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  Williams pushed off the ground into a dead run up the hill toward the fence. He was half tempted to climb over it, but he didn’t want to test if the tight-fitting black rubber gloves had even the tiniest hole in it. He held the Uzi in his right hand, reaching into his belt with the other. He grabbed the tiny pencil torch and whipped it out as he stopped next to the fence. He ignited the flame, its glow like a blue dagger in the dark.

  Wayne started slow, burning links in the fence from the ground up. Each link burned away as the flame touched it. He raised the torch two feet up, and then crossed it in front of him, tearing a meter-wide gash in the links. He burned away the last remaining links and kicked the cutout section away with a rubber-soled shoe.

  Williams reached under the fence, and then pulled himself through, lying flat against the ground. Hands flat on the grass, he pulled his legs up under him, then exploded toward the windows of the complex, which lay about a hundred feet away. He tucked the torch away on the run, next to his combat knife, another loan from Maureen.

  He flattened himself against the wall and looked up. The lowest windows were ten yards up the wall. He smiled. This he at least knew how to handle. He slipped the Uzi carrier strap over his head, then reached beneath his combat belt with two hands. He pulled at the little Velcro pouch holding the belt even tighter to his body. The Velcro peeled away, and he pulled out the belt that went with his suit and tie. Against the leather belt was a hair-thin fiber cable that curved up and down the belt, folded tightly together. He unwound the cable and marveled that it could hold up to half a ton of weight with a single strand. He tapped the belt buckle against the Uzi to double check its potential. Amazingly enough, the buckle had to be torn away from the weapon’s metal frame.

  Wayne stepped back and twirled the belt above his head. When it gained enough momentum, he hurled it at the metal window frame, whose bulletproof glass had been removed long ago. The magnetic grasp of the buckle held as Wayne tugged at it securely. He stared to climb, thinking, This is too easy.

  Catherine watched the man she suspected to be Wayne Williams scale the guard post wall while holding on to what looked like thin air.

  Who does he think he is? James Bond?

  But then again, she wore the latest in terrorist fashion: a form-fitting black ensemble of ski mask, lightweight turtleneck, gloves, and thin, rubber- soled shoes. When she had scouted the guard post earlier that afternoon, she decided on the half-size too-small getup to avoid the barbs on the perimeter fence. But now that Wayne left her a path to follow, it would be even easier to get in.

  She darted for the hole Williams had made in the fence, crawling under it easily.

  Catherine snapped to her feet and sprinted toward the rope Wayne left behind.

  * * * *

  Williams climbed in through the glass-less window and glanced around the interior of the room he found himself in. It might have been the barracks at one time, but the vast room had been recently stocked with crates. He leapt from the window frame onto the top of a crate, landing in a crouch. He didn’t even want to speculate about how much weaponry he was sitting on. There was a path twenty feet wide between that crate and another row of them. He swung the strap over his head and jumped onto the floor.

  The sound of a cocking gun sounded through the room. Wayne instinctively fired at the source of the noise: between two crates. The bullet coughed out of the silenced Uzi, passed through the gunman’s teeth, and out the back out his mouth.

  I’m glad I put this on single-shot.

  By the racking of three other weapons, Wayne gauged that he had AK-47s pointed at him. The red dots staining his shirt clinched it for him. He looked in front of him: two men with the infamous Russian assault rifle. The third had to be behind him. He rose from his crouch, certain that they’d shoot if they didn’t want to spare a few interchanges of dialog. He dropped the Uzi and put both hands behind his neck, gripping the two small throwing knifes he had hidden behind his turtleneck collar and the low brim of the backwards baseball cap.

  “Is this the annual IRA going out of business sale?” Williams asked. “I’m in the market for a really good selection of hand grenades and flame throwers… and a nuclear bomb, if you have any.”

  One of the two gunmen in front of him raised an old-fashioned walkie-talkie to his lips—ready to signal an alert for a possible strike team infiltration—when Wayne dropped, hurled both knives into either killer, and scooped up the Uzi as he rolled away from the gunman behind him. He stopped rolling and turned as he heard a loud pop—similar to that of a champagne cork.

  Wayne completed his turn toward the gunman behind him, who crumpled to the ground, somewhat dead.

  “Thank you,” he said to no one, as though the one who saved his life stood in front of him.

  “You’re welcome, Mister Williams,” she answered from the window frame. Wayne looked up at the familiar voice; only she was clothed behind an all-black exterior.

  He grinned. “And they call the wind Mariah… or was it Catherine?”

  “Either will do for now,” STRONGBOW answered as she flipped gracefully from the frame to the crate to the ground.

  “Nice,” he said admiringly. “Gymnast?”

  She shrugged. “College Olympiad.”

  “I can imagine. That Glock of yours has a built-in silencer?”

  “Little vents to let the sound dissipate,” she told him, slipping it into her shoulder holster. “Comes in handy.” She turned and walked over to one of the fallen gunmen, crouching by his side.

  “You intended to take on this entire place with just a Glock?”

  Catherine stood, swinging the AK-47 under her shoulder. “Nope. I just expected these people to be ready for an army, although I expected heavier weaponry than this.” Her eyes flicked to the crates. She took the rifle in both hands, raised it over her head, and struck through the side of a crate. Grenades rolled out.

  “Not quite that, either,” she murmured. She smashed through the side of another crate. Assault rifles spilled out along the floor. Catherine nodded in approval at their taste in weaponry. She dropped the Russian army surplus and picked up the space-age assault rifle. Its stock was an elongated rectangle; the barrel was more of a thinner rectangle with silver cylinder to end it. At the top, an elongated trapezoid with a computer screen on either side melded seamlessly with the gun. On the side, two knobs were embedded into the gun. Attached to the underside of the gun was another weapon, a .45-automatic. A watch was wrapped around the barrel

  “An Alliant Sabre?” Wayne remarked. The new NATO-issued assault rifle had only been released the year before, including a .50-caliber high- explosive round attachment that went over the stock of the weapon. The one side of the trapezoid was a target sight; the other was a camera that relayed signals to the watch in a Dick Tracy–like fashion. Its range was a kilometer. The knobs were to control the time delay and range on the High Explosive rounds in the load.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” she asked. “I never knew gun-runners to move so quickly in scooping up new technology before.” She gave a light laugh. “I only learned about this in my gun qualification test last year.”

  “And who do you work for?” Wayne inquired.

  “I’m the CIA’s equivalent of you,” she told him. She walked over to the next crate and cracked that one open from the top. “Very organized killers we have here. They put the magazines next to the guns.” She reached in and pulled out a strap with three magazines stuck in pouches. She smiled. “They were even nice enough to put them in straps. Isn’t that considerate?”

  Wayne hung the Uzi over his head, letting it dangle at his left side, the safety on and the muzzle pointing behind him under his arm. He picked up a gun and wondered if it cooked TV dinners, too.

  “I take it you haven’t heard of me back at the Company yet?” he asked Catherine as he walked over to collect a strap.

  She locked a mag in place, and then loaded the chamber. “That you shot Secretary Stevens? We hear
d. I just had my doubts after I read your file.” She placed the gun on the top of the crate and pulled out another strap of mags.

  He reached in and pulled out a magazine. “Why would I concern CIA?” He slammed it home.

  Catherine bent down and strapped the magazine belt around her calf, the magazines facing outward. “You received some CIA training, of course you do.” She stood up. There were additional reasons she couldn’t point out, but she had her orders.

  Williams pulled out a fresh magazine strap. “How’d you find me on the plane?”

  “That was dumb luck, believe it or not.”

  He nodded. He gripped either end of the belt and wrapped it around his leg. “I believe it.” He tightened the belt, and then stood. “You rented a car?”

  She nodded. “It’s parked behind a thin line of trees on the other side of the road. I noticed they threw you out of a moving vehicle. Old friends of yours?”

  “‘Old friends’ is a rather tenuous description. Let’s just say we’re old acquaintances. You could also say they’re IRA. So, you think that the nuke is in here somewhere?”

  STRONGBOW shook her head. “Doubt it. Probably somewhere else in the complex. Where is anybody’s guess.” She looped the assault rifle’s strap over her head and stuck her left arm through. She let the gun dangle, point down, behind her back and pulled out her Glock. Wayne did the same with his gun after unwrapping the Uzi. They both wanted to go for stealth before the enemy discovered their presence.

  “What do you suggest: look through the building floor by floor, killing people as we go along, like some sort of bad action movie?” he asked.

  She looked at him. He could see her (real) amber eyes sparkle. “I’m disappointed, I thought you were more creative than that.”

  He laughed. “Good! I know how creative I am, I wanted to see if you were. Which do you want to start with? Smoke bombs that they probably have, or—”

  “The fire detectors, I think,” she answered. “They would’ve definitely hooked it back up or some variation on it, at least down here with the weapons. And as long as they don’t know we’re down here—”

  “Eagle group, come in,” the walkie-talkie squawked. “What is your status code, over?”

  The two looked at each other. “We’re gonna have company,” they said as one.

  * * * *

  “Eagle group, come in,” Michael DeValera repeated. “What is your status code, over?”

  He sat on the mattress in the former mess hall. The military-like wire-frame bed was something Mike was very used to. He changed frequencies. “Alpha and Bravo, come in. Secure the stockpile room. Eagle group is non-responsive. Use caution, and for God’s sake, don’t shoot any of the crates.”

  * * * *

  Williams and Catherine grabbed several grenades from the broken crate. Wayne stuck them in his Velcro pouch, and climbed after Catherine. They both looked at the distance between them and the frame.

  Wayne looked at her. “Catherine, is it?”

  She glanced at him. “Catherine.”

  “Let me give you a hand or two,” he offered. He crouched down, cupping both hands in front of him.

  “Thank you,” she replied. She firmly set her right foot in his two hands, then pushed off, propelled partially by him, to the window. She landed on her hands, rolled heels over head through the window frame, and grabbed the belt before she slid down the hair-thin cable, which otherwise would have cut her hands to shreds. She pulled herself back onto the window frame and reached out to Williams. He grabbed her hand and she hauled him up effortlessly.

  He lay half in, half out of the window when he said, “Who do you bench press, Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

  She rewarded him with a smile and climbed down the rope five feet before she let go. She bent her knees as she landed, absorbing almost all the shock.

  “Ten point landing,” she muttered. She looked up as Wayne tossed one of the grenades back inside the building. He slid down the rope, counting down the fifteen-second timer. Once he landed, they both bolted, in case the wall wasn’t as sturdy as they thought it was.

  The grenade bounced on the top of the crate of grenades, then bounced again. When it landed, it slowly rolled to the crate’s edge, and then fell for the last time. The explosion detonated the box of grenades. The flames from the secondary explosion licked at the crate of HE rounds. The heat from the fire caused the HE rounds to alternately explode and shoot outwards, the result sounding like a machine gun coughing up a moth ball. The HE rounds that shot out mostly hit a small box of Stinger missiles. The resulting detonation was a massive explosion that swiftly devoured the entire stockroom, and any connecting hallways. The massive fireball followed the path of least resistance and traveled what was left of the bread box–like halls, engulfing both Alpha and Bravo groups before they even got off their respective elevators.

  * * * *

  DeValera struggled to his feet, using the wire-frame bed for support with his left hand, snatching the walkie-talkie with his right. “Charlie and Delta teams, are you still there?”

  “Yes! What the fuck was that!”

  “Ditto!”

  “That was most of our armaments going up in flames,” Michael said as he straightened out. “That was Alpha and Bravo teams being burned alive. Do me a favor and make those little shits pay! Take gas masks in with you. If the ones who caused this mess are still alive, they’ll be coming back through the hole they just made.”

  “You shitting me, man? The place will be in flames.”

  “Stone isn’t flammable, you nitwit, and we’re surrounded by it! The only things flammable were crates, and I can assure you that there isn’t much left of them.”

  * * * *

  Wayne looked at the resulting destruction with appreciation—once he pulled himself off the ground, of course. STRONGBOW stood next to him, waiting for the next boot to drop.

  “Are we going back in,” she asked, “or do you want them to come out?” She walked past him, then sprinted toward the gaping maw in the complex wall. He easily caught up with her.

  “Given that we don’t know how many people they have left,” he said as they ran, “I don’t think we want to be on open ground, do you?”

  She would’ve sighed, but she ran too hard.

  “You might wish to consider that everything doesn’t have to be answered instantly.”

  “I grew up in New York,” she replied.

  And that explains everything, Wayne thought.

  When they arrived at the new back door of the old guard post, half the fires had suffocated the others. All that was left were flaming piles of wrecked crates.

  “Your clothes flame retardant?” Wayne asked. “Or do you want to go through the front door?”

  “You think we have time to go through the front door?”

  “Guess not.”

  Chapter 16

  Charlie and Delta teams were composed of four men apiece, each carrying an Alliant Sabre. David McDermott, a tall, scruffy man in his thirties, led the way to the now-expanded doorway of the weapons stockroom. The air was scorched from the flames, but the smoke wasn’t half as bad as DeValera had presumed. McDermott didn’t think he needed the gas mask, but better safe than dead.

  A shape moved through the flames to the left. David pointed. Two of his team moved left toward it, and then were thrown sideways by the impact of silenced bullets. He looked right and fired off two quick rounds at a black form silhouetted against the fire, then pulled back behind the ruined wall. He waved the men back.

  “We use the explosions from the rounds to put out the fires,” he said, his voice muffled through the mask. “Then we rush them.” His men nodded. He had seniority, warranted by his field experience.

  They spread across the hole in the wall like an opening accordion. With a quick burst, half the fires had been put out. They finished the load, reloaded. They tensed, waiting for David to give the signal. He raised his arm like the flag before a drag race, brought it do
wn in a menacing chop. Even a layman could tell, by the ferocity of the move, that the meaning was Kill!

  Four of the remaining six rushed into the opening, weapons held at the ready. Once they cleared the threshold, they fanned out. A second later, four more silenced shots brought them down low.

  “Where the fuck are these guys shooting from now?” McDermott asked.

  * * * *

  Wayne Williams pressed himself flat against the opposite side of the wall McDermott used for cover. While the commandos had been busy firing blind, Catherine and Williams had circled around the central concentration of power and moved right to their current positions. Both had shed their rifles, going instead for more maneuverability and stealth.

  Charlie leader, Richard Carter, stepped into the room at the same time David did. STRONGBOW grabbed the tip of Carter’s gun and yanked hard, pulling Carter along with his weapon. She performed a quick chop into his windpipe and crushed it. Carter was dead by the time he hit the floor.

  McDermott had some intelligence, however. When Wayne grabbed his gun, David immediately rushed forward, beating the pace of the pull. In one continuous move, he ejected the magazine with one hand, while removing the .45- automatic from the underside of the primary weapon at the same time. He dropped to his knees and rolled across the floor. He spun, bringing the weapon to bear. Wayne kicked it away, then brought the heel of his foot against David’s hand.

  McDermott winced, but sprung backwards into a fighting stance. Wayne shook his head and clucked his tongue, as though chastising a small boy, even though McDermott had more than a foot on him. Williams casually got into a fighting stance of his own: one foot in front of the other, a set of arms lazily held up in defense. His feet both rested on his heels, the tips of the shoes not touching the floor.

  McDermott shook his head and laughed. He struck out with a right cross. The Secret Service agent twisted his feet perpendicular to him, twisting his body the same way, while crouching down low. The fist soared over his head. Wayne sprang back up, twirling his body around. His right foot came up in a graceful arc, snapping into David’s face. Before his right foot has even come halfway close to the floor, he pulled his left foot up, and smashed it into the same side of his enemy’s face. McDermott’s head snapped around so fast, his neck broke before Wayne’s two feet were firmly planted on the ground.