Hidden Agendas

then, a tracer left a glowing red trail in the darkness. Bad idea — tracers worked both ways—

Another bullet hit Howard on the torso. It felt like being whacked with a hammer.

Shit—!

* * *

Michaels took a deep breath, then pressed the button to lower the window with his left hand while he carefully pulled the taser from his belt with his right hand. The terrorist stepped right up to the car.

'Excuse me, officer,' Michaels said. 'What's the problem?'

Michaels already had his left hand on the door's latch. He took another deep breath, then stared off in the distance and saw a series of dim light flashes. That would be the attack on the compound.

'What the hell is that?' Michaels said, still looking into the distance.

The gunman must have caught a glint of light peripherally. He glanced away from Michaels to get a better look—

Michaels yanked the latch up, threw his weight against the door, and slammed it into the surprised gunman. It wasn't enough to knock him down, but it did rock him off balance.

'God damn—!' the man began. He flailed with the weapon and his empty hand, trying to catch his footing, but slid a little in the loose dirt on the road. He recovered a hair, enough so he could swing the assault rifle around—

Michaels pulled the door shut. A little too hard — the door's latch handle came off in in his hand — but he didn't have time to worry about that. He thrust his taser through the open window, pressed the laser aiming stud, saw the red dot on the center of the man's chest, and fired the weapon. It seemed to take eons—

The man jerked, juttered toward the car as the capacitor needles fed him however many thousand volts they held. The assault rifle nosed skyward and went off five or six times in one long noise— blaaaat! — flashing red-orange and making less noise than it seemed it should. The gunman spun to his left and corkscrewed, hit the dirt, and continued to spasm, the gun still gripped tightly in one hand but no longer firing—

Michaels couldn't open the door, since the handle had broken off in his hand, but he grabbed the window frame and hauled himself headfirst out of the car, did a sloppy dive and forward roll, and came up next to the downed man. He bent and jerked the AK-47 away from the gunman, then took two steps back and pointed the weapon at the man.

If this sucker tried anything, he was going to blast his sorry ass to kingdom come!

The tasered gunman didn't seem too interested in doing much of anything just at the moment.

Michaels exhaled out his held breath. Damn—

* * *

Howard looked at the man and woman who had opened up on him and Fernandez. Oddly enough, what he found himself thinking was: Tracers. Huh. Probably one every fifth or tenth round. What had they been doing out in the barn? Why hadn't somebody picked up their heat sigs?

Next to him, Julio turned and leveled his H&K subgun at the shooters.

Howard swung his own heavy weapon around—

'Shit!' Julio said. He dropped to one knee, his return fire chewing up the ground five meters in front of him. 'I'm hit,' he said. His voice was calm, as if he was talking about what he was going to have for breakfast.

One of the shooters must have armor-piercing rounds—

But they weren't using concealment or cover, just standing there hosing, so Howard V-stepped hard to his left, brought the Thompson up to a quick-kill point, and triggered a five-round burst at the man. Braap! Orange tongues lanced from the tommygun, and the Cutts compensator on the end of the barrel took part of the flaming orange and spewed it upward, forming a fiery letter 'L' in the darkness that helped keep the recoil down and the barrel from climbing too much.

Without waiting to see the effect on the man, he shifted his index to the woman. Braap!

The shooters collapsed, and the man beat the woman to the ground by maybe a half second.

Howard spun three-sixty, looking for more attackers. Clear. His heads-up showed him a strike-team suit signature as one of the sappers moved in toward the two downed terrorists. The sapper waved an 'I-got-‘em' at the colonel, who turned away.

'Julio?'

'I'm okay, John,' he said. 'Took it just above the knee, to the inside. I don't think it hit the bone. Of course, I could be wrong.'

'We have the objective,' Alpha's team leader said over the LOSIR. 'Eight terries down, Alpha Team secure, no casualties.'

Howard blew out a big breath. Thank God. He said, 'Copy, Alpha, good work. Doc, Julio took one in the leg. We're at the southwest corner of the chicken coop, get over here PDQ.'

He couldn't see them, but the term LOSIR was not strictly accurate — there was always a little bleed, enough to keep coms working when somebody ducked behind a tree or wandered off center.

Doc, the medic, rode with Delta. 'On the way, sir. Let me drop my passengers. Forty-five seconds. Go! Out, out!'

Thirty seconds later, Delta Team's vehicle, empty except for the driver, Doc, plowed right through a section of fence, slapped it flat, and skidded to a stop ten feet away. Doc bailed and ran to where Julio sat, both hands pressed against the hole in his armor.

Doc flicked his helmet spotlight on and used a suitcutter to open a big flap in the leg of the wounded sergeant's armor. He sliced away the pants leg to reveal the hole in the flesh. He bent the leg up and looked at the exit wound.

'Looks like twenty-caliber high-velocity hardball,' Doc said. 'Through-and-through, missed the bone, no expansion. Neat little hole about the size of a drinking straw, bullet hot enough to cauterize the wound. We'll have to clean out fibers. Otherwise, I don't see any problem.'

Doc grinned, leaned away from the leg, and looked at Fernandez. 'Jesus, some people will do anything to get a few days off.'

Fernandez said, 'You do what you have to do to get a break.'

Howard nodded, relieved. 'Let's hear it, people,' he said into the LOSIR.

The reports came in.

'A walk in the park, sir,' Alpha's team leader said. 'We make it six terries KIA, in the house, two wounded but still alive, two undamaged and in restraints. Objective is patent, no leaks, b.g. radiation levels normal. Send Doc on in when he gets a minute.'

'Nobody came out this way,' Delta's team leader said.

'Three terry guards down, one KIA, two slightly damaged,' the head of the sapper team said. 'They didn't lay a glove on our guys.'

'Hell, we've been watching paint dry back here,' Beta's team leader said. 'We coulda stayed home and seen it on TV for all we had to do. We won't even have to clean our weapons.' He sounded disgusted.

The sapper who had gone to check out the shooters in the barn came out carrying a big bunched sheet of heavy material, black on one side and silvered on the other. 'Found this in the barn, Colonel,' he said.

Howard looked at the sensor shroud and nodded. That was why nobody picked up a heat sig on the terrorists who'd been hiding in the barn. They'd been shielded. He'd thought about radar, but not about heat-sink camo. A mistake on his part, but fortunately not a fatal one.

Howard blew out a sigh. They had the stolen nuclear material and Julio was going to be okay. It could have been a lot worse.

Time to call Michaels.

'Commander?'

'Colonel. Everything okay?'

'Yes, sir. Objective achieved, terrorists neutralized, we have one minor injury on our side. Sergeant Fernandez picked up a little scratch.'

Sitting on the ground with his leg bandaged and an amp of dorph injected to kill his pain, Fernandez said,