“Anything!” Woods begged, shifting his legs away from the increasing heat coming from the engine. “Please! Just get me the hell out of here!”
“The plans,” Lyons said in a monotone. “And no more talk.”
Licking his dry lips, Woods’s eyes took on a wild look. Then he slumped his shoulders and nodded weakly. “Fine, here they are,” he whispered, shoving the folder out the open window. “You win. Take it. The unit is yours now.”
Lyons flicked a fast glance at the folder, then back at Woods just as the man brought a small .44 derringer into view. Moving in a blur, Lyons slapped the weapon aside just as it discharged, the two rounds blowing gaping holes in the roof on the burning car.
With a snarled curse, Woods dropped the empty weapon. “You…you’re no cop! What are you!” he demanded, all of the fight gone from his voice.
“Everything you’re not,” Lyons replied, and stroked the trigger of the Python once. As the dark hole appeared in his forehead, the rear of his head made a crimson geyser across the car, and Woods flopped backward onto the passenger seat, his anguished face relaxing into death.
Lyons lifted the folder off the floor, carefully checking the papers and computer disks inside. When he was satisfied, the Stony Man commando limped forward and tossed the folder onto the crackling flames. There was no way to know if any additional copies had been made, but there was nothing he could do about that right now.
“You! Drop that gun!” a new voice commanded. “This is the police!”
Lowering his piece, but not letting go, Lyons stood and watched the waterproof folder melt away, then the pages of schematics and blueprints started to turn brown and smolder.
“I said drop the gun, buddy!” the cop demanded, coming closer, his shoes cracking the loose glass on the floor.
Out of the corner of his vision, Lyons noted that the young cop was standing properly with his legs apart, two hands on the Glock 17, ready and fully prepared to blow him away.
“I want a lawyer,” Lyons said, stalling for time. The sheets of paper burst into flames, the silvery finish of the disk peeling away, then suddenly flashing into smoke as it reached critical temperature.
“Look, drop the gun and back away from the car,” the cop commanded. “It’s gonna blow when that fire reaches the gas tank!”
Outside, there came the howl of another police siren, followed by the squeal of brakes and doors slamming. The backup had arrived. Time to surrender. But he still had to wait until the files were utterly destroyed, with no chance of a rescue and recovery.
Suddenly, there were flickering lights under the chassis. “She’s going to blow!” the cop shouted, backing away, more glass cracking at every step. “Come on, buddy, this is no place to die!”
On that point, Lyons fully agreed, but he still delayed a few seconds until the last schematic crumbled into ash.
“I’m coming out!” he shouted, dropping the Pythun.
Turning, Lyons charged for the doorway as fast as possible with his bad leg. Several police were there with fire extinguishers and drawn pistols. Two of them rushed forward to grab Lyons and bodily haul him away from the crash site and throw him to the pavement.
“Freaking lunatic,” a cop muttered, keeping Lyons covered while another officer snapped on the handcuffs. “Didn’t you know that—”
The chastisement was interrupted when the store thunderously erupted into a fireball, the roiling blast throwing out a wave of glass and smoldering debris.
“Son of a bitch!” one cop yelled, rocking to the concussion.
As the rolling echo died away, several of the cops raced to the window to spray CO2 onto the burning car wreck, but the carbon dioxide blanket seemed to have little effect on the gasoline-based inferno.
After reading Lyons the Miranda rights, the police carried the wounded Stony Man commando to a nearby squad car and locked his handcuffs to a thick ring firmly bolted to the floor. Then they left to divert traffic and handle the mob of gawking civilians.
In fairly short order, fire trucks arrived to handle the blaze, and a howling city ambulance parked alongside the squad car. However, considering the circumstances of his arrest, the police refused to relinquish their prisoner, but did allow an EMT do some quick repairs to the wound in their prisoner’s thigh. When the cloth was cut away, the damage was a lot worse than he had thought, and Lyons had no objections when the paramedic gave him a shot of local anesthesia along with some antibiotics, tetanus and several other medicinal concoctions.
Even before the local took effect, the EMT started stitching the wound closed, and Lyons looked out the windows to take his mind off the needlework. Across the street, he saw Blancanales and Schwarz lounging near a garbage bin, and they didn’t have a weapon in sight. Very good. That was fast work.
Touching a finger to his ear, Schwarz let him know that the Farm had been informed about the situation. Arching an eyebrow, Blancanales asked a silent question.
Turning away from them, Lyons nodded to show that the job was done. Then he settled back and tried to relax as the EMT started to wrap the freshly closed wound with clean bandages.
As the infusion of drugs began to take effect, Lyons felt himself starting to fall asleep and briefly wondered how David McCarter and Phoenix Force were doing.
EPILOGUE
Washington, D.C.
A roaring fire blazed in the eighteenth-century hearth, and an antique clock ticked loudly on a priceless Hoban drum table. Outside the widows, the rising green of the Jefferson Mounds could be seen framing the world-famous rose garden, and in the far distance rose the shimmering white needle of the Washington Monument.
“Six hours?” the President said, leaning forward to rest both arms on the desk. “You got him out in six hours?”
With its thick doors firmly shut, the Oval Office felt miles away from the daily hustle of the White House. Reclining in a wing-back chair older than the state of New York, Hal Brognola always felt as if the room had been freshly painted only hours earlier, even though he knew better. The filtered air was cool and clean, smelling faintly of flowers and furniture polish. The expensive rugs were freshly vacuumed just that morning, and every inch of the famous room had been electronically swept by the U.S. Secret Service for bugs and other spying devices every hour on the hour.
“Yes, sir.”
“Purely for the sake of curiosity,” the President asked, “how was it done so quickly?”
“Our cybernetic team simply had the Stony Man operative transferred to a federal jail, one that doesn’t exist except on paper,” Brognola explained with a smile. “We’ve done this sort of thing before, sir.”
“Lord knows I wish the CIA was that effective,” the President said with a tired sigh. It had been along day for the Man. “And what is the status of the device in question. Has it been recovered?”
Brognola shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Even here in the Oval Office, the Man refused to say certain things aloud. Paranoia or common sense? In politics, those were often the exact same thing.
“The Chameleon has been destroyed, sir,” Brognola reported. “The one prototype and all of the files are gone.”
“Destroyed? Damn it, Hal—”
“It was either that or lose it to the world,” Brognola replied firmly. “My people made the choice in the field, and paid a high price to get it done.”
The President leaned back in his chair and regarded Brognola sternly. Very few people were allowed to talk to him this way. It was a breath of fresh air and a pain in the ass at the same time.
“Accepted,” the President finally said. “And how is David?”
“Thankfully, he’ll live. Round bullets almost always glance off a round skull. It’s why we use hollowpoints and armor-piercing rounds for a sure kill.”
Lacing his fingers, the President merely grunted at that.
“He’ll be out on medical for a few weeks,” Brognola went on, “then I’m sending him on a vacation for some R&R before putting
him back on the duty roster.”
“Please send him my best wishes for a speedy recovery.”
“Thank you, sir. I will.”
“However, during his absence, what will become of his team?” the President asked, gesturing with one hand.
“Somebody else will run the team until he returns,” Brognola answered.
Sensing no further information was coming on the topic, the President glanced at a report on his desk marked with a red-stripped border showing it was a level-ten security document, for his eyes only. “I understand the damage to the Nucleus base on Matua Island was considerable,” he asked slowly. “Were there any additional survivors aside from the rash Major Fukoka?”
“Not when my team left, no, sir,” Brognola said bluntly.
The Man pursed his mouth at the statement as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Accepted, Hal. And what was the breakage?” the President finally asked.
Brognola scowled deeply, and didn’t reply.
The President scowled back. Brognola often hit him with the brutally logical argument, that if his field team could do the job, then at the very least the damn politicians could call the acts by their right name. His people didn’t “relocate an unwilling witness”—they kidnapped the bastard. And they didn’t “terminate with extreme prejudice”—they shot people dead. Calling these acts something different didn’t wash away the blood any faster.
“Fine,” the President relented. “How many people died, Hal?”
“Sir, it was a near thing, but we didn’t lose a man,” Brognola said. “On the other hand, you can scratch two terrorist organizations. Put together, Cascade and Nucleus don’t have enough manpower to hold a poker game.”
“Sounds like an excellent job, Hal,” the President said with a weary grin. “Good work, as usual.”
Lifting the security document off the blotter, the President fed it into a slot built into the desk. There came a brief series of whines as the government shredder annihilated the documents into dust.
“So much for portable stealth technology,” the President said, reaching for a carafe to pour himself a cup of black coffee. Not his first for the day, and far from the last. “Thank God it’s finally over.”
“Amen to that,” Brognola murmured.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-7296-8
THE CHAMELEON FACTOR
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nick Pollotta for his contribution to this work.
Copyright © 2004 by Worldwide Library.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
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