Читать книгу Radical Edge - Don Pendleton - Страница 13

CHAPTER FIVE

He woke to find himself staring into Jack Grimaldi’s face.

“Somehow,” Bolan said, “I always knew it would end like this.”

“You aren’t dead, Sarge,” Grimaldi said, grinning widely. “And I’m sure no angel.”

“I was thinking just the opposite.”

“You must be feeling better if you can make bad jokes. Here. Take a sip of this.” Grimaldi handed him a bottle of water and helped the soldier to sit up. Bolan realized they were in the back of the Pave Hawk. He had been lying on an olive-drab Army blanket between the bolted seats.

Bolan took a long sip of water and then looked down at his hands. Grimaldi had sprayed them with translucent, liquid skin. His palms were numb.

“Switch that to your left hand,” Grimaldi said, “and give me your right.” Bolan extended his right hand, which his friend turned palm-up and began dressing with light gauze.

“How long was I out?” the soldier asked.

“Not long enough,” Grimaldi said. “I gave you some painkillers that will be wearing off soon. There’s more in the medical kit.” He gestured for him to switch hands, then began the process of wrapping his left palm. Bolan sipped more water. It wasn’t cold, but was delicious anyway. His throat felt raw.

He looked out past the unmanned door gun of the Pave Hawk. The chopper sat in the center of a broad expanse of scrub and sun-baked dirt on what he took to be the outskirts of Alamogordo.

“You’re in rough shape, Sarge,” Grimaldi said. “Nothing that won’t get better provided you take a couple weeks’ vacation.”

“I’ll get right on that,” Bolan told him.

“Right.” Grimaldi shook his head. “I shot you up with some of the pain amps in your kit. As much as I dared. It’s going to wear off and you’re going to hurt again. You’ll need to stay on top of that.”

“I can manage.”

“We’ve got a blacksuit squad on-site cleaning up the damage,” Grimaldi said, “and running interference with the Alamogordo PD, who’re hopping mad. All but the two cops whose lives you saved. They’ve been debriefed.”

“Somebody beat us to the safe house. Killed everyone inside.”

“Yeah.” Grimaldi nodded. “The officers kept asking me if you did that. Although I don’t think they really believed it.”

“The house?”

“A complete loss,” Grimaldi said. “The bomb started a fire that burned the place to the ground. You’re lucky. It could easily have killed you and your two new friends.”

“The Chevy,” Bolan said. “Getaway car. Two men. One automatic weapon. They were with whoever hit the safe house.”

“Uh…yeah.” Grimaldi hesitated. “About that. Both men and the car were burned to a crisp. Any clues we might have found inside…well. You get the idea. We’ve had the bodies routed to a facility we control, for autopsy, but running their dental records will take time.”

“Yeah.” Bolan shook his head.

“Here,” Grimaldi said. “I made you something.” He handed over a pair of leather gloves. Bolan held them up curiously. He realized that the fingers had been removed.

Grimaldi held up a pair of medical shears. “These are yours, too.” He put them back in the kit. “Those gloves are sized for my mitts, which are a little smaller than yours. Without fingers, though, it won’t matter.”

Bolan pulled the leather shells on over his hands. They fit snugly but weren’t too tight. The cut-up gloves covered his dressings and protected his scorched palms.

“Thanks, Jack,” Bolan said. “You know you’ve got a pretty decent bedside manner?”

“No, I don’t,” Grimaldi replied. “I’m about to spoil your mood. You want the bad news or the bad news?”

Bolan said nothing. He raised an eyebrow.

“We’ve got a big problem,” Grimaldi explained. He produced a replacement earbud and his own secure satellite phone. “I can use the transmitter here in the chopper to relay to the Farm,” he said. “Use my phone. The earbud is from the spares here.”

“The problem?” Bolan prompted.

“Idle hands,” Grimaldi said. “You didn’t find Shane Hyde at the second target house,” he said. “I know, because I’ve been talking to the Farm while you were out. Shane Hyde and his Twelfth Reich boys have been very busy. If he was here, he was long gone before you got yourself blown up.”

“Doing what?”

“I’ll let Barb tell you that,” Grimaldi said. He pointed to the earbud. “You’re hooked in through the chopper.”

Bolan put the device in his ear. “Striker here.”

“Striker?” Barbara Price sounded worried. “Jack says you’ve sustained some injuries. If you need to come in—”

“Negative,” Bolan said. “I’m all right, Barb.”

She paused. “All right. Striker, what I have for you is significant. Bear and his computer team have identified, through a series of account transfers and our internet chatter algorithms, a hijacking perpetrated by Twelfth Reich.”

“Perpetrated as in already conducted?” Bolan asked.

“As in happening right now,” Price said. “We’ve checked it at the source and we’re confident it’s ongoing. So is the domestic intelligence network. Right now Hal is sitting on DHS and the Bureau, who are gearing up to take action. Hal held out for confirmation from you. He’s pushing hard to get you in on this.”

“What is it?”

“Do you remember O’Connor Petroleum Prospecting?”

“Yeah,” Bolan said. “The oil outfit that had some trouble in Honduras when the dictator there nationalized their equipment and took some of their employees hostage.”

“O’Connor has finagled a deal with the relatively new government of Honduras, the powers that are in Guatemala, and the new, moderate regime in Mexico. They’re running a pipeline from newly discovered oil fields in Honduras to a refinery in Mexico, from which they’ll ship oil across the Texas border and around the country. This energy initiative is very important to the Man and, as you know only too well, is the result of some recently resolved political turbulence in all three nations.”

“Yeah,” Bolan said. “That sounds vaguely familiar.”

“We have identified a series of account transfers, among other things, that helped us identify some suspicious industrial purchases of fertilizer. There were multiple indicators that Bear, on his own time, cross-checked. The pattern emerged slowly—too slowly for us to stop it before it could begin.”

“Stop what, Barb?” Bolan asked.

“Twelfth Reich’s people have hijacked an OPP tanker train,” Price said. “We believe they’ve packed it with ammonium nitrate fuel oil bombs—ANFOs—in cargo cars attached to the tankers. They’re heading for an enormous O’Connor tank field outside of Dallas, one of the largest of its type in North America. The facility is adjacent to a kind of tent city, an encampment that has risen to serve Mexican immigrants working for O’Connor. That’s the target. Twelfth Reich wants to kill those people.”

Bolan frowned. “Likely casualties?”

“Potentially thousands,” Price said.

“Why not evacuate them?”

“These are migrant workers, Striker,” Price explained, “many of them in the country illegally. We can’t prove it, of course. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has swept the area twice now, and each time, the workers return as soon as they find gaps in the security cordon. It’s just too large an area for the INS to patrol. By the time we got enough men in there to link arms and surround it, the train would have arrived. The other problem is that, even if there is no loss of life among the workers, destroying that tank field will deal a serious blow to our economy. The waivers and other incentives needed to get all this moving with OPP were delivered because the nation needs that oil, Striker. Losing that infrastructure will wound us badly.

“The train will cross the border near Piedras Negras,” Price went on. “It will then follow a route through San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth. The terrorists could choose to blow the train themselves at any point, but Hyde and his fanatics don’t just want to destroy a train. They want that tank field. This is their ticket to al Qaeda status, as they see it. Their death blow to the hated American regime. They want to get where they’re going.”

“So we have to stop them before they get there.”

“That’s the problem,” Price said. “We can’t erect a barrier. There’s no time for that, and anything solid enough to halt the train will blow it. Blow the track itself, derail the train, and we risk creating an environmental disaster that will kill whoever’s unlucky enough to be nearby. Strike it from the air, it explodes, taking everyone aboard with it—and that’s if you can reach it. We have intelligence indicating Hyde may be in possession of antiaircraft weaponry, purchased from the Iranians.”

“Not good.”

“It’s worse. This train is one long bomb, but it’s a bomb with hostages aboard.”

“How many?”

“There’s a very special passenger car attached, near the engine,” Price said. “O’Connor, in an effort to protect its employees from the threat of kidnapping, to avoid future occurrences of its Honduras experience, has equipped the train with an armored personnel compartment. There are close to forty employees aboard, all of them O’Connor executives, returning to Dallas from an on-site conference across the border. They attended the opening of the new Mexican refinery, apparently.”

“Those people might already be dead, Barb,” Bolan said.

“They aren’t,” she replied. “The train’s security passenger car is hardened to external assault and has self-contained communications gear. We’ve verified that OPP is in contact with its employees. The terrorists can’t get in, not without damaging the train so badly they risk derailing it themselves. But those people cannot get out, either. Not with Hyde and his skinheads waiting to take them hostage the moment they do.”

“Well,” Bolan said. “Isn’t that a pretty picture.”

“It doesn’t get much more complicated,” Price admitted.

“Not with an unknown element killing our leads,” he muttered. “Jack apprised you of the situation?”

“Fully,” Price answered. “He said you recovered some .40-caliber casings on the scene before the evidence burned?”

Bolan patted himself down.

Grimaldi smiled and waved, giving Bolan the A-OK sign. “I’ve arranged for them to be couriered,” the pilot interjected.

“We’ll run them, for whatever good that will do,” Price said. “I’ll let you know.”

“So what’s the play?” Bolan asked.

“The Bureau and the Department of Homeland Security are running a joint operation outside San Antonio,” Price said. “Hal has been leaning on everyone involved, hard, to get you in on it. There’s been some resistance, but you know how these tugs-of-war usually play out.”

“Hal gets what he wants.”

“Most of the time. It doesn’t hurt to have the Man backing your play.”

“Any chance of getting some backup on this? People I can trust?”

“We’re spread thin covering potential ancillary targets,” Price said. “We believe Twelfth Reich may attempt, through satellite cells, to conduct parallel attacks while we’re occupied dealing with the train hijacking. Able and Phoenix are deployed here and abroad, for some of Hyde’s European allies may be involved. We’ve got blacksuit contingents covering other high-profile target areas. We’re just spread too thin, Striker. Except for our allies in Homeland Security and the FBI, you’re it.” Able Team and Phoenix Force were the Farm’s other field operatives.

“Understood,” Bolan said. “When do we go?”

“As soon as you signal Jack you’re ready to fly.”

“Then I’m ready to fly.” He looked at Grimaldi, stuck up one finger and rotated his hand in the universal “spinning rotors” sign.

“Striker…” Price said.

“Yeah?”

“You’re sure you’re up to this.” It wasn’t a question. The concern in her voice was obvious even through the scrambled, filtered and reprocessed connection.

“I’ll manage,” Bolan said. More quietly, he added, “Like I always do. I’ll see you soon.”

There was a pause. Finally, Price said, “Good hunting, Striker. Again. Out.”

Bolan, forcing himself to move without grimacing, pulled a pack from the locker bolted to the floor nearby. He unzipped the gear bag inside and began rifling through it. Grimaldi made a mock show of tapping his foot impatiently as Bolan shrugged out of his web gear, changed out the stiff, bloody and scorched shirt of his blacksuit, and donned his equipment. Then Bolan began to check through his weaponry, only to find it had been cleaned and reloaded. He looked at his friend curiously.

“You were asleep for a while,” Grimaldi said. “I had to keep busy.”

“Idle hands,” Bolan repeated. He smiled. “Thanks, Jack.” He made a cursory review of both of his pistols and the FN P-90, including removing the slide of the Beretta and checking its custom suppressor. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Grimaldi; this was simply long-ingrained habit, the result of years of trusting his life to the weapons he carried. One of the most basic rules of such weaponry was that you never simply trusted a weapon handed to you; you always checked it, for yourself, to make sure.

Grimaldi returned to the cockpit and began the process of firing up the chopper. He restored the in-flight connection, allowing them to speak to each other over the noise of the machine.

Once they were in the air, Bolan closed his eyes, breathed deeply and focused on his limbs. His hands and forearms were still numb, but rapidly warming. The ache that would pervade them could be blunted with painkillers, but these would fog his judgment and reaction time. He would have to err on the side of more pain, more awareness. He accepted as much and shrugged the thought from his mind. There was no point in dwelling on what couldn’t be changed.

Starting with his feet and moving up his legs, he tensed and then relaxed his muscles. As his focus moved up his torso, he rolled his shoulders, working the kinks out, feeling the tightness give way. Years of combat had left him a patchwork of scars and potential recurring stress injuries. The human body simply wasn’t built for the kind of punishment Bolan put himself through. If he allowed himself to dwell on it, he supposed he would have to chalk it up to effort of will. He was, after all, extremely well motivated. What he did, what he asked the men and women of Stony Man Farm to do with him, and what they did of their own will and motivation, wasn’t normal. That of itself was a shame, for a country as great as the United States deserved a citizenry whose every member thought superhuman effort preserving freedom was the norm.

Bolan couldn’t, and never had, faulted any man or woman for not following the path he himself had chosen. Lesser men and women might wrongly conclude that this wasn’t a choice at all; that circumstance, and tragedy, had forced Bolan to do what he did, to fight as he fought. That, of course, was ridiculous. Most men, confronted with the deaths of those they loved, grieved and absorbed the tragedy, soldiered on as best they could in the most benign sense of the word.

The men and women of Stony Man Farm weren’t truly the exception, for deep down, Bolan believed every man and woman had the potential, and the desire, to fight for what he or she valued most. It was simply that the counterterrorists with whom Bolan worked were exceptional, and that was the best way to describe them.

He snapped open the replacement satellite phone that Grimaldi had loaned him. A brief update bar appeared and, when it finished scrolling, the phone’s screen indicated that its new code assignment was STRYKR2. Grimaldi and Price had wasted no time getting him back up and running.

As Bolan watched, the send-receive icon started to blink. Data files began coming in, automatically shunted to a folder on the phone’s desktop, the wallpaper of which was still a graphic of Grimaldi’s choosing: a buxom woman in a red-white-and-blue bathing suit. Despite the grim scenario he faced, Bolan found himself smiling. Some things, he reflected, never changed. Jack Grimaldi was a constant in the universe.

Bolan supposed he was, too.

There were worse things to be.

The data files contained everything the Farm had managed to gather so far on the OPP hijacking. A complete map of the route the train was supposed to take, as well as an overlay indicating the route the Twelfth Reich terrorists intended to use, was included. Bolan called up several photographs taken of the migrant work camp, some of which were overhead shots, obviously taken by satellite. Others were news photographs taken when the camp was first established. Scans of those articles and wire releases were included.

While Grimaldi flew them to the target zone, Bolan read through each file. He never missed an opportunity to familiarize himself with data the Farm supplied. The war he fought wasn’t merely a conflict of guns and explosives, of tooth and claw and steel and fire. It was just as much a game of intelligence. There was no way to tell when a discrete piece of data might provide a crucial, missing puzzle piece; no way to predict when a seemingly unimportant bit of information would help him achieve his short- and long-term combat goals. Whenever possible, he assimilated, and committed to memory, as much of the Farm’s analysis and data as he could.

The schematics for the train and, more importantly, the armored passenger unit, were included. These were of specific interest because of the challenge they represented. He would have to find a way to free the hostages, but depending on the battlefield conditions he faced, would have to do that without killing the very people he was trying to save.

The plans had been sent by OPP. Barbara Price had appended notes to the files, adding that the management of the petroleum prospecting company was apoplectic over this latest turn of events. Bolan thought it bitterly ironic that the very precautions OPP had tried to take to safeguard its personnel—at great expense in customizing an already state-of-the-art train—had made it possible for the hostage situation to come about.

Standard procedure, were the hostages under the direct sway of the terrorists, would be to treat them as already dead, or at least potentially so. As harsh as that might seem to the uninitiated, it actually increased the array of options available for counterterror response. An operation planned with that cold, hard fact as its premise could focus on the most expedient method for neutralizing the terrorists, taking into account the possible rescue of innocents. Once the threat was resolved, any hostages rescued alive would be a bonus.

In the case of the OPP train, the hostages were confirmed alive and likely to remain so. While Hyde and his skinhead scum were doubtless angry to be cut off from their victims, the presence of the OPP employees was serving the same purpose from the terrorists’ perspective. In point of fact, the reality of the train’s passenger compartment served Hyde better than if he had guns to the hostages’ heads. Force response to the hijacking had to take into account the fact that the employees were thus far unharmed and could be released if the train was taken intact. Any action that might damage the train and kill the hostages would be deemed unacceptable…unless and until the conscious, deliberate decision was made to sacrifice those men and women.

Bolan would do whatever was in his power to prevent that from happening. Innocents didn’t die on his watch; not if he could help it. That didn’t mean that bystanders and allies, friends and loved ones, the innocent and the guilty alike, hadn’t died before him and beside him.

He had learned hard lessons; he had made hard choices. More would lie before him before the mission was done.

His thoughts returned to the assault on the second safe house. Knowing who they faced, or why—that was the most challenging aspect of the current hunt. Quantified, defined problems, even big ones, were easy enough to solve, either with force, intelligence, or both. The unknown…that couldn’t be resolved until it was faced, and rarely could it be faced until it was defined.

So. That was the question.

Who did he face, and why?