length of fuse poked out of the cap on the end.
She lit the fuse.
One thousand one. One thousand two … Helen lobbed the pipe bomb down the stairwell. It bounced once on the landing, then rolled down the second flight of stairs — and out of her line of sight.
Move! Move! Move! She scrambled upright, kicked the fire door shut, and sprinted down the hall.
One thousand four. Now!
Helen rocketed around the corner at a full run and threw herself prone.
Thorn looked up and saw Helen skidding toward him.
One floor below, the pipe bomb exploded — sending the nails they’d buried inside the plastic explosive sleeting outward through a deadly arc.
WHAMMM.
The steel fire door banged open blown almost off its hinges by the blast. His ears rang … And then the breaching charge he’d rigged detonated.
WHUMMPPP.
This time the whole floor bucked up and down as the shock wave rippled through it. The door to the conference room flew out into the corridor and smashed into the opposite wall.
“Here we go!” Thorn yelled, extending a hand to help Helen to her feet. “You ready?”
She nodded tightly. “Yes!”
He whirled around and rushed back into the smoke-filled conference room. The chairs and tables that had once filled the room were piled in a jumble of broken, twisted wreckage in the corner. There was nothing left of the water-filled bag he’d used to tamp down the charge.
In fact, the only thing left in that spot was a scorched patch on the floor.
Thorn took a running leap and landed squarely on that charred, smoking section.
Dieter Schmidt, a onetime meteorological-officer in the East German Air Force, threaded his way through the knot of groggy, cursing pilots fumbling for their gear and boots amid a tangle of overturned cots and spilled duffel bags. The sudden commando raid had caught them all by surprise.
He clutched a handful of charts, thanking God that Ibrahim wanted his key personnel down below-out of harm’s way. The only trouble was that the stairs down to safety were right next to the stairs leading up to the floor above. And he could see two security guards crouched there — spraying the stairwell with rounds from their submachine guns.
Schmidt swallowed hard — trying to steel himself to make the dash past that opening. This was supposed to have been easy money, he reminded himself bitterly. Run a few weather predictions, keep them updated, and then collect a hundred thousand marks to stash in that rather meager pension fund of his … A white cylinder bounced down the stairs and rolled out onto the floor.
Some animal instinct prompted the meteorology officer to dive for cover.
WHAMMM.
A bright white flash strobed through the room — lighting every darkened corner for a single, dazzling, deadly instant.
Pieces of shrapnel shrieked outward from the explosion — tearing into everything in their path.
Half deafened by the blast, Schmidt raised his head cautiously.
The two guards were gone — blown into bloody rags by the full force of the explosion. Half the pilots around him were also down — stunned and bleeding. He saw one man staring in horror at a nail protruding out of the back of his open hand.
You should have ducked, the meteorologist thought smugly.
WHUMMPPP.
Schmidt buried his head in his hand and then lifted it again.
What the devil? He was soaked. Where in God’s name had all this water come from?
The meteorologist stared up at the ceiling in shock — just in time to see a large piece of it break away and come hurtling straight down on top of him.
Thorn hit the floor hard and rolled away — ignoring the pain stabbing through his ankles and legs. His pistol broke loose and skittered across the floor. The fall had been further than he’d anticipated — more like fifteen feet instead of ten. He was damned lucky he hadn’t sprained an ankle — or broken his neck.
Like the poor dumb son of a bitch he’d landed on.
The dead man’s eyes were open wide in stunned horror — staring sightlessly up through a pair of crushed, wire-frame glasses.
His head lay cocked at a sickening angle.
Helen dropped through the opening, landed on the smoking pile of debris, and rolled in the other direction.
Thorn swore silently. He and Helen were smack-dab in the middle of a hornet’s nest. They’d come out right in the center of a huge open space — not an isolated, enclosed room as he’d hoped. And there were people all around them. Most appeared to be armed.
Sooner or later these bastards were going to realize their enemies had jumped right into their midst. And when they did, all hell was going to break loose. Like right about now … It was too late to retrieve his pistol. He yanked the Winchester shotgun off his shoulder, flicked off the safety, and pumped the fore-end-chambering a 12- gauge round.
One of the men closest to him heard the sound and swung around.
“Mein—” Thorn saw the pistol in his hand and pulled the trigger — riding the recoil back and automatically pumping another shell into the Winchester’s chamber.
The sabot round he’d fired blew a big hole.clear through the German’s chest and blasted out his back in an impossibly large spray of blood and pulverized bone. The dead man flew backward and landed in a splayed heap beside an overturned cot.
Helen’s Beretta barked three times-knocking down another man, this one carrying a submachine gun.
The rest scattered — diving for cover behind cots or wriggling frantically away across the floor toward some of the doors that opened up into this one vast room. Panicked shouts in German and what sounded like Arabic echoed across the space.
A pistol round slammed into Thorn’s back and glanced off the Kevlar vest. A red-hot wave of pain washed through him. Christ.
He spun around and saw a figure crouched behind one of the COTS.
He fired. Pieces of bedding, metal frame, and flesh exploded away from where the sabot round struck home.
Thorn pumped the Winchester again and scanned their surroundings rapidly — frantically searching for a way out of this killing zone.
They were too damned exposed here.
He turned toward the south wall — toward the staircase Helen had tossed her pipe bomb down. There. Another fire door stood right beside the stairs leading up. He’d bet good money there was another staircase behind that closed door — and that those stairs led down.
Lying prone on the floor beside one of the men she’d just shot, Helen Gray spotted movement near the far wall. A man carrying a submachine gun had just come out of the room closest to the main entrance. He looked tough and totally unafraid.
Not good.
She fired twice. Both rounds hit her target squarely in the chest.
Incredibly, the other man stayed up and fired back with the submachine gun — calmly walking three-round bursts through the chaos in the middle of the room.
She flattened herself as bullets whipcracked past just inches to the right — tearing huge strips of linoleum from the floor. Body armor!
That son of a bitch had body armor on, too.
Without hesitating, Helen raised the muzzle of her Beretta slightly, altering the view over her front and rear sights. She squeezed the trigger.
