Shadow Strike

“You tell me,” Bolan said, and gave the man the full details of the matter.

“Loki…nope, never heard of them,” Brognola said, massaging his jaw. “That’s the Norse god of mischief, right?”

“Pretty much. Not necessarily evil, just a pain in the ass. Which makes me wonder if the thieves were sending a message with the name.”

“As if they want people to know who stole the mines?” Brognola said with a snort. “I don’t like those implications. Sounds like a suicide message. Maybe it was a mistake.”

“That’s not how I read it, and Loki was good enough to take Mad Mike in his own backyard.”

“Yeah, good point. Amateurs, but not fools.”

Bolan then told him about the Squall.

“The combination of old weapons and advanced technology bothers me. Any idea what they’re planning?”

“Wish I did,” Bolan said. “Hal, are there any known terrorist groups that operate out of Iceland or Greenland?”

“Hell no. Those countries don’t even have armies! They’ve got nothing worth stealing or blowing up. Nothing major, anyway.”

“Then this might be a personal matter.”

“Swell,” Brognola said with a scowl.

“Did you bring the files?” Bolan asked.

“Of course.” The Fed reached inside his flannel shirt to remove a plain white envelope. “A couple of these needed presidential clearance, but the White House owes you big time, so no problem there.”

“Good to know.” Bolan started riffling through the top secret documents. Where his fingers touched the paper, it turned brown. “Damn, all these are dated yesterday. Anything happen within the past couple of hours? Anything in water? Mysterious explosions, ships lost at sea, river tunnel collapse…anything odd like that?”

“Sorry, no,” Brognola said, then frowned. “Wait a minute, yes, there was. Just a couple hours ago a British naval convoy went missing off the Azores, all hands lost.”

“Any reason given?”

“An unexpected storm.”

Finishing his sandwich, Bolan arched an eyebrow. “A summer storm…near the Azores Islands at this time of year?”

“Well, that’s what the prime minister is saying,” Brognola said with a shrug. “Anyway, the British navy went absolutely ape-shit over the sinking, and scrambled two wings of RAF jet fighters out of their base on Gibraltar to sweep the area.”

“Not helicopters?”

“Nope.”

“It’s impossible to rescue drowning sailors in something flying at Mach 3,” Bolan stated, crumpling the paper into a ball and depositing it back into the cooler. “The jets were doing a recon, not a search and rescue.”

“Obviously. Think those stolen mines sank the convoy?”

“Could be.”

A cold breeze blew over the mountains of boulders, carrying the smell of distant plant life mixed with the reek of diesel fumes.

Bolan leaned forward. “Okay, Hal, what was stolen? A member of the royal family, a new type of message decoder, nerve gas or nuclear warheads?”

“Give me a minute.” Pulling out his smartphone, Brognola tapped in a number and held a terse conversation. Then he texted somebody else and made another call.

“They stole gold,” he stated at last.

“Just gold?” Bolan asked.

“A lot of it. According to my contact in MI5, the convoy was carrying a full consignment of refined ore from the Imperial Gold Mines UK down in South Africa.”

“How much gold are we talking about?”

“Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth, maybe more. The Brits aren’t talking. The Reliant was a big ship, and those are very lucrative mines.”

“Damn well guess so.”

“Now, the U.S. Navy had an attack sub in the area patrolling the deep waters, and offered to help with the search and rescue,” Brognola said slowly. “But the British government refused any assistance.”

“On an S and R?” Bolan frowned. “Those jets were looking for the thieves.”

“That would be the logical assumption.”

“Any chance the RAF blew them out of the water?”

“No way. The Pentagon had a Keyhole spy satellite orbit over the area only minutes behind them. If the Brits blew up anything, even a submarine, we would have seen the oil slick and flotsam.”

Furrowing his brow, Bolan said nothing for a few minutes. “Tiffany said that the people who stole his mines used a Hercules transport. A Herc could carry a hell of a lot of bullion. If the terrorists are hauling gold, they’d need more than one. Any reports of a couple of Hercules planes being stolen recently? That would give us someplace to start looking for the thieves.”

“Not that I’ve heard. But if they rented the aircraft, then they wouldn’t be considered missing for days, maybe weeks.”

“That would be the smart move,” Bolan said.

“Striker, this is starting to stink to high heaven of a French stepladder.”

“That possibility occurred to me,” Bolan growled, setting aside the remains of his sandwich.

“Swell.” Brognola sighed, throwing the squashed beer can at the cooler. It hit the plastic rim and bounced inside.

A “stepladder” was an old French police term for a street mugger who used a rock to smash the window of a hardware store, to steal a stepladder to rob a house through a second-story window. He then sold the purloined jewelry to buy enough explosives to blow open a bank vault, and used that cash to bug a truckload of drugs that he then sold for millions to a dealer. Throw a rock and become a millionaire. All it took was guts, brains and a complete lack of morals.

“Did they take anything else from the sunken ships?” Bolan asked.

“If you’re referring to the rods in the nuclear power plant, no, nothing like that,” Brognola said, shaking his head. “The destroyer and frigates were all diesel.”

“Glad to hear it. Any of the crew missing before the convoy left port?”

“Unknown. Think it might be an inside job? You could be right. There have been traitors before, and for a slice of hundreds of millions of bucks…” Brognola’s voice faded away.

“The big question has to be how did the thieves know where to ambush the convoy?” Bolan asked. “The route had to have been secret.”

“Well, once, very long ago, I was assigned to help guard a delivery of gold from the United Kingdom to Fort Knox. Nothing big, about half a ton.” He smiled. “They hid radio transmitters inside the wooden pallets so that the gold could be tracked every step of the way.”

“Any chance the Brits have upgraded their system and now have GPS microdots on their gold?”

“Sure. Probably on the pallets, and hidden inside the gold itself. Try to melt down a bar, and the heat would trigger a micropulse signal. Five minutes later, you’re surrounded by the British army, asking for their property back.”

“Unless you melt it inside a Faraday cage to block the signal.”

“Think Loki is that smart?”

“They have been so far,” Bolan said. “Now, I’m willing to bet that the British MI5 are already checking on the company that manufactured the GPS dots, to see if anybody called in sick today, or recently died in a car crash.”

“Nothing we can do to help them there,” Brognola stated honestly. “And if Loki can safely remove the tracking dots, then they can sell the bars anywhere, on street corners if they like.”

Bolan scowled. “Not without the British being informed. I’d be very surprised if they don’t already have a huge reward posted across the internet for any information about the thieves, no questions asked.”

“True. Which means Loki will have to sell it on the black market, and get a fraction of the real value.”

“One or two hundred million is still a boatload of cash.”

“Damn straight. Okay, where can they go? Switzerland?”

“No, the Swiss banks are riddled with spies working for Interpol these days,” Bolan stated, leaning back in the chair. “And in spite of all the electronic banking done, the need for hard commodities like gold and silver is very much alive and well. The biggest underground banks are in Ecuador, Pakistan and China.”

“Ecuador?”

“It’s the Switzerland of South America.”

Brognola almost smiled. The man knew the damnedest things. “Okay, but that’s only for trading small amounts of gold, right? Where could Loki go to unload so much gold in one shot?”

“Without getting a half-ounce of hot British lead in the back of their heads?” Bolan said. He didn’t speak for a moment, his mind filled with a swirling hurricane of half-truths, rumors and outright lies, about the hidden world of criminal finance. Stealing the gold was only half the job. Now Loki would have to convert it into something usable, and more importantly, untraceable.

Propping his fingertips together, Brognola patiently waited.

“Barcelona,” Bolan said at last, rising from the chair and starting to pack away the campsite. “But I’m heading for Albania.”

“Why?” Brognola demanded in confusion.

“To talk to the people who actually own the secret banks of Spain,” he told his old friend.

CHAPTER THREE

Barcelona, Spain

The blazing sun shone mercilessly on the bustling metropolis of Barcelona. The streets and sidewalks seeming to reflect the waves of searing heat like parabolic mirrors until the entire city appeared to be shining.

Traffic had slowed to a crawl, and most of the pushcart venders had closed shop. There was no sign of tourists, and even the locals had abandoned the daylight to seek the cooler realms of basements and air-conditioned cafés.

At a small private airport located far outside the city limits, three Hercules seaplanes sat baking on an isolated strip of cracked asphalt. One of the big planes was closed, its ramps rigidly locked in position. The other two had their access ramps fully descended, the shadowy interior of the aircraft dimly visible through the wavering heat from the ground.

Dripping sweat, twenty men and women surrounded the hulking aircraft, AK-47 assault rifles carefully balanced in their gloved hands. The Icelanders had stripped down as far as decorum allowed. Everybody was wearing tinted sunglasses, their pale, exposed skin oily with suntan lotion.

The gold had been divided into three parcels, and now each plane contained roughly a hundred million dollars’ worth. The sheer numbers made Hrafen Thorodensen feel slightly drunk. But it was nothing, a drop in the ocean, to what Britain would end up paying for their inhuman greed.

“Well, any sign of them yet?” Gunnar Eldjarm demanded, tying a handkerchief around his head to stop the sweat from pouring down his face and washing away the sunscreen.

“Speak of the devil,” Thorodensen replied, lowering a pair of binoculars.

A small dust cloud was coming their way from the west, and as it drew closer, he could dimly see an armored truck accompanied by a dozen motorcycles. The riders were masked in combat gear, body armor and mirrored helmets, and Thorodensen tried not to imagine how hot it had to be for the guards, in that heavy equipment. Still, he did appreciate their professionalism.

The truck and escorts braked a hundred feet away from the idling planes, and a second later the wake of dust arrived, to flow over the area like desiccated fog. The Icelanders started coughing, but held their positions, alert for any treachery by the infamous Spanish bankers.

Before the armored vehicle had fully stopped moving, the rear doors burst open and out rushed a dozen men carrying an assortment of weaponry—American assault rifles, German autoshotguns and Russian grenade launchers.

Watching timidly from the shadows inside one of the big planes, Professor Lilja Vilhjalms marveled at the open display of ordnance, and double-checked the EM scanner in her hands for any sign of a tracer signal or microburst. She had personally neutralized the GPS dot from each bar of gold, and destroyed them inside a standard microwave oven. The clever British had thought of everything but that. As her old science teacher had liked to jokingly say, advanced technology was just so damn primitive.

Climbing out of the cab of the truck, a slim man stepped onto the shimmering tarmac. Dressed in a three-piece business suit, he carried a small laptop slung at his side, and had a leather briefcase in one hand. If the heat had any effect on the dapper man, it wasn’t noticeable.

“Good morning, Mr. Loki!” he called out, casually walking forward. “I am Hector Gonzales. Lovely day, is it not?”

“Yes, wonderful day. Spain must be the home of God,” Thorodensen said diplomatically, trying not to breath too deeply. Then he added, “Gibraltar.”

“Malta,” Gonzales replied with a smile. “Well, now that’s done, shall we proceed to business? How much of a deposit are you making this time, sir?”

“One hundred million dollars in gold,” Thorodensen said, glancing at the closest Hercules. “And I need another hundred million converted into German bearer bonds.”

“Please accept my hearty congratulations on your success in such a slow economy,” Gonzales said, swinging up the laptop and typing away. This wasn’t their largest account, but it was most definitely in the top ten. “Does the gold need to be, ah, washed?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. Then after our usual fee for the service, your deposit will be…thirty-four million dollars. Correct?”

“Correct,” Thorodensen growled, trying not to bridle at the open thievery. The money was flowing away like water running downhill, and they were still a long way from their final goal. But every journey started with a single step.

At a gesture from Gonzales, the bank guards swarmed forward, advancing upon the two open Hercules as if the airplanes were an enemy position, their weapons constantly sweeping for danger. Gonzales strolled up the ramp of one and patiently waited while a pair of guards broke out laboratory equipment and inspected every gold brick for purity. When the amount was confirmed, the guards relayed the gold bars into the armored truck, and Gonzales ran off a receipt from a small printer attached to the laptop.

“Here you are, sir.” He smiled as he passed over the slip. “And here are the bonds you requested. If there is anything else?”

“Yes, please transfer one million dollars to this numbered account,” Thorodensen said, handing over a sealed envelope.

“With pleasure, sir,” Gonzales replied with a toothy grin, tucking it away inside his jacket. “Hope to see you again soon. Have a pleasant flight!”

Forcing a smile to his face, Thorodensen nodded in return, and didn’t allow himself to relax until the armored trucks and guards had disappeared once more into the distance.

“I have trouble believing that you just gave the Spaniards a million dollars as if it was pocket change,” Gunnar Eldjarm muttered, resting the Vepr on a shoulder.

“Have no fear, old friend. That amount is all the bastards will ever get from us,” Thorodensen stated, passing over the briefcase. “Now, take these bonds to France and purchase five more Hercules seaplanes. We will meet you at the established coordinates off the coast of Sardinia in sixteen hours. If we are not back from Greece on time, leave immediately for Peru. Wait there for two days, then leave. Spend the gold in good health.”

“No, I’ll come find you!”

Starting back into the airplane, Thorodensen smiled tolerantly. “Thank you, old friend. If we have not returned by then, it means we are dead.” He stopped to place a hand on the shoulder of the bony man. “Don’t take any chances, Gunnar. Trust nobody, and keep to the plan! Wait two days, then disappear. You know where to purchase false identity papers in New Zealand?”

Resting a foot on the access ramp, Eldjarm gave a curt nod. “Yes, the Two Billies Tavern, just outside of Christchurch. There are new names and passports waiting for all of us.” He stressed the last words.

“And with luck we will retire to the Gold Coast of Australia, and live in luxury and peace for the rest of our lives. But that can only be accomplished by adhering to the plan!”

“Thor, when you were the Icelandic ambassador to the United nations, where you this much of a pain in the ass?” Eldjarm asked with a friendly scowl.

“Of course!” he said with a laugh. “How else could I have ever gotten anything done, representing a country without an army?”

Muttering under his breath, Eldjarm swung away from the plane and strode off. Half the armed Icelanders followed, and the rest strode into the open Hercules after their leader.

As Thorodensen started for the flight deck he was joined by Professor Lilja Vilhjalms. She didn’t say anything, but from her tense expression, he could tell that she was deeply concerned about something important.

“What is wrong, Lily?” he asked, using his private name for her. The two of them had been very close once, sex partners, but not really lovers. These days they were much closer than that, partners in crime. The evaluation of their relationship amused him.

“Your plan is so complex,” the woman stated, moving closer to the big man. “Selling your home to rent the planes, making the mustard gas to steal the mines, and now… Are you sure it is not going to unravel?”

“No, my dear, everything is under control.” Thorodensen laughed, draping a friendly arm across her shoulders.

She thrilled at the contact and ached to touch him back, but restrained herself for the moment. They were in view of the others. Perhaps, once they were on White Sands… “So, we are not going to be caught?”

“By those fat fools in NATO? That would be impossible, Lily. Impossible!”

Vilhjalms frowned. “Yet you once told me that nothing is impossible to a strong will.”

That caught Thorodensen by surprise. He started to speak, then merely grunted in reply as they started up the steel stairs to the flight deck of the massive aircraft.

Durrës, Albania

FLYING TO A PRIVATE airfield outside of Durrës, Mack Bolan bribed officials to get a locked trunk through airport security, then rented a Range Rover with four-wheel drive and drove toward the capital city, Tirana.

Albania was the heroin hub of the world, supplying the narcotics to most of Europe. The Fifteen Families even had a sweetheart deal arranged with the drug lords of Colombia. They exchanged heroin for cocaine, and each group expanded its sphere of influence. A win-win situation, unless you were one of their customers, forced into thievery, prostitution or worse, just to maintain your supply of the deadly substances. Bolan considered them all narcoterrorists, and removed them from this world as quickly possible. But at least for today, he needed the willing assistance of the murdering sociopaths.

The rolling countryside was beautiful, with rich fields of soybeans, cotton, wheat and endless herds of grazing cattle. However, the roads were much less noteworthy. They were mostly paved, but not always, and were often so steep that the sidewalks had been replaced with concrete stairs. The tough Range Rover took the steep inclines without noticeable effort, aside from a few assorted rattles and a lost hubcap.

Traffic was light, mostly pedestrians, and a few small trucks hauling produce. But Bolan carefully marked the location of every military vehicle.

Albania had once been a kingdom, then Communist, and now was supposedly a democracy, but that was a lie. The entire nation was owned, body and soul, by the Fifteen Families, the largest and most powerful crime family in existence. They made the old Mafia look like a sewing circle. Albania was ruled by a secret dictatorship that used the military to control the police. The reason Bolan rarely tangled with them was because their main concerns were inside Albania. He felt sorry for the enslaved Albanian people, but never fooled himself into thinking that he could save the entire world. That was madness.

Traffic become thicker near the capital city, but the roads didn’t improve much. The majority were made with cobblestone, dating back to the Middle Ages. Very picturesque for the tourists, but not practical. Occasionally there was a smooth stretch of pavement, a remnant of the days when the Soviet Union ruled the tiny nation. But most of the streets were in very poor condition, dotted with deep potholes. More than one car was abandoned alongside the road, with a wheel bent sideways, the axle broken in an unexpected encounter with a particularly deep depression.

Standing on a small raised platform, a young policewoman in a crisp uniform and bright orange gloves was expertly directing vehicles around a traffic circle. She instantly noted that Bolan was a tourist and smiled as he passed. He grinned in return, but noticed that her smile quickly faded as she returned to work.

Just then, a limousine raced past the police officer, clearly going way over the posted speed limit, veering in and out of lanes without regard for the other cars, and generally ignoring every rule of safe driving. She bridled at the sight for a moment, then turned her back on the vehicle with a sigh.

Watching in his rearview mirror, Bolan guessed the limousine was owned by a member of the Fifteen Families, and noted that the vehicle rode low on military-grade, bulletproof tires. The limo was armored. He almost smiled at that. In the trunk of the Range Rover was something he had brought along from Brooklyn for just a target.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to use it. On the plane ride from the States, Bolan had placed a few phone calls and managed to set up a meeting with Rezart Kastrioti, a high-level member of the Fifteen Families. Bolan was posing as a representative for a cartel of American manufacturers to negotiate safe passage for cargo ships carrying Detroit-made cars to Europe. As always, the Fifteen Families were happy to talk business with rich Americans—if the price was right. Bolan should get what he wanted in only a few hours, and then slip quietly away. However, he knew from experience that it was wise to plan for what the enemy could do, not just for what they might do. Hence the XM-25 in the trunk.

The city limits of Tirana were marked by a sharp improvement in the road surface. It was a beautiful municipality, with its tan brick buildings and red tile roofs, and carried a sense of age. Everything in the country felt old, even if it was brand-new. He had encountered such a feeling before many times, mostly in third world nations where poverty was rampart, but also in Detroit, the so-called Rust Belt of the Midwest.

Circling the crumbling remains of an old Roman fortress, Bolan easily spotted his destination in the distance, the glass-and-steel structure rising from the older stone buildings as if a starship had landed in a junkyard. The King Zog Hotel had been built into the side of a small mountain. The slanted glass facade sparkled brightly, and even from a distance he could see a heliport on the rooftop.

The hotel was named after a legendary president of Albania, a gentle and wise man so deeply beloved by the people that they had given him the nickname King Zog. He had tried to stop the invasion by the Soviets, and failed, but his heroic battle still gave heart to the people.

Parking a short distance from the hotel, Bolan walked around the block a few times, casually dropping small packages into trash bins and down storm gratings. After checking the signal on the remote control, he returned to the Range Rover and drove to the front of the futuristic hotel.

For the meeting he was wearing business chic: a Hugo Boss three-piece suit, with a raw silk tie and gold Citation wristwatch. He had a miniphone clipped to his ear, and a fake prison tattoo of a spiderweb stenciled on his neck to indicate a rough-and-tumble past. His shoes were Italian, his sunglasses French and his briefcase burnished steel. His usual weapons were riding their accustomed positions, but he also was carrying a brace of knives in case some silent kills were necessary.

Underneath everything else, Bolan was wearing a ballistic T-shirt. It would stop only small-caliber rounds from penetrating, and his bones would still break, but under the circumstances he couldn’t wear any type of proper body armor. That would be an insult. And he needed to gain the trust of these killers.