Contagion Option Page 8

  Graham drove in silence. Reader had been upset about the thought that his covert guard assignment had put him in the league with torturers and assassins. While he didn’t know much more than the name of the top-secret farm—Stony Man, in the Blue Ridge Mountains—he did know that the men who were vetted to become blacksuits were people of strong moral caliber.

  If violence was required, they wouldn’t shirk their duty to use it to prevent American citizens from coming to harm. He’d been involved in a couple of small operations, working as backup for either Striker, the one-man army, or one of the two teams that were employed by the Farm. The details of exactly who he’d worked with were sketchy. He didn’t have names.

  But he did have knowledge of the teams’ operations. The blacksuits were kept aware of current operations, in case they were sent as backup to help the big guys kick some butt. Usually, Graham’s time had been served as security. On two occasions, he’d been sent into the field, as security for a forward base in one instance, or as part of a cleanup operation in a hazardous material environment in the other.

  It was dark and secret work, but they were under strict orders not to involve civilians.

  Reader’s doubts could have been allayed if he’d been a part of the blacksuit operation. He’d have seen that torture was only a last, desperate resort, and used only against the most blatantly guilty. Truth drugs were used in other cases, and Graham had been subjected to Scopolamine treatment to be vetted for the program. They asked him about his views on such matters, grilling him hard for signs that they were recruiting a closet psychopath who sublimated his killing urges to gain more training.

  “Kirby,” Reader said, nearly jolting Graham out of his own skin.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Reader apologized.

  “Warn a guy next time you come out of zombie land, Stretch.”

  Reader chuckled.

  Graham cast a glance at his old friend. “So, what’d your meditation tell ya, buddy?”

  “That I should have trusted you not to be the kind of man who sends suspects to Saudi Arabia to be hung by their thumbs.”

  “Hell, Stretch…”

  “I know. You could have told me that. I just needed to examine all the evidence myself,” Reader replied. “Everything I know about you simply didn’t jibe with the Air America program.”

  “I want to tell you about it all…” Graham began.

  “You’re not at liberty,” Reader stated. “I’m on a need-to-know basis. If someone higher up the ladder wants to let me in on this operation, they will. Until then, my mental efforts will be focused on the mystery at hand.”

  Graham smiled. “Thanks, Stan.”

  Reader shook his head. “You never have to say thanks to me, Kirby.”

  “So what does the bank robbery have to do with the UFOs spotted around Dugway?”

  Reader frowned. “Obviously, computer records were available at the bank that would have disclosed who was financing the security probes at the facility.”

  Graham nodded. “In two-dollar words, the money trail of the snoopers leads to the bank.”

  Reader shrugged. “However, the electromagnet would have been used on any and all tape backups in the mainframe.”

  “That wouldn’t have affected DVD-based backups.”

  “No, but the explosion would have dropped the roof on any optical media, crushing, warping or otherwise rendering it useless,” Reader stated.

  “They also could have had a team sent after the CDs and DVDs storing that info,” Graham added.

  “Most likely, if this team were covering up its tracks,” Reader mentioned.

  “So we’re back to square one,” Graham grumbled.

  “Even if the gangs have no information for us, the very lack of data is evidence of a direction we should be searching in,” Reader said.

  “What they don’t know might kill us, though.”

  Reader tilted his head. “I’ve never known you to turn your back on a good scrap, Kirby.”

  “Yeah. And this’ll be a pretty good one.”

  Reader nodded.

  “Simply because I got you on my side,” Graham noted.

  Reader grinned. “Thanks.”

  Graham pulled the car over as they reached a restaurant in Korea town. He didn’t have to check to feel that his Special Response Pistol was locked and cocked in its holster and its backup, a Glock 23, was on his ankle. “You packin’?”

  Reader nodded. “Before I joined you at the morgue, I obtained replacements for my confiscated weaponry.”

  Graham chuckled. “Yeah. You’re packin’.”

  Reader sighed. “Sorry, Kirby. Ten-dollar words when a simple yes would do.”

  Graham killed the engine. “You wouldn’t be the same old you if you said ‘ain’t’ and ‘yeah.’”

  Reader was about to answer when the windshield was struck with a salvo of bullets that turned it into a sheet of spiderwebs.

  Graham ducked out the door, .45 in hand. Reader was nowhere to be seen, as he’d snaked out the other door.

  Bullets slammed into the asphalt beneath Graham’s feet, plunking against the sheet metal of the car.

  “Well, the good news is…” the Fed said, flicking off the pistol’s safety. “If they’re trying to kill us, we’re on to something.”

  He only hoped that he’d live long enough to learn what it was.

  Wonsan, North Korea

  THE EXECUTIONER’DISGUISE held. There was no doubt that it would. The prosthetics were of a tougher, more durable material than that used in standard stage makeup, and the spirit gum compound was water- and sweat-proof, yet breathable so that he could wear them for at least a week at a time. The brief dunking the eye folds took in Tongjosun Bay didn’t affect them.

  The contact lenses were also soft and breathable, yet turned his ice-cold blue eyes into dark, smoldering orbs. He could sleep in them for up to thirty days before discomfort set in.

  He plodded along with his walking stick, stooped over, no one paying him any attention. He was just an old man, hunched over with age and too many experiences. An unnoticed face in the crowd. He was darker and craggier than the smooth-faced Koreans around him in the port city, but he didn’t look like an American. They simply assumed him to be some foreign national.

  A pair of police officers on a street corner finally noticed him. One stepped forward and asked for papers from the “elderly” Bolan.

  Bolan apologized in the smattering of Korean that he knew and presented his old, battered paperwork to the cop.

  “What’s your business here?” the cop asked.

  “Visiting my son-in-law,” Bolan answered.

  The cop sneered, then handed Bolan back his papers. It was obvious that the Korean cop was disgusted at the thought of a fine Korean man marrying a Chinese citizen, let alone one who wasn’t even Chinese, but Vietnamese by birth. Asian racism was common in the Orient. Every race scorned the other in varying degrees. Certainly, different nations tolerated each other as allies against common enemies, but contempt always lay beneath the surface. The cop waved him off, as if he were convinced that Bolan would defecate right on the sidewalk like an untrained dog.

  Knowing the rampant bigotry, Bolan figured that the cop actually did assume that “the old Vietnamese fool” would actually perform such a vile task in public.

  “Move along, old man,” the cop snapped. “Don’t cause any trouble.”

  “No, sir,” Bolan replied, nodding and grinning.

  So far, so good, Bolan thought. He continued on to where the submarine’s hard drive had revealed the covert craft would have unloaded. He reached the harbor and leaned against his walking stick.

  The waves swelled on the surface, a few cresting enough to produce a whitecap before crashing against the rocks. Freighters and junks bobbed where they had been moored for the evening.

  No submarine pens were in evidence, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. He doubted that the North Koreans would hav
e a fleet of undersea craft within easy view of the rest of the world.

  He scanned the shoreline and noticed a large pier, lost amid the huge hulks of two ancient, barnacle-laden and rusty ships. Bolan narrowed his eyes. The two huge craft looked out of place, rundown and ill preserved. The old boats were shielding prime shoreline in a heavily built-up area. Bolan walked toward them.

  The two ships were huge, and the soldier didn’t have a doubt as to their true purpose. They probably hadn’t left the shoreline in years, serving as shielding against prying satellite radar and infrared scanners. They were the perfect cover to keep unwanted American eyes from seeing the submarines nearing the surface, slip in under the two old hulks and into a waiting underground wharf.

  By the time he reached the pier, it was two hours after sunset. Curfews had driven people home, and Bolan had gone from a slumped-over old man to his own lithe, nimble, shadow-hugging form. The walking stick was laid amid some crates, out of sight. He wouldn’t need it now, but he might have use of it later.

  A military shore patrol passed by in a clean, well-running Jeep. Bolan took care to note their weapons: top-of-the-line AK-107 rifles, brand-new 5.45 mm weapons, even more advanced than the standard AK-74. He briefly considered the bank robbery in Utah, and wondered if the “robbers” had similar weaponry. In the darkness, he remained a wraith, letting the soldiers pass by unmolested.

  The Jeep paused for a moment as it sat between the two rusting hulks. One of the soldiers brought a high-tech Motorola radio to his lips, checking in undoubtedly to a central command.

  New weapons, good vehicles, and top-of-the-line electronics told the Executioner all he needed to know. If this wasn’t the submarine pen, then it was something of equal covert value. In cash-strapped North Korea, such equipment was in short supply, which gave Bolan another clue as to the origin of this operation.

  Someone else was in charge. Even North Korea’s fledgling nuclear program was utilizing fifties’ era atomic technology.

  More than just cattle and humans were being smuggled into North Korea.

  The Jeep rolled on and Bolan slipped from the shadows. He pulled the swim goggles from his pocket and placed them over his eyes. He pulled his flashlight and affixed a red filter over the end cap, then slid over the rail.

  The harbor’s water enveloped the Executioner, but he had a lungful of air, and he clicked on the waterproof flashlight, bathing the murk ahead of him in dull red. The filter would keep the light from being seen from too far away, the red wavelength of the spectrum being notoriously weak. With the cover of night, the pier, its ships and the dark water, no one would notice him.

  Kicking powerfully, he sliced through the murky darkness, finding a huge gap in the cleft between the two rusted keels. Bolan dived toward the gap, his eyes making out straight banks of concrete that formed a collar around the entrance. Smooth walls ran on into the depths of the tunnel, and Bolan turned back and broke the surface of the harbor, sucking down a deep breath.

  Swimming into the pen would be one certain way to catch the conspirators unaware, but he didn’t have scuba tanks, and it would require more time than he could hold his breath to reach the end.

  The Executioner, however, was undaunted. Though it had been some time since he’d engaged in casual sex in the field, he always carried a few foil-wrapped condoms with him. In the Army, he’d learned that a condom was good for more than protection against disease and unwanted pregnancy. When rolled over the muzzle of a barrel, it kept mud and dirt from jamming up the rifle. A condom had many other uses.

  Bolan unwrapped one condom and blew into it, inflating it with four or five deep breaths. Stretched into a long, semiopaque tube, it now became an air bladder. He took out a paperclip and clamped it over the neck, making certain not to puncture the stretched rubber. He sucked down a breath, then plunged into the depths of the harbor.

  The submarine access tunnel was wide and long, and Bolan had to pause three times, exhaling carefully through his nostrils, then clamping his lips to the end of his improvised air bladder to take in a lungful. The condom was half deflated by the time he’d advanced far enough through the tunnel to rise to the surface. Bolan kicked upward and broke the surface, breathing in fresh air.

  The tunnel was still dark, only faint amber work lights illuminating the far end of a massive cave. Bolan released the last of the air from his makeshift air bladder and pocketed it. He’d refill it when it was time to exit, or find another path out of the sub pens.

  Bolan killed his flashlight and swam slowly, careful not to splash and cause too much of a disturbance. If he was spotted now, he’d be easy prey for any guard force protecting this conspiracy.

  Granted, Bolan would put up a good fight, but the element of surprise would be lost.

  As he reached the underwater pier, he noticed that there was one submarine parked in its berth, but there had been room for two others. The Executioner had already accounted for one U-boat, but that meant that another of the seacraft was crawling in the oceans. He’d transmit the information to Stony Man Farm if the opportunity arose.

  He wondered if the sub berth had been in use or if it was an extra, set up for visitors.

  With the knowledge that the North Korean arm of the conspiracy had outside sponsors, that was likely. He crawled up one of the support struts after making certain no trip wires adorned the post. As he exited the water, he drew one of his Beretta knock-offs, thumbing the hammer back and flicking the selector to 3-round-burst mode.

  Bolan took an extra moment to fix a suppressor to the muzzle of his machine pistol. He was ready for anything. The lamps didn’t cast light on the water, but a driveway led from the loading dock to a man-made cavern off to one side. The way the ground swelled toward the mouth of the cave, Bolan knew it was an inclined road, leading to the surface. Whatever the false front of the loading bay was, it would have proved invisible to satellite and aerial reconnaissance. Only the knowledge that the enemy had submarines had given the Executioner a clue that this facility even existed.

  Bolan turned and jumped aboard the berthed craft, scrambling up its black, beetle-like back until he reached the conning tower.

  Someone spoke in sleepy Korean, and the closest that the Executioner could translate was “breakfast.” It was a question, and presumably the man on watch was expecting to have breakfast delivered in bed.

  Moments later, his face appeared in a hatch, and the sleepiness disappeared in a silent mask of shock. Before he could cry out, Bolan served him a full meal of slugs in the mouth. Brains and skull fragments exploded down the sailor’s back and he tumbled into the control room. The suppressed autoburst was no louder than a polite cough, but the Executioner had started the fight, and he had to make certain that no one else was aboard the submarine. Or if they were, they had to be put out of commission quickly.

  Bolan knelt beside the corpse and checked its pockets. He heard nothing else in the submarine, but still spent a few minutes examining the craft from stem to stern, the silenced machine pistol leading the way.

  Satisfied that the vessel was abandoned except for a single watchman, Bolan headed to the engine room.

  He took a moment to open one of the fuel reservoirs and let the thick, pungent rough fuel splatter across the deck at his feet. He located a small container and filled it, forming a path all the way back to the control room. He needed a second trip to refill the container to ensure that he had enough diesel to thoroughly soak the control room. The Executioner took several minutes with the container to pour more of the thick, greasy diesel over engines and control panels, letting the seepy runoff dribble to the floor, forming flammable streaks up the sides of control surfaces.

  Bolan crawled up the ladder to the conning tower deck, then lit a waterproof match and dropped it into the large puddle in the center of the floor. He closed the access hatch.

  The diesel wasn’t volatile enough to explode, but with the engine and control rooms’ most vital equipment soaked with fuel, the fi
re he started would render the old Soviet craft difficult to use. The fire would also make it difficult for the submarine’s crew to determine how their watchman died.

  Satisfied that he’d crippled the second craft, Bolan eased into the water by the pier to remove the stench of petroleum from his boots and skin. Returning to the dock, he crawled out, pausing crouched at the edge. He let himself drip dry, not moving until he was certain the facility was still quiet.

  Two men walked lazily through the area toward the sole, lit prefab building at the other end of the cavern. They were carrying boxes.

  The breakfast club, Bolan recognized. He stalked across the submarine pen slowly. Landline wires ran up to a conduit pipe that were no doubt connected to above-ground communications services. These wires ran to the lit shack, identifying it as the communications post for the facility. If he took command of the comm center, he’d be able to isolate this branch of the conspiracy.

  The arrival of the two with the food and coffee gave Bolan a confirmation of at least three men in the communications shack, more likely four minimum.

  He wondered how many of the enemy were present in the facility, but there was only one way to find out. Bolan padded up to the communications shack and gently loaded the partially spent Beretta.

  Whoever was still alive after the shooting stopped would give him the answers he needed.

  The Executioner kicked open the shack door, Beretta leading the way.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Salt Lake City, Utah

  Stan Reader snaked almost bonelessly out of the shotgun seat as soon as the windshield was smashed by a salvo of enemy gunfire. His Scorpion revolver slid into his hand easily, and he twisted behind the protection of the wheel well.

  Bullets pocked into the asphalt in front of him and he poked the flat, slab-sided revolver barrel around the corner. The polished surface acted like a mirror, and he was able to locate the enemy snipers quickly. He lowered the barrel and sought Kirby Graham in the next moment. There was no sign of him, which was good news.