enough for a man to enter, a heavy metal grate had been spot-welded across the opening.
From a pouch on his web belt next to where he carried two M-18 smoke canisters, Bolan withdrew a roll of incendiary tape and a small plastic tube containing a substance like petroleum jelly. Using his combat knife, he cut short sections from the half-inch roll and wound them around each of the dozen crossbeams where the grate was welded to the tunnel’s frame. The tape’s active ingredient was a waxy allotrope of white phosphorous that CIA scientists had altered to prevent its reaction to atmospheric oxygen, thus making it a portable product. They had also developed a reagent designed to eliminate the dense white smoke white phosphorous usually produced while burning, which in addition to being undesirably visible, also contained toxic amounts of both phosphorous pentoxide and phosphoric acid.
Once the tape was in place, Bolan used his combat knife to slice open one end of the tube and quickly smear a dollop of the reagent onto each piece. The goop was a sodium-based oxidant that would react in about a minute with the white phosphorous in the tape, bringing it to its flash point.
Once the tape was coated, Bolan averted his eyes and stood close to the grate in an attempt to shield the flashes. The tape buzzed briefly before bursting into a white-hot exothermic flame, each section of tape igniting in the order Bolan had applied the reactant. The burn-through was quick, less than five seconds, but it had taken slightly longer than fifteen to touch every section, which meant the light intensity peaked at seven seconds for a three-second period before dimming. When the tape wrapping the final crossbeam winked out, Bolan dropped to one knee, drawing his handguns. After remaining motionless for slightly longer than a minute, he concluded that the light from the burning white phosphorous had not been seen.
Holstering both his Desert Eagle and Beretta, he grasped the grate in the middle of its grid and pulled it away from the air vent. Before he climbed into the metal tunnel, he adjusted the night goggles over his eyes and switched the unit into IR mode. Seeing no infrared beams blocking his way, he moved headfirst into the vent.
As he progressed through the air tunnel, Bolan recalled the schematic Akira Tokaido had created on the bank of Cray SV2 supercomputers housed at Stony Man Farm. Using sonar data downloaded from satellite flyovers, the talented hacker had been able to produce a three-dimensional map charting air tunnels from the roof leading into the research lab.
“IT’S KIND OF LIKE AN echocardiogram,” Akira Tokaido had told Bolan while nodding slightly to the rhythm of rock music blasting through his ever present earbuds, “just not as accurate.”
“But you’re sure these vents lead into the lab?”
“Not exactly, Striker,” Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman, head of the cybernetics team at Stony Man Farm had answered for his subordinate. “We have good photos of the roof. There’s no question these are not general air conditioning or heating inlets. We’re assuming they must be laboratory exhaust and intake. For the type of research Dr. Zagorski does, you’d want a dedicated air system. These fit the bill. We believe those vents lead into the lab.”
Using advanced computer modeling to enhance the sonar data stream echoed back to satellite transducers, Tokaido had also drawn a rough floor plan of the second story.
“There’s a stand-alone suite next to where I think the lab is,” he said, tracing with his finger the path Bolan would follow through the air tunnel from the roof to the second floor. He snapped his bubble gum a few times in quick succession before adding, “Private bathroom. Porcelain has a great sonar signature.”
On missions too numerous to count, Bolan had bet his life on the accuracy of information provided by Stony Man Farm. There was no reason for him to start doubting Aaron Kurtzman’s team now.
2
On hands and knees, Bolan moved swiftly through the pitch-black vent, reaching the first intersection at roughly the spot where Tokaido’s diagram had indicated it would be. The air system’s intersecting branches came together between floors, meaning Bolan was already past the third, and directly above the second story where the lab was located. When he came to the T in the tunnel he remembered was close to the end, he removed the goggles and put them away, confident there were no IR sensors in the vent. Although he had engaged enemies on many occasions while wearing night-vision gear, the view in IR mode occasionally shimmered and stalled for a split second when the gallium arsenide photocathode tubes refreshed. For that reason, Bolan avoided using them when he thought gunfire was imminent.
From his shirt pocket, he pulled a powerful penlight, switched it on, and, holding it between his front teeth, turned into the vent’s left branch. Ahead he could see the outline of an access door Tokaido had told him he thought opened onto a stairwell directly next to the lab. It was the spot where Bolan planned to enter the building proper.
Upon reaching the door, he found it was neither secured nor grated, enabling him to turn the latch from the inside and swing the hatch open. Dropping silently onto the landing, he switched off and put away the penlight, and while walking to the stairwell entrance, drew his Beretta 93-R. Taking a deep breath, he turned the knob with his free hand and opened the door on silent hinges.
A wide hallway with a shiny white linoleum floor stretched the entire length of the second floor, dimly illuminated by track lighting running along the ceiling. On both sides of the corridor, two or three doors were located at various points on otherwise blank windowless walls. One was guarded.
Approximately ten yards away, two men dressed in gray jumpsuits were sitting outside a door on which a security slot similar to those used for hotel rooms was mounted above the latch. As he stepped into the hallway, Bolan’s mind registered two critical facts—each man was wearing a lanyard with a magnetic key card clipped to the end and, within easy reach, two Herstal P-90 submachine guns with thirty-round banana clips extending from their ammo ports leaned against the wall. Before Bolan had progressed three steps, one of the men lunged for his weapon.
The Beretta 93-R whispered instant death, delivering a 9 mm Parabellum round that slammed into the side of the man’s face before exiting through the back of his skull in a rush of brain tissue and blood that sprayed a fan-shaped pattern of pink droplets onto the white linoleum. The other guard, apparently realizing that the intruder held a lethal advantage, raised his hands over his head and gazed at Bolan with calm eyes.
He was young, perhaps in his late twenties, with pale blue eyes and a pockmark in the middle of his forehead. Across his right cheek, a deep maroon port-wine stain ran from his temple to the line of his jaw.
“Do you speak English?” Bolan asked.
“Oui. Yes.”
“Where’s Dr. Zagorski?” Bolan asked.
The man’s eyes shifted for a split second in answer to the question before he replied, “I don’t know.”
“Are you ready to die?”
“Yes,” the young man said.
Bolan motioned with his pistol, said, “Open the door, or I’ll kill you and do it myself with your key card.”
Without hesitation, the man obeyed, using the magnetic card at the end of his lanyard to gain access.
The door opened into a cavernous modern facility approximately fifty feet square with vented work stations in every corner, large pieces of scientific equipment along the side walls, and an array of laboratory glassware that filled a series of shelves constructed from floor-to-ceiling against the back wall. Numerous beakers, flasks and
