by Mel Odom
BODY PARTS
The stainless steel floor was slippery, covered with a thick pad of ice and frost. Racks lined the walls, most of them empty, but several held stainless steel canisters of different sizes.
Picking one up, Wilson pressed the button on the side. A viewscreen opened, leaving the bulletproof glass in place. Electronic data contained in the canister’s nano-chip information display juiced the circuitry. He read it at a glance: CONTENTS: HUMAN HEART. DONOR, 22-YEAR-OLD FEMALE ALCOHOLIC. NO DISEASES, NO INFARCTIONS, SLIGHT ABNORMALITY IN LEFT VENTRICAL THAT CAN BE … A chill touched his own heart as he thought of the husked bodies that had been left in Miami.
Wilson looked up, saw Newkirk coming for him, one hand out to slam against his chest.
“The place is wired,” Newkirk said.
Wilson went backward, propelled by Newkirk’s charge. He grabbed the man’s jacket and yanked him toward the door, scrambling to get out.
They’d almost reached the hallway when the freezer exploded.
OMEGA BLUE
MEL ODOM
Copyright 2012 by Mel Odom
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.
All Rights Reserved.
For Bob McDonald, who got me back up on my feet and put me back in the game.
1
Slade Wilson loosened the Colt 10mm Delta Elite strapped to his left thigh and peered through the pouring sheets of rain slamming against the windshield. The wipers barely compensated for the deluge, and traffic was slowed down to less than the posted sixty-five miles per. The ruby taillights of the eighteen-wheeler ahead of them were hazy, but he locked onto his target, and pretended the pursuit hadn’t taken almost fourteen hours and that the headache wasn’t finally getting the better of him.
Atlanta, Georgia, slid behind them as they made the turn off 1-95 north onto 1-20 west. The city’s lights became a glowing bubble trapped by the night and the thunderstorm blowing in from the coast with hurricane force. The storm had been brewing for days in the Atlantic, deciding to strike only hours before Wilson had tracked his prey up from Miami to Atlanta.
“Coffee?” Emmett Newkirk sat in the passenger seat. In his late fifties and nearing retirement, the man looked like a bloodhound. The fatigue of the last three days of sitting in a car on surveillance and eating takeout food made the bags under his eyes even more pronounced. His jacket was unbuttoned and his tie was lost somewhere in the backseat with the accumulated litter they hadn’t had time to jettison before leaving Miami. Once the eighteen-wheeler had taken to the interstates, it had rolled relentlessly. Newkirk’s dark hair was parted neatly on the left, and despite his age he was less than ten pounds overweight by Bureau standards.
“No, thanks.” Wilson kept his eyes on the truck and massaged his leg to attempt once again to alleviate the cramped muscle:. When the operation came to a head, he needed to be in top shape. The people who owned the truck wouldn’t be taking any prisoners. Too much money was at stake.
He was a contrast to the other agent. He was thirty-five, his reddish blond hair shaved almost to his head. At six two, he had the rangy build of a fastball pitcher. With both men in the front seat, the midsize sedan was a tight fit.
Newkirk poured himself a cup from the one-gallon aluminum thermos between his feet on the floorboard. “It’s going to happen soon. These guys wouldn’t leave the interstate if they didn’t have a destination in mind.”
“I know.” Wilson scanned the rearview mirror, ignoring the burning redness in his hazel-brown eyes. He caught sight of the abandoned Six Flags over Georgia amusement park off the highway. The twisted threads of the roller coasters and skeletal outlines of other rides were suddenly brought into sharp relief against the dark sky by a searing bolt of jagged lightning.
“The storm’s going to make it harder.”
“Yeah.” Wilson turned his attention back to the truck. “But it’ll work for us too.”
“We could take them down here,” Newkirk suggested. “Maybe bust these drivers hard enough to put the fear of God into them. Sweat them a little, they may give it up anyway.”
“No.” Wilson knew Newkirk was only playing the devil’s advocate. They’d worked together since the beginning four years ago. Wherever he chose to lead the team, Wilson knew Newkirk would follow without complaint. “The guys waiting on this delivery will close up shop and move on if the truck doesn’t show. By the time we’re able to move on whatever-if any-information we get, they’ll be gone. By tomorrow, there’ll be another truck rolling from somewhere else like Miami. If we put these guys out of business, they’ll stay out for a while till their bosses can neutralize the fallout.”
The truck slowed.
Wilson registered the fact a moment late. The intervening-distance indicator warning light flared on the windshield’s idiot lights, and he had to tap the brake to drop the necessary speed.
The eighteen-wheeler’s signal came on, a heartbeat of racing yellow that pointed to the right. The truck slowed as it took the off-ramp.
Wilson squinted through the rain as a cannon burst of thunder rattled the inside of the sedan. He pulled onto the off-ramp as well, and closed the distance between his vehicle and the truck. The cramp in his leg faded. He spotted an exit sign and called the numbers and street names out to Newkirk.
The man touched the overhead control for the built-in computer. In response, a monitor overlay juiced into being on his side of the windshield. He tapped it a couple times and brought up a satellite view of the area. Newkirk recapped the thermos and stowed it under the seat, then hooked up the sedan’s comm.
Reaching for the handset clipped to the rearview mirror, Wilson juiced the frequency. “Redball One to Redball teams, do you copy?”
“Three copies.” Maggie Scuderi’s voice was alert, showing no sign of the long drive.
“Six copies.” As usual, Lee Rawley’s voice revealed nothing.
“It’s going down,” Wilson said, and gave them the exit number. “Close up ranks.” He cleared the channel.
“I got a couple maybes,” Newkirk said. The gray monitor screen wavered, reflecting the electric war raging overhead.
Wilson mentally reviewed the information he’d read in the Fodor’s travel book during the first leg of their journey, while Newkirk drove. He’d worked at a few street maps of the major cities in the southeastern sea coast afterward, and learned there were a number of places the jackals could hole up while their grisly business was transacted.
Atlanta had remained a flourishing manufacturing and commercial region in inland Georgia, despite the international economic depression that had landed the United States just short of bankruptcy in 2026. Now, seven years later, residential areas that had held promise even after the fall were ghost towns housing the uncounted homeless and diseased. The Six Flags over Georgia amusement park was one of the more colorful memorials to an extravagant way of life many Americans were beginning to doubt had ever existed.
The truck paused briefly at the stop sign before the overpass, then took a left and headed over the interstate.
Wilson glided to a halt and checked the rear and side mirrors.
Scuderi pulled her sedan in behind him. On the passenger side, Bob McDonald was busy pulling armament from the rear seat. Lee Rawley halted his Ford minivan behind Scuderi’s vehicle. When lightning snaked across the wine-dark sky again, Wilson noticed Rawley’s cowboy hat and sunglasses; Darnell J
anuary sat beside him, a massive black hulk.
“Spread it out,” Wilson said as he put his foot on the accelerator and took off in pursuit. “Rawley.”
“Go.”
“Take point position in the van, see if you can find out where our guy is headed before he gets there.”
“On my way.” The van accelerated and shot past Wilson and the eighteen-wheeler as the driver struggled to rebuild his speed despite the truck’s load and the rain-slick streets.
“Access the computer as Newkirk provides voiceovers,” Wilson went on. “If you shoot past their destination, you can double back without losing too much time.”
“Right.”
“I have four warehouses on the screen,” Newkirk said. “All of them show to be nonoperational.”
“What were they?” Lightning cut through the sky again. Past the interstate and the off-ramps, the countryside turned hilly and forested with scrub brush and stunted pine trees interspersed with white and red oak, hickory trees, and maples. Indian summer had colored the leaves, but the drenching rain and the night leached out all color.
Newkirk read from the info scanning across his side of the windshield, touching the screen rapidly. “Cancemi, Incorporated. They were a textile plant until four years ago, then the money petered out. Opare Industries, a chemical plant. Cashed in five years ago when local law enforcement teams found out the management was turning out blue angel as a sideline investment. Boatright Mills. They handled paper but weren’t outfitted to handle the recycling required by law. They closed this plant down, opened up a new one on the east side of Atlanta.”
“They’re still in business?”
“Yeah.”
The eighteen-wheeler was back up to speed at fifty miles per hour. Wilson trailed along in its wake, partially shielded by the truck from the storm’s buffeting winds. “What’s the last one?”
Newkirk smiled. “I saved this one for you. Walkoviack Packing.”
“Meat packers?” Wilson remembered from the Fodor’s that cattle and pigs were still big business in Georgia.
“Yeah.”
“Bingo.” Wilson felt triumphant for a moment.
“I checked,” Newkirk said. “Georgia Gas & Electric has been providing them power for the last fourteen months. That coincides with the information the SAC at the Miami bureau turned up. According to courthouse records in Atlanta, Walkoviack Packing went bust a couple years ago. No new licenses have been issued for commercial purposes regarding that property.”
“And Georgia G & E doesn’t check the paperwork that flows across their desk?”
“Yeah.”
“How far away are we?”
Newkirk pointed. “There it is.”
Wilson strained his eyes to make out the low building hugging the gently falling hillside a half-mile away. A flash of lightning ignited the countryside, sparked from the fenceline running around the property. There were no lights visible. He reached for the handset, then keyed it to life. “Redball One to Redball teams.”
“Go,” Scuderi said.
“Go,” Rawley answered.
“We’re on top of the operation now, and we’re going in with the truck.”
“I’ve got a satellite lock,” Newkirk said.
Wilson glanced at the monitor and ignored the truck’s turn signal when it came on. The picture was black and white, revealing the rectangular building shown from above. The fenceline was highlighted through Newkirk’s own programming. He tried to estimate how many men would be working inside. Jackals liked to keep the numbers low. The more people that knew about a meat dump, the greater the chances of someone finding out about it. If law-enforcement people didn’t show up on their doorstep soon, other jackals would. As a guess, Wilson figured thirty or forty men onsite. It was a lucrative sideline, with parts going for hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Red Market.
“There’s a guardhouse,” Rawley said. “It’s built into the fenceline. With the night and the storm, it’s really hard to see. But you can bet that gate is strong enough to keep that truck out unless they’re ready to allow it in.”
“Can you take the gate out?”
“Yes, but they’re sure as hell going to know some-thing’s up when I do.”
“Take it out,” Wilson said, “just ahead of us.”
“You got it.”
Ahead of the truck, Wilson saw the van pulled over at the side of the road, its lights extinguished. He couldn’t see January or Rawley, but that was fine because it was their job to be unseen.
Newkirk damped the computer screen as the sedan gained speed, reached under the seat, and pulled out the sliding rack that held an M401 assault rifle and an Atchisson Assault 12 combat .12-guage shotgun. He slipped the Atchisson into the clips mounted on the dash for quick release, and held the assault rifle in his lap.
“Are you belted in?” Wilson asked as he put the accelerator on the floor. The power plant screamed with high-pressure performance.
“Oh yeah.” Newkirk held the support mounted on the inside of the roof over his head.
“Redball Two,” Wilson called out, “you stay with the truck until the drivers are down.”
“Roger.”
Wilson knew Scuderi wasn’t happy with the call, but he also knew she wouldn’t question him during a play. He went out wide around the eighteen-wheeler, felt the tires hydroplane for just an instant, and backed off on the accelerator till the silicon and ceramic tread grabbed traction again. He cut the wheel hard as he passed the truck. The sedan skidded for a few feet, barely ahead of the eighteen-wheeler’s blunted nose, the headlights glaring through the side windows, then the back one as he got the car straightened out.
The side road dipped as it exited off the highway, and the sedan’s undercarriage slammed against the pavement. A brief flurry of sparks flared in Wilson’s rearview mirror, then the eighteen-wheeler turned in behind him, the big rig’s lights washing the sparks out of existence.
The gate was thirty feet away and closing fast. Wilson watched it swell into view, then saw the triple strands of barbwire curling across the top of the fence become jagged daggers of light as another bolt of lightning seared the sky. A rolling crackle of thunder sounded almost immediately. The intervening-distance indicator warning light went nova on the windshield, and the audio kicked in with high-pitched squeaks. He ignored the system as he kept his course straight on the gate.
“Where the hell is Rawley?” Newkirk asked.
Wilson hung onto the steering wheel and didn’t reply. There were a number of things Quantico didn’t know about Lee Rawley during the years preceding the two that he’d been with the Omega Blue unit. Rumor had it that the man was a CIA operative who’d gotten too hot to operate outside the continental United States and was buried in Quantico to cool off. Rumor also had it that Rawley was an ex-Organization hit man who’d turned state’s evidence and was in the FBI on a Witness Protection Program deal.
Personally, Wilson didn’t care. Rawley had established himself as one of the best snipers in the FBI, and had a string of successful takedowns to testify to his skill. Wilson had found out about the man and had gone to Earl Vache, Omega Blue’s liaison with the rest of the Bureau, to recruit him. Rawley had listened to the pitch, then said “Sure” in the laconic voice that was his trademark. There was a lot more to Lee Rawley than met the eye, and Wilson was convinced of two things: Rawley wasn’t Rawley’s real name, and Rawley would never let the team down as long as it didn’t conflict with his personal agenda-whatever that was.
“Fire in the hole,” Rawley said.
The fence was close enough now for Wilson to see the mesh clearly in spite of the rain. His peripheral vision caught the movement of at least two people in the cleverly hidden guardhouse on the right side of the gate. Then a sheet of fire flowed from the center of the gate. The flames snapped and licked like anxious hounds, rolling over the sedan’s windshield in a molten wave. Skeletal outlines in the middle of the explosion showed the two g
ates separating under the impact of the LAW’s 94mm warhead.
The sedan caught the gates as they swung, and added enough force to rip them from their hinges. Metal screeched and ripped, and gonging noises sounded as the spinning gates slammed into the car.
Wilson powered through the opening with a pool of fire sitting on top of the car’s hood. The truck was barreling down on him, the horn wailing louder than the thunder. He juked right, then cut back left. As the truck passed, unable to keep up with his maneuvering, it clipped the rear of the sedan and spun it around. With a final shriek, the intervening-distance indicator warning system registered the impact in a curtain of scarlet light across the windshield, then went dead.
Wilson hit the brake and shrilled to a rocking stop twenty feet from the guardhouse. Opening the door, he grabbed the Atchisson from the clips and stepped out. He was dressed for the night in black jeans, black low-cut tennis shoes, and a navy short-sleeved sweatshirt under the Kevlar-lined black motorcycle jacket with matte-finish zippers. The Colt 10mm Delta Elite, which was the pistol chosen by Bureau standards, rode in a drop holster counterterrorist fashion along his thigh.
He kept a 9mm Heckler & Koch VP70Z in an ankle holster as backup, with a specially silenced Walther model TPH . 22LR in a paddle holster at the base of his spine. A Crain combat dagger was housed in a spring-loaded sheath under his right forearm. Other devices equally deadly and incendiary were in concealed pockets inside the motorcycle jacket, along with extra magazines for the pistols.
A man ran from the guardhouse, an assault rifle clutched in his hands and spitting autofire.
Being left-handed, Wilson took a step in the opposite direction from the one the jackal expected as he lined up the Atchisson. The big .12-guage roared and blossomed a muzzle flash almost a foot long.
The one-ounce rifled slug caught the jackal in the shoulder and spun him around, dropped him to the pavement. He went down rolling, came up on his elbows with a pistol clutched in his good hand.
