Thunder Down Under

by Don Pendleton

  A hard impact from behind jolted both the SUV and him forward just as he squeezed the trigger. The short burst of bullets plowed into the roadway, kicking up bits of asphalt as they roared past the new holes in the macadam.

  What the hell? Bolan turned around to see a giant Range Rover with a huge ram bar and blinding lights roaring up behind them to smack into the rear of their SUV.

  “Where the hell did those guys come from?” Williams shouted.

  “Don’t know,” Bolan replied as he swung the P-90 around and emptied the rest of the 50-round magazine at the front of the pursuing vehicle. “But it’s time for them to go!”

  Sparks and paint chips flew up from the hood, bumper and lights as the rounds sprayed across the Rover. Two of the roof-mounted lights and a headlight died under the onslaught. The windshield took several rounds but didn’t shatter, nor did the engine sound like it had taken any damage.

  Instead the Rover surged ahead again and smashed into the back of their vehicle, making Bolan lurch forward until his back smacked the front jamb of the door window. He slid back inside and grabbed another magazine. “Their vehicle’s armored!”

  “What!” Williams exclaimed. “Who the hell are these guys?”

  “I don’t know, but make sure you stay on those two.” Bolan jabbed a thumb at the vehicles they were pursuing. “I’ll get these guys off our ass. Open the rear window!”

  “Grab the black-tip ammo!” Williams said as he hit the rear window.

  Ejecting the empty magazine, Bolan scanned the three other mags and found the one loaded with black steel-cored rounds. Slamming it home, he chambered a round and began crawling into the back seat.

  Just then the front SUV slowed while the Rover accelerated. Williams tried to swerve out of the way, but their SUV was thrown into the rear bumper of the front vehicle while the Rover sped up, its ram bar slamming into their rear bumper and shoving them tight against the lead car. The rear window on the front SUV slid down, and two gun barrels poked out.

  “Get down!” Williams shouted as he ducked beneath the dashboard.

  Bolan had just hit the back seat and he rolled to the floor as both shooters opened up on the front windshield. It starred and whited out, then gave under the furious onslaught of bullets, the rounds chewing up the leather seats and passing all the way through into the rear tailgate.

  The Executioner kept calm under the withering gunfire, waiting until the fusillade stopped. The moment it did, he popped up and sprayed the back of the silver SUV. He was taking a calculated risk that anyone in the Rover figured the front shooters would have cleared the passenger compartment by the simple expedient of lead poisoning, and wouldn’t expect anyone to come up shooting back.

  As he’d hoped, the pair of gunmen had done a good deal of his job by shooting out most of the windshield. His first burst of bullets caught at least one of the shooters, who went down with a yelp. The other one also ducked for cover, but Bolan couldn’t be sure if he had tagged him or not. Quickly adjusting his aim, he put four evenly spaced 3-round bursts through the back door from left to right, each grouping ten centimeters apart. No more gunfire came from the back of the SUV, but neither the front vehicle nor the back one moved out of the way—they were still pinned between the two.

  “You all right, Bert?” Bolan called out as he crouched in case anyone behind them decided to get trigger happy.

  “Yeah—got glass in my hair, though!”

  “Can you pass me another magazine?” Bolan called as sporadic gunfire began coming from the rearmost vehicle, making him hunch even lower. The rearview mirror, which had been hanging on to a lone scrap of glass, exploded when it finally took a shot, spraying more glass everywhere.

  “Here—shooter’s choice!” Both remaining magazines fell onto Bolan’s back. He grabbed the closer one and reloaded, then waited for the rear shooter to stop and reload what had to be a pistol, as the shots weren’t nearly as fast as the front guns had been.

  The second there was a pause in the firing, the Executioner vaulted over the back seat and landed in the cargo area. Glass pellets slashed at his blazer but didn’t penetrate deep enough to cut him. He rolled to the rear door, feeling more glass poke his back, and hoping the shooter in the rear vehicle hadn’t seen him take out the front pair of gunners.

  The roar of the Rover’s engine was deafening back there. Bolan added to the cacophony by raising the FN P-90 and putting 3-round bursts into its windshield, trying either to opaque the whole thing by whiting out the layers from multiple bullet impacts, making it impossible to see, or eventually penetrating it and actually wounding someone inside. He had to have hit someone eventually, because after the seventh burst, the Rover began slowing down then easing off their back bumper.

  “We’re loose!” he shouted to Williams. “Fall back!”

  “Already doing it!” the driver yelled back. It was true—they had disengaged from the front vehicle and were now a few meters away. Despite a few bullet marks on the hood, nothing appeared to have penetrated and their engine still sounded pristine.

  Bolan risked a glance back at the Rover and saw it drift into a ditch at the side of the road and flip onto its side. He looked around for some kind of marker to note where it had crashed so they could come back and search it, but just saw black fields around them.

  “Let’s get that SUV!” he said, replacing his half-empty magazine with the last full one.

  “You got it!” Williams gunned the engine and they rapidly gained on the fleeing four-wheel drive. Scattered shots came from inside the vehicle, but they had to have come from the driver, as many of them went wide of the target.

  “Pull alongside. I want him alive!” Bolan ordered.

  Williams tried to do so, but the SUV driver was still able to cut him off, swerving and hitting their left front corner with the rear quarter panel of his vehicle. Williams fought the wheel as they came dangerously close to going into the same ditch the Rover had fallen into.

  Both engines roared as the two vehicles started climbing a hill, still jockeying for position.

  “Close enough! Hold it steady!” Bolan leaned out of his window again and aimed at the left rear tire. The first short burst penetrated the hubcap. The second one shredded the tire, making the vehicle swerve into the opposite lane as the driver fought for control.

  Unfortunately, a fully loaded semi-tractor trailer, complete with a giant ram bar, was coming over the hill in the other direction. Before either driver could react, the huge truck plowed right into the enemy vehicle.

  It was as if the silver SUV had driven into a wall at more than 100 miles an hour. The front end, for all intents and purposes, exploded, with plastic and metal flying everywhere. That was followed by the rest of the SUV, which was blasted off its wheels and soared into the air, flipping end-over-end. It came down on its roof, crushing most of the passenger compartment and then skidding off into the ditch on the other side of the road, where it finally came to a stop, a twisted, mangled pile of smoking metal.

  The truck driver had slammed on his brakes, locking his wheels and causing clouds of white smoke to plume out from the tires. He was far too late, however.

  Bolan glanced back at the accident then turned to the front and began climbing into the back seat. “Two down, one to go!”

  “Yeah, but we got another problem,” Williams replied, waving at the dark, empty road ahead of them. “Seems the other driver gave us the slip.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Although the view of Washington, DC, from the Bell 206B helicopter was lovely, with the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial all gleaming in their white marble majesty, Barbara Price barely saw them. Instead, she scanned her tablet for any updates on Striker’s mission or any others—Phoenix Force and Able Team were also in the field—Stony Man was coordinating around the world. And all the while, she concentrated on tam
ping down her rising irritation at being summoned like this.

  Brognola had to feel this way, she mused with a rueful smile. Although Christian Payne hadn’t specifically said the big Fed wasn’t included in the invitation, she had definitely gotten the impression that he would prefer her to attend alone. When she had let Brognola know about the lunch “demand—er, engagement,” as she had put it, they’d both chuckled at the idea of having him show up unexpectedly at the restaurant. But in the end, they’d decided that Price might be able to get farther with Payne on her own.

  As long as he wasn’t like so many other pompous windbags around the Hill, she thought, who believed their position gave them the right to do anything they wanted. Despite his uptight demeanor at their first meeting, she would still give him the benefit of the doubt tonight. From what she had seen, Payne could go either way. She had noticed the lack of a wedding band on his finger, but that didn’t automatically put him into the creep camp—it was very possible that his work was his spouse.

  Then again, he might be one of those true believers who wouldn’t dare risk any situation that would embarrass his leader. She could only hope this evening will be along those lines.

  The helicopter glided down to a landing at the South Capitol Street heliport and Price was escorted off by Charlie Mott, one of Stony Man’s pilots, and led to a waiting black Lincoln Town Car. Soon she was being chauffeured through the city streets, with Capitol Hill looming in the distance.

  The car pulled up to the Capital Grille, a well-known restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The driver got out and opened her door then offered her a card.

  “Just let me know when you’re ready to go, ma’am, and I’ll be here to pick you up.”

  “Thank you,” she replied and then walked inside.

  The restaurant’s interior was a study in understated elegance. High-backed red booths ringed the main floor, with white-clothed tables arranged in the middle, all surrounded by dark mahogany paneling. Large art deco light fixtures overhead diffused the light to a comfortable glow throughout the entire room. To her right was a long bar with a distinctive green-marble back counter. It was a busy afternoon, with most of the chairs and more than half of the booths and tables already occupied. Price scanned the bar and what she could see of the main floor, but didn’t see Payne anywhere.

  Checking with the maître d’, she found Payne was already there, even though she was five minutes early. Figures, she thought as a waiter led her past the booths on the floor to a small private room at the rear of the main dining area.

  “Your host is in here, madam.” He opened the door and she stepped through, then he closed the door behind her. The susurrus of the dining room crowd immediately faded to a dull murmur.

  “Ah, Barbara, thank you for joining me,” Payne said as he rose from his chair on the far side of the table. He was dressed more casually this day, in a light blue button-down with no tie and charcoal slacks. A matching suit coat hung on the wall.

  “This is a bit more—private than I’d anticipated,” Price said with a glance behind her at the windowed door and the two glass panes on either side of it. The room was comfortable, with more of the red paisley carpeting underfoot and a framed landscape picture hanging on the wall over Payne’s head.

  He pulled her chair out for her. “Given what we have to discuss, not to mention how much everyone in this city loves to talk, I thought we would be better served in a more personal setting.”

  “Thank you,” she replied as she sat. “For the chair, and the prudent decision.”

  He smiled and at that moment didn’t seem like the stiff, bottom-line-oriented bureaucrat that had been at the Farm just two days ago. More relaxed in general, she thought as she watched him head back to his side of the table. He definitely seemed more confident. Was it just because he was on his home turf or did he know something she didn’t?

  Their waiter returned with water for Price and to ask if she wanted anything stronger, which she refused as she saw Payne didn’t seem to be imbibing this afternoon, either.

  The waiter presented the menus and went over the specials. With the dinner order placed, the Stony Man mission controller sipped her water and leaned back in her chair. Other than his politeness, Payne was looking fairly inscrutable, so she decided to dispense with any more niceties or small talk.

  “So, what did you want to discuss here that you felt couldn’t be addressed in a conference call?”

  Payne set his water glass down and smiled. “I figured you’d get straight down to business—I like that. There are a few items on the agenda, but let’s start with the most pressing one, the incident with your operative in Melbourne. Where are you and your people on it right now?”

  Price launched into a quick but detailed summary of the attempted attack on Bolan, focusing on the event itself at first, then widening the scope to include what Akira Tokaido had uncovered during his data analysis. “Whomever this group is, they are well-financed and equipped, judging by their weapons and vehicles. So far we haven’t been able to uncover any new violent or radical environmental or conservation groups appearing in Australia. Since we haven’t been able to identify the perpetrators yet, we cannot draw any connections to any existing groups at this time, either.”

  “I see. That includes no links to the AFN?” Payne asked.

  “Correct. Their group is among the forefront of nonviolent protestors in the nation. We are confident that they are not behind this attack, nor were they behind the incident at the LNG plant.”

  “And how did you arrive at that conclusion?” he asked.

  “Because our analysts believe that whomever executed the operation at the Amadeus station had military experience, due to how both of the victims were killed—at long range with what was most likely a sniper rifle.”

  “So there’s no chance that a passing hunter might have made a mistake and shot one of them?”

  For a moment Price wasn’t sure whether he was kidding or not; his tone certainly sounded serious. “This isn’t like hunting in the Michigan forest,” she replied, gratified to see his brow furrow at the mention of where he’d grown up. “There’s the natural gas plant and several hundred acres of empty scrubland all around it. Plus, there is the matter of the first man being shot inside the facility, and the second one being shot as he was trying to leave in their vehicle. I seriously doubt anyone would mistake a Mitsubishi SUV for a lost water buffalo.”

  “You’re right, of course. Please forgive my poor attempt at humor.”

  Very poor, Price thought as the door opened and their first courses arrived. Once the waiter had served them both and departed, she began to eat, still keeping an eye on Payne. He ate a shrimp then wiped his fingers.

  “The primary issue right now is maintaining control over the situation and preventing it from becoming a bigger issue than it already is.”

  Price opened her mouth to reply but he held up a finger. “If you’ll indulge me. We’ve already got some of the more, er, liberal members of Parliament complaining about trigger-happy Americans coming over and getting into gunfights on their highways—”

  “Then I hope you reminded them that this particular ‘trigger-happy American’ saved the lives of two Australians with his actions, which may not have happened if he hadn’t been there.”

  Payne popped another large shrimp into his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “Well, that’s just it—they’re trying to make the case that it wouldn’t have happened at all if our person hadn’t been there in the first place.”

  She frowned. “What are you saying, that it’s our fault an attack happened simply by his very presence?”

  “I’m not saying that—they are,” Payne replied. “I think the fact that such an attack occurred in the first place means something larger is going on down there. That’s one of the reasons I brought you here—to see if your intelligence had pointed you in the same
direction.”

  Once again Price had to revise her estimate of Payne. Sharper than she had given him credit for. She ate another bite of salad to give herself a moment to think.

  “That such a planned and organized attack occurred almost immediately after our operative landed indicates a few things,” she replied. “First, that a faction exists that’s willing to commit such violence to stop an outside investigation, one that far exceeds our initial threat estimation. Two, that they were able to pinpoint our operative’s movements so quickly indicates that they have access to resources outside their own structure, including unallied parties.”

  “I’m sorry?” Payne asked. “I’m not quite following you.”

  Price didn’t let slip a hint of the smile she wanted to show at his question. “They have access to their enemy’s intelligence sources. In other words, a mole.”

  “Certainly not here,” Payne said.

  “I would find it very hard to believe that, as well,” she agreed. “Which means it’s most likely on Wallcorloo’s end. We’re also chasing down any potential leads on that right now.”

  “I expected nothing less. And how exactly do you expect to keep the rest of this assignment to a lower profile?”

  “Well, the facility our operative will be inspecting is in a very remote location. They’re flying out to it, so unless the enemy is already out there waiting for them, there shouldn’t be another incident. If there is, fortunately there won’t be many people around to witness it. The unknown factor is whether this group will try to strike at him again.”

  “Well, short of hunting them down and taking them out before they could do that, that would be beyond anyone’s control,” Payne said.