Toxic Terrain

by Don Pendleton

  Chen watched the men in the production room loading the product into the transportation casks through thick glass. The room was sealed shut because anyone breathing in even a granule of the product would die of encephalopathy within weeks. The only way into the working room was through an air lock that could be locked shut from the outside, should something go wrong. The men working in the sealed chamber wore nuclear-biological-chemical suits, but Chen refused to enter the chamber even while wearing an NBC suit. He had seen what happened to those unfortunate enough to ingest even microscopic particles of the infected product.

  “Are your men nearly finished?” Chen asked Zoeng, who stood beside him, watching the prion-infected material being loaded through the protective glass.

  “They are working as fast as humanly possible,” Zoeng replied. Chen detected a bit of testiness in Zoeng’s voice. Normally such insubordination would have been met with swift and terrible reprisal, but this situation was far from normal; as with Liang, Chen felt that the pressure Cooper had exerted on the entire operation made a small amount of insolence, if not excusable, at least understandable.

  None of that changed the fact that Chen needed Zoeng’s men to finish their task immediately. If this was the fastest speed possible, then Chen needed Zoeng’s men to perform the impossible.

  “I appreciate that I have given you a difficult task,” Chen said to Zoeng, “but the fact remains that we will likely be under attack from Cooper very shortly.”

  “We must have two hundred men guarding the facility,” Zoeng said. “What can one man do against such odds?”

  “It depends on the man,” Chen said. “Until several days ago we had well over two hundred troops at our service, but this one man has cut that number nearly by half. That should still be adequate. It seems impossible that one man can overwhelm one hundred men, but given what this one man has accomplished in a very short period of time, I don’t believe we can rule out any possibilities.”

  “Granted we are facing a capable adversary,” Zoeng said, “but that doesn’t negate the fact that my men are working as fast as they can.”

  “Then perhaps you should don an NBC suit and go assist them.”

  “You cannot be serious,” Zoeng said. “You are well aware of the risks of going into that room, even while wearing an NBC suit.”

  “The risks of not going in are far greater, I’m afraid.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Zoeng asked.

  “Please, Zoeng, do not confuse a promise with a threat. Failure at this point would be unacceptable.”

  Zoeng didn’t respond. He knew that Chen never said anything that he didn’t mean.

  “You have done a remarkable job of developing the prions,” Chen said, “and please do not think this in any way disregards your contribution to our plans, but as distasteful as I find the proposition, I will see that you die a painful and horrible death if you choose to disregard my suggestion that you help your men.”

  Zoeng still remained silent, but he’d seen the results of Chen’s handiwork on the veterinarian being held at the facility. Compared to what the man had done to her, the potential for encephalopathy seemed a minor inconvenience. He began donning an NBC suit.

  BOLAN MADE HIS WAY around the fence surrounding the perimeter of the Ag Con property as quickly as he could without being discovered. The terrain was rocky and steep, but he managed to make fairly good time. He’d covered about two miles before he encountered more patrols outside the fence. Wanting to conserve his energy for the inevitable battle ahead, he chose to take cover and let the pair of Chinese guards pass unmolested. He ducked into the gap between two large boulders protruding from the hillside and hoped the sun was still low enough to keep his position hidden in the shadows.

  It nearly was. The two men passed within inches of Bolan, following the path as it wound around the boulders. The Executioner thought he’d avoided confrontation, but at the last moment the rearmost of the pair glanced back over his shoulder. The man’s eyes grew as round as saucers when he saw the soldier crouched less than a foot away from him.

  Before he could utter a sound, Bolan swung his knife upward. It entered the man just above his hipbone. The blade sliced through his entrails and split about six inches of his sternum before being stopped by the bone. The man’s guts spilled out of his cavity before he even realized he’d been stabbed and he collapsed to the ground.

  The only noise produced by the encounter was the thud made by the man’s weapon as it hit the ground, but it was enough to alert the other guard, who had been walking about three feet ahead of his now-deceased partner. Bolan’s knife was wedged tight in the first man’s sternum and when the man fell, he pulled the knife from the soldier’s grasp, leaving Bolan empty-handed.

  When the second man registered the threat, he raised his bullpup battle rifle to his shoulder. Before he could get the gun into position, Bolan was on top of him, knocking it from his hand. The guard fell beneath his attacker, but he rolled into his fall and brought his knee up, catching Bolan right in the groin. The Executioner spun his hips to the side and managed to avoid a blow that might have led to permanent injury. He still received enough of an impact that the pain shooting through him nearly blinded him. Rocking to the side had diminished the impact of the blow, but it had also put Bolan in an awkward position for fighting, leaving him unable to get the leverage needed to deliver a blow of his own. The sentry took advantage of that and lunged at the soldier. He grabbed Bolan’s throat with both hands and once again drove a knee into the soldier’s lower abdomen.

  By this time Bolan had his shoulder against a rock, allowing him the leverage needed to go on the offensive. With both his hands around his adversary’s neck, the guard was unable to fend off Bolan’s roundhouse blow to his temple. The Executioner felt the man’s grip on his neck ease off slightly, but he was still choking off the soldier’s air supply, so Bolan pounded the man’s head again and again, his fists driving the man ever closer to the verge of losing consciousness.

  After delivering six devastating blows to the man’s temple, Bolan began to fear that he would lose consciousness himself before his adversary released his death grip, but on the seventh blow Bolan felt something give beneath his fist and the man on top of him went limp.

  Bolan rolled the guard off of him. Blood poured from the unconscious man’s nose, eyes and ears. He wasn’t dead, but most likely soon would be. If by some miracle he did survive, it would be in a comatose state.

  The Executioner was starting to run low on ammunition, so he stripped several magazines from the bodies. He also discovered two Chinese fragmentation grenades on each man. These were the old-style grenades, patterned after the Soviet RGD 33 units, armed by unscrewing a wooden cap atop the grenade and pulling it loose, igniting the fuse in the process. They were crude units, but better than nothing. After Bolan confiscated the magazines and grenades from the dead sentries, he stuffed the corpses into the crevice between the rocks, hoping that it would provide better cover for the bodies than it had for him.

  He continued to follow the perimeter of the fence for about another mile before coming upon an opening. It had shorter sections of chain link placed parallel with the fence, about two feet in front of and behind the opening. Two more Chinese men stood guard at the opening, but they were the only opponents Bolan could see.

  The soldier crept through the sage and juniper until he’d moved into a sniping position in some rocks less than fifty feet from the opening and removed his sound-suppressed Beretta. He’d have to move with almost impossible speed if he was to drop both sentries without their firing a shot. He doubted that they’d be able to hit him in his position, but he knew that if they got off a shot, the men guarding the compound would come down on him in force. He sighted in on the head of the nearer sentry and waited until the other had turned his head to the side before he pulled the trigger.

  The Beretta coughed and a single round tore through the bridge of the sentry’s nose. A bloody lump of
cartilage blossomed between the man’s eyes and he fell dead. Before he reached the ground, Bolan had the other guard in his sights. He squeezed off another round, but the man was moving, bringing his QBZ rifle into firing position. Bolan’s shot tore through the man’s eye and out the side of his head.

  The sentry raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired, but he fired blindly because his dominant eye had exploded and his shots ran wild. Bolan flipped the selector switch and put a 3-round burst right through the man’s chest. Still the guard continued to spray the air with autofire, though Bolan couldn’t tell if he was still alive or if he’d died with his finger locked around the trigger. It didn’t matter because the sentry was making far too much noise. The soldier put another 3-round burst through the back of the man’s head, shredding brain stem to pulp and putting an end to his gunfire.

  9

  Chen considered patience one of his most valuable attributes. His patience had made it possible for him to orchestrate this plan over the course of decades without ever being discovered. It had enabled him to develop a secure network that had in turn put him in contact with such like-minded individuals as Liang and Zoeng. Superhuman patience had, in fact, been necessary every step of the way to get him this close to consummating decades of hard work, denial of worldly pleasures, sacrifice and suffering.

  But finally on the verge of accomplishing all he had long dreamed of, Chen’s patience had abandoned him. He keyed the microphone button on the console built into a shelf just below the observation window into the lab in which Zoeng and his men worked to fill the last of the containers with the product. “How much longer, please?” he inquired of Zoeng.

  “We are nearly finished,” Zoeng said into the microphone inside the lab, his voice muffled to the point of barely being audible through the helmet of the NBC suit.

  “Then please finish,” Chen directed.

  “We are going as fast as we can,” Zoeng said.

  “I strongly suggest that you consider going faster,” Chen said.

  Knowing that he was as disposable as an empty plastic cigarette lighter at this point, Zoeng ordered his men to move faster. They picked up the pace and worked until they were nearly finished filling the final container when Zoeng’s worst fears became reality. They were transferring the product into the transportation casks from the sealed, rubberized sacks used for temporary storage through flexible funnels that locked onto both the casks and the sacks with an airtight seal, but the strength of that seal required the men to secure the coupling tightly. In their haste, the final coupling hadn’t been properly secured, and when the man holding the temporary storage sack stumbled, he tore the coupling loose from the sack, releasing a cloud of fine particulate into the air.

  As the man staggered forward, he reached out to grab something to break his fall. That something was the mask on Zoeng’s NBC helmet, which gave way, causing Zoeng to inhale a lungful of the prion-laced particulate.

  Zoeng smashed his fist down on a red emergency button. Lights flashed, sirens sounded and a spray of water came down on the men inside the lab. At the same time the locks on the entrances to the air lock that separated the lab from the rest of the facility closed tight. No one was going in or out until Chen punched in the correct code, and he had no intention of doing that. Zoeng’s men had loaded all but one cask onto the helicopter. As tragic as Zoeng’s inevitable death would be, he had delivered enough product to become expendable.

  Chen ignored the screaming and pleading coming through the intercom and walked out to the helicopter pad, where the pilot already had the engine idling. “Take off,” he ordered.

  After the helicopter had flown away with the product safely on board, Chen summoned the Chinese special forces operative who served as his chauffeur, along with both of his bodyguards. “Has Liang returned yet?”

  “No, sir,” the chauffeur told him. “We have not heard from Colonel Liang.”

  Chen frowned. He’d intended to have Liang accompany him to the Ag Con facility in Iowa. “Please send Mr. Tang to see me,” he ordered the chauffeur, “and then bring my vehicle around and prepare to leave.”

  Minutes after the chauffeur had left, Tang Tsu, Liang’s second in command, appeared. “I understand we have not had contact with Colonel Liang,” Chen said.

  “That is correct, sir,” Tang said.

  “You have prepared for an attack from Cooper?”

  “Yes, sir. My forces, what are left of them, are patrolling the perimeter and the remaining B&B men are inside the gate, prepared to defend the facility. I don’t see how it is possible for him to penetrate our defenses.”

  “You are aware, of course, that Cooper has performed the impossible with such regularity that he makes it look routine?” Chen asked.

  “I am, sir.”

  “Then you will not take anything for granted? You will be relentless in exterminating the American?”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Please see that you are,” Chen ordered. “Is Mr. Yao in place in the cupola?”

  “He is, sir.”

  “Good.” Having his best sniper in position restored at least a semblance of Chen’s confidence.

  While Chen waited for his chauffeur, he called Gould one last time. He could not afford for the incompetent cattleman to fail, and by this point the Chinese had lost all confidence in the North Dakotan.

  “Yeah?” Gould said, by way of greeting.

  “Where are you?” Chen asked.

  “Me and Dan are at the airport, getting his plane ready for takeoff.”

  “I expected you to be at the Killdeer airfield already,” Chen said.

  “Well, expect in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first,” Gould blurted out. When Chen remained silent, Gould began to get nervous. Finally he said, “Sorry about that. It’s just that we have to check out the plane to make sure that Dan doesn’t go and get the both of you killed.”

  “I see,” Chen said. “By all means make certain that the plane is prepared for our flight. But also please make certain that you arrive at the airfield as soon as possible.”

  “No worries,” Gould said. “Once we get airborne, we’ll be landing in no more than ten or fifteen minutes.”

  Chen hung up and was still waiting for his chauffeur when he heard the first shots fired from the northern perimeter of the facility. He heard several blasts from a small-caliber full-auto rifle, followed by silence. He called his chauffeur to see what was causing the delay.

  “I’m refueling the gas tank,” the man said. “It was empty.”

  “Get over here now,” Chen ordered. “You have enough gas to get me where I need to go.” Minutes later the chauffeur arrived. Just as Chen and his two bodyguards were getting into the vehicle, all hell broke loose at the north end of the compound.

  BOLAN DIDN’T BOTHER to hide the bodies at the entrance, though he did stop to confiscate their grenades. Again, each man had two grenades, but this time they were modern Chinese fragmentation grenades, with a pin-and-spoon activation system. He wished he had a web harness to stow his gear, but he had to make do with stuffing the grenades into one of the drop pouches. Between the magazines and the grenades, the pouches bulged to the point of almost hampering the soldier’s movement.

  The Executioner ran off the main path that led from the gate to what he assumed was the central facility and took cover in an outcropping overlooking the route. He knew that within moments the mercenaries guarding the facility would rush out to see why shots had been fired. In less than a minute he had that knowledge confirmed—a group of about twenty men appeared, running toward the gate, three abreast.

  Bolan unleashed a stream of autofire and sawed down the three men leading the charge. The rest dived into the brush lining the path. While they sought cover, the soldier crawled to a higher position in the rocks to the left of where he’d fired his first rounds.

  It proved to be a good move. Almost immediately upon hitting the dirt the soldiers fired on Bolan’s
original position. While they hammered the rocks below him, the Executioner crept along a small ledge until he was almost directly over the men. He stood up and sprayed an entire magazine into the group of guards in a sweeping figure-eight pattern. When his bolt locked open, he dropped behind the rocky ledge and moved to a new position, reloading his weapon on the way.

  His second burst had taken a toll on the group. Bolan stole a quick glance as he sprinted toward his new position and saw that at least five bodies were not moving. But those that still moved presented a problem for the soldier. This time they’d seen him leaving his position and a stream of autofire motivated him to dive behind some large boulders. He landed elbow-first in a prickly pear cactus, driving the spines deep into the skin of his forearm. Though it was painful, Bolan had to either remain where he was or risk exposing himself to the gunfire below.

  He crawled over the cactus to get to a shooting position, allowing the spines of the cactus to stab him in the chest. He gritted his teeth and plowed through the cactus with his chest, making his way to a rock formation that would provide him with cover for returning fire.

  Once in place, he looked over the rock to assess the situation. The men below hadn’t seen him escape and continued firing on the position in the rocks below him. Switching to single-shot, Bolan sighted in on the man closest to him, squeezed off a shot, instantly acquired another target and then managed to drop a third before the men below identified his position. Once again he was forced to duck to avoid return fire.