Don Pendleton - Line Of Honor

Bolan considered how he would have done it.

“Bear, can you get me some satellite imaging?”

“What are you looking for?”

“I want some high-magnification infrared on Dragonslayer,” Bolan replied.

“Well…” Kurtzman considered the weird request. “She isn’t moving, is she?”

“No.”

“Well, what I’m most likely to see is a pair of glowing exhausts.”

“Run a full infrared spectrum analysis,” Bolan ordered.

“Okay…that’s going to take a few minutes.”

“Fast-track it if you can.”

“All right.” Far off in Virginia, Kurtzman clicked keys and made the magic happen. “The Pentagon has two birds that have a window on your position. You officially have high priority, but it’s going to take a few moments to receive the command codes. Hold on. Syncing in your tablet…”

Bolan’s tablet peeped at him and he touched an icon. The farthest flung, northwest corner of Kenya appeared in infinite shades of gray. The view plunged down through the atmosphere as the satellite locked on to his signal and began increasing its magnification. The haphazard mess that was Lokichogio resolved into a city and then an airport. Suddenly, Bolan found himself with a top-down view of Dragonslayer.

In the infrared imaging, her engine cowls still glowed a dull bone-white against the green-gray of the fuselage from the evening’s earlier excursion.

“Tracking is locked and imager is calibrated, Striker. We looking for anything in particular?”

“Just a hunch. Let’s start from the bottom and take it through the spectrum.”

“That’s not exactly this bird’s job, but let’s see what we can do. Starting at 0.7 micrometers.”

A micrometer was one millionth of one meter, and it was often used in measuring infrared wavelengths. Point seven micrometers was the nominal edge of visible red light, and the spectrum extended out to 300. Such measurements went far beyond the ability of the human eye. Dragonslayer’s engines were one-offs, custom built specifically for a single aircraft, and powerful out of all proportion to her size. Like staring into the sun, most minor fluctuations in her infrared signature would be impossible for most instruments to detect. However, the right instrument using the proper filters could stare directly into the sun and detect heat variations all over the sun’s surface as well as within it. Bolan was looking for a fluctuation that a high-intensity infrared imaging satellite, most likely a hostile one, would detect. Particularly a satellite that was on station, for that purpose, and that knew exactly what it was looking for and had a good idea where.

Bolan was looking for a cold spot.

The image of Dragonslayer slowly changed like a black-and-white photo polarizing. “There,” Bolan said.

“I see it,” Kurtzman acknowledged. “Increasing magnification.”

The corner of Bolan’s mouth quirked as his hunch was vindicated. The back slope of the main rotor housing was spackled with mysterious spatters of glittering white light.

“Man!” Grimaldi was incensed. “Someone done gone and gooed my girl! Rat…bastards!”

It was a trick Bolan himself had used. You could design chemicals to give off infrared light at specific wavelengths, suspend them in a clear, fast-drying gel and use them to mark objects or even people for unwitting targeting or tracing. If Bolan had to bet, someone had unloaded on Dragonslayer with a silenced, high-powered air rifle loaded with the equivalent of paint balls filled with infrared-emitting gel. It wasn’t the sort of assault that would have triggered any of Dragonslayer’s security sensors, and if Bolan was the shooter he would have timed his shots to the nearly constant 24/7 roar of takeoffs and landings.

The soldier glanced over at the fuel truck and found his spackle-sniper’s position. It was currently parked fifty yards away and serviced the helicopter park. Bolan looked out across the shelters and prefabs to the airport proper.

He had a very strong feeling he was under surveillance.

“Bear, I’m calling this mission FUBAR. We’re marked and can’t operate out of this theater.”

“So the whole thing is a wash?”

“No—” Bolan stared northeast toward the cauldron that was the Sudan “—we’re just going to have to do it the hard way.”

“We’re running out of time, Striker.”

“You said Able and Phoenix are currently operating?”

“That is their status.”

“I can’t use blacksuits for this gig. I need mercs.” Blacksuits were the military and police personnel who rotated onto the Farm to provide security duty for a period of time.

“Oh…my…God…”

“Find them for me, Bear. Break into databases and find me some reliable men.”

“I don’t know if I can get that authorized by—”

“Don’t authorize it. Just do it.”

“And to finance and equip this little jaunt I am…” Kurtzman’s voice trailed off.

“I’m going to give you a password and an account number and authorize your access to an account a friend opened for me in Labuan. I had to stash away someone’s ill-gotten gains.”

Kurtzman paused a moment. “In Malaysia.”

“Yeah. Malaysia.”

“What will you need?” Kurtzman asked.

“About a squad, a lean one. Like I said, I want you to hack the databases, deal with each individual directly.”

“Anything specific you’re looking for?”

Bolan considered the Sudan again. “Any experience in the desert is good. Some French or Arabic is a plus, so would being able to ride a horse.”

“What’s the pitch?”

“I’ll make the pitch. You offer them a first-class round-trip ticket and ten thousand euros to hear me out.”

“Some of them might think its some kind of trap. I think you need to give me a little more.”

“All right, we’ll lead with the truth. Tell them it’s a rescue mission that’s probably suicide, and tell them to meet me in Chad.” Bolan smiled tiredly. “Then let’s see who comes.”

2

CIA safehouse, Abeche, Chad

Bolan regarded the files in front of him. He had turned his back on whatever flapping and squawking was going on in Washington and charted his own course. He now found himself in Chad. He trusted Kurtzman and the Stony Man cyberteam implicitly, but privately even Bolan had been forced to wonder what kind of men would fly halfway around the world on twenty-four hours’ notice to hear a suicide proposition in Chad. Bolan had his answer, and he had his men.

And his woman.

Kurtzman spoke from four thousand miles away over the tablet’s sat link. “So what do you think?”

Bolan swiped his finger across the tablet and flipped the files back to the beginning. He had been expecting to see mostly Americans. Bolan looked at the sole Yankee on his team. Yankee was a loose term. Corporal Alejandro “Sancho” Ochoa wasn’t exactly a Yankee. In his mug shot, the corporal was built like the light-middleweight boxer he had been. The tattoo of an outrageously buxom Latina in a sombrero and peasant dress covered his right arm from shoulder to elbow. A similarly shaped woman dressed like an Aztec priestess covered his left. An Aztec pyramid with the sun rising behind it covered his abdomen from belt line to sternum. Above that, San Jose 408 designated his hometown in California and its area code across his pecs.

Ochoa was grinning and throwing gang signs at the photographer. The only thing even vaguely military about the man was his high and tight haircut. Bolan shook his head. The jailhouse mug shot was hard to reconcile with the Army file photo of a grimly determined young corporal in dress uniform with the ranger tab on his shoulder.

“What happened?”

“It’s hushed up, but basically his unit was involved in a bad civilian casualty situation in Iraq. He was individually cleared, but…”