Extreme Instinct

“Got it,” Hannigan cried, stepping back.

As he dropped a circuit board into the wooden box, there came the low hiss of working pneumatics and the middle section of the cylinder cycled up to reveal seven large spheres nestled inside the complex machinery, their smooth surfaces glistening with condensation. It took a moment before the mercs realized the white objects were not truly spheres, but some sort of decahedron, or more properly, a dodecahedron, the curved sides made of a smooth array of a hundred interlocking pyramids.

“Whew, so that’s them, eh?” Barrowman said, scratching his arm inside the sling. “Kind of hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

“Not really, no,” Lindquist replied, feeling his heart quicken at the sight. The spy at Mystery Mountain had informed him that the Skyfire weapon system possessed multiple warheads, but he had expected to find two thermobaric bombs, not seven. This windfall once again changed his plans.

Shifting gears to take a hill, Kessler looked at the spheres in the rearview mirror. “What kind of a yield are we talking about here?”

“Close to the order of a kiloton of TNT,” Lindquist answered absentmindedly, his thoughts elsewhere.

“Are you serious?” Kessler gasped. “But that Chinese nuke we used on the dam only had a quarter-kiloton yield.”

“Then this would be more,” Johansen said with a tolerant smile.

“Four times more powerful than a tactical nuke,” Barrowman muttered. It was incredible. One of those spheres could flatten Manhattan. The cluster would burn all of New York City, from Brooklyn to the Bronx, clean off the map.

“Pity we’re not selling them on the black market,” he said impulsively. “We’d be millionaires overnight.”

“Billionaires, more likely,” Lindquist corrected.

The mercenaries exchanged glances, but said nothing.

“How much farther to the tunnel?” Johansen asked, licking her lips.

“We should be there any minute now,” Lindquist answered.

“There she blows!” Kessler announced, taking a curve in the road.

Directly ahead of the truck was a wall of dark rock, impossible to climb or traverse. But smack in the middle was a small tunnel, the mouth just barely large enough for the huge Soviet truck to gain entry.

As they entered the tunnel, the truck headlights illuminated the interior for hundreds of feet. The pavement was old, but the smooth concrete walls were spotlessly clean, without any trace of diesel fumes or car exhaust, almost as if the tunnel was brand-new.

Or very rarely ever used, Lindquist mentally corrected himself. Only the top brass at the Kremlin ever used the secret tunnel, and not even the nosy Americans knew of its existence.

But almost instantly, Kessler downshifted and started to brake. “There’s roadwork up ahead,” he added in a suspicious voice.

Craning their necks to see through the windshield, the Foxfire team scowled at the sight of a van parked in the middle of the roadway, the headlights beating to the rhythm of the idling engine. Surrounded by a ring of bright yellow cones, a team of workmen wearing bright orange safety jackets and carrying shovels seemed to be doing something to the pavement. There were several tanker trucks on the far side of the construction zone, the drivers standing outside their rigs smoking cigarettes.

Braking to a halt, Kessler pumped the gas pedal a few times to stop the engine dieseling. At first it did not seem to work, then the engine went still and a heavy silence blanketed the highway.

“Okay, we do this by the numbers,” Lindquist said, pulling out a 9 mm automatic Tokarev and working the slide. “Everybody stay here, and I’ll go see what’s happening.”

“We got your six, sir,” Johansen stated, pulling the Carl Gustav launcher onto her lap.

Tucking the Soviet automatic into a pocket, Lindquist opened the side door and stepped down to the roadway. “Hello,” he called, waving a hand. “What’s the trouble?”

“Water main broken,” a slim man shouted in a heavy accent, checking something on a clipboard.

“Can we get past?” Lindquist asked, walking over casually. Then he suddenly dived to the side.

Instantly the workers dropped their clipboards and shovels to bring up Red Army 30 mm grenade launchers and fire a salvo at the Soviet truck.

“What the… It’s a trap!” Kessler bellowed, frantically trying to start the engine while the barrage of canisters impacted around the truck, gushing out thick volumes of a bilious green smoke.

“Gas attack,” Johansen cursed, grabbing a gas mask from under a seat.

Everybody else did the same as the rising fumes seeped into the truck, swirling around their boots. Breathing deeply as they had been taught, the mercenaries now grabbed weapons, but a terrible wave of nausea overtook each of them. The strength flowed from their limbs like water down a drain. Their fingers turned numb, breathing became impossible, then they went blind. Foaming at the mouths, the Foxfire team dropped twitching to the floor, and went very still.

Staying safely where they were located, the workers waited for several minutes until the ventilation system of the tunnel cleared away the fumes of the deadly gas.

With a bang, the rear doors of the truck slammed open and out stepped a skeletal thin man wearing the crisp uniform of a Soviet Union admiral. There was a Tokarev automatic holstered at his stomach, the grip reversed for a left-handed man. A nylon cord connected the pistol to his belt in case it was dropped when at sea. He appeared to be much older than he actually was and his teeth were clearly false, but the bony man still possessed a full head of wavy hair and radiated authority the way a furnace does heat.

“Report please, Sergeant,” commanded Brigadier General Ivan Alexander Novostk, both hands held behind his back. A smooth red scar crossed his throat from ear to ear where a Soviet Union paratrooper had tried to remove his head and failed at the cost of his own life. General “Iron Ivan” Novostk considered himself unkillable. His body was covered with scars from a hundred battles, hard fought and won. His long career in the Slovakian military was burned into living flesh, and most of the scars were a constant reminder of the brutality of the Kremlin and its monstrous lapdogs, the KGB, forever renewing his unquenchable hatred of the Communists.

“The air is reading clear, sir,” Sergeant Petrova Melori announced in Slovakian, checking the monitor of a chemical sensor.

Rising to his feet, Lindquist dusted off his pants. “Two of you make sure they’re dead,” he directed in the same language. “The rest of you clear away these cones. The entire Russian army will soon be here, and we better be long gone.”

“You heard the colonel!” a corporal bellowed, slinging the grenade launcher over a shoulder. “Kleinova, Louvsky, check the bodies and watch for traps. Everybody else, clear the way.”

As the soldiers got busy, Lindquist walked over to the skinny man. “Good to see you again, sir,” he said with a genuine smile.

“And you, Colonel,” General Novostk replied, offering the man a hand. “How many T-bombs did we get?”

“Seven,” Colonel Lindquist replied, drawing the Norinco automatic and tossing it away. “More than enough to get the job done.”

“Excellent! I am more than pleased.”

Damn well hope so. But the colonel said nothing out loud.

A sharp whistle came from the Soviet truck and a soldier waved. “They’re dead, sir,” he shouted through cupped hands.

“You sure?” Lindquist demanded, brushing back his hair.

There came the sound of four individual pistol shots.

“Yes, sir,” the private replied. “We’re sure.”

Good enough. “Well done, Private.”

After transferring the seven angular spheres to the van and strapping them down, the soldiers threw the box of spare parts across the tunnel and left.

“To enhance the appearance of an internal explosion,” Colonel Lindquist said to the sergeant. If the general did not agree, he kept the matter to himself.

Satisfied for the moment, Lindquist drove away in the van, the soldiers easily running beside the slow-moving vehicle until it reached the other end of the tunnel. Idling there was a titanic Mi-6 Hook, the largest helicopter in the world.

The van was guided up the rear ramp into the Hook, where the soldiers lashed it securely into position. Then they took seats along the walls and put on their seat belts. This promised to be a bumpy ride. Lindquist and Melori went to the flight deck for their seats, and strapped in tight.