Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

He stood looking out across the front of the castle. Lights shone from many of its casement windows, and for a moment they were the only things visible in the pitch darkness. Then he saw a hazy glow coming on about a hundred yards beyond the castle. It intensified and coalesced and then divided amoeba-like into two distinct circles of light.

Headlights. They were high off the ground, pushing their long bright beams across the snow. Behind them, Carmody saw the shadowy outline of a large vehicle.

It was moving fast, barreling toward them from the east.

Wrong direction.

He flicked a glance at Schultz.

“That isn’t Dixon,” he said.

The Rezvani’s driver, a veteran security guy named Lazlo, leaned over the wheel and hurtled toward the two men standing up ahead near the Ninja motorcycles. In the passenger seat, a recent addition to his detail named Bogdan sat straight as a lamp pole.

“They have guns,” he said. Which was unquestionably true.

“And we have armor,” Lazlo said. Which he felt was equally true but of greater consequence.

He disliked being saddled with Bogdan. In fact, once things settled down, he would recommend Matei either cut Bogdan loose or transfer him to another team. Preferably somewhere off the estate. Lazlo sensed he was the sort to fold when it really counted. Personal security wasn’t for chickenshits.

He was far more confident of the two men in back, Andre and Khasan. Both were with him when he’d driven the Wolf out of Bucharest months ago. The Wolf and his icily beautiful cryptobanker friend Quintessa Leonides. They had escaped the city with half its streets and boulevards cordoned off, and the polizei ’s helicopters whirling overhead, and their cruisers and tactical wagons closing in from all sides.

It had been a tricky spot. Very tricky. By comparison, this one wasn’t even close. In fact, Lazlo knew he easily could have been free and clear of it. He had been well outside the east gate when Matei radioed. But when he was summoned back to the estate to deal with the intruders, back he came. The job was the job.

He rumbled forward in four-wheel drive, both hands on the steering wheel, his Sig MCX Rattler resting beside him on the center console. Not that he expected to need it. The intruders were no more than a hundred yards ahead, standing on the cobblestones between him and the bikes on the wide, semicircular court that served as the manor’s parking apron. The pair had spotted his Rezvani’s headlights and heard the animalistic howl of its V-8 as it came on like a battle tank. But they weren’t budging.

Lazlo was thinking they had balls. Huge brass balls just staring him down. Give them that. But they didn’t stand a chance. His bumper, grill, and engine block combined for over a thousand pounds of metal. They couldn’t just stand there much longer. If they made for the hedges around the apron, he would swing off-road and jam his front end up their asses before they went ten feet. If they tried shooting through his windshield, its ballistic glass might shatter on the outside, but would stop their bullets cold. If they aimed for the Rezvani’s tires, his run flats could keep it rolling for miles. They would know all that. They couldn’t possibly be stupid enough not to.

There were now fifty or sixty yards between him and the apron. Then about the same distance across to where the intruders stood facing him.

He would run them over, flatten them on the cobbles, balls and all.

He gritted his teeth, bracing himself as he neared the apron. Built for horse-drawn wagons centuries ago, it was raised several inches above the surface of the access road. At his speed, he was in for a jarring bump.

“Hold on, we’ll feel this!” he warned.

Hoping Bogdan wouldn’t piss his pants, he gripped the steering wheel as if to shatter it with his large, bare hands. And hit the gas.

Their guns upraised, Carmody and Schultz stood motionless as the Rezvani charged toward them on the access road.

It was now fifty or sixty yards from the apron. Maybe eighty total yards off, its headlights almost blinding in the digitally enhanced vision of their quads.

Carmody tasted adrenaline at the back of his tongue. His reptilian fight-or-flight response had kicked in, but he wasn’t a reptile. He could think rationally. Even with his nerves and glands and reflexes telling him to run. Think.

Running would do no good. He and Schultz might make it off the apron, but they wouldn’t make it very far before the driver plowed into them.

The Rezvani got closer and closer, its headlights smacking their faces with glare.

“Aim high and steady,” he said. “Above the lights. On my word.”

Schultz nodded once. He knew exactly what Carmody was thinking.

They kept their legs planted apart, their assault rifles shoulder-high, and pointed at the oncoming vehicle. They had maybe four seconds before the Rezvani reached the apron. Another one or two before it reached them.

And they had fresh sixty-round magazines in their guns. At a firing rate of 950 rounds per minute, they knew they could empty the mags before the Rezvani struck them down. Its windshield would deflect a single bullet. Even a scattered spray of bullets. Its outer layer would fracture and spall but disperse their energy, so they didn’t penetrate. But Carmody and Schultz were using high-velocity, low-recoil black-tip ammunition. If each of them poured it on, hit a single spot multiple times at close range, they might weaken it enough to punch through the glass.

They waited. The Rezvani was about twenty yards off.

Carmody prepared to squeeze the trigger.

Then, at the edge of his vision, he abruptly saw a new set of lights ahead and to his right, racing up from the south on the main access road.

Without turning his head, he flicked a glance in its direction to confirm his hunch.

This time it was Dixon.

And he was coming on in the BearCat.

Dixon rounded the curve and saw the Rezvani up ahead. It was fifty yards to the right of Carmody and Schultz, on the west side of the apron, and bearing toward them in a straight line. He was likewise to their right, perpendicular to the apron, roughly midway between the motorcycles and the Rezvani. But he was also twenty yards south of the apron, giving him extra ground to cover. He would have to step on it.

He manually disengaged the airbags and warned the men in the crew section over the comm. “Brace for impact! Brace! Brace!”

Beside him, Kali bent slightly forward and planted her feet on the floor. She felt the vibrations from the Cat’s rapid increase in speed traveling up her legs.

Dixon pulled in a breath and held it. Like Carmody, he assumed the Rezvani was armored. But the Cat was, too. Plus, it was designed for tactical offense, and the other vehicle wasn’t. Plus, he knew what he intended to do, and the other driver didn’t. Plus, he’d done his Crash/Bang with the Company boys at Blackstone. And didn’t give a damn whether the other guy had or hadn’t.

The BearCat shot over the final few feet of road leading up to the apron. As the other vehicle came on from the right, Dixon lowered his accelerator nearly to the floor, closing the gap between him and the apron’s rim, bouncing up over it and coming down heavily onto the cobbles. Then he was shuddering over them at a high rate of speed, the Rezvani crossing his path dead ahead, long and dark, its grill, hood, windshield, and front-passenger door blurring through the brightness of his headlights.

Dixon timed his move perfectly. When you were going to deliberately ram a vehicle, you didn’t aim for is centerline, where its weight was balanced between the front and rear. You didn’t T-bone it. What you did was go for its rear end, so it took the brunt of the hit, and caromed away from you, and the rest of the vehicle’s disproportionate weight spun counterclockwise in a fishtailing skid.