by Larry Bond
The inner loop of the U contained a rest room, a small kitchen, and a conference room that obviously served as both a lounge and an eating area.
They found and disposed of two more sleepers in the fourth bedroom.
Body armor and web gear hanging from hooks above the cots made it clear that these guys were guards — not technicians.
The fifth and final bedroom was unoccupied, and the only two other rooms on the floor were both dedicated to machinery and equipment storage.
Helen closed the storage room door behind her and looked at Peter. He was down on one knee with his pistol out — covering the stairwell leading down. “Ready?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, starting to rise.
And then the fire door to the stairs swung wide open.
Startled, Thorn raised his weapon.
A young, thin man wearing overalls stepped out into the hallway.
He carried a steaming mug in one hand. His other hand was still holding the fire door open.
Time stood still.
No weapon, Thorn realized suddenly. He’s not carrying a weapon. Years of training warred against the instinct to kill, and his training won.
You did not shoot unarmed civilians. Especially not when you were already acting outside the law. They’d have to take this guy alive.
His finger relaxed on the trigger.
The young technician saw them at the same moment. His eyes widened.
Time kicked back into gear.
The mug went one way in a spray of scalding brown liquid.
The technician went the other — whirling round and throwing himself down the stairs. “Alarm! Alarm!”
Shit.
Thorn raced toward the stairwell. He took the stairs down at breakneck speed, skidded onto a landing, rebounded off the wall, turned — and threw himself flat as a high-velocity round fired from below tore low over his head. The bullet gouged concrete shards out of the stairwell wall and then tumbled away.
He stuck the SIG over the edge of the landing and squeezed the trigger twice firing blindly down the stairs. He yanked the weapon back without bothering to see if he’d hit anything.
The gunman below switched to full automatic and sprayed bullets back — ripping at the forward edge of the landing. Ricochets whirred everywhere — slamming into the walls, the ceiling, and the stairs. One smashed into his body armor hard enough to leave a bruise.
Thorn rolled away, frantically wiping the powdered concrete dust out of his eyes. Jesus! There was no way he was going to get down those stairs alive — not against that kind of firepower.
He spun around and threw himself back up the stairs almost as fast as he’d gone down them — clutching his left side where the stray round had hit him.
Helen grabbed him and pulled him through the door as a new burst of firing broke out below them. More submachine gun bullets lashed the stairwell wall and whirred away overhead. She patted him down frantically. “Are you all right?”
Still trying to catch his breath, he nodded.
“Thank God,” she said and then fired her own pistol down the stairs.
Thorn went prone beside her, and squeezed off another round — still firing blind. The aim now was to discourage the people below from trying to rush the stairs.
Another three-round burst of submachine gun fire spattered bullets across the pockmarked concrete.
“Any ideas?” Helen asked dryly, half shouting to be heard over the rising crescendo of gunfire.
Options raced fast through Thorn’s mind. He discarded most of them just as rapidly. Right now he and Helen were locked in a stalemate.
They couldn’t get down the stairs. And the bad guys couldn’t get up.
Ultimately, though, a stalemate worked against the two of them. The bad guys had more men, more weapons, and more ammunition. More to the point, time was on Ibrahim’s side. The longer the gun battle went on, the more time he would have to launch his weapons of mass destruction.
Strike Control Center
Ibrahim grabbed Talal’s shoulder and spun him around. “What do you mean there are intruders in the building?” he demanded.
“How many? Who are they?”
Still holding the phone, the other man shrugged. “It is impossible to say, Highness. One of the off-duty technicians spotted two strangers with weapons on the top floor. He escaped them and raised the alarm.
Fortunately two of our men were close enough to seal off the stairwell.”
His mind still reeling from the sudden bad news, Ibrahim snapped. “An enemy force still holds the roof and the upper floor?”
Talal nodded. “True, Highness. But we hold everything else. The control center is secure.”
Ibrahim forced himself to calm down. It would not do to show fear in front of his inferiors — especially not in front of Reichardt’s German hirelings. Besides Talal, the room held one of his Saudi security guards, an electronics technician, and one of the computer techs. The others — including his pilots — were all supposed to be in their quarters on the floors above, resting up before being summoned to their duty stations for the coming attack.
“Has the patrol we dispatched to search the woods reported in yet?” he asked finally.
“Yes, Highness. A moment ago. Schaaf says they’ve found nothing so far.”
Ibrahim pondered that.
If the American government had somehow learned of his plans and launched this commando raid, then why hadn’t they also attacked the men he’d deployed outside the secure perimeter? Leaving them unmolested didn’t make sense. His fingers drummed rapidly on one of the control consoles. “This technician says he saw two intruders? Only two?”
Talal nodded.
It must be the two Americans — Thorn and Gray. It had to be them. He couldn’t imagine how they had bypassed all his alarm systems, but there was no other reasonable explanation. Somehow they’d evaded the FBI, and now they had the audacity to attack him directly.
He shook his head. Two lone wolves against his guard force and all the armed technicians. It was madness.
“Order Schaaf to recall the patrol!” Ibrahim ordered.
“Highness.”
“And I want the pilots and other control center personnel to report for duty — now!”
Ibrahim watched Talal turn back to the phone to relay his instructions.
He would let the professionals deal with Thorn and Gray, while he and the rest of the experts he needed to launch the strike waited safely here below.
Second Floor
Thorn fired down the stairwell again, ejected the SIG’s spent magazine, and slammed in a new one. He put his mouth close to Helen’s ear. “I need your package.”
She nodded, rolled away from the door, and quickly sorted through her rucksack. She pulled out a plasticwrapped parcel and offered it to him. “Opting for brute force?”
He took it and then shook his head. “Not quite. Here’s the plan …”
He hurriedly sketched out his idea and then sent another three 9mm rounds winging down the stairwell.
“Not bad,” Helen said, wriggling back into position. “It might even work.”
Thorn grinned at her and then started to crawl back down the hallway, lugging his rucksack behind him. “Keep the bastards pinned down for me!”
“No sweat.”
He crawled backward until he was out of the line of fire, scrambled to his feet, and sprinted down the hall toward the door to the conference room. He threw open the door and darted in side.
Tables and chairs dotted the carpeted room. A water cooler and coffeepot sat in one corner.
Thorn scanned the layout quickly — checking for obvious structural supports. If he did this wrong, he could bring down the whole floor.
Satisfied that he had the right spot, he tossed a table and two folding chairs out of his way and knelt down.
He unwrapped the package Helen had given him — revealing a half-pound brick of homemade plastic explosive.
&nbs
p; More gunfire erupted back near the stairwell — the higher-pitched stutter of enemy submachine guns mixed with the slower, steadier bark of Helen’s Beretta.
Moving as fast as possible, Thorn tore the brick into two roughly equal lumps, and then did the same with the second half-pound brick of plastic explosive he retrieved from his own rucksack.
He eyed the lumps carefully. Close enough, he decided. He slapped the lumps down on the floor — outlining the four corners of an approximately three-by-three box — and then connected them with Primacord and detonators. Satisfied, he rocked back on his heels and checked his watch. Sixty seconds had gone by.
One more detail to attend to, Thorn thought to himself, without which his rigged charges would make a nice loud bang, blow the hell out of the room, set a few fires — and do little else but scorch and shred the carpet. He hauled a large, plastic leaf bag out of the rucksack and moved toward the water cooler and coffeepot.
One after the other, he sloshed the contents of both into the leaf bag and then tied it off.
Thirty seconds more gone.
He dragged the liquid-filled bag over on top of the plastic explosives.
It would tamp the explosion-directing most of the blast downward. The water should also help suppress any fires he started.
“Delta Two, this is One. I’m set,” Thorn radioed.
“On my way,” Helen said.
He grabbed the rucksack, slung it over his back, lit the end of the Primacord, and raced out into the hallway — slamming the conference room door shut behind him.
Peter’s signal galvanized Helen into action. She thrust her pistol back into its holster and took one of the plastic-tube pipe bombs he’d manufactured out of her rucksack. It contained almost half a pound of explosive. A length of fuse poked out of the cap on the end.
She lit the fuse.
One thousand one. One thousand two … Helen lobbed the pipe bomb down the stairwell. It bounced once on the landing, then rolled down the second flight of stairs — and out of her line of sight.
Move! Move! Move! She scrambled upright, kicked the fire door shut, and sprinted down the hall.
One thousand four. Now!
Helen rocketed around the corner at a full run and threw herself prone.
Thorn looked up and saw Helen skidding toward him.
One floor below, the pipe bomb exploded — sending the nails they’d buried inside the plastic explosive sleeting outward through a deadly arc.
WHAMMM.
The steel fire door banged open blown almost off its hinges by the blast. His ears rang … And then the breaching charge he’d rigged detonated.
WHUMMPPP.
This time the whole floor bucked up and down as the shock wave rippled through it. The door to the conference room flew out into the corridor and smashed into the opposite wall.
“Here we go!” Thorn yelled, extending a hand to help Helen to her feet. “You ready?”
She nodded tightly. “Yes!”
He whirled around and rushed back into the smoke-filled conference room. The chairs and tables that had once filled the room were piled in a jumble of broken, twisted wreckage in the corner. There was nothing left of the water-filled bag he’d used to tamp down the charge.
In fact, the only thing left in that spot was a scorched patch on the floor.
Thorn took a running leap and landed squarely on that charred, smoking section.
First Floor
Dieter Schmidt, a onetime meteorological-officer in the East German Air Force, threaded his way through the knot of groggy, cursing pilots fumbling for their gear and boots amid a tangle of overturned cots and spilled duffel bags. The sudden commando raid had caught them all by surprise.
He clutched a handful of charts, thanking God that Ibrahim wanted his key personnel down below-out of harm’s way. The only trouble was that the stairs down to safety were right next to the stairs leading up to the floor above. And he could see two security guards crouched there — spraying the stairwell with rounds from their submachine guns.
Schmidt swallowed hard — trying to steel himself to make the dash past that opening. This was supposed to have been easy money, he reminded himself bitterly. Run a few weather predictions, keep them updated, and then collect a hundred thousand marks to stash in that rather meager pension fund of his … A white cylinder bounced down the stairs and rolled out onto the floor.
Some animal instinct prompted the meteorology officer to dive for cover.
WHAMMM.
A bright white flash strobed through the room — lighting every darkened corner for a single, dazzling, deadly instant.
Pieces of shrapnel shrieked outward from the explosion — tearing into everything in their path.
Half deafened by the blast, Schmidt raised his head cautiously.
The two guards were gone — blown into bloody rags by the full force of the explosion. Half the pilots around him were also down — stunned and bleeding. He saw one man staring in horror at a nail protruding out of the back of his open hand.
You should have ducked, the meteorologist thought smugly.
WHUMMPPP.
Schmidt buried his head in his hand and then lifted it again.
What the devil? He was soaked. Where in God’s name had all this water come from?
The meteorologist stared up at the ceiling in shock — just in time to see a large piece of it break away and come hurtling straight down on top of him.
Thorn hit the floor hard and rolled away — ignoring the pain stabbing through his ankles and legs. His pistol broke loose and skittered across the floor. The fall had been further than he’d anticipated — more like fifteen feet instead of ten. He was damned lucky he hadn’t sprained an ankle — or broken his neck.
Like the poor dumb son of a bitch he’d landed on.
The dead man’s eyes were open wide in stunned horror — staring sightlessly up through a pair of crushed, wire-frame glasses.
His head lay cocked at a sickening angle.
Helen dropped through the opening, landed on the smoking pile of debris, and rolled in the other direction.
Thorn swore silently. He and Helen were smack-dab in the middle of a hornet’s nest. They’d come out right in the center of a huge open space — not an isolated, enclosed room as he’d hoped. And there were people all around them. Most appeared to be armed.
Sooner or later these bastards were going to realize their enemies had jumped right into their midst. And when they did, all hell was going to break loose. Like right about now … It was too late to retrieve his pistol. He yanked the Winchester shotgun off his shoulder, flicked off the safety, and pumped the fore-end-chambering a 12-gauge round.
One of the men closest to him heard the sound and swung around.
“Mein—” Thorn saw the pistol in his hand and pulled the trigger — riding the recoil back and automatically pumping another shell into the Winchester’s chamber.
The sabot round he’d fired blew a big hole.clear through the German’s chest and blasted out his back in an impossibly large spray of blood and pulverized bone. The dead man flew backward and landed in a splayed heap beside an overturned cot.
Helen’s Beretta barked three times-knocking down another man, this one carrying a submachine gun.
The rest scattered — diving for cover behind cots or wriggling frantically away across the floor toward some of the doors that opened up into this one vast room. Panicked shouts in German and what sounded like Arabic echoed across the space.
A pistol round slammed into Thorn’s back and glanced off the Kevlar vest. A red-hot wave of pain washed through him. Christ.
He spun around and saw a figure crouched behind one of the COTS.
He fired. Pieces of bedding, metal frame, and flesh exploded away from where the sabot round struck home.
Thorn pumped the Winchester again and scanned their surroundings rapidly — frantically searching for a way out of this killing zone.
They were too damned
exposed here.
He turned toward the south wall — toward the staircase Helen had tossed her pipe bomb down. There. Another fire door stood right beside the stairs leading up. He’d bet good money there was another staircase behind that closed door — and that those stairs led down.
Lying prone on the floor beside one of the men she’d just shot, Helen Gray spotted movement near the far wall. A man carrying a submachine gun had just come out of the room closest to the main entrance. He looked tough and totally unafraid.
Not good.
She fired twice. Both rounds hit her target squarely in the chest.
Incredibly, the other man stayed up and fired back with the submachine gun — calmly walking three-round bursts through the chaos in the middle of the room.
She flattened herself as bullets whipcracked past just inches to the right — tearing huge strips of linoleum from the floor. Body armor!
That son of a bitch had body armor on, too.
Without hesitating, Helen raised the muzzle of her Beretta slightly, altering the view over her front and rear sights. She squeezed the trigger.
A neat, red-rimmed hole appeared in the other man’s forehead and he went down.
Strike Control Center
Ibrahim could hear the sounds of gunfire now — the stutter of submachine guns, shotgun blasts, and the crack of pistols. He shook his head in disbelief. The battle was moving closer. How could this be?
He whirled toward Talal. “What’s happening up there? Where are my pilots? I want an accurate report!”
The former paratroop officer spread his hands helplessly. “I can’t give you one, Highness. I’ve lost contact with Schaaf. He left the security office to lead the defense — and immediately dropped off the com net.”
Ibrahim swore sharply. Incompetents! He was surrounded by fools and incompetents. First Reichardt had failed him. And now Reichardt’s chosen deputy.
He stabbed a finger into Talal’s chest. “Get up there and take command?”
He nodded toward the only security guard still in the control center. “Take that man with you!”
Talal stared at him. “But Highness, you will be unprotected!”
