Don Pendleton: Extermination

“You must bid higher than your opponent. The opening bid is one-fifth of your nation’s population. Those willing to sacrifice the most people will survive total extinction. Those willing to resist will be completely exterminated.”

Bezoar smiled, though there was no mirth or warmth in it. “Have a nice day, sir.”

The video ended.

Brognola felt as if he had to scrub himself down. He’d only been watching for ten minutes, but the horror carried the weight of hours. He set down the small smartphone, plucked out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.

“They either have someone inside Homeland Security or they have good spies. Given the aerial footage…” the President began. He rested a hand on Brognola’s shoulder. “Stony Man is our only option. Bezoar is insane, asking for me to kill one in five people.”

The smartphone beeped. The two men looked at it.

It was a text message.

“France has a bid to kill one of every two of its citizens. Make up your mind quickly.”

The Oval Office fell silent as the specter of doom hung over the big Fed and the leader of the free world.

America’s Ultra-Cover Intelligence Agency

Stony Man ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

One of the things that Trooper Eugene Robespierre liked about the state he’d sworn to protect was that all of Iowa felt like a small town. He was one of less than four hundred state troopers who saw to the safety of the roads and supplemented local law enforcement. His Ford Crown Victoria was fifty miles out of Lansing, the end of Iowa Highway 9 and this current leg of his patrol. In Lansing he’d spell himself for the night before returning to the District 10 barracks back on Oelwein. This was a once-a-month roll for Robespierre, mainly because this corner of Iowa was quiet. The road twisted and bent to find the path of least resistance between the rippling hills and strips of farmland.

“Unit 327, Unit 327, call in,” his radio chirped.

Robespierre picked up the receiver. “I’m here, Janice. What’s going on?”

“We’ve got a call from the Allamakee Sheriff’s Department about a problem in the town of Albion,” the dispatcher, Janice Clayton, told him.

“Problem?” Robespierre asked.

“It seems like there’s a riot in Albion,” Clayton said.

Robespierre had never been near Albion, a quiet little stretch of farmland that had never boasted more than six hundred souls. The town had been so peaceful, the only reason he knew anything about it was that his best friend had been born and raised there, and railed about how absolutely boring the place had been.

“Riot,” he repeated. He was already turning back to the west. The computer beside him in the squad car was already determining the best route to Albion by GPS. From what Robespierre remembered, Albion was a place where everyone was well fed. It wasn’t in the cornfields of central Iowa, but this area still had pockets of farmland between rows of trees and the rolling hills. Some were conventional crop fields, but a few orchards were sprinkled here and there. Even as he gunned the engine, racing toward Albion, he noticed that something akin to a tornado had landed by the roadside.

He stomped on the brakes, skidding to a halt beside a fruit stand that had been assaulted. Broken, half-eaten fruit was scattered everywhere, and there were bodies littered among the mushy remains. Robespierre pulled his radio.

“Dispatch, we’ve got eight casualties at roadside, by marker 12,” the trooper called. He hit the dash computer, transmitting his GPS position to the barracks.

“We’re aware of them. All were announced DOA by the local sheriffs’ deputies,” Clayton replied.

“He left the bodies out here?” Robespierre asked, sliding out from behind the wheel to get a closer look. It might have been a trick of the light, or smears of mashed fruit, but a couple of the corpses on the ground looked as if bites had been taken out of them. Another body lay just outside the carnage of twisted corpses and pulped food. The man had been wearing flannel, the front of his shirt hanging in ragged strips where it had been torn by the unmistakable violence of a twelve-gauge shotgun. Unlike some of the others lying amid the ruins and carcasses, his face was fully visible. There was no apparent reason as to why he had been shot, except for the fact that his belly was distended to the point where shirt buttons around his stomach had popped off.

“The hell?” Robespierre muttered, hoping someone was out there who could give him an answer.

“Robey, you need to get to town,” Clayton replied. “The deputies are in deep shit. They need backup now!”

Robespierre turned back, but he had seen more that was unusual among the dead.

One of them, a young woman, had apparently asphyxiated trying to swallow gulps of squash. Her belly was distended, too, recalling the images of horror from Ethiopian and Somali droughts. The woman’s mouth and cheeks were stuffed with a choking mass of pulp, her crazed eyes wide with terror.

She’d literally eaten herself to death, and Robespierre looked to see half-eaten fruit scattered in a trail leading back to Albion. “How many deputies are on scene?”

“Three of them, but they’re running out of ammunition,” Clayton answered. “I’ve also diverted more troopers, but you might want to make sure you have easy access to your rifle.”

“Running out of ammo,” Robespierre repeated. “Are they in a restaurant or a grocery store?”

“Uh…no. A delivery truck, refrigerated, for produce,” Clayton said. “How did you know the call-in was about a food riot?”

“Because I saw the damage done at a roadside fruit stand,” Robespierre told her. “I don’t get it. There’s all kinds of food around, and these people are scrambling to down so much that they choke on it?”

He’d reached the rise of a hill and looked down on the small town of Albion. Bodies were strewed in the road running through the center of town, and fires had broken out in different corners of the little burg. Robespierre looked at the Smith & Wesson Military and Police 15 rifle locked into its dashboard rack. The weapon was one of the latest M-16 clones built by various companies foreign and domestic, but the M&P was the same “brand” as the .40-caliber pistol on his hip, so the Iowa state troopers had received a deal on both sidearms and patrol rifles. Robespierre had enjoyed shooting the MP-15; it was accurate and wasn’t prone to jamming like other M-16 knockoffs, but this would be the first time he’d have to utilize it in an actual fight.

Gunfire crackled in the distance, and from the sound of things, it was more than just a few deputies firing. This was a back-and-forth gunfight; no surprise here since rural communities and guns went hand-in-hand. Almost every household had a gun rack of some sort, and more than a couple had full-size safes. But these were sporting arms, legally purchased and owned, not the stolen outlaw arms that were smuggled into cities with weapons bans that only ended up disarming law-abiding citizens. Raging gun battles just didn’t happen in small, friendly communities where everyone had jobs and the means to support themselves.