Janine Angriff turned and saw the terror in her eyes, the pleading for help. Sharon Goldstone didn’t want to die and her twisted face reflected all the horror of approaching death.
But Mrs. Angriff had no sympathy for the woman who’d pistol-whipped her daughter and threatened to kill her. She smashed Goldstone’s nose with the heel of her hand and swept her feet out from under her, as she’d been taught by her husband. By the time Nick knelt beside the dying doctor, she was trembling with spasms. Within ten seconds she was dead.
“Is it over?” Janine pronounced over as ovah.
“No. My headquarters is under attack. But I can’t leave you and Cynthia.”
She picked up Goldstone’s pistol and did a press check to ensure a round was chambered. Then she looked back up at her husband. “Go do what you have to do, Nick. We’ll be fine.”
“Did you take care of him?” He pointed at the dead man with the glass in his neck.
“He had it coming.” Her stern look assured him of her strength.
He turned for the door then stopped, spun on his heel, and ran past his wife to the closet. From the top shelf, he pulled down a box. Inside was a shirt of thin material, which could only be seen once he removed it. Taking off his ACU shirt and the undershirt beneath, he slipped this over his head and then put the others back on. It was the experimental mesh armor that had saved his life once before, when Bettison had shot him down on sub-floor eleven.
Ready for action, he headed for the door, stopped an instant to kiss his wife on the cheek, and then left.
#
More chatter from automatic weapons penetrated into the titanium cylinder.
“Shouldn’t we keep going, sir?” Schiller said when Fleming stepped onto the first landing. “This leads back into headquarters.”
“We have to help our people,” Fleming said. “It sounds like they’re fighting for their lives.”
Fleming slid the door open and peered out into the communications section of headquarters. A rectangular warren of cubicles with monitors and comm. gear filled the space between him and the glass wall and massive main doors directly ahead, while on his left the room ended in a wall and hallway leading to the supply closets and bathrooms. That was an enticing escape route, but a cul-de-sac with no way out. Unlike the stepped-down terraces in the Clam Shell behind him, this area was flat. Angling upward on his right was the ramp leading to the Crystal Palace. Below the ramp, and around the column to his left, he glimpsed the Clam Shell, and directly above was the platform surrounding the Crystal Palace.
Footsteps rattled on the metal mesh above. It sounded like several pairs of boots, not just one.
A shot echoed through the Clam Shell, followed by two more. Putting a finger to his lips, he stood by, pistol locked and loaded, as the others exited the titanium column. Schiller came next with his own pistol out, and Walling was last.
Peering around the column and beneath the ramp, Fleming watched technicians in the Clam Shell, huddled in groups, some with guns, taking cover behind anything they could. One of them was Dupree. The lanky computer tech still had the M-16 he’d carried when Steeple had arrived and he’d been in the honor guard. He rose up and fired a three-round burst, and then ducked as two gunmen fired back. Some of the return fire seemed to be coming from the Crystal Palace walkway above, some from elsewhere in the Clam Shell, but with the echoes from the glass wall and stone, it was impossible to be certain.
Fleming and the others knelt beside a cubicle.
“I can’t get in!” a voice yelled from above. “This thing’s locked up tight.”
A second voice answered from the foot of the ramp, just out of Fleming’s sight but in full view of anyone outside the glass wall. “Shit! Keep trying.”
Fleming’s mind automatically calculated: at least two above, one at the ramp’s foot, some laying covering fire and keeping the technicians busy… five or six attackers in the headquarters area, possibly more.
“We need explosives to get in there. Let’s cut our losses and get out of here. Rex is hurt bad.”
“Shit!” The gunman at the bottom of the ramp opened fire in frustration, spraying the office area where Fleming and the other two knelt in hiding. Bullets shattered the acrylic dividers separating each cubicle and did little real damage, but a few stray rounds ricocheted off the tower. One hit Walling in the left ankle and he cried out.
“Somebody’s down there!”
Walling’s ankle poured blood and he rolled in agony. Fleming chanced a peek around the corner of the cubicle where they’d hidden. Three men with M-16s fanned out and duck-walked his way. He signaled Schiller three men were approaching and what they should do. Each took a deep breath, rose, fired three shots, and then ducked back behind cover. Someone screamed.
The men on the platform above opened fire, leaning as far over the railing as they could and firing downward. The angle was bad and their shots hit behind the three men, but it pinned them down and kept them from moving. Ricochets could hit them again any time, though, which meant staying put wasn’t safe, either. To make things worse, while to their left was an opening that led into a hallway, if somebody got onto the ramp on their right they’d be outflanked and easy targets.
“Think we can get back inside?” Schiller asked. “Colonel Walling’s in bad shape.”
“We’d have to carry him. We wouldn’t make it five feet.”
Walling breathed heavily through gritted teeth. “Same side. Same damned side.”
Using the polished titanium surface of the column as a mirror, Fleming could see two of the men on their level using cover to sneak up. He popped up and let off two rounds, driving them to cover but doing no damage.
“Give us Angriff and we’ll let you go!” one them called. “He’s the one we want. We don’t care about you, Fleming. We just want Angriff.”
“They think General Angriff is with us! What are your orders, sir?” Schiller asked.
“We wait.”
Schiller had been under fire too many times to tell a superior he was crazy in the middle of a firefight. “For how long?”
Fleming smiled and tried to be reassuring. “Until Nick shows up.”
#
Chapter 60
Out of the darkness,
Out of the black,
Out of the ether,
Stabbed in the back.
Sergio Velazquez, from Wounded Soul
Operation Overtime hangar deck
1313 hours, April 20
Green Ghost was turning a wrench inside the Blackhawk when someone started yelling inside the hangar deck.
“Somebody’s attacking the Clam Shell! They say Nick’s dead and so’s Fleming!”
Green Ghost slid out of the helicopter and ran over, grabbing the man by his shirt. “Where did you hear that?”
“My buddy told me. He heard the shots.”
The man hadn’t finished before Green Ghost took off at a dead run for the stairs leading to the level above, where corridors led into the main base. With the ambient noise of the hangar, combined with excited chatter as news of the attack spread through the base, he didn’t hear the other footsteps running in his wake. Joe and Morgan Randall had been standing nearby inspecting the Blackhawk.
#
As he left his quarters, Nick still had six rounds in each pistol and two magazines in his waist holster. He walked carefully, holding the gun in firing position with his finger on the trigger, something he never did except in combat. He eschewed the elevators in favor of the stairwell beside them. It allowed him to move with the gun always aimed up and forward.
As he reached the landing halfway up to the headquarters level, he spotted a figure holding a rifle in the exit door above, standing half in the corridor and half in the stairwell. He was dressed in standard ACUs and held the door open with his body. The man’s attention was drawn to the gunshots Nick could hear now, and which he knew came from his headquarters.
Without warning, the guard turned his hea
d into the stairwell, as though he’d heard something. He listened a minute and raised his rifle. Then he finished his turn and started down. Where Angriff stood, just below the landing, his only cover was the railing and the turn of the stairs. But if he backed down for cover, his motion would attract the guard’s eye.
“Hey!” A shout came from the corridor in a voice Angriff recognized. “What’s all the shootin’ about?”
The guard turned away and strode into the corridor to deal with Dennis Tompkins. The door slammed behind him on its spring.
#
Tompkins wore blue jeans and a brown shirt, with no socks or shoes. He kept his hands splayed to show they were empty.
The hard-eyed guard, face hidden behind a red bandana, looked as if he wanted to spit. “Get out of here, old man. I don’t want to kill you, but I will.”
“Oh, please don’t kill me. I heard shots and thought maybe I could help.” He sauntered two paces forward, innocently, and got within ten feet of the gunman, who stood near the closed stairwell door.
“I’m warnin’ you, don’t come any closer.”
The door squeaked as someone cracked it open. The guard jerked around, rifle held waist-high, ready to fire. The instant his attention was drawn to the door, Tompkins reached around to his back and yanked out a three-foot piece of wood that had been stuck into his pants. It was colored a dark red, and he’d made it long ago from desert ironwood. Swinging it one-handed, he smashed it into the back of the man’s head. The gunman dropped his rifle and collapsed in a heap.
Two seconds later, Nick Angriff flung the door open and emerged into the corridor, a Desert Eagle aimed right at Tompkins’ face.
“I wondered where you were at,” Tompkins said.
#
“He’s losing a lot of blood, sir,” Schiller said.
Walling had stopped rolling around and simply lay on his back, eyes closed and teeth clenched.
“One more minute, J.C. If Nick’s not here by then, we’ll try to make it back to the shaft. That’s our only hope.”
“What makes you so sure he’s coming?”
Fleming’s smile was intentionally wry. “Don’t you know him better than that by now?”
#
From where they stood by the stairwell, the curve of the corridor kept Tompkins and Angriff out of sight of the main headquarters doors.
“Wanna try that same trick again?” Tompkins had retrieved the fallen gunman’s M-16.
“No, that’ll never work again.”
“Good, ’cause I ain’t ready to die just yet.”
“We need a distraction.” Angriff looked all around them, but the corridor was empty. Not even a garbage can to throw. Seeing no other choice, he prepared to go in shooting, but somebody down the hall saved him the trouble by opening fire.
“You stay and watch him,” Angriff said. “We need him alive.”
With that, he balanced into a boxer’s stance, Eagle steadied in both hands, and moved forward.
#
Lying on his stomach, Green Ghost inched a little closer and peered down the curved corridor toward the Clam Shell. Inch by inch he pushed his head along the floor until he glimpsed what lay ahead. A figure aiming a huge pistol eased cautiously toward the glass wall of the headquarters. It was unmistakably Saint Dad, and in that moment he realized that was what he would call his father when they were alone, Saint Dad. When around other people he would simply call him Saint, just as he always had, but in private...
Joe and Morgan Randall padded to a stop behind him. He touched a finger to his lips and mouthed words without speaking. Do either of you have a gun?
Joe shook his head. Green Ghost pointed down and mouthed stay here.
He sat up and pulled off his camo T-shirt. Wadding it, he jammed it into the crack where the wall met the floor. Then he gestured back with one hand, and all three of them scooted back ten feet. Ghost only had a Sig Sauer, but aiming at the shirt, he squeezed off two rounds to distract the guard in the headquarters doorway. They ricocheted from the marble flooring but the shirt absorbed a lot of the energy, and they flew down the hallway at much reduced speed. It was a calculated risk.
#
Angriff flinched as two sharp bangs echoed down the hall, but then realized they weren’t aimed at him. Instead, somebody was giving him cover fire. He walked faster until he spotted another guard, this one in the headquarters doorway some thirty feet distant. Holding his gun at port arms, the muzzle pointed upward, his body faced Nick directly, but his head and eyes were turned to the right, the direction of the pistol fire.
Angriff was twenty feet away when the man noticed movement and turned. He lowered the rifle to fire.
He was too late.
#
Bam! The gunshot echoed down the corridor and through the headquarters.
Fleming grinned. “Nick’s here.”
He was still smiling when bullets sprayed them from the ramp on their right. One hit Schiller in the right shoulder and thigh, while a third glanced off Fleming’s cheek. The gunman paused to reload and brought the rifle to his shoulder, but another gunshot rang out.
Bam!
The impact knocked him sideways. He rolled around for a few seconds and came to rest against the restraining mesh on the ramp side. Mouth agape, he rattled a breath. Blood fell through the mesh catwalk to the floor in large drops.
Bam! Bam!
Someone fell from the platform overhead and landed on a desk two cubicles over.
“Norm? Are you out there?”
Fleming fought down the pain in his face and struggled to keep his voice normal. “Here, Nick, all three of us.”
“Anybody wounded?”
“Open mike, Nick, open mike.” It was an old code. We’re being eavesdropped, so I’m telling you the opposite of the truth. “Everybody’s fine. Got that? All three of us are fine.”
“Got it. Green Ghost is here with me, and two squads of MPs are with him. I’ll give these clowns until the count of five to surrender, then we put ’em down like dogs. Roger that?”
“Roger that!” Fleming gritted his teeth as he said it. Blood soaked his shirt collar.
“One… two… three…”
“Hold it!” someone yelled from somewhere. “How do we know you won’t shoot us on sight?”
“You have my word,” Angriff said. “If you boys are part of the Seventh Cav, you know I don’t break my promises. You’ll get a fair trial.”
“What about torture? We know about that blond-haired lunatic.”
Meaning Nipple; Angriff had to grin at that. Apparently the whole base knew of her reputation. “That’ll be up to you.”
After a few seconds, a different voice spoke from the same location. “I’m coming out.”
The former attacker rose from behind a cubicle wall and put hands on his head. A red bandana still hid his face. Behind him, a single, unexpected shot made them all blink. A red mist sprayed the surrendering gunman.
“On your knees.” Angriff approached within six feet. “Norm, hold tight. Medical’s on the way.”
“If you’ve got him, I’ll help Socrates,” Green Ghost said as he slipped by.
“He’s not going anywhere.”
Seconds later, Joe and Morgan Randall raced into the Clam Shell. Seeing her father wasn’t hurt, she followed her brother to help with the wounded, and her husband followed her.
#
The eyes… Angriff recognized but couldn’t quite place the surrendered gunman’s eyes.
“Using one hand, carefully slide down that bandana,” he said.
Hate showed in the man’s eyes as he complied. Angriff saw the taut, lean face of a man he had promoted less than a year before.
“Colonel Claringdon?” He kept his eyes fixed on the man as medical personnel rushed past.
Doctor Friedenthall spoke from behind him. “Are you injured, General?”
“No.”
Friedenthall left without another word.
“Why?”
Angriff asked.
“I’ll save it for my trial.”
“We’ll see about that.” His tiny smile was only visible because of the deep creases cut into his face.
#
Damage to the headquarters was minimal. Sensitive areas throughout the base had secondary internal blast shields for just such emergencies. Dupree himself had tripped the deployment switch. A few rounds had hit equipment in the Clam Shell before the bulletproof polycarbonate shield had come down, but the communication area beneath the Crystal Palace had taken the worst of it, but Angriff’s office remained undamaged.
“This is my fault,” Green Ghost said. “I should have ferreted these people out.”
Angriff trimmed a cigar and was annoyed that his hand still shook. “You can’t always find a traitor before he acts.”
“Even if I didn’t know names, I should have seen it coming. You were the target, again. That’s two assassination attempts in the past couple of days.”
“From the same two groups that tried it last time, too.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Today’s attack was Steeple’s doing, or at least his people’s doing. If anybody should have seen Colonel Claringdon’s involvement, it was me, not you. As for Sharon Goldstone… I still don’t understand her involvement.”
“The red bandanas are new.”
“Yeah. They’re popping up everywhere all of a sudden.”
“How’s Mrs. Angriff?”
“Mrs. Angriff?”
“How’s Janine? And Cynthia?”
“Cynthia might wind up with a scar but she’ll be fine. Janine is tough, a lot tougher than you might think.”
“I’m gonna go have a talk with Claringdon and he’s not gonna like it.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to finish getting that Blackhawk mission done as first priority, and then you’re going to take a team to Creech. End of discussion.” The intercom buzzed, and hearing the voice of Corporal Juan Diaz instead of Schiller threw Angriff off stride. “General, Doctor Friedenthall sent a preliminary status report on our wounded.”
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