Tom Clancy: Locked On

Whoever the hell had just attacked him was still fighting it out with the Lashkar-e-Taiba cell back at the warehouse; Rehan could hear the persistent gunfire. He’d seen only a couple of shooters, and they looked like local police. Even if they did overrun his cell, he was sure that no gang of street cops was going to disarm his bomb.

He made it onto the train, still pushing and wheezing, and he shoved his way through the phalanx of passengers standing in the aisles. He needed to get up to the front car, to wave his credentials or his fist or his gun in the conductor’s face to get the train out of here.

The train did begin to move, but it rolled painfully slow; Rehan himself moved faster than the wheels beneath him as he made it closer to the front. He punched a man who would not step aside and shoved the man’s wife back down into her chair when she tried toQ grab his arm.

In the passenger car nearest the locomotive, he found a little space to run, then he made his way forward to the vestibule with the door to the outside and the door to the next car. He passed the open door on his right and saw the platform pass by. Just as he looked a young white man in a police utility vest leapt onto the moving car, crashing his shoulder against the wall of the tiny hallway between the cars. He looked right at Rehan, and the Pakistani general swung his pistol toward the man, but the big white man grabbed the general and knocked him against the wall.

The pistol fell to the floor of the car.

Rehan recovered quickly, then launched himself at his attacker, and the two of them slammed their bodies hard against the surfaces in the small confines of the vestibule for thirty seconds before they fell back through the door, into the crowded coach car. Civilians scrambled out of the way as best they could. Many screamed, and some men shouted and shoved the fighting pair back toward the vestibule.

Here they continued to fight. Ryan was faster, fitter, and better trained in hand-to-hand combat, but Rehan had more brute strength, and the Pakistani used this, and the tight quarters, to render his opponent unable to get the upper hand.

Jack saw he wasn’t going to win anytime soon against the bigger man while pressed into the tiny tin can of the vestibule between the cars, and he did not want to leave the area, since he knew his friends were fighting to the death for control of the nuclear weapon, so he did the only thing he could think of. With a scream to muster all of his strength, he wrapped his arms around the big general, kicked his feet up on the wall of the vestibule, and pushed back with all his might.

Rehan and Ryan tumbled together out of the train. Their bodies separated as they hit the hard ground and rolled alongside the track.

Major Mohammed al Darkur had given up at the front entrance of the warehouse; the gunfire was just too heavy. Instead he moved around to the side, where he found his ISI captain still firing through an open window. From the sound of it, there were no more than three or four men remaining prone behind the crane, but they had good cover.

And then the rear wall of the warehouse, behind the LeT gunmen, exploded inward. Wood and mortar and brick blew into the room behind a large truck that continued rolling through the wall, only to crash into the crate and stop. While al Darkur watched from the open window he saw the militants stand and open fire on the vehicle, pouring jacketed lead through the windshield.

Dominic appeared at the new opening in the rear wall. Mohammed had to hold his fire immediately, as the American was directly downrange from him. The major held his hand up so that his captain would check his own fire.

While they watched, Dominic fired over and over from his G3 police rifle into the men. There were four, and they bucked and spun and fell to the ground as he moved on them in a crouch, his big weapon firing during his approach.

“Mohammed?” Dominic shouted after the shooting stopped.

“I am here!” he replied, and al Darkur and his captain ran into the large open room, up to Dominic. The American looked into the long wooden crate, and then down at a wounded militant lying next to it. “Ask him if he knows how to turn off the bomb,” Caruso said.

Mohammed did, and the man answered. Immediately al Darkur shot the terrorist in the forehead with his rifle. By way of explanation, al Darkur shrugged. “He said no.”

The portion of track where Ryan and Rehan found themselves was still on the grounds of the Lahore Central Railway Station, and the ground around them was full of the detritus one would find in any urban rail yard; stones and trash and portions of discarded track were strewn all around the two men as they both climbed to their feet after their rough landing from the train that passed alongside them. Jack Ryan knelt for a big rock, but the general kicked at him before he could get it. Ryan ducked the blow and then rammed Rehan in the chest with his shoulder, knocking him back to the ground. As the two men fought in the dirt and rocks and trash alongside the moving train, the Pakistani took hold of a small segment of iron rebar, and it whipped through the darkness and missed Ryan’s face by just a few inches.

Jack took a few steps back, away from Rehan, turned to find something to use as a weapon, but Rehan barreled into him from behind. Both men crashed back into the ground. Jack grunted with the impact, his Kevlar vest saving him from a broken jar that would have sliced him open.

Rehan climbed up to his knees, Jack still facedown below him, and the general grabbed a large brick from the trash around him. He lifted it up into the air, over Ryan’s head, and prepared to crush his skull.

Jack bucked hard, throwing the larger man to the ground next to him.

Ryan reached out, ready to grab anything to use as a weapon, and his right hand wrapped around a heavy and rusty railroad spike. He took the spike, leapt to his knees, and then leapt again, diving toward Rehan, who was trying to climb back up off the ground.

In the air, Jack positioned the spike in front of his Kevlar vest, pressing the head of the iron point against the rigid vest, and he held it there with his hand as he landed on his enemy. He slammed down on him with all his weight.

His body and his vest hammered the rusty spike into General Riaz Rehan’s chest.

Jack rolled off the big man and climbed slowly back to his feet.

Rehan sat up, looked down at the iron barb sticking into him, bewilderment on his face.

Weakly, he put a hand on it. He tried to pull it out of him, but he realized he could not, so his hand fell back to his side.

Ryan, his face covered in dirt and smeared blood from the encounter, said, “Nigel Embling sends his regards.”

“American? You are American?” Rehan asked in English as he sat there.

“Yes.”

Rehan’s look of surprise did not waver. Still, he said, “Whatever you think you just did… you failed. In minutes the caliph will reign in Pakistan… ” Rehan touched his hand to his lips and then looked at it; it was covered with blood. He coughed out a thick wad of blood now while the young American stood over him. “And you will die.”

“I’ll outlive you, asshole,” Jack replied.

Rehan shrugged, then slumped over on his right shoulder; his eyelids remained open but his pupils rolled back in his head.

Ryan heard police sirens that seemed to come from the railway station, a few hundred yards back. He left the general’s body right where it lay and began running across a dozen sets of train tracks and toward the warehouse.

Ryan ran back into the warehouse with his pistol raised, but he holstered it when he saw his cousin and al Darkur looking into a large packing crate. Dom was talking on his phone with one hand, and shining a flashlight with his other.