Ken Goddard - Prey

Then, after working through a similar set of commands to cancel all other passwords out of the system, Paul Saltmann ran out into the tunnel corridor leading to the ICER team's quarters while red warning lights began to blink overhead and a blaring alarm began to pulse and echo through the building.

No one had bothered to tell Command Sergeant Major Clarence MacDonald that the engineers who created the Whitehorse Cabin training facility had incorporated an interesting twist into the design of the lower-level command-and-control center: namely, the destruct sequence overrode the manual settings and automatically closed the five exterior emergency doors that provided access to the secured facility.

Dwight Stoner discovered this when a heavy concrete door suddenly started to roll across the twelve-foot opening. The crippled agent took one last look at the rapidly approaching helicopters, shrugged, and barely managed to jump inside the access tunnel before the leading edge of the six-inch-thick panel slammed into the locking mechanism on the opposite side, effectively sealing off the facility from outsiders.

Shaking his head and mumbling to himself, Dwight Stoner grabbed his crutch in one hand, a twelve-gauge shotgun in the other, and began hobbling down the sloping corridor toward the sound of distant gunfire, barely audible over the pulsing alarm.

The stairwell leading to the upper level of the training facility had become a free-fire battle zone.

As the agents, state wildlife officers, and military instructors moved up the stairs to the upper level behind the concussive blasts of flash grenades and directed gunfire, and the ICER counterterrorists continued to retreat, both sides shot out lights to conceal their position and their intended movements. As a result, most of the available light in the smoke-filled stairwell and upper-level hallways came from red emergency lights pulsing in a synchronous rhythm with the echoing alarm.

And thanks to the frenzied antics of Gunter Aben and Carine Mueller, who delayed the raid team's advance with bursts of 9mm submachine gun fire, the bullet-pocked stairs and hallways were now slippery with blood and expended brass casings.

Of the ten men who had begun the raid from the deceptive landing of the white-painted helicopter, two Louisiana officers were dead and four others-Brickard, Lightstone, Paxton, and the Louisiana sergeant-had been wounded.

On the ICER team side, Carine Mueller was now bleeding from the nose-the result of being too close to the stairwell door when a flash grenade went off-and limping from a ricocheting chunk of buckshot in her upper thigh. Gunter Aben had sustained at least four or five minor wounds, which hadn't slowed him down at all. He continued to dive and twist and roll from one barricade to another, sending three- and four-round bursts of 9mm ball ammo at anything that moved in the reddish-streaked darkness.

Farther back in the forestlike Hogan's Alley, Gerd Maas worked with cool, calm, and deliberate movements to set the stage for his latest, and possibly his most exhilarating, brush with death. He ignored the curses and screams of Alex Chareaux as Kimiko Osan guarded her assault group leader's back with careful sweeps of her laser-aimed Colt Commando submachine gun.

When Command Sergeant Major Clarence MacDonald and Special Agent Mike Takahara burst into the lower-level command-and-control room, they first spotted the bloody, lifeless body of Dr. Morito Asai, then looked out through the broken glass and discovered Lisa Abercombie, equally dead.

Both men looked up when the curly-haired man in the distinctive blue FBI raid jacket stepped into the room. MacDonald tried to bring his M-16 up in time, but the. 44 round caught him high in the chest and slammed him backward into one of the steel pillars just as the second. 44 slug mushroomed into Mike Takahara's solar plexus and sent the shocked technical agent stumbling backward through the broken glass wall and atop the sprawled body of Lisa Abercombie.

Then, humming contentedly to himself, Paul Saltmann checked his watch, glanced at the flashing red numerals on the control board that had changed from forty-five to thirty-six, and walked through the destruction he'd caused toward the lower-level conference room and stairwell.

As he did so, Saltmann was unaware that wheelchair- bound Roy Parker, blocked from escape by the six-inch- thick emergency doors, was rapidly working himself toward the command-and-control center from the opposite direction.

It was Lightstone who picked up on the pattern first, noting that as the returning ICER members worked their way back into the first of the Hogan's Alleys, designed to look like two floors and the open plaza of an indoor shopping center, Carine Mueller had started to conserve her energy by waiting for the explosion of the flash grenade and then running immediately to the position vacated by Gunter Aben, invariably using the cover of her previous position to protect herself from the raid team's directed gunfire.

"Hey, Brickard, Paxton," Lightstone hissed as he holstered his pistol, pulled one of the flash grenades off his belt, and then signaled with his hands what he intended to do.

They waited until Gunter Aben suddenly rolled away to a new position under the covering fire of Carine Mueller's H amp;K submachine gun.

Then, after Paxton heaved one of the canister grenades at Mueller's position, and Brickard and the remaining three Louisiana wildlife officers opened fire on both positions, Lightstone took three lunging steps forward, pulled the pin and flung the grenade toward the barricade position that Gunter Aben had just vacated.

At that point, Henry Lightstone had less than a second to roll forward and cover his ears as the detonation of the first grenade sent shock waves through every inch of his exposed body.

Dazed by the concussive force of the blast, Lightstone was still reaching for his shoulder-holstered 10mm semiautomatic when Carine Mueller broke from cover, lunged toward her new position, and then saw Lightstone out in the open.

Hesitating in mid-stride, the beautiful young counter- terrorist started to come around with her finger tightening on the trigger of her H amp;K when her eyes caught the motion of the rolling canister out in front of her. Reacting instinctively, she turned away just as the grenade exploded and sent her tumbling to the floor, the H amp;K clattering away in the red-tinged semidarkness.

Nearly unconscious and bleeding from the mouth, ears, and nose, Carine Mueller's right hand fumbled for her belt-holstered Model Sixty-six. 357. Henry Lightstone centered the sights of the 10mm automatic on the young German woman's hand, because they had all agreed that they wanted to take someone out of here alive.

But then the words of A1 Grynard flashed through his mind: Whoever killed Scoby used a couple of Model Sixty-sixes.

Without thinking about it further, Henry Lightstone shifted the sights of the heavy automatic, sent five 10mm hollow-point rounds into Mueller's upper chest, throat, and head, then rolled away from the stream of 9mm slugs that tore the wooden floor into splinters right where he had been lying… and Gunter Aben screamed out his rage in his native German tongue.

Continuing to twist away from the furious 9mm assault, Lightstone fired one round at the German's exposed head, missed, felt the jarring clack as the receiver jammed open on an empty magazine, and was reaching for one of the loaded magazines on his belt when Gunter Aben came back around the corner fast, the H amp;K leveled, a sneering smile on his face.

The impact of the first. 44 bullet nearly severed Gunter Aben's arm as it ripped through bone and tissue, punched through the gap where his thick Kevlar vest didn't quite overlap, splintered a rib, and then buried itself in the counterterrorist's heart.