Domination Bid. Don Pendleton

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       CHAPTER THREE

      Stony Man Farm, Virginia

      The five battle-hardened warriors of Phoenix Force sat attentively as Harold Brognola, head of the most covert special operations agency in America, opened the briefing.

      “We’re long on intelligence and short on time, so let’s get right to it,” Brognola said. He looked at Barbara Price and nodded.

      Price, Stony Man’s mission controller, tapped the key on the table-top keyboard in front of her and the operations center conference room lights dimmed. A moment later the face of a young man with dirty-blond hair appeared on the 72-inch LED screen at one end of the room.

      “Gentlemen, meet Dr. Oleg Dratshev. This picture was taken about ten years ago when he was age twenty-five. For more than a decade Dratshev has been Russia’s foremost military R and D scientist in the areas of electromagnetic pulse weapons. He holds several advanced degrees and his work has been financed directly by the Kremlin. Two days ago he disappeared.”

      Price paused for effect and met the gaze of every Phoenix Force warrior before she continued. “Dr. Dratshev is highly respected by most members of the military scientific community. His security was handled by the FSB. He was taken by a party or parties unknown, and thus far no ransom demand has been made. The Russian government has attempted to keep his disappearance a secret, but it was hardly possible given that he disappeared shortly after arriving in Minsk and the grabbers left the bodies of four FSB agents behind.”

      Phoenix Force’s team leader, David McCarter, cleared his throat and asked, “Do we know why he was in Minsk?”

      Price shook her head. “We don’t have any positive proof but we believe he may have been there to oversee the test demonstration of some prototype weaponry he designed.”

      Calvin James let out a low whistle. “Funny they’d think testing weapons of that size in a foreign territory would be something they could keep a lid on.”

      “Well, the buzz running through the highest channels at both the CIA and NSA would indicate they weren’t testing high-energy weapons,” Price replied.

      “Wait a minute,” Gary Manning interjected. “Are you saying Dratshev has come up with a design for EMP application using small arms?”

      “It would seem so,” Price replied.

      Each of the Phoenix Force members muttered curses under their breath and an icy tension settled on all present.

      “That’s unthinkable,” Rafael Encizo said. A Cuban native and one of the original Phoenix Force veterans, Encizo was the team’s resident specialist in maritime operations and an expert knife fighter.

      “As far as we know,” Price said, “the capabilities of EMP in small arms are still little more than an untested theory. But we do think that given how long Dratshev’s been working on the project, coupled with the Russian government’s continued financing of his research, those capabilities are a very real possibility.”

      “Excuse me,” Thomas Jackson Hawkins said, raising a hand in automatic reflex.

      “T.J.?” Price acknowledged with a nod.

      “I was under the impression EMP was still somewhat poorly understood. At least from the perspective of safe weaponization.”

      “I think Bear could give us a more expert opinion on that concept,” Brognola said. “Aaron?”

      The other man in the room differed more than the rest in just the fact that he was confined to a wheelchair. By any standards Aaron Kurtzman had an IQ nearly off the charts and the uncanny ability to collect, sort and manipulate copious amounts of electronic data into logical chunks of intelligence. Those talents, coupled with his leadership of all of Stony Man’s computer-based operations, had saved the lives of every field team member on occasions almost too numerous to quantify.

      Kurtzman grinned, happy as always to be in his element. “From the standpoint of physics, electromagnetics is a relatively simple principle to grasp. Think about the Earth. Surrounding our atmosphere is an electromagnetic field, which is generated by the Earth’s core of molten metal spinning at thousands of miles per hour. At least that’s the generally accepted scientific axiom.

      “That field helps contain our air and moisture, but more importantly it protects us from the cosmic radiation generated by the sun. Now suppose that you could harness such a field on a microcosmic СКАЧАТЬ