Читать книгу Critical Exposure - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

“Talk to me, Bear,” Mack Bolan said.

“We were able to pick apart the code,” Kurtzman replied. “Akira managed to find the obligatory self-destruct codes and shut them down, so we had enough transitory information left behind. After that it became a cakewalk.”

“Akira” was Akira Tokaido, one of the best computer hackers in the world, and a valued member of Aaron Kurtzman’s cyber team.

“So you know where the original intercept program was sourced?”

“To within a grid about a quarter-mile square.” A pause ensued and then he continued. “The transmissions were sourced from a wireless, high-frequency satellite tower in the central Rockies. I’m uploading the exact coordinates via secure link to Jack’s navigation system. He can then set it from there and put you down on almost a dime.”

“Unless it’s heavily wooded,” Bolan remarked.

“I made sure they had rappelling gear aboard, boss,” Grimaldi chimed in. He’d been listening to the conversation through his own headset.

“Looks like we’re set then,” Bolan told Kurtzman. “Thanks again for the assist, Bear. I’ll be in touch when we know something more.”

Bolan signed off.

The beating of chopper blades against the air threatened to vibrate Bolan’s innards down to the bone. Unfortunately the older Bell-Huey was the only thing they could get on such short notice, and the Executioner hadn’t wanted to wait for something more modern. Besides, if Kurtzman’s preliminary information panned out—something for which Bolan had little doubt otherwise—he wouldn’t be spending a very long time aboard.

Bolan squeezed his frame out of the jump seat in back and began to prepare his equipment. He’d already changed out of his Class A uniform for woodland camouflage fatigues. He donned a web harness that held a portable medical kit, combat knife and four M-67 high explosive grenades. He whipped out his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle, checked the action and ensured a round was chambered before replacing it in his hip holster. Finally he slung an MP5K.

Under normal circumstances Bolan would have preferred something a bit more powerful in a primary assault weapon, but he figured if the terrain happened to be mountainous, he would need to carry light. His judgment had proved sound given the territory Kurtzman described. The model he carried boasted a side-folding stock, quick-detach sound suppressor and a 3-round burst mode. It chambered 9 mm rounds in a 30-round steel magazine.

Light but durable, yeah.

Bolan looked forward and saw Grimaldi twirl his finger. He donned the headset. “Go ahead, Jack.”

“We’re almost on point. Based on what I’m seeing, there’s no place to put down, Sarge. Looks like you’ll be going in the hard way.”

“Could be just as well,” Bolan replied. “I don’t know what I’m going up against, and I don’t want to risk putting this old crate in harm’s way.”

“It would mean a long walk home,” Grimaldi said. “Understood.”

“I’ll get the winch deployed,” Bolan said. “Once I’m through, I’ll find an extraction point and send a homing signal. Might want to take the time to get back and find something a little more...say, robust.”

“Roger,” Grimaldi stated. “Stay frosty, Sarge.”

Bolan grunted an affirmation before abandoning the headset and moving to the swing-out winch. He got the rescue arm into position and locked, and then expertly deployed the take-up and belay lines through the rigging just beneath the winch head. Once that was done he quickly put his legs through the climbing harness, put the sling in place and hooked up the carabiner through the working end of the take-up and belay lines.

Grimaldi piloted the chopper with the expertise that had earned him a reputation with Bolan as perhaps one of the greatest tactical pilots ever to lay a hand on a stick. Flying talent seemed to be something that was part of Grimaldi’s blood, an enigmatic and invisible element that coursed through the man’s veins. Like Bolan’s talents as a warrior, Grimaldi had a natural gift that not only made him a consummate flier but a solid ally in Bolan’s War Everlasting.

The soldier called a last farewell and then bailed out of the chopper without hesitation as soon as Grimaldi reached hover point. He descended the rope steadily but not too quickly. Even rappelling into the woods held intrinsic dangers, and Bolan had enough experience to know it wasn’t good to rush things. He could fall or slip or experience an equipment malfunction, and descending at a controlled speed under such circumstances could be the thing that saved him from a backbreaking fall.

The cards were with Bolan and he easily passed through the treetops to find the cool forest earth rushing to greet him. At the last twenty yards, Bolan yanked his arm behind him and jerked twice to slow his descent. A moment later his boots touched the ground and he crouched to absorb the mild impact. He unclipped his belt, released the lines through the carabiner and then donned the portable communications earplug and attached the throat microphone.

“Striker to Eagle, you copy?” Bolan whispered.

“Go, Striker.”

“I’m down and set. Beat feet back to base and get us some modern chops,” Bolan replied.

“You got it, Striker. Good luck.”

“You, too. Out.”

Bolan clicked off and removed the ear bud and mike before stowing them carefully in the pouch at his side. He was now in communications blackout and would remain that way until he either called for extraction or they found his bloody, battered corpse.

Bolan activated the electronic compass on his right wrist. He checked his bearings and realized Grimaldi had dropped him nearly on the spot of the coordinates Kurtzman had sent them. The soldier began to look around him, but he couldn’t see the tower—not yet, anyway. The dense foliage overhead did a good job of blocking most of the sunlight, and only by the fact it was midday did Bolan have any light at all. He did one last equipment check and set off.

It took him about ten minutes of walking in ever-widening circles, using the compass as his guide, before Bolan found the tower. He made sure nobody was around before stepping into the small clearing and approaching the base. It was tall, but when he looked up he could just barely see the top of it through the trees. So that was it. They hadn’t spotted it because whoever had erected the structure had managed to camouflage it so it wasn’t visible from the air. Perhaps highly sensitive equipment could have detected it, like the kind found aboard an AWACS. But therein lay the problem—somebody had to actually be looking for the tower. Up until recently, nobody had even known there was anything wrong.

Bolan turned to study the base of the tower. He gave it the once-over with a critical eye before locating a power panel. Just visible above the forest floor was a heavy, thick cable that ran from the power box and disappeared into the woods. From that point he could see what would have been just passable for a foot trail. He considered following it, but thought better. Daylight wouldn’t last forever and he didn’t have time to risk moving off the target or losing the trail.

No. Better to let the enemy come to him.

Bolan pried the panel open with his combat knife and quickly studied the rat’s nest of connections. He located the neutral and cut the thick cable of twisted-pair wires inside. If the tower was that critical to whomever had installed it here, and the Executioner bet it was, it wouldn’t be long before someone came to investigate.

Bolan closed the panel and made for the woods as close to the box as possible. He knelt behind thick foliage he found nestled between a pair of giant pines and settled in to wait. Yeah, they would definitely come to him.

* * *

BOLAN DIDN’T HAVE to wait long—about fifteen or twenty minutes by his reckoning—before someone approached the tower making enough noise to raise the dead. At first the soldier couldn’t believe it, but when he saw the reason it didn’t seem so incredible. The man who came through the trees to Bolan’s left, just about where he’d seen the makeshift path, was fat and clearly out of shape. Even from a distance the Executioner observed that the man’s face was beet red from the exertion, and he was wheezing loudly.

The man finally reached the tower and stopped to catch his breath. Droplets of sweat beaded his forehead, those that weren’t already plopping onto the ground from his face and neck. Armpit stains were visible. Why anyone would have sent a guy of this girth and poor physical condition to investigate a tower on a forest mountain was anybody’s guess.

Bolan stepped out of the bushes and approached the man, the .44 Desert Eagle up with sights pinned on the man’s chest. The man could barely catch his breath and he seemed even less able to do so when he first noticed the big guy dressed in camouflage fatigues toting what looked like a cannon in his hand. The man did nothing to hide the surprise in his expression.

“Whoa,” he said, raising his hands. “What the hell is this?”

“This is where you stop asking stupid questions and start answering some of mine,” Bolan said coolly. “That work for you?”

“Um, yeah...just...easy, man. I’m not in a hurry to get killed.”

“And yet you’re still talking.” That shut him up. “What’s your name?”

“Ah...Ducken,” the guy replied. “Horace Ducken. Look, can I...? Can I put my hands down? My arms are getting tired.”

Bolan almost cracked a smile. Ducken was a heart attack waiting to happen. He’d only had his arms up a moment. The Executioner thought about making him keep them up, a little incentive not to try anything, but then he nodded. Might as well let the guy off the hook. Maybe it would buy him a little good will.

“So tell me, Ducken...” Bolan began. “What are you doing up here and what do you know about this tower?”

“I just maintain the thing, man.”

“Alone?”

“Alone? No, hell...shit no.”

“Then start telling me something of substance,” Bolan replied. “Or I may make you put your hands up again and keep them up forever.”

“Look, I’m not doing anything wrong,” Ducken said. “I lost my job with Paradine-E and—”

“Wait a second,” Bolan cut in. “The electronic security firm contracted to the DOD?”

Ducken nodded.

“All right, go on.”

“I was just trying to make some cash, man. My mom had to put up for a second loan on her house after I lost my job, and I couldn’t afford to let her lose it.”

“How did you come into this work?” Bolan asked, nodding in the direction of the tower.

“They came to me, man. I mean, I’m no Snowden or nothing. I didn’t tell them anything about what I did for Paradine-E. I just got hired because I knew—”

He cut his words short and a look of horror crossed his face, as if he’d just almost given it all away.

Bolan considered what Ducken had said so far. It sounded plausible enough, and this setup was nothing he could’ve done on his own, especially not in his physical condition. He’d just about killed himself just climbing a slight incline to investigate the issue. Not to mention, the fat and socially awkward man in front of him didn’t strike Bolan as any sort of criminal mastermind.

“The tower’s not working because I cut the power. You think you can repair that?”

“Yeah, I guess. Depends on how bad you cut it.”

“Not enough that any simple splice job couldn’t fix.”

“And then what?” Ducken asked, scratching his neck as he considered the grim visage of the Executioner.

“If you repair it, they’ll be expecting you to return,” Bolan said, his plan already formulated. “They won’t be expecting us.”

“Us?”

“Yeah,” Bolan said. “You help me, and I’ll make sure you’re out of the way when it all goes south.”

“Oh, shit,” Ducken said. “You’re about to put me out of work again—aren’t you?”

“Afraid so,” Bolan replied. “Fix that thing.”

Ducken turned his attention toward the power box, and as Bolan suspected the young man had it up and humming in just a few minutes. Fortunately there had been a toolkit secreted in a nearby compartment that Bolan had thought was a transformer box, as it was labeled such, but in fact contained an array of tools and replacement parts. At least Bolan had some inkling he was dealing with an ingenious enemy.

But who?

The question troubled him and he pondered it as Ducken led him into the woods and down the slight hill. They proceeded for what Bolan estimated was at least a quarter mile, Ducken wheezing and panting the entire trip, until they arrived at the main facility. It wasn’t impressive at first glance, mostly because it was obscured with heavy camouflage—a bunker of sorts with a low-hanging entrance and sloped dirt walls covered by brush and the tops of pine trees. Additionally there was radar-scattering camouflage netting woven into that.

Bolan grabbed Ducken by the shoulder and pulled him up short, putting his lips close to the tech’s ear while he jabbed the muzzle of his MP5K PDW into a spot near Ducken’s left kidney. “Hold it. Where are the guards?”

The tech shook his head emphatically. “No guards, man...no guards.”

Ducken held up a card and Bolan realized at a glance it was a coded access card. “Fine. What sort of security inside?”

“Just a few guys with pistols, a sort of roving guard.”

“Are they on any sort of predictable schedule?” Bolan asked.

“No,” Ducken said. “They just appear every so often, look things over and then they leave. They go to some area that’s off-limits.”

“How many like you inside?”

“You mean workers?”

“Yeah.”

Ducken shrugged. “I think there’re about a dozen of us, all told. But usually we rotate in twenty-four-hour shifts of four. Each shift has a technician, a couple of data guys and a microwave tech. That’s me. That’s what I do.”

“Fine. You’d better be telling me the truth, Ducken, because lies won’t end in anything good for you. Now let’s move out,” Bolan said as he nudged the tech with the MP5 for emphasis.

The pair continued down the path until they reached the entrance to the bunker. Ducken looked back at Bolan, who met his gaze and nodded, and then swiped his card. The amber light turned green and Ducken opened the door. Bolan gestured for the guy to go ahead and he followed behind.

They passed through a very narrow corridor, so narrow that Ducken’s girth barely managed to walk along without his arms brushing the walls. The floor of the corridor was composed of metal grating and traversed a decline path until leveling out where it opened onto a large room. The light there was minimal, most of it coming from computer workstations with large screens. Somewhere Bolan could hear the steady thrum of power generators.

True to Ducken’s words, three other people were in that room, and they didn’t even notice Bolan at first because Ducken obscured him. The soldier’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and he spotted the empty seat that had to belong to Ducken. He shoved the guy toward it and then brandished his weapon high in two hands so all those present could see it clearly.

“That’s enough,” Bolan said. “Take your hands off the keyboards and put them up where I can see them.”

One skinny kid with an unlit cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth squinted. “Who the hell are you?”

Bolan turned toward the young man. “I’m the guy holding the hardware, so I would guess that puts me in charge. Is that good enough for you?”

The youth’s haughty mask melted and he sat back in his chair, all signs of potential defiance fading. Meekly he replied, “Yeah, it sure is.”

“Now, your pal here tells me there are a few guards in this place. Where might they be?”

“They come through there,” a young woman, the only female in the group, said, pointing to a door in the corner. “About every hour or so.”

“When was the last time they came through?” Bolan asked even as his ice-blue eyes flicked toward the large, tinted plate glass that spanned one of the walls.

“Maybe...maybe forty minutes?” she replied.

“Fine. You guys—”

The Executioner never finished the statement because the glass “wall” disappeared in a massive shock wave of splintered glass shards followed by a blast of autofire. One of the young men at a terminal, the only one who hadn’t spoken, was the first to buy it as a half dozen rounds slammed into his lithe frame. One blew part of his head off and the impact knocked him off his rolling chair. He crumpled to the ground a bloody mess of mangled flesh.

“Get down!” Bolan ordered as he went into motion and beelined for cover.

On the move, Bolan swung the MP5K in the direction of the fire and triggered a short burst of his own. His eyes were still adjusting, and through the one pane of shattered glass fragments he could make out several shadowy forms approaching. All were toting weapons, the evidence of that fact in the winking muzzles followed by the angry cloud of rounds pelting the opposite walls.

Equipment was shattered, terminals emitting showers of sparks as the remaining three technicians jumped out of their respective seats and made best possible speed for the floor. Bolan got behind a console just as the next volley of rounds passed overhead and then peered over the top long enough to deliver a sustained burst.

Bolan had finished spraying his magazine and was exchanging it for another during a lull in the firing when something metal sailed through the window, bounced off the wall-length tabletop that had served to house two of the workstations and skidded to a stop near his foot. It was difficult to see in the dim light, but Bolan could make out its shape well enough to know what it was.

Putting all fear aside, the Executioner reached for the grenade.