Sky Sentinels. Don Pendleton

strikes just like Afghanistan and Iraq did in order to draw us in, then bog us down on the ground like we already are in those two countries.”

      “Hundreds of thousands of Iranians who don’t have a thing to do with this are going to die if that happens, Hal,” the Able Team leader noted.

      “I know that, the President knows that and so does Javid Azria. But he doesn’t care about that.” Brognola stopped talking long enough to take a breath, then went on. “Life’s cheap to him. All life except his own.”

      “Okay,” said the Able Team leader. “Anything else we need to know?” He glanced out the window at the clouds below the Concorde as he waited for an answer.

      “Yeah,” Brognola said. “Striker came across some interesting side intel in Bosnia. Evidently, there’s a Russian connection somewhere inside this whole mess.”

      “A what connection?” Lyons wasn’t sure he’d heard right.

      “You heard me correctly. Some kind of Russian connection.” The Stony Man director was chomping hard on the end of his stump of cigar. “Striker doesn’t know any more, and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with his own mission there. It was just something he picked up along the way and passed back to us in case it helped.”

      “It helps confuse me even more than I already was,” said Lyons.

      “Me, too,” Brognola said as Lyons felt the Concorde begin a rapid descent. “But it might start to make sense somewhere down the line.”

      “I’ll keep it in mind,” Lyons said. “Anything else we need to know?”

      “Probably a lot. But that’s all I have for now. I’m sure you’ll find out yourself when you get to K.C.”

      “We’ll keep you informed,” Lyons said. “And thank Striker for me.” He disconnected the call.

      The flight from Oklahoma City to Kansas City, Missouri, was almost an up-and-down hop for the Concorde, and Lyons saw that it was only a little past 1500 hours on his wrist. As they deplaned to the runway, they saw the marked KCPD helicopter waiting for them on the ground, blades whirling as it warmed up for flight.

      In a way, it felt like Oklahoma City all over again. But the mall was going to get a lot more complex than the church had been. It was far bigger, and there were thousands more places for men—or explosives—to hide.

      Jack Grimaldi was the last one out of the Concorde but he raced past the men of Able Team as Lyons, Schwarz and Blancanales began pulling equipment bags out of the storage compartment. Lyons saw the air ace say a few words to the KCPD pilot inside the chopper, and then the uniformed man reluctantly stepped down.

      Grimaldi patted him on the shoulder as he took the man’s place at the controls.

      It took a little less than four minutes for Grimaldi to get them over the tall downtown buildings of Kansas City, Missouri, to the Kansas border and then to Shawnee Mission, Kansas. Actually, Shawnee Mission was a region rather than a suburb, made up of several independent smaller towns that, if combined, would have taken over from Wichita as the state’s largest city.

      “There’s the mall,” Grimaldi said, nodding toward the bubble windshield in front of him. “Carpenters Square.” He turned to glance at Lyons. “Want me to do a fly-over?”

      Lyons nodded silently, frowning slightly as he looked out the side window of the chopper. Below, he saw what looked almost like a replay of the scene at the church they’d just come from. Blue-and-red lights whirled above both marked and unmarked squad cars, and the sirens were blasting so loud he could hear them all the way up in the helicopter. Most of the marked units were from Kansas, but some of the Missouri officers had crossed the state line as backup, too. Such was usually the case when a residential area spanned more than one jurisdiction—the cops on both sides knew each other and worked together frequently.

      The mall itself appeared to be in a classic cross configuration, with two long hallways that intersected in the middle. At one end of the north-to-south hallway stood a large, three-story Dillard’s store. At the other was a JC Penney.

      Kohl’s and Jan and Jeni’s Sportwear made up the tips of the other long strip of stores.

      “Take her down a little lower,” Lyons told Grimaldi. “I want to get a look at the entrances and exits.”

      Grimaldi nodded and dropped the bird in the air, hovering a few feet off the ground and almost directly in front of one of the entrances into Dillard’s. Through the glass, the Able Team leader could see several men with red scarves around their necks looking back at him. As he watched, one of them raised his AK-47 and fired.

      But Jack Grimaldi had seen the man, too, and he twisted the chopper slightly in the air, not unlike a boxer sliding off a punch. The 7.62 mm bullet struck the windshield of the chopper and careened off, leaving only a tiny scratch in the glass to show where it had been.

      That scratch was directly in front of Carl Lyons’s nose.

      The radio suddenly blasted with screeching and scratching. Grimaldi adjusted the squelch as a stern voice said, “KBI-1 to Missouri chopper—whatever your call name is!”

      Lyons lifted the radio microphone from where it was clipped below the control panel and said, “Just call us AT,” he said. “AT-1, 2 and 3. I’m 1.”

      “Well, whoever you are, get your ass out of there,” said the same KBI voice. “They’ve just called and said if you don’t land or fly away they’ll ignite the whole mall right now!”

      “Affirmative,” Lyons said. He nodded at Grimaldi, who immediately raised the helicopter straight up in the air. He glanced down at the mike, as if it might actually be the man he’d just talked to. Whoever the guy was, he sounded as if he was used to being obeyed.

      Carl Lyons’s best guess was that KBI stood for Kansas Bureau of Investigation, a state investigative unit. And KBI-1 would undoubtedly be the director.

      But he didn’t sound as if he was going to be as easy to get along with as Dwayne Langford had been back at the church.

      “AT-1 to KBI-1,” Lyons said into the mike. “What’s your 10–20?”

      “We’re set up at the edge of the parking lot, north side,” the surly voice came back. “There’s a place where you can land over here, and I’m ordering you to do just that right now!”

      Grimaldi turned to the Able Team leader again. “Want me to land?” he asked.

      Lyons nodded. “I’m not sure this clown’s ego could take it if we didn’t.”

      Grimaldi laughed and turned the chopper that way.

      A few seconds later they were coming down on the asphalt parking lot next to one of the SWAT vans parked around the mall. Lyons saw the same hectic activity that he’d seen outside the church in Oklahoma City, with flashing lights and sirens blaring, with every SWAT team and other unit anxious to get started but not knowing how or where.

      As the chopper’s rails met the ground, a man in a dark blue shirt and bright red tie approached with a look of anger on his face. He reached out and opened Lyon’s door with one hand, and would have grabbed the Able Team leader by the arm and dragged him out if Lyons hadn’t intercepted his other hand first. Twisting the man’s wrist into a classic jujitsu hold, the Able Team leader watched the anger on the man’s face turn to a grimace of pain as he exited the chopper on his own.

      “Well, we’re certainly off to a great start, aren’t we, Mr. KBI-1?” he said as he finally released the man’s hand.

      The Kansas Bureau of Investigation director was too proud to rub his wrist where it had come close to snapping, so he stood upright and at attention as he said, “Okay, you’re under arrest for resisting an officer.” He turned to look at Schwarz and Blancanales as they exited the helicopter behind Lyons. “What happens to you two remains to be seen.” He ran his eyes up and down the blacksuits all