Contagion Option

by Don Pendleton

  An instant later, the fury-fueled bodyguard remembered that the cabin was reinforced against even RPG fire. Pave held the trigger down on one gun, crushing the grip frame in his grasp. Pieces of the Krinkov dropped uselessly to the ground and he hurled the rest at the blast door.

  “Fuck you!” Pave bellowed. He turned to the driver, and his senses, hyperattuned by adrenaline slicing through his nervous system, saw that the man was standing in a puddle of his own urine. The raging bodyguard shook his head, then snapped out his empty fist, crushing the poor fool’s nose, blood smearing his fist. With the bridge of his nose driven into his brain, the hapless driver collapsed lifelessly.

  “Puny, whining bastards,” Pave growled as he saw Kirby Graham pull up on the Bearcat.

  “Drop the gun!” Graham bellowed. He aimed his .45 at the ponytailed giant.

  Pave let the Krinkov drop, his lips curling back in rage. “Oh, good. I was hoping you’d make this fun.”

  Graham shook his head. “Facedown in the snow, asshole! I’m not telling you again!”

  Pave took a step forward. “My name is Pave. And I’m going to smash you.”

  Graham triggered the TRP twice, twin 230-grain hollowpoint rounds striking Pave in the chest. The bodyguard’s Kevlar armor held, but without the surging adrenaline numbing him, Pave would have fallen over backward from the impacts. Instead, he waded through the snow toward the Fed. Graham glanced toward the crushed rifle and the man that Pave had killed with one punch. He’d seen men dosed with PCP before, and Pave, being only slightly cleaned up from his biker days, was every inch the image of one of those monsters on Angel Dust. Graham fired twice more into Pave’s chest, but by this time, Pave’s spastic stomping turned into a bull-rush. The .45-caliber slugs were focused on the center of mass, still protected by the slabs of chest muscle and bulletproof Kevlar. The hulking bodyguard didn’t feel the slugs and his hamlike fist snapped out.

  Graham blocked the punch with his forearm, and his injured shoulder flared with agony. He twisted under the hammer blow, losing his footing. Graham collapsed to his knees, but swung the .45 in his good hand. He brought up the steel frame like an ax, chopping Pave in the crotch. The blow barely registered in the howling nervous system of the hulking beast, but the force of it did make Pave stagger backward, giving Graham enough breathing room to snap to his feet, slamming shoulder-first into the bodyguard’s gut.

  It was a tackle worthy of Graham’s college football days, lifting the three-hundred-pound ex-biker off his feet. The two men sailed over the snow, landing in a clumsy tumble of limbs.

  Only momentarily stunned by the audacity of Graham’s charge, Pave slammed his beefy paws down on the Fed’s back. The strike aggravated Graham’s pulled shoulder muscles, and a red curtain of rage fell down over the FBI agent’s eyes. Whereas Pave’s fury was fueled by Stevens’s chemical interference, sheer frustration and agony shut down Graham’s pain receptors. Graham hammered both fists under Pave’s armpits in a bone-cracking punch, fracturing both his own knuckles and the giant’s ribs.

  Pave roared as this fresh pain sliced through his fogged senses. Angrily, he peeled Graham off his chest and flung him aside like a rag doll. Graham landed and rolled, his relatively clearer mind enabling him to roll to his feet in a three-point stance, blue eyes glaring as the ponytailed ex-biker struggled to sit up. Graham charged like a freight train, spearing Pave in the head with his shoulder, snapping the man’s head around. There was a loud click as tendons overextended, but the bodyguard exploded to his feet in a column of blinded fury. The hulk’s neck muscles had proved too strong for Graham to snap his neck with such a dirty trick, but the ex-football player pivoted and scooped up an armful of snow. The slough flew in an obscuring cloud that Pave thrashed at with animalistic abandon, giving Graham another chance to charge him. All thoughts of his backup Glock and .38 were forgotten. Graham’s mind no longer acknowledged any technology more sophisticated than crude clubs and hurled debris.

  As much as Pave had turned into a rampaging monster, Graham, too, had become a simple thing of destruction. He slammed into Pave’s slablike gut and hammered wildly with rabbit punches. Pave knifed down with his elbow, striking Graham between the shoulder blades. While the Fed’s spine proved strong enough to absorb the strike without fracture, the ribs on his left side cracked. Pave’s own elbow took a horrendous shock, as well, cartilage rupturing and tendons snapping, but with Burn sizzling through his blood, the ponytailed giant wouldn’t even have felt discomfort if someone had hacked off his arm with a machete.

  Pave liked this feeling of invulnerability, pain bouncing off his consciousness like marshmallows off a brick wall. The only problem was that this puny, flat-faced little FBI agent was proving just as stubborn to fall down.

  “Why don’t you die?” Pave bellowed, recovering a crude semblance of language.

  “Just shut up,” Graham snapped back, and he reached down deep and powered his left fist in an uppercut that flipped Pave’s head back like a tennis ball. Through his numbed senses, he felt the carpal bones in his hand crack under the violent impact, but even as his own fist broke, he also felt Pave’s jaw give unnaturally in the same blow.

  The hulking giant staggered back, blood pouring from his mouth. Pave spit out broken teeth and tried to sneer, but his broken jaw left his lower, gore-dripping lip slack and expressionless. Instead, the bodyguard unleashed a bellow and charged again.

  Graham had swung up his brawny, injured right arm to protect himself when a buzzing roar rose up from behind him. Instinct cut through the haze of combat in his skull, and he dropped to the snow just as a flashing shape cut through the air above him.

  Mack Bolan hit full-throttle on the Arctic Cat and, reaching 100 miles an hour, took flight like a missile aimed at the rampaging Pave. Graham ducked out of the flying snowmobile’s path, and the Executioner hung on, keeping his improvised aircraft on a straight course. The massive 300-pound bodyguard froze in stark realization at the blurring jet of red-and-blue snowmobile spearing at him.

  Pave didn’t even have time to throw his arms up as the 750-pound rocket crashed into him. Steel and fiberglass proved too much for even Kevlar stretched across drug-enhanced muscles. Bolan twisted out of the seat and dived to the snow as Pave and the Arctic Cat continued plowing on into the heavy bulletproof door. More than one thousand pounds of crushed flesh, mangled fiberglass and steel tore the door off its hinges.

  Bolan staggered to his feet and drew the Raging Bull, then raced over to Graham. “Kirby?”

  “I’m alive,” the battered Fed grumbled. “Stevens is escaping.”

  Bolan nodded and saw Grimaldi and Reader racing to join them. The Executioner knew that the others would take care of the injured agent as he took off into the house.

  Bolan sidestepped, not wanting to step in the messy pulp that used to be Pave. The Arctic Cat had turned the huge bodyguard into a bloody stew, jagged ribs poking up from a compressed chest like the legs of some hideous insect. The warrior continued on, scanning for signs of the criminal mastermind. Then he saw the rear porch and through the large sliding-glass doors, Bolan spotted the madman.

  Stevens struggled to pull his own snowmobile out into the snow, probably not realizing that the broad tread at the back would work as well on wood as it would in soft powder.

  Bolan raised the Raging Bull and triggered a round, but the bulletproof glass of the patio doors stopped the slug. Stevens froze like a startled deer in the headlights, then took off running through the snow.

  Bolan charged the glass, picking up a dining-room chair on the run. He swung the furniture ahead of him like a lance, and throwing all of his weight and strength into the blow, cracked the protective glass. The chair burst into chunks, and Bolan bounced off the transparent barrier, but several deep cracks ran through the length of the bulletproof shield.

  “Just not using a big enough hammer,” Bolan said to himself as he turned back and tore a television set off the kitchen counter. The appliance was s
quat and dense, and Bolan swung for the intersections of the cracks in the glass. This time, he opened a hole large enough to dive through. Bolan was on the patio and racing after Stevens a heartbeat later.

  He was tempted to jump on the other snowmobile, but there were no keys in the ignition, and time wasted hotwiring the vehicle would only give the enemy a larger lead.

  Bolan’s long legs propelled him along through the snow as Stevens struggled to crash through the deep powder. The scientist looked back, then looked down to a tiny glimmering object in his hand. Bolan thought it was a gun at first, but pistols didn’t come in bright orange. Stevens looked down at his injector, then flipped the red glasses off his nose.

  “If you want me, you’ve got me,” he said. “After all, God should partake of his own nectar.”

  Bolan remembered how Graham looked after his war with Pave, the bodyguard. He snapped up the Taurus and triggered it as Stevens pumped the stimulant into his veins. The .44 Magnum slug punched through the mad scientist’s bulletproof vest and into his left lung, missing major arteries and the heart, but with a concentrated dose of Burn flooding through his system, Stevens didn’t even feel the bullet’s impact. Instead, with glassy eyes, the madman laughed. Bolan leveled the front sight of the Taurus at his adversary’s head, and then blinked in surprise as the skinny little man who had so much trouble running through the snow darted like a jet at the Executioner. Bolan’s shot missed the mastermind in a display of adrenaline-charged speed that left the soldier lost for a heartbeat.

  Then Stevens struck, and Bolan went flying, thrown by the speed and the fury of the blows. Bolan had fought bigger, stronger men in the past, but these were men who felt pain and who were limited by the protests of their muscle and sinew. The gaunt, corpselike creature in front of him had no such hindrance as mortal frailty, and charged with blinding quickness.

  The Executioner fired the .44 again, this time the heavy 240-grain slug tore out a chunk of muscle and a fragment of a rib, missing Stevens’s center of mass. Fingers like talons wrapped around Bolan’s forearm and dragged him into the air. Bolan kicked, reaching for leverage as the heavy revolver twisted out of his grasp. Finally, Stevens’s talons released the Executioner, and Bolan tucked into a ball, cushioning his landing in a snowbank.

  Bolan struggled to his feet as the bloody, gaunt killer circled him, scrawny limbs waving in the air like the legs of a grotesque albino spider. A deathly rictus split Mojo’s face.

  “I bleed, and yet I do not die. I am glorious in my unmatched—”

  Bolan lunged, putting everything he had into a hard roundhouse kick. The blow snapped Stevens’s head around, but all it did was provide red, bloody gaps in the skeletal rictus of the criminal mastermind. A bony fist speared the Executioner in the small of the back and the soldier collapsed into the soft powder.

  “See, Burn was developed to give our soldiers a means to tap the potential of the human body,” Stevens explained, his voice a discordant singsong tone that informed Bolan of the man’s lapse of sanity. “Every man is far stronger than he appears. Now, my muscles match my intellect. When the Burn wears off, I’ll surely die from the wounds you’ve inflicted.”

  Stevens’s glassy eyes flashed with the flame of madness. “But for now, I am perfect. If I can’t be the king of this Earth, then most certainly I will be the god of your death.”

  “Sorry,” Bolan apologized. He hooked the spindly legs of the supercharged scientist with one brawny arm and yanked him off his feet. “I don’t bow down to anyone calling himself a god.”

  Bolan punctuated that statement with a hammer blow to Stevens’s gut, driving the air from his lungs, but the drug-crazed scientist kicked violently, catching the Executioner in the side of the head. The sole of Stevens’s snow boot opened a four-inch gash in Bolan’s scalp and the warrior tumbled back into the snow, his counterattack blunted.

  Suddenly, Stevens’s claim of taking Bolan with him didn’t seem so outlandish. Like a mixture of ghoul and spider, the bloody creature leaped to its feet, its broken-toothed, gore-smeared smile gleaming in sharp contrast to his pale, snow-caked face.

  Bolan pulled the Walther P-99 and stiff-armed it, punching out half the magazine. Six .40-caliber slugs flew in a thunderstorm of retribution, but Stevens was fast. Almost fast enough to avoid all of the half-dozen bullets, but the Executioner’s marksmanship skills were up to the challenge of the man’s hyperactive reflexes. Two bullets connected, one crushing the spindly scientist’s right elbow, and the other tearing a chunk out of his scrawny neck. Stevens staggered, slowed by the hits.

  Bolan lunged to his feet, swinging one arm around Stevens’s bloody neck. A bony fist stabbed into the soldier’s gut, and the drug-fueled doctor continued to hammer on his adversary’s abdomen. The onslaught knocked the wind out of Bolan, and he could see the world wreathed in a red haze that he knew was the onset of unconsciousness.

  But he felt Stevens’s head, pinned against his chest by his left arm, the polymer frame of the Walther locked in his other fist. The solution to this punishment grabbed the Executioner from the edge of collapse and he jammed the muzzle of the P-99 into the bloody smile of the ghoul and pulled the trigger. Something exploded across his biceps, burning hotly and painfully, a cycle of explosions sounding in the morass of his numbed senses.

  When he recovered his wits, Bolan looked down at Stevens’s cored skull. Sticky brains stuck to his chest and arm, and he could see where two of his bullets had gone through the mass murderer’s head and into his own arm. Bolan released his death grip on Kent Stevens and the ghoulish figure dropped into the snow, his insectlike limbs still twitching, as if receiving signals from a disintegrated brain. The corpse’s distorted face was livid with powder burns from the contact wounds.

  The Executioner staggered away from the corpse, scraping the dead man’s tissue off his own wounds.

  “Striker!” A voice cried out.

  Bolan glanced up to see Stan Reader running through the snow.

  “Know anything about first aid?” Bolan asked.

  Reader caught up to the Executioner and slid his slender shoulder under Bolan’s armpit. “Some. Why?”

  “Flesh wounds in the arm. Maybe a broken rib or two,” Bolan explained.

  “And Stevens?” Reader asked.

  Bolan sucked down a breath, then felt something crunch beneath his feet. He looked down and saw the red, mirrored shades that the mad scientist had worn. He ground the lenses under his heel, cheap metal frames bending and deforming under his weight. He remembered the title Stevens had given himself.

  “The king is dead.”

  The exhausted and battered warriors waited for Brognola’s strike force to pick them up.

  EPILOGUE

  Captain Michael Jaye was uncertain of the wisdom of meeting Kent Stevens at the beach. The submarine breached the surface, however. Jaye knew full well the reach of the gaunt, red-haired mastermind, and he for one didn’t want to disappoint him. Not with the ways Stevens had to kill an enemy.

  It was just after sunset, and he put the night-vision binoculars to his eyes.

  On the shore, a skinny figure stood, arms folded and waiting.

  “He made it,” Jaye whispered.

  So much for having his very own South Sea island paradise, but better to be disappointed than killed by the hideous biowarfare mastery of Stevens. Jaye nodded for his crew to get the shore launch ready.

  It had been a hectic voyage across the Pacific. Undoubtedly, the man he’d encountered in the Wonsan submarine pen had put out the alert for their craft. All along their journey from Korea, Jaye had to play a deadly game of cat and mouse, avoiding sub-hunting destroyers and helicopters across thousands of miles. Had it not been for his skills as a submariner, they would have been caught, but he’d managed to squeeze through, escaping the dragnet put out for them.

  Jaye rubbed his sore arm. The scrape he’d received in the firefight with the mystery man in Wonsan still itched, despite the ship doctor’s atte
ntion.

  “Serves you right for getting directly involved in a shore party,” the medic chided angrily. “You’re a captain. Delegate authority.”

  Jaye smirked at his friend’s admonition, but he lived for adventure. If he wanted to just wear a captain’s hat and enjoy the privilege of rank, he’d be the captain of a fishing boat or a garbage scow. No, he’d been addicted to the rush of adventure, and that meant when he had the opportunity, he’d be at the forefront of the action. The men in his command appreciated that he would make them take no risks that he wouldn’t face himself, especially if it meant swimming into a covert, underwater facility and fighting an unknown marauder.

  Jaye checked his SIG 550 rifle, then scanned the shore.

  Just because the scrawny doctor was standing on the beach didn’t mean that they were in the clear. The intruder hadn’t been expected in the depths of the submarine pen. He could be anywhere.

  Jaye crawled down and got into the inflatable launch, Mercury engines thrumming with quiet power as they pushed the Zodiac raft to shore. Jaye gripped his rifle tightly, his instincts screaming at him to just put the stock to his shoulder and empty two or three rounds into the skinny man on the sand.

  From the faces of his men, they also had that thought racing through their minds.

  Brushes with destroyers and helicopters had put everyone’s nerves on end.

  “Where the hell is Pave?” one of his sailors asked as the Zodiac raft glided over the waves.

  Jaye frowned. “Maybe he didn’t make it.”

  “What could kill a beast like him?” the sailor asked.

  “Just be glad his fat ass isn’t riding in the Zode back to the sub,” Jaye answered. “I didn’t really like the idea of that huge freak trying to squeeze in with the rest of us.”