths of the cavern. Even so, his bulk attracted attention and a short burst of bullets chased him behind the cover of the building. Bolan poked the Beretta machine pistol around the corner and milked out two 3-round bursts that caught one of the Korean guards at stomach level. The rifleman folded over and smashed into the cave floor with a messy splash. That caught the remaining five gunners’ attention to that corner, giving the Executioner a second to reach the opposite side of the shack, drawing his second Beretta and flicking that to burst mode, as well.

  Still distracted at pinning down the intruder, spreading out to flank the tiny shack to get around behind them, the gunners were caught unaware as salvos of high-velocity slugs chopped into them. Three collapsed instantly, cored by Bolan’s chattering machine pistols. The other two scrambled, trying to split up and avoid their judgment. They focused on the corner of the shack to cut off their enemy from his avenue of retreat, but Bolan did the unexpected and leaped farther into the open.

  Hitting the ground on his chest, Bolan ripped off another storm of 9 mm slugs into the face of one of the remaining Korean soldiers, bursting his skull. A flap of scalp waved like a grisly flag as the guard slumped to the floor. Bolan rolled and triggered more shots into the other Korean, but the 9 mm slugs only clipped the gunner’s thigh.

  The sentry collapsed, but he continued to hold down the trigger on his weapon, a bullet creasing Bolan’s back. Pain shot through the Executioner, but he knuckled down and emptied the last of both Beretta magazines into the wounded killer. Nine rounds shredded the Korean’s chest, dumping him unceremoniously in the center of the darkened cave.

  Bolan ran over the numbers mentally. Four men in the communications shack, one on the submarine.

  Five men made up this shift, and the six who came out to rush him were from the combined two remaining shifts, which meant that it was likely there were at least four remaining gunmen in the hut. Instead of gathering up the rifles from the dead, Bolan held his ground, reloading the emptied machine pistols with fresh magazines.

  A light appeared in a window of the hut, sweeping the six dead men that Bolan had dropped. There was a long moment as the lamp tried to spear the darkness, but the soldier was just out of its range. He held his fire. Popping off a shot would have produced a muzzle-flash that would call enemy rifle fire, but to equip one of his pistols with a sound suppressor would have robbed the weapon of the power and range to be effective. Instead, he waited.

  After thirty seconds, one of the remaining Koreans started a reconnaissance by fire, sweeping the shadows on full-auto. Bullets sparked wildly, but they didn’t go near Bolan. Once the firing stopped, he rolled to where the bullets struck as the cone of light tried to reach as far as the splash of bullets. Finally, the Executioner was rewarded with a bath of illumination as he slumped limply on the ground. Blood glistened on his back from the nick he received. He performed an accurate impersonation of a dead man, and the hut doors opened, gunmen racing out. His hooded eyes picked up five sets of feet running toward him.

  The light was off him, but they had flashlights, flapping and wavering, not focused on him. With his Berettas in his hands, he was perfectly laid out—seemingly dead, but ready to spring his trap.

  When they got within twenty feet, Bolan cut loose with both machine pistols, full-auto bursts ripping into the last of the Koreans. Caught flat-footed, assuming that Bolan was dead, the remaining guards were chopped into lifeless meat.

  Bolan rose. His back hurt from where the bullet had sliced it, but the bleeding wasn’t bad. He could deal with it at his leisure, especially since no enemy rifle fire came from the hut. He walked over and grabbed a dead Korean’s rifle just to be sure, pocketing a couple of spare magazines.

  Water burbled behind him and Bolan turned, watching something bob to the surface in the middle of the cave’s lagoon.

  It wasn’t a submarine. It was the size of a barrel.

  Recognition hit like a freight train.

  Bolan didn’t know how long he had, but there would be only a few moments before the thermobaric explosive went off.

  Bolan knew full well that a thermobaric bomb the size of the barrel would burst initially, diffusing large amounts of highly flammable fuel throughout the cavern. If the sudden, all-permeating cloud of toxic fuel didn’t suffocate him, the subsequent ignition spark from the charge would prove lethal. The cloud of vaporized fuel would combust instantly, with the force of a train car full of high explosives. The atmosphere in the cavern would disappear in a heartbeat, human flesh consumed and reduced to ash, the subsequent shock wave from superheated air expanding, then collapsing in on itself reducing anything else to rubble. Even if Bolan could find a fox hole or a protective bunker, it would be useless. That wouldn’t even include the roof of the cavern collapsing under the powerful blast wave.

  It would bring down the entire submarine pen in a single flash of devastation.

  There was one Jeep by the barracks, but even if there were a key in the ignition, he didn’t know how long it would be until the fuel-air explosive would go off. Cutting underwater might put him right in the lap of those deploying the explosives, and being submersed would be no protection from the superheated fireball.

  Bolan took off running, knowing that it might already be too late.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Salt Lake City, Utah

  Kirby Graham rolled off the hood of the car and threw himself flat against the asphalt as enemy rifle fire chopped angrily toward him. He clawed at his holster and got out his .45, knowing that against the onslaught of a pair of AK-107s, he was in the hole. He wore body armor, but it was lightweight, and against the high-velocity 5.45 mm penetrators, it might as well have been tissue paper stretched across his chest.

  An automatic rifle chattered behind him and Graham spun, aiming his .45 before realizing that the lean figure of Stan Reader was in motion, hosing down the ambushers with his confiscated AK-107.

  It didn’t take more than a moment for Graham to pop up, moving in the opposite direction as his old friend, safety snicked off, tritium front sight a flash of green intersecting the chest of one of the two killers. Graham triggered his weapon twice, and the murderous thug flopped backward, ribs crushed by the double tap of .45-caliber thunder.

  Reader stitched the second rifleman with a blast of 5.45 mm slugs, and as soon as the battle had resumed, it was over.

  A van peeled out down the street, laying a patch of rubber, but neither man could see its license plate, let alone catch up to it.

  “White Ford panel van,” Reader said. “They obscured the license plate.”

  Graham turned toward his car and saw that the engine poured smoke out through the sieve that was its hood. “Trashed our wheels.”

  “We’ve lost them for now,” Reader said. He looked at their bound prisoners, their heads splattered with fresh blood. “And we lost the killers.”

  Graham glared at the dead men and shrugged. “Remind me to give a damn about them later.”

  Reader nodded. The images of the murdered occupants of the apartment were still fresh in his mind. Sirens wailed in the distance, and Graham got on the phone, calling in the fire department to control the blaze started by the firebombs. He realized that his arm was bleeding from where a shard of glass had slashed it. He grimaced and Reader pressed a handkerchief against the wound.

  “You okay?” Reader asked. “You took a nasty tumble.”

  “I was gonna ask the same about you. After all, I threw you through the window.”

  “All that skiing gave me some pretty good aerial reflexes. I tucked and hit the roof of that van and bled off velocity with a somersault before coming to a halt behind cover.”

  “Figured you’d bounce back without an ache,” Graham said.

  Reader rolled his eyes as he secured t
he compress. “I didn’t say without an ache. I just controlled my descent with minimal impairment.”

  Graham nodded and let Reader take a seat on the bumper of the van.

  Salt Lake cops and firemen showed up in their attending vehicles.

  There was a brief moment of confusion on the faces of the cops, but Graham had both of their confiscated rifles propped away from them. He regretted getting his fingerprints all over the weapons, ruining their use as evidence, but considering that the murderers who owned them were dead, and beyond prosecution, it wasn’t a major loss.

  He looked at the burning apartment. The murder victims inside were incinerated, making forensic identification difficult, if not impossible.

  And there was a van driver who had gotten away. He’d have provided them with more answers to this strange little conspiracy if they’d caught him, but for now, there was nothing they could do. Reports had to be filed, and the shootings investigated.

  It would be a mess. “Some days, it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed,” Graham stated.

  Wonsan, North Korea

  BOLAN TUCKED behind the communications shed as he spotted two more shapes breach the surface of the underground lagoon. Divers had accompanied the thermobaric device, probably to set it up. A third and a fourth man rose from the water, armed with suppressed rifles, scanning the darkness.

  All the men had exchanged swim goggles for night-vision devices, thus pinning Bolan in place.

  Tension gripped the Executioner as he realized that the two security men for the demolitions team were going to notice his handiwork sooner or later. The rifle in his hands would give him an edge against them, especially since Bolan’s vision had become accustomed to the dim light of the underground submarine pen. However, that advantage would disappear quickly with the bright muzzle-flash of the AK-107 in his hands.

  He briefly considered switching to one of his sound-suppressed pistols, but at this range from the water’s edge, he’d lack the power and accuracy to ensure a killing shot, especially if the gunmen wore body armor.

  Bolan’s breathing dropped to shallow inhalations and exhalations, so soft that they could barely be heard. The two gunmen at the pier reacted as they spotted the strewed corpses of ten Koreans in the middle of the cavern.

  “Someone got here first,” one said in English.

  “Hurry up with that Daisy Cutter,” the other told the two demolitions men. “We might have company.”

  “This is going to take some time,” retorted one of the first pair of divers. “Get in touch with our sub.”

  “Already on it,” the first man stated. He spoke into a radio unit.

  Bolan slid out of sight slowly. They spoke English, and they sounded like Americans, which only confirmed to him that this conspiracy didn’t have its heart in North Korea.

  Obviously, the encounter with the smugglers and the first of the Korean submarines had pushed the conspirators on the other side of the Bamboo Curtain to cut their losses. The thermobaric explosive—a Daisy Cutter in American military parlance—was just short of a nuclear explosive in terms of raw destructive power. The existence of the cover submarine pen would cause too much trouble for their end of things, so the American conspirators were cutting their losses. The Daisy Cutter would obliterate any evidence there was a link to outside allies.

  That meant that the other facility would be compromised and scheduled for elimination soon. Once more behind the eight ball, the Executioner would need to work quickly to trace the path up the food chain. Bolan shouldered the AK-107 and took aim at the two gunmen scanning the darkness. He needed to take them out fast.

  “Gun!” one of the riflemen shouted as he dived to one side. Bolan ripped a burst into his partner before the man could react. The enemy gunner spun in a death dance as 5.45 mm slugs speared through his flesh, tearing body armor and tumbling violently through muscles, organs and blood vessels.

  Autofire lanced at the Executioner as he ducked back.

  The two demolitions men hurriedly continued their work and as Bolan whipped around the far corner, he spotted that the quicker of the two security men had sought cover behind a short stone post at the end of the pier. Bolan sent a quick burst of fire his way to keep his head down, when he noticed that the enemy’s rifle had a stubby, fat pipe under its barrel. The blunt, wide-mouthed barrel swung around the corner as the gunman stayed safely behind the cover of the stone pillar.

  Bolan cut and ran, moving as swiftly as he could. A grenade slammed into the communications shack. One half of the building was reduced to splinters that sizzled wildly through the air like shrapnel. Bolan hit the ground before the chewing cloud of shattered wood crawled over him. A few patches of exposed skin stung as tiny needles of wood plunked into him. The heavier debris had more momentum, and thus flew past him, moving with enough force and velocity to have ripped him to shreds if he hadn’t flopped to the ground.

  Bolan rolled onto his back and opened up with his AK-107 again as the distinct chatter of an M-16 erupted. The stone pillar sparked as Bolan’s 5.45 mm slugs ricocheted away from it. With a kick, Bolan rolled out of the way of a blast of return fire that would have sliced him in two.

  The Executioner rolled into a crouch behind the half-collapsed remnants of the communication shack and reloaded his weapon. He looked back at the Jeep and knew that he’d have to make a run for the vehicle. The shell of the destroyed shed would give him concealment for about half the distance if he kept to the proper course. Exploding to his feet, he raced toward the Jeep, keeping the half-destroyed comm center between him and the enemy gunman. After a few seconds, rifle fire chopped at his heels and Bolan poured on the speed, cutting left and right in a serpentine path that kept the enemy gunman from anticipating where his target would end up next.

  At least until Bolan got closer to the Jeep.

  The rifleman reloaded rapidly, but in that brief moment of changing magazines, Bolan had two seconds of open ground to cover. He was three steps from the vehicle when the first of the gunner’s shots exploded in the air, but the soldier leaped across the hood, sliding across it then dropping behind the vehicle’s wheel well. Bullets rattled against the chassis.

  Bolan fired under the body of the vehicle, sweeping the enemy gunman at foot level, but the hardman ducked back behind the stone pillar. Nothing hit. Bolan hauled himself up to the driver’s seat and noticed that the Jeep didn’t have any keys in the ignition. It would take too long to hot-wire the vehicle, and doing it would expose him to enemy fire.

  A hollow thump sounded in the distance, and Bolan whirled and threw himself away from the Jeep. Moments later, a 40 mm grenade detonated against the vehicle’s far fender. Bolan glanced back to see the hood peeled up into a Mohawk, the wheel nearest to him folded under by the explosive force of the grenade.

  So much for that set of wheels, Bolan figured. He glanced around and spotted a motorcycle. A key ring glimmered in the light of one of the few operating lamps. It was out of sight of the enemy rifleman.

  Bolan scrambled toward the motorcycle, emptying the AK-107 on the run. Brass tumbled from the breech as he kept the enemy gunner’s head down. When the rifle clicked empty, he was already behind the nearby garage and he discarded the useless weapon.

  He checked the gauge on the motorcycle as he fired it up. The needle whirled to the full position, and Bolan kicked the motor over. A grenade crashed on the far side of the garage as the gun-toting diver continued to hammer away at the Executioner. The 40 mm grenade probably did horrendous damage to the other side of the building, but nothing reached Bolan as he revved the engine. The sound of the motorcycle had undoubtedly alerted his opponent to the fact that he was on his way out.

  Sheets of automatic fire ripped the wall in front of him, which made him hold his position for a moment. The demolitions men might not be as skilled with rifles as their friend, though Bolan couldn’t count on that. At the first ebb of the torrent of bullets, Bolan hit the throttle. The Kawasaki burst from cover, racing
toward the ramp to the surface.

  Gunfire chased the Executioner, fragmented bullets bouncing off the tarmac and stinging his shins and calves as the enemy shooters tried to home in on him. Weaving and gunning the engine, Bolan threaded his way through the hapless riflemen’s efforts to tag him. As he hit the ramp entrance, he opened up the throttle in fifth gear and the Kawasaki popped up on its rear wheel as power surged through the drive train. He sailed along on the back tire for nearly fifty yards as a grenade blast sent a wave of hot air and blunted concussive force chasing uselessly after him.

  Bolan struggled to hold the bike steady as he raced up the incline, the explosion having unsettled his balance slightly. At the speeds he was moving, he needed all the focus he could get, and he finally straightened into an arrow-like run to the top of the ramp.

  That’s when he saw that the doors leading to the surface were clamped down tight. Bolan skidded the motorcycle to a halt, then looked down the six hundred yard slope.

  The enemy gunman stood at the bottom of the ramp, out of range for his rifle. But the gunner stood there nonetheless, rifle at the ready, watching Bolan. A charge, even on the speedy motorcycle, would just run him into a flurry of rifle bullets long before he got into close enough range to fight back. Bolan dismounted the motorcycle and looked at the huge doors, then looked back at the rifleman who eyed him through binoculars.

  Finally, the rifleman backed off from the ramp entrance. That meant that the Executioner had only a handful of minutes to get below. He figured that if the divers were on sea sleds, they’d be out of the submarine pen within thirty seconds once the rifleman got into the water. The long, underwater tunnel would provide enough protection for them to detonate the fuel-air explosive without personal harm.

  But in the meantime, the ramp tunnel would be turned into a funnel for superheated gas and shock waves.

  Bolan looked at the small access panel and twisted its handle. It was out of sight of the bottom of the ramp, so he didn’t want to call attention to it in case the rifleman scooted two hundred yards closer to try to take pot shots at him. He twisted with all of his strength, but it was locked firmly.