Power Grab

“Tape his hands to the rifle,” Pyragy said.

Burdimedezov looked up at him, then back to his injured colleague, but did as he was instructed. At his leader’s direction, he propped Nihemedow up on the bench facing the corridor down which the guard had disappeared.

“They will come from that direction.” Pyragy nodded. They could hear the faint wail of sirens in the background now, and knew that the battle was coming. “Take position over there, by that archway. I will conceal myself near the planter once more. Our enemy may be police, and may be their special weapons and tactics personnel. If it is the latter we have much less chance…but if the former, we can shoot our way through them. Be certain to shout slogans. Tell them that God is Great. Tell them you strike a blow with your rifle against the hated West. Anything you think they might overhear.”

“If we kill them all, such a tactic does nothing.”

“If we kill them all,” Pyragy said, “God truly is great. Is Kanzi even awake?”

“He may be dead,” Burdimedezov said quietly.

“Then he will draw their fire and do his part anyway,” Pyragy said grimly. They could hear the sound of glass and metal crashing, echoing down the empty mall hallways. “They have entered the building. Make ready.”

When he saw the AR-15-pattern rifles, the helmets and the body armor, Pyragy knew that their chances were not good. He had hoped the first line of response would be city police officers, but this was a tactical response team. They were better armed and better trained, and they far outnumbered Pyragy’s team.

Burdimedezov, from his position in the arch, opened fire.

The hollow-metal clatter of the Kalashnikov filled the hallway. The first of the charging law-enforcement officers was stitched across his chest, the rounds knocking him down with a grunt. Burdimedezov began spraying the floor around the man, raising churning debris from the polished floor, trying to finish his enemy. It was possible the 7.62 mm rounds had penetrated the man’s vest, but this was not ensured, and thus Burdimedezov hoped to hedge his bets.

The distinctive sound of the lighter 5.56 mm rounds fired from AR-15s filled the corridor, deafening in their overlapping thunder. Pyragy was driven back behind his planter as several rounds found him and chipped away at his dubious cover. He looked around the corner of the planter with one eye, squinting against the dust and grit flying through the air, and saw Burdimedezov leave his place. Fate bless the man, he was screaming about God and capitalists and even the United States President. If they were not all going to die doing this, Pyragy would want to put the man up for a commendation.

Burdimedezov charged the enemy, heedless of the danger. He was shot in the stomach and doubled over, falling to his knees. Struggling to bring up his AK-47, he managed to trigger a final burst from the kneeling position.

Someone shot him in the head.

The big man’s forehead opened up and his head snapped back, folding him over awkwardly, still kneeling. He looked, to Pyragy, as if he might be praying.

Kanzi Nihemedow had not moved during all of this. Several bullets had found him. He had jerked in place as his body was hammered this way and that, never once making an attempt to raise the weapon taped into his fists. Pyragy closed his eyes for a moment, crouching behind the planter. There had been in his mind the dim hope that Nihemedow might yet live, at least long enough to die heroically. Instead he had died before the fight had begun…his entrails leaking from him thanks to a single civilian American. It was galling. Pyragy vowed he would never tell Nihemedow’s family how this had occurred.

He realized then that there was a chance for him to survive this, perhaps to fight another day. The American justice system was as weak as the Americans themselves. He would be given a lawyer. He would even be read his rights. He could use the many opportunities they would give him, to talk and to talk and to talk, and he could further obfuscate the true reason for the mission as he did so. He would spin the Americans fanciful yarns about his terror cell. Weeks into all of this, the bomb would explode for maximum effect, long forgotten, and only then would the stupid Westerners understand the true reason this attack had taken place.

“I surrender!” he shouted at the top of his lungs in English. “Please, do not shoot! I surrender!” He placed his Kalashnikov on the floor and kicked it away from him, watching it slide some distance before it stopped.

The gunfire continued for a few seconds before shouts of “Cease fire!” and “Hold your fire!” began to echo through the hallway. The men who faced Pyragy kept their distance, maintaining cover, wary of some trick. Pyragy did not kid himself. A sniper would be lining him up for a shot the second he stuck his head out from behind the planter. He would not let them assassinate him. It was said among his people that American police often simply killed their victims this way, after a surrender. Weak as they were, they were also corrupt, and the Americans could not be trusted not to murder unarmed men, women and children if given the opportunity. Some small part of Pyragy’s brain wondered if perhaps the bomb he had just planted in this shopping mall would not also kill unarmed men, women and children…but he crushed that thought before it could grow too loud.

“I wish to surrender,” Pyragy yelled again. “I am unarmed. I have thrown away my weapon. Do not kill me.”

“Come out with your hands on your head,” someone shouted back. “Interlace your fingers. Make no sudden moves.”

“I want assurances,” Pyragy shouted. “I will testify. But I want assurances!”

There was no response to this. Finally the instructions to come out with his hands up were repeated. Pyragy knew that he had only a few moments before they started throwing tear gas or perhaps even stun grenades, if they were equipped with such weapons.

He needed to keep his wits about him. He needed to put on a masterful performance, in fact, if he were to carry out his new plan. Perhaps his people would bargain for his release at some subsequent point…or perhaps, when the attacks began in earnest, his release would be demanded as a condition that the bombings stop. He could not dwell on that now. Now, all that mattered was living through this and making sure his enemies focused on him and his dead teammates. They must not suspect the bomb was here.

He glanced back to where he had concealed the device. He hoped again that moving it prematurely had not ruined things.

“All right,” he shouted back. “I am coming out. Please do not shoot.”

A high-pitched whine made him turn, again, toward where he had hidden the bomb.

Three metal spheres, propelled by charges of compressed gas, burst upward into the air, one after the other.

“No—” Pyragy had time to say.

And then there was no more time, ever.

CHAPTER ONE

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

Barbara Price, Stony Man Farm’s mission controller, seated herself at the large conference table in the War Room, smoothing the slitted thigh-length skirt of the business suit that did nothing to hide her contours. The honey-blonde, model-beautiful Price did not look as if she had been awake since the earliest hours of the morning, but then neither did Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman. As the Farm’s cybernetics expert propelled himself into the room, turning smartly with a practiced motion of his wheelchair, he looked bright-eyed and alert. Clutched in one massive hand was an oversize insulated aluminum travel mug that was, no doubt, freshly filled with his stomach-roiling house blend of overpowering coffee. Kurtzman busied himself with the uplink controls set in the wall next to the giant plasma screen that dominated that end of the briefing room.

The men of Phoenix Force and Able Team filed in moments later, talking quietly among themselves or, in the case of Able Team leader Carl Lyons, sitting stone-faced and watching the room with cold blue eyes while silently sipping coffee from a disposable cup. The big, blond ex-cop, who had more than earned the nickname “Ironman” from his teammates, was flanked by Able Team members Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz and Rosario Blancanales.

Schwarz, who pushed his wire-framed glasses up on his nose while reaching for a coffee cup of his own, was a computer expert in his own right. He was also a veteran field operative. Many enemies had underestimated the slim, unassuming Schwarz…and had died because of it. Blancanales, for his part, looked calm and confident. He always did. The gray-haired, dark-eyed, soft-spoken Hispanic, a former Black Beret, was known among the men as “the Politician” for his ease with blending in with others, making them believe what he needed them to believe.

David McCarter, team leader of Phoenix Force, seated himself next to Blancanales and gave him a neighborly jab with one elbow, uncharacteristically cheerful by his usual standards. He emptied the aluminum can of Coca-Cola from which he was drinking and set it on the table with a loud, metallic ring. The lean, fox-faced Briton, a former SAS commando, had changed considerably in his time as leader of Phoenix, Price thought. While still something of a hothead, he took his job seriously and had led his fellow counterterrorist operatives to victory in mission after dangerous mission.

The other Phoenix Force veterans filled the opposite side of the conference table. There was Rafael Encizo, the stocky, well-built Cuban-born guerilla expert. Next to him hulked Gary Manning, the burly, square-jawed Canadian who served as Phoenix Force’s demolitions expert. A former antiterrorist operative with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Manning was the sort of solid, dependable soldier Price was always glad to have on hand. He was quiet, stable and more than willing to speak his mind if it was necessary.

To Manning’s left sat Calvin James, the lanky knife fighter and former SEAL who would always be the son of Chicago’s mean streets. Price mentally chided herself for indulging in such poetic phrasing, even privately. Still, looking at James and watching the muscles play under his dark skin, it was hard not to see him as some kind of predatory animal. Easygoing as he was, he was one of the most dangerous men she had ever met, and that was saying something, considering the company he kept. It occurred to Price that she sat in a room with some of the most experienced warriors on the face of the Earth. There was just one exception, and she would see him soon enough, when he returned from whatever mission had called him away most recently.

Beyond James, just pulling out a chair for himself, was T. J. Hawkins, formerly of the Army Rangers and the youngest member of Phoenix Force. Hawkins’s Southern drawl and easy manner belied his abilities as a fighter. He could hold his own with any of the men of Able Team or Phoenix Force, which was why he had been added to the latter’s ranks.

Also on hand was Akira Tokaido, the brilliant computer hacker who, with Carmen Delahunt and Huntington Wethers, formed the rest of Kurtzman’s cybernetics contingent. Tokaido took the chair next to where Kurtzman was stationed and placed an item on the table in front of them both. The device was about the size of a large universal remote control and bore several LEDs, buttons and knobs, all labeled in neatly printed black permanent marker.

Price unfolded her slim notebook computer, waiting as it connected wirelessly to the secured network that controlled the flat plasma screens on the wall of the briefing room. As she did so, the careworn face of Hal Brognola suddenly appeared on the screen at the end of the room. Larger than life-size, the face of the director of the Sensitive Operations Group stared out at them with hound-dog sincerity from behind his desk, the scrambled transmission emanating from his office on the Potomac. The big Fed was chewing something, which Price knew was probably an antacid. Dark circles under his eyes betrayed the sleepless night he had no doubt just had.

Not for the first time, Price wondered if Brognola’s job was slowly killing him. The man from Justice answered directly to the President, but the covert antiterrorist organization that was Stony Man Farm—from the hidden base in Shenandoah National Park, where they now sat, to the network of resources and assets that included the black-operations soldiers sitting in front of her now—was Brognola’s baby before it was anyone’s. The troubles of the world rested squarely on Brognola’s shoulders before they weighed down anyone else.

“Good morning, Hal,” Price said.

Brognola huffed something that might have been a “good morning” of his own. He was looking away from the camera and thus from the microphone when he did it. He found the papers he was looking for and then looked into the lens of his own camera again. “Let’s get started,” he said.

Price nodded and then looked to Kurtzman, who lowered the lights in the War Room by fifty percent. Price tapped several keys on her notebook computer. The plasma screens on the walls that did not bear Brognola’s image came to life with the pictures of three men.

“Now there’s a respectable-looking lot,” McCarter muttered.

“You’re looking at Nargoly Pyragy, Kanzi Nihemedow and Gandosi Burdimedezov,” Brognola said. “Turkmen nationals who, according to our intelligence networks, were part of a terror network run by the recently ‘elected’ leader of Turkmenistan, officially known as ‘President for Life Nikolo Ovan.’”

“‘Were’?” Hawkins drawled.

“Were.” Brognola nodded. “Because just over eight hours ago, they blew themselves up rather spectacularly in a shopping mall in upstate New York.”

Price tapped more buttons and the images shifted to show video footage of a sea of police cars, fire engines, emergency vehicles and SWAT vans parked in front of the blackened entrance to what could have been a shopping center in any part of the United States. A sharp-eyed Calvin James sat forward in his seat.

“Why am I seeing hazmat response teams in that shot, Hal?” he asked.