Terminal Velocity Read online

  It appeared surprisingly maneuverable within the dangerous confines of the Khazani Valley. It was coming back on the reciprocal of its approach course. This time the camera panned smoothly with it.

  The film shuddered into slow motion, then froze. And the central portion of the image was zoomed up into greater enlargement. When it stopped, a grainy portrait of the new Russian helicopter filled the screen.

  "That's better than any of the satellite shots we got when they were trying out the test model in the Urals," confessed Webb.

  "It's designated the M-36 PD. Plamya Drakona. We call it the Dragonfire," Miles told them. "I'll give you all the technical specifications — at least, as far as we can deduce them — when we work in the cockpit simulator. To put it simply, the Dragonfire can outmaneuver, outdistance, outshoot and outperform any other helicopter in the world."

  "But the main thing we've discovered," added Knopfler, "is that the M-36 is equipped with the new Nevski missile-deflection system."

  "What exactly is that?" asked McCarter.

  "That's what we've got to find out. And fast," replied the intelligence analyst. "Today this machine is being combat tested in the Afghan mountains. Once in production, it could alter the whole balance of power along the European front.

  "Your job, gentlemen, is to get inside Afghanistan and steal that Russian chopper."

  2

  "Is this guy for real?" whispered McCarter, affecting an American nasality. No one had warned them about Captain Hillaby, other than that he was sharp, tough and very competent at his job.

  Frank Hillaby had never been to Vietnam. It was over before he graduated. But he remained more acutely aware of missing out on the real action than any of his colleagues. And now he proved his dedication to the service by a rigid adherence to the rules. He played everything by the book. Even if it didn't fit.

  "'Fraid so," said Bolan, as Hillaby strutted toward them. They resigned themselves to humoring this gung-ho youngster. There was no time for personality conflicts.

  Hillaby, in helmet and flak jacket, packed a survival kit and a personal firearm holstered low on his hip. The early-afternoon sun was making him sweat under that padded vest, but he was looking forward to having a retired colonel and a Briton under his command. This pleasurable anticipation began to falter when he got his first look at them.

  They had been instructed not to shave, in preparation for their cover. The Englishman's mustache was already spreading out into a growth of thick stubble, and Bolan's chin was darkly shadowed. It was an affront to Hillaby's sense of military crispness.

  He eyed the two men warily, turning his introduction into an informal preflight inspection. Bolan let him play at this pointless ritual. They were going to be cooped up with him in a cramped cockpit for several uncomfortable hours to come.

  "Follow me, gentlemen. And we'll see how much you remember," said Hillaby, disguising his instinctive dislike for the two cowboys. "We'll also find out how much you've got to learn."

  A jeep ferried them out to the chopper pad on the far side of the field. They rode in silence.

  The whole mission was structured on a strictly need-to-know basis. Hillaby was not aware that his two charges had spent all morning in a mock-up of the Dragonfire's cockpit that had been hastily constructed, using the shell of a Hughes AH-64, inside Hangar G.

  Geoffrey Miles had drilled them in the use of everything — from the all-weather sensors to the missile pods, from the laser trackers to use of the integrated sighting helmets. Bolan and McCarter had twice swapped places as pilot and weapons' operator, although it was believed the M-36's controls were fully interchangeable.

  All the switches and instruments had been marked in Russian, and Bolan was thankful for the immersion course he had taken in San Diego the previous fall. McCarter had caught on almost as quickly; he had a natural aptitude for anything that flew.

  Hillaby pulled up fifty yards from a painted circle. Standing at its center was an olive-drab machine, with the graffiti Death Coming Down! only partially scoured from its blunt nose. It was a standard-issue Huey — Nam style.

  "A Hog?" McCarter sounded dismayed.

  "What did you expect? Do you think they'd risk your wrecking a brand-new aircraft on a training course?"

  "A refresher course," Bolan corrected him sharply.

  "Yes, well, I expect they figured this was what you'd be most familiar with."

  "Yeah," said Bolan. "Been for a few rides in this one."

  Hillaby kept a close watch on their every movement in the cockpit.

  "You should leave the mixture on full-rich for a second longer," he instructed, trying to find some fault with their start-up procedure.

  Bolan purposely exaggerated his look at the instrument panel as he flipped the fuel boost to On and checked the oil pressure.

  He increased the collective and corrected right as the chopper became light on the skids. They rose smoothly to hover. Bolan adjusted the throttle and moved forward on a straight takeoff path.

  Hiliaby was torn between being rattled by these two hard-eyed strangers and a reluctant respect for the skill with which they handled the machine.

  Bolan flew a wide sweep over the desert basin practicing running approaches, autorotation and quick stops. Hiliaby had some comment to make each time, whether it was fully justified or not. McCarter began to fiddle with the radio to keep his own temper in check.

  The fuel gauge was dipping low. Bolan tapped the glass. Hiliaby checked his watch and signaled they should return to base.

  Bolan began to turn left around a huge broken butte. At one end of the flat-topped monolith stood a separate spire about eighty feet out from the main block. He aimed the Hog straight for the gap.

  It was Hillaby's startled gasp that made McCarter look up from the radio set. The dappled cliff face loomed large through the windscreen.

  Bolan's lips were compressed in concentration as he touched the left pedal, lined up with the narrow notch and roared through. The racket of the engine bounced off the rock wall and redoubled the reverberations in the cockpit. They had little more than fifteen feet of clearance on either side of the rotor sweep.

  "You... you're..." Hiliaby clenched his teeth and his knuckles and his guts as the Hog bounced on an updraft then settled on course for the base. "That was a crazy stunt to pull, Colonel!"

  Bolan glanced across with a completely straight face. Behind the instructor's shoulder McCarter gave Mack a broad wink.

  * * *

  "I think you'll pass at a distance," said Webb, as he went over the cover plan for the fourth time. Bolan and McCarter now sported disheveled growths of beard.

  A conference call was arranged with a CBS cameraman who had been on an undercover assignment in the war zone. A costume designer from a Hollywood studio was flown in to put together two outfits, from woolen caps and long vests to rough-woven cotton pants, all carefully presoiled. All Bolan and McCarter were waiting for was contact to be established with the right guide to take them over the Pakistan border. They would be posing as a film unit for the television newsmagazine The World This Week.

  Webb and Knopfler double-teamed for intensive briefings on the current situation in Afghanistan. Parallels were drawn with America's involvement in Southeast Asia, but several careful distinctions were made, too. Bolan had to admit the ISA man knew his material. Webb was as thorough as Knopfler was perceptive.

  "The Soviets cannot force a decisive military resolution," explained the presidential adviser, "so the main thrust of their strategy now is to make war on the civilian population. It's a policy of indiscriminate destruction, making it impossible for ordinary villagers to live out their lives as they have always done."

  "Population estimates were around the fifteen million mark prior to the Soviet invasion," said Webb. "So far hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been killed and three and a half million have been forced to flee to refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran, anywhere that will have them."

  "The
Dragonfire has been developed specifically as a terror weapon for this strategy." Knopfler checked his watch. "Geoff Miles will be waiting for you in Hangar G. He wants to go over the refueling procedure. And when you're finished there, these briefing books will be in your quarters. Study them thoroughly. They'll give you background on Tarik Khan. He's the man you'll have to contact. He's the guerrilla leader who might help you break into the Sharuf air base."

  * * *

  "Target practice, gentlemen! The range we'll be using is thirty miles due west." Hillaby tried to sound sprightly. He knew this would be the last training run, but he was tired after a night-flying exercise in the Cobra. Colonel Phoenix and his English comrade should have felt equally exhausted, but if they were, it didn't show. "Okay, let's go!"

  The Hog carried four fixed 7.62mm machine guns, with two more on flex mounts in the doorways, pods filled with 2.75 HVAR rockets and the deadly M-5 that could spit out a stream of 40mm grenades.

  Bolan shook off the weight of lethargy as the chopper rose from the concrete pad. The hours of briefing, map and aerial photograph inspection, cover preparation and flying with Hillaby had left the midnight warrior with little time for conscious brooding.

  And yet below that threshold of instinct and reaction, beneath tactical decisions and strategic considerations, a deeper part of him was still formulating the most effective response to the terrible events in Virginia.

  Hedgehopping across the dusty scrub Bolan appeared preoccupied with the controls, but foremost in his thoughts was what had happened at Stony Man Farm.

  "Use that highway down there as a reference line and make an S-turn," ordered Hillaby. "Gain more altitude and correct for wind drift, Colonel."

  The instructor still wanted to get in a few last licks at his unorthodox trainees. McCarter turned his attention to the radio: terse instructions from the Fullerton control tower were followed by more traffic from the civilian airfield at the south end of the city limits.

  "Okay, Tango Delta One-Niner... clear for takeoff..."

  McCarter flipped through the channels. Hillaby looked annoyed thai their foreign visitor was not giving him his undivided attention.

  "Oh, geez... two officers down... Christ, it's a mess! They got everyone..." The voice of the cop on the police channel was tinged with panic. "The guys in the armored car are all dead... yeah, a bright red Charger... three men, they're heading west..."

  "We're nearly at the range," snapped Hillaby.

  "There's a robbery in progress," McCarter replied evenly.

  "Switch that back to the proper channel! And, Colonel, you turn fifteen degrees west and watch for the markers."

  Bolan ignored the captain. Did he just say a red Charger? Looks like that's the car down there!" Three hundred feet below them Bolan saw a Dodge careering down the black ribbon of asphalt. The driver was in the left lane, overtaking a U-Haul trailer and two riders on motorbikes. Bolan estimated its speed at well over a hundred miles per hour.

  "Geez, I can't believe it... they just blew the sucker apart... yeah, everyone's dead..." The youthful-sounding voice choked back a sob. Bolan wondered how long he would last on the job.

  "They're turning off," McCarter called out from the doorway.

  The car cornered at high speed, spewing out a curling wave of sand before the driver fishtailed onto the secondary dirt road. The chopper had already overshot their position.

  "They must be making for the old Consolidated Mining airstrip," guessed Hillaby, as absorbed in the chase now as the other two.

  Bolan banked steeply in a tight turn. "Let's go down and take a look," he said with cold determination.

  He reduced the collective pitch, increased pressure on the right rudder pedal and adjusted the throttle. The Hog came skimming down low alongside the getaway car.

  "I count three men inside," McCarter called from the open doorway.

  The guy crouching in the rear seat rolled down the window and whipped off three shots. One of the bullets clanged off the skid. Hillaby looked ashen as Bolan rose even more sharply than he'd descended.

  From their increased altitude they could see the mining company's abandoned airfield about six miles dead ahead. Hillaby peered through his field glasses. There was a Lear jet standing at the end of the badly cracked runway. This was crime with all the corporate trimmings.

  "We've got to radio this in," shouted Hillaby.

  "We've got to do something about it ourselves or let them get away," said McCarter, moving back behind the flex-mounted machine gun. He had no doubt of the colonel's decision.

  The Lear jet pilot was standing beside the open door of his aircraft waving frantically at the billowing dust plume of the approaching car.

  Bolan saw red.

  He swooped in over the paddies again, streaking toward the hoochline.

  "Let's do it!" he snapped. "Now!"

  The loaded Hog was a powder keg and Bolan's anger the spark.

  McCarter swung the muzzle back to hose the road. The close confines of the chopper cabin were rocked with the concussive crescendo of gunfire. Bolan lined up the small jet in the illuminated target sight and unleashed two of the HVARs. Tongues of brilliant orange-yellow flame flashed from the rocket pods.

  The pilot ran for his life as the first missile plunged straight through the open hatch and exploded inside the jet. The fuselage ruptured with the roaring blast.

  Bolan swung round for a second pass. The pilot was now racing for the scant cover provided by a nearby clump of mesquite. The searing hail of machine-gun fire made the desert sand jump in a pattern of endless eruptions. Bolan ejected a string of grenades: desert scrub, dirt and the man disappeared in a whirling cloud of grit and gore.

  The car was approaching the last rise in the road before the airfield. As the Charger leaped over the bump, Bolan unleashed another wave of rockets.

  The punk in the passenger seat was the only one to leap clear before the 2.75 HVAR projectile vanished through the grille and the car became a raging fireball. But the guy who escaped had only bought himself seconds to live. McCarter's machine gun spat out a stream of death... The last crook was instantly shredded into a crowd.

  Bolan circled over the scene. The smoldering wreckage of the car lay scattered on the sandy track. The plane lay broken-backed and still smoking. Some bloody rags dangled from the upper branches of a mesquite bush.

  "My God!" Hillaby muttered, shaking his head. He looked pasty white.

  "Don't worry," said McCarter, giving him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "It only gets hairy when everyone's firing back at you!"

  Hillaby opened his mouth to reply but nothing came out. He swallowed dryly. For the first time the captain suddenly felt very glad he hadn't been in Vietnam. He would stick to training other pilots. He'd leave real combat to cowboys like these two roughnecks.

  3

  The gears failed to mesh properly as the Moskvich saloon turned into Marx Prospekt and tackled the short hill up to Dzerzhinsky Square. The driver glanced nervously at the mirror. The second-rate black vehicle was a replacement car, and he was not used to it. But his passenger continued to stare soullessly through the side window.

  Colonel Vichinsky did not notice the old woman on the corner pull her gray shawl tighter against the bitter chill, although he looked right at her.

  This morning his mind was concentrated on one thing: glavni protivnik. The principal target. Not as Soviet officials most often thought of it — the United States in general — but how it was symbolized in the work of one dangerous man, John Phoenix.

  He was the glavni protivnik.

  The main enemy.

  Phoenix!

  It was only when the colonel found himself staring out at the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founding director of the secret police that Lenin so desperately needed to consolidate his power, that he realized they had already arrived at headquarters. The car sped past the imposing facade of Moscow Center, turned the corner and pulled up by the side entrance. Only d
epartment heads were permitted to enter 2 Dzerzhinsky Square through the main doors. Vichinsky had not achieved that rank. Not yet. But he had every intention of doing so.

  Breath steaming on the early-morning air, Vichinsky waited at the doorway for the guard to demand his identification. The sentry — who knew Vichinsky well by sight — asked to see the colonel's pass, then made a show of checking the narrow, pockmarked face in the photograph against the features of the man who held out the card. Junior Sergeant Teplov saluted crisply.

  Vichinsky decided to walk up to his office on the third floor. Sentries were posted at intervals of sixty to eighty feet throughout the building. This half of the KGB headquarters, the slightly higher right-hand side of the baroque complex, was constructed by German POWs still held captive after World World II had ended.

  The older part of the building, which had once been the head office for the All-Russian Insurance Company, before being taken over by the infant Cheka — predecessor of the KGB — housed the quarters for the chairman and his senior deputies.

  As their global work load increased — and they were spending well over three billion dollars a year on propaganda, terrorism, covert action and corruption — it had been necessary to move the bulk of the administration to Machovaya Ulitza.

  And the swollen first chief directorate, which ran the KGB's foreign intrigues, had been transferred into a modern, crescent-shaped office block on a forested estate beyond the twelve-lane expressway that ringed Moscow.

  Colonel Vichinsky said nothing to the guard standing outside his office. There was no lettering to indicate what department worked behind the door. But this anonymous green-painted office suite was the nerve center of the deadliest ultrasecret group within the vast KGB organization. From here its tentacles spread out around the world.