Shadow Strike

Tiffany paused as if waiting for Bolan to deny that such a thing could possibly exist. When that didn’t happen, he added, “I don’t carry any of those. Don’t know anybody who does! The damn things malfunction half the time. They’ve killed more Russians than anybody else. Still…” He shrugged.

Bolan felt as if an important piece of a puzzle had just clicked into place. North Korean mines and Russian torpedoes. Somehow those two were connected. Was Loki going to declare war on the rest of the world? That made no sense whatsoever. Something very odd was going on here, and Bolan had a bad feeling that a lot more innocent civilians were going to die if he didn’t figure this out fast.

“Okay, we’re done,” he said, holstering the Beretta. “I leave, and you go out of business, because if we ever meet again…” He didn’t finish the promise and saw in the other man’s eyes that it was not necessary.

“Yeah, sure, no problem.” Tiffany sighed, crushing out the cigar in a glass ashtray. “Always wanted to retire to…ah…Florida?”

“Mike, I don’t care where, just leave tonight,” Bolan stated, walking backward out of the room. “Leave tonight.”

Staying in the chair for several minutes, Tiffany plucked splinters from his aching arm while debating his options. Standing, he started to reach for the Glock in the drawer, then abruptly changed his mind and turned to move the picture of the congressman and reveal a small wall safe. Twirling the dial, he opened the door and began stuffing packets of cash into his pockets.

“Smart move,” Bolan whispered from the darkness outside.

Trying not to shiver, Tiffany emptied the safe, then headed directly for the nearest emergency exit. First a bunch of foreigners wipe out his dock crew, and then some hardcase blows open his Brooklyn operation like he was the wrath of God. It was obviously time for him to find a nice tropical island someplace where the rum flowed freely and the native girls wore only smiles and sunshine.

Keeping his expression neutral, Tiffany waited for the elevator doors to sigh shut before finally allowing himself a brief smile. At least he had been able to bluff that big son of a bitch about one thing. Loki hadn’t stolen a couple hundred of the North Korean mines, but four thousand! Enough to blow the city of New York out of the water, or sink a dozen battleships.

But that was his problem now, Tiffany smugly thought, rearranging the packets of cash stuffed into his clothing.

Suddenly, a figure in the darkness blocked his way. “Half a mil in advance would mean a cool million dollars for a couple hundred underwater mines that sell legally for a grand apiece,” Bolan said from the shadows. “Not even you overcharge that much, Michael. What else did they get?”

His elation melting away, Tiffany felt a cold fury well within him, and he made a desperate grab for the Glock. There was a bright flash of light, a brief pain, and he fell forward into an inky blackness that seemed to extend forever.

Returning to his car, Bolan saw drunk men staggering away into the night, then heard police sirens and fire trucks wailing in the distance. The club parking lot was empty by now, and even the doorman was gone.

Stowing his weapons in the truck of the car, Bolan drove off into the hard rain. He had allowed Tiffany to lie about the amount of mines stolen only to salve the man’s ego. Let subjects think they outwitted you on a small point, and they’d spill their guts about all the rest. That trick usually worked, just not this time. Bad luck, nothing more.

When he was several blocks away, Bolan turned onto Flatbush Avenue and headed toward Manhattan. Okay, Mr. Loki had obviously taken a lot more than a couple hundred underwater mines. Maybe it had been several thousand. The big question was, what did Loki plan to do with enough military ordnance to launch the Empire State Building into orbit? The possibilities were endless, and he didn’t like any of them.

As the car rumbled across the Brooklyn Bridge, Bolan flipped open a cell phone and tapped in a memorized number. It was answered immediately.

“Yeah?” a sleepy voice said with a yawn.

“Striker here,” Bolan said brusquely. “We need to talk.”

“Where?”

“Flintstone.” Then the soldier closed the phone and tossed it out the window. It hit the steel lattice of the bridge and shattered, the pieces falling through the grating to sprinkle into the turgid waters of the Hudson River.

CHAPTER TWO

Azores Islands

The sea foamed white and clean before the cutting prow of the HMS Reliant, while behind the destroyer a school of bottlenose dolphins played in the churning wake.

Staying close to the Reliant were three heavily armed frigates. Their overlapping Doppler radar ceaselessly swept the sky above, and state-of-the-art sonar probed the murky depths below. The missile pods were primed, depth charges and torpedoes were ready for action, and sailors stood on the decks cradling L-85 assault rifles. But they lounged against the gunwales, kept their faces to the sun and mostly talked about women.

The entire crew of the convoy was fully prepared for battle, but expected nothing more serious than a mild case of sunburn to happen. Everybody knew the monthly trip to South Africa was about as dangerous an assignment as standing guard at Buckingham Palace when the royal family was away on vacation. Boring, but necessary for the general good of the United Kingdom.

It was early in the morning, with the sun still low on the horizon. But the sky was clear, the wind warm. And standing on the flying bridge of the Reliant, Captain Olivia Taylor, wearing a pair of nonregulation sunglasses, was watching the dolphins splash and play, and occasionally feed on the smaller fish that were attracted to the churning foam, incorrectly thinking it was food. Evolution in action.

Opening a bottle of suntan lotion, Taylor spread some on her exposed arms and neck, working up to her cheeks. This assignment was a cakewalk, as her American father had liked to say, a task so easy it would border on dull if it hadn’t been for the vital nature of their cargo.

Roughly a hundred years ago, Great Britain had owned most of South Africa, and was making a serious attempt to get the rest of the continent, when the Boer War erupted, closely followed by Zulu uprisings. Then there was the Great War, World War II…and every conflict seemed to whittle down their African holdings a little bit more until they were reduced to being landowners in just a few locations.

Closing the cap on the bottle, Taylor had to smile. But those last few were choice locations, indeed. Snug in the bowels of her destroyer was the yearly run from the Imperial Gold Mines UK Limited—a hold full of gold bullion worth millions of pounds. Which was why the Royal Navy had been assigned to convey the gold from Johannesburg to London, the final destination being the main vault of the Bank of England, the most impregnable fortress this side of Fort Knox in the United States.

“Cup of tea, Skipper?” a young officer asked, stepping onto the flying bridge. He was carrying two large plastic mugs, the bottoms oddly curved.

“Lord, yes, James! My thanks,” Taylor said with a smile. Taking the mug, she drained half of it in a single gulp. “Ah, like blood to a vampire!”

Chuckling, Lieutenant James Jones set his mug on the railing of the platform. Its curved bottom fit perfectly over the steel pipe and locked into place with a snap. “Now, that sounds like a line from a bloody Hammer film back in the seventies.”

“Ah yes, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.”

“To be honest, Skipper, I was thinking more along the lines of those curvy Hammer Girls, and their rather famous low-cut gowns.”

She took another sip. “I’m sure you were, Lieutenant. To each his own. Peter Cushing is more to my liking. The nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat!”

The officer laughed. “As you say, Skipper, to each their own.”

Just then, a wing of fully armed RAF striker fighters streaked by overhead.

“Cheeky bastards, rattling our chains like that,” Jones muttered, squinting at the disappearing jets.

“Just doing their job, Lieutenant,” Taylor replied, finishing off her tea. “Any sandwiches in the galley?”

“Yes, ma’am. What would you like?”

She laughed. “I’ll get them myself, James. No sense—”

Unexpectedly, a loudspeaker bolted to the armored wall of the warship crackled to life. “Captain to the bridge, please! Captain to the bridge!”

With a sigh, Taylor hurried inside, passing off the empty mug to a waiting rating. The young sailor took it, saluted and scurried away.

“Trouble?” Taylor asked the room in general.

Control panels lined the room, a dozen computer screens showing the exact state of everything important on the navy ship, from the temperature of the main bearings in the Rolls-Royce engines, to the amount of 30 mm ammunition left in the bunkers for the forward Oerlikon miniguns. A dozen men and women were sitting at their posts, heads bent solemnly over the controls like priests in prayer.

“Unknown, ma’am,” said an ensign, rubbing the back of his neck. “But with this much glimmer in our belly, I thought it wise to be safe instead of sorry.”

“Fair enough,” Taylor said, pushing back her cap. “Status, please, chief.”

“We’re traveling the exact same route we took going down to South Africa,” Chief Michelson replied crisply, his gaze locked on a glowing sonar screen. “We know every hill and rock under these waters, and there’s something new below. Something big.”

“A dead whale?” Jones asked curiously. He had followed the captain inside.

“No, much larger than that, sir. Sonar says irregular shapes, mounds of it. Could be a wrecked ship.”