Ramrod Intercept

“There was never any doubt.”

“To answer your question,” Price said, “about an air insertion, we know the garrison has state-of-the-art radar, sold to the government in Antananarivo—or Tana for short—by France. We’ve picked up machine-gun nests, but no antiaircraft batteries and no fighter jets. However, if one of the terrorists is running around with a Stinger when this goes down, the Spectre would be history if it’s wielded by even semicapable hands. Besides,” she added, a trace of sarcasm in her tone, “the former French colony has been attempting to go democratic for about ten years.”

“How? By giving safe haven to a small army of international murderers?”

Price shrugged. “What can I say? All of us know graft and corruption don’t care about the difference between communism, iron-handed dictatorship or fledgling democracy.”

“I hear you.”

Brognola heaved a breath, told himself to drop it down a notch, aware his jacked-up mood was affecting and stretching taut nerves all around.

Price rode out a moment of silence, then said, “The way I figured it, since Madagascar is an island four hundred kilometers from the east coast of Africa by the Mozambique Channel, and with what we have planned, an air drop sounded too risky. Too much open sea, to get them from point A to B. And the Seawolf was available. Going in by cover of the vast Indian Ocean, and at night, was the lesser of two evils. Once the dust settles and the smoke clears, an airfield about two hundred meters west of the garrison can accommodate Jack and company for a landing. Evacuation for our troops. And we assume, there will be some of the more notable terrorists left standing to be brought back to the States to stand trial for what we know is their involvement in just about every major terrorist attack around the world in the past ten years or more.”

“We’re assuming an awful lot, all of us,” Kurtzman said. “We all know the President’s position on this. He wants a few live ones to hold up to the cameras. Whipping boys or trophies, I have to wonder.”

“I told him up front and in no uncertain terms I wasn’t about to make that promise,” Brognola said. “Could be why I’m getting the silent treatment. No way in hell am I putting Phoenix into the fire, working under the assumption these fanatics are just going to throw their hands up and let our guys read them their Miranda rights, recite Geneva Convention nonsense, chapter and verse and all that crazy shit. Besides, I have to agree with the Man to some extent on one point. A few songbird fanatics could have the mother lode of intelligence. Give me a numbers crunch on bad guys.”

“Bear?” Price said.

“Two full squads of Madagascan soldiers. Thirty-four, now thirty-one Iranian fanatics.”

Brognola raised a curious eyebrow over the smoke at the grim tone in Kurtzman’s voice. “I get the feeling you want to tell me something?”

“I’ll do better. I’ll show you, live and in color.” Kurtzman palmed his own remote and flashed on a sat image that made Brognola freeze as the steaming brew was being raised to his lips. “We have an ONI-1 satellite, courtesy of the DIA, parked in space over Madagascar.”

Kurtzman muttered a curse. “There’s our Butcher of Southern Sudan, hard at work, showing off the kind of talent he used on black Christians and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army for some five years. Bloody animal. The UN puts his slaughter of mostly innocent women and children in the tens of thousands.”

“A real charming piece of work,” Price added. “Mr. Sunshine.”

“So, who got to know Vlad the Impaler’s loving feeling?”

“One of them was Reza Nahru,” Kurtzman informed.

“That name sounds familiar.”

“It should. He was tried and convicted by the Israelis in absentia for three separate terrorist attacks that claimed forty-three lives,” Kurtzman said. “One was a busload of little else but women and children in Tel Aviv. We have also picked up from ONI-1 four other faces belonging to Iranians linked to bin Laden who were likewise convicted in absentia but by the Jordanians. Death warrants issued for these butchers.”

“Which leads us to the task at hand, as far as the Madagascar and Sudan situations are concerned,” Brognola said. “This General Arakkhan is no small fish. He still carries heavy weight among a loyal military faction in Khartoum who want to see his return to…well, the Vlad the Impaler glory days. The problem is the CIA contract agents who got us this far are disappearing all over Sudan.”

“They were working on getting the Company a leadin,” Price said, “to where the shipment of high-tech weapons is located, or being shipped, which is rumored to be an Iranian-occupied island in the Strait of Hormuz. Now, the rumbling I caught from Langley was that Nahru had jumped to the other side of the tracks, looking to deal or double deal. Who can say now? Obviously word got back to Arakkhan the impaler. Three less fanatics on the loose now, if nothing else. And with what we know about the situation in Los Angeles we can at least surmise the smuggling operation has its origins there.”

“DYSAT,” Brognola growled. “What do we know about them, other than three of their executives who went to the FBI have been abducted by the DYSAT mother ship?”

Kurtzman filled in the blanks. “Apparently they do classified work, chemical lasers, microchip processors for high-energy X-ray lasers. It took some digging and a few phone calls over to the Pentagon, but that’s about as far as we got. Their only office is in Century City, Tinsel Town, which I find sort of strange, planting classified military think tanks in the heart of where all the movie execs and agents do their trolling and scamming.”

“Go figure,” Brognola said. “I read smoke screen, hiding out in the open. And by classified, I’m hearing you mean to say they are a black project.”

“It certainly reads that way,” Kurtzman went on. “Since the files I hacked into over at the Department of Defense are full of blacked-out words and whole deleted sentences about the pasts of the head honchos. The top dogs are former Air Force air commandos, nothing, however, untoward that would indicate they would be part of some conspiracy. The workforce is primarily civilian, Harvard, UCLA, MIT grads, pretty-boy types. We did find out DYSAT’s production and research facility is located in Idaho.”

“I don’t mean to get sidetracked here, but can someone explain to me just what a chemical laser is?”

“Akira and Hunt,” Kurtzman said, referring to Akira Tokaido and Huntington Wethers, two more vital cogs in the cyber machinery at the Farm, “could probably explain better than I could.”

“Give it a shot.”

“Well, since the genesis of laser technology some three decades ago, it would appear the research is on the verge of crossing the Rubicon. The brass ring of future high-tech is within grasp, or so it would seem. Basically, a laser weapon works as the transfer of heat to a target. It’s a silent killer, supposedly, or so the scuttle-butt goes, which is capable of burning the eyes out of a soldier on the battlefield, and from as much as a hundred miles or more out. Meltdown, evaporation of anything the beam is focused on, no shots fired in anger. Only now the next quantum leap would be to use it on aircraft and missiles. Or even satellites. That’s where the microchips come in to help get the bugs out of high-energy X-ray lasers. Now, the ones DYSAT have produced—or so our informants told the FBI—can locate, identify, track and intercept satellite transmissions, anywhere, anytime.”

“And disrupt,” Brognola said. “There is nothing wrong with your television sets, NORAD. We are in complete control.”

“In a worst-case scenario,” Kurtzman went on. “What our three AWOL contacts told us is called Ramrod Intercept is currently on the drawing board and is designed to shut down early warning of ballistic missile launches or air attacks. Akira and Hunt get all worked up when they start talking about excimers, carbon dioxide molecular transfers and gas exits, but it’s essentially pulse radiation from what I can understand.”

“I get something of the picture,” Brognola said. “We’re talking about the next step in silent, invisible warfare. Warfare directed from space.”

“Or even from the ground,” Kurtzman said, “if you have the microchips, a computer, the component parts of what the missing informants called a roving command center.”

“We still have three more civilian brain suits who hacked into the Pandora’s box, right? These college playboys running scared?”

“Carl,” Price informed Brognola, referring to Carl “Ironman” Lyons, the leader of Able Team, “states he has them under constant surveillance. Alive and well, I might add.”

Kurtzman grunted. “Carl’s on a short leash, I have to tell you, Hal. Well, you know the guy’s bulldog style. He says if he has to go into one more gentlemen’s club and order soda water and watch everyone else having a grand old time while he’s playing a poor man’s Magnum with his thumb up his—”

“I get the drift,” Brognola said. “He’s about to go apeshit. And this is where, once again, I get the long hard pauses from the Man to the point where I nearly have to ask him if he’s still there. He tells me, item—DYSAT is a legitimate Air Force–run classified project, funded, of course, by Congress. Bottom line he wants absolute, one hundred percent concrete proof there’s a conspiracy before I send Lyons and Able Team crashing down the front door, kicking ass and taking no names.”

“They’re working on it,” Price said. “And we have enough suspicion, handed to you by way of the FBI, that there is a conspiracy to get these weapons and the Ramrod Intercept technology to both the Sudan and the Iranians.”

“Which brings me to Striker’s status. Well?”

Brognola read into the anvil of silence. Mack Bolan, also known as the Executioner, was Stony Man’s lone wolf operative. There would be no Phoenix Force or Able Team this time out watching his back. They all knew that, days ago and going in.

“Limbo, to quote you, and holding,” Kurtzman said, “at a U.S. air base in Saudi.”

“I haven’t quite gotten the particulars yet on what he’s supposed to do or how he’s prepared to get into Sudan, a country hostile, to understate it, folks, to the West.”

“Once we receive the green light,” Price volunteered, “Striker will be air-inserted inside the Sudanese border, a HALO jump from a Starlifter C-141.”

“I’m waiting for the good news.”

“I’ve arranged for a CIA contract agent to meet him, roughly twenty kilometers northwest of Port Sudan. One call on a secured satlink from the Company, and the contract agent will be there to pick Striker up, on-site and waiting. Striker will have a passport stating he’s an Iranian businessman who deals in Persian rugs and jewelry, if he finds himself facing down Sudanese soldiers while in-country.”

“That’s thin, Barbara. Especially if he’s confronted by the Sudanese authorities at a roadblock and they decide to lock him up until they can check him out. They tend to skin Western spies over there alive and feed them their own flesh.”

“It was the best we could do, Hal,” Kurtzman offered. “Since we have an ongoing situation in Port Sudan, and since we strongly suspect DYSAT is funneling the high-tech goodies through the country—”

“And with the Company contract agent as an escort,” Price quickly put in. “It’s dicey, I know, but Striker insisted he go. Shake some trees and see what falls. He said…he’d figure it out.”

Brognola had to smile at Bolan’s balls-to-the-wall philosophy. “Tell me why I’m not surprised he said that.”

He and the others dropped into silence as each of them hashed over the enormity of not one, but three separate missions. Just the same, three or five doors to bulldoze through, Brognola could see the dots beginning to connect all over the map.