Nuclear Reaction

by Don Pendleton

  Pahlavi snapped at them again, jabbing the muzzle of his CETME rifle into one man’s gut, and listened to the torrent they unloaded in response.

  “They claim the weapon has not been completed. They have the materials. No, some of the materials. It’s difficult to understand, when they…Something retards their progress. I’m not sure—”

  “It’s okay,” Bolan told him. “I don’t care what’s slowed them. Do you believe them?”

  Stepping back a pace from his three prisoners, Pahlavi studied them for several seconds, gunfire hammering throughout the other nearby rooms, then nodded. “Yes,” he said at last. “They’re very frightened. I believe them.”

  “Then we only need to see the parts they’ve finished, deal with those and trash the lab,” Bolan replied. “Simple.”

  “Simple,” his guide repeated, heavy on the irony. Another whiplash order from him made the three technicians cringe from him, then slowly nod agreement.

  “They will show us where the pieces are,” Pahlavi said. “They want to live.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “And after that—?”

  “Darice,” Bolan assured him, thinking, If there’s time. If we still can.

  The technicians led Bolan and Pahlavi from the makeshift grilling room, clearly reluctant to approach the battleground, but prodded from behind with weapons and Pahlavi’s threats of instant death if they refused. Bolan surveyed the scene as they proceeded down another corridor, observing that his goal of taking out the labs had nearly been accomplished in his absence, by the seesaw struggle for control. Bullets and shrapnel had destroyed much of the delicate equipment, punctured walls and ceiling panels, shattered furniture. It wasn’t permanent—they’d need plastique or fire for that—but no one would be building any weapons in that wreckage for the next few weeks, at least.

  Bolan considered, once again, the prospect that a bullet or grenade might crack a cabinet or canister containing nuclear material, exposing them all to radiation in a killing dose, but there was nothing he could do about it. He’d discussed the problem with Pahlavi’s people at the house, and they’d all agreed to take the risk, while making every effort to avoid contamination of their comrades and themselves.

  Some of it still came down to luck, and Bolan wasn’t sure how much his side had left.

  Their three reluctant guides brought Bolan and Pahlavi to a short, plain corridor some distance from the rooms where men and women were engaged in killing one another, giving it their best. One of the male technicians tapped in numbers on a keypad by the last door on their left, then pushed his way inside. The others followed, trailed by Bolan and Pahlavi, Bolan pausing long enough to knock a trash can over with his foot and use it as a wedge, to keep the door from swinging shut behind them.

  Even with his lack of expertise in items nuclear, the Executioner recognized the place. There was the glove box, where technicians stood with arms inserted through stout, insulated sleeves to handle dangerous materials. Another one had robot arms, controlled from the outside by joysticks. The wall to Bolan’s left was lined with HAZMAT suits, dangling from stainless-steel hooks. The floor beneath their feet was spotless.

  Within that room lay the components for a weapon that, while relatively small, could someday rock the world—and maybe even dam the stream of human history. The Doomsday elves hadn’t assembled it, so far, but Bolan recognized some of the parts. Together, finished, they were Hiroshima in a handbag. Nagasaki at rush hour.

  The troops Pahlavi’s team had vanquished at the house had come well prepared, although they’d left some of their best gear in their vehicles. The Willie Pete, for example. Their white phosphorous grenades. Thermite.

  Bolan palmed one and passed another to Pahlavi, nodding for the technicians to leave. “Let’s shake and bake,” he said. “We haven’t got all night.”

  22

  Pahlavi turned his face away from the fierce heat of the burning laboratory, eyes half closed against the glare of chemical explosions. The incendiary grenades were incredible, white-hot chunks of phosphorous melting steel and burning through concrete as if it was cardboard. The fireworks show had brought a momentary lull in fighting, as defenders and invaders alike gaped in wonder, momentarily awed by the awesome display of destruction.

  Bolan had explained that the thermite charges should destroy all weapons-grade material within the plant, along with the peripheral components, tools and plans required to build a bomb. It would not—could not—wipe the knowledge from the minds of those technicians who had worked on Project X, but some of them were probably incinerated by the blast, and Pahlavi planned to shoot any he saw from that point onward.

  While he searched the compound for his sister.

  Pahlavi knew he might not find her, at the very least might not find her alive, but he was bound to try.

  “Ready when you are,” Bolan said, as if he could read Pahlavi’s mind.

  Pahlavi looked around the compound, saw the guards and soldiers still engaged in fighting members of his team at several points. The numbers had thinned on both sides, since they’d crashed the gates twelve minutes earlier. Janna was still alive and at his side, but he could count three dead among his friends from where he stood.

  “I don’t know where to start,” he answered bitterly.

  “Think of the layout,” Bolan said. “She wasn’t in the main lab, which leaves four buildings to search.”

  Four, Pahlavi thought. It might as well have been four hundred. “I don’t know!”

  “Administration’s where we entered. Do you think they’d hold her near their offices?” Bolan asked.

  It seemed unlikely. “No,” Pahlavi said, shaking his head.

  “Okay, what’s left. In Building C, you’ve got the kitchen, dining room and library.”

  “Not there,” Pahlavi guessed. “Too much foot traffic every day. Too many witnesses.”

  “D is the barracks,” Bolan said.

  A possibility, Pahlavi thought, but what about the guards and other staff in residence, who came and went from tiny sleeping rooms a dozen times each day? Gazsi would not want them distracted by the fuss and noise of an interrogation, would he?

  “No,” he finally replied.

  “That narrows down the search to E,” Bolan said. “Storage and maintenance.”

  Perfect. Aside from storage rooms, Pahlavi realized, they would have privacy and tools. Tears stung his eyes as he said, “I will search E next.”

  “Makes sense to me,” the Executioner agreed.

  But first, they had to get there, and the battle for the compound had not ended with the fiery destruction of the lab. If anything, the compound’s defenders seemed to have redoubled their efforts, as if seeking revenge now that they’d missed their chance to avert disaster.

  Their heavy machine gun had fallen silent, and while Pahlavi didn’t know what that meant for Darshan, he couldn’t go and check on his good friend before he sought Darice.

  Facing Bolan and the rest who gathered round him, huddled in the depth of shadows next to Building C, Pahlavi said, “I need to find my sister. This is my fight only. You may leave if you wish to. All of you have reason to be proud, and seeking safety now should not embarrass you.”

  Janna pressed forward, stormy-eyed, seeming as if she was about to slap him. “You insult us, Darius!” she snapped. “You think that we would leave you now? That I would leave you?”

  “But—”

  “We go together. Now.”

  Bolan didn’t understand the words but the young woman’s intentions were clear.

  Pahlavi nodded, blinking back another swell of tears, though not from anguish this time. Studying the battlefield in front of him, he waited for an opening. Not looking for a lull in gunfire, but the opposite—a flare-up in some other portion of the compound that would keep his enemies distracted while his small team raced toward Building E.

  A moment later, a grenade explosion from the general direction of the gates drew gu
ards and soldiers in that direction, several firing as they ran, although Pahlavi could not guess their targets. If they had a party of his friends cornered, he wished the others well and vowed to help them soon. Or else avenge them, if it came to that.

  He glanced at Bolan, caught a nod from the American.

  “It’s time,” Pahlavi told the others, lunging from the shadows even as he spoke the order. “Follow me!”

  Seconds into the advance, the team met opposition from a clutch of soldiers hanging out near Building D. Firing in twos and threes, the enemy peppered the parking lot and drove the Ohm commandos off their course, looking for cover on the near side of the same building.

  That made it tricky. They could theoretically be stuck all night in that position—or until the camp’s defenders rallied to surround and wipe them out—and Bolan reckoned they were quickly running out of time. Some kind of breakthrough was required, and he decided it was his job to provide it.

  “Hold them here,” he told Pahlavi. “I’ll cut through the barracks and surprise them. Shake them up a little. When they’re hopping, you can close the trap.”

  Pahlavi blinked at him. “It should be I who—”

  “You’ve got business waiting for you,” Bolan cut him off. “This is my specialty.”

  “Just one of them, I think,” Pahlavi said.

  “Wait here, unless they try to box you. You’ll know when I get there.”

  “Right. Good luck!” Pahlavi said.

  There was an entrance to the barracks ten feet to the left. Bolan went through it in a crouch and moved along an east-west corridor that led him toward the corner where his enemies had taken up position. Doors lined either side, most of them closed as Bolan passed, no sounds inside the barracks rooms to indicate that anyone was home. Of course, that didn’t mean—

  A door flew open on his left, and Bolan glimpsed a pistol thrusting toward his face. He dropped and rolled, the first explosion well above him and its bullet wasted, drilling through another door directly opposite.

  He fired a short burst from the floor, saw drywall pulverized, and then his enemy in olive drab was angling for another shot, dropping the pistol’s muzzle toward the floor where Bolan lay. He rolled again, barely before the muzzle-flash, and fired once more on his rotation, as his shoulder hit the wall.

  His second burst went in on target, more or less. It cut the shooter’s legs from under him and dropped him to the floor, alive but stunned and gasping on the brink of shock. The pistol wavered, wobbled as its owner tried for target acquisition one more time, but Bolan didn’t let him get there.

  Firing from a range of six or seven feet, he put two bullets through the wounded soldier’s face and finished it. Blood splashed the wall behind his target’s head before the dead man slumped sideways and let his pistol drop from twitching fingers.

  That had been too close for comfort, Bolan thought, and he wasn’t nearly finished yet. A high-noon showdown in the barracks hallway hadn’t helped his friends outside, nor had it put them any closer to Pahlavi’s sister—if, in fact, she could even be found inside the lab complex.

  Bolan had no idea if she was alive or not, but he was bound to help Pahlavi try to find out. And that meant going through the soldiers who prevented them from reaching Building E. Rising, he moved off toward the far end of the hallway, checking each door closely as he passed, prepared for anything.

  DARICE STUMBLED, nearly falling, as Gazsi pulled her along the corridor. She was barefoot, the concrete smooth and cold against her soles, with long cracks here and there where it had settled over time. No real attention had been paid to decorating storage space, unlike the other buildings in the complex, where a layer of vinyl flooring covered plain concrete.

  Outside, she heard the fight still raging, automatic weapons hammering the night. Darice wondered how Gazsi planned to make it through that killing zone with just a pistol, but she reckoned he was counting on his rank to get him past the guards and through the gates.

  Was there a chance that they would challenge him, perhaps even prevent him from departing with his prisoner? It seemed too much to hope for, and as that thought formed in her mind, she wondered why she should hope for it. Why wish to remain where men were killing one another, for whatever reason, when she had a chance to get away?

  Because I won’t, she thought.

  That was the bottom line. With Gazsi, she would always be a prisoner, until he tired of her and put a bullet in her head, discarded her somewhere like so much trash along the highway. He would use her, lie to her, but he would never under any circumstances let her go.

  Not now.

  In which case, she decided, there was no point in cooperating with him any longer. If he meant to kill her one way or another, she could make him do it now, and maximize the bastard’s inconvenience. If he thought she could assist him somehow in escaping from the compound, let him try without her.

  Still, she had no stomach for a simple suicide. Darice decided it was best to wait until they were outside, then she’d break away from him and try to run. It didn’t matter which direction, where she went. If nothing else, she could make Gazsi shoot her in the public eye, with witnesses, assuming all of them weren’t so distracted by their efforts to remain alive that they entirely missed the show.

  Perhaps someone would see, would file the memory away and bring it back to haunt Gazsi another time. Perhaps her sacrifice would not be all in vain.

  Perhaps he’ll miss!

  The thought surprised her. She had never seen him shoot, had no idea if Gazsi was a practiced marksman or if carrying a gun was simply part of his persona, one more prop to make a small man seem larger than life. It might be that he couldn’t hit a billboard with his pistol if he stood ten feet away. Perhaps he was inept, incompetent.

  But if he missed, if she escaped—where would she go?

  It was a problem she had not considered, and it struck her like a pail of cold water dashed into her face. They were five or six paces away from the exit, all manner of gunfire and shouting outside, plus the wail of a siren for background music, and Darice realized she had no plan at all.

  She framed the compound’s layout in her mind, the way she’d sketched it for her brother. She was in the maintenance and storage section—Building E—which meant the gates were located some three hundred yards to her left, as she stepped through the exit. If she ran in that direction, she would pass the motor pool and small garage that kept the plant’s vehicles running, then a helipad they seldom used, and finally the western wing of Building A—thirty yards or so before she reached the gates.

  It was a simple jog in daylight, with no one restraining her, without an army locked in battle all around. Given the circumstances as she found them, though, Darice supposed it might be the last thing she ever tried.

  So be it, then, she decided.

  At least she would have made the effort, without simply throwing up her hands in meek surrender.

  At the exit, Gazsi clutched her wrist and used his knee to press the bar that would release the door, then shouldered through it, dragging her behind him. They had barely crossed the threshold into darkness speckled with flashes of gunfire, when the world in front of them went white and sizzling, nearly blinding her.

  “Oh, God!” she whimpered, cringing, barely conscious of the fact that Gazsi had released her arm.

  At first, Darice supposed it was the bomb exploding, but a heartbeat passed and she was not incinerated where she stood. Then she remembered that bomb was not completed, not assembled on the day of her arrest. Without some miracle that she could not envision, they would have had no working prototype so soon.

  The lab was burning—melting almost seemed a better word—and shooting off white streamers that resembled something from a fireworks exhibition. Some kind of chemical explosion, she supposed, although Darice couldn’t recall any materials in stock that would produce such an event. That only left munitions of some kind, presumably employed by those who were attacking
the compound.

  She said a silent prayer of thanks to whoever had destroyed Project X. She hoped the work was trashed beyond repair, the data lost beyond recall.

  Gazsi was still aghast and gaping at the white-hot ruin of the laboratory when she struck him with her fist, putting her full weight behind it, giving it everything she had. He staggered, dropped to one knee, but she didn’t wait to see him fall.

  Before her heart beat twice, she was already off and running toward the distant gates.

  DESPITE THE GUNFIRE in the hallway, Bolan caught the outside shooters by surprise. He counted five of them as he pushed through the exit, one just turning toward him with a questioning expression on his face, thrown off for just a second by the army uniform, then starting to recover as his eyes locked on the AKMS rising toward his face.

  Bolan would never know if his first target registered the weapon, realized that it was wrong for anyone wearing his country’s uniform. Maybe it was the threat alone that made the man backpedal, recoiling, with a warning cry to his companions building up a head of steam.

  I’ll warn them for you, Bolan thought, and shot the young man in the chest before he had a chance to speak. Three rounds ripped through his chest at something close to point-blank range, erupting from his back to spray and wound the nearest man behind him.

  Bolan let the second wounded soldier curse and stagger for a moment, while he faced the other three. They panicked. One excited youngster squeezed off prematurely, knocking divots in the concrete wall beside him, fighting to control his weapon as its muzzle climbed.

  Bolan fired from the hip, raking the three from left to right and back again, making them twitch and dance. His rifle wasn’t made for close-range killing, but it did the job just fine, its small tumbling projectiles tearing massive wound channels through flesh and bone. There was no question of survival for the men on the receiving end. They dropped, already dead or dying, tremors from their final death throes mocking signs of life.

  The man he’d wounded accidentally was trying hard to lift and aim his rifle with a broken arm. Given sufficient time, he might’ve managed, but the Executioner was in a hurry and he didn’t want to die. A clean shot through the forehead dropped his final adversary like a puppet with its strings cut, plummeting into a lifeless heap.