by Chase Austin
“But…”
“Do it. I’m keeping on hold. Go on, do it, do it. I’m listening…do it.” Shahrukh had to comply. He stared at Yakub with helplessness and shot Peter. Olivia shrieked. Getting up, she limped helplessly towards the door. Yakub took aim at her and before she could cross the door, multiple bullets riddled her body.
Wick had to lose his train of thought when he heard the shriek followed by gunshots. Someone was running towards them and before Wick could understand anything, Olivia’s body flew out of the door. Her back had innumerable bullet holes and she hit the floor face down.
A grenade flew in close proximity to her and landed in the lobby. Wick jumped without waiting. The grenade exploded in mid-air. Steel splinters rushed to meet Wick’s body. By the time he landed, he knew many of them had found their way into his bullet-proof vest. Without it, he would have been dead meat.
This was getting out of hand. They had to blast open the door. The reason was that the terrorists were easily able to open it, at will. They had to take away this control from them. Jessica ordered Landon and Eddie to provide her with covering fire. While she crawled closer to the room, Wick pulled Olivia’s dead body away from the door. There was silence from inside; perhaps the terrorists had paused to reload their weapons.
Jessica placed the charge on the door, and the explosion managed to partially splinter it. As soon as the door was breached, Wick lobbed multiple grenades into the room. There was an ear-splitting explosion. The firing from within the room had begun, and it instantly subsided. Jessica and Wick kept lobbing stun grenades into the room. Landon and Eddie kept the pressure with intermittent cover fire. The firefight was slowly tilting towards Wick’s team. The dull subsonic sounds of the MP5, like a coconut hitting the floor, versus the AK-47’s firecracker sound, echoed through the atrium.
In the incessant firing, Wick and Jessica didn’t have the time to check if there were any hostages in the room.
In the hotel elsewhere, the guests cowered in fear.
Chapter 54
Landon and Eddie kept firing at the door to keep the terrorists from breaking out. But they had begun running low on ammunition. Jessica opened her bag and took out some Molotov cocktails. She lit them one by one and flung them at the door. The cocktails crashed through the gap in the door and set the room on fire. The curtains obscuring the view quickly burned away. Black smoke billowed out of the room. The fire also triggered off the hotel’s sprinkler system. Water spurted out of spouts in the ceiling, extinguishing the fire. This gave them a clear view of the room from outside.
Shahrukh and Yakub rushed into the bathroom for shelter. Wick and Jessica lobbed more grenades into the room, but they proved futile. The terrorists opened the faucets in the bathroom. Water started to fill the bathtub, spreading out into the room and gushing into the corridor outside.
At the same time, Shahrukh and Yakub also had a conversation with their handlers who kept them at it with motivational speeches. “The manner of your death will instil fear in the unbelievers. This is a battle between Islam and the unbelievers. Keep looking for a place to die. Keep moving.”
“Insha’allah,” they responded earnestly.
“You’re very close to Heaven now. One way or another we’ve all got to go there. You will be remembered for what you’ve done here. Fight till the end. Stretch it out as long as possible.”
It was past midnight and Room 0724 and its vicinity resembled a coal pit. The fire had charred the whitewashed walls around the room. The corridor was indistinguishable from the black granite facade of the elevators. The firefight and the water had turned the area around the room into a slushy puddle. The grenade blasts had knocked the light fittings out in front of the room and lift area. They had also smashed the false ceiling to reveal a thick mass of black electrical cables. Cable TV routers and wires hung limply like creepers. The corridor filled with half an inch of water, turning the red carpet into a soaking bog.
What Jessica and Wick didn’t know was that one of the grenade blasts had injured Yakub grievously. There was no way he could be saved.
While sitting in the van, Mac decided to make himself useful by tuning into the various frequencies, to see which of them were being used by the terrorists. Eventually, he succeeded in latching on to one. Mac captured their conversation on his device.
“How are you, my brother?” The handler asked them.
“Praise God. Yakub has passed away.” Shahrukh sounded weak.
“Really? Is he there?”
“Yes.”
“May God accept his martyrdom.”
“I’m sitting in the bathroom with the taps on,” Shahrukh said, looking at Yakub’s dead body.
“Don’t let them arrest you. Don’t let them knock you out with a stun grenade. That would be very damaging. Fire one of your magazines, then grab the other one and move out. The success of your mission depends on you getting shot,” the handler suggested.
“Jessica, one of them is dead. Only one is left.” Mac hissed in his lip mic.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Snooping on the frequency they are using to talk to their handlers. He is going to come out. He doesn’t want to be captured.”
“Thanks.”
Eddie was on guard at the fire exit near five o’clock. Landon was with him. Wick was still near the door, with a four-foot-high housekeeping trolley next to him that stood shielding him from any shots from the room. He felt dazed and tired. The travel, firing, and explosions had numbed him. It was the thought of Stan that kept him going.
Jessica took stock of the situation. The four of them were tired, but she had to regroup them and launch another assault on the room.
Suddenly a short burst of fire echoed through the atrium. It was difficult to tell the location of it, but the gunfire did not come from within the room. It was in the atrium.
‘Who’s firing?’ they wondered. Was it the MARSOCs or the SWAT Teams?
There was a second burst. This time very close to where Wick stood. The bullets drilled the wall and blasted out puffs of white dust. “Damn,” Wick yelled as he darted back into the corridor for cover.
The figure fired again, this time from within the narrow niche of the elevator door. Still unsure about the identity of the shooter, Wick raised his MP5, but Jessica motioned him to hold back.
She shouted frantically. ‘The man is in black. It could be one of ours.’
The figure continued to fire and move towards Eddie and Landon who quickly took cover. Wick shot a glance out of his cover. It was Shahrukh in black tees with his AK-47. He had taken advantage of the dark corridor and a lull in the fighting and broken out of the second door of the room opening in the lobby, determined to shoot his way out. Wick’s thumb slipped his MP5 selector to a three-round burst, and he aimed and fired two quick bursts. The MP5 rattled.
Shahrukh was hit in the leg. He staggered and limped back towards the elevators.
Enraged, Shahrukh screamed, “You coward, why are you hiding? If you are worth your salt, come out and fight.” He then ran for cover himself.
Eddie appeared from the shadows and took aim at the place where Shahrukh was hiding. Shahrukh was now being shot at from two different directions. Eddie shouted, “Now why don’t you come forward?”
A tense stand-off ensued. Both held their positions. Eddie and Landon were almost out of ammo, and they informed Jessica and Wick about it. Now, the two of them had to stop Shahrukh from slipping out in the dark into the other side of the corridor.
Wick asked Eddie to go onto the next floor and fling grenades at Shahrukh’s location from there. Wick wanted to create an illusion that Shahrukh was now trapped from all directions. Either he could surrender or die.
Wick and Jessica reloaded their weapons while Eddie ran up to the eighth floor. He had just two hand grenades left, and he had to make them count.
Shahrukh kept firing single shots, inaccurately, from his hideout in the elevator passageway, but he was
now clearly out of his depth. Eddie positioned himself nearest to the place from where Shahrukh was firing and lobbed two grenades at it in quick succession. With the twin explosions, the firing stopped.
Wick threw a stun grenade into the atrium. And in the blinding light, he spotted the body of the dead terrorist lying in the corridor. He aimed his MP5 and fired one quick burst at the body. No movement. He walked down the corridor. Shahrukh lay inert on the floor, his dead eyes staring at Wick. His AK-47, five magazines and a pistol lay beside him. Empty cartridges lay scattered around.
Jessica swung open what was left of the door to Room 0724. It was a compact battle zone. The terrorists had used the room’s two doors as a barrier. They had used the minibar and a study table as firing positions. She stepped on hundreds of AK-47 brass empties. The windows, the bed, and a sofa were half burned. The carpeted floor was soggy and strewn with shoes and clothes. She aimed her weapon at the bathroom. The door was open. A terrorist lay on his back on the bathroom floor. Shrapnel had passed through his right eye. This was Yakub.
Inside the room, Peter Jacob also lay dead.
Outside, Wick rolled over the dead body of the woman that lay in the corridor and immediately recognized her. She was Olivia Helms. He looked back at Eddie who looked shocked and disturbed. He knew who Olivia was.
The terrorists had been neutralized, but the operation did not end there. The MARSOC teams carried out room intervention operations in the rest of the hotel, moving from the top downwards.
The Onyx was eventually cleared of civilians. Bodies of the dead civilians were removed by the next day noon. Guests from all floors were thoroughly screened again and handed over to the hotel authorities. The bomb disposal squad conducted their Render Safe Procedure, sweeping the hotel for live ordnance and ammunition, and searching for possible booby traps before the building was handed over to the hotel authorities.
Chapter 55
The news channels were awash with the news of victory over terror. Once again, they were trying to give the ominousness of the attacks a positive spin, but the people actually affected were the ones who knew that no amount of positivity could bring their loved ones back from the dead.
The dead were in thousands. In the absence of any official figures, the estimate game had already begun on various news channels. TV debates had already started, with hashtags and with quotes, in a bid to make them trend on social media. After the initial condemnations and sympathies from the politicians and public figures alike, the blame games had also started within the various stakeholders responsible to keep America safe.
Wick, Jessica, Eddie and Landon stood in silence as the medical teams rushed inside the Onyx to tend to the hostages. Wick had called Helms a few minutes ago to deliver the news of Olivia’s death. It was one of the hardest things to do in life – letting a father know that his child was no more. Helms said nothing, he just listened to what Wick told him and then he disconnected the call.
In Manhattan, Richard survived, but the one person he wanted to live his life with finally succumbed to her injuries in the hospital. Richard kept holding Lily’s hand long after she was gone.
In Philadelphia, Mary woke up to the news of her only son’s martyrdom. The officer who gave her the news asked her if she had anyone whom he could call to be with her at this time. All she could was to stare at him blankly. She didn’t even cry. She just sat there on that hospital bed; her mind blank. What would she do without her son? With whom would she go to the market?
Chapter 56
Hancock’s first feeling was of relief. The immediate next thought was of the political fallout he was about to face. During his walk from the Situation Room to the Oval office, he met many people, and all of them congratulated him on the successful mission. But as soon as he closed the Oval office door, his fears roared back with vengeance. ‘What would be tomorrow’s headline? Would he be a hero for America?’ he wondered.
Hancock’s train of thought was interrupted only when his phone rang. It was Peter Jackson – his ex-Special Advisor who had quit his job moments before the attacks.
‘Finally, someone has realized his mistake to abandon the ship at the worst moment and is now eager to board it again,’ Hancock thought, while picking up the phone. An involuntary smile caressed his lips. If anyone could help him milk this opportunity to the fullest, it was Peter Jackson.
“Hello Pete,” he said.
“Hello Mr. President.” Jackson sounded earnest.
“Calling to congratulate me?”
“You deserve it, sir.”
“I know,” Hancock gloated. He pictured Jackson running his hand through his signature bleach-blond hair and smiled.
“You must be first President who not only thought of this impossible task but also executed it ruthlessly. And then, of course, saved the day for everyone.” Jackson sniggered.
Hancock’s voice shook. “What do you mean?”
“Isn’t it crystal clear? I mean, you wanted me to do this but then you went ahead, got this done and that too on the same day.”
“You are accusing me of…” Hancock suddenly stopped short of saying the exact words. His phone could be tapped by the Secret Service as protocol. He didn’t know, because he had never cared until now.
“Am I? Do I sound like I’m accusing you of anything you are not capable of? You… the President of the United States? I only called to congratulate you on your glorious victory.”
Hancock said nothing in return. He wanted to, but he didn’t.
“And tomorrow when the whole world will revel in America’s victory on terror, when you will be cherished and celebrated as the strong leader that this nation deserves, I will be the proudest of all because I made you the President. Not the people of this country, not the media, not your senators but I did. You know that, right?”
“Yes, Peter it’s you. It will always be you.” Hancock swerved around, changing his tactic.
“But Hancock, tell me, what did I get in return? A shitty designation, Special Advisor to the POTUS! What is that, a slap for good work?”
“Peter, why don’t you come and meet me? We can talk…sort this thing out.”
“I’d love to, but you see I don’t have time for a President who is going to be impeached soon. Your time is over, buddy.”
“You are threatening the President of this country!”
“I’m just saying that one should cover one’s tracks more closely. In this age of trending hashtags, you can never tell when it’s going to be your face on one of those viral videos.”
“What do you mean?”
“Okay if you want it in simpler words, then let it be so. Hancock, you should have never said those things to me that you did in our last meeting.” Jackson took a long sigh. “But you did. Don’t worry, I will keep your golden words very safe with me.” And with that, Jackson disconnected the call.
Hancock remained standing at his place, alone in the Oval office, looking into the darkness. His own words from that conversation, ringing louder in his ears.
“Think about it, an attack on this country and people will forget about everything. This is what I need.”
Chapter 57
“The message is delivered.” Jackson spoke on the phone.
“Good.”
“Anything else for me?”
“Not now, but soon,” the man said, speaking slowly.
“Thank you, Professor!”
And the phone was disconnected from the other end.
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