Читать книгу Fireburst - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

CHAPTER ONE

Colombia

Entering his tent, Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, sat on a canvas cot, eased off his body armor and grabbed a medical kit. His latest strike against Colombia’s leading cartel had resulted in minor injuries. None of his cuts were very bad, but things went septic very fast in the jungle, so even a tiny cut could soon become life threatening. When he was done, Bolan loaded a hypodermic syringe and injected himself with a double dose of strong antibiotics. Better safe than sorry. He had a long journey back to the airplane after he packed up his gear.

The soldier was just starting to make coffee when he heard a soft chime from inside his bedroll. Pulling out a laptop, he flipped up the lid, activated the decoder and established contact with a military satellite in orbit.

“Striker here,” he said.

“Anchor,” came the reply.

Tapping a button to activate the webcam, Bolan saw the screen clear into a view of a middle-aged man hunched over a desk covered with papers.

“Hi, Hal. Something wrong, or were you worried about me?”

“Not sure yet,” Hal Brognola said, running a hand through his hair.

The big Fed was one of the top cops of the nation, a fixture at the Justice Department, and the head of the clandestine Sensitive Operations Group. Almost everything he did was covert, such as his alliance with Bolan, and he reported directly to the President.

“Okay, shoot,” Bolan said, folding his bandaged hands.

Brognola frowned. “What do you know about lightning?”

“I know enough to get out of the rain when there’s thunder.”

“Then hold on to your ass, buddy. Within the past twenty-fours hours a commercial jetliner, a high-speed monorail train and fifteen individual people have been killed by lightning strikes.”

“I’ll assume the number is unusual?” Bolan asked.

“No, lots of people, places and things get zapped by lightning bolts every day. But ever since Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod, the death toll has been kept at a minimum,” Brognola said, reaching past the monitor to get a manila folder. “However, according to the black box from the aircraft, the plane was hit fifty-seven times by lightning in a five-minute period.”

Suddenly alert, Bolan sat up straight. “That’s not possible, Hal.”

“Bet your ass it’s not,” Brognola growled, opening the folder, to spread out some papers. “Yet it did happen. That’s been confirmed. What’s even worse, those fifteen people killed by lightning were all experts in advance electronics, specializing in—”

“Lightning?”

“Close. Tesla coils.”

“Same thing.”

“Near enough,” Brognola admitted.

“All right, going with the idea that these weren’t simply outrageous coincidences, what are we talking about, artificial lightning bolts from some sort of machine hidden inside the storm clouds?”

“Could be. Unless somebody has discovered a way to invoke a lightning strike, and then we’re all in for a shitstorm of trouble.”

“You got that right,” Bolan replied, rubbing his unshaved chin. “What does a lightning bolt generate, a billion volts or so?”

“Right.”

“Any of the people hit happen to survive?” Bolan asked.

“No way in hell. After the second strike, they were greasy smoke. The third lightning bolt made holes in the ground over a yard deep. Add the rain, and it’ll take weeks to identify most of the remains. The FBI forensic lab was able to scrape some residue off nearby lampposts and store windows to try to run a match on the DNA, but no joy yet.”

“Which means there must have been some eyewitnesses.”

“Check. We managed to identify a few of the people killed. One was Professor Albert Goldman, the foremost expert in lightning storms in the world, another was Dr. David Thomas, an electrical engineer who had designed a radical new antilightning safeguard that would, he hoped, harness the power to channel into the power grid of a major city, and another was Dr. Kathleen Summer. She is…sorry, she was the woman who invented the Tesla antitank trap for the Pentagon ten years ago.”

With each name, a picture scrolled across the bottom of the screen, along with a shot of the person’s charred remains. Bolan snorted. Charred? They were damn near vaporized.

“Hal, how many people get killed by lightning in the U.S. in an average year?”

“About ninety.”

“So fifteen are burned in a single day?” Bolan shook his head. “Good call, Hal. Clearly, somebody has found a way to control lightning strikes, and they’ve already removed most of the leading scientists in the field to forestall any attempts to analyze their equipment.”

“Unfortunately, that was my guess, too.” Brognola sighed, the picture distorted for a moment with a burst of static. “We won’t know what these people want until they attack again.”

“Were any of these scientists connected to one another? Went to the same school, had the same bookie, were they all heading toward a summit conference on weather—anything like that?”

“Nope, I checked, and then double-checked everything,” Brognola stated, pushing the folder aside. “They had absolutely nothing in common aside from their field of expertise. Maybe when we identify the rest of the victims, some sort of pattern will emerge. But until then—”

“We’re in the dark until these people start making demands,” Bolan added. “And by then it may be too late to track them down.”

“Agreed. All we can do is stay sharp, and be ready to move the instant something is learned.”

“Okay, if I’m going to be chasing clouds, then I’ll need some help on this,” Bolan said. “Any chance of getting Able Team or Phoenix Force?” The two teams were the other field operatives of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, Virginia.

“Sorry, they’re both out of contact at the moment.”

“Okay,” Bolan stated. “If the Stony Man teams are unavailable, I have some people I can call in.”

“Expect trouble?”

“Just prepared for it. You know me.”

Brognola chuckled. “Yeah, I do. All right, stay in touch, and watch your ass.”

Turning off the laptop, Bolan grabbed his gear and loaded it into the speedboat. He started the outboard motor and headed out. He had a long way to travel, and speed was of the essence.

In the distance, thunder softly rumbled.

He only hoped it wasn’t already too late.