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  “Mitch,” Coleman said over his earpiece. “Should we be on our way to you?”

  “Stand by,” Rapp said, pulling his hood up and hiding his gun in his pocket before calmly opening the door. He glanced at the sky as though he was checking for rain and then began wandering casually toward the diner. The semi driver was still out of sight behind his vehicle and without the benefit of binoculars, Rapp couldn’t make out the man still in the diner.

  If they knew they’d been ID’d, they wouldn’t be able to go back to where they came from. The chance of leading authorities to their network would be too high. And in the twisted mind of an Islamic extremist, that left only one option: go out in a blaze of glory. They’d murder everyone at this motel complex and then take their killing spree on the road. It wouldn’t stop until they killed themselves or someone did it for them.

  “Negative,” Rapp said finally. “If I can’t stop them here, they’re likely going to be coming your way. Take them out before they get to town.”

  “Roger that.”

  Rapp followed the best trajectory available but his tactical position was still a fucking nightmare. He had an assault rifle–armed man behind him, a parking lot largely devoid of cover, and a bunch of civilians trapped in a building with a second shooter invisible to him. He forced himself to keep his stride casual. With a little luck, the tango inside would get greedy and wait for him to come through the door before he started shooting.

  As usual, luck wasn’t with him. A shot rang out and Rapp reacted immediately, pulling his Glock and firing three rounds into the top of the diner’s expansive front window. The goal was twofold: First, he hoped to shatter the window to give him an unobstructed view inside. Unfortunately, the effort failed and instead he ended up with three relatively neat holes and some spiderwebbing that made the glass even more opaque. The second was to draw fire away from the civilians inside. For better or worse, that worked perfectly.

  He sprinted to the right just as a burst of automatic fire rose up behind him. The hum of the rounds was clearly audible as they passed through the place he’d been standing a moment before. The tango’s fire discipline was good, as was his aim. Rapp found himself with no choice but to go for the cover of a pickup parked in front of the motel. The terrorist inside the diner suddenly kicked the door open and let loose a couple of rounds from a pistol, using the brick jamb for cover.

  He could shoot straight, too.

  Rapp fired in his general direction from a full run, but there was no way to get particularly close. He just needed to buy the two seconds it was going to take him to get to the pickup.

  The gun behind him sounded again, but this time only a single shot. Its owner was no longer satisfied with the spray-and-pray method. He was going to take his time.

  The first round went wide, but the second impacted Rapp’s side right above his hip. He managed to keep his footing and jump, letting his momentum carry him over the side of the pickup as the pain signals started reaching his brain. He slammed headfirst into the back of the cab, knowing that this could only be a brief stop—the vehicle’s metal skin was too thin to protect him.

  He was in the process of using what was left of his momentum to flip over the other side when he realized the bed was stacked with bags of fertilizer, sand, and soil.

  Finally, he’d caught a break.

  While bullets tended to go through modern passenger vehicles like they weren’t there, sand was another story. He shoved two bags behind him and lay out flat as the tango went back to full auto. Rapp could hear the ring of the rounds penetrating metal and then the dull thump as the bags absorbed the impacts.

  He was in good shape from that angle, but it seemed certain that the terrorist in the diner was lining up on the exposed side of the truck. The bottom line was that fighting from the middle never worked out particularly well. He had to choose one of these assholes and fully commit. Unfortunately, it was going to have to be the one with the rifle. He had the superior firepower but lacked the cover of the diner.

  Rapp lifted one the bags as he rose, aiming around the left side of it. His target was about twenty yards away, crouched on one knee with his rifle butt pressed firmly against his shoulder. The bag bucked, and based on the cloud of dirt rising around him, the rounds were now penetrating. The first two missed him, but the shooter was already calmly adjusting his aim. Rapp lined up as well as he could for a virtually impossible shot when he saw a flash of movement to his target’s left.

  Bebe Kincaid’s minivan caught the terrorist dead between its headlights. The front grill caved in, snagging him on the radiator for a moment before he was sucked beneath the wheels. Rapp didn’t take the time to watch the aftermath, instead throwing himself over the truck’s side and landing shoulder-first on the wet concrete next to it.

  By the time he got to his feet, the remaining tango had realized the situation was reversed—that it was his turn to engage on two fronts. He made the mistake of prioritizing the minivan and managed to get a couple of rounds through the windshield as Bebe ducked down behind the wheel.

  Only the tango’s arm and a small patch of his side were visible around the door frame. Rapp steadied his hand on the truck and squeezed off a careful shot. There was no way to know precisely where it landed, but it was unquestionably a hit. The tango jerked back and disappeared inside as Bebe just missed crashing through the northwestern edge of the diner.

  Rapp came around the back of the truck and saw a flash in the windows. A gunshot—but not aimed at him. He began to sprint toward the building, gritting his teeth against the searing pain in his side.

  When he made it to the door, the Arab was crawling on his stomach toward a terrified woman who had crammed herself into the back of a booth. The only other civilian visible was a man lying by the cash register with part of his face missing.

  The tango had a wound in his back that had likely destroyed one of his lungs, but missed his heart. Enough to keep him from aiming accurately, but not enough to make him lose consciousness.

  The Agency needed the man alive, but he’d lined up on the woman in the booth and was about to pull the trigger. Reluctantly, Rapp put a round into the back of his head.

  The woman’s screams followed Rapp into the kitchen, where the staff had escaped through the back door. It was still open and he could see them and the remaining customer a few hundred yards to the east, stumbling their way across a muddy field.

  “Bebe,” Rapp said into his radio as he began searching the drawers in the kitchen. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine. You?”

  “I’ll live,” he said, pulling up his shirt to examine the wound in his side.

  It was only a graze, but probably three-eighths of an inch deep and bleeding badly. A dishrag and a roll of duct tape were the closest thing he could find to medical supplies, but they’d have to do.

  “Mitch,” Scott Coleman said. “Give me a sitrep. The police scanners are lighting up. Are the tangos down?”

  “They’re down,” Rapp said, stepping back out into the rain. “And one civilian.”

  “Ambulance?” Coleman said.

  “Hearse,” Rapp responded.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Somehow, these assholes got tipped off. But unless I miss my guess, it wasn’t until just a few minutes ago.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because if Nahas knew this was a setup he wouldn’t have sent an advance team to drink coffee for forty minutes and then shoot up a nearly empty diner. No, he sent these guys here still thinking this meeting was a go. Then, when he found out we were watching, he cut them loose.”

  “And they decided to go down in a blaze of glory,” Coleman said.

  Rapp pressed the dishrag a little tighter to his side as he passed through the open door and started for the tree line. What he didn’t need was a run-in with the cops. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “If you’re right, then it seems like Nahas would be close
. He was on his way when he realized we were watching.”

  “Agreed,” Rapp said. “We’re looking for two or more Middle Eastern men somewhere within…” He paused. The blood loss was making it hard to do math in his head. “Hell, I don’t know. Call it a hundred miles.”

  “We’re on it,” Coleman said. “Can you get to the road where we dropped you off? I can have a chopper inbound in five minutes.”

  “Yeah. I’ll be there.”

  CHAPTER 12

  RAPP leaned a little farther out the chopper’s open door, feeling his harness tighten against the wound in his side. The speed of the aircraft drove the cold mist through the jeans he hadn’t had time to change out of. His legs were pretty much numb, as were his face and hands. What he could still feel, though, was the warmth of the blood leaking from his side.

  They were staying low, skimming the treetops next to a rural highway south of the motel. And while having branches nearly slapping the runners wasn’t the safest way to fly, there wasn’t much choice. Visibility was bad enough that if they rose even another twenty-five feet, the road below would be invisible.

  He glanced back at Joe Maslick, who was sitting behind him with a HK417 rifle in his lap. Instead of the silent resolve that he normally exuded during operations, he was hunched and talking heatedly into his headset. Rapp slapped a hand into the side of his own earphones to no effect. He couldn’t hear either Maslick or the person he was talking to.

  “Fred,” he said to the pilot. “Can you hear me? I’m having a problem with my comm.”

  Maslick suddenly stopped talking, his expression making it clear there was nothing at all wrong with the equipment. He’d been deliberately cut from the channel.

  “What?” Rapp shouted over the howl of the wind coming through the door.

  In lieu of a response, Maslick pointed at the blood that had spread across pretty much Rapp’s entire lower right side. Even his sock was starting to skew crimson.

  “We gotta get you to a hospital,” the former Delta operator said, looping him back in.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine, man. You’re gonna die.”

  Before he could respond, the pilot’s voice came on. “We’ve got a vehicle ahead. Blue SUV.”

  “Same drill as before,” Rapp said, and Maslick’s jaw clenched visibly. He looked like he was about to say something, but then thought better of it.

  “All right. We’re coming in, Mitch. Hopefully, this’ll go better than last time.”

  He was referring to a pickup they’d intercepted about ten minutes ago. A family of four dressed in their Sunday best, as it turned out. No idea, but the fucking weather made it impossible to see through windshields.

  Fred Mason overflew the vehicle and then banked, flying sideways about thirty feet above the deck and matching its speed. Rapp had a perfect vantage point, but the glare was still a problem.

  Mason’s voice boomed over a speaker mounted to the bottom of the helicopter. “This is the police! Pull over immediately.”

  Rapp had a hand on his rifle, but wasn’t quite ready to shoulder it in light of what had happened last time. One of the kids crying inconsolably in his sights had been about Anna’s age.

  The SUV slowed and eased to the muddy shoulder. This time a family on their way back from church didn’t materialize. Instead two men with medium builds got out but didn’t move from behind their open doors. The mist made it impossible to discern detail and for a moment Rapp thought they were African Americans with short hair. It took about a half a second for him to register that he was looking at dark ski masks.

  “Back us up!” he shouted just as the men’s weapons appeared over the tops of the SUV’s window frames. Mason jerked the chopper to the side and Rapp slammed his rifle to his shoulder just as the flash of gunfire appeared below.

  Despite the sound of rounds tearing through the aircraft’s metal skin, Rapp didn’t aim directly at the targets. Killing them was very much not the plan, so instead he concentrated his fire on the front grill and hood of their vehicle. If they decided to take off, they’d now be doing it on foot.

  The tangos continued to track the chopper as it moved back over the forest. Instead of climbing to put distance between them and their attackers, Mason actually lost a few feet of altitude, creating an angle that forced them to shoot through the dense trees.

  “Hold it here!” Rapp shouted into the comm. “I’m out.”

  The harness holding him in position was attached to the chopper at two points. On Rapp’s right was a short static line with a carabiner clipped through a bolt. On the left was a much longer dynamic rope that snaked through a rappelling device at his waist.

  Rapp disconnected the carabiner and jumped, letting the rope slide through the device at a speed that was just shy of a free fall. He didn’t arrest until he was only about five feet from the ground. The combination of rope stretch and the helicopter rolling to the side took him to the ground.

  The guns had gone silent by the time he disconnected and started running toward the road, knowing that Maslick wouldn’t be far behind.

  “I’ll go west, you go east,” Rapp said, inserting an earpiece and toggling his throat mike. “But take it easy. There’s a good chance they’re in the trees by now.”

  “Roger that,” came the immediate reply.

  Whoever these two men were, they had enough training to stay cool and shoot straight. And if that was the case, they were likely smart enough to not stay with their vehicle. They’d go for the cover of the trees, either in an effort to escape or for an opportunity to go on the offensive. In his experience with terrorists, the second option was by far the most likely.

  He slowed his pace, scanning the woods for any sign of an ambush, but didn’t find any. In less than two minutes he’d made enough progress to get a view of the road cut through the trees.

  “I’m about twenty-five yards out with no contact,” he said into his throat mike.

  Maslick responded immediately. “I’m about fifty yards behind them and fifteen from the road. No contact. I should have eyes on their vehicle in another minute or so.”

  “Watch your ass, Mas. I doubt these guys are going to run. They don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “Understood.”

  Rapp slid his finger off the trigger of his weapon and flexed his hand in an effort to get some feeling back into it. Fuck, he was cold. Colder than he could ever remember. And it wasn’t just the weather—it was the trail of blood he was leaving across the forest floor. How much had he lost?

  No time to worry about that now.

  He continued toward the road, going from tree to tree in a careful zigzag pattern. Still, no resistance. Maybe martyrdom wasn’t on today’s menu. If the two men were Muhammad Nahas and his new tech guru, it was possible that they’d try to live to fight another day.

  When Rapp reached a position where he could see the car, it was clear that he’d miscalculated. For some reason, the men were still there. They’d broken out all of the SUV’s windows so they could shoot through them and taken cover on the other side.

  “They’re both still at the car,” Rapp said over his comm.

  “What?” Maslick said, understandably confused. “Repeat that.”

  “I’ve got eyes on both of them. They’ve taken cover on the south side of the road. You’re in good position. Cross the road far enough away that they can’t see you and flank. Take it slow, though. I don’t understand what these assholes are doing but don’t bet on them being stupid. Nahas doesn’t work with stupid people.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Fred, do we have backup inbound?”

  “You have vehicles coming from both directions and another chopper’s on its way. ETA on the helicopter is five minutes and the vehicles should be here in about ten.”

  “All right. There’s nothing you can do for us here. I want you to check the road and make sure there’s no civilian traffic bearing down on us.”

  “I’m
out, then. Good luck.”

  Rapp crouched and scanned the SUV again. Nothing. The two tangos were still wearing their masks despite the fact that it was a little late to worry about anonymity. Otherwise they were just standing there, aiming their rifles through the empty window frames and waiting. But for what?

  “I’m across the street,” Maslick said. “Heading back in their direction.”

  “Roger that.”

  Rapp sighted over his rifle, determining that he had a vaguely viable shot on one of them. Unfortunately, it was a head shot and that wasn’t going to go a long way to accomplishing his mission of taking them alive.

  Four more minutes passed before Maslick’s voice came back on the comm. “I’m in position behind them. I’ve got a shot on both.”

  “Can you put them down without killing them?”

  “I can try.”

  “Hold on. I’ll get their attention,” Rapp said.

  He squeezed off a burst into the vehicle’s driver side door and, as expected, they returned fire. Instead of assuming they were being flanked and spreading out, though, they moved to take cover in the vehicle.

  Maslick got a shot off, throwing one of the men forward but not killing him. He managed to lift his wounded leg into the vehicle and slam the door shut as his friend turned and fired in Maslick’s general direction.

  Rapp didn’t like it. They’d put themselves in a disastrous tactical position—particularly in light of the fact that they’d know backup was on its way. With a superior force coming down on them, their best bet was a running fight in the woods. It was obvious now how this was going to end.

  “I’ve lost my angle,” Maslick said. “Moving in.”

  “No!” Rapp shouted.

  A moment later, the SUV went up in a column of fire that rose a good fifty feet in the air.