by Bryan Devore
Then, he heard the distinct sound of a handheld foghorn: two blasts, followed by a short pause, then two more quick blasts. He didn’t know what it might mean—only that it came from down the stairway, out of sight.
Suddenly, all the doors to their right opened almost simultaneously. At the same time, he saw quick movement from the shadows in the ballroom to their left. Then, out of the darkness, gunfire from heavy, modern assault rifles roared, like a hundred jackhammers ripping into concrete.
Caught in the middle of this ambush, half his CAT agents were killed outright. Those still able returned fast, precision shots against both sides, but they had been lured into a kill zone impossible to fight out of. Abbott caught multiple rounds in his arms and legs and chest body armor. Falling to the floor, he watched with horror as most of the agents fell around him.
“Breach! Breach!” he yelled into his communicator. “Hold evac! Hold evac! Breach!”
And then something fast and hard hit his neck, and he knew that his life was over. The last thing he noticed before falling into eternity was the American flag shoulder patch on another CAT agent lying beside him.
22
MAXIMILIAN MOTIONED TOWARD THE FOUR men with the steel tanks strapped to their backs, who had been waiting at the bottom of the stairs, away from the ambush, for his command. Now they followed him, running down the hallway, hurdling the dead Secret Service agents.
He knew that this first victory was only the beginning of what he needed to accomplish. Like Hannibal after his army came down from the Dolomites and into northern Italy, Maximilian could not afford to make even one serious mistake—as the Americans had just done. If he hoped for any chance of success, his tactical strategy and execution must be far superior to theirs. The Secret Service was trained and equipped to fight off a small army, and they also had additional resources they could call in for support if given enough time. Any success he and his men had would be brief and, ultimately, pointless unless they managed to tip the scales completely in their favor.
He had sent fifty of his well-armed men down the hallway. Another fifty were spaced behind them in phalangeal order-of-reinforcement attack lines. On either side, twenty men flanked Maximilian and the four men with the tanks. This protection was necessary to prevent their being hit by surprise flanking fire as they moved out of the hallway and into the cavernous lounge area.
He could barely see the front rank of his men, but he could tell from the horrified screams that they had reached the lobby. More gunfire erupted. He thought his men might be making good progress, securing the area for him and possibly even overrunning the Secret Service’s command center, but those hopes vanished when he saw them getting pushed back by a new wave of CAT agents—twice the number he had ambushed and killed. His men couldn’t hold up in a head-to-head fight with these agents, and no doubt many more Secret Service resources were being funneled toward this location. He had to play his ace card now before the Americans wiped out his entire company.
He gave the order to the four men. Splitting off in separate directions, they raced through the lobby area that his front line had temporarily secured.
As they moved, Maximilian yelled into his radio, “Inferno! Inferno!”
The message was relayed to each soldier in his army. The ones engaging the Secret Service near the command center moved back toward the center of the lobby while still shooting at the agents. The soldiers still in the sublevels would be moving faster to make sure they got to ground level and the upper stairs in time.
But it was the four men with the tanks who made all the difference. Maximilian watched as they rushed through the lounge to their designated positions at the corners of the vast room. And he watched as the four men—each at least a hundred feet from the others—knelt and raised the thick black hoses attached to the tanks on their backs. Almost in unison, a stream of fire squirted thirty feet out from the nozzle of each hose. As the four men swiveled their flamethrowers about, everything around them on the hotel’s ground level was blanketed in a living, growing fire. The flames rose greedily into the air and danced over furniture, and in mere seconds, dark smoke billowed up, indicating that the fire had also entered the hotel’s walls. The entire lobby was aglow in firelight, and the air quickly filled with suffocating smoke.
Maximilian’s smile widened as he watched the fire spread. With all the technology available to government security agents, it was important to him that the thing to defeat them be a weapon as primitive as fire. By now agents on the other side of the fire would be desperately relaying messages to their command center. They would wonder why the hotel’s fire suppression system wasn’t working. It would probably take investigators days to discover that the reason the sprinklers hadn’t doused the hotel after heat broke the plastic holds on the sprinklers was because his team underground had ruptured the water main into the hotel just before igniting the fire. And thanks to the man who had martyred himself in the Montparnasse Tower only fifteen minutes ago, firefighters would be delayed getting to this hotel by just enough time to ensure that the fire spread beyond their ability to control it.
It was important to him that the world should visualize a great fire as the symbol of this night’s reckoning. There was no weapon more powerful than fear for controlling the minds of others.
Then, without warning, one of the fire starters’ tank exploded—hit by an agent’s bullet. Maximilian tensed as he saw his man on the floor, writhing in flames from his own weapon. The shot must have come from a Secret Service agent. Wherever the hell they were amid the smoke and flames and heat, they would be as determined to protect the president as his men were to kill her. The protection detail had better training and equipment and outside support on their side, but the greatest surprise was yet to come. He prayed that Kazim would make it to the roof in time to secure their victory.
23
JOHN ALEXANDER MOTIONED FOR THE agents to stop short in the stairwell at the sixteenth floor. Stone and the other two agents surrounded the president, each covering a different arc in case anyone came at them from above or below.
“Repeat that!” John said into his communicator. There was little time, but with all the commotion on the stairs, and the occasional sound of close gunfire coming through every agent’s earpiece, he needed to be certain he had heard correctly.
“Sir, I repeat, we’ve lost control of the first floor.”
“Where?” John asked. “Is any part of the evac route secure?” The words “lost control” cut through him like a knife.
“No sir. There’s a massive fire spreading fast, gunmen are scattered everywhere, and the fire suppression system isn’t working. Sir, this area is no longer secured for Firefly evac. I say again, we have lost control, sir.”
John had to think, but he had only a few seconds to make the right decision. There were risks either way. Taking the president down was the fastest way to get her out of the building—a building being swarmed by terrorists and a growing fire. Taking her up moved her away from the immediate threat, but it would mean a more complex extraction from the roof, which could ultimately prove riskier. As the SAIC of PPD, it was his call. And his instincts told him to move POTUS away from the immediate threat.
He pointed to David, then up the stairs. Speaking into his communicator, he said, “Taking Firefly to Zenith. Extract with White Top. Two minutes.”
And then, as if the ten seconds’ pause had put them hours behind schedule, they rushed the president back up the stairs. John was in front, David and one agent here again half-carrying her, and the other agents were coming up the steps behind them, covering the rear.
“Zenith snipes, confirm secure,” John said into his communicator.
“This is Agent Graves,” a voice replied in his earpiece. “Confirmed. Zenith is secure.”
John recognized the voice of the commanding agent posted on the hotel’s rooftop with two other countersnipers and spotters. With the roof secured and the White Hawk on the way, his mind ju
mped through all the things that needed to happen in the next thirty seconds.
“Agent Payne, where’s the military aide?”
“Twenty-third floor,” another voice answered in his earpiece.
“Get him to Zenith now. Agent Billings, where’s the doc?”
“Twenty-fifth floor, south side,” another voice replied.
“Get him up top. I want him near Firefly asap.”
“Agent Alexander, this is Command Center. We’re gonna have to break down to keep links with HQ.”
“Negative,” John replied. “I need you to stay up.”
“Sir, the fire’s right on us. We’re gonna lose comms either way. Encrypted radio will still work, but we need to break down now or we’ll lose our equipment and won’t have links with Washington for twenty minutes.”
“Where’s the White Top?”
“White Hawk is three minutes out. Supported by King Stallion.”
“How long will you be dark?”
“Four minutes.”
“Do it faster.”
Looking back as he rounded up the next landing, he saw that the president was holding it together. The group was focused, moving up the stairwell as a unit. Every agent was doing exactly as he had been trained.
Into his wrist, he said, “All agents above six, go to Zenith. All on or below six, form block stops in stairwells and engage any hostiles.”
“This is Zenith,” reported a rooftop agent through the radio. “We have three countersnipers and three watchers. Zenith is secure.”
“This is Reid. On twenty-two, north side. Night-watch has thirty station agents between floors one through six, forty between floors six through twenty-six, and now another forty from CAT caught in the first-floor blaze and firefight. Another hundred agents and French police officers are on the third perimeter outside the hotel, but the fire has kept them from entering the building.”
On the past three floors, as they ascended, additional agents had met them, guarding the cracked doors from the hallways, announcing the Secret Service “white knight,” “red knight” emergency code for quick identification. As the protection bubble rushed past, agents would then leave their posts to join it until, by now, some thirty agents surrounded the president.
The White Hawk and King Stallion helicopters should be at the roof in two minutes. The agents’ footsteps pounding up the stairs clattered like hail on a tin roof. The command center had broken down and would be dark for three to four minutes, and he still couldn’t get good intel on the threat.
24
MAXIMILIAN LED FIFTY MEN UP the north stairwell. His group was far below Kazim’s faster-moving team. Like Hannibal at the Battle of the Tagus in 220 BC, he knew that it was critical to control the flow of soldiers—both his and the enemy’s. Hannibal had been a master at military maneuvers, rehearsing advances and flanks and false retreats with tens of thousands of men days before an engagement with the enemy—all to ensure that his army would execute his ingenious plans with perfection once the chaos of battle erupted. It was a strategy that Maximilian had mimicked while training his men during the past six months. Every motion and maneuver had been practiced in preparation for this critical moment in the attack.
Reaching the third floor, he found ten of his advance men stopped in the stairwell just ahead of him. Many more were crowded below him. “You men, secure four and five!” he commanded all those above him except the burly bearded man by the door. Those above turned and raced up toward the next flight. The door man grabbed the handle and yanked it open, and Maximilian stood aside while the others rushed past him and poured into the third floor hallway. Screams echoed, but no shots were fired.
Maximilian now jumped into the middle of the line of men and ran into the hallway. He saw Tomas and Asghar, the Merchants of Death, at the front. The group moved like a pack of wolves, loping past the doors that lined the long hallway. An older man stood in the open doorway of his hotel room, yelling desperately in French to someone still inside. Asghar smashed him in the forehead with a gun butt. A woman twenty yards ahead whimpered softly as she tried to swipe her key card in her door’s electronic reader. Tomas shot her in the neck, spraying blood on the wall as the card reader turned green. She fell to the floor and jerked briefly while men rushed past her toward the midway bend in the corridor, by the elevator bay.
“Hurry!” Maximilian yelled. “The Americans will be fast! Move!”
He had a dozen men with portable fire extinguishers to suppress any fire that threatened to block their movements, and each man on his team had goggles and an oxygen mask for heavy smoke. The blaze was still too far below for much smoke to have reached their level, although the alarm had gone off and filled the hallway with its annoying electronic screech. Several people came out of their hotel rooms, only to be shot in their doorways. The hallway must remain clear for his men to maneuver, and he had no interest in taking hostages. The fire would kill everyone soon enough.
Four scouts had raced ahead of the pack and were already in the south stairwell, two going up and two going down. The main body of men was nearly to that end of the hallway, with five staying behind to keep it secured. Others should now have control of the north stairwell behind them from floors one through five.
In front of the pack, shots went off with a muffled echo, and blood spattered across the outside of the small window in the stairwell door. The door cracked open, and a bloodied scout fell back into the hallway.
“Aytek!” Maximilian called to the man. “Where are they?”
The scout, half dazed, glanced without a word, as if confused to see the rest of the men charging at him. His wide-eyed stare looked somehow puzzled, and blood covered most of his face.
“Where are they?” Maximilian yelled as the group neared the end of the hallway.
“Below,” the scout replied.
“How many?”
“Three or four.”
“Keep moving!” Maximilian yelled at his men. He looked at the Merchants of Death and could see their gleaming, eager eyes—one pair brown, the other blue—through the masks. “Fire wave, charge down. Overrun the Americans. Kill them all. They won’t be able to hold the stairwell with just four agents. Charge! Charge to ground floor! Take it and secure it!”
As Tomas and Asghar went into the south stairwell to lead the downward assault, Maximilian held up his hand to stop the second half of the group. “Not too many,” he said. “It’s a bottleneck—could be a trap.”
The dark face of the first man he had stopped stared intently at him. No true warrior ever wanted to be held back from a fight, and that was exactly why Maximilian had chosen these men. But it was also why he always needed to control them, to occasionally hold them back from rushing headlong to a needless death.
“Not yet!” he said to the man and those behind him.
Then he heard shouting and gunshots from the stairwell. It went on for half a minute before lapsing into an eerie silence.
“Scout it,” he said to the man.
The man darted past him and into the stairwell. Maximilian could hear his boots clomping down the steps. Waiting for the report, he tipped his head sideways to make sure there were no problems back down the hallway. Other than the bodies of a dozen hotel guests, everything was open for his men to move through. He then stepped back through the doorway and looked up the south stairwell. The next landing was clear, and the other two scouts were calling down to him that it was clear to the fifth floor. He motioned for more men from the hallway to rush up the stairwell and help the scouts keep the next few levels secure.
Finally, the last man he had sent down rushed back up. “We lost half,” he said, “but all the agents from here to the first floor are now dead. The stairs belong to us.”
“Are Tomas and Asghar alive?”
The man’s eyes smiled. “Nothing can kill the Merchants of Death.”
Maximilian stepped past him into the stairwell and yelled down tow
ard his men. Tomas appeared below, mask off and dangling around his neck. He looked as if killing Americans was great fun.
“How long can you hold the stairs?” Maximilian asked.
“As long as you wish!” Tomas boasted.
“You and Asghar hold this area with the men you have left. I’m sending twenty more down to raise hell on the first floor. Let them pass, but your group stays.”
“We want to raise hell too!” Tomas said.
“You’ll soon have plenty of opportunity,” Maximilian promised. “But right now, keeping the stairs is most important.” He turned back into the hallway and ordered a large group of fighters down to the first floor.
The flank was nearly complete. As he watched more of his men rush into the stairwell, he knew that he had taken control away from the Secret Service. He had the basement, the lower floors on the north side, and now the lower levels of both north and south stairwells. The fire had most of the lobby, with his men now carefully holding flanks on both sides of the spreading inferno. Any agents still alive on the ground floor were outside the ring of fire, pushed away from the critical access paths that could lead up into the building. And with the third floor now under control, he could easily maneuver his men between stairwells, giving them quick access to both sides of the hotel.
He did a call check into his radio. “Ground spot! Any eyes on Medusa?”
“No Medusa,” a voice crackled through the radio. “Confirmed with other watchers. I repeat, no Medusa, no black carriage—nothing!”
Maximilian grinned. The president hadn’t had time to escape the building and must still be somewhere above him, but she would undoubtedly have many Secret Service agents still protecting her. His bold strategic maneuvers had worked. He had systematically removed every path of escape for the president. He had trapped her and cut her off from the bulk of her protection resources, much as Hannibal had done to the Roman garrison at the citadel in Tarentum.
