Day of Wrath

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!”

Strike Control Center 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!”