They were at the heart of the systems of defense and destruction that lay poised and ready in the bowels of the supernations. For now they were at the fulcrum of the cosmic equilibrium. But if the technocrats overstepped their mandate, or miscalculated in any of a dozen different ways, the result could easily be a holocaust.
Without the technocrats, Frank Edwards would have been just another petty international hood.
The technological corps of Edwards's army of the night was hardly composed of innocents. If these people were intelligent enough to run Edwards's computer banks, communications net, and other state-of-the-art support equipment, they were intelligent enough to at least divine an inkling of what was going down. But intelligence and insight were two different things, and like many men of hard scientific knowledge, Edwards's people could be highly prone to the old forest-trees shortsightedness.
And there were relative degrees of guilt. These were not gun-toting hardmen who had turned their back on the country that had nurtured them. They were not fanatical terrorists to whom murder was as impersonal as life. Sure, indirectly their activities supported these types. But Bolan could not expect to eliminate, on suspicion only, every person who was vaguely tainted by the stink of terrorism.
Maybe the lesson of what was about to come down would impress itself upon these people. In any case they would not have their hi-tech toys to play with anymore.
This was the essential weakness of a technocracy: destroy its technology, and you bring the society to its knees.
That was Bolan's immediate objective.
There would still be men on the base, according to Toby's intelligence. At any given time, two to three dozen of the iron-hard inner circle were billeted at Wheelus. As at the Valais chalet, the guards were all active members of terrorist organizations, selected for their demonstrated commitment to violent propagation of "the cause." They were chosen to go to the base for various reasons: to select and purchase weapons, to maintain contact with other groups in the terrorist network, to receive advanced training from Edwards or his handpicked associates in sabotage, espionage, assassination, guerilla fighting, and all the rest of the black arts. In exchange for this, they served tours as base guards. The largest and hardest contingent was assigned to the armory where Edwards's stock of illegally exported weaponry was stockpiled. Every precaution was taken, for here was the source of Edwards's immediate wealth, the financial base for much of his operation.
Unlike the technologists, these men fell into no gray area. They were pure black, dedicating their lives willing even to sacrifice them, in some fanatical cases — to their so-called "ideals." If anything about repression, intolerance, persecution, subjugation, and domination could be called "ideal."
Bolan rose in the seat as the Mercedes minibus, and the Rover rumbled on by. Maybe some day the technocrats would realize they were their own worst enemy.
As for the terrorists, the lesson would be more immediate, more direct, and far more deadly.
Bolan keyed the ignition and the Jag rolled on toward the Wheelus base. The electric gate eased open as he approached. Bolan pulled to a stop at the guardhouse.
The contusion on Toby Ranger's forehead was yellow and purple, and her face was pale and drawn. When she opened the half-door of the guardhouse, Bolan had a brief glimpse of the limp figure of the regular guard, sprawled on the little structure's floor.
Bolan slid over, and Toby got in behind the wheel. Her eyes widened in inquiry when she saw the blacksuit's amputated sleeve.
"I'm all right," Bolan told her. He grinned. "if it doesn't fall off in the next ten minutes, we're home free." He was trying to take the edge off, but both of them had fought enough long-odds battles to know that ten minutes could pass in an eyewink — or stretch into a lifeless eternity. "What about you?" Bolan asked.
"I'm...." She glanced back toward the guardhouse and unconsciously touched at the Colt .45 now strapped around the waist of the snug-cut white jump suit.
But when she turned back to Bolan her expression was set with resolution, and color was returning to her face. Bolan understood. If he did not know how many men had died at his hand, he did know that every kill had been personal. When his finger tightened on the trigger, no matter how great the necessity, no matter how evil the target, there was some recessed component of reluctance in Bolan's psyche.
A reminder that he was not, could not think of himself, as all-knowing, all-power. A reminder the man was human.
"I'm okay," Toby assured him, her voice strong and even. "Lead on, Captain Blitz."
Bolan checked his chronometer. "Eight forty-one forty," he said.
"One sec." Toby clicked at the button on her own matching timepiece.
"Eight forty-two," Bolan said. "Mark!"
"You got it." Toby slipped the Jag in gear and gave it gas.
18
A main drive bisected the old USAF base. To the left was the primary aviation facility: maintenance shop, a terminal with control tower, then hangars, and beyond the buildings stretching across the flat concrete-covered plain, a maze of runways. To the right were the support structures: first some office buildings, and behind them a subdevelopment of billets, ranging from barracks to fairly nice homes that once housed married officers, now gone toward disrepair. After the billets came some stores, and then a couple of warehouses.
The last one housed the primary inventory of Frank Edwards's illicit weapons supply business.
But Toby turned the Jag to the left, heading for the hangar opposite the warehouse. She drove onto the apron. Parked down toward the terminal, Bolan spotted the Lear on which Bryant had arrived, along with a Beechcraft single-engine for local hops, and a surplus C-119 Flying Boxcar that had to be 30 years old. Sure, having your own cargo plane made good business sense, when you were dealing in the volume that Edwards was. Toby steered the Jag around the end of the last hangar. There was a four-seater bubble-front helicopter in front of it, squatting on its skids. Toby Ranger was already an IFR-LICENSED pilot in the days when she teamed with Bolan in Detroit. It was she who had flown the blitzing fighter north to Toronto to pursue one thread of the motor city investigation, and even in those days she was experienced and proficient with both the Lear and the Beechcraft.
Since then, Bolan had been pleased to learn, she had added the chopper to her repertory.
The little rig's maneuverability would be an invaluable asset to the battle plan Bolan had worked out.
Within the shade of the hangar's wall, a guy was seated in the lotus position, his hands palm up in his lap. He wore a cap over dark hair, and khaki cutoff shorts, and he had a gut that hung over their waistline. The cap, the shorts, and the guy were all stained with motor oil. His eyes were closed, and he did not open them until Toby got out and slammed the Jag's door.
Toby nodded at the chopper. "Did you get her running, Buddha?"
The guy blinked at the sunlight. "Sure. Just a bearing in the tail rotor. She's running good as new now." The guy's chatter ran down then; he had finally come out of his meditative trance enough to notice the .45 in Toby's hand.
Bolan got out of the car, stood by its side but did not interfere.
"Gassed up?" Toby asked.
The guy she'd called Buddha — whether the nickname came from his meditative practices, or that godly gut, Bolan was not sure — stared at her. Toby repeated the question, a little more sharply. The guy nodded.
"Start her up, Buddha." Bolan went into the shop, found a rag and a coil of insulated radio wire on a workbench. Behind him he heard the noise of the chopper's six-cylinder power plant starting up. A few moments later, Toby herded the fat guy into the dimness, and a few moments after that he was lying in a corner on his stomach, gagged and trussed like a turkey.
Bolan checked his chronometer and said, "Three minutes."
"Three it is, Captain Numbers," Toby said. "And counting." She reached out, touched his arm.
"Be good," she said softly, "Captain Wonderful."
; Be good, for sure.
Be good or be dead.
19
The armory was a windowless metal Quonset hut, the line of its ground-to-ground curved roof broken only by an oversized air-conditioning unit.
Two khakiclad Arabs flanked the door, automatic rifles with web belts slung over their shoulders.
Mack Bolan came around the corner of the hangar opposite. He paused just long enough to pull the Litton Night Vision Goggles into place, then floored the open jeep he had commandeered, aiming it at the two guys. One of them managed to drop to his knee and sent a burst of autofire through the jeep's free-standing windshield. But by then Bolan had bailed out, coming down on his feet, rolling on his good shoulder. The front of the jeep tore a ragged hole in the flat front end of the Quonset hut.
Someone inside shouted.
One tire of the jeep was resting on the chest of the guy who had fired. His partner looked up from the other side, and Bolan's Beretta spit a silenced 9mm whizzer into his forehead.
Another guy threw open the door, gaped at the jeep, started to say, "What the hell..." The Beretta punched the rest of the words right back down his throat, and Bolan followed the body as it fell back inside the building. A row of high-wattage bulbs ran along the spine of the curved ceiling.
Bolan raised the Uzi and distributed a full 32-round magazine along that line, and the armory plunged into near-blackness, the only light trickling in from the rip the jeep had made in the wall.
Answering fire raked Bolan's position, muzzles flashing like stroboscopes in the darkness.
But the man had moved on. His hands worked busily, dropped the clip from the Uzi, reversing it, seating it in the pistol-grip, racking back the cocking handle.
His eyes scanned the cavernous room, everything clear as daylight through the NVD goggles, while other men shouted in anger and fear, waiting for their own eyes to adjust.
Crates of all sizes and descriptions were stacked on pallets, the pathways between them narrow canyons. In the canyon in front of Bolan, figures appeared. The Uzi chattered, its flash hidden, and four arms, four legs, two torsos fell into a tangled pile on the poured-concrete floor. These men had reverted to the animals they were, the animal's primal fear of darkness and the unknown cutting at their confidence and effectiveness.
Now the dark warehouse was a pandemonium of shouting, cursing men groping toward the thin wash of light at Bolan's end of the building. Somewhere across the room an autorifle spoke, the muzzle flash directed away from Bolan. Someone screamed out pain, shot by his own side. The Man from Hellfire stepped over the bodies and into the inferno. The Uzi flamed its nine millimeters of firepower, and gut-reamers exploded through terrorist flesh. The man walked on, while savages suddenly visited by savagery of a new sort bellowed and bawled and bumped each other. Bolan sent them encouragement via the scream of the Uzi, the whisper of the sweet Beretta.
Other guns talked, but they accomplished nothing more than a revelation — a revelation answered by return fire that did not miss. Up and down the canyons behind the ceiling-high stacks of arms and other tools of the Savage, the man proceeded and his two guns talked.
At the end of an aisle, three wild-eyed candidates for another world scrambled into the open and found that world, when a sweeping burst of hollow-points tumbled through them to burst their torsos like ripe melons.
The man walked on, and the firestorm he left in his wake consumed only two of the allotted three minutes, followed by a moment of silence as profound as sleep. Yeah, the sleep of evermore.
Then, from outside, came shouts and gunfire and the distant whup-a-whup of the chopper's rotor.
The man found the crate he was looking for, ripped the top free. Inside were lengths of what might have been PVC piping — but was not. The man grabbed three lengths.
Then he turned back through the sickly sweet smell of fresh blood that mixed with the sharper acrid odor of gunpowder. His eyes were moving and alert, but he did not care to look over his handiwork. The job was not quite over.
Another jeep with a tripod-mounted .50-caliber heavy machine gun on the open back deck was parked between the armory and the helicopter hangar. The gunner was hunched over, trying to fire the gun in an almost vertical line at the chopper hovering 100 feet above him. The jeep's driver was leaning back, holding the belt so it would not foul.
Bolan swept the Uzi from the belt-man to the gunner. The gunner's sudden deadweight dragged down on the trigger, and the big machine gun went on spitting harmless slugs into the air until the belt jammed. Dust swirled as Toby set the chopper down in front of Bolan. Another jeep was barreling down the street toward the helicopter. Bolan dropped to one knee, emptied the rest of the Uzi's magazine into the front of the hurtling rig. For a moment it neither slowed nor changed course.
Then, less than fifty feet distant, the jeep swerved to the left at an impossibly sharp angle. It flipped into the air. As Bolan dived into the copter's cockpit, he had a visual flash of a body cartwheeling through the air, arms and legs outflying. When the jeep blew, he and Toby were still close enough to the ground to feel the leading edge of the shock waves. Bolan slipped on his headset in time to hear her ask, "What now, Captain Fire?" Somehow the adrenaline of the armory blitz had overcome the pain in Bolan's shoulder, but it returned with a vengeance as he slipped into the gunnery harness anchored to the front passenger seat's frame.
The human resistance below had been broken, and the means to finish off the armory was in Bolan's hands.
But he knew that it was not enough. No one Edwards, Khaddafi, or anyone like them — would exploit this U.S. base again. The mission would only be done when Bolan had wiped it off the face of the earth.
"The planes, Toby," Bolan said. "It's mop-up time."
Toby kicked the little bird into a side-slip, and they skimmed the top of the hangar before she pulled up, holding steady at 100 feet, just upwind from the big bellied C-119 Flying Boxcar. Bolan selected one of the Light Artillery Weapons he had liberated from Edwards's cache. He pulled the pins to' expand the disposable fiberglass tube, raised the pop-up sights. His right foot groped out the door for the skid, found it, let it hold his weight, then he leaned farther out. The gunnery harness would not reach.
Toby turned in time to see his hands working to free the buckles. "Oh, no, you don't," she snapped.
"I have to be completely clear of the cockpit," Bolan smiled tensely, "or the backburn knock us out of the sky."
"You're hurt, Mack," she began to plead.
"Hold her steady," Bolan interrupted, then stripped off the headset. He held the LAW in his right hand, grasped the doorframe with his left, ignored the wrenching pain.
Then he was completely outside and dropping into a straddle on the skid, steadying himself against the fuselage in a last desperate demand that his body not betray him. Bolan got the C-119 in the sights, squeezed out fire. The rocket whooshed away on a trail of flame, impacting in the midst of the transport's fat body. A moment later the fuel tanks went, the impact flipping the nearby Beechcraft onto its back, while a huge plate of the C-119's body metal sheared into the Lear. Bolan stabbed a forefinger forward, and the copter eased in the direction indicated. Bolan leaned inside, snagged the second LAW. The one bored in at the base of the control tower. The tower swayed like a redwood tree sawn three-quarters of the way through, then it toppled to the apron in a grinding dusty crash. The chopper lifted skyward, skittering above the hangar. Someone had remained the heavy chattergun. A line of .50 slugs punched across the chopper's tail.
Bolan ignored him as he sent home the third LAW round. The rocket punched through the thin metal of the Quonset hut's roof near its middle. A heartbeat later, the armory's contents began to blow.
A roiling pillar of fire erupted through the ceiling, great spouts of molten metal cascading into the air like a demonic fountain. Jagged strips of metal, giant in size, flew incredible distances. Waves of shock and heat banged across the base. The effect was virtually thermonuclear.
Angry balls of flame roared into the billets and offices, some of them already bursting into spontaneous combustion. Across the wide street, hangar walls bent and buckled and distorted, and roofs sagged like Silly Putty before collapsing. The gunnery jeep exploded throwing parts of the gunner into the madness. And the few terrorists still alive were caught under the hellish downpour of white-hot liquid metal, volcanic spews of sheet-fire, charred chunks of human flesh.
Bolan let the LAW'S disposable tube drop from his stiff fingers. When he tried to climb back into the cockpit, he found he could not. Toby gaped at him in alarm, tried to reach across toward him. Bolan flashed her a hand signal. When she hesitated, he circled thumb and forefinger in an "okay" sign. Even that was an effort. She brought the chopper down well outside the perimeter fence, hovering a few feet over the grass to allow Bolan to slip to the ground. He managed to get to his feet by himself. When Toby leaped from the cockpit, ducked around the chopper, and flew into his arms, he even managed to maintain his balance.
Epilogue
Maintaining the balance. That, in the world view, was what it was all about. He had achieved it once again.
For now. Hell was not for the living, it was for the dead, may they rest in peace. Someday Mack Bolan, too, would rest. For now, he had to find his way among the living. As had long ago been prophesied, The Executioner would live life to the very end.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 0f1d72c4-b987-463e-b25a-2cd31d3803f1
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 2005-01-21
Created using: FB Tools software
OCR Source: OCR Binwiped
Renegade Agent te-47 Page 13
