Contagion Option Read online

  Reader desperately clung to the tailgate, his legs flying wildly under the impact and wicked shaking of the vehicle. The heavy tires of the truck ground up chunks of packed snow as the jet of slough tried to snap its wheels off. Only the massive weight of the smuggled munitions and the deuce and a half’s own size kept it from flipping like a leaf in a hurricane. Dykstra kept the vehicle plowing straight ahead, engine roaring under the strain. The suspension sagged under the dual forces of its payload and the snow’s strike.

  Anderson didn’t let up, and he smashed across the current of snow that had slapped the road ahead of them. It was like hitting a brick wall while having a second one thrown at you. The front end buckled, hood deforming as it struck the jet of rocketing ice and snow, and the driver’s window shattered, both men in the cab suddenly inundated by choking powder. The driver didn’t stop, though, still keeping the hammer down, the pedal pressed firmly to the metal. The truck cut through, its speed and mass sufficient to keep it on the road and crash through the avalanche. Bolan was thrown in his seat, blinded, but holding Anderson at gunpoint now was superfluous. The driver’s attention was focused on survival. He worked the wheel, twisting and slaloming the big transport after it burst through the advance tendril of the avalanche. He couldn’t see, but all he needed to do was to keep the truck from slashing off course. Physics helped, and he knew that he had to keep plowing in the direction of the truck’s momentum. His face and eyes were caked with powder that had blasted through the shattered window. Both Bolan and Anderson had to cough and spit to free their noses and mouths from the choking cloud that had swarmed into the cab. Knobby tires whirled, trying to find traction, and momentum carried them off the side of the road into a ditch. Heavy steel split tree trunks as the woods provided a cushion for the out-of-control vehicle.

  Bolan’s shoulder struck the dashboard on impact, and Anderson’s face was a mass of cuts and slashes on one side from broken glass. The driver clutched his arm, and the bruise from his own wrist was livid on his forehead through the snow that flaked off of his face. Bolan recognized the bruises as Anderson’s attempt to protect his face from a violent impact with the steering wheel. In blocking with his arm, he’d punched himself in the forehead, but it was better than having his skull caved in by the steering wheel.

  “You all right?” Bolan asked.

  “Alive…” Anderson muttered. There was no way the driver was faking his injuries. He’d suffered tremendously, taking the brunt of not only broken glass, but at least a broken forearm. Bolan checked the man’s eyes, using his pocket flashlight.

  “Concussion,” Bolan told him. “Stay put.”

  “Good ’vice,” Anderson slurred. Bolan checked the glove compartment and found a first-aid kit. Luckily, the snow had caked to the lacerations on his cheek. This gave the warrior time to check for any obvious broken glass in the man’s face. He took out two nasty splinters and a jagged square of glass, then pressed gauze to the cuts. Anderson helped to hold it in place while Bolan taped the compress down. Luckily, the driver’s eyes hadn’t been damaged.

  “Thanks,” Anderson muttered.

  “You got us through,” Bolan admitted. “I owe you.”

  “Don’t suppose this means that you’ll let me go?” Anderson asked.

  Bolan shook his head. “You’ve got some dues to pay.”

  Anderson would have nodded, but his head hurt like hell. Bolan put the driver’s broken forearm in a sling he’d gotten from the first-aid kit. “Not like I could walk away from this…”

  “No. But contact this man,” Bolan said. He pressed a small business card into Anderson’s good hand. “You can cut a deal with him. Turn state’s evidence, help the law close down whatever is still outstanding in this operation. That’s how you can pay the rest of your dues.”

  Anderson managed a weak smile. “A chance for redemption.”

  “You’ve earned it. So did your buddy Dykstra,” Bolan explained. “He can cut the same deal.”

  “Somehow, though, I don’t think there’s gonna be too many left to prosecute after today,” Anderson muttered.

  “Nope,” Bolan replied.

  Bolan got out of the cab and saw that Graham had forced Dykstra to swing back around and rejoin him.

  “What now?” Graham asked. “Are you okay?”

  Bolan shrugged his shoulder, taking stock of it. “Bruised the joint when we hit the trees, but everything seems to be working all right.”

  “I think Stevens has anticipated our plan,” Reader said.

  Bolan looked at the pile of snow blocking their only way out. “Well, there’s no turning back now. How are the snowmobiles?”

  “Serviceable,” Reader responded.

  “He probably thinks he’s taken us down,” Bolan continued. He pulled out his satellite phone. Its powerful signal would reach Hill Air Force base despite the mountains around Park City. A cell phone’s signal would be blocked by the mountains.

  “Sarge?” Grimaldi asked.

  “Time to move in,” Bolan told him. “Hope you’ve got something pretty sharp up your sleeve.”

  “Oh, the general decided to let me have some really nice toys since we kept his guys from having to nuke Dugway,” Grimaldi answered. “I’m on my way.”

  After securing Dykstra to the steering wheel of his truck, Bolan and his companions unloaded their snowmobiles and headed for their final encounter with Mojo.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Dr. Kent Stevens strode with majestic pride toward his Learjet. To one side, waiting in a queue, sat three Hercules C-130 planes. Their long storage had made them sluggish to get into action, especially in the cold Utah mountains. Still, they were ready to fly, their aircrews having spent the night preparing for their escape. On board each of the large craft were one hundred artillery shells.

  It was only sixty percent of what he had promised to his buyers, the dozen terrorist organizations that he had entreated to begin their ultimate jihad against the corrupt governments of the world. He frowned, knowing that their disappointment would prove costly, but he had no choice. The remaining two hundred shells had already been lost in transit. He still had containment shell cores for the missing munitions, and there was the possibility that the terrorists would arrange their own means of dispersal of lethal spongiform prions. After all, they had proved quite adept at improvising explosive devices to carry out their wars.

  Still, there would be customers, upset about the lack of ready-made munitions to drop on their victims.

  Pave walked beside Stevens, the hulk a willing and docile toady. As he imagined the man who murdered Clarice Mi crushed under tons of snow, the big man’s face soured.

  “What’s wrong?” Stevens asked.

  “I can’t buy the fact that we took him out with an avalanche,” Pave responded. A bandage was wrapped around his forehead, red seeping through. “You heard what Captain Jaye said.”

  The mad genius nodded. “He escaped a fuel-air explosive. This man has taken on many major threats in the past and survived them all. Perhaps we have destroyed him, but I doubt it. He can busy himself with our contingency plan, if he is capable.”

  Pave looked at the cannon, primed and counting down to the moment when it would hurl a deadly shell, loaded with lethal bioagents, into the air over Salt Lake City. A tinge of doubt and regret colored his ruddy face. While he was fine with plotting the collapse of the rest of the world into chaos, barbarism and carnage, the thought of destroying a city he’d spent so much time in weighed on him for a moment. He knew people in the city, if only in passing.

  It was one thing to plan something so abstract as worldwide slaughter and mayhem against faceless billions. But the people of Salt Lake did have a face, did have identities to the hulking bodyguard. He took a deep breath and let it out, trying to flush the thought from his mind.

  There was only a one in two chance that the airborne version of the prions would infect people he recognized. Perhaps they would survive the pandemic caused by the ar
tillery launch or the chaos caused in the wake of the outbreak.

  Pave rationalized the outcome as he struggled with his conscience. He had been the one who had programmed the countdown, but he wasn’t the one who gave the orders, who developed the warhead loaded with nerve-tissue-destroying mutant proteins. He was merely a servant, at the command of a man who had put a stopper in a bottle of death, and who sought his deserved place at the throne of the whole world.

  “Have you thought of where we should place my new palace?” Stevens asked whimsically. “I’ve got it split between the Taj Mahal and the Vatican.”

  “I like Italian food,” Pave answered.

  Stevens rubbed his chin and smirked. “Me, too. Hopefully we can find some decent Italian chefs in the aftermath of our apocalypse.”

  “Well, they’re pretty spread out across the world. Maybe a few will make it,” Pave responded.

  “Remind me the next time I make plans for depopulating the globe to arrange for a cadre of quality cooks before engaging in mass extermination,” Stevens quipped.

  Pave laughed, his doubts burning away with the absurdity of his master’s comments. “Yes, sir.”

  Stevens neared the Learjet, its turbines wailing to full power. The pilot waited at the steps of the plane. “I’ll miss the snow.”

  “The tropics will be nice, though, sir,” Pave began. Something glinted in the corner of his eye, and with a speed belying his bulk, he dived, scooping Stevens to his chest. The two hit the snow as gunfire rang out.

  The jet engine chugged, its perfect scream of operation suddenly turning into a sickly cough. Pave glanced up to see fire and smoke spitting through a hole in the drumlike turbine. A moment later, the other engine shook as a .300 Winchester Magnum round pierced it. This time, though, the superheated engine spewed a glowing stream of flaming aviation fuel in a fountain of liquid fire.

  “Holy shit,” Stevens hissed as Pave fisted one of his stubby rifles and dragged the genius along like a child.

  “Stay close to me!” Pave ordered. He triggered his Krinkov in the direction of the flashing glass that had alerted him to the attack. Despite the rifle cartridge, the stubby machine pistol didn’t have the range to reach the sniper.

  The jet’s flaming engine erupted in an explosion that rained chunks of burning debris on the spot where Stevens and Pave would have been standing if the bodyguard hadn’t reacted on training and instinct to get them moving.

  The airfield erupted as the riflemen hidden in the woods opened up. Stevens’s security forces reacted with trained precision, sweeping automatic fire to pin down the sudden assault.

  Pave tore open the door to their gunmetal-gray Suburban and threw his boss into the back seat. The driver was wide-eyed as a rifle bullet glanced off the armored windshield.

  “Move!” Pave bellowed, grabbing on to the truck’s frame.

  The Suburban accelerated across the airfield, racing for cover. Pave slammed the side door behind him just in time to stop another powerful rifle slug that would have severed his spine.

  “The man in black made it,” Pave growled.

  “At the most, it’s only three men,” Stevens replied. “Kill them all.”

  Pave reloaded his Krinkov, his face split by a mirthless smile. “Oh I intend to.”

  STAN READER SLICED through the snow on his skis, the Heckler & Koch G-3 rifle bouncing against his back as he raced along. His legs and lungs burned for respite, but there would be time for that later. Hopefully.

  Reader ducked beneath a branch, then skidded to a halt and shouldered the rifle. He spotted two of Stevens’s riflemen rushing toward Graham’s position, attracted by the muzzle-flash of his AR-10 on full-auto. The slender skier triggered his G-3 and took them both between the shoulder blades with a ragged, extended burst. The gunmen collapsed in bloody heaps, and Reader twisted and raced along as enemy gunfire reached out for him.

  Just like skiing the biathlon, except with a rifle that really kicked, and with the urgency of kill or be killed. Earning a spot on the Winter Olympic team had provided Reader with a lot of pressure, but nothing matched the snap and crack of enemy bullets cutting through the air chasing after him. He wasn’t much more heartened by the idea that the thugs he was shooting at were far larger and easier to hit targets than the little metal plates he’d had to nail while running the biathlon course. Plates didn’t bleed or scream when they were hit. They simply fell over. Dead men were far more disconcerting targets.

  Reader fought to make the differences not matter as he sliced between the trees. Both he and Graham had a vital task in this opening salvo of the assault on Stevens’s airstrip. They had to keep the security forces busy while the Executioner’s marksmanship was put to work against the parked aircraft. If one of them got off the ground, then a cargo of lethal biotoxins could get away. They had to sew up the escaping planes right away, and Bolan’s .300 WM rifle and his uncanny sniping skills were the only thing that could ground them.

  Unfortunately, Stevens’s personal guards were very well trained. Most of them had taken cover and had created arcs of fire that kept Reader blistering across the powder, dodging both tree trunks and high-velocity bullets. The mathematician in him calculated velocities and ranges as he swept through evergreen branches caked with snow. Each one he hit exploded with powder, camouflaging him as he cut through the trees, making him harder to see. Reader made certain to shield his face with his forearm, because his breath created a sheet of steam that turned the normally placid powder into a sticky concoction that could clog his goggles. Blind, the scientist would prove to be easy pickings for the enemy gunmen as he raced to dodge them.

  As soon as he passed out of the lethal arc of one group of enemy riflemen, he crossed toward another’s range. Reader twisted and raced for deeper cover among the trees as Graham opened up on the nest of gunners. Stevens’s defenders ducked under cover, but counted on their allies to apply pressure to the Fed. His Bearcat growled as it shot across the snow, sweeping around in the opposite direction as Reader’s orbit of the airfield. The powerful snowmobile kept Graham ahead of his enemies, always pushing himself just out of the range of their weaker 5.45 mm rifles.

  Graham reached another secure position, shouldered the AR-10 and cut loose.

  Stop, fire, wait for the enemy to duck out, then move again.

  A simple, repetitious pattern, like the biathlon, Reader mused as he took aim and managed a hit, punching a 7.62 mm slug through the face of one of the enemy riflemen. The man’s right eye shot out of its socket on a rubbery string of nerves, blood pumping from the dying man’s face. The gruesome demise once again hammered home the difference between this lethal fight and the cool, bloodless precision of his Olympic sport.

  People died here.

  Reader charged on to avoid becoming one of those dead. A 5.45 mm slug tugged at the shoulder of his coat, and powdered snow flew. The flakes sprayed across his goggles, momentarily blinding him, and he tumbled as he struck a tree trunk. The impact would have crushed his nose if not for the safety goggles, but still, his head bounced wildly off the trunk, the world spinning like a top as he collapsed back into the soft powder. His forward momentum robbed, his arms windmilled, trying to keep him upright, only instinct keeping him from hurling his rifle from his grasp.

  Hitting the ground had saved his life as enemy rifles slashed the air above him. He rolled, freeing himself from his skis, then triggered the G-3 blindly. The powerful German rifle shook in his grasp, and the swarm of enemy bullets faded. Reader shook the flakes from his goggles and saw two more men lying in crumpled, gory heaps, mute testimony to the sheer killing power of his weapon. He spotted another gunman racing away from the others, triggering his AK-107 wildly as he ran. There was no aiming on the defender’s part. He was only wasting ammunition in an effort to keep Reader’s head down.

  The scientist wrestled with his conscience for a moment, then pulled the trigger, blowing a crater in the back of the mercenary’s skull.

  “If t
hey surrender, let them, but be careful, it could be a trick,” Bolan had warned him. “And if their finger is on the trigger, kill them. They’ll kill you without a second thought.”

  “Kill them.” Reader repeated the orders of the mysterious warrior.

  He scrambled to his feet and got his skis on. Within a moment he was moving again, racing away from Stevens’s defenders as they sent forth a blistering reaction of rage to avenge their comrades. Reader fought off a biting chill that had seized him in the middle of this snowy battle zone.

  Despite the heat of the bullets cutting the air and the sheath of sweat under his snow suit, Reader felt very cold inside.

  WHEN THE THIRD C-130’s last engine billowed with smoke, roiling forth as a 180-grain high-velocity slug had punched through its internals, Mack Bolan let the rifle drop into the snow and crawled onto the back of the Arctic Cat snowmobile. Graham and Reader were in the middle of a frantic firefight with the defenders of the airfield, and the enemy gunners had proved disciplined and capable.

  Bolan wished that he could have had a grenade launcher to even up the odds, because against enemies with such skill and determination, a person needed all the edge he or she could get. Instead, all he had left was the Uzi, abandoning the bolt action as just a little too slow to make a difference against this crowd of gunmen.

  It was time to get close and nasty. The Arctic Cat launched off an outcropping, snow trailing behind him like a cloud of exhaust, the single wide tread whirling as it was freed from contact with ground or powder. The vehicle had become an aircraft for a heartbeat before coming down with a jolt. The front skis shoved back hard into their shock absorbers, and then the wide-belt tread bit into snow again and thrust the snowmobile forward like a missile. With Bolan and his gear, the snowmobile was 750 pounds of hurtling war machine. He gripped the Uzi in preparation for his arrival into the midst of the battle, and taking off from a ramp of packed snow, he exploded over the heads of a group of guards. Trailing snow sprayed in their eyes and they fired their rifles ineffectually into the sky, but by then the Executioner was behind them, landed on the airfield and spinning the Arctic Cat around with deft precision.