Cold Fusion

by Don Pendleton

  When this had been done, the bosun’s chair was dismantled. On the gunboat, it was gathered in and roughly stowed and secured where it could not float free on the surface and betray any position.

  * * *

  UP ON THE bridge, Vladimir joined Piotr. The fat man grunted.

  “Did you see him puke? Pig. I ask you, if he cannot take what has happened to him so far, how will he and the other one be able to handle what will happen when they are sold? Hardware, not software, my friend. Our employers have not thought this through. What if these men cannot perform when they are sold?”

  “There is no money-back guarantee, Piotr. And there does not need to be. We have completed our mission—”

  “Not quite.”

  Vladimir shrugged. “Very well, but we have completed the most difficult part.”

  “What about those powerboats? Who sent them?”

  “Does it matter now? We were successful, they were not. And they have not tracked us. More, it will be impossible for them to pick up a trail that lies at the bottom of the sea. All we have to do is to keep a secure ring around those two until the sale is complete, then collect our pay. The rest is not our concern.”

  “I hope you are right,” the fat man mused. He looked out to where the yacht was already receding into the distance, headed for land. “How long should we give them?”

  Valdimir clapped him on the shoulder. “You are nervous, Piotr. Do not be.”

  The fat man grunted again. “I prefer cautious,” he said dourly.

  “Very well. We set the charges for forty-five minutes. They will be well on their way by then, and with our small boats we can catch them easily before we come too close to shore.”

  “Then do it,” Piotr assented. “I will give the order for disembarkation.”

  Leaving his opposite number to complete his part of the task, Vladimir descended into the bowels of the gunboat. It seemed a shame to dispose of it in such a manner, as it had cost them a lot of their resource allocation, and to have a fully equipped gunboat could prove to be handy in the future. Of course, docking it may prove a problem, but...

  He realized he was allowing his mind to race away from the matter at hand. As he reached the engine room, he heard Piotr’s voice over the in-ship comm system issue the order for all personnel to assemble at the emergency boat points, ready to abandon ship.

  As he prepared the charges and made his way from one end of the ship to the other, placing four charges along the way in areas where they would cause stress fractures in the hull and so directly allow flooding in the least amount of time, he mused on how disciplined his crew was. They shut down systems and gathered their belongings with a minimum of fuss before proceeding to the embarkation points. Not bad for what had a short while before been a rag-tag assortment of mercenaries and paramilitaries who had never worked together before, and rarely individually under the kind of discipline insisted upon by himself and Piotr.

  By the time he had laid the last charge and was making his way back up to the deck, the gunboat was deserted. Once on deck, he found that one of the motorized dinghies had already been launched and was turning to head in the direction taken by the yacht. The other was descending into the water, and was followed by the remnants of the crew as he and Piotr made one last scan of the deck.

  “Ready?” the fat man asked.

  Vladimir nodded. “When they go, the chain will spark the ordnance aboard. She will already be shipping water. Down one way and out the other. There should be little left to see.”

  “I would prefer nothing. Not even a slick of oil or fuel.”

  “I can guarantee much, but not that. Unless anything works loose, there will be no objects to identify her.”

  Piotr sniffed. “Very well. It is the best we can hope for, I suppose.”

  Vladimir laughed. “You are a miserable bastard, Piotr Ilyich.”

  For once, a smile cracked the man’s fat face. “That is why I am still alive, and don’t you forget it.”

  With which he clambered down the rope to the dinghy in ungainly fashion, followed in short and smooth order by his gaunt partner.

  The dinghy pulled away, its motor straining as it set off in pursuit of its companion. There was silence in the boat, and the two Russians did not break this, even when, after the time had elapsed, there was a distant and hollow explosion far to their stern, followed by a series of smaller, subsidiary explosions.

  They did not look back, though Vladimir did break the silence.

  “It is a pity. It would have been useful to have our own gunboat.”

  * * *

  BOLAN LOOKED HASSIM squarely in the eye. “How much would it cost?”

  “More than you could probably muster in the necessary time. It’s not that we wouldn’t come. You think we wouldn’t like a crack at the bastards on that gunboat?” He gestured to encompass the others in the room. Bolan took them in. To a man there was a muttering of consent that showed there was the element of the personal about this—whether or not that was a good thing was another matter.

  “But there’s something else, right?”

  “Right,” Hassim affirmed. “If they are headed for Jordan, then they’re on safer ground than if they messed with the Israelis or screwed around on the West Bank. Those evil scum would take them out just for the hell of it. But Jordan? They have no ax to grind, no real problems right now. Except one.”

  “Palestine,” Bolan nodded. “They were being overrun with refugees and exiles.”

  “Right. So they started this yellow card shit. If you’re Palestinian and live in Jordan but have family on the West Bank, then you can go back and forth. If you don’t, you’re fucked. I think...if you live on the Gaza Strip then you ain’t getting into Jordan even if you claim the king is your third cousin twice removed. They’re tight. They don’t want nothing to do with the Gaza Strip as they spent over twenty years fighting the Israelis. That was another twenty years back now, but they’ve got long memories.”

  “You figure I’ve got a better chance of getting in on my own than I have with you?”

  Hassim laughed. “We’re Arabs, Cooper. So are they. And they’re going to take a long hard look at us. But you? You’re a white guy, you can be anything it says on any of your passports and move around a whole lot easier.”

  “Fair point,” Bolan conceded. “Leaves me light, though. I could use backup.”

  “And we’d gladly do it for the money and the fun of it. But we can’t use water as there’s no real way we could land without scrutiny. No coast, and what there is on the West Bank—our only way in—gets looked at closely. By road, it’d take us one hell of a journey, and it would be almost impossible to get across any passable roads because of checkpoints.”

  Bolan considered this. Solo he would be more flexible, could move quicker. Air would be fast, but he would have to leave ordnance behind, with no guarantee that there was a supply source at the other end. Road, maybe. On his own, that was possible, but it still left him with the knowledge that he would be up against a sizeable force with no backup, assuming there were no friendly faces in Kurtzman’s contact book.

  What the hell—he’d faced worse.

  “It’ll just have to be that way, then,” he said.

  Hassim laughed. “You got balls, Cooper. Let’s hope you get to keep them. Pity those bastards aren’t headed for Egypt. We could arrange a little boat trip for that one. Places to land aren’t so hard to find as places to park, you know?”

  “You might get your chance,” Bolan mused. “Until I hear, Jordan is just the most likely location. In which case...”

  Excusing himself for a moment, he retrieved his handgrip from where it had been stowed with the duffel bags containing his ordnance. When he returned, he could see that Hassim’s men were seated around the tables, talking loudly and e
xcitedly, too fast for his basic Arabic to grasp in full. What he could understand told him that they were discussing the best routes for him to cross into Jordan without running the risk of being detained.

  There were twelve of them, along with Hassim, in the room. Rafik and Shadeeb he already knew. The other ten were a jumble of names and faces to him. There had been no real time to assimilate them, but he knew that Hassim trusted the group, and that was enough. Looking at them, they were a mixed bunch of men—some little more than boys, like the one he had first encountered in Hassim’s store, while others showed the scars of war and the wear of long years toiling on the land and against an enemy.

  Most of them were rangy and tall, lean with muscle and the hardships they had endured: Aref, who was an old friend of Hassim’s, Haithem, who had just one eye, the other now a wound bound by scar tissue; Riad and Kamal, who were brothers; and Adib, who was the most silent, yet had the brooding air of someone about to explode with anger. Then there were the younger ones: Sami and Husni, both of whom looked too soft to fight, being chunky and well-fed; Gamal, the boy Bolan had encountered in the store, and who still looked at him with a glimmer of suspicion; and Abd and Amin, who were rangy youths resembling nothing so much as the sons of the older, more experienced fighters, even though they were not. A mixed band of age and ability, perhaps, but bound together by camaraderie with their brothers—something that Bolan knew, better than anyone, could overcome disadvantages.

  He would be sorry if he had to leave them behind, and perhaps for more reasons than just having to fly solo. But there would be time to worry about that later. For the moment, he could use the help they seemed willing to offer.

  Bolan stepped into their midst and took the iPad from his handgrip, powering it up before calling up the charts that Kurtzman had downloaded for him. Although he had kept his Arabic to a minimum, preferring to be translated via Hassim and avoid misunderstandings, he paid them the courtesy of addressing them in their own language.

  “Gentlemen, if I am to journey into Jordan on my own, I would appreciate your guidance. I have some maps, but they are no substitute for the knowledge of experience. If you would look at them and advise me...”

  He grinned as the whole room seemed to converge on him, arguments and jabbing fingers already indicating points of contention.

  * * *

  DAWN WAS BREAKING as Bolan stepped outside to take the incoming call from Stony Man. Behind him, the group of mercenaries lay across the tables and floor of the building. They had argued and planned for hours, to the extent that Bolan now felt as though he had an intimate knowledge of the region. He was also pretty sure, from what he had been told, of the likeliest region of the country in which any quick auction could be arranged.

  “Bear, speak to me.”

  “You sound wide-awake considering it must be early morning where you are,” Kurtzman said wryly.

  “I’ll snatch a couple of hours shortly. I’ve just been through the kind of briefing that you could only imagine,” Bolan replied with a grin.

  “I’ll take your word for it. Good news and bad news, Striker.”

  “Bad first, then,” Bolan replied, killing the grin.

  “Two sides of the coin, there, so I’ll just lay it straight. I think we’ve nailed who they are, and they’ve not wasted any time in setting up a new meet. Jordan, as you suspected. They must have headed straight there when they took the targets, and had an auction site set and ready to go.”

  “That’s fine. I was pretty sure it would have to be there, so I’ve been planning accordingly. I’ve got a route and transport lined up, and I figure I can get in with ordnance. Can’t take any backup though, so I’m relying on you to give me a name.”

  “That’s the flipside of it, Striker. We have no one in the area that we can hook you up with—for backup or supply. So just as well you can supply your own. It’s been quiet there of late, and the people we did have are either inactive or moved on. It’s going to have to be a solo op.”

  Bolan sighed. “I was really hoping not to hear that, Bear. And I’m thinking, from the tone of your voice, that’s not the only downside.”

  “The auction is twenty hours away. If you go by road then you’re at least sixteen hours away.”

  Bolan cursed. “Doesn’t give me a lot of time to reconnoiter. They’ve emailed location and maps, right?”

  “That’s the one good thing. They’ve had to forego certain precautions in order to set this up so quick, and that’s given us an advantage, thanks to Hal’s mole.”

  “Send me everything. I’ll be setting off immediately and will do some studying on the way.”

  “I hope you’ve got a good driver, Striker.”

  Bolan looked back to the building where his erstwhile compatriots rested.

  “Right here and now? The best, Bear.”

  Chapter 9

  Twelve hours in, Bolan lay across the back of the jeep, trying to get some rest. There was a lot to think about, but he was long practiced in the art of switching off—the problems would still be there when he awoke, and he would be in a much fresher frame of mind. That wasn’t the issue—it was these damn roads and the desert that were causing him grief.

  A simple plan: two jeeps, one with Hassim and Bolan, the other with Rafik driving and Gamal riding shotgun. Hassim would take the wheel of their vehicle, allowing Bolan to get some rest as they made their way to the small line of border that lay between Syria and Jordan that would put him in direct line for his target destination. When they were within twenty klicks, Bolan would take the wheel and proceed across the border alone to his destination. Hassim would wait with the others, making camp. They would wait thirty-six hours. If Bolan returned, Hassim would drive him back to the village, allowing him to rest. If he did not return, they would mourn the loss of their vehicle and travel back alone.

  Twenty klicks was far enough back that the border patrols would not stumble on them. Thirty-six hours would allow Bolan to get to his destination, effect his mission and then return. Anything else allowed too much margin of error.

  The plan would have been great, if not for the fact that the roads were in poor condition and they needed to go off-road for great swaths of territory. The land was dry scrub, desert in places, with rocks treacherously hidden by the thin, sandy soil. It was not a smooth ride, and although Bolan was used to snatching z’s in the most unlikely of places, the constant jarring was proving to make his rest fitful, at best.

  It would have been easier if he could have flown via Jack Grimaldi and Dragonslayer, but local conditions made this impossible. As part of the sanctions the Arab League had imposed when Libya was going down, there had been an exclusion policy and a no-fly zone over much of Libya and the surrounding territories. Even the UN planes that had been part of taking down Gaddafi had encountered problems. Although the despot had joined the league of great dictators in the even greater beyond, the fragile state of the National Transitional Council had made the other states in the region nervous, neighboring Egypt in particular. So the Arab League had kept no-fly in place: scheduled commercial flights and a state airforce were fine. But anything that didn’t fit this profile was a no-no. And as Syria was in a delicate political position and was not, unlike its neighbor Jordan, a part of the Arab League, having been sanctioned and excluded, anything that took to the air from there and wasn’t immediately accountable ran huge risks.

  It would take a lot to shoot a flyer like Grimaldi and a chopper like Dragonslayer out of the sky. But worse than that would be the possibility that they were in some way tagged and traced back to the homeland. Questions would be raised that no one would want to answer.

  So Bolan found himself relying on water transport and four wheels. Not the most comforting thought that went through his mind as he drifted in and out of sleep during the journey.

  He was finally jolt
ed awake by the grinding of gears and the sudden shunt of the jeep pulling up. Hassim leaned over and whispered in a hoarse voice, “Hey, Cooper, wakey wakey. We’re here...”

  “I kind of gathered that,” Bolan said as he stood and stretched. He got out of the vehicle and looked around. The other jeep had stopped about ten yards away, Rafik and Gamal staring at him. Bolan got out his smartphone and used the GPS to locate himself in relation both to the border and to his target destination.

  “Border’s that way,” Hassim said, waving a hand unnecessarily in the direction the jeep was facing.

  “Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind,” Bolan said wryly.

  “Yeah, funny man,” Hassim replied. “Listen, there’s not much land on the border between us and Jordan that causes problems. Most of it has been pretty easy for tribal movement over the centuries. But just lately, the way things are...some sections get patrolled a lot heavier than other stretches.”

  “Frequency? What kind of patrols?” Bolan asked, needing some kind of specific.

  “Every few hours around here. You just drew the short straw is all. It had been more, but things have been quiet of late, so they’ve slackened the pace. Usually a jeep with a mounted gun, sometimes an armored car. Three, four men tops.”

  “What will they do when they see me coming?”

  “If they do—and you go carefully, you should avoid that—then they’ll want papers. You’re American, so pretend you’re some fuckwit Fox newsman who’s got himself lost.”

  “I think I can manage that,” Bolan said, amused.

  “Yeah, well you won’t get the kind of interrogation we get. You got the hardware secured?”