Fireburst

“Same thing.”

“Near enough,” Brognola admitted.

“All right, going with the idea that these weren’t simply outrageous coincidences, what are we talking about, artificial lightning bolts from some sort of machine hidden inside the storm clouds?”

“Could be. Unless somebody has discovered a way to invoke a lightning strike, and then we’re all in for a shitstorm of trouble.”

“You got that right,” Bolan replied, rubbing his unshaved chin. “What does a lightning bolt generate, a billion volts or so?”

“Right.”

“Any of the people hit happen to survive?” Bolan asked.

“No way in hell. After the second strike, they were greasy smoke. The third lightning bolt made holes in the ground over a yard deep. Add the rain, and it’ll take weeks to identify most of the remains. The FBI forensic lab was able to scrape some residue off nearby lampposts and store windows to try to run a match on the DNA, but no joy yet.”

“Which means there must have been some eyewitnesses.”

“Check. We managed to identify a few of the people killed. One was Professor Albert Goldman, the foremost expert in lightning storms in the world, another was Dr. David Thomas, an electrical engineer who had designed a radical new antilightning safeguard that would, he hoped, harness the power to channel into the power grid of a major city, and another was Dr. Kathleen Summer. She is…sorry, she was the woman who invented the Tesla antitank trap for the Pentagon ten years ago.”

With each name, a picture scrolled across the bottom of the screen, along with a shot of the person’s charred remains. Bolan snorted. Charred? They were damn near vaporized.

“Hal, how many people get killed by lightning in the U.S. in an average year?”

“About ninety.”

“So fifteen are burned in a single day?” Bolan shook his head. “Good call, Hal. Clearly, somebody has found a way to control lightning strikes, and they’ve already removed most of the leading scientists in the field to forestall any attempts to analyze their equipment.”

“Unfortunately, that was my guess, too.” Brognola sighed, the picture distorted for a moment with a burst of static. “We won’t know what these people want until they attack again.”

“Were any of these scientists connected to one another? Went to the same school, had the same bookie, were they all heading toward a summit conference on weather—anything like that?”

“Nope, I checked, and then double-checked everything,” Brognola stated, pushing the folder aside. “They had absolutely nothing in common aside from their field of expertise. Maybe when we identify the rest of the victims, some sort of pattern will emerge. But until then—”

“We’re in the dark until these people start making demands,” Bolan added. “And by then it may be too late to track them down.”

“Agreed. All we can do is stay sharp, and be ready to move the instant something is learned.”

“Okay, if I’m going to be chasing clouds, then I’ll need some help on this,” Bolan said. “Any chance of getting Able Team or Phoenix Force?” The two teams were the other field operatives of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, Virginia.

“Sorry, they’re both out of contact at the moment.”

“Okay,” Bolan stated. “If the Stony Man teams are unavailable, I have some people I can call in.”

“Expect trouble?”

“Just prepared for it. You know me.”

Brognola chuckled. “Yeah, I do. All right, stay in touch, and watch your ass.”

Turning off the laptop, Bolan grabbed his gear and loaded it into the speedboat. He started the outboard motor and headed out. He had a long way to travel, and speed was of the essence.

In the distance, thunder softly rumbled.

He only hoped it wasn’t already too late.

CHAPTER TWO

Bern, Switzerland

A thick blanket of glistening snow covered the jagged mountains surrounding the valley, puffy white clouds drifting lazily along the granite tors and snowcapped peaks.

Joyful singing could be heard coming from both the church and the synagogue. A frozen lake reflected the majestic Alps, the image slightly distorted by the laughing people skating arm in arm. Numerous people in snowmobiles scooted along the gentle hills, and a deadly serious snowball fight was raging out of control at the elementary school.

The town of Bern was a combination of the old and the very old. A stone tower attached to city hall boasted a gigantic clock with human-size figures that came out and performed a robotic dance every hour on the hour. There was an artesian well in the town square where people still drew water, even though they had modern plumbing, and there was the jingle of bells as teams of horses pulled colorful sleighs along the snowy streets.

Every wooden building was decorated with ornate carvings, every brick structure painted with highly stylized hex symbols of good luck and prosperity. The satellite dishes were concealed in the nearby woods, the cables laid under the ground so that they wouldn’t mar the appearance of a classic Swiss village, and the fully functional Second World War antiaircraft cannons were well-hidden inside concrete bunkers designed to resemble stone cottages. As with just about everything else in the mountainous country, nothing was precisely what it seemed to be at first glance.

Just down the block from the town square was a crowd of people in heavy parkas and gloves. Standing politely behind the bright yellow “danger” tape, they talked in hushed whispers and took endless pictures with their cell phones.

On the other side of the barrier, gray smoke rose from the mounds of hot ashes and burned timbers that used to be a small bookstore. The firefighters had gone home hours earlier, and the chief constable of the village had trundled back to the station to write a report on the incident.

Suddenly, there was the roar of an engine, and a shiny Harley-Davidson motorcycle charged across the new bridge spanning the frozen lake. Revving the twin-V88 engine to maximum, the driver banked low around a corner, both wheels slipping in the ice under the snow in spite of the winter spikes. Cursing vehemently, the driver fought for control of the bike, and managed to right the Harley before jouncing over a frosty granite curb. For a split second, man and machine were airborne, then they came down hard, skittering along the slippery sidewalk until coming to a ragged halt at the danger tape.

Many people in the crowd frowned at the rude arrival of the outsider, but said nothing, merely moving aside to give the stranger a better view of the wreckage. Sitting on the purring motorcycle, the driver did nothing for several minutes but stare at the gaping black hole in the ground only a few yards away.

Turning off the Harley, the man kicked down the stand and walked to the edge of the pit, still trying to comprehend what he was seeing.

“Impossible,” he muttered, lifting his visor. “This is impossible!”

Just then, cries of surprise rose from the skaters on the lake as a BMW snowmobile rocketed across the frozen expanse. Narrowly missing the scattering villagers, the big machine zoomed straight up the bank onto the snowy street and across the village green.

At breakneck speed, the driver dodged the well and several children and slammed through a snowman, reducing it back into its basic component. Blinded by the explosion of flakes, the driver zigzagged down the street, nearly clipping several parked cars and another snowman before crashing into the granite cornerstone of the local bank. Stone chips went flying, the fender crumpled, and the engine sputtered into silence. However, the driver managed to stay in the seat just long enough to ride out the recoil before hopping off and yanking open a rear compartment to haul out a bulky toolbox.

The driver was clearly a woman, and wearing the incongruous outfit of a ball gown and a thick puffy winter jacket. Satin slippers jutted from a pocket, and she was wearing heavy black snow boots.

“Damn it, Della, it took you long enough to get here,” the driver of the motorcycle said, removing his helmet.

“Shut up, Zander. I live farther away than you do,” Della Gotterstein countered, striding toward what remained of the bookstore. “How bad is the damage?”

“Total,” Zander Meyers stated.

She scowled. “Bah, that is not possible.”

“See for yourself!” Meyers said, making a sweeping gesture.

Pushing her way through the rapidly thinning crowd, Gotterstein halted at the danger tape to stare down into the charred hole.

“Good God,” she whispered, setting down the toolbox to remove her own helmet. A wealth of golden hair cascaded to her trim waist.