Firestorm. Don Pendleton

the handlebar grips and the Colombian began to grab at himself, as though besieged by thousands of unseen insects. In the flurry of activity, he fell from the bike. It shot ahead a few yards before it rolled to a stop and tipped over.

      He lay on the ground, curled protectively into a ball. Within moments, paralysis set into the parched flesh of his throat. The skin of his face and lips blistered, grew taut, emitted small curls of smoke. The orbs that had been his eyes sizzled, their remnants oozing from their sockets like tears. His mind, overloaded by pain, had begun to shut itself down, to shield him from the countless lancets of pain that coursed through his body, tearing away at him like parasites. There will be more, he thought. His body shuddered one last time before a blackness swallowed the last bit of consciousness.

       M ARIA S ERRANO, A SUITCASE in either hand, rushed to her car. She popped open the trunk, slipped the bags inside, shut the lid and started back for her apartment. She cast furtive glances as she closed in on the building. Ascending the stairs, she reentered her apartment and moved from room to room, checking to make sure she’d left behind nothing important. She’d packed her calendars, phone books, laptop and a stack of spiral-bound notebooks. She didn’t want to leave anything that would provide clues about her true identity or her mission in Colombia.

      It had been twenty-four hours since she’d lost contact with Javier and the others from her crew. The longer she waited, the more isolated and worried she felt. A knot of fear formed in her stomach and tightened as she mulled the situation. Javier never missed a check-in call. That he suddenly was incommunicado was scary; that she’d been unable to contact her own handler troubled her even more.

      What the hell was going on? she wondered.

      Serrano was operating under nonofficial cover and, therefore, had to tread lightly as she maneuvered through Colombia. She could visit the U.S. Embassy only infrequently and then only for mundane reasons. She had to studiously avoid anyone even remotely connected with the Company who could implicate her as an intelligence agent.

      Her cell phone vibrated on her hip. She grabbed it and put it to her ear.

      “Yes?”

      “You know the situation?” Serrano immediately recognized the voice as that of her controller, a man she knew only as Fletcher.

      “I know enough,” she said.

      “You need to get out.”

      “Obviously,” she said. “Tell me what’s happened.”

      “Is this a secure line?”

      She considered lying for a few seconds but decided against it. Fletcher could hear a lie in her voice in a heartbeat.

      “No,” she said. “It’s not secure.”

      “Then I have no information.”

      “Fine. I’m leaving.”

      “You should. Go to contingency B.”

      “But I have a flight in three hours.”

      “Fuck it. You have no flight. Don’t risk it. We’ll have an executive jet waiting for you when you arrive. Go to contingency B. Miller will come and get you. Go downtown, to the office and leave your gun in the car.”

      “What?” she asked, startled.

      “You heard me. We’re going to take you to the airport. But there’s been a lot of chatter from FARC about a kidnapping at the airport. The locals are nervous, and they’re going to be inspecting every car that comes or goes to the airport. We can’t risk them detaining you for any reason.”

      “What about Miller?”

      “He won’t be carrying either,” Fletcher replied.

      Her brow creased with confusion and distrust boiled up from inside. Even on its best day, Colombia was a big slice of hell. The idea that she was to move around without a gun—to possibly force her way out of the country—was unfathomable. She couldn’t even wrap her mind around the idea that her escort also would be unarmed.

      “You’ll be fine,” Fletcher said. “Really. I have two choppers at my disposal. We’ll track you from the air, give you an armed escort. If anyone tries to harm you, they’ll get vaporized from the sky. They’re private contractors, so they have more, um, flexibility when it comes to dealing with these situations.”

      For reasons she didn’t understand, gooseflesh broke out on her arms.

      “Do it, Maria,” he said. “We’re bending the rules by trying to get you out of there. There’s no time for debate. Just do this and in a couple of days we’ll hook up in Mexico to talk this through.”

      “Fine,” she said. “Give me the details.”

       S ERRANO DROVE HER CAR downtown. When she reached a skyscraper of mirrored glass, one that served as the headquarters for a local bank, she circled the block once to get the lay of the land. When none of the bystanders immediately tripped any alarm bells, she turned onto a ramp that led into a parking garage located beneath the building.

      She maneuvered the car down two more levels until she reached the appointed floor. She found a space between two other cars. She put the car into Park but left the engine running.

      Turning in her seat, she looked over her left shoulder, then her right to see what was behind her. She saw only more cars and an occasional passerby, but nothing that seemed out of place.

      She reached beneath her jacket and drew her 9 mm SIG-Sauer from a hip holster. Holding the gun in her open palm, she examined it. A flurry of questions flashed through her mind as she weighed her options. With the relentless political and drug-related violence constantly rocking the country, she’d never been without the weapon since she’d arrived six months earlier. And, considering what she’d found the previous night, the thought of leaving her weapon behind seemed insane.

      Something hammered against the passenger window. Serrano gasped, but reacted quickly. Her motions a blur, she transferred the gun to her right hand, gripped it and drew down on the interloper at her window. The guy outside gave her a pie-eyed stare that, under other circumstances, might have amused her. At the moment she just felt mortified.

      “Hey!” Miller snapped. When he realized that she wasn’t going to blow his head off, an angry expression flashed across his pudgy features, replacing the terror that had been there a moment before.

      She stowed the weapon and stepped out of the car.

      “Lord, woman,” he said in anger-tinged whisper, “you damn near blew my head off.”

      “Sorry,” she said.

      “Just be careful,” he said. He scratched at the exposed skin on the crown of his head and composed himself. From what she knew, Miller wasn’t a field agent. Rather, he worked in Colombia’s main station as a political analyst where he studied opinion-poll results, newspaper stories and think-tank reports.

      As she came around the vehicle, she thumbed a button on her keyfob and the trunk lid popped up. She reached inside the trunk, grabbed her bags by their handles and jerked them free from the compartment.

      “Need help?” Miller asked.

      She shook her head.

      “Suit yourself,” he said. He walked away from the car and gestured ahead of himself. “Car’s two rows from here,” he said. “It’s the red Jeep Liberty.”

      “Fine.”

      Minutes later, her luggage stored in the rear of the vehicle, they sped from the garage. Miller punched the gas to make a yellow light. Serrano saw the shadows cast by the choppers that flew overhead.

      “You were supposed to ditch the gun,” Miller groused.

      “Go to hell,” she snapped. “Last thing I need is some fucking analyst telling me how to conduct myself.”

      “No skin off my nose,” he