The Chameleon Factor Read online

  Then they abruptly changed course and swung directly for the grandstand.

  “Hello, give me the White House,” a congresswoman said into a cell phone. “There’s been a disaster at—”

  “Incoming!” the lieutenant bellowed.

  At the incredible sight, men and women both began to scream in terror, and the crowd became a mob fighting to reach the stairs. A handful of military personnel pulled out their dress side arms to empty the weapons at the approaching Delta Fours. If the subsonic lead had any effect on the ultrasonic missiles, it wasn’t noticed as the Deltas smashed directly into the grandstand. Hundreds of bodies blew apart from the triphammer blasts, the rolling waves of chemical fire obliterating the grandstand, and the homing beacons glued to the underside of the wooden seats.

  A death wave of splinters and boards blew across the parking lot, killing everybody in their path. A heartbeat later, the hidden charges in the car trunks went off, adding their thermite charges to the assorted destruction. Melting cars flipped into the air, gas tanks exploding like firecrackers. The startled pilots of the two Apaches had no time to react before the shock wave and shrapnel arrived, throwing the gunships sideways. Their blades snapped off as the helicopters tumbled over and over along the ground until they erupted into flames. Shrieking insanely, the pilots burned alive in the wreckage until their cargo of rockets and missiles ignited.

  WATCHING FROM the side of a road on a hilltop, the man disguised as Professor Johnson looked up from the destruction of the target range just as the last two Delta Four missiles climbed into view. As they reached azimuth, he looked to the east, down into a rugged arroyo filled with a small complex of buildings surrounded by lush greenery. Pulling out a fountain pen, Johnson aimed the disguised transmitter at the complex and pressed the side hard. The pen gave an answering beep as its signal was received and the next set of homing beacons was activated.

  Climbing back into the car, Johnson saw the Delta Fours streak past, heading for the office buildings. Looking up, he saw the missiles angle about and streak past the test site to head for the office buildings. Done and done—the Chameleon now belonged to him.

  Starting the engine, the man turned the car and headed south toward the Kobuk River. There was a speedboat waiting for him there, and after that…

  Following a gentle curve in the road, the nameless spy glanced in the rearview mirror and saw writhing tongues of orange flame reach for the sky, then an outcropping blocked his view and they were gone. Now there was only open road stretching between him and freedom.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Virginia

  With its rotors beating steadily, the U.S.Army Black Hawk helicopter moved through the crisp morning air. Reclining in the jump seat in the rear of the massive gunship, Hal Brognola looked out the port window and watched the lush Virginia countryside endlessly flow by, the dense forests melding into sprawling towns of tree-lined streets and green parks. A hundred years or so ago, all of this land was torn and bloody as brother fought brother in the Civil War.

  “Did you know that more Americans died in the Civil War than in World War II?” the blacksuit pilot said over a shoulder.

  Roused from his thoughts, Brognola turned from the window. “Yeah, I did. History buff?”

  The pilot flashed a smile. “I am in the military, sir.”

  The big Fed waited for the pilot to also mention his skin color, but apparently it was not relevant to the discussion. White and blacks both died in the war, each fighting on both sides. Hell of a thing.

  Harold Brognola wasn’t a soldier in the traditional sense, but he had certainly seen more than his share of warfare. As a high-level official in the Justice Department, Brognola was one of the top cops in the nation, answerable only to the President. Chief of the ultracovert Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, Brognola was returning to Washington from a quick visit to the Farm, hidden in the depths of Shenandoah National Park. Recent defensive renovations included a newly installed antimissile system. Upgrades to weapons systems were ongoing, and every once in a while Brognola would drop by the Farm to check things out. Any excuse to escape the frenetic pace of Washington, D.C., was acceptable.

  The pilot touched the side of his helmet. “Sir, I have an urgent call for you from Dover,” he reported crisply.

  Brognola frowned. Dover. As in the white cliffs of Dover. That was this month’s code name for the White House.

  “I’ll take it back here.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The big Fed pulled a briefcase onto his lap when his cell phone chirped.

  Deactivating the locking mechanism in the briefcase, Brognola lifted the lid and the compact computer inside automatically cycled on. Typing a few passwords onto the miniature keyboard, the big Fed watched as the plasma screen scrolled identification signatures and countersigns as the machine dutifully checked and then double-checked to confirm it was receiving an authenticity signal on a secure frequency.

  Exercising patience, Brognola waited. The man was aware that the White House had its own private communication satellites, and that the President had access to several that nobody else even knew existed. But it never hurt to make sure.

  The gibberish on the screen melted into a familiar face at a well-known desk.

  “Good morning, sir,” Brognola said.

  “Good to see you, Hal,” the President replied. “We have a situation.”

  “So I gathered, sir. Can it wait until I arrive? I’m already en route to D.C. ETA, twenty minutes.”

  “Sorry,” the President said, frowning. “This cannot wait, and you have to turn back.”

  Return to the Farm? “This relay is secure, sir,” Brognola reminded him respectfully.

  “For now, yes.”

  The President reclined in his chair and lifted a sheet of paper edged with red stripes. Even as he held it, the paper turned brownish where his fingers rested. Brognola scowled at that. A level-ten report, for the President only. This was big.

  “It’s called Chameleon,” the President said, putting the paper down, “a brand-new kind of jamming field that blocks or interferes with about ninety-five percent of all modulated electromagnetism.”

  Brognola raised an eyebrow at that but said nothing. Ninety-five percent? That would scramble cell phones, and even landline phones, and make radar absolutely dead. Doppler or focused radar, even proximity fuses on warheads might not work. It would be the ultimate stealth shield. Tanks, planes, hell, even aircraft carriers would become as close to invisible as modern science would allow. In the hands of terrorists, they could fly cargo planes of troops or bombs anywhere and America would never know until it was far too late.

  Lifting a cup of coffee into view, the President took a sip and waited while Brognola worked out the details.

  “How close are they to completion?” the big Fed demanded.

  “This morning was the final test.”

  “And what went wrong?”

  “Everything, my friend,” the Man said honestly. “The missiles being fired from a U.S. Navy corvette in the bay first took out the control bunker, killing the inventor, a Professor Torge Johnson, and destroying every working prototype of the device.”

  Brognola bit back a curse.

  The President leaned closer. “We received a piece of a phone call from Congresswoman Margaret Anders at the sight, then she went off the air. A recon flight from Fairbanks confirmed that the second wave of Delta Four missiles hit the grandstand, killing a couple of hundred people, mostly politicians and high-ranking soldiers.”

  “Could still just be an accident,” Brognola said slowly, then he noticed the hard expression in the other man’s face. “There’s more.”

  “Unfortunately, yes. The third wave of Delta Four missiles went straight past the firing range and curved around a mountain to strike and destroy the laboratory where the Chameleon had been invented.”

  Brognola opened his mouth to say “Impossible,” then closed it with a s
nap. “So we have a traitor who planted homing beacons for the missiles.”

  “That is also the opinion of the Joint Chiefs.”

  “What was the breakage?” Brognola asked, frowning.

  The President drummed his fingers on the desk. “Total. The plans are gone, the working prototypes are gone, everything is gone, and everybody involved with the project is dead.”

  “What about the off-site backup files?” Brognola demanded gruffly.

  “Unknown,” the President replied, hunching his shoulders. “Everybody who knew their location is now dead.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shit.”

  “Agreed. We have been compromised on a major level, and by a professional. As of this moment, our unknown thief owns a billion dollars’ worth of American technology.”

  “And there’s no way to re-create the work?”

  “Over time, of course. Eight months, maybe a year. But by then…”

  Brognola felt a gnawing sensation in his stomach. A year from now the world could be in total chaos, or worse, total warfare. Unlimited smuggling, unstoppable hijackers, it was a nightmare!

  “What are the various agencies doing so far?”

  “Nothing. This is a White Project. Level Ten personnel only. As far as the FBI and the media are concerned, there was a gas explosion at a military warehouse in Alaska.”

  “Orders, sir?” Brognola asked grimly.

  “Search the wreckage, find out who stole the Chameleon, or if nobody did and this is all a gigantic coincidence. They do happen sometimes.”

  Yeah, right. “If it isn’t a coincidence, sir?”

  The President leaned closer to the screen. “Then get the Chameleon back at any cost. Get it back, Hal. And if that proves impossible, then destroy the prototype.”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me. I’ll eat that billion dollars, and another billion on top, if that is what it takes to keep the U.S. safe. The Chameleon is dangerous enough in our hands. But at least we have checks and balances in our government. However, under the control of a terrorist group, or rogue nation, we’d never even know what was happening until Manhattan, L.A. or even D.C. was blown off the face of the map with millions dead.”

  “Understood, sir,” Hal said in a strained voice, and then bluntly added, “What a shitstorm!”

  The President gave a strained smile. “You took the words right out of my mouth, my friend.”

  A light flashed on the briefcase computer.

  “You should have the full files and aerial reconnaissance photos by now,” the President announced, doing something off-screen.

  “Just arrived, sir. Standard decoding?”

  “Yes. Move fast on this one, Hal. We’re completely in the dark so far, and that light at the end of the tunnel isn’t daylight, but a goddamn express train coming down our throats.”

  With a swirl of colors, the link was broken and the screen returned to its neutral silver sheen.

  Closing the briefcase, Brognola cupped a hand to his mouth and loudly shouted, “Hey, pilot!”

  In the wide cockpit, the blacksuit glanced over a shoulder. “Yes, sir!”

  “Turn around. We’re going back.”

  The man arched an eyebrow in surprise, but said nothing and tilted the stick in his grip. The pitch of the blades overhead changed, and the Black Hawk started to swing around in the sky.

  As the sun reappeared on the other side of the gunship, Brognola opened his briefcase once more and started to access a secret satellite.

  Within a few minutes, the screen cleared to show a blond-haired woman leaning forward on a desk. She was dressed in a simple blue workshirt, with no jewelry.

  “Forget your wallet, Hal?” asked Barbara Price, mission controller at Stony Man Farm.

  “Wish I had. Call them back,” Brognola ordered. “Both teams. Call everybody back. We’ve got trouble.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Cassatt Federal Penitentiary, South Carolina

  Soft and low, the mournful call of a freight train moved through the night as armed guards in the high watchtowers closely scrutinized the arrival of an armored bus at the front gate of the Cassatt Federal Penitentiary.

  The first line of guards checked the driver’s ID and did an EM scan of the vehicle, then finally passed it through the outer, thirty-foot-tall fence. Once the bus was trapped between the first and second fences, more guards arrived with dogs to sniff for explosives or narcotics before the transport rolled through the inner, electric fence and finally onto a featureless parking lot. There were no concrete bumpers or ornamental bushes for anyone to take cover behind. Just a flat expanse of bare asphalt studded with tiny reflecting squares set into the tar and gravel, range finders to assist the sharpshooters in the watchtowers.

  In an ocean of bright lights, there came the sound of pumping hydraulic, and the huge ferruled doors on the Cassatt Federal Penitentiary began to ponderously cycle open.

  With the close of Alcatraz so many years ago, there had been an urgent need for new prisons to hold the worst of the worst, the mad-dog killers and terrorists that the courts had condemned to death. With nothing to lose, the prisoners would use any opportunity to escape, and since a person could be executed only once, taking another human life meant less than nothing to the cold-blooded psychopaths. Hence the creation of the Bureau of Prisons’ supermax facilities.

  Cassatt had been the first supermaximum prison created in the country, level six, absolute security. Yet there had proved to be men that even this ultralockdown couldn’t contain, and so there was forged the prison within a prison, the violent-control ward. Boxcar-style doors permitted no communication to other prisoners, video surveillance was twenty-four hours and there were no windows. Each prisoner had his own private cell. There was no mixing with other prisoners for his entire stay. Guards in the lotus-style control room could electronically open the cell door, and the unescorted prisoner would walk down empty corridors for his shower three times a week. There was no human contact with these violent repeat offenders. Ever.

  Yet the ingenuity of the criminals was incredible. Staples were attached to the tips of Q-Tips and blown through tubes made of rolled paper to strike passing guards. Dozens of makeshift weapons were created out of seemingly innocuous items, and more than one guard lost an eye, or worse, to the ingenious prisoners until full-coverage body armor and goggles became standard dress uniform.

  Cassatt supermax, and its fellow penitentiaries, weren’t ICCs, correctional institutes trying to correct the career of the professional criminal. The supermax was the end of the line, the edge of the world, and damn few who ever went in ever came out again, except in a black body bag.

  Security was tighter here to keep the prisoners in than it was at Cheyenne Mountain, where the purpose was to keep invading enemy armies out. The land beyond the perimeter of the second fence was barren and dead, a former uranium milling dumpsite that the EPA was still trying to clean after forty years. There was no grass to hide in, no weeds in the muddy creek, no trees whose branches could be used as a club. Additional sentry posts stood between the deadlands around the penitentiary and the city of Cassatt, forcing any escapee into the slag heaps of the toxic waste dump. A hundred men had tried to escape from Cassatt supermax over the years. Ten made it to the gate alive.

  Six got over the first fence, and two got over the second fence only to be blown apart by the radio-controlled land mines.

  The infamous Ossing of New York and Leavenworth of Kansas were considered luxurious country clubs compared to Cassatt supermax. But there were even more secure facilities now: Pelican, Logan and the infamous Florence in Colorado. Many of the inmates were insane, but no asylum ever built could hold the killers, and the violent-control ward of a supermax was the only chance of containing these enemies of civilization.

  Many people believed it would be much more humane to simply kill the prisoners than send them to the steel-caged hell of Cassatt. Every prison
er and guard of the supermax penitentiary agreed, except for four special inmates.

  As the final lock on the armored front gate was released with a hydraulic hiss, additional lights glowed into blinding brilliance, illuminating the parking lot and the grounds beyond for more than a mile. On the stone walls, searchlights swept the sky looking for small planes or helicopters. It was unknown who would want these four men free, but the list of people who wanted them dead at any cost was a mile long. Although they would be executed some day by the state, that wasn’t the right of any individual, and as much as they hated the idea the Cassatt guards were ready to die in order to protect the criminals from any vigilante justice, no more how much it was deserved.

  Ten guards in full combat gear stepped from the armored bus and waited while twenty men in full riot gear walked four prisoners through the doorway of the penitentiary. The inmates were dressed in bright orange prison jumpsuits, heavy shackles on their legs, handcuffs on their wrists, and a black box encased their hands and forearms to forestall any attempt to pick the lock on the cuffs. The cadre of guards was fully armed, and carried military-grade stun guns and bulletproof plastic shields studded with electric probes. One touch and a bull gorilla would drop unconscious from the terrible pain.

  “Hold it right there,” an amplified voice called from above, and everybody waited a few moments for the wall guards to decide that the area was safe for everybody to continue.

  “Okay, move along,” the voice commanded.

  Circling widely past the four men, a guard lifted his face mask and passed over a sheaf of papers to the colonel from the waiting bus. Blue smoke puffed from the double tailpipes under the chassis and the two additional exhaust vents on the roof, every opening covered with a steel grille to prevent the insertion of an item to clog the exhaust and choke the engine. The windows were double sheets of Plexiglas separated by a lattice of steel bars, and the only door was three inches thick.