Dark Star. Don Pendleton

watching the fire, Henzollern stood a little straighter at those words, but said nothing out loud.

      “Of course, sir,” Davidson replied hesitantly. “I’ll…come right down.”

      As their earbuds went silent, Henzollern rested a hand on her MP-7. “Sir, will we be returning for Davidson?”

      “Yes,” Southerland retorted sternly. “Dark Star never leaves a man behind.”

      Nodding in agreement, the woman tore her attention away from the burning truck as there came a metallic clang and the hatch swung open to reveal Davidson. The pilot paused uncertainly for a moment, then put his back to the others and climbed down the ladder to the ground. The blackened soil was soft around the great ship, but as the man got farther away it started crunching under his sneakers.

      “We won’t be gone more than thirty minutes, an hour at the most,” Southerland said, patting the man on the shoulder. “The fire should keep you warm for that long. But even if it dies early, stay in plain sight and wait right here for us. We’re already behind schedule and I do not wish to waste time hunting for you among the rocks.”

      “Yes, sir,” Davidson replied, snapping off a salute. “And if Interpol, or NATO, should arrive before you return?”

      Already starting toward the ladder, Southerland stopped to turn and stare hard at the pilot. “Throw yourself off the cliff,” he ordered in a perfunctory manner. “People often flinch at the second when shooting themselves in the head, and are only wounded. The bastards must not learn anything of importance from you. Understood?”

      “Yes, sir! Hail the Motherland!”

      Placing a sneaker on the bottom rung, the colonel gave a grim nod. “God bless South Africa,” he said in reply, starting to climb.

      “Sir!”

      At the top of the built-in ladder, Southerland climbed into the X-ship and dogged shut the hatch. Heading directly to the control room, he found Henzollern already strapped in and adjusting the dials. “Preburners on,” she announced, flipping a switch. “Reaction chamber is reaching operational levels…ready to go, sir.”

      “Launch,” Southerland commanded, strapping on a safety harness.

      There came a deafening roar and crushing acceleration slammed the man into the cushioned seat. He watched the world drop way below them, then move sideways as the X-ships descended from the mountains. Keeping a sharp watch on the fuel gauge, Southerland was starting to become nervous when the mountains finally gave way to rolling foothills and then a jagged coastline.

      Minutes later a small factory town came into view on the monitor. There were row upon row of small wooden houses laid out in orderly streets. Thick black smoke poured out of tall brick chimneys of the main plant, and the dockyard was busy with cranes loading and unloading cargo from a fleet of vessels.

      “Busy place,” Henzollern commented. “What is it called?”

      “I could not care less,” Southerland retorted, studying the monitors for their goal. “All I am concerned with is…there! See it there, just to the west?”

      “Yes, sir,” she replied, working the joysticks. “Starting descent now.”

      The air plant was situated off by itself, well away from the town and public roads in case of an explosion. The building was long, the flat roof edged with hundreds of small windows in an obvious effort to try to control the damage of a blast, and off to one side were some bare steel exhaust vents covered with ice and surrounded by white mists.

      The colonel started to point at them, but the woman was already heading in the correct direction. The legs extended, a red light began to flash as the X-ship landed on the pavement, the material cracking from the tremendous weight.

      “We must have had a lot less fuel than O’Hara figured,” she reported. “We barely made it here, sir!”

      “Good thing for him we did,” Southerland said dryly, rising from the chair. “If I die on a mission, he dies.”

      Licking her lips, Henzollern ached to ask how it was arranged, but restrained herself. The colonel would not be the man he was without taking any, and all, necessary precautions to safeguard his return. He will make a fine king of South Africa, she thought.

      As the man and woman undogged the hatch, they found a crowd of astonished workers gathered around the vessel. Without hesitation, Henzollern began to sweep the people with the MP-7. A dozen workers died before the rest registered the slaughter then scrambled away, screaming in terror.

      Ignoring the rabble, Southerland and Henzollern climbed down the ladder and stepped over the twitching corpses to enter the plant. There were no divisions or walls inside the structure, the entire building one single massive room. Hundreds of tall steel bottles were lined up neatly, the bronze nozzles attached to pressure lines. Somewhere big pumps were thumping, steadily forcing two-thousand square feet of gas into the six-square-foot cylinder. While constructing the X-ships, Southerland recalled seeing an oxygen tank fall over, the bronze nozzle snapping off against a concrete block. Instantly, there was a hurricane as the volumes of gas inside rushed out and the cylinder shot along the floor, then up into the air, zooming about madly like an unguided missile, smashing apart men and machinery, until punching through the cinder-block wall and disappearing into the distance. Surrounded by so much explosive material, there was a sudden tingle in his gut similar to the rush of combat.

      “Watch the feeder lines,” the colonel directed, pointing. “Green is oxygen, red is hydrogen. We need the insulated tanks. Those will hold the liquid gases.”

      There came the sound of running boots and several burly men in denim jumpsuits appeared from around the row of air tanks, brandishing long wrenches and iron bars. One fellow in a suit was holding a fire ax. Obviously, that was the owner of the plant, or at least the foreman. Knowing to discharge the Webley this close to the charging lines might blow them to hell, the colonel pulled out a knife and jerked his wrist.

      Across the floor of the plant, the man dropped the ax and staggered backward, the handle of the knife jutting from his throat. As red blood began to gush between his spasming fingers, the workers lost heart and ran away frantically, casting aside their makeshift weapons.

      “Cowards,” Henzollern sneered, pressing the release button on the French police baton. The coiled sleeve of steel extended to a full yard, and locked into position. Eagerly, she tapped the deadly bludgeon against her leg, looking for prey. But there was nobody in sight, only the jerking hoses and thumping machinery.

      Retrieving the gory blade, Southerland saw a side room full of refrigeration tanks and heavily insulated conduits. Opening the door, he was hit with a bitterly cold wave that chilled him to the bone. “This is it!” Southerland cried, reaching for a pair of safety gloves lying on a convenient table.

      Having done something similar hundreds of times before, it took only a few minutes to run a pair of flexible hoses to the X-ship and start the pumps. In short order, the refrigeration tanks had been emptied, and the Dark Star operatives disconnected the lines to simply cast them aside. Returning to the control room, Southerland took command this time and started the engines, frowning deeply as the fuel gauge only registered a quarter full. Damn, just barely enough.

      The colonel sent the X-ship soaring skyward, the fiery exhaust igniting the feeder hoses, the flames rushing back into the plant as they climbed high into the sky.

      Streaking back toward the mountains, Henzollern saw the huge explosion rip the plant apart. As a roiling fireball covered the building, hundreds of black shapes began darting around within the blast, punching through the walls, and roof, then spiraling off into every direction. Mother of God, those had to be the air bottles!

      Like a salvo of missiles, the steel containers dispersed randomly, a handful reaching the town to smash through buildings, spreading a wave of destruction throughout the homes and factories, and even reaching the cargo ships moored at the wooden docks.

      “Our next stop will be