Starfire. Don Pendleton

      PROLOGUE

      Australia

      Forty-three minutes and counting, and Chuck Boltmer knew they were cutting it close to the razor’s edge. He wasn’t even suited up and already he was sweating. If they stuck to training—both mock-up and virtual-reality dry runs—thirty-five minutes and a few more agonizing ticks alone would be devoured just getting set up, more, depending, of course, on the human factor. The low earth orbit satellite was already in position, and Boltmer knew if they were two shakes behind schedule Zenith One wasn’t about to hold up the show because the hired help was too slow on the draw from ground zero.

      Man, oh, man, what kind of crazy life had he led, he wondered, that would lead him to the brink of suicide like this, and of his own free will?

      He knew. A washed-out CIA special op once connected to the Cali Cartel, who loved money more than law and order and was hunted by his own people, broke and down on his luck didn’t get to choose which banquet table offered the choicest meat.

      Not much more than a street beggar, as far as he was concerned, but those days were fast coming to an end, one way or another.

      And in the face of a holocaust that would leave no doubt.

      Boltmer killed the Jeep’s engine and lights, then stared through the dust- and bug-spattered windscreen. The pub and surrounding area had been chosen as a test site, he knew, and right from the beginning, when his handlers laid out mission parameters and particulars. Remoteness guaranteed limited immediate collateral damage. That, and the handlers figured nobody much cared about a bunch of ex-cons, ex-mercs and other assorted riffraff living off the radar screen, to be used as guinea pigs in what struck him as little more than a ghoul’s experiment.

      The problem haunting Boltmer was grim knowledge acquired during training. Sure, this stretch of out-back fanning away in oceanic dimensions was humped with rocky hills and cut with gorges, all but deserted of human beings, and they were situated well beyond the immediate four- to five-mile incineration radius. Or so said the nameless European principals who had hired him out of obscurity and grinding poverty in Berlin, eighteen months back, but what now seemed another lifetime. What worried him at the moment was all the spinifex grassland, the eucalypt forest to the north and east, subtropical rain forest that would rise up when—if—they managed to extract for the decon site. In other words, the dry countryside was a living hot zone, with enough incendiary flashpoints…

      “We will be fine. Show courage. Just remember, we are being paid five million dollars. Apiece.”

      Boltmer looked over at the big, bullet-head buzz-cut man with black eyes cold and lifeless enough to sub-humanize him as part-reptile in human flesh.

      He knew him only as Karlov. Boltmer was certain that wasn’t his real name, but judging the accent, sloping forehead and high cheekbones, he pegged him as East Euro-trash, maybe Serb or Bulgarian, likewise a gangster, since Karlov had all the greedy, malicious aura of a common street thug, more muscle and animal instinct than good sense. And what made him so confident anyway? he wondered. Did Karlov know something he didn’t?

      As his partner marked their position on the GPS unit mounted to the dashboard, began punching in the series of cutout numbers on the secured sat phone, then fiddling with the scrambler, Boltmer wondered about his own seeming death wish. The madness he was about to participate in and come out the other side would find those hefty retirement funds plunked down into a numbered Swiss account—or all his hopes, dreams and fears—would be over.

      Vaporized, in truth, in less time than it took to blink.

      He tried to focus on the positive, such as living. The thermal-insulated, one-piece raid suit he wore was state-of-the-art, similar to the protection tiles that shielded space shuttles upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, only stronger. Same deal for the main protective suit, but with obvious and subtle variations. Compare 2900 degrees Fahrenheit those astronauts faced to an educated ballpark half-million hellish units he was maybe staring down, what with superheated pressure waves that would come roaring their way at supersonic speed, and both thermal pj’s and their black project robot shell better be next to as invincible as any divine armor of heavenly angels against evil.

      “This is Vortex to Zenith One. We are at Blast Furnace and moving into position. Repeat…”

      Bottom line, Boltmer figured it was all about the spacesuits and their advanced cutting-edge extras, as he heard Karlov confirm transmission. Forget the bush lab rats, the two of them were the real test subjects, once they suited up. He’d been blindfolded and driven from Berlin, he briefly recalled, to the underground complex for training when verbally signing on, he had never been told outright who he’d pledged allegiance to. But he knew enough about the European Space Agency to know it housed the European Space Operation Center in Darmstadt, Germany, and two and two still equaled four, even in the spook world’s black hole. Armed now with the latest in supertech armor for astronauts, he knew he was way past the point of hoping the spacesuit to be donned would hold up under heat about as extreme as the core of the sun. At the end of the day, he decided, the principals’ main objectives were none of his wonder.

      Living to collect five million was his end game.

      “Let’s do it, my friend,” Karlov said.

      Boltmer malingered a moment before piling out the door behind his partner, another few seconds lagging before hauling the heavy corpse-size nylon bag out of the back of the Jeep. Hanging the full weight of what would either save or fry his war-grizzled bacon over his shoulder, he felt Karlov’s glacier eyes drilling into the side of his head, but ignored the man as he stared east. All the blood on his hands, all the insane schemes by his own machinations he’d lived through in his day than he actually had a right to keep on claiming air, and he was hardly lacking in the guts department. But this?

      Pure Hell on Earth.

      Oh, but the insanity of it all, no question.

      And here he was, Boltmer glancing at the illuminated dial of his Breitling emergency transmitter watch, moving out to fall in behind Karlov. Forty minutes and ticking…

      Then, willingly, they would become the first human beings to try to live in the face and fury of a nuclear explosion almost four times as powerful as the one dropped on Hiroshima.