Extreme Instinct

A tunnel? The Farm’s mission controller frowned. “Okay, something exploded inside, and the blast came out the ends,” Price rationalized, crossing her arms. “Could it have been the Red Army dealing with the thieves?”

“Or vice versa,” Carmen Delahunt announced from her console. Perched on the edge of her chair, the redhead was focused on her computer screen. Dangling from the back of her chair an S&W Bulldog revolver was tucked into an FBI-style shoulder holster.

“Explain that,” Price demanded.

“According to the NATO Watchdog satellite we hijacked, there were isotonic traces of diesel fuel in the chemical signature of the explosion,” Delahunt said. “Along with similar amounts of vulcanized rubber.”

“That sounds like a truck,” Price said slowly, testing the words.

“Three trucks, by my calculations,” Delahunt answered.

“Insulated trucks,” added Akira Tokaido, removing his earbuds. “There was far too much cobalt in the signature to come from anything other than heat-resistant steel.” Tokaido was of mixed Japanese-American ancestry. He seemed born to operate computers, code coming to him as easily as breathing to ordinary people.

“Maybe there was a tank, or an APC caught in the blast,” Price offered hesitantly.

“I wish that was true, but no,” Kurtzman countered, sliding his wheelchair under his console. “Russian military contains natural wood fibers to make the metal more elastic, and thus proof to most armor-piercing rounds.”

Wood fiber in tank armor? “Are you positive?” Price scowled.

Tokaido gave a curt nod. “The spectrum analysis is conclusive. No military vehicles were involved in the blast. So unless whatever was stolen detonated while suspended in liquid boron, or something equally outrageously exotic like that…”

“Then the explosion was caused by insulated tanker trucks carrying liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Clearly, it was a trick by the thieves to try to fake their own deaths,” Huntington Wethers said, removing an old briar pipe from his mouth. “Unfortunately, it also tells us what was stolen.”

Tall and distinguished-looking, Wethers seemed to be the epitome of a college professor with wings of silvery hair at his temples, a briar pipe and leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket. Although fully tenured at Berkeley University, the man had felt a strong need to serve his country, and left the world of academia to become one of the most feared cyberhunters in existence.

Thoughtfully, Price chewed a lip. An explosion powerful enough to be mistaken for a tactical nuke, but without any radiation. The only thing that came to mind was… Oh hell, not that. “What was the last weapon tested there?” Price demanded, trying to stay calm. If what she thought had just happened, the world was in for a long hard rain of blood and pain.

“Difficult to say,” Delahunt answered. “The master computers of Mystery Mountain are not connected to the Internet, and the entire valley is covered with a camouflage net so that our Keyhole and Watchdog satellites can’t see what was happening down there.”

“However, the only logical extrapolation is that the thieves stole one of the new Russian thermobaric bombs,” Tokaido interjected.

“Now, LOX and LOH don’t quite burn as hot as one of those,” Kurtzman stated, cracking his knuckles. “But pretty damn close.”

Several decades ago, the Pentagon had started a program to create an arsenal of nonnuclear weapons, and the cream of the crop was the FAE bomb, or Fuel-Air Explosive, nicknamed Skyfire. The idea was simple, as all good ideas are. Imagine closing all of the doors and windows in a house, then turning on the gas oven but turning off the pilot. In only a few minutes, the house would be completely filled with highly explosive gas. Now stuff an ordinary fuse under the front door and light it. When the fuse reaches the interior, the house would thunderously detonate, obliterating the entire structure and quite often the homes alongside.

The FAE bomb did the same thing, but out in the open. A plane would drop the bomb and it would burst open, sending out a huge cloud of flammable gas, the exact composition of which was not known to even Stony Man. A split second later, the plummeting canister would explode, igniting the cloud, and a fiery implosion of unimaginable power would blanket the sky, uprooting forests, knocking over homes and office buildings and setting fire to everything within range. The one limiting factor was that a FAE bomb would not work if there were strong winds, or if it was raining, snowing, or even if there was heavy fog. It had to be a clear, calm day.

In spite of colossal efforts, no other nation had ever been able to duplicate the American trick of making a fuel-air explosion work. But a few months ago rumors had surfaced in the intelligence community that the Russians had not only figured out how to make an FAE but had also gone even further. They called their weapon a thermobaric bomb, and it worked exactly like an American FAE bomb, except it could function in high winds, rain, snow or fog. There were no operational limitations on a T-bomb, and if true, it was the most deadly weapon in existence. For all intents and purposes, it was a nuclear bomb that did not give off hard radiation—a clean nuke.

“Is there anything in space?” Price asked, walking closer to the wall screens, her hands clenched into tight fists. “Have the Russians created a new…I don’t know, some sort of a new plasma weapon and it’s running wild?”

“Space is clear,” Delahunt intoned.

Damn. “Do we have any video from the valley? Security cameras or such?”

“Not after a nuclear explosion,” Kurtzman scoffed, drinking from the old cracked mug. “The EMP blast of the nuke erased all of the electronic records.”

Which was probably deliberately done by the thieves, Price realized dourly. It would be very hard for the FSB to track down the thieves if they knew absolutely nothing about them. The nuke destroyed the base, along with any video, then the tanker trucks in the tunnel faked the death of the thieves and vaporized any physical evidence. Whoever took the weapon was smart. Too damn smart, in her opinion.

Deep in thought, Price started to pace. Personally, she hoped that China had stolen the damn thing. At least with them, the United Nations could exert political and economic pressure to not use the weapon. If a terrorist group got their hands on a T-bomb they would immediately use it to destroy a major city—New York, London, Tokyo. The death toll would be in the millions.

“Okay, if somebody has stolen a T-bomb, then how do we track the thing?” Price demanded. “There must be remote telemetry or a lowjack on the thing.”

“Which anybody with an EM scanner could find and remove,” Tokaido stated, studying the monitor on his console. The screen was flashing through road maps of the Russian countryside. A flatbed had been seen by a NATO spy satellite amid the wreckage left by the tidal wave from the destroyed dam. If the bomb was particularly heavy, then it could only be hauled over specific roads. Unfortunately, most of the logging roads in the mountains connected with railroads, and those went everywhere in Russia.

Grudgingly, Price accepted that. “Okay, what about dogs or chemical sensors?” She rallied. “We can tune every one at every major airport to look for just T-bombs.”

“Sorry, no can do,” Kurtzman stated bluntly, placing aside his empty mug. “Hell, Barb, we don’t even know what the damn thing looks like, much less how it works.”

Chewing a lip, Price tried to find some way to approach the problem, but was coming up with nothing. The Russian superweapon was practically invisible. Nobody would know it had been smuggled into Washington until the Pentagon vanished in a fiery implosion that also ripped the White House from its very foundation.

“Okay, do we know of any operational limitations?” she demanded.

“Unfortunately, no,” Wethers muttered around his pipe. Smoking was forbidden anywhere near the supercomputer, but the man found chewing on the stem oddly inducive to his creative concentration. “The Pentagon strongly believes that the T-bomb can be activated at extreme low levels, perhaps as little as five hundred feet.”

Price stared hard at the professor. “Are you trying to tell me that it may not be necessary to drop the T-bomb from a plane?” she said slowly, absorbing the information. “Instead it could simply be rolled off the roof of a fifty-story building?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“But no nation in the world can secure every office building over fifty stories tall. There must be hundreds, thousands, of them.”

Deep in thought, Price poured herself a mug of coffee, adding a great deal of sugar and milk. Kurtzman liked the stuff strong enough to degrease tractor parts, but lesser humans preferred it at less lethal levels of corrosion.

Taking small sips, the woman finished the mug, then turned around with a new light in her eyes. “All right,” she said forcibly. “If we can’t track the weapon, then we go after the thieves.”

“But we don’t know who took it,” Kurtzman tactfully reminded her.

Impatiently, Price waved the objection aside. “That doesn’t matter. We know that they used a Chinese nuke. Start there. Send Phoenix Force to Milan to see if somebody purchased a black-market nuke recently. After that, they can try Paris and then Sudan. This whole thing might have been a trick by Russia for an excuse to attack their ancient enemy, China.”

“You think the Kremlin nuked Mystery Mountain just to have a legitimate excuse to start a nuclear war?” Tokaido asked in disbelief, then frowned. It wouldn’t be a nuclear war, but a Skyfire war. “On it,” he announced, and bent over the console, his hands flying across the keyboard.

“The big question is, how did the thieves know about the test?” Kurtzman growled. “It wasn’t exactly broadcast on the evening news.”

“Which leaves two possibilities,” Price continued. “Either there is a traitor, or somebody hacked into the computer system at Mystery Mountain.”

“Not even we can do that,” Delahunt stated in annoyance, curling her toes on the floor. “Their firewalls are just as good as those at the White House.”

Kurtzman snorted. “So it’s got to be a traitor.”

“Or a spy,” Price amended. “Carmen, check the first-class-passenger list at every major airport in the area, cross reference that to the personnel file we stole from the Kremlin last month. Find me somebody who went on vacation the day before the T-bomb was stolen.”

“I’ll also check with the health department to see if anybody recently got sick. Vacations can be cancelled by your boss, but nobody would interfere with a cancer treatment,” Delahunt muttered.

Clenching her gloves, she closed the files she had been reading and activated the NSA communication protocols.

“Okay, if Russia and China were not behind the theft, this might have been done by mercenaries hired to do the bloody work,” Price speculated. “Hunt, activate the Dirty Dozen, try to hire the top mercs and see who is not available.”

“Already doing it, Barb,” the professor muttered around his pipe.

Long ago, Mack Bolan had suggested the creation of some artificial buyers of weapon. In virtual reality, that was easy. But Kurtzman had decided to take the matter one step further. Together with his team, the Farm had created a dozen fake personalities in all of the major areas of crime, along with a team of black ops mercs called Blue Lightning.

The Dirty Dozen was a collection of artificial criminals invented by Kurtzman and his team long ago. Their entire lives were fake, forged out of nothing but the Stony Man hackers slipping data into files around the world. When a bank was robbed in Melbourne, the hackers started the rumors that it was financed by one of the Dozen. If a politician got assassinated in Norway, it was because he had crossed the path of another of the Dirty Dozen. Pirates attacked a cruise ship in the Caribbean, an Interpol agent was shot in Amsterdam, a plane crashed in the Andes—any unsolved crime was quickly attributed to these secretive masters of criminal underworld.

The names of the Dozen were constantly changed as they died in car accidents or were captured and executed—only to be immediately replaced by another Stony Man construct. The Dirty Dozen was a constant source of valuable information about international crime as people tried to sell them stolen goods. And whenever one of the Stony Man field teams needed to contact a terrorist group, a member of the Dirty Dozen was always available to vouch for them through e-mail or a phone call.

“Hunt, keep a watch for any secret arms sales,” Kurtzman added. “If the T-bomb becomes available for sale, it is a safe bet that one of the Dozen will be invited to the auction. If so, pay any price to get it. Better to pay a billion dollars now than a hundred billion to rebuild Los Angeles.”

“Agreed,” the professor muttered, his hands busy. “However, it could be more than a billion.”

“Don’t care. Pay whatever is necessary. I’ll have our Keyhole and Watchdog satellites initiate a planetary recon for any other gigantic explosions,” Kurtzman declared brusquely. “The thieves may try to fake their own deaths again. Or worse, actually use the T-bomb on somebody.”

“God forbid,” Price muttered softly, glancing at the clock on the wall.

“Hold on…okay, I found him,” Delahunt announced. “A janitor working at Mystery Mountain recently won a free vacation in an online contest and had to leave the day before the theft occurred or else he lost the prize.”

A contest win, that was a good cover. She had used something similar once herself. “What’s the name, and where did he go?”

“Stanislav Kominsky. Disney World, Orlando, Florida.”

“The other side of the world,” Kurtzman muttered. “Not very subtle.”

“Okay, try this,” Delahunt said. “He was killed in a car crash en route to his hotel room on the day he arrived. The body was taken to the Dade County morgue, and since Mr. Kominsky is Jewish, he had to be buried within twenty-four hours.” She paused. “He was interred at Bonaventure Acres roughly six hours ago.”

“Less than an hour before the theft took place.”

“Yep.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.” Kurtzman’s hands flew across the controls of his console with expert speed. “I’ll have Jack Grimaldi warm up a C-130 Hercules, and Able Team can be there in a few hours to check the body.”

“Why not have the local police or a CSI team do it?” Tokaido asked, tentatively glancing sideways.

“Because, with any luck, it could be a trap,” Price stated with a humorless smile.

CHAPTER THREE

Balaklava Bay, Ukraine

The land around the secluded cove was rough and seemed almost half formed. Cold and deep, the Black Sea extended far beyond the shimmering horizon to the distant nations of Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania.

The small cove was protected from the worst of the storms by a natural breaker of glassy ballast. The barrier had been strongly reinforced under the Communist regime of the Soviet Union with huge concrete slabs. Abandoned pillboxes were secreted among the arcadia bushes along the barren shoreline.

Dominating the area was a crumbling lighthouse, the cupola only splintery framework, the glass long gone and the great stone blocks weathered to a dull sheen from the constant pounding of the waves. But only a hundred feet away rose a brand-new lighthouse, even taller than the ruins, the freshly painted sides glistening with the salty spray, the plastic cupola topped with radar and microwave receptors.

A town curved along the eastern side of the cove, the fishing shacks and drying huts converted into hotels and restaurants for visiting tourists. Under the indolent rule of the czar, Balaklava had been a thriving seaport, a bustling community of fishermen and sailors, plying their ancient trade. Then the Communists seized control and soldiers forced the people to leave their homes for reasons unknown. The few men foolish enough to ask were never heard from again. Then the Soviet Union fell, and the people of Balaklava returned to reclaim their ancestral homes, and to try to build a new life as a resort community. The fishing was excellent, the vodka cheap, and there were countless subterranean caves to be explored, along with the abandoned glory of a secret naval base. The massive fleet of submarines was long gone, but the dry docks remained, as well as the facilities to house and maintain a fighting force of over a thousand sailors.

Directly across from the seaside village was a wooden dock that led directly into a volcanic cave, the entrance to the underground redoubt. At one time, it had been a shooting offense to know the location of the cave. Now it was decorated with posters and photographs from the glory days of the Cold War, along with a stenciled placard announcing the days and times of each tour.

Standing on the other side of a woven yellow rope, a fat man in a loose white suit glared indignantly. His skin was pale from a life working under fluorescent lights. Mirrored sunglasses hid most of his face, and a large Nikon camera hung around his neck.

“What do you mean, closed?” the man demanded angrily.

“Closed. As in not open to the public anymore,” the tour guide replied patiently. “The government is doing something here, and nobody is allowed inside until they’re done. Okay?” The guide enjoyed using the strange American word. He had heard it often in movies.

“No, it is not okay!” the fat man bellowed. “I’ve come all the way from St. Petersburg to see this goddamn installation, and I want to see it right now. Fuck the government!”

“In the old days, that would have gotten you shot,” the guide coldly reminded.

“But these are not the old days anymore, comrade,” the tourist sneered. “We’re a democracy now. Free men all. So fuck you, fuck the government and get the fuck out of my way, I want to see the submarine pens!”

“Fair enough,” the guide replied, unclipping the rope and stepping aside.

Triumphantly, the tourist strode along the long wooden dock and into the volcanic cave. The man removed his sunglasses to see the interior better when the light vanished. Turning, he scowled at the sight of a thick black curtain hanging across the mouth of the cave.

“What the fuck is this?” the fat man demanded loudly, looking around for somebody to berate. Then he blanched at the sight of a dozen men coming out of a duty room. They were each dressed in combat fatigues and carried automatic weapons.

“Hey,” the tourist mumbled only a split second before the mercenaries opened fire.

The silenced Kalashnikov assault rifles chugged softly, the 7.62 mm rounds tearing the fool apart. He hit the stone floor coughing and twitching, the white suit rapidly turning a deep crimson. The echoes of the muted gunfire repeated endlessly along the watery tunnel, disappearing into the distance.

Walking closer, Colonel Lindquist pulled out a Tokarev automatic and shot the civilian once more. Gurgling horribly, his head snapped back from the arrival of a steel-jacketed round, and then went still forever.

“Russians,” Novostk sneered, stiffly walking into view. “The best way to make them do something is to tell them not to do it.”

The skinny general had already changed out of the hated Soviet naval uniform, and now was back in his Slovakian uniform. It was plain and unadorned, with only the insignia on the collar showing his rank. An old Samopal Vzor assault rifle was slung across his back, and a web belt of ammo pouches encircled his skinny waist with a bulky Rex .357 Magnum revolver holstered on the hip.

“I knew we should have dismantled the dock,” Colonel Lindquist said, holstering his pistol. “Mikhail, clean up the blood. Petrov, get rid of the body in one of the submarine pens. Zhale, put up a sign about falling rocks. That should keep away the fools until we’re gone.”

Quickly, the assigned men moved to obey. The rest stayed where they were, close to the general.

“Speaking of which, we’re ready to leave,” General Novostk said, shifting the Samopal Vzor assault rifle to a more comfortable position. The weapon was a Slovakian version of a Russian AK-47. Both the metal and wooden stock worn from years of use, but gleaming with fresh oil and polish.

“Already?” Lindquist asked in surprise. “Excellent. Has even the helicopter been dismantled?”

“Sealed off in a side tunnel,” the general countered. “I did not know if you wanted to use the Hook again.”

“Too risky, sir,” Lindquist answered. “I’ll use a boat for the next part.”

The general arched an eyebrow at that but said nothing. The colonel was an amazing officer, in spite of being a mixture of American and Slovakian blood. Clearly, there was just a touch more Bratislava in his soul than Brooklyn.

“And how is your former employer taking the betrayal?” Novostk asked, heading deeper into the dim cavern.

“Fuck him,” Lindquist snarled, clasping both hands behind his back. “He’s part Slovak himself, but harbors no ill will toward the Soviets, in spite of everything they did to our nation.”

“Then he is a fool.”

“Agreed, sir. Which is why I had no trouble killing his mercenaries to turn Skyfire over to you.”

“History will remember you as a true patriot, Colonel!”

Unimpressed, Lindquist shrugged in reply. As a soldier, it was his sworn duty to protect his homeland. The Soviet Union had plundered the natural resources of Slovakia, and that lunatic Stalin had sent millions of its citizens to the Siberian gulag work camps never to return. As a soldier, Lindquist would have much preferred a straight fight with the Russian army, but if this was the only way for Slovakia to strike back at Moscow, then so be it. Blood was blood, and terrorists were always heroes to the dead they avenged.

Turning at a corner, the officers paused at the sight of a bound man covered with chains. A soldier tried not to smile as he shoved the helpless prisoner forward. A muffled scream escaped his gag as the bound man toppled off the concrete apron, to land in the water with a large splash. He sank immediately into the depths, leaving behind a small trail of air bubbles.

“And who was that, Private?” Novostk asked casually. “Another fisherman who wandered in here by accident?”

“Smuggler, sir,” the soldier replied, giving a crisp salute.

“Indeed,” Lindquist muttered, glancing at the struggling man descending to the bottom of the pen. The water was over fifty feet deep, and soon there was only a trickle of escaping air bubbles visible in the underwater lights. “And what was he trying to sneak into Russia?”

“Heroin.”

The general scowled, then spit into the water. “No loss, then. The fool only got what he deserved. We want the Russians dead, not enslaved to that filth.”

“And what did you do with the drugs?” Lindquist asked sharply.

“Made him eat it, sir. A half kilo of Bulgarian black tar.”

“And he lived?”

Suddenly the air bubbles stopped rising from the murky depths.

“No, sir, he did not.” The soldier grinned savagely.

“Well, the fish should have a good time disposing of the carcass.” Lindquist chuckled in dark amusement. “Very good, Private. Carry on with your duties.”

“Yes, sir.”

Proceeding along the tunnel, the officers headed toward an old Soviet Union submarine moored to the concrete dock. Purchased on the open market in Amsterdam, the borderline antique had been incredibly cheap, mostly because the submersible lacked any sort of modern convenience. It was slow and noisy, the air always smelled of diesel fumes, the toilet leaked, plus the torpedo tubes had been welded shut. The submarine was useless to anybody but ichthyologists and historians. In spite of that, a group of Iranians had outbid Lindquist’s former employer, and the first assignment of the Foxfire team had been to convince the Iranians to give them the sub, in exchange for a few ounces of subsonic lead.

“How is the work of the bombs progressing?” General Novostk inquired.