"Alex One, Alex Two!" he called over his Motorola. "We're on the parapet okay. Moving."
"Two, One, roger," was the reply. AK fire rattled nearby, echoing off stone. "Good hunting!"
Tactically, Gold Squad had a tough choice to make. Since they had no idea where the hostages were being held, they would have to search the entire structure, clearing it as they went. The enemy could be counted on to be keeping the prisoners someplace inconvenient for any invading HRU, someplace easily sealed off and easily defended. Given the architecture of the castle, that meant either all the way down in the basement — possibly even in the old dungeons that had been Gorazamak's principal tourist attraction — or at the very top, in one or several of the rooms that had been remodeled as hotel suites for visitors. The question was whether to take the castle tower from the bottom up r the top down. A wrong decision could cost the hostages their lives.
The preferred means of clearing any building was to go in on the roof, since it was far harder to fight your way up a staircase than down. That wouldn't work here, though, because the enemy had almost certainly posted people on the tower's roof. The gun battle had probably pulled them around to the side facing the bailey, and Magic would be picking them off right now with his usual murderous accuracy… but Magic's vantage point in the gate tower was still well below the top of the keep. He couldn't see inside the ramparts up there, so it was all too possible that someone would still be up there, waiting when Gold Squad fired their climbing lines over the top of the keep.
If they'd been able to carry out a heloborn assault, or if they'd had time to place a sniper on the mountain above the level of the keep and with a clear field of fire onto the roof enclosure, Murdock would almost certainly have decided to have Gold take the roof first and work down. As it was, however, there was a convenient compromise available. Murdock's squad, after knocking loudly at the front gate, would force the front door to the keep and get two men into the basement to check out the rooms down there. The six men of Gold Squad, meanwhile, would take the tower from the middle, going in by way of that wooden door set into the east side of the keep.
All of Gold Squad was on the parapet walk now, Kos and Stepano breaking left and right to cover the flanks, Holt and Frazier aiming their weapons almost straight up, ready to target any curious head that showed itself from the roof. Rattler Fernandez had his CAW unlimbered. As the other members of the squad took up positions against the stonework to the left and right of the door, Fernandez leveled the assault shotgun at the door and opened fire.
There was no way to silence a shotgun. On full auto, the big weapon bellowed a deep-throated slam-slam-slam that echoed back from the cliffs behind them. Rattler had loaded his first mag with slugs rather than shot. The door, an inch-thick, solid wood instead of hollow-core, bucked and cratered under the impacts of the first three one-ounce slugs, then cracked open in a whirlwind of lead and flying splinters. Fernandez shifted his aim and sent two more rounds, a light tap on the trigger for each, slamming into the door's hinges. The ruined door crashed back into the corridor beyond, as Fernandez went full auto, emptying the last of his magazine in a sweep designed to take down any unwanted ambushers guarding the door from the inside.
"Avon calling!" Kos yelled, and he tossed in a concussion grenade as the SEALs pressed back against the wall; the blast rang through the tower like the tolling of a huge bell. Frazier hurled a flash-bang, and as the last detonation died, Holt went through the door, his big M-60 leveled from his hip.
"Passageway clear!" Holt shouted. The other SEALs rushed in, leapfrogging down a darkened corridor that was littered with wood splinters and blast-loosened stones and — yes — two shredded bodies.
"Alex One, Alex Two! We're in! Two tangos down!"
"Copy, Two. We're at the front door!"
Holt's machine gun thundered in the passageway ahead, an ear-splitting blast of hellfury announcing quite definitely that the SEALs had just come calling.
0207 hours Main tower, main entrance Gorazamak
"One, this is Three!" Roselli's voice said in Murdock's ear. "We're coming in the front gate!"
"That's right," Sterling's voice added. "None of this 'friendly fire' shit."
"Come on through," Murdock replied. "Rally at the tower's front door!"
Murdock, crouched next to the main door in the tower, turned to face the front gate. A moment later, Roselli and Sterling trotted through the arch, emerging from the battle fog that wreathed the bailey — like specters, their gear-heavy vests and the NVDs worn beneath their helmets transforming them into nightmare apparitions.
"Set at the road entrance?" Murdock asked.
"Claymores are out, Skipper," Sterling told him. "Anybody comes up that way, we'll hear it."
"Okay. Let's get inside. Positions!"
Roselli, Sterling, and Papagos took their places to either side of the front door, weapons ready. Murdock and Nicholson tossed a pair of flash-bangs through the door together, averting their electronic gaze as the first floor of the castle keep lit up in a stuttering chain of light bursts and sense-numbing blasts. They charged through the opening as plaster continued to rain from the ceiling, both as a fine cloud of dust and as chunks the size of dinner plates. A guard staggered erect behind a counter to the left and Murdock shot him down. Another man lay on the stone floor across the room, fumbling with the receiver on his AK until Nicholson put a burst into his head and back.
Left, beyond the counters, an unsteady light spilled through a partly open door. The door opened and an officer emerged, back-lit by an emergency battle lantern.
"I'm on him," Murdock said, thumbing his HK to full auto and spraying a burst across the officer at the level of his chest. The man shrieked and went facedown. Sterling pulled the pin on a fragmentation grenade, let it cook off for two seconds, then yelled "Grenade" and hurled it through the open door. There was a tinkling of smashed glass, then a shattering blast that blew out the door. Roselli ducked in, then came back out. "Clear! Three tangos down inside! Looks like the commo shack!"
"One-One," Murdock called into his lip mike. "We're in the front door."
"You're clear outside," Higgins said. "And Two-Eyes is on the third floor."
"Roger that. Keep an eye out for unfriendly neighbors. The commo shack was occupied in here."
"Ay-firmative."
The soft stutter of suppressed fire clattered at Murdock's back. Turning, he saw Nicholson and Sterling in the middle of the rotunda, firing full auto at a trio of half-glimpsed shapes moving on the second-floor balcony at the top of the stairs. One shape slumped over the banister, then dropped to the stone floor below; another spilled onto the stairs, thumping loudly as it rolled halfway down. The third slipped through a door to the left, vanishing.
The lights came on.
"Hello," Jaybird said, reaching up to adjust his night goggles. "Somebody's home!"
"Jaybird! Red!" Murdock snapped. "You've got the basement! Nick, you're with me."
"Right, Skipper."
Together, Murdock and Papagos stormed up the stairs.
0208 hours Main tower, fifth floor Gorazamak
"What's happening? What's happening?"
"Easy, Celia," Kingston said quietly. "Worst thing we can do now is panic."
"That's right, Celie," Bunny added. "The Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand."
Another explosion sounded, much closer this time, and Kingston was certain she could hear someone screaming in pain. She wondered if the lights would stay on this time.
The women were all in the same room, lying flat on the floor behind the bed with their arms over one another, listening to the approaching thunder. Never in her life had Ellen Kingston felt so utterly and completely helpless. There were six of them, Kingston, the four of her staffers who were women, and one female sergeant who was on Colonel Winters's staff. So far they'd held up remarkably well, Kingston thought, all except Celia, who'd been on the verge of hysterics the whole time and who was
certain that they were all going to be raped.
Celia, unfortunately, was the Army sergeant. In Congress, Kingston had delivered speeches several times in favor of bills that would allow women to serve in combat. After observing Celia these past few days, she was beginning to question her stand.
So far, and despite Celia's shrill fears, none of them had been mistreated in any way… none of the women, anyway. She'd not seen any of the male hostages since they'd arrived here — wherever "here" was — and she didn't know where they'd been taken. The soldiers watching them had been stiffly formal and correct, even courteous with an Old World formality; the women had been fed, and several times a day a uniformed woman had escorted them one at a time to the toilet.
But no one had so much as questioned the women or come to tell them why they were being held or what demands were being made for their release. Hour after hour was an agony of not knowing, of wondering what each new sounding of footsteps in the corridor heralded.
Footsteps sounded outside the door, and the rattle of the lock as someone turned the knob. Kingston, braced for the worst, prayed that it would be Americans who opened it.
Celia began to scream.
20
0208 hours Main tower, fifth floor Gorazamak
The door banged open, and Kingston's prayers dissolved in sick horror. The man was in uniform, but not of any U.S. military service. There was a lot of gold braid on the unbuttoned jacket, and he held a vicious-looking little pistol with a curved magazine in front of the trigger. Two more soldiers crowded in behind him, brandishing assault weapons.
"Up ladies," the man said, his accent thick and Slavic-sounding. "Everybody up!"
"What do you want with us?" Beth Leary cried from behind the bed.
"He's going to rape us!" Celia screamed.
"I will kill you if you don't do precisely what I tell you!" the man snapped. He added something in a rasping, Slavic tongue, and the two men with him came in and shut the door, taking up positions on either side of it.
The officer shoved his way through the women until he was face to face with Kingston. "You," he said, "will come with me." Moving around behind her, he reached around her with his left arm, not circling her throat as she'd thought he was going to do, but slipping it under her left arm and across her breasts. She caught the sharp tang of his cologne mingled with his sweat. He jerked back suddenly, lifting her off her feet, swinging her about to hold her between his body and the door, backing farther away from the door until his back was up against the wall. Bunny screamed.
"Shut up!" the officer shouted. Still holding Kingston inches above the floor with one arm, he reached out with the deadly-looking little gun, until the muzzle was only a couple of inches from Bunny's right eye. "Shut up, bitch, or you die this instant!"
The woman fell quiet. "That is better," the man said, but he did not relax at all. "Now, we wait."
0208 hours Main tower, stairs Gorazamak
Stepano had point going up the stairs; Kosciuszko was at his back, moving up the steps backward with his M-16 trained up the stairwell, insurance against someone pulling a hop-and-pop surprise from further up the steps. Frazier followed, then Holt, packing his big M-60 like a child's toy. DeWitt and Fernandez brought up the rear.
"Looks clear," Stepano was saying as he went, a kind of mantra, a chant. "Looks clear… looks clear…"
It was one of those tightly wound spiral stairs, all of stone, winding up the middle of the castle keep. If there was a good place for an ambush…
Movement… a face, a weapon at the landing just above. Stepano fired instinctively, the silenced weapon thuttering briefly as he sent a burst snapping into the target. Stepano took the next few steps three at a time, bounding onto the landing, stepping across the body. The man was still alive, his eyes starting from his head, his hands scrabbling weakly at his chest and shoulder, which were already slick with blood.
He was wearing an officer's uniform… a captain in the JNA.
Stepano grabbed the man's collar beneath his chin. "Kade e Gospogya Kingston?" he demanded. "Where is Ms. Kingston?" Then he repeated it in Serbian, the words almost identical. "Gde ye Gospogya Kingston?"
"Top floor," the wounded man answered, speaking Serbian. He seemed anxious to talk, and Stepano wondered whether that was because he thought he was dying, or because he was terrified of the black-clad apparition looming over him. "Room twelve."
"Are the hostages all together? Or did you spread them out?"
"Women… in room twelve. Men are… are room three. Please. I didn't-" And then he was dead. "Room twelve and three," Stepano told DeWitt.
"Room twelve and room three, people," DeWitt echoed. "Let's go!"
"You wanna split up and take 'em down together?" Holt asked.
"Sounds good," DeWitt said. "Three and three. Kos, you take Bearcat and Scotty. Steponit and Rattler, you two with me. Watch out for a trap."
Stepano didn't think the dying man had lied, but it was certainly a possibility. At the top of the stairs the SEAL squad turned right and pounded down a corridor. Room eight… room ten… there! Room twelve.
Silently, DeWitt deployed his men, Stepano to the left of the door, himself to the right, both crouched below the level of the doorknob in case the opposition tried firing through the door. Rattler took up a crouched position slightly on the right of the door, his shotgun switched to single-shot.
DeWitt held up three fingers… two… one…
0208 hours Main tower, fifth floor Gorazamak
Blam! Blam! And the door splintered inward, flying off shattered hinges. Kingston screamed; she couldn't help herself… and then her ears rang with a deafening quickfire chain of explosions and a blinding light like a news reporter's camera strobe set off inches from her face.
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, seeing that blinding light even through her closed eyelids, feeling something like a hot blast of air slap her face and clothing and set her skin tingling. When she opened her tear-streaming eyes again, she had a glimpse — just a glimpse — of monsters crashing through the shattered door. They were dressed head to foot in black, with vests heavily laden with arcane and technical-looking gadgets, with visored helmets and with the visible parts of their faces thickly smeared with green and black paint. Their weapons were submachine guns of some kind, but with muzzles as long and as thick as her forearm.
The first man through rolled to the right, so low he might have been sitting down, his weapon held high and stiff-armed; he nearly collided with the soldier crouched in the corner, who had fallen to the floor and had his hand over his eyes. The submachine gun spoke — a fluttering whisper — and the stunned soldier's face came apart.
A second black-clad figure had rolled through the door to the left close behind the first. The other Serb soldier had had his head turned away from that dazzling light and was still on his feet. As the black apparitions burst into the room, he tried to raise his assault rifle, but before he could fire he was slammed back against the wall by the attacker's shot and the gun went clattering into the floor.
"Stop!" the officer holding Kingston screamed, his mouth an inch from her right ear, the muzzle of his machine pistol pressed against her head. She knew he was shouting, could feel his chest moving and feel the breath on her face, but her ears were still ringing from the explosions and his voice seemed very far away. "Stop now or I kill them!"
"American Special Forces," one of the men shouted back. "Hurt her and you're dead, y'hear me? You can't get out of here. Best thing for you to do is drop your gun and give it up!"
Everything seemed suspended in time and space. Both invaders had their weapons turned now, aimed — she was certain — directly at her, and there was a third invader still in the hallway, covering them all with something that didn't even look wholly like a gun. Kingston found herself looking straight down the black openings at the fronts of those heavy barrels. The women were flat on their faces or on their hands and knees, knocked down by the explosions; only
Ellen Kingston was still upright, and that was only because her captor was still holding her up off the floor. She swung her legs, kicking at him, but he only tightened his grip painfully across her chest.
"No! You will drop weapons!" her captor shouted. "Now! Then back out of the way!"
It happened so fast she could scarcely tell what had happened. The black figure on the right took two steps further to the right, the muzzle of his gun still aiming at a point directly behind Kingston's head. He said something… and it wasn't English. What was he saying? The words were liquid and Slavic-sounding, spilling out so quickly she felt completely bewildered. She'd assumed her rescuers would be Americans, not… God, was that Russian he was speaking?
Her captor stiffened; the muzzle of his gun left her head, sweeping across an arc to aim at the Russian-sounding man. Her captor screamed something…
The other invader's strange weapon spoke twice, a sound like the double slam of a door. At almost the same instant, her captor's gun fired, and the rattling crack it made was far louder in that narrow hotel room than the gunfire from the other weapon.
And the Russian-sounding man was already lunging toward her; she saw the bullets striking his vest, opening holes in the nylon fabric, and the little gun was still firing, the muzzle flash dragging up across the black-clad body…
And then she was on the ground, and her captor was limp beneath her and her deliverer was a dead weight lying on top of her and Celia was screaming and screaming and Ellen thought if this went on much longer she would surely shoot Celia herself.
The weight was lifted off her and she sat up, gasping for breath. Bunny knelt beside her, holding her upright, helping her over to the bed.
"It's okay!" the man was saying, shouting to be heard above Celia. "Everybody stay down! I'm Lieutenant j.g. DeWitt, and we're here to get you out. Stay calm, stay quiet, and stay on the floor. Okay?"
"You're… American?" Monica Patterson asked.
"They're American!" Celia cried.
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