Shadow Strike. Don Pendleton

trapped in an air pocket on the bridge—the inverted bridge. The deck was above her head, and she was awkwardly standing on the ceiling. Smashed electrical equipment crackled from the control boards, blood was everywhere, and pieces of her command crew bobbed about in the water like fishing chum. A jumbled array of tattered arms and legs swirled in the water, then the head of Lieutenant Jones floated by, his face contorted in a final scream. Her stomach lurched at the grisly sight, but she banished those thoughts, and concentrated solely on staying alive. Her job now was to destroy the main computer and then escape from the sinking wreck. Of course, the only two exits were blocked by folded layers of crushed steel, but that wasn’t her main concern at the moment.

       As Taylor feebly splashed her upside-down chair toward a sparking controls board, she noted that the only reason she was still alive was that the windows were all still intact, the bulletproof plastic merely scratched. She felt a sudden jarring from below, and loose sand swirled outside the windows. They were at the bottom already?

       Creaking and groaning, the Reliant began to settle into place, the crippled vessel warping around the steel-reinforced shell of the bridge.

       “God bless all navy engineers!” the captain panted, then gasped at the sight of moving lights outside the windows. In growing astonishment, she saw a dozen scuba divers swimming along the murky seabed, heading her way.

       Wild hope of rescue flared just for a second, until she realized those were nonregulation diving suits, and the masked strangers were carrying acetylene torches and crowbars.

       In a surge of cold adrenaline, Taylor fought her way through the morass of body parts to reach the glowing SD button, smash the glass covering and press hard. She felt it click, and there was an answering thump through the water from the pressure of the explosive charges cutting loose. Now the military codes of her nation were safe, the communication chips and data files utterly destroyed. Whoever these bastards were, they would learn nothing from those molten remains!

       Just then, a scuba diver riding an underwater sled drove into view, and she bitterly cursed at the sight of a net being dragged behind the sled. The nylon threads bulged with gold bars…and corpses, the faces of the dead sailors familiar to her. These weren’t enemy spies, but common, ordinary thieves—and for some unknown reason, body snatchers.

       “Filthy bastards!” Taylor screamed in white-hot rage.

       As if hearing the curse, the driver slowed and looked about for the source. He seemed quite startled to see the live naval officer on the other side of the cracked window. Then he smiled and waved hello.

       Sputtering expletives, Taylor irrationally drew her sidearm and fired all fifteen rounds. However, the 9 mm slugs merely smacked into the heavy plastic and stayed there like flies in amber. The resilient material that kept in her precious air supply also prevented her from reaching out to the thief.

       Grinning behind his face mask, the skinny driver waved again and continued on his way.

       Raging impotently, the captain holstered the pistol, unable to think of anything else to try at the moment.

       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.