Sky Hammer. James Axler

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ