The entire island? “Glitch?” Hawkins demanded, striding faster toward the hovercraft.
“Negative on that. Everything registers A-okay. We are fully operational and running smooth.”
“Son of a bitch was testing the unit,” McCarter said, then the truth hit him like a punch from the dark. “Bloody hell, no! The buyer was testing the unit!”
Lurching forward into a full run, McCarter switched frequencies on his radio. “Stone House, this is Firebird. We have a possible location on Harrison. Repeat, we have a possible location. It’s Matua Island. Repeat, Matua. We are in pursuit. Tell Lyons the balloon has gone up! Firebird out!”
“What about our guy?” Hawkins asked, shrugging the man on his shoulders.
“Leave him,” McCarter stated. “By the time he wakes, it’ll all be over.”
“One way or another,” Manning agreed, heading for the hovercraft.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Gary, Illinois
The dimly lit hallway was filthy, trash strewed about and a dead rat lying in a niche that was supposed to be holding a fire extinguisher. Graffiti covered the walls, and most of the ceiling panels were gone, exposing the metal framework designed to support the foam squares. The original ceiling beyond the framework was cracked plaster, veined with insulated wiring and an empty light socket.
With three armed men in front of him and four behind, Peter Woods strode along the dirty hallway, glancing impatiently at his watch. What the hell was going on? Why hadn’t anybody reported in yet? Biggest deal of his life, going to turn the world upside down, and the punks were probably off getting laid or fighting with some rival gang. Damn fools.
Surrounded by the Magnificent Seven, Woods turned at an intersection and entered what once would have been the secretarial pool of the factory complex. A skylight admitted milky light, softening the splintery remains of the broken furniture and smashed typewriters. Pausing to light a slim panatela cigar, Woods drew in the dark smoke, then scowled at the shadows in the far corner.
“Who the fuck is that?” he demanded, pointing at a pile of rags partially hidden under a mailing table.
Tall and wide, Brian Ledbetter pulled a piece and rushed the table. Thumbing back the hammer, he kicked over the table and the rags came to life, raising a pair of skinny arms.
“Please, I ain’t hurting nothing,” the old man croaked, trying to get farther into the corner.
“Here now, that’s okay. Stay calm, old-timer,” Ledbetter said gently, lowering the muzzle of his gun. “There’s barbed wire all around this place. How did you get inside?”
The old man shook a scrawny finger to the left. “There’s an old coal chute—” he started to explain.
Raising a hand, Ledbetter cut him off. “Sure, I left it open. Just wanted to know, thanks.” Firing from the hip, he pumped three rounds into the rags, and the old man toppled over without a sound.
“Tony, Gary, toss it outside,” Ledbetter ordered, holstering the piece.
“No, leave it,” Woods said around the cigar in his mouth.
The leader of the Magnificent Seven shrugged in response, and the group started along the next corridor. Halfway down, Woods stopped and slipped a magnetic card into a crack in the wall. There was a subdued click, the low hiss of hydraulics working, and a section of the opposite wall disengaged to swing aside and bright lights filled the ramshackle hallway.
Stepping into the light, the group spread out so that Peter Woods could lead the way now. Striding past a sandbag nest containing armed guards and .50-caliber machine gun, Woods gave the eye to a group of Cascade soldiers sitting at a table cleaning assault rifles, and then pushed his way through a revolving door. The glass in the door had been replaced with Plexiglas and rubbed with sandpaper to make it almost opaque. Any cops trying to bust the place wouldn’t be able to see what they were heading into by going through the door, giving Cascade valuable time to erect its interior defenses.
Past the door, cool air blew briskly from the ceiling vents to carry away the stink of the abandoned factory outside. In here, the raised floor was spotlessly clean, the ceiling intact and the area well lit with fluorescent ceiling lights. A dozen people were at consoles operating controls, and hulking machines larger than refrigerators formed neat lines along the flooring. A steady hum pervaded the cool air, along with the faint aroma of ozone, from the operating Cray supercomputer.
“Are you ready?” Woods asked, looking proudly at the mainframe. It was an older model, slow and feeble compared to the massive Cray IV supercomputers used at his legitimate business offices in the downtown Loop of Chicago. But this machine was the heart of a very profitable Internet pornography business, stealing content from one Web site to sell it to another, and occasionally hacking into banks for a little debit-card fraud. The more money Cascade generated to finance its military operations, the fewer paper trails there were leading back to him. The old Cray more than served the needs of his covert organization, and had the added benefit of being unknown to exist. Even the Feds couldn’t try to stop what they didn’t know about.
Which was why the location of this base was such a closely guarded secret. Peter Woods owned all of the land in this section of Gary, and nobody would ever get permission from the city to start urban renewal. The sprawling jungle of the industrial slum was merely another layer of protective camouflage for Cascade.
“Are we ready? Absolutely, sir,” the chief technician said, giving a crisp salute. “Once we get the plans for the jamming unit, we’ll have it bombed across the Internet in five minutes.”
“All general recipients?” Woods asked, clasping both hands behind his back.
“Mostly, yes sir,” the chief technician said slowly. “We tried to get some of the more radical Arab groups to buy the plans—”
“Buy?” Woods snapped, yanking the cigar from his mouth. “Buy? You were supposed to convince them it was a gift from American sympathizers!”
The chief technician swallowed hard. “Yes, Mr. Woods, I know. But quite a few of the terrorist groups thought the offer sounded too good to be true, and wouldn’t have anything to do with it. So I started offering the jamming unit for sale, and the numbers went back to where they were supposed to be.”
Puffing on his cigar for a few minutes, Woods said nothing.
“We need maximum distribution to elicit total chaos in the Middle East,” the man nervously added.
In exaggerated slowness, Woods removed the cigar. “Admirable,” he said at last. “Smart move. Well done.”
“Th-thank you, sir.”
“Once we get it out, what kind of a response time can we expect from the NSA?” Woods demanded, blowing a gray ring at an air vent. He knew the smoke was bad for the Cray, but it was his machine, and he did what he liked with his property.
“Ten minutes, sir. Two if they know it’s coming.”
Woods tilted his head, so that the rising smoke obscured his features. “Do they know it’s coming, son?” he asked in a deceptively gentle voice.
The chief technician went pale. “Sir, no sir!”
“Good,” Woods said, putting the cigar back. Walking among the humming servers, Woods looked at the video monitors showing different locations around the factory. Most of the screens were devoid of life, alleyways, empty rooftops and such. One showed a hooker working the street corner, and another displayed a dealer conducting business at a traffic light. Cars would stop, he’d approach, make the sale and the car would drive on again. Total elapse time, twenty seconds. But it wasn’t drugs. Woods had nothing to do with that shit. He sold guns. To old men, children, gangbangers, housewives, cheerleaders, hell, he gave guns away from free to homeless families to protect them from the predators of the night! What would the hijackers on 9/11 have done if the all of the passengers on board those planes had been armed? Nothing. That’s what would have happened, instead of the biggest disaster in the history of the nation. Guns made America, and guns made America strong. The disarming of this once great
nation was a Communist plot to weaken democracy, and he would never let it happen. Never! No matter what the cost was in dollars, or human life.
“The right to be armed is the right to be free,” Woods muttered, then turned to face the waiting technicians. “It’s a glorious day, gentlemen! War is what this country needs to get back on its feet. We’re too fat, too rich, too lazy! Combat makes us leaner, smarter, faster!”
“Butter will make us fat, guns make us strong, eh, sir?” The chief technician chuckled in agreement.
With a guttural snarl, Woods lunged forward and punched the chief technician in the stomach. The other people in the computer room could only gasp as the chief technician dropped over and fell to his knees, gagging and dry heaving for breath.
“How dare you quote Hermann Göring to me!” Peter Woods snarled, raising his fist as if to strike again. “My grandfather died fighting Hitler!”
“But, sir, I…” the chief technician wheezed.
Turning red, Woods advanced to tower over the cringing man. “Shut up!” he roared. “If you ever cross the line like that again, I’ll turn you over to our turkey doctor!”
Raw fear contorting his features, the chief technician stammered out an apology, but Woods turned his back on the man.
“You there!” Woods shouted, pointing at another technician.
“Sir?” the middle-aged man asked, going pale behind his glasses.
“Can you handle the Cray, yes or no?”
The hacker cast a furtive look at the chief technician on the floor. “Yes, sir,” he said with growing confidence. “Easy as pie.”
“Good. You’re in charge.”
“Thank you, sir!”
“Don’t fail me,” Woods growled menacingly, as a red light flashed above the revolving door.
A few seconds later, the frosted panels swung aside and Brian Ledbetter walked into the room. “I heard shouting,” he said, an automatic held steady in his fist.
“Nothing important,” Woods replied, walking past the former chief technician. “Where’s Mannix?”
“Checking on the walkways between the buildings, making sure they’re all guarded. Keep the boys on their toes.”
“Good. How soon will we be ready?”
“We’re ready now,” Ledbetter said, sliding the weapon away. “Harrison and his men will have a hard time getting in here, sir.”
Woods scowled. “Men? What are you talking about. The British bastard always works alone.”
“Well, the way I see it,” Ledbetter said, spreading his hands, “our boy is no fool. Somewhere along the way Harrison could have gotten some muscle to back him up. Say, ten, maybe fifteen guys tops.”
“That many? And our alarms are useless against the unit he carries.”
“No problem. I have Yang walking the perimeter with his boys,” Ledbetter said.
“Call them back.”
“Sir?”
“We should let Harrison and his associates inside the factory,” Woods said calmly, removing the cigar to inspect the glowing red end. “Then we flood the building with poison gas, and after they stop twitching, we get the jamming unit without firing a shot.”
“Now where’s the fun in that?” Ledbetter asked, twisting his lips into a hard grin.
“We’re not here for a good time,” Woods growled, staring at the clock on the wall. “We’re here to save a nation from itself. We’re patriots! Remember that.”
Firebase One
IN SPITE of the armed guards, Harrison approved of his new environment. The air was crisp and clean in the elevator, completely lacking any trace of the sulfur from outside spewed forth by all of the neighboring volcanoes.
Arriving at the western end of the island of Matua, Harrison hadn’t been startled when armed men rose from the sandy beach wearing camouflage fatigues. After he exchanged passwords with them, the guards took Harrison under escort, then pushed his borrowed dinghy back into the water. Once it was far enough away from shore, the Japanese terrorists shot numerous holes in the thin hull, sending the vessel to the bottom of the bay. That seemed to carry an ominous tone to Harrison, until he realized it was simply done to mask his location from any possible observers. Very wise.
A small cave in the side of a low hill led to a set of steel doors painted the same color as the surrounding rock. Past the door, an elderly man smoking a cigarette and wearing a white lab coat accepted the Chameleon from Harrison, along with a CD containing the engineering blueprints, electrical schematics for the device. This was as arranged in his earlier communications with Yangida Fukoka, the man in charge of this cell of Nucleus, the infamous Japanese terrorist group.
As the nameless scientist rushed away with the device and disk, Harrison tried to hide a frown of disapproval. Not for the terrorists, but for himself. Now that he had seen their hidden fortress, Harrison wished he had asked for more money. This base had to have cost millions to build in secret! And right under the noses of the damn Russians, too.
“This way, noble sir,” the larger guard said in halting English. “Director Fukoka wishes to see you personally.”
“Hai! Domo,” Harrison replied in flawless Japanese, and gestured the guards onward.
The surprised men exchanged glances and then started down the clean white corridor and into the central elevator of a bank of five. As the doors closed, Harrison hid a smile. Five elevators for an organization of only a few hundred people? Bullshit. Most of the lifts were probably dummies. The central elevator and the wings would be the easiest for hurrying people to remember, so those were probably the only ones that actually worked. The others would be death traps for any invaders. Once again, his respect for Nucleus went up, as did his apprehension. The group was known for keeping its word to weapon dealers. That was a vital prerequisite in their line of work, or else soon they would find it impossible to obtain any of the supplies and materials needed for their agenda. But the Chameleon was a one-time offer. Would they still play cricket?
Casting a furtive glance at his escorts, Harrison nervously checked the trick cigarette lighter in his pocket, his watch and collar. They had taken his gun on the beach, but stopped at that. It was their first and only mistake so far. He was still well armed, and more than capable of fighting his way free of the underground firebase.
As the elevator doors opened, a muted voice announced the base status was green and that all launch systems were go. Harrison filed away the information with a placid expression. He had already deduced that the Japanese terrorists wanted the Chameleon for missiles. It was the most logical way to utilize the jamming field.
Their footsteps rang loudly on the terrazzo flooring, but the noise drew no attention. Nobody else was in sight, as if the passageways had been cleared for his coming. The ventilators gave a soft hum as they pushed clean air past filtration screens, and just for a moment there came the muffled cry of a man in terrible pain. The guards gave the incident no attention, so Harrison forced himself to do the same. Sympathy for others was considered a weakness to many who followed the old bushido code of the warrior. Could the cry have been fake, a test of his resolve? There was no way of knowing, but the man decided to stay alert for further tricks, and surreptitiously moved his cigarette lighter from his shirt to a pants pocket where it could be reached faster.
Suddenly, the lights flickered. The guards instantly drew their side arms and backed away from Harrison, but he merely smiled at the actions. The scientist was merely testing the unit to make sure it was working properly. A logical precaution.
As the rippling effect faded away and the lights returned to full brightness, Harrison waved the guards on. They slowly holstered their weapons and started along the hallway once more, but now maintained a healthy distance from Harrison, as if he had personally generated the disrupting effect of the jamming field.
There were few doors along the way, all of them made of plain steel with very advanced electronic palm locks set into the wall alongside. Harrison allowed himself to chuckle at
that. Trust the Japanese to use only the latest technology. Were the terrorists trying to impress him with their level of technology? That was foolish. What did a terrorist really need aside from a fast car and a good throwing arm? Silly buggers were always making things more complex than they had to be.
However, as they progressed, Harrison noticed that the hallway was reinforced every few meters by thick metal beams. Could the earthquakes from the neighboring volcanoes really be that bad? Or was this base more of a bomb shelter than a firebase? Exactly what sort of missiles was Fukoka planning on launching, and against whom? England, perhaps? The former SAS agent felt a rush of concern for his homeland, and fought to keep the expression from his face. Ice. He was ice. Remember that. The Japanese hated uncontrolled displays of emotions. They considered it a sign of weakness, and that could get him killed down here. A weak man couldn’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut.
At the end of the long passageway, the smaller guard stepped aside and drew his weapon, while the larger man placed a bare hand on a touch plate set into the wall, then he put an eye to a retinal scanner and finally spoke something in Japanese to a voice lock. Harrison was impressed. Triple security, eh? This had to be the command center. So he was going to meet the boss, and wasn’t being escorted to a small cell to be shot in the back of the head. Or at least, not yet he wasn’t.
The door gave an answering tone, and heavy thuds sounded as massive locks disengaged. Ponderously, the door swung aside on thick hinges to reveal it was a truncated cone of different metals and materials. The guards gestured him in, and Harrison took the lead. As he stepped through the opening, he noticed several layers of lead and cadmium among the armor plating of the portal. These boys were prepared for atomic radiation. But were they launching nukes at somebody, or preparing for incoming bombs? Either way, it was chilling knowledge.
Standing still while the door cycled shut behind him, Harrison looked around the command center with unfeigned interest. Few outsiders had ever seen this room, and fewer still lived to tell the tale.
The Chameleon Factor Page 19