Net Force

14

From the time Julio Fernandez knocked the guard cold until the two assault teams were in place inside the warehouse had taken slightly less than forty-five seconds. Not a glitch.

Now, they waited.

There was an elevator, but the circuit breaker working the lift had been tripped; it wasn't going to move. The only way down from the second floor consisted of two sets of stairs. The exit door on one set of those stairs was padlocked from the outside — wouldn't that be lovely during a fire? Howard left two men watching that door anyhow, along with men outside watching the windows. Nobody was sneaking out of here.

The other set of stairs was wide and straight, the door unlocked. This was how they'd gone up, and this was how they would come down.

Howard deployed his men so they weren't visible from the base of the stairs. Everybody was to stay hidden until he gave the word.

Howard himself would have put on the unconscious guard's coveralls to stand by the front entrance — until the sarge reminded him it wouldn't be enough of a disguise — not unless these guys were really color-blind.

"Fine, fine, you do it. By the way, what was in that lunch box you hit that guy with?"

"Twelve pounds of lead shot, sir. Packed into a nice tight leather bag. Sometimes low-tech stuff is still the best way."

Thus it was that Fernandez wore the guard's coveralls, his face in shadow, so when the party broke up and the terrorists made to leave, they'd see that things were still fine downstairs.

Howard found a spot behind a stack of wooden crates in which to hide. There was enough of a gap between the boxes so he could see the base of the stairs. He could smell the pine-like scent of the unfinished wood, and the lube from the machine parts in the boxes. He could also smell his own nervous sweat.

Once most of the plotters were down, they'd move on them. He reasoned that the plotters wouldn't be showing weapons, since they were about to go out into public view, and unless they were real fast on the draw, they wouldn't have time to get their weapons out without getting cooked for their efforts. They'd see they were caught and that resistance was unwise. That was how he reasoned it. If he could take them all alive, that would be the best thing. Let the interrogators at them.

The sound of voices talking in Russian or Ukrainian drifted down the stairs, along with the clump of boots. This was it. He took a deep breath.

Don't screw this up, John—

Ruzhyo sat upright in bed, heart pounding rapidly. Despite the motel's air-conditioning, he was clammy with sweat, the covers tangled in a knot around his feet.

He kicked the covers off, swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood. The room was dark, save for a thin shaft of light from around the edges of the almost-closed bathroom door. He padded in that direction, scratching at his damp chest hair. It was not fear of the night's gloom that caused Ruzhyo to leave a light on there, but practicality: The nightmare woke him frequently, and often in a room in which he had never slept before. Switching on a bright lamp with its hard glare to find his disoriented way to the toilet seemed… excessive. Over the years of cheap rooms and fast moves, he had learned the lesson: Leave a lamp burning near the toilet, close the door so only a gap remained, and relief was always in the direction of the light. Had he been a religious man, he would have perhaps considered some metaphorical significance in that, but faith in an Almighty Being was not in Ruzhyo's soul, if indeed he had such a thing.

No God worthy of the name would have ever let Anna die so young.

In addition to the one over the sink, there were mirrors across from, and next to, the toilet — a stupid place to put such things — who wants to watch himself urinate or defecate? The mirrors reflected his external image, which always came as something of a surprise, since he did not spend too much time looking at himself. To hear the mirrors tell it, he was a fit man, muscular, but not overly so, his brown hair now cut short, going gray at the temples. He looked at least his age of forty, perhaps a bit more, and his eyes, though bleary from the night's touch, were all too cold and knowing. Those eyes had seen many die. They belonged to a man who had caused more than a few of those deaths. But at least his method was quick. He did not leave the wounded to suffer slowly, in pain.

When Anna had been alive, he had not been so introspective. There had been no need. She had asked the deep questions, and often, she had answered them, too. It had been enough for him to listen, to smile and nod, to let her speak of such matters. For a time after she was gone, he had been completely shut down, had done nothing other than the barest survival motions, not wanting to remember, to think, to feel. It was only later, after the wound had slowed from a torrent to a slow but steady trickle, only then had he spent any time inside his own head. He had gone back to doing what he knew best and he was still good at it — but he no longer took any joy in the work. His pride at being able to deal death with expertise was greatly diminished. It was simply what he did. What he would continue to do until someone better did it to him.

He finished pissing, closed the toilet's lid without flushing and returned to his rented bed. He lay in the dark for a long time, but sleep did not want him back. Finally, he got up and turned on a light. He stretched, sat on the floor and began to do crunches, working his abdominal muscles. He would do a hundred of these, then push-ups, a hundred of those, then another set of crunches and push-ups, and another, until he could not do even one more exercise. Sometimes that helped. Sometimes he would be tired enough to fall back into exhausted slumber.

Sometimes it merely left him exhausted, but still awake. Those were not the best of times.

Nor, unfortunately, were they the worst of times.

"Now!" Howard said into his mouthpiece. As he spoke, he stepped out from behind his cover and raised the assault rifle to a hip point. "Don't move!" he yelled, using the Ukrainian phrase Fernandez had taught him.

For a heartbeat no one did. The terrorists, most on the warehouse floor, two still on the stairs, froze, startled no doubt by the sight of more than a dozen armed men in coveralls stepping or rolling out of concealment to point weapons at them.

Then one of the terrorists screamed something, certainly a curse, even if Howard didn't understand the words. The screamer dug his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small chrome-plated pistol—

Somebody cooked off a double-tap—pop! pop! — and dropped the pistoleer.

It all went south. Most of the other terrorists tried to get their guns out.

One of them saw how stupid this was, yelled "Nyet! Nyet!" but too late.

Howard's orders to his troops had been clear — take them alive if possible, but if somebody is going to get shot, do not let it be you.

Time stalled, stretched, and Howard saw part of it in his suddenly tunneled vision, as if it were a movie being run in slow motion and he was in the front row. His vision narrowed, but there was nothing wrong with his hearing: Even amidst all the gunfire, obscenely loud in the enclosed warehouse, he distinctly heard the sound of men yelling, actions cycling, chunk-chunk! and brass clinking on the concrete floor, tink, tink, clink—

— a big bearded man pulled what looked like a World War I Luger from his belt and swung it up, only to catch several rounds from a submachine gun in a neat horizontal row across the center of his mass—

— the man yelling "Nyet!" dropped to the floor, covered his head with his hands, curled into a fetal position, still repeating his panicked yell—

— the men on the stairs turned to flee back the way they had come—

— a thin, balding man missing a front tooth came up with a sawed-off bolt-action rifle, a.22 maybe, and thrust it toward Howard. So keen was his vision that Howard noticed a ring on the man's right forefinger as he wrapped the digit around the trigger—

No time to raise the assault rifle to aim. Howard point-indexed the thin man, stabbed the weapon at him as if it were a bayonet and pulled the trigger. The big weapon bucked, once — twice — three times! and recoil lifted the muzzle with the second and third rounds. The first bullet struck at high solar-plexus level, the second the base of the throat, the third at the top of the receding hairline. Howard saw the spray of the head's exit wound, a balloon full of dark red fluid bursting—

One would have been enough. That was the thing with a.30-caliber rifle, a good solid body hit was a one-hundred-percent-fight-stopper. No handgun could claim that, but a 7.62mm, yeah—

The thin man fell, already dead, taking nearly forever to reach the floor. Land masses rose and sank, life came and went, time wore away mountains…

By the time the dead man lay flat on the concrete, the battle was over.

Howard noticed his ears were ringing, and the stink of burned gunpowder filled his nostrils. Jesus!

His troops moved, covering the surviving terrorists. Two had made it up the stairs, only to find the other exits blocked. Hands raised, they came down the stairs again.

The yelling man had survived. When the smoke cleared and the counts were done, of the twenty-one terrorists, nine were dead, six were wounded — two seriously enough so that Howard's medics didn't give them much hope, four with survivable injuries. The unit's medical transports had already pulled up and were hauling the bodies and wounded out.

None of Howard's troops had sustained a scratch.

And he had killed a man, face-to-face, who had tried to kill him.

"Sir," Fernandez said, "we oughta skedaddle."

"Affirmative, Sarge." He glanced at his watch. Not yet noon. Amazing.

According to Hunter, they had about ten minutes before the local authorities would have to quit pretending they didn't know anything and take action. "Pack it up," Howard said to the troops. "Oh, and… good work."

That earned him a few grins, but his adrenaline was fast fading. He felt tired, old and suddenly depressed. He and his troops had been better trained, better armed, and they'd had surprise on their side. This wasn't a battle, it had been a complete rout. These so-called terrorists had never had a chance.

How much pride could you take in winning a battle of wits with an idiot? A footrace with a man wearing casts on his ankles? Not very much.

Still — he hadn't screwed it up. That was something.