Power Grab

At the front of the case, dominating the lower half of the hinged mechanism, three stainless-steel orbs were set half flush with the midline of the case. These were the explosives themselves, the warheads. Each was the size of a baseball and each was staggeringly deadly—a shaped plastic explosive core covered in hexagonal shrapnel plates that were in turn layered with solid toxins. On detonation, the shrapnel would excite the toxic resin layer and produce a poison cloud that would linger over the blast radius.

Knowing that there would be no turning back after he pressed the buttons, Pyragy entered the start-up sequence. The machine hummed. Its status readouts responded immediately. Pyragy moved as far from the bomb as he could, which was not very far. Again he hoped that neither of the other two men noticed his actions.

Nihemedow, who was never truly still, began to peer around the side of the planter. Grateful for the chance to focus on more concrete concerns, Pyragy poked him with two fingers and made a sharp gesture of warning. Nihemedow returned the look with one of dire portent but withdrew his head just as the security guard’s footsteps grew louder. The man had rounded the corner and would soon pass by their location.

In planning this step of the operation, it was of course Nihemedow who suggested the guard be killed. There was a single night guard known to patrol within the shopping mall at night. There were options for dealing with him. They could wait for him to complete his circuit, plant the device while the man was known to take a scheduled break from eleven o’clock to eleven-thirty and escape before anyone suspected. This option carried with it the risk of discovery during any point. The device would have to be tended while it went through its interminable acclimation program, during which it could not be disturbed. If the guard were to vary his routine, which Pyragy and his team had established during the previous weeks’ surveillance, it could ruin everything.

To say he had reluctantly approved the assassination of one fat American would be overstating the case. He didn’t care. He wasn’t the sort of man to leave any detail to chance or to last-minute decisions, however, so the act had been preplanned right to the man who would do it. Kanzi Nihemedow was eager to blood himself—perhaps too eager—and so he would do the deed. It seemed like such a small detail, in the grand scheme of things, but the death of any single man was no small thing. There was great power in death. This Pyragy understood.

The rasping sound of Nihemedow’s knife leaving its sheath set Pyragy’s teeth on edge. It was too loud. His thought had been that their silenced pistols would leave behind evidence whereas a knifing could easily be dismissed as a failed mugging or burglary. Looking at it now, in the split second he had to consider the situation, Pyragy decided it would have been better to shoot the guard.

The guard turned his head toward the three men.

Nihemedow, indeed too eager, screamed in bloodlust, his yell almost an ululation. He rushed forward, the knife coming up, the keen blade poised to strike. The guard froze and his eyes went wide. His hands came up as if he would ward off the charging attacker with his fear alone.

The knife flashed downward.

Nihemedow missed.

Had he not been watching, Pyragy would have thought it impossible. The arc of the knife passed down and through the place where the guard should have been. Some analytical part of Pyragy’s brain understood what his senses refused to acknowledge. Kanzi had been a half step off in his overeager charge. The two men collided and hit the slick, polished floor in a heap.

“Go, go!” Pyragy ordered Gandosi Burdimedezov. “Stop him!”

Burdimedezov hurried…but it was too late. Nihemedow made a sort of retching, choking noise and fell to his knees, clutching at himself. Burdimedezov threw himself into the fray. There was a moment’s scuffling as Nihemedow was knocked flat, then he curled into a ball and screamed in pain and terror. Then it was Burdimedezov yelping, the sound a strange one from so stolid a man. It was a shriek of pain and shock, of surprise. Then Burdimedezov was falling backward, landing painfully in a sitting position, clutching one of his hands. The guard fled beyond him.

Pyragy stood and ripped the Ruger .22 pistol with its attached, handmade silencer from his waistband and began pulling the pistol’s trigger as fast as he could. The bullets raised flecks of colored facade from the walls of the corridor leading away from their position as the guard ducked, dodged and scrambled for all he was worth. Pyragy cursed as his pistol ran dry. He threw it to the floor in rage.

“Why!” he demanded, wheeling on Burdimedezov. “Why have you done this?”

“He had a knife!” Burdimedezov shrieked. It was then that Pyragy saw the blood streaming from Gandosi’s arm and from the hand he clutched tightly in his other palm.

“But,” Pyragy argued, “he is a private security guard! They do not carry combat knives. That is absurd!”

“He had a knife, I tell you,” Burdimedezov snorted, sounding nothing like himself as he paled from the blood loss. A pool of sticky crimson had begun to widen around him on the floor, and Pyragy realized then how severe the damage must be. “He had a knife clipped to the pocket of his trousers. A folding knife. He flicked it open and cut me.”

Pyragy would not have believed it if he had not seen it. Americans were soft. Weak. Everyone knew that. They guarded their airports with soldiers who did not have magazines in their rifles. They apologized to the leaders of nations whose citizens streamed across U.S. borders illegally. They listened to the enemy abroad in their countless wars and “police actions,” and prosecuted their own soldiers for killing those enemies too efficiently. How, then, could one fat American fool have been armed and prepared to resist? It boggled the mind.

“See to Kanzi,” Pyragy ordered. “He will call for help. We must make sure they do not find the bomb.” Heedless of the danger, for in truth there was supposed to be no danger yet, Pyragy used a foot to shove the bomb deep into the planter he and his team had chosen for the purpose. He took a moment to arrange some of the plant fronds to cover it. Glancing at his watch, he cursed. The box was not supposed to be moved for another fifteen minutes. He had been told this over and over again: the bomb required a very specific time for preset acclimation to its environment, to ensure maximum casualties when its sensors and processors were triggered.

Well, there was no help for that now. If he did not hide the bomb, its discovery would render the entire mission a failure. He would not have such a waste on his record. He would not allow himself to fail.

So the bomb would perhaps detonate prematurely. No matter. Even if it killed no one, the explosion would have the desired effect. The Americans would see yet again that the safe little world of illusion in which they lived was not so safe at all. They could be touched. They could be harmed. One of their most precious icons of their sick, capitalist, consumerist world, a shopping mall, a temple to greed, would become a killing ground in their minds, even if there were no victims. Each time one of the lazy Westerners set foot in a shop or in any public place, he or she would be wondering if an explosion was imminent. Wasn’t that what a campaign such as this was about?

That was how Pyragy would justify his failure to his superiors, at any rate. With luck, he could convince them that his mission, while not technically successful, was not so horrible a failure as to warrant punishment for him…or for his family.

Burdimedezov dragged Nihemedow up, who still clutched his stomach. “Let me see it,” Burdimedezov ordered. “Let me see it,” he said again, more forcefully. He pushed his partner to a sitting position on a nearby bench.

Pyragy grabbed the heavy duffel bag they had brought with them. His mind began running through what he knew of their situation. They had broken through the glass doors at the rear of the mall, where the periodic parking lot patrols frequently did not come close enough for the drivers to notice such a breach because of the placement of large trash containers and an overgrowth of trees and vines close to the face of the building. The security system’s motion sensors, and other electrical components of the obsolete security devices in this structure, were being jammed by the device Pyragy carried on his belt. All of these measures were supposed to have enabled them to break in, place the bomb and get out, disguising their breach as simple vandalism.

Now the guard would be summoning police, and telling those police that armed, dangerous men were in the building. Pyragy pulled back the heavy zipper of the duffel bag and removed a pair of AK-47 rifles with folding metal stocks. He slapped one 30-round magazine home and racked the bolt of the weapon.

“Gandosi,” he said. “How badly are you hurt?”

“I will live,” Burdimedezov said, his composure returning. Pyragy knew that sensation well. Having temporarily failed, having sustained unanticipated injury, Burdimedezov would be eager to reassert his manhood, to prove that he was no coward and no weakling.

“Your arm looks very bad,” Pyragy said, preparing a second AK-47. “You have lost much blood.”

“Give me the tape,” Burdimedezov said simply. Kanzi Nihemedow sat half crouched on the bench nearby, whimpering.

Pyragy produced a roll of silver duct tape from the bag and threw it to Burdimedezov, who caught it with his uninjured hand. He began using his teeth to break the tape as he wrapped strips of it around his arm and hand. He was still very pale, and his arm and the leg of his pants were stained through with blood, but he showed no signs of slowing down.

“Kanzi?” Pyragy asked.

“He is barely conscious,” Burdimedezov said, looking again to his wounded comrade and placing a hand on either side of the man’s face to peer directly into his eyes. “He clutches his stomach and refuses to let go. He is bleeding everywhere. I think the American pig gutted him.”

Pyragy cursed again. “I do not believe it,” he said.

“Kanzi. Kanzi!” Gandosi Burdimedezov shouted. He shook his head. “He does not respond to me at all,” he said.

Pyragy, his rifle cradled in one arm, went to stand over them both. He slapped Nihemedow hard across the face.

“Operative Nihemedow!” he bellowed. “Report! You are ordered to report!”

Nihemedow’s eyelids fluttered. He finally fixed Pyragy with a sickly gaze, sweat beading on his forehead and cheeks. “Yes…yes, sir,” he finally responded.

“Get him a rifle,” Pyragy said, not removing his eyes from Nihemedow’s.

“But, sir,” Burdimedezov said.

“We have moments,” Pyragy said. “Unless the guard has decided he fears the legal repercussions of his actions, he will have gone straight for help. We have but one choice, and that is to make the Americans believe we came to attack the mall directly. If we sell our lives dearly, perhaps they will not investigate too thoroughly. They may not find the bomb. It may still do its job.”

“Have we no chance to fight clear?”

“There is a chance,” Pyragy said. “A slim one. We could, of course, leave now…but the Americans would wonder what we did here. Their authorities would search this place for clues. We must give them an obvious answer, prevent that search from taking place.”

“They may still search,” Burdimedezov said.

“Perhaps,” Pyragy agreed. “But do we dare do less for the cause?”

Burdimedezov thought about that for a moment. “No, sir.”

“Then it is agreed,” Pyragy said. “Now get Kanzi a rifle.”

Burdimedezov brought the third Kalashnikov from the duffel bag, loaded it, racked the bolt, and moved the selector switch to full-auto. He set the rifle aside for a moment and looked up at his leader.

“Help me with him,” he said. “I must tape him up.”

Understanding, Pyragy managed to lift Nihemedow’s arms. The man’s resistance, and his strength, were fading fast. Soaked in blood and gore, Burdimedezov managed to wrap layer after layer of duct tape around Nihemedow’s stomach.