“Oh, I’m just getting started,” Yardley told him. “There’s always the possibility of knockout gas through the environmental systems. Or we send in SWAT teams. That’s a damned big tower, and you can’t begin to put fire teams everywhere you’d need to be to stop us. We can work our way around you, get our own teams in position, then blow our way through walls and floors to take you out.”
“Probably,” the strike leader acknowledged. “I’d say the chances of your pulling that off without our killing Ms. Guernicke before you get in here are no more than forty-sixty, though, and that’s if you wait a couple days, until fatigue and anxiety start dulling our alertness. Of course, that’s also assuming we’re willing to wait that long before we just go ahead and shoot the bitch. For that matter, we’ve got somewhere around fifty more Trifecta employees up here, most of them pretty damned senior, and we don’t especially like any of them, either. You want some of them airmailed back? They’ll make an awful mess when they hit the pavement without counter-grav.”
There was silence from Yardley’s end, and the strike leader leaned back in Guernicke’s sinfully comfortable chair.
“I’ve been informed by President Lombroso that you’re not getting your air car, and you’re not getting out of that building, without handing Ms. Guernicke over to us unharmed,” Yardley said finally. “That’s not negotiable.”
“No, that’s not negotiable yet,” the strike leader corrected her. “And I didn’t expect it to be, either. But we’re not going anywhere, and you’re not moving anyone else into this building, until he’s had an opportunity to…rethink that position.”
“You think not?”
“Not unless you want to start getting bits and pieces of Trifecta’s senior management team back as greasy spots on the street.”
“You start throwing people out of windows, and I may just decide the only chance Ms. Guernicke has is for us to get in there before you throw her out one.”
“I’ll take my chances on that. Besides, what makes you think that’s the only string to our bow?”
“I know how many people got inside with you,” Yardley said. “That tower is lousy with security cameras, you know. I know about the people you’ve got covering your entry portal—and those tribarrels of theirs won’t do squat if I decide to send in the Scorpions, by the way—and I know how many people you’ve got covering the lift banks. I even know how many people got into Ms. Guernicke’s office with you…and that you lost somebody on the way in.”
“And are you getting very much information from them now?” the strike leader inquired in an interested tone.
He almost imagined he could hear her teeth grinding together in the silence from the other end.
“Yeah, we know about the cameras,” he went on after a moment and shrugged. “There was no way to take them out before we got inside, but you’re not seeing a damned thing from them now. Which means you don’t know whether we’ve pulled SAMS out of our van—or ATWs, for that matter—or not. You don’t even know if we’ve still got Guernicke in her office or staked out across the lift bank doors. Oh, and by the way, did you know Ms. Guernicke has the master codes to access all of the building’s surveillance and environmental control systems from her desk? She was kind enough to give them to us when we insisted. So if you want to try infiltrating SWAT teams into the building, you go right ahead.”
“Listen,” Yardley said, “I’m not going to send people up there after you—not yet. But I damned well am going to secure the lower floors of that tower.”
“You try to do that and someone’s going to get hurt,” the strike leader said flatly. He was watching the feed from the tower’s ground level security cameras as he spoke. At least two companies of the Presidential Guard were advancing across Trifecta Boulevard from the parking garage. “Even if you manage to get troops inside the tower, it’s not going to buy you any edge you don’t already have. But if they keep coming, you’re going to regret the attempt.”
“Are you threatening the hostages again?” Yardley laughed harshly. “You’re not going to kill Ms. Guernicke, or even any of the other management personnel with her, until you feel a hell of a lot more threatened than that! And if you do, you lose your bargaining chips, and we come straight in however hard and fast we have to.”
“Last warning,” the strike leader told her, still watching the advancing troops. “Call them off now.”
* * *
Yardley’s eyes narrowed. His voice was flat, unwavering. In fact, there was something almost like…satisfaction in it, and alarm bells sounded in the back of her brain. But she couldn’t back off. She had to shake his nerve, destroy his confidence that he was in control of the situation, calling the tune while she had no option but to dance to it. She had to assert her ability to control the situation, and so she simply sat back, folded her arms, and watched her command vehicle’s visual displays.
* * *
“Have it your way, General,” the strike leader said, and pressed a button.
* * *
The van which had parked so quickly at street level when Air Traffic Control ordered the local airspace cleared had been abandoned with unseemly haste. The driver hadn’t even wasted any time trying to straighten it out; she’d simply left it there, dumped across three parking slots with its nose pointing out across the street at a sharp angle. It was sloppy of her, no doubt, but other vehicles had been abandoned with equal haste.
There was, however, one difference between her van and any of those other vehicles, as the Presidential Guard discovered when it disappeared in a horrendous fireball.
The weapon was technically an “improvised explosive device,” since it had been manufactured for the purpose out of readily available components by largely amateur hands. There was nothing haphazard or slipshod about it, though. A solid partition, both sides concave in shape, had been run lengthwise along the van’s generous cargo space. The outer surfaces of the partition had been coated in explosives—civilian explosive compounds stolen from construction crews, not military-grade, but amply powerful for the task in hand—and the explosives, in turn, had been coated with a thick layer of screws, old-fashioned nails, bits and pieces of scrap metal, broken glass, and chunks of ceramacrete. The van had been transformed into a huge directional mine which sent a lethal sheet of shrapnel sweeping out in both directions simultaneously.
The driver hadn’t achieved a perfect angle, but she’d come close, and the strike leader had judged his moment carefully. He caught at least ninety percent of the advancing Presidential Guard infantry in the IED’s blast area, and destruction crashed over them like a thunderbolt. The blast front swept up weapons, helmets, equipment, and body parts on its fiery breath. It shredded its victims like toys…and painted the pavement and slide-walks in ghastly sprays of blood decorated with bits and pieces of mangled flesh.
* * *
“I told you to call them off,” the voice on Yardley’s com was cold and precise. “You should’ve listened. But since you didn’t—”
He pressed a second button.
* * *
“Tiger” Braddock was astonished he was still alive. His position had been just deep enough inside the parking garage for its sturdy walls to intercept the shrapnel which had butchered his infantry. One moment, the next best thing to three hundred of his elite troops had been sweeping across Trifecta Boulevard towards their objective. The next moment, at least two hundred of them were dead and a lot more were dying. He stumbled to the garage entrance, head ringing from the force of the explosion, and peered out in horror at hell’s own landscape as men and women with no legs tried to drag themselves out of the charnel house of the boulevard on their elbows and forearms. He saw another rocking on his knees while he tried to stuff his own intestines back inside his ruptured body. Another stumbled helplessly about, hands clasped over the blind, red ruin of what had been a human face only moments before. Still others only lay there, unable to drag their mangled bodies anywhere, shrieking amid the motionless dead.