Super Bolan - 001 - Stony Man Doctrine Read online

  Motioning to Encizo, he whispered, "The wireless room! Stand watch, I'll put one in there."

  Encizo nodded. Manning went to the door, turned the knob infinitely slowly, and pushed the door open. He looked inside, froze.

  The radio operator slept on a floor mat. Manning started back, then looked. Empty beer bottles stood at the side of the mat. Reaching into his pouch of micro-transmitters, Manning took out one of the coin-sized devices and peeled off the plastic that covered the self-adhesive back.

  He pushed the door open, took two steps to the radio console and slapped the transmitter under the table. Beyond the inside door, he heard voices. Two steps brought him back to the wind-whipped Atlantic night.

  "Now the bridge," he whispered to Encizo.

  Moulding themselves against the steel wall, the two warriors moved slowly to the superstructure's corner. Their legs were fluid, their feet never left the walkway; no footfall, no creak of old steel betrayed them.

  Encizo went flat, his cheek against the walkway, and he peered around the corner.

  As his partner watched and listened, Manning waited, his eyes sweeping the decks. He noted the one Palestinian still hunched against the rail, another pacing the deck and smoking a cigarette that lit his face with each drag.

  Encizo rounded the corner like a snake. Manning dropped to a crouch and watched Encizo crawl under the wheel room window. The long rectangle of plate glass glowed with the phosphor green of a radar screen. Encizo motioned Manning to follow.

  Their backs flat against the superstructure's steel, they inched up toward the long window, keeping their heads to the side of each end. When they gained the height, they turned slowly to peer through the glass into the interior of the room.

  Brilliant light filled the wheel room. A silhouette moved against the radar glow. Manning snapped his head back. He looked across to Encizo. Encizo looked at Manning. He touched one eye, pointed inside. He licked his thumb, mimed sticking something to the window. Manning nodded.

  While Encizo watched the interior, Manning prepared another mini-mike. Accumulated filth and corrosion along the bottom of the window forced him to wipe the glass clean before pressing the adhesive-coated transmitter to the extreme corner of the window. He scraped up some flaking paint and gull guano from the window's ledge to conceal the device. The window would now serve as an extension of the microphone, gathering the voices of the crew and captain for transmission.

  Motioning Manning to follow, Encizo continued to the opposite side of the superstructure. Around the corner, they saw another steel stairway leading down. While his partner listened for movement below them, Manning pressed a mini-mike to the porthole of the cabin immediately behind the bridge. Then they crept down to the second deck.

  An aluminium outboard-powered boat hung in the lifeboat racks. In contrast to the rust and salt-encrusted paint of the freighter, the boat's aluminium gleamed. The factory's plastic cover protected the outboard motor. Manning put a transmitter on the underside of a wooden seat, then followed Encizo to the main deck.

  Across the deck, the sentries talked. A lighter flared for a cigarette. Encizo crawled across the open area between the superstructure and the stacked cargo containers. He rose to a crouch and watched the upper decks for other sentries. He signalled to Manning.

  Staying against the lip of the hold hatches, Manning crawled to the shadows of the containers. The two men darted from row to row, glancing down the length of the rows, listening for unseen sentries, then crossing.

  Manning saw a container door swinging with the ship's sway. He hissed Encizo to a stop.

  Peering inside the door, he saw oil drums. The interior stank of some nauseating chemical. He looked at a tangle of plastic tarp under a container. He tore a patch free. Gulping a breath of air, he leaned into the fumes and wiped the floor of the container with the patch. The stinking chemical coated the plastic.

  Manning folded the plastic into a tight wad and jammed it deep into the ankle of his boot where the neoprene would hold it tight.

  A minute later, first Encizo, then Manning dropped into the Atlantic. The slap of their bodies hitting the water was lost in the wind and waves.

  10

  Virginia

  Friday

  3:00 p.m.

  (2000 Greenwich mean time)

  SQUINTING AGAINST THE GLARE of the afternoon sun, the assembled personnel of Stony Man watched the Army helicopter descend.

  The Huey's side door slid back. Mack Bolan jumped the last six feet, then ran for the perimeter of the helipad. Hal Brognola waited until the skids touched concrete.

  Throwing her arms around her man, April Rose welcomed Bolan with a kiss, the rotor-storm whipping her auburn hair around their heads. The noise obliterated her words.

  Aaron Kurtzman, data director of the Stony Man HQ, allowed them only a moment's embrace before shouting, "There's a shipload of nerve gas anchored ten miles east of New York City! We got a lab report just five minutes ago—"

  Bolan gently separated April's arms and pulled her along with him as he strode for the Stony Man command center, the War Room. The others knotted around him—Kurtzman, Yakov Katzenelenbogen, Gary Manning, Rafael Encizo, Brognola—all shouting to their commander and at one another to make themselves heard over the rotor throb of the helicopter as it soared away. Bolan glanced to his friends, his brother warriors—would they all survive the coming week of desperate war?

  Bolan and Brognola had flown by Air Force jet from Lebanon to Paris. At Charles deGaulle airport, they had jogged across the tarmac to a Concorde supersonic transport.

  Bolan had welcomed the civilian flight. With businessmen and movie actors in the seats around them, Brognola had not been able to continue the briefing. They could not discuss strike options. Bolan had slipped headphones over his ears and slept deeply as stereo orchestral music drowned out the vibrations of the SST's engines.

  On arrival at Kennedy International, Bolan had run to a waiting limousine for a ten-minute meeting with a government official. Meanwhile Brognola had met with a CIA courier to exchange the negatives of the Lebanon photos for a folder of Agency background information. Then they had run again, to the Huey waiting to take them to Stony Man.

  Bolan had told his friend nothing of the limousine conference at Kennedy: neither to whom he had spoken, nor what they had discussed. Brognola did not press Bolan for the information. He knew Bolan would tell them all at the briefing.

  Keio Ohara, the shy young Japanese martial artist of Phoenix Force, waited at the entry to the War Room. Awkward with the still unfamiliar ethno-eccentricities of his American and European compatriots, Keio bowed to his commander. He handed over yet another folder thick with papers and photos, then bowed to everyone in the group as he also gave them folders.

  The drill instructor's voice of Andrzej Konzaki, the Stony Man weapon smith, boomed. "Take your seats, please. Keio, pull the blinds for me and turn on the screen's power. Mack, everyone's got info for everyone else. Let's get this briefing in gear."

  Setting down his aluminium canes, Konzaki took a seat in the front row of chairs. His artificial legs were stretched out in front of him. In his conservative gray suit, with his information folders and his open briefcase placed on the seats around him, Konzaki looked like a Washington bureaucrat, not an ex-Marine master of weapon technology. Bolan gave Konzaki a friendly mock salute as he took the lectern. "Where's Grimaldi?" the big guy asked.

  "Checking aircraft," Konzaki answered. "Reported in, then went to work."

  "Good. And McCarter?"

  "His flight was delayed," Yakov reported.

  "IRA popped one at Heathrow," Manning added. "Bloody bastards. Killed three kids and their grandfather. Wish we could clean out those morons."

  "They're on the target list," said Bolan, "but not this week. You've all had briefings. You know what we're up against. You probably know more than I do. Hal and I flew over on the Concorde. What's developed in the last few hours? What did you say about
nerve gas in New York, Bear?"

  Aaron "The Bear" Kurtzman held up a torn teletype sheet. "Just came off the machine. Manning's sample turned out to be methylphosphonic difluoride. It's half of the nerve gas GB."

  "There's a whole shipful of it," Manning reported. "Cargo containers stacked twenty-five feet high. High-pressure pumps. Couldn't see what they were for, the pipes going straight up in the air. Thought the machines were a miracle of Arab engineering—totally bungled!"

  Yakov interrupted. "Colonel, I took the liberty of assembling the equipment and weapons necessary for the assault."

  "On what?" Bolan asked. "It's on a ship? On the docks, what?"

  "The Tarala. The freighter my comrades in the Mossad tracked from Yemen."

  "So what's your plan?"

  "Hijack it," Encizo announced. "Take it out to deep water, and—" The Cuban grinned, pointed down.

  "We want prisoners, remember," Mack Bolan said, his blue eyes cold as ice. "We're up against unknown enemies. Hal, the photos from Lebanon—please pass them around. We have already dropped the negatives with Langley. They'll be searching their files for those faces. These are the facts as I have them. A Russian appeared to be the officer in charge of the chemicals. He wore a protective suit and a gas mask. The Cubans came in on the Ilyushin. Keio, there's an Oriental in a Cuban uniform. Maybe you can tell us his nationality, or his ethnic group.

  Yakov, I don't know if I can recognize whatever gang those Palestinians came from—"

  "Kalinin!" Kurtzman shouted out. He waved the photo of the Russian killed in Lebanon. "Alex Kalinin. You're a rich man, Mack. The Afghans have a reward for this one. One kilo of gold."

  "They can keep it. What do you know about him?"

  "Off the top of my head... won the Lenin prize in the Communist Youth Corps, degree in biochemistry from the University of Moscow, taught at Patrice Lumumba University, fluent in Spanish and English. Chemical Warfare officer in the KGB—" Kurtzman turned to the others "—you know the Soviets have two separate armies, the KGB army and the Red Army. Went to Afghanistan to test experimental poisons. Gassed a mosque full of women and children. Was careless enough to walk in front of a Red Army photographer. The Afghans captured the photographer, took his film and notebook. That's how we identified the unit and the location. United Nations wouldn't accept the evidence, by the way, when they had the Afghan hearings. The Rule of the Three Monkeys—See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, unless it's the United States."

  "He have any links to the Cubans?" Bolan asked.

  "Who knows? The KGB's got links to every crazy in the world. We do know that he's been connected with a character called Fedorenko, who was one of Andropov's artsy-fartsy friends, used to go with Andropov to beatnik Russian art galleries back in the seventies. But Fedorenko's disappeared, could be dead for all we can find out. We may never hear about him again."

  "What about the others?" asked Bolan. "Anybody got anything on them?"

  Heads shook, no.

  "Too much to hope for," April sighed.

  Konzaki spoke up. "We got names from the Cuban that Able Team took in Jamaica. We'll crosscheck for names, places, organizations—"

  "How's the interrogation of that Cuban pilot from Jamaica going?"

  Bolan rubbed the unshaven stubble of his broad chin.

  "Just came from Langley," Konzaki replied. "Got few hours of cassettes for you to hear. Senor Bru is a very pragmatic young Communist. He wants to live. We're cross-checking what he's told us with what the Iranian soldiers told us—"

  "Able Team captured Iranians? In Jamaica?"

  "Affirmative. A soldier and a truck driver. They're no one important. Teenagers. Mullahs came to their villages and grabbed all the young men. Some went to the Iraqi front, others got sent to 'freedom-fighting' units. But they had names and details. Able Team will use the information in Nicaragua."

  "What?" Brognola asked, incredulous.

  "We have every kind of creep and they're all in on this Hydra operation," said Konzaki. "With the information they've given us, we have identified bases in Nicaragua and Florida."

  "Hope this doesn't end up on the six-o'clock news as American crimes in Central America," commented April Rose.

  "Where are the camps in Florida?" asked Bolan. "Who are the leaders, Andrzej?"

  "The Iranians don't know. They had contact only with their unit leaders. But the Cuban pilot heard two Orientals speaking at the Florida base. They spoke Spanish to his commander, spoke Chinese or whatever to each other."

  "What did they look like?"

  "The pilot didn't see them. He was outside the office, never saw who his commander talked with."

  "We're moving!" Bolan said. He pointed to Yakov. "Colonel, when David McCarter gets here, you go back to New York. We'll review your plans while we wait for him. Bear, we want anything you've got on those bases in Nicaragua and Florida—"

  "Already done, Mack," Konzaki interrupted. "Give your okay, Able Team's on the way."

  "Good. Konzaki, Yakov. Set up briefings for me. Kurtzman, the War Room's yours. You're responsible for managing the information flow from all sources, and to all agencies. Briefings will be continuous. We'll have personnel from other agencies coming here. You'll need to transmit updates to me, to Able, to Phoenix wherever they are in the world. You and Konzaki and April will be coordinating the movement of teams and equipment. Understand this, all of you. This is the big one. I talked with the President. He said no surrender. No surrender."

  Mack Bolan scanned their faces for a long, silent moment. "Now go to it. You all have your work. Konzaki, Yakov, Kurtzman, come up front, please. Hal and I have some points to check out with you."

  The confusion of voices returned as the warriors gathered their intel folders and left their seats. Yakov spoke quickly with the members of his team before going to Bolan. Encizo and Manning argued with each other. Keio attempted to mediate. April made a phone call, then dashed out.

  Gathering in a tight group around the lectern, the senior members of the Stony Man forces held their questions while Bolan leafed through interrogation transcripts, glanced at maps and satellite photos. Bolan waited until all of the others had left the War Room.

  "The President said more than 'No surrender,' " Bolan told them quietly. "I met with him only a few minutes ago. Hal, that's who was in that limo. The Man himself.

  "He told me that all the evidence we have indicates this is more than an attack on the United States by fanatics and political criminals. We have the involvement of radical anti-U.S. terrorists, the Cuban DGI, the Nicaraguans. We've faced these groups before, but never all at once, never in a coordinated worldwide assault.

  "One organization links all these groups. One organization funds them, trains their recruits, plans their atrocities, provides sanctuary for the killers, pleads their insane causes to the world. We know who they are, but we cannot stop them. It would mean war to attack their command center.

  "The President told me 'No surrender.' Even if we fail, there will be no surrender. We will not abandon the people of the world to the slave-masters.

  "Even if they hit our cities."

  "That is what the President told me. If we can stop them, good. The story will never make the newspapers or history books. There will be no confrontation.

  "But if we fail, the President will go straight to the center of this terrorism. He will inform the Soviet Union that any attack on the cities of the United States by the KGB or its proxy forces is an act of war."

  "Problem is, the Soviet Union has spent the last twenty years preparing for this. We have not. Our allies have not. You know the Europeans. Our country cannot expect help quickly. Only talk and debate, while millions die."

  "There it is. America alone. Against the most powerful military regime in history. War. And only we can stop it."

  Mack Bolan's steely eyes glared at each man in turn. Behind the hard gaze was a soul torn by primal forces.

  But the steel of those eyes expressed
a will, a determination to seek the balance within the tempest, a balance within himself and within his men, that by virtue of its intrinsic power and faith would ensure final victory in a struggle that even now pitched the world precariously toward a full fall to Hell.

  11

  Straits of Florida

  Friday

  3:30 p.m.

  (2030 Greenwich mean time)

  CRUSTED SALT STIFFENED HIS FACE to a mask.

  As his power cruiser closed the last mile to the yacht, Kinosuke Yoshida stood on the flying bridge. The spray from the prow misted his white shirt and white deck pants. He saw Cuban crewmen on the yacht furl its sails.

  Yoshida's eyes continued scanning the wind-whipped Straits of Florida for the patrolling cutters of the United States Coast Guard.

  The rented power cruiser was manned by his bodyguards. Kizu piloted the craft, Kampei monitored the multi-band radio scanner and searched the frequencies for signals from the Coast Guard.

  To the moment that they tied up beside the yacht sailing north from Cuba, Yoshida and his men did not fear an encounter with the Coast Guard. They had the correct immigration stamps in their passports. They carried receipts proving they had rented the cruiser. In their deck suits, purchased from an expensive shop in Miami, they appeared to be only Japanese tourists lavishing American dollars on a visit to Florida.

  But he had no confidence in the documents and disguises of his comrades aboard the yacht. Yoshida knew the United States maintained continuous surveillance of the Straits of Florida—from ships, high-flying radar planes, satellites. If the Americans had detected the departure of the yacht from the secret marina in the islands of the Cuban Archipelago de Sabana, their security services would maintain their surveillance until the yacht reached its destination. Yoshida knew a satellite could even now be replaying their coordinates to a Coast Guard ship.

  Any encounter with the Coast Guard involved questions. If the false identities of the Cubans and Palestinians failed to pass the inspection of a Coast Guard officer, the Americans could link Yoshida to Hydra.