Day Of Wrath (54 page)

He whirled around and rushed back into the smoke-filled conference room. The chairs and tables that had once filled the room were piled in a jumble of broken, twisted wreckage in the corner . There was nothing left of the water-filled bag he’d used to tamp down the charge.

In fact, the only thing left in that spot was a scorched patch on the floor.

Thorn took a running leap and landed squarely on that charred, smoking section.

First Floor Dieter Schmidt, a onetime meteorological-officer in the East German Air Force, threaded his way through the knot of groggy, cursing pilots fumbling for their gear and boots amid a tangle of overturned cots and spilled duffel bags. The sudden commando raid had caught them all by surprise.

He clutched a handful of charts, thanking God that Ibrahim wanted his key personnel down below-out of harm’s way. The only trouble was that the stairs down to safety were right next to the stairs leading up to the floor above. And he could see two security guards crouched there—spraying the stairwell with rounds from their submachine guns.

Schmidt swallowed hard—trying to steel himself to make the dash past that opening. This was supposed to have been easy money, he reminded himself bitterly. Run a few weather predictions, keep them updated, and then collect a hundred thousand marks to stash in that rather meager pension fund of his … A white cylinder bounced down the stairs and rolled out onto the floor.

Some animal instinct prompted the meteorology officer to dive for cover.

WHAMMM
.

A bright white flash strobed through the room—lighting every darkened corner for a single, dazzling, deadly instant.

Pieces of shrapnel shrieked outward from the explosion—tearing into everything in their path.

Half deafened by the blast, Schmidt raised his head cautiously.

The two guards were gone—blown into bloody rags by the full force of the explosion. Half the pilots around him were also down—stunned and bleeding. He saw one man staring in horror at a nail protruding out of the back of his open hand.

You should have ducked, the meteorologist thought smugly.
WHUMMPPP
.

Schmidt buried his head in his hand and then lifted it again.

What the devil? He was soaked. Where in God’s name had all this water come from?

The meteorologist stared up at the ceiling in shock—just in time to see a large piece of it break away and come hurtling straight down on top of him.

Thorn hit the floor hard and rolled away—ignoring the pain stabbing through his ankles and legs. His pistol broke loose and skittered across the floor. The fall had been further than he’d anticipated—more like fifteen feet instead of ten. He was damned lucky he hadn’t sprained an ankle—or broken his neck.

Like the poor dumb son of a bitch he’d landed on.

The dead man’s eyes were open wide in stunned horror—staring sightlessly up through a pair of crushed, wire-frame glasses.

His head lay cocked at a sickening angle.

Helen dropped through the opening, landed on the smoking pile of debris, and rolled in the other direction.

Thorn swore silently. He and Helen were smack-dab in the middle of a hornet’s nest. They’d come out right in the center of a huge open space—not an isolated, enclosed room as he’d hoped. And there were people all around them. Most appeared to be armed.

Sooner or later these bastards were going to realize their enemies had jumped right into their midst. And when they did, all hell was going to break loose. Like right about now … It was too late to retrieve his pistol. He yanked the Winchester shotgun off his shoulder, flicked off the safety, and pumped the fore-end-chambering a 12-gauge round.

One of the men closest to him heard the sound and swung around.

“Mein—” Thorn saw the pistol in his hand and pulled the trigger—riding the recoil back and automatically pumping another shell into the Winchester’s chamber.

The sabot round he’d fired blew a big hole.clear through the German’s chest and blasted out his back in an impossibly large spray of blood and pulverized bone. The dead man flew backward and landed in a splayed heap beside an overturned cot.

Helen’s Beretta barked three times-knocking down another man, this one carrying a submachine gun.

The rest scattered-diving for cover behind cots or wriggling frantically away across the floor toward some of the doors that opened up into this one vast room. Panicked shouts in German and what sounded like Arabic echoed across the space.

A pistol round slammed into Thorn’s back and glanced off the Kevlar vest. A red-hot wave of pain washed through him. Christ.

He spun around and saw a figure crouched behind one of the
COTS
.

He fired. Pieces of bedding, metal frame, and flesh exploded away from where the sabot round struck home.

Thorn pumped the Winchester again and scanned their surroundings rapidly—frantically searching for a way out of this killing zone.

They were too damned exposed here.

He turned toward the south wall—toward the staircase Helen had tossed her pipe bomb down. There. Another fire door stood right beside the stairs leading up. He’d bet good money there was another staircase behind that closed door—and that those stairs led down.

Lying prone on the floor beside one of the men she’d just shot, Helen Gray spotted movement near the far wall. A man carrying a submachine gun had just come out of the room closest to the main entrance. He looked tough and totally unafraid.

Not good.

She fired twice. Both rounds hit her target squarely in the chest.

Incredibly, the other man stayed up and fired back with the submachine gun—calmly walking three-round bursts through the chaos in the middle of the room.

She flattened herself as bullets whipcracked past just inches to the right—tearing huge strips of linoleum from the floor. Body armor!

That son of a bitch had body armor on, too.

Without hesitating, Helen raised the muzzle of her Beretta slightly, altering the view over her front and rear sights. She squeezed the trigger.

A neat, red-rimmed hole appeared in the other man’s forehead and he went down.

Strike Control Center Ibrahim could hear the sounds of gunfire now—the stutter of submachine guns, shotgun blasts, and the crack of pistols. He shook his head in disbelief. The battle was moving closer. How could this be?

He whirled toward Talal. “What’s happening up there? Where are my pilots? I want an accurate report!”

The former paratroop officer spread his hands helplessly. “I can’t give you one, Highness. I’ve lost contact with Schaaf. He left the security office to lead the defense—and immediately dropped off the com net.”

Ibrahim swore sharply. Incompetents! He was surrounded by fools and incompetents. First Reichardt had failed him. And now Reichardt’s chosen deputy.

He stabbed a finger into Talal’s chest. “Get up there and take command?”

He nodded toward the only security guard still in the control center. “Take that man with you!”

Talal stared at him. “But Highness, you will be unprotected!”

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.