Nuclear Reaction

by Don Pendleton

  Just another moment.

  Pahlavi braked as they approached the lab, and Bolan vaulted from the car, not waiting for the rest. He lobbed a frag grenade toward the defenders ranged in front of him, and hit the deck as sudden thunder tore the night apart.

  GAZSI WAS FLUSHED with panic as he stumbled out of the administration building, suddenly confronted with a scene straight out of Hell. The gates were down—or, rather, torn apart and cast aside—with bodies sprawling on the ground around them. Two searchlights were dark, the earth below their towers strewed with shattered glass and one more twisted corpse. Away to Gazsi’s left, three military vehicles were racing toward the main lab, spewing gunfire, while the camp’s defenders sprayed the vehicles with bullets.

  Stunned by what he saw, giddy from breathing cordite fumes, Gazsi could not imagine what was happening—unless, perhaps, there was a coup in progress, rebels from the army trying to depose the sitting government. He thought of Ohm and instantly dismissed it. How would peasant rebels get their hands on army weapons, uniforms and vehicles?

  But if this was a coup, however ill-conceived, it might foretell a change in leadership. If it succeeded, Gazsi and the other personnel of Project X might not be treated with the same consideration they had heretofore been shown.

  In short, he reckoned it was time to leave.

  But not alone.

  A measure of insurance wouldn’t hurt in case he had to bargain with the rebels or civilian enemies of the regime. His possibilities were limited, but one came instantly to mind.

  Gazsi had brought his pistol with him, when he heard the sounds of gunfire. Nothing else inside the administration building mattered to him. He had to reach Darice Pahlavi without getting killed along the way, release her from her cell, and march her to his car. The rebels had already cleared his access route to the outside, and they would doubtless keep the other guards engaged while Gazsi slipped away, unnoticed in the chaos.

  He had no idea where they would go, as yet, but he would think of something on the road. Gazsi had bank accounts, if he could access them in time, and two spare passports in a safe-deposit box, but he could always try his luck at crossing over into India by covert means. If necessary, he could sell his services to the New Delhi bureaucrats, a convert who could tell them all about the Pakistani threat and help them prove it if they took their case to the United Nations.

  Anything, in short, to keep himself alive.

  But first, he had to reach Darice Pahlavi and extract her from her cell, compel her to cooperate if she valued her own life.

  And if she didn’t, well, Gazsi would take her with him, anyway. She simply had no choice.

  Gunfire echoed throughout the compound, and the remaining searchlights swept across the scene erratically, seeking elusive targets. Gazsi dodged the lights and clung to shadows, trying to be inconspicuous as he traversed the compound. He was known to all the soldiers assigned to Project X, but he could not tell who they were in the confusion of the moment, and he did not care to meet a group of rebels if he could help it. They might cut him down on sight, or else detain him for interrogation if they had the time and manpower to spare. In either case, the outcome did not fit with Gazsi’s plans.

  Running in fits and starts, he made his way across the compound like a sneak thief, dodging men in uniform wherever they appeared, clutching his pistol in a trembling hand. A headache throbbed behind his eyes, exacerbated by the sounds of gunfire, but he had no remedy.

  Escape was all that mattered.

  The sole alternative was death.

  DARIUS PAHLAVI FIRED a short burst from his CETME assault rifle, cursing as his bullets missed their moving target and struck sparks from the pavement. He tried again, catching the soldier as he swung around, attempting to return fire, this time stitching him across the chest to drop him where he stood.

  It was chaotic in the compound, figures dashing here and there in military uniforms, only their faces serving to distinguish friend from foe when there was time or light enough to see them. Pahlavi and his ally had considered making simple armbands for their comrades, then discarded the idea as it might simply help the compound’s defenders spot their targets on the run. So far, Pahlavi hadn’t shot one of his friends, and trusted that the odds against them—heavily outnumbered as they were—would help prevent his doing so.

  He couldn’t get Darice out of his mind, but had no clue where Gazsi might be holding her inside the complex. She would not be in the lab, that much was fairly certain, but the layout also featured barracks, offices, a mess hall and substantial storage space. Pahlavi might be forced to search it all before he found his sister, yet he couldn’t start that vital exercise until he had helped raze the lab.

  Despite the pain it caused him, Pahlavi knew that scuttling Project X was more important to the outside world than any single person’s life.

  The anger spawned by that idea gave him new energy and focus as he fought his way around one corner of the laboratory building, toward the entrance.

  Bolan was ahead of him, lobbing another antipersonnel grenade and crouching low as it exploded, shrapnel whining through the smoky air. Pahlavi saw the guards and soldiers scattered by its blast, writhing in blood and other fluids he was unable to name.

  Bolan advanced, Pahlavi on his heels, three others close behind them, firing bursts in all directions as new targets came into their view. Incoming fire chipped at the wall behind them, spraying them with concrete shards, but thus far none of them had suffered any major wounds.

  Pahlavi didn’t know about the rest of his comrades. They’d scattered, leaping from their vehicles, except for Darshan on the jeep’s heavy machine gun. From the sound of it, the soldiers had not dropped him yet, but he could only last so long, a stationary target ringed by enemies. Pahlavi hoped Darshan would save himself, but there was nothing he could do to help his old friend now.

  Frustration gnawed inside his stomach as they crept by inches toward the main lab’s entrance, ducking gunfire all the way.

  When they were close enough, Bolan lobbed yet another hand grenade, this one exploding on the very threshold of the lab and buckling its doors so that they hung ajar and twisted in their frame. Bright muzzle-flashes from inside marked the position of the defenders, and Pahlavi answered with his rifle, emptying one magazine and reaching for another at his waist.

  Janna edged closer to him, worry written on her face, clinging white-knuckled to her submachine gun as she huddled in Pahlavi’s shadow. “What about Darice?” she called to him above the racket of the guns.

  “Later,” he answered bitterly, “if there is time. The bomb comes first.”

  “You have such courage,” she replied, forcing a smile.

  Pahlavi saw the love reflected in her eyes and hoped she saw the same in his. He hoped, also, that they would have more time together, once this Hell on Earth was behind them. But he knew they couldn’t count on it.

  “Stay close,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

  And turning from the woman who had sworn to be his wife someday, Pahlavi followed the big American toward the laboratory doors.

  A SWIRL OF SMOKE met Bolan as he crossed the threshold to the structure labeled “B” on their hand-drawn strategic maps of the compound. It didn’t smell like any chemicals were burning yet—except the ones in gunpowder and high explosives—but he kept his breathing shallow all the same, as he pushed past the crooked hanging doors and made his way inside.

  Gunfire erupted instantly and drove him to the floor. There was no need to warn the others, crowding in behind him, as the bullets whistled overhead, smacking the walls and doors. He heard Pahlavi shouting at the woman called Janna, then felt bodies jostling all around him, each looking for his or her piece of the deck.

  Bolan saw muzzle-flashes up ahead, winking around a counter and a turnstile where, he guessed, employees had been checked through to their jobs each morning and checked out again as they were leaving for the day. He wasn’t sure how many sho
oters held the checkpoint, but their cover was superior and Bolan didn’t feel like charging down the muzzles of their guns if he could help it.

  He reached down to his belt and found another Russian hand grenade—his second last, before he’d have to use the larger models he’d retrieved from Pakistani troops who didn’t need them anymore. It was a second’s work to free the safety pin and drop it, glance at his allies to either side and let them see what he was doing, then rear back and make the pitch.

  It wasn’t perfect—few things ever were in combat—but it did the job. From where he lay, Bolan saw the grenade bounce once, across a countertop beside the turnstile, then drop out of sight among his enemies. Some of them recognized it, shouting in a sudden panic as they tried to flee, but no athlete on Earth could travel far enough to save himself within the time remaining.

  Bolan rode the shock wave of the blast and kept his head down while the shrapnel sang around him. Most of it stayed well behind the checkpoint barrier, but some punched through, while other fragments peppered walls and punctured the acoustic ceiling tiles. Beyond the checkpoint, automatic fire gave way to screams and gurgling cries of pain.

  Bolan was on his feet a heartbeat later, rushing toward the turnstile, leaping over it to crouch among the dead and dying. There were five, bleeding freely from a dozen wounds. Pahlavi knelt beside one and clutched his hair in one hand, brandishing his rifle in the other, hammering away with questions. When the wounded man replied with a weak head shake, clearly pleading ignorance, Pahlavi left him to die.

  “I had to ask about Darice,” he said. “You understand?”

  Bolan nodded, reminding him, “We’ve still got work to do.”

  “I’m here,” Pahlavi said. “Let’s do it now.”

  They moved forward together, pressed against opposing walls, advancing step by step. Bolan reviewed the floor plans in his mind, surprised to find that they were accurate in scrupulous detail. Pahlavi’s sister had invested time and effort in those plans, and it had cost her dearly.

  Bolan hoped they’d have a chance to help her, but he knew he couldn’t guarantee it. They still had at least one bomb to find and decommission before they could pursue Pahlavi’s private quest. Until that job was done, it claimed their top priority.

  In front of Bolan, six or seven feet away, a door flew open and expelled three lab technicians in white coats. One woman and two men, all looking panicked and confused to find themselves stuck in the middle of a firefight. Bolan saw his opportunity and leapt to grab one of the technicians by his collar, dragging him back toward the open room he had just evacuated.

  “Get the others,” he told Pahlavi. “They can lead us to the bomb!”

  21

  Dr. Mehran was terrified. His body trembled from his quaking legs, up to his chattering teeth, a panic reaction he couldn’t suppress, despite the embarrassment it caused him. Simrin Amira, standing close beside him in the closet, did not seem to notice, but Mehran knew she had to feel him shaking, judging him a coward as they stood together in the dark.

  The closet had been her choice for a hiding place, of course, and Mehran had agreed because the sound of gunfire and explosions made his mind go blank. He seemed incapable of forming a coherent thought, even to save himself. But now that they were actually in the closet, with what sounded like a full-scale war raging outside, Mehran believed that trusting Amira may have been his last mistake.

  The first—or the most critical, at least—had been when he agreed to work on Project X. Seduced by money, flattery and patriotic zeal, Mehran had signed on to the program without really thinking of the risks to himself, to his country, or to the world at large. Now, when it seemed that Project X was going to collapse around his ears and bury him, he wished that he had been a wiser, stronger man.

  Too late.

  He’d thrown that chance away, and now he found himself standing in a pitch-dark closet with a woman who most likely thought he was a fool, waiting for strangers to burst in and kill him where he stood. Great plans came down to nothing in the end, all vanity and empty posturing, he thought.

  “I’m not sure this was such a good idea,” Amira said.

  “You thought of it!”

  “I know that! But I think, now, we should try to make our way outside.”

  “Through that?” He pointed toward the doorway and the battle sounds beyond it, even knowing that Amira could not see the gesture. “How?”

  “They’re fighting with the guards,” she answered. “If we stay low, run like hell, why should they bother us?”

  “They’re attacking the lab,” he reminded her. “Don’t you suppose we’ll be targets?”

  “Better moving targets, then, than sitting ducks.”

  “I don’t know…if I can,” Mehran replied.

  “Can what?” Amira asked.

  Tears streaming down his face, he said, “I’m not sure I can move, much less…I mean…”

  Somehow, her hand found his and squeezed. Remarkably, Mehran discovered that her touch calmed him. The hand she held stopped trembling almost instantly, together with the arm attached to it. If she would only wrap her arms and legs around him now, perhaps—

  That fantasy went nowhere, as a bullet drilled the closet door and smacked into the wall a foot from Amira’s head. He ducked instinctively, knees cracking, tightening his grip on Simrin’s hand until she whimpered from the sudden pain.

  “Sorry!” he whispered.

  “Never mind. We’re getting out of here, right now.”

  “But, where—?”

  “Shut up and follow me!”

  The door opened a second later, Amira’s free hand was on the knob, and Mehran felt her dragging him along behind her, out and to their left along the so-familiar corridor. He wasn’t sure where she might lead him, but it hardly seemed to matter at the moment, with the sounds of gunfire ringing in his ears.

  A pair of Gazsi’s guards rushed past them, headed in the opposite direction, paying no attention to Mehran or Amira. Both had rifles braced against their shoulders, eyes narrowed behind plastic goggles, mouths set in grim snarls. Mehran was glad to see the last of them, and that they had ignored him, but as Amira led him farther down the hallway, he could only wonder what still lay ahead.

  DARICE PAHLAVI HEARD the distant, muffled sounds of gunfire, but the racket barely penetrated through the haze that fogged her mind. Someone was shooting, she could work out that much, but as far as who it might’ve been and why they should be shooting at that time of—day? night? whatever it was—she had no clue.

  A part of her, still rational, assumed that it had to be important, otherwise no one would fire a gun around the laboratory complex. But her situation was so hopeless, her defenses beaten down by cruel abuse, that she could not put two and two together for a logical result.

  She recognized the sound of footsteps in the hallway, though, and understood their import perfectly. The tick-tock of their swift approach made Darice slump back on her cot and draw her legs into a fetal curl. Weeping, she waited for the door to open, wondering if it would be the final time. A moment later, Gazsi stood above her in a glare of light, but even with her eyelids closed to slits, Darice saw that this time he was alone.

  “We’re leaving,” he informed her. “Can you walk, or must I call a man to drag you?”

  “Walk?” The concept struck her as eccentric. Gazsi may as well have asked if she could swing from a trapeze.

  “That’s right. Assuming you still want to live.” He drew a pistol, cocked it, aiming in the general direction of her tear-streaked face. “Or I can leave you here, after ensuring that you’ll never speak about our time together. It’s your choice, Darice.”

  With something close to superhuman will, she struggled to her feet. The world began to tilt, but with her arms outstretched she managed not to fall. It was a tightwire act. Perhaps she could manage the trapeze, after all.

  Gazsi held out a lab coat. “Put this on,” he ordered.

  Suddenly re
membering that she was nude, Darice snatched at the coat, half turned away from him and struggled into it. The buttons were a puzzle, taking more time than they had to spare, and Gazsi snapped at her to finish them along the way.

  “We’re going now,” he said. “Do what I tell you, when I tell you, and you may yet see the brother you admire so much.”

  “Darius? Is he here?” The very notion staggered her.

  “Not here,” Gazsi said. “We must go to meet him.”

  “Yes, please,” she replied.

  Gripping her right hand with his left, so that she had no chance to finish buttoning her lab coat, Gazsi led Darice out of the cell that she’d begun to think of as her final home. The corridor seemed chilly, with its air-conditioning. She shivered, then fell into step behind Gazsi as he began to move along the hallway.

  Darice didn’t ask where they were going. Anything was better than her cell and the interrogation room, where she’d been strapped down on a table while they—

  No!

  She wouldn’t think about that now. She needed all her courage for whatever was about to happen next. The gun in Gazsi’s hand and the continued sounds of shooting, louder now, told her some kind of battle had been joined within the lab. It made no sense, and yet—

  Perhaps it did make sense, she thought. If Ohm had gathered strength enough to stage a raid, try something, anything, to shut down Project X, it might not be too late.

  Too late for what? her mind echoed.

  And yet another small voice answered back, For me. For all of us.

  BOLAN ASKED THE QUESTIONS, while Pahlavi translated, his tone and attitude swiftly persuading the technicians that they should cooperate. They answered his inquiries, and Bolan listened to Pahlavi’s clipped rendition.

  “They have been placed on a deadline. None of them believe it can be done. Two weeks. Ridiculous they say.”