Grappling with the steering wheel at the bottom of the ramp, trying to keep it from wrenching out of his hands, Zaheer suddenly tasted blood. Coppery blood in his mouth, coming up from deep inside his body. There was a moment of greater weakness, his consciousness fading to gray.
Then he remembered the mission, the glory, and summoned himself again.
Feeling God guide his hand, Zaheer swung off the ramp, and as his eyes cleared, realized he’d turned the wrong way onto the boulevard into which it fed and was shooting into oncoming traffic.
The bikes were pouring off the exit ramp behind the van when it took its wide, erratic swing against the rush of traffic, then suddenly went screeching around in a U-turn.
Ricci heard a cacophonous outburst of horns as the stream of cars and trucks skidded and parted, saw two cars sideswipe while unsuccessfully veering to avoid a collision. There were screeches, a sickening crash, and then the van looped back in the right direction, roaring toward Ricci and the others, forcing them to scatter out of its way as it plunged ahead through two red lights and then barreled down a side street.
Zaheer recalled the turns he’d made before, recognized the factories and corporate signs.
With the motorcycles behind him still, Zaheer pushed his foot against the accelerator, believing he would now have an advantage… if only an advantage of a few minutes. He had taken this route before — would the same be true for them?
A handful of minutes, yes. All he would need was minutes to hold them off. Minutes, and he could trigger the Dragonfly cannon.
Zaheer barreled down a street to his left, then took a right, a second right, another left, and at last saw Raja’s employee lot ahead. The evil droning song of the motorcycles had briefly grown fainter at his rear as he’d left the turnpike, but he could hear it growing louder again, and knew he would have no chance to reach the intersection with the abandoned gas station.
It did not matter.
Allah would give him what he needed.
As he sped up to the parking area’s entrance, he swung the U-Haul in past the factory workers’ cars to the chain-link fence dividing the outdoor lot from the HF storage area.
And then they were there before him, the tank clusters with their serpentine pipelines.
Zaheer spun the van around in a full circle, backed up to the fence, slammed his brakes.
Through his windshield, he could see the motorbikes turning into the lot. A single uniformed security guard jogged toward him from the factory to his right — fat, unsuspecting, that one posed the least threat of all.
Shifting the van into PARK, Zaheer started to reach for the Zastava pistol he’d stored in the glove box, but then changed his mind, choosing instead the MP5K submachine gun under his seat.
“Yo, mister!” the guard yelled, trotting up to the driver’s side of the van. “That’s a restricted area, can’t you read the
Able to hear him shouting through his window, Zaheer noticed he did not have a hand anywhere near his gun.
Fat. Complacent. They would not learn their lessons.
The guard had heard the buzzing of the cycles now. He turned his head briefly toward the parking area’s entrance, saw the motorcycles, looked back at Zaheer again.
“What the hell?” he said. “What the hell
Zaheer had no time to waste lowering his window — the cycles were approaching. He raised the MP5 and fired two three-round bursts directly through it into the guard’s face, wiping him from his sight.
Then, heedless of the shattered window glass that had blown over him in slivery piles, he slung the submachine gun over his shoulder, clambered back into the cargo section, threw himself on his stomach, and turned the cannon’s turretlike beam director toward the tanks.
Cutting across the lot in a straight line, the bikes broke formation as they reached the front of the stopped van, Ricci and Glenn swooping to the left, the two other remaining Sword ops taking its right flank.
Ricci hooked his bike around toward the rear section and had time enough to see that the cargo hatch was already raised, opened from within, before fans of gunfire began pouring out of it. He wrenched his handlebars, tailing away from the van to avoid the volleys, but one of the ops on its other side was slower by a hair to react. Bullets cut into him and he went into a tailspin, spilling from his seat as his attack cycle crashed into the divider fence.
He halted the bike at the side of the van, booted down its kickstand, and lunged off his seat, crouching low, pulling his variable-velocity snubnose automatic from under his leather jacket, switching the weapon to its lethal setting. Beside him, another motorbike also braked to a stop.
“Glenn?”
“Yeah.”
“Count of three, we get around back, open fire.”
“With you.”
“One, two—”
“Ricci.”
“What?”
“Check it out.”
“Check wha—”
Ricci looked. And realized what Glenn had been trying to get him to notice.
The firing from the rear of the van had stopped, and a submachine gun… an MP5, Ricci thought… lay on the ground behind its back bumper, its black grip glistening wet with blood.
Ricci turned to Glenn, made eye contact with him through his visor, nodded in silent communication.
Slowly, guardedly, their weapons at the ready, they edged along the side of the van with their backs flat against it, then hooked around to the open cargo section.
The driver lay sprawled over what looked like a small cannon turret on a mount the size of a small valise. He was face down on his belly, a pool of crimson underneath him, crimson all over the turret, all over the hand hanging limply from the open bay door. Mounted inside the cargo section were three readout and control panels, their flatscreen displays blank.
Ricci looked at Glenn.
Glenn looked at Ricci.
“Done,” Glenn said.
And they both lowered their weapons to their sides.
EIGHT
“Guess it ain’t too tough to figure why I’m here,” John Earl said, trying hard to stay on his feet a little longer.
Hasul Benazir looked at Earl from behind his desk at the Kiran office.
“Our deal,” he said.
Earl nodded.
“Our deal,” he affirmed. “Fifty grand up front, fifty on completion—”
