Fire in the Sky

by Don Pendleton

  Annotation

  On January 23, 1986, millions watched in horror as the space shuttle Challenger exploded during takeoff.

  But NASA's greatest disaster was only a grim prelude to the nightmare to come. A conspiracy has taken root at the core of the U.S. military machine as a fanatical group of the Pentagon's elite prepares to fulfill an ancient prophecy of ultimate destruction.

  America needs a friend, and Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group, has just the man — Mack Bolan.

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Mack Bolan

  Fire in the Sky

  Determination will carry the soldier only as far as the place where he dies, and few soldiers care to go that far.

  A. J. Liebling, Oct. 19, 1963

  Fight the good fight with all thy might.

  J. S. A. Monsell, 1863

  It was my destiny, all those miles ago, to resolve to stand firm against America's enemies, whoever they may be. I'll defend her to my last breath.

  Mack Bolan

  To those who pledge to uphold the principles of democracy

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Mike McQuay for his contribution to this work.

  Prologue

  Titusville, Florida

  January 23, 1986

  Nobody watched the launches anymore. Nobody took them seriously. As Jerry Butler sat, mesmerized, in front of his nine-inch black-and-white TV screen, he thought that if familiarity didn't breed contempt, it certainly bred easy acceptance.

  And therein lay the danger.

  He sat in the small, trashed-out bungalow that he'd rented just weeks before, the easy roar of the Atlantic coast surf just barely reaching through his closed and shuttered windows. He wore only pajama bottoms, his unkempt hair falling wildly into his eyes. Half-eaten TV dinners, rotting in their aluminum containers, were scattered around the small living room. His six-day growth of beard had reached the itching stage, and he'd developed a rash on his neck from continual, absentminded scratching.

  Normally a neat, fastidious man, Jerry Butler had lately discovered that the mind could easily and rapidly create new realities for itself if given the proper stimulus. In his case fear was the key. His doctor would perhaps call it paranoia.

  Where was McMasters? He should be here by now.

  On the small, flickering screen, Challenger sat on its pad like a squat frog, ready to leap, pure white smoke bleeding from the solid fuel boosters that would kick it, screaming, from Earth's atmosphere and into orbit. It was chilly outside, and cloudy. Butler desperately hoped that the inclement weather would scrub the mission for at least one more day.

  But it wasn't to be. Bureaucratic priorities would win out over intelligence and common sense every time, and the space shuttle program had to hurry and show its commercial value in order to justify more congressional bureaucratic dollars being spent on its survival. He thought bitterly of the term, "commercial value." The profit motive, plus easy acceptance, were at the moment threatening the entire planet, and Jerry Butler felt himself the only man capable of stopping it.

  "The countdown is continuing at 11 minus 60 seconds and counting," came the voice of the NASA spokesman over the television.

  "Damn," Butler muttered. This thing could be handled even if the shuttle was in orbit, but it would be infinitely more difficult.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow flit past the side window. He jumped up and ran to the window, parting the curtains. Through the shutter slats he could see a normal, if cool, Florida morning. The snowbirds who had rented these beachfront cottages to escape the northern winter were getting a taste of it anyway. The sky was slate, palm trees swaying in the stiff wind.

  He closed the curtains and returned to the television. Supply trucks were racing away from the launch platform and large, billowing clouds of smoke were now filling the screen.

  "T minus 30 seconds and counting."

  Another shadow flitted past the window. But he ignored it this time, his eyes fixed on the excitement of the launch.

  At T minus 10 seconds there was pounding on the back door, Butler jerking his head to the sound. McMasters. Finally.

  He jumped up, listening to the sounds of the lift-off as he pulled the door open. Glen McMasters stood before him, weaving slightly, like a drunk. The man's eyes were glassy, a strange look of perturbed confusion twisting his pale, fleshy face.

  "Wha..." Butler began, then his eyes took in the spreading pool of red that wet the man's sport shirt. Blood and fatty tissue were oozing from several wounds on McMasters's chest and stomach.

  "Oh God!"

  Butler tried to back away, but McMasters fell into his arms, his lips sputtering soundlessly. Butler supported the man's weight for a second, then the bulk of it took both of them slowly to the floor.

  Wrenching away, Butler slid out from under the deadweight, his mind numbed by fear and confusion. He got to his feet — McMasters's blood all over him — and clenched his fists, trying to force his mind to calm long enough to think of a course of action. He took several deep breaths. The first thing he had to do was to get help for McMasters. The next thing he had to do was get the hell out of there. Had he looked more closely, he would have discovered that McMasters was already dead.

  His knees were weak, almost buckling, as he hurried to the phone. He picked up the receiver just in time to watch the space shuttle on the TV screen explode in a huge fireball seventy-three seconds into the flight.

  "No!" he screamed. "Those bastards! Those bastards!"

  And through the anger and the fear, a small truth made its way into his tortured, reeling brain: the phone he held up to his ear was soundless — dead.

  The receiver slipped from his grasp, his whole body numb. He thought to try to run for the bedroom window, but heard a loud crashing back there. He turned toward the front door, unable to look at the body that lay near the back way out.

  He took one faltering step, then another, his body responding sluggishly, as in a dream, unable to hurry. Then he saw the door burst open, a man in a Security Policeman's uniform filling the doorway.

  No words were exchanged as the SP slowly raised the M-16 he carried at his side. Butler gave up then, resigned himself to the end of his world. In his last seconds he saw things with a crystal clarity that was almost frightening, and wondered, given the opportunity to live it over again, if he'd be willing to condemn the rest of the world to extend his own existence just a little longer. Then it struck him that he was getting the better end of the deal after all.

  The SP grinned broadly and pulled the trigger.

  Jerry Butler never heard the sound of the weapon or felt even the slightest twinge of pain. His body simply accepted what his mind had already embraced.

  Chapter One

  The fog in Mississippi was the worst Bolan had ever seen anywhere. He drove the bi
g, old Cadillac through dense impenetrable patches of it, thick like delta cotton, that rolled aggressively along the twisting blacktop and extended visibility no farther than the end of the hood. It hung suspended in the thick stands of woods that butted all the way up to the road on both sides and turned what was already a dark and foreboding landscape into a surreal nightmare.

  He was tired and irritable from the intense concentration demanded by the fog, his mood not helped by the constant bickering of the two people sharing the front seat with him. Husband and wife, they seemed a physical and emotional mismatch, drawn together by mutual scientific interest and nothing else. At the moment they were arguing loudly.

  "Skinner was right," Dr. Harry Arnold said. "Control the environment and you control the man. Control the environment positively and you have a happy man."

  "But who controls, Harry, who controls?" Julie Arnold replied, turning and leaning against the passenger-side door to stare at him. She pointed. "And who controls the controllers? Somebody's got to be in charge."

  "Don't be a fool," the man replied wearily. "My theory implies first and foremost that benign, intelligent direction would institute the control. That would be the first step."

  "You're living in a test tube," she replied, her eyes bright fire in the darkness of the car. "Even your given is an impossibility. Power corrupts."

  "Stop!" Bolan ordered, rubbing a hand across his face. "Between the fog and the arguing, I'm getting a headache. We've only got another hour on the road. Let's spend it peacefully."

  Dr. Arnold looked at him over the top of his wire-frame glasses. "Your job is to drive," he said coldly.

  Bolan hit the brakes, hard, the car jerking to a stop in the middle of the dark, lonely road. He turned a stern face to the Arnolds. "Look, you'd better keep quiet," he said, menace in his voice.

  Julie Arnold started to speak, but stopped herself. Throwing Bolan an amused look, she straightened up in the seat and looked out the windshield.

  Bolan sighed and drove on, reaching out to hit the wipers long enough to clear the moisture that had accumulated. He hadn't wanted this job, hadn't wanted any part of it, but here he was. The Arnolds were classified, even from him, but he did know that they were government research scientists who were being escorted to a safehouse in the Mississippi delta and that the Justice Department didn't want to take it through regular channels.

  And Mack Bolan was definitely not regular channels.

  Hal Brognola, Bolan's friend and contact at Justice, had asked him as a personal favor to handle the transport. It had seemed like a waste of time, but Hal had been insistent. And to Mack Bolan, real friendships ran deep and true. He had taken the job, and from the moment he had climbed into the vehicle with the Arnolds in Langley, Virginia, he'd regretted every minute of it.

  Of the Arnolds, Bolan knew very little. They had been on the road together for nearly eighteen hours, most of them spent in disagreement. Both were scientists, Julie working as her husband's assistant. There was, perhaps, a twenty-to twenty-five-year difference in their ages. He was rumpled suits; she was blue jeans and sweaters. Beyond that, they were strangers to him. It seemed best to keep it that way.

  Bolan looked at his watch, the luminous dial telling him that another day had begun. He'd been at the wheel the entire time, stopping only for food and gas. The roads were the safest, least predictable means of conveyance, and, according to procedure, he'd changed routes frequently and changed cars twice. His hardware weighed heavily against him in the humid air—a Beretta 93-R and a .44 AutoMag — hidden from view in a combat harness concealed beneath a light windbreaker. He'd nearly stowed them in the trunk before the start of the trip, and now, as he sweated profusely under the leather of the harness, he wished he had.

  The safe house, near Hattiesburg, was a converted plantation that had survived the Civil War. Southern Mississippi was rife with these antebellum dinosaurs of a bygone era. They were tucked away in the incredible, dense forests that blanketed two-thirds of the state, many of them redecorated and opened to a public curious to see the remnants of American aristocracy.

  To the dreamer in Bolan, the pristine conservation of such natural wonders as the forests and the ghosts of the memory they protected was a romantic legacy of a unique and delicate past, but to the soldier in Bolan, this was the worst possible place in the world. The two-lane blacktop snaked its way through uncountable miles of totally impenetrable forests. The road had been deserted for hours. He longed for open country, for visibility. Anything, anyone could disappear from these roads and never be seen again. The forests held secrets, and the forests remained silent.

  Bolan suddenly slowed the Cadillac to a crawl. "There's something up ahead."

  They peered intently through the windshield. The fog glowed brightly in the distance, then receded, back and forth.

  "What is it?" Harry Arnold asked.

  "Maybe a police car," Bolan offered, "with its cherry turned on."

  "Maybe there was a wreck," Julie Arnold said.

  "Yeah...maybe," Bolan said, but it didn't feel right. He looked in the rearview mirror. The fog behind was glowing brightly — headlights. There was no reason for there not to be a car behind them, but to see so much activity after so much solitude just didn't sit right.

  "Something's starting to take shape," Dr. Arnold said.

  "A car?" the woman said.

  "A jeep," Bolan replied, bringing the Cadillac to a complete stop perhaps thirty feet from the blue Security Police jeep that had been parked across the road. He could make out a larger form behind the vehicle, perhaps an armored carrier, that blocked what the jeep didn't. A man, wraithlike in the fog, stepped out of the vehicle. He wore a colonel's uniform.

  Bolan checked the rearview mirror again. The dark hulk of a two-and-a-half-ton canvas-covered truck — also with Air Force markings — had pulled up twenty feet behind. Engine idling, it just sat there, headlights lighting the area around the Cadillac.

  "He's coming this way," Julie Arnold said, pointing at the colonel who moved, smiling, toward them.

  Bolan eased the Beretta out of its holster.

  "What are you doing?" Dr. Arnold asked. "Those are our people."

  Bolan said nothing as he primed the weapon. He rolled down the window and called out, "That'll be far enough, Colonel. I want to ask you a few questions."

  The man smiled broadly and raised his hands. "Quite understandable, Mr. Bolan," he called back. "Sorry to have engaged you in such an... unorthodox manner. You've been out of contact, however, and it couldn't be helped."

  Bolan tensed. There was no way this man could have known his name. Brognola was the only one who knew he was the escort. The operation had been compromised.

  "My name's Kit Givan, Colonel, United States Air Force. You are transporting Drs. Harry and Julie Arnold to our safe house in Hattiesburg. I have been sent to escort you."

  The Arnolds sighed in unison, then chuckled in relief. Bolan felt no better. The man once again started to walk toward the car.

  "Stop!" Bolan said, and the smile finally disappeared from Givan's face. "Why are you intercepting us? This is an undercover operation."

  "We have received reports that KGB agents might try something at the house," Givan called. "We are here to protect you."

  "If KGB agents know about the safe house," Bolan replied, "then that's the last place I want to take my charges."

  "This is not a request, Bolan," Givan returned. "These are orders... yours, as well as ours."

  "I don't take orders from you," Bolan said, his eyes scanning the surrounding trees. Had he caught movement? "I want you to remove your vehicles from the roadway so I may proceed with my mission. I'll make my own contacts with Justice and determine at that time the proper course of action in this matter."

  "What are you saying?" Julie Arnold asked, angry. "This is the Air Force. We work for them."

  "I don't," Bolan replied. "And from where I sit, this whole setup stinks."

  He sa
w them again, maddeningly brief glimpses of shadows with rifles running between the pine trees. They were close enough to be visible only because they wanted to be close enough to get off a shot.

  "I'm ordering you to stand out of the vehicle!" Givan called, his hands resting on his gun belt. "I am now in command of this operation!"

  "Give me a minute to discuss this with my people," Bolan returned.

  The colonel looked at his watch. "You have thirty seconds."

  Julie Arnold was fiddling with the lock on her door. "This is foolish," she told Bolan. "I don't know who or what you are, but you're making a lot of trouble with the government."

  "Don't get out yet," Bolan ordered.

  "Go to hell," the woman answered, pushing the door partway open.

  Bolan leveled a penetrating look at her. "You'll be dead when your foot touches the ground. Wait until I give you the word."

  She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. "Who are you?"

  "You're nearly out of time!" Givan called.

  "Listen," Bolan told the Arnolds. "The woods around us are filled with men with guns, and they're not the good guys. Whoever these people are, they're here to kill us. We're going to have to break for the woods. The darkness and fog will hide us as well as it's hiding them."

  "You're crazy!" Harry Arnold said.

  "Time's up!" Givan shouted.

  "Okay," Bolan said. "Out your side and don't stop running. For anything. Go!"

  "No!" Julie Arnold said. "I can't just jump…"

  "Go!" Bolan rasped. "Go!"

  He saw Colonel Givan turn and run back to his jeep at the same instant that muzzle-flashes lit up the night on the opposite side of the roadway.

  Bolan ducked instinctively to the chain-saw rattle of automatic weapons, glass shattering all around them. Harry Arnold yelled once, a scream that caught in his throat and died abruptly, his body slumping onto Bolan.

  As small-arms fire ate away at the Cadillac, Bolan pulled free of Arnold's body to look at the woman. She was down, too, staring in horrified fascination at the mass of red, quivering flesh that had once been her husband's face.