The Chameleon Factor. Don Pendleton

Price said. “Able Team goes in as DOD inspectors. Phoenix Force stays in the background to give you three cover in case of trouble.”

      Lyons frowned. Which translated as, his team got killed, but Phoenix Force found the culprit.

      “And then?” Encizo inquired.

      “Kill the thief.” Price didn’t believe in couching terms. If the men could do the job, then she could damn well say the word.

      “Any ID on him yet?” Blancanales asked, then added, “Or her?”

      “Not a thing,” Price replied, placing her mug aside on the counter. “Whoever did this is good. As good as anybody we have.”

      “Must have been an inside job. Nothing else makes sense,” McCarter stated. He took a drink from the bottle, then went on, “So it’s a mole.”

      Lyons shook his head. “Or an ape.”

      Ape, yes, Price knew the term. Spies stayed out and relayed information for years. Apes hit hard, blew things up and stole things. “Ape” was slang for an AP, which stood for Agent Provocateur. Secret government soldiers.

      “So we’re facing a James Bond type,” Schwarz said without a trace of humor. “Not many of them around these days.”

      Blancanales lowered his sandwich. “And for just this reason. Everybody is dead, and the prototype is lost.”

      “Maybe lost,” James corrected. “Maybe destroyed in the explosions, or stolen. We don’t know shit right about now.”

      “Could be a solo, or a freelance,” Price admitted. “Somebody not affiliated with any government. Just there to steal the Chameleon and sell it on the open market.”

      “Or even sell it back to us,” Hawkins grumbled. “If it cost us a billion to make, then we’d certainly pay that much to get it back.”

      “At least.”

      Rubbing the faint bullet scar on his temple, Encizo sighed. “Hellfire, we really are in the dark on this.”

      “That’s why we have to move fast,” Price agreed, “and try to cover every base.”

      “What was the name of the company doing the research?” Kurtzman asked over a shoulder.

      “Quiller Geo-Medical,” she said, and then smiled at the surprised expressions. “Yes, it means nothing. But it sounds very scientific, and people seldom ask.”

      “Or maybe one did,” Kurtzman muttered, then wheeled his chair about. “Akira! Check the IRS tax records for a list of employees. Then cross-check that with the state driver’s-license files at the Alaska DMV. Carmen, I want you—”

      “On it,” she interrupted from behind her mask, both hands in their VR gloves caressing the air. “I’ll access the video surveillance cameras at the airports and run a facial check as soon as Akira gives me some faces from the driver’s licenses.”

      “He’ll be wearing a disguise,” Price warned. “And this person is damn good. KGB good. Maybe better.”

      Delahunt shrugged. “We can adjust for that. It’s our ID software that caught that last group of terrorists trying to sneak out of the country.”

      “Where’s Hunt, anyway?” Blancanales asked, glancing at the empty fourth chair at the end of the row of computer stations.

      Huntington “Hunt” Wethers had been teaching cybernetics at Berkeley when he was recruited into Stony Man. With wings of gray hair at his temples, and smoking his briarwood pipe, Wethers looked like the stereotypical college professor. Yet he possessed a facility with computers that few other experts had.

      “Hunt’s on a special assignment with Mack,” Price explained after a moment.

      That was an unexpected answer. “In the field?”

      She shrugged. “Mack asks, and he gets.”

      Lyons stood. “Good luck to them both,” he said with feeling. There had to be a major problem for Striker to request assistance from anybody, and double so for him to ask for a desk jockey like the professor.

      “Better save it,” Hawkins said, pushing away from the wall. “Because I think we’re going to need all of the luck we can get to bust this nut.”

      “Alert,” Delahunt announced calmly. “We have a break in the clouds.”

      Everybody turned. The main wall monitor filled with a view of western Alaska, then jumped closer in a staggered series of zoom shots until the screen was filled with a real-time view of the destroyed target zone and the smoking ruin of the research lab. The ambulances had come and gone, leaving only chalk outlines everywhere on the ground. Often, there was only the outline of a limb, or a torso, instead of an entire body.

      Somebody merely grunted, while another muttered a curse.

      “Barbara, tell Jack to get fueled and ready for liftoff,” Lyons ordered brusquely. “We’ll meet him on the front lawn in ten minutes.”

      “Cowboy already has your spare equipment ready to go. Along with the proper ID cards, weapons permits, all the usual,” she told him.

      Both teams headed for the door, and a grim-faced Encizo tapped in the exit code this time.

      “We bloody well could be walking into a trap, mate,” McCarter commented.

      As the armored door started to cycle open, Lyons looked backward at the pictures on the wall monitor, the hundreds of chalk outlines amid the smoking rubble.

      “No,” he replied in a voice of stone. “They are.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Flight 18, above the North Pacific

      The recessed ceiling lights in the 747 flickered for a moment.

      “Hey,” a man said, taking the cell phone away from his ear. “What the hell is going on?”

      “What’s the matter?” his wife asked, lowering her magazine.

      “This damn thing is dead!” he raged, hitting the device.

      Gwenneth started forward to talk to the upset passenger, when she noticed that across the plane, a woman was shaking her airphone and also muttering annoyances. Two phones died at the same time? How odd.

      “Hu, Yuki,” Gwenneth said to the other flight attendants. “Go calm down the passengers. I’ll report this to the captain.”

      Yuki nodded vigorously and started down the aisle, beaming a pleasant smile.

      “It’s nothing,” Hu scoffed, sliding another packaged meal into a microwave to be warmed. “Just a coincidence.”

      “Maybe,” Gwenneth said, biting a lip. “Or maybe it’s a freak magnetic storm that’ll throw off the navigation and make us hours late. Either way, regulations say that the captain must be informed at once.”

      Hu shrugged in a noncommittal manner, and Gwenneth pushed past the man to start for the cockpit. Moving through first class, she stopped as the door to the lavatory opened, almost hitting her in the face. It was Mrs. Coleson, the pregnant American woman from coach.

      “You really shouldn’t be here, dear,” Gwenneth started to say, when the woman grabbed her forcibly by the arm and shoved something hard into her stomach.

      “I have a weapon,” Davis Harrison growled in his real voice. “Stay calm and you may get to live.”

      Her eyes went wide at the realization that it was a man wearing a disguise. Quickly, Gwenneth started to pull air into her lungs for a full-throated scream, but Harrison rammed the gun into her stomach, almost knocking her out. Gasping for breath, Gwenneth felt her eyes well with tears as she fought to draw in a ragged breath.