Warren Murphy: Chained Reaction

"Go," said the chief in the deep soft voice that the very rich often have because they never have to raise their voices to get anything.

"When do we get the list of ... er, subjects?" asked Bleech.

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"You have it in your Norfolk files. We would like fifteen out of twenty."

"Yes sir. You'll have them within two days."

"I don't want welts on them. No scars either. Welts and scars offend people."

"Not a mark," Bleech promised. "Prime, sir."

Colonel Bleech did not go back to bed but dressed in combat fatigues. He would return to bed in two days. He couldn't sleep now anyhow.

He walked across the main camp compound under the dark misty sky of predawn morning. He smelled the moist heavy breezes of the nearby swamp and heard his solitary footsteps on the parade ground gravel, like crunching drums from an approaching one-man army.

He headed for the intelligence security branch that was leakproof because it was unique. There was no piece of paper in it that could be stolen, that could be given to the FBI or CIA or Congress or anyone who could expose the special unit and what Colonel Bleech now considered his sacred mission.

He had always hated paperwork anyhow. And now he would examine maps and reports and lists without ever touching one piece of paper.

At the north side of the compound, two guards with submachine guns stood over a flat level square of khaki-painted steel.

He nodded to the flat metal square beneath their feet, and thought that if one planted flowers in a cold frame above that door, it could become completely invisible.

The two guards had asbestos gloves clipped to their belts in case Colonel Bleech wanted to enter

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during- the day. The metal shield got awfully hot under the summer sun of South Carolina.

It was comparatively cool now and the two men bent over and put their bare hands under the metal slab. With a grunting effort, they hoisted it, revealing a white concrete stairwell.

Bleech's riding boots made sharp clicking sounds as he descended.

"All right, put it back now," he said, impatiently holding a key at a lock. It would not enter the lock slot unless the heavy metal slab above was shut. The meager moonlight disappeared and the stairwell became dark as a grave as Colonel Bleech pressed his key into the lock, and the door opened and a soft light, increasing gradually, filled the room ahead.

In the center of the room was a console with a screen, one chair, and a set of buttons. This room was simply access to the accumulated intelligence of the cause. When he had seen the room for the first time, when he was initiated into the cause, when the chief himself showed him this room, he knew it was possible to achieve the grand mission.

For here was America at the push of a button, and he pushed Norfolk, Virginia, and he saw the map of the city connected by tunnel and bridge to mainland sections and what security was on each and what the city police did and the state police did and who, as of two days ago, was generally doing what to make the city operate.

He pressed keys for an update and new data flashed onto the console screen. He pressed keys to get the names, locations, and pictures of the twenty. He asked for an update on their where-

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abouts, no later than noon. He pressed in emergency. The beauty of a system like this, he thought, was that people at the other end of the computer did not have to have any knowledge of who or what they were gathering information for.

Thousands could be working for the cause, and not one would have to know it. Which was why Colonel Bleech believed that it would be possible to achieve the grand mission.

Here he was, looking at the innards of a city, and he was going to go in and neatly take what he wanted, then leave. There was no law or force that could stop him.

Bleech worked out three plans for the raid. It was not like he was inventing them at the moment. He had worked on them for months. He ran them through the computer for an evaluation. And it wasn't that one or at best two would work. They would all work; it was a question of which would work best.

He liked the answers the computer gave back. The assignment was easy, a piece of cake.

The only real problem was the twenty targets. By their nature, they had no exact pattern. Sometimes this pool hall or that bar when the welfare checks arrived, sometimes just an abandoned building. Some would probably be in the hands of the police.

Colonel Bleech refined his plans from the isolated intelligence room as he gave orders to the computer. He was thirsty and hungry and tired and his stomach groaned when he signaled the guards upstairs to open the heavy metal lid.

When they did a light went on in the computer

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room and a screen against the wall showed who was standing up there. Satisfied that it was the two guards who should be there, Bleech put his key back into the door and walked out. He checked his watch. He and his unit would reach Norfolk with hours to spare. His plan was to keep everyone out until the last possible moment, then make tight sweeps.

He would raid in daylight, for 9 A.M. was the optimum hour, the time when the targets would most likely be asleep in their homes.

When Bleech saw his selected units drive up in drab olive buses, his heart soared. He had planned this but seeing it made him know it would work.

They looked so real in white hats and blue uniforms with white leggings and the SP bands on their arms. They looked like two busloads of Shore Patrol, quite common in a Navy base town. Only Colonel Bleech wore the khaki.

He kept his men waiting in the hot summer sun while he went to sleeping quarters, changed, had four English muffins, and they were off.

They were at the outskirts of Norfolk by dawn and his stomach was hopping with the tension of his first mission. He ordered the two buses into the outskirts of neighboring Virginia Beach, just so they could keep moving without entering the crucial target zones.

He went through an equipment check again. Proper rounds of ammunition per man, proper weapons, the new nylon limb chains-which were far superior to the old heavy metal ones-hypodermic needles, intense sedatives. They were all there.

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The buses moved through Oceana, Ocean-bridge, and then, at 8:37 A.M., were in Norfolk and then Granby Street. They drove to the designated check points and then, at this bright morning hour when those who were going to work were at or near work, his unit struck.

The first spot was the Afro-Natural Wig Factory on Jefferson Street, R. Gonzalez, Proprietor. The crew was quickly through the plate glass, ramming it down with two sharp jabs of poles. A beautiful mulatto woman with cream brown skin but fiery black eyes stood inside the entrance of the small shop with a broom. She was brushed aside quickly.

Four men were into the upstairs and the first bedroom on the right. They were down instantly with a groggy drunken young black man.

"This is him. Positive indent, sir. Lucius Jackson."

"That his sister you pushed?" asked Bleech. He looked around. "Where'd she go?"

"That was her."

"Okay, let's go."

The unit was working the street, some groups entering through doors, others through windows. Colonel Bleech knew he could not keep track of the targets because he was too busy making sure officers and men moved as part of one great invasion of this street.

In ninety seconds they were gone, to another street for another raid. Eight seconds later, R. Gonzalez, Proprietor, appeared in the front door of the Afro-Natural Wig Factory, a .44 Magnum in her hand, and cursed when she saw the street

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was empty. She had wanted to shoot herself somebody.

Bleeeh was ecstatic. Not a single member of the unit had made a mistake. The intense sedatives worked perfectly. Practiced hands inserted the plastic tongue holders that prevented a drugged person from choking on his own tongue. The nylon chains bound wrists behind backs and feet up tight together at the chest. Like curled laundry bundles, the targets were slid into luggage compartments in the sides of the buses. Unlike the normal Greyhound or Trailways buses, these compartments had oxygen pumped into them.