Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(24)

Finally, the little dots on the screen were moving out toward their designated assault positions. But something about Alpha team looked wrong. Two of the lead dots had stopped moving before reaching their assigned locations. Suddenly, the radios were alive with chatter.

"Two officers down. Christ. Someone just killed Jonesy and Christopher." The sound of automatic weapon fire drowned out the remainder of his words.

Gibson's voice broke in. "Bravo Team. Where the hell is the suppressive fire onto that second floor?"

Another radio squawked. "Damn it, we're pounding the hell out of it. We've launched five gas grenades in there too."

Gibson's excited voice shifted to the other channel. "Alpha team? Where is the fire coming from?"

This time a different voice answered. "Shit. Get us some backup. We've got two more down over here. I can't tell where the hell the fire is coming from."

"Bill, can you get to your wounded?"

The other man's breathing was coming in ragged gasps. "We don't have any wounded. The bastard is shooting everyone in the head. Get us some f*cking help over here or there won't be anybody left."

"Bravo, move over to support Alpha," Gibson's voice cracked with stress.

Suddenly, Freeman felt Kromly's hand grip his arm. He swung his eyes to meet those of the old CIA trainer.

"You don't have much time," said Kromly in a voice devoid of emotion. “Jack is on their flank, rolling them up like ducks in a shooting gallery."

"That was before we got the gas into the building."

"God damn it, Freeman, you stupid *. Don't you get it? Jack isn't in the building. He's out there somewhere among your men and he's hunting. Don't send more of them to him."

"Kromly, you're not telling me something. Why all the head shots?"

Suddenly, the Bravo team radios began to chatter. One of their men was down, but it was unclear where the shot had come from.

As much as it galled him and despite the fact that he knew this meant the end of his career, Darnell Freeman knew where his duty lay. It lay with those men out there, who put their lives on the line for their country every day of the week, those men who were getting butchered by the abomination called Jack Gregory. He picked up the microphone.

"Gibson, this is Freeman. Pull Bravo team back now."

"Sir?"

"You heard me. We've lost containment on Gregory. Get your men back to where they can establish a defensible perimeter and await further instructions. And keep those Los Alamos cops out of there too."

Having finished with Gibson, Freeman switched to another frequency. They may have lost Gregory for the moment, but taking down the other four members of his team would help take some of the sting out of it. He would, no doubt, be fired tomorrow, but that man had killed some good agents, some of them men he had known personally. It was now time to close the other two traps and bring home some of the vengeance that the FBI was owed.

He picked up the SATCOM radio handset and spoke the words that would set the other two parts of the taskforce into motion. Fifty miles away in Santa Fe and just a few miles down the road in Los Alamos, two other special assault units moved into action.





22


The tear-gas canisters crashed through the windows of the house in volleys, rapidly filling every room with a noxious cloud.

In the second floor office, Janet leaned back against the corner, breathing slowly in and out the air that filtered through her M95 protective mask, holding the Uzi and twin green clackers. She waited. It wouldn't be long now. A matter of seconds.

The sound of imploding glass downstairs signaled the arrival of the special weapons assault team into the Johnson house. Janet squeezed the handle on one of the clackers, sending an electrical signal down the line to the Claymore antipersonnel mines positioned behind the couch and in the pantry downstairs. The shock wave lifted the floor beneath her, signaling that the thousands of small ball bearings had introduced themselves to her attackers, blowing what was left of them back out through the doors and windows they had just crashed through.

Before the second floor of the house could quit vibrating, Janet was on her feet, pressing the handle of the second of the twin green clackers. This one shook the house from the outside as a long daisy chain of Claymores cleared a path from the back door into the canyon behind the house and set off the thermite grenade in the attic.

She moved through the smoke-filled hallway and down the fractured remains of the stairway by feel, since smoke rendered visual cues nonexistent. In the kitchen Janet paused just long enough to orient herself to the doorway before launching herself into a dead run down the line that had been cleared through the SWAT perimeter by the four daisy-chained Claymores.

Before the first layer of smoke had begun to clear, she was already in the steep wooded canyon, moving toward the distant rally point where she would meet up with Jack. Behind her, the sound of gunfire directed into the roaring inferno gave ample evidence that the SWAT team did not yet have a good idea what had just happened.

The whup-whup of a helicopter moving out over the canyon indicated that this situation was changing. Yells from above her to her left and right indicated that the leader of this assault team knew what he was doing. He had been surprised by the Claymores and had lost several men, but he was now getting things put together. He had sent men racing out on two sides in an attempt to cut off escape along the line cut through his perimeter by the daisy chain of Claymores. Clearly, she had not been seen, but the man was making all the right assumptions.