Splintered Sky

Splintered Sky
Don Pendleton

?America's elite defense unit works under the radar and outside the law to stop terror before it hits America's streets. But with each new crisis, Stony Man's cyberwizards understand that the new battlefi eld is deep space. Someday, a superweapon may be impossible to stop.With luck, that day won't come, thanks to Stony Man's fi eld teams bringing the fi ght to the enemy, face-to-face…. An invisible enemy plots to launch a dirty bomb from orbit, exposing vulnerable cities to hard radiation. Intel points to a multinational terror force bent on controlling the skies over the free world. Suddenly the Farm is on a hunt for a threat that could shake the entire planet. From deep-cover penetration of hostile Red China to an emergency rescue fl ight to save the International Space Station, the covert commandos are pushed to the limit, especially when they have to prevent a suicide crash of a knockoff shuttle into New York City–a collision that would turn the city into a smoking crater.

“THIRTY SECONDS TO SRB STAGING.”

Something suddenly speared through the sky in the distance, darting across the windshield like a laser-bolt effect from a movie. Schwarz tensed, but the angle was all wrong for something coming after the Arcadia.

“What the hell is going on?” Cole growled.

“Darkest night…” Broome gasped. “Mission control, are you tracking that on radar?”

“We’re trying. It came within twenty-five miles of your course,” Thet said on the other end. “Its trajectory is toward the Caribbean.”

“What is it?” Cole demanded.

Lyons closed his eyes, his jaw set firmly. “It’s the opening shot. This war has reached the hot stage.”

Splintered Sky

Don Pendleton

Stony Man

AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

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

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Douglas P. Wojtowicz for his contribution to this work.

SPLINTERED SKY

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

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 TWENTY-THREE

PROLOGUE

Near Yuma, Arizona

Sabrina Bertonni winced as she clutched her hand to the bloody gap in her side. The raider’s bullet had merely grazed her, but her clothes were soaked through from what had only been a little nick. Other than keeping her hand clamped over the injury, she didn’t move. The limp bulk of Harold Maguire slumped against her body, casting her in shadow. Maguire’s body shook violently as the raiders emptied more bullets into the group of rocket scientists who had tried to escape out the back of the laboratory.

The men were masked, clad in black from head to toe, wielding automatic weapons that made almost no sound. They moved with a similar eerie silence. Bertonni’s lucidity was hampered by blood loss and the concussion she’d received when her head smacked a rock on the desert floor with the added momentum of Maguire’s corpse, but from the way the assault force moved, it was as if they were living excerpts from her worst nightmares. Their speed and coordination, and just how quietly they had laid waste to the Burgundy Lake Testing Facility gave her the impression of shadows come to life.

Though none of the black-clad raiders had spoken, their goal was clear to Bertonni, especially since she was one of the scientists working on brand-new, high-mobility steering thrusters for precision orbital maneuvering. Compact and fuel-efficient, they would be very important in the next generation of spacecraft replacing the aging, worn-out space shuttle. The maneuvering thrusters would make the expansion of the International Space Station easier, and provide the ability to perform round trips to the moon. Bertonni had no doubt that the thrusters could provide extra maneuverability for combat-oriented suborbital fighters and bombers, or armed satellites. The military potential couldn’t be underestimated. The kind of firepower and professionalism displayed by the armed marauders lent credence to what the enemies of the United States thought of the design.

The security force was provided by the U.S. Air Force, heavily armed and trained soldiers who were responsible for protecting nuclear bomber groups. These men had trained hard against Navy SEAL Opfor units to hone their combat skills and antiinfiltration awareness.

Fat lot of good that did, Bertonni thought. In the distance she heard the blast of C-4 detonating. The ground shook under her, and Maguire’s corpse slid off her prone form. She stirred, looking around. The shadowy raiders were nowhere to be seen, but with their bombs going off, she knew that they weren’t going to stick around. She fished in her pocket for her cell phone and hit Send to 9-1-1. The lighted LED screen showed she had no bars. The remote Burgundy Lake facility had been chosen for its distance from civilization and privacy, but the administrators had set up a cell tower to make things easier for the staff. Bertonni knew that the calls were monitored through that tower, the better to prevent sensitive data from being transmitted outside the testing laboratories, but right now she needed help.

The phone didn’t ring. The raiders had been too efficient, probably taking out the cell tower first.

Bertonni pocketed the phone and crawled, scurrying deeper into the desert, away from the dormitory building. She’d gotten twenty yards when the apartment shook. She looked back to see a cloud of dust and debris swell, escaping through shattered windows and burst doors. The vomitous wave of ejecta hit her hard and knocked her off her feet. Her head swam and she stumbled on the uneven ground. She wrapped her arm around her nose and mouth, filtering out the choking dust with the cloth of her sleeve.