Free The Shroud of Heaven by Sean Ellis

partially revealing two motionless forms: a US soldier and one of the Red Cross workers. Kismet dug at a scattering of bricks that still pinned the legs of the latter individual, enough so that the woman was able to slip her hands beneath the fallen aid worker's shoulders in order to drag him to safety.
    Kismet blinked in disbelief. The woman, ostensibly dedicated to bringing relief to victims of the war, had helped rescue a single individual—her own friend—before fleeing the disaster area. Shaking off his incredulity, he plunged into the ruin once more, pushing aside large chunks of the wall to reveal other victims in dust-streaked camouflage. Another section of the wall, twice as large as the piece he had helped move, had fallen inward, crushing several more unlucky souls. It seemed unlikely that anyone could have endured its massive collapse, but Kismet had witnessed survival stories far more improbable.
    He was closer now to the perimeter of the terminal, and able to follow the battle raging outside on the tarmac. The infantrymen were advancing toward the position from which the grenades had been launched, filling the air with bursts of gunfire. He couldn’t tell if they were taking fire but the soldiers were staying low in order to present as small a target as possible. Kismet gave the situation a cursory glance, but kept his focus on driving wedge-shaped pieces of debris under the outermost lip of the fallen wall, forcibly raising it, if only by microscopic increments.
    Abruptly, the pitch of the skirmish seemed to change. Kismet looked up from his task, anxious that yet another RPG had been unleashed. Instead of a grenade however, he saw something far more destructive racing toward his position.
    In that instant he realized that the grenade attack had simply been a diversion, a feint designed to engage the troops and draw them away from the terminal. The advance had opened a gap in their flank, allowing a single vehicle to break through the outer secure perimeter of the airport, onto the tarmac. At the same instant, gunfire—Kismet recognized the distinctive report of the AK-47—from no less than three separate locations began showering the exposed soldiers, compelling them to dive for cover and effectively preventing them from firing on that lone automobile. Kismet knew instantly the purpose behind the driver’s suicidal attempt to reach the terminal and recognized just as surely that none of the men on the tarmac would be able to stop it. When that car, or rather car bomb, reached the idle jetliner, the battle would be over for everyone. The soldiers on the runway and every soul in the exposed terminal building would be caught in the ensuing firestorm.
    With a deftness acquired through weeks of training—and like bicycle riding, never quite forgotten—Kismet snatched a long object from the shoulder of a fallen trooper, removed the safety pin and rolled the cylinder onto his shoulder. The AT-4 anti-tank weapon was only slightly different than the LAW 80 he had learned to use a decade earlier, and a brief glance at the instructions printed on the side of the tube was all he needed to prepare the launcher for firing. A tilt of his head brought the target into view in the peep-sight.
    “Backblast clear!” He glanced quickly to his rear, checking to make sure that anyone close enough to have heard his shouted warning was hastening away from the area, then thumbed the red trigger button.
    The launch tube filled with fire as the solid propellant rocket motor blasted the 80-millimeter high-explosive warhead across the tarmac. A cone-shaped inferno blossomed behind Kismet—the rocket’s backblast—and an ear-splitting hiss filled the enclosed terminal building as the missile broke the sound barrier.
    The car was less than fifty meters from the jet, close enough, Kismet knew, to ignite the fuel in its wing tanks if enough explosives had been packed into the station wagon. The vehicle was a fast-moving target,