Aim and Fire (30 page)

A chorus of affirmatives answered the ops officer, then they heard Elidondo, who had taken a position in the armored truck that was going to breach the front gate. “All teams assume your positions and commence operation on my mark.”

There was a moment of silence, and Tracy heard the roar of the truck as it powered up the rise.

“Briggs, let your sergeant know that they have a pop-up barrier at the main entrance.”

“Thank you, Agent, that was already noted on the plans you provided. They’ll be accessing the grounds through the cyclone fence after eliminating the guard post.”

“I thought you weren’t going to tell them how to do their job,” Nate muttered, but Tracy was too intent on the images unfolding before her to take the bait.

The helicopter had picked up the members who would assault from the roof, and now waited for the word to swoop down and disgorge its heavily armed passengers to seize the high ground. The truck was waiting to roar in to breach the fence near the front gate, while the third team would enter at the rear of the compound and access the 278

main building, sweeping forward to catch the occupants by surprise and overwhelm them with superior forces and firepower.

Sergeant Elidondo radioed all the teams one last time, making sure they were in position, then gave the order.

“Execute, execute, execute!”

The truck lunged over the dune, heading off-road to ram a portion of the fence. Immediately they began taking fire from the guardhouse. What looked like blasts from assault rifles ricocheted off the front armor and bulletproof glass of the truck. “Goddamn, they put out the welcome mat for us!”

Tracy heard the driver exclaim. She heard the SWAT snipers on another channel, and as she watched, one of the riflemen was taken out with a well-placed shot into the viewport.

“Be advised, be advised, there are gunmen on the roof.

Repeat, gunmen on the roof, Team Bravo,” the ops officer radioed.

“Roger that—see three emplacements, two front, one back. Will disembark between all three—they’ll never know what hit ’em.”

The truck screamed down the hill, but when it was about thirty yards from the fence, Tracy heard a loud explosion, followed by a column of dirt and flame erupting under the truck’s front tire. The vehicle tilted on two wheels, and for a moment it looked as if the driver might have been able to bring it back down upright, but then it rolled over on its side, crashing to the ground with an earthshaking impact and skidding to a stop.

Tracy heard everything as it went down.

“Team Alpha, Team Alpha, what is your status? Can anyone hear me in there, over?”

“Tag Team One to Base, have eliminated one guard in the gate post, over.”

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“This is Air One. We are in initial descent—what the hell was that, over? Jesus Christ! They’ve got heavy weapons up here. Repeat, heavy weapons, possibly .50-caliber rifles.”

A huge report echoed over the small valley and the helicopter pilot yelled into his mike, “Base, this is Air One.

We are taking fire from heavy weapons on the roof. Repeat, taking heavy fire—” A scream came from the helicopter, and the steady pitch of the rotors became labored and whining. “Air One to Base, Air One to Base. Mayday, Mayday, we are going down. Repeat, we are going down!

Return fire, dammit, return fire!”

Throughout it all, Briggs remained as calm as anyone Tracy had ever seen. “Roger that, Air One. Can you make it outside the perimeter and regroup with Team Charlie, over?”

Tracy tore her gaze away from the monitors and looked out the front window to see bright flashes flare on the roof, followed by a series of concussive reports that over-powered everything else in the area. The helicopter, its rotors laboring to keep it aloft, sideslipped and lumbered away from the roof of the building, smoke trailing from its lower fuselage, no longer the swift, powerful bird of war it had been only a few seconds ago.

“Flash-bangs to cover their withdrawal. Good idea.”

Nate shielded his eyes as he watched the debacle unfold.

They didn’t hear a crash or see an explosion, which made Tracy dare to believe the pilot had put the bird down safely.

“TacCom, this is Alpha. We are pinned down approximately thirty yards from the gate. Lofgrend is injured and cannot move—oh, shit. RPG, there is an RPG at the main gate!”

280

“I’m on it.” This came from one of the snipers, followed by a single gunshot a few moments later. “RPG is down.”

“…Thanks, Tag Team. We still need evac ASAP….”

Tracy shielded her eyes from the glow of the firefight and tried to make sense out of everything that was happening. The well-thought-out plan was disintegrating before her eyes. The terrorists were dug in, and it might be hours, perhaps days until they could get a force inside, giving their adversaries plenty of time to get that rocket off the ground. They needed to do something immediately. But what?

“This is bulllshit!” Nate got up and stalked to the back doors of the truck. Tracy followed, only dimly aware of the SWAT officer trying to regroup the remaining men.

“All Border Patrol, on me! Form up right here.” In less than thirty seconds Nate had a dozen men and women around him. “All right, this is what we’ve been expecting ever since 9/11. We’ve got terrorists back on our home soil, and we’re gonna take ’em out. Everyone wearing vests, raise your hands.” A half-dozen arms shot up. “All right, you’re with me in the insertion team. Everyone else, you’ll follow behind and extract the SWAT team in the truck.”

“Hey, who says you get to be the hero here?” Billy Travis shouldered his way to the front of the group.

“I don’t have time to bulldog you, Travis. Either you got a vest and you’re with me, or you don’t and you’re on second team. That’s the way it is.”

Travis thumped his chest, revealing the bulky outline of a vest under his shirt. “I never come to a party unprepared,” he said.

“Well, get these boys into an SUV and wait for my signal. All right, people, mount up. Use channel 26 for our comm. Move out in thirty seconds.”

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“Whoa, whoa.” Tracy grabbed Nate’s arm. “What are you going to do?”

“Try to turn this cluster-fucked op around before it’s too late.” Nate headed back to the large SWAT van. “You can sit this one out back here—it’s liable to get real nasty down there,” he said.

Frowning at the suggestion, Tracy thumped her chest, too. “In case you didn’t notice, I raised my hand back there. Let’s go.”

Nate ran to the driver’s side of the SWAT van and jumped up into the seat, twisting the ignition key. Briggs looked over in surprise. “What in the hell are you doing?”

“Officer, I’m commandeering this vehicle in the name of the United States government,” Tracy said as she slapped a fresh magazine in her SIG Sauer and pulled the slide back. “You can stay on or get off—the choice is yours.”

The lanky officer grabbed a lethal-looking HK MP-5N, rammed a 30-round stick magazine into the receiver and cocked the weapon. “Those are my people dying out there.

Let’s hit it.”

Tracy nodded, and turned back to Nate. “Go!”

“Briggs, tell your back-door team to make their entrance in thirty seconds if they haven’t done so already.

And give me covering fire from all your snipers—I need those snipers on the roof to keep their heads down for a minute!” Nate bellowed.

“You got it!” Briggs began issuing orders to the rest of the SWAT teams on the perimeter.

“Extraction team, ready! Insertion team, ready! Go, go go!”

With that, Nate floored the gas pedal, making the huge van lurch up the rise between two of the sniper teams, who 282

were firing steadily at the roof of the compound. The tall, black, armored behemoth reached the crest of the hill and seemed to pause a moment before plunging down into the valley of hellfire. As soon as it did, bullets began ricochet-ing off the windshield from several directions.

“What happens if a .50-caliber round comes at us?”

Tracy asked the SWAT officer, who had buckled a helmet on. He grabbed a spare and quickly adjusted the inner webbing, then held it out to her.

“If it does, don’t worry about it—you’ll probably be dead before you even know what hit you.”

“Glad I asked.” Grabbing the Kevlar helmet, Tracy jammed it on her head and hunkered down behind Nate’s seat, all too aware that it would be little protection. She braced herself for the impact of a huge bullet, but it didn’t come—apparently the snipers were doing their job.

“Extraction team, as soon as I pass the truck, get to it and get them out of there!”

“Copy that, Nate.”

“Insertion team, on me. Follow me through the hole.”

Travis’s voice came over the radio. “What hole? I don’t see any hole!”

“The one I’m about to make, goddammit!” Nate goosed another burst of speed out of the van, pushing it to more than fifty-five miles per hour. Tracy and Briggs swayed back and forth as the vehicle lurched forward even faster.

“Hang on back there!” Nate shouted.

Tracy saw the guard post looming dead ahead in the windshield. She ducked back and wedged herself into the corner of the cargo area. Across from her, Briggs had done the same thing, folding himself into a surprisingly compact ball. Their eyes met, and he actually dropped her a wink.

“Here we go—”

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The armored SWAT van hit the fortified guard post in a shriek of tortured metal and exploding concrete—the ultimate unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.

Tracy was thrown hard into the back of the driver’s chair, the breath driven out of her with the impact. Incredibly, the van was still moving forward. Peeking out, she saw a scratched and battered windshield, and the Spaceworks compound stretched out before them. Nate had plowed the guard post completely off its foundation. He lolled in the driver’s seat, stunned by the impact.

“Order Team Charlie in!” Tracy said as she got up to check Nate, grabbing the radio mike at the same time. “Insertion team, the front door is open. Repeat, the front door is open.”

“We’re right behind you.”

Briggs had recovered his earpiece from where it had been knocked out, and Tracy heard him order the back-door team to make their way inside. Tracy checked Nate’s body as gently as she could. “At least you wore your seat belt.” She unbuckled him and held him up as he leaned forward, coughing for a moment.

“Wha’s—did we do it?”

“Yes, you dumb son of a bitch, we certainly did,” she replied.

Nate came more awake at her words, then his eyes cleared, and he looked around. “We’re not done yet.” He started to get up out of the seat, but groaned and folded his arms across his ribs.

“
We
aren’t, but
you
are, buddy. You’ve got at least two cracked ribs, maybe a broken one. Time for you to hold the fort here, and we’ll go in and wrap this up,” Tracy said.

“Aw, hell, no. I started this, and I’m sure gonna finish it.” Nate leaned back to find Briggs. “Hey, buddy, you 284

SWAT guys must have something to rev me up a bit, don’t you?”

The officer went to a small backpack and opened a side pouch. “Lucky you snagged the medic, as well.” He shook out two small blue pills and held them out. “Take these—

they’ll keep you going until this is over.”

Nate picked them up and tossed both into his mouth, then stood with an effort and grabbed his shotgun from where he’d stored it beside the seat. “Let’s go hunt us some terrorists.”

“Sir, the roof teams report they have driven off the infidels’

helicopter, but the front gate has been breached, and the enemy is inside the fence!”

The young man’s voice was tight with fear, but he remained at his post on the security console, watching the assault unfold. Sepehr could hear the faint, sharp chatter of automatic rifle fire, punctuated by the deafening booms of the Barrett sniper rifles the three terrorists had smuggled into the country along with the nuclear weapon. He scanned the monitors, looking for the infidels. “Where are the biggest concentrations of Americans?”

“Team Three reports a large group of intruders at the rear fence, and the front guard station has just been destroyed by a vehicle that rammed into it. The Americans are crazy! What should we do?”

Sepehr glanced at Joseph, who seemed to be coming unhinged at the idea that his company was being invaded.

He looked back at the young man, whose name he couldn’t remember—Mamood, or something like that. “Order all 286

of the men to fire at will on any infidel they see. They must keep the Americans away from the rocket at all costs.”

He ran to Joseph and grabbed the other man by his shirt. The once-proud scientist was mumbling under his breath. “I can talk to them…explain that this was all a mistake…they’ll listen to me….”

“Joseph—Joseph!” The other man stared at him dully.

“What is the status of the guidance system?”

“Last I checked, they were almost done—just a couple more minutes—”

“And they have their orders to launch once the repairs are complete, yes?” Sepehr asked.

“Of course.” Joseph flinched as another explosion shook the walls around them.

Sepehr turned back to the guard. “Mamood, do you truly believe in the glory of Islam and the righteousness of Allah?”

“With my very last breath.”

“Good, I am entrusting you with this most sacred mission.” Sepehr snatched a short-barreled AKS-74U from its clips under the table and thrust it at the man. “You must protect this room with everything you possess—above all else, the enemies of Islam must not be allowed past this point. Do this, and the highest respect and honors will be yours.” He decided against adding “in Paradise.” This one might be naive enough to believe that he could come through the onslaught outside in one piece. “I must get Joseph to safety, but I will radio you when the time comes to leave, all right?”

“Yes, sir.” The young man took the weapon and checked the load, then hunkered down behind the console to await the coming invaders. Meanwhile, Sepehr took Joseph’s elbow and steered him out of the room, making sure the security door closed behind him. Once inside, he smashed Aim and Fire