RW11 - Violence of Action

by Richard Marcinko

  “What about nukes?”

  Barrett’s eyebrows arched hard and his face went cold. “I’m getting to that. Let’s go inside,” he growled.

  The lawyer’s corpse was lying on the floor where he’d fallen. I looked the dead man over. I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies and, percentage wise, Beckstein’s looked better than most. Yeah, he’d sucked up two rounds to the pumpkin and half his skull was gone, but other than that he was whole and could be identified by his next of kin. Better treatment than some of my SEALs had gotten.

  “Captain Barrett?”

  I turned and saw a thin Hispanic man, bald as a billiard ball. Barrett introduced us. “Leo, meet Dick Marcinko. Dick’s with me.”

  He stuck out his hand and said, “Pleased to meet you, sir.” His attention immediately shifted back to Dan. “Captain, I found a partial shoe print on the living room carpet not far from where there’s a door to the backyard that’s unlocked. We’ve got an unsecured servants’ gate going from the yard to an alley in the back that runs parallel to the street here. Looks like the perp walked in the front door, shot Beckstein twice, then went out the back.”

  “Get the lab working on that shoe print. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Beyond the gun shots to his head, Beckstein also took a helluva blow to his chest—his sternum was shattered. I’m guessing bone splinters punctured the heart. Whoever did him was not fucking around.”

  “Thanks, Leo. Stay with it.” Barrett gestured for me to follow him up the beautifully carved teak stairway to the second floor. At the top of the stairs he turned right into a handsomely furnished but very messy private library. “Grab a seat, Dick. We need to powwow.”

  I sank into a luxurious leather club chair. Every available surface in the room was piled high with books. Legal texts, novels, history, biography, philosophy, science—a crazy jumble of subjects and authors. And I sensed these books weren’t for show—from their well-worn condition, they’d obviously been Beckstein’s close companions. Looking around his office I couldn’t help but be impressed. His “I Love Me” wall was studded with pictures of him posing with some of America’s most notable celebrities and power brokers. This guy had definitely gotten around. No wonder Danny was feeling heat from on high. Still, all of Beckstein’s powerful connections weren’t worth a rat’s ass when it came to keeping his brain inside his skull. Everybody’s the same in front of a loaded gun. “So what’s up, Danny Boy?”

  “We found a microcassette next to the body. The message was short and not so sweet.”

  “So what does this asshole want from us?”

  “Sounds like it’s not one guy, but a whole team, Dick,” replied Barrett. “And it’s not what they want, it’s what they’re going to do to us, to this country, if you don’t get to them first.”

  “I take it this is where the nukes comes in.” Bad images were running through my mind. Whoever hit Beckstein was using him as an attention getter. “When can I hear the fucking tape?”

  Barrett fixed me with a stare as warm as a glacier. “It’s already gone to Karen at OISA. These bastards may have gotten their hands on at least one suitcase nuke. Word is a NEST team was hit this morning in New Mexico. All KIA. No sign of the nuke they were carrying, from what my source is telling me.”

  The big cop shook the last remaining cigarette out of a pack and crumpled the plastic wrapper in his fist. Fuck me! This was a worst-case scenario from my days at Red Cell. We’d proven to the Navy that our nuclear program and its weapons were vulnerable to terrorist attack. Hell, we’d not only proven we could infiltrate the sites where nuclear weapons were stored or pre-deployed, we’d proved we could actually steal the goddamn bombs. Apparently someone else had balls as big as my Red Cell operators. The thought made my gut go sour. Rogues are one thing, renegades are another.

  I damn sure wanted to hear the fucking tape.

  “Soon as I played it and realized what was on the damn thing I called one of my contacts at the Agency. They sent a courier to secure it and get it to Karen. Then I heard you were inbound.”

  “Where do we go from here?” “Not we, Dick. You.” Barrett snubbed his half-smoked cigarette out. “I’m to run you and your crew back to the helo. As soon as you’ve seen this kill zone, Karen wants your undivided attention. You’ll get your marching orders from her.”

  “Well fuck, let’s roll. But I charge extra for recovering stolen nukes!”

  “Same old Marcinko,” the retired Marine laughed. “You’ll be a fucking pirate ‘til the day we bury your hairy ass.”

  “Don’t count me out even then, buddy!”

  With my brain running various unpleasant scenarios involving mushroom clouds and killer radiation, I went downstairs again and started looking for Trace and Paul. I headed out the back gate into the alley that Leo had mentioned, figuring that was where the kids would probably be snooping around. Sure enough, I saw them, or rather heard them, but they weren’t exactly snooping. They were sprinting a fucking hundred-yard dash! Both went flying right past me down the alley and then I realized they were in hot pursuit of somebody making tracks about half a block farther down. Trace hollered, “Dick! On us! On us!” She was about a half-step behind Kossens who was burning up the asphalt with his long-legged stride. Fuck! They must’ve spooked somebody worth talking to. I saw the distant figure they were chasing dart left, disappearing into somebody’s back garden. I figured he had to be heading for the street and a better escape route than this narrow alley.

  I tore back through the house and grabbed Danny in the foyer. Must have been the look on my face because he didn’t stop to question me, just ran to his car, an unmarked Crown Victoria parked out front, and we both jumped in.

  “Danny, go!” I yelled and in seconds we were hauling fucking ass down the street toward the barricades. Ahead I saw a few guns being drawn, but the startled cops didn’t seem to know exactly what to do as the foot chase passed them right by. There were too many people milling around to allow any indiscriminate shooting. Even a trigger-happy D.C. cop would know that, right? We cleared the barricade just as I saw Trace disappearing around the street corner. “There!” I yelled to Barrett. “Left at the corner!”

  As Danny wheeled the powerful cruiser around the corner we stopped just long enough for Trace to throw her tight little ass into its back seat. “Get this guy!” she spat out as she gulped to fill her tired lungs with fresh oxygen. “We spotted him…in the fucking alley…after you’d…gone in. Looked like he was checking some sort of listening device…”

  “There’s Paul, to the right! Turn fucking right!” I yelled.

  I braced myself hard against the padded dash as Danny swung the car around the corner. Kossens was about halfway down the block, the man he was chasing was almost at the next corner, and the gap between them seemed to be widening. We were heading for a busy intersection of some sort. As Barrett slid the Crown Vic past Paul, Trace kicked the right rear passenger door open for him. I felt Paul throw himself inside and slam into the back seat.

  “GO!” he yelled.

  Barrett managed to maneuver us through the intersection’s heavy traffic and I thought we were gaining on our prey when I suddenly lost sight of him. A moment later we came to a screeching halt as the driver in front of us slammed on his brakes. In the blink of an eye the entire street was a snarl of unmoving traffic and the obnoxious blare of car horns became deafening. Traffic. What a bitch.

  A silver Mercedes-Benz SUV about fifteen cars in front of us looked to be the source of the problem. OK, I could play traffic cop. I jumped out and hit the pavement, determined to get this fucking car out of the way one way or another. Glock in hand, a fat little Federal Hi-Shok jacketed hollow point nestled in its chamber, I slipped by the cars in front of us, ignoring the frozen, frightened faces of the drivers as they saw me passing. I approached the stalled SUV ready to read the driver the riot act. Behind the wheel, a pretty black woman in a form-fitting white tennis outfit sat stock still. And no wonder. There was a
fresh bullet hole right through the center of her forehead. The guy we were chasing didn’t pull any punches.

  I took up a security position at a 90-degree angle to the dead woman and scanned the area for our running man, but I hadn’t a clue where our mysterious marathon runner had gotten to. Uniformed cops were suddenly all over the place. Great timing, boyz. I immediately holstered the Glock and grabbed my State Department badge, holding it up high where the street officers could clearly identify it. A big, ugly, unknown motherfucker with a beard and ponytail holding a gun is not exactly what a cop wants to see when he pulls up on a shooting scene.

  “He’s with me! He’s a cop!” yelled Danny as he rushed over to where I was standing like a statue while a cop pointed his big steel six-gun at my head. Barrett flashed his badge and jerked a big thumb toward the dead woman in his car. “Give us a hand with the victim!” The officer in my face nodded, holstering his weapon and turning away without a word. I went back to the car.

  Danny was giving a report to the cops when I heard a call about our missing snoop come over the police radio in his Crown Vic. “Barrett!” I hollered to him. “They got the motherfucker holed up, maybe with hostages! Let’s roll!” I jumped into the passenger seat as Danny shoved himself behind the wheel. He turned the siren on and we worked ourselves free of the traffic and found open road. Trace and Paul were ahead of us in a patrol car heading for the location.

  “Damn, Marcinko,” Barrett yelled so I could hear him above the siren’s piercing wail, “you still attract trouble like cow shit attracts flies!”

  Like I said, Danny and I go way back.

  We drove into a part of town that seemed light years from Beckstein’s white glove territory. It was all strip malls, fast food restaurants, and weed-filled empty lots. Danny came to a stop next to several other police cars across the street from a nondescript, single-story office building that looked like it hadn’t been touched since the 1950s. A mostly empty employee parking lot bordered it on one side, surrounded by a tall chain-link fence. There were uniforms crawling all over the place. As I got out of the car I spotted Paul and Trace. We married up. “So what the fuck?” I asked.

  “He’s inside,” explained Paul. “Cops say maybe hostages, but they don’t know. We should have gotten him back in the alley, we just couldn’t quite close the distance.”

  Trace nodded in agreement. I could see both were pissed at themselves. “First, I figured him for a reporter trying to get a scoop on the murder, but the way he slipped through our fingers when he saw us coming was too damned slick. He practically had a sign on his back that said ‘Professional.”’

  “I’m sure the lady with the bullet in her head back there would agree—you definitely weren’t chasing the Post society page reporter,” I said. “Whoever he is, he’s in this thing up to his fucking eyeballs. You two did great. Now let’s finish the job and go get him.” I looked over at Barrett. He nodded. Whoever this asshole was, we wanted him and wanted him first. I had a feeling. And I always trust my gut when it tells me I’m right.

  It took Barrett less than a minute to tell the uniforms to hold the perimeter. “I’m going with you,” he said upon returning to our little group. “Let’s introduce ourselves to this fuckup.”

  With Trace on point we made our way to the northwest corner of the squat office building. Once there, I looked around to make sure everyone was ready. In most situations like this you back off and wait for SWAT. Or, if you were lucky enough to be on SIX or with Red Cell, you’d have the necessary time to gear up and rehearse an entry plan. That wasn’t going to happen here. It was hey-diddle-diddle-straight-up-the-middle time. We needed the cur inside and we needed him now. If he was part of the crew that hit Beckstein then he was part of the crew that was now in possession of one U.S.-made tactical nuclear weapon. I didn’t want him exercising any rights other than the right to talk to me or have the crap beat out of him. After that, the cops and ACLU could bandage up whatever was left and make sure it got the best legal help since O.J.

  “Trace,” I hissed. “You low-crawl the window and take up opposite! Paul, you follow her.”

  Trace nodded. She slipped her Kimber out of its custom tactical holster (NOW I know where she carries that thing!) and in an instant was shimmying along the concrete on her belly. Kossens followed and seconds later we had both sides of the entry point covered.

  “Danny, you still the fucking strong ox I remember? See that big garbage can? You’re gonna throw it right through the fucking window on my say-so. As soon as it goes through, I’m going through behind it. You’ve got our six!”

  Barrett nodded. Holstering the massive .41 he turned and grabbed the steel garbage can I’d pointed out. Filled with all sorts of shit, it must have weighed an easy hundred pounds. The big bastard lifted the container by its handles with ease. He slid past me and lined up just out of the line of site of the window. Dahlgren and Kossens were in position and ready to spring after I did.

  I checked my Glock to make sure it was secure in its holster at my side. With a few deep breaths I readied myself for what was to come. I’d have to follow the can through the window, draw the Glock once I was in, and hope like hell I didn’t get my ass cut to ribbons by falling glass. Trace and Kossens would follow right behind me and together we’d move through the building as quickly as possible in search of our target. I knew neither of my team was wearing their ballistic vests and I never wear one. Why? They can drag you down if you wind up in water; they get in the way when you’re breaking through doors and windows; and most of all they give you a false sense of security that can inhibit your best instincts and reduce your reaction time. Shoot first and fast has always been my personal motto. Our goal was to get this bastard alive and in one—more or less—piece, if possible. However, if he as much as pointed a weapon in our direction I knew one of us would take him out to protect the others.

  I looked over at Danny and nodded once. Showtime!

  Barrett took three short steps, swinging the big can hard and then let it fly. I watched as it hit the plate glass window, smashing through it with a crash that was loud enough to make a deaf man crap his pants. Thousands of shards of safety glass exploded inward and I was right behind them, burrowing my face as deeply into my chest as I could. I cleared the low wall and tumbled into the room, rolling as I hit something that gave way beneath me. A beat-up desk chair. I was up and on the balls of my feet, Glock in hand.

  ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK! I heard Trace and Paul coming in on my ass as I moved forward. Across the room I saw a door being pushed shut and instantly threw myself right at it, yelling at the top of my lungs for the team to get with me. The door gave way as I slammed all 240 pounds of Rogue into it and I heard a startled yelp of pain as it smacked into whoever was on the other side. I burst into another sparsely furnished office and saw the little blond fucker we’d been chasing over half the city. He began to raise a chromed pistol toward me. I rushed him, using my own weapon to smash his aside, and punched him hard in the face with my free hand.

  He staggered backwards with a grunt. I’d busted his nose wide open and bright red blood was gushing down his face. As I closed in on him once again he lashed out with a low-line kick, catching me hard on my right shinbone. Fuck! I ducked as he swung a fist at my head then realized the other one was coming up hard and fast from below my line of sight. It connected beneath my jaw and stars exploded inside my skull. Great, I thought, a badass who actually knew how to fight!

  I felt another kick and my left knee buckled. Then he had me by my neck and I could feel one of his knees slamming into my lower ribs. I burrowed my head down and fought to stay upright. My elbows were now tucked in tight to protect my ribs from serious damage. I had to punch my way outta his grasp or this silly little fucker was going to beat the holy shit out of me! I felt him trying to twist me to the right and down so I just relaxed and went with his energy. Oldest trick in the book. The sudden absence of resistance caught him off guard and I felt him slip a bit. I pu
shed forward with both hands and yelled as loudly as I could right in his eardrum. A gap opened up between us and I filled it with a series of hard punches to his face and body. I backed him up against the far wall and just as things were looking up for Yours Truly, I got kicked square in the balls.

  Forgive me, I stand corrected: that’s the oldest trick in the book.

  For a moment I thought I was going to black out. I fought it and somehow managed to land a wild left haymaker against the side of Blondie’s skull. As I was grabbing my nuts and lurching sideways I watched him trip and fall hard against the corner of a cheap-ass desk. I felt a wall at my back and my knees buckled beneath me. I couldn’t breath. I could feel puke rising up from my stomach. As I slid down the wall I blew chunks. Fuck me! This was not how I’d planned things.

  I managed to open my eyes long enough to see Trace swinging her Kimber at Blondie’s head. With a thwack the all-steel pistol slapped him upside his skull and he hit the floor like a dead man. A second stream of vomit lurched up outta my guts and all over the cheesy light green carpet I was hanging onto for dear life. Dickie’s balls were on fire. They hadn’t felt squeezed this tight since I’d gotten my divorce papers from my ex-wife’s shark of a lawyer.

  “Skipper? Hey, Skipper! You okay?”

  Finished puking, I raised my eyes to where Trace was squatting beside me. I nodded weakly. Actual tears were running down my cheeks and I could smell fresh vomit in my beard. Yeah, I was fucking-A fine. Never better, thank you very fucking much!

  Paul helped me up off the floor and he and Trace eased me into a chair. I watched Danny do a quick search of the asshole who’d probably ruined my sex life for the next six months. The big cop then cuffed Blondie and yanked him to his feet. I grinned as I saw his eyes rolling around in his head like loose marbles. Trace had scrambled his brains good.