The two friends went to check on Rachel Marrick, and Bolan went to get uniforms and to check with Jack Grimaldi as he set up the communications center with Stony Man Farm.
STEVENS KNEW from the look on Pave’s face that he came bearing bad news.
“Shock’s team was neutralized,” the huge bodyguard announced.
Stevens nodded. “I expected as much. Were any of them taken prisoner?”
“We couldn’t tell. A helicopter was flying over the scene, and something was jamming all of our electronic communication,” Pave answered. “And it kicked up dust, so our long-range surveillance was blocked. More choppers arrived and began a rapid cleanup. After a few minutes—”
“It was as if there had been no encounter with our enemy and his agent friends,” Stevens concluded. “Hell and damnation.”
“We should assume that Shock spilled all he knew,” Pave suggested.
Stevens glared at Pave as if he’d just released a noxious odor.
“Sorry,” Pave apologized.
“There’s a reason why we keep our operatives so in the dark. They are all expendable,” Stevens stated. “Sadly, even Mi Qua.”
“And me,” Pave answered. “But that’s the job of the bodyguard. To die so the target doesn’t.”
“But if you die, you can’t keep me shielded,” Stevens reminded him. “And as our operatives die, they are no longer able to assist us. I do not blithely throw away my resources or my faithful.”
This was a lie, of course, but Stevens didn’t need the hulk standing in front of him to know that. He turned back to his lab table and tapped a few keys on his computer. “How is Plan Delta going?”
“Well enough,” Pave answered. “So far, nobody suspects anything yet.”
“Excellent,” Stevens stated. He adjusted the name tag on his lab coat, flipping it into his pocket so it would be out of the way of his study of the inert proteins on the slide as he looked at them in the microscope. He paused, looking at the picture of himself, and smiled.
“Major Stephen Nelson, of the United States Army Biological Warfare Research Division, Dugway Proving Grounds Branch.”
Nestled in the heart of one of America’s most top-secret facilities, “Nelson” had the authority to select his own staff, and to travel the world investigating outbreaks of diseases, obtain samples and bring them back to Dugway to work on them in well-protected laboratories under such strict security that it seemed a shame to even have his own cadre of loyal troops interspersed among the base’s staff. The real Major Nelson had died ten years ago, replaced by Stevens. Nelson himself had been one of the best and brightest of the USABWRD’s scientists, even if he was a little reclusive. It was no problem for Stevens to replace the American, who had been in his employ. The major might be found, but only in the form of ten-year-old alligator dung. Nelson had been hired because of their similarities in height and appearance—slender, knobby men with gaunt and similar faces and red hair. The mastermind known as Mojo had subjected himself to a battery of immunizations to match Nelson’s, the aftermath of which left him with a ferocious fever that forever left his eyes sensitive to strong light, necessitating the sunglasses he wore at all times.
Nelson’s staff, who were Mojo’s employees, as well, covered for the ailing mastermind and documented the change in his skin condition—pockmarked and wrinkled from a ferocious rash that left him scarred and even more slender and ghastly. The BWRD accepted “Major Nelson” back with open arms, because the scientist had far too much technical skill to leave alone. With no family or friends outside of the military, it was easy to replace the dead man.
Stevens looked at the prion strings on the slide, monitoring them. There had been no growth. He pulled up a split image, and compared them to the weaponized variant proteins that he’d already assembled into artillery rockets that Pave and his team were loading up for “demolition.”
Dugway Proving Grounds was a storehouse for biological weapons, and once they were examined, outdated samples and biological munitions were dealt with and disposed of. Those munitions were generally destroyed by a thermobaric explosive, which had so much power, even microbes caught in the blast dome of superflammable fuel and air were destroyed. The fuel-air explosives were also good at destroying old chemical weapon samples.
Stevens, in the meantime, had been destroying hulls and husks, leftover empty tubes and warheads from North Korea’s bioweapon development program, sent by Chong to America. After a scheduled demolition of the munitions, even the foreign shells were indecipherable from the pulverized and charred splinters that would have been left from U.S. munitions.
In this position, Stevens had provided botulinum and sarin munitions to allies for various conspiracies over the past few years as a means to keep his original plans solvent. He needed money to maintain his cattle farm and breeding program, and to keep his small army employed. Some were with his cause through belief that the human race would be better off if it was smaller. Others were motivated by political nihilism. But they all needed a paycheck. Stevens had laundered this cash through the bank in Salt Lake City, paying off the crews he’d selected for his stealth helicopters, buying black-market submarines, hiring Shock’s Korean mercenaries, and paying off General Chong and his staff. That, and the war funds he’d received from assisting the Iraqi government in dealing with its Kurdish problems, had all been wiped clean through “legitimate” businesses and all through the bank.
The robbery was a cover for all of that. He’d hired some hackers to clean out the last of it, but the original data in the bank’s mainframe had to be destroyed, along with hard copy. It was a necessary evil and effort.
Someone might notice Stevens transmitting his retirement fund to a Bahamian bank account through the bank in Salt Lake. It was enough money for Stevens and Pave to live in the lap of luxury for the rest of their lives. They would hide in a nice South Seas Island, bought through the funds, and Captain Michael Jaye would stock it with plenty of supplies as the civilized world fell under the assault of the dozens of terrorist groups to whom Mojo had promised the ultimate weapon.
Weaponized spongiform prions in artillery shells would kill millions of people in the hands of his psychotic pawns. He’d made five hundred of the deadly shells, enough for the most populous cities across the globe. One hundred eighty of them were specifically meant for the capitals of every major nation. Stevens figured that the other 320 set off in giant cities like St. Petersburg, Sydney, New York, or Honolulu would wipe out hundreds of millions more. The purchased warheads were almost complete, worked on in secrecy by “Major Nelson’s staff” in their off hours. The warheads were destined for destruction, but in reality, Stevens’s operation would substitute junk munitions from various donor terrorist groups. While he didn’t expect the terrorists to succeed in their mass slaughter, even the detonation of three or four of the bioweapon warheads would result in ten million deaths, throwing world governments into such a panic that they would suspend the rights of their citizens.
When the iron fist of oppression crushed humanity across the globe, then the dogs of war and madness would finally be released. If more of the lethal warheads were detonated, so much the better, especially if they were fired in defiance of untempered authority. Democracies would succumb to dictatorships, republics would crumble in civil war, riots and mayhem would kill huge numbers.
And watching from his well-stocked, heavily defended island mansion, the biological sorcerer known as Mojo would watch civilization collapse like a house of cards, humans either succumbing to disease or becoming prey to a new age of barbarism. Those not slain by his mutant proteins would be vulnerable to human predators all too willing to seize power as law folded in on itself.
It was a brilliant, glorious strategy.
All made possible by the simple stupidity of feeding a cow the remains of another cow, passing on bad genetics to mutate proteins into nerve destroying molecules that affected almost any form of mammal indiscriminately.
Mojo smiled as he looked at the little strings of complex proteins twisted and enlarged by the electron microscope. Dr. Kent Stevens, Major Steven Nelson, Mojo, whichever name he held, would be remembered by the survivors of his apocalypse as the man who brought humanity to its knees. And then, after the collapse, he would take on the name he was born to wield.
The god-king of Earth.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Security at Dugway is tighter than a frog’s ass,” Hal Brognola informed Mack Bolan. “They’re ready for the hounds of hell if they show up.”
“Which worries me,” Bolan answered.
“What do you mean?” Brognola asked.
“All that security. It’s also perfect for providing cover for an operation already in progress,” Bolan said. “I’m sure that Mojo or Stevens or whatever he calls himself is somewhere close by.”
“Striker, the only way he could be on the inside is if he’d been on the staff of Dugway for the past decade or more,” Brognola stated.
Bolan remained silent, allowing the head Fed to drink in the reality of his own statement.
“Good Lord. But, Mojo—”
“Mojo was involved in Iraq’s culling of the rebellious Kurds in the early nineties, Hal,” Bolan explained. “And then he decided to take part in breeding cattle in Thailand.”
Brognola let out a low groan.
“Somewhere along the way, he could have infiltrated Dugway. We’ve been running into a lot of stolen biological weapons. Stuff that terrorists either learned how to access, or have ended up in control of when they had no visible means how to,” Bolan explained. “We never did figure out where exactly the botulinum ampules for the O’Hare incident came from.”
“As if someone had somehow deleted them from the U.S. Army’s own database of those weapons,” Brognola added.
“Exactly. And that would take an inside source to even give a hacker a clue as how to do that,” Bolan replied. “Have Aaron dig into this for me. It might give us some lead in to who’s responsible.”
“This could go all the way up the ladder,” Brognola stated.
“I don’t like the idea of possibly going against U.S. servicemen, even if they are on the take from a criminal mastermind,” Bolan answered. “But we’ve got the fate of millions resting on taking down Stevens before he puts his plan into operation, and time’s getting too short.”
“Striker, we have your contingency plan in place,” Brognola informed him.
Bolan nodded. He’d decided to exercise an option that he’d never thought he’d have to when he was first put in charge of the Sensitive Operations Group. When he was recruited to defend America and her allies against terrorism in the wake of his mob wars, the President who recruited him had entrusted Bolan with the authority to use almost any level of nuclear force, including battlefield tactical-level nuclear weapons. He’d utilized an Atomic Demolitions Munition on a few occasions after returning from his lone-wolf estrangement caused by the death of April Rose. It wasn’t an option that Bolan was entirely comfortable with, having access to weaponry that could turn an entire city into a blast crater.
But he informed Brognola to have bombers from Hill Air Force Base ready to turn the facilities at Dugway Proving Grounds into a sheet of radioactive glass to prevent a lethal outbreak. Bolan prepared his panic button, an electronic sensor hidden under a fleshlike prosthetic in the crease of muscle between his pectoral muscle and his armpit. To activate it, he’d squeeze hard enough to break a circuit. At that moment, the panic button would transmit its signal, and the fighter-bombers would launch.
A minute later, barring a cancellation signal from Bolan, the weapon stockpiles, the base, and everyone there would be consumed by several kilotons of nuclear fire. The biological and chemical weapons would be vaporized, rendered into harmless distaff atoms by the explosions. Whatever munitions or conspirators would be reduced to serene ash.
Salt Lake City would be spared the horror of a biohazard outbreak.
And the Executioner’s War Everlasting would come to a fiery end, Bolan’s body burned to radioactive powder in his own final option. It was a last-ditch effort, one he wanted to avoid to spare those uninvolved and oblivious to the conspiracy. As dug in as Stevens was at the proving grounds, there was no evidence that he was in complete control of the operation. In fact, the fewer who were aware of the threat Stevens posed, the more secure the cunning madman was to discovery. He probably had only a handful of supporters with him on the base, enough to carry out plans of smuggling and sabotage, but discreet enough to go unnoticed by an unwitting U.S. Military serving as security for a world-threatening conspiracy.
“Good. Thanks, Hal,” Bolan said.
“Striker, you don’t think it’ll come to that?” Brognola asked.
Bolan frowned. “I’ve got too much left to do, Hal, to want to blow myself to ashes. Too many people in trouble, too many wrongs still need to be made right. But if it’s a choice between millions of noncombatants and myself…”
“I understand,” Brognola answered.
“If containment is breeched, a nuclear fireball will plug it back up handily,” Bolan explained. “You can make antibiotic resistant microbes, but I don’t know anything that can survive temperatures approaching the heat of the sun.”
“Just finish this case,” Brognola admonished. “You’re right. We do need you.”
“I’ll do my best,” Bolan answered.
“You always do, Striker.”
RACHEL MARRICK FELT like hell, her head filled with cotton from painkillers. The fact that her eyes were taped over and she couldn’t even move her lids only added to her discomfort.
“Other than that, you look fine, Rachel,” Graham offered meekly.
“Thanks,” she answered, not sounding convinced. “Where did you get the moisture for the wet compress on my eyes, Reader?”
“It’s a proved fact that the moisture in the human bladder is free from infection carrying—”
“Thanks for saving my eyes. Please shut up.” Marrick held up her hand.
“But it worked, didn’t it?” Reader added. “Sorry.”
“My doctor said it kept my right eye’s burns from getting worse,” Marrick answered. “There’s some reaction in it still, but the other cornea is unresponsive.”
“You sound like me,” Reader mentioned.
“It’s the drugs,” Marrick said. “And I think you’re rubbing off on me.”
“A little soda water should clean that off,” Reader offered.
Marrick gave one convulsive snort of laughter. She felt Graham’s hand wrap around hers. It was big and rough, but the grasp was light and gentle, as if he were holding something fragile. She clenched her fingers tightly against his.
“I’m not giving up,” Marrick told him.
“I know you’re not,” Graham replied.
“So stop treating me like some little China doll, okay?” Marrick requested.
Graham sighed. “You know me. I’m a big worry wart.”
He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and Marrick smiled. “Yeah. I know.”
“Just relax and recuperate,” Reader told her. “Kirby and I will see this thing through with Striker.”
“Considering I can’t even lift my head from the pillow I can’t complain about you leaving me behind,” Marrick said.
Graham squeezed her hand again.
“And even blind, you’ll kick my ass if I let anything happen to Kirby,” Reader told her.
“You won’t let anything happen to him,” Marrick replied.
“You sure?” Reader asked.
“You didn’t let me take on Shock by myself. If it wasn’t for you, he might have killed me,” Marrick said.
“He did blind you—”
“Yeah,” Marrick interrupted. “He was going to blow your head off, and I stopped him. I saved your narrow ass.”
“And I just got over feeling guilty,” Reader muttered.
“Stan, I’m trying to like yo
u because you’re practically family,” Marrick said. She was surprised, but she attributed it to the painkillers loosening her tongue. “But for God’s sake, quit being such a self-absorbed schmuck, okay?”
Reader chuckled a little nervously. “Okay, Rachel.”
“Gimme a kiss, both of you,” Marrick said. “While I’m all doped and touchy-feely.”
She felt Reader’s chaste kiss on her cheek, and Graham’s lips on her own. Graham’s kiss she drank down.
“Okay. Go save the world,” Marrick said, her voice slurring off.
Within a few minutes she was asleep again. She could tell she was asleep, because in her dreams, she could see Reader and Graham leaving the hospital room.
“Good luck,” she muttered in her dream.
THE TRUCKS LEFT Hill AFB just before dawn, laden with paperwork that had been delivered to the air base for transport to the proving grounds at Dugway. The journey was quiet as the convoy left on its standard morning travel, sending supplies to the installation. The men on board the trucks were dressed in blue coveralls and bulky coats with laminated ID cards hanging from their collars.
The trucks were laden with mail, food, office supplies and other assorted crates with which to continue the day-to-day operations of the Dugway facility. Just one more delivery trip.
Except, three men on these trucks were newcomers to the daily grind. In jumpsuits that covered fatigues and concealed handguns, Mack Bolan, Kirby Graham and Stan Reader rode in separate vehicles, each absorbed in his own thoughts as the Great Salt Lake sprawled out like a sheet of black glass in the predawn murk. Clouds hung, promising a dreary day, but that would provide neither boon nor hindrance to the men’s plans. With appropriately faked identification tags, complete with magnetic verification stripes, Bolan and his allies would pass through the inspection checkpoint to make their deliveries.
But once the crews stopped their trucks, the infiltrators had other plans.
Bolan accepted a cigarette from the driver of his truck, lighting up. He used to smoke long ago, but had cut down on the habit, for health and stealth purposes. But he still occasionally accepted one if offered to him. It was a means of socialization, and military men had few more certain icebreakers than an offered cigarette. As he let the cigarette hang between his lips, blowing smoke from his nostrils out the open truck cab, he wasn’t hit with any nostalgic feeling for nicotine, but instead, he settled into the role of a bored delivery man, making another sleepy trip for another day of back-bending labor.
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