Doomsday Conquest

“Any ideas on who’s looking to help pile up the body count with SPLAT?”

Kurtzman sipped from his mug, frowning. “There was some talk, the French were mentioned, but we think it’s a smoke screen to deflect blame. Since France was dumped in the crapper on oil contracts in Iraq, however, they have been schmoozing the Iranians. I’m not one to jump on the PC bandwagon, so I don’t mind saying they’re a sneaky, backstabbing lot, with a whole lot to hide in some shady dealings with Saddam, but I don’t think they have the balls to start dumping off ordnance that could be used against Coalition Forces in Iraq, though they most likely have this technology. That aside, there are no markings, serial numbers and such that we know of on the ordnance, which leaves suspicion enough to go around it could be Germans, North Koreans or Russians…”

“Or someone on our team.”

“It’s happened before, as we all sadly know. Now, as for SPLAT, it’s the next step in laser-guided artillery and its sister version for short and intermediate range missiles. Laser guidance has been tried in the past where field artillery is concerned, but there’s a few refinements on SPLAT. Thermal, or heat-seeking guidance systems have been upgraded, for one, the use of sophisticated super microchips installed in computer systems, developed, in part, from the U.S. Navy’s SidewinderAIM-9D. You can see the tracked vehicle with eight launch rails, I’m told twelve to twenty more shells, or short-range missiles, can be stored in ready-access pallets. As for the shells, they range anywhere from 85 mm to 155 mm. On the short-range or intermediate missile range…”

“I bet you’re going to tell me they can be fitted with chemical or biological warheads. Or tactical nukes.”

“Not only that, but they can, ostensibly, hit their target down to within a few meters. Gunner in turret mount, he aims the projectile using GPS. The tracking signal processor feeds into the computer optic link using Global Positioning Satellite. Point and fire.”

“And the package can be guided in by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.”

“Yes. All things considered, Hal,” Kurtzman said, “it’s a quantum leap in laser-guided field artillery, vastly improved for bad weather and night operations.”

“Range?”

“Unknown. But, say for the sake of argument, you go with intermediate-range missiles, using this delivery system and rocket fuel…”

“You could hit Tel Aviv.”

“With your eyes closed.”

Brognola grunted around his cigar. “And we’re thinking Namak is beefing up his Army of Armageddon with SPLAT?”

“And/or arming foreign fighters across the border in Iraq,” Kurtzman said. “And if he has UAVs at his disposal to guide the projectiles to target.”

“Which bring us to Phoenix Force,” Brognola said. “What’s its status?”

“They’re ready to move when you give the green light,” Kurtzman said.

“To link up with our Tiger Ops allies,” Brognola muttered. “And I use that word ‘ally’ with great reservation.”

“I know you tried to get the Man,” Kurtzman said, referring to the President of the United States, “to cut Phoenix loose on its own, but with the instability of the area in question near and along the Iranian border, and with no telling how many enemy combatants they may be facing, a few extra guns may not hurt.”

“The jury’s still out on that, Bear. For one thing, you can’t dig up any background on who these Tiger Ops are, which agency cuts them blank checks from whoever’s slush fund. I hate having our people working with and inside lurking shadows who may have dubious agendas. Especially since we don’t know who is funneling SPLAT and whatever other high-tech ordnance to Namak and thugs.”

“I concur, which is another reason I thought we’d run with the satellite relay station. In the event Phoenix needs backup on the ground, Barb worked it out with the CIA station chief in India to have them a Gulfstream fueled and ready to fly to the battlefront on a moment’s notice. Not only that, but with the weather predicted to be nothing but tropical paradise, clear skies for the next two weeks, any satellite imagery relayed to us from them will be in crystal clarity. With the fiber-optic camera mounts Phoenix will have on their person, our guys can monitor the battlefront for them, live and in color, cyberspace directors, if you will, on the bloody stage. Likewise we will get relayed images, but they will be time-delayed by about three seconds.”

Brognola watched as Kurtzman snapped on the vast Indian Ocean, enlarging an area southwest of the subcontinent’s tip in the Maldive Islands in red.

“Emerald Base Zero,” Kurtzman said, “confirmed they are set up and ready to begin sweeping the Iran-Iraq border with the first available satellite they can park over the AIQ. What I did was provide Commander X and his team with a software program—Ghost Dreams—which will create a ghost satellite of the one they park in space. That way, whoever’s on the ground monitoring that eye in the sky will think it’s still orbiting, will even have ‘artificial imagery’ relayed to the station.”

“And, once again, our blacksuits are running the relay station in a joint effort with Tiger Ops, who will be watching the backs of their own guys,” Brognola said, then paused, watching Price. “You know what I’m thinking? It looks like these Tiger Ops have been running around in Iraq and maybe Iran for some time now, that they have in all likelihood established contacts on both sides of the fence.”

“And you suspect some or all of them may be sleeping with the enemy?”

“If they are—and like you said, Bear, it’s happened before—Phoenix will get the thumbs-down from me to take them out, and I don’t care how highly touted they came to me from the President. I may be liaison between the Farm and the Oval Office, but I won’t play anybody’s fool when it comes to putting our people in harm’s way. Barb? I gather you’ve found something I received from my Shadow Man that’s grabbed your eye?”

“Perhaps, but I’ll need to make a phone call or two to some old contacts of mine at the NSA. Before you arrived, Bear, Akira and I were kicking around some ideas about this ‘incident’ in North Dakota. It smacks of a military test gone wrong. In this instance, terribly wrong. Our sat pics show civilian casualties, full military quarantine, denials being issued to whatever press can get close enough before they’re driven back. From the facts given to you by your source, I’m thinking there’s a strong possibility…well, your source states this Eagle Nebula is creating superweapons of the future, including, as unbelievable as it may sound, flying war vans that can be fitted with state-of-the-art hardware. Moreover, he hints that maybe a few loose cannons are selling whatever the supertechnology to our enemies.” She tapped her keyboard, framing a fighter jet on the wall monitor. “That is Lightning Bat, allegedly the prototype super fighter jet of tomorrow. With its swept-back Delta wings and arrowhead configuration, it appears just like an F-117 Stealth, only with quantum leap variants. According to your source, it has a top speed of Mach 10. To go ten times the speed of sound, your intel alludes to some type of super combustion ramjet, using air for fuel.”

“Only, Lightning Bat is powered by a nuclear reactor,” Kurtzman added.

“Which I find damn hard to believe. You have the problem of the tremendous weight of a reactor alone, for one thing, all that steel and concrete housing,” Brognola said. “You’re releasing huge sustained amounts of energy, which is basically heat, I believe, producing what is steam to keep a turbogenerator going strong. You’ve got to keep the reactor cooled by water…”

“We believe it’s done at high altitudes,” Kurtzman said, “by air pumped through vents to cool the reactor. Somehow, we don’t know how, but they’ve purportedly done it at Eagle Nebula, weight problem and all. Problem is, the single greatest fear and why no aircraft before now has been propelled by nuclear energy should be the obvious crash landing in a heavily populated area. Depending on how much uranium or plutonium is used, you would most definitely have a Chernobyl to deal with.”

“And we’re thinking Lightning Bat’s test run,” Brognola said, “was a belly flop, and that they’ve got radioactive clouds spreading over half of North Dakota?”

“No,” Price said. “We’re thinking its payload was launched by some sort of computer malfunction. Or by direct sabotage.”

“And these payloads are suspected to be?”

“Conventional cluster bombs,” Kurtzman said.

“And your man in the know,” Price added, “claims the bomb bay can hold nukes, and that a nuke test run is on the drawing board for Nevada. Cluster nukes, he calls them, one designed to go off after the other in varying outreaching circles of obliteration around the compass. The payloads are lowered on something like a crossbar, which allows for a simultaneous launch of four warheads, north, south, east and west. Whatever happened out there I think warrants investigation. And if weapons or technology is being hijacked to be sold on the international black market…”

Brognola nodded. There were a lot of blanks that needed filling in, and if there was one type of savage he detested it was a traitor wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, selling out for money or twisted ideology, it didn’t matter. Treason, he believed, deserved the ultimate rough justice.

“Okay, what’s the status on Able Team?” Brognola inquired.

Price cleared her throat. “Carl and Gadgets,” she said, referring to Carl Lyons and Hermann Schwarz, two of the three commandos of Able, “are in Chicago.”

“Let me guess. R and R,” he offered, “tearing up the town. Gentlemen’s clubs, all-night drinking binges and the possibility I may get a phone call they need bail money.”

“How well you know our prodigal sons,” Kurtzman quipped.

“Yeah, well, there may come a day they’ll rue when Daddy hangs up the phone. So, what’s the story on Rosario?” Brognola asked, meaning the third leg of the team, Rosario Blancanales, sometimes referred to as the Politician.

“I arranged to have him sent to Vegas,” Price said.

“I didn’t know he was a gambler.”

“He’s not,” Price said, and tapped her keyboard. “He is.”

Brognola looked at the wizened face on the wall monitor. The eyes were hidden by dark sunglasses, a mane of snow-white hair flowing to the shoulders of his aloha shirt.

“That,” Price said, “is Ezekiel Jacobs, the creator of Lightning Bat and its purported nuclear-powered capabilities, among other superweapons systems, as confirmed by your source’s intelligence. An Israeli national, he was educated in the States, then disappeared for a number of years after a brief stint with NASA. The NSA says he worked for the Russians during that missing time on a space program to someday see man travel deep space. Apparently a number of his theories, travel at light speed using controlled bursts of fission reactions, was a little too radical for the NASA crowd. He begged for funding to create what he called the Dynamo Matrix Program—again deep space travel at light speed—raised a stink, was fired by NASA and, it appears, sold his services to the Russians. He’s considered a genius, however, in the field of aerospace engineering and physics.”

“And he spends his free time at the slot machines?” Brognola said.

“Blackjack. He can count cards so well he’s been banned from several casinos. Now, apparently, he’s switched to dice just so he can get through the front door, or not end up in an unmarked grave in the desert.”

“So what’s Pol doing out there?”

“Helping an old friend from his Vietnam tour,” Price answered.

“Come again?”