Hell Dawn

“After that,” Kurtzman said, smiling.

“Try to restart the system,” he replied. “See if I could get the cooling system to kick back on.”

“Right. Thing is, though, every time you do that, the worm changes the computer’s password. So you just sit there restarting the damn thing while the reactor core overheats.”

“Wow,” Schwarz said.

“Yeah, wow. Pretty soon, you have a meltdown like nothing the world’s ever seen. You multiply that by every nuclear reactor around the country, hell, around the world, and you’ve got Armageddon a hundred or so times over.”

“Okay, fine,” Lyons said, “so this little lab rat comes up with this thing. Surely he came up with a way to counteract it.”

“He’s working on it,” Kurtzman said.

Lyons’s face reddened, and Kurtzman knew the former Los Angeles cop was having a meltdown of his own. “Working on it? What the hell? If he’s ‘working on it,’ then he ought to be sitting on his rusty can in a basement at Langley. Not skulking around the damn Rocky Mountains.”

“That’s why we’re going after him, Carl,” Kurtzman said.

“That’s not what I meant. What I meant was, why wasn’t this guy under heavier lock and key? Shit, if it was me, I’d stick him in the Situation Room in the White House’s basement, cordon the place off with Delta Force troopers and not let him out until he came up with a way to counteract this thing.”

Kurtzman nodded. “Agreed. Unfortunately someone at Langley was more focused on playing ‘cover your ass,’ rather than doing his or her job. According to the background information Barb and I were able to piece together, someone in Virginia didn’t want the White House to know there was trouble.”

“So they handled it ‘in-house,’ so to speak,” Blancanales said.

“Yeah, they handled it, all right,” Lyons said. “Let the toilet overflow, and guess who has to handle the mop-up.”

“Eloquent,” Schwarz said.

“He’s right, though,” Kurtzman interjected. “Apparently someone, or several people within the Agency, for that matter, knew about Gabe’s problem. They also knew that someone was acting as a mole, handing out information about his latest creation. But they kept trying to handle it themselves, rather than go to the President or someone else for help.”

“The big questions are, who sold him out and who’s trying to kidnap him?” Blancanales said. “We have anyone covering that angle?”

Kurtzman nodded. “Hal’s working on it. As soon as word went out about the whole situation, he hopped a plane to Wonderland. I guess the National Security Council’s still getting up to speed and debating whether to yank this from the Agency.”

Blancanales scowled. “Doesn’t seem like there ought to be a hell of a lot to debate here.”

“More politics,” Kurtzman said, sighing. “In the meantime, we’re heading to Leadville, Colorado, to hunt for Gabe. Or more precisely, we’re going there so he can find us. There’s a municipal airport in Dillon. From there, it’s about an hour or so’s drive to find him. He knows me and will be looking for me. That’s the reason I’m going along on this mission. Plus, Barb and Hal figured my computer expertise might help. I may draft Gadgets, too, before it’s all over.”

Schwarz nodded. “What then?” he asked.

“Carl, you and Pol need to form a human cordon around him. Gadgets and I will work with him on trying to counteract this thing.”

“If we’re that worried about losing him,” Blancanales countered, “why not haul him back to Stony Man Farm? No one would find him here.”

Kurtzman shook his head. “Unfortunately, the word from upper management was pretty clear. Someone already has traced Gabe to one safehouse. It’s pretty safe bet that someone inside the government’s selling him out. Hal and the Man agree that they don’t want to risk Stony Man’s security by making it a target. That’s also why he’s not cooling his heels at Langley, or any other facility at the moment.”

“Fasten your seat belts, ladies,” Grimaldi called over his shoulder. “We’re about to go airborne.”

The assembled warriors strapped themselves in, and the engine’s whine intensified, audible through the craft’s hull. Kurtzman felt his bulky torso press against his harness as the force pushed him forward. He shuffled through some papers, looking for a copy of the two-page memo Price had supplied for the briefing. While the Lear taxied down the runway, he handed copies of the memo to the members of Able Team, each man scanning his copy when he received it.

“So they don’t want to put Stony Man Farm on the bull’s-eye,” Blancanales said without looking up from his briefing packet. “What do we know about the kidnapping attempt?”

“We found one of the agents in Gabe’s room. She’d been shot dead. According to the forensics report, she’d taken one in the stomach at close range. The bullet punched through her spine and—” Kurtzman snapped his fingers “—the lights went out instantly for her. We think Gabe’s the one who shot her. And we think he did it with her weapon.”

“Why?” Blancanales asked.

“She had scratch marks on her face and hands, bruising on her midsection, all consistent with a struggle, like she’d been tackled. Now her gun’s missing. We recovered the bullet, but it was so mangled from tearing through bone and colliding with the floor that a good ballistics match is damn near impossible.”

“Okay,” Blancanales persisted, “but why kill her?”

A cold sensation settled into Kurtzman’s gut as he spoke. “We have a couple of theories at this point. One, Gabe actually went rogue himself and used the chaos created by the raid to kill her and escape. The more likely scenario, though, is that she was actually working in concert with the kidnappers.”

“Explain,” Blancanales said.

“These guys were pros. They did what they could to haul their dead away. But they missed a couple. One of the raiders got knocked into a crevice and the bad guys had to leave him. We ran his prints and came up with some interesting results. Name was Ricardo Montoya. Apparently he worked for the Mexican government, along with about two dozen other men and women, forming an elite counter-terrorism team called Project Justice.

“Project Justice?” Blancanales said.

“Yeah. Unfortunately, Montoya and his group disappeared about six months ago, along with enough guns, ammo and explosives to supply a small army.”

“Which is precisely what they are,” Schwarz said.

“According to Mexican intelligence sources, there have been rumors that the group decided to sell its collective skills on the open market,” Kurtzman said.

“Mercs?” Lyons asked.

Kurtzman shook his head. “A couple of the group’s foot soldiers have been spotted in the Tri-Border in South America, meeting with a multitude of bad actors, everyone from Chinese triads to al Qaeda. Some of our best people—Delta Force, Navy SEALs—trained these folks in counterterrorism tactics.”

“And now they’re sharing what they know with terrorists and criminals,” Lyons said. “Beautiful. And this fits with your buddy Gabe how exactly?”

“Two weeks ago, the lady Gabe killed apparently traveled to Mexico. Puerto Vallarta to be exact. She used her own passport, so she wasn’t necessarily trying to hide her travels. A day or so later, a Mexican intelligence agent shoots a picture of a man named Pedro Vasquez meeting with an American woman in a small beachfront café. Vasquez is sort of their bagman, or business manager, depending on how you want to look at it. Mexican intelligence has been shadowing him for a couple of months, hoping to catch up with the group, but to no avail. He rarely makes direct contact, but instead relies on cloned cell phones that they constantly churn through and hand-delivered messages left at drop-off points.”

“Old school tradecraft,” Schwarz said. “Smart group.”

“No e-mails, no single home base. Frankly, they’ve stolen a page from guys like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, using primitive communications whenever possible and constantly staying on the run.”

“What happened to Vasquez?” Schwarz asked.

Kurtzman shrugged. “Not sure. He’s an attorney in Puerto Vallarta, but he recently came up missing.”

“Dead?”

“Possibly. More likely, though, he found a hole to crawl into until things settle down a little bit. The Mexicans had a stroke of luck and found the guy supplying the disposable phones, and he had a list of phone numbers for the phones. They passed this stuff along to the National Security Agency, which is hoping to catch a stray phone call, one they can trace back to the group. Once they do, the Mexican authorities have promised to drop the hammer on these bastards.”

“What are we?” Lyons said, his face flushing. “Chopped liver? I’d like to be there for that, not babysitting some damn egghead and cleaning up the Agency’s messes.”

Kurtzman nodded. “Understood, Carl. But we need to look at the bigger picture here. Someone wants to get hold of Gabe for a reason. And, if they do, they’d have something horrible in their grasp. They don’t call this worm Cold Earth for nothing. Imagine multiple meltdowns occurring at once.”

Lyons held up his hands defensively. “I get it. I get it. I just don’t like sitting on my rump when something needs done, is all.” He displayed one of his snakeskin cowboy boots. “These boots were made for kicking tail, baby.”