Читать книгу Shadow Strike - Don Pendleton - Страница 7

PROLOGUE

Northwest Atlantic Ocean

“Remember what happened to the southern United States when that offshore oil rig ruptured?” a man asked, easing an ammunition clip into the receiver of an AK-47 assault rifle. “Now just imagine the same thing happening to every offshore oil ring on the whole planet. It would be…” He fumbled for the correct word.

“Catastrophic,” a woman supplied, working the arming bolt on her own weapon. “But we’re not going to do that to every oil rig in the world, just the ones around the British Isles. Maybe fifty or sixty million will die, not a couple of billion.”

He grinned. “But still, something to think about, eh?”

“Oh, shut up and concentrate on your work,” another man growled, removing the clip from his assault rifle to spray some military lubricant into the receiver.

Flying at maximum speed, three massive C-160 Hercules transport planes maintained a tight formation as they cruised dangerously low over the Atlantic, just below the American coastal radar net.

On the distant horizon a raging squall, a sudden summer storm, churned the ocean in unbridled fury, and choppy waves sprayed the bellies of the huge airplanes with layers of slick moisture that flowed smoothly away from the steady stream of air churned by the powerful Allison engines.

Inside the planes, the low hum of the turboprop engines was a palpable presence among the grim passengers, and conversation was difficult, but not impossible. They were all dressed in loose civilian clothing, totally inappropriate for long-distance air travel, and heavy fur parkas.

“So…was this the first time you ever…you know?” a bald man asked, his voice tight with emotion. There was a bloody bandage on the side of his head where an ear had been, and his fur collar was stained dark red.

“Killed anybody?” a woman replied, her hands busy reloading an AK-47 assault rifle. “Yes, of course.” The curved magazine slid easily into the receiver, and with a jerk of the arming bolt, the deadly weapon was ready for business again.

“First time for me, too,” another man added, disassembling his own weapon to clean the interior.

“Never saw so much blood in my life,” an older man whispered.

“Shut up and concentrate on your work,” the first man growled, irritably touching the bandage. Then he savagely jerked out the clip from his assault rifle and placed it aside.

The entire group had been practicing for the past hour, disassembling an old AK-47, only to put it back together and then take it apart once more in an endless learning ritual. Naturally, all of them were familiar with hunting rifles and such, but nobody had any military training. How could they? Iceland had no army or navy, only a national police force. This bizarre Russian weapon, a combination of a 7.62 mm machine gun and 30 mm grenade launcher, was as foreign to them as the dark side of the moon. As was murder.

Killing for food, they understood. That was part of life. However, taking the life of another human was something horribly new, and most of them looked a little queasy from the recent slaughter. True, it had been necessary, but still extremely disagreeable.

Located at the extreme rear of the lead Hercules, the fifty men and women were jammed uncomfortably between the hydraulic exit ramp and a solid wall of wooden cubes that filled the rest of the huge cargo transport.

Each squat cube was roughly a yard square, and bore no manufacturer logo, designation or shipping label. Nor was there a manifest, customs sticker or duties seal. The identical wooden boxes were completely blank, aside from a few smears of drying blood, an occasional tuft of human hair and the all-pervasive smell of industrial lubricant.

At the front of the plane, only inches away from the colossal mound of crates, was a short flight of metal stairs that led to the flight deck. Underneath the deck was a utilitarian washroom and a small metal room that once had been an ammunition bunker for a twin set of 40 mm Bofors cannons. But for this trip it had been converted into a crude electronics workshop. The noise from the engines was noticeably less at this location, yet the three people clustered in the cramped room hadn’t spoken for hours, ever since hastily leaving the burning warehouse.

“So, is it done yet?” a portly man finally demanded, grabbing the hexagonal barrel of an old-fashioned Webley .445 revolver and breaking open the cylinder to remove the spent shells. He dumped them into a metal waste receptacle, and the brass tinkled musically as it rolled about on the bottom. Though he was a large man, the three-piece silk suit he wore hung loosely from his wide shoulders, and a series of holes cut into his leather belt accommodated a recent dramatic weight loss. On his right wrist was a solid-platinum Rolex watch that shone mirror-bright, while a cheap gold-plated wedding ring gleamed dully on his left hand. Although only middle-aged, he seemed much older, with deep lines around his mouth and eyes, and his curly dark hair was highlighted with wings of gray at the temples.

“Only glaciers can move mountains, Thor,” muttered the slim woman bent over the workbench clamped to the metal wall. Her pale hands moved among the complex circuitry of an electronic device, soldering loose wires into place and attaching computer chips with the innate skill and speed of a surgeon.

“What does that mean?” growled a skinny man attaching a large drum of 12-gauge cartridges to the bottom of a Vepr assault shotgun. The deadly weapon mirrored its new owner, bare-bones and deadly, possessing nothing that wasn’t absolutely necessary to the single goal of eradicating life.

His hair was so pale that he almost appeared bald, and he was painfully clean-shaved, with a small bandage covering a recent nick on his shallow cheek. He was wearing a camouflage-colored military jumpsuit, and one of his boots bulged slightly from a folded straight-razor tucked in the top for dire emergencies.

“It means, Gunnar, that we shouldn’t bother the professor when she’s busy,” Hrafen Thorodensen answered, thumbing a fifth round into the cylinder. With a snap of his wrist, he swung up the barrel and closed the British-made weapon.

Gunnar Eldjarm scowled, resting the Vepr on a shoulder. “You shouldn’t snap a revolver shut like that, Thor. It damages the catch.”

“Only if I do it a lot,” Thorodensen replied. “But with any luck, two days from now I can throw it away and never touch another damn weapon.”

“And if we fail?” Professor Lilja Vilhjalms asked, expertly inserting another circuit board into the rapidly growing maze of electronics.

Midnight-black hair trailed down her back in a thick ponytail that almost reached her trim waist. A pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses dominated her otherwise lovely face.

“If we fail, my dear Lily, then we’ll all be dead, which will achieve the same result,” Thorodensen said, pulling a folding jump seat from the curved wall. “Now, please finish up quickly. We will reach our next target soon.”

“Target?” Vilhjalms asked in a whisper, her hands stopping cold. “But I thought—”

“Yes, yes, we will try to legally purchase the equipment, of course,” Thorodensen interrupted with a curt gesture. “But if there are any complications, then we shall take what we need.”

“At any cost?”

“Yes, at any cost.”

Putting aside the soldering gun, the woman made one last plea for sanity. “Please, Thor, the Americas aren’t our enemy.”

“Wrong,” Eldjarm stated coldly, brushing back his hair. “The friend of my enemy is my enemy.”

Removing a cigar from inside his suit, Thorodensen grunted in somber agreement. He didn’t really care for this new blood-thirsty aspect of his childhood friend, even if it did help in this dirty little war. However, as the old saying went, needs drive as the devil must. Which he always took to mean that, sometimes, in extreme cases, the end actually did justify the means.

Withholding a sigh, Lilja Vilhjalms tactfully said nothing and returned to the arduous task of assembling the sonar scrambler. She didn’t care for the name of their little group, Penumbra, and had no idea if they were on the path of righteousness or damnation. Sadly, there was no other course available. Win or lose, right or wrong, this was their destiny, and revenge was as inevitable as death itself.

Outside the windows, the sky began to darken as the three Hercules raced away from the thunderous storm and slipped into twilight, heading directly into the coming night.