скачать книгу бесплатно
Langford held up his hand and shook his head to the uniformed men. They lowered their weapons.
“Somebody you know?” Lyons said.
“Oh, yeah.” The OSBI director grinned. “Retired agent. And I’d forgotten he went to this church.” He paused a moment, then said, “Carl Lyons, meet Gary Hooks. Former agent and close-quarters-combat expert with and without weapons.”
The two men shook hands.
“You’re a little late for the service, Gary,” Langford said.
“We always are,” Hooks said. “My wife can’t stand that canned music they play on Sunday mornings. So we get here just in time for the sermon and sneak into a back pew.” He looked around for a moment, taking in all of the other officers, weapons and equipment. “Then again, maybe God made me late on purpose,” he said. “My guess is none of you know jack about the layout inside of the church.”
“No details or schematics,” Langford said.
“It’s fairly simple,” Hooks said, tightening the turquoise bolo around his neck. “Right behind those front doors is a foyer that is about ten feet wide and circles the sanctuary. But it’s a killing ground. They—whoever they are—could stand just inside the sanctuary itself, with the doors propped back, and kill every one of us who opened one of the outside doors before we even got inside.”
“Any other ways in?” Blancanales asked Hooks. “Ways these guys wouldn’t know?”
“Well,” Hooks said, squinting slightly, “this isn’t ancient Rome and we don’t have any catacombs to hide in. But there’s a way in they may not have thought about, particularly since they’re Muslims and particularly since this is a Baptist church.” He looked up at the roof of the large building. “There’s one way in I think enough of us could use to get the drop on them. That’d give the rest of these guys time to come through the doors,” he said, then cleared his throat. “Your team, Lyons, plus Langford and me. Our job will be to take out the sentries at the sanctuary doors from behind so the SWAT teams and other officers can come in and join us.”
“And just how do you plan to get behind them, Gary?” Langford asked,
Hooks grinned. “Since you’re a Methodist, I wouldn’t expect you to know,” he said.
Langford laughed, and it was obvious to Lyons that this was an old joke between the two old friends. “Don’t worry,” Hooks said. “I’ll show you all the way. But we’ve got to spot and disarm whatever explosives they’ve set up, too. And that could get tricky.” He paused a second and cleared his throat. “You know what this is, Dwayne,” he said, using Langford’s first name. “One giant suicide bombing. Those men inside plan to blow themselves up along with everyone else, and you know it. I know that because they haven’t paid a bit of attention to what we’re doing outside here. Has anyone so much as seen a face in any of those windows?”
Langford shook his head. “But you’re retired, Gary,” he said. “You don’t have to—”
“I’m not retired when somebody tries to blow up my church,” Hooks said. He glanced around. “You’ve got some good men out here,” he added finally. “I know, because I trained most of them in close-quarters combat. But none of them know the inside of that church like I do.”
Langford laughed softly again, then looked at Lyons. “He never was worth a damn at taking orders,” he said.
“I think what he’s saying makes sense,” Lyons said. “We need Hooks to come with us.”
“Then let’s get on with it,” Gary Hooks said.
“I know this is a foolish question, Gary,” Langford said. “But do you have a gun on you?”
“One or two,” said Hooks. “But I need one more.” He turned swiftly and returned to his pickup, kissed his wife, and came back carrying a worn canvas briefcase. A moment later he produced a 5.56 mm Kel-Tec PLR-16 pistol and began stuffing extra loaded magazines into the pockets of his gray suit.
As soon as he returned, Langford turned to a man at his side. “Give me your AR, Don,” he said.
As he grabbed the AR-15 from his subordinate’s hands he said, “Everybody ready?”
Lyons nodded. “Then let’s go. You know the layout,” he said, looking to Hooks, “so you lead the way.”
A second later they were following the man in the gray suit and turquoise bolo tie around the building to the side of the church.
T HE RECENTLY PURCHASED Pizza Hut building was not the only addition the Southern Hills Baptist church had planned. A vacant lot where an old crumbling wood-frame house had been torn down stood adjacent to the church’s gymnasium, and the workmen who were building new Sunday-school classrooms had left several ladders at the site.
While Blancanales stood watch through the windows into the gym to make sure no curious eyes were on them, Lyons, Schwarz, Hooks and Langford hefted the tallest of the ladders and hauled it to the side of the church.
“See anything?” Lyons asked when they had the ladder resting against the brick.
“Nothing but basketball goals and foul lines,” Blancanales said.
Lyons led the way as the other men steadied the ladder, then turned and assisted each of the other men up onto the asphalt roof of the church.
The men made their way as quietly as possible across the top of the building. When they reached an airshaft roughly halfway toward the front of the church, Hooks stopped. “This leads down into the dressing rooms behind the baptistry,” he said. “From there we can step down into the water itself. There’s a curtain that’ll cover us from sight.”
Lyons nodded. It was at this point, he knew, that the leadership of the quickly formed five-man team should return to him. Hooks looked him squarely in the eyes and nodded his acknowledgment.
“Okay, guys,” the former LAPD detective said. “I’ll go first. None of us hit the water until we’re all down. Got it?”
Four heads nodded back at him.
With Hooks’s and Langford’s help, Lyons pried the metal shaft off the hole leading down into the building. His Randall Model 1 fighting knife took care of the screen, and then he lowered himself through the passageway to the tile floor. His boots tapped as they hit the floor and he heard the curtain in front of the water start to move.
Someone had heard him.
And there was absolutely no place to hide.
Ignoring his own order of a moment earlier, Lyons lowered himself into the water of the baptistry and ducked his head beneath the surface, pressing himself as tightly as he could against the wall directly beneath the curtain. Through the water, he could see the curtain move. A bearded man wearing a red scarf with his khaki fatigues and BDU cap peered through the open window.
But he didn’t look down. And a moment later, the curtain closed again.
Lyons rose slowly through the water, acutely aware of the unavoidable sound he was making. But it was evidently not as loud as his drop had been because the curtain remained closed. Climbing up the two steps and back onto the tile floor, he looked upward and motioned for the next man to come down. Lyons caught Schwarz’s legs before they hit the floor, then lowered him silently.
Together the two Able Team operatives did the same for the remaining three men.
Holding a finger to his lips, Lyons then gave hand signals to direct the other men down into the water. He remembered the red scarf the terrorist had worn as he looked through the curtain a minute earlier, and frowned.
These terrorists had claimed to be legitimate Iranian troops. And the red scarf was official issue to the Revolutionary Guard—like the green beret to U.S. Special Forces.
The president of Iran was crazy—few people would argue that point. But was he crazy enough to actually send official troops inside America’s borders and attack a house of worship? Of course anyone could buy a red scarf and tie it around his neck and call himself anything from Revolutionary Guard to Gene Autry if he wanted to. The terrorists could easily be al-Qaeda or Hezbollah or Hamas or some other group simply masquerading as Pasdaran troops.
At this point it didn’t matter. He and the rest of his men could sort that all out after the thousand or so hostages on the other side of the curtain were safe.
Lyons’s M-16 was already soaked with water from his earlier dip beneath the curtain. But that mattered little with modern firearms. It would still fire. So holding it in front of him, he moved slowly to the corner of the curtain and used the barrel to push it slightly to the side.
Directly through the window was a large choir loft, with terrified men and women dressed in robes still sitting in their chairs. Mixed in with them were more men in khaki uniforms and red scarves.
One of them had to be the man who had almost spotted him earlier.
Behind the pulpit, and making full use of the microphone in front of him, another terrorist dressed in identical fatigues and a red scarf stood spouting Islamic terrorist propaganda in broken English. Lyons could hear him demanding that the congregation all convert to Islam immediately or be killed and go directly to Hell.
Other men with AK-47s, Uzis and a variety of other weaponry stood next to the speaker. Still more patrolled the aisles, and in the balcony Lyons could see that the same thing was going on. These men in red scarves—perhaps Iranian Pasdarans, perhaps simple terrorists in disguise—were covering their hostages from every angle.
What interested Carl Lyons most, however, was a red-scarfed man on the stage sitting next to a Caucasian in a blue suit. Lyons suspected the man in the suit was the minister. In his midforties, he had slightly graying hair. He sat quietly. But his face showed no fear. If anything, what emanated from the pastor was confidence and determination.
Next to the minister, on the floor, was a sinister-looking device that appeared to be comprised of Semtex plastic explosives and a glass container that held a dull, cloudy liquid that was turning yellow.
Nitroglycerin. Most people thought it was clear, and it was when it was new. But as the explosive aged, it took on more color.
And more instability. It might even be set off by the vibrations of a gunshot. It was a true IED—Improvised Explosive Device. Unprofessional and unpredictable.
In addition to a pistol in one hand, the man next to the minister held an electronic device that resembled a television remote control in the other. But Lyons knew this device had only one channel.
Explode.
Lyons stepped back through the water. He could never crawl through the window and get to the bomb or the man with the detonator before the bomb was detonated. And if he shot the terrorist, the gunshot itself might cause the explosion of the shaky nitro. Lyons stood there while the rest of his team took turns looking through the curtain to access the situation for themselves. All of them looked at him when they’d seen the explosive.
The Able Team leader moved back to the corner of the curtain and brushed it slightly to the side again. He looked out to lock eyes with the minister he had seen only moments earlier.
Somehow, for whatever reason, the preacher had turned in his seat enough to stare at the baptistry. And somehow Lyons had known he was going to do just that even before he moved the curtain.
The minister slowly nodded at Lyons.
Lyons nodded back. Although he wasn’t sure why or what the nod meant. He only knew that to do nothing meant the sure deaths of two thousand innocent people seated in the congregation.
Turning toward the rest of the men next to him in the water, the Able Team leader whispered individual assignments. Langford and Hooks would take out the guards at the main doors while Schwarz and Blancanales dived through the opening to handle the terrorists on the stage and in the aisles.
Just before he was about to seize the curtain and jerk it back, Schwarz grabbed his sleeve. “What about the bomb?” he said.
“I’m taking care of it,” Lyons said.
Schwarz frowned, then slowly nodded.
Carl Lyons reached up and grabbed the curtain with one hand, holding his M-16 with the other. He took a final look at each of his men, then suddenly ripped the curtain off the front of the baptistry so hard it came completely off the rings that had held it in place along the top of the window.
H AL B ROGNOLA was a well-known face to the Secret Service agents stationed at the White House. So when he walked purposefully through the final metal detector and sent a loud buzzing down the hall, all he got from the men in the dark suits were nods of acknowledgment.
Brognola nodded back as he strode toward the open door to the Oval Office. Stepping inside, he saw that the chair behind the huge desk was empty. But that wasn’t unusual.
So he turned to his left.
Few Americans knew it, but the Oval Office was used primarily for news briefings and meetings with foreign dignitaries. It was a show office. Most of the papers the President reviewed and signed, as well as the rest of the actual work he did, was conducted in a much smaller, more businesslike room next door. And it was from this door that Brognola heard the familiar voice say, “In here, Hal.”
Brognola crossed the freshly vacuumed carpet and entered the work office. The Man was seated at one end of a long leather couch with stacks of paper arranged next to him.
When the President pointed toward the other end of the couch, Brognola dropped down beside the stacked papers. He wore two hats in the U.S. government. To the public, he was a high-ranking official within the U.S. Department of Justice. But behind the scenes, he was also the Director of Sensitive Operations for Stony Man Farm.
Today, however, he had no doubt which role the President would be expecting him to assume. Had the Man simply had Justice Department business on his mind, he’d have conducted it over the phone.
“I guess I don’t have to tell you about the situation at the Iraq-Iran border,” the President began.
Brognola shook his head. “I haven’t seen a news tape replayed so many times since Rodney King,” he said.
“You realize what the Iranian president is trying to do, I’m sure,” the Man said.
“Sure,” Brognola said. “They’re trying to suck us into another Iraq. Crossing the border and killing and kidnapping American noncombatants was an act of war. Clean and simple. They’re daring us to invade Iran.”
The President nodded. “Exactly,” he affirmed. “Right now, the sympathy of the rest of the world is with us.”
Brognola grunted sarcastically. “That won’t last. Particularly if we start bombing Tehran.”
“You know, I know and Iran knows that we can kick their butts nine ways to Sunday if we want to,” the President said. “But unless we nuke them out of existence, we’ll have to send in more troops to keep order, and it won’t work any better there than it has in Iraq.”
“Or Vietnam or Korea,” Brognola agreed.
“Right,” the Man said. “It’s pretty much all or nothing. We’d have to just forget about civilian casualties altogether and wipe them out. Or sit back and do nothing for years like we did when the Shah went down.” He paused a moment, then said, “But there is a third possibility. A surgical strike that frees the hostages but doesn’t do much, if any, collateral damage. It’s slim, but at least it has a chance.”
Brognola knew what was coming and remained silent.
“Where’s Bolan at the moment?” the Man asked.
“Haven’t heard from him in several days,” Brognola said. “He’s tied up with some things in Bosnia right now.”
“Able Team and Phoenix Force?” the President asked.
“Able Team’s in Oklahoma,” Brognola said.
“Ah, yes.” The President nodded. “The church situation. I understand it’s Iranian-backed terrorists there, too?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Brognola said seriously. “There’s a rumor going around the intel agencies that the men who took over the church are Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen. Pasdarans, complete with their red neckerchiefs.”
“And Phoenix Force?” the President asked.
“McCarter and his boys are catching a few hours of well-deserved sleep after that affair in South Africa. But I can have them up and ready within the hour.”
The phone on the desk suddenly rang.
“Get that, will you, Hal?” the President said. “Put it on speakerphone.”
“Certainly, sir.” Brognola rose to his feet, took two steps to the desk and pressed the intercom button on the phone.
“Nan, I told you to hold all of my calls while Mr. Brognola was here,” the President said somewhat testily.
His tone didn’t seem to have any effect on his receptionist. “I know,” the voice on the other end of the line said confidently. “But you’ll want this one.”
“Who is it?” the Man asked.
“Javid Azria,” Nan answered.
The President looked at Brognola.
Brognola looked back.
“Put him on,” the Man directed.
