WATER TORTURE

Eco-Armageddon is the goal of a far-reaching plan with the scope, vision and power to strike oil rigs around the globe. With unprecedented disaster looming, Mack Bolan begins the hunt to identify and stop the terror dealers behind the threat. A trail that starts in Brooklyn’s underworld leads to black market underwater mines, the looting and sinking of a British destroyer carrying gold, and the purchase of Hercules transports in Miami. The long arm of the terrorist operation, brilliantly organized by a vengeance-hungry madman, is soon to be hijacked by the Russian mob. Adding rocket torpedoes to the punishing arsenal, the enemy is all but invincible, possessing the technology, the soldiers and the greed to kill millions and doom the world.

The pilot’s body was held in place by the safety harness

Bolan reached out to help, but stopped when the Black Hawk began to spin out of control. Turning toward the side hatch, he worked the lever. It moved smoothly, but the hatch refused to budge an inch, held in place by the pressure of centrifugal force.

Bracing a boot against the minigun, Bolan grabbed the lever with both hands and exerted all of his strength. It felt as though the universe was rapidly spinning around him. The Black Hawk was a sitting duck, and the next burst of shells would blow him out of the air.

“Come on, you stubborn son of a—” The lever bent slightly, then the hatch moved and he was thrown from the spinning helicopter....

Shadow Strike

Don Pendleton’s

Mack Bolan

www.mirabooks.co.uk

By taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing over it, he is superior.

—Author Unknown

Heaping revenge on a wrongdoing solves nothing. Avenging an injustice is something else entirely.

—Mack Bolan

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

PROLOGUE

Northwest Atlantic Ocean

“Remember what happened to the southern United States when that offshore oil rig ruptured?” a man asked, easing an ammunition clip into the receiver of an AK-47 assault rifle. “Now just imagine the same thing happening to every offshore oil ring on the whole planet. It would be…” He fumbled for the correct word.

“Catastrophic,” a woman supplied, working the arming bolt on her own weapon. “But we’re not going to do that to every oil rig in the world, just the ones around the British Isles. Maybe fifty or sixty million will die, not a couple of billion.”

He grinned. “But still, something to think about, eh?”

“Oh, shut up and concentrate on your work,” another man growled, removing the clip from his assault rifle to spray some military lubricant into the receiver.

Flying at maximum speed, three massive C-160 Hercules transport planes maintained a tight formation as they cruised dangerously low over the Atlantic, just below the American coastal radar net.

On the distant horizon a raging squall, a sudden summer storm, churned the ocean in unbridled fury, and choppy waves sprayed the bellies of the huge airplanes with layers of slick moisture that flowed smoothly away from the steady stream of air churned by the powerful Allison engines.

Inside the planes, the low hum of the turboprop engines was a palpable presence among the grim passengers, and conversation was difficult, but not impossible. They were all dressed in loose civilian clothing, totally inappropriate for long-distance air travel, and heavy fur parkas.

“So…was this the first time you ever…you know?” a bald man asked, his voice tight with emotion. There was a bloody bandage on the side of his head where an ear had been, and his fur collar was stained dark red.

“Killed anybody?” a woman replied, her hands busy reloading an AK-47 assault rifle. “Yes, of course.” The curved magazine slid easily into the receiver, and with a jerk of the arming bolt, the deadly weapon was ready for business again.

“First time for me, too,” another man added, disassembling his own weapon to clean the interior.

“Never saw so much blood in my life,” an older man whispered.

“Shut up and concentrate on your work,” the first man growled, irritably touching the bandage. Then he savagely jerked out the clip from his assault rifle and placed it aside.

The entire group had been practicing for the past hour, disassembling an old AK-47, only to put it back together and then take it apart once more in an endless learning ritual. Naturally, all of them were familiar with hunting rifles and such, but nobody had any military training. How could they? Iceland had no army or navy, only a national police force. This bizarre Russian weapon, a combination of a 7.62 mm machine gun and 30 mm grenade launcher, was as foreign to them as the dark side of the moon. As was murder.

Killing for food, they understood. That was part of life. However, taking the life of another human was something horribly new, and most of them looked a little queasy from the recent slaughter. True, it had been necessary, but still extremely disagreeable.

Located at the extreme rear of the lead Hercules, the fifty men and women were jammed uncomfortably between the hydraulic exit ramp and a solid wall of wooden cubes that filled the rest of the huge cargo transport.

Each squat cube was roughly a yard square, and bore no manufacturer logo, designation or shipping label. Nor was there a manifest, customs sticker or duties seal. The identical wooden boxes were completely blank, aside from a few smears of drying blood, an occasional tuft of human hair and the all-pervasive smell of industrial lubricant.

At the front of the plane, only inches away from the colossal mound of crates, was a short flight of metal stairs that led to the flight deck. Underneath the deck was a utilitarian washroom and a small metal room that once had been an ammunition bunker for a twin set of 40 mm Bofors cannons. But for this trip it had been converted into a crude electronics workshop. The noise from the engines was noticeably less at this location, yet the three people clustered in the cramped room hadn’t spoken for hours, ever since hastily leaving the burning warehouse.

“So, is it done yet?” a portly man finally demanded, grabbing the hexagonal barrel of an old-fashioned Webley .445 revolver and breaking open the cylinder to remove the spent shells. He dumped them into a metal waste receptacle, and the brass tinkled musically as it rolled about on the bottom. Though he was a large man, the three-piece silk suit he wore hung loosely from his wide shoulders, and a series of holes cut into his leather belt accommodated a recent dramatic weight loss. On his right wrist was a solid-platinum Rolex watch that shone mirror-bright, while a cheap gold-plated wedding ring gleamed dully on his left hand. Although only middle-aged, he seemed much older, with deep lines around his mouth and eyes, and his curly dark hair was highlighted with wings of gray at the temples.

“Only glaciers can move mountains, Thor,” muttered the slim woman bent over the workbench clamped to the metal wall. Her pale hands moved among the complex circuitry of an electronic device, soldering loose wires into place and attaching computer chips with the innate skill and speed of a surgeon.

“What does that mean?” growled a skinny man attaching a large drum of 12-gauge cartridges to the bottom of a Vepr assault shotgun. The deadly weapon mirrored its new owner, bare-bones and deadly, possessing nothing that wasn’t absolutely necessary to the single goal of eradicating life.

His hair was so pale that he almost appeared bald, and he was painfully clean-shaved, with a small bandage covering a recent nick on his shallow cheek. He was wearing a camouflage-colored military jumpsuit, and one of his boots bulged slightly from a folded straight-razor tucked in the top for dire emergencies.

“It means, Gunnar, that we shouldn’t bother the professor when she’s busy,” Hrafen Thorodensen answered, thumbing a fifth round into the cylinder. With a snap of his wrist, he swung up the barrel and closed the British-made weapon.

Gunnar Eldjarm scowled, resting the Vepr on a shoulder. “You shouldn’t snap a revolver shut like that, Thor. It damages the catch.”

“Only if I do it a lot,” Thorodensen replied. “But with any luck, two days from now I can throw it away and never touch another damn weapon.”

“And if we fail?” Professor Lilja Vilhjalms asked, expertly inserting another circuit board into the rapidly growing maze of electronics.

Midnight-black hair trailed down her back in a thick ponytail that almost reached her trim waist. A pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses dominated her otherwise lovely face.

“If we fail, my dear Lily, then we’ll all be dead, which will achieve the same result,” Thorodensen said, pulling a folding jump seat from the curved wall. “Now, please finish up quickly. We will reach our next target soon.”

“Target?” Vilhjalms asked in a whisper, her hands stopping cold. “But I thought—”

“Yes, yes, we will try to legally purchase the equipment, of course,” Thorodensen interrupted with a curt gesture. “But if there are any complications, then we shall take what we need.”

“At any cost?”

“Yes, at any cost.”

Putting aside the soldering gun, the woman made one last plea for sanity. “Please, Thor, the Americas aren’t our enemy.”

“Wrong,” Eldjarm stated coldly, brushing back his hair. “The friend of my enemy is my enemy.”

Removing a cigar from inside his suit, Thorodensen grunted in somber agreement. He didn’t really care for this new blood-thirsty aspect of his childhood friend, even if it did help in this dirty little war. However, as the old saying went, needs drive as the devil must. Which he always took to mean that, sometimes, in extreme cases, the end actually did justify the means.

Withholding a sigh, Lilja Vilhjalms tactfully said nothing and returned to the arduous task of assembling the sonar scrambler. She didn’t care for the name of their little group, Penumbra, and had no idea if they were on the path of righteousness or damnation. Sadly, there was no other course available. Win or lose, right or wrong, this was their destiny, and revenge was as inevitable as death itself.

Outside the windows, the sky began to darken as the three Hercules raced away from the thunderous storm and slipped into twilight, heading directly into the coming night.

CHAPTER ONE

Brooklyn, New York

Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled in the stormy sky. A cold rain fell unrelenting on the dark city. Rivers of car headlights flowed in an endless stream along the regimented streets of south Brooklyn, while traffic lights blinked their silent multicolored commands.

The ragged shoreline of Sheepshead Bay was brightly illuminated by the bright neon lights of countless bars, restaurants and nightclubs skirting the choppy Atlantic, where oily waves broke hard against ancient rocks and modern concrete pylons. Tugboats churned across the bay, guiding huge cruise liners out to sea, and even more massive oil tankers to the industrial dockyard.

As silent as the grave, a black Hummer rolled to a stop near the mouth of an alley, and the driver turned off the headlights, but kept the engine running. For several minutes, Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, did nothing, closely studying every detail of the area, from the flow of the dirty water in the gutters, to the shadows on the window curtains of nearby apartment houses.

The rain pelted hard across the neighborhood, visibly dancing on the sidewalks and hitting the patched pavement of the streets with a sound oddly similar to a steak sizzling on a griddle. There were few pedestrians about at this late hour, only a couple drunks staggering home, and a lone prostitute huddled under the tattered awning of a cheap hotel.

The rest of the wet street was lined with parked cars. Every store window was protected by a heavy steel gate, every wall adorned with garish graffiti, and the few bus kiosks were made of military-grade bulletproof plastic, the resilient material still scored deeply in spots by knives and car keys. No messages had been etched into the plastic, just random scars to signify that nothing was allowed into Sheepshead Bay without the permission of the locals.

There were no security cameras in evidence anywhere, but Bolan did a careful sweep of the vicinity with a handheld EM scanner just to double-check. When the electromagnetic device read clean, Bolan tucked it away under his waterproof poncho, turned off the engine and stepped from the vehicle.

Bolan was a big man, well over six feet tall, and while he carried 220 pounds, he moved with the grace of a jungle cat. For the mission this night, he was wearing black clothing and shoes, and a black leather duster that hung to his knees.

Walking to the next corner, Bolan glanced around the dead-end street, and almost smiled at the glowing oasis of light in the Stygian gloom, the Golden Grotto. Electric signs flashed digital photos of various dancers whose clothing melted away to reveal their many delights, but always stopped at the exact limit that the law allowed. Most of the dancers were blonde, even the Latinas and Asians.

Music thumped from inside the building, and the parking lot was filled with a wide assortment of cars. A uniformed doorman stood under a wide canvas awning, and kept close attention on the rows of vehicles. Even from this distance Bolan could tell the man was armed.

The rest of the street was deserted, which wasn’t surprising, since Bolan knew Michael Tiffany owned all the buildings in the area, and deliberately kept them empty of tenants so that there would be no nobody to complain about the noise and blazing lights of the Golden Grotto Gentleman’s Club. Even the warehouse situated on an old jetty was dark. The squat brick structure was shiny from the thundering downpour, and was Bolan’s real goal for this night. Getting there would be far trickier than it appeared.

However, Bolan found it odd that the warehouse didn’t look as if a dozen people had died the previous day. There was no sign of any gunfire or explosions. Interesting.

Heading for the club, he straightened his leather collar and used a thumb to break another ampoule of whiskey taped to the underside. The reek of potent liquor briefly flooded the air, then was washed away by the unrelenting rain.

Pretending to stagger along the sidewalk, Bolan got to the door just as the burly doorman opened it and waved him on inside.

“Good evening, sir,” the man declared.

Mumbling something unintelligible, Bolan shuffled past, noticing that the fellow was wearing a bulletproof vest under his raincoat, along with an Uzi submachine gun.

As the glass doors closed, Bolan was hit by a tidal wave of noise, smoke, light and steaming hot air that reeked of hard liquor, stale sweat and cheap perfume. Every wall was covered with mirrors, and a disco ball hung from the ceiling, radiating a galaxy of moving star points.

The club was spacious, filling the entire ground floor of the converted warehouse, but it was still packed to the walls, with cheering customers at every table, waving and leering at the naked dancers gyrating on three different stages. The signs outside displayed only as much flesh as the law allowed. Inside was another matter entirely.

A completely nude woman was walking off the first stage, her hands stuffed with dollar bills, while two Asian women were just starting to remove their schoolgirl outfits on the middle stage, and a young black woman wearing tooled boots, chaps and a cowboy hat strode out onto the third, to be greeted by a crescendo of loud country music and wild hoots from the drunken crowd.

Smoothing back his soaked hair, Bolan grunted in wry amusement. Nonstop entertainment meant it was harder for a paying customer to realize it was time to leave and go home. There were no wall clocks in sight, and the front door was partially hidden behind a barricade of plastic plants. Las Vegas had been using these tricks for decades, and apparently Tiffany had decided to copy the big boys. Smart. But then, nobody had ever said that Mad Mike Tiffany was a fool, just ruthless.

The cushioned leather stools along the curved hardwood counter were mostly empty, as the management wanted the drunks sitting in chairs and not falling onto the floor. A dozen waitresses rushed back and forth from the bar to the patrons, steadily relaying overpriced drinks. They wore matching outfits of fishnet body stockings, leather boots and white satin bowies.

“Table, sir?” a pretty redhead asked, coming out of the smoky darkness. The name on her plastic ID badge read Shelly.

Her smile could have illuminated Broadway, but her eyes were dead, telling an age-old story that Bolan had encountered far too many times in his travels.

“No, thanks,” he replied. “I’m here to see Tiffany.”

Inhaling sharply, Shelly stiffened at the open use of the name, then forced a friendly smile back on her face.

“Part of the new security team?” she asked with a tilt of her head. Then, stabbing out a finger, she poked his duster and found the holstered Beretta underneath. “Yeah, I can see that you are.”

Bolan was impressed, but said nothing. New security team? Maybe something had recently happened here that had scared Mad Mike. Had somebody tried to ice the man, or had it been something even worse?

Looking about, Shelly leaned in closer. “You know, we’re all still kind of upset about that. So many of his people dead…” Suddenly, she looked frightened and took a step backward.

“Hmm, what did you say?” Bolan asked with a stone face. “I was looking at the dancers and didn’t hear a word you said, darling.”

Relaxing at the obvious lie, Shelly blessed him with a smile, a glimmer of the girl she had once been peeking out from the overlaying years of abuse. “Come on, the vault is this way,” she said, turning to briskly walk away.

Checking for any oddly placed mirrors that might be hiding a surveillance camera, Bolan stayed close, watching the crowd as much as the waitress.

But nobody seemed to be paying him any undue attention. Every gaze was locked on the Asian women, who were naked by now and oiling each other in a pretend wrestling match.

When they reached a curtained alcove, Shelly parted the black drapes, and Bolan observed that they were very heavy and thickly coated with a tan foam on the inside to retard the ambient noises of the club. Beyond them was a short hallway and another set of soundproof curtains. Past that in a small room lined with metal lockers, two large men were sitting at a table, playing cards. One had a beard, the other a Mohawk, and they were both openly armed, automatic pistols tucked into shoulder holsters, their jackets draped over the back of their chairs.

Keeping his back to the wall, Bolan read both of them as low-level guards, just some muscle to keep out the drunks. Next to them was a second door, made of solid steel and equipped with an alphanumeric keypad.

“Hey, Chuck,” Shelly said in greeting. “Meet the new guy.”

“No names,” Bolan said. “Not yet, anyway.”

Both men kept playing cards, but shifted position in their chairs for faster access to their weapons. Okay, they were big, Bolan noted, but not completely stupid. Too bad for them.

“You the mechanic from Detroit?” asked the man with the Mohawk, shifting the cards in his hand.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” the bearded man said with a sneer, sliding a hand inside his jacket to scratch his stomach. “Whatcha want, Blackie?”

Bolan grunted. That was a not-so-subtle reference to him being a Black Ace, a professional killer. “I’m here to see Mad Mike,” he replied in a bored voice.

The two men broke into laughter, and Shelly went pale, as if just speaking the nickname could get you killed. Looking nervously at the three men, she abruptly turned and departed, closing the soundproof curtains in her wake. Soon the hard clicks of her high heels faded away.

“Okay, what’s your business with the boss?” asked the bald man, rising from the table. Something under his shirt jacket hit the Formica table with a metallic thump.

Bolan showed no reaction but immediately changed his tactics for gaining entry. These men were wearing military body armor, not a cheap bulletproof vest like the doorman. These weren’t guards, but street soldiers. Muscle for the boss.

“Don’t worry about it.” Bolan chuckled, drawing the Beretta and firing twice.

Each man jerked back as a 9 mm Parabellum slug slammed into his chest directly above the heart. As the slugs ricocheted away, the guards doubled over, gasping for breath and clawing for their own weapons. Stepping closer, Bolan swung the Beretta fast, clubbing them both across the back of the head, and they dropped to the floor like sacks of dirty laundry.

It would have been faster and safer to simply execute the guards. But since Bolan didn’t know for sure that they deserved death, he would allow them to live for the time being.

Removing a pair of 10 mm Glock pistols from their shoulder holsters, he tossed them into a wastebasket.

Checking the guards, he found a transceiver on the bearded man, along with a throat mike and earplug. Plus an access card. Tucking in the earbud, he switched on the radio, hoping it was already on the correct channel. There was only silence. Damn.

Going to the wall, Bolan searched alongside the door until finding a disguised access slot in the woodwork. He slipped in the card, and a panel slid back, revealing a glowing sheet of plastic with the outline of a human hand. He grunted at that. A biometric refusal system. That was pretty high tech for a Brooklyn gun dealer. Suddenly, he had a very strong suspicion that his tip from Leo Turrin was right on the money, and that something big had happened here yesterday, something a lot more dangerous than selling cheap Taiwanese revolvers to gangbangers.

Looking over the unconscious men, Bolan chose the one with the better shoes. That meant he was probably getting paid more, which translated as holding a higher position in the criminal organization.

Pressing the hand of the man against the panel, Bolan heard a soft chime, and the armored door slid into the wall. Directly ahead was a long hallway illuminated with bright halogen lights and lined with closed doors. The walls were brick, the floor terrazzo, and there were no security cameras.

Dropping the limp body in the path of the door to prevent it from closing, Bolan shrugged off his leather duster and drew both his weapons. The Beretta 93-R machine pistol rested comfortably in his left hand, while the right was filled with a .50-caliber Desert Eagle. Quantity and quality. A very deadly combination.

Easing along the hallway, he strained to hear any noises, but there was only the soft whir of the air-conditioning system blowing a warm breeze from hidden vents, then the radio earbud crackled.

“Chuck, we’ve got a reading that the damn door is wide open,” a man growled in annoyance. “Check it, and see if that idiot Bobby dropped something in the jamb again, will ya.”

Touching the throat mike, Bolan grunted in reply. Ahead of him a door opened and a man stepped into the corridor, a case of U.S. Army HEAT rounds cradled in his arms.

He gasped at the sight of Bolan and dropped the case to go for a mini-Uzi holstered on his hip. The Executioner stroked the trigger of the Beretta and the weapon fired, the sound suppressor reducing the report to a discreet cough. The man fell back into infinity, his brains splattered across the brick wall.

“The damn door is still open!” the voice said as the radio crackled. “What the fuck are you two morons doing up there?”

Up there, eh? Thanks for the directions, Bolan thought, stepping into the room. It was filled with wall shelves packed solid with cases of Glaser Sure-Kill, Navy SEAL Daisy Cutters, Black Talon cop killers and Army HEAT rounds, all strictly illegal for civilian use. Especially the high-explosive armor-piercing tracers. There was even an empty carrying case for an HK XM-25. Now, that was real trouble.

Pulling a cigarette pack from his jacket pocket, Bolan pulled off the arming strip, then slapped the disguised explosive charge against the middle case of HEAT rounds. Those would do the most damage when the plastic-wrapped wad of C-4 detonated.

Checking the next room, Bolan found it full of crates of U.S. Army M-16 assault rifles, M-79 grenade launchers, and several cases of mixed hand grenades. He primed a second pack of cigarettes.

Taking a couple of HE grenades, Bolan dropped them into a pocket. Turrin had been right, and wrong. This wasn’t just a supply depot for the local Mob, but a major league black-market weapons dealer. Now, Bolan was eager to find Tiffany and discover exactly what had happened that made him increase security to this level.

“If you two assholes are fucking the new girl instead of standing your post, the boss is going to feed your balls into a fucking woodchipper!” the voice on the radio said furiously. “Now, answer me right fucking now, you losers!”

Too late for that, Bolan thought, removing the safety tape from around the handle of a flash-bang stun grenade. He yanked the pin free and tossed the sphere up the corridor toward the strip club. It landed directly on the back of the unconscious guard and rolled into the alcove.

Turning away, Bolan sprinted for distance. A few seconds later there was a thunderous explosion and a blinding flash. Instantly, every fire alarm started to howl, then white foam gushed from sprinklers in the ceiling.

“Red alert,” a woman said calmly over a speaker inside the drop ceiling. “We have an explosion in section 12. Repeat, explosion in 12. Everybody topside clear the club and seal the doors. Allow nobody access. Nobody!”

“Mr. Tiffany, I sent Harry to get a crate of grenades,” a man said over the radio. “The blast might have been him, sir.”

“That old drunk?” another man growled. “If the asshole is still alive, shoot him in the head! Now clear the club and seal the doors! The last thing I want is a bunch of firemen charging in here!”

The voice was low and throaty, almost garbled, and Bolan couldn’t tell if it was from a man, a woman, or computer-generated. But that fit the description of Mike Tiffany.

“No problem, sir!” the man replied promptly.

Satisfied that all the civilians would soon be gone, Bolan sprinted for the end of the corridor. From this point onward, anybody else he encountered should be an employee of the arms dealer, and fair game.

Reaching the end of the corridor, Bolan paused before an elevator, frowned, then stepped through an open doorway that led to a stairwell. Even over the fire alarm, he could hear several people running up the steps. Pulling out another grenade, he left on the safety tape and simply dropped it over the railing. The sphere hit the metal steps below with a ringing crash, then started bouncing along, impelled by gravity and inertia. A few seconds later, the unseen men began shouting curses, then running away fast.

Pulling out a second grenade, Bolan started to remove the safety tape, then heard a sound from behind. Dropping the grenade, he drew the Beretta and pivoted at the hip.

A large man in a yellow raincoat was running down the corridor, working the pump action on a 12-gauge shotgun. Instantly, the Executioner fired twice, the double report lost in the clamor of the alarm.

The shotgun discharged harmlessly into the wall as the first round knocked it aside, then the man jerked backward as the second 9 mm bullet punched a neat black hole in his forehead. Slowly, he crumpled to the floor and lay down as if going to sleep.

Suddenly, the soldier heard the sound of people running up the stairs again. This time, Bolan pulled the pin on an HE grenade, counted to three, then dropped the bomb over the railing. The metallic sphere hit the stairs with a hard metallic ring, and somebody cursed.

“Grenade!” a man yelled.

“Ignore it!” another countered gruffly. “That last one wasn’t even live!”

A split-second later, a violent explosion filled the stairwell, and fiery chunks of human remains vomited into view. A smoking hand still holding a gun smacked into the concrete wall, and a tattered shoe arched over the railing to land in the corridor.

Quickly starting down the stairs, Bolan hopped over the grisly remains of the guards and kept moving. Unfortunately, he could feel the stairs swaying, and cursed the fact that the builder had merely attached them to the wall with pinions and wires, instead of anchoring them properly to the masonry with thick steel bolts. Now there was a chance that the staircase would tumble to the bottom level with him on it. However, the elevator was a guaranteed death trap, so he had no choice.

Increasing his speed, Bolan holstered the Beretta, using both hands to steady his hasty progress down the shuddering stairs. Pinions were ripping free from the wall moorings, the support cables lashing about like insane snakes, hissing as they whipped through the air. He was hit twice in the back, his life saved by the Threat Level IV body armor under his jacket. Then he caught a cable across the face. The sharp pain blurred his vision for a moment, and he tasted blood, but kept moving. Speed was his only defense now.

As he neared bottom, the last flight of stairs gave a low groan and twisted sideways, closely followed by a horrible crashing sound that steadily built in volume and power.

Jumping the last eight feet, Bolan hit the floor in a crouch and dived at the exit. The fire door resisted for a second, and just for a moment the soldier thought this was the end. Then the portal crashed open and he half fell onto soft carpeting. A split second later, a deafening avalanche of stairs, cables, stays and corpses arrived, blocking the doorway completely as it formed a ghastly pile of debris.

As Bolan started to rise, a dozen armed men charged into view from around a corner. Drawing the Beretta 93-R, the soldier emptied the magazine into the group. Faces disappeared, and hot blood splashed the wall as the chests of the guards were torn open under the barrage.

Dropping the magazine, Bolan slammed a fresh one home as a second group of gunners appeared. But these men were carrying M-16 assault rifles and wearing body armor.

As the guards paused at the sight of the carnage, Bolan threw himself to the floor and quickly shifted targets. Firing 9 mm rounds across their exposed knees, he brought them down screaming and cursing, white bones and gore erupting from the hideous wounds.

Rolling to a new position, Bolan drew the Desert Eagle and stroked the trigger. The big bore handcannon boomed louder than doomsday in the enclosed confines of the hall, the muzzle-flame extending for almost a foot from the pitted maw of the oversize weapon.

The head of the first man simply broke apart, his life gone in a microsecond of high-powered annihilation. Then the nose of the second man vanished, just before the back of his head exploded, the men behind him caught in the spray of bones and brains.

Temporarily blinded by the gory material, the other guards rubbed at their faces and fired back randomly, mostly hitting the floors and ceiling, and occasionally one another.

Constantly moving and shooting, Bolan continued to ruthlessly exterminate each of them, one after another, until the corridor was again empty.

Swiftly reloading both his weapons, Bolan took this opportunity to press the button on the remote detonator clipped to his shoulder holster, then toss the device away.

Moving onward, the soldier stayed low and close to the walls, gunning down everybody he saw carrying a weapon, as well as every security camera that came into view.

Pausing at an intersection, he fired the Desert Eagle into the ceiling, dislodging several foam acoustical tiles to expose raw concrete and several thick power cables. He grunted at the sight. Those would lead either directly to the power room or to Tiffany. A fifty-fifty chance. He went to the right.

Sure enough, at the far end of the corridor, Bolan saw a group of men with military weapons clustered around an unmarked door. As they turned, Bolan shot the two men in front, then dived to the side. Caught by surprise, the guards took a moment to fire back, their assault rifles sending a fiery maelstrom of steel-jacketed lead along the corridor. But Bolan was already safely behind the corner, and unwrapping a grenade.

“Surrender or die!” he yelled, yanking out the arming pin and releasing the safety lever.

“Fuck you, cop!” somebody snarled in reply. “Come and get us!”

As the guards cut loose with another barrage, much longer this time, Bolan threw the military sphere as hard as he could at the opposite wall. It bounced off the bricks and went around the corner.

A man cursed, another screamed, then the antipersonnel grenade detonated in the air, sending out a hellish corona of stainless-steel fléchettes. Just for a second, Bolan heard the hiss of their trajectory, then there was only silence.

Pulling a mirrored dental probe from his inside pocket, he glanced around the corner to check the damage. There were tattered bodies in sight, but none remotely resembled human beings anymore, just piles of ground meat in cheap suits. Then he spotted a disembodied arm holding an XM-15. Bolan scooped it up and slung the deadly weapon across his back.

Stepping over the ragged corpses, the soldier heard one of the mutilated men give a low groan, and he quickly fired a mercy round from the Beretta to end the torment. Just then, the overhead lights went out, casting the corridor in near absolute blackness.

Cracking open a chemical glow stick, Bolan tossed it onto the bodies, then blew off the lock to the office door with a single booming round from the .50 Desert Eagle. The thundering rip of an auto-shotgun answered, a dozen cartridges discharged in a single, continuous volley.

Even before it stopped, Bolan tossed in an unprimed grenade. The bomb hit the carpet and rolled out of sight. He heard a man curse vehemently, and swung around the jamb.

Standing behind a huge wooden desk was a short bald man, a tailored silk shirt almost unable to contain his amazingly muscular frame. He appeared to be made out of nothing but bulging muscles and scar tissue. On the brick wall were several certificates from local charities, and a framed picture of the short man standing with his arm around the recently elected congressman who was rumored to be in the pockets of organized crime. Tiffany was clean-shaved, and had a puckered scar across his throat where a Jamaican drug lord had tried to behead him and failed. That was what gave the arms dealer his characteristic growl for a voice.

“What the fuck…a fake!” Tiffany snarled, dropping the spent drum of the Atchisson and reaching for another from a pile on the desk.

“Don’t do it, Mike,” Bolan said softly.

Tiffany froze with his hand less than an inch from the ammunition drum. Slowly, he looked up to squint into the darkness.

A long moment passed, then he curled his lips into a snarl and tossed away the Atchisson. It landed with a clatter on the carpeting, right next to the smoking ruin of a computer. The cover was off, and an electric stun gun was resting inside the complex wiring, molten plastic dribbling from the hard drive onto the floor.

“Okay, you got me, feeb,” Tiffany growled, raising both hands. “But you took too long, and my computer has bizarrely crashed.” He grinned as if he had just won the battle. “Now, read me my rights and call me a fucking lawyer.”

“Okay, you’re a fucking lawyer.”

Tiffany scowled. “What was that?”

“I’m not with the FBI,” Bolan stated, cracking alive another glow stick while advancing. “And I’m not here for your records, or to arrest anybody.”

“That so?” Tiffany muttered. “Well, you sure aren’t here to zap me, or else you would have tossed in a live grenade.”

Biding his time, Bolan said nothing, letting the arms dealer work out the details for himself. Interrogation was an art, not a science.

“You don’t really think I’m going to rat out my contacts for a shorter jail sentence?” Tiffany barked in a cold laugh.

“Mad Mike, the Brooklyn Terror? That possibility never even entered my mind,” Bolan stated honestly, pressing the hot barrel of the Colt against the man’s cheek.

The skin sizzled at the contact, but aside from a slight furrowing of his brow, Tiffany gave no indication that he felt anything. Finally, Bolan removed the weapon.

“Okay, now that you’ve had fun, what the fuck do you want?” the dealer demanded, rubbing the spot with his fingertips. “Money? I can get you that. More than you can spend in a dozen lifetimes!”

“Wrong again, Michael,” Bolan whispered, making the other man strain to hear the words. This was an old interrogation technique that almost always worked.

“Weapons?” Tiffany snorted in disdain. “You didn’t have to ace half my staff to cut a deal for some guns! What do ya want? Stinger missiles, C-4 satchel charges? I can even get you a PEP laser, if you give me a week.”

Bolan had started to speak when he saw Tiffany’s eyes widen in delight. Instantly, the soldier’s combat instincts flared and he spun out of the way with both guns blazing.

A big man stood in the doorway, aiming an M-16 assault rifle. He stumbled backward from the triphammer impact of the .50-caliber round from the Desert Eagle ricocheting off his chest, the shirt tearing to reveal body armor. Then the triburst of 9 mm rounds from the Beretta walked across the man, tearing away more cloth, then punching through flesh and bone.

As the riddled man fell, the M-16 cut loose a wild hellstorm of 5.56 mm cartridges, then the M-23 grenade launcher shoved beneath the barrel boomed, the 40 mm shell shooting harmlessly down the hallway.

Before the concussion stopped, Bolan spun and fired the Desert Eagle again.

Caught with his hand in a drawer, Tiffany shrieked in pain as the top of the desk exploded into splinters. He jerked back his arm, his wrist bristling with slivers. “Son of a bitch!” he snarled.

Kicking aside a chair, Bolan went around the desk and yanked open the drawer. Inside was a sleek, black Glock machine pistol and several ammunition clips.

“Now, I thought we had an understanding, Michael,” Bolan said, dropping the magazine of the Desert Eagle to slam in a fresh one.

Watching the magazine fall to floor, Tiffany went pale. “Okay, okay! Sure, no problem, we got a deal!” he replied, backing away until he was flat against the wall. “Ask away. Whatever you want. I’ll tell you everything!”

Bolan stood perfectly still and said nothing. Then he slowly raised the Desert Eagle and took aim.

“Sweet Jesus, what the fuck do you want to know?” Tiffany yelled, a touch of fear in his voice at last. “I’ll talk already! Just tell me what you want to know!”

Unfortunately, Bolan had no idea exactly what he wanted to know. So there was only one way to play this, cold and hard. “Tell me about what happened a few days ago,” he demanded, leveling the Beretta.

After inhaling deeply, Tiffany let his breath out slowly. “Oh…that. I should have known. Well, I’ll be fucking delighted to roll over on those assholes. They paid half a mil in advance, but when I delivered the goods, they released mustard gas and took everything…and killed fifty of my best men. Fifty! Even the fucking rats in the rafters were dead before the air was clear enough for me to get back inside the warehouse!”

“The warehouse on the wharf outside?”

“Yeah, bunch of locals also bought the farm. Some bums, a few gangbangers and two of my cooks.”

Civilians had died; that upped the ante. “Sorry for your loss,” Bolan said in a graveyard voice. “Keep to the important details.”

“Yeah, sure.” Slowly reaching for a wall switch, Tiffany turned on the lights. He blinked as they came on. Bolan didn’t.

“There were twenty or so of them, but one guy was in charge,” Tiffany said, sitting down in a plush leather chair. Wisely, he kept his hands in plain sight. “A foreign guy, nice dresser, platinum Rolex and such.”

“Name?”

“Mr. Loki.”

Now, that was a new one. “More,” Bolan said.

“Loki spoke really good English, but with a weird accent, like nothing I’ve ever heard before,” Tiffany said with a shrug. “Know what I mean? Not Israeli, German, French or anything normal like that. Something else.”

Which left most of the world’s population. “What did he purchase?” the soldier demanded impatiently.

“Junk.”

Bolan scowled. “Drugs?”

“No, I mean real junk,” Tiffany repeated. “Tons and tons of it. The oldest, cheapest crap I had in storage. I was figuring on dumping it all on some third world warlord who didn’t know napalm from orange juice, who didn’t know a revolver from a cruise missile, but this guy had cash in hand, bags and bags of euros. He wanted all of it, but didn’t have quite enough cash. So we cut a deal and—”

“And he used gas and took all of it.”

“Every fucking thing in the warehouse! Let me tell you, there is no honor among thieves anymore.”

“There never was. Define junk, Michael.”

“Antiques, man. Cold War stuff. AK-47 assault rifles, and some World War II bazookas. Honest, freaking bazookas!” He paused, and a shadow briefly crossed his face.

“Don’t lie to me now,” Bolan warned, thumbing back the hammer on the Desert Eagle.

Tiffany shrugged in resignation. “Okay, they stole the guns. They had arranged to buy just a couple hundred land mines.”

“What kind of land mines?”

Reaching down to the ruined desktop, Tiffany pushed away some papers to reveal a wooden box. He flipped the top and took out a slim cigar. “Not land mines, underwater mines,” he stated, biting off the end and spitting it onto the floor. “You know, the sort of things Britain used to chain to concrete blocks and line the Channel with to stop Nazi U-boats. Mines, man.”

Yes, Bolan knew all about underwater mines. North Korea used them by the thousands to blockade their own harbor to prevent NATO or South Korea from invading. Underwater mines were one of the deadliest defensive weapons in existence. But why did Loki want so many of them?

“I need more,” Bolan prodded.

Lighting the cigar tip, Tiffany inhaled deeply, then exhaled dark smoke. “Sure, sure, no problem. They were Iranian mines, M-39s.”

“Any idea what he wanted the mines for?”

“I don’t stay in business by asking questions,” Tiffany told him, touching his wounded arm.

Fair enough. “How many mines?”

“All of them, couple hundred.”

“Exactly how many, Michael?”

“Okay, okay, six hundred and fifty.”

Six hundred underwater mines…that was enough to blockade the entire city of New York. “What did they use to haul them away, trucks or a freighter?”

“A Hercules transport. Big-ass seaplane.”

Interesting. “Describe the buyers.”

“Two men and a woman. She was pretty, and had the biggest tits I’ve ever seen.”

Considering that he ran the strip club overhead, that was quite a statement. “And the men?”

“Loki was tall, good-looking, like George Hamilton, the actor. Old, but classy.”

“And the other?”

“Just a mook. Street muscle. Skinny, with cold eyes, like there was nothing inside but hate and hunger.”

A trigger man. Possibly a bodyguard. “Anything else?”

Tiffany hesitated. “Not all of my guys were dead when I arrived. One of them managed to whisper that he heard the fuckers talk about bringing a squall to the world.”

“Interesting. Did he say a storm or a squall?”

“Squall. Now, in my business, that is both a sudden summer storm and an incredibly expensive piece of Russian navy hardware. It’s a kind of underwater missile, a rocket-powered torpedo.”

Tiffany paused as if waiting for Bolan to deny that such a thing could possibly exist. When that didn’t happen, he added, “I don’t carry any of those. Don’t know anybody who does! The damn things malfunction half the time. They’ve killed more Russians than anybody else. Still…” He shrugged.

Bolan felt as if an important piece of a puzzle had just clicked into place. North Korean mines and Russian torpedoes. Somehow those two were connected. Was Loki going to declare war on the rest of the world? That made no sense whatsoever. Something very odd was going on here, and Bolan had a bad feeling that a lot more innocent civilians were going to die if he didn’t figure this out fast.

“Okay, we’re done,” he said, holstering the Beretta. “I leave, and you go out of business, because if we ever meet again…” He didn’t finish the promise and saw in the other man’s eyes that it was not necessary.

“Yeah, sure, no problem.” Tiffany sighed, crushing out the cigar in a glass ashtray. “Always wanted to retire to…ah…Florida?”

“Mike, I don’t care where, just leave tonight,” Bolan stated, walking backward out of the room. “Leave tonight.”

Staying in the chair for several minutes, Tiffany plucked splinters from his aching arm while debating his options. Standing, he started to reach for the Glock in the drawer, then abruptly changed his mind and turned to move the picture of the congressman and reveal a small wall safe. Twirling the dial, he opened the door and began stuffing packets of cash into his pockets.

“Smart move,” Bolan whispered from the darkness outside.

Trying not to shiver, Tiffany emptied the safe, then headed directly for the nearest emergency exit. First a bunch of foreigners wipe out his dock crew, and then some hardcase blows open his Brooklyn operation like he was the wrath of God. It was obviously time for him to find a nice tropical island someplace where the rum flowed freely and the native girls wore only smiles and sunshine.

Keeping his expression neutral, Tiffany waited for the elevator doors to sigh shut before finally allowing himself a brief smile. At least he had been able to bluff that big son of a bitch about one thing. Loki hadn’t stolen a couple hundred of the North Korean mines, but four thousand! Enough to blow the city of New York out of the water, or sink a dozen battleships.

But that was his problem now, Tiffany smugly thought, rearranging the packets of cash stuffed into his clothing.

Suddenly, a figure in the darkness blocked his way. “Half a mil in advance would mean a cool million dollars for a couple hundred underwater mines that sell legally for a grand apiece,” Bolan said from the shadows. “Not even you overcharge that much, Michael. What else did they get?”

His elation melting away, Tiffany felt a cold fury well within him, and he made a desperate grab for the Glock. There was a bright flash of light, a brief pain, and he fell forward into an inky blackness that seemed to extend forever.

Returning to his car, Bolan saw drunk men staggering away into the night, then heard police sirens and fire trucks wailing in the distance. The club parking lot was empty by now, and even the doorman was gone.

Stowing his weapons in the truck of the car, Bolan drove off into the hard rain. He had allowed Tiffany to lie about the amount of mines stolen only to salve the man’s ego. Let subjects think they outwitted you on a small point, and they’d spill their guts about all the rest. That trick usually worked, just not this time. Bad luck, nothing more.

When he was several blocks away, Bolan turned onto Flatbush Avenue and headed toward Manhattan. Okay, Mr. Loki had obviously taken a lot more than a couple hundred underwater mines. Maybe it had been several thousand. The big question was, what did Loki plan to do with enough military ordnance to launch the Empire State Building into orbit? The possibilities were endless, and he didn’t like any of them.

As the car rumbled across the Brooklyn Bridge, Bolan flipped open a cell phone and tapped in a memorized number. It was answered immediately.

“Yeah?” a sleepy voice said with a yawn.

“Striker here,” Bolan said brusquely. “We need to talk.”

“Where?”

“Flintstone.” Then the soldier closed the phone and tossed it out the window. It hit the steel lattice of the bridge and shattered, the pieces falling through the grating to sprinkle into the turgid waters of the Hudson River.

CHAPTER TWO

Azores Islands

The sea foamed white and clean before the cutting prow of the HMS Reliant, while behind the destroyer a school of bottlenose dolphins played in the churning wake.

Staying close to the Reliant were three heavily armed frigates. Their overlapping Doppler radar ceaselessly swept the sky above, and state-of-the-art sonar probed the murky depths below. The missile pods were primed, depth charges and torpedoes were ready for action, and sailors stood on the decks cradling L-85 assault rifles. But they lounged against the gunwales, kept their faces to the sun and mostly talked about women.

The entire crew of the convoy was fully prepared for battle, but expected nothing more serious than a mild case of sunburn to happen. Everybody knew the monthly trip to South Africa was about as dangerous an assignment as standing guard at Buckingham Palace when the royal family was away on vacation. Boring, but necessary for the general good of the United Kingdom.

It was early in the morning, with the sun still low on the horizon. But the sky was clear, the wind warm. And standing on the flying bridge of the Reliant, Captain Olivia Taylor, wearing a pair of nonregulation sunglasses, was watching the dolphins splash and play, and occasionally feed on the smaller fish that were attracted to the churning foam, incorrectly thinking it was food. Evolution in action.

Opening a bottle of suntan lotion, Taylor spread some on her exposed arms and neck, working up to her cheeks. This assignment was a cakewalk, as her American father had liked to say, a task so easy it would border on dull if it hadn’t been for the vital nature of their cargo.

Roughly a hundred years ago, Great Britain had owned most of South Africa, and was making a serious attempt to get the rest of the continent, when the Boer War erupted, closely followed by Zulu uprisings. Then there was the Great War, World War II…and every conflict seemed to whittle down their African holdings a little bit more until they were reduced to being landowners in just a few locations.

Closing the cap on the bottle, Taylor had to smile. But those last few were choice locations, indeed. Snug in the bowels of her destroyer was the yearly run from the Imperial Gold Mines UK Limited—a hold full of gold bullion worth millions of pounds. Which was why the Royal Navy had been assigned to convey the gold from Johannesburg to London, the final destination being the main vault of the Bank of England, the most impregnable fortress this side of Fort Knox in the United States.

“Cup of tea, Skipper?” a young officer asked, stepping onto the flying bridge. He was carrying two large plastic mugs, the bottoms oddly curved.

“Lord, yes, James! My thanks,” Taylor said with a smile. Taking the mug, she drained half of it in a single gulp. “Ah, like blood to a vampire!”

Chuckling, Lieutenant James Jones set his mug on the railing of the platform. Its curved bottom fit perfectly over the steel pipe and locked into place with a snap. “Now, that sounds like a line from a bloody Hammer film back in the seventies.”

“Ah yes, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.”

“To be honest, Skipper, I was thinking more along the lines of those curvy Hammer Girls, and their rather famous low-cut gowns.”

She took another sip. “I’m sure you were, Lieutenant. To each his own. Peter Cushing is more to my liking. The nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat!”

The officer laughed. “As you say, Skipper, to each their own.”

Just then, a wing of fully armed RAF striker fighters streaked by overhead.

“Cheeky bastards, rattling our chains like that,” Jones muttered, squinting at the disappearing jets.

“Just doing their job, Lieutenant,” Taylor replied, finishing off her tea. “Any sandwiches in the galley?”

“Yes, ma’am. What would you like?”

She laughed. “I’ll get them myself, James. No sense—”

Unexpectedly, a loudspeaker bolted to the armored wall of the warship crackled to life. “Captain to the bridge, please! Captain to the bridge!”

With a sigh, Taylor hurried inside, passing off the empty mug to a waiting rating. The young sailor took it, saluted and scurried away.

“Trouble?” Taylor asked the room in general.

Control panels lined the room, a dozen computer screens showing the exact state of everything important on the navy ship, from the temperature of the main bearings in the Rolls-Royce engines, to the amount of 30 mm ammunition left in the bunkers for the forward Oerlikon miniguns. A dozen men and women were sitting at their posts, heads bent solemnly over the controls like priests in prayer.

“Unknown, ma’am,” said an ensign, rubbing the back of his neck. “But with this much glimmer in our belly, I thought it wise to be safe instead of sorry.”

“Fair enough,” Taylor said, pushing back her cap. “Status, please, chief.”

“We’re traveling the exact same route we took going down to South Africa,” Chief Michelson replied crisply, his gaze locked on a glowing sonar screen. “We know every hill and rock under these waters, and there’s something new below. Something big.”

“A dead whale?” Jones asked curiously. He had followed the captain inside.

“No, much larger than that, sir. Sonar says irregular shapes, mounds of it. Could be a wrecked ship.”

“Damn. Have there been any storms in the vicinity, or known pirate attacks?” Taylor asked. “If a commercial vessel sank in these shallow waters, there could be survivors about. What about it, Ears?”

“Possibly a civilian wreck, Captain,” the sonar operator replied. Eyes tightly closed, he held the earphones in place with both hands. “But it would have to have been a small ship, maybe a fishing boat or pleasure craft. I’m not hearing any metal below, just lots of wood and plastic.”

“Sounds like a speedboat to me,” James stated, crossing his arms. No metal meant there was no threat to the convoy. “Ears, what’s the depth?”

“Five hundred meters, and rising,” the sonar operator called out briskly, hunched before the glowing computer screen.

“Lieutenant, send out a couple of hovercraft… No, belay that,” Taylor said with a grimace. “Uncork a Lynx helicopter and do a sweep for any survivors. Hundred meters, three hundred and five. Move quick now.”

“Debris spotted in the starboard water, sir!” an ensign interrupted, touching his headphones. “Multiple lifejackets, broken wood and general flotsam!”

“Get that Lynx flying, Lieutenant,” Taylor snapped, sitting in the command chair. All around her banks of video monitors strobed into life, showing every aspect of the colossal vessel. “Helm, increase speed to maximum. Chief, have one of the frigates stay behind and conduct a full S and R op.”

“Search and rescue, aye, aye, ma’am,” he said with a brisk salute. “But may I suggest—”

Just then, the entire destroyer rocked from the force of a powerful explosion.

“What the bleeding hell just happened to my ship?” the captain demanded, glancing at the overhead monitors. A forward compartment was taking on water—not much, but steadily. A port side depth charge launcher had gone off-line, and two of the crew had vanished, last seen near the anchor chain winch.

“Unknown, ma’am!” the sonar operator reported crisply. “Sonar is clean. There is no hot noise in the water! Repeat, no hot noise!”

“Thank God for that. What about radar?” Taylor demanded, twisting her head.

“Clean and clear, Skip,” the ensign replied. “Five by five. Whatever is happening is coming from below.”

“The water is clear,” Ears repeated sternly.

“Well, something just hammered us like a Christmas bell!” Jones snarled, just before a second explosion shook the vessel, closely followed by another, then six more in rapid succession.

Reaching up, the captain grabbed a hand mike from an overhead stanchion. “All hands hear this, all hands hear this, battle stations! I repeat, battle stations!” she snapped. “This is not a drill. We are under attack!”

Instantly, Klaxons and horns began to hoot all over the destroyer, and swarms of sailors poured out of hatchways to surge across the tilting deck and take their assigned positions at the weapons stations.

“How could you possibly know this is an attack, and not a catastrophic mechanical failure?” Jones demanded, grabbing on to a stanchion as the ship shook again, even harder this time.

“That wreckage on the ocean floor,” Taylor growled in reply. “It had to be a trick to make us stop!”

The ship rocked again as a water plume rose off the starboard side.

“But we accelerated!”

“Then let’s hope we escape!”

By now, the overhead monitors showed several breaks in the primary hull, with multiple compartments taking on water faster than the gauges could read. One engine was already dead, and screaming was coming from the galley.

“Helm, evasive tactics!” Taylor said calmly, her heart wildly pounding. “Sparks, call Gibraltar for rescue! Engine Room, all pumps to maximum!”

Just then, there came a deafening explosion, and one of the escort frigates rose from the ocean on a boiling column of steam and flame. As the stunned bridge crew of the Reliant watched, the frigate broke in two, spilling crew and machinery into the water.

“Are we being nuked?” Jones demanded, blood flowing from the palm of his clenched fist. “Did we hit a ruddy volcano?”

“I have no idea,” Taylor said honestly, her hands pressed firmly to the cushioned arms of her chair.

Another powerful explosion shook their vessel, and a sailor yelled as he went over the side. Several water columns appeared alongside another frigate, and the armored hull ripped open wide to show the burning decks inside, broken human bodies flying away in chunks. Diesel fuel and oil spread across the choppy waves like thick blood. The second frigate was listing badly to the side, while the third was already nose deep in the water and quickly sinking.

“Ma’am, the Cardiff is gone,” the radar operator said in an emotionless voice, his face deathly pale.

“What in the… Captain, sonar is dead!” Ears called out, staring in horror at the screen. It was glowing a solid, featureless green, every attempt by the onboard computers completely overwhelmed.

“Well, fix it!” Captain Taylor bellowed, as the destroyer rocked again and a water plume rose high on their port side. Honest to Jesus, if she didn’t know any better she would have sworn that was an underwater mine!

Ears held out his hands, his fingers hovering inches away from the complex controls. “But I don’t even know what’s wrong, Skip! This…this is impossible!”

“Fix it anyway!” Jones demanded, as yet another explosion shook the warship.

“Forget target acquisitions! Every station fire blind into the water!” Taylor shouted into the hand mike. “Weapons Officer, set depth charges for—” That was when she saw a dozen metallic spheres rise to the surface of the ocean surrounding the convoy. They were covered with short, dull spikes and…

Mines! The convoy was being attacked by bleeding underwater mines! she realized in shock. But any British navy ship could withstand the concentrated attack of a dozen conventional mines, maybe twice that number!

Except that as she watched, more and more of the dark spheres appeared on the waves, dozens upon dozens of them, until they made the sea look like a cobblestone street. Taylor could barely believe the sight. It was a nightmare come true. There had to be thousands of them! There wasn’t a ship in the world that could withstand that sort of mass attack. But how had the things gotten so close? Had the sonar been sabotaged? That was the only logical answer, because otherwise it would mean that—

The entire ocean seemed to erupt into a solid sheet of flame as the jostling mines clanged into one another to start a hellish chain reaction, a nonstop series of bone-jarring blasts that filled the universe. Briefly, men and women screamed as there arose the terrible keening of tortured metal being twisted out of shape. But even as Captain Taylor dived for the self-destruct button that would destroy the communications code in the main computer, she felt the ship heave upward, and for an unknowable length of time there was only pain and chaos.

FIGHTING HER WAY back to consciousness, Captain Taylor found herself waist deep in water, with the strange sensation of being in an elevator that was descending. Sinking, my ship is sinking! But that was difficult to confirm at the moment. Her left eye wasn’t working, her chest ached and both legs felt oddly numb. The ceiling lights were gone, but a couple of the emergency wall lights had survived intact and were emitting an eerie green luminescence.

Glancing around, the captain discovered that she was trapped in an air pocket on the bridge—the inverted bridge. The deck was above her head, and she was awkwardly standing on the ceiling. Smashed electrical equipment crackled from the control boards, blood was everywhere, and pieces of her command crew bobbed about in the water like fishing chum. A jumbled array of tattered arms and legs swirled in the water, then the head of Lieutenant Jones floated by, his face contorted in a final scream. Her stomach lurched at the grisly sight, but she banished those thoughts, and concentrated solely on staying alive. Her job now was to destroy the main computer and then escape from the sinking wreck. Of course, the only two exits were blocked by folded layers of crushed steel, but that wasn’t her main concern at the moment.

As Taylor feebly splashed her upside-down chair toward a sparking controls board, she noted that the only reason she was still alive was that the windows were all still intact, the bulletproof plastic merely scratched. She felt a sudden jarring from below, and loose sand swirled outside the windows. They were at the bottom already?

Creaking and groaning, the Reliant began to settle into place, the crippled vessel warping around the steel-reinforced shell of the bridge.

“God bless all navy engineers!” the captain panted, then gasped at the sight of moving lights outside the windows. In growing astonishment, she saw a dozen scuba divers swimming along the murky seabed, heading her way.

Wild hope of rescue flared just for a second, until she realized those were nonregulation diving suits, and the masked strangers were carrying acetylene torches and crowbars.

In a surge of cold adrenaline, Taylor fought her way through the morass of body parts to reach the glowing SD button, smash the glass covering and press hard. She felt it click, and there was an answering thump through the water from the pressure of the explosive charges cutting loose. Now the military codes of her nation were safe, the communication chips and data files utterly destroyed. Whoever these bastards were, they would learn nothing from those molten remains!

Just then, a scuba diver riding an underwater sled drove into view, and she bitterly cursed at the sight of a net being dragged behind the sled. The nylon threads bulged with gold bars…and corpses, the faces of the dead sailors familiar to her. These weren’t enemy spies, but common, ordinary thieves—and for some unknown reason, body snatchers.

“Filthy bastards!” Taylor screamed in white-hot rage.

As if hearing the curse, the driver slowed and looked about for the source. He seemed quite startled to see the live naval officer on the other side of the cracked window. Then he smiled and waved hello.

Sputtering expletives, Taylor irrationally drew her sidearm and fired all fifteen rounds. However, the 9 mm slugs merely smacked into the heavy plastic and stayed there like flies in amber. The resilient material that kept in her precious air supply also prevented her from reaching out to the thief.

Grinning behind his face mask, the skinny driver waved again and continued on his way.

Raging impotently, the captain holstered the pistol, unable to think of anything else to try at the moment.

Forcing herself to remain calm, she tried to conserve oxygen, biding her time as the strangers looted the Reliant of its entire cargo of gold bullion, and then departed.

She waited a few extra minutes just to make sure, then surged into action. Rummaging among the dead crew, she found a pocketknife and started scratching details of the thieves into the tough plastic—their numbers, descriptions and type of weapons carried. But then the skinny driver unexpectedly returned.

Quickly, the captain moved away from the window, but it was already too late. Reaching into a canvas bag slung at his side, the skinny man pulled out a WWII limpet mine and clumsily attached it to the plastic. He set the timer, smiled, threw her a salute and swam away once more.

Trapped inside the wreckage, Captain Taylor could do nothing but curse until a bright flash of light filled her universe.

Flintstone, Maryland

TURNING OFF THE MAIN ROAD, Hal Brognola skirted the little town of Flintstone and drove the rented truck into the vast rolling countryside of Maryland. The old vehicle rattled and clanked at every pothole and gully, and the big Fed hoped he wasn’t leaving a trail of broken parts all the way back to his office in the Justice Department.

Occasionally checking the GPS on his dashboard, he finally took an unmarked dirt road that snaked into the hillsides to finally end at a long-abandoned stone quarry. Windblown leaves covered the ground, ancient garbage was scattered everywhere, and the sagging remains of huge machines slowly rusted away into indecipherable mounds of debris.

Coming to an easy stop, Brognola set the parking brake, but left the engine running in case of trouble. A stocky man with graying hair, the big Fed could still bench-press his own weight at the gym. Although, to be honest, it did seem to take more of an effort these days to achieve those results.

As head of the Sensitive Operations Group for the Justice Department, he normally wore a two-piece suit, but this day Brognola was in less formal attire—a denim vest, red flannel shirt, worn pants and leather boots. Flintstone was a hardworking, blue-collar town, home to a cement factory. Nobody wore a suit around here, not even the mayor.

Easing a S&W snub-nosed revolver out of a shoulder holster under the vest, Brognola thumbed back the hammer, but stayed behind the wheel, listening to the soft clatter of the engine. Nothing was moving in the jagged expanse of the stone quarry. There wasn’t a tree, a bush or even a stray dog, just rocky desolation. Even the construction shacks and mill had collapsed into jumbled piles unfit for anything but burning in a wood stove.

The sole exception was a colossal lifting crane, the long box girder neck extending over the main pit. For some reason it reminded Brognola of a gallows, and sent a shiver down his spine. The message he’d received from Mack Bolan had used all the correct code prefixes. But codes had been broken before, and the big Fed had more than his share of enemies. The list seemed to go on forever these days, and the only thing getting shorter was his tolerance for the bloodthirsty sons of bitches who broke the law, and then demanded its protection.

“Choose one or the other,” he growled softly, involuntarily tightening his grip on the checkered handle of the .38 Police Special.

Just then, he heard the soft rattle of a rock tumbling down a mountain of broken slabs. Instantly, Brognola turned in the exact opposite direction, with the S&W level and two pounds of pressure on the six-pound trigger.

“I see sitting in an office hasn’t slowed you down in the least.” Bolan chuckled, stepping into view from behind a granite boulder.

“Not yet, anyway.” Brognola grinned, lowering the barrel of his weapon. “Okay, what’s with meeting out here in the middle of nowhere? I mean, for God’s sake… Flintstone?” He snorted. “I had to check two maps before I even found the place!”

“Too many new faces in D.C.,” Bolan said, pulling a small black box from his belt and moving it slowly about. “We need privacy.”

“You checking for bugs?” Brognola asked incredulously, then clamped his mouth shut and looked around at his car. Slowly, he turned off the engine, and thick silence descended.

A minute passed, then another.

“Okay, we’re clear,” Bolan announced, tucking away the box. “This EM scanner was built for me by a friend at JPL Laboratories, and has twice the range of anything the Farm can come up with.” The Farm was Stony Man Farm, home base for the Sensitive Operations Group. “It also jams cell phones and digital recorders, and sends out an ultrasonic pulse to check for any parabolic reflectors.”

“What’s the range?”

“Half a mile.”

“That should do the trick,” Brognola stated, tucking the revolver into its shoulder holster and climbing out of the car. “You don’t trust anything, do you?”

“Just a few old friends,” Bolan replied with a smile, extending a hand, and the men shook.

“It’s been a while since we last met face-to-face, Striker,” Brognola said. “I’ve had an awful lot on my plate.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard.” Bolan released his grip. “Come on, I have a camp set up over here. Canvas chairs, sandwiches and beer.”

“Now you’re talking,” Brognola said amiably.

Following a zigzagging path through the field of broken slabs and boulders, Bolan finally led Brognola into a small clearing. There were a couple of canvas chairs set up near a foam cooler. There was also a battered canvas backpack on the ground nearby, an M-16/M-203 assault rifle combo lying on top.

“Expecting company?” Brognola asked, scanning the nearby rocks for suspicious movements.

“Just prepared for it,” Bolan said, sitting in a chair and flipping back the lid of the cooler. Inside was a six-pack of beer, a couple deli-wrapped sandwiches, several grenades and a 9 mm Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun with a sound suppressor attached.

Brognola tried not to chuckle. The man never missed a trick. “Okay, the last I heard you were in Brooklyn checking on a smuggling ring.”

“It’s out of business.”

Yeah, Brognola knew what that meant. The smugglers were dead and buried.

“So what were they moving? Drugs, illegal aliens, slaves, DVRs, pornography…?”

“Weapons.”

He frowned. “Saturday night specials or—”

“Damn near everything, including North Korean underwater mines.”

“Damn! How many?”

“Couple of thousand.”

“Who the hell would want those in Brooklyn?”

“You tell me,” Bolan said, and gave the man the full details of the matter.

“Loki…nope, never heard of them,” Brognola said, massaging his jaw. “That’s the Norse god of mischief, right?”

“Pretty much. Not necessarily evil, just a pain in the ass. Which makes me wonder if the thieves were sending a message with the name.”

“As if they want people to know who stole the mines?” Brognola said with a snort. “I don’t like those implications. Sounds like a suicide message. Maybe it was a mistake.”

“That’s not how I read it, and Loki was good enough to take Mad Mike in his own backyard.”

“Yeah, good point. Amateurs, but not fools.”

Bolan then told him about the Squall.

“The combination of old weapons and advanced technology bothers me. Any idea what they’re planning?”

“Wish I did,” Bolan said. “Hal, are there any known terrorist groups that operate out of Iceland or Greenland?”

“Hell no. Those countries don’t even have armies! They’ve got nothing worth stealing or blowing up. Nothing major, anyway.”

“Then this might be a personal matter.”

“Swell,” Brognola said with a scowl.

“Did you bring the files?” Bolan asked.

“Of course.” The Fed reached inside his flannel shirt to remove a plain white envelope. “A couple of these needed presidential clearance, but the White House owes you big time, so no problem there.”

“Good to know.” Bolan started riffling through the top secret documents. Where his fingers touched the paper, it turned brown. “Damn, all these are dated yesterday. Anything happen within the past couple of hours? Anything in water? Mysterious explosions, ships lost at sea, river tunnel collapse…anything odd like that?”

“Sorry, no,” Brognola said, then frowned. “Wait a minute, yes, there was. Just a couple hours ago a British naval convoy went missing off the Azores, all hands lost.”

“Any reason given?”

“An unexpected storm.”

Finishing his sandwich, Bolan arched an eyebrow. “A summer storm…near the Azores Islands at this time of year?”

“Well, that’s what the prime minister is saying,” Brognola said with a shrug. “Anyway, the British navy went absolutely ape-shit over the sinking, and scrambled two wings of RAF jet fighters out of their base on Gibraltar to sweep the area.”

“Not helicopters?”

“Nope.”

“It’s impossible to rescue drowning sailors in something flying at Mach 3,” Bolan stated, crumpling the paper into a ball and depositing it back into the cooler. “The jets were doing a recon, not a search and rescue.”

“Obviously. Think those stolen mines sank the convoy?”

“Could be.”

A cold breeze blew over the mountains of boulders, carrying the smell of distant plant life mixed with the reek of diesel fumes.

Bolan leaned forward. “Okay, Hal, what was stolen? A member of the royal family, a new type of message decoder, nerve gas or nuclear warheads?”

“Give me a minute.” Pulling out his smartphone, Brognola tapped in a number and held a terse conversation. Then he texted somebody else and made another call.

“They stole gold,” he stated at last.

“Just gold?” Bolan asked.

“A lot of it. According to my contact in MI5, the convoy was carrying a full consignment of refined ore from the Imperial Gold Mines UK down in South Africa.”

“How much gold are we talking about?”

“Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth, maybe more. The Brits aren’t talking. The Reliant was a big ship, and those are very lucrative mines.”

“Damn well guess so.”

“Now, the U.S. Navy had an attack sub in the area patrolling the deep waters, and offered to help with the search and rescue,” Brognola said slowly. “But the British government refused any assistance.”

“On an S and R?” Bolan frowned. “Those jets were looking for the thieves.”

“That would be the logical assumption.”

“Any chance the RAF blew them out of the water?”

“No way. The Pentagon had a Keyhole spy satellite orbit over the area only minutes behind them. If the Brits blew up anything, even a submarine, we would have seen the oil slick and flotsam.”

Furrowing his brow, Bolan said nothing for a few minutes. “Tiffany said that the people who stole his mines used a Hercules transport. A Herc could carry a hell of a lot of bullion. If the terrorists are hauling gold, they’d need more than one. Any reports of a couple of Hercules planes being stolen recently? That would give us someplace to start looking for the thieves.”

“Not that I’ve heard. But if they rented the aircraft, then they wouldn’t be considered missing for days, maybe weeks.”

“That would be the smart move,” Bolan said.

“Striker, this is starting to stink to high heaven of a French stepladder.”

“That possibility occurred to me,” Bolan growled, setting aside the remains of his sandwich.

“Swell.” Brognola sighed, throwing the squashed beer can at the cooler. It hit the plastic rim and bounced inside.

A “stepladder” was an old French police term for a street mugger who used a rock to smash the window of a hardware store, to steal a stepladder to rob a house through a second-story window. He then sold the purloined jewelry to buy enough explosives to blow open a bank vault, and used that cash to bug a truckload of drugs that he then sold for millions to a dealer. Throw a rock and become a millionaire. All it took was guts, brains and a complete lack of morals.

“Did they take anything else from the sunken ships?” Bolan asked.

“If you’re referring to the rods in the nuclear power plant, no, nothing like that,” Brognola said, shaking his head. “The destroyer and frigates were all diesel.”

“Glad to hear it. Any of the crew missing before the convoy left port?”

“Unknown. Think it might be an inside job? You could be right. There have been traitors before, and for a slice of hundreds of millions of bucks…” Brognola’s voice faded away.

“The big question has to be how did the thieves know where to ambush the convoy?” Bolan asked. “The route had to have been secret.”

“Well, once, very long ago, I was assigned to help guard a delivery of gold from the United Kingdom to Fort Knox. Nothing big, about half a ton.” He smiled. “They hid radio transmitters inside the wooden pallets so that the gold could be tracked every step of the way.”

“Any chance the Brits have upgraded their system and now have GPS microdots on their gold?”

“Sure. Probably on the pallets, and hidden inside the gold itself. Try to melt down a bar, and the heat would trigger a micropulse signal. Five minutes later, you’re surrounded by the British army, asking for their property back.”

“Unless you melt it inside a Faraday cage to block the signal.”

“Think Loki is that smart?”

“They have been so far,” Bolan said. “Now, I’m willing to bet that the British MI5 are already checking on the company that manufactured the GPS dots, to see if anybody called in sick today, or recently died in a car crash.”

“Nothing we can do to help them there,” Brognola stated honestly. “And if Loki can safely remove the tracking dots, then they can sell the bars anywhere, on street corners if they like.”

Bolan scowled. “Not without the British being informed. I’d be very surprised if they don’t already have a huge reward posted across the internet for any information about the thieves, no questions asked.”

“True. Which means Loki will have to sell it on the black market, and get a fraction of the real value.”

“One or two hundred million is still a boatload of cash.”

“Damn straight. Okay, where can they go? Switzerland?”

“No, the Swiss banks are riddled with spies working for Interpol these days,” Bolan stated, leaning back in the chair. “And in spite of all the electronic banking done, the need for hard commodities like gold and silver is very much alive and well. The biggest underground banks are in Ecuador, Pakistan and China.”

“Ecuador?”

“It’s the Switzerland of South America.”

Brognola almost smiled. The man knew the damnedest things. “Okay, but that’s only for trading small amounts of gold, right? Where could Loki go to unload so much gold in one shot?”

“Without getting a half-ounce of hot British lead in the back of their heads?” Bolan said. He didn’t speak for a moment, his mind filled with a swirling hurricane of half-truths, rumors and outright lies, about the hidden world of criminal finance. Stealing the gold was only half the job. Now Loki would have to convert it into something usable, and more importantly, untraceable.

Propping his fingertips together, Brognola patiently waited.

“Barcelona,” Bolan said at last, rising from the chair and starting to pack away the campsite. “But I’m heading for Albania.”

“Why?” Brognola demanded in confusion.

“To talk to the people who actually own the secret banks of Spain,” he told his old friend.

CHAPTER THREE

Barcelona, Spain

The blazing sun shone mercilessly on the bustling metropolis of Barcelona. The streets and sidewalks seeming to reflect the waves of searing heat like parabolic mirrors until the entire city appeared to be shining.

Traffic had slowed to a crawl, and most of the pushcart venders had closed shop. There was no sign of tourists, and even the locals had abandoned the daylight to seek the cooler realms of basements and air-conditioned cafés.

At a small private airport located far outside the city limits, three Hercules seaplanes sat baking on an isolated strip of cracked asphalt. One of the big planes was closed, its ramps rigidly locked in position. The other two had their access ramps fully descended, the shadowy interior of the aircraft dimly visible through the wavering heat from the ground.

Dripping sweat, twenty men and women surrounded the hulking aircraft, AK-47 assault rifles carefully balanced in their gloved hands. The Icelanders had stripped down as far as decorum allowed. Everybody was wearing tinted sunglasses, their pale, exposed skin oily with suntan lotion.

The gold had been divided into three parcels, and now each plane contained roughly a hundred million dollars’ worth. The sheer numbers made Hrafen Thorodensen feel slightly drunk. But it was nothing, a drop in the ocean, to what Britain would end up paying for their inhuman greed.

“Well, any sign of them yet?” Gunnar Eldjarm demanded, tying a handkerchief around his head to stop the sweat from pouring down his face and washing away the sunscreen.

“Speak of the devil,” Thorodensen replied, lowering a pair of binoculars.

A small dust cloud was coming their way from the west, and as it drew closer, he could dimly see an armored truck accompanied by a dozen motorcycles. The riders were masked in combat gear, body armor and mirrored helmets, and Thorodensen tried not to imagine how hot it had to be for the guards, in that heavy equipment. Still, he did appreciate their professionalism.

The truck and escorts braked a hundred feet away from the idling planes, and a second later the wake of dust arrived, to flow over the area like desiccated fog. The Icelanders started coughing, but held their positions, alert for any treachery by the infamous Spanish bankers.

Before the armored vehicle had fully stopped moving, the rear doors burst open and out rushed a dozen men carrying an assortment of weaponry—American assault rifles, German autoshotguns and Russian grenade launchers.

Watching timidly from the shadows inside one of the big planes, Professor Lilja Vilhjalms marveled at the open display of ordnance, and double-checked the EM scanner in her hands for any sign of a tracer signal or microburst. She had personally neutralized the GPS dot from each bar of gold, and destroyed them inside a standard microwave oven. The clever British had thought of everything but that. As her old science teacher had liked to jokingly say, advanced technology was just so damn primitive.

Climbing out of the cab of the truck, a slim man stepped onto the shimmering tarmac. Dressed in a three-piece business suit, he carried a small laptop slung at his side, and had a leather briefcase in one hand. If the heat had any effect on the dapper man, it wasn’t noticeable.

“Good morning, Mr. Loki!” he called out, casually walking forward. “I am Hector Gonzales. Lovely day, is it not?”

“Yes, wonderful day. Spain must be the home of God,” Thorodensen said diplomatically, trying not to breath too deeply. Then he added, “Gibraltar.”

“Malta,” Gonzales replied with a smile. “Well, now that’s done, shall we proceed to business? How much of a deposit are you making this time, sir?”

“One hundred million dollars in gold,” Thorodensen said, glancing at the closest Hercules. “And I need another hundred million converted into German bearer bonds.”

“Please accept my hearty congratulations on your success in such a slow economy,” Gonzales said, swinging up the laptop and typing away. This wasn’t their largest account, but it was most definitely in the top ten. “Does the gold need to be, ah, washed?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. Then after our usual fee for the service, your deposit will be…thirty-four million dollars. Correct?”

“Correct,” Thorodensen growled, trying not to bridle at the open thievery. The money was flowing away like water running downhill, and they were still a long way from their final goal. But every journey started with a single step.

At a gesture from Gonzales, the bank guards swarmed forward, advancing upon the two open Hercules as if the airplanes were an enemy position, their weapons constantly sweeping for danger. Gonzales strolled up the ramp of one and patiently waited while a pair of guards broke out laboratory equipment and inspected every gold brick for purity. When the amount was confirmed, the guards relayed the gold bars into the armored truck, and Gonzales ran off a receipt from a small printer attached to the laptop.

“Here you are, sir.” He smiled as he passed over the slip. “And here are the bonds you requested. If there is anything else?”

“Yes, please transfer one million dollars to this numbered account,” Thorodensen said, handing over a sealed envelope.

“With pleasure, sir,” Gonzales replied with a toothy grin, tucking it away inside his jacket. “Hope to see you again soon. Have a pleasant flight!”

Forcing a smile to his face, Thorodensen nodded in return, and didn’t allow himself to relax until the armored trucks and guards had disappeared once more into the distance.

“I have trouble believing that you just gave the Spaniards a million dollars as if it was pocket change,” Gunnar Eldjarm muttered, resting the Vepr on a shoulder.

“Have no fear, old friend. That amount is all the bastards will ever get from us,” Thorodensen stated, passing over the briefcase. “Now, take these bonds to France and purchase five more Hercules seaplanes. We will meet you at the established coordinates off the coast of Sardinia in sixteen hours. If we are not back from Greece on time, leave immediately for Peru. Wait there for two days, then leave. Spend the gold in good health.”

“No, I’ll come find you!”

Starting back into the airplane, Thorodensen smiled tolerantly. “Thank you, old friend. If we have not returned by then, it means we are dead.” He stopped to place a hand on the shoulder of the bony man. “Don’t take any chances, Gunnar. Trust nobody, and keep to the plan! Wait two days, then disappear. You know where to purchase false identity papers in New Zealand?”

Resting a foot on the access ramp, Eldjarm gave a curt nod. “Yes, the Two Billies Tavern, just outside of Christchurch. There are new names and passports waiting for all of us.” He stressed the last words.

“And with luck we will retire to the Gold Coast of Australia, and live in luxury and peace for the rest of our lives. But that can only be accomplished by adhering to the plan!”

“Thor, when you were the Icelandic ambassador to the United nations, where you this much of a pain in the ass?” Eldjarm asked with a friendly scowl.

“Of course!” he said with a laugh. “How else could I have ever gotten anything done, representing a country without an army?”

Muttering under his breath, Eldjarm swung away from the plane and strode off. Half the armed Icelanders followed, and the rest strode into the open Hercules after their leader.

As Thorodensen started for the flight deck he was joined by Professor Lilja Vilhjalms. She didn’t say anything, but from her tense expression, he could tell that she was deeply concerned about something important.

“What is wrong, Lily?” he asked, using his private name for her. The two of them had been very close once, sex partners, but not really lovers. These days they were much closer than that, partners in crime. The evaluation of their relationship amused him.

“Your plan is so complex,” the woman stated, moving closer to the big man. “Selling your home to rent the planes, making the mustard gas to steal the mines, and now… Are you sure it is not going to unravel?”

“No, my dear, everything is under control.” Thorodensen laughed, draping a friendly arm across her shoulders.

She thrilled at the contact and ached to touch him back, but restrained herself for the moment. They were in view of the others. Perhaps, once they were on White Sands… “So, we are not going to be caught?”

“By those fat fools in NATO? That would be impossible, Lily. Impossible!”

Vilhjalms frowned. “Yet you once told me that nothing is impossible to a strong will.”

That caught Thorodensen by surprise. He started to speak, then merely grunted in reply as they started up the steel stairs to the flight deck of the massive aircraft.

Durrës, Albania

FLYING TO A PRIVATE airfield outside of Durrës, Mack Bolan bribed officials to get a locked trunk through airport security, then rented a Range Rover with four-wheel drive and drove toward the capital city, Tirana.

Albania was the heroin hub of the world, supplying the narcotics to most of Europe. The Fifteen Families even had a sweetheart deal arranged with the drug lords of Colombia. They exchanged heroin for cocaine, and each group expanded its sphere of influence. A win-win situation, unless you were one of their customers, forced into thievery, prostitution or worse, just to maintain your supply of the deadly substances. Bolan considered them all narcoterrorists, and removed them from this world as quickly possible. But at least for today, he needed the willing assistance of the murdering sociopaths.

The rolling countryside was beautiful, with rich fields of soybeans, cotton, wheat and endless herds of grazing cattle. However, the roads were much less noteworthy. They were mostly paved, but not always, and were often so steep that the sidewalks had been replaced with concrete stairs. The tough Range Rover took the steep inclines without noticeable effort, aside from a few assorted rattles and a lost hubcap.

Traffic was light, mostly pedestrians, and a few small trucks hauling produce. But Bolan carefully marked the location of every military vehicle.

Albania had once been a kingdom, then Communist, and now was supposedly a democracy, but that was a lie. The entire nation was owned, body and soul, by the Fifteen Families, the largest and most powerful crime family in existence. They made the old Mafia look like a sewing circle. Albania was ruled by a secret dictatorship that used the military to control the police. The reason Bolan rarely tangled with them was because their main concerns were inside Albania. He felt sorry for the enslaved Albanian people, but never fooled himself into thinking that he could save the entire world. That was madness.

Traffic become thicker near the capital city, but the roads didn’t improve much. The majority were made with cobblestone, dating back to the Middle Ages. Very picturesque for the tourists, but not practical. Occasionally there was a smooth stretch of pavement, a remnant of the days when the Soviet Union ruled the tiny nation. But most of the streets were in very poor condition, dotted with deep potholes. More than one car was abandoned alongside the road, with a wheel bent sideways, the axle broken in an unexpected encounter with a particularly deep depression.

Standing on a small raised platform, a young policewoman in a crisp uniform and bright orange gloves was expertly directing vehicles around a traffic circle. She instantly noted that Bolan was a tourist and smiled as he passed. He grinned in return, but noticed that her smile quickly faded as she returned to work.

Just then, a limousine raced past the police officer, clearly going way over the posted speed limit, veering in and out of lanes without regard for the other cars, and generally ignoring every rule of safe driving. She bridled at the sight for a moment, then turned her back on the vehicle with a sigh.

Watching in his rearview mirror, Bolan guessed the limousine was owned by a member of the Fifteen Families, and noted that the vehicle rode low on military-grade, bulletproof tires. The limo was armored. He almost smiled at that. In the trunk of the Range Rover was something he had brought along from Brooklyn for just a target.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to use it. On the plane ride from the States, Bolan had placed a few phone calls and managed to set up a meeting with Rezart Kastrioti, a high-level member of the Fifteen Families. Bolan was posing as a representative for a cartel of American manufacturers to negotiate safe passage for cargo ships carrying Detroit-made cars to Europe. As always, the Fifteen Families were happy to talk business with rich Americans—if the price was right. Bolan should get what he wanted in only a few hours, and then slip quietly away. However, he knew from experience that it was wise to plan for what the enemy could do, not just for what they might do. Hence the XM-25 in the trunk.

The city limits of Tirana were marked by a sharp improvement in the road surface. It was a beautiful municipality, with its tan brick buildings and red tile roofs, and carried a sense of age. Everything in the country felt old, even if it was brand-new. He had encountered such a feeling before many times, mostly in third world nations where poverty was rampart, but also in Detroit, the so-called Rust Belt of the Midwest.

Circling the crumbling remains of an old Roman fortress, Bolan easily spotted his destination in the distance, the glass-and-steel structure rising from the older stone buildings as if a starship had landed in a junkyard. The King Zog Hotel had been built into the side of a small mountain. The slanted glass facade sparkled brightly, and even from a distance he could see a heliport on the rooftop.

The hotel was named after a legendary president of Albania, a gentle and wise man so deeply beloved by the people that they had given him the nickname King Zog. He had tried to stop the invasion by the Soviets, and failed, but his heroic battle still gave heart to the people.

Parking a short distance from the hotel, Bolan walked around the block a few times, casually dropping small packages into trash bins and down storm gratings. After checking the signal on the remote control, he returned to the Range Rover and drove to the front of the futuristic hotel.

For the meeting he was wearing business chic: a Hugo Boss three-piece suit, with a raw silk tie and gold Citation wristwatch. He had a miniphone clipped to his ear, and a fake prison tattoo of a spiderweb stenciled on his neck to indicate a rough-and-tumble past. His shoes were Italian, his sunglasses French and his briefcase burnished steel. His usual weapons were riding their accustomed positions, but he also was carrying a brace of knives in case some silent kills were necessary.

Underneath everything else, Bolan was wearing a ballistic T-shirt. It would stop only small-caliber rounds from penetrating, and his bones would still break, but under the circumstances he couldn’t wear any type of proper body armor. That would be an insult. And he needed to gain the trust of these killers.

Stepping out of the vehicle, he left the door open and flipped the keys over a shoulder. From a nearby kiosk, a teenage valet rushed forward to snag them in the air, muttering apologies for not being more prompt.

“Don’t worry about it, kid.” Bolan chuckled, pulling out a wad of cash. Peeling off a hundred euro note, he let it drop. “Just park it close.”

“Absolutely, sir!” the valet gushed, beaming over the colossal tip. “I wash, too! Good job!” One hundred euros was a month’s wages.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” he said, dismissing the matter with a wave. “Just don’t scratch the paint or I’ll break your legs.”

“Yes, sir! No, sir! Thank you, sir!”

Heading for the front door, Bolan noticed the armored limousine from the traffic circle parked in a handicap zone. Standing around the vehicle were four large men openly carrying Uzi submachine guns, with spare clips jutting from their belts like samurai swords. One of them had a dead white eye, and a military-style hand mike dangled over the shoulder of his white linen suit. Bolan instantly marked him as the crew chief.

The men watched him closely, shifting to a more aggressive stance, but Bolan ignored the street soldiers as if such a sight was an everyday occurrence. He would wager five-to-ten that the limo belonged to Rezart Kastrioti, the man he was supposed to meet in a few minutes for lunch.

Stepping through a revolving door, Bolan felt as if he was entering another world. The structure was hollow and rose impossibly high, the rooms arranged along the outer rim. By craning his neck, the big American could see straight to the vaulted roof some fifty stories above.

The air was cool and clean, smelling faintly of jasmine. Lush plants grew in orderly abundance, and carpeted steps led to a spacious lobby that stretched nearly the length of a football field. Glass elevators rose and descended at several locations, liveried staff rushed about carrying trays, and soft instrumental music played from hidden speakers. Bolan identified it as something by Debussy. Signs pointed the way to the indoor golf course, water park, brothel, restaurant, casino and skeet shooting range.

A score of elegant people moved through the lobby, the men in tailored business suits, the women in skimpy dresses that showed a wealth of cleavage and displayed long legs. Everybody was deeply tanned, and accompanied by secretaries, assistants, armed bodyguards, aides, butlers and maids, while nannies herded small children or pushed babies in strollers.

Bolan pretended to check his watch, barely able to believe the ebb and flow of people. It was more like opening night at the Metropolitan Opera than a simple Tuesday morning. Was this some national holiday he didn’t know about? That could be a major problem.

That was when he noticed the carefully disguised video cameras. They were everywhere, overlapping one another’s ranges. There was absolutely no way anybody could go anywhere unnoticed. This was prison level security. Bolan realized that this wasn’t merely some random hotel; it had to be owned and operated by the Fifteen Families. The King Zog was most likely the nerve center of Albania, a safe haven of luxury and comfort for the criminal elite, far from the misery and strife they caused.

Instantly, he changed his plans for an emergency escape. There were far too many innocent bystanders in the line of fire to do a blitz of any kind. Which left him only one option if things went wrong. But hopefully, he wouldn’t have to do anything that extreme.

Radiating confidence, he coolly headed for the restaurant. Appearing as if from nowhere, smiling waiters bowed and removed a velvet rope to usher him through to a private section. A young waitress gave a curtsy in passing. Bolan stayed in character and merely grunted in return.

Just past an array of private booths, Bolan found another part of the restaurant had been sectioned off by a wooden trellis covered with a thick blanket of live roses, a secret world hidden within the mob terrarium. Inside the decorative arbor were a dozen tables, all empty except for the largest. That could accommodate twenty, but there were only two settings, on opposite sides. Sitting at the head of the table was a short fat man in a reclining office chair, his dirty shoes on the linen tablecloth. Rezart “The Hacksaw” Kastrioti was puffing on a black cigar, a SIG-Sauer pistol peeking out from a shoulder holster under his tailored suit. The man was clean-shaved, including his head. A diamond twinkled from his right earlobe, and his left shoe had a extra-thick bottom, indicating that that leg was slightly shorter than the other.

Possibly from having rickets as a child, Bolan guessed. Which meant he had been poor once, but wasn’t anymore. He had to have worked his way up the organization, by being either smart or ruthless, probably both. That told Bolan a lot about the man.

“Get your damn feet off the table!” Bolan snapped.

With a start, Kastrioti instinctively obeyed, not used to being ordered about by anybody but his direct superiors in the organization. Then he scowled and started to go for the pistol under his jacket, until Bolan burst into laughter, sat down in a chair and put his own feet on the table.

“Stop hogging all the room.” He chuckled. “Is that how you treat a guest?”

Breathing deeply, Kastrioti did nothing for a long moment, and Bolan started to think he had read the man wrong. Then Kastrioti snorted a nasal guffaw and slapped the tabletop with an open palm.

“I like your style, Yank!” He laughed, pointing a finger across the table. “You take no shit! Me, too! I am Rezart Kastrioti! Welcome to my country!”

Never had Bolan heard that phrase used so accurately. It was his country, every rock, tree and bush. “A pleasure.” He smiled and gave a salute. “Now, do you want to talk business first or—”

“Business always first,” Kastrioti stated, pushing aside a plate to fold his hands on the table. “Afterward we shall have wine, women and song, eh?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Agreed!” He smiled, then went darkly serious. “So…pirates have been bothering your ships. That is not good for profits. How can we help? Do you want armed guards on the ships, or military escorts, or—”

Bolan interrupted. “What I told my representative this meeting was about, and want I really want to talk to you about are two entirely different things.” Swinging his feet to the floor, Bolan slid the briefcase across the table.

Scowling, Kastrioti looked at the case while thoughtfully rubbing a ring on his thumb. Then he reached out to turn the case around and flip up the lid.

“Nice,” he whispered, fingering the stacks of cash before he closed the case again. “Very nice, indeed. Okay, Yank, what is it you really want? Slaves, drugs or guns?”

“Just some information.”

“What kind of information?” Kastrioti asked in a calculated manner, pouring a crystal goblet of dark red wine. He took a sip and waited.

“Somebody stole my property,” Bolan said, letting a hint of anger enter his voice. “I want it back.”

Kastrioti gave a nod. “As is only proper.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t know who has it,” Bolan said, observing a subtle movement on the other side of the rose trellis. His combat instincts flared, and he casually slipped a hand into his pocket to press the button on the remote control.

“That is a shame,” Kastrioti said.

“But you do know how it is.”

“Indeed,” the man replied, twirling the glass to inspect the wine in the overhead lights. “And I have this information because…?”

“Because they just made a sizable deposit in a Spanish bank,” Bolan said. “Your bank.”

“Me? I do not own a bank.” Kastrioti laughed, looking over the rim of the goblet. “But I may have a cousin who does. Several cousins, in fact.” He took another sip. “What does this thief look like?”

“I have no idea.”

“Then how—”

“He just deposited several million in gold bars,” Bolan stated, resting his elbows on the table. “That can’t happen every day, even to the Fifteen.”

Sipping more wine, Kastrioti gave no reaction to the mention of the organization. “No, it does not,” he said, setting the goblet aside. “Yes, I am aware of this person. The sum was truly impressive. But there is a small problem.”

“Which is?”

“You have not paid me anywhere near as much as he has deposited. Thus, he is more valuable to me than you.”

There was more movement on the other side of the roses, and Bolan distinctly heard the telltale click-clack of an arming bolt being pulled into place. Once again he changed the escape plan. Yes, this was a private little world, perfect for some bloody business far from the view of everybody else.

“At the moment, you’re correct,” Bolan said smoothly, shifting his weight. “But you see, in regards to the billions involved—”

“Billions?” Kastrioti interrupted in surprise.

Bolan smiled. “Of course! Did you—” Instantly, he surged upward, heaving against the heavy table with all his strength.

The candles and silverware went flying, while the heavier plates and wine bottles slid toward Kastrioti to crash in a noisy pile. Snarling curses, the Albanian toppled backward in his chair, but came up in a roll with the SIG-Sauer drawn.

“Freeze,” Bolan gritted, pressing his Beretta into the base of the fat man’s neck.

Startled that the voice came from behind him, Kastrioti started to turn, then stopped, easing his finger off the trigger of the deadly pistol.

“Smart move,” Bolan said. “Now drop it.”

“This is not good business, Yank,” Kastrioti muttered, letting go of his weapon. It hit the soft carpeting with a dull thud. “Simply tell us who you are working for, and you can leave alive.”

“Do the other one, too,” Bolan ordered, digging the barrel in deeper.

Kastrioti reached down to pull a small.32 Remington from an ankle holster.

“You really shouldn’t have put your feet on the table,” the soldier said, tapping the weapon out of the hands of the other man with the Beretta’s barrel. “Now, kick it away.”

Sullenly, Kastrioti complied.

“Okay, call off your boys,” Bolan commanded, watching the shadows move on the other side of the trellis. “Or you’re the first to die.”

For a moment, Kastrioti did nothing, panting deeply from the exertion of controlling his anger. “Not a chance in hell,” he growled, and dived to the floor.

A split second later, the entire trellis exploded as a dozen automatic weapons cut loose, spraying a hailstorm of high-velocity lead across the private alcove.

CHAPTER FOUR

Mazagón, Spain

“Bah, this smells like death,” a man announced, sniffing the stiff collar of his British uniform. An L-85 assault rifle was slung from his shoulder as per regulations, and a canvas belt of spare 5.56 mm magazine clips was strapped tightly around his waist.

Placing both hands behind his back, Thorodensen stood rigidly at attention. “Nonsense! All these uniforms have been thoroughly washed several time. They are absolutely clean.”

The man wearing the uniform of a CPO gave no reply, but his expression clearly stated that he completely disagreed with the former Icelandic ambassador, as did several other members of the group.

“I love this heat!” a large woman said, smiling into the warm sun.

“Dear God, I miss snow,” a small man growled in reply, wiping a sheen of sweat off his brow.

The ancient ridge of cooled lava had been smoothed over time by the crash of the gentle waves, yet the landscape still held a certain aspect of raw power that reminded the people of their distant home.

The dozen armed members of Penumbra stood in an orderly row, NATO equipment bags stacked neatly off to the side. Behind them rose a hulking concrete building situated at the extreme end of a rocky peninsula. Every door to the NATO disposal facility was made of solid steel, with three different types of locks. There were no windows whatsoever, and two massive chimneys rose from the middle of the structure like the horns of a demon. The entire grounds were enclosed with an electrified fence topped with razor wire, and a radar antenna spun nonstop on a nearby hill, where a SAM bunker was hidden.

The shore was lined with antipersonnel mines, a sunken WWI battleship blocked the narrow harbor, and a state-of-the-art NATO sonar sensor was hidden among the barnacles, rust and colorful coral.

The best way to approach the place was along a narrow road, a twisting ribbon of asphalt studded with concrete tank traps, edged with more land mines, and lined with rows of steel spikes fully capable of rendering even bulletproof tires into ragged shreds.

The exit ramp from the main highway was normally closed with a steel barrier designed to stop a modern-day tank, along with a secondary spread of steel spikes jutting from the pavement that would shred tires.

“I hope everything goes well this time,” Professor Vilhjalms said, hunching her shoulders. “Brooklyn was a disaster.”

“Yet we did get the mines, correct?”

“That is true,” she hedged. “But still…”

“Everything will be fine, Lily. The staff of the facility accepted my credentials, did they not?” Thorodensen said, minutely adjusting his cap. The insignia of a commander was stitched on the bill. “And why should they not? The papers are real enough. They were just not assigned to me.” He turned to smile at her tolerantly. “Everybody is gone, and we’re here alone. What could possibly gone wrong?”

“The unknown is what frightens me,” Vilhjalms said, glancing out to sea. Their Hercules seaplane was moored just over the horizon, well past the reach of any ground-based radar. If all went well, they would be gone within the hour. If not, escape was only minutes away. That gave her some solace.

Nervously, she tugged on the heavily starched uniform again. This had been the largest shirt among the dead sailors. However, it had been designed for a man, and it simply didn’t fit conformably across her more ample feminine contours. In an effort to flatten her breasts, she had removed her brassier. That helped, but not much, and now every step produced a very undignified jiggling effect. Everybody was trying not to notice, and she deeply appreciated the courtesy.

Trying not to be obvious, Vilhjalms glanced at Thorodensen, standing so close that she could almost feel the heat radiating from his body. The white uniform fitted him perfectly, of course. But then the man was built like a Norse god of war, and she wouldn’t have minded at all if he had noticed her unbound freedom. Not even a little bit. On impulse, she bumped a soft breast into his bare forearm.

Curiously, Thorodensen glanced down. “Something wrong?”

Suddenly, they heard the low roar of truck engines in the distance.

“Here they come.” She sighed, trying to cover the blunder. Science and math she understood, but clearly, seduction was not one of her many skills.

“And right on schedule,” Thorodensen said with a smile. “Okay, people, stand at attention! Remember, from now on only speak English! Even among yourself. Understood?”

“Ja, samkomulag!” the men and woman answered in a ragged chorus.

“And what did I just tell you?” he bellowed.

“Yes, sir!”

“Better,” Thorodensen growled, feeling a trickle of sweat going down his spine.

There was a loaded pistol at his hip, as well as an L-85 assault rifle across his back. More importantly, he had a remote control in his pocket. If necessary, he could destroy the entire facility, along with his own people and a huge section of the peninsula. But that would purely be a last resort, death instead of being captured. His fledgling organization, Penumbra, desperately needed this cargo. Without it, the plan fell apart completely, here and now.

As the convoy rumbled closer, Thorodensen noted in relief that it was a standard NATO formation, nothing special. There were three primary vehicles and a few escorts. The main three were massively armored NBC-class trucks, nuclear-biological-chemical proof, able to withstand any type of modern-day weapon, even a near hit from a tactical nuke. Of course, a direct hit would vaporize them, just like anything else. But where most armored vehicles would be torn to pieces and nearly vaporized, these resilient trucks could ride out the shock wave with the crew intact and alive.

“Trouble?” Vilhjalms whispered, licking her dry lips.

“Not in the least,” Thorodensen said with a thin smile. Accompanying the four NBC trucks were two Hummers full of combat troops, and six motorcycle riders in full body armor. An Ashanti gunship hovered in the sky overhead.

Thorodensen grunted. That was normally more than enough protection for this type of cargo. Just not this day.

As the convoy got close to the exit ramp, Thorodensen waved a hand, and the Icelander in the guard kiosk operated the controls. Hydraulics thumped, and the flimsy-looking gate slowly moved out of the way.

The convoy braked to a halt at the kiosk, and the motorcycles spread out in a defense pattern. Saluting the guard, the driver of the lead Hummer offered a clipboard full of papers. Saluting back, the Icelander pretended to read them, gave a curt nod, then waved the convoy on.

“Pass,” he said in a perfect Liverpool accent.

That caught the driver by surprise, and he beamed in delight. “Cor’ blimey, you from the Puddle?” He laughed. “Me, too! Where were you stationed?”

Since he had already used the only English word he could say correctly, the guard merely scowled and jerked his head toward the facility. The driver glanced that way, and Thorodensen frowned darkly.

“Pass!” the guard repeated, stressing the word.

“Sorry, mate,” the driver muttered, and shifted into gear once more.

“Wait a minute,” a Turkish sergeant commanded, holding up a palm. “That’s a British navy uniform. Why is the royal navy guarding a UN facility?”

Instantly, everybody in the convoy stiffened and stared intently at the lone guard.

With a sigh, Thorodensen reached into his pocket.

“Hey now, he’s just some swabbie doing the task he was assigned,” the driver said with a big grin. “Isn’t that right, ya yellow-bellied whoremaster?”

Having no idea what else to do, the guard grinned back and winked.

“British my ass, it’s a trap!” the sergeant yelled, working the arming bolt on a MP-5 as he swung the weapon around and fired.

The startled guard was blown off his feet as the hail of 9 mm rounds hammered across his chest.

Thorodensen pressed the first button on the remote control.

Instantly, the entire section of road lifted up on thundering columns of flame, twisted bodies and broken wreckage spraying outward for a hundred yards. The motorcycle riders were torn to bits, their flaming bikes tumbling into the electrified fence sending out torrents of sparks. Even the armored trucks flipped over, rising a dozen yards into the air before crashing back down sideways onto the ruined roadway. The NBC vehicles slammed into the pavement, but seemed completely unharmed; not even the windows were cracked.

Instantly, the Icelanders started to rush forward.

“Wait!” Thorodensen commanded, pressing the second button.

A split second later, a full salvo of surface-to-air missiles streaked out from the hidden bunker on the hill, and the Ashanti gunship erupted into a writhing fireball. As it fell, the props came loose and spun wildly away, while several rockets launched into the sea. They hit the water and violently detonated, sending out huge waves that crashed onto the rocky shoreline.

“Now, get those trucks open!” Thorodensen bellowed, striding down the road. “We have thirty minutes before reinforcements arrive!”

“Thirty?” Vilhjalms asked, already working the small EM scanner in her hands. “I thought our window was only fifteen minutes!”

“Before leaving the United Nations I managed a small reorganization of the tactical rescue forces in Spain,” Thorodensen said grimly. “They’re now less efficient than the French parliament on a Friday.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.