Contagion Option

Koreans clutched their burned eyes or their shattered eardrums, stunned by the force of the explosion. Bolan clubbed one of the submariners across the jaw with the stock of his weapon and dropped him to the deck. It took only a few moments for Bolan to knock out the remaining conscious crewmen. That would hold them until he could use the plastic cable ties in his harness to restrain them.

A hatch shifted and Bolan braced behind the doorjamb.

It opened partially, a gun muzzle poking through. Bolan was to the side, out of sight, but his P-90 was primed and ready to greet the newcomers.

A Korean sailor stepped through the hatch, talking to his partners. Bolan didn’t understand what he was saying, but he recognized the lilt of confusion in his voice. The Executioner speared him with a powerful kick and hurled him to the deck.

Panicked cries filled the air as Bolan lurched into view. The P-90 blazed to life, and its payload of 5.7 mm flesh-shredders made the hatchway into a no-man’s land of supersonic death. Bodies tumbled in a mad rush to escape the big soldier’s salvo, but the .50-round magazine had enough ammunition to give everyone who had been poised to retake the bridge a deadly kiss.

The opening burst lasted only three seconds, but the quartet of Koreans in the hatchway leaked from forty fatal wounds. Bolan changed the depleted magazine for a new one, and checked on the stunned sailor on the deck.

Bolan’s kick had caught him in the kidney, and as he’d bounced off a control panel, his forehead and nose had been split by unyielding metal and plastic. The Korean’s face was a bloody mask, and he was curled on the deck, insensate to his surroundings. The soldiers spared a moment to bind his wrists and ankles with cable ties, waiting for the next wave of defenders to show up.

“How’s it going, Jack?” Bolan asked over his headset.

“The carrier’s choppers are still fifteen minutes out. That’s all you’ve got to mop up the sub.”

“It’ll have to do,” Bolan told him.

The Executioner pulled another stun grenade, armed the bomb, and hurled it into the depths of the corridor beyond the bridge. It bounced, and he was rewarded with more cries of panic. Bolan turned away and let the stunner do its job, releasing a deafening and blinding thunderclap. In the confined quarters of the submarine, it was like being struck in the head with a sledgehammer. He rushed into the corridor and found three men lying on the deck. One clutched bloody ears, while the others clawed at their burning faces. Another tough sailor still stood. One of his ears leaked a slick of blood, but his eyes were clear, and the gun in his hand swung at Bolan.

The P-90 ripped him from crotch to throat, and the gunman collapsed. Bolan kicked the down sailors’ guns away from them. He’d taken the time to memorize the layout of the Koreans’ black market submarine, and knew what lay beyond the next hatch. It was where the submarine’s two levels were connected by a stairwell. Bolan reached into his bandolier and withdrew a fragmentation grenade. He thumbed out the cotter pin and held the detonator spoon in place.

With a push, the next hatchway opened. The juncture was empty as far as Bolan could see, but he guessed that defenders waited at the bottom of the steps. Bolan threw the fragger through the hatch and it bounced down the stairs, detonating violently before anyone could react. He surged through as the next hatch opened. Gunmen had been lying in wait, but the Executioner was ready for them, 5.7 mm slugs sizzling out his P-90’s muzzle at 800 rounds per minute. Two defenders collapsed through the joinway in bloody heaps as he reached the top of the stairs. Down on the next level, Bolan spotted a tangle of gory body parts at the bottom. A choking cough wafted up the steps, informing him that there wouldn’t be any immediate arrivals from that flank.

Bolan pulled another flash-bang and hurled it through the hatch.

One Korean leaped out to avoid being caught in its blast, and instead, he stopped a flesh-eating cloud of high-powered bullets. The dead sailor tumbled headfirst to the deck with boneless grace.

The stun grenade detonated and gave the Executioner a window of opportunity to hit the upper hatchway. He spotted one sailor, struggling to stay in the fight, but Bolan retired him with a point-blank burst. From what he’d read of the submarine’s stats, the vessel needed at least twenty men to run easily. Adding in shipboard security, Bolan had thirty enemies to take out. So far, he’d gone through almost half that number. With Grimaldi’s report about blasting a boarding crew with Dragon Slayer’s miniguns, he figured only about ten were left to oppose him. Bolan set up a grenade with a tripwire in the open hatchway, then turned back and went to the lower deck, heading for the engine room. He had another charge designated for the main boiler to scuttle the sub, allowing him to avoid being in the middle of an international incident. The North Koreans would turn the capture of their submarine into a global spectacle and demand the return of their sailors. At the very least, it would ramp up tensions between North Korea and the United States, and with the state of its nuclear program, such a loggerhead would turn into a lethal conflict for South Korea and perhaps even Japan.

Reaching the bottom of the steps, Bolan heard a resounding crash above. Charred flesh rained down the stairwell, informing him that his quick booby trap had done its job. Whoever was lying in wait for Bolan’s retreat had stumbled into the grenade’s tripwire. The soldier paused for a moment, waiting for further motion.

He was rewarded by a head poking out of a side hatch.

The Executioner swung up his P-90 in a lightning movement, high-powered 5.7 mm slugs smashing through the Asian’s face, destroying it in a cloud of blood and splintered bone. A muzzle poked around the hatch and Bolan backed up the steps. Sparks flashed on the metal below his feet, and Bolan crouched deeper, hammering out another burst that caught the enemy’s gun and plucked it from his hands.

Footsteps sounded as a man covered in bloody wounds lunged through the booby-trapped hatchway. The Korean spoke in an odd tone, unintelligible to Bolan, but the intent was clear. Armed with a handgun as a club, he lurched toward the big American, intent on killing the man who’d mutilated him. Bolan readjusted his aim, but the handgun butt knocked his barrel side.

The Executioner let go of the P-90 and grabbed the blood-slicked arm of the injured sailor. With a twist, he hauled the wounded man down and onto the steps with a sickening crack. Neck broken, the bloody Korean stopped thrashing and slid lifelessly to the lower deck. Bolan vaulted over the corpse, drawing his Desert Eagle.

He checked the room where the two gunmen had first encountered him, and except for several bunks and personal items, there was only one sailor inside, clutching the severed hand that had been chewed off by the P-90’s burst. The injured sailor wildly eyed Bolan, too terrified to move. The Executioner knew there wasn’t any fight left in him, so he continued on to the engine room.

Gunfire greeted Bolan immediately, and he ducked to one side. He holstered the big Desert Eagle, plucked a pair of stun grenades from his bandolier and launched them simultaneously. As soon as he threw them, he took the instant before their detonation to feed the depleted P-90 another magazine. The moment the double thunderclap shook the engine room, he ducked through the hatch, submachine gun leading the way.

Blind and stunned, the defenders of the engine room provided little hindrance to the Executioner. He set the breeching charge on the side of the boiler.

“Jack?”

“You’ve got eleven minutes, Sarge,” Grimaldi informed him.

Bolan set the timer on his detonator and stuck it in place.

A hand gripped his ankle and Bolan tripped over the shocked defender’s grasp. The Executioner twisted his boot free from the stunned Korean and regained his balance. Once his freed foot was firmly planted, he used the heel of his other boot to smash down violently on the sailor’s jaw. Bone shattered with the force of the kick, and the sailor slumped to the floor, dead.

A second Korean fought to get to his knees, and Bolan kicked him in the stomach and used the butt of the P-90 like a hammer to finish the man. He didn’t have much time, and he needed to hit the captain’s quarters. With doomsday numbers ticking down, Bolan exited the engine room and spotted two sets of legs stomping down the stairs.

Before they could come down the steps far enough to see the Executioner, he cut loose with the FN submachine gun, catching them at groin level. Bullets plowed through soft tissue, severing arteries in their violent passage, while others hammered into heavy pelvic bone. The two defenders screamed and toppled down the steps, their bodies landing in a tangle. Bolan milked off two more shots, one into each head, then raced forward, vaulting the corpses.

He was halfway up the stairs when someone slammed into his back and drove him against the hard metal steps. The Executioner struggled to shake the Korean off his back as tightly knotted fists pummeled his neck and sides. Only Bolan’s battle-hardened musculature and his combat harness blunted the bone-breaking force of his attacker’s punches. That gave him a moment to jerk himself upright and flip the unsecured sailor off his back.

The Korean toppled to the deck and clawed for the handgun in his holster. Bolan, still stunned by the sudden and savage attack, lurched up the steps and flipped over the top stair. As his body disappeared behind the upper deck, a bullet sliced the air, barely missing him. The sailor cursed at him in his native language, but the Executioner used the duration of his tirade to recover his wits and get his second wind. The P-90 had been torn away by the Korean’s sudden attack, so he reached for his .44 Magnum pistol.

Bolan saw a gun frame pop up out of the stairwell, and he kicked his way through a hatch to the next compartment before he was sliced apart by his own weapon. High-powered bullets clanged on metal, one slicing across his shoulder. It was a shallow scratch, but it reminded the soldier that his enemy was to be taken seriously. He flicked off the Desert Eagle’s safety and braced himself. The Korean sailor appeared at the top of the steps, P-90 in one fist, the handgun in the other.

Bolan tripped the mighty Magnum pistol’s trigger and a .44-caliber slug cored through the defender’s chest. The Korean collapsed to his knees, vomiting blood. Glassy eyes looked in disbelief at the Executioner, and sticky red lips tried to form words. Bolan punched another slug through the round, pale face, and then stepped forward to retrieve his submachine gun. He cut back through the bridge and located the captain’s cabin.

It was a mess, and he found torn maps in the trash receptacle. A box of matches sat on the desk, several matchsticks lying broken where the captain failed to light them. Presumably the captain was one of the last of the defenders that Bolan had encountered. He looked at the personal computer on the captain’s desk, and saw that it was in the process of deleting its files. Bolan shut off the computer, then pulled out his combat knife to open its main casing.

The hard drive sat like a silver brick in the center of the motherboard, and Bolan cut its IDE cables and wrenched it off the silicone-and-plastic board. The drive itself was as solid and strong as steel, so he stuffed it in an empty magazine pouch on his harness. Though the captain had been deleting all of its files, Stony Man Farm had data recovery software that could bring back any information that had been erased. It wouldn’t be difficult, and it would give Bolan a better understanding of why the Koreans were smuggling human beings and cattle into their country.

“Sarge?” Grimaldi asked over the radio.

“Still here,” Bolan answered.

“It got quiet,” the pilot explained.

Bolan looked at his watch. “I’ve got eight minutes before the carrier arrives. Lower the crane and I’ll be topside.”

“Gotcha.”

“We’ll head back to our airfield and process what’s on this hard drive,” Bolan told him. “Looks like I uncovered a lot more than people smuggling.”

“A black market submarine and cattle? I don’t doubt it,” the pilot quipped. “’Round and ’round we go, where we stop, nobody knows.”

Bolan left the captain’s quarters, wary for remaining defenders. But even as he did, he knew that Grimaldi was right. What started as a simple smuggling intervention had just turned into the potential for a nightmare.

Business as usual for the Executioner.

CHAPTER FOUR

Salt Lake City, Utah

Kirby Graham handed Rachel Marrick a cup of coffee as they waited at the perimeter of the bank standoff. Rachel took a sip and looked at Stan Reader, who was riffling through his luggage.

“So, who’s he?” Marrick asked.

“A friend from college,” Graham replied. “Actually, best buddies. We even went into the service at the same time. We worked together a few times there.”