as the armored SUV roared in response to Lyons’s foot on the accelerator. Schwarz was forced to hang on to the overhead handle to keep from sliding back and forth in his seat as the Suburban weaved and dodged. Blancanales smiled grimly and held on to the back seat.
“What happened in there?” Lyons asked, his eyes never leaving the traffic in front of them.
“You heard him,” Blancanales said. “I played the Justice card and he froze. When I talked about seizing and searching his computers, he went for the hardware. Who were the other two?”
“Security, I guess,” Lyons grunted. “Moved on us the second your boy opened fire. Must have made our stakeout. They were too quick to come at us, otherwise.”
“So they were already waiting for trouble,” Schwarz mused.
“But why would they just open fire? What’s to be gained?” Lyons asked. “The second we show up they start popping caps. Why?”
“Whatever the reason, this means Hal’s suspicions were well-grounded,” Blancanales replied.
“And a big, black Suburban parked on the street isn’t as subtle as we thought it was,” Schwarz said wryly.
“Gadgets, the clean-up team,” Lyons said, whipping the steering wheel hard left, then right. “They know to secure the computers?”
“Yes,” Schwarz said. “They’ll search the network and pull the drives for us. That’s if nobody activated some sort of sweep-and-clear doomsday program. We might come back to find their drives have eaten themselves.”
“Let’s hope not,” Lyons said. He came to a clear stretch of road and tromped the pedal to the floor. The Suburban growled and shot forward with renewed speed. “Got him now,” Lyons said.
Blancanales craned his neck, looking forward out the windshield from where he sat. The Suburban slowed for a moment and the distance between the two vehicles increased.
“Carl—” Schwarz said.
“Ironman, wait—” Blancanales protested.
Lyons slammed the pedal to the floor again. The Suburban rocketed forward like a battering ram. The bull bars mounted in front of the grille smashed into the rear of the Taurus, crumpling the trunk as the smaller vehicle shuddered beneath the impact. Lyons never let up, maneuvering the nose of the Suburban until it was scraping the rear quarter of the Taurus. Then he pitted the Taurus, slamming the sedan into the curb with tire-popping force. Maroon paint streaked the front fender of the Suburban. Lyons was out of the driver’s seat almost before the two vehicles stopped moving.
“Out of the car, out of the car!” Lyons shouted. “Hands where I can see them! Hands!” A dazed Timothy Albert staggered out of the Taurus. His airbag had not deployed, and his forehead was bloody. He had something in his left hand. His other arm was behind his back.
“Drop it!” Lyons yelled. The barrel of the Python never wavered. “Drop it, now! Get your right hand where I can see it!”
Albert glanced at the device in his hand as if seeing it for the first time. Something like recognition flashed across his face. Then his right hand came up. The Smith & Wesson’s short barrel lined up on Lyons’s chest.
The gunshot rang out. Crimson blossomed, soaking Albert’s chest. The .357 Magnum bullet from Lyons’s Python did its deadly work, dropping the politico-turned-gunman in a tangled heap. The body slumped against the creased rear fender of the Taurus and the .38 clattered to the pavement.
Lyons advanced, checking side to side and glancing to his rear as he kept the Python trained on Albert. When he was certain Timothy Albert wouldn’t be shooting at anyone ever again, he spared a look at Schwarz and then at Blancanales. “We clear?” he asked.
“Clear,” Schwarz replied said. He and Blancanales had taken up positions to form a triangle with Lyons around the damaged Taurus.
“Clear,” Blancanales stated.
“All right,” Lyons nodded. “Gadgets, grab a flare from the truck and direct traffic around us. We don’t need any more rubbernecking than we’re already getting.”
“On it.”
“Pol,” Lyons said. “Give me a hand here.” He knelt over the body. Blancanales, watchful for other threats and mindful of the traffic still streaming past, came to join him. The big former L.A. cop had picked up the device Blancanales had at first thought to be a phone. “Check it out,” he said. “That’s no phone. It’s not a PDA, either.”
“Strange,” Blancanales said, taking the device and turning it over in his hand. “It almost looks like a miniature satellite link.” The roughly square device had a tubular antenna running the length of its slim body, with a full miniature keyboard, a mike pickup and a tiny camera. It was much heavier than he would have thought to look at it. The device’s heft made Blancanales wonder just how much microelectronic black magic was hidden inside it.
“What do you suppose it does?” he asked.
“That’s Gadgets’s department,” Lyons said. “But I wanted you to get a look at it before he takes it.”
“True.” Blancanales laughed. “Once he’s got his mitts on it, we’ll never see it again.”
“Why do you think I sent him to direct traffic?” Lyons cracked a rare grin.
“I heard that,” Schwarz said over the earbud transceiver.
CHAPTER TWO
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
A bleary-eyed Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman wheeled himself into the War Room at Stony Man Farm, cradling an oversize stainless-steel insulated travel mug in the crook of one hairy arm. He positioned his wheelchair next to where Barbara Price already sat, checking files on her laptop as she glanced up at the large plasma wall screens to which the slim notebook computer was connected. Stony Man’s honey-blond mission controller looked up and raised an eyebrow at Kurtzman.
“Security blanket, Aaron?” she asked, nodding to the mug.
“Life support,” Kurtzman said evenly. He took a long drink from the mug, the smell of his extra-strong coffee reaching Price from where the bearded, barrel-chested cybernetics expert sat. “Want some?”
“No, thanks,” Price said, smiling. Kurtzman’s personal blend was legendary for its power. “I don’t want to burn a hole through my stomach.”
“I haven’t had any,” a disembodied voice said over the War Room’s speakers, “and I’m still working on an ulcer.”
Price tapped a key on the laptop. The harassed face of Hal Brognola appeared on one of the plasma wall screens. He was chewing an unlighted cigar and glanced repeatedly off camera to something that had to have been on his desk. The microphone on his end of the scrambled link picked up the sound of shuffling papers and then the tapping of computer keys. Brognola, as leader of the SOG, was one of only a handful of living human beings—apart from those operators working within Stony Man’s ranks—who knew that the ultracovert antiterrorist operation existed. When it came to the Farm, Brognola answered to the Man himself, the President of the
