The Lazarus Vendetta - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,143

following one of the decoy flares as it tumbled slowly toward the ocean. He breathed out. "Must have been a heat seeker," he commented, irked to hear a tremor in his voice.

Peter nodded. His lips were pressed tight together. "Man-portable SAMs usually are." He sighed. "Back to square one, I'm afraid. We daren't mess about at altitude - not with a missile threat like that sitting right behind us."

"So in we go?" Smith suggested.

"Too right," Peter said, baring his teeth in a fierce fighting grin. He brought the Black Hawk down so low that its main landing gear seemed to be skimming right over the curling waves. The airfield, now dead ahead, grew rapidly through the forward canopy. "We go in hard and fast, Jon. You clear the left. I'll clear the right. And Randi, God bless her, will do whatever else needs doing!"

"Sounds like a plan!" Randi agreed from behind them. She handed Smith one of the M4 carbines and three thirty-round magazines. With a shortened barrel and a telescoping stock, the M4 was a somewhat lighter and handier weapon than its parent, the M16. He snapped one magazine into the rifle and tucked the spare clips away in his pockets. The third carbine went to Peter, who wedged it beside him on the pilot's seat.

"Thanks! Now, buckle in," Peter yelled back at her. "The landing will be just a tad bumpy!"

There were more flashes rippling along the runway ahead of them. Several men were standing out in the open, steadily firing at the oncoming helicopter with assault rifles. Five-point-fifty-six mm rounds smacked into the Black Hawk - pinging off the main rotor, ricocheting off its armored canopy and cockpit, and punching through the thin alloy sides of the fuselage.

Smith saw Nomura's first flying wing lift off the ground and begin climbing. He slammed his fist onto the side of his seat in frustration. "Damn!"

"There are still two more on the ground! We'll deal with that one later," Peter assured him. "Assuming there is a later, that is," he added under his breath.

The Black Hawk clattered low over the tarmac and spun rapidly through a half-circle, flaring out to thump heavily into the long grass growing beside the runway. More rifle bullets spanged off the canopy and went whirring away in showers of sparks. Smith hammered the seat belt buckle hard, opening it, grabbed his M4 carbine, and forced his way back into the troop compartment. Peter followed closely, pausing only to set a couple of switches on the control panel. Overhead, the rotor blades slowed dramatically - but they kept turning.

Randi already had the left-side door open. She crouched in the opening, sighting down the barrel of her carbine. She glanced over her shoulder. "All set?"

Jon nodded. "Let's go!"

With Randi right behind him, he leaped out of the helicopter and dashed south along the fringe of the runway. Rifle rounds cracked low overhead, coming from a pair of guards running toward them across the concrete. Smith threw himself down in the tall grass and opened fire-squeezing off three-round bursts in an arc from left to right.

One of the guards screamed shrilly and flopped forward, cut almost in half by two high-velocity bullets. The other dropped flat on the concrete and kept shooting.

From her position on Smith's right, Randi coolly took aim. She waited until the sights settled on the goggles of the guard's gas mask and then gently pulled the trigger. His head exploded.

Jon swallowed hard, looking away. He checked their surroundings. They were about a third of the way along the runway - just a few hundred meters from the massive hangar at the southern end. An enormous tin-roofed warehouse stretched east not far behind them. There appeared to be only one entrance on this side, a solid-looking steel door with a keypad lock. His eyes narrowed as suspicion hardened into certainty. No one put that kind of fortress-like door on a run-of-the-mill storage facility. Nomura's secret nanophage lab must be somewhere inside. You could hide a dozen biochemical factories inside that vast, cavernous space and still have plenty of room left over.

The second of the huge flying-wing planes was rolling down the runway in their direction, slowly gathering speed as its propellers spun faster and faster. Jon could see the deadly canisters clustered beneath its single enormous wing. The third drone aircraft was stopped just outside the hangar, waiting for its turn in the takeoff pattern.

Gunfire erupted to the north, on the other side of