Dale Brown - Act of War

He finally made it downstairs and went down a long hallway, breaking open locked doors and using his scanners to locate any sign of danger, until he came to the computer room. Maneuvering inside there would be even more difficult than going down the stairs—the place was chock-full of workstations, server racks, printers, monitors, and bookshelves. The suspended floor, which was ventilated underneath to provide cooling air to the servers and workstations, felt spongy and fragile. Every time he moved he knocked something over, until in complete frustration he simply pushed objects out of his way—he figured he wasn’t making any more noise than before doing it that way.

“Whoever is in this room, come out immediately,” Bolton said through his electronically synthesized voice. “Sdacha teper!” he tried in Russian, using his on-board voice translator. No movement. He turned up the gain on his audio sensors…

…and immediately turned in the direction of a very slight “Snip!” sound he heard coming from behind a rack of modems and servers. “Vy pozadi stojki!” Bolton shouted. “Vyhodivshij tam!” He heard a man’s muffled cry of panic. “Vyhodivshij tam! Come out of there!”

“Izbegite menja!” the man cried in Russian. “Stay away from me, or I’ll blow this whole place to hell!”

Bolton reacted without thinking and deployed his Bushmaster grenade launcher from his backpack…before realizing that the barrel and part of the feed mechanism had to extend upward out of his backpack. Since he had to stoop to enter the room anyway, the top of the backpack was almost always scraping the ceiling. When he deployed the cannon, the barrel immediately shot through the drop-ceiling in the computer room. It immediately got tangled in electrical wires and ducting so it wouldn’t retract when ordered.

The lieutenant jumped up from behind the server rack, aiming an AK-74 assault rifle. Bolton tried to pull himself free, but the more he tried to twist free the tighter he got stuck. “Umrite vy ubljudok! Die, you bastard!” the Russian shouted, and he opened fire. The heavy-caliber bullets had no effect on the CID unit, but now Bolton was starting to panic as he was showered with sparks from the electrical wires at the same time he was being pelted with bullets. The Russian was crossing back around toward the door, firing as he moved. In a few more steps, he’d be out the door.

Enraged, Bolton thrashed around harder, kicking workstations and racks around as easily as a Lincoln Logs set in his attempts to get free and to stop that Russian from escaping. Finally, he remembered to simply detach the backpack, and the second he did so he was free. Just as the Russian made it to the door of the computer room, Bolton lunged for him. The Russian stumbled out the doors, with the CID unit right behind him, blasting through the glass doors, giving chase. Blinded with confusion and frustration, Bolton didn’t even attempt to avoid crashing into things—he crushed, scraped, smashed, or shoved anything and everything in his path.

The Russian headed straight for the stairs leading up to the main level, and Bolton knew he had to catch him before he reached those stairs because he wasn’t sure if he could go up them without tripping or otherwise looking like an ass. “Ostanovka! Halt!” Bolton shouted. With a last effort he managed to grab the guy just as he started up the stairs. The Russian battered him with the butt of his rifle until the stock shattered, then tried pounding him with his fists. “What were you doing down here?” he asked. “Shto vy delali zdes’?”

“Let me go! Let me go!”

“Not until you tell me what you were doing down here!” Bolton shouted.

“CID Three, what’s your status?” Kelsey radioed.

“I captured the Russian who came down here,” Bolton replied. “Whatever he was doing, I interrupted him.”

“Bring him upstairs and clear the building.”

“I’m going to find out what he was doing first,” Bolton said. “I’ll be up in two minutes.”

“This is Richter. Bolton, get your ass up here,” Jason interjected. “Our objective is to get Zakharov and the terrorists. If he was setting explosives down there, you could be walking into a trap. We’ll let TransGlobal security and the Egyptians worry about bomb disposal.”

“Or maybe he was going to warn Zakharov,” Bolton said. “I’m going to investigate. I’ll be up in two.” Ignoring Jason’s repeated calls, Bolton headed back to the computer room. The Russian’s terrified cries and futile attempts to escape only indicated to Bolton that he was on the right track.

He had almost destroyed the computer room in his mad dash to get out and chase down the Russian—it looked like every desk and rack was on the floor and half the roof was caved in. Still carrying the Russian, Bolton walked over to the rack the Russian had been working behind, kicking desks out of his way. “Okay, Ivan,” he said, “what in hell were you doing back…?”

And then he saw it—a timer set to what appeared to be forty or fifty blocks of C-4 explosives, with wires leading to a half-dozen similar stacks on other racks and workstations. The Russian was screaming his brains out, but Bolton needed no translation now. He turned and ran, crashing through what was left of the doors and racing down the hallway toward the stairs until he—

He hardly felt the shock of the first explosion, although its force blew the Russian clean out of his arms and into a fiery oblivion. But the fury of the first explosive discharge quickly set off a chain reaction that eventually ignited over three hundred kilos of C-4 high explosives in the headquarters building. Carl Bolton was crushed between two nearly simultaneous explosions both below and above him and died almost instantly.

The feeling of dread Jason Richter felt when Carl Bolton said, “I’ll be up in two” was so strong that he didn’t jump or feel surprised in the least when the headquarters building exploded. He felt sorry for Carl. He didn’t deserve to die like this. He was here only because Kelsey DeLaine was here, not because he felt he had anything to contribute or because he cared at all for TALON.

“Jason…?” The fear and pain in Kelsey’s voice was obvious, and he felt very sorry for her. She had ordered Carl into the building, not knowing that the CID units were not meant for indoor operations.

“Kelsey, it was the headquarters building,” Jason said. “We’ll search for him, don’t worry.” But the tone in his voice made it plain: the destruction was total. What he was praying for now was that the explosions would stop and not ripple throughout the entire facility…and thankfully, they did. Men were screaming and running wildly out of the plant. “Let them go as long as they’re not armed!” he ordered. “Let the police pick them up. Keep an eye on the facility for any armed men.”

And at that exact moment, Falcone radioed, “Armored car coming out.” Jason flipped his electronic visor over to Falcone’s camera and saw what appeared to be a Humvee or similar wheeled infantry vehicle, racing away to the west. “Want me to blast it?”

“You like riding in that thing, don’t you, Falcone?” Jason asked.

“You got me hooked, boss,” Falcone said happily. Frank Falcone had always been a cheerful guy, but ever since volunteering to ride in the new CID unit, he was like a kid in a candy store. “I got legs again. Let me tag this SOB, okay?”

“Take it, Falcon—just don’t destroy it,” Jason said. “We want them alive.”

“You got it, boss. Fire in the hole.” One ride in the CID unit and a few hours of training on the C-17 Globemaster flight from New Mexico to Egypt, and Falcone was an expert. He deployed his7.62-millimeter machine gun from his backpack, turned, locked on to the front right wheels of the armored vehicle, and opened fire with a one-second burst. The rounds shredded the tire and wheel, and the vehicle collapsed and spun around. When the left front wheel exposed itself, a second one-second burst destroyed that wheel as well, completely immobilizing the vehicle.