Fire in the Sky

by Don Pendleton

  "Perhaps a person would put a worm on the program," Ito said, "that would crash the whole file should someone try to enter by using passwords at random, or try to bypass the password completely with fancy footwork.

  With a worm, you not only would deny access but destroy the evidence completely."

  "Are there any ways around that?" Greggson asked.

  Ito smiled broadly. "The catch with any 'foolproof' system is that if the human mind can conceive of the puzzle, the human mind can crack it. It simply becomes a matter of time and eliminating all the existing possibilities."

  "Time is something we don't have much of," Brognola reminded him, still looking outside—was that a shadow flitting across his front lawn? "What are your suggestions?"

  "There are two choices. You can either go at the file directly — the quick way — and face the possibility of a major error, or you can go at it the slow, safe way and depend on ultimate success... perhaps too late. My suggestion to you at this point, is that we go at it slowly, working down through the passwords and security clearances that we know, then proceeding with caution. That way, we can always switch to the quick approach if things get tight."

  Oscar Largent spoke up. "What we need to do is nab one of these guys and force him to give us the password."

  "Walk carefully," Ito told him. "It would be simplicity itself to change a password if they felt their security had been breached."

  "On that subject," Brognola said, moving to another window to scan the perimeters of his yard, "how is our surveillance going?"

  "Right now," said Ann Beckman, an agent from Enforcement Division, "we've got Leland and most of his staff under observation twenty-four hours a day. They seem to be involved with routine, except for Captain Norman Michaels, who is moving around a great deal, engaged in a large number of no routine activities."

  "We'll concentrate on him." Brognola squinted into the night gloom and saw the shadow again — or was it another shadow? "If he jumps, we'll get him."

  "If he jumps where?" Greggson asked.

  "I wish to God I knew. We need evidence right now, hard evidence. If we can dig up something substantial on this we won't need to depend so much on the computer…" He stopped cold.

  There it was again. The shadow seemed to be moving closer to the house... and another...and a third.

  "Kill the lights and hit the deck," Brognola ordered, reaching for the .38 in his waistband. "Someone's out there."

  He hit the overhead switch himself, others reaching for freestanding lamps that had been taken from tables and set on the floor.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Automatic-weapons fire exploded the stillness of the night like rolling thunder, the darkened house crying loudly with the breaking of glass, porcelain and splintering wood. A barrage of fire tore mercilessly through the living room, the people on the floor pelted with a shower of glass, plaster and wood fragments as windows and frames imploded in a continuous devastating rampage of destruction.

  "They're going to try to take the house!" Brognola shouted. "We've got to defend the perimeters. Those with weapons spread out down here. Everyone else...follow me upstairs!"

  People began to crawl on hands and knees to defend-able positions, Brognola moving toward the front hall on his stomach. He made the hallway, followed by several of his Justice colleagues. His house had become a shooting gallery, an unrecognizable noisy horror in the moonless dark. He finally pulled the cigar out of his mouth and threw it onto the floor — two-thirds had been blown away.

  The carpeted stairs were just off the dining room, protected by an inner wall. Ann Beckman was right behind him. Brognola turned and patted her on the back. "Go!" he ordered. "Wait at the top of the stairs!"

  She started up, followed by the others. Distracted by the sounds of gunfire and shattering glass, Brognola stole a quick look into the dining room. A line of withering fire was tearing Helen's grandmother's breakfront and dining table to shreds, Noritake china exploding in porcelain shards. Hot rage was consuming him. Damn them! Damn them to hell!

  He started up the stairs, glancing back once to see a black-clad figure diving through the remnants of the dining-room window. He raised his gun, firing three times in quick succession. At least one of the slugs struck home as the man fell backward out of the house.

  "Somebody take the dining room!" he screamed, and fired again as another shadow approached the window.

  Largent and Healy ran at a crouch to join him at the stairs, Healy's left arm hanging limp, dripping blood.

  "They're coming through here!" the head Fed told them, the two men dropping to the glass-filled floor.

  Brognola turned and raced up the stairs. Four people waited for him at the top, Greggson among them. "You should start packin' fire, Counselor," he advised. "Come on!"

  Brognola led them through the dark upstairs, running into the room that had been the fourth bedroom when he'd bought the house, but was now an office. Complete with filing cabinets and a large desk, the room also contained a weapons case where the Fed stored his hunting rifles and handguns.

  He rushed to the desk, fumbling in the dark for the key to the gun case; he couldn't find it. In desperation he hefted a moonrock paperweight and hurled it at the front of the case, shattering the glass.

  He ran to the case and pulled out two rifles he kept for deer season, digging down in the bottom of the case for boxes of shells. He felt his heart racing and forced himself to calm.

  "On the roof!" Greggson called, and the head Fed ran to the window to see a man in black climbing onto the small balcony that defined the second story of the old frame house.

  Brognola fired twice, driving the man back. Greggson took up a position at the window with a rifle, Brognola moving back to the weapons case to reload the .38.

  He handed the .38 to a woman beside him. "Know how to use this?"

  "No."

  "Just hold it up and look down your finger and squeeze the trigger," he instructed. "Shoot at anything that moves."

  She took the gun and he grabbed a Remington 12-gauge pump shotgun for himself, hurriedly shoving shells into the chamber from a box he had spilled on the floor.

  "Spread out!" the Fed yelled. "Keep them out of here!"

  He charged out of the room and ran into the master bedroom. Sheer-curtained French doors opened onto the balcony. As he entered the room, he could see a man easing himself over the balcony rails. Angered, he pumped once, this time putting the shotgun to his shoulder and taking the time to sight.

  When he pulled the trigger the glass doors exploded, the man screaming and falling off the balcony. Brognola charged out onto the balcony, where he had a commanding view of his large lot.

  He could see fifteen attackers, already in disarray and falling back with their wounded. The element of surprise gone, they were proving more vulnerable than the defenders in the house. Brognola's warning had turned the trick.

  He Fired, missed, pumped and fired again, hitting a retreating man in the leg. As he sprawled on the lawn two men rushed forward to help him away.

  Brognola pumped his weapon again, but they were taking to the shadows and were beginning to distance him. He moved to the edge of the balcony and, putting a leg over the low rail, began to climb down the rose trellis.

  He jumped the last ten feet to the ground, his own people already filtering out of the house to chase the interlopers.

  His head light from the anger and the excitement, Brognola tore across his well-manicured lawn, adrenaline pumping.

  They'd done it. The sons of bitches had come to his house and tried to take him on his own ground. He charged into the street, just as three cars screeched away. He raised his shotgun and drew a bead on retreating tail-lights, but stopped himself at the last second, remembering this was a residential neighborhood.

  He stood there fuming. How dared they violate him in this way! His wife could have been killed, his children. Leland's goons hadn't known who was going to be there, nor did they
care. They had come to kill whomever they could find. "You won't get away with it, Leland, you bastard," he said with deep intensity. "I swear you won't get away with this. This is my home, my home, and by God, you'll pay!"

  Oscar Largent ran from the house to flag him down as he walked slowly back, calming himself. "Your man, Bolan, is on the line."

  "Good," Brognola said, easing his mind, at least, in that direction. "Did we get any of them?"

  "They didn't leave anyone behind."

  "Just like a military operation," Brognola growled. "Check the grounds carefully. See if they left anything or anybody behind."

  "Yes, sir."

  "What about our people?"

  "Cuts and bruises," Largent reported. "Ted took one in the forearm, but it went through clean."

  "Thank God for that."

  "Yes, sir."

  Brognola crossed the last few feet of the front lawn and entered the house. The place was a shambles, everything that was still standing covered with glass, wood and plaster. The furniture on the ground floor would have to be replaced, as deep gouges had been dug into everything. He looked at the hundreds of bullet holes in the walls. Some carpenter was going to earn his vacation just puttying up the holes.

  Greggson was coming down the stairs as the Fed walked into the dining room for a quick look — and was sorry that he had.

  "What do we do now?" the lawyer asked. "Find a new place?"

  Brognola stared hard at him. "We board up the windows and post guards. Leland isn't going to run me out of my home, not now, not ever. If he wants me, he can come on. We'll give him all he can handle."

  Greg smiled. "Down, boy."

  "Sorry," Brognola said sheepishly. "It's just that they've hit me where it hurts most, this time. And it cuts so deep I'll never forget it. I'm going to be a bulldog on Leland. I'm going to get my teeth into his leg and never let go."

  "Trying to say you're mad?"

  "They've destroyed more than furniture here, Greg," he said. His friend nodded solemnly. "Check all the phone lines, would you?"

  Brognola stepped through the mess of the living room, smiling briefly as he picked up the phone. "I'd about given you up for dead," he said into the receiver.

  "You wouldn't have been far wrong," Bolan replied. "It all came down here — at the institute, at my house, at Peg Ackerman's."

  "Isn't she the woman we're running the security check on?"

  "Yeah," Bolan replied, "but there isn't much we can do with her now. She's dead."

  "Are you all right?"

  "So far," Bolan said. "I'm calling from the Jeep. It's all we've got left. It's possible we've got a tail. What about you? I hear you had troubles."

  "You got that right." Brognola briefly explained the situation.

  When he'd finished, Bolan said, "Sorry about all this. Maybe I'm responsible. I got tired of waiting and flushed the woman out this morning."

  "We'll keep checking on her, but I'm afraid..."

  "Of what?"

  "I can't say just yet," Brognola replied. "We'll check."

  "I've translated part of the code," Bolan said. "It's a place, Gila Bend, Arizona."

  "What the hell?"

  "Yeah. What the hell. I think my days undercover at the institute are over. What now?"

  "I want you to check on something for me. One of the Challenger vendors was a company called GeoScan. It's a subsidiary of Baylor Goggle and Optical based in Sanford, Florida."

  "Just north of here," Bolan informed him, the line staticky. "Where do they fit in?"

  Brognola took a breath, lifting up the base of the phone so one of the Enforcement people could sweep the glass shards off the table. "My secretary had been receiving large weekly payments from Baylor since she came to Justice. It was money she never declared, and we can find no reason for her receiving it. Baylor Goggle and Optical, among other things, manufactures rubies for industrial lasers. Our purchase orders here show a great many purchases by DOD from Baylor, but never delivery. Money's gone out to them in the millions just from us, yet we checked their income tax records today and found that they list a gross income of about a million five a year."

  "Have you called them on it?"

  "No," Brognola said, putting the phone back on the table. "That's what I want you to do. I don't trust anyone but you to handle it. The place has been in existence since 1937, but was purchased several years ago by an investment firm called Centurion Investments. We're checking them back now."

  "In other words, you just want me to poke around."

  "Yeah, that's it," the head Fed replied. "Something's obviously not on the up-and-up. I just want you to nose around a little and see what they're doing out there. Meanwhile we'll be finding out what we can from our end."

  "Right," Bolan said. "Are we getting close to anything?"

  "The circle's widening," Brognola replied, tiring as his adrenaline rush wore down. "Both sides have drawn blood. Beyond that, I know nothing."

  "Nothing," Bolan repeated. "I'd hate to tell that to all the folks who've died so far."

  * * *

  Bolan took a quick left at the last second and without warning, burrowing through a darkened residential neighborhood. He clamped the telephone receiver between his neck and shoulder to keep from losing it.

  Julie knelt on the passenger seat, looking back through the shredded remnants of the plastic rear window. "He turned, too," she said, then a second later, "Oh my God, another one."

  "We're being pursued, Hal," Bolan spoke calmly into the phone. "I'm taking evasive action."

  He jerked the wheel hard right, then right again at the next corner, heading back to the main road. He stiffened in the seat, reaching down into his pocket.

  "Striker, I'm hanging up!"

  "Wait!" Bolan shouted, pulling the dog tags out of his pants. "I want you to run down someone for me. I jerked the tags off an SP at the institute."

  "Go."

  "Johnson, LaMar," Bolan read, then recited the SSN. "He looked like the real thing to me, Hal, Air Force two-striper."

  "I'll get on it."

  "They're still coming," Julie said from beside him.

  "They're pros," Bolan told his friend. "I've got to give it my attention."

  "Caution, big guy," Brognola said. "I want you intact for the rest of this thing."

  "You know me."

  "Yeah, that's why I'm warning you."

  Bolan hung up and checked the rearview mirror. Two sets of headlights were closing from a distance of a hundred yards. He looked at Julie. "Get into your seat belt," he ordered, reaching back with one hand to pull his own around.

  He hooked his belt, watched Julie do the same. "Look," he said. "We're slow and not very maneuverable. The only thing going for us is the ruggedness of the Jeep. Our best shot is to get off the road and go overland with the four-wheel drive. Just hang on. I can get us out of this."

  "You've got the wheel," she said tensely. She sat half turned in the seat, watching him and the road behind.

  They came quickly up on Colonial Drive, Bolan slamming on the brakes to avoid traffic on both sides. He watched the rearview, the chase vehicles gaining rapidly. Traffic was thick, but he had no choice. Taking a slim shot, he goosed the vehicle into the traffic, hanging hard left and fishtailing into the right lane, bleating horns following him as he gunned it, moving toward Orange Avenue. Their hope lay to the south, in the orange groves off Oak Ridge.

  Horns blared a block behind them, and they knew the chase was still on.

  "Both of them," Julie said. "They're still there."

  Bolan grunted. They were good.

  For ten minutes they played cat and mouse, Bolan moving in and out of traffic, his adversaries always right behind, chopping his lead a car length at a time. He just couldn't get up the speed he needed on the straightaways to distance them. They turned south onto Orange, traffic thinning, then west again on Oak Ridge. Suddenly the city was gone, and they were plunging into dark, reclaimed swampland, their head
lights the only guide as they ate black asphalt at seventy miles an hour.

  The warrior checked the rearview. Two sets of headlights were taking up both sides of the two-lane road, and they were closing fast. He hoped his strategy had been right. Once again, he had to question his own motivation. He wanted this settled out of town and away from innocent people, but had he been alone, he would have stopped here and held his ground in a firefight. But he hated to risk it with Julie in the car.

  They heard the first shot at the same moment the side-view mirror shattered, which was blown right off the Jeep.

  "Get down!" he yelled, and Julie hit the floorboards as acres of orange groves blurred past on both sides.

  The shooting intensified, Bolan ducking as low as he could, while looking for an advantageous place to pull off the road. Automatic fire raked the car, and the windshield shattered, Bolan smashing out the remnants with the butt of Big Thunder as bullets thudded into the body of the Jeep.

  Suddenly the Jeep veered sharply as a shot took out one of the rear tires. Bolan tried to ride it down as the vehicle swerved off the road, knocking over a barbed-wire fence and barely getting between the rows of bushy trees without crashing into them.

  Branches slashed through the open windshield as they barreled over the terrain. Bolan regained control and killed the lights, slowing to twenty. Julie climbed back up on the seat, eyes wide, and looked behind.

  "They're still coming. They're leaving the road."

  "Right."

  He switched to four-wheel drive and picked up speed, moving through the truck lanes of the grove, bouncing wildly through chuckholes. He cut across the rows, moving through the endless lines of trees that were set in neat rows.

  "I can't see them," she said.

  In response, Bolan slowed slightly, but continued the dangerous route between the lanes. The grove looked large, perhaps a thousand acres or more, but he couldn't go far on three wheels.