Patriot Strike

by Don Pendleton

  “We’re close, Simon. You know how friggin’ close we are.”

  “I do, sir.”

  “I don’t want anybody pissin’ on my dream.”

  “They won’t, sir.”

  “Seems to me they’re pretty goddamn close to doin’ it right now.”

  “I won’t allow that, sir.”

  “See that you don’t.”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’re like a son to me,” said Ridgway. “Like the son I never had.”

  A heartbeat’s silence came on the other end. “Thank you, sir,” Coetzee said.

  “And a father dreads the day when he has to bury his child.”

  Ridgway ended the call. Let Coetzee chew on that a while. Lamar called out toward the bedroom door, “I’m done! Come get the goddamn phone!”

  Fabius entered, took the instrument, and wished Ridgway a restful night.

  “Too late for that,” the oil man grumbled, as he burrowed back into his sheets and drew the quilted comforter up to his double chin.

  Small minds had hampered Ridgway all his life, trying to hold him back. In school before he’d left the seventh grade, small-minded teachers had tried to pigeonhole him, telling him that he would never amount to a fart in a cyclone.

  His parents and their parson had tried to sell him the same message, binding him to a hardscrabble farm and a church built on strict “thou shalt nots.” Ridgway had kicked over the traces, gone out on his own and proved them wrong. In spades.

  Once he was rich as Croesus—no, scratch that; richer than Croesus or the Lord Himself—small minds kept after him in other ways. They told him that he should concentrate on oil and gas, stick with the things he knew, where he had proven his ability. Don’t branch out into other fields and least of all space exploration. What did any Texas oil man with a sixth-grade education know about the friggin’ moon and stars beyond it?

  Next to nothing, granted. But he had money to burn, enough to buy the brains that did know all about the universe and rockets, astrophysics, interplanetary travel—name your poison. And he knew some other things, as well.

  Ridgway knew that his country had been losing ground for decades—hell, for generations. Ever since the last world war, when Roosevelt and Truman let Joe Stalin gobble up half of the world without a fight. The great U.S. of A. had been declining ever since, with racial integration and affirmative action, gay rights and abortion, losing wars all over Asia and the Middle East.

  He’d done his best to save America, bankrolling groups that stood against the long slide into socialism’s Sodom and Gomorrah, but he’d finally admitted to himself that they were beaten. His United States, the one he loved, was circling the drain.

  And it was time to start from scratch.

  He’d be goddamned if some inept redneck would spoil it now.

  You want a job done right, a small voice in his head reminded him, do it yourself.

  San Antonio

  CONGRESS HAD CREATED the National Nuclear Security Administration in 2000, following the scandal that had enveloped Dr. Wen Ho Lee and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Lee had been accused of passing secrets about America’s nuclear arsenal to the People’s Republic of China, pleading guilty on one of fifty-nine charges, then turned around and won a $1.6 million defamation judgment from the Feds and various media networks. The trial judge later apologized to Dr. Lee and blasted the justice department for suppressing and mishandling evidence.

  In spite of that confusing episode—or possibly because of it—the NNSA was created within the U.S. Department of Energy, with the goal of both reducing the threat caused by nuclear weapons worldwide, and of supporting America’s endeavors in developing and managing safe, effective nuclear technology.

  Simple.

  The NNSA’s Office of Fissile Material Disposition was responsible for disposing of excess plutonium and highly enriched uranium. Both materials, commonly used in weapons of mass destruction, were collected by the OFMD and converted for peaceful use as commercial nuclear reactor fuel. In November 2007, collection of fissile material was expanded from America to include surplus plutonium from Russia.

  And now, it seemed, the OFMD might have sprung a leak.

  “This Walraven,” said Bolan. “What’s his job at Lone Star?”

  “Jerod didn’t have a chance to tell me,” Adlene Granger answered. “When I did a Google search, I found out that he has a Ph.D. from MIT in nuclear physics. He’s published papers, but I couldn’t understand the titles, let alone the gist of them.”

  “Smart money says he works for Lone Star’s aerospace division,” Bolan said.

  “He’d fit right in,” Granger replied. “They hired a slew of NASA people when the agency was laying off their rocket scientists. A guy named George Roth runs the show. They claim to have a shuttle up and running, ready for commercial flights within a year or so.”

  “Did your brother say that Ridgway has fissile material, or that he’s trying to acquire it?” Bolan asked.

  “We never got that far. He was supposed to have some files, but they were gone when the police found him in Lubbock.”

  “And he worked for Lone Star?”

  “Right. In their accounting department.”

  “Where he could have stumbled onto something classified, while he was balancing the books.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Granger agreed.

  They were rolling east on Houston Street, two blocks from Alamo Plaza. Bolan had been watching for patrol cars, marked or otherwise. Driving a circuit of the plaza, he saw nothing to suggest police had staked it out. Nor, it appeared, had any reinforcements turned out for the team that they’d eliminated, to watch Granger’s Dodge Avenger.

  He pulled into the parking lot and stopped beside the Dodge. Granger already had her keys in one hand, pistol in the other.

  “This is it,” he told her. “Time to choose whether you’re in or out.”

  “They killed my brother,” she replied.

  Bolan cut to the chase. “You want to join him?”

  “What?”

  “You need to understand that there’s a chance you might not walk away from this. And if you do, the Rangers may not want you back.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “Then we need to get you organized. First thing, you can’t go home.”

  “I get that.”

  “You may need a change of clothes, gas up your ride, whatever.”

  “So I’ll shop.”

  “No credit cards. No bank withdrawals.”

  “Damn it!”

  “Here.” He took a wad of greenbacks from his pocket, handing it to Granger.

  “What’s this?”

  “Just a little contribution from the war chest.”

  “I don’t need a sugar daddy.”

  “And I’m not applying for the job,” he said. “The money’s dirty, but it spends the same.”

  “So you’re a robber, too?”

  “Let’s say I got it from a cartel boss who didn’t need it anymore.”

  “You always play for keeps?”

  “Is there another way?”

  “Okay. What’s next?”

  “We pay a call on Mr. Walraven.”

  Chapter 5

  Arlington, Texas

  Craig Walraven always woke at dawn. No matter where he was, what he was doing or how late he’d worked the night before, he could not sleep past sunrise. It was a quirk he’d never really understood but had learned to live with, since he had no other choice. Get up and get a jump on any competition, any trouble that the new day held in store.

  This morning, as his habit was, he listened to the news on the radio while showering. He favored station KRLD out of Dallas, right next door to Arl
ington, because it was an all-news station, the equivalent of CNN without the talking heads and the annoying, often misspelled headlines crawling endlessly across the bottom of the television screen. He turned up the volume to make it audible over the drumming of his shower, and because he had no neighbors to complain.

  The good life. Finally.

  Walraven would not have said that his years of mostly deskbound labor with the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Fissile Material Disposition had been wasted. If not for that phase of his life, he would not have transcended the workaday drudgery that held so many others of his age and educational background in thrall. He might have been stuck in some university laboratory, working on some project that would ultimately make the institution richer and more famous, while he toiled in anonymity for the academic equivalent of minimum wage.

  Instead, he’d seen an opportunity—or rather had one set before him on a silver platter—and he’d grabbed it. He was wealthy now, beyond his former wildest dreams; although, of course, such things were always relative. He’d never be a billionaire, like some folks he could name offhand. But at the not-so-tender age of forty-three, he had three-quarters of a million dollars in an offshore bank account, and more was rolling in each month.

  On top of which, he had a chance to change the world.

  It was a good life, certainly. But how long would it last?

  Later, after The Change, would he be as valued as he was today? Or would he suddenly become disposable? Walraven had accepted certain promises on faith but knew full well that ultrawealthy people often changed their minds and changed directions without thinking of the consequences for the little people crushed beneath their feet. Therefore, he had prepared an exit strategy, had nearly all the pieces set in place, ready for use in an emergency, should one arise.

  The main part of his work, he understood, was quickly coming to an end. In fact, his underlings and the technicians he had trained could likely get along without him now. If promises were broken, all he needed was a moment’s warning. He had already accumulated passports, credit cards and other documents in two new names, and last month had secured a rental property outside of Auckland, on New Zealand’s North Island.

  Whatever happened once he left, Walraven thought that half a world away from Texas should be far enough to keep him safe.

  KRLD was a CBS affiliate. As Walraven turned off the shower, news anchor Mike Rogers was giving details of a shooting in San Antonio. It sounded like a bloody business—four men dead, all armed with heavy weapons—but it wasn’t anything unusual for Texas. For all of the governor’s tough talk on law and order, the pride he took in executing prison inmates, Texas had still logged over one hundred thousand violent crimes a year, including murders, rapes, aggravated assaults and armed robberies.

  Walraven toweled himself dry, standing under the bathroom’s heat lamp, warm tiles beneath his feet. In his bedroom, Walraven had laid out his clothes for the day: a Ralph Lauren broadcloth sport shirt, Brooks Brothers slacks and Florsheim penny loafers. No tie today, since he’d be spending most of his time inside a radiation suit, and comfort mattered.

  When he’d finished dressing, Walraven began to prepare a leisurely breakfast. Another benefit of rising with the dawn was that he rarely had to rush in the morning. No crude meals prepared in haste and bolted down to fuel a storm of indigestion. He was not exactly a gourmet but had the skill to please himself—and the occasional young woman who might join him for a little taste of heaven.

  He was warming up a skillet when the doorbell rang. Frowning, Walraven turned off the stove and made his way to the front door. He blinked in surprise as he peered through the peephole, recognizing a familiar face.

  The frown was still in place as he opened the door and said, “I didn’t hear your car.”

  * * *

  BOLAN’S HIGHWAY MAP told him that Arlington lay 231 miles north of San Antonio, as the turkey buzzard flies. He rolled north on Interstate 35, quickly discovering why the segment of it between San Antonio and Austin is considered to be among the most congested stretches of highway in the American interstate system.

  One of the country’s major NAFTA corridors, it hums with big rigs day and night, bearing all manner of cargo to and from Mexico. In Austin proper, where it’s known as the Interregional Highway, I-35 narrows from eight lanes to four, slowing the pace of heavy traffic that much more.

  The long drive gave Bolan time to think, while Adlene Granger alternately dozed in the passenger’s seat or watched the flatland of Texas slide past her window. Daylight overtook them as they entered Waco, scene of the 1993 Branch Davidian siege and a continuing source of criticism for the Feds.

  Bolan remembered it, of course—who could forget the images of conflagration running live on television, then repeated endlessly?—and he supposed there had been fault enough to go around on both sides. An apocalyptic cult, members armed to the teeth and prepared to die for their charismatic leader, squaring off against authority composed in equal parts of arrogance and righteous indignation. It had fired a generation of rebellion, plots and insurrection, private armies on the march.

  And it obviously wasn’t over yet.

  Once they had passed Fort Worth Spinks Airport, Bolan left the interstate and pulled onto a rural highway known as Farm-to-Market 1187, winding his way toward Craig Walraven’s home near the Tierra Verde Golf Club.

  Living in the rural lap of luxury.

  As he was turning off the interstate and heading eastward, Granger broke the silence. “So, our theory is that Walraven’s been cooking up a nuke for Ridgway?”

  “Not impossible,” Bolan replied. “We know fissile material’s been disappearing since the fifties. Some out of labs, but most goes missing in transit. I read that something like three tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium sold to foreign allies over the years—mostly for use as fuel in reactors—has yet to be accounted for. You only need thirty-five pounds of uranium-235 to build a nuclear bomb, nine pounds of plutonium.”

  “So there’s enough floating around out there, somewhere, to make...what? Almost two hundred uranium bombs?”

  “At least,” Bolan replied. “Closer to seven hundred if it was all plutonium.”

  “That’s pretty freakin’ grim.”

  “The good news is, nobody’s detonated one so far,” he said. No point in telling her how close a few had come.

  Walraven’s place was near the intersection of Mansfield Highway and Gertie Barrett Road, a rambling ranch-style home set on four acres of land. There was a sleek gray BMW 5 Series Gran Turismo in the driveway, but no sign of lookouts on the property. Bolan parked behind the import, pocketed the RAV4’s key and stepped out of the SUV into bright Texas sunshine.

  “Front door’s open,” Granger told him.

  “Careless?”

  “Can’t be good.” She had her I.D. in her left hand, right hand on her holstered pistol, as they stepped up to the door.

  The bell went unanswered. Granger leaned across the threshold, calling out Walraven’s name, with no result.

  “Left in a hurry?” she suggested.

  “Walking?” Bolan countered.

  “Doubtful.”

  They went in with pistols drawn, cleared an expansive living room and found Walraven in the dining room. He was slumped over a table large enough for six, head turned to one side, left cheek resting in a pool of blood that had begun to drip onto the floor. Bolan made out two bullet wounds behind the right ear, scorching and grossly distorting the dead man’s face, proving the shots were fired at point-blank range.

  “Somebody didn’t want us talking to him,” Granger said.

  “Or didn’t want him talking period.”

  “You want to toss the place?”

  Bolan considered it, then shook his head. “I doubt he’d bring anything inc
riminating to the house.”

  “A wasted trip then.”

  “Not entirely. We know someone’s under pressure.”

  “On to Roth, then?” Granger asked.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Bolan was backing out of Walraven’s driveway when a throbbing sound intruded on his consciousness. Almost before it had a chance to register, he saw the helicopter rising behind the dead man’s house.

  “That’s not Life Flight,” said Granger.

  No. More like the Death Flight.

  * * *

  “IT’S THEM, NO QUESTION,” Perry Baylor said. “Stay on them.”

  “No problem,” Kyle Warner replied.

  Warner was flying the Bell 206B-3 chopper with Baylor beside him, handling the hardware. In this case, the hardware was a Minimi light machine gun produced by Fabrique Nationale d’Herstal in Belgium. Weighing in at fifteen pounds, it fed 5.56×45 mm NATO rounds from a 200-round M27 disintegrating-link belt at a cyclic rate of 700 rounds per minute. Baylor had a couple spare ammo boxes at his feet, but didn’t plan on needing them.

  The SUV and its two occupants were easy pickings.

  No sweat.

  Somebody else had taken care of Walraven before the snoops had showed up—not Baylor’s business. He was paid to aim and shoot, his specialty. There was no bonus—and, in fact, could be a major penalty—for asking questions out of turn.

  Now the Toyota had a jump on them, was rolling by the time their spotter had called it in, and Warner lifted off from the waste ground where they’d been sitting, waiting for their pigeons. Not that any kind of head start mattered, since the Bell’s turboshaft engine gave the whirlybird a top speed of 139 miles per hour, versus the RAV4’s—what? maybe 100 mph on a straightaway?

  Not even close.

  Some might have figured it was overkill, using the chopper for a hit that would normally call for infantry, maybe a drive-by, but another team had bitched the first attempt and had caused a shitload of embarrassment for all concerned. Not good. Today was payback, and the boss had dropped his plan of picking up the snoops alive, to question them.