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“You want our people to try to follow him?”
Hell yes, he did. More than anything. He wanted them to track him to his safe house and then he wanted to kick down the door and look into his eyes before splattering his brains all over the wall. But one of his people was already down. That was enough.
“Negative. No one gets anywhere near this guy. Is that understood?”
“Copy that. We’re letting him walk.”
Another shot came from below, this time hissing past his right ear. Rapp turned and fired five rounds in rapid succession, each one coming within inches of one of the five armed men in the street. They all scrambled for cover as Rapp turned and ran crouched toward a sturdy-looking ventilation pipe.
He tied the end of the rope still running through his harness around the base and then played out some slack. With the guns below still silent, he ran toward the edge of the roof, launching himself over the low wall bordering it and into the air. The rope caught him with a spine-wrenching jerk about fifteen feet down. He released his brake hand and dropped the rest of the way, hitting the concrete rolling, and coming to his knees behind a parked car.
“I’m on the ground and heading for the warehouse,” he said into his throat mike.
“Copy that,” Maslick came back. “I see you. The front’s locked and you’ve got a lot of company out there. Scott got in through the alley on the southeast side.”
“Copy.”
Rapp came up over the hood of the car and fired a few more well-placed rounds, punching holes in the vehicles, walls, and street signs the Pakistanis were using for cover. Nothing close enough to cause injuries, but plenty close to get everyone thinking about just how important their job was to them.
Despite the hundreds of garbage bags rotting in the heat, the entrance wasn’t hard to find. The lock had already been shattered by Coleman’s Sig, so Rapp pushed the door open and slipped though.
Predictably, the shooting started almost immediately. Automatic fire stitched a line of holes in the wall above, forcing him to stay low in the shadows. He moved right and dropped to the floor, landing exactly where Coleman had, based on the marks in the dust.
The HK rifle rounds impacted a hell of a lot harder than his Glock, so he didn’t bother going for his normal head shot. The first tango took a round to the chest, flipping backward over the crate he was standing in front of and disappearing behind it. The second was hit in the ribs and dropped like a bag of rocks when both lungs and his heart were punctured.
Rapp sprinted for the demolished office at the heart of the building. Coleman was lying on his back in the debris from the collapsed roof and shattered windows. His eyes were open but he didn’t so much as twitch when Rapp dropped the rifle next to him.
“Mitch,” Maslick said over his earpiece, “give me a sitrep.”
“I took out two tangos. They look like the last ones. Scott’s down. Stand by.”
“Down? Is he all right?”
“I said to fucking stand by.”
He pulled his Glock 30 from the fanny pack strapped around his waist and moved away from the office, crossing the shop floor while watching for movement. Once at the back, he stepped over the body of one of the men he’d shot and looked inside the open crate lying on the floor.
“I have the warhead, Mas. Drop me a cable and a box of ammo for your HK.”
“Copy that.”
Outside, the roar of the chopper intensified. Rapp threw open one of the bays and squinted against the dust being kicked up by the rotors. The civilians Maslick had been concerned about seemed to have fled, and Rapp went for the line descending from a reel in the helicopter’s open door. Weighted down with the metal ammunition box, it was easy to get hold of and he pulled it inside.
When he reached the crate, he found there was nowhere to connect the hook, only smooth steel and a garish depiction of the Pakistani flag. With no other option, he just wrapped the cable around the tail fins.
“All right,” he said into his throat mike. “Reel it in!”
The line went taut and he winced as the weapon started bouncing across the concrete floor. The CIA’s experts had told him these things were hard to set off and now he was going to find out if they were right. It hung up on the bay door for a moment and then went through, taking some of the frame with it.
“We’ve got it!” Maslick said. “And you’ve got a group of Pakistani cops and soldiers coming at you from the north. They’ve blown the lock on the front doors and are getting into position to open them.”
“Copy that. Now get that thing out of here.”
“What about you and Scott?”
“Go!” Rapp said, scooping up the ammo box and running back to Coleman. It turned out that he was still breathing, but in a shallow, labored way that Rapp had seen too many times before.
The sound of grinding metal rose up from the front of the building but he didn’t bother to look at what was causing it. Instead, he lifted Coleman into a fireman’s carry and grabbed the rifle and spare ammunition with his free hand.
