The Lazarus Vendetta c-5 Read online

  Now Lazarus Movement volunteers were moving through the mass of protesters, handing out new signs and posters. Eager hands grabbed at them. MacNamara pushed and shoved his way through the jostling, agitated mob to get one for himself. It carried a much-enlarged and hurriedly color-copied photo of Paolo Ponti and Audrey Karavites — a picture that must have been taken very recently indeed, because they stood silhouetted against the white peaks of the Sangre de Crista Mountains. Scrawled above their young, smiling faces in bold red letters were the words: THEY WERE MURDERED! BUT LAZARUS LIVES!

  Still chanting, the pale-eyed man nodded to himself. Clever, he thought coldly. Quite clever.

  * * *

  “Jesus Christ, Colonel,” Diaz murmured, listening to the sound of raw hatred spreading through the mob outside. “It's like feeding time at the goddamned zoo!”

  Smith nodded, tight-lipped. For a moment he wished he was armed. Then he shook the thought away. If things turned ugly, fifteen 9mm rounds in a Beretta clip were not going to save his life. Nor had he joined the U.S. Army to shoot unarmed rioters.

  The sight of flashing lights out on the access road attracted his attention. A small convoy of black SUVs and sedans was moving slowly up the access road, steadily forcing its way through the swelling crowds. Even at this distance, Jon could see angry fists being shaken at the vehicles. He looked over at Diaz. “You expecting reinforcements, Frank?”

  The security guard shook his head. “Not really. Hell, barring the National Guard, we've already got every unit available within fifty miles.” He peered closely at the oncoming vehicles. The lead car had just pulled up outside the gate. “And that sure ain't the National Guard out there.”

  The Army veteran's tactical radio squawked suddenly, loud enough for Smith to hear it.

  “Sarge?” a voice said. “This is Battaglia, at the gate.”

  “Go ahead,” Diaz snapped. “Make your report.”

  “I've got some more Feds here. But I think there's something really-screwy going on….”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, like these guys say they're the Secret Service advance team. The only one,” the other guard stammered. "And there's a Special Agent

  O'Neill down here who's madder than spit because I won't open the gate for him."

  Diaz lowered his radio slowly. He stared at Smith in utter confusion. “Two Secret Service teams? How the hell can there be two goddamned Secret Service teams?”

  A shiver ran down Jon's spine. “There can't.”

  He fumbled through the inner pocket of his leather jacket and tugged out his cell phone. It was a special model, and all transmissions to and from the phone were highly encrypted. He punched a single button, triggering an auto-dial emergency sequence.

  The phone on the other end rang once — just once. “Klein here,” a quiet voice said calmly. The voice belonged to Nathaniel Frederick Klein, the reclusive head of Covert-One. “What can I do for you, Jon?”

  “Can your people patch into the Secret Service's internal communications system?” Smith demanded.

  There was a brief pause. “Yes,” Klein replied. “We can.”

  “Then do it now!” Smith said urgently. “I need to know the exact location of the presidential advance team for the Teller Institute!”

  “Wait one.”

  Smith cradled the phone between his shoulder and his ear, temporar-ilv freeing both of his hands. He looked at Frank Diaz, who was watching him with a strange expression of disbelief. “Did your boss give that first Secret Service unit your tactical radio frequencies?”

  “Yeah. Naturally.”

  “Well, then, Staff Sergeant,” Smith said coolly, “I'm going to need a weapon.”

  The former noncom nodded slowly. “Sure thing, Colonel.” He handed over his Beretta. He saw Smith check the pistol's magazine, slap it back in, pull back its slide to chamber a round, and then flip the decocking lever to safely lower the hammer, all in a series of smooth, fast motions. Both Diaz's eyebrows went up. “I guess I should have figured out that you were more than just a doctor.”

  Fred Klein came back. “The advance team headed by SAIC Thomas O'Neill is presently just outside the Institute's main gate. They report that the security personnel there have refused to admit them.” The head of Covert-One hesitated. “What precisely is happening out there, Jon?”

  “I don't have time to explain in detail,” Smith told him. “But we're looking at a Trojan Horse situation. And the damned Greeks are already inside the gates.”

  Then suddenly he and Diaz had even less time than he had imagined.

  The fake Secret Service agent he had seen guarding the main doors was moving out into the open. And he was already swinging the muzzle of his submachine gun toward them.

  Smith reacted instantly, diving to one side. He landed flat on the steps with the Beretta already extended in both hands and on-target. Diaz threw himself the other way.

  For a split second the gunman hesitated, trying to pick out the biggest threat. Then he swung the MP5 toward the uniformed guard.

  Big mistake, Smith thought coldly. He flipped the safety catch off and squeezed the trigger. The Beretta bucked upward in his hands. He forced the pistol back online and fired again.

  Both 9mm rounds slammed home, tearing flesh and shattering bone. Hit twice in the chest, the gunman went down in a heap. His submachine gun clattered to the pavement and a widening rivulet of blood trickled down the steps.

  Smith heard a car door open behind him. He looked back.

  Another dark-suited man had climbed out of one of the two black SUVs parked along the drive. This man had his SIG-Sauer pistol out and it was aimed squarely at Jon's head.

  Smith swung round in a frantic attempt to bring his own weapon to bear, knowing that it was no use. He was too slow, too far out of position, and the dark-suited man's finger was already tightening on the trigger….

  Frank Diaz fired his shotgun at point-blank range. The blunt-tipped CS gas round struck the second gunman right under the chin and ripped his head off. Tumbling now, the tear gas shell bounced off the SUV and exploded high in the air — sending a puff of gray mist drifting east, away from the building.

  “Shit,” Diaz murmured. “Nonlethal ammunition, my ass.” The ex-Ranger noncom quickly reloaded his shotgun, this time with solid slugs. “Now what, Colonel?”

  Smith lay flat for several seconds longer, scanning the Institute's wide doorway for more enemies. There were no signs of movement. “Cover me.”

  Diaz nodded. He knelt, aiming at the door.

  Smith belly-crawled up the steps to where the first dead gunman lay. His nose twitched at the hot, coppery smell of blood and the uglier stench of voided bowels. Ignore it, he told himself grimly. Win first. Regret taking life later. He put the Beretta on safety and shoved it into his belt, at the small of his back. Moving fast, he scooped up the MP5.

  The sentry's surveillance radio gear caught his eye. It would be very useful to know what the bad guys were up to, he decided. He stripped the lightweight radio set off the other man's belt and fitted the tiny receiver into his own ear.

  “Delta One? Delta Two? Reply, over,” a harsh voice said.

  Smith held his breath. This was the sound of the enemy. But who the hell were these people?

  “Delta Section? Reply, over,” the voice repeated. Then it spoke again, issuing an order. “This is Prime. Delta One and Two are off-line. All sections. ComSec enable. Mark. Mark. Now—”

  Abruptly the voice vanished, replaced by static. Smith knew what had just happened. Once they realized their communications were compromised, the intruders inside the building had switched to a new channel, following a preset plan and rendering this radio useless to him.

  Smith whistled softly to himself. Whatever the hell was going on here, one thing was absolutely clear: He and Diaz were up against a force of stone-cold professionals.

  Chapter Five

  Inside the quiet, clean confines of the Harcourt Biosciences
Lab, the tall, auburn-haired man frowned. The early arrival of the real Secret Service advance unit was a possibility he had anticipated in his mission plan. Losing the two men he had left guarding the Institute's main entrance was a somewhat more serious complication. He spoke quietly into the small radio mike attached to his suit coat lapel. “Sierra One, this is Prime. Cover the stairs. Now.”

  He turned to the men under his direct command. “How much longer?”

  The senior technician, short and stocky, with pronounced Slavic features, looked up from the large metal cylinder he was wiring into a remote-control circuit. He had clamped the cylinder to a desk next to the lab's floor-to-ceiling picture window. “Two more minutes, Prime.” He murmured into his own mike and listened intently. “Our sections in the other labs confirm they, too, are almost finished,” he reported.

  “Is there a problem, Agent O'Neill?”

  The green-eyed man swung round to find Dr. Ravi Parikh staring at him. His colleague Brinker was still engrossed in his analysis of the failed nanophage trial, but the Indian molecular biologist looked suspicious now.

  The big man donned a reassuring smile. “There's no problem, Doctor. You can go on with your work.”

  Parikh hesitated. “What is that piece of equipment?” he asked at last, pointing to the bulky cylinder beside which the technician crouched. “It does not look much like a 'hazardous materials detector' or whatever else you have said you are placing in our lab.”

  “My, my, my, Dr. Parikh… you are a very observant fellow,” the green-eyed man said carefully. He stepped closer and then, almost casually, chopped down hard on the scientist's neck with the edge of his right hand.

  Parikh crumpled to the floor.

  Startled by the sudden noise, Brinker spun around. He stared down at his assistant in shock. “Ravi? What the — ”

  Still moving, the big man pivoted and kicked out with tremendous force. His heel slammed into the blond-haired researcher's chest, hurling him back against his desk and computer monitor. Brinker's head snapped forward. He slid to the floor and lay still.

  * * *

  Smith twisted a control knob on the captured radio set, running through as many different frequencies as he could as fast as he could. He listened attentively. Static hissed and popped. There were no voices. No orders he could intercept and interpret.

  With a frown, he yanked the receiver out of his ear and set the now-useless radio gear aside. It was time to get moving. Sitting out here any longer meant surrendering the initiative to the enemy. That would be dangerous enough against amateurs. Against a trained force it was likely to be catastrophic. Right now those fake Secret Service agents were methodically running through some kind of very nasty scheme inside the

  Teller Institute. But what was their game? he wondered. Terrorism? Hostage taking? High-risk industrial espionage? Sabotage?

  He shook his head. There was no real way to know. Not yet. Still, whatever the enemy was doing, this was the time to press them, before they could react. He rose to one knee, checking the shadowed entrance to the Institute.

  “Where are you going, Colonel?” Diaz whispered.

  “Inside.”

  The security guard's eyes widened in disbelief. “That's crazy! Why not wait here for help? There are at least ten more of those bastards in there.”

  Smith risked a quick glance behind him, toward the perimeter fence and the gate. The angry crowd down there was spiraling out of control — pushing and shoving against the fence and hammering furiously on the hoods and roofs of the stalled Secret Service convoy. Unwilling to provoke the enraged mob any further, the real federal agents had retreated inside their locked vehicles. And even if the Teller Institute security guards opened the gate to let them in, the protesters would pour through at the same time. He swore softly. “Take a look, Frank. I don't think the cavalry is coming. Not this time.”

  “Then let's hold here,” Diaz argued. He jerked a thumb at the SUVs parked behind them. “That's their line of escape. Let's make 'em come through us to get away.”

  Smith shook his head. “Too risky. First, these guys may be dead-enders who don't plan to leave. Second, they know we're out here by now. These guys are pros. They must have alternate escape routes, and there are just too many other ways for them to get away — maybe a helo landing on that big flat roof up there, or more vehicles waiting outside the fence. Third, these weapons”—he nodded at both the MP5 submachine gun he had captured and Diaz's shotgun — “don't give us enough firepower to stop a determined attack. If we let the bad guys run a set-piece battle, they're going to roll right over us.”

  “Ah, crap,” the Army veteran sighed, rechecking the loads for his Remington. “I hate this John Wayne shit. They don't pay me enough to be a hero.”

  Smith bared his teeth in a tight, fierce grin. “Me, neither. But we're it. So I suggest you shut up and soldier, Sergeant.” He breathed out. “Are you ready?”

  Grim-faced but determined, Diaz gave him a thumbs-up.

  Cradling the MP5, Smith sprinted for the right side of the Institute's huge main doors. His stomach muscles tensed, expecting the sudden, tearing agony of a bullet fired from inside the main lobby. There was only silence. Breathing fast, he flattened himself against the sun-warmed adobe wall.

  Diaz joined him a second later.

  Smith rolled around the corner of the door, moving the submachine gun through a steady, controlled arc as he sighted along the barrel. Nothing. The huge room appeared emptv. I Ialf-crouched, he moved forward and took cover behind a stretch of waist-high marble railing. Caught in a gentle breeze from the open doors, papers fluttered off the Institute's registration and information desks and swirled lazily across the tiled floor.

  He started to poke his head over the railing.

  “Get down!” Diaz roared.

  Smith sensed a shape moving in the corridor off to his left. He threw himself flat just as the gunman opened up — firing rapid aimed shots at him with a 9mm pistol. Rounds hammered the marble right over his head, sending jagged chips of shattered stone flying through the air. One sharp-edged fragment sliced a thin red line across the back of his right hand.

  Lying prone, with the stock of the MP5 braced against his shoulder, Jon fired back, shooting in controlled three-round bursts. From the open doorway Diaz began firing solid slugs from his twelve-gauge shotgun. Each slug tore huge chunks out of the Institute's adobe walls.

  Smith rolled out from behind the railing. A pistol bullet cracked right past his head. Damn. He rolled faster and then stopped himself suddenly, lying prone again — but this time with a clear view right down the corridor.

  Jon could see the gunman staring straight at him. They were less than fifty feet apart. It was the sturdy, serious-looking man who had said his name was Farrows. The supposed Secret Service agent was down on one knee, with a SIG-Sauer pistol extended in a two-handed shooting grip, still firing steadily. Another bullet punched into the floor close by Smith's head, spraying small bits and pieces of broken tile across the side of his face.

  He ignored the stinging impacts and breathed out. The MP5's forward sight steadied on the gunman. He squeezed the trigger. The submachine gun stuttered three times. Two rounds missed. The third hit Farrows in the face, blowing a hole right out the back of his skull.

  Smith scrambled to his feet and raced to the foot of the U-shaped staircase leading up to the Institute's second floor. Three of the enemy down so far, he thought. But how many more to go?

  Diaz sprinted through the lobby and went prone not far away, covering the first flight of stairs with his shotgun. “Where to now, Colonel?” he called softly.

  That was a good question, Smith thought grimly. Much depended on what the intruders intended. If they were set on holding the research staff as hostages, most of them would be holed up in the Institute cafeteria— not far down the corridor from where Farrows lay dead. But if this was a hostage situation, charging in headlong was likely to get far too many innocent people ki
lled.

  Somehow, though, Smith doubted hostage taking was the goal here. This whole operation was too elaborate and too precisely timed for something so simple and low-tech. Coming in disguised as Secret Service agents on a bomb sweep seemed aimed primarily at gaining unimpeded access to the labs.

  He made his decision and pointed to the ceiling.

  Diaz nodded.

  Moving in alternate bounds, with one man always readv to provide covering fire while the other went forward, Jon Smith and the Institute security guard began climbing the central staircase.

  * * *

  “LAZARUS LIVES! NO TO NANOTECH! LAZARUS LIVES! NO TO DEATH MACHINES! LAZARUS LIVES!”

  Malachi MacNamara was jostled ever closer to the Institute's perimeter fence, borne along by the shouting, chanting mob. He scowled. He was a man who disdained displays of wild, unreasoning emotion — a man who felt far happier alone in the wilderness than trapped like this in a sea of his fellow humans. For now, though, he knew he could only move with this maddened tide. If he tried to stand against the pressure for too long, he would only be swept off his feet and trampled to death.

  Still, he thought icily, that did not mean he had to play the utterly passive puppet.

  He swung his elbows through a series of short, vicious arcs, hammering at the ribs of those closest to him. Frightened by his cold rage, they fell back — giving him just enough room to risk a look back at the protest stage. It was deserted. His pale eyes narrowed in sudden calculation. The Lazarus Movement radicals who had whipped this mass of more than ten thousand demonstrators into uncontrolled wrath had vanished.

  Where were they?

  Even this deep in the mob, the lean, weather-beaten Canadian was tall enough to see past the outer fringes of the crowd. Two of the Secret Service vehicles were edging slowly back down the access road. Dented hoods and car roofs, crumpled fenders, and smashed w indshields testified to the fury of the human storm through which they had passed. There were also small knots of worried-looking New Mexico State Police troopers and Santa Fe County sheriffs, most backing slowly away to avoid triggering an all-out riot. Lured by the prospect of shooting dramatic footage they could feed to the national and international networks, several local TV crews were much closer to the stamping and shouting protesters.