Skystorm (Ryan Decker)

by Steven Konkoly

  “ALPHA. Breach,” he said, before getting out of the SUV.

  From a covered position behind the hood, he watched the assault teams work their magic. To minimize their noise and hopefully delay the inevitable police response to their obtrusive presence, they had opted to use an unorthodox method to quickly defeat the front door. Two team members pressed handheld thermal torches to the lock points along the door and ignited them.

  A brilliant shower of bright-yellow sparks erupted along the doorframe, each TEC torch’s five-thousand-degree-Fahrenheit metal vapor jet cutting through the locks and extinguishing in two seconds. When the sparks stopped, a third operative shouldered the door open and disappeared inside. The entire team followed.

  “Donnelly. What’s your status?” he said over the radio net, checking on the bag-and-tag job behind Dalton’s place.

  No response. This wasn’t the time for even the slightest misstep.

  “Donnelly. I need—”

  A sharp, earsplitting crunch cut off his transmission, followed almost instantly by an explosion of debris from the very recently breached target house doorway. Guthrie instinctively ducked behind the SUV as fragments of wood and metal clanged across the hood and peppered the windows. He stayed low for several long moments, until only two sounds could be heard at the scene: agonized screams for help from inside the house and car alarms throughout the neighborhood. Neither the surviving members of the team inside the house nor their adversaries had engaged in a gunfight—yet.

  “ALPHA. Report,” he said over the net.

  Nothing.

  “BRAVO. Report.”

  “Holding in position. What the fuck just happened?”

  “The house is a decoy. Get out of there immediately,” said Guthrie. “E and E package Zulu.”

  “Shit. Copy that,” said the team leader. “Moving out.”

  Escape and evasion package Zulu was the catastrophic plan. They’d change vehicles in predetermined locations twice as they executed separate surveillance-detection routes to clear the DC metro area. Several hours later, they would converge on a yet-to-be-determined location hundreds of miles from here for a headquarters-level debriefing. If APEX didn’t decide that Guthrie’s entire group was too much of a liability moving forward. In that case, they would all be driving to their deaths.

  “Donnelly. I need a status report.”

  No response. He glanced over his shoulder at Dalton’s brownstone a few houses down. What the hell was going on over there?

  Guthrie backtracked along the side of the SUV, grabbing the submachine gun in the front passenger footwell along the way. He knelt beside Davitts, who had crouched next to the rear bumper. Guthrie had to get everyone off these streets and driving away in a minute or less. A bombing this close to the seat of government, combined with neighborhood reports of gunmen running amok, was guaranteed to draw a swift tactical response. The situation would go from screwed to beyond screwed if he didn’t get his mercenaries out of there ASAP.

  “I’m headed inside to make an assessment,” said Guthrie. “If I’m not back out in ten seconds, get everyone back inside the vehicles and out of here. You got that?”

  The visibly shaken operator nodded, inspiring little confidence in such an important job. He glanced up at the next closest team member, Laura Bachmann, who had her compact rifle pointed at the house. She had always been entirely focused and reliable, which was exactly what he needed right now.

  “Bachmann. Make sure that gets done,” said Guthrie. “And reassign Davitts to cover the approach from Dalton’s place. I can’t reach Donnelly.”

  “Got it. Ten seconds or we’re gone,” she said, scooting over next to Davitts.

  “Get the backs of the SUVs open,” said Guthrie, yelling over his shoulder as he approached the blasted door. “We’ll pile everyone in. Dead or alive.”

  A figure appeared through the thick haze obscuring the doorway. Guthrie raised his MP7 and placed the green holographic reticle center mass. The shape staggered forward, resting against the doorframe. The desperate pleas for help coming from inside the house had settled down into a discordance of resigned moans.

  “Anyone in ALPHA. Respond,” said Guthrie, holding the figure in his sights.

  “It’s me,” gasped the man in the doorway.

  “Moreno?”

  “Everyone is down,” he said, taking a knee.

  Guthrie rushed forward to help him, immediately determining that Moreno wasn’t going to make it. His arms, legs, and lower abdomen had been shredded. And he was bleeding profusely from the right side of his neck. He could drop the team leader at a nearby emergency room—maybe. But that wasn’t a viable option. He signaled for the teams on the street to start the cleanup.

  “What happened?” asked Guthrie, moving him clear of the doorway.

  “We got inside the front hallway and fanned out into the adjacent rooms,” said Moreno. “Grenades fell from the ceilings. Short fused. No time to react.”

  “We’re gonna get you out of here. Get you some help,” said Guthrie, before turning to Bachmann, who was on her way up the long brick stoop. “Should be safe to proceed. Medical treatment in the vehicles. I want to be rolling in forty-five seconds.”

  “Copy that,” she said, raising her rifle and stepping into the house.

  Moreno grabbed his arm. “If they got us here . . .”

  They got us there, too. He couldn’t afford to think about Dalton’s brownstone right now. Getting out of here without tangling with the police would take every bit of focus he could muster. And they didn’t have the time to investigate anyway. The best he could do was hope that the mess was contained inside Dalton’s property—and that it would escape police attention until APEX could get a team in to straighten up the mess. He just hoped APEX didn’t consider him to be a mess that needed cleaning.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Tim sat in front of the screens, simultaneously stunned by what he had just witnessed and thankful he did not have a second round of improvised explosives at his disposal. Rich would have undoubtedly ordered him to unleash it on the rescuers. A classic guerilla warfare tactic. Enough was enough. Rich had made his point—and likely stirred up a hornet’s nest that would not be easy to shake.

  “What are you seeing inside the decoy house?” asked Rich.

  “Not much. Most of the cameras went off-line,” said Tim, not wanting to go into a description of what had happened in there.

  He’d seen the grenades fall from the cylinders mounted to the ceiling and hit the floor. Watched the operatives’ panicked responses—before three of the camera views flashed NO SIGNAL. His only remaining view of the mayhem originated from a camera mounted in the kitchen and facing the front hallway. Three bodies lay crumpled in a fairly compact pile in the center of the passage. They had been moving in a tight formation toward the kitchen when they’d been bracketed by grenades. One in front of them. One behind. The opposing blasts had dropped them in place—on top of each other. The operative in the middle had survived, the men in front and behind him absorbing most of the fragments.

  “Cut the shit, Tim,” said Rich, seeing right through him. “What’s happening in there? Do I bail or do I need to drive home the message a little further?”

  Tim wasn’t sure how the message could be made clearer. A quick glance at the screen displaying police response codes and locations helped him with the answer.

  “I have three police units headed toward the scene from the east,” said Tim. “You need to clear the area. Head north on Potomac and link up with the others. They should have emerged from the alley.”

  “You still didn’t answer my first question.”

  “Their entire breach team went down hard,” said Tim. “The backup team is carrying out the casualties and tossing them in the back of the SUVs. Looks like they’re trying to get out of there before the police arrive. I strongly advise you do the same.”

  “I thought I saw one get out.”

  Rich could be ghoulish w
hen it came to this part of the job.

  “He didn’t look like he had much fight left in him,” said Tim.

  “Fair enough. I’m headed north,” said Rich. “Wait until our new friends depart so we can get as much video as possible; then execute a soft scrub. Head south on foot for Rosslyn Station, take the subway west past Falls Church and grab an Uber. Rally point is the safe house in Rockville.”

  It was interesting that Rich didn’t want any of them traveling in their own cars but not at all surprising. They’d misjudged APEX’s countersurveillance capabilities, and he wasn’t taking any chances that their vehicles had somehow already been compromised or could be tracked by traffic cameras. More accurately, he and Anish had underestimated APEX. The attack had hit them without any advance warning. Fortunately, APEX’s underestimation proved to be far worse, giving Tim what he assumed would be a one-time pass. APEX wouldn’t make the same mistake again, and neither would he.

  “Do you want me to cancel your pickup?”

  “Already canceled,” said Rich.

  “And our client?”

  “Calling her as soon as I hang up with you.”

  “I’ll be out the door in ten,” said Tim, ending the call.

  He set the alarm and walked through the back door seven minutes later, carrying the server hard drives and laptops in an obviously strained backpack. Tim wasn’t looking forward to the long walk across the Key Bridge with this beast on his back, but the extra weight would be worth the discomfort. He could have taken a few extra minutes to remove the laptop hard drives and memory cards, but that would leave them temporarily cut off at the safe house, especially if Rich intended to sequester the team for a few days to ensure they’d made a clean break.

  Police sirens echoed off the buildings that surrounded the small courtyard, coming at him from every direction. The sound didn’t give him pause. He was four blocks northwest of the explosion, which may as well be four miles in the city, and there wasn’t a single physical or digital trace connecting this location with either house on N Street. Georgetown’s more exclusive and privacy-cherishing clientele made sure that DC’s extensive public camera network didn’t take root on these streets.

  The stakeout house would remain undiscovered, providing safe refuge again once the dust settled from this little mess. If it ever settled. APEX was a powerhouse inside and outside the Beltway, with a nearly unlimited reach. Anish and Jared would be identified by their intelligence apparatuses within the hour. General Sanderson would be implicated shortly after that—along with anyone ever connected to his notorious black ops enterprise.

  By midafternoon, Tim would have a price on his head that would make his own mother think twice about not turning him in.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Decker checked his phone and sighed. A little too loudly. Harlow glared at him.

  “The pressure’s on,” she said.

  “Five minutes,” he said, holding up his phone—as though Garza’s text would help the situation.

  “It was five minutes twenty minutes ago,” said Pam. “And he was already thirty minutes late at that point. That’s fifty minutes we’ve wasted.”

  “Why are we even waiting for him, Harlow?” said Katie. “I thought you already reassigned him to some bullshit admin job this morning.”

  “Careful, Katie,” said Pam, smirking. “Decker is babysitting him today. Or maybe it’s the other way around.”

  “I’m going to have a long talk with Garza,” said Decker, “while we count shit.”

  “I really want to keep him on board. For a number of solid reasons that directly benefit the firm,” said Harlow. “But he has to change his tune.”

  “If by tune you mean attitude and work ethic,” said Sandra, “I agree.”

  “He could also play a little nicer with our contract crews,” said Sophie.

  “I think that falls under attitude,” said Pam. “But point well taken. You have your work cut out for you, Decker.”

  His phone vibrated on the table.

  “Let me guess. Ten minutes,” said Sandra.

  Decker got up and checked the screen. Senator Steele. He hadn’t heard from her in a few months, which had been a good thing. They all needed a long break after dealing with APEX’s twenty-four-seven harassment campaign. He hoped this was just a friendly check-in. Wishful thinking.

  “It’s our favorite senator,” said Decker, answering the call. “Good timing. Everyone is—”

  “Ryan. I need you to listen carefully,” said Steele.

  Decker sat back down. She hadn’t called him Ryan since they’d met at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Annapolis. Harlow mouthed, “What?” He shook his head and focused on the call.

  “I’m listening.”

  “You’re all in grave, immediate danger,” she said.

  “Hold on—”

  “Stop talking. You need to pull the trigger on your worst-case scenario APEX plan right now. Assume that everyone is being targeted at this very moment.”

  “Wait. What happened?”

  “I screwed up,” she said. “I’m very sorry. I’ll explain later. Remember, you have unlimited access to the bank account we arranged. Use it. And call me when you’re safe.”

  The call ended before Decker could form another word. He glanced around the table, locked in a momentary daze.

  “You okay?” said Harlow.

  He shook his head. “No. Steele said we need to activate BROKEN ARROW.”

  Pam got up from her seat. “Right now?”

  “Right now,” said Decker, before calling up a never-before-used number on his phone’s contact list.

  The team scrambled out of the conference room, Pam barking orders.

  On her way out, Harlow put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re sounding the alarm?”

  “Yeah. And calling in our favor with the Sinaloans,” said Decker.

  “You really think it’s that bad?”

  “Steele sounded scared,” said Decker. “Really scared.”

  She nodded solemnly, a worried look breaking through her normally stoic mien. Decker knew what she was thinking. It was the same thought that had flashed in neon lights the moment Steele had said to assume everyone was being targeted—Riley and his parents.

  “They’ll be fine. Riley’s in good hands, and your parents know what they need to do,” she said, squeezing his shoulder. “We’ll head over to the school first thing.”

  He pressed “Send” and put the phone to his ear. The call connected to a custom-designed, automated phone-tree system. He entered his six-digit access code and spoke. “BROKEN ARROW.” The system sent him a text displaying what he had spoken, plus a code, which he promptly repeated for final confirmation. Outside the conference room, several cell phones rang simultaneously. Brooklyn, Riley, his parents, Garza, and Jessica Arnay would receive the same warning.

  “Where’s Jessica today?” asked Decker.

  Jessica Arnay, the firm’s in-house attorney, spent the bulk of her time in court. Decker could count on one hand the number of times he’d run into her at the firm over the past few years.

  Harlow paused. “She had a hearing this morning. Los Angeles County Superior Court building. Very secure. I’m not worried about her.”

  Before Decker could respond, his phone buzzed with a text.

  DAD: Real deal?

  DECKER: Yes. U in a safe place?

  DAD: Was headed home from breakfast. Turning around. On way to Riley.

  DECKER: Head to the nearest police station.

  DAD: No can do. Riley top concern.

  DECKER: Then keep a safe distance until I get there. Ten minutes.

  DAD: I’ll coordinate with Brooklyn. Stay safe.

  DECKER: U 2.

  “Pain in the ass,” he mumbled, before another text rolled in.

  RILEY: What’s happening?

  DECKER: Not sure yet. Do exactly as Brooklyn says. I’m on my way. Love U.

  RILEY: Love U 2.

>   BROKEN ARROW was in motion. Decker just hoped Steele had been overreacting. Not because he didn’t want to upend everything and go into hiding. Or burn a once-in-a-lifetime, potentially fate-altering favor the firm could use to make a difference on the streets. Because if Steele was right, they would soon be in the fight of their lives—and nothing would ever be the same once that fight started.

  Decker considered calling his Sinaloa Cartel contact to get that ball rolling but decided it could wait until they were in the car and on the way to meet Riley. The clock was ticking, and his number one priority right now was safeguarding his daughter and parents.

  “Let’s gear up and head out,” he said, stepping into the hallway. “Brooklyn is good, but she’ll need backup.”

  “Brooklyn will have to do for now. We have our own problems.”

  A few doors down, Joshua Keller, their electronic surveillance guru, bolted out of the firm’s Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility enclave.

  “We have suspicious vehicles on Sunset and Holloway,” he yelled. “The inside of the building and the critical approaches look clear, but Mazzie is running through the recorded feed to see if anyone entered earlier. Someone may have stowed away out of sight.”

  Joshua and the firm’s electronics support team had hacked into the building’s security system when the firm first moved into the third-floor office space, coopting all its interior and exterior cameras. They had also installed additional hidden cameras, which better covered the streets in front and in back of the building and gave them a view of the stairwell. The secretive installations had been designed to augment what they could access through the building’s system.

  “Let’s see what we’re up against on the street,” said Decker, starting toward Joshua.

  “I have a team inside the building!” said Mazzie, her voice bellowing from inside the SCIF. “Nine subjects entered three minutes ago through the ground-floor lobby and disappeared.”

  “Scratch that. I’m headed to the armory,” said Decker. “Get with Mazzie and map the known location of every hostile, plus all of the blind spots. I need that data available to us in real time, while we’re on the move. Joshua can make that happen. We need to get out of here now.”