Silencing the Thunder

By Stevenson Mukoro

Susan Dax is coerced by the American Intelligence into not only aiding an unethical shady friend, who has been captured and imprisoned, but also to look into the theft of an undisclosed weapon. The developing plot takes her from the easy confines of Washington, DC, to Yemen, across the Middle East and the Mediterraneanending with her being double-crossed, captured, and at the mercy of an extremist intent on poisoning and delving a crippling blow to the American public.

The capers involving Stevenson Mukoros masterly creation of Susan Dax is a sexy English compliment to Lara Croft and Flemings James Bond. She and Mr. Seymour Krakauer have lost none of their influence and constant-moving action flurry. The ambiance of raw espionage and no-holds barred fight scenes come floating back like biting cordite smoke.

The Susan Dax series of novels now number eight titles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: May 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781493193332

Book preview

SILENCING THE

THUNDER

A SUSAN DAX ADVENTURE

Stevenson Mukoro

Copyright © 2015 by Stevenson Mukoro.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4931-9334-9

                eBook             978-1-4931-9333-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 05/26/2015

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Also by Stevenson Mukoro

Cold Heat

My Name Is Susan

The Lighthouse Guards

Dying Hard

Guns, Death and Mr. Krakauer

For Mr Pompom

P R E L U D E

S heikh Insidigo Bonavita Bashir glanced at the laptop sitting on his desk in front of him before raising his hands. In one of his hands was a DVD case. He took out the disc in the case and glanced at the scratched printed label that displayed the faded letters " Pytroxide BA Pemphredo Testing on it. He spun the disc through his fingers several times before sighing and giving in to some astute desire behind his brown eyes, he tapped the On" button of the laptop and inserted the disc into the side-disc tray.

Almost instantly, a roving video of a mountainside followed by a clear blue sky flicked on. There was no background music or expert touch or sanitisation to the way the video was being filmed. It was amateurish and mediocre. The video image suddenly veered away from the picturesque mountain view, as if the person behind it had spotted something else interesting. The image focused on the clear sky and a bird like object flying across it. It seemed to eject something as it continued onward. Halfway down, Insidigo Bashir identified it from the light reflected off the yellow cylindrical object as a German military spec aerosol canister.

The hand behind the camera followed the canister as it dropped to the edge of what seemed like a small but built-up mining settlement, spilling a gaseous smoke. The camera began moving. Slowly at first then using wide angles it zoomed forward and backward several times filming the dispersal of the yellow smoke filling the air and crawling all over the valley floor towards the camera’s direction. It filled the air like a cold harmattan haze.

Suddenly the body behind the hand holding the camera seemed to fall onto a grassy rough earth. For a moment, the camera tumbled across the ground catching glimpses of the man behind the camera’s face. He was a scruffy young Caucasian dressed in a mountaineering outfit. The camera jumbled slightly before resting still on an outcrop.

Insidigo Bashir sitting behind his desk didn’t bother to adjust the settings on his monitor. He watched as a young white male in mountain-gear flash into view, stumble across the ground, snatch up the camera and point it down shakily into the valley below.

The mining village was sparse about eighty people seemed to be in the area going about their business when the aerosol cylinder touched down. They were a multicultural bunch of Caucasian, Asian and Negro inhabitants.

Insidigo Bashir guessed that from the vegetation and landscape that it must be somewhere very south of the equator, probably South Africa.

He observed black and white men, women, and children on the paths and on the roadways, shouting, wondering with frightened curiosity what the hell was going on. There was a growing event of complete chaos and panic. The livestock including the birds in the vicinity slowly began to drop.

Then as if on cue, one after the other, one by one, slowly at first, the denizens began to stagger and fall to their knees. Foam started to appear on some of their mouths and nose. At first, it was just the Caucasian residents. The Negro inhabitants were scratching at their eyes or faces, from a terrible irritation they seem to be experiencing. Then the Caucasians residents started to throw up, acting strange, rolling on the sandy ground as their skins were beginning to transform into various colours. Bluish, yellowish or reddish they turned. Strangely the dark skinned inhabitants remained pale, though some of them had develop into a more ashen colour they seem no worse for wear. It seemed the Caucasians were more susceptible to the effects of the gaseous compound emanating from the yellow aerosol than the Negro inhabitants were. Though the camera didn’t focus on their faces, Insidigo could guess from their reactions that their eyes were sore and that they were finding it difficult to breath. Some of the Caucasian individuals were still vomiting and their skins seemed to be scorching without any stimulus. Blisters formed on their bare arms and legs, then face. Both white and black skinned villagers were confounded over which part of their pain they should focus on first. Their irritating discoloured skins, prickling eyes or their gagging mouths and nose.

The two or three Asian skinned individuals in the village who seemed unaffected by what was going around them didn’t seem to dare or think of touching their wailing counterparts as eyes streamed with red tears and their lips open soundlessly crying or yelling with raucous moans for aid. Every villager the camera could observe was hysterical, quivering, jerking up and down, twisting left and right. Insidigo could see blood emanating from noses and ears, as skins took on a bluish tint. Some clutching their throats, thrashing their limbs around suffering one convulsion or another.

Insidigo couldn’t understand what kind of chemical agent was behind the gaseous smoke. He was aware of one bioweapon that smelt like vinegar and rotten eggs and one that had strange, noxious odour, like Thiodiglycol and Phosphorus Oxychloride. He had dealt with most of them but nothing like the effect that this one was producing.

Despite himself, Insidigo’s spirit was rebelling, he couldn’t help being helpless or sympathetic. His eyes were riveted on the images on his monitor. He could not but help focus on one particular white individual stumbling from round a shack corner. An elderly man with a deep sore on his chest who stumbled to a water tap and started splashing water on his arms and face trying to wash off the blisters, but instead of getting rid of the pain it seemed to be aggravated by the water. Going by the way he was yelling, his skin was getting more inflamed.

Suddenly the camera stopped shaking, maybe because the person behind it had stopped also. However, the camera continued recording, filming the horrible sight below but at a less assessed viewpoint.

When the last white and black skinned person in the valley below stopped moving Insidigo assumed that was the end of it. It wasn’t. A caption in black and white letters fizzled onto the screen:

PYTROXIDE BA PEMPHREDO OUTCOME

Milwood

(TWO HOURS LATER)

It seemed the camera continued onward from its last position because everything was the same as it was a second ago, except the horizon seemed lower.

For two minutes, The Sheikh continued watching the bodies lying still on the street, his teeth on edge dreading the scenes of death that he saw. Insidigo could only guess that they were dead or near death. Their dead lungs no longer filtering out carbon dioxide. Skins, no longer excreted excess heat or water from the bodies while their livers seized its purification of blood cells and toxins from the blood.

Insidigo froze, because as if on prompt, something surprising started happening on the monitor.

Some of the villagers started rising albeit slowly. Not all of them. Only the Negro villagers were getting to their feet, confused and surprised. Some were retching and from the expression on their faces still in pain. The Caucasian villagers remained where they had fallen.

Some of the Negros villagers after regaining some measure of normalcy attended to their white neighbours lying still. They remained unmoving and unchanging despite the shaking and prompting from those around them.

The camera suddenly went blank.

Insidigo shuddered with nauseating relief as he ejected the disc. The images from what he could only term as a massacre were sickening. The mere waste of men, women and children lying dead, murdered by an odourless poisonous gas. Foaming from every orifice on the body, gasping for breath. That is no way to die he muttered to himself in Arabic.

After a while, he grinned to himself This could be my insurance policy he murmured again in Arabic as he took out his android phone. He dialled an American number with a Washington area code.

‘My friend, I think I find something you lose’ he said in English into the tiny microphone as soon as the voice on the other line answered. ‘Maybe we talk huh’

*     *     *

Two weeks later, Assistant Director for National Intelligence Charles Beecham was remembering the briefing he and his boss had with Doctor Prudence Mallory.

‘… from our mass spec readings, the size of the capsids it shows it’s very important. It determined the … er … molecules packed within the container. The C4D container will be good for storage and conveying the catalyst, if they intended to do it’ the doctor had said ‘Considering they built a handful of pentagonal tiles with magnetic edges that mimic chemically-bonded capsid proteins … er … er … I’m not surprised that this type of chemical reaction occurred spontaneously, sir. Finding and hitting on the particular program and then combining it with a macroscopic computer scale was inspirational. It’s very similar to the simulations we did on the corannulene, in that case …’

‘Stay on point Professor’ his female boss had insisted

‘Of course sir’ the dopey doctor had replied ‘Needless to say ma’am, this is not something that should ever be exposed, no matter the circumstances’

He couldn’t agree more and for the third time Charles Beecham was sitting in his office reading the translated clipping from Singapore again. Taking his time, he read, like he did when he first read it two and a half weeks ago. Careful not to miss any punctuation, he took each word one at a time.

"…. Three armed gunmen with thick Visayan accents wielding M-16s and robbed an armoured truck belonging to the Synth Corp Industries outside Equitable PCI Bank in Parañaque City on Thursday morning.

The robbery happened near 6013 NW Avenue about 4.20 p.m. The raiders stole three heavy-duty specimen containers and several courier bags with an undisclosed amount of cash. According to Police Chief Superintendent Mansu Estilles, Apart from ricochet hitting elderly man and P 100,000 worth of property damage, no one was injured during the robbery.

Authorities believe the getaway vehicle was a late -90s black four door Pontiac or Skoda with tinted windows with first digits of its licence tag maybe 282. It was last seen heading south on the Katong Court road towards Niñoy Aquino Avenue.

Superintendent Estilles describes the robbers as being in their twenties, with an average height between 5 feet 9 inches and 6 feet. Each had dirty nails, probably with ear piercings. They wore dark-coloured hoodies, navy jeans and coloured cloth bandana covering their faces. He pleaded with the public for any assistance they could provide in apprehending these culprits"

Beecham paused to read the second paragraph again. He shook his head at the words Specimen Containers.

‘It couldn’t have been a fuckin’ coincidence!’ he mumbled to himself as he tossed aside the newspaper clipping. ‘Sonofabitch gangbangers’ he cursed aloud, turning away from his desk with a despondent expression, he glances at his watch ‘Jesus! Susan, I hope no harm comes to yuh’ he said to himself.

O N E

U nhurriedly, reaching into the leg pouches on my pants, my hands wrapped round the smooth dollar notes and the wooden Tambo stick. I stood out of sight with my flank against a trunk of a palm tree about twelve feet from the retreating outlying of the palm trees, watching inertly at the one-story top-security prison I had come to break into.

It was past one a.m. and I was getting a tad restless. I was togged up in black denim pants, loose enough for movement round the leg and tucked into my black thick-soled boots. In the pouch and my pockets were various mega-doodads I might need. My black turtle neck sweater covered my torso and arms. Under my turtle-neck and pants was the new dark grey and zipped up Arami close-knit Level X skeletal bodysuit, specially fabricated in exact measurement for my body. The bodysuit was not unlike my normal Kevlar singlet that was capable of deflecting much more than a close range shot from a .45 Smith and Wesson or a double barrel shot gun. Parts of my hands and face had been painted over with black camouflage cream and my long black hair was tightly bound and tucked into the beanie I was wearing.

Over my turtleneck, in a Bruckheimer soft semi-shoulder holster was my trademark weapon, a polymer Chinese Makarov with a fingerprint recognition scanner. Under my sleeve a stiletto, I nicknamed Saint Peko was another of my hallmark armaments. Peko was strapped against my right forearm and nestled in a chamois sheath.

Strapped along my thigh was a specially designed Blackhawk Omega band holster with two Glock 20’s on either side. Just in case, things got out of hand.

The Chinese Makarov was a compact weapon, weighting about 28 oz. with a barrel length of 93.6 mm. As a feministic weapon, it had a lot more stopping power than most other handguns. With a muzzle velocity of 1,033 ft./s it was the weapon that I love to have with me whenever I get myself into dire situations because when I do fire it, which is rarely, there are no doubts as to what weapon did the firing. The only thing that concerned me about the Makarov was the Identification Module attached to the grip. The palm recognition scanner module that identifying me and no one else who had the authorisation to fire the gun. I hadn’t tested it effectively under pressure or combat conditions. This will be the first time.

For some reason I thought about the new Beretta BU9 Nano automatic Seymour had gotten me. Unlike the Makarov, it weighed just 17 oz. with a barrel length of 7.3 cm and had a muzzle velocity of 1,120 ft./s. However, like the Makarov it was a muted but powerful pistol because it possessed a custom-made compensator with bored chambers and a customised trigger making it a most reliable automatic.

Saint Peko nicknamed after the Finnish Karelian saint or warrior who provides rain to the fields and is the brewer of beer, lay not only snugly in its customised echelon but also against my forearm. He was on me more for morale than use, unlike the Tambo. The Tambo was an effective 2-dimensional short hardwood staff about 12 inches long, which I rarely use but decided to bring on this mission. It was capable of disabling any opponent provided one has the skill and understanding of human anatomy to use the weapon, which I did to some degree.

The assuring feeling from the armaments on me made me feel like an armoured-plated woman filled with venom. Oh what a singular formidable feeling.

Night had long since fallen and the birds were silent sleeping cosy in their little nests. The only rustle I could hear came from the murmur of living trees. The star-splashed night sky with the lone waning moon glinting down on the sandy inconsistent earth that wound between the marginal dunes and the building up ahead.

The building or should I say the intelligence prison stood in-between a half circle of rocky and beaten earth. The area around it had been cleared in a wide curve that led towards a dirt road. It was a secluded black site prison. Earlier, I circumvented the 20-foot high neodymium laser fence that surrounded the area and jutted upright from behind some trees by pinpointing a section, tapping into the system to release an intermittent pulse via my android phone. The pulse should disable the section for 7 minutes from the time I initiate the pulse again and buy me enough time to pull my rescue and make my escape. Being a black site prison there were no Guard Towers or Raffle Pits with guards posted. Whoever ran the site had been sure that the prison was disguised to look like private manufacturing factory and not a prison.

It had been an hour since my stance against the tree and another two since I had scaled the fence after an initial minor reset. I had been careful not to touch it with my bare skin because it burns skin off, if touched.

As always before entering a place, I had accessed how many ways I could penetrate and egress my way out at a moment’s notice in case of the likelihood that things did not go my way. I was still stuck on two approaches when the second guard walked past.

Every eight minutes or so, one of the two sentries with a slung AK-47 would pass within twenty feet of me on his rounds. I could hear both of their heavy footfalls coming and going, I could even catch the sound of the clink of their guns off their heavy sashes.

Three weeks ago, my friend Insidigo was betrayed by a client of his and since been imprisoned here in Yemen’s Sana’an black site prison to silence him. It just so happens, that Insidigo’s client belonged to an unknown terrorist group responsible for the theft of some scud missiles belonging to the U.S. Army.

I received the news from Charles Beecham, who had just recently made a lateral move from the National Security Agency to National Intelligence. He was now an Assistant Director for National Intelligence. A friend who despite his lateral move knew almost everything the Pentagon or the diverse intelligent agencies in America was up to. It wasn’t out of charity that he informed me of Insidigo’s plight. No. He made a compelling offer why I should unofficially seek out my dear friend. I’m sure that it wasn’t the whole story but Insidigo was a friend whom I shared an unsettled relationship with and that more than anything was why I was here.

A week ago in Washington, Beecham had informed me of a certain predicament and Insidigo’s value in the recovery of the stolen weapons. I had volunteered to go after him not only because he was an acquaintance but in return for a favour from Beecham. Twenty-four hours ago, an agent of Beecham’s had narrowed down Insidigo’s location and given me an update of his condition. The agent apprised me the plans of the prison including recent news out of the prison. According to him, Insidigo was due to face a firing squad in a matter of days.

Self-proclaimed Sheikh Insidigo Bonavita Bashir was an Italian Somalian whose adopted religious repressions were uneven and shady because he was, in reality a crook with extensive influence in East Africa and the Middle East. Leaving the country of his birth, he settled in Somalia and parts east, where he had the freedom to express his convictions through Islam and because of his parentage, he felt he had the right to dictate his made-up repressions to his Arabian flock. After some conflict with a certain warlord and his own congregation, he gave up religion and turned his attention to trade with a side interest in crime. He re-settled in Saudi Arabia and became successful. Dealing with every single rare or stolen item he could get his hands on, especially exotic banned and illegal bits and odds. Among his traded goods where white slave’s, frankincense, a tank or weapon of choice and gold. If you wanted ice or ice cream of a particular flavour at a party held in the middle of the Sahara, he would be the man to call. Name the product and he knows someone, somewhere and somehow for the right price will have it delivered to you wherever you need it. He is now a millionaire a million times over with mansions all over the world. He owns two state-of-the-art hotels in Dubai and Costa Rica, thoroughbreds with magnificent bloodlines and was close friends with the families of most of the religious leaders in the Middle East.

And now here he was in a secluded Yemen prison awaiting execution. His wealth and influence unable to help or make a difference.

I thanked the heavens when at last, I saw the rickety russet military truck I had been waiting for to leave, drive away from behind the stockade and head down the road leading away from the prison. Its sand filled tyres barely getting a grip on the road as it jerked and rumbled out of my sight. Five minutes later, when I knew one of the sentries patrolling the rear of the fenced perimeter would come into view, I tossed the notes from my pocket into his path.

Of all the weapons on me, I believed they were no lethal than my own body because I did not intend to use them unless absolutely necessary. That is all except the Tambo. This operation if I could help it was going to be a non-lethal offensive.

I thought of going after both guards but knew that if the other guard didn’t see his colleague, he would immediately alert the security office located in-between the south and north gate.

My blood was pumping so hard, my ears were thumping a rush of adrenaline that was spreading within me. It was like a rush of an intriguing exhilaration one gets on a rollercoaster or almost being in a car wreck. This prickly warmth went right through my body. Yielding to the wry knowledge of self, I knew my predator instincts were coming into play. I wouldn’t kid myself, but it was this feeling that I live for. I let this feeling escalate then subside. It was a pity that I might end lives in a few minutes because there were many and great things in life to experience.

The second sentry who wore a half-donned Habib was slowly coming into view.

I watched as he spotted the dollar notes I had tossed in his path, flapping and rolling in the soft breeze. He moved forward, peering at them. It took him a while before he could identify the notes but by then he was abreast of me.

Flexing my fingers round the Tambo, I stepped forward out of the darkness of the dichromatic landscape. My feet making no sound on the sandy ground as I advanced. I almost wished I knew what the sentry was thinking as I came up from behind him and grabbed his hair while my other hand came down like a hammer and clobbered him with the pointy edge of the Tambo precisely behind the ear.

The guard slumped bonelessly against me as I caught his rifle. I lowered it with him.

I moved swiftly over the open stretch of sandy earth approaching the eastern bright light that spread from above the slits of the steel East Gate next to the security office, which the schematics designated as the Dead house. Here a guard with his head tilted back against a chair was sitting with a rifle across his lap in front of the half-opened door of the guard office. He was smoking a rolled-up joint of marijuana and relishing the buzz he was getting. The red glow of the rollup was indistinguishable from the light beaming across from him from the slits in the wall.

I edged towards him from the side, along the stockade wall. There was no doubt that despite his high, he would notice me. However, I was waiting for that moment as I neared him. When he tilted his head forward and did get a glimpse of me, his eyes widened with surprise and shock. The rollup did not have time to droop from his lips when I launched myself at him as he scrambled for the rifle. I took one long pace and twisted to bring my booted leg swinging up in an arc. My foot caught him in the oesophagus, choking off the strangled cry he was about to utter. The Tambo ended any conscious notion he might have had after that. For a moment, his unconscious body was rigid with paralysis then slumped slowly back across his chair. After checking that the guard office was unoccupied, I eased the unconscious guard out of his chair, hauled him into the vacant office and appropriated his seat. I delved into one of my pouches to retrieve a pencil case. Picking up his rollup and rifle, I placed the rifle across my lap, repositioned the rollup in-between my lips and awaited the second roving guard. After giving the rollup a few puffs without inhaling, I retrieved from a pencil case from one of my pouch pockets. Within the case were two parts of a 30 cm blowpipe kit made from ironwood that weighed less than 150 grams when assembled.

I rarely use the blowpipe, but when I do, it’s for close quarter ambushes on account of the weight and silent high velocity ballistic impact it can achieve. The pencil-case kit included ten small plastic tranquilizer darts. Three tipped with a succinylcholine neurotoxin venom that can kill almost instantly and seven haematotoxin tipped darts that can induce temporary paralyses.

I selected one of the haematotoxin darts and inserted it into the blowpipe. Giving the guard’s rollup another couple of puffs to keep the smell in the air, I lowered it and moisturised my lips before setting them to the end of the blowpipe.

I didn’t have to wait more than two minutes when the last guard came leisurely round the western corner. I drew in a breath. He didn’t immediately notice the altered profile sitting in the chair because of the wafting smoke around me, when he did, his unhurried walk became restrained within three steps and his whole deportment transformed. He was in the process of slinging off his rifle to close warily in on me when I lifted the blowpipe and blew with a sudden explosive evacuation of my lungs.

He registered a sharp pinch just above his neck and in that same instant, took two more quick steps in my direction. The Yemeni guard didn’t cry out but he did try to mumble something. Oddly, he took his eyes off me to grab a quick glance at the tiny rollup still smouldering a couple of feet away. He had no idea that his nerves had taken a breather in their task and his blood was about to face an influx of toxins. His rifle tumbled from his unresponsive fingers onto the sandy earth. My rising from the chair was the last thing, he saw before crumpling onto the ground without another movement.

After securing him next to his companion, I checked their strong pulses, then sidestepped them and had a look round the security office. The easy part was done, now for the next step.

There were monitors, monitoring the whole prison but they were in bad shape and were out of date for a prison this size. The images were in colour but they were grainy.

I worried that this was too easy. How could the prison have a sophisticated neodymium fence but have such