Don Pendleton - Extreme Instinct

“Don’t,” the President declared gruffly, and hung up.

Staring at the radio for a long moment, Brognola returned the mike to a clip, then climbed out of the Hummer. “Lieutenant!” he bellowed. “Please have one of your men drive my car to the hotel where I’m staying. I’ll have somebody pick it up later.”

The soldiers walked closer. “And you will be coming back with us to the base,” the officer said, not posing it as a question.

“And commandeering a jetfighter back to the east coast.” Brognola nodded. “Eagle One wants me there ASAP.”

“Going to the White House, sir?” a young soldier asked excitedly.

“Something like that,” Brognola muttered evasively, climbing into the damp front seat and glancing at his watch. If he flew directly to Andrews Air Force Base, he could reach the Farm in western Virginia by midnight. With any luck, the Russian army would have captured the thieves by then and the matter would be over. If not, then it would be time to activate the Stony Man teams.

Caucasus Mountains

AS THE OLD Soviet Army truck raced along the mountain highway, Lindquist glanced in the side mirror and watched the river valley vanish behind them in the night. Good riddance.

Personally, there really was nothing in the world the man hated more than Russians, and Lindquist was extremely pleased that Foxfire had left the Russian weapons facility pounded flat, with large sections of the surrounding forest ablaze. The mushroom cloud of the nuclear explosion was long gone, but the hellish red glow of the growing conflagration was rapidly spreading across the hills. A forest fire had not been in the original plans, but it made a nice addition to their escape.

Give the bastards something else to worry about than trying to find us, Lindquist thought, smirking. Not that it would do them any good.

Now wearing civilian clothing, the man and his team were speeding away from the annihilated valley along an old logging road not on any civilian map. It was in surprisingly good condition. The pavement was smooth, the dividing lines freshly painted, and there were tiny plastic pyramids set into the material to reflect the headlights of a vehicle so that a driver could stay in the correct lane during even the worst possible winter storm. Obviously this road was reserved for use by visiting politicians and generals. But it would serve them well tonight, and in ways never dreamed of by the idiots in the Kremlin.

Keeping a hand on the wheel, Kessler shifted gears and glanced sideways. “What’s that thing under the dashboard?” he asked with a frown. “Some sort of radar jammer?”

“Just an eight-track tape player,” Lindquist replied, checking the map. Soon they should be nearing the tunnel where everything would happen.

“Yeah?” asked the puzzled man. “And what the fuck is that?”

Not in the mood to explain antiques to a child, Lindquist dismissed the question with a wave of his hand.

In the rear of the truck, Barrowman was practicing loading an assault rifle with just one hand, Johansen was wrapping an amazingly realistic-looking plastic baby in a soft pink blanket and Hannigan was hard at work on the last lock, sealing shut the huge cylinder recovered from the flatbed. A wooden box on the floor was filled with parts he had already removed, including a delicate Faraday Net, which protected the complex electronics of the weapon from the EMP blast of a nuclear bomb.

“How is it coming?” Lindquist asked impatiently.

“Almost there,” Hannigan muttered, wiping his forehead with a sleeve and leaving a streak of grease behind. “Damn, these locks are intricate.”

“It was not designed to ever be disassembled,” Lindquist reminded him harshly.

“This I know,” Hannigan rumbled, returning to the task.

Outside the truck, a car raced by, heading in the opposite direction, the headlights washing over them for only a moment before it was gone.

“Think that was the FSB?” Barrowman asked, bringing up the AK-47 assault rifle.

“Too soon,” Lindquist stated. “The federal police will be the very last people the Kremlin lets know what actually occurred this night.”

“Good.”

Just then, Johansen jerked in surprise as the animatronic doll swaddled in her arms began to softly cry. With a scowl, she gently rocked the thing, and the noise stopped.

“Do I look like a fucking mother?” the mercenary angrily muttered under her breath, shifting uncomfortably in her plain woolen dress.

“More than the rest of us, yes,” Barrowman said, clumsily working the arming bolt.

“Hmm, sounds like it’s hungry. Why don’t you whip out a tit and give it a drink?” Kessler called over a shoulder, both hands on the wheel.

“Why don’t you jump up your own ass?” Johansen snarled, gesturing, and a knife dropped into her palm from a sleeve of her dress.

“Can’t while I’m driving. Maybe later.”

“I can wait.”

“Got it,” Hannigan cried, stepping back.

As he dropped a circuit board into the wooden box, there came the low hiss of working pneumatics and the middle section of the cylinder cycled up to reveal seven large spheres nestled inside the complex machinery, their smooth surfaces glistening with condensation. It took a moment before the mercs realized the white objects were not truly spheres, but some sort of decahedron, or more properly, a dodecahedron, the curved sides made of a smooth array of a hundred interlocking pyramids.

“Whew, so that’s them, eh?” Barrowman said, scratching his arm inside the sling. “Kind of hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

“Not really, no,” Lindquist replied, feeling his heart quicken at the sight. The spy at Mystery Mountain had informed him that the Skyfire weapon system possessed multiple warheads, but he had expected to find two thermobaric bombs, not seven. This windfall once again changed his plans.

Shifting gears to take a hill, Kessler looked at the spheres in the rearview mirror. “What kind of a yield are we talking about here?”

“Close to the order of a kiloton of TNT,” Lindquist answered absentmindedly, his thoughts elsewhere.

“Are you serious?” Kessler gasped. “But that Chinese nuke we used on the dam only had a quarter-kiloton yield.”

“Then this would be more,” Johansen said with a tolerant smile.

“Four times more powerful than a tactical nuke,” Barrowman muttered. It was incredible. One of those spheres could flatten Manhattan. The cluster would burn all of New York City, from Brooklyn to the Bronx, clean off the map.

“Pity we’re not selling them on the black market,” he said impulsively. “We’d be millionaires overnight.”

“Billionaires, more likely,” Lindquist corrected.

The mercenaries exchanged glances, but said nothing.

“How much farther to the tunnel?” Johansen asked, licking her lips.

“We should be there any minute now,” Lindquist answered.

“There she blows!” Kessler announced, taking a curve in the road.

Directly ahead of the truck was a wall of dark rock, impossible to climb or traverse. But smack in the middle was a small tunnel, the mouth just barely large enough for the huge Soviet truck to gain entry.

As they entered the tunnel, the truck headlights illuminated the interior for hundreds of feet. The pavement was old, but the smooth concrete walls were spotlessly clean, without any trace of diesel fumes or car exhaust, almost as if the tunnel was brand-new.

Or very rarely ever used, Lindquist mentally corrected himself. Only the top brass at the Kremlin ever used the secret tunnel, and not even the nosy Americans knew of its existence.

But almost instantly, Kessler downshifted and started to brake. “There’s roadwork up ahead,” he added in a suspicious voice.