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"What do we-?" the woman behind him began, and Divkovic's anger peaked. He whipped around towards her, lips parted to snarl his rage at her.
The sudden movement of the lead terrorist, the rise of his weapon, had inspired-or terrified-two of his followers. They flung themselves to the sides, going prone. And then Jezic saw the muzzle flashes of chemical-powered rifles as they opened fire on the searchlights.
There was no one on the building's roof. The lights were remotely controlled, although the terrorists had no way of knowing that. But opening fire at all was a fatal mistake. Under Able Zulu, the Rules of Engagement changed.
"Blue Team, Blue One!" Aranka Budak snapped over the com. " Take them! "
Juras Divkovic had one fleeting moment to realize what was happening. An instant to recognize that his unsuspected cowardice, if that was what it was, didn't matter. Wasn't going to have the chance to seduce him into surrender-and -survival-after all.
He was fleetingly aware of more fire, from Tyra
" Cease fi -" he began to bellow, out of some pointless instinct.
Barto Jezic saw it happening, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. For that matter, he wasn't even certain he would have tried to stop it if he'd been able to. Budak's command was in policy and in accordance with the Rules of Engagement currently in force.
It was exactly the correct response, however final it might have been.
A tornado of pulser fire slammed back at Divkovic and his companions. The pulse rifles were bad enough, but there were two old-fashioned, multibarreled bulky miniguns, as well. Slower-firing and less destructive than a tribarrel they might have been, but a thousand rounds per minute, even from an obsolete nitrocellulose weapon, were quite sufficient to turn a human body into a finely suspended red mist.
The shattering explosion when something hit the detonator of the commercial explosives tucked away inside one of the terrorist's backpacks was almost anticlimactic.
Jezic swore in mingled frustration and satisfaction. He really had wanted those people alive. But he was too honest with himself to pretend he didn't feel a deep, vicious sense of triumph as his people took the terrorists down.
The mingled snarl of pulser fire, civilian-made rifles, and minigun thunder from the direction of Sergeant Maksimovac's Red Team ended as abruptly as Aranka's fire had, and Jezic swore again, then relaxed and shrugged his shoulders.
He'd accomplished his primary goal by stopping the attack dead in its tracks, he reminded himself. And if there was enough left down there for the forensic specialists, he might find out he'd done quite a bit better than that...
"You're joking!" Vulk Rajkovic looked at Colonel Brigita Basaricek's face on his com screen. The National Police's commanding officer was a tall, hawk-faced woman with dark hair and eyes in the KNP's pearl-gray tunic. At the moment, her eyes gleamed, although her expression remained guarded, as though she were unwilling to believe her own news.
"The attack itself was stopped dead, Mr. Vice President," she said. "There's no question that every one of the terrorists was killed. As to the other, well, the forensic people don't have a lot to work with. Apparently she was personally carrying one of the explosive charges they'd pla
"But you think it was actually her?" Rajkovic pressed.
"Mr. Vice President, I think there's a good chance of it," Basaricek replied after a momentary hesitation. "Again, I have to stress that forensics doesn't have much. But the information we had before the attack was that it was under the operational control of the man they called Icepick, but that Nordbrandt herself was in overall command. The fact that Secretary Grabovac was supposed to be there in person apparently made the meeting important enough for her to decide it justified her own presence. You know how she's insisted on that 'lead from the front' image from the begi
She paused until Rajkovic nodded. Much as he'd come to hate and loathe Agnes Nordbrandt, no one had ever called her a coward. And, much as he hated to admit it, her habit of personally accompanying certain especially high profile attacks had earned her a grudging respect-though certainly not admiration-from some segments of the planetary press. He wasn't certain if she insisted on doing that for exactly that reason, or if it was because of her own fanaticism, and it didn't matter. Particularly not if Basaricek's information was correct.
"At any rate, we've positively identified 'Icepick' among the dead," the KNP's commander continued. "We'd already known he was one of her most senior action cell leaders. Now that we've managed to run his fingerprints, we can ID him as one Juras Divkovic. His father was killed-apparently by some of my own people, I'm sorry to say, though it might have been some of the militia we were forced to call out-when the Odak factory riots got out of hand eight years ago. From everything I've seen on him and his family, it's hard to blame him for being bitter as hell, and he's got two brothers. Both of them disappeared right after the attack on the Nemanja Building, just like 'Icepick,' so I'm afraid we may be ru
"In addition to him, however, we also recovered the bodies-or partial remains, at least-of six other people. One of them was female and, from the low-light surveillance footage Lieutenant Budak's people got just before it all fell into the crapper, looked an awful lot like Nordbrandt. As I say, she was carrying a heavy explosive charge which detonated during the firefight, so the biggest pieces of her body we've been able to recover aren't much. What we have is being transported to our central forensics lab for examination, but it's not like we have the sort of technology someone like the Star Kingdom or the Sollies has, and it was a powerful explosion. It's going to take us days or even weeks just to sort out which body parts go together. We may never be able to say for certain that it was or wasn't her."
"But if it was..." Rajkovic's voice trailed off as he contemplated the devastating impact Nordbrandt's death would have on the FAK. It was unlikely to stop the lunatics she'd set in motion in their tracks, but it would certainly be a body blow.
"All right," he said, shaking himself back to the present. "Do the best you can to confirm that one way or the other, Colonel. And in the meantime, we need to make sure this doesn't hit the press. The last thing we need is for it to look as if we've made unfounded claims that she's dead if it turns out later that she actually isn't!"
"Ah, Sir, that may be a problem."
"Problem?" Rajkovic's tone sharpened, and the colonel's mouth twitched unhappily.
"Mr. Vice President, the gunfire didn't last long, but it was quite... noticeable," she said. "And the explosion was even more so. All the commotion attracted a lot of attention, including the press. At least three news teams got there even before the forensics vans. Our people were under orders to keep their mouths shut and refer all inquiries to the official public information officers, of course. Unfortunately, one of the questions our PIO was asked by a reporter was whether or not he could confirm Nordbrandt was among the dead. So it looks to me like someone leaked the possibility to them when they first hit the scene."
She grimaced again, more strongly, and shook her head.
"I'm sorry, Sir. I know how sensitive this information is, and how important it was to keep it under wraps until we did have confirmation. But it appears it's already gotten out. The only people who could've leaked it are all KNP perso
"I see." Rajkovic frowned, then shrugged. "Done is done, Colonel. If you can find out who did it, give him-or her-a few extra kicks from me, but you're right. We can't shove the cat back into the bag. We'll just have to be as forthcoming as we can while making it clear we don't have any confirmation for them. Not that they'll pay the least attention to us," he predicted with a sigh.