sniper. It should have been a simple task but took a bad turn when the police reported the Marine had not been in the apartment. They were chasing him.
At the two-minute mark, Selim heard the explosion and looked out from his own apartment in time to watch the upper floor of the building where Jim Hall had been hiding disappear with sharp blasts and coiling smoke. Fire was already rising through that wreckage. That jarred him back to reality. He could wait no longer. Plans change. It did not matter whether Hall or the Marine or Taliban fighters or students studying the Koran or cops or soldiers were alive when overturning the government was the true goal. Anyone could be sacrificed. At four minutes, with still no report of a capture, he grabbed his cell phone and dialed number by number, then punched the SEND button.
For a moment, time seemed to stand still in the beautiful city of Islamabad. Soldiers on rooftops, people in the streets and in their homes and businesses, or on their knees at prayer, paused as their brains processed sudden new information that something dangerous was happening.
Waleed’s signal was received by a detonator planted among the boxes and crates of ammunition stacked in the big yard next to the crowded madrasah, and a spark jumped to complete a firing circuit. The jagged high hill of explosives erupted, and as the old sun disappeared for the night of September 30, a volcanic new sun of fire and destruction rose in the heart of the city.
21
COPS, SECURITY PERSONNEL, AND soldiers swarmed, throwing a cordon around the apartment block. Blockades of police cars with flashing light bars sealed the streets, and officers yelled directions to their men going into the buildings. Swanson swam easily against the tide, moving with the self- confidence of someone on a specific mission, just another uniform, and nobody stopped him. Every second counted. Just being out of the building did not mean he was safe, although it improved the odds.
He needed wheels. Beyond the first line of policemen guarding the inner perimeters were clusters of official cars that had parked haphazardly and been abandoned along the street. Chances were good that if the lights were blinking, some anxious driver would have left the motor running in his excitement to join the hunt. Ironically, Kyle realized that he was moving toward the same building where his targets had been standing on the balcony. Swanson methodically worked his way along the line of cars, placing his palm on the hood of each in turn to detect the vibration of an engine. The third one. An iron gray Nissan sedan with no insignia had been abandoned with its red and blue lights still winking brightly behind the grill. A disciplined officer would have shut down and locked the vehicle, but this one had not done so. Kyle knew his chances had just improved remarkably. Once through the cordon of cops, Kyle could drive like hell to reach the helicopter.
Swanson ducked into the driver’s seat and tossed his AK-47 into the passenger compartment. He closed the door and snapped the lock shut, and an automatic seat belt harness strapped across his chest. With one hand on the steering wheel, he glanced down to find the gear lever and shifted it into reverse. He looked in the rearview mirror. Clear. He gunned the accelerator.
In the next heartbeat, the entire car was snatched from the ground by a monstrous blow and twirled into the air like a toy by a scalding cyclone of superheated air.
The Nissan completely overturned while airborne, then corkscrewed back to earth, whipped by the concussion. It crashed once back onto the street, bounced, and rolled over twice more while skidding a hundred feet before coming to rest with a half-dozen other cars that were stacking against a building.
Kyle Swanson was unconscious, hanging upside down, suspended by the seat belt, and supported by inflated air bags. He never heard the explosions that rolled over him.
THE SUV THAT WAS carrying Jim Hall of the CIA also overturned when the concussion wave snatched it, and slid in a cascade of sparks on its side as debris smacked it like an unending barrage of mortar shells. A length of steel rod punched through the front window and stabbed the driver through the head.
The other agent in the car was dazed and groaned in pain. He could function. The man put his arms against the door that was now over his head and pushed with weightlifter strength until it popped free, then levered himself out of the wreckage.
Instead of disappearing in the chaos, running away to find safety, the agent turned back to the vehicle. He called out in broken English, “You alive?”
“Yeah,” Hall shouted. “Help me out of here.” He had been hurled against the seats and was torqued into a tight corner, trapped by twisted metal.
“I am coming.” The large man ignored the blood streaming down his own face and put his big muscles back to work, hurling away chunks of material and digging with his bare hands. The explosions thundered. He found the American at the bottom of the car, twisted and caught in a corner. The agent needed leverage. He squeezed into the backseat, put his feet against the front seat and his back against the rear, and pushed hard and steadily. There was strong resistance, but he continued to push, grunting with effort, and felt some give. Then came a sharp snap as a weakened metal strut broke, and the rear seat catapulted backward.
Hall felt the pressure ease against him. “That’s it.” He could move again. He squirmed up and grabbed the man’s beefy hand. The Taliban agent clamped onto his wrist and hauled him free. Hall stood and wiped his face. Around him lay a wrecked moonscape, and more explosions were rocking the area every minute. “Thanks, big guy. I owe you one. You know a way out of here?”
“Yes. Follow.” The big man was breathing hard, still bleeding from his nose and both ears and from a corner of his mouth. Hall guessed there was some internal damage, probably to the lungs, but said nothing. They dodged around a fallen tree and ran for safety.
THE BLAST LIFTED THE fleeing Land Rover several feet into the air, as if it had been picked up by an angry child, while the momentum kept it moving forward, flying until the extreme weight of the vehicle pulled it back down. Staff Sergeant Travis Stone was slammed against the door, with his head ricocheting off the window, and he saw stars as he fought the steering wheel. The armored SUV bounced down hard, swerved onto a sidewalk, and clipped a wall. The strong engine howled as Stone gunned it. Darren Rawls, holding on with both hands, stared back wide-eyed at the carnage in their wake. “Jesus H. Christ,” he muttered.
Entire apartment buildings were cascading down in a slow landslide of concrete and glass and metal. On the street, cars overturned, the sidewalks buckled, and other walls crumpled, then fell, and a hundred fires bloomed. Bodies lay in the street, and wounded people struggled to get away from a deadly hail that began to fall when the storehouse of antitank rockets and mortar shells ignited and spun without direction into other parts of the city. The missiles blasted into private homes, businesses, public parks, foreign embassy compounds, and hotels with equal savagery. A jagged piece of black metal blew directly over the hood of the Land Rover and sliced into a parked truck like a giant arrow. Stone kept his foot hard on the accelerator and roared on toward the edge of the city, dodging fires and wreckage. The newly dark sky boiled in crimson orange. Ruptured underground water mains spouted like fountains. Tidal waves of scalding air were being sucked through the streets, feeding the developing firestorm.
“What happened back there?” Stone yelled. “What the fuck, man?”
“Next left!” shouted Rawls, and Stone threw the Land Rover into a screeching ninety-degree turn. Loud booms jarred the area like an unending earthquake and shook their teeth. Debris banged against the vehicle like a hailstorm.
