Contagion Option

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan stiff-armed the Uzi and raked the trio of gunmen he’d blinded. A burst of 9 mm manglers chopped into them at the tune of 600 rounds per minute, twisting the riflemen in a discordant death dance. A moment later, the trio collapsed into lifeless lumps in the snow. For a moment,

  he was tempted to rush the corpses and grab one of their rifles and ammunition, when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

  An antiaircraft gun swiveled and Bolan realized that Jack Grimaldi was on the way.

  “Jack! Careful! They’ve got antiaircraft!” Bolan shouted. He twisted his snowmobile around and launched toward the 40 mm Bofors. Over the racket of rifle fire, he heard the rolling thunder of an approaching helicopter. The defenders’ radar had to have picked up the Executioner’s ace pilot in the hole, and they intended to blow him out of the sky.

  THE MOMENT THAT the Executioner had called for him, Jack Grimaldi took flight in the AH-1 SuperCobra. Twin high-powered turbines rocketed the sleek combat aircraft along like a fanged dart splitting the sky. The SuperCobra was the ultimate evolution of one of the finest fighting helicopters that Grimaldi had ever flown, capable of zipping along with an agility that left the more heavily armored Apache AH-64 in the dust. The SuperCobra’s swiftness and nimbleness kept it competitive nearly half a century after its invention, thanks to upgraded engines and electronics.

  Under the stubby wings of the aerial predator, were two fat barrels stuffed with 2.75-inch High Velocity Artillery Rockets, another old-fashioned design. On two other hard points, there were eight much more modern Hellfire antitank missiles waiting to unleash their explosive fists of devastation against truly heavy targets. Grimaldi had enough experience with the Hellfire to know that its warhead could smash a small building to rubble with the same ease that it could split a tank in two.

  Two lethal guns rode under the nose of the SuperCobra, jutting forth like slender wicked horns or extended fangs. One was an M-134 minigun capable of shredding out 6000 rounds per minute, the other an MK-19 automatic grenade launcher that fired much more slowly, but each shell it fired was a hefty 40 mm packet of high-explosive.

  “Jack! Careful! They’ve got antiaircraft!” Bolan’s voice cut over his headset, and Grimaldi speared the SuperCobra deep into the sky, rising like a rocket into the cloudy gray above. With a twist, he turned the cockpit around so that he could look down at the airfield, able to see two blistering streams of 40 mm antiaircraft tracers arcing up after him. At the speed he tore through the atmosphere, Grimaldi could see the columns of fiery bolts bending away from him, and he swung the helicopter into an Immelman. The sheer horsepower and the sleek frame of the AH-1 enabled such fighter-plane style tactics, and he dropped beneath one sweeping arc of Bofors fire.

  “I’m on it, Sarge,” Grimaldi answered. He locked his gaze on one of the antiaircraft emplacements, his helmet’s visor boxing it in a luminescent green rectangle with crosshairs in the center. He kept his gaze locked on the Bofors cannon and hit the firing stud for the Hellfire missile beneath his stub wing. The powerful rocket engine spit the warhead along on a column of fire. As long as he kept the electronic optics of his helmet centered on the antiaircraft gun, the visually directed missile would stay on course. The whole process lasted only a few seconds, but even at 200 miles an hour, Grimaldi was a sitting target for the other gunner should he happen to gain the proper windage.

  A glowing shower of spears cut across Grimaldi’s peripheral vision and he juked the SuperCobra to one side, avoiding the enemy cannon shells. The Hellfire wavered off course. It didn’t matter. The shaped charge warhead hit one yard away from the Bofors cannon, not stabbing into the heart of the emplaced weapon. Instead of disintegrating into a cloud of splintered, burning metal, the fireball lifted up the cannon and hurled it aside like a toy. The four 40 mm barrels sank into the snow and bent like taffy. The gunner in his seat was crushed under the massive weight of the thrown weapon, bursting like a rotten tomato when it landed on him.

  Grimaldi pulled out of his charge and whirled into a spiral as the other gunner swept the sky to avenge his comrade. The SuperCobra danced out of the four-tiered rain of fire stabbing skyward. The minigun under the nose swiveled and ripped out a long burst of 7.62 mm bullets that exploded the snow to one side of the remaining Bofors.

  By now, Stevens’s defenders realized that they had a deadly serpent in their midst and directed rifle fire against him. The armored cockpit glass discolored under the impact of a few lucky rounds, its skin plinking loudly as more slugs raked the fuselage.

  “Heat’s on, Sarge! Buy me some breathing room!” Grimaldi requested.

  The rifles weren’t that pressing a threat, but they would nickle and dime the sleek gunship to pieces, and damage its rotors or weapons systems with a lucky hit. The 40 mm cannon was the real menace that made Grimaldi sweat in his seat, and he flipped the helicopter around on its Jesus nut.

  While Grimaldi had learned to fly almost any kind of aircraft, he was originally a “rotor head,” a helicopter pilot par excellence, and his reflexes and muscles put him through the motions of guiding even the nimble SuperCobra as if it were an extension of his body. He twisted the attack helicopter out of the path of another burst of heavy 40 mm explosive shells and opened up with his own 40 mm grenade launcher. The MK-19 thundered violently, but unlike the sheer power of the Hellfire’s antitank charge, the grenades detonated in front of the antiaircraft gun without sufficient force to damage the weapon.

  Grimaldi sliced the helicopter sideways, wincing as a 5.45 mm bullet spiked through the canopy, grazing his helmet.

  The solid-state optics in the aiming unit took the shock and only produced a minor glitch across his visor screen. Grimaldi swooped around in a tight circle and ripped the ground below with a burst from his minigun. A rifleman standing in the open exploded into a crimson mist as the M-134’s slugs tore him to pieces. The Bofors thundered again, and Grimaldi dipped the chopper forward to flash out of the lethal lances of cannon fire.

  The air below was crisscrossed with bullets as Bolan, Graham and Reader tore into the defenders, pulling their attention away from the airborne dragon spitting fire at the antiaircraft guns. Grimaldi whispered a prayer of thanks for their efforts and dodged the Bofors again. This time, he switched over to the HVARs and the fat drum under the port wing spit out six of them.

  The 2.75-inch warheads rained down, walking a line of explosions leading up to the 40 mm cannon. The gunner clutched the trigger tightly, screaming in horror as he knew what was coming next. Three of the rockets landed short, and the shock waves of their detonations buffeted the soft human in the gunner’s seat. When the remaining artillery darts slammed into the main gun itself, the stunned gunner ceased to exist as anything larger than a flying finger bone. The cannon he’d sat in was similarly pulverized.

  Suddenly the skies above the airfield became a whole lot safer and Jack Grimaldi turned his attention to the damaged aircraft. The burning Learjet received another pair of HVAR rockets and it split in two, one wing cartwheeling into the trees.

  That’s when he noticed the artillery piece sitting at one side of the field. He saw where the barrel was pointed—Salt Lake City. A cabinet of electronics was hooked up to the big gun’s firing mechanism, and Grimaldi realized that if it was allowed to fire, millions would suffer.

  He locked a Hellfire missile on target and launched it. The heavy warhead struck dead-center this time, and the cannon broke in two. Grimaldi followed up with a salvo of HVAR rockets, their thermobaric warheads turning the air around the shattered field piece into a blistering inferno. The Stony Man pilot wasn’t about to allow a munition full of lethal bioagents to detonate so close to his friends without making the atmosphere inhospitable to the mutant proteins. The artillery shell cooked off, and Grimaldi launched a second blast of fuel-air rockets. The ensuing fireball was enough to render any microscopic organism harmless.

  Grimaldi only hoped that it would be enough to shield his allies.

 
; That’s when the SuperCobra shook.

  Hovering in place to hammer the artillery piece and protect Salt Lake, he’d left himself open to the defenders on the ground. One of them had a 40 mm grenade launcher, and had scored a crippling hit on the tail boom.

  Grimaldi wrestled with the assault helicopter, autorotating the damaged aircraft to the ground. In the bathtub of armor plating, he was safe from enemy riflemen for the moment. Still, the ace pilot wasn’t going to sit out the rest of this fight. He scooped up a Fabrique Nationale P-90 and prepared for a break in the enemy sniper fire.

  Then he intended to come out, spitting lead and giving Stevens’s forces a show of how dangerous he was, even without an aircraft.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Kirby Graham revved up the Bearcat and cut across the airfield. With the AR-10’s barrel resting on the handlebars, he was able to hose down enemy gunmen with ease, whipping the lethal muzzle at Stevens’s mercenary forces. Around him, columns of flame and smoke rose from the wreckage of antiaircraft guns and smashed planes. In the distance, he saw Striker’s pilot, Grimaldi, bring his Super-Cobra down in one piece despite the 40 mm crater in its tail boom. He accelerated toward the downed helicopter, intending to give the pilot some cover against the raging swarm of defenders waiting to greet him.

  Graham reloaded the AR-10 as he coasted forward, using the heavy rifle as a lever to hold the handlebars straight while his free hand was busy. Grabbing the bar again, he milked the trigger and stitched one of Stevens’s riflemen up the back. The others broke and spun to react to Graham’s assault. Their weapons barked, but the snowmobile charged faster than they could aim. Graham tossed another burst of .308-caliber slugs at them and scored another dead enemy when the canopy on the SuperCobra opened.

  Suddenly the armed thugs were caught in a crossfire as Jack Grimaldi whipped his quick little machine pistol around. The 50-round magazine of the P-90 was more than enough to supply a little something for everyone he targeted, short bursts chopping lethally into the guards. Graham spun the Bearcat to a halt and mopped up whoever Grimaldi didn’t get to, triggering salvos of heavy rifle fire into two of the gunmen and smashing them from existence on the sharp points of his bullets.

  He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and saw a Chevy Suburban racing toward “Major Steve Nelson’s” cabin.

  Graham swallowed and fired up the Bearcat. He reached for a spare magazine for his rifle, but his vest pockets were empty. He’d burned up everything taking on the enemy forces. Even Bolan had resorted to stripping an AK-107 off a dead defender, using it to scythe through the opposition.

  “Stevens is falling back to his cabin!” the Fed growled.

  “Kirby!” A voice cut from behind him.

  Graham whirled in time to see Stan Reader launch through the air on his skis. The scientist’s spindly arms and legs splayed out, and then he brought both feet together. Graham ducked under the hurtling skier, and spotted a gunman tracking him. Armed with only an empty rifle, no time to draw either of his handguns, the Fed looked death in the face for a long heartbeat. Then suddenly Reader speared the rifleman through the chest with both skies.

  The wood flexed and bent under Reader’s weight, the quick release bindings popping free to protect the scientist’s ankles from snapping. Meanwhile, Viktor, Stevens’s head mercenary, staggered backward, bowled over by the flying form that slammed into him. The tips of the skis were too blunt to penetrate the man’s chest, but Graham realized that the impact had to have at least broken ribs. Blood poured over the gunner’s lower lip and Reader rolled to a crouch from where he landed, the Skorpion in his fist. Two .357 Magnum slugs smashed through Viktor’s head.

  Graham gave his friend a nod.

  “Get Stevens,” Reader gasped, running to retrieve the dead man’s rifle. “We’ve got things under control here.”

  “Right,” Graham answered, and he tore out toward Stevens’s shed. He was tempted to mention that he owed Reader one, but the clumsy attempt at gratitude would have fallen on deaf ears. Graham would have pulled the same reckless stunt to protect the scientist, just the same as when he’d dived into the freezing water of the lake to haul him out all those years before.

  It was just what brothers did for each other.

  Graham raced after the mastermind and his hulking bodyguard.

  MACK BOLAN LET THE EMPTY magazine drop free from the AK’s well and slammed a full one home. Stevens’s security forces were decimated now, corpses soaking their lifeblood into the cold, white snow, turning it into a messy shade of pink.

  It was butchers’ work, and so far his allies were all hale and healthy. Reader had lost his skis in a reckless act of bravery to protect Kirby Graham, but he was up and grabbing a weapon. He spotted Jack Grimaldi behind the cover of the crashed SuperCobra, and Graham had taken off for the cabin.

  The mayhem of the airfield battle had left the enemy in disarray, easy pickings for the Executioner and his allies. Except for the aircraft they lost, this battle was going well. Bolan sighted a pair of defenders who were trying to sneak up on Reader, and he triggered a burst. They jerked under an onslaught of 5.45 mm bullets, their blood pouring to further defile the clean winter scene, now a snapshot of hell.

  The defenders no longer had the will to fight; they broke and ran. Between the Justice Department forces that Hal Brognola was assembling in Salt Lake and the Utah state police, these stragglers would be taken care of, thrown into prison for their part in this conspiracy, providing they survived their panicked trek out of the closed-off valley. Bolan kept a steady eye on the few guards as they retreated.

  One lifted a handgun to menace Bolan, but a burst of automatic fire cut him down.

  The airfield was secure, only the damaged bulks of the C-130s still standing. Grimaldi had held his fire to keep from releasing any of the stored contagion within the craft. Bolan’s sniper fire, though, was sufficient to render them nothing more than multiton paperweights sitting in the snow, queued up for a takeoff they would never make. Their lethal cargo would be secured by the U.S. Army’s Biological Warfare Research Division, for both study and disposal back at Dugway, where Stevens had brewed them.

  The plan to destroy the whole world wouldn’t travel more than a few hundred miles back to its birth for destruction, a fitting end for the lethal prions and their creator.

  “Striker.” Reader spoke up, running to his side. “Kirby went after Stevens and his bodyguard.”

  Bolan glanced toward the cabin. “Keep an eye on the planes. I’ll go back him up.”

  Reader nodded, and the Executioner got back onto his snowmobile, racing after the FBI agent.

  There was the possibility that Stevens would have one last-ditch effort at escape, and Bolan wasn’t going to let the madman go, not after so far and so much.

  The mad scientist’s judgment was waiting.

  “BRILLIANT, JUST BRILLIANT,” Pave muttered as Stevens squirmed in the seat beside him. “We cut off every road into this place.”

  “I expected—”

  “You expected the man in black, and what did it get us?” Pave snapped. “You expected his interference and we lost Clarice, we lost our submarine base, and we lost our cover at Dugway!”

  “How dare you talk to me like that?” Stevens asked.

  “I am the one who will keep you alive, you puny whiner.” Pave wrapped his thick, powerful fingers around the doctor’s slender neck to emphasize his point. “You might be the genius here, but I don’t see you racing for proper cover, and I don’t see you packing a rifle.”

  Stevens nodded. Pave’s rough fingers hadn’t squeezed his neck, just wrapped menacingly around. Had the hulking brute wanted to, he could have easily squeezed off the scrawny mastermind’s head.

  “You might be the God of Death,” Pave whispered, “but not all gods are immortal. And that bastard out there specializes in killing gods like you.”

  “Yes,” Stevens answered. “You’re in charge.”

  “As long as
someone’s shooting at you? Damn right. But when it comes to conquering the world, you’re the man,” Pave said. He rustled his hand through Stevens’s bristly red hair. “Don’t we have some snowmobiles here?”

  “In the shed next to the cabin.”

  “Good. That’ll get us across the road, even if it’s all blocked with the avalanche,” Pave decided. “Come on.”

  At that moment, they heard the buzz of a snowmobile engine. Since the house had been evacuated, and the only member of Stevens’s staff present was the driver of the Suburban, that could only mean that the strike team was catching up. Pave snarled and shoved Stevens along. “Leave a snowmobile ready for me. I’ve got some ants to smash.”

  Pave filled his fists with the twin Krinkovs when he felt something sting his ruddy cheek. A moment later pain flashed through his brain. He glanced back and saw Stevens lowering a small hypodermic dart pistol in his hand.

  “What…”

  “It’s a little something I call Burn,” Stevens told him. “It’s a stimulant.”

  Pave felt his eyes seemingly swell in their sockets, his muscles tightening up. He remembered the mad doctor’s experiments with the stimulant. The Army thought it might be a good idea for injured soldiers to have it to fall back on to compensate for wounds, but the stimulant proved far too strong, too deadly in test animals. It turned them into rampaging psychopaths. Rats would tear even into their own nest mates, raging until their hearts exploded.

  “This is a slightly weaker version, designed to allow the humans to live. On smaller folks, it still pushed them to a fatal heart attack, but given your body mass and strength, you’ll survive,” Stevens explained. He shut the heavy oak door between them before Pave recovered enough sense to pull the triggers on his rifles. Before it slid completely shut, Stevens’s voice cut across the distance. “You will never lay your hands on me like that again, fool.”