The Chameleon Factor Read online

  “No underground cables so far,” he announced, leading the way through the darkness. Their shadows extended before them, the deeper pools of night only dimly illuminated by the dying fires. Busted masonry and torn pieces of clothing were everywhere. A broken M-16 lay in the dirt, black ants covering a brownish stain on the stock. The men said nothing at the sight, concentrating on the mission. Death was part of the job. Soldier or cop, you learned how to handle it, or got into another line of work.

  “Any idea on the number of vehicles?” Lyons asked, walking around a crumpled sedan lying on its side. The tires were gone, burned off the rims, the doors smashed inward, and the interior upholstery was slashed in a thousand places, the stuffing well out like pus from a wound.

  “According to Aaron, forty-five,” Blancanales said, sweeping the destruction with his goggles. “So that gives us a minimum death toll.”

  “Most of these were limousines,” Lyons corrected, brushing a hand over his short blond hair. “And nobody drives in one alone. So I’d place the minimum at 250, a maximum of, say, six hundred.”

  “Okay, heads up. The primary detonations were there,” Schwarz said, pointing at another location. “And over there. But there were a lot of secondaries in the parking lot.”

  “Gas tanks in the cars?” Lyons asked.

  After a moment, Schwarz shook his head. “More likely fragmentation bombs hidden in the trunks of a few cars that sent out dozens of bomblets that then detonated.”

  Carefully, Blancanales sniffed the air. “No smell of willy peter. Could have been thermite, or napalm.”

  “How hard would those be to obtain?” Lyons asked, dodging slightly as another round cooked off in the distance.

  “We’ve been using them for forty years, England, China, heck Australia has its own version. They’re expensive, and you have to know what you doing or else you only get a big-ass flash and not a damn thing is damaged.”

  “But do it right and whole towns could disappear off the map.” Lyons said grimly. “And this is what they used merely to cover their tracks?”

  “Whatever they used, I’m convinced now that it was for the Chameleon,” Blancanales said, walking among the smashed cars, a tattered scrap of Navy uniform fluttering from a jagged piece of twisted metal. “It took a lot of effort to achieve this. Sure as hell wasn’t done to get revenge on some congressman or senator.”

  While Schwarz continued his EM scan, Lyons surveyed the smoldering ruins of the grandstand. Okay, he was forced to agree with his teammate. If this had been a personal grudge against somebody, a simple car bomb would have done the job. In spite of what the Secret Service said, it was relatively easy to kill a man if you didn’t mind dying with him. This level of destruction was done to cover the theft.

  The somber atmosphere of the site was disturbed by a buzz from Lyons’s jacket pocket. Switching his gun to his other hand, he pulled out his cell phone and flipped the lid.

  “Able,” he said.

  “Cain,” replied the voice of Barbara Price. “Good news. Aaron found gold. Professor Torge Johnson was spotted driving his car through a red light an hour after the explosions in Fairbanks.”

  “But MI identified the professor from his dental records and a finger found at the bunker,” Lyons said, then added, “So we have a duplicate.”

  “Agreed. Unless the professor was kidnapped in front of a hundred VIPs.”

  “Highly unlikely.”

  “Agreed.”

  “A duplicate of a dead man, a stolen prototype, goddamn it, I remember something about a similar incident in France a few years ago,” Lyons growled. “A politician was killed in an explosion, but his duplicate showed up minutes later at a national depository and emptied his personal safe-deposit box. God alone knows what state secrets were in there.”

  “Anybody claim the job?” Price asked.

  “No.”

  “I’ll find the incident and have Aaron and Carmen compare the records of everybody killed in the French explosion to the dead in this one. Somebody is going to match somehow, and that could be our man.”

  “Or woman,” he said.

  “Yeah, I already considered that. The professor was slim, and had a bushy beard. An easy man to imitate.” Price sighed. “Too bad Hunt isn’t here. He knows the French government systems inside and out.”

  “Help design them?” Lyons asked.

  “No, but a student of his did.”

  “And Hunt taught the kid everything he knows?”

  “She knows,” Price corrected with a chuckle. “We almost recruited her, then Carmen came our way.”

  Lyons whistled. “That good, eh?”

  “Very few better.”

  Somewhere in the woods, an owl began to hoot, then abruptly stopped as another round of ammunition ignited from the asphalt fires.

  “Sorry, I missed that,” Lyons spoke into the cell phone.

  “I said, how is the search going?” Price asked.

  “Zero so far. I’ll call back when we find something.”

  “Confirmed,” Price said, and the line went dead.

  The Able Team leader closed the lid on the cell phone and slipped it away. “Okay, let’s go see the target range,” he ordered, heading briskly into the darkness. The sooner his team was out of here, the better. He simply couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.

  Firebase One

  THE MISSILES WERE ready to fly.

  Gigantic, gleaming columns of metal, the four North Korean monsters stood in a neat line, each supported by an individual gantry. Brick fire pits yawned open beneath each titan to contain the fire blast of a launch. Power cables hung in clusters, while fat fuel lines kept the tanks of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen constantly filled to the absolute maximum level. Wisps of cold fog drifted around the exhaust vents of the colossal ICBMs, and a thin layer of ice covered the housings where the huge fuel tanks were located.

  The sum total of the organization’s resources had been used to make these four missiles. There would be no more. But they would suffice. The design of the missiles was unique: a mixture of American electronics, Chinese alloys and Russian engines. They were marvels of technology, fully capable of traveling halfway around the world to deliver a payload of staggering destructive power. Not nukes. Those had proved impossible to obtain. But something almost as deadly, supplied by their comrades from Vietnam.

  Standing behind a thick Plexiglas window, a slim Oriental man looked upon the towering missiles with near fatherly pride. He was dressed in a well-cut suit from the finest tailor in London, and a tiny red flower was in his buttonhole. A gold Rolex watch shone on his left wrist, and a cryptic tattoo adorned the back of his right hand—three interlocking circles.

  “Are the coordinates programmed in for the new targets?” Major Yangida Fukoka asked in flawless English.

  It was odd. The technical staff was from several nations, and at first, communication had been a problem. Then he discovered that many of them were amateur pilots, which easily settled the matter. English was the chosen international language of airport flight controllers. Every pilot in the world knew a little English. Brothers bound together by their knowledge of the hated enemy’s tongue. The irony was almost poetic.

  Crouched over a console of instruments, an elderly man turned and smiled. “Yes, sir,” Dr. Owatari Tetsuo replied, pulling a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his lab coat. “We can launch at your command.”

  Major Fukoka merely grunted, trying to ignore his own reflection in the Plexiglas. His face was horribly pockmarked with acne scarring, a combination of starvation and filthy living conditions as a child. Only his eyes were beautiful, shining with intelligence, although without the warmth of humor or compassion. Women of many races were drawn to his wondrous eyes, until they discovered the mind behind them, and by then it was too late. The major’s tastes in bed ran to the extreme, and few of his partners ever saw the light of day again.

  Lighting a cigarette, the scientist drew in a d
eep lungful of smoke, letting it trickle slowly out of his nose. “My technicians are ready to copy the device as soon as it arrives. Maybe a day, perhaps only an hour. Depending on the design and complexity of its circuits.”

  “Good,” Fukoka said, glancing at his watch. “Now it is simply a matter of waiting for the arrival of Chameleon.”

  “And Davis Harrison.”

  “Yes, him too,” the major said with a cold smile.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Kolyma Hills, Eastern Russia

  Watching the glowing green radar screen, David McCarter stayed alert for boulders in the nameless river. The pelting rain of the squall was far behind them now, the ocean mist replaced by a thick fog moving along the calm surface of the country river. Briefly, McCarter had a flashback to London at midnight. But this was not the time, nor the place. The former SAS officer cleared his head of such pleasant memories and concentrated on the work at hand. But it was difficult to forget. This was his fifth mission in a row without a break. McCarter knew he was starting to get edgy, his infamous short temper becoming dangerously tetchy. He needed some R&R. Hell, his whole team needed some rest and relaxation soon, or else their next mission would be their bloody last one!

  The radar flashed a mute green light.

  “All stop,” McCarter subvocalized into his throat mike.

  At the rear of the hovercraft, Encizo was operating the engines, and he carefully began to slow the vehicle. Wearing night-vision goggles, Hawkins stood guard at the port side with an assault rifle draped over a shoulder and a silenced tranquilizer gun held loose in his gloved fist. This was civilian territory, and even if the U.S. and Russia were at war, the Stony Man commando would refrain from killing innocent civilians at all costs. The narcotic dart of the gun would put a person to sleep for hours, and by then Phoenix Force would be long gone. As always, the danger was encountering a child. The darts carried an adult dose to put a man down fast. The same amount could cause heart failure in a small child, but there was no second gun. If the team was spotted by a kid, they would have to run for it and take their chances against the entire Russian army.

  Manning and James, in the second hovercraft, pulled alongside the first and as the engines went silent, the vessels lowered into the sluggish river. The fog carried a faint aroma of wood smoke, but there was no sign of a flickering campfire in the billowing mist covering the two shorelines.

  Rising and falling with the gentle currents, the hovercraft headed downstream toward the ocean. The waves slapped against the moss-covered boulders rising from the river like baby mountains. Manning jerked about his assault rifle as a fish broke the surface, jumping after an insect. He relaxed with a sheepish grin, then went stiff as a soft buzz came the sky. The big Canadian whistled softly in warning, but the others had already caught the sound. A single-engine plane, or a small one-man helicopter. With the masking effect of the fog it was hard to tell, and McCarter didn’t dare use the radar again. If that was a military aircraft, the pilot would spot the signal instantly and backtrack it directly to the hovercraft. That would blow the entire mission.

  “T.J., toss it,” McCarter said gruffly, keeping a steady hand on the small control board for the craft.

  Sliding the tranquilizer gun into a holster, Hawkins pulled the pin on a fat tube that resembled a pipe bomb. Whirling it above his head at the end of a short rope, he built momentum and then let it go. The bomb flew into the fog and disappeared. If it hit water, the sound was lost in the noise of the waves on the rocks.

  At first nothing seemed to happen, then the sound of the plane began to drift away in the direction of the pipe until it could no longer be heard. Lifting a pair of infrared goggles to his face, McCarter scanned the sky and found nothing. Switching to UV, he still saw nothing. Feeling the pressure of time, he decided to risk the radar and the screen came up clean. The plane was gone.

  “Engines,” he whispered into the mike, and the motors were cut back in immediately. “We used this long enough. Head north by northwest, half speed.”

  Rising off the river, the hovercraft moved forward once more and soon made up the lost distance. Skimming across the rocks and water, they floated over a submerged log and up onto a pebble shore. Continuing onward, the hovercraft moved up the slope and onto bare soil, then smooth grassland. Now their speed noticeably increased, and the team felt as if they were flying across the dark Russian countryside. After a hundred yards the sounds of the river were left behind, and there was only the low moan of the wind and the steady purr of the hovercraft engines.

  “Looks like the plane bought the singer,” James said, one hand tight on the joystick of the little craft.

  The singer was a decoy that generated the radar ghost of a flock of birds. A sensor set for aerial pursuit would switch off the ghost as soon as the plane got close. The team also carried one set for a school of whales if they had been in danger of becoming exposed at sea. That one would sink while making the sounds of a dying whale, then turn itself off as it touched the seabed. The singer was designed by some unsung genius in the Pentagon as cover for Navy SEAL incursions and emergency evacuations. This was the first time Phoenix Force had used one, and so far it was receiving high marks.

  Floating along the ground at fifty miles per hour, the men stayed alert for obstructions coming out of the thick fog. Now and then a tree zoomed out of the mist and they had to separate fast to go around. But mostly the terrain appeared to be farmland, the soil churned by tillers for the spring planting. Once a giant shape appeared on the horizon, and the team swung their weapons around. But it proved only to be a combine tractor sitting idle until the next day of work. Minutes passed in hushed quiet, only the purr of the engines and the rush of the ground-effect that keep them airborne disturbing the night. The craft dipped as they took a ravine filled with reeking garbage and stagnant water. But they rose again on the other side, sailing past some loose bricks scattered on the ground.

  A soft glow became noticeable in the rushing fog, and McCarter checked a map on his PalmPilot. Ah, just a local village. This part of the Kolyma Mountain Range was mostly deserted, aside from a few farms and a couple of mining towns. The CIA believed it was also the training ground for a Russian terrorist organization, but that was unconfirmed.

  Chancing the radar once more, McCarter slowed the hovercraft until it stood still, drifting slightly in the wind of its own creation. James did the same with the second. Some loose gravel on the ground kicked out from the spinning turbines, creating a small dust cloud. The men backed away until it stopped.

  Just then, rapidly building in volume, a great shape came rushing out of the fog with blazing lights, and then it was gone.

  “Clear,” McCarter announced, nudging the joystick forward.

  Moving on, the two craft flowed effortlessly over a low rock wall and across a smooth concrete highway. The two American craft paused above the grassy strip, separating the opposite lanes until another truck went by. Then they proceeded once more, down a gravel hill and out across a rough terrain of broken shale and small ponds.

  As they crested the top of a low hill, the mountains were now in sight, impossibly tall peaks surrounded by a dense forest. If they stayed on the roads, the team might be seen. But if they stayed in the woods, soon the trees would be so close that the men would be forced to abandon the hovercraft and proceed on foot. But the forest gave them vital cover, so they’d keep flying until the very last moment.

  “Any sign of the crashed plane yet?” McCarter asked.

  “No response from the ILM system or the black box,” James replied over the earphone. “But the GPS says we’re smack on track.”

  “Stay alert,” McCarter said, squinting into the foggy night. “Watch for wreckage on the ground, or broken treetops.”

  “Roger that.”

  In the second hovercraft, Manning and James shared a thermos of coffee and zipped up their suits a little tighter. Cold. The Russian night was surprisingly cold.

  Trees rose in
the darkness, and the proximity sensor gave warning in time for the hovercraft to be turned in time to avoid a collision. Minutes later, their forward speed was cut by half as the two craft wove through the dense greenery, the trees dangerous close to one another. The branches formed a canopy overhead, and the sky was gone. Dead leaves swirled in the wake of their turbofans, and birds screamed in terror at the mechanical invasion, but there was no help for that. Time was of the essence.

  The team knew that, while America and Russia were on genial terms these days, political friends became economic enemies at the drop of a stock market, and there was still a strong anti-American feeling in many of the former Soviet Union soldiers. The Chameleon would give the Russians a killing advantage in stealth technology—invisible spy planes and unstoppable missiles. Even incursions like this by Phoenix Force would be next to impossible to control if the hovercraft were masked by the blanketing field of the Chameleon. Recover or destroy. The words rang in their minds. It was seldom they received such a command.

  The craft slowed at a rushing river, the mist fading away and a cold, clear moonlight bathing the primordial woods. Encizo did a scan with the infrared and found nothing. The same for James and the tracking beacons. This was starting to worry McCarter. A crashed commercial jetliner was one of the easiest things in the world to find. Aside from the great fan of wreckage in its wake, the jet planes carried numerous devices for rescuers to find the passengers. There were backup systems on the backup systems. So unless Flight 18 had slammed into the side of a mountain and been blown to smithereens, there should be a beacon beeping for help. But the airwaves were clear.

  “I don’t like this,” Hawkins commented, sliding an AK-105 off his shoulder and working the bolt.

  The deadly assault rifle had a 40 mm grenade launcher attached under its barrel. Normally, the covert team carried a favorite weapon for close-order combat, the incredibly reliable 9 mm Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun. But this was politically dangerous territory, and so the AK-105 had been chosen as the support piece for the mission. Any shells found would be traced back to the Russian army, not American soldiers. As backup weapons, the second hovercraft also had the team’s MP-5 subguns, but those were for emergency use only.