Don Pendleton - The Chameleon Factor

“Been wanting to do that for quite a while,” a guard snarled, panting from the exertion.

A man alongside hawked juicily and then spit on the sprawled bodies. “Damn Feds should have blown their heads off when they were captured. Keeping these assholes alive is like sticking your dick in a working blender.”

“The chair ain’t good enough for them,” another snarled. “I got a brother in the Navy. Ya know how many of our guys these bastards aced with their trick bombs?”

“Don’t let the warden hear you say that,” another warned, glancing at the wall guards hidden behind their bright lights and stone walls. “Or you’re out on your ass. This state doesn’t execute prisoners anymore. It’s not cost effective.”

“Cost effective? And what about justice?”

The smaller man shrugged. “So move to Texas.”

“Check the shackles before removing the black boxes,” the lieutenant directed.

“And you,” he added to the colonel, “constantly keep your weapons on these prisoners. If they make another move, kill them.”

Loosening the flap covering his holstered 10 mm Falcon, the colonel nodded.

Weakened by the stun shields, the prisoners didn’t make a second try for freedom and submitted meekly to being herded onto the armored transport and chained in place. This fooled nobody, and the bus guards were dripping sweat from the tension until the four were shackled into different chairs of bare steel bolted and welded directly to the armored floor of the transport vehicle.

“Good luck,” the lieutenant said as the armored door closed.

The colonel flipped the prison guard a salute as the armored door cycled shut and locked tight.

“And good riddance,” another prison guard muttered softly, removing his protective helmet. “I hope the bus crashes and the prisoners burn alive.”

“Wishful thinking,” the lieutenant said coldly. “Damn the politicians and lawyers. Men like that should just be hung. Cost effective or not, it sure as hell makes it hard for them to kill again once their neck is stretched.”

“Amen to that, chief,” another man agreed.

“I wonder why the government kept them alive,” another muttered. “It’s not like they could be used for anything.”

Throwing back his head, the lieutenant laughed for the first time in days. “And who the hell would have enough balls to try and use the goddamn Black Vipers for anything?”

“Come on,” a corporal said on a sigh, running a gloved across his sweaty face. “Let’s get out of this gear and go have a beer.”

Turning to face the prison, the guards tested their equipment once more to make sure everything was in proper working condition, then marched back into the sterilized confines of Cassatt Federal Penitentiary. High on the walls overhead, the unseen guards watched their every move purely out of habit. The rifle marksmen watched everything and trusted nobody. That was the job, and they were damn good at it.

OVER TWO MILES away, far outside the circle of light around the supermax facility, three men with Starlite scopes stood alongside a battered gray SUV, the license plates obscured with mud permanently glued into place.

In unison, Able Team tracked the progress of the USP transport along Highway 37 as it headed due south away from the supermax facility. The man in front was blond, with a crew cut and ice-blue eyes. The next was stocky with wavy salt-and-pepper hair, and the third had dark brown hair and a full mustache. Swaying slightly in the evening breeze so that they wouldn’t stand out from the rustling forest, all three of the men were wearing camouflage-colored jumpsuits designed for urban warfare.

“Stony One to Stone Two,” Carl “Ironman” Lyons said into his throat mike, Starlite still pressed to his face. “We are in position. Copy?”

“Roger that, Stony One,” a gruff voice replied in the earphone. “We rendezvous at Point Charlie in one hour. Over.”

“Ten-four,” Lyons replied. “See you there. Over and out.”

“Don’t be late,” Rosario “The Politician” Blancanales said in the background.

Climbing into the SUV, Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz grimly added, “If they are, then we’re dead, chum.”

AFTER AN HOUR of driving, the countryside of South Carolina began to change from gray grassland into a plush forest of tall trees and countless small brooks. Shackled to their metal seats, the four members of the Black Vipers sneered at the beauty of nature as if they preferred the concrete corridors of the federal jail.

Glancing about to see if anybody was watching, the largest and most heavily muscled of the Vipers jerked hard on the chain holding his wrists to the bolt in the floor, and instantly a gas vent hidden in the ceiling sprayed him with Mace. The terrorist flopped in his seat fighting for breath, his eyes and tongue almost popping from his flushed face.

“That’s warning number one,” the colonel said from the front of the bus, a wall of thick bars separating the two sections of the vehicle. “Warning number two is a lot worse. So behave, convict, or else.”

“I am a political prisoner of the American government,” the tallest member of the four said. “Once more I beg for asylum from the overlords of Washington.”

“Oh, shut up,” a younger guard said, jacking the slide of the sleek black Neostead shotgun.

Designed by the new democratic government of South Africa, the high-tech alleysweeper had two tubular magazines and could be switched from one to the other by the flick of a selector switch. For this journey, the guard had the first magazine filled with stun bags, the other mag filled with fléchette rounds that could reduce a man into hamburger in under a heartbeat.

The terrorist opened his mouth to speak again, then decided against it and leaned back in his hard chair, his thoughts seething with revenge.

“What the hell?” the guard riding alongside the driver said with a puzzled expression. Frantically, he began to work the controls of the built-in radio switching frequencies.

“Something’s wrong,” he said swiftly over a shoulder. “We’ve lost contact with USP HQ, and every channel is filled with hash.”

“Jamming?” the colonel demanded, releasing the flap over his side arm. The ivory handle of a Colt .45 pistol was revealed, a line of deep gouges in the grip appearing to be hand-carved notches.

The guard in the front passenger seat looked up with a pale face. “Confirmed, I can’t get a bounce signal off a repeater tower. The airwaves are being jammed,” he replied succinctly. “But whether or not it’s for us, or some natural phenomenon, I have no idea.”

The guards were silent as the armored bus jounced slightly onto a picturesque stone bridge.

“Sir, if this is an escape attempt…” the younger guard started to say, flicking the switch to the second magazine of fléchette rounds.

“Don’t kill them yet, Corporal,” the colonel said, pulling the Colt and jacking the slide.

Going to the front windshield, he looked out into the starry night. “Maybe this is just another weird solar storm like last year that knocked out all of the satellites for a day. Could be anything, or nothing. I’m not going to ace these men just because we’re not sure.”

In tense silence, the armored bus rolled off the bridge and onto the paved roadway once more. A split second later the night was split apart by a violent thunderclap. Fiery light blossomed from behind the transport, and rocks began pounding the bus in a deafening rain of debris.

“Son of a bitch!” the driver cried as the flaming shrapnel washed over the armored transport, breaking out the rear windows. “The bridge is gone! Completely gone!”

“That bomb missed us by a heartbeat,” the colonel growled. “Get us the hell out of here, man!”