Day of Wrath

CHAPTER TWENTY DEAD RUN

His face and forehead blackened with camouflage grease paint, Colonel Peter Thorn led the way through a thin patch of forest toward the perimeter fence of Caraco’s Chantilly office complex.

They were coming in from the back side — away from the road — cutting through ground left wild as a buffer between the corporation’s Washington-area facility and the buildings belonging to its nearest neighbor — a prominent consumer electronics firm.

Fifty meters or so from the fence, he glanced over his shoulder.

Helen Gray followed silently in his wake. Only her eyes gleamed in a face daubed with the same black camouflage paint.

Like him, she was heavily laden with weapons and a bulging rucksack containing her share of their hurriedly improvised assault equipment.

He started moving again. Crickets chirped nearby and then fell silent — momentarily hushed by the whispering passage of their feet through the grass and underbrush. An owl hooted mournfully somewhere off in the distance.

A few meters from the cleared area surrounding the fence, Thorn stopped at the foot of a towering oak tree and looked up through the tangle of broad, gnarled branches and leaves. Then he turned toward the brightly lit Caraco compound — measuring angles and distances by eye.

He nodded to Helen.

“Delta Two to Delta Three. Delta One beginning ascent.” Her hushed voice ghosted through his headset, reporting their position and status to Farrell. The retired general was hidden among the trees on the other side of the compound — keeping an eye on the main gate.

Thorn flipped up his nightvision gear. This close to the edge of the compound he had enough light — and he needed the depth perception denied by the Russian-made light intensifier’s single lens.

Moving rapidly, he unslung his Winchester shotgun and rucksack, clipped a hacksaw onto his web gear, and then tugged on a pair of close-fitting, heavy leather work gloves. Knee pads and shin protectors completed the outfit. He was set.

“Peter,” Helen whispered in his ear. Thorn turned. “What?”

“If you even think of whistling “I’m a lumberjack, and I’m okay,’ this whole mission’s off,” she warned.

He grinned, then swung back, grabbed one of the large, thick branches just above his head, and levered himself up and into the oak. He climbed higher, moving from one limb to another — but always staying close to the trunk and well inside the concealing canopy of leaves.

Thorn stopped about halfway up. Going higher was impractical.

The boughs were clustered closer together barring easy passage.

They were also narrower and less likely to support his weight. He looked down. He was roughly twenty-five feet off the ground. Good enough.

Slowly he edged further out from the tree trunk, gingerly testing each step to make sure the limb he was standing on could take his weight without snapping. To transfer some of the load, he wrapped his left hand tight around a higher branch and pulled himself part way up.

Two steps. Three steps. The bough swayed suddenly, creaking as it sagged toward the ground. Thorn froze. Far enough, he thought — inching backward ever so slightly.

He was facing the Caraco compound — about ten meters from the fence.

Beyond the fence, a cleared strip of close-cropped gross soon gave way to a half-filled parking lot. The square, antenna-topped building they believed contained Ibrahim’s command and control center rose just beyond that — roughly sixty meters in from the fence. Leaves and the slender twigs branching off from other boughs obscured much of his view.

Time to make a nice, discreet hole, Thorn thought.

Still balancing himself with his left hand, he carefully unclipped the hacksaw from his web gear. He paused and whispered, “Delta Two, am I clear?”

Helen’s equally quiet reply crackled through the headset.

“Wait one. Two.man patrol coming down the fence now.”

Thorn stood motionless, every sense straining. There. He heard them now — the clink of metal on metal, the muffled sound of boots tromping across grass, a quick mutter in guttural German. From his vantage point he caught one quick glimpse of the guards as they passed by, checking the fence for any signs of tampering.

One side of his mouth quirked upward. Both men in that patrol were carrying what looked an awful lot like H&K MP5 submachine guns slung over their shoulders. They were also wearing body armor. These guys sure as hell weren’t the usual corporate rent-a-cops working for minimum wage and the chance to wear a fancy uniform.

“You’re clear, Delta One,” Helen said. “They’ve turned the corner and are moving away. We should have another fifteen minutes before they make the next circuit.”

Without waiting any further, Thorn started in — sawing rapidly away at the tree limbs that blocked his view of the headquarters building.

Leaves and slender pieces of lranch spun away into the shadows below.

He was taking a calculated risk — betting that none of the debris would drift far enough to land within view of the TV cameras monitoring the fence.

More narrow boughs felt the hacksaw’s sharp-edged bite and spiraled away toward the ground below. When he’d cleared a rough two-by three-foot oval in the foliage, he stopped cutting and clipped the saw back onto his web gear.

Thorn reversed course, climbing down by the same route he’d taken coming up. He crouched on the lowest and largest branch and leaned outward. “I’m set. You ready?”

In answer, she reached up and handed him the Mossberg 590 shotgun they’d converted into a line launcher. He slung it carefully over his shoulder, feeling the points of the grappling hook he’d welded on dig into his back.

Thorn looked back up toward the top of the tree, calculating how long it would take him to get there and get set. He glanced down at Helen, held up three fingers, and saw her repeat the signal.

Her voice came over the radio again, issuing instructions to Sam Farrell. “Delta Three, this is Two. Set your timer for three minutes on my mark.”

Thorn saw the second hand sweep through the number twelve on his faintly luminous watch face.

“Mark.”

“Got it,” Farrell’s laconic voice replied. “Timer set. I’m backing off.”

Climbing back to his chosen perch was a little more difficult this time — mostly because he had to avoid snagging the Mossberg or any of its attachments. Once in the right spot, he settled carefully into position — straddling a thick bough with both legs, his back firmly planted against the oak tree’s trunk.

Thorn pulled the converted shotgun off his shoulder and carefully sighted down the length of the barrel. His eyes narrowed. A tiny droplet of sweat rolled down his forehead. He shook it off impatiently.

He didn’t need anyone else to tell him how crazy this was — in every detail. The Mossberg line launcher kit was designed to fire precisely shaped flotation or distance heads. With the completely unaerodynamic, six-pronged grappling hook attached, its maximum range and the trajectory would both be wildly imprecise — at a time when precision was at an absolute premium.

If he fired just a fraction of an inch too far up or down, or left or right, the grappling hook and the line it carried would slam through the tangle of the surrounding foliage and veer completely off course.

If his shot fell short or the grapple failed to bite on target, a couple hundred feet of super-strong line was going to fall right over the perimeter fence — triggering every alarm system in the compound.

And millions of people would die when Ibrahim’s strike aircraft reached their chosen targets unmolested and undetected.

Plus, he couldn’t be absolutely sure just how his improvised attachment would affect the shotgun’s aim. There hadn’t been either the time or opportunity to test the jury-rigged system. Besides, he thought wryly, where the hell would you go to practice firing off a grappling hook and eight hundred feet of tightly wound line?

Noise should also have been a factor. Nobody could build a silencer for a 12-gauge shotgun. But at least they had a way to deal with that.

Thorn’s hands steadied. He and Helen had gone over the plan a dozen or more times. And this was the only way that offered them even the ghost of a chance to get far enough inside Ibrahim’s heavily guarded compound to make a difference. Well, he thought calmly, if you only had one roll of the dice, you rolled the dice and prayed that you didn’t crap out.

The second hand on his watch swept past the number twelve for the third time since Helen’s signal.

Now.

Two hundred meters away, on the other side of the compound, a digital timer blinked from 00:00:01 to 00:00:00. An improvised circuit closed, sending electric current through a short length of tungsten filament.

The filament heated rapidly — glowing white hot. That, in turn, ignited a fireworks squib. Flame hissed through the gunpowder-filled tube and lit the closest fuse of one of the more than two dozen firecrackers daisy-chained together to a piece of cardboard.

The firecrackers began detonating off one after the other — each small explosion echoing loudly through the trees.

Pop-poppop.pop … Thorn pulled the trigger. The Mossberg kicked back in his arms as it fired — propelling the grappling hook straight through the ragged hole he’d hacked in the tree’s leafy canopy and up into the night sky.

Trailing behind the hook, the Spectra line unwound with dizzying speed from the spool and through the smoking barrel — whining shrilly as it payed out.

He held his breath, waiting.

The grappling hook arced down out of the darkness and disappeared somewhere in the forest of radio and microwave antennas on top of the building seventy meters away.

With Talal close at his heels, Prince Ibrahim al Saud took the steps up from the basement two at a time. He hurried across the open area that filled most of the building’s first floor — ignoring the sleeping figures huddled on cots in the middle of the open space. Since they’d only arrived three days ago, the eight pilots he needed to remotely control his planes hadn’t required more elaborate living quarters.

They were being paid more than enough for their part in the Operation to justify temporary discomfort and a certain lack of privacy.

By rights he should have been asleep himself. But sleep had proved impossibly elusive. The growing excitement as he watched the carefully hidden dream of nearly a lifetime drawing ever closer to reality had kept him awake and pacing through both the planning cell and the aircraft control center.

He went through the door into a room just off the building’s main entrance. Banks of small monitors covered one whole wall — showing the grainy, black-and-white images continuously transmitted by the video surveillance cameras posted around the perimeter fence. Several computers in another part of the room displayed the data gathered by the motion sensors scattered across the compound.

Ibrahim ran his eyes quickly over the camera views — seeing nothing out of the ordinary. He spun toward Hans Jurgen Schaaf, the former East German commando Reichardt had designated as second-in-command of the headquarters security detail.

“Well? You summoned me. What for?”

“Two minutes ago, the outer patrol reported a series of sharp reports — possibly gunshots — coming from the woods to the west.”

“Gunshots?” Ibrahim repeated. His lipstightened.

Schaaf shrugged. “Possibly gunshots.” He nodded toward the calendar.

“But it might also be schoolboys playing pranks with firecrackers.”

Ibrahim nodded. That was true. They were close to the American national holiday, the Fourth of July. And the newspapers were already full of stories about fires set by carelessly handled fireworks. For an instant, he wished again that he could have found some way to set the attack for July 4th — but too many of the military units, intelligence specialists, and political leaders he’d selected as his prime targets would have been gone for the holiday when his strike aircraft arrived.

“What do your sensors show?” he asked.

“Nothing. No movement,” Schaaf answered.

Ibrahim pondered that. “Very well. But let’s not take any chances. Activate the fence.”

The German nodded and began entering the keyboard commands that would send lethal amounts of electricity sleeting through the perimeter fence.

Ibrahim turned to Talal. “Dispatch a four-man team to sweep the woods on that side. Equip them with nightvision gear and automatic weapons. If they encounter unarmed civilians or uniformed police, they are to avoid contact and return here. If they come across either Colonel Thorn or that woman of his — they will shoot to kill. Clear?”

The former Saudi paratrooper nodded. “Yes, Highness.”

For another instant, Ibrahim pondered the wisdom of the orders he’d just issued. Taking into account the four security guards he’d brought from the Middleburg estate and counting themselves, Talal and Schaaf had fourteen men at their disposal but only half were normally awake at any one time. So he was deploying over half his ready-alert force to chase down what might be only a few drunken American teenagers out on a spree after an all-night party. Was that a foolish waste of his manpower?

Then he shook his head. It was better to act than to sit passively — especially with so little time remaining.

Thorn finished securing the line around the oak tree’s massive trunk and then tugged on it again with all his might. It didn’t give an inch. The line stretched away into the darkness — a taut, almost invisible strand heading straight for the top of the headquarters building.

He nodded to himself. Almost as soon as the sound of the firecrackers Farrell had triggered died away, he’d slowly reeled in the grappling hook until it made firm contact with one of the antenna support structures.

Moving quickly but still carefully, he worked his way back down and dropped lightly onto the ground beside Helen.

“Success?” she asked quietly.

“We’re in business,” Thorn replied — taking back the Winchester shotgun and rucksack she offered him. He laid the Mossberg down in the tall grass and then levered himself back into the oak tree. Thirty seconds later, he was back at his perch.

Helen climbed up after him, stopping on a branch just a few feet below.

He shrugged off the rucksack, secured the unloaded shotgun to it, and then ran a length of the strong, lightweight nylon rope coiled at his waist through an eyelet on the rucksack. At a hand signal, Helen passed her pack up to him and he rapidly rigged it the same way. Then he tied both rucksacks to a nearby branch.

She would finish prepping them once he was on his way.

Which had to be soon.

Thorn made sure his gloves were snug, checked his web gear to make sure all the pockets and pouches were sealed, and then looked over his shoulder at the line leading off into the darkness.

Now all he had to do was shinny uphill along seventy plus meters of ultra-thin Spectra line — all without making too much noise or dropping anything.

Sure.

He took a deep breath and nodded to Helen.

Her terse report to Farrell sounded through his headset. “Delta Three, this is Two. We’re going in.”

Thorn took hold of the line with both hands, gripped it tightly, swung himself up, locked his legs around it, and set off — moving hand over hand up the long slope.

Helen Gray watched him go. The nylon rope he’d tied to their rucksacks dangled behind him as it payed out from the coil at his waist.

At last, Peter’s voice came through her own headset. “Delta Two, this is One. In position.”

That was her cue.

Helen pulled herself up onto the gnarled branch he’d set off from, reclaimed the rucksacks, fastened them together, and then clipped the whole assembly to the taut Spectra line. “Haul away,” she said quietly.

The rope attached to the rucksacks tightened, slowly at first, and then faster as Peter began pulling it in. They started moving upslope — trundling toward the distant rooftop of Ibrahim’s headquarters building.

Helen stood watching, knowing full well it would be her turn to make the arduous ascent next. She flexed the fingers of her own gloves and started working on her breathing.

“Two, this is One. Come ahead.”

Helen gripped the line and started climbing — using the same hand-over-hand technique as Peter.

The first few meters were relatively easy. That was an illusion.

Soon Helen could feel the Spectra line trying to slice through her gloves. Her shoulder, neck, arm, and wrist muscles all quivered under the constant strain needed to maintain her grip on the thin cable. It was like dangling from piano wire.

Ignore the pain, she told herself sternly, remembering the rigors of her training. Ignore it. Keep moving. Don’t stop.

She kept moving.

Helen was almost halfway across when Farrell’s frantic voice shattered her single-minded concentration. “Two, this is Three!

You’ve got an enemy patrol right below you! Two men just came out of the building and joined the rovers. Total is four men armed with SMGS and nightvision gear.”

God. If any of those bastards so much as looked up at the night sky, he couldn’t possibly miss seeing her dangling just thirty feet or so above them. Her back tensed as she imagined the agony of a quick burst of 9mm Parabellum submachine rounds slamming into her.

Worse yet, she couldn’t even look down to see the men who might kill her in the next few seconds. Hell, she couldn’t even stop moving. Not on a line like this. If she lost her momentum, she’d never be able to regain it.

Helen heard the sound of boots ringing on pavement. Her hands started to slip.

No, damn it!

With absolute determination, she shoved all her fear and doubt to the back of her mind. Everything in the universe narrowed to a single point — the short length of line always just a little ahead of her steadily moving hands. Slowly, painfully, she kept going — climbing hand over hand along the cable, drawing nearer and nearer to the roof and relative safety.

“Thank God,” she heard Farrell say softly. “They’re heading away — moving toward the main gate.”

Ibrahim is sending men out to check the noise made by our distraction device, Helen realized suddenly. He’s dispersing his troops.

Incredibly, despite the pain, despite her fatigue, and despite her fear, she could feel herself almost smiling.

“You made it, Helen,” Peter whispered, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder.

She looked to the side with a start — aware only then that she’d cleared the edge of the roof. She unlocked her legs, let herself swing away from the line, and willed her weary, aching hands to let go.

They were at their first objective.

Peter already had the rucksacks open with the equipment they would need straight away laid out.

First came their body armor. Both quickly donned the heavy Kevlar vests. They would have been far too bulky and awkward to wear during their climb up to the roof, but now they were headed deep into enemy territory. As she struggled into hers, Helen wished for what felt like the millionth time that the manufacturers could get it through their heads to take some aspects of female anatomy into account.

Next came the two Winchester shotguns. Peter handed her one. “You’ve got triple-ought. Mine’s loaded with sabot.”

Helen nodded. She looked around the roof without being able to pick out much detail. They were above the level of the compound lights and it was much darker here. She flipped the nightvision gear down over her eyes and waited while they adjusted to the flat, green-tinted view.

Farrell reported in from his concealed position outside the compound.

“Delta Two, this is Three. Patrol has left the main gate and entered the west woods.”

“Understood, Three,” she said. “Moving toward entry now.”

She checked the magazine in her Beretta and looked up at Peter. He had his own light intensifiers on. “You find a door?”

“Yeah.” He gestured toward the southern edge of the roof.

“Over there by that big air-conditioning unit.”

Helen slung the Winchester over one shoulder and the rucksack over the other. “Let’s get this done, Peter.”

She followed him through the cluttered array of satellite dishes, radio antennas, and microwave relay towers. They’d called it a forest, and that was an accurate term, she decided — stepping over a massive power cable that lay snaked across the roof like a giant, exposed tree root.

The door down was metal and set into a raised section of the roof at a forty-five-degree angle. There was no exterior handle.

Helen looked it over carefully, noting the thick metal bolt holding the door in place. “You want speed or subtlety?”

Peter smiled. “Just for once, let’s change our MO. I vote for subtlety.”

“Agreed.” She went down on one knee and fished through her rucksack for a small plastic bottle. The cap went into one of her web gear’s pouches. She replaced it with an angled plastic tube that ended in a tapered nozzle. “Stand clear.”

Gingerly, Helen tilted the bottle over the bolt, laying down a thin line of nitric acid across the metal. She pulled back fast as a cloud of bitter, poisonous smoke sizzled off the bubbling metal.

When the smoke dispersed, she could see where the acid had eaten deeply into the bolt. A second application finished the job.

Peter knelt beside her holding a slender metal ruler he’d picked up at a drafting store and a powerful magnet from a hardware store. After swiftly rubbing the magnet over the ruler, he cautiously slid the now-magnetized ruler through the door frame.

Using it as a probe, he felt around the frame for pressure plates or other sensors that might trip an alarm.

He stopped halfway along the bottom sill. “Got one,” he said.

“There’s a raised spot where they’ve installed a pressure pad.”

Helen watched as he put the magnet back on one end of the ruler, and then squeezed out a dollop of Krazy Glue under the door frame. The glue would help hold the ruler in place against the pad — ensuring that the alarm wouldn’t trip when they opened the door.

A screwdriver sufficed to lever the door up and away from the melted bolt — revealing a darkened set of stairs leading down.

Peter started moving, but stopped when Helen stuck her arm out in front of him.

“Not so fast,” she said, showing him the second squeeze bottle she’d packed along in her rucksack. This one was filled with white chalk dust. “Subtlety, remember?”

He grinned sheepishly and hung his head in mock shame.

“Sorry.”

“Uh-huh.” Helen squirted a cloud of chalk dust into the doorway.

A laser beam appeared right across the middle of the opening — glowing red through the swirling white fog.

Peter whistled softly under his breath. “Jesus Christ. A pressure plate and a laser sensor! These bastards aren’t screwing around!”

Helen nodded slowly. Now that they knew it was there, it wouldn’t be difficult for them to wriggle under the laser beam — even in body armor.

But who knew how many more alarms or booby traps the bad guys had rigged throughout the building they were about to enter?

She watched as Peter slid under the beam and then followed suit.

The stairs from the roof ended in a closed steel fire door.

Peter unholstered his 9mm SIG-Sauer and stood ready while she tried the handle. It was unlocked. She pushed down gently, unlatching the door, and pulled out her own pistol. The shotgun slung over her shoulder was a two-handed weapon and too unwieldy for what she had in mind.

The fingers on his left hand flashed out a count. One. Two. Three. Go.

Crouching low while Peter covered her from above, Helen pulled the door open a crack. Dim light spilled into the darkened stairway. She flipped the eyepieces of her nightvision gear back up and poked her head through the opening — rapidly scanning the area beyond. She was facing north now.

The fire door opened up into a hallway that ran east before dead-ending to her left and then turned north not far to the right. There was no one in sight.

A faint, familiar smell hung in the ain-the odor of too many people crowded into too tight a space without adequate personal hygiene. She sniffed. It was an aroma she associated with college dorms.

She slipped out into the hall and took up a firing stance, covering Peter as he glided out behind her.

He nodded toward an identical fire door adjacent to the one they’d just come through and mouthed, “Stairs down.”

Helen nodded. They’d have to clear this floor first. Without knowing anything about the building layout, they couldn’t risk leaving any door unopened or any room unchecked. Doing anything else was just asking to be bushwhacked from behind.

At Peter’s signal, she moved slowly down the hall to the right, with her Beretta out and ready to fire. He followed her, periodically checking behind them.

Helen turned the corner. The hallway stretched north and then turned back east. There were doors on either side.

She drew nearer to the first door. A three-by-five card taped to the outside of the door displayed what looked like two names, “Eberhardt,” and “Prless.” These must be living quarters. She arched an eyebrow at Peter and nodded toward the door.

He nodded back.

She tested the knob. It turned easily and quietly. The door swung open under gentle pressure — just far enough to show the foot of a cot.

She pushed the door open a bit further and then moved inside — angling right to clear the entrance for Peter.

Once they were both in, he closed the door behind them.

From her position on the floor, Helen scanned the room. The light spilling under the door bottom provided ample illumination for her intensifiers.

Two holstered pistols hung from a single chair placed between two cots.

Each cot was occupied by a soundly sleeping man. Perfect.

She smiled coldly. Why fight fair when you didn’t have to fight at all?

Taking care of the two men took just a couple of minutes. The procedure was simple: Whack each sleeping man over the head to stun him. Shove a piece of old cloth into his mouth and wrap several lengths of duct tape around the man’s face to hold the ready-made gag in place. Then tightly bind the wide-eyed, thoroughly frightened, and still groggy German’s wrists and ankles with cable ties. Easy and effective — the best combination. Helen snagged their weapons and shoved them into her rucksack. Even though these clowns weren’t going anywhere anytime soon, she wasn’t going to make the mistake of leaving usable weapons behind.

Two down, an unknown number to go, Helen thought as they left the bedroom and edged back out into the hall.

She softly recounted their progress to Farrell and listened as he made his own report. “That patrol seems to be still mucking around in the woods. I’ll keep you posted if I see them heading back your way.”

They kept working their way from room to room — moving carefully and cautiously, consciously fighting the urge to hurry.

Stealth was their best ally now — not speed. The next two bed rooms were empty, though both showed signs of recent occupancy.

By now Helen had a pretty good mental picture of how this floor was laid out. Living quarters ran in a giant U along the outer walls — at least five rooms laid out to house two men each.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!”

Ibrahim glared at him. “Do your job right, Captain. Then I won’t need any protection!”

Talal stiffened. “Yes, Highness.” He snatched up his submachine gun and headed for the door that led to the planning cell.

Ibrahim didn’t bother watching him go. Instead, he swung around on the two German technicians who were left. He pointed to the 9mm pistols they wore. “You know how to use those weapons?”

They nodded hurriedly.

“Good. Then guard the door. Move!”

The technicians scurried into position.

Ibrahim turned back to contemplate the secure phones that linked him with the five strike airfields. His eyes narrowed.

Should he transmit the arming codes and target coordinates now — and order an immediate launch?

Such an order would utterly disrupt the final stage of his carefully planned timetable. It would certainly throw the ground crews and security troops at those airfields into confusion. He frowned. Some were paid mercenaries like those who were failing him here. They were sure to panic when they heard his command center was under attack. A few might even abandon their posts without launching their aircraft.

And even if all the planes left the ground, Ibrahim knew the damage their bombs caused would be dramatically reduced — perhaps even halved.

Too many key American personnel would be at home asleep — and outside the target areas. His hired planners had run through several night attack scenarios when drafting the Operation. None had yielded the kinds of results he desired.

No, he thought furiously. He would not be panicked into wasting so much of the destructive power he had spent so much effort, time, and money to obtain.

Besides, once the four heavily armed men he’d so foolishly deployed outside the compound returned, the two Americans would find the odds tipping even more heavily against them. Thorn and Gray were only human. They could be killed.

First Floor

Thorn dropped another pistol-armed man taking potshots at them — swinging away to look for new targets before the man he’d shot even hit the floor. The sudden movement sent fire streaking down his side. Might have a broken rib there, he thought clinically.

“Pete!” Farrell’s voice sounded through his headset. “You’ve got company coming! That patrol’s on its way back-at the double! They’re heading for the gate.”

Damn.

Thorn scanned the room around them. He and Helen were each covering different sectors — moving from position to position whenever they fired. Several more of their enemies were down-either torn in half by his shotgun rounds or hit by one or more of Helen’s 9mm bullets.

Others had thrown their weapons away and were either lying doggo amid the clutter or fleeing out the building’s main entrance.

He let them go. There wasn’t any percentage in shooting unarmed men in the back-especially when they were abandoning the fight. Running away was exactly the kind of behavior he wanted to encourage.

But he and Helen were still taking fire from a couple of different locations. Throw four more guards wearing Kevlar and carrying automatic weapons into this battle, and you’ve got two very dead people, Thorn realized. Two very dead people who are us.

“Can you delay them?” he asked desperately. “I’ll try,” Farrell said matter-of-factly.

Thorn heard the sudden boom of a shotgun blast over the radio as Farrell opened up.

From his concealed position in the trees across the road from the Caraco compound, Sam Farrell saw the man he’d shot crumple to the pavement. Not even Kevlar body armor could stop a sabot round fired from less than forty meters away.

After a split second’s stunned amazement, the other three guards threw themselves flat and opened up — flailing away at the trees and brush on full automatic.

Pieces of torn bark and leaves rained down on Farrell. Shit, he thought, I am getting too damned old for this crap. He wriggled back behind the thick trunk of one of the trees and reloaded.

Helen Gray heard the desperate radio exchange between Peter and Farrell. The building entrance was in her sector. Which made stopping this new threat her responsibility.

She fired the Beretta two more times. Both shots slammed into the wall — right beside the man she’d been aiming at. With a startled yell, he threw his own pistol away and scuttled for the big double doors leading out.

Fair enough.

Helen tugged the empty magazine out of her own weapon and reached for another. Nothing. She’d used up the ammo she’d stuffed in her ready-use pouch. There were more rounds in her rucksack, but it would take far too long to get them out.

She switched to the shotgun, pumped it, and rose to one knee.

“I’m going for the doors, Peter,” she warned.

Without waiting for a response, she rose to her feet and moved forward, dodging around the tangle of cots, gear, and bodies.

A gunman appeared in one of the open doorways on the far wall.

Still running, Helen fired from the hip. Nine pistol-size pellets blasted out of the barrel and spread through a narrow arc. Two hit her target in the chest and two more tore his face apart.

Another man popped up to her right and fired twice. The first bullet snapped past her face. The second caught her in the side.

Momentarily stunned by the fiery impact, she stumbled and fell — still holding her shotgun. Another 9mm round spanged into the floor by her face and whirred away.

Helen spun on her side, fired, pumped the action, and then fired again.

An eerie, echoing, bubbling scream told her she’d hit the shooter.

Wincing, she levered herself upright and started for the main doors again. This time nobody tried to stop her.

On the other side of the vast room, the fire door to the stairs going down started to open.

Thorn caught a fleeting glimpse of two men, both wearing body armor, in the doorway. He fired quickly and swore as the sabot round tore a small, jagged hole through the wall a foot away from the door. He’d missed.

The steel door slammed shut.

Thorn scrambled to his feet. He had to take these new enemies now.

Before they recovered the initiative.

He pumped another round into the chamber and ran toward the stairwell firing on the move. Once. A finger-sized puncture appeared in the steel door. Twice. Another sabot round struck home — ripping a second hole at waist height near the handle.

Thorn pulled the trigger again. Nothing. He’d used the whole seven-round magazine. Christ, he thought, no time to reload.

Now what the hell do I do?

He reached the fire door and jerked it open.

One of the two men he’d spotted lay faceup on the top landing in a spreading pool of blood. The second, a tough, middleaged Arab, was very much alive.

The Arab brought the submachine gun he was holding on line — ready to fire at point-blank range.

And Thorn swung the Winchester up through a vicious twohanded arc — slamming it into the other man’s face with enough force to shatter bone.

Screaming and clutching at the red, pulped ruin that had once been his face, the Arab dropped his weapon and toppled backward down the stairs.

Helen cautiously pushed open one pair of double doors with the barrel of her shotgun. Nothing. No reaction.

She kicked open the door and slid through into a hallway closed off by another set of double doors — these leading outside into the compound.

Blood trails on the linoleum showed that some of the wounded had fled this way. A guard room stood empty to her right.

Naturally, she thought coldly. The guards were all inside — and dead or dying. Except for the men she was after now.

Helen moved on down the hall, pushed through the second set of doors, and came out onto the sidewalk fronting the half-filled parking lot.

Submachine gun fire rattled in the distance drawing closer.

A single, echoing shotgun blast answered.

“Delta Three, this is Two. How’re you doing?” she asked.

“They’re pulling back through the gate, Helen,” Farrell replied, breathing heavily. “I can’t stop them.”

Helen spotted the retreating patrol. Two were half dragging a third man, while a fourth provided covering fire. They would be in among the parked cars and vans in just a few seconds.

Too bad for them.

She knelt, laid her shotgun aside, and rifled through her rucksack.

Her fingers closed on the cylindrical plastic surface of a pipe bomb.

Her lighter came out of one of her assault vest’s breast pockets.

The retreating guards were sixty meters away. Fifty-five. Fifty.

Helen lit the fuse, stood up, and hurled the pipe bomb toward the enemy patrol. It spun end over end through the air, fell a little short, bounced once, and rolled under a minivan just meters away from them.

Perfect.

She snatched up her shotgun and rucksack in one hand, yanked open the closest door, and threw herself prone into the hallway.

WHAMMM.

The pipe bomb detonated directly under the van’s gasoline tank. A fireball tipped with nails and torn pieces of metal and plastic roared outward-consuming everyone and everything in its path.

“Jesus,” Farrell said simply over the radio.

Helen looked back over her shoulder at the inferno raging outside the building. That ought to get a few official pulses finally pumping, she thought calmly.

She stiffened as Peter’s voice came over the circuit. “I’m at the top of the stairs to the basement. I may need some help with this.”

Helen sprinted toward the inner set of double doors, slinging the rucksack over her shoulder. She started reloading the shotgun as she ran. “Give me thirty seconds, Peter!”

The sound of gunfire faded away on the floor above. At last, Ibrahim thought.

He signaled one of the technicians. “Find out what’s happening!”

The technician, an older man, swallowed hard. He hustled out the door leading to the planning cell. And then stopped dead.

“Sir!”

Ibrahim hurried over. “What is it, ma?”

The gray-haired computer specialist lifted a shaking hand, pointing toward the stairs leading up.

Ibrahim froze. Talal lay dead on the steps. His mangled face was covered in blood.

Impossible. Absolutely impossible.

The sudden realization that he was on the verge of losing everything flooded through Ibrahim’s stunned mind. He grabbed the shaking computer technician, pulled him through the door, and brutally shoved him toward one of the control consoles.

“Activate that console! Now!”

Then he whirled toward the other man — the younger one with a shaved head and a gold loop through his eyebrow. “Seal that door! Shoot anyone who comes through it! understand?”

The young man nodded convulsively, his face ash-gray.

May Allah protect me, Ibrahim thought bitterly. All would not be lost.

He could yet inflict a massive death blow to his great enemy.

He moved to the secure phone linking him to Godfrey Field.

“This is Control One. Get me Deckert! Now!”

Peter Thorn led the way down the stairs, with Helen coming right behind him.

He turned the corner. The Arab he’d clubbed lay crumpled at the foot of the steps. A few more feet brought him out into a large room crowded with empty desks.

He stopped in sudden confusion. Was this it? Had they been wrong about the whole setup? Where the hell was Ibrahim’s control center?

“Peter,” Helen hissed — pointing her shotgun at a gray, unmarked door in the far corner.

Thorn nodded.

He moved closer. Helen drifted off to the side so that they approached the door from different angles.

Thorn put his back against the wall, leaned over, and gently tested the handle. It was locked. Well, well, what a surprise, he thought grimly.

At a hand signal, Helen moved into position — ready to cover him.

He raised his shotgun, now loaded with solid slugs, and fired twice — smashing the hinges, first the top and then the bottom.

Helen spun out, savagely kicked the door in, and spun back into cover.

From inside the room a pistol cracked twice — sending steeljacketed rounds screaming through the opening.

The stupid bastard’s firing high, Thorn thought. He dropped to one knee and then threw himself flat in the doorway with his shotgun angled up. A figure loomed in his sights — a young man, obviously terrified, but still holding a weapon.

Bad move.

Thorn pulled the trigger.

The slug caught the other man in the stomach and threw him back against some kind of equipment console. Eyes already glazing over in death, he slid to the floor, smearing blood across the console, and toppled sideways.

Helen flowed in through the doorway, yelling, “Hands up! Get your hands up!”

A second man, this one older, hurriedly tossed his pistol to the side and stuck his hands in the air.

Thorn scrambled upright and joined Helen inside.

“Eight. Four. Alpha. Two …” someone said, speaking rapidly, but precisely.

He swung toward the voice and saw a tall, slender, handsome man with dark hair and dark eyes speaking intently into a telephone. Ibrahim. That had to be Prince Ibrahim al Saud — the man responsible for all this carnage. Rage flared inside him.

Thorn aimed the shotgun at the Saudi. “Drop the phone!”

Ibrahim smiled thinly and shook his head. “Delta. Tango.

Five …”

Helen fired. She was less than three meters away, and the pellets from her triple-ought shotgun shell were still tightly grouped when they hit — blowing Ibrahim’s right hand, the hand still holding the telephone, off just below the wrist.

The Saudi prince stood motionless, staring in horror at the blood pumping out of his shattered right arm.

Thorn grabbed the older man they’d taken prisoner and tossed him toward Ibrahim. “Use your belt! Put a tourniquet on him!”

“Oh, my God,” Helen said in horror.

Her shocked voice stopped Thorn in his tracks. He turned toward her.

She pointed at the several computer consoles that filled the room. One of them was live. It showed a digitally generated map of the surrounding region.

And a white dot blinked rapidly as it moved across the screen-heading inexorably toward Washington, D.C. One of the strike planes was airborne and closing on its target — with an armed 150-kiloton nuclear warhead aboard.