Mission: Apocalypse

Guard duty was dull duty the world over. The man had spent more time and attention lighting his cigarette than he had the darkness around him. The flare of the lighter had instantly killed his night vision. In the same instant Bolan was on him. Teeth and tobacco went flying. In the sentry’s defense he was deep in his homeland, deep in the desert, the roads were all watched and all military and police units in the area had been thoroughly penetrated and bribed to alert his organization to any movement.

No one was expecting a single, hostile American to come floating down out of the sky six hundred miles south of the border into Mexico.

Bolan hit the guard again. This time his open hand chopped into the side of the sentry’s neck like an ax. The Executioner raised his hand for a third blow but the man was already falling unconscious to the ground with a concussion and half of his carotid arteries and nerves crushed. Bolan let him fall and caught the man’s rifle before it could clatter to the pavement. The G3 assault weapon was Mexican Army issue and probably stolen. The man was most likely ex-Mexican Army issue, as well. Bolan knelt over the sentry and found that he was indeed wearing Mexican military dog tags beneath his windbreaker. Gasca, Victor, was a private. Private Gasca was out of uniform. Mexican military officers and enlisted men moonlighting to do work for the cartels was as old as the war on drugs. Gasca was also wearing a white card key around his neck. Bolan removed the key and ran it through the lock on the warehouse door. The light on the lock blinked green. Bolan pulled his night-vision goggles down over his eyes and slid inside into the darkness. The light-enhancing optics took the barely discernible glow of the stars shining through the skylights and magnified it thousands of times, turning the inky blackness of the warehouse interior into a harsh, grainy, gray-green world.

Bolan subvocalized into the microphone taped to his throat. “I’m in.”

Fourteen hundred miles away in Virginia Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman sat in Stony Man Farm’s Computer Room and gazed at satellite imaging of Bolan’s position in Sinaloa. “Copy that, Striker. Begin radiological survey.”

“Copy that. Commencing survey.” Bolan pulled the Geiger counter out of his web gear and powered it up. The IDR-Monitor 4 was a simple Geiger-Müller type that measured alpha, beta, gamma and x-radiation and was about the size of an old style walkie-talkie. The device’s main component was a tube filled with argon gas. Argon was inert, but it would briefly conduct electricity when a particle or photon of radiation passed through it. The tube amplified the current into a pulse. The pulse was what created the typical clicking, static sound Geiger counters made. The faster, uglier and more staticky the sound was, the more radiologically uglier the ambient environment was.

This night, gamma radiation was the subatomic particle of choice.

Gamma radiation was always around. It was constantly bouncing around the cosmos, but usually in amounts a human being would consider infinitesimal. However, gamma rays were the most dangerous form of radiation emitted during a nuclear explosion. Unlike solar radiation, gamma rays were not stopped at the skin level. They passed completely through the body like a freight train, damaging every cell in their path and creating breaks in the DNA strands. Victims of exposure suffered horribly before they died, and survivors would pass on their damaged DNA in the form of birth defects to their children. You didn’t need a nuclear explosion to get gamma radiation. It was emitted from spent nuclear reactor fuel at very lethal levels. Mixed with conventional explosives, nuclear material would go on killing long after the effects of the explosives had been dealt with.

Gamma radiation was the “dirty” in dirty bombs.

Bolan muted the audio signal on the IDR-4 and began running his sweep through the warehouse. He waved the counter slowly over and around each pallet and crate, keeping his eye on the tiny dial to see if the needle jumped. It was barely twitching, but it was twitching. “Bear, I have slightly elevated levels of gamma radiation.”

“Give me a count,” Kurtzman replied.

Bolan watched the needle tremble at the very lowest end of detection. It was far less than the exposure one would get from an X-ray imaging at the doctor’s office, but it was still abnormally high for a nonmedical or nonindustrial warehouse in the middle of Sinaloa. “I’ve got ten kV.” Bolan shook his head. “Maybe less.”

Kurtzman echoed Bolan’s thoughts. “It’s residual. The material has moved.”

“Continuing sweep.” Bolan slid from pallet to pallet and stack to stack. Ostensibly the warehouse was used in the transshipment of beans and soya out of the Mexican highlands to the south. Bolan knew that any dope-sniffing dog worth his salt would be doing backflips from the scent of the residual Mexican brown heroin and Colombian cocaine that had spent the night on its way to the United States border. Gun-sniffing dogs would have recognized the scent of Cosmoline, Russian military lubricants and high-explosive blocks. As far as Bolan knew, there were no uranium-sniffing dogs, and if there were they had very short life spans. But the needle of the electrical sniffer in his hand began to twitch like a nose as it scented the air. “Reading getting stronger.”

“Maintain safety protocols, Striker,” Kurtzman warned.

“Readings still far below danger levels.” Bolan knelt on the warehouse floor as the needle shook like a leaf in the wind. His eyes narrowed beneath his night-vision gear. The needle was still vibrating against the low-end peg. He traced his fingers on the outline in the floor where pallets had obviously rested for years. Bolan passed the IDR-4 over the scratched square, and the needle twitched up a hairbreadth. Something radioactive had indeed rested here. The fact that there was still a distinctive radiation signature told Bolan that the bad guys had either breached the original containment vessel or they had transferred the materials to a new container whose shielding was not up to spec. “Confirmed, material was in the warehouse, and has since been moved.”

Kurtzman’s silence spoke volumes. Nuclear material had gotten within six hundred miles of the U.S. and was still presumably heading north.

They both knew there was only one option left.

“Bear, I’m heading up to the hacienda for some Q and A.”

“Copy that, Striker. Will advise the Man.”

Kurtzman was going to inform the president that the mission had progressed from reconnaissance to search and destroy. Bolan finished sweeping the warehouse, but the strongest reading continued to be the suspiciously empty space. He stepped back over the stricken sentry. The man was alive but wouldn’t be raising the alarm anytime soon. Bolan’s boots crunched on the gravel road as he moved up toward the house. In the distance the Tamazula River gleamed with reflected starlight. Oswaldo “Pinto” Salcido seemed an unlikely trafficker in nuclear materials. He had gotten his nickname for the continent-shaped wine stains that streaked his left cheek and temple and had a vicious reputation in an already vicious line of work. He was still lower echelon, a regional warlord who exploited his locals and took a taste of goods moving through his territory rather than a major player in the Mexican crime cartels. If he was moving nuclear material, then he had moved up to the big leagues.

Bolan was about to give Pinto some big-league attention.

The Executioner raised his night-vision goggles and unslung his SCAR rifle. The weapon had a 40 mm grenade launcher mounted and loaded beneath the barrel, but he reached over his shoulder into his pack and drew forth a GREMs barricade breaching rifle grenade and clicked it on his muzzle. Salcido’s place was standard twentieth-century Mexican crime lord. High pink adobe walls surrounded a sprawling hacienda. Bolan closed within twenty yards of the automatic iron gate, peered through his rifle’s optic and fired. The assault rifle bucked against his shoulder as the rifle grenade flew from the muzzle. The grenade slammed into the gate’s locking plate and ripped the entire wrought-iron fence right off its tracks and left it twisted and lying in the driveway. Bolan squinted as the hacienda’s security floodlights snapped on and threw the entire front of the house into shadowless glare. The front door flew open and three men with AKs charged down the steps. Bolan leveled his rifle but pulled the trigger on the grenade launcher. Pale yellow fire belched from the 40 mm muzzle, and a bee swarm of buckshot expanded and enveloped the charging men in an invisible cloud of lead ball bearings that passed through their bodies like a withering wind. The three men twisted and fell.

Bolan raised his rifle and fired six quick bursts into the arc of floodlights, and the front and sides of the hacienda plunged back into darkness. He pulled his night-vision goggles back down, jacked a tear gas grenade into his launcher and slid a fresh magazine into his rifle.

Within the hacienda men were shouting, women were screaming and dogs were barking.

A man leaned out of an upstairs window and sprayed the grounds with submachine-gun fire, but he was firing blind into the darkness. He showed up perfectly in Bolan’s optics and the Executioner’s burst blasted him from the window and dropped him down to the patio below. Bolan sent his tear gas round spiraling through the vacated window and sent a second one through the front door into the house a few seconds later. He took a moment to don his gas mask and clip it to his night-vision gear. Bolan moved up to the hacienda. Ignoring the open front door, he stepped onto the patio, picked up a wrought-iron patio chair and hurled it through the French windows. Shattered shards of glass cascaded to the tiles. Fresh feminine screaming broke out, as well as several gunshots, but none were aimed at Bolan. He jacked another buckshot round into his grenade launcher.

Glass crunched beneath his boots as the Executioner entered Casa de Salcido.

The gas was spreading nicely from room to room. Bolan went to the kitchen and took the stairs into the basement. He raised his rifle and burned a magazine on full-auto in the fuse box. The rest of the Salcido household plunged into darkness. Bolan strode back upstairs. Everything was chaos. People ran throughout the house shouting, screaming, choking and cursing. He could see everyone and everything through his optics, but to the inhabitants of the house he was just one more dark shape in the gloom and gas. Men with guns, Bolan shot. Men without guns, Bolan gave a lick with the butt of his rifle and dropped them. He grasped women firmly by their shoulders, told them “Get out” in Spanish and shoved them toward the closest exit. No one Bolan had encountered so far matched Pinto’s description. The soldier finished sweeping the ground floor of the hacienda and began to suspect Señor Salcido was upstairs.

Bolan went to find him.

Things were slightly more organized on the second floor. Flashlight beams were sweeping wildly about while someone—Bolan suspected Salcido—was bellowing orders at the top of his lungs. A man appeared at the head of the stairs waving a flashlight and a pistol. Bolan stitched him with a burst and he tumbled down the steps. The rest of the gunners upstairs finally found some focus, and salvos of gunfire erupted and tore across the top of the landing. Bolan drew two flash-bang grenades from his bandolier, pulled the pins and lobbed the bombs over the landing. He prudently closed his eyes beneath his goggles and stuck fingers in his ears. Twin incandescent flashes lit up the upstairs landing and twin booms rocked the house like thunder.

Bolan came to the top of the stairs.

Two men with rifles staggered like drunks in half-blind, half-deaf disorientation. Hundreds of winking, pyrotechnic aftereffects flitted about like fireflies. A third man was holding himself up with one hand on the wall and desperately shaking his head to clear it from the effects of the stun grenade. In the gray-green world of the night-vision goggles the wine stains on the man’s face looked black. Bolan put a burst into each of the riflemen and put them down. Salcido pushed himself away from the wall and tried to raise a pistol.

Bolan closed in three strides and snapped the butt of his rifle on Salcido’s wrist. The man screamed as his wrist fractured and the pistol thudded to the carpet. Whipping the butt up, Bolan cracked Salcido across the cheek. As his adversary staggered back under the assault, the Executioner slung his rifle and buried his fist into the man’s guts. The drug lord doubled over and then screamed and stiffened like a board as Bolan dropped his fist across each kidney as if he were hammering nails. The big American seized him by the collar and belt, and marched him into the master bedroom. More French doors opened onto a balcony. Pinto howled as Bolan accelerated from a fast walk to a run and gave him the bum’s rush right off the balcony.

Salcido screamed as he plummeted through the darkness.

His screams were cut short as he hit the swimming pool with a splash. Bolan climbed over the balustrade, hung by his hands for a moment and then dropped down in the backyard below. He went to the pool and hauled Salcido out by the hair and hurled him onto the pool deck. Bolan unslung his rifle and aimed at Salcido’s face. He activated the tactical light mounted on the side of his rifle and strobed Salcido with 75,000 candlepower at sixty blinks per minute. Salcido moaned and tried to raise his hands in front of his face. Bolan kicked them away, killed the light and planted a knee on Salcido’s chest. “Pinto, where is it?”

“Where’s…what?” Between the flash-stun, the beating, the impromptu skydive and swim and the strobing, Salcido was at an all-time moral low. “Where’s what? I got money, I got drugs…. Whatever you want.”

“I want the material.”

Salcido gasped. “What…material?”

Bolan frowned beneath his mask. It was possible that Salcido had no idea just what had been stored in his warehouse. “You had a very important consignment in the warehouse. Now it’s gone.” Bolan leaned more weight into his knee. “Where is it now?”

“Shit…I don’t know. I was just paid to sit on it until pickup.”

“Who picked it up?”

“I don’t know, some guys. I didn’t know them.”

Bolan sighed inwardly. Unfortunately he was fairly certain Salcido was speaking the truth. “When did the plane leave the airstrip?”

Salcido suddenly became reticent.

Bolan dialed the light up to 150,000 candlepower and hammered Salcido with the strobe. The man groaned and twitched feebly. At this level some individuals were known to have seizures and the drug lord had already had a hard night. “They left by truck! They took the road north!”

Bolan killed the light. “How many men?”

“Three.”

“Who were they?”

“I told you! I don’t know!”

“Describe them.”