Brothers In Arms (36 page)

“C’mon, c’mon,” one man muttered, bracing himself with one hand on the van’s roof.

The driver said, “Stand by.”

Dale and Charley stood on the corner across the street from where bin Faisal approached on foot. They watched with anticipation as the van began to slow down behind the unsuspecting terrorist leader.

“You ever seen this before?” Charley said.

“Not from this perspective,” Dale said. “Done it a couple of times.”

“Not me,” Charley said.

“It’ll be over before anyone knows what’s going on. Four guys, one for each arm and leg, throw him in the van, shut the door, and move out. They’re only a couple of seconds out of the van. They bag him, tag him with some tranquilizer, and move to the rally point while the cover vehicle blocks behind them. Clean and sweet.”

Charley looked up and down the street. “Couple of pedestrians, light traffic . . . should be a go.”

Dale pressed his elbow against the pistol concealed beneath his light windbreaker. “Let’s do this thing,” he said, touching his teeth to his lip. “We’re good to go.”

The two November Seventeenth assassins following Hans’s streetwalkers split up. One jogged across the street, nimbly dodging traffic; the other continued on his side of the street. The two men exchanged glances, then moved in quickly on their prey. They fell into step, closing in behind their chosen targets, then drew their Skorpion
machine pistols, lengthened with a dull silver silencer, from beneath their baggy windbreakers.

They fired just as Hans’s operators looked back over their shoulders.

The only sound was the clatter of the bolt and the tinkle of spent casings striking the sidewalk. At short range, the machine pistols poured 750 rounds per minute into the surveillance streetwalkers. Both of them dropped instantly, their backs mottled with holes that spouted blood across the sidewalk. After pausing for a moment to put a short burst into the downed operator’s head, the November Seventeenth shooter jogged back across the street to meet his partner. They both began running down the block in the same direction as Ahmad bin Faisal.

A short distance behind them, Costas and Anna pulled up beside the four-door Fiat sedan they were following. Just as the driver looked over, Anna leaned out the window, the mini-Uzi in her fist, and fired a long burst into his head and shoulders. The Fiat veered to the right and crashed to a stop against a parked Audi. Costas stomped on his brakes, and Anna jumped out, changing magazines as she went. The surveillance man in the passenger-side front seat threw up his hands as though he could block the bullets that came through the windshield. Anna fired from almost contact distance through the glass, putting a long burst into the face and skull of the surveillance operator. She turned and coolly reloaded as she hurried back to the car and got in beside Costas, who rested his hand on the .45 tucked in his waistband.

“They’re done,” she said.

Costas scanned the road ahead, the cars slowing to see what had happened, and saw in the rearview mirror his two shooters running from their killing.

“Here is Stavrous and Dimitri,” he said.

The two men threw themselves into the backseat, their weapons out.

“Go! Go!” the first one shouted.

“Calm yourself,” Costas said, jerking the wheel sharply and
accelerating into the street. “We’ll pull ahead of the Arab and see if there are any others left.”

He pulled wide around a Chevy Suburban with blacked-out windows and a slow-moving delivery van.

The
DOMINANCE RAIN
operator behind the wheel of the van saw the whole thing. “Who the fuck is that? They hit somebody right back there!”

He tilted his head and snapped into the hands-free microphone. “Charley-Two, this is Charley-One, we have unknown shooters engaging targets in the street, Zero, do you copy?”

From a block away, slightly uphill, which gave them a good vantage point, Charley and Dale watched the shooting unfold. Dale leaned forward, his weight on the balls of his feet, and reached beneath his coat for his pistol.

“They’re coming this way,” he said. “Get the cover car to block them, we can take them on the street.”

Charley reached out and took Dale by the arm. “Don’t go out there!”

Dale shrugged off his hand, drew his pistol, and, holding it under the open front of his jacket, crossed the street, dodging cars like a football receiver dodged blockers.

“Shit!” Charley said. He drew his own pistol and began to pick his way across the street, following in Dale’s wake.

In the back of the delivery van, the
DOMINANCE RAIN
team leader, his words terse but carefully controlled, said, “Where’s the target?”

The driver said, “He’s stopped on the sidewalk.”

“We take him now,” the team leader said.

The driver nodded in assent, then said, “Stand by!”

He slammed on his brakes and the van shuddered to a stop. In
the back, the door man yanked the door open and the four-man snatch team exploded out, two of them scrambling across the hood of a parked car to get at the Arab, frozen with fear on the sidewalk. Bin Faisal barely had time to turn his head away before a beefy forearm struck the nerve plexus in the side of his neck and hard hands grabbed at his arms and legs.

In the November Seventeenth car, Anna gripped the dashboard with one hand to steady herself and said, “They are taking him now!”

Costas cut the wheel sharply to the right and pulled in front of the van at a forty-five-degree angle.

“Take them!” he said.

The back doors opened and the two shooters in the rear sprang out. Anna opened her door and followed them. Costas set his foot on the brake, then drew his pistol, keeping his free hand steady on the steering wheel.

The
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operator behind the wheel of the delivery van barely had time to raise his weapon before Anna fired a long burst into his face. That stopped the van for the time being. She circled around the front of the van while her two partners went around to the rear. On the sidewalk four men struggled with bin Faisal. She closed on them, her weapon steady in her hands, coming to nearly contact distance so as to be sure not to hit her fellow terrorists. The nearest man to her saw her and turned suddenly, letting go his grip on bin Faisal’s leg, rushing her and grabbing her weapon. He forced the muzzle away from his chest and into the air. Her short burst went into the sky. Anna gripped the mini-Uzi fiercely and drove her knee into the man’s groin. She pulled one hand from his iron grip and raked at his eyes while she drove her knee again and again into his groin. He was big and strong and she was losing the tug-of-war for her weapon, but still she hung on, determined not to let go. She clawed harder at his eyes, and his grip loosened for just a moment,
just long enough for Anna to lever the muzzle back on-line with the man’s thick chest and squeeze the trigger. The five-round burst tore into his chest. The mortally wounded operator fell back a step, stumbled, then went to one knee. Anna put her weapon to his head and squeezed off a short burst into his skull.