Читать книгу Hazard Zone - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

Other than imminent violence, few things had the power to bring Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, fully awake like a phone call in the middle of the night. As the first tones sounded from his cell phone, he sat up in bed, aware that these calls never came with good news—usually just the opposite. Someone was either dead or someone needed to be.

“Yeah,” he said, answering before the second ring had finished.

“Sorry to wake you, Striker.”

He recognized the voice of Hal Brognola immediately. Brognola was the director of the Sensitive Operations Group—located at Stony Man Farm, Virginia. He used to work for the clandestine organization directly, but now had an arm’s length association with the outfit. Their mission hadn’t changed—they still took on terrorists and criminals that the U.S. government couldn’t or wouldn’t. When the situation was complicated, they called on Mack Bolan to uncomplicate it. His presence was never official.

“It’s not a problem, Hal,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve got a full-scale mess,” he said. “There’s been an anthrax attack in Washington, D.C. It’s been contained, but a senator was killed, and the whole thing is getting ready to turn into an epic disaster.”

Bolan knew the security precautions that had been in place since 9/11. “That’s a mess all right. How’d they get anthrax that close to a U.S. senator?”

“You won’t believe me when I tell you,” Brognola said. “It was stored inside the body of his dead daughter. Somehow, these terrorists rigged it to explode during the autopsy—and, of course, Senator Carson demanded to be on hand.”

“What?” Bolan was rarely disturbed by the things he saw and heard, but this was going too far. “Her body exploded?”

“Apparently it was some kind of pressure trigger,” Brognola explained. “When they got to her stomach…”

“Jesus,” Bolan said.

“Yeah, I know. It’s unheard-of, and the kind of play that only truly bad men would even consider. The entire thing is on video, and it will be in the file I’m sending. Anyway, Senator Carson was killed, along with his Secret Service agent, the doctor and his assistant, and several other people who ran into the room after the explosion. This was weaponized anthrax, Stricker. They’ve had to seal off an entire section of Bethesda Naval Hospital, and the other bodies in the morgue were contaminated, too. The whole place has to go through decon.”

“I assume you want me to track down the source of the attack?”

“Yeah, that and…” Brognola’s voice trailed off.

“And what?” Bolan asked. “Come on, Hal, you don’t usually hesitate.”

The big Fed sighed heavily. “Look, this wasn’t just a well-executed biological attack. They used her, Striker, and I mean that in the most literal sense. The coroner had already completed the rape kit and some of the toxicology before the explosion. She’d been given Rohypnol. She was raped and killed. Symbols had been carved into her body with some kind of thin-bladed knife. And then they filled her with a deadly virus and killed her father, along with some other good people. I don’t just want the source, Striker. I want to know every bastard that was behind this and…”

Bolan could hear the deep anger in Brognola’s voice, and he felt some of it himself. “What exactly do you want me to do, Hal?”

“I want you to do whatever it takes,” he snapped. “I want the son of a bitch responsible for this to pay. The full tab.”

“All right,” he said. “Where do I start?”

“Looks like you’re going back to Jamaica,” Brognola said. “Amber Carson was down there on vacation. I’ll send you over everything we’ve got on her. You’ve been booked on a flight leaving in—” Bolan could hear the clicking of a keyboard in the background “—five-and-a-half hours.”

“What’s my cover?” Bolan asked.

“I know you prefer something less flashy, but I’m going to send you in as CIA, and I’ll get you a meet at the American Embassy in Kingston. Amber’s death has already created a shitstorm down there, and it’s a guarantee that every government agency we’ve got is going to have people traipsing around. One more agent asking questions should go unnoticed, but still get you a little cooperation.”

“I don’t know that traipsing is the word. With a dead senator, you won’t be able to move five feet without running into some government official from here or there. Our deal is usually low profile, and this has the makings of a very high-profile mess. Why is Stony Man Farm so quick to jump in when there are so many other agencies involved?” Before Brognola could respond, he added, “Look, I understand it’s bad, what they did to the girl, and the anthrax, even the death of a senator, but that doesn’t automatically make it one for us.”

“Striker, I know,” Brognola said. “It’s… Yeah, this one is a little personal, I get that, but it’s well within our mandate.”

Bolan considered his friend’s words. “And you’re sure this is how you want to play it, Hal?”

“I’m sure, Striker,” he said. “I need you on this one. I can’t trust that anyone else will do it right, and I don’t want there to be some kind of cover-up if this gets really big.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll find whoever did this, Hal.”

“I know you will, Striker. Good luck.” Brognola ended the connection.

Bolan put his phone back on the nightstand and headed for the shower. It was going to be a long day, and he wanted to review the file Brognola was sending to him before he got on the plane, as well as review anything the news might have on the situation.

As he stepped under the hot spray of the shower and leaned into the pressure of the water, Bolan couldn’t keep the disturbing thought of how brutal it was to kill a man’s daughter and then use the grief to kill the parent, as well. There was a lot of evil in the world, but this was a level of brutality that didn’t come around too often.

He decided it wouldn’t hurt to do some research online. He’d run across some Jamaican gangbangers in the past, and they played hardball. He also had a recent run-in with chemical zombies in Jamaica. But biological weapons didn’t seem to fit with anything the gangs had done before. Any intel he could come up with before he went in might be a weapon he could use later.

And Bolan had the feeling that he’d need every weapon he could get.

SITTING IN FRONT of his laptop, Bolan reviewed the file Brognola had sent, then went online and used the instructions the big Fed had given him in order to view the video file of what happened at Amber Carson’s autopsy. It had been stored behind several federal law-enforcement firewalls, but Aaron Kurtzman and the cyberteam at Stony Man Farm had no trouble finding work-arounds to get him in.

The video showed the autopsy suite at Bethesda Naval Hospital. On the stainless-steel table, a beautiful young woman was covered with a sheet. Nearby, the coffin in which she’d been transported back to the States sat on a table, the lid open. Bolan froze the image and saw that the coffin was metal and stamped with the seal of the Coast Guard. That explained why the trigger, which had to have been pressure based, didn’t activate prior to the autopsy—the coffin had been pressurized and sealed to preserve evidence.

He tapped the play icon and the video resumed. Standing over the body of Amber Carson was a man who spoke into the hanging microphone, identifying himself as Dr. Harvey Palfrey. He gave the particulars of her name and date of birth, while across the room, a sad-faced man Bolan recognized as Senator William Carson stood and watched. Next to him, a Secret Service agent stared at nothing, while occasionally speaking into his wrist microphone to update the other agents that were undoubtedly outside the room. Reading from a sheet of notes, Palfrey gave the findings of the already completed toxicology report and the rape kit.

Bolan felt a thread of anger burn in his stomach. Amber Carson had been young, beautiful and well educated, with a world of opportunity in front of her. She should have lived a long, full life. Now she was dead—raped and murdered by some thug. He also felt badly for Dr. Palfrey. As one of the handful of physicians at Bethesda Naval Hospital who regularly served members of Congress, it was his unfortunate task to conduct the autopsy. Under normal circumstances, performing an autopsy on a young person was undoubtedly unpleasant; with Senator William Carson watching as he did so, would have made any doctor tense.

Bolan froze the video on Carson’s face. The poor man obviously hadn’t slept in several days, and it was a little strange that he’d be present for the autopsy itself. Still, he was a grieving father, and a powerful Senator, so if he’d made an issue of being there, even Dr. Palfrey couldn’t rightly gainsay him. He started the video once more and listened as Palfrey asked the senator again if he would consider waiting outside. Carson frowned and shook his head.

“Please, Senator,” Dr. Palfrey said. “I understand—”

“Enough!” he snapped. “I want the answers. Nothing is going to happen unless I am around to see it. I wasn’t there when she died, but I sure as hell am going to find out who did this and make them pay. You and I both know that nothing in Washington is a coincidence, and I don’t believe that the daughter of a senator is killed this way by happen-stance.”

Senator Carson moved forward and instinctively Palfrey moved back. Bolan watched as Carson stretched out his hand and stroked his daughter’s blond hair. The pain seemed to almost overwhelm him as he leaned on the table with his other hand. The room stayed silent for another minute. Palfrey finally broke the silence by clearing his throat. The senator straightened and turned on his heel to return to his place next to the Secret Service agent.

“Get on with it. The sooner you’re finished, the sooner we can have the full findings. I flew to Jamaica to pick up her body, and I will stand by her until she is properly laid to rest. It is…it is the least I can offer her until the raping, murderous son of a bitch who did this to her can be brought to justice.”

The doctor’s shoulders slumped in defeat, but he nodded and resumed his position next to the table.

Not knowing the man, Bolan couldn’t make a guess as to Carson’s motivations, but he was obviously obsessed with knowing everything—and if everything was horrible and disturbing, it would likely only further fuel his rage and insistence on justice.

Palfrey turned his attention to the body on the table and lowered the boom microphone, then selected a scalpel from the tray next to him. Lifting up the vital-statistics card, he started the official recording, giving Amber’s name and statistics, then turned to the body. “Beginning the initial incision, a standard Y cut to prepare the chest and abdominal cavities.”

He worked quickly, speaking his findings into the microphone as he went. An assistant stood nearby, making notes and moving in clean containers for the organs when they were needed. Carson and the Secret Service agent stood silently, flinching only when they used a small saw to get past the rib cage. The doctor examined and removed Amber’s lungs, kidneys, spleen and liver, noting that each appeared healthy and undamaged.

“Moving on to the intestinal tract and the stomach,” Palfrey said. He made another incision, angling the cut slightly to avoid slicing open the stomach until he’d removed it from the abdominal cavity. “The appearance of the stomach organ is—” he started to say, then stopped. “Did anyone else hear that?” he asked.

Bolan could detect a barely audible high-pitched whine, and he saw the Secret Service agent begin to move.

Then the stomach exploded in Palfrey’s hands, and he screamed in agony. The video captured the flash of powder-filled light and then stopped.

“Damn,” Bolan muttered, knowing that the attack was not only vicious, but required genuine imagination and intelligence. He closed the file and finished packing. He had a flight to catch and some very bad men to track down and bring to justice.