Enemies Within
Page 15
Hoping for screams from wounded men, Oberon heard only silence in the aftermath of the explosion, then two rifle muzzles poked around the transport’s gaping door frame, spitting NATO rounds. And down the agents went again, but not before Oberon had fired another submachine gun burst, aimless but hopeful, holding off his enemies as best he could.
Until the cavalry arrived, sure—if they did, and if they were in time to salvage anything from the fiasco on East Byrd Street. Failing that, he meant to sell his life dearly, and knew that Meyer would do the same.
If only that were good enough.
* * *
Behind the stalled convoy, a block or more distant, Bolan’s sharp eyes picked out a helicopter rising from its errand to deposit someone on the battlefield. He saw a solitary, somewhat portly figure jogging toward the Secret Service trucks and SUV, wearing a TAC vest, carrying some kind of automatic weapon that was probably an MP-5. He couldn’t make out features yet, but there was something in the figure’s stride, its head and hair, that struck a strong, familiar note.
Improbable—but could it be?
Hal Brognola hadn’t strayed into the field for a couple years, since Stony Man began absorbing so much of his time and drawing him away from Justice headquarters in Washington at frequent intervals. Was this attack the lure it took to draw him out, or had he simply rallied to the call for old time’s sake?
No matter. Brognola, or whoever the tardy arrival, was charging on a crash collision course with death. If Bolan couldn’t head him off, the late addition to their team was likely doomed.
One problem, though. Or rather, three: the surviving AWOL Rangers situated between Bolan and the solitary runner coming toward them from behind.
Had they seen him yet? Granted, a helicopter landing, then immediately taking off again, was difficult to overlook, but with the RPG in action and the small-arms fire now sputtering around the second GM Canyon, missing it was not impossible. Before much longer, there would be a sky full of police choppers and TV news hawks, each contingent bent on different missions in the air above the combat zone. Bolan wasn’t excited by the thought of cameras zooming in on him, but he would leave the censorship to Washington, whichever branch was handling suppression of the Rangers and their manifesto from the day this business started.
His focus remained where it belonged: at ground level, among the grunts on either side.
Another rapid scan, eyes flicking left and right, still gave no clue to where Grimaldi might be in the fog of war, whether alive or dead, or somewhere in between. The Bell 205 sat where the Stony Man pilot had left it, on the grassy verge of East Byrd Street, clearly unmanned, and no one from the opposition team had bothered taking any potshots at it yet. The smaller aircraft, having dropped its single passenger, had circled up and back and out of range from hostile fire, westbound over the thoroughfare, perhaps in search of someplace safe to land.
Bolan flinched and recoiled instinctively, reacting to a frag grenade exploding in midair behind the second Secret Service transport. Apparently the rocket hadn’t done its job in terms of taking out the guards left with the bundled currency, so one of the attackers must have followed up with the grenade and failed again, one of the agents quick and deft enough to pitch it back before it blew.
Not bad, but small-arms fire around the truck’s rear told him that the antipersonnel device had failed against both sides. The fight was heating up and Bolan had to pass right by the worst of it to meet the lone runner whose visage had resolved itself into Brognola’s beyond doubt.
Can do? a voice asked from inside his head.
And instantly another answered back. Can do!
With just a bit of luck, perhaps, some skill, and possibly a helping hand from the almighty Universe.
* * *
“We’re wasting too much goddamned time!” Captain Tanner snapped, as he fired another M-4 burst into the open rear compartment of the second armored truck.
“Tell me about it,” Major Darby growled under his breath, and risked another burst around the twisted door frame from his own carbine.
“More frag grenades?” Tanner asked as he edged back, just in time to dodge a blast of double 0 buckshot.
They carried two more each, but Darby wanted to preserve some for their getaway, when they’d be forced to fight their way past local cops and God knew who else, rushing to the ambush site. He hoped their timed diversionary blast at the Black History Museum had drawn at least some of the bluesuits from the action on East Byrd Street. Darby couldn’t guess if there’d been casualties across town, but any bombing in this day and age brought out the troops in force.
Instead of answering Tanner and tipping off their enemies inside the truck, Darby relied on hand signals, lifting another of his smoke grenades, miming a pitch, and watching Tanner palm one of his own. They yanked the safety pins together, set their fuses sizzling and tossed the M-18s as one, waited just long enough for smoke to cloud the view of their opponents, then went in with M-4 carbines blazing from the hip.
It was a close call, even so, but within seconds they had finished off both Secret Service agents. Darby took no pleasure in it, any more than he’d enjoyed capping jihadists overseas, but neither would he lose a wink of sleep about it overnight. He didn’t know these people, didn’t plan on watching any coverage about the raid to learn their names or to see their weeping families.
In short, with billions riding on the line, he didn’t give a damn.
And time was of the essence now. Fanning some of the smoke aside, inured to its effects from Ranger training and combat experience, they went to work with knives, cleaving the shrink wrap that confined fat bales of currency. Though destined for incineration, bills had been sorted by denomination and wrapped up that way, aiding selection as the former soldiers dropping the duffel bags that sagged across their backs and loaded them with hundreds first—each bundle bound in strips announcing that they held $100,000—and then fifties, when the Benjamins were safely tucked away.
How much per man?
Darby had roughly calculated in advance, and even in his rush now, he was trying to keep count. Call it a billion in each duffel, more or less, and heavy lifting when he shouldered it again. Less than he would have liked, given the proper time and tools, but that was life. Besides, when all the cash was in the Escalade, it would be his, and Tanner would be out of it, another fading memory.
But first things first.
They had to make it to the Cadillac, and Knowlton still had his fair share of currency to claim—another contribution to the major’s personal retirement fund when all was said and done.
Make it an all-or-nothing deal, three billion give or take, and that would suit Darby just fine.
Speaking of Knowlton, where in hell was he?
“Come on!” Tanner snapped as he finished zipping his duffel bag. “I’m out of here.”
“Affirmative!” Darby replied, turning his back on slaughter, happy for the extra burden he was carrying, as he descended from the armored truck into a brighter world.
* * *
Jack Grimaldi felt disoriented by the rolling clouds of smoke, but he was fighting through them, edging past the second GM Canyon’s cab with one hand raised, hoping the agents trapped inside it wouldn’t take him for a hijacker and drop him on the spot. Whether they were distracted, blinded by the battle haze, or simply lying low, it seemed to work. No weapon poked out from the gun port on the driver’s side to threaten him, so the pilot crouched lower, moving almost in a frog walk as he eased along the armored transport’s rear compartment.
Another gun port coming up, no windows this time for a signal that the agents locked inside might take as friendly. Nervously, Grimaldi tried to duck below the opening, its hatch closed from the inside at the moment, and continued toward the truck’s rear, where he quickly saw that the rocket blast he’d heard short moments earlier had done its work.
Two agents down, then, and he still had hijackers to deal with. Two of them were off and running toward the Caddy Escalade, loping like Quasimodo from the movies with fat duffel bags strapped to their backs. Grimaldi didn’t have to guess what those contained: cash slated for destruction, on its way to other uses now, paving a golden brick road for the fleeing bandits.
Unless he stopped them first.
Grimaldi didn’t feel like playing cop and calling out for them to halt, throw up their hands, and all that jazz. He had already raised his Steyr AUG before he saw a third hijacker coming toward him through the battle smoke.
The pilot’s memory coughed up the name of Andrew Knowlton, ex-lieutenant colonel in the Rangers, bleeding on one side from what could only be the .45 slug Jack had clipped him with in Roanoke.
Grimaldi didn’t have the time to think in terms of irony or synchronicity before Knowlton stopped dead, his M-4 carbine leveled from the hip, and blurted, “You!”
Nice to be recognized, Grimaldi thought before his index finger found the trigger of his AUG. It took only a fraction of a second, but the Ranger had him beat somehow, firing a 3-round burst that stitched across Grimaldi’s chest.
He’d come prepared, with Type III body armor strapped on tight beneath his shirt. But stopping slugs was one thing; blunting their impact was something else again. Three rounds on target in a fraction of a second hit Grimaldi like a hammer stroke across his sternum, slamming him back against the armored transport’s hull with stunning force. His skull bounced off the truck’s bulkhead, sparking a brightly colored constellation on the inside of his eyelids.
As Grimaldi fell, Knowlton squeezed off another burst from his M-4. Two bullets missed their mark, but one opened Grimaldi’s scalp, a final shocking blow that turned his fingers slack, dropping his AUG from flaccid hands. The pilot tumbled forward into darkness, with his last coherent thought wondering whether this was how it felt to die.
* * *
Brognola reached ground zero of the battle site just as the Caddy Escalade’s engine revved to life and the luxury SUV rolled backward on a hard collision course with him. He dropped and rolled, cursing, but spared himself a grinding passage underneath its chrome wheels with their fat steel-belted radials, tasting hot asphalt as its driver braked, then swung around and powered westward, dodging traffic that was either stalled on East Byrd Street by now or still advancing from the west.
Brognola struggled to his feet and chased the fleeing Rangers with a short burst from his MP-5, but didn’t score a hit on the Cadillac. With the smoke swirling around him, dust and grit clouding his eyes, the big Fed couldn’t get off another burst before the vehicle disappeared.
Damn it all!
Chasing the Escalade on foot would have been madness, but he took the time to palm his walkie, linked to the pilot of his H120 whirlybird, and bark a warning.
“Two hijackers off and running westward in a black Cadillac Escalade. Get someone after them if possible.”
Instead of waiting for an answer, Brognola returned the walkie to a pocket on his TAC vest and turned back to face the other action still in progress. As he turned, a burst of automatic rifle fire caused him to crouch, expecting hostile rounds to sweep him off his shaky legs, but what he saw instead was Jack Grimaldi facing off against another of the Rangers, ten to fifteen yards away.
Brognola couldn’t name the enemy, back turned in his direction, but he recognized Grimaldi well enough, despite dark smudges on his face. He saw the pilot raise his weapon, but his adversary, hit and bleeding from his right-hand side, was faster, triggering a burst that slammed Grimaldi back against the nearest Secret Service truck, its back door blasted open while Brognola had advanced from his chopper drop.
The sight of the pilot collapsing, struck by yet another burst before he landed facedown on the highway’s pavement, hit Brognola like a sucker punch to his gut. He couldn’t tell whether Grimaldi was alive or dead, much less how badly injured if alive, before rage overtook him and he shot the faceless gunman from behind. No warning, just a quick burst of 9 mm Parabellum slugs that raked his back and drove him to his knees.
But he was getting up now. What the hell?
Brognola’s mind clicked onto body armor, knew he should have thought of it first thing. He brought up the submachine gun, bracing its stock against his shoulder while he found its iron sights—a hooded post in back, rotary drum in front—and started taking up the trigger slack.
But even hit and stunned, his enemy was fast. Brognola gave him that much, startled as the former soldier swiveled on his knees and swung his M-4 carbine around to face the new threat at his rear. In that split second, the big Fed saw Andrew Knowlton’s face and recognized it from the turncoat’s Army files, although in photos he had never worn the scowl he showed the Justice man now.
Jesus!
A portion of Brognola’s good life flashed before his eyes, then he was pouring automatic fire into his adversary, burning through the submachine gun’s magazine of thirty rounds in something like two seconds flat. Some of them hammered Kevlar, but Brognola brought up the little weapon’s spitting muzzle until the final dozen rounds or so ripped into Knowlton’s face.
He wore no armor there, nothing to shield his eyes, nose, lips or skull now morphing into a scarlet haze in front of Brognola’s eyes. Before he toppled over backward, going slack, Knowlton was nearly headless, and no one would ever recognize his face again.
The AWOL Ranger wasn’t the big Fed’s first kill, but he had never killed a soldier, and he felt a surge of deep regret over the loss before his mind snapped back to business in the here and now. These deserters were killers.
Pressing his weapon’s magazine release, he yanked the empty and replaced it with the spare its double clip contained. Smoke furled up from the MP-5’s muzzle and from its hot ejection port, immediately to the right of the receiver.
“Ready,” Brognola assured himself, unconscious of the fact that he’d spoken aloud.
More wet work still remained, as far as he knew, and he started off to get it done.
* * *
Bolan arrived too late to see Grimaldi fall, but caught Brognola taking down the enemy who’d shot him. When their eyes met, the big Fed lowered the muzzle of his SMG and moved toward Bolan, meeting at the left-rear corner of the rocket-ravaged GM Canyon armored truck.
By then, Bolan had knelt beside Grimaldi, feeling for a pulse below his jaw and finding it before he gently turned the pilot onto his back. A quick examination brought relief. But only just.
Rising, he told Brognola, “He’s alive. His vest stopped most of it, but that’s a nasty scalp wound. He needs medevac, and soon.”
Brognola had his walkie in hand before he nodded toward the stalled convoy and asked, “Back there?”
“Two Rangers down, now three with yours.”
“And agents?”
As Brognola spoke, three members of the Secret Service Uniformed Division came around the far side of the nearest transport, guns leveled at Brognola and Bolan from a range that made missing their mark nearly impossible.
“Right here,” one of the agents said, a dark-haired man whose face was torn and bleeding from what looked to be a shrapnel wound. “Lay down those guns or name your beneficiaries.”
“Whoa!” Brognola answered. “We’re your backup, if you hadn’t noticed. If you want to see credentials—”
“Screw it,” said the guy who seemed to be in charge, despite his mutilating wound. “We’ve seen enough.
What happened to the other hijackers?”
Bolan had glimpsed the Escalade in flight and beat Brognola to the answer. “Off and running. I need wheels to follow them.”
“Our SUV’s still functional,” one of the other agents said, deferring to the man in charge but looking eager for a chase.
“Okay, then,” the wounded boss said. “Let’s pile in and get after them.”
“That’s a negative,” Brognola interjected. “You’ll be needed here to sort it when the cavalry shows up.”
“Hold on a second now—”
“We’re going after them,” Brognola interrupted him. “That’s final. If you need to call headquarters, do it, but we don’t have any time to waste.”
“Correction,” Bolan chimed in, saying, “I’ll be going after them.” Before Brognola could remonstrate, he added, “You’re senior officer on-site now, out of Justice. You’ll be needed here, and rustling up some help for Jack.”
Brognola’s shoulders slumped a little, but he nodded. They’d wasted too much time already and he knew it.
Bolan turned to face the Secret Service agents. “Car keys?”
“Still in the ignition,” the boss said.
Bolan was off and running without any further comment or a backward glance. He didn’t have to ask what they’d been driving, picking out a Ford Explorer parked beside the armored trucks, its 4.6-liter, V-8 engine idling smoothly as it sat there, going nowhere.
The Executioner threw himself into the driver’s seat, ignored his safety harness, even when chimes started nagging him, and put the SUV in gear. A short surge forward, past the first transport in line and he made a sharp U-turn, powering up to chase the fleeing Escalade.
How many dead so far? He counted off three former Rangers and four Secret Service agents he was fairly sure of. Any further tabulation would be left to someone else; a figure to be aired by talking heads on television news. The living were his primary concern, though not Grimaldi. Thinking of the wounded pilot now would only serve as a distraction, maybe slow him down enough to get him killed.