Shadow Strike

Forcing herself to remain calm, she tried to conserve oxygen, biding her time as the strangers looted the Reliant of its entire cargo of gold bullion, and then departed.

She waited a few extra minutes just to make sure, then surged into action. Rummaging among the dead crew, she found a pocketknife and started scratching details of the thieves into the tough plastic—their numbers, descriptions and type of weapons carried. But then the skinny driver unexpectedly returned.

Quickly, the captain moved away from the window, but it was already too late. Reaching into a canvas bag slung at his side, the skinny man pulled out a WWII limpet mine and clumsily attached it to the plastic. He set the timer, smiled, threw her a salute and swam away once more.

Trapped inside the wreckage, Captain Taylor could do nothing but curse until a bright flash of light filled her universe.

Flintstone, Maryland

TURNING OFF THE MAIN ROAD, Hal Brognola skirted the little town of Flintstone and drove the rented truck into the vast rolling countryside of Maryland. The old vehicle rattled and clanked at every pothole and gully, and the big Fed hoped he wasn’t leaving a trail of broken parts all the way back to his office in the Justice Department.

Occasionally checking the GPS on his dashboard, he finally took an unmarked dirt road that snaked into the hillsides to finally end at a long-abandoned stone quarry. Windblown leaves covered the ground, ancient garbage was scattered everywhere, and the sagging remains of huge machines slowly rusted away into indecipherable mounds of debris.

Coming to an easy stop, Brognola set the parking brake, but left the engine running in case of trouble. A stocky man with graying hair, the big Fed could still bench-press his own weight at the gym. Although, to be honest, it did seem to take more of an effort these days to achieve those results.

As head of the Sensitive Operations Group for the Justice Department, he normally wore a two-piece suit, but this day Brognola was in less formal attire—a denim vest, red flannel shirt, worn pants and leather boots. Flintstone was a hardworking, blue-collar town, home to a cement factory. Nobody wore a suit around here, not even the mayor.

Easing a S&W snub-nosed revolver out of a shoulder holster under the vest, Brognola thumbed back the hammer, but stayed behind the wheel, listening to the soft clatter of the engine. Nothing was moving in the jagged expanse of the stone quarry. There wasn’t a tree, a bush or even a stray dog, just rocky desolation. Even the construction shacks and mill had collapsed into jumbled piles unfit for anything but burning in a wood stove.

The sole exception was a colossal lifting crane, the long box girder neck extending over the main pit. For some reason it reminded Brognola of a gallows, and sent a shiver down his spine. The message he’d received from Mack Bolan had used all the correct code prefixes. But codes had been broken before, and the big Fed had more than his share of enemies. The list seemed to go on forever these days, and the only thing getting shorter was his tolerance for the bloodthirsty sons of bitches who broke the law, and then demanded its protection.

“Choose one or the other,” he growled softly, involuntarily tightening his grip on the checkered handle of the .38 Police Special.

Just then, he heard the soft rattle of a rock tumbling down a mountain of broken slabs. Instantly, Brognola turned in the exact opposite direction, with the S&W level and two pounds of pressure on the six-pound trigger.

“I see sitting in an office hasn’t slowed you down in the least.” Bolan chuckled, stepping into view from behind a granite boulder.

“Not yet, anyway.” Brognola grinned, lowering the barrel of his weapon. “Okay, what’s with meeting out here in the middle of nowhere? I mean, for God’s sake… Flintstone?” He snorted. “I had to check two maps before I even found the place!”

“Too many new faces in D.C.,” Bolan said, pulling a small black box from his belt and moving it slowly about. “We need privacy.”

“You checking for bugs?” Brognola asked incredulously, then clamped his mouth shut and looked around at his car. Slowly, he turned off the engine, and thick silence descended.

A minute passed, then another.

“Okay, we’re clear,” Bolan announced, tucking away the box. “This EM scanner was built for me by a friend at JPL Laboratories, and has twice the range of anything the Farm can come up with.” The Farm was Stony Man Farm, home base for the Sensitive Operations Group. “It also jams cell phones and digital recorders, and sends out an ultrasonic pulse to check for any parabolic reflectors.”

“What’s the range?”

“Half a mile.”

“That should do the trick,” Brognola stated, tucking the revolver into its shoulder holster and climbing out of the car. “You don’t trust anything, do you?”

“Just a few old friends,” Bolan replied with a smile, extending a hand, and the men shook.

“It’s been a while since we last met face-to-face, Striker,” Brognola said. “I’ve had an awful lot on my plate.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard.” Bolan released his grip. “Come on, I have a camp set up over here. Canvas chairs, sandwiches and beer.”

“Now you’re talking,” Brognola said amiably.

Following a zigzagging path through the field of broken slabs and boulders, Bolan finally led Brognola into a small clearing. There were a couple of canvas chairs set up near a foam cooler. There was also a battered canvas backpack on the ground nearby, an M-16/M-203 assault rifle combo lying on top.

“Expecting company?” Brognola asked, scanning the nearby rocks for suspicious movements.

“Just prepared for it,” Bolan said, sitting in a chair and flipping back the lid of the cooler. Inside was a six-pack of beer, a couple deli-wrapped sandwiches, several grenades and a 9 mm Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun with a sound suppressor attached.

Brognola tried not to chuckle. The man never missed a trick. “Okay, the last I heard you were in Brooklyn checking on a smuggling ring.”

“It’s out of business.”

Yeah, Brognola knew what that meant. The smugglers were dead and buried.

“So what were they moving? Drugs, illegal aliens, slaves, DVRs, pornography…?”

“Weapons.”

He frowned. “Saturday night specials or—”

“Damn near everything, including North Korean underwater mines.”

“Damn! How many?”

“Couple of thousand.”

“Who the hell would want those in Brooklyn?”

“You tell me,” Bolan said, and gave the man the full details of the matter.

“Loki…nope, never heard of them,” Brognola said, massaging his jaw. “That’s the Norse god of mischief, right?”

“Pretty much. Not necessarily evil, just a pain in the ass. Which makes me wonder if the thieves were sending a message with the name.”

“As if they want people to know who stole the mines?” Brognola said with a snort. “I don’t like those implications. Sounds like a suicide message. Maybe it was a mistake.”

“That’s not how I read it, and Loki was good enough to take Mad Mike in his own backyard.”

“Yeah, good point. Amateurs, but not fools.”

Bolan then told him about the Squall.

“The combination of old weapons and advanced technology bothers me. Any idea what they’re planning?”

“Wish I did,” Bolan said. “Hal, are there any known terrorist groups that operate out of Iceland or Greenland?”

“Hell no. Those countries don’t even have armies! They’ve got nothing worth stealing or blowing up. Nothing major, anyway.”

“Then this might be a personal matter.”