Starfish Prime (Blackfox Chronicles Book 2) (24 page)

The one story cinderblock building sat on the side of Hig
hway 12, the main road that passed through town. It was on the outskirts south of it―the only location where such a place would be tolerated by the good citizens of the area. Five U.S. dollars bought you access, so there was no need to exchange dollars for Bolivares, the local currency. 

That was good, because he had been liquidating his supply of U.S. currency for quite a while, ever since he had overheard the Grand Ayatollah talking with Stal about electromagnetic pulse. He had flown them both around Iran and then to Venezuela a half dozen times to negotiate a deal to use the launch site and arrange for the transportation of what he had assumed from the cryptic language they employed, was an old Soviet ICBM. Stal had stayed on site for a month while negotiations for the use of the facility were being finalized. He stayed to ensure the proper off
icials got paid off, and Madat Asserian had stayed with him. 

Madat felt ashamed, but it did little to spur him into action. He was just one old lovelorn pilot trying to get along. He loved the United States. They had treated him well at Miramar and when he introduced himself as Persian, he seemed exotic to the young California girls looking to hook up with a pilot.

It was cool and dark on the inside of the club. A small stage sat off to the right of the room and on either side there were fifty-two inch video screens playing pornographic movies while a girl stripped on stage―nothing subtle about the place. After living in the forced abstinence of Tehran, the Gomorrah-like setting made him feel light-headed. He took a seat and ordered a Polar beer, the first of many. 

Victoria, the nineteen year old
dancer on stage, had jet-black hair that fell to the small of her back. She had a tight, rippled body and olive skin, large, firm breasts sporting rich, silver dollar-sized nipples. Like all the girls, she had completely shaved her pussy bare so as to appear more like the porn stars that they watched while dancing. 

She smiled when she recognized Madat and squatted down to give him a kiss while he stuck a five-dollar bill in her garter. 

She was friends with Sofia and he had actually treated himself to a threesome with the two beautiful creatures on one occasion.

“She’s in the back―you should go say hello.”

Asserian nodded and walked towards the dressing room through a curtained off doorway to the side of the stage. Sofia was seated in front of a pink wooden vanity that looked like it had been liberated from some child’s room. She saw his reflection in the mirror and squealed with delight. 

“Ai,
Papi!” she screamed and wrapped her near-naked body around him. In stark contrast to Victoria, Sofia was fair skinned and had light brown hair cut in a pageboy. She was tiny―without the four inch high heels she wore on stage, she was less than five feet tall and weighed about ninety pounds.

“Come with me,” she said, grabbing his lapel and leading him into the short-time rooms in the back of the club. They e
ntered the sparsely furnished room that hosted a battered queen size bed, a chipped wooden dresser, and a flat-screen television mounted to the wall, so that the raunchy American pornography could be piped in. Once inside, she unbuckled his pants, slid his bikini briefs to the floor, dropped to her knees, and took his manhood into her mouth. Slurping loudly, she worked the shaft of his penis with her small birdlike hand until he couldn’t stand it any longer and he erupted in her mouth. She swallowed his seed, rose up from her knees, and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“Why did you do that? I thought we were going to make love?” 

“Oh, trust me, Papi, we will make love, but this way you will last until I am totally satisfied.” 

She got what she wanted; they fucked for an hour more. It was only the two-girl threesome being televised that assisted him in finally climaxing inside her in a spasm of bucking spurts. He dismounted her petite ass and collapsed exhausted while she climbed off the bed and disappeared down the hall to the bat
hroom. 

Madat slept for a short while and then dressed and returned to the bar.

“Hey, this is a great place. I just can’t believe the quality of the women in here,” said the young and obviously American guy who spoke to Asserian unprompted. 

Sofia would be going up on stage in a few minutes and he was spent anyway. She had to work until two unless he wanted to pay her bar fine, but he figured that there would be little to gain. He had given her his best shot, and he would have to be on his best behavior tomorrow. 

He nodded to the guy and thought of something noncommittal to say. “Yes, they’re very nice,” he said, and then took his beer to a table toward the back of the room. The young guy followed him. 

“Mind if I join you? I’ve been traveling around
Amazona for the last two months, and you’re one of the first people I’ve run into who speaks English.” 

Asserian
nodded and indicated a chair with the upturned palm of his hand. 

“Please do.” He welcomed the opportunity to speak the la
nguage as well; he found himself having difficulty due to a lack of practice. 

“My name’s Sam.” he said, offering a callous hand. 

“Madat” said the pilot. Sam nodded and upended his beer, draining half.

Been prospecting,” said Sam.
“They say Amazona has got great gold reserves. They say it washes down these mountains in streams and ends up in riverbeds, and that prospectors are finding handfuls of gold nuggets. But if that’s true, I haven’t found it.” 

Madat didn’t know what to say at first. He started to nod,
then looked at the man.  “I guess they lie,” he said and then laughed. Sam smiled and continued talking.

“I just got out of the navy this past September. I heard they were pulling nuggets of gold from the rivers here in the Amazon, so I put everything in storage and headed here.” 

“The navy?” replied Asserian. The man nodded at him.

“I flew with your navy at Miramar.” That engendered a long commentary from Sam about the love hate relationship he deve
loped over his two tours. Madat voiced nothing but love and admiration for his time with the Navy. They ordered several more rounds of beers as they whiled away two hours discussing the pluses and minuses of different naval bases, although Madat’s knowledge extended to only three—Miramar, Pensacola, and Oceana—while Sam knew them all. 

Sofia was tied up with a customer, an elderly rancher from San Fernando de
Atabapo, who wanted to marry her. She sat with him while repeatedly draining the ‘ladies drinks,’ he bought her at ten dollars a pop. She got a fifty percent cut, which was just compensation for listening to him pine for his long-dead wife. She knew that she would pocket close to fifty dollars if she could talk him into a hand job. He was incapable of coitus and she wasn’t about to take his gnarled dick in her mouth. She looked over at Madat, who seemed to be engaged in a spirited conversation with a young, blond-haired gringo. She offered her hand to the old geezer and led him into the back room. 

Sam had suggested they buy a bottle of tequila, and had even paid for it, so who was Madat to argue. They each did a shot, and then another. 

“No shit, there was this great kitty bar in Pensacola,” said Madat after returning from the bathroom.

“You mean
titty bar,” said Sam. 

“Right,
titty bar,” he replied. They did another shot and Madat suddenly felt strange―his vision began to blur and he was dizzy. He fell off the chair to the side and landed heavily on the floor, unconscious. 

Sam looked at the bartender and said in Spanish, “My friend is a little drunk. I think I’ll take him home.” The man nodded slowly.

Sam reached down, pulled Madat to his feet, gripped him behind the knees, and hoisted him up over his shoulder in a firemen’s carry. He started to the door and then turned to retrieve the tequila, as he wanted to avoid an unnecessary poisoning should the bottle be resold. He grabbed the bottle and was out the door and to his truck long before Sofia managed to make the grizzled old rancher shoot his load. 

Char sat in the cab listening to a bootlegged Jimmy Buffett CD and smoking a locally made
Lancero style cigar, both of which had been purchased at a gas station about ten klicks back.

He noticed Johnnie kick open the club’s door and lowered the right side window.

“Throw him in the back.”

“You don’t think he’ll wake up and jump out?” asked Joh
nnie. 

“If he got a full dose, he’ll be out for at least four hours,” r
eplied Char. Johnnie lowered the tailgate with his free hand, unceremoniously dropped the pilot’s unconscious body onto the bed, and closed the gate. Char backed out on the highway and began speeding south.

“So, what now?” said
Johnnie. 

“Don’t really know,” replied Char 

“What the fuck! I roofied a pilot for ‘I don’t know?” 

Char looked at him blankly and thought for a minute. They had seen the jet land when they arrived. Char thought a high end private jet landing at a rural airport in the jungle warranted fu
rther investigation. Once he saw the Ayatollah exit the jet, some of the pieces fell into place. Char and Johnnie followed the parties to their hotel and waited.

A short time later, a cab arrived to pick up the pilot and they followed. “Well, like that great philosopher Sun Tzu used to say:

‘When in doubt, fuck things up.’” 

Johnnie stared at him with a bemused grin, “I’m pretty sure he said ‘If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him,’” said Johnnie.

“Same principle, replied Char. Let’s take him back to his room.”

Carabobo Launch Complex  

It had taken over a half an hour to notice that Doctor Lam was missing, since she frequently slipped out the door to spend about three to five minutes puffing a Hongtashan cigarette, only to return reenergized by a new dose of nicotine. 

One of the technicians became curious and went outside to check on her. He saw the crumpled body lying on its side and ran to it, initially thinking she had suffered a seizure or a heart attack. As he drew closer, he noticed a golf ball sized hole in her back where the small-caliber, high-velocity round had exited her body. 

Not knowing what else to do, he gently shook her shoulder and the body collapsed on its back, exposing a small entrance wound between her tiny breasts. It was then he noticed swarms of black flies busily engaged in laying their eggs, while long lines of ants marched in and out of various orifices. 

He suddenly became nauseous and retched up a bowl of shrimp noodles he had just consumed for breakfast. He smelled the odorous barf and began to retch again. This time, he moved back from the pools of vomit, got to his feet, and ran to the door. “Come quickly! Doctor Lam has been shot!” He immediately felt stupid for shouting, as he was sure that there was nothing anyone could do, and hence no reason to hurry. 

***

Bobby had prescribed an early lunch for Stal to combat what he determined was a slight overdose of insulin. Stal felt better after eating a carb-heavy plate of meat and cheese pierogies he’d had flown in from a Russian restaurant in Miami.

“Can I see my daughter?” asked Bobby 

“Not quite yet, but soon,” replied Stal, although he had no intention of ever allowing the man to see her again. He had done perverted things to the young girl, and he was not about to allow her to share that information with her father. He knew how much Grand Ayatollah Najavani liked young, nubile women, and he thought she would make the perfect welcome gift. He had already sufficiently used her, and he no longer found her to be that alluring. With one hundred million in the bank, he would soon have access to a nonstop stream of women of any age and description. 

The communications program on his computer buzzed to i
ndicate a caller, and he turned away from Bobby to answer it. Van Achtenberg’s face filled the screen. “Someone shot Doctor Lam when she stepped out for a cigarette. No one heard a thing. It’s obviously the same sniper team that took out the crew-served weapons last night.” 

Stal felt his face flush red with blood as anger swept into his being. With the snipers hazarding the installation, there was no way that they could move the missile into place, and he had planned to have everything ready to launch when the Grand Ay
atollah arrived. 

“Order the National Guard to initiate suppression fire. Then bring me the three Americans.” 

After the Marines had initially attacked the compound, the National Guard had brought ten Chinese built, VN-4 armored vehicles to reinforce the perimeter. They mounted a 12.7 mm machine gun, roughly the equivalent of the M2 Browning fifty caliber. The Marine’s Barrett MX-109, however, leveled the playing field as one twenty-five mm explosive round could destroy the lightly armored vehicles. 

Stal ended the video conference and waited. A few minutes later he heard the unmistakably loud, repetitive clatter of several heavy machine guns simultaneously firing. 

***

Heavy bullets zipped through the jungle, cutting leaves from the thick canopy. Langston and Perry had moved from the vicin
ity of where they had neutralized their last high-value target, the female engineer, and had set up in a hide site within effective range of Stal’s quarters to await further instructions.

“Take out some targets, then hunker down and wait,” said Gunny Grimes over the team radio. 

“Roger that,” replied Langston. Perry used the Barrett Optics rangefinder, a ballistic solution computer, to sight in on the VN-4 that was firing from the road in front of the dining hall. He targeted the machine gun atop the vehicle and then engaged it by sending a round into the engine compartment. He watched multiple secondary explosions erupt from within the vehicle while rounds began to cook off inside. Several forty millimeter explosions impacted against another armored car, so Perry reasoned that the Havoc Twins had been given the same order―fuck some shit up and then wait for word to melt back into the jungle. 

***

Michael, Dixon, and Thomas stood with their hands cuffed behind their backs in front of Stal. 

“Call off your dogs, or I’ll cut your heads off, starting with you,” said Stal while pointing at Dixon. 

“Shit, they always start with the black guy,” said Dixon. No one laughed. Van Achtenberg held a long blue steel machete at his side.
Fuck, they might be serious,
thought Michael. Two Afrikaner troopers seized Dixon from behind and threw him to the floor.  “Last chance,” Said Stal.  Dixon looked up at him.

“Okay, I’ll call them off, but then you let us go,” said M
ichael. 

“Oh, no, you and your fellow soldiers will provide security for the launch. You will escort the missile to the gantry and stand there while it is launched. Then you can go, as it won’t make any difference.”

Michael was tempted to correct him—they were Marines after all—but he fought the urge and nodded his assent. This guy was as sincere as a lap-dancer who had a rent payment due―he was pretty sure that Stal would tell him what he wanted to hear right up until the time he was no longer needed. Eventually, a lot of questions would have to be answered and effective risk management meant a bullet in the head. 

Van Achtenberg unlocked his cuffs and handed him the squad radio that was taken during his capture. 

“Tell them to stand down or I’ll cut the Kefir’s bleeding head off,” said Van Achtenberg. 

Michael took the microphone, “Victor Seven Two, this is Charlie Two Five, Actual
—stand down, return to the rear CP.” He called the Havoc Twins and repeated the order. Both teams broke squelch twice in acknowledgement. The intermittent incoming fire abruptly terminated. 

“Happy?” said Michael. 

“Good,” said Stal. “But, just to make sure, we’ll be launching mortar counterstrikes against locations we have been able to identify and woe be it if your soldiers decide to hang around.”   

Van Achtenberg drew close to Michael and spoke in a quiet, threatening tone. “If I hear so much as a mouse fart on the peri
meter, I will come get your Kefir and give him a hair cut from the neck up, you read me?” 

“Like a sign that says asshole ahead,” said Michael. 

The taller man leaned down, brought his mouth next to

Michael’s ear, and talked in a low tone. “This isn’t over, chum.

You and me are going to go round and round before it is.”

“That’s fine, Gramps, just make sure you put on a fresh pair of adult diapers because I’m going to beat the ever-loving shit out of you.” 

The Afrikaner’s face flushed with anger, and he attempted a retort, but was preempted by Stal’s shout.

“Lock them up in the cell and bring me Chen.” 

Van Achtenberg and his guards herded the three Marines to the cell door, opened it, and beckoned Chen out with a quick wave of his hand. There was no need to handcuff the little man; he knew what to expect. With Lam dead, they had no choice but to put Chen back in charge. The Topol class missile was over seventy feet long and weighed over ninety-nine thousand pounds. It would be transported to the launch gantry on a flatbed, and then a crane and harness would be used to place it upright. It would be a tricky business and Chen was the only one with the requisite expertise to get it done. 

Van Achtenberg had already discussed it with Stal. One of his rapidly diminishing
cadre of men would be responsible for monitoring Chen’s every action, right up until the time came to put a bullet in his skull.