“Kick that rifle away from you now.”
Again Paz did as he was told. His exposed, stubbly head poured sweat, and he fought to keep the rage from showing on his raw-boned features. He positioned himself so the mayor had no hope of seeing the pistol holstered in his belt.
“I been waitin’ for this for the longest time, you bastard,” McCluskey said and Paz knew in that moment the man wasn’t going to kill him right away, which meant he wasn’t going to kill him at all. “Put your arms in the air,” came the next order. “Straight up so the fingertips touch the sky.”
Paz started to oblige, smiling warmly to display his submission. When his arms were almost fully outstretched, he launched his taut body into a dive and used his left hand for leverage as he rolled across the ground with his right going for his pistol.
The wounded mayor sprayed the dirt with fire, bullets coming close but not close enough. Paz felt their heat as he brought his pistol up and fired it repeatedly. The first bullet spun the mayor violently around and the next two dropped him. Paz smacked one more into his writhing frame just for good measure and lurched back to his feet, grasping his Kalishnikov on the way. Beneath him the people of Pamosa Springs were rushing toward the hillside, a large stream collectively holding the potential instrument of his failure in their hands with the bearded bastard at their lead.
Paz scrambled into position.
“You really think this is going to work?” an out-of-breath and hobbling Sheriff Junk huffed to McCracken, catching up to him en route to the hill.
“You’re the demolitions man. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Fuck…. You would put it on my shoulders, wouldn’t you? ‘Case you haven’t noticed, they’re not in the best of shape.”
“They’ll do,” said McCracken.
On Blaine’s orders, a throng of residents had lifted the mounds of C-4 plastic explosives from the church’s perimeter and hurried after him toward the sloping hill which overlooked the gulley containing the generator gun. His plan was to plug the hill with the plastique, wiring it in a way that would bring the whole bulk of land mass down upon the huge gun. Thousands of pounds of rocks and dirt and sand entombing it just might stop the generator from firing its beam, redirect it at the very least in a direction where it would do no harm.
So long as Sheriff Junk could get it wired properly.
So long as there was time for him to try.
“Fifteen minutes to system activation,” announced Raulsch in his gravelly voice.
Activity in the command vault had stabilized. As long as all readout lights continued to flash green, there was little the personnel could do other than wait for a dreaded malfunction as they sat attentively behind their monitors or CRT screens.
For Raskowski, the minutes had already passed into an eternity. He should have been savoring these final moments, but instead he was nervous, on edge, a feeling of foreboding filling him with the certainty that the enemies he had let slip from his grasp had one final card to play.
He was so caught up in these thoughts that he was not aware of Katlov’s breathless presence until the man grasped his shoulder.
“General,” came his agitated report, “deployed ground security spotters have just reported armed commandos rushing down the Bahnhofstrasse in our direction. Just blocks away now.”
Raskowski rose from his chair, still towering above the one-eyed Katlov who had spoken from floor level. “Who?” he wanted to know.
Katlov swallowed hard. “Tomachenko is at their lead.”
“The bitch!” Raskowski roared drawing attention from nearby technicians but not seeming to care. Fighting to calm himself, he turned to Katlov. “Deploy all our defenses. Condition Red. You know the procedures.”
“Da,” Katlov replied and rushed out after making the semblance of a salute.
Raskowski waited for the electronic door to close behind his security chief before speaking again. “Seal the vault,” he ordered Raulsch.
Raulsch began flipping switches on his console, deactivating the mechanism that permitted entry and switching the vault’s air supply to its own tanks, so that no foreign gases could be introduced. The vault could now be opened only from the inside and only with the special cards that both Raulsch and Raskowski possessed.
“Twelve minutes to system activation,” Raulsch announced.
The general leaned back, confident. With all these precautions taken, Natalya Tomachenko and whoever her friends were stood no chance of getting in to stop him now.
The shooting began when Natalya and the commandos were still a block away from the Kriehold Building. The building was fronted by a giant fountain adorned with falls and spouts. The first line of Raskowski’s defenses had taken cover behind it, cloaked by the night.
“They were expecting us!” one of Vasquez’s men screamed as he ducked for cover.
“It doesn’t matter!” Natalya shouted back.
The commandos responded instinctively. With their fire-power infinitely superior to that of the guards, they knew this resistance was futile. But any resistance took time, and time was the one weapon they didn’t possess. They hurled grenades immediately, a pair landing in the fountain and ripping away parts of its structure. Water gushed everywhere, adding to the chaotic rush of people screaming and charging for cover. More grenades followed the first and a path was cleared through the floodlit darkness to the building’s main entrance.
A lead phalanx had already lunged ahead of the grenade hurlers and encountered more enemy fire from inside the Kriehold’s lobby. This, too, was ended with a few grenades that shattered the glass in the huge doors, demolishing them. Natalya was impressed with the ruthlessness of Vasquez’s men. Their loyalty was fierce. Their orders were to help penetrate the madman’s stronghold and nothing was allowed to get in their way. The commandos were of one mind, one purpose. With Natalya just behind the first group, they rushed into the lobby and used their machine guns to fell the remainder of Raskowski’s inadequately armed security guards, hardly prepared to deal with such a full-scale assault.
“What floor?” one of them screamed at her.
“Fourteen!” Natalya returned, and they rushed along toward the elevators.
One of the commandos pushed the UP arrow again and again. At last the doors slid open. Only Natalya’s surprisingly strong grasp stopped the first of the men from entering.
“No!” she ordered. “No elevators! We enter them and he turns the power off in mid-flight. The stairs, it’s got to be the stairs!”
Raskowski watched all this transpire on one of the seven miniature closed-circuit monitors on the console directly before his chair. The enemy was coming up the stairs. His men could not possibly hold them off. But they would still have to find the command center and even then there would be the vault door to contend with.
Impregnable. He had won. Everything was on his side.
“Ten minutes to system activation….”
Including time.
The resistance within the stairwell was heavier than expected. Grenades were dangerous to use in so narrow a space because of their percussion qualities and potential to roll back or send clouds of deadly debris showering in their wake. It came down to hand-held weapons, then, and the commandos were well up to the task, seeming to find it preferable.
They never stopped, even when the enemy fire was at its strongest. Soon Raskowski’s forces were pinned with their backs against the exit door from the stairwell onto the fourteenth floor. They were out of bullets and fighting to reload when the commandos killed them. The door proved only a small hindrance to them and they were through it in an instant to the sound of more enemy fire trying to cut them down as they surged into the corridor in what had to be single file.