Читать книгу The Chameleon Factor - Don Pendleton - Страница 11

Nome, Alaska

Death stalked the crowd.

A calm voice called an announcement over the PA system of the airport. Excited children ran ahead of their weary parents. An old couple walked stiffly along the carpeted corridor, holding hands and talking softly. An anxious young man clutched a bouquet of flowers and watched each arriving plane with painfully obvious impatience.

As he stood in line at the airport scanner, the weight of the gun felt heavy inside the blouse of the disguised man. His wig itched, and his lower back ached from the weight strapped to his belly, along with the padded bra and the—

“Next, please!” the guard called out.

His disguise of Professor Johnson long ago removed, Davis Harrison, aka the Chameleon, waddled forward from the yellow line on the floor and placed his lady’s handbag on the conveyor belt, then paused and removed a plain gold wedding ring from his pinkie and put it in a little plastic tray. His long nails were manicured and freshly painted, his sneakers worn at the heels and his white support stockings had a small run artistically placed near the ankle, where most runs occurred in stockings. He knew his disguise was perfect, but there was still a small knot of tension in his stomach. After 9/11, the Americans had become exceptionally good at uncovering smugglers—whether it was drugs, money or weapons. He was carrying all three. Plus his technological namesake, the prototype jamming unit.

Armed guards stood in the far corners of the airport, loaded M-16 assault rifles cradled in their arms, hard eyes sweeping the crowds steadily. Briefly, Harrison had a flashback to the armed guards walking the elevated catwalks of the Berlin airport before the Wall came down. Hard times to make a living.

However, as the Transportation Security Administration guards glanced his way, they shifted their attention away from his face to the bulging belly, and those with wedding rings smiled. Posing as a pregnant woman was a favorite ruse of smugglers, but this one seemed to be okay. She was wearing support stockings and her ankles were slightly swollen, her wedding ring didn’t fit the correct finger anymore from the water weight gain, her ears were pierced, but she wasn’t wearing earrings, there was no scarf to cover an Adam’s apple, no razor burn on the cheeks and so on. Satisfied for the moment, their attention moved to more likely suspects.

An Inuit woman in a neatly pressed TSA uniform at the scanner held up a restraining hand as Harrison waddled toward the scanner.

“Your glasses, ma’am,” she said, holding out a hand.

“Sorry, I forget they were there,” Harrison said as he passed over the glasses.

The guard nodded in sympathy and waved him on.

Holding his bulging stomach protectively, he squeezed through the scanner and it remained silent. It worked! Elation filled the man, but he kept his expression weary. He was pregnant now, and it was exhausting work. Remember that, fool!

Once on the other side, the now smiling guard returned his glasses, ring and handbag, and waved for the next passenger.

Awkwardly shuffling away, Harrison paused for a moment to glance into a convenient wall mirror as he put on the ring and glasses, and fixed his hair. Then he pretended to burp and frantically covered his mouth in embarrassment.

ON THE OTHER SIDE of the mirror, the security guards drinking coffee watched with dull interest as the pregnant woman primped for a moment. A lot of smugglers were caught by the mirror trick. They remained icy cool at the scanner, then smirked in satisfaction at their cleverness in the reflection in the “conveniently placed” mirror.

“Poor thing,” a soldier said. “When my sister was preggers with her twins, she belched like a sailor day and night.”

Another man laughed. “Well, that explains a lot about you.”

“Stuff it,” the first guard snarled, the threat softened by a half smile. “Now, your sister, whew! Let me tell you…”

WADDLING AWAY, Harrison joined the short line heading to the China Air counter. His ticket was for New Delhi, a city closely watched for smuggling things out, but not well monitored for smuggling things into. The nation was poor. Why would anybody smuggle something into India? Harrison kept his face pensive, but smiled inside his mind. Why indeed?

As the line to board the plane moved slowly forward, he started shifting his weight from foot to foot, and began breathing a little heavily.

An alert flight attendant noticed the action and briskly walked over.

“Come on, dear,” she said, smiling. “Let’s get you on board where you can use the rest room.” Her nametag said Gwenneth, and the tall beauty had deep green eyes, a sure sign of not being of pure Chinese descent.

“Thank you,” Harrison whispered in a little voice. “I didn’t want to seem pushy or anything, but, well, you know…”

“My first baby seemed to love kicking my bladder,” the woman said in a friendly manner. “I understand. It’s okay, come with me, please.”

A few of the younger men scowled as the pair moved past the line and onto the plane. But all of the adults merely smiled as they figured out the reasoning behind the courtesy, and remembered similar incidents from their own lives.

A killer a hundred times over, Harrison took hold of the pretty woman’s arm and let his hand press against her uniform jacket, savoring the warmth of her full breasts as they walked along the skyway tunnel. Then he felt a flash of real fear at the totally unexpected appearance of a second weapons scanner in the entrance of the waiting 747 jetliner. This wasn’t on any of his plans or charts! Relinquishing his hold on the flight attendant, Harrison cradled his fake stomach and pressed on the sides to activate the Chameleon at its lowest setting. The tunnel lights flickered for a brief moment as the field engaged, but then they returned to normal and he passed through the EM scanner without incident.

Inside the plane, he gave a male flight attendant his ticket and shuffled quickly toward the little lavatory. Once inside, Harrison locked the door and reached under his dress to turn on a Humbug. The device silently swept the lavatory for any optical pickups or working microphones. When it checked as clear, he pulled out a Tech-9 machine pistol, worked the bolt to chamber a round for immediate use, then slid it back under his dress into the cushioned sack of supplies hanging from his shoulders. The thing weighed a ton, but there was no other way to accomplish his mission. So what couldn’t be changed had to be endured. At least temporarily.

Adjusting the power levels on the Chameleon, he raised the dial from its lowest setting to about halfway, and locked it into position. Soon now, very soon. Using the toilet, Harrison washed his hands and waddled out to his seat, settling down with a contented sigh.

Remembering to read a magazine through his glasses, he waited and watched as the last of the passengers came on board. After the door was latched shut, the pilot made an announcement that the flight was on schedule, and the steward began his mindless song about safety and seat belts, while the female flight attendant checked seat belts and the storage of the carryon baggage. Gwenneth was working his aisle, and Harrison allowed himself to study her in detail. Slim legs rising to a perfect rear, a narrow waist and large breasts. Midnight-black hair, pouting lips, sparkling green eyes—yeah, maybe he’d keep her alive for a while, before he sent everybody else on this plane straight to hell.

As the pretty flight attendant walked by, Harrison stretched out a fingertip to lightly brush the smooth nylons on her thigh.

Angrily, Gwenneth glanced down to scold the flirt. But when she saw it was the pregnant passenger, she dismissed it as an accident and moved on to help other passengers settle in for the long flight to India.

Yes, do your job, little flower, but nothing can save these fools now. Harrison smirked behind an impassive face. All I need are a few more minutes. Then it will be too late to stop me. And afterward, nobody would ever be able to stop the fall of America.

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

MURMURING SOFTLY, the radio receiver tucked into security chief Buck Greene’s ear gave a constant report on the progress of the Black Hawk gunship coming in from the south. The surface-to-air missile bunkers were armed and ready in case it wasn’t the Stony Man teams inside coming home. The Farm’s mission controller, Barbara Price, had told Chief Greene about the secondary effects of the Chameleon device, so he was taking no chances. If the lights flickered just once, or if there were two Black Hawks instead of one, then he would order the covert fortress to cut loose with everything it had, which was plenty. A mistake could be made, and friends might die. “How could we stop a Chameleon attack?” Greene wondered out loud.

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking that myself,” John “Cowboy” Kissinger stated. “Radar-invisible gunships, armed with invisible missiles—how could we stop those?”

“We couldn’t,” Greene replied flatly. “That’s what worries me. Even our proximity trips wouldn’t work.”

“Damn.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

If they were reduced to visually targeting a flying enemy, they’d be slaughtered. Running stiff fingers through his hair, Kissinger scratched his head as he considered possible countermaneuvers, and came up with nothing.

Tall and lanky, Kissinger was the master gunsmith for the covert warriors of Stony Man, his strong and nimble hands constructing nearly all of their speciality weapons. Guns were his thing, and there were damn few better at his job in the entire world. A 10 mm Megastar pistol rode in his shoulder holster this month, the Magnum automatic being personally tested by the gunsmith for possible use by the field operatives. Unless a weapon carried the Cowboy seal of approval, it never made it into the hands of the Stony Man commandos.

“Our heat-seekers are good, but at short range, they’d never have enough flight time to lock on to the exhaust of an incoming missile or rocket,” Kissinger said at last.

“I know,” Greene rumbled.

“Just trust to the nets,” Kissinger said, glancing at the thick trees surrounding the hidden base, “and keep those land mines armed. Whether it’s helicopters, jet packs or pogo sticks, they got to land sometime.”

“Amen to that,” Greene said, tilting his head to listen to the soft voice coming over the radio. “Heads up, they’re here.”

Almost immediately they heard the powerful throb of rotor blades approaching from the south. The noise rapidly built in volume until suddenly a sleek Black Hawk came into view over the leafy tops of the trees in the park.

Greene and Kissinger watched the helicopter maneuver into a landing.

As the aircraft landed, the two men caught sight of the grinning pilot through the cockpit windows and relaxed. Chief Greene and Kissinger walked from the building bent over against the turbulence of the spinning blades. Before they got halfway there, the side door of the Black Hawk slid open, exposing Able Team and Phoenix Force. Carrying bulging duffel bags, Carl Lyons, Rosario Blancanales and Hermann Schwarz jumped to the ground, and, bent low, hurried to greet their friends.

Smiling with pleasure, Greene and Kissinger shook hands with the team.

“Glad to see you guys in one piece,” Greene shouted. “How did it go?”

“Still in one piece,” Lyons quipped.

Kissinger snorted a laugh. “Damn glad to hear it!”

Just then, the men of Phoenix Force exited the aircraft along with their cargo of destruction. The men were still under the blades when the Black Hawk lifted and circled the Farm once, the smiling pilot giving the men on the ground a thumbs-up gesture before leveling out and departing.

“Nice to see you boys again,” Kissinger stated as the swirling dust settled. “Barb’s waiting in the computer room for a debriefing. Something’s going on in Alaska.”

“Alaska?” Rafael Encizo asked, shifting the strap of the duffel over his shoulder. “Any trouble with the Chameleon test?”

They already knew? Chief Greene shook his head. “Better ask Barb.”

The two teams accepted that and headed for the farmhouse.

Walking onto the porch and up to the front door, McCarter tapped a security code into a keypad and the door clicked open.

The teams headed directly to the basement, taking the stairs rather than the elevator, ceiling-mounted security cameras tracking them along the way. At the landing, Schwarz raised a hand to block a camera, and it gave a nasty warning buzz. Quickly, he took away his hand before the alarms sounded and tear gas began to vent from the ceiling.

“Touchy, isn’t it?” Manning said, amused. “Built-in proximity sensor?”

“Yep,” Schwarz said with a touch of pride. “The best in existence. I helped design them.”

Hawkins frowned. “And if the Chameleon works as promised, they would be about as useful as two paper cups and some waxed string.”

Since it was true, nobody bothered to reply to that.

Exiting the stairwell, the two groups continued on to the tunnel that would take them to the Annex, choosing to walk rather than take the tram.

The Computer Room was abuzz with activity, two men typing madly at computer stations, while a redhaired woman wearing a VR helmet and gloves rode the Internet. At the end of the row of consoles, the fourth computer was dark, the chair empty.

“Anything on the railroads or bus lines?” Barbara Price demanded, crossing her arms.

“Nothing so far,” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman replied, his hands flowing across a keyboard. A former member of the Rand Corporation think tank, Kurtzman was the chief of the electron-riders at the Farm. Although confined to a wheelchair from an attack on the Farm many years earlier, his mind was as sharp as ever. That was, aside from a minor dementia for black coffee strong enough to kill a rhinoceros.

“Ditto with major airlines,” Akira Tokaido added, speed-reading a scrolling monitor. “Every plane is on schedule and accounted for.” Of Japanese and American descent, the handsome young man was often referred to as a natural-born hacker with “chips in his blood.”

“So far,” Price said, biting a lip. “Keep a watch on the private planes. He might try to hijack a Cessna or a helicopter. Are there any crop dusters working in the state?”

“Good idea. I’m on it,” Tokaido said, turning on a submonitor while typing with his other hand.

“What are we looking for?” Lyons asked, dropping his duffel to the floor. It landed with a clank that momentarily caught the attention of the hackers.

“Glad you’re here,” Price stated without preamble.

“Where’s Hal?” McCarter asked, glancing around.

“Already back in D.C. talking with the President,” Price answered, waving the men toward the coffee station along the wall. “There’s plenty of coffee, so help yourself. I expect you’re also hungry, so I had the staff fill the fridge with fresh sandwiches. I can brief you as you eat. You go airborne in fifteen minutes.”

So fast? Lyons started to ask for an explanation, but said nothing. Price was no fool. If she was sending them into the field this quick, then the shit had already hit the fan.

“Ah, thanks, I think. Did Bear make the coffee?” James asked with a worried look.

Without turning in his wheelchair, Kurtzman laughed. “And you call yourselves soldiers.” He brandished a steaming mug. “This’ll put some hair on your chest!”

“Or take it off,” James quipped.

“Also degreases tractor parts,” Schwarz added.

“Heads up!” Carmen Delahunt announced from behind her VR helmet. “I just accessed a NSA WatchDog satellite.”

Right on cue, the main wall monitor fluttered with a wild scroll and settled into a picture of more swirling clouds.

“Damn!” Delahunt cursed. “There’s no break in the cloud cover over western Alaska.” She sounded as if the inclement weather were a personal affront to her abilities as a hacker.

“Carmen, did you really expect clear sky at this time of year?” Price asked. “That’s why the Pentagon set the field test for the Chameleon. No other nation’s satellites could watch.”

“Advanced technology is so damn primitive,” Schwarz said with a flash of a smile.

“Apparently so, this time,” Delahunt muttered, going back into the virtual reality of the worldwide Net.

Going to the kitchenette, Price poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, adding a lot of milk and sugar. “Have you all read the report from Hal?”

“In the Black Hawk coming here,” Lyons replied. “There wasn’t much there.”

“Sadly, it’s all we have,” she said.

“Okay, grab a seat,” Price instructed, gesturing at some chairs pushed along the wall. “We’re truly operating in the dark on this. We know nothing about how the Chameleon operates, power requirements, distance limitations and so on. Every report and file was destroyed in Alaska. All we can do is make some educated guesses. Everybody connected with the project was at that field test or in the laboratory. The missiles from the USS Fairfax killed them all.”

“What was the hoped-for size of the unit?” Schwarz asked, leaning forward in his chair.

“About the size of a paperback book,” Price replied. “But Hal said that the President believes Professor Johnson was field-testing a shoe box version yesterday.”

“The size of a shoe box?” James said, the astonishment plain on his face.

She nodded. “Yes. But once again, it’s only a guess.”

“Still certainly small enough to be portable,” McCarter said, rubbing his chin. “How much did it weigh?”

“We figured it at roughly twenty pounds. But it could be more, a lot more.”

“Barbara, was that Professor Torge Emile Johnson by any chance?” Schwarz asked, scrunching his face.

Blinking in surprise, Price turned. “Yes, it was. So you know him?”

“Only by reputation. I’ve read articles by the man. He was a genius. A real one. Made breakthroughs all the time. SA once called him the Thomas Edison of the twenty-first century.”

“SA?” Manning asked patiently.

“Scientific American magazine,” James explained.

Manning nodded wisely. “Ah, yes. I have the swimsuit issue at home.”

“Oh, shut up,” James growled.

“So what is the mission?” Hawkins asked, leaning against the wall. “We’re supposed to get it back before anybody get hurts?”

“Over three hundred people are dead already,” Price answered sternly. “We want it found, or destroyed.”

Going to the fridge, Blancanales opened the door to find it filled with plates of sandwiches, soft drinks and bottles of juice, so he grabbed sandwiches and an orange juice. It was going to be a long day. He could feel it in his bones.

“What about the off-site backup files?” he asked, resting against the counter to unwrap his food and take a healthy bite.

“The what?” McCarter asked, heading for the fridge. There was no Coca-Cola in sight, only some diet Mountain Dew and several bottles of fruity stuff, and the juice.

Blancanales was chewing, so Schwarz answered. “Every project is vulnerable to accidents, or hackers. So all big corporations, and most government projects, have an automatic recording of everything done in the lab located far away from the building. Just in case.”

“Smart move,” McCarter commented.

“Damn straight it is. The IRS does the same thing, which is why it’s pointless to bomb the place.”

“The Farm, too?” Hawkins asked.

Turning away from his console Kurtzman said, “No, we’re too sensitive. If this place goes, nobody will ever know we even existed.”

“The backup files are a good place to start a search, but once again, we don’t know where they’re located,” Price added grimly. “Only the project head and the Pentagon liaison did.”

“And they’re dead,” Encizo stated.

“Exactly.”

“So our job is to go through the wreckage and find the location of those backup files,” Lyons said, thinking aloud, his eyes half-closed in concentration.

“Yes,” Price said. “Able Team goes in as DOD inspectors. Phoenix Force stays in the background to give you three cover in case of trouble.”

Lyons frowned. Which translated as, his team got killed, but Phoenix Force found the culprit.

“And then?” Encizo inquired.

“Kill the thief.” Price didn’t believe in couching terms. If the men could do the job, then she could damn well say the word.

“Any ID on him yet?” Blancanales asked, then added, “Or her?”

“Not a thing,” Price replied, placing her mug aside on the counter. “Whoever did this is good. As good as anybody we have.”

“Must have been an inside job. Nothing else makes sense,” McCarter stated. He took a drink from the bottle, then went on, “So it’s a mole.”

Lyons shook his head. “Or an ape.”

Ape, yes, Price knew the term. Spies stayed out and relayed information for years. Apes hit hard, blew things up and stole things. “Ape” was slang for an AP, which stood for Agent Provocateur. Secret government soldiers.

“So we’re facing a James Bond type,” Schwarz said without a trace of humor. “Not many of them around these days.”

Blancanales lowered his sandwich. “And for just this reason. Everybody is dead, and the prototype is lost.”

“Maybe lost,” James corrected. “Maybe destroyed in the explosions, or stolen. We don’t know shit right about now.”

“Could be a solo, or a freelance,” Price admitted. “Somebody not affiliated with any government. Just there to steal the Chameleon and sell it on the open market.”

“Or even sell it back to us,” Hawkins grumbled. “If it cost us a billion to make, then we’d certainly pay that much to get it back.”

“At least.”

Rubbing the faint bullet scar on his temple, Encizo sighed. “Hellfire, we really are in the dark on this.”

“That’s why we have to move fast,” Price agreed, “and try to cover every base.”

“What was the name of the company doing the research?” Kurtzman asked over a shoulder.

“Quiller Geo-Medical,” she said, and then smiled at the surprised expressions. “Yes, it means nothing. But it sounds very scientific, and people seldom ask.”

“Or maybe one did,” Kurtzman muttered, then wheeled his chair about. “Akira! Check the IRS tax records for a list of employees. Then cross-check that with the state driver’s-license files at the Alaska DMV. Carmen, I want you—”

“On it,” she interrupted from behind her mask, both hands in their VR gloves caressing the air. “I’ll access the video surveillance cameras at the airports and run a facial check as soon as Akira gives me some faces from the driver’s licenses.”

“He’ll be wearing a disguise,” Price warned. “And this person is damn good. KGB good. Maybe better.”

Delahunt shrugged. “We can adjust for that. It’s our ID software that caught that last group of terrorists trying to sneak out of the country.”

“Where’s Hunt, anyway?” Blancanales asked, glancing at the empty fourth chair at the end of the row of computer stations.

Huntington “Hunt” Wethers had been teaching cybernetics at Berkeley when he was recruited into Stony Man. With wings of gray hair at his temples, and smoking his briarwood pipe, Wethers looked like the stereotypical college professor. Yet he possessed a facility with computers that few other experts had.

“Hunt’s on a special assignment with Mack,” Price explained after a moment.

That was an unexpected answer. “In the field?”

She shrugged. “Mack asks, and he gets.”

Lyons stood. “Good luck to them both,” he said with feeling. There had to be a major problem for Striker to request assistance from anybody, and double so for him to ask for a desk jockey like the professor.

“Better save it,” Hawkins said, pushing away from the wall. “Because I think we’re going to need all of the luck we can get to bust this nut.”

“Alert,” Delahunt announced calmly. “We have a break in the clouds.”

Everybody turned. The main wall monitor filled with a view of western Alaska, then jumped closer in a staggered series of zoom shots until the screen was filled with a real-time view of the destroyed target zone and the smoking ruin of the research lab. The ambulances had come and gone, leaving only chalk outlines everywhere on the ground. Often, there was only the outline of a limb, or a torso, instead of an entire body.

Somebody merely grunted, while another muttered a curse.

“Barbara, tell Jack to get fueled and ready for liftoff,” Lyons ordered brusquely. “We’ll meet him on the front lawn in ten minutes.”

“Cowboy already has your spare equipment ready to go. Along with the proper ID cards, weapons permits, all the usual,” she told him.

Both teams headed for the door, and a grim-faced Encizo tapped in the exit code this time.

“We bloody well could be walking into a trap, mate,” McCarter commented.

As the armored door started to cycle open, Lyons looked backward at the pictures on the wall monitor, the hundreds of chalk outlines amid the smoking rubble.

“No,” he replied in a voice of stone. “They are.”