three recent missions of unusually blazing intensity.
The legitimate business of DonCo was technology; it followed that its security system was of the latest state-of-the-art design. Although only a handful of people were authorized to know it, DonCo had recently been at the forefront of ongoing sensitive applications studies of the U.S.
Navy's newest sea-toground missile guidance systems. Every step had been taken to guard against just the sort of covert infiltration that Bolan and Gadgets were now carrying through.
The security facility at DonCo was proprietary, as Gadgets had explained to his boss during the preprobe briefing, and it employed a systems approach. This meant simply that security was on-site, tied in to a basement guardroom, and that the entire plant had been designed with counter-subversion in mind. The glass-and-steel-frame design embodied fixed windows, wired with alarms that signaled breakage, accidental or otherwise; ventilation came from a failsafed rooftop air exchanger. Every legitimate access was limited to the front door; fire doors on the other three sides opened only from the inside, and sounded an alarm even then. That much they knew before the probe began. Since, they had also encountered the close-circuit television system monitoring the grounds, the deceptively simple lock on the front door that served as decoy to a break-to-activate electric alarm, and the ultrasonic-wave-propagating equipment that crisscrossed the company's lobby with invisible soundwave tripwires.
The blacksuits and some nimble footwork defeated the TV'S, while Gadgets's sharp eye and some coaxial cable and alligator-clip probes took out the electric alarm. A sweep with a superheterodyne receiverstdetector revealed the frequency of the UWP transmitter, and a transistorized feedback device neutralized it without causing a 'systems failure' readout in the guardroom.
Mack Bolan was willing to risk both of their lives, and his New War, on the correctness of this analysis by his comrade.
The cold metal of the doorknob turned easily in his hand. He pushed open the door and stepped into the deeper darkness of the office.
Gadgets was hot on his tail, shutting the door, running his hands swiftly along the jamb, his sensitive fingers searching for yet another device that could knock them out. Bolan heard him breathe out relief. 'Clean as a Stony Phone,' he grinned.
They were in an outer office, a reception room.
It was completely dark. Bolan waited until Gadgets had relocked the outer door, then flicked on his penlight for a quick-check recon. In the sharp beam and its attendant half light, they scrutinized the decor. The receptionists secretary's desk was a thick slab of butcher-block hardwood set on stainless-steel legs, with a white leather swivel chair. On the desk were a white-leather-edged calendars blotter set and a matching appointment book, a white pen in a white holder, a white telephone with three rows of pushbuttons and nothing else. Set to one side on a lower table with two drawers was a computer terminal with a video display tube. There was a file cabinet against one white wall, a white sofa with two matching chairs, and a couple of coffee tables on which magazines were arranged in neat overlapping rows. The only real color came gloomily from a couple of abstract framed paintings that looked like microcomputer schematic. Gadgets was already checking out the door set into the wall behind the desk. The intelligence reports that had gotten them this far had the room beyond as the private office of Frederick Donald Charon ( president of DonCo, theoretical scientist with a PhD in cybernetics, mathematics, and computer applications, and holder of an NSC Priority-One clearance.
Charon was an extraordinary man, for sure, with, perhaps, merely a single flaw.
The guy was guilty of treason.
Back up a bit. As was common knowledge, over half the staff of the Soviet embassy in Washington were intelligence agents under direct control of the KGB. One of these agents, a medium-ranker named Tuholske who worked in the legal counsel's office, had secretly defected years earlier.
Though hardly privy to everything that went through the embassy, he was occasionally able to answer on some interesting tidbits for the U.S. Not twelve hours earlier, Tuholske had reported to his control that he had encoded a message to the Kremlin reporting one Frederick Donald Charon offering to sell some unspecified but highly classified defense information for a great deal of-money. Was Moscow interested? Probably. Washington sure as hell was.
The fact that the intelligence was, in fact, three weeks old was unfortunate but unavoidable.
Tuholske was under strict orders to make contact only on a rigidly randomized monthly schedule, as a precaution against his being discovered. What made things more difficult, more urgent, was that Charon's present whereabouts were unknown, and inquiries through normal channels had been uniformly stonewalled by DonCo personnel.
This softprobe, therefore, had two purposes.
One was to secure hard evidence of Charon's evident treason. The other was to discover his whereabouts, hopefully in time for a regular field agent to interdict the scientist before he could carry through on his offer to the Russians. And the key to both goals was behind that locked door.
A quick little shimmer tingled the Bolan spine. He stood relaxed in the dark zone, but alert, legs apart in his skintight combat blacks and soft black shoes. He watched in the darkness now, taking position in the very background of the gloom as the wizard played his own penlight over a panel set into the wall next to the entrance to Charon's office.
The panel held a keyboard, and above it an LED display.
'Automatic access-control system,' Gadgets said. He punched a digit at random.
It appeared in the display. Gadgets hesitated, punched another, then a third, fourth, and fifth.
Next to the five figures the display began to flash 'ERROR,' like an accusation. Gadgets hit the 'clear' button and the display returned to darkness.
'Exactly one hundred thousand possible code combos, pal, Colonel Phoenix, sir!' Gadgets smiled. Then his brows knit in concentration as he made rapid mental calculation. 'It would only take us maybe 28 hours to go through them, hitting one a second.' He shook his head to himself. 'There's another way, though, Sarge. Risky, but...'
'But we're this far into the cold damned chamber,' quietly finished the warrior. 'Let's play it.'
Gadgets was already unzipping his military chest-pack, eagerly plucking tools and instruments from its interior.
Two Philips-head screws held the panel to the wall. 'Charon is using a number-code system, which tells us that other people besides him have access to his office,' Gadgets whispered as he went to work on them. 'If he were the only one, he'd use a voice-activated circuit, or a thumbprint reader.' The panel came free and Schwarz placed it on the carpeting, set the screws carefully in the holes. 'That could mean other people have access to his terminal, maybe even his user code. If so, it makes life a lot easier for us.... Uh-oh. Command decision time, Sarge. The numbers just stacked up against us. In a big way.'
Beneath where the panel had been, Bolan saw a circuit board covered with microcomponents and a second one with two parallel vertical rows of ten terminals. To each of these terminals on the second circuit ran a wire coded in a different colored insulation.
'Here's what you have to know, Sarge,' Gadgets said. 'This is essentially a simple device. When the circuit reads the correct five-digit code, it trips a relay. The relay trips a breaker, the breaker completes a circuit, the circuit activates a mechanical delock. So all you have to do is hotwire the code reader-make it think the right code has been punched in.' Gadgets pointed to one of the vertical rows of terminals. 'That means clipping a wire from one of these-was he indicated the other row to one of these. The only question is, which pair?'
'And if you come up with the wrong answer?' ( Bolan asked in a voice like blighted night.
Gadgets wiped a sleeve of his blacksuit across his forehead. 'It'll blow our heads off. It's trip-rigged.'
Mack Bolan's decision made itself. 'All right. It goes that way sometimes. Now let's pull...'
'Sarge,' Gadgets cut in. His voice was soft, but there was no weariness in it, the assurance was full and rich. 'I can crack it.' In Gadgets Schwarz's statement there was no tentativeness. It was a simple expression of fact.
The lighted numerals of the chronometer on Bolan's left wrist read 0132:30 A.M.
He gave Gadgets the go-ahead with a nod, said 'Mark,' and turned away. His respect for this fighting man seemed to resound in the silence.
He smiled calmly. Behind him there was no sound as Gadgets studied resistors, transistors, capacitors,
