Slowly he relaxed and eased his finger from the trigger.
Bolan shivered and lay down, drawing the blanket around him in the chill of the seven-thousand-foot mountain elevation.
He looked at his watch. It was 3:00 a.m. Sleep would come again, but no more dreams. He willed his mind not to dream.
Soon he slept again and he did not dream.
Mack Bolan woke up, stretched and worked out a few stiff joints from the chill of the Arizona highlands. He pushed the Ingram to one side on the cord around his neck and carried the folded blanket toward the car.
Nothing warned him.
It was the combat awareness, sharpness of years of being a fugitive and staying alive, that saved him. He paused fifty yards from the car and observed through the trees. Everything looked peaceful enough.
Kitty was up and leaning against the fender of the car, combing her hair. She wore jeans and a blouse. The car radio had been turned on and a newscast was just ending.
It looked normal, but it was all wrong. She did not have her purse and her Luger with her. Kitty never left her gun far from her reach. She kept glancing to her left at a thick stand of brush. A Phoenix news station was broadcasting local news. Bolan ignored it. His combat-trained eyes dissected every part of the scene around the car and Kitty.
Movement.
Where? It had been in his peripheral vision. Bolan swept the scene again. The brush that Kitty had glanced at wavered. There was no wind yet. Bolan concentrated on the shape, form and shadows of the brush spot ten feet in front of the car. It moved again.
Company. One concealed ambusher was in the scrub. Again Bolan scanned the area around the car, not looking selectively as the eye usually does, but looking at the whole scene at once, like a camera. Closer to him he found the second man in a position where he could get a good cross fire on a target at the front of the car without endangering Kitty.
The Executioner moved silently through the forty yards toward his first suspect. Not a leaf stirred in the early dawn. No birds were out. It was limbo time between the night creatures and the daywalkers. That meant no covering sound. Music came on the radio as Kitty moved to the door and turned up the volume. Thanks, Kitty.
Bolan edged around a ponderosa and spotted the figure twenty feet ahead. He wore camouflaged Army clothes. He was small and when he turned, checking to each side, Bolan saw that he was Japanese and had a flattop haircut. Strange that he should be here. Bolan wished he had brought the silenced Beretta. No, the man was still an innocent. The Executioner spotted the Oriental's weapon, a deadly black M-16 automatic rifle held loosely, confidently. Strike one.
Bolan checked his own pockets. Nothing to rattle or clink. No coins or keys. He stood silently, moved like a grounded wisp of fog to the next tree and paused. Now he would be exposed if his target in front of him turned. Bolan fisted the Ingram, put it on automatic fire and stepped forward, cat quiet. The mark turned and looked left, but not behind him. Bolan froze to stay out of the man's side vision. The guard turned back to watch Kitty.
Bolan took two more quick steps and knelt beside the Japanese before he sensed someone was near. When he jerked his head around, Bolan pressed the muzzle of the Ingram against the man's lips.
"One sound and you're dead," Bolan whispered. The man nodded. "How many of you here?"
The guard moved one hand slowly and held up one finger. Bolan pushed the barrel into his mouth. Beads of sweat popped out on the gunner's forehead. He held up two fingers. Bolan withdrew the barrel.
"Who are you working for?"
"Yamaguchi."
"Why didn't you kill her and then wait for me?"
"Yamaguchi said no killing down this far. Too messy. We just capture whoever shows up and hold them for three days."
Suddenly Bolan surged on top of the supine man, pinning his hands to his chest, then Bolan's trained thumbs found the carotid arteries on each side of the guard's throat and pressed. Twenty seconds later the Japanese was unconscious.
Bolan shackled the man's wrists and ankles with police plastic riot cuffs. The only way to get them off was to cut them free. The guard would be unconscious for ten minutes, which should be long enough.
Bolan crawled back into the heavier brush and timber and circled the site, moving within twenty feet of the other ambusher, who also was Japanese with a flattop haircut and wore camouflage fatigues. No wonder Yamaguchi could be in two places at one time. He had clones.
Bolan flipped the Ingram to automatic fire and stood.
"Hey there, friend," he said. The surprised soldier on the ground turned sharply, saw the submachine gun aimed at him and wilted.
"Don't even breathe. One sound and your next meal is hot lead."
The gunman nodded. Bolan moved up and fastened the man's wrists behind him, then marched him to the car where Kitty still stood.
"Glad to see you, Mack."
"I'll bet you are. They caught you sleeping?"
"Yes, but it will be the last time."
"It almost was, for you," the captive said. Bolan turned to the Japanese and backhanded him across the mouth.
"Now, tell us what this little war game is all about."
"I was out deer hunting."
Bolan slammed the edge of a stiffened palm into the side of the man's neck, driving him to his knees. It was not hard enough to break his neck, but would leave a painful bruise for days.
"We're not law-enforcement officers. So don't try your kid hoodlum chatter with us. Answer the questions and you just may survive the next five minutes."
The man's eyes widened, he nodded and stood slowly.
"Hey, take it easy! Okay, we're friends of Yamaguchi's. He's got this little organization. Most of us are in the reserve National Guard with him. He says he's got an operation going here that is bigger than anything we ever dreamed of. That's all we know. He says stay here and stop anyone from coming up the road. We stop them."
"You didn't ask Yamaguchi why?"
"You don't ask Yamaguchi anything."
"I will. How far up this road is the trailer?"
"He didn't tell us. We've never been up the road."
"How many men does Yamaguchi have in his whole operation?"
"I don't know. I've seen twenty of us from the Guard but he's talked about thirty men. I don't know."
"Anything else to tell us?"
The man shook his head.
"Fine." Bolan slashed a karate blow into the side of his neck and then another as the man was going down, plunging him into dreamland. Then he bound the man's wrists with plastic binders.
"I am sorry, Mack. They caught me changing clothes and I could not get to my purse. They were here waiting for me when I woke up. I..."
Bolan held up his hand. "Forget it. Just a slight delay, and we picked up some intel." He grabbed the Japanese and carried him into the brush beside the first one. Let them suffer together when they came to.
Bolan considered using the car, but rejected the idea. He went to his weapons case and took out some aid and comfort. He decided to change into his black skinsuit.
Kitty watched him.
"What in the world is that thing?"
"My working clothes — hard to see at night."
Kitty shrugged and looked through one of her suitcases and took out a weapon, a German-made Schmeisser MP-40 submachine gun.
Bolan slid into the skinsuit, filled the slit pockets with equipment he would need and put on his combat webbing, added four grenades and his Colt Commander in the holster. The Executioner took some C-4 primer cord, two quarter-pound chunks of C-4 plastic explosive and six extra magazines for the Ingram. He checked the pouches on the web belt and saw that all were filled. Then he strapped the Childers battle shotgun on his back.
Bolan left the car where it was parked off the road and out of sight. They walked back to the forestry trail, keeping twenty yards into the tall pine country and its light cover of brush.
Bolan approved Kitty's new costume, the tight blue
jeans and blue blouse. She also wore sturdy hiking boots and now slid in a magazine and charged the MP-40. She said she had four more magazines in her shoulder purse.
They moved slowly, carefully, alert for trip wires and any kind of warning devices. Bolan did not expect much, figuring the first security would be five miles from the trailer. Nearly a mile up the road they came to a gate across the trail.
Heavy timber at this point prevented any four-wheelers from driving around the gate. Bolan checked the padlock and chain on the metal barrier. The lock was shiny new, the chain was old and showed signs of nicks and burrs. The old lock had been cut off. On the far side of the gate he found heavy truck tire tracks. They were the same as the ones he had been following up the road. They were still on the right trail.
A hundred yards farther along, Bolan sensed the trap. It was his old combat awareness, that sixth sense that separates the natural combatmen from the wounded and dying.
"Get down!" Bolan thundered, diving at Kitty and knocking her off her feet. They both rolled behind a large fallen log just as the space where they had stood was riddled by twenty rounds from two or three M-16s.
Bolan's eyes were angry. "Those weren't rounds from Dr. Dunning's set guns. Those were live riflemen trying to kill us right here. Somehow every rule in the old book has been changed. It's now kill or be killed."
Kitty lay behind the log, her face drawn as she rubbed her elbow where it had hit a rock.
"How many of them?" she asked.
"Two, maybe three. You stay here. I'll go around..." He stopped when her expression changed.
"No, Mack. My turn. You stay here and cover me as I swing around behind them. I have done this before."
Bolan nodded, lifted his Ingram and sent a dozen rounds from his chatter gun into the woods ahead of them. He had no target, but it would give them something to think about. He fired again, watched Kitty slip beyond the fallen trunk, and then he rose and squeezed off another 5-round burst.
He crawled ten feet along the ground and fired again. This time he kept on moving. It was no time to leave his fate in the hands of the KGB. This one agent of theirs might help him, but he was damned if he was going to rely on her for anything!
Bolan paused at the end of the log, dashed to the first tree, then the second. No one fired at him. He darted for the third and felt the slug before he heard the sound of the M-16. The burning bullet creased his right thigh and kept on going as Bolan dived toward the nearest cover. He hit on one shoulder, executed a roll and kept turning trying to get out of the open space. There was no option — he had to be hidden before the gunman refined his sight for the next shot.
10
It was twenty-four seconds after midnight in Moscow. The Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had just finished talking with the President of the United States of America. Most of the Premier's advisors were still in the room when a glow outside his window caught the group's attention. At once it changed into a brilliant flash that shattered the darkness with a continuing dazzling light much like noontime. They all rushed to the window and found that it was daylight all over Moscow.
Twenty-five thousand miles above Moscow, a hydrogen warhead had been detonated. The blinding flash moderated into bright sunshine by the time it penetrated the gloom on the night side of the planet Earth. The spurious daylight set roosters crowing, sent owls scooting for their daytime perches and turned off millions of photosensitive street lights.
The Premier staggered back, fearing another blast would follow, that Armageddon had indeed come to the world. But within seconds, two of his advisors assured him that there had been no report of incoming missiles. Quickly they determined that the explosion had been hydrogen and had been thousands of miles above the earth.
Five minutes later reports began streaming in. It was confirmed that the explosion was twenty-five thousand miles high, exactly over Moscow.
"Was it one of ours?" the Premier asked his defense chief.
"We have no way of knowing. We realize what is missing. It is possible, but we should hope for the best. It would be my suggestion that we postpone any overt action against American satellites until this new mystery is solved."
The Premier nodded, watching the light continue outside. He had no idea how long it would remain, how much noon at midnight they would have. But even as he watched, the light began to fade. Ten minutes. The power! What massive power had been released!
"We will not phone the President. It is four in the afternoon there. We shall wait until it is our daytime and their night when we talk again."
Eight hours later, at precisely twelve midnight, Washington, D.C. time, a similar explosion took place twenty-five thousand miles above the capital. There was a hushed reaction in the President's Oval Office.
The Chief Executive and his advisors had been meeting since four that afternoon trying to decide what had caused the brilliant explosion over Moscow as reported by observers in many European countries.
They knew the altitude and had followed reports of possible radiation levels in the upper atmosphere, which most now thought would be negligible.
The President shielded his eyes as he watched the rose garden come into full view and then turn garish in the harsh overlighting. He stood at the window, sure that there would be no nuclear explosion. Knowing that it was not the forerunner of a thermonuclear holocaust, he was still amazed.
"Why?" The President threw the challenge at his advisors.
Secretary of Defense Jensen held up his hands. "We simply don't know. One over Moscow, one here. Where else? We don't have anything but speculation. The Third World might be making a spectacular display of its new nuclear capability, and tomorrow they may demand parity in all things — all wealth, all development — otherwise we will feel the might of their weapons at five thousand feet. Nobody knows what the hell is going on."
"Find out!" snapped the president. "I want to know everything I can when I talk to the Premier in the morning."
He waved his hand and everyone but his legal advisor, the man some called the presidential clone, left the office at once.
"This could be disastrous," the President said." By tomorrow morning I want to know exactly what is happening, and if the theft of that Russian 'orbiter' has anything to do with it. If the Reds lost what they might have lost, the whole thing would be much simpler. But that's almost too much to hope for. Get on those guys out there. Make them produce. Notify me up if anything else big breaks."
* * *
Three hours later, at precisely midnight in Oregon, a radio signal turned on a powerful transmitter on a peak in the Mount Hood National Forest six miles from the nearest road. A rather stiff, nonprofessional voice spilled into thousands of Oregon and Washington late-night listeners' ears, overriding the normal program signals, booming over rock and roll, country, Top 40 and talk-show stations alike. The voice gave a clear and persuasive narrative about what had happened over Moscow and then over Washington, D.C.
Newsmen rolled out of bed. Front pages were scrapped and remade. Radio and tv broadcasts were shuffled and rewritten. The voices came on again, repeating the fifteen-minute description of events and then degenerated into a diatribe for world peace and disarmament of offensive weapons.
"Good morning from the Pacific Northwest. This is radio station TRUE reporting on the world events of the day. At exactly midnight in Washington, D.C, and eight hours earlier, at midnight, over Moscow, hydrogen missile warheads were detonated. There is no danger and no damage. The missiles that carried the warheads were detonated at twenty-five thousand miles in space, and created a daylike period of ten to twelve minutes in both capitals. The explosions caused a certain amount of panic, but there was no loss of life or structural damage in either city.
"I captured the missiles that resulted in the explosions. They are both intended to be a warning to the world: don't let the big powers kill our planet by launching a nuclear war. Both the United States and Russia are more dangerously clos
e to such a blunder right now than either nation realizes.
"The two MIRV warheads that exploded came from a Russian missile orbiting the earth. This Russian super-missile was loaded with twenty-four independently targetable warheads. Each has the power of the two that were exploded last night. All are hydrogen bombs, all are monstrously deadly. The twenty-four warheads on this one vehicle are not alone in outer space.
"Russia has twelve such vehicles now in orbit around the earth, flying directly over your house, threatening every human being in the world. That means Russia still controls two hundred eighty-six independently targeted hydrogen bombs ready to drop on your home at any instant!
"MIRV is an acronym for Multiple Independently targetable Re-entry Vehicle.
"A few hours ago I electronically captured one Russian missile. I'm sure they burned up the hot line to Washington trying to get it back from the President, without telling him what the vehicle actually was. These weapons are in space in spite of an agreement that space should be free of all weapons, especially the MIRV type. Both the U.S. and Russia agreed to such an agreement.
"My name is Dr. Peter Dunning. I worked for NASA for many years, and while there I actively campaigned for a reduction in offensive weapons and a reliance on defensive ones such as countermissiles and defensive screens. Soon I became counterproductive to NASA, so I resigned.
"It permitted me time to work on my own project: to capture a Russian MIRV missile to prove to the world how the big powers lie to us; how they endanger us; how they threaten us with hydrogen war if we don't do just as they say. I captured the Russian Armageddon device on my own, without the help or the knowledge of the U.S. government or the space administration.
"They would have stopped me. It is my purpose to ban all nuclear weapons from outer space. You will hear more from me soon. Let me tell you why I am doing all this."
* * *
Orbiting Omega Page 7