Don Pendleton - Extinction Crisis

“A brown delivery van,” Blancanales said.

“Don’t tell him before we take his legs off at least!” Lyons bellowed. The hollow echo of the gas mask amplified the yell to a roar against the side of Morrison’s head.

“No, the brown van? Man, they picked that up two days ago! Look in the office!” Morrison said. “You want the password? Ecclesiastic!”

Schwarz tilted his head. “What?”

“From that movie. Where they wanted the safe word…but had to go with snakebite ’cause the snitch was too stupid?” Morrison asked.

“Spell it,” Schwarz said.

Morrison did so. He didn’t even realize that Lyons had let up the pressure on his arm.

“Aw hell, you’re going to shoot me in the head,” Morrison muttered.

Lyons shrugged. “Why would I do that?”

“And, for our edification, Mickey Giardelli coughed you up, and we didn’t even have to pretend to be a SWAT team,” Blancanales said.

Morrison’s eyes widened. “Aw shit…”

“You’ve got a choice, son,” Lyons told him, slapping him on the shoulder to focus his attention. “Stay free, and maybe have the pricks who you delivered the truck to think you gave them up—which you did—or do some prison time for running a chop shop. One ends with you sitting safe in a box for six months. The other has guys willing to murder federal agents wanting to shut you up so you don’t testify.”

“I’ll take the safe option, thank you very much,” Morrison stated.

Lyons smiled. “Beautiful.”

Morrison mopped his brow as Schwarz broke into his computer.

K URTZMAN PICKED UP THE secure, direct connection from the field. Schwarz had activated an encryption protocol that turned the line his computer was on into a shielded transmission conduit. Hackers attempting to penetrate the electronic security locks and creating interference with the direct connection would alert Stony Man Farm to the intrusion and render themselves open to a salvo of countersurveillance programs guaranteed to crash even the most powerful processors set to the task.

“Gadgets,” Kurtzman greeted over the tight-band video chat. “Nice design extrapolation on the robot snake.”

“Thanks,” Schwarz replied. “You should have seen the picture of Carl as Captain Caveman that he destroyed.”

“I bet it would have been a hoot,” Kurtzman admitted.

Schwarz grinned. “Since I drew it on a tablet computer, I’ll upload it to you for a screen saver.”

Kurtzman chuckled. “Lyons would take my head off if he found that.”

“You told him how to understand the magic box?” Schwarz asked.

There was a grunt on the other end, and Lyons appeared on camera as Schwarz winced and rubbed his shoulder.

“There’ll be time for jokes later,” Lyons grunted. “You have access to Morrison’s hard drives?”

“Yeah,” Kurtzman said. “We’ve located the account which paid for the delivery truck, but we’re looking at an offshore bank with some paranoid security.”

“Paranoid is a walk in the park for you guys, isn’t it?” Lyons asked.

“Not these banks,” Kurtzman replied. “They’ve been upgrading their black ice, and I’m not afraid to say that they’re making us work for our paycheck, even if it is just a false front.”

“So, the conspirators dumped cash into an account for their dead buddies to pull out,” Lyons said. “How’ll you be able to track the money trail?”

“By diligent, meticulous observation once Akira breaks a hole for us into the bank’s security,” Kurtzman stated.

“What about the robots?” Lyons asked. “I hear that Cal and Rafe transmitted digital photographs of what was left of their encounter with two of them.”

“Same design. Two sets of parallel bow-coiled legs off of a central, flexible spine. The legs are fat little plates, and the body ends in a large head that fits an interesting firearm design,” Kurtzman told them.

“How so?” Lyons asked.

Kurtzman looked at the picture. “You know how the FN P-90 has that pivoting magazine that turns bullets at 90 degrees to keep the gun flat?”

Lyons nodded. “It’s been used on other designs, as well.”

“This one was hooked up to a Glock 26 barrel. The end result is that the head of the snake is about six inches long, and only four inches in diameter, but holds 17 shots,” Kurtzman said. “It has no means to reload itself, but stuck in there, parallel to the Glock barrel are two small cameras, and two Taser modules, whose capacitor batteries are further down the spine, tucked between the legs.”

Lyons blinked. “I saw the picture that Gadgets made. The batteries look like oversize watch batteries, right?”

“Yes. More than capable of producing enough voltage to paralyze a grown man,” Kurtzman said. “You’re lucky that you’re as strong and prepared for Taser shocks as you are.”

“I’m also lucky I was too stupid to keep my finger off the trigger. If my muscles hadn’t seized up and applied enough pressure to drop the striker, I’d have been carved up by that weed-whacker in its tail,” Lyons snarled.

“The cutting monofilament,” Kurtzman noted.

Akira Tokaido waved at Kurtzman to get his attention. “Hunt’s inside running the finances on the account,” Tokaido said.

“Good news,” Kurtzman answered. “You heard?” he said to Lyons.

“Yeah,” Lyons replied. “Is anyone watching Hunt and Akira’s six inside the bank?”

“Carmen’s way ahead of you on that,” Kurtzman told him. “After the DoE was penetrated, we’re on extra-high alert about any impropriety.”

“Good,” Lyons said. “You done with Morrison’s records?”

“Yes. You can shut down the computer,” Kurtzman answered. “He tries anything in the future, we’ve got a tap on his records.”

“I think he could be used as a local resource,” Lyons said. “I’ll stop by and rap my knuckles on his dome for a few answers every so often.”

Kurtzman nodded. “I was thinking the same thing, except I’m talking about aiding anyone on the terrorist watch lists.”

“Those things work?” Lyons asked.

“Not for Homeland Security, but those of us here with brains can determine the corn from the shit,” Kurtzman replied.

Lyons smiled. “Spoken like a true cop.”

Kurtzman winked. “Farm out.”

O NE OF THE ADVANTAGES that Phoenix Force had over the Directorate of Security and their investigation was that they didn’t have to worry about coordinating multiple raids after assembling a half-dozen teams in and around Paris. The Directorate needed to pull off each raid at the same time, in case the conspirators were in communication with each other, and more than one enemy site was actually part of the guilty party. The agency also needed to assemble warrants, scope out approaches and gather much more intelligence before they could make the first move. That all also depended on putting aside the bureaucratic differences that put the brakes on their moves.

McCarter looked at the latest data gathered from the French by the computer hackers at Stony Man Farm, and applied his years of counterterrorism investigation and operation to narrowing down Phoenix Force’s target as Manning drove them through the streets of Paris.

“I think that we’re looking at the neo-Nazi cell just off of the Seine,” McCarter said.

“What makes you think that?” Manning asked.

“The warrants are moving especially slow on them,” McCarter said. “Considering that we’re dealing with expert computer hackers, as well as the robots, I’m betting that the conspirators are looking to keep their asses covered until their patsies can get out of the way.”

“Or be gotten out of the way,” Hawkins mentioned. “The bad guys in Inshas and Washington were both sacrificial lambs, and they didn’t seem to care about the robots, either.”