But the soldier worked the bolt on his bullpup assault rifle. “Password,” he demanded, leveling the deadly weapon.
From this angle, the professor could actually see the 40 mm AP round in the stubby grenade launcher situated under the main barrel. At this range, the stainless steel fléchettes in the antipersonnel shell would tear him into bloody gobbets. He knew that for a fact, having seen it done to some Communist rebels back in Argentina. The men had died never even knowing what happened. One moment they were alive and charging the Andes firebase, and the next they were gone, scattered debris on the snowy ground. Red on white. Wine spilled on a white tablecloth.
“Firestorm,” Reinhold stated, feeling his stomach tighten slightly at the unpleasant prospect of his own demise.
“Pass, sir,” the soldier said, raising the weapon and gesturing onward.
“Well done, trooper,” the professor said, approaching the nest. “My compliments. I like to test my men, and make sure they are alert and ready.”
“Ah, thank you, Professor,” the soldier said awkwardly, easing off the arming bolt. “Just doing my job, sir.”
“Indeed you were,” the professor agreed, then he turned to scowl at the other soldier. “On the other hand, you would have let me pass.”
The man swallowed hard. “But, sir, I—”
“Ten extra watches standing guard and a reduction in pay for a week,” Reinhold snapped. “Do it again, and you will leave this mesa by the stairs.”
The soldier went pale. The stairs, that was their name for falling off the top of the mesa. Or being thrown off. “Yes, sir!” he said crisply, giving a stiff salute.
Pretending that he didn’t know what it meant for a soldier to salute inside, Reinhold proceeded to a steel panel closing off the end of the tunnel. The men had to have their petty rebellions.
Going to a sensor plate set into the curved wall, Reinhold placed his hand on the dark plastic and kept still as the UV light scanned his finger and palm prints. There came a click, and a vector graphic of a keypad appeared on the plate. Tapping in the entry code, the professor waited while the steel panel slid aside on greased wheels. The double lock seemed a little like overkill, but better safe than sorry. An enemy might be able to fool one, but not both safeguards. The professor felt sure that nobody was getting into CNC without his express permission.
Inside command and control, the professor shivered slightly from the chill in the air. His breath didn’t quite fog, but he was sure that it was close to freezing. However, the banks of Cray supercomputers that controlled the uplink array needed the low temperature to operate at their maximum levels. Tanks of liquid nitrogen were stored alongside the computers, a simple thermostat set to trigger more of the supercold liquid as needed. The system was simple, elegant and almost foolproof.
When they were setting up the apparatus, a technician had accidentally gotten a finger sprayed with the liquid nitrogen, and before Reinhold could get the finger warm, the technician had bumped his hand and the finger shattered like antique glass. At the sight, the screaming man fainted dead away. Once the poor fellow had stabilized in the medical bay, the professor had sent him to the Firebase Alpha on a commercial flight out of Fargo, but knew that his career with Forge was in serious jeopardy. The general didn’t tolerate fools gladly, and his anger was legendary. What Calvano had done to the rebels that his troops had captured during the ’83 war had earned him the secret nickname Torquemada, after the ruthless priest in charge of the Spanish Inquisition who brutally tortured non-Christians into confessing their dealings with Satan. Oddly, the general found the nickname amusing. That disturbed Reinhold more than anything else about the head of Forge.
Circling the room was a series of high-density plasma monitors showing a panoramic view of the desert outside the mesa, and a few more monitors on a control panel gave views of critical tunnels and doorways. As the professor took his chair in front of the main console, he saw the squad of soldiers carrying out the body of the dead mountaineer in a body bag.
“Hello, sir, we saw everything on monitor nineteen,” Erica Sabot said, the technician approaching with a clipboard.
A beautiful woman, her long auburn hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she wore no cosmetics. There were few women in Forge, and all of them had been chosen for their combat skills. Even the personal assistant for the general was a former Intelligence agent for the Argentine government and famous for her skill with a knife.
“A minor inconvenience,” Reinhold said, accepting the clipboard. “I see the number six turbine generator is running a little hot. Better check the gauges and the needle valves. Those can sometimes stick from the condensed moisture.”
Electricity was crucial at the mesa base to operate the massive computers needed to run the uplink. Stealing it from the local grid was impossible as the nearest power line was fifty miles away. Hacking into the GPS network was hard enough without adding power fluctuations to the equation.
“I’ll check it personally, sir,” Sabot replied. “Anything else?”
“Not that I can think of. Anything unusual spotted while I was dealing with our interloper?” the professor asked, gazing out the virtual-reality windows. Aside from the occasional ripple or flicker, it really did seem as if he were looking through glass at the rocky desert below. Another mesa rose on the distant horizon, and low-cresting foothills formed sandstone waves across the floor of the desert. Like a petrified ocean, with the waves caught cresting.
“No EM scans have been done of the mesa, no radar or laser sweeps, no burst radio transmissions, or anything similar, sir,” another technician replied in English. Born in Argentina, the man had been schooled at Harvard and the conflicting accents were sometimes difficult to comprehend.
“Excellent. Thank you.”
As the technician turned to leave, a red light began flashing on the main control board.
“Message from the Snake Eater, sir,” a technician crisply reported, reading off the scrolling printer. “Our mercs in Puerto Rico have destroyed the secret DOD warehouse. No prisoners taken.”
Thoughtfully rubbing his bruised ribs, the professor scrunched his face. “Thank goodness.” The professor exhaled in relief. One planeload of INS units could have ruined everything.
“One problem, sir,” the technician continued slowly. “He believes the entire matter is fake, a bluff to lure us out into the open.”
“Is this another of his hunches?” the professor demanded coldly.
“No, sir. The return flight time for the plane is wrong. If it was carrying a full load of INS units, it would move slower than the flight out there, but the return flight is marked as full speed.”
That could be a simple clerical mistake, but perhaps not. He thought of the mountaineer. Danger often came from the most unexpected direction. “Is there a strong westerly wind?” Reinhold asked suspiciously. “Maybe the DOD is leaving their people behind to lighten the load?”
“No wind, sir. Clear sailing all the way to Texas,” the tech replied. “And the manifest lists a full complement of people. Six and a pilot arrived, seven leaving.”
The professor furrowed his brow. This could only mean that the Americans were already wise to their plans and Puerto Rico had been a trap! That return flight time was a bad mistake on their part. A very tiny one, to be sure. But a critical mistake all the same. Thank God Snake Eater caught the gaff. Once more, the little man proved his worth to the Great Project.
“Inform the general at once!” Reinhold snapped. “We must not send any personnel to try to destroy that plane when it lands in Texas! And destroy all links with Puerto Rico! Then recall our people in Sonora. The Americans must not get their hands on them at any cost!”
“At once, sir!” another technician said over a shoulder, his hands moving steadily across the complex controls. Indicators were starting to glow with power as accumulators for the satellite uplink slowly charged to operational voltage.
“And have Snake Eater send more merc
s to the rendezvous point for Lieutenant Caramico and her people,” Reinhold muttered angrily. “They are to help her reach North Dakota, where she is to dispatch them.” He paused. “Unless the FBI is tracking them, trying to find our American base, then the mercs are to kill her and run for…Seattle.” Where we shall have more mercs kill them upon arrival, he thought. What was it a politician had once said, you could always hire half of the poor to kill the other half? The supply of mercenaries was endless. There were just too many people. However, Forge was going to change that.
“But, sir, these are our people!” Sabot began, aghast.
“A necessary sacrifice,” the professor said, waving the trifle aside. “We’re going to murder five billion people. What does three more matter?”
The woman gave no reply and turned her face away from the professor so that he wouldn’t see her dark expression.
“They’re our own people,” Sabot muttered, almost too soft to hear.
The rest of the technicians in command and control got busy. Safely relaying messages between the two uplink sites had always been tricky. First, the message had to be heavily encoded, then compressed to a microsecond squeal, and then relayed across the world to the Southern Hemisphere innocuously mixed into mindless Internet chatter. A recorded voice spoke normally while the ultrasonic message buzzed in the background like a housefly. The Snake Eater had designed the process, and so far it had proved to be unbreakable. The NSA and FBI monitored the Net for hidden messages in graphic files, but not audio files of rock songs, clips from porn movies, and the like. The technician in charge of communications had to admit Snake Eater was extremely clever, even if it did make her skin crawl to try to be respectful to the little foreigner. Calling the man “sir” tasted like ashes in her mouth. But although she was born in Argentina, there was German blood in her veins and she understood the necessity of obeying orders. Life had to be controlled, or else there was only chaos. It amazed the woman that so few people ever seemed to understand this obvious fact.
Finished with the encoding, the chief technician mixed the tone with an audio file of children laughing at a birthday party, then tapped a few buttons.
ON TOP OF A MESA a mile away, the ground split apart, the sand pushed back by the sections of louvered steel. Spreading and expanding like a blossoming flower, the steel formed a large satellite dish. With a hydraulic sigh, a stubby beam antenna rose from the center and locked into place, then the dish began to track across the sky in a quick search pattern. After a few minutes, the Chilean telecommunications satellite was located and the terse message was beamed into space. Then the steel flower closed to disappear from sight as if it had never existed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sonora, Texas
“I said, drop the gun,” the voice repeated harshly.
“My money is in my wallet,” Sergeant Mendoza said. “Please, I’m just a surveyor for the county….” He tried to pretend to be scared, but it only sounded ridiculous.
“Nice try, son,” Sheriff Andrews said contemptuously, pressing the muzzle of the S&W .38 into the back of the man’s head. “Now drop that ray gun, Buck Rogers, you’re coming with me.”
“No. If I touch the second trigger, your hospital gets a 40 mm round dumped into the Emergency Room,” Mendoza countered. “Perhaps it is empty, eh? But perhaps not. Now drop your weapon, or else I shoot.”
“You’ll be the first to die,” the sheriff added in a graveyard voice.
Mendoza felt nervous sweat forming on his palms, but his heart was pounding deliciously. “But I shall not be the last,” the big sergeant replied. “Drop it! I shall not ask again.”
There was a long pause, then the gun was thrown onto the rocky ground. But as the old revolver landed, the hammer jerked forward and the weapon discharged. Exactly as planned.
Caught by surprise, Mendoza flinched as the bullet ricocheted off a concrete block used to keep fools from driving off the hill. His grip loosened, and something hard slammed into the side of his neck. The impact jingled for some reason and the sergeant was thrown to the ground.
Rolling, Mendoza came up in a crouch with the FN-2000 at the ready. There was the small-town sheriff. His gun holster was empty, and the old man was wearing what appeared to be a lumpy bulletproof vest. Idiot! His hand already in position, Mendoza triggered the 40 mm grenade launcher.
Throwing fire and smoke, the weapon rocked backward. The shell missed the sheriff by an inch, slamming into the trunk of a tree. Bark and wood chips went flying as the whole tree shook, and the fat 40 mm round dug out a gouge bigger than a mauled fist.
Recoiling from the sight, Andrews waited for the shell to explode, not fully able to understand why he was still pulling in air. Had the shell malfunctioned? Then some dim recess of his mind dredged up the fact that grenades had to travel a certain distance before the warhead armed itself. It seemed clear that the tree had to have been just under that range.
Stepping forward, the sheriff kicked the assault rifle out of the hand of the bigger man, the spurs on his boots jingling from the hard blow. The weapon went flying and the man dived forward, catching the sheriff in a bear hug that drove him to the sandy ground.
Wresting for supremacy, the two combatants rolled over and over, kicking and punching. Unable to get a grip on his opponent’s throat, Andrews tried to break the other man’s nose with a head butt, but Mendoza turned his face at the last instant, then savagely bit the sheriff on the arm, drawing blood. Grimacing from the pain, Andrews spit in the sergeant’s left eye and rammed a knee into his groin.
Both men knew that this was no friendly fistfight in the neighborhood bar, or a boxing contest with cash as the prize, but a bare-knuckle brawl to the death. Their weapons lay on the ground, but any attempt to grab a gun would leave that person vulnerable to a strike from behind.
Breaking apart, the two men scrambled to their feet and warily circled each other while gasping for breath. Both were bruised and bleeding, their clothing ripped and stained, but neither had any intention of asking for mercy or running away. They were here for the long count.
Needing more room to move, Andrews yanked off his bulky vest, and Mendoza tried for a grab. But the sheriff danced out of the way and hammered a gnarled fist directly into the man’s kidney. Mendoza grunted from the impact, then rammed his elbow backward in a martial arts move. Andrews caught it full in the chest and felt a rib crack. Controlling his breathing, the sheriff put two more punches into the sergeant, then looped a slow overhand blow trying to lure the man closer. But Mendoza backstepped quickly, not falling for the obvious trap.
“Time to die, old man,” the sergeant growled, pulling an Andes combat knife from a trick sheath strapped inside his sleeve.
“Not yet, son,” Andrews snarled, lashing out with a boot trying for a vulnerable throat. The toe missed Mendoza, but the jingling spur caught his cheek, slashing the flesh open.
Ignoring the terrible pain, the sergeant thrust out his knife. But the sheriff moved out of the way as if dodging a rattlesnake. Then Andrews noticed a thin red line forming along his upper thigh and blood started seeping into his tan uniform. The son of a bitch was fast! the sheriff thought.
Snatching the handcuffs from the pouch behind his back, the sheriff threw them at the sergeant, then dived past the man and came up with his dropped revolver. Starting to turn, Andrews saw the sergeant gesture and cover his face with a raised arm a split second before the fistful of sand arrived. Firing twice blindly, Andrews scraped his face clean and opened his eyes just in time to see the other man grab the fancy assault rifle.
Trying one last time not to take a life, the sheriff drilled a round into the assault rifle. The computerized optics exploded into pieces, the blow almost making the sergeant drop the weapon. Spinning around into a crouch, Mendoza cut loose with a burst of rounds above the charging sheriff. But before he could swing the weapon downward, Andrews fired again directly into the sergeant’s chest. Blood sprayed from the hit and Mendoza staggered,
then trigged another burst, stitching the sheriff from knee to throat.
Thrown backward, Andrews tried to put another round into the big man, and only hit sky. With his life flowing out of the gaping wounds, the sheriff dropped to the concrete divider and fired again into the dust. Everything was getting hazy, and there was no pain anymore. The sheriff knew what that meant. Shock was setting in, and he was dying, every beat of his heart forcing out more precious blood. Only rage was keeping Andrews in motion, the old law officer grimly determined not to die alone on this nameless hill. He fired twice more, and hit nothing.
Grinning widely, Mendoza fired short, controlled bursts into the sheriff, driving the man to the ground never to rise again.
“You are lucky I had no time to question you properly,” the big sergeant said, dropping the spent clip and quickly reloading. “You and my little knives would have a good time, eh? Yes, I think so, gringo. A bloody good time.”
The wind sighing over the grisly Texas hillock almost sounded like a whispery reply, then there was only silence.
Slinging the weapon over a bloody shoulder, Mendoza pulled the compact Kenwood radio from his belt holster to warn the lieutenant. Then he cursed at the sight of a gaping hole in the electronic device, the loose wires dangling free like jungle vines. The lieutenant was on her own.
“Good.” Mendoza chuckled, putting his back to the town and heading for their motorcycles and the stores of medical supplies. If she died, he would be placed in charge of the mission. Then he would start having real fun.
PARKING THE MOTORCYCLE in an alley, Lieutenant Caramico paused and looked quickly around with her assault rifle at the ready. The soldier could have sworn that she’d just heard distant gun shots, but there was nobody in sight.
When the noise didn’t come again, Caramico peeked around the building at the nearby hill, but again there was nothing visible. Hopefully the sergeant wasn’t in trouble. Then again, the man could easily take care of himself. She felt only pity for anybody foolish enough to tangle with Mendoza. The only person to ever beat the sergeant in a fair fight was General Calvano.
Capital Offensive (Stony Man) Page 11