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  “It says a helicopter is approaching now.”

  “That’s right. The transport window is closing fast. Now, if you would please leave me alone!”

  An alarm sounded.

  “I must check this,” the albino said. “I need to see what’s going on.”

  Chuck said, “Make it fast.” He followed the albino over three rows of computer banks to where the man leaned over a monitor and typed rapidly on a keyboard. An alert flashed on the screen.

  “It’s nothing,” the albino said. “A REMO helicopter is approaching with personnel.”

  “I can see that,” Chuck said, looking at the names. “You know Dante Brulé?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “You’re a liar. What’s a REMO helicopter?”

  “Remote control.”

  “Can you control it from here?”

  “No, that happens in the air traffic control center.”

  “Take me there.”

  “I can’t leave my post.”

  Chuck aimed his Glock at the albino’s face. “You better get moving.”

  “Alright, but you’ll regret this.”

  They walked down a passageway and into a dark room that was glowing with electronics, including three huge video monitors that covered the far wall. One of the monitors featured a map of Southern Chili and Argentina, the Drake Passage, Cape Horn, the Southern Ocean, and the coast of Antarctica. A little light was flashing by a little island near Antarctica. That was clearly the USS Forrestal. Another flashing light was slowly moving toward the USS Forrestal.

  “Change its course,” Chuck said.

  “What?”

  “Redirect it to land in the antenna farm over on the supertanker.”

  “There’s no landing pad there. It will wreck. It will destroy the HAARP weapon.”

  “Do it now.”

  “I will not.”

  Chuck punched him in the nose, breaking another piece of bone. More blood poured out of the nasal passage down over his pale skin and pink lips. Chucked pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it over.

  “This should help. Hopefully it won’t heal too crooked.”

  “You broke my nose again.”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll be an improvement.”

  The scientist pressed the handkerchief against his nose, but screamed in pain.

  “You want to do that gently,” Chuck said, “especially after I hit it again.”

  He flinched. His pale skin had turned deep pink as he controlled his rage. “You’ll never get away with this. Do you know how many Black Cobra terrorists are on this ship?”

  “How many?”

  “Ninety. They’ll own you in minutes.”

  Chuck raised his gun. “Redirect the remote-controlled helicopter carrying Brulé to crash Kamakazi style on the supertanker.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “I don’t think you want to find out, do you?”

  “I’ll need to call Lazar for permission.”

  Chuck put the .45 to his neck. “I’m getting tired of your whining.”

  “Oh, my God. This is suicide. He’ll kill us both.”

  “Die now or die later.”

  Ursinov reached for the key pad with pale, shaking fingers.

  “Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll—I’ll change the course.”

  “Make it fast.” Chuck touched Ursinov’s ear with the pistol. “And don’t mess around. Too many lives depend on your success—including your own.”

  The albino tapped away on a key board. He typed in new landing coordinates.

  Chuck looked up at the big radar screen with the superimposed maps. The bottom of the screen read. “Arrival time: 1:21.”

  And that time was counting down.

  Chuck watched the course of the flashing dot. It changed visibly from heading toward the aircraft carrier to a new course for the supertanker.

  “Good work, doctor. Now zoom in the exterior video feed and let’s watch the show.”

  The big screen by the map showed a distant image of the supertanker through a thin veil of fog. The doctor typed and the cameras outside zoomed in on the other ship.

  Then alarms started blaring.

  “WARNING” flashed on the map in big red letters.

  Chuck saw the albino smile.

  “What’s so funny?” Chuck said.

  “Just watch. I did what you wanted.”

  Chuck saw the helicopter emerge on the edge of the video monitor. Then several flashes occurred on the deck of the supertanter. The helicopter exploded and dropped into the ocean.

  “What happened?” Chuck said.

  “Anti aircraft weapons,” the albino said. “You didn’t really think the great General Lazar would leave his ship out there defenseless, do you? You really don’t know who you’re dealing with. Whatever happens to me, you’re a doomed man.” As the albino gently pressed the handkerchief to his nose, Chuck punched him again, hard enough to knock him down.

  “Do not move!” The command came from the doorway. It was the voice of authority.

  CHAPTER 25

  Five minutes after the first helicopter left, the helicopter carrying Stuart and Dante Brulé lifted off. When they were within a few miles of the USS Forrestal, a voice crackled over the radio of the remote-controlled Dragonfly Two. Brule was rigid with tension because he hated flying and he’d heard the radio talk about the fate of Dragonfly One.

  Then he heard, “Dragonfly Two will proceed without delay to land on the USS Forrestal. The threat has been neutralized.”

  Brulé was relieved and furious at the same time. He was relieved that his ride was no longer in danger. He was furious that they’d evidently neutralized Brandt before he got there. This would rank as the first failure of his illustrious career as an assassin.

  Maybe there was still a way to take out Brandt if they were keeping him alive.

  Brulé could let him try to escape then shoot him in the back to save the day.

  After all, if Brandt was dead, why didn’t they turn the Dragonfly Two around and take Brulé back to Lima? he wondered. Whatever the reason, Brulé wanted to see Brandt’s dead body to be sure the job was done and he got credit.

  CHAPTER 26

  Dragonfly Two touched down on the mothballed USS Forrestal. Slinging his canvas bag straps over his shoulder, Brulé ducked and ran under and whirring rotor blades. As he reached the tower, he passed seven men, dignitaries of some kind, who were going in the other direction. They ran to the helicopter and climbed in.

  Brulé was embarrassed that he hadn’t taken out Brandt back in Lima. Now his future was uncertain. He would find a way finish the job. He would allow no one to get in his way.

  ***

  After a three hour flight in an OFFSHORE Concord jet and now a super-fast REMO helicopter, Stuart was glad to be arriving. Any day he faced the enemy was a good day. Now that Dragonfly Two had landed on the flight deck of the decommissioned USS Forrestal, his life expectantly had fallen dramatically. As the helicopter engines died down, the passengers left and men began lugging the supplies from the back of the fuselage. The freezing wind hit his face when he stepped out. He aimed for the doorway, moving slowly.

  He acted like he belonged there.

  Everything went smoothly until he entered the door to the tower. Then a dark-skinned man stepped in front of him.

  “Hey, you’re not on the list. Stay right there. I need to get approval.”

  Stuart pulled his silenced handgun and fired.

  Two Black Cobra terrorists fell.

  “Forget about it.” Stuart jogged down a steel tunnel. He heard voices yelling somewhere back down the uneven corridor. The more that he ran, the more heat his body generated. Finally, he ducked into an open doorway and closed the door. He was in a stripped out room with no light. They would be coming for him soon. After a minute, he heard approaching voices out in the hallway.

  He stopped moving in the dark as he heard footsteps pounding metal as several me
n were running down the same steel tunnel that he’d just come from.

  He clasped his fingers around his handgun and aimed at the door.

  CHAPTER 27

  One hour, fifty-six minutes till WMD attack

  “Freeze! Move a hair and I blow your brains out… Put your hands in the air! Get down on your knees.”

  The talker was behind Chuck, so he could not see who it was. Chuck didn’t like this at all. He’d just gotten here. He hadn’t even sabotaged Lazar’s operation yet.

  “Get down now unless you want to see the devil.” This was a different voice. It was deep and soaked in menace.

  Facing a wall of glowing electronics in the darkened control center, Chuck raised his hands and got down on his knees.

  He heard footsteps as the two Black Cobra thugs approached him.

  “Who the hell is this, Ursinov?”

  “He attacked me!” Doctor Ursinov blurted out. “Said he was an intern then pulled a gun. Now I’m behind schedule.” Ursinov blew his noise into a bloody handkerchief and hurried out.

  The two men stood in front of Chuck, one aiming a handgun at his face. They were dressed black. The big guy’s face reminded Chuck of a Mac Truck. His face was broad and hefty like the rest of him. He had aggressive eyes. His body was like a Mac truck. When he stepped forward, Chuck felt like he might be run over. The other thug was leaner and taller; he had long dark hair and a neatly-trimmed beard. His eyes were cold like those of a snake.

  Mac Truck held a club; his pistol was holstered. Snake Eyes held his .45 aimed at Chuck’s head. The barrel shook slightly, but Chuck sensed this was more from excitement than fear. He wanted to use his gun.

  “Move. Follow him.”

  Chuck was led down a long passageway. It felt like the passageway to doom. To have come this far only to fail was unbearable and unacceptable. He felt like he was overwhelmed with pain. So much pain going back so far. Pain over the betrayal of government bureaucrats who sold him down the river and sold out the country, too. The pain of loss and grief. Even physical pain from lingering injuries, including a gunshot wound that wasn’t completely healed. Now the pain of failure. The agony of failure. He tried to shut the pain out, to ignore the pain—but then he realized that the pain was giving him purpose. The pain was giving him strength. Pain was his friend in life’s battles—even on his last day.

  They led him through a doorway into a room with a metal table with a remote control on it next to a glass ashtray.

  “Sit down!”

  Since Snake-eyes had a gun pointed at him, Chuck obeyed.

  Then Mac Truck picked up the remote control from the table and turned on the ceiling-mounted projector. A video screen lit up on the wall.

  “I’m going to hurt him,” Snake Eyes said, standing behind Chuck.

  Chuck recognized the voice. This was the one who’d offered to introduce him to the devil.

  Mac Truck shook his head. “No, we talk to Lazar first then break every bone in his body.”

  Lazar’s video image appeared on the wall. He said, “Chuck Brandt, you are bolder than an African hyena. I admire that, but you are outclassed. I win.”

  “Win what? You’re hiding.”

  “No, I am achieving my destiny. The ex-US president, my close associate, turned over all of the USA’s best HAARP equipment to me. Officially, it was supposed to be scrapped, but that was obviously not the case.”

  “I really don’t understand HAARP,” Chuck said, hoping to buy time.

  Lazar grinned. Intensity filled his eyes. “To understand it, you need to know where it came from. You’re familiar with the inventor Nicola Tesla, right?”

  “Sure, he worked with Edison, was into electricity. I think he installed all the power at Niagara Falls. I believe that he invented the world’s first radio-controlled boat.”

  Up on the television screen, Lazar moved out of camera range, leaving the screen blank. Then he promptly returned. “Please excuse me. This is a busy time. I’m sure you understand. As I was saying, oh yes, Tesla created artificial lightening, but that’s only the beginning. What’s important is his connection to HAARP.”

  “Why?”

  Lazar smiled. “I will tell you, Brandt, because I respect a man with tenacity. But you’re too ambitious for your talent level. You don’t know when you’re outmatched. You fly too close to the sun, and you burn your wings. But I’ve enjoyed the diversion of your sideshow. I’ll give you two extra minutes on your last day.

  “Back in 1900, Tesla applied for a patent to transmit electrical energy through ‘natural mediums’ as he called it. But he had been working on this research for some time. Then something eye-opening happened in 1904. The US Government began conducting research in the upper atmosphere with airplanes.”

  “How’s that relevant?”

  Lazar said, “The timing. Do you think it coincidence that this research began just four years after Tesla’s patent application?”

  “I don’t know, but generally I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe that things usually happen for a reason.”

  Lazar nodded. “The public rarely hears the truth about what happens in the world. Many believe in randomness, but many things are happening by design that they would never imagine.”

  “Where are you going with this?”

  Lazar lifted his thick pointer finger and tapped his thick cheek bone. “The heavy research on the atmosphere began way back in 1904, and that research was inspired by the ideas of Tesla. That research had continued ever since—that’s for well over a hundred years. You can make a tremendous amount of progress in ten years, let alone a fifty years or a hundred years and so on. A hell of a lot of progress.”

  “I’m following you.”

  “Good,” Lazar said. “Very good. You’re going to like it. In 1924, they confirmed that radio waves bounce off the ionosphere. In the 1930’s Tesla announced his death ray invention.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  Lazar smiled. “That depends on your perspective. When Tesla died in 1943, the US government seized and classified all his papers, but it’s not all about Tesla. There are other players in this modern tragedy. Think 1945. That was the year when Julian Huxley, secretary-general of the United Nations Educational and Scientific and Cultural Organization, also called UNESCO, proposed exploding atomic bombs above the Polar Regions to raise the temperature of the Arctic Ocean. The hope was that doing this would warm the entire climate of the Arctic. You can just imagine how these government scientists think. You blast a hole in the atmosphere. The sun pours in and warms the planet up. It never occurs to them that they might destroy the world.”

  “I suppose I should be relieved that you’ve taken over the HAARP technology.”

  “The truth, Brandt, is often hard to take. That’s why so many people fear the truth. Anyway, have you heard about the hole in the ozone layer over the North Pole? Have you ever heard government officials blaming it on carbon emissions? Blaming the people? Blaming you and me? Global warming—all of that?”

  “It sounds familiar.”

  “Ever heard of C.Y.A.?”

  “Another scientific term, right?”

  “Of course, anyway, let’s stick with progression of havoc that can develop over a hundred years.”

  “Alright.”

  “In 1952,” Lazar said, “the US White House Department of Weather Modification was formed. In 1953, President Eisenhower formed the US Advisory Committee on Weather Control.”

  “I get the idea.”

  “Hold on.” Up on the wall screen, Lazar raised his hand. “It’s just about to get interesting. In 1958, the Val Allen radiation belts were discovered in the earth’s magnetic field? If you were a scientist, what would you do after a discovery like that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’d study it.”

  “So did they, but wait until you hear how they decided to study the Van Allen Radiation Belt. That same year, three nuclear missiles were exploded in the Van Allen Rad
iation Belt. What a great scientific experiment, huh? And this is the same government that blames its own people for driving gas cars instead of electric cars, but I’m getting off topic again.”

  “Try to stay on topic.”

  Lazar smiled. “Mea culpa. I know you have a date with death. I won’t keep you for long. Look, I’m skipping over most of the known developments of Tesla’s teleforce weapon, but a few are instructional. In 1958, Soviet scientists proposed a plan to place a ring of metallic potassium particles into Earth’s polar orbit. Why? You’ll love this. To increase solar radiation that could get through? Why? Oh, this is beautiful. They wanted to thaw out Siberia and the North.”

  “Why would they want to do that?”

  “I was hoping you’d ask. I think you know why. It would open up vast areas to mining, agriculture, and settlement. But the main point here is that they were adding metallic elements to the atmosphere to heat the planet. Now according to weather data, they were not very successful. Russian scientists are now predicting global cooling. Can they be trusted?”

  “Why not? Hasn’t the earth always had warming and cooling cycles?”

  “Sure, but that’s not what I mean. I mean we’re no longer talking about natural weather patterns. Those are a thing of the past because HAARP and other ionospheric heaters have played havoc on our atmosphere. Nothing is natural anymore. Do you ever hear about unusual weather events on the news?”

  “Sure.”

  “Of course you have, and why are so many records being broken? Do you really think it’s because Americans drive trucks? Or could there be other causes—like detonating nuclear devices in the atmosphere?”

  “That does seem dangerous.”

  “Sure, but that’s nothing compared to what else is going on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think 1974,” Lazar said, tapping his cheek again. “That was the year when the United Nations General Assembly banned environmental warfare.”

  “It’s hard to give credibility to a bunch of corrupt dictators who want to rip off America of their mineral wealth.”