The Devil's Shadow: A Gun-for-Hire Thriller

by J E Higgins

  A quick barrage of fire from the invaders tore into the guards cutting the remaining outside security to pieces. Another guard emerged from the door, this time drawing his weapon to fire. He had barely lifted his weapon when a sniper’s bullet blasted through the wooden door shielding him, exploding through his torso. He crumbled just inside the doorway.

  With the element of surprise gone, the invaders lifted their weapons to cover the various windows of the building as they fanned out across the lawn covering every avenue of the front. The back was already covered by additional teams of snipers placed at various positions across the street. Anyone attempting to escape would be quickly cut down by their gunfire. Additional teams were dispatched to cover the flanks, and a brief code word over the comms initiated the next phase.

  Holding their position, a few of the men had brought along M32 grenade launchers which they carefully aimed at the windows of the lower floor. The ammunition cylinders rotated with each shot. Skilled in their craft, the shooters fired the cumbersome weapons with practiced accuracy. The rounds flew across the grassy landscape crashing through the windows of the various offices.

  A half second later the loud blasts burst through the building, followed by the gut-wrenching screams of the victims. The ammunition was medium velocity grenades with a ten-meter kill radius. It was enough to guarantee that the casualties would be numerous. They were far enough away to avoid any blowback from flying glass shards or other debris.

  Following the blast, the grenadiers placed their weapons into a tactical hold and moved up to the main door of the embassy. A small team lined up at the edge of the doorway. They rapidly button hooked through the door, the first of the team firing an additional round into the corpse of the young soldier downed earlier.

  Inside, they encountered a short man who looked to be in his early thirties and three women shrouded in long black robes manning the reception desk. Terrified, the quartet remained frozen in their seats looking blankly at the armed masked figures quickly filtering into the corridor. The first masked assailant called attention to them as he burst in and took a position watching the long wide hallway leading down the center of the building. The second man caught sight of the whimpering reception staff, raised his weapon, and sprayed gunfire riddling the quartet with bullets. The third man saw several staff employees racing up the stairs trying to get away. A few belches of well-aimed fire from his M-4 carbine had the poor souls fall like bowling pins back down the steps.

  Establishing a foothold, the team leader used his communication gear to tell the rest of the force to move in. Seconds later, another team of six masked figures moved tactically through the door, sliding past as they made their way up the stairwell to the next floor. Another group of six followed through the building entrance and pressed past the initial entry team, moving down the hallway. More assailants entered, disappearing into the building’s interior.

  As they came to each office, they pitched a hand grenade into it before entering. Because the inside walls were not as strong as the building exterior, the grenades used were concussion grenades that released no shrapnel and kept the lethality mainly to the initial blast. Soon the sounds of more grenades and gunfire reverberated throughout the corridors as the assailants cleared one office after another mercilessly dispatching anyone they came across. The continued rhythm of explosions, terrifying screams, and desperate pleas were followed each time by gunfire.

  When the first blast went off, Guardian First Lieutenant Hassan Jannati was upstairs and instinctively moved to assess the damage by looking outside. To the IRGC officer, it was a sound he was familiar with from his tours in Iraq working with Shiite militias against Sunni terrorists and Western military forces only a year ago. When he saw a group move towards the gaping hole that had been the access control point, he only needed to see the commando-style baklavas covering their faces and the obvious tactical way they moved to know it spelled trouble.

  He had already tried to reach the men he had on duty throughout the building on his radio. The replies were sporadic and confused at best. When the second barrage of explosions occurred, this time inside the embassy, he knew they had been breached. Accepting that the first floor was lost, Jannati anticipated the next move of this mysterious enemy and set about gathering what men he could to secure the upstairs for an inevitable attack.

  He managed to meet some of his senior non-commissioned officers out in the hall and quickly issued orders to begin barricading the stairwell and stopping the elevators. Next, he found one of the senior staff workers, an older man in his early sixties, and set him to gather the rest of the civilian staff. Next, he ordered everyone to take refuge in the back rooms until he could arrange for their evacuation. He also instructed a young woman, who was fluent in Spanish, to contact the police and inform them of what was happening.

  His men were barely starting to work when they heard the crashing and shouting of men coming into the embassy. A barrage of gunfire and the terrible screams of people meeting their grisly end soon followed. It became obvious that whoever was attacking them had no intentions of sparing anyone. With only six men, armed mostly with side arms and AK-47s, he was going to have to hold on as long as possible.

  The IRGC guards hurried to move a large sofa from the hall against the entryway. They could hear foot-steps moving up the stairs and knew their time was limited. Jannati readied his sidearm, a .45 caliber automatic, as he stepped back into the office where the senior staffer was busy trying to herd a group of terrified secretaries and clerks out the door.

  The Spanish linguist was on the phone trying to call the police when she suddenly dropped limply to the ground. Confused, Jannati walked closer to examine what had happened. He saw the young woman lying face down in a pool of blood. Then he heard glass cracking and something buzzing through the air. He saw the senior staffer drop against a desk and slide to the floor, and two more people swiftly followed suit.

  Looking at the webbed window glass, the IRGC officer suddenly understood they were taking sniper fire. “Get down!” He screamed as he dropped behind one of the office desks just in time to feel a stinging metallic object wiz just centimeters past his head. He looked out from his covered position and realized the shots were coming from the building across the street. He could see all the windows of the third, fourth, and fifth floors had been blasted out and the rooms darkened to effectively conceal the shooters within the shadows. Nothing gave even the slightest hint as to their positions.

  Bullets continued to fly through the glass, picking off those still exposed. He looked for muzzle flashes, but was unable to see any, nor could he hear any definable gunshots even as rounds continued to pierce the glass. He figured the snipers were using suppressors to dampen the sound and conceal any muzzle flashes that would give away their positions. The lack of sound indicated they were also using sub-sonic ammunition to further inhibit the noise. Whoever these people were, they were skilled professionals and not run of the mill terrorists.

  Having lost their leader, the staffers stood dumbfounded like a flock of sheep. As bullets whizzed by them, they only screamed and pressed into an even tighter group. “Scatter behind the desk!” Jannati screamed in a desperate attempt to save them. The bewildered staffers only looked about confused by his direction. Another bullet struck a young woman who couldn’t have been much more than twenty. She crumpled to the ground like a rag doll as everyone watched in horror.

  Jannati growled fiercely as he called out again. This time he used the most commanding tone he could muster. “Damnit, I said get behind the furniture or I’ll kill you myself!” This time his harsh words resonated as the staffers scattered into thickets of office furniture as if they were mice.

  Out in the hallway, the thunderous sound of gunfire echoed loudly. The battle was increasing. The enemy was attempting to breach the second floor. The distinctive sound of the M-4 carbines firing their 5.56 caliber ammunition told Jannati that the enemy was delivering most of the fire. He could hear
an occasional quick burst from an AK-47 letting him know his men were giving their own back to these aggressors.

  He wanted to join the battle, but he had to first neutralize the snipers and make contact with the police. Whatever defenses he and his men had been able to establish wouldn’t last very long against such well-armed adversaries. He called to one of the staffers, an older man trying to hunker behind a desk. The older man raised his head just enough to peek over the desktop. Jannati instructed him to find a phone and call the police. The old man barely nodded before ducking back down behind his cover.

  The next step was to suppress the snipers. Aside from the death toll they were mounting, the soldier understood they were also acting as an observation team feeding intelligence back to their people on the ground with updates. His only hope for any reprieve was to get to the shades and somehow close them.

  Crawling on his belly, he snaked through the virtual maze of furniture and desks. It was aggravating that an office he had passed through so many times with ease and without a second thought should now become alien territory. Each obstacle he encountered had become a life or death struggle while the thundering sounds of gunfire continued to remind him of the desperate gun battle being waged just outside the door.

  He managed to crawl to the far end the room through a network of desks that effectively shielded him from the sniper fire that still intermittently shot through the glass ricocheting through the room. Crawling towards the windows, he continued to call out to the staffers to get updates on their efforts to contact the police. The old man nervously responded with a litany of feeble excuses and confused diatribe suggesting that the tension had robbed him of his faculties. Exasperated Jannati screamed out, “Is anyone able to contact the police?”

  “I have! I have!” A young woman shrieked excitedly “I just explained that the embassy is under attack! They said they are sending help!”

  Jannati had a nagging feeling something was not right. The embassy was in a very developed upper-class business district, not some low-end barrio. The Miguel Hidalgo district accommodated several diplomatic missions in addition to theirs. As a rule, the police generally maintained a reasonable presence in and around the district. Why hadn’t they responded already?

  His thoughts were interrupted by one of his men calling for him. He looked over just in time to see his senior sergeant frantically race into the room. The sergeant stopped just inside the doorway looking around. Jannati yelled for him to take cover, but it was too late. No sooner had the Lieutenant spoke than he heard the familiar sound of bullets piercing the window. A split second later he watched as the sergeant was jolted back and dropped to the floor.

  Next, he heard another violent explosion. This time it was much closer, and the power of the blast shook the floors of the office, delivering a thunderous rushing sound that rolled through the hallway. Outside, Jannati could see a cloud of smoke emerge and the loud cries of agony from what could only be his men. It was all followed with the rumbling sound of numerous booted feet running up the stairs. Anticipating what was going to happen, Jannati grabbed for his sidearm training it on the door.

  The footsteps stopped just outside the office door. Sweat poured from the soldier as he prepared for the inevitable gunfight. Then a small black cylinder flew into the room and thumped to the ground. Jannati had little time to process this action when the object exploded setting the room ablaze.

  Dark-suited intruders entered the room following the same tactics with which they had breached the embassy. One of the first assailants in the door recognized the IRGC officer wedged between the desks. He raised his weapon, firing two precise shots directly into the colonel’s head. Jannati died instantly. More assailants swept into the room and commenced shooting the staffers hiding behind the furniture. Gunfire was going off in all directions over the chorus of terrified screams. More gunfire was heard as the remainder of the assault force ascended the stairs and commenced clearing the rest of the rooms.

  As the upstairs assault continued, the downstairs assault teams, having cleared all the rooms, began rummaging through filing cabinets, collecting every computer disk and USB drive they could lay their hands on. At the same time, their comrades began filtering through the rooms setting out ten-pound bricks of Semtex. Detonators were carefully stuck in the mass of the claylike substance, then secured with tape. This process was repeated over and over as each room was ransacked and then fixed with explosives. When the bottom floor had been cleared, they moved to the next floor. Continuing their ransacking, the assailants ignored the bodies of the Iranian staffers as they stepped over them with indifference.

  After completely wiring the building, the assault force disengaged from the embassy in the same tactical manner in which they had entered. As they exfiltrated the premises, their explosives handlers followed closely behind. Passing through the demolished gate entrance, they walked far enough down the street to avoid the flying debris that would be produced.

  A short while later the embassy roared angrily with the thunderous pounding of explosions firing from all the offices. The embassy, now nothing more than a hollow shell, presented a chilling scene as thick clouds of grey smoke belched from the line of windows and began to enshroud the building in a ghostly haze.

  Chapter 2

  Two weeks later.

  Major General Maktar al-Anwar Hosani couldn’t help but feel a little infatuated by the splendor of the offerings in Mexico City. The wealth of culture and mysterious beauty had a most intoxicating effect on the special military representative for Pakistan visiting the country and prepping for what was hoped to be a beneficial defense partnership. Enjoying a small glass of tequila from a bottle he had received as a gift from the liaison officer who welcomed him upon arrival, he indulged in the guilty pleasure a few drops at a time as he stepped out onto the balcony of his new home. He relished the luxury of the moment as he stared at the heavenly scenery and the brightly colored illumination of the city’s lights in the night. It was hard for him to believe that this gorgeous place, that he had found so culturally enriching, was the same land he had heard so many terrible things about.

  After being briefed on Mexico City, he expected to arrive in a war zone with soldiers and police battling it out in open warfare against the near ravenous armies of the cartels. Since his arrival a week ago, he had seen absolutely nothing that indicated such dangers were around him ─ maybe it was just his location. The district of Miguel Hidalgo was a splendid upscale neighborhood housing a higher class of people. The houses were generally larger, more traditional structures of large estates with manicured lawns and jungle-like gardens. He was quite comfortable in the embassy lodgings. It was a lovely location and only a few blocks from the embassy itself making it even more convenient.

  He almost felt embarrassed that he had brought along a protective detail ─ a couple of soldiers from Pakistan’s elite Special Services Group (SSG), his old unit. Though most officers only served two years in the SSG before returning to careers in regular infantry units, he, through exemplary service and good political connections, had been able to remain for most of his military career. In that time, he had seen more than his fair share of action and life-threatening violence and was not easily intimidated. He had even capitulated to their demands and let his wife and children come. His wife, though a quiet woman who knew better than to challenge her husband in public, asserted her will when in private where she expected to get her way.

  Finishing the last drops of his libation, he set the glass down on the edge of the thick stone railing surrounding the balcony. The night air was pleasant with a mild warmth and a slight breeze that swept past him. His tranquility was interrupted by his wife as he heard her march into the room. Turning, he found himself facing a woman who was less than two-thirds his size yet seemed to dominate the room.

  Mrs. Fatima Hosani was a gorgeous woman in her early fifties. She maintained her excellent shape and athletic build with a daily regime of exercise. Her hair, tha
t she kept tied up and covered under a stylish red hijab, was a silky raven black. She was the image of a fit woman still in her twenties in a long-sleeved shirt and pants that framed her figure well. Only the age lines on her face betrayed her actual age. She sighed with exasperation as she waited for her husband to return from the balcony. She ignored the obvious aroma of alcohol as she had much more pertinent matters to address.

  “We need to discuss staffing!” She stated her demand while trying to avoid directly snapping at him. “The embassy made no accommodations for staffing when they gave us this place! As a man in your position with the responsibilities you have been given, it will be necessary for us to entertain important guests frequently. I cannot manage this house without the proper staff!” As the daughter of a former army general and now prominent politician and businessman, she had grown up in the culture of the military and its politics. Like her mother before her, she tended to the role of an officer’s wife with zealot-like responsibility.

  “I’ll speak to the embassy about helping us obtain some people who can handle the cooking and maintenance,” Hosani said as he came closer to his wife. “That is another problem. We can’t just have any cook,” she protested. “We need a professional. A chef who can cook quality meals.”

  “I understand.” He replied warmly, trying hard not to sound patronizing. “But, my dear, as you have pointed out, I have a seriously important position here. It is one that will have me dealing with highly classified information. Any servants hired for this house will have to be vetted thoroughly by the embassy’s security department. Remember the US is just to our north, and their intelligence service, I’m sure, is watching my mission here with suspicion. The Central Intelligence Agency probably has people assigned to spying on us already.” Fatima’s eyes shifted nervously in response to her husband’s sudden revelation.