The window height’s gonna be a problem, she thought.
Gripping her suppressed .22 caliber Norinco, Abby ascended the southwest emergency stairs to maximize the distance between herself and the snipers on the roof. The second floor was nearly identical, thousands of cluttered square feet. No scaffolding. Not even a ladder.
Abby returned to the stairs, moving stealthily, handgun at the ready.
Floor three was studded with pallets of cardboard boxes that had been slashed open and pillaged. She slinked soundlessly toward the eastern side of the building, into shadows that should have been awash with sunlight. An L-shaped corridor of festering wallboard led into a tiered theater, a semicircle of cement steps.
Incredulous, Abby blinked at the wall, realizing the chain of transom windows on the building’s exterior was a false façade. Her neck slanted back, and despite the meager light, she glimpsed the ceiling two stories above. The fourth-floor windows directly beneath the snipers, the windows she had planned to shoot from ... they didn’t exist.
172
TEradS West Headquarters
Langden Air Force Base, Texas
RYAN GLARED AT THE intruder in his foyer, blocking his front door. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Good-morning to you too, Captain Andrews.”
The man spoke the words without a hint of accent.
“You’re American?”
“Born and raised in California.” He stepped away from the door, a smile of superiority tweaking his duckbill lips. “I am Yuan, and my superiors wish to chat with you. Let’s go, Captain.”
Infuriated by yet another traitor, Ryan swaggered across the room, defiantly flopped down onto the couch, and propped his feet on the coffee table. “Listen up, Won Ton, I’m not going anywhere.”
“The name is Yuan. And I’m the one with the gun.”
Ryan grinned at his captor’s naїveté. He was barely into his twenties, short, with a pear-shaped face, blotchy cheeks, and a wide upturned nose.
“Your superiors can’t chat with me if I’m dead.”
Undaunted, the traitor produced a Chi-phone. “With the touch of a button, I can rupture the capsules inside Sybil Ludington and Israel Bissel, infecting them with smallpox.”
Masking his surprise, Ryan intertwined his fingers, clasped them behind his head, and reclined against the couch, elbows splayed in a relaxed pose. “Go ahead. Push the button.”
“Then the children will die, Captain.”
“So ... ? We all die eventually.”
Yuan’s forehead furrowed like a newly plowed field and sprouted shiny beads of moisture. “I will shoot your kneecap! A nonlethal injury will inflict tremendous pain.”
“Then you’ll have to carry my ass out of here, bleeding, attracting all kinds of unwanted attention.”
Anger and humiliation reddened Yuan’s cheeks. His gaze swept the apartment like the beam of a lighthouse. He marched toward the kitchen and snatched a syringe from the countertop. “Leave with me now or I will inject you with Alameda fever.”
Yawning as though bored, Ryan rose to his feet. “Then your superiors will only have three days to torture information out of me. It’ll take longer than that to learn my favorite color.”
He walked toward the door, eyes fixed on the frazzled gunman, who was flinging open drawers and slapping their contents.
“Better idea!” Yuan said, displaying a ten-inch carving knife. “I’ll lop off fingers until you comply.”
Countering that cocky smirk with one of his own, Ryan extended his middle finger and waggled it, summoning the traitor with a wave. “Start with this one ... If you’ve got the balls to get that close to me.”
The traitor’s eyes flitted birdlike from the gun to the knife to the syringes, and Ryan could practically smell his brain cells overheating.
“Take your time, Won Ton. Figure out how to kidnap me, and we’ll try this again.” He grasped the doorknob, pulse racing. Would the moron panic and pull the trigger? Would he hurl the knife?
Ryan yanked open the door, walked smack into a roadblock of a man, and mumbled, “Fuck me!”
173
District Three, Washington, D.C.
BRADLEY HAD EXPECTED the pain to moderate when he stopped moving, but it seemed as if his wounds were competing in a cruel game of one-upmanship. His head felt like it was being crushed; his wounded thigh felt like a piranha was feasting on it; and even his kneecaps ached from kneeling on the concrete.
Where the hell is Team 3B?
What if they were ambushed by peacekeepers?
Beads of sweat rolled down his face, rehydrating crusty patches of dried blood. He breathed in rapid pants, trying to ward off the nausea and grogginess that were closing around him; then a loud pop replenished his adrenaline.
A gunshot ... ?
No, too loud.
Several torturous minutes elapsed before the man-sized garage door was kicked in. He heard a chink and steeled himself. The flash wasn’t so bad, but the bang reverberated through his skull, making his brain feel like an over-shaken bottle of Coke about to erupt.
Dark figures with rifles rushed through the whirling dust. Bradley could hear voices, could feel the restraints being cut. They laid him on his back.
Tompkins was hovering over him. “Webber. What happened?”
“Something hit me in the head.” Bradley’s lips felt rubbery; his words sounded slurred. A pressure bandage tightened around his leg. “Must’ve knocked me out. Then five of them, they brought me here.”
“You know anything about the civilian hostage?”
Civilian hostage? Shit! Did Ryan send me into an active terrorist base? Bradley tried to shake his head and regretted it.
“Her name’s Lily Hamilton.”
A woman? Bradley’s thoughts backtracked fifteen months to that girl at the swing set, the one he couldn’t help. The raw fear and despair in her screams had burned into his soul. He tried to convince himself that death was more merciful than living with the trauma, than reliving it through dreams and flashbacks, but even his most ardent rationalizations couldn’t absolve his guilt.
Bradley craned his neck toward Sergeant Sperling, who was escorting the hostage through the open doorway. He squinted, bringing her bloody, bruised face into focus then a suffocating anger surged through him.
174
District Ten, Idaho
THE FIREFIGHT AT THE northern checkpoint lasted three minutes, more than enough time for the peacekeepers to call for reinforcements. Nancy Hart lit the signal fire and kept watch to the south, while thirty patriots high-fived, celebrating the rout.
Within minutes, a monument of gray smoke bisected the horizon.
“The southern checkpoint is in our control,” Nancy shouted above cheers. Anticipation coursed through her, warming and chilling, exhilarating and terrifying. “Get ready. The easy part is done.”
They took up positions behind a blockade of checkpoint vehicles, rifles trained on six UW trucks charging like riled bulls.
“Why isn’t anyone shooting at them?” muttered Jack, a wiry fifty-year-old she’d freed from the labor camp.
“I don’t know.” Nancy was counting on a strategy of attrition to dwindle their numbers.
If all those peacekeepers make it to the checkpoint, we’ll be overrun, she thought. Annihilated.
The lead vehicle barreled closer, three men inside the cab, four seated atop each side of the truck bed, and one standing upright, manning a .50 caliber gun mounted above the roof.
A massive projectile cracked overhead and struck the ten-inch trunk of a pine. Wood pulp exploded, the severed treetop keeled over, and the trucks continued coming—unabated.
“Jack, get that shoulder-launched missile ready!”
As the lead truck sped past an old brick savings bank, a salvo of gunfire boomed, a four-foot-high horizontal curtain of lead that sliced through the enemy like a buzz saw.
A second truck plowed into the line of fire, and Nancy cringed,
dreading the inevitable silence when shooters would switch out their magazines.
A third truck plunged through the virtual blade of gunfire.
Then a fourth.
The civilians must’ve staggered the ammo, she decided; half switching out mags while the rest put lead on the target.
The driver of truck number five locked up the brakes and fishtailed past the firing squad, diminished speed serving only to lengthen exposure and maximize bullet strikes.
The final truck swerved and smashed into a tree. Soldiers were thrown to the ground. Civilian warriors broke formation, their whooping battle cry amplifying as they rushed the bewildered enemy.
“Jack, we’re doing it. We’re taking back our country!”
175
TEradS West Headquarters
Langden Air Force Base, Texas
“GET DOWN!” RYAN ANDREWS shoved Sergeant Morton and swept the MP’s stocky legs out from under him. Both men fell, grappling for control of his sidearm.
A gunshot resounded.
A plume of blood sprayed from Morton’s shoulder, and a young MP returned fire, shooting Ryan’s would-be kidnapper at the threshold of the bedroom.
While the young Corporal radioed for medics, Ryan ran to the kitchen and gathered dish towels. Squatting at Morton’s side, he applied pressure to the wound to stem the bleeding.
The Sergeant grunted, “You fucking shot me!”
“No, I didn’t. That bleeding guy in the hallway plugged you. The people who killed Rodriguez sent him to abduct me.”
Morton’s block-shaped head rocked in disbelief. “And he was just letting you walk out the door? Without a gun to your head?”
“He needed me alive, so I was calling his bluff, trying to force an error.”
Ryan watched the Sergeant grimace, unsure whether pain or his explanation had provoked it.
Additional MPs arrived to secure the scene, and a team of medics whisked both injured men to the medical center. Ryan followed behind on foot, hoping the bullets lodged in Won Ton’s chest were not fatal.
If he dies, we’ll lose our only intel regarding Captain Defina’s disappearance.
His phone chirped as he strode into the emergency room. He unclipped it from his belt. “Andrews.”
“Sergeant Tompkins, Team 3B, sir. We have rescued Bradley Webber along with a civilian hostage. A woman named Lily Hamilton.”
“And the terrorist cell?” Ryan asked.
“Not present during the raid. The woman’s account was sketchy, but Webber confirmed at least five members in the cell, sir.”
A thin smile bowed Ryan’s lips. Five terrorists was code for all traitors successfully dispatched. “Sergeant, I want Webber on the next flight to Langden. And the woman too—”
“Captain Andrews ... !”
He spun toward the voice and nodded an acknowledgement to the surgeon who had operated on Gwen, Sybil, and Izzy.
“... The laboratory results are back.”
176
District Three, Washington, D.C.
WHY CAN’T I CATCH a freaking break? Abby thought, trying to recast frustration into resolve as she edged into the Climate Change Museum’s fourth floor.
She circumnavigated a mountain range of humidity-laden boxes with moldy corners; then meandered through an outcropping of pallets loaded with sacks of grout and square white cartons. The shrink-wrap had been stripped from one skid, its cases of floor tile ripped open, creating a precarious leaning tower of marble.
She crept past the sun-lit northwest emergency stairwell, the only one with roof access, then cleared the vast room, keeping dutiful watch over that 900-square-foot peephole in the ceiling.
Abby returned to the cardboard mountain range and spent nearly an hour thinking, critiquing, considering contingencies, and rethinking. Ideas swirled through her mind, each more rash, more insane, more desperate.
Using her tactical knife, Abby slit the packaging tape on a box roughly the size of a bathroom vanity. She lifted the commercial-grade, gift-shop display cabinet from the box; then resting the base atop her right foot, she mummy-walked it down to the third floor.
What’s the probability of a cobbled-together plan working? she asked herself.
Back on the fourth floor, she assembled the M99 .50 caliber rifle, attached the five-round box magazine, then quickly transferred food, water, and survival gear from the hiker’s backpack to the collapsible tote bag. She ignored the internal voice that was whispering, “Why bother with a ‘go bag’ when you’re not getting out alive?”
Abby stashed the backpack, “go bag,” and M99 inside the southwest stairwell. She rehearsed climbing in and out of the empty box, chosen for its tactical merit—location and orientation—rather than convenience of size; and she didn’t dare move anything. A good sniper would instantly detect the slightest change. She practiced closing the sagging flaps of the lid and maneuvering without jiggling the cardboard, aware that an ill-timed tremor could transform it into her coffin.
Knees bent, sitting back on her heels inside the claustrophobic, mildew-infested box, Abby nudged a narrow, die-cut flap upward and peered through the handgrip. Though her field of view was limited, it would have to do. She was out of time—and options.
Feeling like a jack-in-the-box clown, Abby popped up and abandoned her cardboard hide. She triple-checked her Norinco handgun then took up a position beside the northwest stairwell. Studying the sun-drenched rear wall of the midfloor landing, she fought to control her respiration and silence her nagging doubts.
Finally, the sniper’s shadow materialized, a dark apparition rising along with the demon of fear crawling up Abby’s throat.
She swatted the tower of marble. A thudding crash laced with shrill tinkles washed over the fourth floor. Abby scurried into her box and closed the flaps with fumbling fingers. Through the handgrip, she watched her Chinese counterpart emerge cautiously from the northwest stairwell. He had ditched his sunglasses along with the cumbersome .50 caliber in favor of a handgun.
Abby didn’t breathe until the barrel skated past her.
The sniper closed within twenty feet. His brows arched slightly, perplexed by the mound of marble shards, then his head bobbed as if recalling the precariousness of the tiles.
Only one chance, Abby thought, then she squeezed the trigger.
177
Ansley Air Force Base,
Washington D.C.
BRADLEY TOOK A QUICK shower before the medical personnel at Ansley Air Force Base treated his injuries. After receiving three stitches in his thigh, a dose of antibiotics, and an ice pack for his swollen nose, he had run out of patience. He felt like an overstretched spring about to snap.
Bradley hadn’t been able to talk to her during the helicopter flight. The engines had been too noisy; and now, no one knew where she was.
After a room-to-room search of the ER and dozens of lame excuses and apologies, he found her slouched against the steel wall of a hangar, dressed in a faded Air Force sweat suit. An oval-shaped bruise stained her cheek, glowing purple against her pale skin, and a bright red streak marked the split in her swollen upper lip. She was watching crews load a cargo pallet onto the C-130 that would shuttle Bradley back to Texas at 1100 hours, minutes from now.
Her glacial-blue eyes widened. “Lily Hamilton,” she shouted above the whine of aircraft engines, extending her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Sergeant Webber.”
Lily Hamilton? His thoughts began to churn, caught in an updraft of profound anger, but for the benefit of any Airmen who might be watching, he indulged the handshake. “What the hell are you doing here, Franny?”
She offered a pleasantly surprised smile as though they had just discovered a common hometown and said, “You think the Easter Bunny left that rifle at the quarry for you?”
Facts crackled through his mind: Franny’s involvement, the fourth target, Abby’s heartfelt good-bye.
I’ve wasted all our time together being angry ... I still love you. I just need you
to know that.
“Nice job with the self-inflicted bruises, by the way,” Franny said. “Very convincing.”
He didn’t mention that they were real, supplied courtesy of a Russian Spetsnaz. “Did Abby come with you?”
“No-o-o.” The syllable rose unnaturally in pitch. Franny’s head nodded ever so slightly, contradicting her statement.
Bradley’s anger spiraled recklessly higher. “You’re lying! Where. Is. My. Wife?”
“Back at Langden. Come on, it’s time to board.” She started toward the aircraft.
Bradley refused to budge. “I’m not getting on that C-130 until you tell me the truth.”
She halted, glanced over her shoulder, and tendered another innocent conversational smile. “You have to leave Washington. You’ll fuck up your cover.”
“I don’t care. Who’s the fourth target?”
Franny’s icy eyes fluttered, nervously scanning the tarmac for prying Airmen. “Bradley, I don’t know. Ryan didn’t tell me everything. Only what I needed to know.”
A familiar ache was burning in his chest. Instinct told him to stay, that Abby had to be in Washington. Where else would you hunt a high-ranking government traitor?
Muttering, “Have a nice flight,” he walked away.
“Bradley, wait!” Franny latched onto his sleeve.
He shook off her grasp and continued toward the TEradS Ops Center.
“Okay, Abby was with me!”
He stopped short, and Franny bumped into him. Then he wheeled around to face her, to gauge her truthfulness.
“I flew the Learjet, and she parachuted into District Two. She’s west of New York City, scouting target four. For you! Ryan’s going to brief you and send you to her ... for a team mission.”
“That makes no sense. If Abby knew I was involved in the black op, why lie about District Five in Illinois?”
“Ryan wanted you focused on your mission. Not worrying about Abby. And let’s be honest, you have a colorful track record.”
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