Toby Ranger—mouth of solid brass and heart of gold, not to mention those delightful other dimensions. She could fly anything with wings, could outshoot the average cop, had the courage of a lioness with cubs. Where the hell had she hatched from? From infinite zero?
Lyons broke into Bolan’s introspections with pithy summation. “This one could be for all the marbles.”
Bolan smiled wearily and replied, “Watch the store, Carl. I’ve got to crash. Eyes haven’t closed for two days and nights.”
It was like turning a switch, that transition from alert wakefulness to restorative slumber. It was another trick he had learned in the death jungles of Vietnam—“combat sleep”—eyes and ears half open and alert to any suggestion of peril, the thinking mind at rest and gathering strength for the trials that lay ahead.
He did not even hear his friend’s reply, so it must have been an assent. And he had no awareness of the routine events of that flight, no sense of time passing. He was, however, jolted back by the faint, distressed voice of Toby Ranger deep in the earphones.
“I can’t believe it! They just disappeared—right over the crater! Going down for a closer look!”
Smiley cautioned, “Be careful.”
Bolan asked Lyons, “What is it? Where are they?”
“Sounds like the home stand.”
Bolan punched his button to tell Toby, “Get a marker down and get away from there!”
“You don’t understand,” came the faint reply. “One second they were there and the next second they weren’t. They simply disappeared, zot! I’m on it now. It’s a—uh oh, ground fire! I’m hit!”
He waited a moment for further word, then prodded for it. “Toby! How bad?”
There was no response.
Smiley screamed it, rattling Bolan’s phones: “Toby! Toby!”
Lyons groaned, “My God.”
Richards reported, “I had her on radar, Stryker. She blipped out. She’s down.”
“Do you have a position fix?”
“Affirm. Twenty minutes out. And that’s mighty rough country down there.”
Twenty minutes.
For those living on the heartbeat, that could be an infinity of eternities.
And for Mack Bolan, especially, it was a circle-back to nowhere … to infinite zero.
21: King Fire
The X on the skipper’s chart marked a chaotic jumble of rock outcroppings—great hollow depressions with jagged sides rising to imposing ridges, and all interlaced with seemingly impenetrabale jungle growth—wild country for sure, the legacy of the violence which accompanied the birth of this volcanic island.
Smiley shuddered. “Oh! If she’s down in there …”
Bolan touched the skipper’s shoulder. “I just saw a flash of something at two o’clock—there it is again!”
“Right, I have it.”
“That’s it!” Anders cried.
That was it, all right—the crumpled wreckage of a small plane, perched near the top of a steep slope and all but hidden in dense vegetation.
“Recent crash,” the pilot judged. “Otherwise the jungle would have covered it over.”
They were almost directly above the spot now. Bolan said, “It’s a bad angle, isn’t it?”
“We can lower you in, if you’re game.”
Bolan was. He went to the waist and got into the personnel rig.
A moment later, he was swinging free and descending into the trees. He was on the ground for just a few minutes, and his face, when it reappeared at the personnel door, held a mixture of defeat and hope. The crewmen pulled him aboard and he reported to the anxious team: “I don’t know how she could have survived that, but maybe she did. Bit of blood in the cockpit, that’s all. Someone took her out. Vehicle tracks nearby, I’d say a jeep or some sort of ATV. Steel mesh fence about fifty yards from the impact point—can’t even see it from up here. The sign says Pan Pacific Geological Laboratory. It also says to keep the hell out. I didn’t like the feel of it. I think it’s paydirt.”
Smiley was biting her knuckles. She said, “God, Mack. If she’s …”
“No, wait,” Lyons said, rubbing his forehead in concentration. “We checked that place out two weeks ago. It’s a scientific research group, doing volcano studies.”
“Were you in there?” Bolan asked him.
“No. But we ran a paper check. They’re even partially funded through a U.S. grant. It checked out solid. Uh … tectonic studies.”
“What’s that?”
“Beats me. Something to do with geological evolution, formation of earth layers, something like that. They have an extinct crater back in there somewhere and—wait a minute!”
“Right—Toby said the chopper disappeared over a crater.”
Smiley said, “Well, you wouldn’t expect them to put up a sign saying missile site, would you? What the hell?—cover groups are a dime a dozen. Let’s go take a look.”
Anders was working another line of thought. “Pele Phoenix,” he said. “Fits like a hand in a glove. From the ashes of an old fire, a new one arises.”
“And rises and rises,” Smiley added. “Clear to California.”
“Sure. That’s got to be it.”
“What a beautiful cover,” the girl said. “Who would think to look for a missile base in a volcano!”
“What do you think?” Lyons asked Bolan.
“King Fire,” Bolan said. “And, sure, it fits. Nobody would question the movement of heavy equipment into a place like that. And it’s not unusual for scientific installations to be fenced off and guarded against trespassers.”
“What trespassers?” Anders commented, shivering slightly. “Mountain goats, maybe.”
“Cute time is over,” Bolan decided. “Let’s go look it over, Skipper. Look right down their throats. If we draw so much as revolver fire, you’ve got yourself a fire mission.”
“Rah-jer. Here we go. Gunners, take stations.”
Smiley was evicted from her seat as the copilot slid in to man his station.
They came in at treetop level, breaking into a clearing several hundred feet beyond the fencing. At dead center was a prefabricated building, long and flat and practically invisible, poised at the rim of a shallow depression which from on high would look like a crater. At this altitude, it was apparent that a huge tarpaulin, painted the same color as the surrounding lava rock, was suspended like a bowl into the depression.
Beneath that tarp, sure, could be a genuine crater—with a surface diameter of about 100 feet. That was small, as Hawaiian craters go. The giant Haleakala Crater on Maui could swallow the island of Manhattan. This one, if indeed it were a crater, could certainly swallow a few illicit ballistic missiles.
The cincher was standing nearby on glistening rails, concealed in covering vegetation—a small gantry crane.
Bolan said, “Bingo. Lift away, Skipper.”
Two men in shirtsleeves had stepped out of the building and were looking up at the chopper, hands on hips, simply watching. One of them waved genially as the Huey pulled away.
Smiley’s breath caught in her throat. “That’s Nate Flora,” she exclaimed.
“Where’s the helicopter?” Lyons wondered.
“Maybe it flew under the tarp,” Lyons said.
The Huey was now circling and climbing to a holding altitude, several hundred yards beyond the installation.
Bolan moved his team to the waist, where they began rigging for combat.
“Here’s the way we go,” he told them. “It’ll have to be a punch-in, ramming all the way, quick-quick numbers. Worse, we’ll have to play the ear. Smiley, you stay close on me. I might need your linguistics.”
The pilot had joined the clutch for the combat order. The guy’s face was sober and a bit drawn, but there was a gleam in the eyes.
“Lyons and Anders will cover our butts outside. Keep that yard clean. Work with Richards here, he can give you plenty of comfort. We’ll look for Toby first, and try to spring her. Richards
—you see a beautiful blonde staggering around out there, go get her. Carl—if you get clear, try to drop that tarp.”
The pilot was passing out radios. He said, “Don’t dwell on formalities. You want a blast somewhere, just scream it. Try to give me some sort of coordinates, though. Sarge—you want to tell me now what’s under that tarp?”
Bolan slung a chattergun from his shoulder and told the guy, “Maybe five or six megatons of hell on earth, Skipper. Don’t put any rockets in there. We could have this whole damn island spewing again.”
The guy’s face turned a bit gray. He said, “What the hell is it?”
“We think it’s ChiCom IRBM’s. Tell your gunners to play their fire accordingly. Look, give us a standard infantry drop, then pull back for fire support. This is an ear play, so you’ll have to use yours, too.”
“Right. Are we ready?”
“We’re ready.”
The pilot returned to his station.
Bolan showed his people a solemn smile. “Live large,” he said. “Follow my lead out of here. He’ll bring her down to a few feet off the ground. You’ll feel the nose dip. That’s go time. Don’t hesitate and don’t look back. Hit the ground running and ready for a fight. Any questions?”
“Yeah,” the comic-fed said, his face cast in pained lines. “How do you get out of this chicken outfit?”
“You die,” Bolan replied with a wry smile.
“I guess I’ll stay.”
The Huey went in on a descending curve, skimming the treetops and dropping steadily. She broke the clearing and gave a momentary, gut-grabbing upward lurch, then bored on in with the nose high and running parallel to the ground. People were spilling out of that building over there and a siren was sounding when the ship gave the telltale shiver, hanging suspended in a split-second hover, the nose dipping.
Bolan yelled “Tally ho” and launched himself into the jarring descent. The others spilled out behind him and the Huey lifted away, machine guns spitting a withering fire across those grounds in advance of the landing team.
Bolan’s piece was blazing before his conscious mind pulled the trigger, and he was aware of chattering hand guns behind him.
On the forward track, a very impersonal thing was happening—men were dying with grotesque screams choking their throats, bodies rolling across the hellgrounds and pumping blood onto the lava rock into pools that could not be absorbed.
He hit the door of the building at full gallop and crashed in, a fresh clip in the chattergun and death on his mind. A trio of khaki-clad Orientals rose up from somewhere and promptly descended into nowhere as death chattered on.
Smiley Dublin ran into his corner vision, a wreath of fire encircling the snout of her weapon—and that part of his mind, mostly submerged now, that gives rise to intellectual activity was sharply jolted by the death snarl on that pretty face.
There were no inner walls here and no back wall whatever, only a gaping wound in what had once been volcanic rock, an elevator shaft which could transport several automobiles at once. The building was crammed with work tables and exotic machinery and, off to one end, a glass cubicle outfitted for lounging during leisure moments.
A pair of familiar Caucasians from Manhattan had just run into there, Dominick and Flora—and, sure, they had to know—there was no China con game here—La Commissione were present, alive, and trying to stay well in King Fire—and Bolan was sickened by the stench of depravity represented by all this.
Before he could react, Smiley Dublin was on them, with her kill mask intact and her gun blowing death into that glass house.
The cubicle walls shattered and the glass rained down in tinkling accompaniment to the shrilling siren, chattering weapons, and the despairing moans of souls departing under duress.
Bolan yelled, “Smiley, hold it!—hold it!”
Her weapon fell and she turned to him like a sleepwalker just jolted awake. The voice was small and unbelieving as she cried, “My God, Mack! I was en-joy-ing it!”
“That’s just gut talk!” he barked. “Toby’s in there. Get her out!”
Bolan ran on, to the edge of the pit. Beyond and to his right, behind another glass wall, were consoles and the usual trappings of a launch control center. He spewed that wall with steel-jacket slugs—and they merely bounced off. He pivoted and ran along the rim, found a steel circular stairway, and descended into the pit. Abruptly, all the lights went out and the siren failed and all sounds of gunfire topside dwindled away.
He was in stygian blackness and descending deeper into it when something fluttered high overhead and bright sunlight converted the depths of hell into a twentieth-century nightmare. Gleaming steel casings glittered hotly under the sun and spoke to him of man-made suns that hurtled through the skies in search of mass souls—and, yeah, even here, in this madness, could be found a sort of perverted pride in the accomplishment of a living species who had climbed down from the trees many, many eons after Pele’s fires had raged in this pit. An example of human excellence, yes—but an excellence run amok.
A pair of them stood there, graceful and threatening yet impotent, incomplete. There were no nose cones—no payloads. The man who had walked through several hells to reach this place had to stifle an impulse to sit down and laugh, to light a cigarette and hurl taunts at the unfanged wonders from across the world.
He went deeper, into the very bowels of the place, following the sounds of moving feet and hushed voices, and found more unfanged marvels, lying on their sides, asleep and strapped to their beds. And there were tunnels down here, narrow-gauge rails, holes in the rock leading God knew where, and running feet scurrying everywhere.
And there was Chung.
He stood beside a sleeping giant, one hand raised as though to caress it, staring at the man in black with inscrutable eyes.
The Big One told him, “Here’s my head, General. Come and take it.”
“You did not beat me,” the guy said. “She beat me.”
“Beat is beat,” Bolan told him. “Let’s go.”
“She intercepted the payloads. She sent them back. The lotus blossom is my Achilles heels. Is it true?”
Bolan told him, “I guess it is.”
The guy turned around and walked away. Bolan called out, then sent a burst of fire around his feet, and the guy walked on.
Pele beat you, guy. I met her, upstairs, just a minute ago.
Bolan let him go, to meet defeat in his own way.
When he returned to the upper level, Carl Lyons was moving gingerly through the litter of dead and dying—looking for faces, probably, that could merit a written report.
“Let’s get out of here,” Bolan told him.
“What is—did you find—?”
Bolan grabbed his arm and pulled him along. “I found. There’s only one way to finish this place. Let’s go.”
“Smiley said—”
“Pele.”
“Huh?”
“I found her, too.”
“Are you okay?”
“I will be—when this place is buried.”
The girls were aboard the Huey. It stood there, hovering a few feet above the ground, proud sign and symbol of controlled excellence. Anders ran to join them and they climbed aboard. Bolan went immediately to the command chair and told the excellent human being there: “Take her up. Rocket range. Bury it.”
The guy’s face drained and he said, “Six megatons worth?”
“A Chinaman’s pride worth,” Bolan corrected him. “There’s nothing down there but rocket fuel. Bury it.”
A minute or so later, a succession of bright, streaking arrows of fire whizzed through the Hawaiian skies to enter a primeval hole in the ground.
The hole belched back with rolling flames and towering smoke, a drumbeat succession of thundering, trumpeting explosions that quivered the ground and shook the atmosphere.
Bolan stood in the open doorway of the gunship to watch a mad dream expire and to comfort a weeping lotus blossom who, for one mad momen
t, had found exultation in violence.
Flames roared into the sky and—for one mad moment of his own—Mack Bolan thought that he saw Mother Pele dancing in the open pit, smiling at him with the face of a lotus blossom.
The one beside him said, “Mack … it is a paranoid business. I haven’t told you everything. Maybe I never can. There are many secret games. And I—I …”
He said, “Shush. It’s okay.”
There was nothing so paranoid about an undercover fed who sang and danced, spoke in many tongues and loved in the line of duty—and completely broke a renegade Chinese general.
“How’s Toby?” he asked her.
“Hurting, but healthy.”
“How’s Smiley?”
“Healthy, but hurting. Mack … What happened to me down there?”
“Happens to all of us,” he told her. “Sooner or later … if we’re really alive. You found infinite zero. You roared back, Smiley. That’s all.”
Yeah. Primeval forces were still at work on Planet Earth.
And some of us, thank God, roared back.
Epilogue
The government was a machine, sure, but the machinery was maintained and the program buttons pushed by people. Brognola had exercised a prerogative of his office. He would do it again, whenever he thought that his government would be best served through such an exercise.
He told the big, damned guy, “I’m assuring you safe conduct back to the mainland. Miss Dublin will go along to make sure it doesn’t get violated. Soon as she releases you, you’re on your own again.”
The big guy showed him one of those humorless smiles as he turned the offer back. “Thanks, I’ll find my own way back.”
“Look,” Brognola fumed, “I hocked my soul to spring you out of here. You owe me. Another scrape with the law in this jurisdiction and I’ll be hanging by my thumbs from the Washington Monument. I mean to escort you back to—”
“No way,” the blitzer said adamantly. “If it will make you feel better, though, Smiley can tag along with me. Part of the way, at least.”
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