Combat Machines Read online

  “Stony Base, this is Striker, are you getting this through my feed?”

  “Striker, this is Stony Base, we’re seeing it. The sat feed still shows the cabin as standing, however. Can you verify your coordinates, over?”

  “Bear, please,” Bolan replied. “You know exactly where I’m standing, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, yeah, a guy can hope, right? You know what this means, right?”

  “Yeah, we just got played,” Bolan said as he began poking through the still-warm remains of the building to verify that there was no body there.

  “Not just played. They were able to broadcast an alternate signal for our satellites to pick up,” Kurtzman said. “Anyone able to do that is connected high up in the surveillance grid, which could mean more trouble down the road in other hot spots.”

  “The place is empty. Site’s still warm, however, which means they were probably here within the past twelve hours. Assuming Utkin was even here in the first place, someone—the Russians or someone else—got to him first.”

  “Great. Well, come on home, and we’ll pick up the search again bright and early tomorrow morning. Stony Base out.”

  “Affirmative, Striker out,” Bolan said, then got on the horn to call the C-130J back to pick up him. Climbing to the top of the tallest hill in the area, which wasn’t saying much, he activated a small pack on his back, sending a large, bright yellow balloon a hundred yards into the air.

  Soon he heard the roar of propellers as the Super Hercules swooped out of the night sky. A V-shaped catcher at the front of the plane caught the cable and held it, jerking Bolan into the air and trailing him after the airplane. Crew members brought him back on board, and soon Bolan was back in the hold of the aircraft, gratefully accepting a hot cup of coffee.

  But all during the flight back, one thought kept nagging at him: Who had Utkin, and where was he now?

  Eight hours later

  Undisclosed location

  HANDS CUFFED BEHIND his back, a hood covering his head, Dr. Rostislav Utkin was marched down a damp hallway and into a small room, where he was forced into a chair. His restraints were removed, but the hood stayed, and his captors left, closing what sounded like a heavy metal door behind them.

  Utkin sat up straight, facing his unknown future without fear. No matter what they did to him now, he knew his program was effective. He knew the operatives he had created were effective. Only the interference of the damnable Americans had foiled his plan. Normally, he would try again, but considering how he had been kidnapped from his remote location and spirited away to—wherever he was now, all he expected was interrogation, perhaps torture, followed by death.

  Instead, a familiar voice said, “You may remove the hood, Dr. Utkin.”

  Utkin pulled it off, blinking in the light. As his eyes adjusted, they widened in surprise to see the man standing in front of him—the last person he expected to see.

  “I am sure that you have many questions,” Colonel General Oleg Istrakov said. “And we will answer as many as we can in time. But first—” he strode forward and stretched out his hand “—let me be the first to congratulate you.”

  Numbly, Utkin took his hand, and Istrakov shook it vigorously. “I—I don’t understand...”

  “All will be made clear in time. For now, suffice it to say that you are among friends, Doctor,” Istrakov said. “It takes great courage to act according to your beliefs, even when your superiors and your country tells you no. With the activation of your people, you passed the test, showing that you were willing to go against everything you had been told to do what you thought was right. That bold action will pay many dividends, starting right now.”

  Hope crept into the doctor’s voice. “You mean...my program is reactivated?”

  “More than back on, my good doctor,” Istrakhov said with a smile. “It’s being accelerated. The proof of what your operatives did was everything we hoped for, thereby confirming that your work should—no, must—continue.”

  “Thank you, I look forward to resuming it...” Utkin trailed off as a thought struck him. “But if I may ask, who is this ‘we’ you referred to a moment ago?”

  “Like you, Doctor, there is a group of, shall we say, like-minded individuals in the Russian government who feel the motherland’s plans are progressing slower than we would like. Through judicious allocation of funds, equipment and personnel, we are creating our own network of people and units to accelerate the reemergence of the Soviet state, and our ascent to the most powerful nation on the planet again. Your created soldiers are an important part of that plan, Doctor.”

  Istrakov stood in front of Utkin. “I know that you feel the same way about our homeland, Doctor.” He held out his hand. “Will you help us reclaim her lost glory?”

  Tears swam in the doctor’s eyes as he grasped the man’s hand. “With all my heart, yes.”

  Istrakov pulled him to his feet. “Then come, we have much work to do. And you have to review the status of your other subjects.”

  “You mean they are still intact and together?” Utkin asked.

  “Of course. As the vanguard of our new army, we needed to keep them safe, yes?”

  Istrakov threw his arm around the physician as they left the room. “You and I are going to do great things in the coming years, Doctor. Great things.”

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from OMEGA CULT by Don Pendleton

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  SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM

  Check out this sneak preview of

  OMEGA CULT

  by Don Pendleton!

  The Daewoo XK9 fired 980 rounds per minute in full-auto mode, eating the contents of a 30-round box magazine in 1.9 seconds, hurling 9 mm Parabellum rounds downrange at 1,235 feet per second.

  Bolan milked the piece for 3-round bursts instead of emptying it all at once. His first rounds cracked the Samsung QM5’s windshield and may have tagged the driver. His next burst punched holes in the vehicle’s radiator, spilling water and green coolant to the pavement.

  Whatever happened next, the Samsung wasn’t going far.

  But at the same time, Chan’s Sonata had been taking hits, as well. It was a sitting duck for automatic rifle rounds and shotgun pellets fired by their pursuers, while Mack Bolan and the lady tried to keep their enemies’ heads down.

  He caught a break when the QM5’s driver broke from cover, circling back to join his friends. The guy was definitely wounded, and on his feet now, he made an enticing target. The Executioner triggered off a burst stitching along the runner’s spin from waist to neck and sent him sailing, arms outflung,
to greet the blacktop in a limp embrace of death.

  That left three.

  Even on a lifeless, dead-end street they couldn’t fight forever without someone catching on and calling the police. Bolan needed a turnaround to deal with his opponents and clear out of there.

  Learning how they had found him in the first place would have to wait. The top priority was getting out of there alive.

  Bolan switched magazines, his second from among the six Chan carried with the submachine gun in her trunk. He saw only two ways to finish it. The first would be to drive his quarry out from hiding by the SUV and drop them as they ran; the second would require an end run on his part, to come around behind them and annihilate them that way if they didn’t scatter under fire.

  The second option put Bolan at greater risk. The first required some thought and calculation, which took time he didn’t have to spare. Between the two, however, number one looked best.

  The trick was convincing his foes that staying with their vehicle amounted to a greater risk than running for their lives. Not easy, but if one or more of them was dumb enough to fall for it, it might work.

  Pocketing two more P magazines, he worked his way around to find his best shot at the Samsung QM5 from the Sonata’s shadow, lining up his sights to go for grazing fire beneath the chase car’s undercarriage, hoping they would open up the gas tank for a full-on spill.

  And after that, see who took the bait.

  Don’t miss

  OMEGA CULT by Don Pendleton,

  available March 2017 wherever

  Gold Eagle® books and ebooks are sold.

  www.Harlequin.com

  Copyright © 2017 by Worldwide Library

  First edition December 2016

  ISBN-13: 9781488010132

  Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Trevor Morgan for his contribution to this work.

  Combat Machines

  Copyright © 2016 by Worldwide Library

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