Don Pendleton - Ramrod Intercept

“Well, in that case, we’d better shake and bake. A tenklick hike will be cutting it close to sunrise.”

“Understood,” Price said.

“Shouldn’t be a problem moving double-time. I can still smell the adrenaline after our close encounter with Jaws. We’ll be in touch. Out.”

Brognola lifted the stogie in a shaky hand. “Air drops. For a while, at least, only air insertions. That, folks, was way too close for this old guy’s heart.”

They were smiling, nodding, but their relief, Brognola knew, sweet as it was, would prove short-lived.

The worst was yet to come. Getting in might have proved the easy task.

Century City, California

“YOU BOYS AREN’T really telling us much more than we already know.”

Lyons was laying the evil eye on Grogan and Caldwell as Blancanales punched in the access code that lifted the door to the underground parking garage.

The van was rolling, going down into the subterranean labyrinth where the office of DYSAT was housed in Century City. Schwarz was monitoring the police bands with his scanner, had informed Lyons units were already on the scene of the carnage back in the alley. No firm ID on suspects. No description of their vehicle.

The way Lyons figured it, from there on it was time to crank up the heat, put some serious fire to the tails of the so-called board of directors. Grogan had put in the call to the boss. The man in question, James Lake, ex-colonel in the Air Force air commandos, was hunkered in his office, calling the shots.

Literally.

“What more do you need to know?” Caldwell sputtered. “We accessed the classified files, it was something of a fluke, an accident. We found out they’re using a cutout in Thailand to ship the merchandise from there to Port Sudan. The microchips are prototypes, samples.”

“And this Benny Goodman…”

“Godwin,” Grogan corrected.

“Whatever. This clown somehow lifted the samples and is sitting on them at his girlfriend’s place in Malibu.”

“Along with the information we downloaded about the operation,” Caldwell added.

“What’s our next move, Carl?” Blancanales asked.

“Find a space in DYSAT’s turf and park it. Me and you are going to have a little chat with the board of directors.”

“How come the sound of that puts me a little on edge?” Blancanales said.

“Because these assholes are traitors. Because I can’t stand traitors. From now on, we do it our way, and if the President squawks he squawks. Hey, what’s the problem anyway? These guys tried to draw first blood. We have ‘official’ status as special agents of the Justice Department. I can walk up to the guy’s office now and start slapping the crap out of him, if I want, threaten him with about twenty-five to life and back it up.”

Lyons watched through the windshield as Blancanales motored deeper into the garage, found DYSAT painted on a stretch of concrete, slid into a space that was isolated from other vehicles.

“You’re going to need my magnetic swipe card to get through the door,” Grogan said.

“Where is it?”

“In my wallet.”

Lyons was his usual gentle self, clawing a talon into Grogan’s shoulder, shoving him around and bending him over a little to yank the wallet out of his back pants pocket. He found the card, slipped it in the pocket of his windbreaker, dumped the wallet in the guy’s lap.

“Then what?”

“Well, you have to go up the steps to the lobby. You can’t take the elevator from down here.”

“Meaning a rent-a-cop encounter.”

Grogan grunted. “He’ll want to see your ID.”

“No problem.”

“He’ll call up to Lake.”

“Again no sweat.”

Lyons reached into the weapons bin and handed an Ingram MAC-10 to Blancanales. “Gadgets, you’re on baby-sitting detail. If we get a bunch of attitude from these clowns when we go up, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Meaning it’s hit the fan,” Schwarz said, sporting a grim smile.

“Let’s rock, Pol.”

James Lake knew the end of DYSAT would come, had to, in fact, and from the very beginning when he’d helped conceive it, put the pieces together and get it launched as part of the Pentagon’s Special Access Programs. It was designed to go down in flames on purpose, make certain an avalanche of badges and subpoenas came crashing down on DYSAT, all the sound and fury of the Justice Department, trumpeting out the intimidation, offering guys immunity in the Witness Protection Program and the like. But also in mind from the start would be the final conflagration, stoked and brewed to critical mass, while he skipped out the door, all the way to the bank.

The genius of it all was it had been worked out by his own cunning and the toil of spilled blood on his hand.

Everything in life ended. Everyone died. Survival was not necessarily for the fittest.

Survival was simply survival. They said that after the big one dropped, only the cockroach would inherit the earth. Mindful of that disgraceful tidbit, just how special could man be?

Not very, he thought.

If there was no hope for humankind, there was also no redemption, and certainly no salvation. Armageddon was inevitable; it just needed a decent shove in the right direction to ignite the fuse.

He sat in his large, deep-cushioned swivel chair, scanning the massive office suite, an amused smile tugging at his mouth. Beyond his teakwood desk, the size of three grand pianos, Grandahl and Preuter were busy on their secured cellulars, trying like hell but failing to dial up their hitters. He wanted to believe no news was good news, but the whole deal was unraveling fast. He could feel it, a noose dangling over his head, ready to drop and put the squeeze on.

It was time to clean up the garbage and bail.

Yes, he had wanted this whole venture to fail from the start. Failure, he once heard said, was often the measure of a man’s success, but he never bought into that loser’s philosophy. Granted, he had failed in three marriages, with seven children he never saw spread all over the country, but what could he say? Women were women, and a man needed far more in life than the comfort and stability of some suburban purgatory.

A man needed conquest, honor and respect. It was either the bliss of heaven or the agony of hell; nothing in between was acceptable. And, no mistake, never again would he fail at anything. DYSAT was his baby, and if he had given it life, he could most certainly take it away. He had always believed the real power in the world came from the left hand of darkness anyway, the true father of light. Even the devil, he believed, had real feelings and needs. It was simply a question of having those wishes honored by the legions of faithful subjects. Meaning they had to be prepared to not only sacrifice their lives for him, but also sell him their very souls.

Still, he often thought life would have been much simpler, easier if he had been, say, a biker. Riding in the wind. A big middle finger jammed in the eye of society at large. Wheeling and dealing guns and dope… Well, he could at least claim he was something of an arms dealer, an outlaw, to be sure.

And outlaws only had to care about and look out for number one, which was why his stint as an Air Force air commando had been brief to the point of ridiculous. Search-and-rescue missions didn’t mean much more than a gob of flying phlegm when a man didn’t care if human beings lived or died. On then to a number of years working as a special black operative, guarding classified Air Force installations where they were building the future of super high-tech. Grooming contacts and, of course, quietly removing any thorns in his side on his climb to the top.

Well, Jim Lake had finally arrived. His big deal was on the table, in the wings, ready to fly. The college kids had been nothing more than pawns, mere toilet paper, he thought. Bring them on board, unleash a few secrets, here and there, fat salaries so they could indulge their every whim and petty earthly desire. He always knew a couple of them would have cracked under the strain of uncovering knowledge of high-tech espionage, state-of-the-art goodies being delivered to so-called enemies of the United States. Truth was, he had counted on them to go running, pants wet, to the Feds. By the time the real law figured it out, he would be long gone, a whopping numbered account overseas, engineering grand schemes to bring on some doomsday from a remote tropical paradise. It would be a sort of in-their-face gesture, proving to every American man, woman and child, from the hallowed classified halls of the Pentagon all the way to Silicon Valley, that Jim Lake was just a little smarter, tougher and, yes, better looking than they were.