Sky Hammer

“HEADS UP, PEOPLE. WE HAVE ACTIVITY!”

On the shots from the Hubbell, the Stony Man team could see the thrusters were firing on a dozen Thors, a lambent purple glow of ionized gas visible as the thick steel bars started accelerating toward the world below.

“Who are they attacking?” Tokaido asked anxiously. His hands itched to send out a warning to the target, maybe save some lives. But he knew it would be pointless. The Thors literally struck like lightning. There wasn’t time for a warning.

“Somebody in the North American continent,” Bear stated honestly. “Hell, maybe us.” Reaching out, the burly man slapped a button on the console.

“Barbara, you better sound the alarm,” Kurtzman said in a deceptively calm voice. “We may have incoming.”

Other titles in this series:

#15 BLOOD DEBT

#16 DEEP ALERT

#17 VORTEX

#18 STINGER

#19 NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE

#20 TERMS OF SURVIVAL

#21 SATAN’S THRUST

#22 SUNFLASH

#23 THE PERISHING GAME

#24 BIRD OF PREY

#25 SKYLANCE

#26 FLASHBACK

#27 ASIAN STORM

#28 BLOOD STAR

#29 EYE OF THE RUBY

#30 VIRTUAL PERIL

#31 NIGHT OF THE JAGUAR

#32 LAW OF LAST RESORT

#33 PUNITIVE MEASURES

#34 REPRISAL

#35 MESSAGE TO AMERICA

#36 STRANGLEHOLD

#37 TRIPLE STRIKE

#38 ENEMY WITHIN

#39 BREACH OF TRUST

#40 BETRAYAL

#41 SILENT INVADER

#42 EDGE OF NIGHT

#43 ZERO HOUR

#44 THIRST FOR POWER

#45 STAR VENTURE

#46 HOSTILE INSTINCT

#47 COMMAND FORCE

#48 CONFLICT IMPERATIVE

#49 DRAGON FIRE

#50 JUDGMENT IN BLOOD

#51 DOOMSDAY DIRECTIVE

#52 TACTICAL RESPONSE

#53 COUNTDOWN TO TERROR

#54 VECTOR THREE

#55 EXTREME MEASURES

#56 STATE OF AGGRESSION

#57 SKY KILLERS

#58 CONDITION HOSTILE

#59 PRELUDE TO WAR

#60 DEFENSIVE ACTION

#61 ROGUE STATE

#62 DEEP RAMPAGE

#63 FREEDOM WATCH

#64 ROOTS OF TERROR

#65 THE THIRD PROTOCOL

#66 AXIS OF CONFLICT

#67 ECHOES OF WAR

#68 OUTBREAK

#69 DAY OF DECISION

#70 RAMROD INTERCEPT

#71 TERMS OF CONTROL

#72 ROLLING THUNDER

#73 COLD OBJECTIVE

#74 THE CHAMELEON FACTOR

#75 SILENT ARSENAL

#76 GATHERING STORM

#77 FULL BLAST

#78 MAELSTROM

#79 PROMISE TO DEFEND

#80 DOOMSDAY CONQUEST

Sky Hammer

STONY MAN®

AMERICAN’S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Don Pendleton

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Paris, France

Lightning flashed in the stormy sky as Alex Davis staggered through the filthy alley. Holding his right hand to his wound, he flinched at the burst of light and tightened his grip on the Beretta pistol in his left. But there was nobody in sight. The clouds opened and down came the rain. The NSA agent was drenched in seconds, the downpour of cool water slightly reviving him.

Coming out of the alley, the dying agent paused at the sidewalk, trying to focus his eyes through the torrential deluge. Only a few people were in sight, all of them racing through the puddles for the safety of a store or a cab. Nobody seemed to be looking his way.

Jerking his head, Davis forced himself awake. If he went to sleep now, he’d never wake up again. Leaving the alley, he lurched across the street and into another alley, a shortcut that kept him off the dangerous sidewalks.

When Davis had joined the NSA, he’d been told that field agents had a long life expectancy. But years of service had taught him the truth. Death stalked everybody in the intelligence game these days, and the only way to survive was to shoot first and ask questions later. He had paused, unwilling to take a human life without direct provocation, and now he was a walking dead man. Davis knew it in his bones.

That morning he’d arranged for a meet with one of his “groundhogs,” somebody who could feed the agency news from the street. Not the public streets, but the back-alley gossip, the hushed news from the French underworld. Blackmail, weapons smuggling, kidnappings, arson and murder. The NSA agent did nothing about the crimes unless they affected America. He simply took in the raw data and wrote a report for his superiors. Machines could tap into cell phone calls very easily these days, the electronic warriors were doing most of work nowadays. But it was spies, moles, turncoats and stool pigeons who kept America safe. People talking. Old-fashioned spy work. Human intelligence.

Everything had seemed aboveboard when Davis met the snitch at the train station. The woman was mature, sixty, maybe seventy, but still maintained her good looks. She was demure in a pink dress with black trim. Only the smile was cold and impersonal. You’d never guess that she ran dozens of brothels across the great metropolis, establishments that catered to the criminal hierarchy, clients who liked to talk afterward. Davis had slipped the madam a book with money stuffed between the pages and she’d given him a newspaper. He’d barely had time to glance at the message taped to the book review page when a train arrived, somebody shoved a shotgun through the window in a crash of glass and opened fire. The madam hit the tiled wall of the station in a red spray, her ruined body crumpling to the ground. Taking cover behind a vending machine, Davis had withdrawn his side arm, but was unable to return fire because of all the civilians.

However, that hadn’t stopped the dark-haired gunman, and Davis got hit twice before managing to escape by going through a plate-glass window. His agency vest had saved his life, but a block later he’d realized he was badly wounded. Dying. Somebody had tried to stop the madam from delivering the note he carried, so that made it a requisite that it be passed on. He pressed a hand to his jacket, but the cell phone was only bits and pieces, smashed during the brief gunfight.

Pausing to rest against a lamppost, Davis struggled to read the short note through the bad light and pouring rain. Could this be real? By God, that would mean…

Forcing himself into motion, the NSA agent continued his hopeless journey for the distant café. Come on, man, just one block more….

IMPATIENTLY, JOE SNYDER GLANCED at his watch. Half an hour late. Davis had to have been taking care of business. Ten more minutes and he’d start without the man. He had skipped breakfast this morning, and the CIA agent was starving. The two men lunched regularly and, more than once, one or the other was late.

Moments later a woman outside the café screamed, then a man sitting near the sidewalk jumped up, knocking back his chair. Coming out of the rain like something from a nightmare was a disheveled figure with a gun in his hand.

Snyder started to go for the Glock under his jacket when he recognized Davis.

“Good God, man, what happened to you!” Snyder cried, rising from his chair. Then he turned to a nearby waiter he knew. “Pierre, an ambulance! Fast!”

Pierre didn’t waste a second in discussion. He turned and charged through the café, maneuvering through the maze of people and tables to disappear into the steamy back room.

“Joe, gotta tell…” Davis mumbled, staggering against the table and knocking it sideways, the plates and silverware flying everywhere.

Reaching out, Snyder caught the man as he collapsed. “Easy there, buddy. Easy. What happened? Are you shot? Stabbed?” Snyder demanded in a soft voice. There were no obvious wounds, aside from a lot of bruises and accumulated filth. Looked as though Davis had been wrestling alligators in the Parisian sewers.

Davis tried to answer but went into a spasm of coughing, spraying red dots onto his wet hand.

Grabbing a cloth napkin from the floor, Snyder wiped the red off the trembling man. Blood was on his lips, giving his breath a coppery odor. That meant massive internal bleeding. Not good. Then he noticed a crimson stain under the man’s arm. Carefully peeling back the linen jacket, Snyder saw that the agent was wearing a nonregulation bulletproof vest. So that’s why no blood showed, it was concealed under his vest! Releasing the Velcro strips on the side to let the man breath easier, Snyder frowned at the sight of the blood-soaked shirt underneath. There was a small bullet wound under the arm. An armpit shot. That was either a freak shot or else somebody knew that was a major killzone. And in their line of business, it was almost always deliberate. Stab or shoot a man there and, nine times out of ten, he died even if you got him to the hospital within minutes.

“Doesn’t matter…” Davis whispered. “Couldn’t reach HQ…cell phone smashed…traitor!…we have a traitor…”

“Easy now, don’t talk.”

“Have to!” he whispered. “Joe…demo today…new weapon…for sale to everybody…anybody! Going to hit…hit…”

“Who? Talk, buddy! Who are they going to hit?”

“Abacus…” he said softly.

“Abacus? Okay, what’s that?”

Shuddering all over, Davis broke into a fit of coughing.

“Never mind the target, who’s the traitor?” the CIA agent urged gently. “Tell me, and I’ll personally squeeze all of the details out of their stinking hide.” He paused. “Was Abacus a code name? Is that the traitor?”

Grabbing the other man’s lapel with surprisingly strong fingers, Davis moved his lips, but no sound came out as the NSA agent slumped to the floor, his reserves of strength finally gone. Silently, Snyder lay his friend on the floor of the café where they had first met so very long ago.

“Goodbye,” he said softly, using a fingertip to close the other man’s eyelids.

The wailing siren grew steadily closer.

Suddenly an ambulance braked to a halt in front of the little café, and the side door slid back to reveal a group of people, all wearing black and carrying weapons. One of them a compact flamethrower, a hissing blue flame jutting out from the preburner angled underneath the ventilated main barrel. The heavy set of duel fuel tanks on her back gave the grim operator the appearance of a hunchback.

With a curse, Snyder dived to the ground as two of the men cut loose with shotguns. The café seemed to explode in blood as people near the entrance were literally cut in two by the discharges, then a machine gun racked the interior of the building as the flamethrower extended a fiery tongue of destruction that swept across the horrified crowd of civilians. Wine bottles exploded, people shrieked and a man dashed into the rain covered with jellied gasoline and dripping flames.

Rolling to his knees, Snyder pulled a Glock from under his jacket, racked the slide and fired a fast five times at the people in the vehicle. Two of the killers grunted from the impacts, but nothing more.

The attackers were wearing body armor, he realized, shoving over a table and taking refuge behind it. He had no idea who these people were, but they had professional hit squad written all over them. Probably the same group that iced Davis.

Now the strangers concentrated on Snyder, the barrage of incoming lead hammering the tabletop and punching through the ceramic tiles covering the wood. He tried to return fire, but screaming people were in the way.

Changing directions, the burning lance of the flamethrower went high and fire rained upon the patrons. Somebody threw a bottle at the ambulance and it smashed on the side of the vehicle with a shower of glass. This distracted the killers for a second and Davis emptied the Glock, trying to reach the pressurized tanks strapped to the back of the woman operating the flamethrower.

He missed and she aimed straight at the overturned table, the hellish column of flame hitting the flimsy barrier with audible force. The shaking table began to move backward, scraping across the floor, as the writhing fiery fingers reached through the bullet holes.

A second ambulance arrived with a flourish, parking in front of the first. As the French emergency medical team piled out, the rear doors of the ambulance opened and there came the dull thump of a grenade launcher. The windshield of the other vehicle shattered and the interior exploded, blowing off doors and sending out great plumes of thick black smoke.

Who were these guys? Snyder wondered as he quickly reloaded. The CIA agent knew he was outgunned here and decided it was time to leave. Davis was dead, and he was doing nothing to these people with the Glock. Might as well be throwing spit balls. That wasn’t an ambulance, it was a tank!

A flashing blue light amid the fire caught his attention and Snyder eagerly snatched the cell phone out of the still hand of a dead businessman. Crouching, the agent tapped in a number. There was a short pause followed by a series of clicks as the scrambled signal was relayed to the Agency headquarters only a few blocks away.

“Hello,” a voice said over the phone. It was flat, metallic, just a robot used to relay incoming messages.

“Snyder, Paris,” he said, coughing, and then gave his identification number. “Under enemy fire. Alex Davis of the NSA is dead! Claims there is a traitor in the NSA or possibly the CIA, I’m not sure which. Some sort of new weapon is going to hit Abacus. Repeat, Abacus is in danger!” He coughed again, longer this time. It was getting difficult to talk. The agent couldn’t really hear the outside world anymore. He pulled into himself, trying to shy away from the incredible heat. He only had a few seconds more of life. He had to make them count.

“Repeat…” The cell phone crackled over the mounting inferno. It was a human voice. Somebody had been listening!

Trying to comply, Snyder broke into savage coughing and dropped the phone. It hit the ground and shattered, the pieces flying into the crackling flames. Bitterly cursing, Snyder decided to take a desperate gamble and insanely charged through the fire firing his gun at the dimly seen figures in the ambulance. There was a pay phone on the corner if he could just reach it…

The machine guns spoke in unison, then the flamethrower. Terrible pain filled Snyder’s universe and everything went black.

CHAPTER ONE

An unmarked black helicopter moved across the Virginia sky. The single passenger onboard was a well-dressed woman with a top fashion model’s flawless beauty.

Gazing out the small window, Barbara Price, mission controller of Stony Man Farm, could see nothing out of order on the grounds of the nation’s premier ultrasecret antiterrorist installation. Yet something was going on that was serious enough to drag her back here from a three-day conference that she had been looking forward to for six months.

“Here we are, Ms. Price,” the pilot announced over a shoulder as the helicopter landed on a wide patch of grass. “Right on time.”

“Thanks.”

Releasing the latch, Price slid back the side door and noted with satisfaction the assortment of men in work clothes lounging near the buildings. All of them had a hand out of sight, presumably resting on the butt of a loaded gun. She was expected, but they were trained to prepare for the unexpected. As Price stepped to the ground, the men all smiled and relaxed their stances, returning to their cover work of painting and weeding.

When Price was a few yards away from the aircraft, the rush of air from above it increased dramatically and the helicopter lifted off again to head back to D.C. She decided to walk to the farmhouse. It was a beautiful day.

“Sorry to ruin your conference,” Aaron Kurtzman said as she reached the porch.

“So what’s the problem?” Price asked.

“There’s trouble in Paris,” Kurtzman replied.

Knowing he wouldn’t divulge details within open air, Price hurried through the security process and made her way with him to the War Room, rather than heading to her office in the Annex.

“Talk,” she directed him as she slipped into a chair. “What happened in Paris?”

Closing the door, Kurtzman took a seat and passed her a report on the café killings. “More importantly,” he said gruffly, “do you know of any secret project or black ops named Abacus?”

Price took the page and read its contents. Her expression darkened with every passing second.

“Akira intercepted this message while on its way to Langley,” Kurtzman said, referring to superhacker Akira Tokaido. “It wasn’t earmarked for a ‘please copy’ to the NSA.”

“So they’re not sharing data, in spite of a presidential order to that effect,” Price murmured.

“Exactly.”

“Anybody crazy enough to hit both the CIA and the NSA is a major threat,” she said bluntly, placing the paper aside. “But it’s this cryptic reference to Abacus that bothers me the most.”

“That’s why I called you back a day early,” Kurtzman stated. “I really need your input. Do you know of anything with that code name? A satellite maybe, or a computer complex?” He paused. “Of course I know an abacus is an ancient Chinese device for making fast and accurate mathematical additions and subtractions. It’s just a wooden frame with beads that move along taut wires. Sort of like a primitive slapstick. Yet the damn thing is so efficient and easy to use that three thousand years later Chinese shopkeepers around the world are still using it instead of mechanical cash registers.”

“Something to do with money, then. Or perhaps the Chinese.”

“Seems likely, given the name.”

Placing an elbow on the desk, Price rested her jaw in her palm. “Well, there’s nothing that I know about. Hal might have a better idea.”

“I don’t think we need the big boss for this. If there was known and confirmed trouble coming, sure. But not for a fishing expedition.”

Price lifted the paper again. “Hmm, it says here the NSA agent was badly wounded at the time, dying in fact.”

“Yes, he was. And…?” Kurtzman prompted, not sure where the woman was going with this. A dying report from a field agent was nothing new in their line of work. Terrible and tragic, yes, the death of a good man always was, but sadly, nothing new. Although it did make responding to his information a top priority. Officially they weren’t in the revenge business.

“He might have been mumbling his words,” she said, thoughtfully. “Ab-ba-cus.” Price tried it again, slurring the word, testing the syllables. Then she went pale.

Spinning in the chair, she checked a calendar. “Son of a bitch, that’s today. Hell, it’s going on right now!”

“What is? What’s happening?” Kurtzman demanded.

Snatching the phone off the receiver, Price tapped in a string of numbers. It was answered before the third ring.

“Hello, Hal?” The mission controller spoke into the receiver. “You better warn the President. I think all hell is about to break loose in the Middle East!”

Abu Dis, Israel/Palestine Border

THE CLOUDS WERE THICK over the West Bank and everybody was thankful for the brief respite from the endless blazing heat of summer in the Middle East. Major Kushner approved. The rains weren’t due for another month and the cooling shade added a festive touch to the milling throng filling the divided city.

Adjusting the compact, green, TAV assault rifle slung at her side, Major Adina Kushner of the Israeli Defense Forces inspected the decorative brick topping of the concrete barrier separating the city of Abu Dis. A single brick was missing from the array,

Walking along the edge of the scaffolding, the major breathed deeply, the smell of oranges from the nearby orchards almost overwhelming the traditional reek of gasoline fumes and camel dung.

On both sides of the concrete barrier, Abu Dis was filled with people, all of them singing, talking, praying, cursing, milling around and taking endless pictures. In spite of the concertina wire frothy on the ground, the Palestinian side of the wall was covered with graffiti and the Israeli side dotted with posters. The major sighed. Civilians! What could you do?

Situated on top of nearby buildings, television crews from around the world were already in place, their cameras sweeping the crowds on both sides of the concrete wall, doing background shots to be included into the news reports later. It seemed as if the entire world wanted to see the dedication ceremony of the wall. The famous wall. The hated wall. The “failing wall,” as one BBC anchor had cleverly dubbed the barrier, the wordplay based upon the famous Wailing Wall of Jerusalem.

Started by another president of Israel right after the 9/11 al Qaeda attack on New York City in America, the wall was a desperate attempt to keep out the terrorist bombers that had plagued the West Bank, physically separating the nation of Israel from the Palestine territory. Although more and more people were simply calling it Palestine. These days, the hardcore Zion fundamentalists were grudgingly admitting that everybody deserved their own homeland.

Eight yards high, ten yards deep in places and 720 miles long, the imposing barrier had been built along the exact 1967 borders agreed upon by Israel and Palestine at the time. Of course, once Israel started building the wall, the Palestinians decried the construction in spite of the earlier accord. They took the matter to the World Court, which decided the construction should stop until the delicate political matter of whether the Palestinians should be forced to keep the treaties they signed was decided. Israel ignored the court order and continued building, although, they did change the borders ever so slightly so that the wall was a bit more on their property. The concession brought fury from the horde of Jewish settlers now trapped on the other side of the wall and from the few Palestinians still inside the barrier.

As a flight of Israel F-16-I jet fighters streaked by overhead, Major Kushner checked her wrist for the time, then looked at the position of the sun for confirmation. Only a few minutes to go. The wall had been finished for weeks, but this day was the ceremony of its completion. The last brick was to be officially laid today amid great fanfare, international press coverage and massive security. Why Abu Dis had been chosen for the ceremony, the major had no idea. Maybe because it was almost in the exact middle. Maybe not. Politics wasn’t her forte.

Dressed in short pants and bulletproof vests, heavily armed Israeli soldiers moved through the crowd, smiling and polite, their sharp eyes checking everybody and everything.

A small child was delayed as the soldiers checked his shopping bag, but it proved to contain only foodstuffs and assorted sundries. A stumbling drunk was quietly escorted to a private room where the soldiers ascertained that the man really was intoxicated and that his bottle held whiskey, not nitroglycerin or some other form of dangerous liquid. A known terrorist was found photographing the scaffolding near the wall, and hit with a tranquilizer dart from a disguised camera held by a Mossad agent dressed as a taxicab driver. The unconscious man was caught by two pretty Mossad agents, who scolded their friend for being drunk in public, and the criminal was hauled away to a private interrogation room.

An elderly pickpocket tried working the crowd and, despite the massive security, actually got a couple of wallets from tourists before being apprehended. He willingly turned over the wallets, which were then surreptitiously returned to the owners, and the thief was thrown into a concrete cell for later trial.

Always in pairs, F-16-I jet fighters moved across the sky, while Yas’ur-class helicopter gunships hovered above the crowds, staying carefully out of range of the news cameras. Several of the huge helicopters were equipped for surveillance, while a few were armed to the teeth, their wings bristling with armament.

At strategic locations were brand-new Merkava-4 battle tanks; old Sho’t army tanks stood guard at street corners. A dozen Zelda-class APCs full of troops patrolled both sides of the border. Radar swept the sky and chemical sniffers checked every bag for contraband. Video cameras swept through the crowd, relaying the scene to a massive bank of police computers in Tel Aviv where sophisticated software cross-referenced every face to a list of known terrorists. When one was spotted, he or she was deftly removed from the crowd for questioning. One man tried to escape and make a break for the hole in the wall, but was tackled by the soldiers guarding the entrance. Another pulled a grenade and was torn to pieces by concentrated gunfire from the silenced pistols of security forces.

Walking along the wall, Major Kushner reviewed everything. Flag poles adorned with the blue-and-white Israel flag flanked the platform on the north side of the wall, a precisely equal amount carrying the Palestinian flag on the south. There was a podium with a speech prompter in place, and near the gap on top of the wall was a single brick lying on a white pillow like some ancient virgin sacrifice. Nearby was a battered bucket full of wet cement and a shiny golden trowel. All of which had been checked for bombs, poisons and anything else that could mar the ceremony or kill the PM.

At the base of the scaffolding was a full company of soldiers; six more in formal dress uniforms stood guard on the top of the platform. Only Kushner had no assigned post. She was the roving soldier ordered to walk everywhere, looking for trouble. But so far, so good. The military officer nodded in satisfaction. The area seemed secure. The Israeli Defense Force had done this sort of thing before, and there was nobody better. Everything that could be accomplished to secure the area had been already done in triplicate. This was an important occasion, and nobody was taking a chance of it turning into an international incident for some terrorist group out to grab some fast headlines.

Suddenly the radio receiver in her ear crackled with an announcement and a few seconds later, a civilian band, all in matching uniforms, swelled into the national anthem of the State of Israel. Just then, a motorcade of six armored limousines stopped in front of the scaffolding and the prime minister got out waving to the crowd, which roared in approval. Only a few people jeered the man’s arrival, but their cries were lost in the overwhelming positive response. Cameras flashed continuously. Proceeding to the carpeted steps to the top of the platform, the PM moved to the podium and made the grand gesture of turning off the speech prompters. The people cheered in approval.

“On this historic day,” the prime minister said softly into the microphone, the speakers amplifying his words until they boomed with biblical force across the entire city, “we lay the final brick in this modern day wall of Jericho. But unlike that ancient structure, this wall will be a symbol of peace and…”

The politician stopped as Major Kushner touched her earphone and frowned. On the ground, dozens of soldiers were charging around, the Zelda APCs began to disgorge armed soldiers as police vans started rolling toward the scaffolding, armed troops guiding civilians out of its way.

Removing a handkerchief from his pocket, the prime minister mopped his face and whispered to the officer, “Is there trouble?”

“Unknown, sir,” Kushner replied. “But radar has picked up something odd.”

“A missile?”

Scowling in concern, Kushner shook her head as lightning flashed in the cloudy sky.

Squinting into the clouds, the prime minster saw the flash again, but it seemed to come from the other side of the clouds and go right through to impact somewhere in the city only blocks away. But there was no explosion from a detonating warhead. He frowned at the sight. That didn’t resemble a missile, rocket or a bomb. It didn’t look like anything he knew.

Below the scaffolding, the crowd was growing nervous, its murmurs increasing in volume.

“Status report,” Kushner snapped into her throat mike.

“Situation unknown,” an IDF operative reported crisply. “Radar has something, or rather, they had something on the screens, but don’t know what that was yet.”

The flash came once more and something brighter than the sun smashed into the Palestinian side of the wall only a few yards from the platform. The concrete and bricks exploded in a geyser of destruction, the rubble flying for hundreds of yards into the air before raining upon the horrified crowds. A split second later a rolling thunder of a sonic boom arrived from the sky.

Turning to demand an answer this time, the prime minister was tackled by Kushner and she drove him to the floor, covering the politician with her body.

“Stay down!” she commanded, drawing a 9mm Jericho pistol. “Control, I want air cover now! Do you read me, right now!”

“What’s happening?” the prime minister gasped, his heart pounding in his chest.

The military officer didn’t reply, but tilted her head as if listening to voices through her earphone. Clustered around the fallen politician, the honor guards had their assault rifles in hand, two of the soldiers thumbing 40 mm rounds into the grenade launcher attached beneath the barrels.

Everybody on the ground was screaming by now and running in panic on both sides of the barrier. Another flash of light and a second section of the wall exploded directly above the gate. The archway collapsed and dozens of civilians were crushed under the tons of falling masonry.