Don Pendleton - The Chameleon Factor

“Where’s Hunt, anyway?” Blancanales asked, glancing at the empty fourth chair at the end of the row of computer stations.

Huntington “Hunt” Wethers had been teaching cybernetics at Berkeley when he was recruited into Stony Man. With wings of gray hair at his temples, and smoking his briarwood pipe, Wethers looked like the stereotypical college professor. Yet he possessed a facility with computers that few other experts had.

“Hunt’s on a special assignment with Mack,” Price explained after a moment.

That was an unexpected answer. “In the field?”

She shrugged. “Mack asks, and he gets.”

Lyons stood. “Good luck to them both,” he said with feeling. There had to be a major problem for Striker to request assistance from anybody, and double so for him to ask for a desk jockey like the professor.

“Better save it,” Hawkins said, pushing away from the wall. “Because I think we’re going to need all of the luck we can get to bust this nut.”

“Alert,” Delahunt announced calmly. “We have a break in the clouds.”

Everybody turned. The main wall monitor filled with a view of western Alaska, then jumped closer in a staggered series of zoom shots until the screen was filled with a real-time view of the destroyed target zone and the smoking ruin of the research lab. The ambulances had come and gone, leaving only chalk outlines everywhere on the ground. Often, there was only the outline of a limb, or a torso, instead of an entire body.

Somebody merely grunted, while another muttered a curse.

“Barbara, tell Jack to get fueled and ready for liftoff,” Lyons ordered brusquely. “We’ll meet him on the front lawn in ten minutes.”

“Cowboy already has your spare equipment ready to go. Along with the proper ID cards, weapons permits, all the usual,” she told him.

Both teams headed for the door, and a grim-faced Encizo tapped in the exit code this time.

“We bloody well could be walking into a trap, mate,” McCarter commented.

As the armored door started to cycle open, Lyons looked backward at the pictures on the wall monitor, the hundreds of chalk outlines amid the smoking rubble.

“No,” he replied in a voice of stone. “They are.”

Flight 18, above the North Pacific

The recessed ceiling lights in the 747 flickered for a moment.

“Hey,” a man said, taking the cell phone away from his ear. “What the hell is going on?”

“What’s the matter?” his wife asked, lowering her magazine.

“This damn thing is dead!” he raged, hitting the device.

Gwenneth started forward to talk to the upset passenger, when she noticed that across the plane, a woman was shaking her airphone and also muttering annoyances. Two phones died at the same time? How odd.

“Hu, Yuki,” Gwenneth said to the other flight attendants. “Go calm down the passengers. I’ll report this to the captain.”

Yuki nodded vigorously and started down the aisle, beaming a pleasant smile.

“It’s nothing,” Hu scoffed, sliding another packaged meal into a microwave to be warmed. “Just a coincidence.”

“Maybe,” Gwenneth said, biting a lip. “Or maybe it’s a freak magnetic storm that’ll throw off the navigation and make us hours late. Either way, regulations say that the captain must be informed at once.”

Hu shrugged in a noncommittal manner, and Gwenneth pushed past the man to start for the cockpit. Moving through first class, she stopped as the door to the lavatory opened, almost hitting her in the face. It was Mrs. Coleson, the pregnant American woman from coach.

“You really shouldn’t be here, dear,” Gwenneth started to say, when the woman grabbed her forcibly by the arm and shoved something hard into her stomach.

“I have a weapon,” Davis Harrison growled in his real voice. “Stay calm and you may get to live.”

Her eyes went wide at the realization that it was a man wearing a disguise. Quickly, Gwenneth started to pull air into her lungs for a full-throated scream, but Harrison rammed the gun into her stomach, almost knocking her out. Gasping for breath, Gwenneth felt her eyes well with tears as she fought to draw in a ragged breath.

“Oh, dear,” Harrison said, sounding like a woman again. “You’ve go the flu, too, eh? Here, let me help you sit down.”

Gwenneth tried to fight free from the other person, but his grip was like iron, and every move only earned her another jab in the belly. Her vision was starting to go red from the lack of air, and a wave of weakness swept over her. This had to be a hijacking…terrorists! But how to warn…

Something slammed into her face, and Gwenneth had a brief flash of the steel-plated door to the cockpit before the universe turned black and she tumbled into a warm darkness.

“Yes?” a voice said from the other side.

Dropping the unconscious woman to the deck, Harrison pushed the door open, its electronic lock disabled from the humming Chameleon strapped to his belly. Stepping inside, he swung the deadly Tech-9 about, marking his targets. The crew was three, pilot, copilot and navigator, exactly as there should be. No surprises here. Excellent.

“Hey, that door was locked!” the navigator cried out in confusion, spinning from his console. Then he raised an eyebrow at the pregnant woman holding an automatic weapon of some kind. Shit! A hijacking!

“Nobody move,” Harrison ordered.

The copilot fumbled under his seat, while the navigator snatched a small black box from the wall and lunged forward to thrust the Talon stun gun at the intruder, the silvery prongs crackling with electricity. The Chinese man got only halfway before Harrison fired from the hip.

Hardly any flame or smoke erupted from the muzzle, and only a subdued click was heard, as if the weapon had misfired. But the navigator dropped the Talon as he was slammed backward against his console, blood spurting from his throat.

Harrison fired twice more, only clicks sounding. The navigator writhed under the sledgehammer blows, his chest seeming to explode and a radar screen behind the man noisily cracked as a slug drilled through. Exhaling life itself, the shuddering man fell to the cold deck, blood pouring from the gaping holes in his body.

“Alert, Anchorage!” the pilot said quickly into her throat mike. “Code four, repeat, we have a code four in progress!”

But there was no reply from the airport; not even the soft crackle of static came over her earphones. The radio was completely dead.

That was when she noticed that most of the control board was dead, many of the instruments giving wildly impossible readings. Shit and fire, her ship was in some sort of a jamming field! There was no other possible explanation.

Reaching under the chair, she thumbed a hidden button. Then something hit her shoe, and the pilot glanced down to see a misshapen lead slug on the deck. From the pistol? But there had been no noise. What was going on here?

“That emergency signal will never be heard.” Harrison chuckled, enjoying their confusion. On impulse, he reached up and pulled off his annoying wig.

The pilot scowled at the sight of the hijacker’s bald head, the skin stubbled with hair. Not bald, shaved, details she would need to remember to help convict him in court before the Red Army firing squad blew off his face.

“Don’t hurt anybody else,” the copilot said in Chinese, raising both hands. “We will obey. What do you want?”

The hijacker frowned at the copilot, and the pilot realized he didn’t speak Chinese. That could be useful in the future.

“This is foolish,” the pilot began in English. “Once we move off course—”

“Shut up! Do you need the copilot to fly this plane?”