The man shoved Coleman back, slamming him into the window frame and dropping out of sight. Rapp watched his friend slowly slide down and fired a pattern around him. The tango would be trying to get behind the desk and kick through what was left of the flimsy rear wall. From there he’d have enough cover to reach the rear exit.
“Mas, you’ve got a man heading for the back door. Bloody face, nice suit. Kill the motherfucker.”
“There are a lot of civilians back here and I gave you my rifle,” came the response. “I have the door gun. How big a mess do you want me to make?”
Rapp swore under his breath. There was no way they could open up on a crowded street with a weapon like that. In one of the most anti-American countries in the world, it would be seen as an act of war.
“Belay my last order,” Rapp said through clenched teeth. “Let him go.”
“You want our people to try to follow him?”
Hell yes, he did. More than anything. He wanted them to track him to his safe house and then he wanted to kick down the door and look into his eyes before splattering his brains all over the wall. But one of his people was already down. That was enough.
“Negative. No one gets anywhere near this guy. Is that understood?”
“Copy that. We’re letting him walk.”
Another shot came from below, this time hissing past his right ear. Rapp turned and fired five rounds in rapid succession, each one coming within inches of one of the five armed men in the street. They all scrambled for cover as Rapp turned and ran crouched toward a sturdy-looking ventilation pipe.
He tied the end of the rope still running through his harness around the base and then played out some slack. With the guns below still silent, he ran toward the edge of the roof, launching himself over the low wall bordering it and into the air. The rope caught him with a spine-wrenching jerk about fifteen feet down. He released his brake hand and dropped the rest of the way, hitting the concrete rolling, and coming to his knees behind a parked car.
“I’m on the ground and heading for the warehouse,” he said into his throat mike.
“Copy that,” Maslick came back. “I see you. The front’s locked and you’ve got a lot of company out there. Scott got in through the alley on the southeast side.”
“Copy.”
Rapp came up over the hood of the car and fired a few more well-placed rounds, punching holes in the vehicles, walls, and street signs the Pakistanis were using for cover. Nothing close enough to cause injuries, but plenty close to get everyone thinking about just how important their job was to them.
Despite the hundreds of garbage bags rotting in the heat, the entrance wasn’t hard to find. The lock had already been shattered by Coleman’s Sig, so Rapp pushed the door open and slipped though.
Predictably, the shooting started almost immediately. Automatic fire stitched a line of holes in the wall above, forcing him to stay low in the shadows. He moved right and dropped to the floor, landing exactly where Coleman had, based on the marks in the dust.
The HK rifle rounds impacted a hell of a lot harder than his Glock, so he didn’t bother going for his normal head shot. The first tango took a round to the chest, flipping backward over the crate he was standing in front of and disappearing behind it. The second was hit in the ribs and dropped like a bag of rocks when both lungs and his heart were punctured.
Rapp sprinted for the demolished office at the heart of the building. Coleman was lying on his back in the debris from the collapsed roof and shattered windows. His eyes were open but he didn’t so much as twitch when Rapp dropped the rifle next to him.
“Mitch,” Maslick said over his earpiece, “give me a sitrep.”
“I took out two tangos. They look like the last ones. Scott’s down. Stand by.”
“Down? Is he all right?”
“I said to fucking stand by.”
He pulled his Glock 30 from the fanny pack strapped around his waist and moved away from the office, crossing the shop floor while watching for movement. Once at the back, he stepped over the body of one of the men he’d shot and looked inside the open crate lying on the floor.
“I have the warhead, Mas. Drop me a cable and a box of ammo for your HK.”
“Copy that.”
Outside, the roar of the chopper intensified. Rapp threw open one of the bays and squinted against the dust being kicked up by the rotors. The civilians Maslick had been concerned about seemed to have fled, and Rapp went for the line descending from a reel in the helicopter’s open door. Weighted down with the metal ammunition box, it was easy to get hold of and he pulled it inside.
When he reached the crate, he found there was nowhere to connect the hook, only smooth steel and a garish depiction of the Pakistani flag. With no other option, he just wrapped the cable around the tail fins.
“All right,” he said into his throat mike. “Reel it in!”
The line went taut and he winced as the weapon started bouncing across the concrete floor. The CIA’s experts had told him these things were hard to set off and now he was going to find out if they were right. It hung up on the bay door for a moment and then went through, taking some of the frame with it.
“We’ve got it!” Maslick said. “And you’ve got a group of Pakistani cops and soldiers coming at you from the north. They’ve blown the lock on the front doors and are getting into position to open them.”
“Copy that. Now get that thing out of here.”
“What about you and Scott?”
“Go!” Rapp said, scooping up the ammo box and running back to Coleman. It turned out that he was still breathing, but in a shallow, labored way that Rapp had seen too many times before.
The sound of grinding metal rose up from the front of the building but he didn’t bother to look at what was causing it. Instead, he lifted Coleman into a fireman’s carry and grabbed the rifle and spare ammunition with his free hand.
The main door was nearly fully open but none of the Pakistanis were visible as he ran across the shop floor and took cover behind the same machine Coleman’s attacker had. He laid his friend on the concrete and pulled the magazine from Maslick’s rifle, quickly slapping in a fresh one as he watched the shadows of the men moving around in front.
They didn’t seem all that anxious to enter, and he used the time to dial Irene Kennedy on his satellite phone, patching it through his earpiece.
“Mitch!” she said upon picking up. “I’m getting reports of a firefight in downtown Faisalabad.”
“That’s me. Most of the terrorists are dead and Maslick’s in the air with the nuke.”
“Where are you?”
“Pinned down in a warehouse. You need to get on to the government and tell them to pull their men back. So far I’ve been shooting wide but if they move in on me I’m going to start dropping them.”
“I’ll do it right away. Where’s Scott? Is he with Joe?”
A small metal canister came sailing through the open door and bounced a few times before starting to spew tear gas.
“He’s with me. He couldn’t make it to the chopper.”
“Why? Is he injured?”
“Sooner would be better than later on that call, Irene.”
He disconnected the line and used Maslick’s rifle to shoot out some of the still-intact windows near the ceiling—more to put the fear of God into the men considering charging him than out of concern about the gas. The building was too large and well ventilated for it to have much effect.
A weak hand gripped Rapp’s leg and he looked down to see Scott Coleman’s eyes fix on him. The injured man managed to speak but when he did, a thick mix of blood and spit drooled from his mouth.
“I’m done, man. Get out of here.”
Rapp shook off memories of Stan Hurley, who had looked up at him in a similar condition a few weeks ago. The difference was that he’d been an old man dying on his own terms. Coleman wasn’t.
Rapp knew that any hint of concern or sympathy would just weaken his friend fur
ther. He was a soldier. One of the best in the world. And that’s the way he deserved to be treated.
Rapp pulled the pistol from his waistband and slapped it into Coleman’s limp hand. “Quit whining and make yourself useful.”
CHAPTER 19
JOE Maslick was lying on the metal floor of the chopper with his head hanging out the open door. He’d been raised by dirt-poor parents in a trailer park tucked into the mountains of South Carolina. When he graduated from high school, he’d never been out of the state. Never eaten Chinese food. Never seen the ocean, except on his family’s static-ridden TV.
Thinking back on that made him wonder how the hell he’d ended up in Pakistan, staring down at an atomic bomb. That cashier’s job at the local gas station was looking better and better.
“This thing’s swinging really bad,” he said into the mike attached to his headset.
“You want to come up here and fly, asshole?” was the predictable response.
The man at the controls was Fred Mason, a retired navy pilot who now flew search-and-rescue missions out of California. Coleman brought him in when second-best wasn’t an option.
“It’d just be good if it didn’t go into the tail rotor, you know?”
“I didn’t remember you being the nervous type, Mas.”
They climbed out of range of the cops and soldiers below, but Maslick could still make out detail around the warehouse. The front entrance was open and there were at least ten cops and soldiers lined up next to it. Smoke was curling from the bay doors but none of the men appeared to have masks on. The general impression was that no one was in charge. That should play in Rapp’s and Coleman’s favor.
The nuke settled down and he started to use the winch to reel it up. When it got close, the copilot came back to help him wrestle it inside. Even with the two of them, it was a herculean task. In addition to the weight, there wasn’t anywhere to get a good grip. They got it partway in the door a couple of times but it always hung up and fell back onto the cable.
The pilot heard all the swearing and glanced back for a moment. “Watch your asses, boys!”
The left side of the chopper suddenly dipped, slamming Maslick into the back of the door gun and rolling the nuke up onto the skid. Then the floor dipped right, tossing him into the other wall. When the aircraft leveled out again, the weapon was inside and rolling lazily toward a cargo net hanging from a set of eyebolts.
“Asshole!” Maslick said, rubbing the back of his head as the copilot trapped the nuke in the net and began securing it.
An urgent beeping indicating an incoming satellite call echoed through Maslick’s headphones and he cut out the two pilots before picking up. “Go ahead.”
“Give me a sitrep,” Irene Kennedy said in a worried tone.
“We have the nuke on board and we’re heading home, ma’am.”
There was a pause that suggested she wasn’t as happy about that as she should have been. “I’ve lost contact with Mitch.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that, ma’am. We just left him and the situation didn’t look like anything he wouldn’t be able to handle.”
Another long pause. “Scott’s injured and I can’t get through to General Shirani or the local police commander to get them to issue a stand-down order. I need you to go back for them.”
Maslick wasn’t sure how to respond. Rapp had made it clear that he was to get their cargo to safety. And, while Kennedy was technically in charge, he was only mildly afraid of her. Rapp, on the other hand . . .
“That’s a negative, ma’am. I have my orders.”
“You take orders from me and those orders have changed!”
He was a little startled by the force of her response. In all the years he’d known her, he’d never heard Irene Kennedy raise her voice.
Maslick suffered a rare moment of hesitation. If she was right—and she almost always was—then his team was in trouble. Rapp would never leave Coleman and the Pakistanis would eventually get organized enough to surround that building. The thought of abandoning them was a thousand times worse than the thought of dying with them. On the other hand, he had no idea what Rapp would do if his orders weren’t followed to the letter. It never really happened.
Finally he pressed a button and linked in the pilots again. “Turn us around, Fred. We’re going back.”
“What? Could you repeat that?”
“You heard me.”
“You realize you’re literally sitting on a nuclear bomb, right?”
Maslick looked down. He actually was sitting on it. “Do it, Fred.”
The chopper banked hard and Maslick used his free hand to switch to the frequency monitored by Rapp. “We are inbound to your position. Do you copy?”
The response was barely intelligible due to interference. “That’s a negative. Continue on your previous heading.”
Maslick couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a dead man. The only question was whether it was a lucky shot from a Pakistani or a perfectly placed one from Rapp. “Be advised that we are operating under revised orders and will be over your position in approximately three minutes.”
• • •
Rapp swung his rifle around the machine he’d taken cover behind and scanned through the dissipating smoke. No one had appeared in the open door. Maybe they’d finally realized they didn’t have masks and were waiting for reinforcements. If they were smart—and that was a big if—they’d put men on the surrounding buildings and position teams behind barricades to cover the exits. At that point, they could lob in some more gas or, better yet, just wait him out. With no water and temps pushing a hundred ten, he wouldn’t last much longer than twenty-four hours. And Coleman probably wouldn’t make it another twenty-four minutes.
“We’re in our descent,” came Maslick’s voice over his earpiece.
Rapp’s jaw clenched and he looked down at Coleman. The pistol had slipped from his fingers and he wasn’t moving. His head wound probably looked worse than it was, but the knife sticking out of his side was likely exactly as bad as it looked. Then there was the blood flowing from his shoulder and leg.
“Scott.”
No reaction to his voice at all. It was possible that he was dead but it didn’t matter at this point anyway. They were going out together or not at all.
He switched Maslick’s rifle to full auto and emptied the magazine into a steel pillar near the door. The metal made an impressive racket and would be enough to delay anyone who might have built up the courage to launch an offensive. He tossed the rifle and pulled Coleman onto his shoulder again. Scooping up the pistol that had fallen from his hand, Rapp started for the back of the building at a full run. He was about halfway there when the deafening whine of a chain gun started up outside. Hopefully, it was Maslick shooting and not an incoming Pakistani aircraft.
He came out into the bright sunlight just as Maslick let loose another burst. He was firing into the air over the top of the surrounding buildings, but it was enough. If there had been any soldiers in the alley before his arrival, they’d taken the hint and run like hell.
Despite Coleman’s dead weight, Rapp managed to grab the rope dangling from the chopper and attached it to his harness. He slid Coleman off his shoulder and wrapped his arms around the injured man. Maslick was leaning out the open door and when he saw that Rapp was ready, he motioned for the pilot to start climbing.
They were only about ten feet off the ground when someone started shooting from an alley to the north. Rapp’s pistol was in his waistband and there was no way to get to it. Coleman was slippery with blood and his weight was being multiplied by the chopper’s climb. It was all Rapp could do to not drop him.
“Mas! Get that son of a—”
But the former Delta operator was already ahead of him. The door gun opened up again and the alley entrance disappeared in a cloud of shattered concrete.
They finally cleared the tops of the buildings and started streaking east. Above, Maslick was rigging the winch to pull them up an
d Rapp tightened his grip on Coleman despite the fact that the muscles in his forearms felt like they were on fire. The SEAL slipped and Rapp barely managed to loop a leg around him in time to keep him from dropping four hundred feet to the street below.
By the time they made it to the chopper door, Rapp had been forced to grab Coleman’s shirt in his teeth to make up for the fatigue in his arms. The metallic taste of blood was yet another reminder of his friend’s condition.
“I’ve got him!”
Maslick’s powerful arms appeared and dragged Coleman’s limp body upward. When he was safe, Rapp grabbed the skids and pulled himself inside, rolling across the floor as the aircraft’s nose tilted forward and Fred Mason pushed the chopper to its limit.
CHAPTER 20
CIA AIRFIELD
CENTRAL PAKISTAN
RAPP leaned over the chopper pilot’s shoulder and pointed at a C-17 Globemaster transport plane below. It was parked at the end of a line of buildings containing the Reaper drones the CIA used against terrorist cells operating in the region. “Put us down there!”
The skids touched down about twenty yards from the Globemaster’s open rear cargo door. The sun had dipped below the horizon and the lights inside the plane silhouetted a group of soldiers pushing a gurney in their direction. Inside the plane, Rapp could see rows of bunks and walls lined with state-of-the-art medical equipment. For all intents and purposes, the plane was a flying hospital—manned by multiple medical teams and equipped to handle everything from basic triage to severe burns.
With so many unknowns relating to the Pakistan operation, Kennedy had kept the Globemaster close in case things went south. Rapp didn’t like to plan for failure, but Kennedy was obsessed with covering every angle. In this case—as in so many before—she’d made the right call. Coleman could be stabilized on their way to the U.S. military hospital in Germany.
Rapp jumped out of the open door as Joe Maslick and the copilot began sliding the stretcher containing Scott Coleman toward him.
They’d managed to stop the visible bleeding, but there was no question that he had internal injuries beyond their ability to deal with. The former SEAL’s skin had gone pale, creating a stark contrast to the blood spattered all over it. He’d still been alive when they’d checked ten minutes ago, but it was impossible to tell just by looking at him if that was still the case.