Shadow of Freedom

The weapon was technically an “improvised explosive device,” since it had been manufactured for the purpose out of readily available components by largely amateur hands. There was nothing haphazard or slipshod about it, though. A solid partition, both sides concave in shape, had been run lengthwise along the van’s generous cargo space. The outer surfaces of the partition had been coated in explosives—civilian explosive compounds stolen from construction crews, not military-grade, but amply powerful for the task in hand—and the explosives, in turn, had been coated with a thick layer of screws, old-fashioned nails, bits and pieces of scrap metal, broken glass, and chunks of ceramacrete. The van had been transformed into a huge directional mine which sent a lethal sheet of shrapnel sweeping out in both directions simultaneously.

The driver hadn’t achieved a perfect angle, but she’d come close, and the strike leader had judged his moment carefully. He caught at least ninety percent of the advancing Presidential Guard infantry in the IED’s blast area, and destruction crashed over them like a thunderbolt. The blast front swept up weapons, helmets, equipment, and body parts on its fiery breath. It shredded its victims like toys…and painted the pavement and slide-walks in ghastly sprays of blood decorated with bits and pieces of mangled flesh.

* * *

“I told you to call them off,” the voice on Yardley’s com was cold and precise. “You should’ve listened. But since you didn’t—”

He pressed a second button.

* * *

“Tiger” Braddock was astonished he was still alive. His position had been just deep enough inside the parking garage for its sturdy walls to intercept the shrapnel which had butchered his infantry. One moment, the next best thing to three hundred of his elite troops had been sweeping across Trifecta Boulevard towards their objective. The next moment, at least two hundred of them were dead and a lot more were dying. He stumbled to the garage entrance, head ringing from the force of the explosion, and peered out in horror at hell’s own landscape as men and women with no legs tried to drag themselves out of the charnel house of the boulevard on their elbows and forearms. He saw another rocking on his knees while he tried to stuff his own intestines back inside his ruptured body. Another stumbled helplessly about, hands clasped over the blind, red ruin of what had been a human face only moments before. Still others only lay there, unable to drag their mangled bodies anywhere, shrieking amid the motionless dead.

He was still trying to comprehend the enormity of what had just happened when the third van—the one parked in the garage which the strike leader had recognized just as clearly as Braddock was the perfect place to stash the Guard’s armored vehicles—exploded.

It was a much larger bomb this time, and the driver had carefully parked it directly beside the central support pillar of the garage’s entire structure.

A huge sheet of flame shot out both open sides of the garage. Fresh flame billowed as the fuel tanks of parked vehicles fireballed, joining the fury of the original explosion. Braddock flung himself down on his belly, covering his helmeted head with his arms in instinctive self-preservation. For an instant all he was aware of was the terrible, concussive force of the explosion. Then his stunned ears heard another sound—a grating, grinding rumble—and he had one more second to realize his instincts had played him false.

If he’d run out into the body-strewn nightmare of Trifecta Boulevard, he might have survived after all.

The entire parking garage came down, puffing out concentric rings of smoke and dust as its floors collapsed, one by one, into the roaring inferno which had engulfed “Tiger” Braddock’s entire regiment.

* * *

“Looks like you need another régiment, General,” the icy voice on Olivia Yardley’s com observed.

“Pity about that.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“I don’t need this kind of shit, General,” Svein Lombroso said unpleasantly. “I could go out and fuck everything up by the numbers myself without paying you and the rest of the Guard such obscene amounts of money! Hell, I could probably even have gotten Guernicke killed without you, if I’d really tried!”

“Would you rather I’d let the bastards walk away after taking out Braddock’s entire régiment?” General Olivier Yardley’s tone was rather pointed, Lombroso thought. Which probably had something to do with the fact that she knew she was irreplaceable…at least for now. “It was a no-win situation from the outset, Mister President. Once they got in and had Guernicke in their possession, we either gave them what they wanted, or we lost her. And you told me not to give them what they wanted.” She shrugged. “So I didn’t.”

“Goddamn it!” Lombroso snarled. “This makes what happened last month look like a frigging picnic! And when Trifecta’s home office hears about this…!”