Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (80 page)

           
The MV-22 came in fast, then swung
quickly to a low hover over the first smoking hole they had just created. Door
gunners suppressed machine-gun fire from more rooftop security guards while the
rear cargo ramp of the tilt-rotor motored down, and eight men in dark gray
electronic battle armor, composite microhydraulic exoskeletons, and electromagnetic
rail guns marched from the belly of the tilt-rotor aircraft.

 
          
One
of the commandos felt bullets ricochet off his armor and instinctively dropped
down and tried to take cover. “Don’t try to cover from small-arms fire unless
your power drops below twenty percent,” Hal Briggs radioed over their secure
commlink. “And don’t waste projectiles on infantry, or doors and walls your
sensors can see through. We do different tactics here, gents: You work alone,
you work quickly, and you let the armor defend you and feed you information.
Follow the position signals, check every room. Let’s move out.”

 
          
“I’m
getting a power-level warning,” one of the commandos said. “It’s reading twenty
percent already.”

 
          
“You
have a bad power pack,” Briggs said. “Withdraw, change packs, follow us down
once it checks out. Move out.” The one commando went back inside the MV-22,
where technicians in protective armor quickly helped the commando out of his
exoskeleton. Meanwhile, the other Tin Man commandos split up into two groups and
dropped through the holes in the roof to the floors below.

 
          
Hal
Briggs led the first group of four. Holding his rail gun on his left hip,
anchored to his exoskeleton, he walked quickly without running through the
corridors of the Libyan Presidential Palace; the others split up, taking
different corridors. Terrified workers and other persons, presumably relatives
or other staffers, ran past him, some running headlong into him. He ignored
everyone he didn’t recognize. Hal used his ultrawide bandwidth sensor to peer
through walls and doors, and anytime he saw someone inside, he kicked the door
open to see who it was. But he kept on moving, sometimes simply walking right
through a wall or door to get inside an adjacent room.

           
“It’s hard to take stairs with this
exoskeleton,” one of the commandos radioed.

 
          
“Don’t
bother with stairs,” Hal responded. When he reached the end of the hallway, he
simply turned, tossed an explosive charge onto the floor, blew a hole in the
floor, and jumped through.

 
          
Once
they finished the top floor, the other floors went more quickly. On the ground
floor, Hal had to contend with massed Republican Guard soldiers, now with
heavier machine guns and grenade launchers. The battle armor’s electric shock
system took care of any close-in security he encountered; he had to fire one
hypersonic projectile at the security booth just inside the front palace entry,
where Republican Guards had set up a twenty-millimeter Gatling gun. One Tin Man
had to jet-jump outside and retreat back to the roof after taking nearly two
thousand rounds from the cannon before Briggs put it out of commission. Briggs
left one Tin Man on the ground floor to watch for any heavy security responses,
while the rest started down to the subfloors.

 
          
The
entire search of the above-ground floors took them less than two minutes.

 
          
Now
that the assault was on, they moved faster through the subfloors, following the
location signal. They came across interrogation rooms, zapped anyone inside
carrying weapons, and released all others. Chris Wohl found an infirmary, and
next door was a makeshift autopsy room and morgue. “I found two of our guys in
the morgue,” Chris radioed. “Looks like both of them have been tortured to
death.” His voice started to tremble with rage. “I’m going to kill someone for
this.” He zipped both corpses into then- black body bags and carried them to
the roof.

 
          
“I
found survivors,” another of the commandos reported. “I’m bringing them out.”
Within minutes, eleven more Night Stalkers were on board the Pave Hammer
tilt-rotor, all of them injured from torture and near-starvation but all still
alive.

 
          
Briggs
and two other commandos had just moved to the bottom subfloor when Briggs heard
one of the lookouts say, “We’ve got trouble, One. Heavy armor on the way in.
We’re engaging, but we’re running out of time.”

 
          
“We’ll
be finished searching the building in three minutes,” Briggs responded.

           
“No good, sir,” Chris Wohl
interjected. “We’re going to be surrounded in one minute. The Pave Hammer is
too vulnerable. Make your way upstairs.”

 
          
“We
can’t leave without Patrick and Wendy.”

           
“Sir, we’ll be walking out of
Libya
if we’re not airborne in sixty seconds.”

           
“Then get airborne.”

           
“Negative, sir. Everyone gets on
board. I’ve stopped picking up life signs from the general.”

           
“That’s an order, Master Sergeant.”
Briggs sent the last two commandos upstairs to get on the MV-22. ‘Two more on
the way. I’m staying until I find the McLanahans.” Briggs hurried toward the
source of the location signal—and he was horrified at what he found. There, a
desktop was covered with blood—and moments later he found Patrick’s
microtransceiver, tossed into a comer.

           
“I found the transceiver—minus the
general,” Briggs reported solemnly. He did another sweep of the area—no sign of
him. “I’m coming up.”

 
         
Ivana
Vasilyeva waited until the loud, rhythmic beat of the heavy rotors far above
her subsided, then crawled out of her hiding place in the steel-lined weapons
locker in an isolated comer of the room. She checked that her submachine gun
was cocked and ready, then carefully searched the hallway outside the small
armory. All clear. She then returned to the locker and grabbed a woman by the
back of her neck, pinning her left arm behind her to steer her out of the room.

 
          
“Well,
that wasn’t much of an assault,” Vasilyeva said to the woman in English. “It
appears your friends have left already, before their work was done.”

 
          
“They’ll
be back,” Wendy McLanahan said. “Count on it.”

           
“But we will be long gone by then,
Dr. McLanahan,”

           
Vasilyeva said. “I am sorry we did
not meet up with your husband. But I do not think he would like how you have
been keeping yourself.” Wendy’s face was badly beaten; one eye was swollen shut
and bleeding; her nose was broken in several places—and she had trouble
breathing because of cracked ribs, a partially deflated lung, and a torn
abdominal diaphragm. Blood had been oozing out of several orifices and wounds
for many days, making her look pale and ethereal.

 
          
“I
think he’ll understand. Besides, I’ll get better—you and your friends will just
get dead.”

 
          
“You’ll
be alive long enough for us to lure your husband to us, and then you’ll both be
dead, at Comrade Kazakov’s hands.”

 
          
“Pavel
Kazakov.” Wendy chuckled. “The only thing worse than being his whore or his
drug pusher is his assassin.”

 
          
Vasilyeva
twisted Wendy’s arm higher up her back, causing her to cry out in pain. “Pain
must be something you enjoy, Dr. McLanahan.”

 
          
“Am
I turning you on, bitch?”

 
          
“Shut
up and move,” Vasilyeva said. “We have a boat waiting for us in the harbor. A
short ride to Zuwarah, a plane ride across the
Sahara
to
Algeria
, and then another private jet to meet
Comrade Kazakov. Then we set a trap for your—”

 
          
They
heard a loud scream behind them. Vasilyeva turned just as a body came flying at
her, pinning himself against her submachine gun and pulling it out of her
hands. The gun went spinning across the hallway. Wendy twisted away. Vasilyeva
struggled to her feet, madly searching for her weapon—and then saw him. “There
. .. you ... are. General McLanahan,” she cooed softly.

 
          
Patrick
stood between her and the weapon. He still wore the handcuffs, waist chain, and
manacles; his left shoulder was an ugly mass of blood from where Zuwayy’s men
had roughly cut the microtransceiver out of his body. He backed up, looking for
the weapon with his feet in the semidarkness of the hallway.

           
“Wendy?”

           
“Patrick!” she cried.

 
          
“Get
out of here,” he said. “Go back. Get away from here.”

 
          
Vasilyeva
reached back, grabbed Wendy by the hair, and pulled her up to her feet. “Is
this who you came for, General? I would not have wasted my time.” Patrick
quickly searched for the gun around his feet. Vasilyeva pulled Wendy to her,
wrapped her left arm around Wendy’s neck, and applied pressure with her right
hand. “Do not move, or I will snap her neck,” Vasilyeva warned.

 
          
“Let
her go.”

 
          
“Kharasho”
Vasilyeva said. “It is you I
want anyway.” And in the blink of an eye, the former Russian officer withdrew a
knife from her belt and drew it quickly across Wendy’s throat. Wendy’s eyes
rolled up inside her head, and Vasilyev let her drop to the floor.

 
          
“No!”
Patrick shouted. “You bitch! You
murderer!
”

 
          
“It
was you Comrade Kazakov wanted all the time,” Vasilyeva said, advancing on
Patrick with the bloodied knife at the ready. “But where is this Tin Man armor
he spoke of? No matter. Comrade Kazakov only desires you dead. I think I shall
bring him a finger—that should be proof enough.”

 
          
Patrick’s
bulging eyes shifted rapidly from his wife’s inert form to his attacker. He
backed away a few steps— that only made the Russian smile. Patrick raised his
hands. “Cut these handcuffs off and let’s make it a fair fight.”

 
          
“I
do not wish a fair fight,” Vasilyeva said. “Comrade Kazakov only wanted you
dead, not for me to give you a fair fight.” In the blink of an eye she was on
him, and before he knew it her blade had sliced once across his right arm and
once across his chest. She smiled evilly. “But he did not say it could not be
slow and agonizing for you.” Patrick tried to back away, but he tripped and
fell straight back. He tried to get back on his feet, but with his hands cuffed
in front of him and his feet manacled, he was helpless. “I think,” Vasilyeva
said, her teeth shining as she smiled at him, “that you should have matching
cuts across your throats. Do you not think it would be fitting, General?”

 
          
A
shot rang out and a bullet ricocheted off the wall. Vasilyeva turned and saw
Wendy McLanahan, her torso a hideous blouse of dark red, not fifteen feet from
her, leveling the submachine gun at her. “Very impressive, Comrade Doctor—to
the very last,” Vasilyeva said. She spun the knife around until she was holding
the blade, then threw it. The blade sunk into Wendy’s chest, and she toppled
over backward. “How very touching. You must be proud, Gen—”

 
          
She
never got to finish her sentence. Patrick had gotten to his feet, kicked the
back of her knees to send her down, then jumped up, wrapped the chain
connecting his ankle manacles around Vasilyeva’s neck, and rolled around to
twist it tight. He rolled several more times until the chain was tight, then
locked his feet together.

 
          
Vasilyeva
was a fierce, powerful woman. She was able to struggle to her feet, actually
pulling Patrick’s body up as she fought to free herself. The Russian clubbed
his legs, swung at his groin, and snarled like a wild animal. She started to
swing his body around, jumping up and down wildly in an effort to loosen his
legs. He hit the walls several times and saw stars. With Patrick stunned, this
time she was able to pin his legs back and land on top of him, the chain still
wrapped around her neck, her face a contorted mask of pain and rage, with blood
vessels breaking all over her face, making it appear as if she were wearing
some sort of primitive war mask. She punched his groin, his legs, his chest,
and his face, trying desperately to get him to release his grip.