Neutron Force

“Another one,” Matthew Liptrot rumbled, lowering his binoculars. The Transportation Administration Security guard was frowning deeply. “I don’t like unscheduled arrivals. They make my ass itch.”

“Then get some salve, buddy,” Jason Kushner replied gruffly, his voice rising in volume as a 757 thunderously took off into the sky. The two members of the TSA waited a few moments until the wash of the colossal jet dissipated. Dimly, in the parking lot, car alarms were starting to bleep and keen, their owners having set the sensitivity of the sensors way too high, in spite of the clearly marked posted warnings at the entrance kiosk.

“Every one of them is probably a BMW.” Liptrot sneered in disdain, hitching back the cap of his blue uniform.

“Or a Lexus,” Kushner agreed with a wan smile. “Chevy and Toyota owners know better.”

“I hear that.” The TSA guard turned to watch the Hercules disappear past the wind flags fluttering in the breeze. “Now, I know we were told to not bother the passengers on this flight, some sort of dignitary from D.C., but still…”

“Don’t,” Kushner warned forcibly. “The last person who violated an order like that is working at an airport concession stand in Alaska selling postcards to polar bears.”

“Okay, okay, the Do Not Disturb order stands.” Liptrot reluctantly relented. “But just the same, I’m gonna keep a sharp watch on the thing. Those 9/11 fuckers left from right here.” He stomped on the pavement. “Our Logan International, and I’m not ever going to let that happen again.”

“I hear that,” Kushner agreed, raising his binoculars to study the massive Hercules. “Nothing wrong with staying alert.”

Pulling out his 9 mm Glock pistol, Liptrot checked the loaded of armor-piercing rounds, designed to go through body armor as if it were soap suds. “Nope, nothing wrong with that,” the man muttered, holstering the weapon. “Nothing wrong with that, at all.”

THE C-130 HERCULES TRANSPORT rolled to a stop in front of the hangar. Jack Grimaldi set the brakes and killed the massive engines.

“All ashore that’s going ashore,” the Stony Man pilot announced over the PA system.

Down in the cargo hold, the men of Able Team unstrapped themselves from the jumpseats lining the curved wall and began to release the holding straps on their custom van.

“I still can’t believe that anybody has a neutron cannon,” Rosario “Politician” Blancanales said, freeing the buckles on the canvas straps wrapped around the rear axle. “How is that possible?”

“Something called induced magnetics,” Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz replied, doing the same to the front. “But exactly what that means I have no idea. The math is way beyond me.”

Releasing the last of the locking clamps on the wheels, Carl “Ironman” Lyons grunted at the frank admittance. Schwarz was one of the leading experts in electronic warfare. Under a variety of pseudonyms, he wrote articles for every major scientific magazine and newspaper in the world. If Schwarz was unable to follow the mathematics, then few people could. Himar had to be a genius. And those were often disquietingly close to madness, Lyons thought.

Stowing the restraining straps, Able Team climbed into the equipment van and started the engine.

Watching from the open door to the flight deck, Grimaldi flipped a switch and the rear section of the military transport broke apart and cycled down to the ground with a hydraulic hiss.

“Stay in contact,” the pilot said over their earplugs. “After I refuel, I’ll keep the engines turning over, just in case you boys need some close-order air support.” The civilian version of the Hercules was unarmed, but the one Grimaldi piloted was heavily armed with 40 mm Bofors cannons.

“Or a hasty retreat,” Blancanales replied, touching his throat mike. “Stay frosty, Flyboy.”

“You, too. Stand where they ain’t shooting.”

“Do our best,” Lyons added, setting the van into gear. Carefully he drove the vehicle down the inclined ramp and out onto the paved landing strip.

Logan International Airport dominated their northern horizon, airplanes seeming to take off and land at the same time, passing within only a couple of hundred feet of each other.

A ballet of steel, Blancanales noted. If the neutron cannon attacked at just the right moment, a wall of dead jumbo jets would fly straight into the skyscrapers of downtown Boston. The death toll would be…unimaginable.

“Where did he live?” Schwarz asked, settling into his chair at the small workshop in the rear of the vehicle.

“An apartment building,” Lyons stated, maneuvering onto a private access road. “Himar lived with his family on the top floor, the rest of the place was filled with relatives, cousins and such.”

The scientist owned an apartment complex? Schwarz blinked. “Just how rich was this guy?”

“Not very. He used the money from the Nobel Prize to put a down payment on the place, and the relatives pay rent.” Lyons frowned. “Or so the IRS and Massachusetts Housing Authority claim.”

Blancanales frowned. “So this could be a hardsite.”

“Exactly.” Lyons growled, slowing in front of a wire fence, the top a curly profusion of concertina wire. The sensors in the gate read the electronic signature of the miniature transceiver in the Stony Man vehicle and the gate unlocked automatically, sliding aside.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Blancanales warned, opening a compartment in the dashboard. Nestled inside were rows of fake identification papers, permits and passports. “What do you want to be, FBI again or CIA?”

“NSA,” Lyons suggested, driving through. “That will give us a free hand. Few people have any idea what the NSA does.”

“Including the NSA,” Schwarz quipped, opening a weapons trunk and extracting an M-16 assault rifle.

Behind them, the gate closed with a loud clang and locked.

“DID YA SEE THAT GATE?” Liptrot asked angrily, adjusting the focus on his binoculars.

“Well, I would expect the folks on that transport to have the exit codes,” Kushner muttered unhappily, rubbing his chin. Sure, that was only reasonable. But the man still didn’t like strangers moving so freely around Logan.

“How about we go have a chat with the pilot,” Liptrot said with a hard grin, setting his cap straight.

“Whoa there, brother,” Kushner cautioned, raising a restraining palm. “We were specifically told not to bother the passengers.”

“Ah, but the passengers are gone,” Liptrot replied, glancing at the retreating van. “Go check the regs, if you want. But pilots aren’t considered passengers. They’re crew. And nobody said anything about him.”

“Well, maybe he left in the van.”

“True. But perhaps we smell a fuel leak.”

From this far away? Kushner thought, then smiled. “Son of a gun, I think I do smell a fuel leak. That could endanger the whole airport. We better investigate.” Liptrot headed for their unmarked Jeep in the security parking lot.

Keeping pace with the other guard, Kushner checked his Glock, then his pepper spray and stun gun. Whenever possible, the TSA preferred to take troublemakers alive. However, Liptrot and Kushner enjoyed being the wild men of the TSA. They always pushed the limits on rules and regulations, and caught more drug smugglers and would-be hijackers than the rest of the TSA, on-site FBI and city blues combined. Half cousins, the grim men considered Logan their private property, and God help anybody stupid enough to try to harm the place.

“We talk first,” Kushner stated, climbing into the Jeep.

“Naturally,” Liptrot said, starting the engine. “However, if he—”

“Or she.”

“Or she, refuses to cooperate, then the kid gloves come off.”

“Yee-haw,” Kushner muttered, turning on his radio.

“Unit Nine to Control, we have a possible fuel leak in area thirty-seven…”

MERGING WITH THE MADNESS of Boston traffic, Carl Lyons checked the digital map display on the dashboard and took a secondary road to head for Braintree. The land went from industrial to suburbia, and then stately homes with low stone fences and tall oak trees older than Columbus. The area looked like something out of a movie.

“You know, Braintree is the ancestral home of John Adams,” Blancanales announced.

“I heard he was obnoxious and disliked,” Schwarz said without looking up, thumbing HEAT rounds into a clip for his assault rifle.

Checking the house numbers, Lyons found the correct apartment building. It was a neat, five-story house that had been converted into apartments: brick walls, green shutters, a wooden porch with a swing. A dog slept on the driveway and a birdbath sat in the front yard.

Lyons drove past the building and parked a few houses down. He used field glasses to study the area to see if they were under surveillance. Nothing moved in the whole neighborhood. A television blared from across the street, and Indian music could be heard softly playing from inside the apartment building. That’s right, Lyons remembered. Himar had been born in New Delhi. The tune was catchy, but the words were unintelligible.

“The place looks clean,” Blancanales said, tucking the NSA identification into a breast pocket. Then he pulled a .380 Colt pistol from a shoulder holster and dropped the clip to check the load. Easing the clip back inside, he clicked off the safety and worked the slide to chamber a round. He wasn’t expecting any trouble here. This was a simple data hunt. But no soldier went into danger without a loaded weapon.

“So let’s get going,” Schwarz said, tucking electronic items and plastique into a black nylon gym bag. There might be a wall safe to blow. But they had to stay lowkey. These people might just be civilians. Unless Himar’s “family” was actually his private army of mercenaries. Schwarz briefly inspected his own 9 mm Beretta and threaded on a sound suppressor. Better safe than sorry.

“Wait a second,” Lyons advised, adjusting the focus on the field glasses. “Something’s wrong here.”

Instantly the other two men were alert and reached for the M-16 assault rifles hidden in the false ceiling of the van.

The Able Team leader surveyed the apartment building and lawn again, the hairs rising on his nape. Something about the area had triggered a warning bell inside his head, and the former L.A. cop was trying to spot what was wrong. A few of the windows were open, admitting the cool morning air. But New Englanders had a love of cold that the rest of the nation found puzzling. Just like getting a tan in California, it bordered on a mania. There was nobody moving in the bushes or in the backyard…. That’s when it hit him. There was nobody moving at all. That dog wasn’t asleep, it was dead. And there were tiny dark shapes floating in the birdbath. Wrens?

Turning, Lyons swept the whole block. Nobody was moving around any of the other homes, either. No leaves being raked, no mail being delivered, no dogs barking, no birds in the trees. Several houses away, a man was smoking while lying in a hammock. Focusing the field glasses, Lyons saw that the fellow had once been smoking, but now his shirt was smoldering. A cigar laying on the blackened ruin of his chest.

“Get hard, people,” Lyons ordered, tucking away the field glasses. Reaching down, he pulled the Atchisson autoshotgun from the bag on the floor. “We’re the only people alive on this street, possibly in the whole damn town.”

“Why would Himar beam his own house?” Schwarz said, frowning, working the arming bolt on the assault rifle. “Unless…”

“Unless Himar really is dead, and somebody else also wants his files on Prometheus before we can get them,” Blancanales conceded, thumbing a fat 40 mm round into the M-203 grenade launcher. “Mighty easy to rob a place if everybody is dead.”

Just then the happy Indian music was cut off and a window on the fifth floor of the apartment house closed, a dark shape moving behind the curtains. In a house of the dead, somebody was still moving.

“Where did Himar live?” Lyons demanded, shrugging out of his suit jacket.

“Fourth floor, but his office was on the fifth,” Schwarz said, passing out the NATO body armor. “I’d say that we’ve got hostiles inside.”

“Could just be a street cop checking the place out,” Blancanales warned, strapping on his light-weight bulletproof vest. “Or maybe a survivor who was taking a bath. You know, safe under the water.”

Lyons clicked the safety off the Atchisson and stepped to the curb. “Let’s go find out.”

Moving across the lawn, the Stony Man operatives headed for the house, each trying not to think about the deadly satellite in space possibly pointing directly downward at their location. If the neutron cannon attacked, they would never know it, and so the soldiers banished the consideration from their minds and concentrated on the task at hand. Get in, get the files and get out.

“Stony Base, this is Einstein,” Schwarz said into his throat mike as they passed the birdbath. “Our twenty may have been neutralized. If you don’t hear from us in an hour, consider this a hot zone. Out.” It took a moment for the message to be condensed, then the radio gave a short beep as the transmission was burst back to the Farm. Unless the enemy was listening to the precise frequency, at exactly the correct moment, Schwarz knew they would never be able to detect the microsecond radio pulse. Much less break the encryption created by Kurtzman and his team.

The world seemed unnaturally still to the Stony Man operatives. Traffic could be heard in the distance, and a jet liner rumbled overhead toward Logan International. But it was almost as if they were moving through a dream. No voices, no laughter, not even birds in the trees.

“We want them alive,” Lyons whispered curtly. “But retrieving those files is more important.”

The other men nodded, their eyes sweeping for danger.

Moving onto the brick porch, the Able Team leader saw a bearded man in slippers lying crumpled behind the laurel bushes, a folded newspaper still clutched in his hand. Lyons stopped and pried it loose. It was an afternoon edition. The attack had only happened a short while ago.

The front door was closed, but unlocked, and the three men eased inside, their weapons at the ready.

The foyer was empty. There was a grandfather clock softly ticking, and a coatrack with an attached bench that Schwarz recognized as an antique from before the Revolutionary War. A brass umbrella stand was in the corner and a ceramic bowl on a small table contained car keys.

Blancanales made a noise and gestured to the left.

In the living room, the shapely legs of a teenage girl stuck out from behind the couch in the living room. A cat lay lifeless next to a ball of yarn, a goldfish floated upside down in a glass bowl. But more importantly, there was a ten-gallon can of fuel sitting in the middle of the living room with a radio detonator attached to the side.

Tightening his grip on the autoshotgun, Lyons tried not to curse. The Prometheans, as Price had dubbed them, weren’t here to steal the files, but to burn the place down to make sure nobody else got them! And they weren’t going to take any chances on missing some papers hidden in the wall or under a floorboard. That firebomb would reduce the whole house to rubble. The neutron cannon could kill from space, but the deadly beams would have no effect whatsoever on computer disks and simple paper. Those had to be destroyed by hand.

Shouldering his M-16, Schwarz went to the colossal firebomb and pulled the wires free. As he turned, the electronics expert grimaced at the sight of a second firebomb in the kitchen. There was another firebomb at the foot of the stairs.

Fast and silent, the team moved through the first floor, deactivating the explosive charges. Reaching the cellar door, they paused for a wordless conference, but then heard footsteps upstairs on the wooden floor.

Separating into a one-on-one defense formation, the Stony Man commandos walked up the old stairs, carefully keeping to the outer edges where the wood would be the strongest and least likely to creak and betray their presence.

The second and third floors proved to be the same as the first, and the team quickly neutralized the bombs.

Reaching the fourth floor, Lyons paused alongside the railing. He could hear murmuring voices, and somebody was happily whistling. A fierce rage swelled within the man. The bastards were enjoying themselves!

“Hey!” a man shouted. “What the fuck are you doing, asshole?”

Able Team froze, swinging up their weapons for the expected attack. Heavy footsteps stomped closer.

“I wasn’t doing anything, George,” another man replied. But the man was cut off by the sharp smack of a slap, and a rustling sound was made by some small items scattering across the floor.

A glassine envelope went over the edge of the landing, and Blancanales made the catch. Opening his fist, he scowled at a tiny packet full of blue crystals. Interesting.

“You’re a fucking liar, Troy!” the first voice snarled angrily. “I saw you stuffing packs in your pockets!”

“Hey, I only figured—”

Another hard slap sounded, then two more. “If Ravid sent us two pounds of crystal meth to sprinkle around the place, then we use every ounce!” George ordered brusquely. “That son of a bitch knew enough about our strongarm operations to send us to Wadpoole prison for the rest of our freaking lives!”

That caught the team by surprise. These were street toughs blackmailed to plant evidence of a drug lab in the house before burning it down. If the local police found traces of the deadly narcotic in the ashes, their investigation of the blaze would stop right there, assuming it was just case of the drug makers falling out over the business. Ravid. They would remember that name.

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Troy mumbled. “I was only just—”

“Shut the fuck up,” George snarled. “Hey, Mike, you wanna remind me why we brought the feeb along?”

“Had to. He’s my cousin,” Mike mumbled. “And don’t call him that word again, get me?”

“Go screw a rolling doughnut,” George replied. “Okay, Troy, get the rest of this crap and meet us on the fifth floor. He said they were all to be strewed around the office.”

“Sure, no problem, eh?”

“Did you put the tanks of ammonia in the basement?” a fourth man demanded. “Nobody’s gonna believe this was a crystal meth lab unless there’s lot of ammonia.”

“Sure thing, Jeff, did that first off,” Troy replied quickly. “Ah…do they really make meth from ammonia?”

“Oh, for the love of…Just pick up the envelopes!”

“Right away! Sure, no problem. Hey, you know me…”

The other men tromped away, and there came the sounds of somebody crawling across the floorboards, sweeping up the packets in their hands. Soon, a bald head appeared over the edge of the fourth-floor landing, and Troy gasped at the sight of the Able Team looking back up, their arms full of military ordnance. The man went pale and froze motionless.

Shaking his head, Lyons pressed a finger to his lips for silence, while Blancanales and Schwarz aimed their assault rifles.

“I surrender!” Troy cried, raising both hands, casting a deluge of packets upon the Stony Man commandos. “Don’t shoot me!”

Muffled curses came from the fifth floor, and all of the arming lights on the cheap detonators strapped to the fuel canisters started blinking.

Furiously, Lyons charged up the stairs and fired. The Atchisson ripped off a short burst, and Troy stumbled backward from the barrage of 12-gauge stun bags.

“Freeze! This is the FBI!” Blancanales shouted, adding a long rip from the M-16 assault rifle into the ceiling. With any luck, the hardmen would simply surrender.

“Fuck you, cops!” George yelled, and a pair of black metallic globes sailed over the railing to hit the fourth-floor landing and bounce away.

“Grenades!” Lyons roared, diving aside, his teammates only a heartbeat behind.

The team was still airborne when the charges cut loose, filling the landing with thundering flame. Still kneeling with his arms raised in surrender, Troy was blown apart by the double explosion.

As they hit the floor, there came a sharp patter of antipersonnel shrapnel smacking into the doors and walls. In a bathroom, a plastic fuel canister ruptured, the pink fluid gushing out to spread along the wooden floor, heading dangerously close to the burning ruin of the smashed landing.

Charging into the bathroom, Schwarz tackled the canister, shoving it into the bathtub. Heading into a bedroom, Blancanales ripped the arming wires off a firebomb and went in search of another.

Rising up from behind the fire, Lyons dropped the drum of stun bags and slapped in a drum of fléchettes just as Jeff jumped down the stairs to land heavily on the splintery wood. Grinning fiendishly, the Boston muscle swept the entire fourth floor with an AK-47 assault rifle, the 7.62 mm rounds slamming into pictures, bookcases and the still bodies of the former occupants.

Ducking behind a wingback chair, Lyons fired a short burst from the Atchisson, the hellstorm of steel slivers tearing Jeff apart, arms and legs going in different directions.

Bracing against the recoil, Schwarz fired a 40 mm round up the stairs. The charge detonated against the ceiling, spraying down a hellstorm of plaster and wooden splinters. Somebody screamed, the noise becoming a demented howl as Mike staggered into view. His upper body was riddled with holes, red blood pumping out in a ghastly spray from the ruptured arteries.

Mouthing obscenities, he sprayed his twin Ingram MAC-10 machine pistols, the 9 mm Parabellum rounds hammering down the stairs in crisscrossing streams of glowing tracers and hot lead. From the bedroom, Blancanales peppered the banister, the 5.56 mm rounds chewing a path of destruction along the polished wood. Still shooting, Jeff retreated to the fifth floor. But just as he disappeared, George appeared and fired a line of tracers rounds directly into the pooled gasoline, dripping over the landing. With a whoosh, it ignited and wild flames raced along the floor going straight into the bathroom and up the wallpaper. Standing in the bathtub, Schwarz turned on the shower and angled the spray onto the walls, but the water did little to hinder the lashing orange conflagration.

“You men up there, get the hell out!” Blancanales shouted, slapping in a fresh clip. “The house is on fire!”

“Lead the way, cop!” George retorted from somewhere above. “I’m not going back to Wadpoole! I’d rather die here with you!”

Lyons shot his friend a hard look and Blancanales frowned from the doorway of the bedroom. It sounded crazy, but many men who had spent decades in jail swore death before returning to the rigid discipline of government cellblocks.

“We need those files,” Lyons ordered, touching his throat mike. He burped a short burst up the stairs. “Think we can cut a deal?”

“No way,” Blancanales replied, cracking the breech of the grenade launcher. He dumped the 40 mm stun bag and thumbed in an AP round. “We have to take them out.”

Another grenade bounced down the ruined stairs and disappeared below. A moment later there came a muffled whomp and then a welling aura of hellish light. Lyons cursed. The grenade had ignited the canisters of fuel! The ground floor, maybe even the second, was on fire, and soon the flames would reach the other canisters. They only had a few minutes before the entire building was an inferno. With us trapped on the top level, he thought.

Turning the Atchisson upward, Lyons emptied the entire drum of 12-gauge fléchettes directly into the ceiling. The fusillade chewed open a gaping hole, and Blancanales and Schwarz instantly triggered 40 mm rounds. Once more, the shells exploded on the next ceiling, and men screamed.

Charging for the stairs, Lyons swept the room at waist level, blowing apart office furniture, computers, blackboards and both of the stumbling hardmen. But as they fell, a skinny blond man hit a radio detonator clipped to his bloody belt.

“Not going back…” George said, then went still.

A split second later, a muffled series of blasts erupted in the lower levels of the house, and the closet across the office was brightly illuminated from within, the door blowing off as the expanding fireball of the hidden incendiary charge cut loose. The only desk was coated with a sheet of flame, the DOD security documents vanishing into ash from the volcanic heat.