The Day Before Midnight Read Online Free Page B

children inside the van.
    “This guy is making me nervous,” he said to the two policemen with him. All were dressed in the uniforms of a private security service, in keeping with the sign that stood above the gate house: SOUTH MOUNTAIN MICROWAVE PROCESSING STATION / AT & T / PRIVATE PROPERTY / NO ADMITTANCE .
    “You want us to frisk him?”
    O’Malley vacillated. He looked again at his Alert Status board, and saw no change in the OZ and IZ lights. He gave a quick visual sweep of the mountain slope below him, and saw nothing but white snow and black stubble. He blinked, swallowed. He looked around. Where was his three-man Primary Security Alert Team? Jesus, those guys were slow!
    Finally, he said, “No. We’re supposed to keep a lowprofile. I’ll just go help him along. I don’t want him spending the morning here.”
    O’Malley drew his parka on and stepped out into the roadway, wincing at the brightness even through his aviator sunglasses. He walked across the hard, cold road.
    “Sir, I have to ask you to move on,” he said. “This is private property. You aren’t even supposed to be back on this road.”
    The dad looked up. He was a suntanned man with very white teeth. He looked, to the sergeant at any rate, like some kind of athlete, a boxer maybe. He had a broken nose.
    It was a vivid morning, just a little after eight. The sun spread through the valley. The sky was flawless, dense blue. The chill in the air rubbed on O’Malley’s skin; he could feel the mucus in his nose freezing.
    “I’m sorry,” the dad said. “I thought there was a McDonald’s up this way. I must have taken a wrong turn, and now I’ve got a flat. Just let me get this tire fixed and I’m gone.”
    “Sir,” said O’Malley, “if you like, I can call a garage and they can send a tow truck up here.”
    “I think I can get it,” said the man. “If I can just find the lug wrench in the toolbox.” He reached into the box, which was old and battered. In the background the kids began to cry.
    The young sergeant was by nature suspicious—his profession demanded it—but when the dad brought out a silenced Heckler&Koch P9 in 9mm, his first impulse was not to reach for the Smith&Wesson .38 he carried on his belt, or to cry out. Rather, he was stunned at the incongruity of it, the sheer, appalling absurdity of such a weapon, here and now, in the man’s hand. But he had no time to react.
    The major dropped to one knee, and, aiming from a two-handed isosceles position, shot O’Malley twice through the center chest from a range of seven feet, firing 115-grain Silvertips, which blossomed like spring tulips as they tumbled crazily through the young man’s chest, knocking him to the earth inside a second.
    The major stepped back from the van and its rear doubledoors sprang open. Inside, two men fired a long burst from a bipod-mounted M-60 into the guardhouse, which shivered, its glass splintering with the impact of the 7.62-mm rounds. Inside, the two air policemen died almost instantly amid a spray of glass chips and wood bits.
    The major jumped onto the running board of the van, whacked it with his gun butt, and the driver gunned it. It slithered, kicking up the dust, and whipped through a ninety-degree turn and smashed through the gate. Before him, the major could see three nondescript corrugated tin buildings inside the complex, one of which boasted a red and white radio tower of perhaps fifty feet.
    According to plan, they had thirty seconds from the first shot until they took out the above-ground communications center.
    Romano called back Security Alpha. There was no answer.
    “I wonder what that guy is doing?” he said.
    “Those cops. You never know.”
    “Donny, take your key off your neck.”
    “Huh?”
    “Do what I say, Donny.” He dialed Communications. There was no answer. He went to the teletype. No messages had come through on their watch.
    “Shit,” he said. “I wonder if—”
    “Hey, Rick, ease off, man. So the