Extinction Crisis

Extinction Crisis
Don Pendleton

Immediate threats require immediate action–no questions, no explanations, no prisoners. Stony Man has the green light to strike against terror anywhere, anytime, and answer to no one except the President. Action-ready and combat-hard, the warriors of Stony Man know the stakes, and make their own rules….Powerful, sophisticated conspirators understand the power in global panic and fear. Using remote-control robots and local terror groups as muscle, this secret cadre has accessed nuclear power plants across the globe, and is poised to let hell loose. By shutting down the alternative fuel industry, they alone will control the world's energy. And as the clock ticks to worldwide meltdowns, Stony Man unleashes everything it's got in a race against a new face of terror….

“MY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN RUNNING THE PROBABILITIES,” BROGNOLA SAID.

“Indian Point and Calvert Cliffs are their biggest and best targets to cause hysteria, even if they fail in the attempt.”

“But they pushed up their timetable now that Phoenix Force stopped them in France,” the President countered. “And then there’s Syria. And when Damascus suffers from their own chemical weapons, the response will be worse than riots. They’ll hit everyone who knew about their facilities, which means our people in Iraq and Israel.”

The President thought about the pictures of the dead Kurds that had been used in the Fallen’s threat video. “Europe’s out of control, and America and the Middle East are under threat. If we ever needed a miracle, we need it now.”

Price took a deep breath. “Luckily, that’s Stony Man’s job description. The impossible missions.”

The President nodded in agreement. “Things don’t get more impossible than this.”

Extinction Crisis

Don Pendleton’s

Stony Man

America’s Ultra-Covert Intelligence Agency

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

EXTINCTION CRISIS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER ONE

Carl Lyons stopped at the edge of the wide puddle of blood, attempting to control his rage at the murder of a Department of Energy investigative agent. Mare Hirtenberg had been a beautiful woman, closing in on forty, but nothing pretty remained in her blood-spattered features, hazel eyes bulging out as her mouth was stretched and distorted in agony. The Able Team leader had been assigned to work with Hirtenberg for the past few days, reviewing infiltration attempts at nuclear power plants around the nation.

Hirtenberg had been Lyons’s kind of Fed, a no-nonsense woman with a sense of irony and cynicism that appealed to him. But today, he had found her seated at her desk, her throat slashed.

The Able Team commander hit a button on his Smart phone, a speed dial command that would bring a Justice Department evidence team running. There was no hope for Hirtenberg, not with two gallons of blood painting the floor tiles and her desk. Paramedics would only be good for confirming the blatantly obvious fact that she was dead.

Something whirred softly on the other side of Hirtenberg’s desk and Lyons drew the Smith & Wesson Military and Police 357 from its shoulder holster. He sidestepped the puddle of blood and saw something move Hirtenberg’s lifeless leg along the side of the desk. He was able to notice two small darts embedded in her calf. Whoever had murdered her had utilized a Taser, directed just above ankle level. Theories of the Israeli Negev Nuclear Research Center break-in rushed to Lyons’s mind. He briefly considered the possibility of a small trained animal slipping unnoticed through defenses.

Lyons snapped his MP-357 to eye level, brow furrowing as he realized that animals didn’t have electro-motors. A dull gunmetal-black tendril writhed as it disappeared around the base of Hirtenberg’s chair. Not having a clear target, Lyons held his fire.

“Come on, show yourself,” Lyons growled, tracking the floor.

Air pistons hissed and Lyons felt an agonizing jolt in his shin. A twenty-thousand-volt current blasted along a pair of fine wires, and the Able Team commander’s entire body seized up. The paralyzing charge tightened every muscle in the former cop’s body, including the index finger curled around the tuned, 6-pound trigger of the sleek new Smith & Wesson. The high-pressure .357 SIG round cracked loudly, a bark that was nearly as intense a bellow as Lyons’s old favored .357 Magnum cartridge, and in a moment, the continuous Taser charge dissipated.

Lyons was physically as powerful as any two men, but in the wake of a Taser jolt, even his mighty musculature went limp. Only his incredible athletic conditioning kept him from falling unconscious or careening uncontrollably off the corner of Hirtenberg’s desk. He managed to catch himself on his hands and elbows, the Smith & Wesson MP clattering from numbed hands.

At floor level, he saw a bulbous, insectlike head staring at him. Two hexagon-patterned domes formed eyes reminiscent of a dragonfly, and the only flaw in the space between them was a smoking .357-inch hole. Beneath the bullet entry, a rectangular turret dangled, slender wires dangling from it like drool. The buglike object writhed, twisted, as if recovering its senses at the same rate that Lyons did.

“No, you don’t, you little bastard,” Lyons growled, pushing off the floor. The metallic worm turned almost completely over on itself, a nodule rising from a second bulbous segment just behind the head. The Able Team leader knew it was another weapon, and he reached out, fist closing on a wastebasket. It was only a few pounds, but to his Taser-hammered muscles, it felt more like a few tons. He swung the metal receptacle in front of his face before another air-piston hissed and an electric motor whined to angry life. The wastebasket’s aluminum skin screamed as a deadly cutting wire whipped at it. There was very little physical push behind the miniature lash, but a gash appeared in the bottom of the wastebasket from Lyons’s point of view.

Mystery solved—time to get primitive, the former LAPD cop thought. Lyons lunged, his wastebasket shield bashing against the side of the metallic caterpillar as its hydraulic whip continued to carve at the aluminum bucket. The impact jarred the yard-long automaton, disrupting the slicing cord. The hydraulic whine ended, and Lyons reached around to grab the lethal worm.

The robot’s blunt tail whipped around and struck the Taser-stunned warrior in the forearm with enough force to break a lesser man’s bones. Lyons grunted, stunned as his limb was jammed into the floor. A second whiplash of the heavy tail slapped aside the wastebasket and glanced off of Lyons’s head. The robot flipped to its upright position, silvery metallic rollers dragging it rapidly toward a battered ventilation duct.