“Do it.”
Swanson pushed hard on the exterior door and when it flew open, he followed it around. Sybelle came out in a crouch, running the other way.
Three parachutists were coasting in a line of rectangular chutes, with the lowest one just about to touch down and eyeing the target zone rising beneath his feet.
“You take number one. I got the second guy,” Kyle yelled.
Sybelle ran toward the first man, closing the distance fast so that her pistol would have a chance. Beyond twenty-five meters she was toast. The guy was sailing fast and right toward her, helping resolve the distance equation, and did not see her until one of his comrades yelled a warning. By then, Sybelle was in a combat stance with her Glock sighted center-mass on the descending parachutist. She followed his drop for a few feet, then blasted almost a full magazine into him before breaking her stance and diving back into the protection of the stairwell as a burst of machine gun fire from the uppermost skydiver stitched the rooftop and the door behind her.
Kyle ran at an angle that kept the air-filled dark parachute of the body that Sybelle was shooting between himself and the next man in the set of paratroop assassins. Only a thin, silk wall of concealment, but better than nothing. Sybelle’s target collapsed when it touched down and the canopy lost its air, falling over the body like an instant shroud. Kyle saw that his target had drifted off to the right and was frantically working the toggles of his parachute to control the landing while simultaneously attempting to bring up an automatic rifle into a firing position. It was almost impossible to do both at the same time.
Swanson scrambled behind a small air-conditioning unit to get a little bit of cover as higher up and some thirty meters back, the final skydiver popped off a long burst of fire that chewed around Kyle, then stopped to control his own parachute, working the nine elliptical panels of his canopy to alter the final glide path away from unexpected danger below.
Swanson now could plainly see his target and sighted in with his Colt. Had the man been just a little farther away, the chances of hitting the falling, moving target with a pistol would have been only a fantasy, shooting on a wing and a prayer, but with the reduced distance, Kyle had him cold. The man wore a black full-face helmet and a black jumpsuit and a chest vest packed with extra magazines. Various grenades hung on his web harness. He was only ten meters away, looking across his right shoulder toward Kyle and trying to swing his rifle around but watching the big pistol tracking him, looking to be about the size of a cannon, and then Kyle opened fire.
He squeezed the trigger and ignored a return burst of machine-gun fire, the ricocheting,
THE SPACIOUS SUITE IN which Sir Geoffrey Cornwell lay immobile on a bed occupied the entire east end of the hall on the top floor of the clinic. It included the patient’s room and an adjoining private bathroom. The sterile look of the medical area ended at the doorway, for a comfortable sitting room separated the patient’s room from a second bedroom, giving the suite a hybrid look of being both a physician’s paradise and an elegant hotel. Everything had been considered during the design process except that the room might some day be the site of a last stand during a terrorist assault.
Jeff was a former colonel in the British SAS, but his normally sharp gray eyes were unfocused due to the light sedation and he could only see what was happening as if he were watching it underwater. Both legs were in casts and a thick bandage was wrapped around his head, a rubber tube leading from beneath the covering to drain fluid from the head injury. He had already undergone emergency surgery for internal bleeding caused by tiny fragments of stone.
Lady Pat, her own left arm in a sling, and both eyes circled by purple-green bruises, was seated beside the bed, gently stroking her husband’s cheek and whispering to keep him calm.
Delara Tabrizi stood just inside the open door, keeping the small pistol pointed at the floor. There was no option of moving Jeff to a more secure location, but the nurses pushed the bed out of the direct line of the doorway, and were busy adjusting the IVs and monitors.
Prince Abdullah, a tall, slender, handsome man wearing freshly pressed black trousers and a loose blue shirt instead of Arab robes, hobbled down the hallway toward the room, leaning on a cane with one hand and with the other upon the arm of his fifteen-year-old son, a younger version of himself. He smiled at her.
“Miss Tabrizi. Fully armed and dangerous,” he joked when he saw the small pistol.
“Mr. Ambassador. Please excuse me for having a weapon in your presence.” She gave a slight bow of her head in respect.
“Nonsense, Delara. That shooting we are hearing up on the roof means that your weapon is most welcome in our current situation.” He looked over the situation, shifted his attitude and took command.
“Let me have the pistol, Delara. I’m an old soldier. I will stand guard while you and my son and the nurses shift all the furniture you can just outside the doorway here to create an obstacle. Make sure the legs are pointed outward, toward any attacker. Lock the adjoining doors to the sitting room.”
The prince looked over at Sir Jeff. Lady Patricia could not smile back, and ever so slightly shook her head in dismay. Abdullah walked over and squeezed Jeff’s hand, then went back to the door, checked the pistol and knew it was really no protection at all against a military-style assault. The only open question was whether the man and woman who had gone charging up the stairwell were really capable of fighting trained terrorists. He shrugged and settled a shoulder against the doorframe.
KYLE SWANSON HUSTLED TO the small parapet that lined the edge of the roof, keeping his head low but still having to duck when a crisp three- shot burst of fire slashed into the concrete and sent big chips flying. He fired blindly twice over the edge, then carefully looking over it, he saw only a thick and spreading cloud of gray smoke. “He popped a smoke grenade! Probably going inside two floors down.”
Sybelle was rummaging through the equipment on the two dead terrorists, tearing off the H &K MP5 submachine guns and pulling spare magazines from the chest pouches. She gave one of the weapons to Kyle as he ran past and followed him back into the stairwell.
The intruder was disoriented. The firefight had forced him to land on the roof of the third floor of the clinic and his target was on the top floor. Under the smoke cloud, he kicked his way through the door of the adjacent building and found himself on the floor of a wide landing that led to the ascending staircase. With the MP5 tight against his shoulder, he moved slowly up the steps.
SWANSON HALTED BEFORE GOING beyond the landing on the fifth floor and whispered to Sybelle, “Don’t use the MP5s yet. We have to draw him out, so stay with the pistols. Make him think that’s all we have.” He cracked two rounds from his Colt.45 down the stairwell, the sound amplified by the enclosed, area, and the bullets gouged out chunks of the wall and whined away in wild ricochets.
The attacker below paused on his step, but did not see anyone, which meant the defenders had no clear line of sight and the firing was meant only to slow him down. A pistol, not an automatic. Move. He ascended two more steps and stopped at the middle landing, where the stairs zig-zagged higher. A blue door with a white number 4 painted on it was to his right. He leaned out and fired a short burst through the door to clear it, then another burst upward in retaliation for the few shots that had come down. Keep their heads down.
Kyle shifted back into the main corridor on the fifth floor and tucked into the slight recess of the elevator entrance, which provided partial concealment and a minimum of cover along the length of his body. On his call, Sybelle dashed out, closing the door behind her and then rolled over the flat counter of the vacant nurses’ station.
At the east end of the building, the doorway to Jeff’s room looked like a porcupine, with the legs of chairs and small tables pointing outward in a jumble of furniture that had been stacked to block entry. Kyle saw a few heads of people watching, and waved for them to get their heads down and take cover.
Almost as he signaled, the door to the fifth floor hallway was blown inward by a small amount of C-4 that the
