should. He was tried and convicted by the Israelis in absentia for three separate terrorist attacks that claimed forty-three lives,” Kurtzman said. “One was a busload of little else but women and children in Tel Aviv. We have also picked up from ONI-1 four other faces belonging to Iranians linked to bin Laden who were likewise convicted in absentia but by the Jordanians. Death warrants issued for these butchers.”
“Which leads us to the task at hand, as far as the Madagascar and Sudan situations are concerned,” Brognola said. “This General Arakkhan is no small fish. He still carries heavy weight among a loyal military faction in Khartoum who want to see his return to…well, the Vlad the Impaler glory days. The problem is the CIA contract agents who got us this far are disappearing all over Sudan.”
“They were working on getting the Company a leadin,” Price said, “to where the shipment of high-tech weapons is located, or being shipped, which is rumored to be an Iranian-occupied island in the Strait of Hormuz. Now, the rumbling I caught from Langley was that Nahru had jumped to the other side of the tracks, looking to deal or double deal. Who can say now? Obviously word got back to Arakkhan the impaler. Three less fanatics on the loose now, if nothing else. And with what we know about the situation in Los Angeles we can at least surmise the smuggling operation has its origins there.”
“DYSAT,” Brognola growled. “What do we know about them, other than three of their executives who went to the FBI have been abducted by the DYSAT mother ship?”
Kurtzman filled in the blanks. “Apparently they do classified work, chemical lasers, microchip processors for high-energy X-ray lasers. It took some digging and a few phone calls over to the Pentagon, but that’s about as far as we got. Their only office is in Century City, Tinsel Town, which I find sort of strange, planting classified military think tanks in the heart of where all the movie execs and agents do their trolling and scamming.”
“Go figure,” Brognola said. “I read smoke screen, hiding out in the open. And by classified, I’m hearing you mean to say they are a black project.”
“It certainly reads that way,” Kurtzman went on. “Since the files I hacked into over at the Department of Defense are full of blacked-out words and whole deleted sentences about the pasts of the head honchos. The top dogs are former Air Force air commandos, nothing, however, untoward that would indicate they would be part of some conspiracy. The workforce is primarily civilian, Harvard, UCLA, MIT grads, pretty-boy types. We did find out DYSAT’s production and research facility is located in Idaho.”
“I don’t mean to get sidetracked here, but can someone explain to me just what a chemical laser is?”
“Akira and Hunt,” Kurtzman said, referring to Akira Tokaido and Huntington Wethers, two more vital cogs in the cyber machinery at the Farm, “could probably explain better than I could.”
“Give it a shot.”
“Well, since the genesis of laser technology some three decades ago, it would appear the research is on the verge of crossing the Rubicon. The brass ring of future high-tech is within grasp, or so it would seem. Basically, a laser weapon works as the transfer of heat to a target. It’s a silent killer, supposedly, or so the scuttle-butt goes, which is capable of burning the eyes out of a soldier on the battlefield, and from as much as a hundred miles or more out. Meltdown, evaporation of anything the beam is focused on, no shots fired in anger. Only now the next quantum leap would be to use it on aircraft and missiles. Or even satellites. That’s where the microchips come in to help get the bugs out of high-energy X-ray lasers. Now, the ones DYSAT have produced—or so our informants told the FBI—can locate, identify, track and intercept satellite transmissions, anywhere, anytime.”
“And disrupt,” Brognola said. “There is nothing wrong with your television sets, NORAD. We are in complete control.”
“In a worst-case scenario,” Kurtzman went on. “What our three AWOL contacts told us is called Ramrod Intercept is currently on the drawing board and is designed to shut down early warning of ballistic missile launches or air attacks. Akira and Hunt get all worked up when they start talking about excimers, carbon dioxide molecular transfers and gas exits, but it’s essentially pulse radiation from what I can understand.”
“I get something of the picture,” Brognola said. “We’re talking about the next step in silent, invisible warfare. Warfare directed from space.”
“Or even from the ground,” Kurtzman said, “if you have the microchips, a computer, the component parts of what the missing informants called a roving command center.”
“We still have three more civilian brain suits who hacked into the Pandora’s box, right? These college playboys running scared?”
“Carl,” Price informed Brognola, referring to Carl “Ironman” Lyons, the leader of Able Team, “states he has them under constant surveillance. Alive and well, I might add.”
Kurtzman grunted. “Carl’s on a short leash, I have to tell you, Hal. Well, you know the guy’s bulldog style. He says if he has to go into one more gentlemen’s club and order soda water and watch everyone else having a grand old time while he’s playing a poor man’s Magnum with his thumb up his—”
“I get the drift,” Brognola said. “He’s about to go apeshit. And this is where, once again, I get the long hard pauses from the Man to the point where I nearly have to ask him if he’s still there. He tells me, item—DYSAT is a legitimate Air Force–run classified project, funded, of course, by Congress. Bottom line he wants absolute, one hundred percent concrete proof there’s a conspiracy before I send Lyons and Able Team crashing down the front door, kicking ass and taking no names.”
“They’re working on it,” Price said. “And we have enough suspicion, handed to you by way of the FBI, that there is a conspiracy to get these weapons and the Ramrod Intercept technology to both the Sudan and the Iranians.”
“Which brings me to Striker’s status. Well?”
Brognola read into the anvil of silence. Mack Bolan, also known as the Executioner, was Stony Man’s lone wolf operative. There would be no Phoenix Force or Able Team this time out watching his back. They all knew that, days ago and going in.
“Limbo, to quote you, and holding,” Kurtzman said, “at a U.S. air base in Saudi.”
“I haven’t quite gotten the particulars yet on what he’s supposed to do or how he’s prepared to get into Sudan, a country hostile, to understate it, folks, to the West.”
“Once we receive the green light,” Price volunteered, “Striker will be air-inserted inside the Sudanese border, a HALO jump from a Starlifter C-141.”
“I’m waiting for the good news.”
“I’ve arranged for a CIA contract agent to meet him, roughly twenty kilometers northwest of Port Sudan. One call on a secured satlink from the Company, and the contract agent will be there to pick Striker up, on-site and waiting. Striker will have a passport stating he’s an Iranian businessman who deals in Persian rugs and jewelry, if he finds himself facing down Sudanese soldiers while in-country.”
“That’s thin, Barbara. Especially if he’s confronted by the Sudanese authorities at a roadblock and they decide to lock him up until they can check him out. They tend to skin Western spies over there alive and feed them their own flesh.”
“It was the best we could do, Hal,” Kurtzman offered. “Since we have an ongoing situation in Port Sudan, and since we strongly suspect DYSAT is funneling the high-tech goodies through the country—”
“And with the Company contract agent as an escort,” Price quickly put in. “It’s dicey, I know, but Striker insisted he go. Shake some trees and see what falls. He said…he’d figure it out.”
Brognola had to smile at Bolan’s balls-to-the-wall philosophy. “Tell me why I’m not surprised he said that.”
He and the others dropped into silence as each of them hashed over the enormity