Corporal Mole cringed to see his rearview mirror filled with the sideways truck body, but it got no closer, and he swerved left to make sure it didn't overtake him. He allowed the car to slow now, watching the mirror as the Volvo truck rolled like a child's toy, shedding pieces as it did so.
'Jesuchristo!' Ding gasped, turning to watch. What could only have been a human body was tossed clear, and he saw it slide up the blacktop and pinwheel slowly as it proceeded forward at the same speed as the wrecked truck.
'Stop the car!' Clark ordered.
Mole did better than that, coming to a stop, then backing up to within a few meters of the wrecked truck. Chavez jumped out first, pistol in both hands and advancing toward the vehicle. 'Bear, this is Chavez, you there?'
'Bear copies,' came the reply.
'See if you can get the car, will ya? This truck's history, man.'
'Roger that, Bear is in pursuit.'
'Colonel?' Sergeant Nance said over the intercom.
'Yeah?'
'You see how they did that?'
'Yeah-think you can do the same?' Malloy asked.
'Got my pistol, sir.'
'Well, then it's air-to-mud time, people.' The Marine dropped the collective again and brought the Night Hawk to a hundred feet over the road. He was behind and downsun from the car he was following. Unless the bastard was looking out the sunroof, he had no way of knowing the chopper was there.
'Road sign!' Harrison called, pulling back on the cyclic to dodge over the highway sign telling of the next exit on the motorway.
'Okay, Harrison, you do the road. I do the car. Yank it hard if you have to, son.'
'Roger that, Colonel.'
'Okay, Sergeant Nance, here we go.' Malloy checked his speed indicator. He was doing eighty-five in the right outside lane. The guy in the Jag was leaning on the pedal pretty hard, but the Night Hawk had a lot more available power. It was not unlike flying formation with another aircraft, though Malloy had never done it with a car before. He closed to about a hundred feet. 'Right side, Sergeant.'
'Yes, sir.' Nance slid the door back and knelt on the aluminum floor, his Beretta 9-mm in both hands. 'Ready, Colonel. Let's do it!'
'Ready to tank,' Malloy acknowledged, taking one more look at the road. Damn, it was like catching the refueling hose of a Herky Bird, but slower and a hell of a lot lower…
Grady bit his lip, seeing that the truck was no longer there, but behind him the road was clear, and ahead as well at the moment, and it was a mere five minutes to safety. He allowed himself a relaxing breath, flexed his fingers on the wheel, and blessed the workers who'd built this fine fast car for him. Just then his peripheral vision caught something black on his left. He turned an inch to look-what the hell-
'Got him!' Nance said, seeing the driver through the left rear passenger-door window and bringing his pistol up. He let it wait, while Colonel Malloy edged another few feet and then-resting his left arm on his knee, Nance thumbed back the hammer and fired. The gun jumped in his hand. He brought it down and kept pulling the trigger. It wasn't like on the range at all. He was jerking the gun badly despite his every effort to hold it steady, but on the fourth round, he saw his target jerk to the right.
The glass was shattering all around him. Grady didn't react well. He could have slammed on the brakes, and that would have caused the helicopter to overshoot, but the situation was too far outside anything he'd ever experienced. He actually tried to speed up, but the Jaguar didn't have all that much acceleration left. Then his left shoulder exploded in fire. Grady's upper chest cringed from nerve response. His right hand moved down, causing the car to swerve in that direction, right into the steel guardrail.
Malloy pulled on the collective, having seen at least one good hit. In seconds, the Night Hawk was at three hundred feet, and the Marine turned to the right and looked down to see a wrecked and smoking car stationary in the middle of the road.
'Down to collect him?' the copilot asked.
'Bet your sweet ass, son,' Malloy told Harrison. Then he looked for his own flight bag. His Beretta was in there. Harrison handled the landing, bringing the Sikorsky to a rest fifty feet from the car. Malloy turned the lock on his seat-belt buckle and turned to exit the aircraft. Nance jumped out first, ducking under the turning rotor as he ran to the car's right side. Malloy was two seconds behind him.
'Careful, Sergeant!' Malloy screamed, slowing his advance on the left side. The window was gone except for a few shards still in the frame, and he could see the man inside, still breathing but not doing much else behind the deployed air bag. The far window was gone as well. Nance reached into it, found the handle and pulled it open. It turned out that the driver hadn't been using his seat belt. The body came out easily. And there on the backseat, Malloy saw, was a Russian-made rifle. The Marine pulled it out and safed it, before walking to the other side of the car.
'Shit,' Nance said in no small amazement. 'He's still alive!' How had he managed not to kill the bastard from twelve feet away? the sergeant wondered.
Back at the hospital, Timothy O'Neil was still in his van wondering what to do. He thought he knew what had happened to the engine. There was a three-quarter-inch hole in the window on the left-side door, and how it had managed to miss his head was something he didn't know. He saw that one of the Volvo trucks and Sean Grady's rented Jaguar were nowhere to be seen. Had Sean abandoned him and his men? It had happened too fast and totally without warning. Why hadn't Sean called to warn him of what he did? How had the plan come apart? But the answers to those questions were of less import than the fact that he was in a van, sitting in a parking lot, with enemies around him. That he had to change.
'Lieber Gott,' Weber said to himself, seeing the wounds. One Team-1 member was surely dead, having taken a round in the side of his head. Four others right here were hit, three of them in the chest. Weber knew first aid, but he didn't need to know much medicine to know that two of them needed immediate and expert attention. One of those was Alistair Stanley.
'This is Weber. We need medical help here at once!' he called over his tactical radio. 'Rainbow Five is down!'
'Oh, shit,' Homer Johnston said next to him. 'You're not foolin', man. Command, this is Rifle Two-One, we need medics and we need them right the fuck now!'
Price heard all that. He was now thirty yards from the van, Sergeant Hank Patterson at his side, trying to approach without being seen. To his left he could see the imposing bulk of Julio Vega, along with Tomlinson. Off to the right he could see the face of Steve Lincoln. Paddy Connolly would be right with him.
'Team-2, this is Price. We have subjects in the van. I do not know if we have any inside the building. Vega and Tomlinson, get inside and check-and be bloody careful about it!'
'Vega here. Roger that, Eddie. Moving now.'
Oso reversed directions, heading for the main entrance with Tomlinson in support, while the other four kept an eye on that damned little brown truck. The two sergeants approached the front door slowly, peering around corners to look in the windows, and seeing only a small mob of very confused people. First Sergeant Vega poked a finger into his own chest and pointed inside. Tomlinson nodded. Now Vega moved quickly, entering the main lobby and sweeping his eyes all around. Two people screamed to see another man with a gun, despite the difference in his appearance. He held up his left hand.
'Easy, folks, I'm one of the good guys. Does anybody know where the bad guys are?' The answer to this question was mainly confusion, but two people pointed to the rear of the building, in the direction of the emergency room, and that made sense. Vega advanced to the double doors leading that way and called on his radio. 'Lobby is clear. Come on, George.' Then: 'Command, this is Vega.'
'Vega, this is Price.'
'Hospital lobby is clear, Eddie. Got maybe twenty civilians here to get looked after, okay?'
'1 have no people to send you, Oso. We're all busy out here. Weber reports we have some serious casualties.'
'This is Franklin. I copy. I can move in now if you need me.'
