Contagion Option Read online

  “Bio-Two is not responding! Take him down!”

  Reader swung the Hughes into an arc and raked the NOTAR across the windshield of one of the Hummers. A blast of concentrated air rammed into the glass and it buckled, starring white. The roof of the vehicle bumped off the tail boom, and Reader wrestled with the jerking aircraft, trying to keep it under control. The second Hummer swung around and fired a burst of .50-caliber shells that punched through the rear cabin, missing Reader in the pilot’s seat, and thankfully also avoiding the engines in the rear of the aircraft. He accelerated forward and watched as the vehicle with the damaged windshield slowed to a halt. The gunner in the turret on top tried to increase the elevation on his M-2 Browning, but Reader spiraled wildly over it, climbing as fast as he could.

  The other Hummer broke away from its partner, gaining distance so that the Hughes was in the arc of fire. A stream of tracers licked underneath the 500D and Reader fought to keep up his frantic climb. The Black Hawks roared into range, flanking him.

  Grim faces peered at him over the sights of M-60D machine guns.

  “Blow Bio-Two out of the sky!” Dugway CAT called.

  STAN READER HAD BOUGHT Mack Bolan a reprieve as he buzzed the machine-gun-armed armored Hummers, and he took advantage, leveling his Raging Bull at the machine gunner on the top of the second vehicle. He adjusted his aim at the last moment and blazed away with five quick shots. The long-nosed Magnum revolver launched its payload, and Bolan could see the gunner recoil from his M-2 Browning, its receiver blasted into useless junk by a swift succession of heavy-caliber pistol rounds.

  The first gunner in the stopped Hummer swung his machine gun around and raked the corner of the warehouse, but the Executioner and Graham retreated from the savage onslaught. Graham, though, instead of heading back to the cover of the warehouse wall, charged forward toward the overturned forklift.

  A security Jeep raced around, riflemen in the back ready to take up the slack for their heavier-armed ally when Graham reached the flipped forklift. He skidded to a halt and grabbed a freely rolling mortar shell. He plucked the safety pin on the warhead and hefted the miniature bomb.

  “Come on,” Graham taunted. “Closer…”

  He whipped the 120 mm shell. While shaped like a football, the warhead seemed to weigh a hundred times more. Still, Graham put everything he had into the throw, and the bomb slammed nose-first in front of the security Jeep. He was short by twenty feet, but when the shell hit, it didn’t matter.

  The mortar shell erupted with the force of a thunderclap, and Graham felt the shock wave rip across him. The riflemen in the back of the Jeep were dislodged from their positions, and the driver swung crazily trying to keep his vehicle from flipping over.

  Graham smirked. “Touchdown.”

  He looked back and saw that the first Hummer and its machine gunner were still in action. The .50-caliber Browning swung toward him, and Graham froze, knowing that they had him dead to rights. The muzzle flared and the ex-college football star was yanked off his feet and slammed against the frame of the forklift.

  Bolan pushed Graham under cover as the tarmac to their side erupted under a line of heavy-caliber slugs.

  “Thanks,” Graham said.

  “Forget it,” Bolan answered. “Reader’s got company up there. Black Hawks with security troops have him pinned down.”

  Graham looked up and saw the teardrop-shaped helicopter flittering like a bumblebee between two heavier, predatory air sharks. It was a wild aerial dance as the bulkier Black Hawks wound in a spiral around the Hughes, trying to keep it trapped long enough for the door gunners to hose it down. At this distance, there was nothing he could do. Chucking the mortar shell even forty yards across the tarmac had taken everything out of him, and his arm hung like limp pasta from the muscle-wrenching effort.

  “Stan, cut the power and drop,” Graham whispered. “You’re a lot more agile than those bloated slugs.”

  Suddenly, the Hughes 500D plummeted, as if the strings holding its toylike frame aloft had been severed. Graham swallowed hard as the Little Bird dropped like a rock, the Black Hawks left easily three hundred feet above it, trying to recover. Suddenly the agile little aircraft twisted out of its power dive with fifty feet to spare and lanced through the sky toward the forklift.

  Reader swung the Hughes around. “Get on!”

  The moment that Graham heard Reader’s voice over his earphone, he realized that the slender scientist had taken Graham’s jet fighter advice. He and Bolan charged toward the aircraft known as Bio-Two, climbing aboard. Bolan slipped into the back while Graham hauled himself into the copilot’s chair. The minute both men had grabbed on, Reader swung the Little Bird behind the cover of the warehouse.

  “Thanks for the advice,” Reader said. “But you’re the one who’s got to get us out of here. I used all my good tricks.”

  Graham clutched the joystick and the collective throttle. His shoulder still ached from the effort of throwing the mortar bomb, but he ignored the pain through force of will, twisting the nimble Hughes out of the path of streams of heavy gunfire from the Black Hawks and the remaining Browning machine gun on the Hummer.

  “Stan, we’re going to need a lot more than my jockeying,” Graham cautioned.

  Reader looked at the PDA and went to work. “I’ll jam communications with my satellite hookup at the condo—”

  Graham nodded as he juked the Hughes hard.

  Bolan reloaded his Raging Bull and cocked the hammer on the revolver. He hung out the side door, offhand wrapped tightly around a safety strap, the other bracing the heavy Magnum revolver as he took aim at one of the Black Hawks. He knew that the steel rotors were tough enough to bounce .30-caliber rifle fire, but even a rifle didn’t have the sheer bullet weight of a .44 Magnum slug. Besides, he wasn’t intending to blow the Dugway security aircraft out of the sky, only to hold it off. He tripped the trigger and one 240-grain slug speared through the spinning rotors, chipping off one aluminum blade before tumbling into the main mast.

  The Black Hawk swerved away.

  The gunners, thrown off by the sudden evasive action of their pilot, weren’t able to hose down the Hughes. Graham swung lower to the ground, making a beeline for the base’s perimeter fence. The second Black Hawk swung in a tight circle, trying to drop down on the opposite side that Bolan was shooting from. Graham, though, twisted the Hughes around on its rotor hub, giving the Executioner a clean shot at the other Black Hawk. The Dugway pilot evaded to keep Bolan’s Raging Bull cannon from damaging his aircraft.

  The first Black Hawk Bolan tagged limped to a landing, smoke bleeding from the base of the main mast. The .44 Magnum slug had to have either deformed violently on contact with a blade, or else it pushed a chipped slab of the flat aluminum into the rotor mast. Either way, the Black Hawk was crippled, but the pilot had managed to land without causing injury to its crew.

  The Executioner couldn’t have dreamed of getting that kind of a shot a second time against the sturdy, powerful Black Hawk, but the Dugway security helicopter crew wasn’t going to take any chances of a repeat performance. Graham aggressively tried to get into a superior dogfight position against the faster, but far less nimble Black Hawk, forcing the Dugway defenders to break off, pouring on the speed to escape the tenacious little helicopter.

  “They’re disengaging,” Reader said. “Plugs out, gentlemen.”

  Graham plucked his earphone out in time to hear a faint, soft howl emanate from the speaker.

  “They’re deaf,” Reader announced. “I bounced a heavy band audio frequency into the perimeter of the base. That will keep them occupied for about two minutes.”

  “By then, we’ll have disappeared into the foothills,” Bolan answered, strapping into the cabin’s rear couch. He thumbed a fresh .44 Magnum round into the Raging Bull to replace the one he’d spent taking down an enemy helicopter. “Do a quick search on the residence of a Major Nelson in Park City.”

  Reader nodded. “Wait…Nelson?”
r />   Bolan nodded.

  “I remember that name…” Reader said. “Yeah. He owns a stretch between a couple of mountains. Sort of a ranch, but it’s mostly ski country there, except for an airstrip. In fact, the other day, Graham and I passed close by while cross-country skiing and plinking.”

  “The day of the bank robbery,” Graham added.

  “Feels like a year ago,” Reader answered.

  “It was only this weekend,” Bolan returned. “You know the area?”

  Graham sighed. “Stretch, take over. My shoulder’s killing me.”

  “Right,” Reader answered. “You okay?”

  “I just need to rest it,” Graham said. “Won’t have much time if we go pay a visit to Major Nelson.”

  “If that’s the case, then we can reequip at your condo,” Bolan suggested. “Do you have any snowmobiles? We can slip in the back door.”

  “We’re not going to intercept the convoy?” Graham asked.

  “We don’t have enough firepower on board,” Bolan explained. “Besides, it’ll take them at least an hour to reach Park City, and then even more time to transfer their equipment to whatever planes they have at Nelson’s airstrip.”

  “What about the containment breach Mojo planned for Dugway?” Reader asked.

  “My first contingency plan is taking effect right now,” Bolan said. “Your jamming signal wouldn’t affect their Internet connection, nor their land-line telephone communications.”

  “So?” Graham asked tiredly.

  “I think they intended to release the contagion electronically,” Bolan told him.

  “A logic bomb,” Reader translated. “Or, ironically, a computer virus.”

  “A virus to release the anthrax virus…” Graham said.

  “Actually, anthrax is a bacterium, not a viral infection…” Reader interjected.

  “You were talking like a normal person for a couple hours, there, Stan. Now you’re getting all scientific,” Graham replied.

  Reader raised an eyebrow. “I believe it’s due to a renewed sense of confidence in our situation—”

  “Stretch…” Graham cut him off.

  “I know,” Reader answered. “Shut up and drive.”

  Kirby Graham smiled and laid back against the headrest of the seat.

  Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  AARON KURTZMAN HAD penetrated Dugway Proving Grounds’ security system only a few minutes before the Executioner and his allies infiltrated, but the hunt for the lethal electronic booby traps laid within the system had taken the two hours the trio of crusaders had been on the scene. Shuffling through the firewalls, antivirus codes and other systems was at once tedious in its intricacy, but tense in that the slightest mistake would turn the entirety of the United States Military Computer Warfare division against him. Conduits from NORAD and the Pentagon, where small armies of military hackers manned their posts, would provide them with countless avenues not only to shut down the Dugway system, ironically protecting the lethal sabotage set in place by Mojo, but also lead them to attack Stony Man Farm’s own cybersystems.

  As such, the rest of the cybercrew—Carmen Delahunt, Akira Tokaido and Huntington Wethers—were manning the computer defenses. All three would have to put their skills to the test to keep the Sensitive Operations Group’s computer systems safe from concentrated counterattacks from two of the most highly skilled groups of hackers in the world, and the powerful networks at their command.

  Kurtzman shifted gently through countless information hubs, shuffling through files subtly, looking for anything that didn’t quite belong. He knew, though, that if Mojo himself had been a part of the Dugway staff for years, anything he set into the computer systems would have seemed home-grown, and a natural part of the electronic landscape. Still, Kurtzman couldn’t let up. Somewhere, there was a virus or a logic bomb waiting for the simple command to erupt and release deadly contagion into the atmosphere.

  The computer genius looked at the screen, his fingertips dancing wildly across the keyboard as he guided his probes deeper into the defenses of the mainframe. His forehead creased with concentration, and a droplet of sweat beaded off his right eyebrow. Kurtzman gave his head a shake, and the sweat flicked away, dropping onto his forearm rather than stinging into his eye.

  The network for Dugway was massive, with subsystems as extensive as a whole city’s. As it was, Kurtzman, with the power of his search programs and his own genius, could only skim the most likely hiding spots for the digital sabotage. Even if he had the other three on hand, poring through every file in every folder of the mainframe, it would take a year to search every jot of data for the sabotage.

  But it had to be done. Otherwise, the Executioner had said a city could die. At the very least, if Kurtzman failed, the thousands of men and women stationed at Dugway would be murdered in a fireball of nuclear cleansing. The pressure was on, but that was how Kurtzman liked it. Adrenaline raced through his bloodstream as his own brain’s neurons fired quickly, thoughts and ideas leaping like lightning from lobe to lobe in his mind. He was in the zone, rapidly making logical associations at a speed that belied his wheelchair-bound form and burly hands.

  “Intrusion protocols activated,” flashed on the screen, and Kurtzman tensed, but he double checked the screens.

  “They’ve detected Bolan and the others,” Delahunt announced. “Security teams have been dispatched to the munitions warehouse.”

  Kurtzman’s lips set tightly. “Keep me posted.”

  “Helicopter’s taking off from the base, too,” Wethers stated. “Unauthorized, but…Radar has cut out. They’ve lost contact with the craft.”

  “Stealth helicopters,” Kurtzman responded. He continued to hack away at the mainframe. His molars ground, and though he wished that he could take a sip of his industrial-strength sludge coffee, he denied himself the caffeine rush. Bolan counted on him to be the last line of defense for the very people who were alerted to his intrusion on the base. Kurtzman sailed through cyberspace, hunting and seeking out the elusive cybernetic commands that Bolan and he had agreed were in place.

  There was no other option, really. A suicide operative would likely go off too soon, whenever his emotional state hit the perfect fever pitch of madness and zealousness. Explosives placed in key soft spots could be discovered by dog teams and security personnel.

  The only sabotage element at work had to be a computer program of some form. And while there were minor viruses within the Dugway mainframe, none was anything more than a standard infection picked up by bored soldiers downloading Internet games and illegal programs online.

  Kurtzman’s hands were growing tired, and his eyes continued to dart over the screen, looking for that one out-of-place line of code that would prove to be the telltale sign of digital sabotage. “Come on, dammit.”

  The discovery of Bolan meant that Mojo was fully aware his cover had been blown. The scorched earth option that the criminal mastermind had set up could be activated at any time. Kurtzman hunted through the system.

  “Bear!” Delahunt spoke up. “I’ve got Striker on the line. He said that the guy running the show at Dugway is Major Nelson.”

  Kurtzman broke off his current line of search and plowed back through the mainframe toward the personnel network. “Nelson.”

  Kurtzman slipped out of the base’s roster and threw up the server nodes in the mainframe for all personnel named Nelson. There were only thirteen who had their own nodes, the others being people of lower ranks who only required a user name to access official e-mail and Dugway bulletin boards.

  And there was only one associated with the Dugway branch of the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Research Division.

  Kurtzman invaded the node and quickly shut it down, isolating it from outside contact even as a message raced toward it. He threw a wall of black ice around the node, blocking the signal, then penetrated into the frozen depths of the node.

  It took only a minute for his probes to find the logic bomb that would open the vents
of the containment core. Mojo had almost activated this program, but the combined efforts of Mack Bolan and Aaron Kurtzman had prevented a computerized disaster.

  The Stony Man computer genius purged the Dugway mainframe of its deadly sabotage, then hacked deeper into Major Nelson’s files.

  “Carmen,” Kurtzman said, coming down off of his adrenaline high, “contact Hal and tell them to stand down the fighter-bombers. We’ve got everything under control.”

  “Right,” Delahunt answered, relief filling the redhead’s voice.

  KENT STEVENS LOOKED at his PDA as its message bounced off the server back at Dugway. He glanced over to Pave, and shook his head. “They cut us off.”

  “So they know where we are,” the bodyguard said. “Great.”

  “We still have the last shipment of artillery shells ready to transport out,” Stevens explained. “And, I do have my last-minute option waiting at my lodge.”

  Pave nodded. “I’ll get that going while we’re loading the planes,” Pave stated.

  “Good,” Stevens answered.

  His last-ditch plan included an old Soviet 120 mm gun, acquired from his friends in the Iraqi government. It had been smuggled from the Middle East on his personal submarine, and brought up from the coast by one of his truck crews. That had occurred years ago, and the cannon was assembled under the cover of a barn where he stored his snowmobiles.

  Granted, this necessitated the delivery of North Korean shells. While these were delivered by his partners’ submarines, and most of these were put to use in covering as destroyed munitions at the proving grounds’ demolitions disposal field, he kept a few of the shells in reserve. He had modified one of the warheads with the first batch of airborne, weaponized prions he’d developed. He had the range to hit Salt Lake City, and an airburst would provide a deadly, invisible cloud that would strike the city hard. Given air-dispersement patterns of the bioweapon, he was certain of at least two hundred thousand casualties, even though they wouldn’t develop for the first couple of months. But, by then, he would be on a tropical beach, drinking his smuggled whiskey and smoking Cuban cigars, securely away from the rest of the planet as the terrorist groups he supplied waged a lethal biological war against the nations of Earth.