COPS, SECURITY PERSONNEL, AND soldiers swarmed, throwing a cordon around the apartment block. Blockades of police cars with flashing light bars sealed the streets, and officers yelled directions to their men going into the buildings. Swanson swam easily against the tide, moving with the self-confidence of someone on a specific mission, just another uniform, and nobody stopped him. Every second counted. Just being out of the building did not mean he was safe, although it improved the odds.
He needed wheels. Beyond the first line of policemen guarding the inner perimeters were clusters of official cars that had parked haphazardly and been abandoned along the street. Chances were good that if the lights were blinking, some anxious driver would have left the motor running in his excitement to join the hunt. Ironically, Kyle realized that he was moving toward the same building where his targets had been standing on the balcony. Swanson methodically worked his way along the line of cars, placing his palm on the hood of each in turn to detect the vibration of an engine. The third one. An iron gray Nissan sedan with no insignia had been abandoned with its red and blue lights still winking brightly behind the grill. A disciplined officer would have shut down and locked the vehicle, but this one had not done so. Kyle knew his chances had just improved remarkably. Once through the cordon of cops, Kyle could drive like hell to reach the helicopter.
Swanson ducked into the driver’s seat and tossed his AK-47 into the passenger compartment. He closed the door and snapped the lock shut, and an automatic seat belt harness strapped across his chest. With one hand on the steering wheel, he glanced down to find the gear lever and shifted it into reverse. He looked in the rearview mirror. Clear. He gunned the accelerator.
In the next heartbeat, the entire car was snatched from the ground by a monstrous blow and twirled into the air like a toy by a scalding cyclone of superheated air. It’s not just the car that’s flying, it’s me! A gigantic explosion had erupted less than a block away and was flattening and destroying everything in its path. Cops and people tumbled, walls were crushed, cars were flung about, and tall palm trees were shorn off at their roots. Big chunks of concrete became deadly boulders of shrapnel.
The Nissan completely overturned while airborne, then corkscrewed back to earth, whipped by the concussion. It crashed once back onto the street, bounced, and rolled over twice more while skidding a hundred feet before coming to rest with a half-dozen other cars that were stacking against a building.
Kyle Swanson was unconscious, hanging upside down, suspended by the seat belt, and supported by inflated air bags. He never heard the explosions that rolled over him.
THE SUV THAT WAS carrying Jim Hall of the CIA also overturned when the concussion wave snatched it, and slid in a cascade of sparks on its side as debris smacked it like an unending barrage of mortar shells. A length of steel rod punched through the front window and stabbed the driver through the head.
The other agent in the car was dazed and groaned in pain. He could function. The man put his arms against the door that was now over his head and pushed with weightlifter strength until it popped free, then levered himself out of the wreckage.
Instead of disappearing in the chaos, running away to find safety, the agent turned back to the vehicle. He called out in broken English, “You alive?”
“Yeah,” Hall shouted. “Help me out of here.” He had been hurled against the seats and was torqued into a tight corner, trapped by twisted metal.
“I am coming.” The large man ignored the blood streaming down his own face and put his big muscles back to work, hurling away chunks of material and digging with his bare hands. The explosions thundered. He found the American at the bottom of the car, twisted and caught in a corner. The agent needed leverage. He squeezed into the backseat, put his feet against the front seat and his back against the rear, and pushed hard and steadily. There was strong resistance, but he continued to push, grunting with effort, and felt some give. Then came a sharp snap as a weakened metal strut broke, and the rear seat catapulted backward.
Hall felt the pressure ease against him. “That’s it.” He could move again. He squirmed up and grabbed the man’s beefy hand. The Taliban agent clamped onto his wrist and hauled him free. Hall stood and wiped his face. Around him lay a wrecked moonscape, and more explosions were rocking the area every minute. “Thanks, big guy. I owe you one. You know a way out of here?”
“Yes. Follow.” The big man was breathing hard, still bleeding from his nose and both ears and from a corner of his mouth. Hall guessed there was some internal damage, probably to the lungs, but said nothing. They dodged around a fallen tree and ran for safety.
THE BLAST LIFTED THE fleeing Land Rover several feet into the air, as if it had been picked up by an angry child, while the momentum kept it moving forward, flying until the extreme weight of the vehicle pulled it back down. Staff Sergeant Travis Stone was slammed against the door, with his head ricocheting off the window, and he saw stars as he fought the steering wheel. The armored SUV bounced down hard, swerved onto a sidewalk, and clipped a wall. The strong engine howled as Stone gunned it. Darren Rawls, holding on with both hands, stared back wide-eyed at the carnage in their wake. “Jesus H. Christ,” he muttered.
Entire apartment buildings were cascading down in a slow landslide of concrete and glass and metal. On the street, cars overturned, the sidewalks buckled, and other walls crumpled, then fell, and a hundred fires bloomed. Bodies lay in the street, and wounded people struggled to get away from a deadly hail that began to fall when the storehouse of antitank rockets and mortar shells ignited and spun without direction into other parts of the city. The missiles blasted into private homes, businesses, public parks, foreign embassy compounds, and hotels with equal savagery. A jagged piece of black metal blew directly over the hood of the Land Rover and sliced into a parked truck like a giant arrow. Stone kept his foot hard on the accelerator and roared on toward the edge of the city, dodging fires and wreckage. The newly dark sky boiled in crimson orange. Ruptured underground water mains spouted like fountains. Tidal waves of scalding air were being sucked through the streets, feeding the developing firestorm.
“What happened back there?” Stone yelled. “What the fuck, man?”
“Next left!” shouted Rawls, and Stone threw the Land Rover into a screeching ninety-degree turn. Loud booms jarred the area like an unending earthquake and shook their teeth. Debris banged against the vehicle like a hailstorm.
“Taxi One Four, Taxi One Four. This is Trident Two Two,” Rawls shouted into his radio, trying to keep his voice calm. He felt wetness on his face as blood streamed from his ears due to the blast. He wiped it away as best he could.
The answer came back immediately from the CH-53E helicopter. “Trident Two Two, this is Taxi One Four. Send your traffic.”
“Roger, Taxi, Trident six mikes out.” Rawls estimated they were about six minutes from the landing zone.
“Roger, Trident. Six mikes. We are heading in now.” The helicopter heeled out of its long turn and began a straight-in descent to prearranged coordinates. The spectacle of the explosions and fire could be easily seen from the sky, a carnival of chaos.
“Kyle was right,” Stone said, fighting the wheel. “It was a setup.” A curtain of dirty ash had caught up with them and was drifting down, so he activated the windshield wipers. The air conditioner was going full blast as a filter.
“We’ll worry about that later. Just keep going.” Rawls scanned the sky as the SUV charged forward over everything in its path.
“Taxi One Four. Taxi One Four. This is Trident Two Two. One mike out, approaching from the south in a black Land Rover.”
“Roger, Trident. I have a visual on you.”
The huge helicopter dropped out of the night like a fast-moving monstrous shadow, then flared at the last moment, throwing up its own curtain of dirt, dust, and debris. The rear ramp was already down, and a gunner was strapped in behind a.50 caliber machine gun, watching them.
Stone killed the headlights and stopped about twenty-five meters away, and he and Rawls jumped out.
“Setting the timer to two minutes!” shouted Rawls as he tossed an incendiary grenade into the Land Rover to totally destroy the vehicle, their DNA, and any other trace of its use. They ran around the gunner, and the whine of the helicopter’s big GE engines immediately increased. Travis Stone held up two fingers to denote the correct count of the people coming aboard, then twirled the fingers in a circle. The crew chief nodded and spoke into his microphone.
The helicopter lifted away and bent into a fast, climbing turn. Stone and Rawls knelt on the metal floor and looked out of the square ramp opening, holding on to supports as the horizon tilted. There was a bright flash when the incendiary bomb detonated in the backseat of the Land Rover.
It was nothing more than a firecracker compared with the inferno back in Islamabad, where trails of rockets still sizzled through the sky, delayed secondary detonations were still rocking buildings, and fires were out of control, burning fiercely and unchecked. Their faces were orange and red with the reflection.
“I better call home,” said Rawls, staggering into a seat and signaling the crew chief for a helmet with a radio.
“Yeah, you better,” his partner agreed. In a softer voice, Stone whispered, “Good luck, Kyle.”
DARREN RAWLS WENT TO an emergency frequency to report back directly to Task Force Trident headquarters in Washington. The signal bounced off a couple of satellites, went through the trapdoor of a global financial network’s interoffice data stream, and was routed into Trident’s private comm setup. “Trident Lizard, Trident Lizard. This is Trident Two Two. Come in.”
In the Pentagon, Lieutenant Commander Freedman saw a flashing code on his computer screen to alert him to the incoming traffic at the same time his headset came alive. He threw up a hand and snapped his fingers to get the attention of the others. Middleton, Summers, and Dawkins stopped what they were doing and hurried to his side. “Trident Two Two. This is Trident Lizard. Send your traffic.”
The signal was weak but clear. “Be advised Bounty Hunter confirmed mission accomplished at exactly nineteen nineteen fourteen hours. Mission compromised. Shooters attacked. Bounty Hunter is trying to exfiltrate under heavy pursuit. Attached partner missing, status unknown. Subsequent massive explosion of unknown origin is causing extensive damage downtown. We are aboard Taxi One Four. Standing by for orders.”
General Middleton switched to the frequency. “This is Trident Six. Roger your transmission. Authorize Gunrunner for you, effective immediately. Out.” Gunrunner was a contingency plan that would let the helicopter take the two special operators to join a routine mission that was already in progress in Afghanistan. Retroactive paperwork would show that Stone and Rawls had never been in Islamabad at all.
“Sir! Look at this!” The Lizard’s voice was rising in alarm. He had been scouring the live feeds from Pakistan, and his screen was suddenly busy with images of destruction, fires, collapsed buildings, and dead men, dismembered women, and bleeding children. Cameras shook as explosions continued to cook off in Islamabad, rocking the photojournalists. The Lizard, who never cursed, spoke for them all. “What the fuck is happening over there?”
Double-Oh stood back and rubbed his square jaw in thought. He spoke in a calm voice, weighing possibilities and options. Nothing would be gained by panic on this end. “We have only that brief report from Staff S’arnt Rawls, and now these early news feeds. Not much to act on, General. Gunrunner takes care of our boys on the bird, but they apparently never actually linked up with Kyle. He provided the time check to confirm the shoot.”
“Replay the call, Liz.” Major Sybelle Summers wanted to hear what had been said once again. Did they miss anything? There was obvious stress in the voice of the unflappable veteran operator Darren Rawls. Mission compromised. Shooters attacked.
“We might not know exactly what happened, but it’s obvious that somebody is trying to kill our guy,” she said. “That’s good enough for me. It was a setup.”
“I agree, Major, but there’s no proof.” Dawkins heard a telephone buzz and picked up the receiver.
General Middleton glowered at the screens, as if he could change things through sheer willpower. “I will need to speak to the president. Liz, put in a call to the White House and tell them I’m coming over.”
“No need for that, sir,” said Dawkins. “That was his chief of staff again. He seems upset. Your presence has been requested.”