Jack Coughlin - Kill Zone

Ten minutes later, Shari was in the front seat of a black Mercedes, beside a handsome Jordanian soldier who served as a combination driver and bodyguard. Her mother sat in back with the ambassador, who was talking on his cell phone.

The ambassador had been correct, and the embassy party had emptied quickly as word spread of the unexpected increase in the terror alert, everyone forsaking the food and drink tables to rush back to their offices to cope with whatever was happening. Taxis sailed about and traffic was heavier than normal for the hour.

The Mercedes with diplomatic license plates drove easily through the streets of Embassy Row and Shari drew comfort from the familiar monuments and squares of Washington, which was aglow in the early night. People had gotten off work and were packed into the bars and restaurants, and the nightlife was beginning to throb. The driver edged around a bicycle messenger with a flashing taillight. Even at night, those bikers were an effective way to get important documents from one federal department to another, or to bureaucrats from the K Street lobbyists, and the government never really slept.

The car stopped at a red traffic signal, third in line, and Shari knew the State Department was only about five blocks away. Maybe they could stop this madness. And she could not help but be happy that Kyle was alive. If he had Middleton and they were escaping, Kyle was in his element and would use every trick in the book to elude pursuit. Soon they would be together again.

She was startled by a tap on her window, and the bike messenger smiled and made a hand motion to roll the glass down. Beneath the visor of his black helmet, she saw that he had a lean face, with a neat beard and bright teeth. He probably wanted directions. As the driver looked over at the noise, another bike rolled up on his side, and its rider slammed a small sledgehammer into the window, stuck a SIG-Sauer pistol into the jagged hole, and fired four bullets into the distracted young driver. Shari screamed and covered her face with her hands as the man’s blood and brain matter splattered her. Restrained by her seatbelt, she could barely move.

The biker on her side then used a hammer of his own to smash through her window, and Shari felt glass shards cut into her, sharp pins and knifelike slashes chewing at her skin. In the back seat, Layla screamed, and leaned forward to try to reach Shari while Ambassador Abu-Adwan scrambled to grab a pistol secreted in the armrest. Both bikers now had their pistols inside the car and sprayed full clips at all of the passengers while shouting “ Allahu Akbar,” the familiar “God is great” war cry often used by terrorists.

They remounted the bikes and sped away through a park, lights off, cutting sharp corners and disappearing into the darkness in moments. Two hand grenades they left behind detonated inside the Mercedes, setting the big car afire as stunned pedestrians and other drivers who had moved forward quickly backed away.

The bikers rode up a platform into the rear of a waiting panel truck bearing the logo of a plumbing company that was parked in a loading zone outside a restaurant. The doors were shut behind them and the blue truck moved out into traffic, heading for a garage in a run-down area of suburban Maryland.

In Alexandria, Virginia, Gordon Gates watched the entire attack unfold on a television screen through streaming video transmitted live by small cameras mounted on the bike helmets of the Shark Team. Buchanan had fed him the information intercepted from the Jordanian Embassy after the NSA computers picked up the name of Shari Towne. Gates assigned the job to his closest sharks, and they did well, he thought. One down.

ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE ONEof your little mental earthquakes now?” General Bradley Middleton did not take his hand from the AK-47 or stop scanning the darkness moving around the truck.

“You better hope I don’t.” Swanson kept his eyes on the road, watching a landscape painted green and black in his NVGs. He maneuvered around potholes, driving as fast as he dared without lights. “You know what I like best about being a sniper?”

“What?”

“I get to pick my partner, so at least I’m with someone I like. Unlike now.”

The two men settled into an uncomfortable silence as Swanson drove due west. Every kilometer they covered added to what he considered a growing debt of good luck that would not last forever. They were about six klicks out of Sa’ahn, had seen no other vehicles, and the truck was running smooth.

“There’s a McDonald’s up the road a couple of miles,” he told the general. Swanson was extending an olive branch because they had to work together. In this kind of situation, there should be only one enemy. “We can stop and get coffee and a Big Mac.”

Middleton actually grunted what might have been a laugh under other circumstances. He wanted to back off, too. “I prefer Burger King. Double Whopper with cheese. Flame-broiled.”

“Of course you would. You argue about everything?” Kyle asked.

“Yep. I’m what they call a contrarian.” Middleton sucked in a sharp breath, and his words were hoarse.

“I was lying about the Mickey D’s.” He handed the general a canteen of water. “We’ll be able to eat in a little while. How you feeling?”

“Been better. Been worse.” Middleton paused, and seemed lost in thought and more focused. He said, “Who sent you to kill me?”

Swanson slowed and steered off the road to avoid a ragged, deep hole. A sharp bump like that might make the broken rib puncture Middleton’s lung. “Gerald Buchanan, the national security advisor, wrote the order directly to me on official White House stationery. He didn’t give a reason, just the assignment. If the mission to rescue you failed, I was to shoot you.”

“He can’t do that.”

“Well, he did.” Kyle pushed the accelerator back down to regain his speed, and another kilometer passed beneath their wheels. “He bypassed the military chain of command by handling it through the CIA, which has used me once in a while. It was handed to me by a guy from his office.”

“Why would he want me killed?” Middleton asked.

“Beats the hell out of me, General. But you do tend to piss people off. Why were those American mercs involved?”

“They worked for Gates Global. That’s who organized the kidnapping, I think, because of my opposition to the military privatization bill. They were going to let the damned jihadists chop off my head anyway, so why would Buchanan send you out to do the same job, other than as an insurance policy in case that plan failed? There must be a direct link between Gates and Buchanan.” He sucked in another breath with a grimace.

Kyle removed his night-vision goggles. The black sky was showing the first signs of the new day, and he could make out shapes along the road. “General, keep in mind that our whole rescue mission was a setup. We were flying into an ambush. We were never supposed to succeed. I might not have even gotten through. Only somebody pretty high up could have gotten that information to the mercs. Buchanan would have been in the loop somewhere.”

“Damn. I need to think about this for a while.” Middleton fell silent.

Pinpoints of headlights crossing the road far ahead were easily visible in the remaining night. “Those have to be trucks on the main highway between Damascus and Amman,” Kyle said. “End of the road for us.”

Middleton watched the busy traffic, drivers hurrying with their loads to reach their destination before the sun rose and the heat of the day baked the roadways. “So we wait for a break and just scoot across. The Golan Heights are what, about thirty or forty klicks straight west?”