Sky Hammer. James Axler

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