Free The Shroud of Heaven by Sean Ellis Page A

difficult to strike even in the best of circumstances. To make matters worse, he knew that in the unlikely event of a direct hit, the anti-tank missile would trigger the car bomb, accomplishing the very thing he sought to prevent. All of those factors had flashed through his mind in the instant he fixed his sights not on the advancing vehicle but on a stationary spot on the runway directly in its path.
    The warhead slammed into the paved surface before Kismet could relax his finger, and gouged a large crater in the soft asphalt a mere whisper ahead of the car’s arrival. What the missile lacked in pyrotechnic splendor, it made up for in raw kinetic energy. The shockwave swept underneath the station wagon, lifting its front end off the runway and tossing the entire vehicle backward like a sheet of paper in a windstorm.
    In that instant, the car detonated in a brilliant supernova. The chassis swelled like an overripe fruit then burst apart in a spray of metal fragments, some still recognizable as automobile components. The shockwave from the secondary explosion radiated outward in a near perfect sphere of force to hammer against the defenseless plane. The wings shuddered and the airframe twisted and popped as a wall of air, hard as steel and moving at the speed of sound, slammed into the fuselage. The jet shifted sideways, pushed by the invisible hand of the blast, and its tires left long streaks of rubber on the runway. An instant later a wheel from the car crashed into the stabilizer fin, followed by a spray of shrapnel that tore into the aluminum skin of the aircraft, peeling back the thin sheets. The port wing gave an agonized groan as a long crack began traveling its length. Kismet saw jet fuel weeping from the underside of the damaged wing and closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable. The explosion that followed however was not what he was expecting.
    “Are you insane?”
    Despite all the fury of gunshots and explosions, that strident exclamation was the harshest noise he had heard since arriving. He turned slowly to find, not surprisingly, the copper-haired woman who had preceded him into the terminal.
    “Did you even think to look behind you?” she continued, her scream of fury like fingernails on a chalkboard. Kismet noted absently that the woman was speaking English, fluently judging by the few words he had heard, but faintly accented.
    Yep, French.
    He countered her ferocious mien with one of calm dispassion. “I checked. It was clear.”
    “You almost incinerated us.”
    Kismet understood her distress and tried to be sympathetic. To a non-combatant, the plume of fire erupting from the launch tube must have seemed quite threatening. But he had checked before triggering the device. Moreover, his decision to angle the shot into the tarmac meant that most of the rocket’s exhaust had been directed upward, over the head of anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the backfire zone.
    Outside, the last fragments of debris from the suicide bomb vehicle clattered to the ground. The plane now bore significant scars from the encounter, but could conceivably fly again with extensive repair. Aside from the sole occupant of the vehicle, there appeared to be no casualties directly resulting from the terrorist act.
    Beyond the battered aircraft, the tide of the ongoing gun battle had shifted once again. The attacking force, anticipating only success, had suffered a morale shattering defeat. Their return fire trickled to nothing as they abandoned their positions and retreated toward the city. As Kismet gazed across the tarmac, he saw a squad of olive drab military vehicles charge across the open expanse in pursuit.
    The red-haired woman remained in front of him, seething with misplaced anger, but said nothing more. Kismet blinked at her, then attempted a compromise. “I’m sorry I frightened you, but you weren’t really in any danger. Not from this at least.” He proffered the spent missile tube like an olive branch.
    The