The Chameleon Factor

“Good to see you, Hal,” the President replied. “We have a situation.”

“So I gathered, sir. Can it wait until I arrive? I’m already en route to D.C. ETA, twenty minutes.”

“Sorry,” the President said, frowning. “This cannot wait, and you have to turn back.”

Return to the Farm? “This relay is secure, sir,” Brognola reminded him respectfully.

“For now, yes.”

The President reclined in his chair and lifted a sheet of paper edged with red stripes. Even as he held it, the paper turned brownish where his fingers rested. Brognola scowled at that. A level-ten report, for the President only. This was big.

“It’s called Chameleon,” the President said, putting the paper down, “a brand-new kind of jamming field that blocks or interferes with about ninety-five percent of all modulated electromagnetism.”

Brognola raised an eyebrow at that but said nothing. Ninety-five percent? That would scramble cell phones, and even landline phones, and make radar absolutely dead. Doppler or focused radar, even proximity fuses on warheads might not work. It would be the ultimate stealth shield. Tanks, planes, hell, even aircraft carriers would become as close to invisible as modern science would allow. In the hands of terrorists, they could fly cargo planes of troops or bombs anywhere and America would never know until it was far too late.

Lifting a cup of coffee into view, the President took a sip and waited while Brognola worked out the details.

“How close are they to completion?” the big Fed demanded.

“This morning was the final test.”

“And what went wrong?”

“Everything, my friend,” the Man said honestly. “The missiles being fired from a U.S. Navy corvette in the bay first took out the control bunker, killing the inventor, a Professor Torge Johnson, and destroying every working prototype of the device.”

Brognola bit back a curse.

The President leaned closer. “We received a piece of a phone call from Congresswoman Margaret Anders at the sight, then she went off the air. A recon flight from Fairbanks confirmed that the second wave of Delta Four missiles hit the grandstand, killing a couple of hundred people, mostly politicians and high-ranking soldiers.”

“Could still just be an accident,” Brognola said slowly, then he noticed the hard expression in the other man’s face. “There’s more.”

“Unfortunately, yes. The third wave of Delta Four missiles went straight past the firing range and curved around a mountain to strike and destroy the laboratory where the Chameleon had been invented.”

Brognola opened his mouth to say “Impossible,” then closed it with a snap. “So we have a traitor who planted homing beacons for the missiles.”

“That is also the opinion of the Joint Chiefs.”

“What was the breakage?” Brognola asked, frowning.

The President drummed his fingers on the desk. “Total. The plans are gone, the working prototypes are gone, everything is gone, and everybody involved with the project is dead.”

“What about the off-site backup files?” Brognola demanded gruffly.

“Unknown,” the President replied, hunching his shoulders. “Everybody who knew their location is now dead.”

“Everybody?”

“Yes.”

“Shit.”

“Agreed. We have been compromised on a major level, and by a professional. As of this moment, our unknown thief owns a billion dollars’ worth of American technology.”

“And there’s no way to re-create the work?”

“Over time, of course. Eight months, maybe a year. But by then…”

Brognola felt a gnawing sensation in his stomach. A year from now the world could be in total chaos, or worse, total warfare. Unlimited smuggling, unstoppable hijackers, it was a nightmare!

“What are the various agencies doing so far?”

“Nothing. This is a White Project. Level Ten personnel only. As far as the FBI and the media are concerned, there was a gas explosion at a military warehouse in Alaska.”

“Orders, sir?” Brognola asked grimly.

“Search the wreckage, find out who stole the Chameleon, or if nobody did and this is all a gigantic coincidence. They do happen sometimes.”

Yeah, right. “If it isn’t a coincidence, sir?”

The President leaned closer to the screen. “Then get the Chameleon back at any cost. Get it back, Hal. And if that proves impossible, then destroy the prototype.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me. I’ll eat that billion dollars, and another billion on top, if that is what it takes to keep the U.S. safe. The Chameleon is dangerous enough in our hands. But at least we have checks and balances in our government. However, under the control of a terrorist group, or rogue nation, we’d never even know what was happening until Manhattan, L.A. or even D.C. was blown off the face of the map with millions dead.”

“Understood, sir,” Hal said in a strained voice, and then bluntly added, “What a shitstorm!”

The President gave a strained smile. “You took the words right out of my mouth, my friend.”

A light flashed on the briefcase computer.

“You should have the full files and aerial reconnaissance photos by now,” the President announced, doing something off-screen.

“Just arrived, sir. Standard decoding?”

“Yes. Move fast on this one, Hal. We’re completely in the dark so far, and that light at the end of the tunnel isn’t daylight, but a goddamn express train coming down our throats.”

With a swirl of colors, the link was broken and the screen returned to its neutral silver sheen.

Closing the briefcase, Brognola cupped a hand to his mouth and loudly shouted, “Hey, pilot!”

In the wide cockpit, the blacksuit glanced over a shoulder. “Yes, sir!”

“Turn around. We’re going back.”

The man arched an eyebrow in surprise, but said nothing and tilted the stick in his grip. The pitch of the blades overhead changed, and the Black Hawk started to swing around in the sky.

As the sun reappeared on the other side of the gunship, Brognola opened his briefcase once more and started to access a secret satellite.

Within a few minutes, the screen cleared to show a blond-haired woman leaning forward on a desk. She was dressed in a simple blue workshirt, with no jewelry.

“Forget your wallet, Hal?” asked Barbara Price, mission controller at Stony Man Farm.

“Wish I had. Call them back,” Brognola ordered. “Both teams. Call everybody back. We’ve got trouble.”

CHAPTER TWO

Cassatt Federal Penitentiary, South Carolina

Soft and low, the mournful call of a freight train moved through the night as armed guards in the high watchtowers closely scrutinized the arrival of an armored bus at the front gate of the Cassatt Federal Penitentiary.

The first line of guards checked the driver’s ID and did an EM scan of the vehicle, then finally passed it through the outer, thirty-foot-tall fence. Once the bus was trapped between the first and second fences, more guards arrived with dogs to sniff for explosives or narcotics before the transport rolled through the inner, electric fence and finally onto a featureless parking lot. There were no concrete bumpers or ornamental bushes for anyone to take cover behind. Just a flat expanse of bare asphalt studded with tiny reflecting squares set into the tar and gravel, range finders to assist the sharpshooters in the watchtowers.

In an ocean of bright lights, there came the sound of pumping hydraulic, and the huge ferruled doors on the Cassatt Federal Penitentiary began to ponderously cycle open.

With the close of Alcatraz so many years ago, there had been an urgent need for new prisons to hold the worst of the worst, the mad-dog killers and terrorists that the courts had condemned to death. With nothing to lose, the prisoners would use any opportunity to escape, and since a person could be executed only once, taking another human life meant less than nothing to the cold-blooded psychopaths. Hence the creation of the Bureau of Prisons’ supermax facilities.

Cassatt had been the first supermaximum prison created in the country, level six, absolute security. Yet there had proved to be men that even this ultralockdown couldn’t contain, and so there was forged the prison within a prison, the violent-control ward. Boxcar-style doors permitted no communication to other prisoners, video surveillance was twenty-four hours and there were no windows. Each prisoner had his own private cell. There was no mixing with other prisoners for his entire stay. Guards in the lotus-style control room could electronically open the cell door, and the unescorted prisoner would walk down empty corridors for his shower three times a week. There was no human contact with these violent repeat offenders. Ever.

Yet the ingenuity of the criminals was incredible. Staples were attached to the tips of Q-Tips and blown through tubes made of rolled paper to strike passing guards. Dozens of makeshift weapons were created out of seemingly innocuous items, and more than one guard lost an eye, or worse, to the ingenious prisoners until full-coverage body armor and goggles became standard dress uniform.

Cassatt supermax, and its fellow penitentiaries, weren’t ICCs, correctional institutes trying to correct the career of the professional criminal. The supermax was the end of the line, the edge of the world, and damn few who ever went in ever came out again, except in a black body bag.

Security was tighter here to keep the prisoners in than it was at Cheyenne Mountain, where the purpose was to keep invading enemy armies out. The land beyond the perimeter of the second fence was barren and dead, a former uranium milling dumpsite that the EPA was still trying to clean after forty years. There was no grass to hide in, no weeds in the muddy creek, no trees whose branches could be used as a club. Additional sentry posts stood between the deadlands around the penitentiary and the city of Cassatt, forcing any escapee into the slag heaps of the toxic waste dump. A hundred men had tried to escape from Cassatt supermax over the years. Ten made it to the gate alive.

Six got over the first fence, and two got over the second fence only to be blown apart by the radio-controlled land mines.

The infamous Ossing of New York and Leavenworth of Kansas were considered luxurious country clubs compared to Cassatt supermax. But there were even more secure facilities now: Pelican, Logan and the infamous Florence in Colorado. Many of the inmates were insane, but no asylum ever built could hold the killers, and the violent-control ward of a supermax was the only chance of containing these enemies of civilization.

Many people believed it would be much more humane to simply kill the prisoners than send them to the steel-caged hell of Cassatt. Every prisoner and guard of the supermax penitentiary agreed, except for four special inmates.

As the final lock on the armored front gate was released with a hydraulic hiss, additional lights glowed into blinding brilliance, illuminating the parking lot and the grounds beyond for more than a mile. On the stone walls, searchlights swept the sky looking for small planes or helicopters. It was unknown who would want these four men free, but the list of people who wanted them dead at any cost was a mile long. Although they would be executed some day by the state, that wasn’t the right of any individual, and as much as they hated the idea the Cassatt guards were ready to die in order to protect the criminals from any vigilante justice, no more how much it was deserved.

Ten guards in full combat gear stepped from the armored bus and waited while twenty men in full riot gear walked four prisoners through the doorway of the penitentiary. The inmates were dressed in bright orange prison jumpsuits, heavy shackles on their legs, handcuffs on their wrists, and a black box encased their hands and forearms to forestall any attempt to pick the lock on the cuffs. The cadre of guards was fully armed, and carried military-grade stun guns and bulletproof plastic shields studded with electric probes. One touch and a bull gorilla would drop unconscious from the terrible pain.

“Hold it right there,” an amplified voice called from above, and everybody waited a few moments for the wall guards to decide that the area was safe for everybody to continue.

“Okay, move along,” the voice commanded.

Circling widely past the four men, a guard lifted his face mask and passed over a sheaf of papers to the colonel from the waiting bus. Blue smoke puffed from the double tailpipes under the chassis and the two additional exhaust vents on the roof, every opening covered with a steel grille to prevent the insertion of an item to clog the exhaust and choke the engine. The windows were double sheets of Plexiglas separated by a lattice of steel bars, and the only door was three inches thick.

“Here are their papers,” the lieutenant said, offering a file folder. “Transport orders for prisoners 49724, 97841 and 66782.”

The USP colonel holding a clipboard scowled at the four men standing quietly in the evening chill. The cool night wind was ruffling the thin cloth of their loose jumpsuits. In the clear overhead lights, the four were haggard and thin faced. Heavy scarring marred their faces from constant fighting in the yard of their previous prison. Their long hair was slicked down, their pointy beards oily with liquid soap. The bright lights seemed to be bothering their eyes, but then they may not have seen sunlight for months.

Then one of them looked the colonel in the face and he felt a chill run down his spine. If the rumors were even half-true, these guys were actually too dangerous to let loose in the general population of even a level-five-security penitentiary. The transfer papers on his clipboard said that in their previous place of incarceration they had beaten another prisoner to death and eaten parts of the corpse before the guards could get into their cell. They had jimmied the lock somehow to give them enough time. Some bleeding-heart liberal lawyers wanted them sent to an insane asylum for treatment, which was exactly what they’d been hoping for. But these men would blow out of any hospital in about an hour, leaving a trail of dead doctors and nurses behind. Thank God somebody in the Justice Department was paying attention for once and was moving these psychopaths to the new supermax in Florence, Colorado, the brand-new level-seven facility. A prisoner escaping from that underground facility would face a fifty-mile trek through scored earth and bare rock with helicopter gunships on him every step of the way. It was as close to being thrown off the planet as anybody would ever get. The new Devil’s Island, and these bastards would be the reigning devils once they arrived.

“So this is them, huh?” he said in disdain. “So this is the last remaining members of the terrible Black Vipers. Big deal.”

The Cassatt lieutenant stared at the shivering men in frank hatred. “Don’t be fooled, pal. Give them an inch and you die. It’s that fucking simple. You know that movie about the cannibal guy who escapes wearing a guard’s face as a mask?”

“Sure. Good flick.”

He gave a thumb jerk. “It was based on these men.”

“Yeah? Well, Manson looked tougher,” the colonel muttered, checking over the paperwork.

Suddenly the first prisoner started to slump to the ground, and the lieutenant jumped away just in time as the fourth prisoner swung his boxed hands at the guard’s head. The steel trap passed by so close he felt the breeze of its passage and knew that he missed having his skull crushed by a fraction of a second. Christ, they were fast!

Without pause, the guards converged on the men with the stun shields and rib-spreader batons, the electric sparks crackling over the terrorists as they were driven to the ground into submission. Nobody made any move to stop the beating.

“Been wanting to do that for quite a while,” a guard snarled, panting from the exertion.

A man alongside hawked juicily and then spit on the sprawled bodies. “Damn Feds should have blown their heads off when they were captured. Keeping these assholes alive is like sticking your dick in a working blender.”

“The chair ain’t good enough for them,” another snarled. “I got a brother in the Navy. Ya know how many of our guys these bastards aced with their trick bombs?”

“Don’t let the warden hear you say that,” another warned, glancing at the wall guards hidden behind their bright lights and stone walls. “Or you’re out on your ass. This state doesn’t execute prisoners anymore. It’s not cost effective.”

“Cost effective? And what about justice?”

The smaller man shrugged. “So move to Texas.”

“Check the shackles before removing the black boxes,” the lieutenant directed.

“And you,” he added to the colonel, “constantly keep your weapons on these prisoners. If they make another move, kill them.”

Loosening the flap covering his holstered 10 mm Falcon, the colonel nodded.

Weakened by the stun shields, the prisoners didn’t make a second try for freedom and submitted meekly to being herded onto the armored transport and chained in place. This fooled nobody, and the bus guards were dripping sweat from the tension until the four were shackled into different chairs of bare steel bolted and welded directly to the armored floor of the transport vehicle.

“Good luck,” the lieutenant said as the armored door closed.

The colonel flipped the prison guard a salute as the armored door cycled shut and locked tight.

“And good riddance,” another prison guard muttered softly, removing his protective helmet. “I hope the bus crashes and the prisoners burn alive.”

“Wishful thinking,” the lieutenant said coldly. “Damn the politicians and lawyers. Men like that should just be hung. Cost effective or not, it sure as hell makes it hard for them to kill again once their neck is stretched.”

“Amen to that, chief,” another man agreed.

“I wonder why the government kept them alive,” another muttered. “It’s not like they could be used for anything.”

Throwing back his head, the lieutenant laughed for the first time in days. “And who the hell would have enough balls to try and use the goddamn Black Vipers for anything?”

“Come on,” a corporal said on a sigh, running a gloved across his sweaty face. “Let’s get out of this gear and go have a beer.”

Turning to face the prison, the guards tested their equipment once more to make sure everything was in proper working condition, then marched back into the sterilized confines of Cassatt Federal Penitentiary. High on the walls overhead, the unseen guards watched their every move purely out of habit. The rifle marksmen watched everything and trusted nobody. That was the job, and they were damn good at it.

OVER TWO MILES away, far outside the circle of light around the supermax facility, three men with Starlite scopes stood alongside a battered gray SUV, the license plates obscured with mud permanently glued into place.

In unison, Able Team tracked the progress of the USP transport along Highway 37 as it headed due south away from the supermax facility. The man in front was blond, with a crew cut and ice-blue eyes. The next was stocky with wavy salt-and-pepper hair, and the third had dark brown hair and a full mustache. Swaying slightly in the evening breeze so that they wouldn’t stand out from the rustling forest, all three of the men were wearing camouflage-colored jumpsuits designed for urban warfare.

“Stony One to Stone Two,” Carl “Ironman” Lyons said into his throat mike, Starlite still pressed to his face. “We are in position. Copy?”

“Roger that, Stony One,” a gruff voice replied in the earphone. “We rendezvous at Point Charlie in one hour. Over.”

“Ten-four,” Lyons replied. “See you there. Over and out.”

“Don’t be late,” Rosario “The Politician” Blancanales said in the background.

Climbing into the SUV, Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz grimly added, “If they are, then we’re dead, chum.”

AFTER AN HOUR of driving, the countryside of South Carolina began to change from gray grassland into a plush forest of tall trees and countless small brooks. Shackled to their metal seats, the four members of the Black Vipers sneered at the beauty of nature as if they preferred the concrete corridors of the federal jail.

Glancing about to see if anybody was watching, the largest and most heavily muscled of the Vipers jerked hard on the chain holding his wrists to the bolt in the floor, and instantly a gas vent hidden in the ceiling sprayed him with Mace. The terrorist flopped in his seat fighting for breath, his eyes and tongue almost popping from his flushed face.

“That’s warning number one,” the colonel said from the front of the bus, a wall of thick bars separating the two sections of the vehicle. “Warning number two is a lot worse. So behave, convict, or else.”

“I am a political prisoner of the American government,” the tallest member of the four said. “Once more I beg for asylum from the overlords of Washington.”

“Oh, shut up,” a younger guard said, jacking the slide of the sleek black Neostead shotgun.

Designed by the new democratic government of South Africa, the high-tech alleysweeper had two tubular magazines and could be switched from one to the other by the flick of a selector switch. For this journey, the guard had the first magazine filled with stun bags, the other mag filled with fléchette rounds that could reduce a man into hamburger in under a heartbeat.

The terrorist opened his mouth to speak again, then decided against it and leaned back in his hard chair, his thoughts seething with revenge.

“What the hell?” the guard riding alongside the driver said with a puzzled expression. Frantically, he began to work the controls of the built-in radio switching frequencies.

“Something’s wrong,” he said swiftly over a shoulder. “We’ve lost contact with USP HQ, and every channel is filled with hash.”

“Jamming?” the colonel demanded, releasing the flap over his side arm. The ivory handle of a Colt .45 pistol was revealed, a line of deep gouges in the grip appearing to be hand-carved notches.

The guard in the front passenger seat looked up with a pale face. “Confirmed, I can’t get a bounce signal off a repeater tower. The airwaves are being jammed,” he replied succinctly. “But whether or not it’s for us, or some natural phenomenon, I have no idea.”

The guards were silent as the armored bus jounced slightly onto a picturesque stone bridge.

“Sir, if this is an escape attempt…” the younger guard started to say, flicking the switch to the second magazine of fléchette rounds.

“Don’t kill them yet, Corporal,” the colonel said, pulling the Colt and jacking the slide.

Going to the front windshield, he looked out into the starry night. “Maybe this is just another weird solar storm like last year that knocked out all of the satellites for a day. Could be anything, or nothing. I’m not going to ace these men just because we’re not sure.”

In tense silence, the armored bus rolled off the bridge and onto the paved roadway once more. A split second later the night was split apart by a violent thunderclap. Fiery light blossomed from behind the transport, and rocks began pounding the bus in a deafening rain of debris.

“Son of a bitch!” the driver cried as the flaming shrapnel washed over the armored transport, breaking out the rear windows. “The bridge is gone! Completely gone!”

“That bomb missed us by a heartbeat,” the colonel growled. “Get us the hell out of here, man!”

The driver slammed onto the gas, and the big Detroit engine roared with power for only a single moment. Then the vehicle crashed hard, to a halt the front windows exploding out of the frame. Every loose item went flying, the prisoners were thrown forward in their seats, setting off more Mace, and the guards tumbled to the floor in a loose pile of bodies.

It took a few minutes for the pinned driver to regain his composure and pull a knife from his belt to stab the airbag pinning him tightly into place. As the metallic cushion deflated, the USP guard gasped at the sight of a smashed pile of fallen trees blocking the forest road, the trunks painted black to render the barricade invisible. Damn! The bridge had to have been blown just to make them go faster and slam hard enough into the barrier and cripple the bus. That was a trap!