Clancy, Tom - Op Center 04 - Acts Of War

by Acts Of War [lit]

  "No, wait!" Katzen screamed. "I said---"

  Suddenly, blood exploded from the top of the slope and sprayed darkly across the blue sky.

  "No!" Katzen screamed, his face distorted as Mary Rose fell to her knees and the blood rained toward them. "God, no!"

  FORTY-NINE

  Tuesday, 3:35 p.m.,

  Damascus, Syria

  The floor of the palace security office was slippery with blood.

  The Diplomatic Security Agents were dead. So were the two- and three-agent security forces for the Japanese and Russian ambassadors respectively. They had been gunned down in the small office, a dark and windowless room with two stools and a large, slanting console consisting of twenty small black-and-white television monitors. The images showed bedlam at nearly every entrance, every room.

  The man who presumably had shot them, a blue-uniformed palace guard whose station this must have been, was also dead. There was an automatic rifle on the floor beside him and a pair of bullet holes in his forehead. One of the Russians had been able to draw his own pistol. Apparently, the head shots were his.

  Paul Hood did not want to linger in the security office. He checked the men for signs of life. Finding none, he remained on his hands and knees and poked his head into the hallway. The sounds of gunfire were all around him. They were no longer distant. The reception room, though only about two dozen yards away, seemed incredibly far. In the other direction, the outside door was much closer. But he wouldn't leave without the others. Tactically, it would make more sense if he could get them here.

  Then he remembered Warner Bicking's cellular phone.

  Hood turned back into the room. The DSA agents both had cellular phones. One had been shattered by gunfire. The other had been busted when the man fell. None of the other agents had phones. Hood sat back on his heels. He looked around.

  This is a security office, goddammit! he told himself. They have to have a telephone.

  He ran his hands along the console. They did have one. It was in a lidded recess to the right of the lowest right-hand monitor. Hood lifted the receiver. The lighted numbers were on the handset. He held it in his trembling palm and punched in Bicking's number. Bicking was probably still on the line with Op-Center. Hood wondered if anyone else in history had ever used call waiting in the middle of a firelight.

  Hood went back to watching the monitors as the phone range. It beeped twice before Bicking picked up.

  "Warner, it's Paul."

  "Jesus God," Bicking laughed nervously, "I'd hoped it wasn't a wrong number. What'd you find?"

  "They're all dead in here," Hood said. "Anything from Op-Center?"

  "They've got me on hold while they try to get someone to us," he said. "Last I heard was from Bob. He told me something's up but couldn't tell me what."

  "He was probably afraid the lines are being monitoned." Hood shook his head. "I'm looking at the monitors, though, and I don't see how anyone's going to---hold it."

  Hood watched as what looked like a contingent of Syrian Army troops made their way through one of the corridors.

  "What's going on?" Bicking asked.

  "I'm not sure," Hood said, "but the cavalry may have arrived."

  "Where?"

  "Looks like it's the other end of the corridor from where I am," Hood said.

  "Closer to us?"

  "Yes."

  "Should I go out and try to meet them?" Bicking asked.

  "I don't think so," said Hood. "Seems like they're headed right toward you."

  "They probably have orders to get the ambassadors out," Bicking said. "Maybe you'd better come back."

  "Maybe," Hood agreed.

  The gunfire was growing louder at the other end of the hall, away from the reception room. It wouldn't be long before the rebels reached the security office.

  Hood continued to watch the monitors. The troops weren't checking other rooms, nor had they set up any kind of flank watch. They were moving ahead with surprising confidence. Either they had courage or they didn't have a clue as to how bad things were.

  Or, Hood thought, they aren't afraid of being attacked.

  It was part of Hood's job to do what he called the "PC thing," to presume conspiracies. Part of Op-Center's mission was constantly to ask "What if?" when faced with a murder by a lone assassin or a rebellion by a hitherto underarmed faction. Hood was not obsessed with conspiracies, but he wasn't naive.

  The soldiers continued to move ahead purposefully. Hood watched as coverage shifted to another monitor.

  "Paul?" Warner said. "Are you coming?"

  "Hold the line," Hood said.

  "I've got Op-Center still holding---"

  "Stay on the line!" Hood ordered.

  He bent lower to the monitors. A few seconds later he saw two men with black kaffiyehs, brandishing what looked like Makarov pistols, cross the hall behind them. One of the soldiers looked back briefly. He didn't even break his stride.

  "Warner," Hood said urgently, "get out of there."

  "What? Why?"

  "Get everyone together and move!" he said. "Bring them here. I don't think the cavalry is on our side."

  "Okay," Bicking said, "I'm moving."

  "And if they won't leave, don't argue with them. Just get out."

  "Understood," Bicking said.

  Hood squeezed the phone. More attackers passed with impunity behind the troops. Either the Syrian military was in on this, or these men were only masquerading as Syrian Army regulars. In either case, the situation had just gone from dangerous to deadly.

  "Shit!" Hood said as the soldiers turned down the last corridor. "Warner, stay put!"

  "What?"

  "Stay where you are!" Hood shouted. He'd no longer have to watch the attackers on the monitor. To see them, all he'd have to do was stick his head out the door. His head or---

  Hood looked down at the blood-soaked marble. The Russian guard's pistol was there along with the Syrian killer's automatic rifle. All that Hood knew about firing guns was what he'd been taught in the required courses at Op-Center. And he hadn't done terribly well at those. Not with Mike Rodgers and Bob Herbert casually ticking off bull's-eyes at the firing stations on either side of him. But what Hood knew might be enough. If he could drive the Syrians back, that might buy Warner and the others enough time to get out of the reception room.

  "Warner," Hood whispered loudly into the phone, "there are soldiers coming toward you. Probably hostile. Hunker down until you hear from me. Acknowledge."

  "Hunkering down," Bicking said.

  Hood let the phone drop. He lifted the automatic rifle from the thin layer of blood carpeting the marble floor. He got up quickly and felt dizzy. He wasn't sure if it was because he'd gotten up too fast or because his hands and the soles of his shoes were sticky with someone's blood. It was probably a little of both. Moving quickly, Hood stepped over the outstretched arm of one of the DSA men. He stood just behind the doorjamb.

  His heart was a mallet, thick and heavy. His arms trembled slightly. He had taken mandatory weapons training, but he had never shot at anyone before. He wouldn't fire to kill. Not at first. But there was no guarantee he wouldn't have to. He'd been the Mayor of Los Angeles and a banker. He'd signed on at Op-Center for a think-tank-type desk job. Crisis management, not wallowing in blood.

  Well, things freakin' change, Hood, he pep-talked to himself as he took a slow breath. Either you fire if necessary, or your family attends a funeral. He leaned into the hallway and looked at the soldiers walking toward the reception room. He had the framework of a plan. First, to find out if he could communicate with these people. Second, to see how they'd react to a challenge.

  "Do any of you speak English?" Hood asked.

  The soldiers stopped. They were nearly twenty feet from the reception room, about three-dozen yards from him. Without turning around, the leader said something to a man behind him. The man stepped forward.

  "I speak English," said the man. "Who are you?"

  "An Americ
an guest of the President," Hood replied. "I just spoke with the commander of the presidential guard by phone. He's asked that all loyal forces meet him in the north gallery at once."

  The man translated for the leader. The leader gave an order to a man behind him. Two soldiers left the group and went back the way they'd come.

  He's got to check, Hood thought, but he's not using his field radio. If there are presidential guards out there, this man doesn't want them to know he's here.

  As the two men trotted around a corner, the leader issued a new order. The group split up again. The leader and four men continued toward the reception area while three men moved toward Hood. Their weapons were in their hands. They weren't coming to rescue him. The question was, did they intend to take the men hostage or kill them? They had already taken several lives in a failed effort to assassinate the President. And they'd killed all the men in this booth. Even if they were taking prisoners, which Hood doubted, he didn't want to subject his country, his family, himself, or the men in the other room to an extended hostage ordeal. As Mike Rodgers had once put it, "In the long run, that's just a different way to die."

  Hood hugged the automatic rifle to his waist, the magazine resting along his thigh. Aiming the barrel low, he swung into the corridor and fired at the floor just in front of the group's leader. Hood was startled as casings flew at him from the ejection port, but he continued to hold the trigger. The men down the hall retreated. The three men, who were coming toward the security room threw themselves against the wall, behind a large bronze horse, and returned fire.

  Hood stopped firing and ducked back behind the jamb. His knuckles were bone-white around the pistol grip. His breathing was fast and his heart was hammering harder than before. The men down the hall also stopped firing. The automatic rifle felt light, nearly empty. Hood picked the bloody pistol up off the floor and checked the magazine. It was about one-third empty. He had seven or eight shots.

  Hood knew that there wasn't much time. He'd have to go back into the hallway and fire again, this time aiming higher. He checked the monitor. The leader and his group were hanging back. They'd been joined by a ragtag group of Syrians with guns. The leaders of both groups were conferring. Hood knew that if he waited any longer he'd fall to sheer force of numbers.

  He sidled up to the jamb and held both guns facing up. He didn't feel like John Wayne or Burt Lancaster or Gary Cooper. He was just a frightened diplomat with guns.

  One who's responsible for the lives of men trapped down the hallway. He listened. He heard no movement outside. Holding his breath this time, he dropped both guns hiphigh and swung into the hallway.

  And stopped as a soldier stepped right into his face and shoved a pistol barrel up under his chin.

  FIFTY

  Tuesday, 3:37 p.m.,

  the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon

  Before joining Striker, Sergeant Chick Grey had been Corporal Grey of the elite counterterrorist Delta Force. He'd been a private when he'd first reported for training at Fort Bragg. But Grey's two specialties had enabled him to climb the ratings ladder to private first class and then corporal in a matter of months.

  His first skill was in HALO operations---high-altitude, low-opening parachute jumps. As his commander at Bragg had put it when recommending Grey's boost from private to PFC, "The man can fly." Grey had the ability to pull his ripcord lower and land more accurately than any soldier in Delta history. He attributed that to having a rare sensitivity to air currents. He believed that also helped with his second skill.

  Grey's second skill was marksmanship. As the late Lieutenant Colonel Charles Squires had written when insisting that Mike Rodgers recruit him for Striker, "Corporal Grey is not only a sharpshooter, General. He could put a bullet clean through one of your bull's-eyes." The report didn't note that Grey could also go without blinking for as long as necessary. He'd developed that ability when he realized that all it took was the blink of an eye to miss the "keyhole," as he called it. The instant when your target was in perfect position for a takedown.

  A few seconds before, perched in a treetop, Grey had been staring through the twelve-power Redfield telescope mounted on top of his Remington 7.62 mm M401 sniping rifle. It had been twenty-odd seconds since he'd blinked. Twenty-odd seconds since the terrorist had walked from the cave holding a gun to the head of Mary Rose Mohalley. Twenty-odd seconds since Colonel Brett August had told him to take the subject out at will. During that time, Grey had not only watched everything that transpired, he'd also listened carefully through earphones plugged into a six-inch-diameter parabolic dish. The clip-on dish had been attached to a branch beside him and provided clear audio from the area surrounding the idle ROC.

  There is an instant in every hostage situation when a marksman makes an emotional rather than just a professional commitment to doing what must be done. A life must be taken in order to rescue a hostage. It isn't a point of no return; hostage situations are fluid and one must always be ready to stand down. But it is a form of peacemaking with oneself. If the guilty party doesn't die---swiftly, painlessly---an innocent one may. That realization is black and white. It comes without passing judgment on the larger matter, the merits of the terrorist's cause. At that point, an almost supernatural calm comes over the marksman. Those last seconds before firing are moments of cold and frightening efficiency. The first seconds afterward are moments of equally dispassionate acceptance with just a hint of professional pride.

  Sergeant Grey waited until the gunman had uttered the last number of his count before firing. His single shot struck the terrorist in the left temple. The man jerked hard to the right on impact, twisted slightly, and then dropped to his back. His blood sprayed out over the ledge and then poured with him as he fell. When the man's arms went limp, Mary Rose fell to her knees. No one rushed out to claim her. A moment later, someone began clambering up the slope. Grey didn't wait to see the outcome.

  Privates David George and Terrence Newmeyer were standing under the tree. The instant'the terrorist went down, Sergeant Grey lowered the dish and headphones to Private George, handed his rifle to Private Newmeyer, and climbed down. As he stowed his gear, Sergeant Grey felt only one thing. That there was still a lot to be done.

  The three men joined Colonel August and the others. The Strikers had left their vehicles a quarter mile back so the engines would not be heard. Two Strikers had remained behind to protect the FAVs and motorcycles, while the others had moved forward through the tops of the close-growing trees. They'd executed an infrared scan and hadn't detected sentries, so the off-ground route served a double purpose. First, it would keep them from tripping any mines that guarded the cave. Second, if the ROC were working, the reading would indicate that something was moving in the trees---though at this distance the Kurds might think they were some of the flocking vultures that were indigenous to the region.

  For the three minutes that Sergeant Grey had been in the tree, Colonel August and Corporal Pat Prementine had been using field glasses to watch what was happening on the ledge approximately three hundred yards away. The other eleven Strikers had been gathered in a tight group behind them. When Sergeant Grey arrived with the two privates, the group absorbed them without seeming to expand.

  August looked back at the newcomers. Corporal Prementine, the boy genius of infantry tactics, continued to look out at the ledge.

  "Good work, Sergeant," August said.

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Sir," said Prementine, "no one's gone after the woman."

  August nodded. "We're going to have to move that," he whispered. "To bring you up to date, we think that's Phil Katzen and our contact at the foot of the slope. We'll be going out in one or two groups. One group if we need to storm the cave to get our people out. Two if the hostages are---"

  "Colonel," Prementine interrupted, "the men are coming out. The bastard's've gone half-and-half."

  August swung his binoculars around. Sergeant Grey also squinted back toward the cave. Three of the hostages had been th
rown face-down in the dirt outside the cave. Grey could see men inside the cave, but they were hidden by the deep shadows.

  "Corporal, mask up and get A-Team over there now." August snapped. "Take them inside. We'll handle the perimeter."

  "Yes, sir," Prementine said. He moved out with seven Strikers crouching low behind him, single file, as they ran toward the ledge.

  "George, Scott!" August barked.

  "Sir?" both men replied.

  "RAC 'em."

  "Yes, sir," said George.

  The two privates moved to the equipment locker they'd hauled from the FAV. As David George assembled a charcoal-gray mortar, Jason Scott pulled four shells of RAC---rapid-acting incapacitant---from their insulated storage bag. Within two seconds of exploding, the amber-colored gas would knock out everyone within a twenty-foot radius. Private Scott assisted with the heavy baseplate, and in just over thirty seconds the grenade launcher was loaded and assembled. While Private George peered through the sight, Scott adjusted the traversing and elevating handles to fix the line of fire.