Orbiting Omega

by Don Pendleton

  She bristled and turned the radio up louder.

  "We now have special reports from Rome and London. As happened over Moscow and Washington, D.C., hydrogen warheads exploded high over both Rome and London last night. There was no damage. The explosions again lighted up the night sky like day, and were seen as another warning from Dr. Dunning that he could obliterate any city he wanted anywhere on earth. There was no response from Dr. Dunning after the spectacular display of what experts said were the explosions twenty-five thousand miles in space. Events have moved swiftly since the Russians first charged the Americans with 'spacenapping' one of their satellites.

  "Now the world faces an uncertain future. On one hand is the threat of twenty thousand deaths if the big powers do not begin to destroy the outer-space bombs. On the other hand, if Dr. Dunning fails, there is the constant threat of hydrogen missiles falling on cities at any time of the day or night, whether by design or some unforeseen earth-shattering accident. The opinion we have sampled around the world is that the only option the Russian and American governments have is to comply with Dr. Dunning's demands."

  Kitty snapped off the radio. In her hand was the Luger aimed at Mack Bolan's chest.

  "Now, Mack, we march up that mountain and relieve Dr. Dunning of his little space station. Move!"

  13

  In the White House the President looked out an Oval Office window. He had heard the broadcast about the missing U.S. MIRV at 10:22 p.m. By stages he had been outraged, furious, embarrassed at the world image the U.S. had lost, angry, in awe of Dr. Dunning and then furious again.

  "He can't do that to us!" the President had raged once around midnight.

  His NASA chief calmly pointed out that Dunning already had raped them, and now he was looking for the plaudits.

  "He caught us horsewhipping the Russians for having MIRVs up there, and then slapped us in the face by showing the world that we were doing the very same thing.''

  Anyone with any clout was there. Most had given opinions, made pitches and sat back. The secretary of state summed it up.

  "Mr. President, I don't see anything else we can do but what he asks. He has us in a no-win situation. We had our chance when he knocked down that communications satellite. We should have nailed the son of a bitch right there. Now, we pay for it. There is no way we can let him drop a hydrogen bomb on one of our towns and kill ten thousand people. Absolutely no way. And there is not a chance that we can blow up our MIRVs unless the Russians do the same."

  The President scowled. "Gentlemen, the Premier told me during our last talk a half hour ago that if their sensors find one incoming missile, they will launch a massive first strike against our mainland. When we sense their incoming, we will be forced to launch our retaliation strike, and suddenly we are in the middle of an everyone-lose thermonuclear war."

  "A bluff. The Premier is bluffing, Mr. President," Secretary of Defense Jensen said. "Hell, he knows he'd get clobbered if he tried that. No way he's going to start a third world war. No chance at all. It's a bluff."

  "We still have no direct communication with Dr. Dunning?" the President asked.

  "None, Mr. President," the NASA man said. "Only the network radio where he listens. Then he talks to us by taking over some network broadcast."

  Everyone was quiet for a moment.

  "Mr. President, a compromise," Ron Harloff said. He was the Russian interpreter and the vice-president looked at him furiously. He was not supposed to offer suggestions. The President waved the VP off and motioned for Harloff to go ahead.

  "I've been listening to the tone, the inflections the Premier uses. He's looking for a face-saving measure. We compromise not with him but with Dr. Dunning. Suppose we say we have technical problems with massive sunspots or a new set of quasars or some such, and while we can't dump all of the MIRVs right now we will move one out fifty thousand miles into space and explode it, the way he asked. We ask him for two weeks to work out the diplomatic problems with the other ten MIRVs on each side.

  "That way we lost one more MIRV, but we hold off on the deaths and we placate Dr. Dunning for two weeks. He knows how slow it is to negotiate with the Russians. In that two weeks we have plenty of time to move our tracking people in and find his location. We can get the Premier to go along with this by saying within that two weeks we can find and neutralize Dr. Dunning and give the Russians back control of the captured vehicle."

  The President nodded. "Might work. Just might work. Only instead of dumping that first MIRV, why not say we need another twenty-four hours before we can do that — the testing, the systems checks, everything that is set up on a new twenty-four-hour countdown. We can tell the Premier that we should be able to nail Dr. Dunning within twenty-four hours. Now, how close are we to finding him?"

  Gregory, the NASA chief, shook his head. "Not close. We swept the area with our radio scanners, and no luck. He was in Arizona, so he might still be there. But there are a ton of mountains there to comb through."

  "But the Premier doesn't know that," the President said. "Yes, I think we can buy another twenty-four hours. What time is it?"

  "Six-thirty."

  "Good. Set up a quick talk with the Premier. And if any of you have any other ideas how we can convince the Premier we're about ready to catch Dunning, let's have them now."

  "What do we have to start the hunt?" Jensen asked.

  "We have one transmission fix of about twenty seconds," Gregory said. "But it's a one-liner going from Houston straight across the western half of the country."

  "I'd like to see the route," Jensen said. "It's a damn sight better than sitting here on our asses doing nothing." The two men left and moved down the hall to a special war room.

  Ron Harloff made the hot-line connection to Russia and spoke briefly with his counterpart in Moscow. Twenty seconds later the leaders of the world's two largest countries were talking.

  "Mr. Premier, good day. Yes, yes, the weather is hot here, too. Moscow in summer — I've heard about it. Now, Mr. Premier, I have an idea I wanted to check with you. First, let me say I don't like to knuckle under to blackmail. However, in this case it is going to be most difficult not to. But we have a chance."

  After the translation, the Premier spoke rapidly.

  "Mr. President, this sounds like Western talk. We still think it is some kind of a NASA plot, but we don't know what. Yes, we know one of your missiles has been moved slightly and he says captured, but NASA could have done that."

  "Mr. Premier, believe me, I wish it were so. Then I wouldn't have been up for thirty-six hours trying to figure this out. Our plan is to buy twenty-four more hours from Dr. Dunning. We agree to explode the first MIRV in far space. But we have a twenty-four-hour safety countdown system that must be worked through before any MIRV can be activated. A safety system. I think he'll accept that. This should give us time for our FBI and our communications people to find Dr. Dunning and capture him. That's our plan I want to try to sell to Dunning."

  "I do not like it!" the Premier shouted. "It is a trick. I do not even like the idea that we think of giving in to this blackmailer, this extortionist, this reactionary."

  "Fine, Mr. Premier. Then we sit here and watch twenty thousand innocent men, women and children, American and Russian, vaporized. You say that will start World War Three. Strike and counterstrike and you and I will bring death and destruction to forty percent of the world's population. It means that civilization as we know it will not survive. We all will be back in caves within two days eating rats."

  "No, not that either."

  "Then do you have a better plan?"

  The President and Harloff could hear the Premier of Russia heave an exasperated sigh.

  "No. With much reluctance I agree to your plan. Capture this madman and make him suffer. Your secret police must work fast. We hope that you can capture him in the twenty-four hours."

  "We will do our best, Mr. Premier."

  Ron Harloff translated the goodbyes, and put the two phones away
in locked drawers.

  Secretary of Defense Jensen came back into the office and caught the President's weary glance.

  "Sir. If I could show you something?"

  The President nodded. Jensen spread out on a desk a map of the southwestern United States.

  "We have a bearing on that one transmission from our Houston listening post. This is a line drawn across the western section of the country. There are six or seven areas where Dunning could be holed up. We think he would want to get high enough to eliminate trash electrical signals that would interfere, since he wouldn't have the equipment needed to filter them all out.

  "This could put him in the San Mateo Mountains in New Mexico or the Managas Mountains on the Continental Divide, also in New Mexico. In Arizona it might be some of the Mogolion Mountains in the Rim area. Over in California we have the line going across the Shadow Mountains and Bald Mountains in the Sierra Nevada. Any of these areas are potential transmission spots. We're ordering air units out as soon as it's daylight in those regions, with radar, triangulation equipment and special heat-sensor scopes to check out any unusual situations. We could have reports back in as little as three hours."

  "Good. It's a chance, a long one, but a chance. Take along some of that new space-photo equipment and get pictures of anything that looks unusual."

  "Yes, sir. We're moving on that right now."

  The President talked to his press secretary, shaking his head. "So we've got the Premier's go-ahead, and now all we have to do is write something that will convince Dr. Dunning. Get somebody right on it. I'll read the message on the air myself. This has to be damn convincing. Because Dunning has been shooting off rockets from up there. We've got to make him believe this is a new procedure he doesn't know about. Make it good. Get back to me in an hour." The President seemed to slump a little. "Maybe Jensen's planes can find something with his peekaboo cameras out there. Hell, I hope so."

  The press secretary hurried off to another room where four speech writers had been standing by to offer assistance.

  The President brightened as an aide spoke to him.

  "Gentlemen, a little good news. If you're willing to take shifts of eight at a time, we can have some breakfast in the south dining room. Anyone hungry?"

  14

  Mack Bolan was not surprised by the KGB agent's reaction to his praise for Dr. Dunning and his purpose in this hijack. He had thought it through and figured she would react this way. He looked at the Luger and smiled.

  "You actually think you can force me to help you do something I really do not want to do?"

  "I have the gun, remember?"

  "Yeah, right. And I refuse to help you, then you shoot me, and in five minutes flat you're so lost you can't even find the car again, much less get to the top of the right mountain where Dr. Dunning is. You couldn't figure your way out of a clover patch in broad daylight in Central Park."

  He watched her, saw the indecision building.

  "Sure, hell, yes," Bolan continued, "I'm bluffing — think what you like. But are you sure you can find the way back to the car? Where is that valley we just blundered our way through? Which direction?"

  He saw she was frowning as she stared up at the trees around them, then at the slope. Slowly she lowered the Luger.

  "You cannot be sure Dunning will do what he says. It could all be a trick of some kind, some way to get our MlRVs destroyed and leave your MIRVs in space. That would be a tremendous tactical and psychological advantage "

  "Hey, that would be nice. But you're forgetting neither NASA nor the President knows anything about this super strategy you've worked out for them. It's Dunning acting on his own, and as you say, nobody can be sure of what he's going to do. So, dammit, maybe we should keep on moving and go up to the top of the mountain, wherever it is, and have a little chat with him."

  The woman hesitated. She glanced up quickly. "Are you not going to ask me for my gun?"

  "No. Why should I? We're partners — a team, remember?"

  "You are laughing at me."

  "We don't have time to laugh; we have to find our way up this beast of a mountain."

  It took Bolan an hour to sort out the hills and valleys and get back on the main forestry trail that would lead them upward toward Horse Knoll. Again he could see the tracks of the heavy vehicle. In soft spots the tires sank six inches into the ground. They met no more opposition for two miles. Bolan was thankful that it was not an in-depth defense, with each circle of protectors becoming deeper, more heavily armed and more proficient. He hoped Yamaguchi had concentrated most of his troops at the access roads, planning to chop off any inquisitive or lightly armed forces there.

  They came around a curve in the roadway and Bolan saw a tree across the trail. It was a good-sized piñon. They ran into the thinner cover at the side of the trail.

  "Trouble," Bolan said.

  "We go together," Kitty said. "I will not give you the chance to lose me out here." She lifted the submachine gun. "You know I can use this, right? We stay close together and support each other."

  "Side by side," Bolan said and moved through the pine and light brush toward the roadblock ahead.

  The woman was starting to present a problem. He was not sure what he would do when he got to the top. Yamaguchi still bothered Bolan. Why would Dr. Dunning give "kill" orders now after being so careful and spending so much time, effort and money to be sure that he killed no one back at the mesa? It didn't make sense. Unless... He thought it through again. That could be an answer.

  Unless Yamaguchi was not following orders, unless Yamaguchi had thoughts of taking over for himself. What was it the captured soldier had said? Yamaguchi had this little group... mostly National Guardsmen... maybe thirty men. A chill sweat popped out on Bolan's forehead. Suddenly he felt like ditching his companion and racing up the hill to find out for sure what was going on there. But he must wait.

  They moved carefully from tree to tree. At first there seemed to be no one around the roadblock. Maybe it was a windfall. Bolan was twenty yards to one side when Kitty broke into the open and sent a 5-round group of lead messengers into the limbs of the horizontal pine.

  "Hey, take it easy. I sure as hell ain't no goddamned whitetail deer," a voice shouted. A man emerged from behind the log, his hands at his sides. Kitty looked at him and shook her head. Bolan had the right angle. Another figure stood up behind a tree out of Kitty's sight line and lifted an M-16 to his shoulder. Bolan's Ingram rattled ten rounds in a tight circle. They caught the gunman across his chest and then again through his groin. He jolted backward out of sight behind the fallen conifer.

  Kitty swung her weapon that way and in a blink the first flattopped defender brought up a handgun and fired at Kitty. She swept the submachine gun back, already firing and cutting the young Japanese man in two before he could shoot again.

  Kitty and Bolan dropped to the ground as the echoes of the gunfire faded slowly into the hills.

  After five minutes of movement, no sound, Bolan stood.

  "That should do it." There were only two of them. Whoever was up on top knew they were coming now for sure.

  Kitty came slowly through the trees. At first she would not look at him.

  "Don't worry about it — you're still alive. Now we should make some time. I've got a hunch that was the last bit of defense between here and the end of the rainbow up there. Any news on that radio of yours?"

  "Do not patronize me. I made a bad mistake and could have got us both killed. Luckily it did not happen."

  "Hell, half of this business is luck."

  She turned on the small radio and held it so they could hear the news station.

  "Dr. Peter Dunning, our resident mad scientist who now is camped out on some mountaintop, continued to hold the world powers at bay today. He refused a last-minute appeal by the President of the United States, speaking for himself and the Russian Premier, with a request for a twenty-four-hour delay in the deadline to send one of the MIRVs from each nation into deep s
pace and destroy it.

  "Since no additional time was granted, the United States has reported that it fired one of its twenty-four-warhead MIRVs into deep space and exploded all of them in one gigantic bang. Observatories around the world reported the detonation.

  "So far Russia has not sent one of her missile clusters to be exploded. The deadline is past, and the President has warned Russia if a MIRV comes into its landmass it will be coming from one of their own missiles controlled by Dr. Dunning and not from any United States action.

  "There has been no word from Dr. Dunning. World opinion is peaking, and it is against the Soviet Union. The President has said he now agrees with Dr. Dunning that there should be no orbiting weapons of any kind in space. He says he is ready either to bring those in space back, or at least to salvage their warheads to cut the massive dollar loss to the American taxpayers.

  "Meanwhile, a community of action and reaction is building across the world to severely chastise both the U.S. and Russia for orbiting the deadly weapons. Some say that it is the biggest groundswell of public outcry since the Russians went into Afghanistan several years..."

  The radio suddenly cut off and Bolan smiled, wondering how long she could listen to the criticism of her homeland.

  "So far we haven't thrown out the bombs with the bathwater," Bolan said. Kitty looked at him with a puzzled expression. "An old country expression," he said, and she was more confused than ever.

  They were making progress. The trail wound around the side of the mountain now, and ahead Bolan could see a bald area. They hiked for another half mile, and Bolan sat down in the shade next to a tree.

  "Conference time," Bolan said. "We're getting close. From here on we move slowly, carefully, under cover and far off the road. It will be our guide only. We want to get up there and find out what kind of a defensive setup Yamaguchi has for us. He knows for sure that we're coming. I'm still not certain how he fits into this picture. He's changed the tone from benign to deadly.