Ground Zero

by Don Pendleton

  A mumbled, static-blurred agreement responded to his words. Ali and Banjo exchanged glances. Rez caught their expressions.

  “Do not worry, gentlemen. This will all be for your benefit. Watch.”

  All three of them turned their eyes to the plasma screen. As the feed flickered and changed, the constant wall of images began to be broken up. Some camera feeds pixilated until they were nothing more than flickering patterns of light, while other feeds cut out entirely; a few seconds of black screen represented their sudden breakdown.

  “This will continue for the next thirty minutes. We know from our own work and from monitoring their repairs to the system that it will take them that long to trace the fault. By that time we will have withdrawn our hacker from the system by the back door. This should give us long enough to mask your progress to the target.”

  “That’s fine, brother, but they aren’t just using CCTV to look for us,” Ali spat. “Have you thought of that?”

  “Do you really think we are that simpleminded?” Rez asked. “This is just one part of the operation. They have men looking for you? Fine, we give them a distraction. A lot of distractions. Calls that will place you at many places within the borough of Manhattan. Calls that will need at least a cursory check. We will send out operatives to create diversions. Packages will be left and reported, harmless, of course, and also untraceable. We do not want to distract the media from what you are about to do, after all. But we do need to keep the authorities on the defensive.”

  For the first time since they had arrived, both Banjo and Ali looked happy.

  “Now you’re talking, brother.” Ali grinned. “I like your thinking.”

  “While I am surprised that you know what thinking is,” Rez murmured. “No matter, you are willing and committed, which is all that anyone can really ask.” He got up from behind the desk, killing the plasma screen and then beckoning them to follow. “Come with me. You will leave the building separately and take different routes. I will brief you as we descend.”

  He led them out of the office and back down the corridor, past the fire door they had used to gain access and to the elevator at the far end. As they waited for the car, he murmured instructions.

  It was unfortunate that his words did not carry just a little farther, as there was next to no noise coming from the open-plan offices, and in such an instance his meaning may have been clear to—and thus avoided a lot of trouble for—the man who had just carefully clicked open the fire door, the man who was just too late to catch the terrorists and their adviser before they entered the elevator.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Bolan cursed as he saw the three men get into the elevator. He had climbed the fire escape swiftly, keeping an eye out for any surveillance equipment, and had carefully opened the fire door, hoping that he would not be observed. It was a blind entrance, and with time at a premium, he had to take a chance.

  He was unlucky on two counts: the first was that he heard the murmured voices of the three men and saw them turn as the car doors closed; the second was that his entrance had not gone unnoticed.

  He was about to withdraw, hoping that they had not seen him as the doors closed, when he heard the barked voice and saw the security guard coming out of an office down the corridor, by the elevator.

  “Hey, you! What do you want?”

  Bolan could just turn and run, which had been his original intention in order to try to meet the elevator on the ground floor, or he could respond to the guard. That would cost him valuable time, but the risk was that the guard would then alert the soldier’s targets. The guy was coming head-on: it would be hard to evade him. With luck, he could get take care of him in a few seconds.

  “This isn’t Kaufman Brothers, is it? Wrong floor, man,” he said, affecting surprise as he looked around. The door was half-open by now, pushed back to give him more space to pull back if necessary.

  The guard did not answer. He drew his gun with a speed that suggested he was better trained than the average security guard, and two shots smacked into the door by Bolan’s head. The guard’s firearm training wasn’t of the quality of his reflexes, thankfully. By the time the metal of the door had buckled by the heavy-duty shot, Bolan had already moved.

  The impact was heavy: a .357 round fired from a SIG Sauer by the look of the gun that was dwarfed by the guard’s fist.

  Bolan couldn’t withdraw. The stairwell was ricochet heaven, and he would be going down and at a disadvantage in returning fire. Attack was the best form of defense. The soldier had CS gas grenades, but no time to grope for his mask. It would have to be his accuracy that saved him. He snatched the Uzi from its holster, set it to short bursts and rolled across the width of the corridor. There was an open office door at an acute angle, and he aimed for it to provide cover.

  The guard was static, concentrating on firing. Two more shots boomed in the confined space, smacking into the pile of the carpet, barely muffled. Bolan ignored them and concentrated on coming up with the Uzi in position. A tap and three shots stitched the guard across the chest. A startled look crossed his face as he crumpled to the floor. As he went down, a second tap made sure that he would not get up again.

  Attack had been necessary to avoid the men in the elevator being alerted by the guard as he pursued the soldier, which could cause more problems than a mere few moments’ delay. This, of course, presumed that the guard was the only armed man in the offices.

  Bolan turned to scan the office space behind him. Two women and a man were cowering behind their desks; one of the women was screaming. They might not be innocent, but they certainly were not armed. The soldier left them and raced for the fire door, which was still open.

  It wasn’t going to be his day. Two more shots came from one end of the corridor, and they were echoed by two more from the opposite end. He was pinned back in the office, unable to reach the stairwell.

  The time for subtlety had passed. He took a grenade from one of his pockets, pulled the pin and pitched the bomb down the far end of the corridor, toward the door. Without waiting for it to detonate, he spun and fired off two bursts toward the elevator end of the corridor. He caught sight of two men with handguns firing at him. They were in suits and were snapping off their shots so that they flew high. One of them was caught by a burst of fire, crumpling, while the other man drew back into cover.

  As he moved back into the relative cover of the office, Bolan took another grenade and pulled the pin, arming the deadly orb before pitching it toward the elevator. The explosion might damage the shaft, but there was little chance of it being occupied by anyone other than the targets. The office workers were at a safe range.

  He hunkered down, ready for the dual blasts that shook the whole floor of the block. A moment’s concussive silence filled his head before his ears cleared and he was able to hear screams, groans and alarms going off on this floor and others. He checked the people in the room. They were stunned but otherwise unharmed. People from the offices wandered the corridor outside. Some were dazed, others in shock. There was no gunfire directed at him, and barely any attention was paid to him as he moved toward the shattered office door. Whatever opposition he may have expected had been eliminated in the blasts.

  A quick glance back to the elevator showed Bolan that the doors had been caved in and hung over the shaft, where shattered cable ends could be seen. Truth was that he’d missed the opportunity to take out the targets when the elevator hit the ground floor. If he was lucky, they had still been in the car when the blast hit and were trapped. That was not something he’d bet on, though. He needed to call in assistance, and while he did that he’d check out the office at the end of the corridor.

  What had seemed to be a simple wooden door that should have been a hole in the wall still had some remnants showing that it had been reinforced.

  He was curious as to why; it might be important.
That view was underlined by the fact that three armed men had been at that end of the corridor, taken out by the concussive force of the blast. Bolan stepped past them, hitting the speed dial number on his phone that put him through to Low. He outlined the situation briefly.

  “Emergency services are already on the way,” Low explained. “You don’t set off two grenades in Manhattan without attracting some kind of attention. I already sent men, figuring it had to be something to do with our boys. You’re shouting at me, by the way.”

  “Sorry, concussion,” Bolan said briefly. “You sound miles away. If our targets are trapped in the elevator car, then we may need to be careful because of the explosives they carry. If they were already out, I need a trace ASAP.”

  “That may be a problem,” Low replied, running through the number of decoy calls that had so far been received and the disruption to the CCTV network. As he did so, Bolan found the remote for the plasma and brought up the CCTV images.

  “I think I’ve found the source,” the soldier said simply. “The decoy calls might stop, but the CCTV feed is being screwed up by remote. Get a tech here with your men. And another thing,” he added, picking up the nameplate that had been blown across the desk and onto the floor. “Our Turks sure aren’t Turks. My guess is that they’re Iranian.”

  “What makes you think that?” Low queried.

  “The arrogant bastard running this show is using the name of the last Shah. Some joke.”

  * * *

  THE THREE MEN were in the lobby of the building when the grenades blew. The doors of the elevator car they had just left buckled out as the force of the blast was directed downward, the stresses on the buckling shaft twisting the metal. Banjo looked panicked, as did Ali. But although it took Rez as much by surprise, he showed that he had a depth of experience that the two American terrorists would never have.

  While all those around them were either frozen by shock or hurrying blindly in whatever direction they faced, Rez grabbed the two bombers by their jackets and propelled them toward the main doors of the building, past the reception and commissionaire, where confusion reigned, and pushed them out onto the sidewalk.

  “Whoever your man was, he’s right on your asses. You have to stay strong and do this. The diversions are in place. Don’t look back, don’t think, just act. Do what I told you, and you’ll be fine,” he snarled. “Now go.”

  Banjo and Ali, unable to even say their goodbyes, let alone have any kind of argument with Rez, stared wide-eyed at each other before moving off in opposite directions, moving jerkily like men who had no real control over their actions.

  In many ways, that was the case. They were now pawns in the game that Rez had set in play. Their operation as an independent cell had ceased the moment they’d walked into the building. They were men who were now part of a much larger machine, as was the man who called himself Rez.

  The Iranian adjusted his jacket and started to walk down the sidewalk as though he had no connection to the building he had just left. In the confusion, he figured that he wouldn’t be noticed. There was a safe house he could head to. He had a new passport there, and as an Egyptian businessman he could leave the country within twenty-four hours. In forty-eight, he could be back in Iran.

  He paused briefly to take stock, then moved on.

  * * *

  THE EXECUTIONER HAD only a short time before the emergency services would arrive. That would mean the NYPD, and they would want to detain him. Low had men on the way, but that would take time that Bolan could not afford. It would be better if he got out before anyone had a chance to ask awkward questions.

  As he left the office, he passed confused and injured office workers. At any other time and under most other circumstances, he would tend to those who were injured and perhaps innocents caught in the cross fire. Not this day. There was no time, and it was not an imperative with paramedics on the way. He took the fire escape, vaulting the stairs so that he could reach the exit onto the side alleyway as quickly as possible. A few moments more and he reached the sidewalk, looking on as a crowd began to gather around the front of the building. He could hear sirens approaching at speed.

  He noticed a familiar figure detach himself from the crowd and cross the street; the traffic was slowed by the commotion outside the building.

  “Well, well, the Shah,” Bolan murmured as he crossed the street, skirting traffic, and fell in behind his man.

  The two terrorists were nowhere in sight. He could leave them for the moment to Low’s men as their destination was known and it was their route that needed to be picked up. Manhattan was small enough to navigate quickly when the need arose. The man in front of him was more immediately important. His company and position provided a link between the isolated terrorist cell and a larger network. Maybe he could be made to talk; maybe that wouldn’t be necessary.

  The man turned down an alley similar to the one at the building they had just left.

  Bolan took his Desert Eagle from its holster. He wanted to take the man alive if possible, but if there was no choice, then he wanted to make sure he took him down. He quickened his pace to catch up, gaining ground. They were alone as they moved down the alley, and he wanted to take out the man before they reached the far end. So far, he seemed preoccupied and hadn’t noticed the footsteps echoing his own.

  It seemed that much of the past few days had hinged on encounters down back alleys, and so it proved again. Bolan would never know what had made the man ahead of him suddenly realize that he was being followed. It was enough that the man suddenly turned with a gun in his hand.

  The distance was enough for him to snap off a shot but not quite enough for Bolan to jump him before that could happen. The Executioner threw himself against the wall, flattening to make as small a target as possible while firing a shot. He went for center of mass, as it was the biggest target. His quarry returned fire with a shot that went high and wide as he was thrown off balance by the slug that hit him on the upper-left side of the chest.

  As Bolan moved toward him, the prone man showed remarkable strength and fortitude in raising his gun to fire again. The soldier could take no chances. A second shot to the head, at a relatively close distance, eliminated the threat.

  Checking that they had not been seen or that or that anyone had entered the alley, Bolan quickly rifled through the dead man’s pockets. The streets at either end of the alley were busy, but like all these service roads, this one was dead—an ironic word choice, Bolan mused as he quickly emptied the man’s pockets. A wallet contained only some currency. There was, however, a smartphone. The man had not had time to wipe it, and hopefully it could be taken apart to provide some kind of intel.

  There was no time to think about that now. Bolan checked again, and with no one seeming to have noticed or heard the brief exchange of shots in the chaos of Manhattan, he stood and walked away from the corpse, pausing only when he reached the far end of the alley to check for bystanders.

  It was a pause for thought that he could take out a man with two shots in the middle of the city and not even be noticed, but at least this time it served him well. He slipped the dead man’s phone into a pocket and used his own to call Low.

  “I’ve got another cleanup for you,” he said briefly. “Any sightings?”

  “You’re making my day difficult,” Low muttered. “But yes, we’ve got one of the bastards on track.”

  * * *

  ALI HAD BEEN given his route, and he was determined to stick to it. After the explosions in the office building, he was terrified. He had never been afraid of dying before. He realized now that was because he was always the better fighter. His life up to this point had consisted of taking on weaker opponents, such as gangbangers, and so the idea of someone being stronger was a concept he could not comprehend. His life had never been in serious danger, and so the notion of blowing himself to a martyr’s
glory was so abstract as to not seem real. But the way the elevator had buckled and the shaking of the floor beneath him and the noise—even muffled by the two floors between himself and the explosions—had brought something home to him.

  Dying would be painful. It would be scary. And right now he wasn’t sure that he wanted to do it. But he knew that any such doubts were pointless. The man in black would get him, and if he didn’t and there was the chance to run, then he would always be looking over his shoulder. One way or another, he was going to die. Rather than a glorious death, this now seemed just a quicker death.

  He took the bus, staying aboveground as he had been ordered and staring sightlessly out of the window at what would be the last people he would ever see. For the first time, he wondered who they all were and what their lives were like, all the while knowing that it didn’t matter.

  * * *

  BOLAN TOOK THE subway. Low had told him that there had been calls claiming bombs had been planted. There were men swarming the system, and every call so far had been a hoax. Bolan figured the strategy—hoax and CCTV interference—was to cause chaos, but any bombing would distract from the big gesture. To keep the system running wouldn’t be the risk it might appear from the outside. Of course, if it was a wrong call...

  No, it couldn’t be. There had been no whispers, no indication of activity. This was standard crank stuff, not even expected to be taken seriously.

  Bolan left the subway and headed for the northern edge of the memorial site. The Feds had picked up Ali’s trail. He was on a bus that was headed for the area. It was worrying that there had been no sign of Banjo, but the net of Feds was tightening all the time under Low’s direction. He would be found. First things first....

  The soldier saw a bus pull up, then Ali disembarked among a group of passengers. There were too many people around him for an immediate approach. Had he had time to prime the bomb yet?