head. The bullet gouged concrete shards out of the stairwell wall and then tumbled away.
He stuck the SIG over the edge of the landing and squeezed the trigger twice firing blindly down the stairs. He yanked the weapon back without bothering to see if he’d hit anything.
The gunman below switched to full automatic and sprayed bullets back — ripping at the forward edge of the landing. Ricochets whirred everywhere — slamming into the walls, the ceiling, and the stairs. One smashed into his body armor hard enough to leave a bruise.
Thorn rolled away, frantically wiping the powdered concrete dust out of his eyes. Jesus! There was no way he was going to get down those stairs alive — not against that kind of firepower.
He spun around and threw himself back up the stairs almost as fast as he’d gone down them — clutching his left side where the stray round had hit him.
Helen grabbed him and pulled him through the door as a new burst of firing broke out below them. More submachine gun bullets lashed the stairwell wall and whirred away overhead. She patted him down frantically. “Are you all right?”
Still trying to catch his breath, he nodded.
“Thank God,” she said and then fired her own pistol down the stairs.
Thorn went prone beside her, and squeezed off another round — still firing blind. The aim now was to discourage the people below from trying to rush the stairs.
Another three-round burst of submachine gun fire spattered bullets across the pockmarked concrete.
“Any ideas?” Helen asked dryly, half shouting to be heard over the rising crescendo of gunfire.
Options raced fast through Thorn’s mind. He discarded most of them just as rapidly. Right now he and Helen were locked in a stalemate.
They couldn’t get down the stairs. And the bad guys couldn’t get up.
Ultimately, though, a stalemate worked against the two of them. The bad guys had more men, more weapons, and more ammunition. More to the point, time was on Ibrahim’s side. The longer the gun battle went on, the more time he would have to launch his weapons of mass destruction.
Ibrahim grabbed Talal’s shoulder and spun him around. “What do you mean there are intruders in the building?” he demanded.
“How many? Who are they?”
Still holding the phone, the other man shrugged. “It is impossible to say, Highness. One of the off-duty technicians spotted two strangers with weapons on the top floor. He escaped them and raised the alarm.
Fortunately two of our men were close enough to seal off the stairwell.”
His mind still reeling from the sudden bad news, Ibrahim snapped. “An enemy force still holds the roof and the upper floor?”
Talal nodded. “True, Highness. But we hold everything else. The control center is secure.”
Ibrahim forced himself to calm down. It would not do to show fear in front of his inferiors — especially not in front of Reichardt’s German hirelings. Besides Talal, the room held one of his Saudi security guards, an electronics technician, and one of the computer techs. The others — including his pilots — were all supposed to be in their quarters on the floors above, resting up before being summoned to their duty stations for the coming attack.
“Has the patrol we dispatched to search the woods reported in yet?” he asked finally.
“Yes, Highness. A moment ago. Schaaf says they’ve found nothing so far.”
Ibrahim pondered that.
If the American government had somehow learned of his plans and launched this commando raid, then why hadn’t they also attacked the men he’d deployed outside the secure perimeter? Leaving them unmolested didn’t make sense. His fingers drummed rapidly on one of the control consoles. “This technician says he saw two intruders? Only two?”
Talal nodded.
It must be the two Americans — Thorn and Gray. It had to be them. He couldn’t imagine how they had bypassed all his alarm systems, but there was no other reasonable explanation. Somehow they’d evaded the FBI, and now they had the audacity to attack him directly.
He shook his head. Two lone wolves against his guard force and all the armed technicians. It was madness.
“Order Schaaf to recall the patrol!” Ibrahim ordered.
“Highness.”
“And I want the pilots and other control center personnel to report for duty — now!”
Ibrahim watched Talal turn back to the phone to relay his instructions.
He would let the professionals deal with Thorn and Gray, while he and the rest of the experts he needed to launch the strike waited safely here below.
Thorn fired down the stairwell again, ejected the SIG’s spent magazine, and slammed in a new one. He put his mouth close to Helen’s ear. “I need your package.”
She nodded, rolled away from the door, and quickly sorted through her rucksack. She pulled out a plasticwrapped parcel and offered it to him. “Opting for brute force?”
He took it and then shook his head. “Not quite. Here’s the plan …”
He hurriedly sketched out his idea and then sent another three 9mm rounds winging down the stairwell.
“Not bad,” Helen said, wriggling back into position. “It might even work.”
Thorn grinned at her and then started to crawl back down the hallway, lugging his rucksack behind him. “Keep the bastards pinned down for me!”
“No sweat.”
He crawled backward until he was out of the line of fire, scrambled to his feet, and sprinted down the hall toward the door to the conference room. He threw open the door and darted in side.
Tables and chairs dotted the carpeted room. A water cooler and coffeepot sat in one corner.
Thorn scanned the layout quickly — checking for obvious structural supports. If he did this wrong, he could bring down the whole floor.
Satisfied that he had the right spot, he tossed a table and two folding chairs out of his way and knelt down.
He unwrapped the package Helen had given him — revealing a half-pound brick of homemade plastic explosive.
More gunfire erupted back near the stairwell — the higher-pitched stutter of enemy submachine guns mixed with the slower, steadier bark of Helen’s Beretta.
Moving as fast as possible, Thorn tore the brick into two roughly equal lumps, and then did the same with the second half-pound brick of plastic explosive he retrieved from his own rucksack.
He eyed the lumps carefully. Close enough, he decided. He slapped the lumps down on the floor — outlining the four corners of an approximately three-by-three box — and then connected them with Primacord and detonators. Satisfied, he rocked back on his heels and checked his watch. Sixty seconds had gone by.
One more detail to attend to, Thorn thought to himself, without which his rigged charges would make a nice loud bang, blow the hell out of the room, set a few fires — and do little else but scorch and shred the carpet. He hauled a large, plastic leaf bag out of the rucksack and moved toward the water cooler and coffeepot.
One after the other, he sloshed the contents of both into the leaf bag and then tied it off.
Thirty seconds more gone.
He dragged the liquid-filled bag over on top of the plastic explosives.
It would tamp the explosion-directing most of the blast downward. The water should also help suppress any fires he started.
“Delta Two, this is One. I’m set,” Thorn radioed.
“On my way,” Helen said.
He grabbed the rucksack, slung it over his back, lit the end of the Primacord, and raced out into the hallway — slamming the conference room door shut behind him.
Peter’s signal galvanized Helen into action. She thrust her pistol back into its holster and took one of the plastic-tube pipe bombs he’d manufactured out of her rucksack. It contained almost half a pound of explosive. A
