He heard someone yelling back at them in broken English. He couldn’t make out the words, but the expletives came through clearly. Is this the language immigrants picked up? Rick thought to himself for some ungodly reason. In the middle of a takedown, he was appalled that their vocabulary was limited but colorful.
The rapid pitch of a submachine gun pounded into his ear. It was followed by the controlled staccato of the HRT’s weapons. They fired quickly, but theirs were semi-automatic. During a building entry, automatic fire tended to harm a disproportionate number of innocents. They had MP5 submachine guns in their arsenal but chose not to use them in this operation.
Rick couldn’t see what was happening. The fire increased in volume. Rick heard voices in between the sounds of gunfire. “Two….Three… Two… Second Room… Cover…”
Guns barked, and more guns joined the chaos. Rick couldn’t tell which were from the HRT and which were from terrorists. They’d walked into a hornet’s nest.
Rick had believed this was a lone wolf operation, that the faceless man wasn’t here. He hoped he was wrong.
The FBI hadn’t shared all their information on this operation. It was their decision, and they were comfortable sending in the HRT. They hadn’t asked Rick’s opinion. As Rick often told himself, he had no dog in this fight.
The gunfire stopped suddenly. The lull came across Rick’s earpiece as white noise. “Room one is clear,” Jack Coleberg announced into the silence, followed instantly by the rapid fire of another submachine gun. Rick visualized the team engaging a new target as they responded with massed fire.
He heard what sounded like a twelve gauge shotgun over the regular fire of the 5.56mm rifles. More return fire from the HRT. Someone else fired a pistol in a steady rhythm.
Through the din of battle, an emotionless voice came through clearly. “Kovak’s down.”
D Minus 16 – The Tedium
Clay called his workplace and told them that he was sick and couldn’t come in. No one seemed to care. He didn’t either, but Mohammed said that now was not the time to quit, so he maintained the façade.
Calling off sick allowed him to get much-needed rest. He slept like a dead man and was well refreshed when morning came. Mohammed picked him up at a neutral location, and they made their way to Walmart before going to the storage shed. Mohammed stayed in the SUV while Clay purchased the remaining items they’d need to cook their mixture. Nothing on the list would raise suspicion – a large pot, a turkey baster, Ziploc bags, towels, a roller cooler, and external speakers for an iPhone. When he checked out, he bought eight bags of ice. With his cart piled high, he navigated to the Escalade at the far reaches of the lot.
They loaded the SUV, left the cart where it was, and drove off. Clay looked back, noting other similarly abandoned carts. It was such an American thing to do. He smiled and turned the Boneyard up.
They detoured to Dunkin Donuts for a quick pick up, then stopped at the Empty Space office. Clay ran inside, dropped off donuts and a coffee with the older gentleman who seemed to perpetually man the counter. The clerk’s appreciation was evident on his face as he dug into the bag. Without a word, Clay waved and left, smiling to himself as he knew the old man would never say a bad word about the nice young African who brought him donuts.
They entered the compound, parked facing the cameras, and then carefully removed their supplies through the flap cut into the tarp. Clay had already delivered a number of buckets of various sizes. He put the biggest one on their folding table, filled it with ice as Mohammed directed, and then nestled a large, glass bowl into it. Mohammed had two measuring cups and a number of glass rods that they’d use for stirring.
Mohammed poured a precise amount of acetone into one measuring cup, then into the other poured an exact amount of the peroxide wood bleach. He looked away, took a sip of water, and double checked the measuring cups as they sat on a level surface to ensure the amounts were exact. He poured these two ingredients together and told Clay to start stirring. He stirred rapidly until Mohammed instructed him to go slower, steadier. With a small glass turkey baster, Mohammed dripped sulfuric acid into their mixture. Clay could feel the heat that it generated.
“It is very important that we keep the mixture from getting too hot. You need to keep stirring, keeping the temperature uniform, as cool as possible.”
They continued this routine for an hour before one of them had to leave. Mohammed chose himself and told Clay that he would lock him inside, but Clay wanted to keep the roll up door open as the strong chemical smell was already making his head swim. Mohammed pointed to a roof vent, suggesting that would be good enough.
“When you return, my friend,” Clay asked politely. “Maybe you can bring a fan?” He cocked his head and gave Mohammed his best cow-eye expression, eliciting a snicker from the older man.
“I will see what I can do, my sensitive friend.” With one last look, Mohammed walked out, rolled the door down and snapped the lock closed. Clay’s unease multiplied exponentially, and he started to stir faster before he realized what he was doing. He continued stirring with one hand as he fumbled with his phone. He tapped his music and turned it on, unhappy with himself that he hadn’t plugged in the external speaker. Mohammed had been clear about the need to keep stirring so he couldn’t leave it to unpack the speaker. He watched as the mixture slowly solidified. He meditated to the music, stirring in rhythm with the beat. He calmed. With the door closed, the roof vent seemed more active.
He took a deep breath, tasting the chemicals on his tongue. He knew it was better that the odor dissipates out the roof vent rather than the door. Anyone passing by would be curious and maybe try to lean in and see. They couldn’t have that.
Clay wondered if Mohammed had a gun. Having seen Mohammed in action, nothing would surprise him. Clay assumed the Da’esh recruiter was armed, in case law enforcement came too close. He knew that Mohammed would let nothing, let no one compromise his mission. Clay wondered if Mohammed would have killed him those days ago in Winchester had he refused to join Da’esh once he learned Mohammed’s true nature.
“Yes,” Clay said out loud, his voice sounding tinny inside the closed storage unit. Then in a near whisper, he continued his conversation with himself. “He would have killed me, and I would have deserved it. He will see that I am his ally, maybe someday I’ll be his equal where we will see the caliphate together, a place where Muslims will thrive, where there will be no kafir, no unbelievers. We will have peace and love like nowhere else on the planet.”
He continued to stir as he added the sulfuric acid, drop by drop, adding more ice as needed to keep the mixture cool.
By cool, he knew that meant he was keeping it from exploding. If he added a baster full and walked away, the resulting explosion would probably level this end of the long building of storage units. Since he was locked in, it was rather important for him to maintain focus and not blow himself up. For some reason, he could no longer smell the chemicals, but the blood pounded in his ears. It told him to worry about issues of a more immediate life-or-death nature.
The Takedown
Rick felt like he had to do something. There was a person on the other side of this wall who was down. He didn’t know if she was shot, just injured, dead, or lying with a twisted ankle. His muscles tensed as he prepared to run, although he didn’t know where. People needed help, and he never felt more helpless.
He took a deep breath, shaking with the anxiety of not being able to do anything.
Gunfire resumed, heavier than before. What the hell did they have in there? Rick thought to himself. Then the wall exploded behind the van. Rick was peppered with rock chips and debris, but he’d been facing the other way. Red brick dust and smoke cleared away from the rubble. Rick loped toward the hole, thinking the terrorists had blown themselves up.
Two figures emerged from the hole in the wall, one, a young man, bleeding heavily, being supported by a second man that Rick couldn’t see clearly.
Rick lowered h
is head and ran like he was coming off the line during a blitz. The uninjured man was looking back through the breach when Rick accelerated into him, driving through with his shoulder as he’d seen his son do a thousand times. Rick wrapped them in his arms, pinning a rifle as he lifted the two men enough that they lost their footing and started to tumble. Rick slipped on the loose bricks, and instead of driving the two men into the ground, he simply fell on top of them.
The injured man gasped and passed out. The other was pinned between the young man and Rick. He struggled to breathe, twisting, trying to get his arm free. Rick held tightly, not sure what his next move was.
He didn’t have to worry for long. Jack Coleberg appeared at his side, and without hesitation, butt-stroked the man in the face.
“Get up, Rick! Move!” Rick rolled to the side. Jack rolled the man over and zip tied his hands and ankles. Then he used another zip tie to link the ties between the man’s hands and feet. Once the man was fully trussed, Jack drug him to the side. He rolled the unconscious man onto his face and zip tied him the same way, despite the fact that he was bleeding profusely. When Rick looked up, he saw another member of the HRT standing watch, facing into the building.
Rick suddenly realized that the gunfire had stopped. With calls of clear from all the members, Jack checked the status of an ambulance for Xandrie. It was already here. He added that they needed one for the perp on the ground in the alley, too. Jack headed back inside, leaving Rick alone with Tony Spagnola, the team’s EOD specialist. He stood loosely, holding his carbine at the ready. Rick moved further away from the two men on the ground.
Soon, FBI agents and LEOs swarmed the area. Rough looking men wearing body armor and badges took charge of the prisoners. Rick wanted to check on Xandrie, but was told to stay where he was, that she was already on the way to the hospital with multiple gunshot wounds. Rick watched the street as people carried empty body bags into the building, then carried full body bags out. In all, seven terrorists lost their lives, including the one with the man Rick tackled. The injured man’s wounds were too great and then getting body slammed to the ground finished him off.
The man that Rick tackled was mostly uninjured but refused to speak. He glared at Rick. Rick settled for giving him the finger for an extended period of time. It went on so long that an Agent asked Rick to take a break, while also praising his patience in delivering the message.
Freaking martyrs with ruined plans, he thought. No virgins for you, or whatever the hell you believe. Me? I think you were a bunch of terrorists and no one will tell me anything different. Rick didn’t go into the building. The FBI told him not to. They were preserving and recovering evidence from the crime scene. The HRT members trickled out, one at a time to climb into the van, exhausted.
Rick checked the time. From start to finish, the takedown had lasted less than ten minutes, with half of that time spent getting into position. Thirty minutes had passed since the ambulance had taken Xandrie away. Many of the members felt down; others were angry. No one cheered. There was no celebration.
He was ready to go. It was an honor and exciting to join the HRT for the takedown, just until it wasn’t fun anymore. The real world was a harsh place where good people stood ready to impart their will on those who meant to defile civilization.
Like the terrorists they’d taken down. The FBI would spend a long time digging into who these people were and how they acquired the weapons they used. Rick wanted to beat the terrorist for his insolent looks. He respected the prisoner’s self-discipline in not saying a word since he was secured, but that didn’t mean he respected the man. He was a terrorist.
When the FBI finally determined to remove him from the scene, they were none too gentle lifting him from where he sat. He winced and coughed, sending spittle laced with blood onto the ground. One Agent laughed and nodded to Rick.
“Looks like you might have broken a rib or two on this guy.” The two Agents supported him as they frog-marched him to an SUV with blackened windows that pulled up in front of the HRT van.
As he watched them drive away with a man he would never see again, Rick suddenly felt bone tired. His shoulder ached. Maybe the terrorist wasn’t the only one injured in Rick’s tackle. He wouldn’t mention it to anyone. He didn’t want to look weak. He gently pulled himself into the van where all the team members except for Jack were there, heads down. Rick touched each of them on the shoulder as he passed to take his place next to the front wall where an empty seat was next to him.
He put his hand on the seat where Xandrie should be and stared at it as if that could make her appear.
“Good takedown on those last two, Rick.” Tony said with an approving look. The others lifted their heads and gave a thumbs up. No one smiled. Rick wanted to ask what happened, but didn’t want any self-recriminations.
Rick put on his Thorny Rose leader hat. “When we first received information about a terrorist attack, we had very little to go on. We had to make some educated guesses. One was that it was here, in DC. The second regarded a faceless man who could move freely about the world, fomenting discontent, and then recruiting radicals to carry out attacks. This isn’t a lone wolf operation, but could look like one. Can you tell me if these guys were a lone wolf?”
“They were well armed,” said Truck Johnson, the team’s breach expert and shooter. “I can’t believe they’d be a lone wolf operation when they were that well supplied. They had freaking MP5s! And some AKs, pistols, and one knucklehead had a shotgun with flechette shells. He didn’t last long,” Truck said without any bravado. The others nodded.
He watched the team members play with their gear. They all had empty magazines, at least two. Rick did the math. They’d expended between two hundred and three hundred rounds in the takedown. He wondered how many rounds the terrorists fired. Probably double that or more. He expected they’d find bullet holes toward the ceiling. Firing a submachine gun wasn’t like in the movies. The barrel kicks upward as you fire. If you have no fire discipline, your bullets will impact in a line that goes straight up. And when you completely lose control, eventually the barrel is aiming at your own head.
Jack climbed in and shut the door behind him. The driver, one of the HRT members, worked his way forward to the pass through to the cab, started the engine, and they were off.
Debrief
Because Rick involved himself by tackling escaping terrorists, he was included in the debriefing. They went through their actions, step by step, using a new diagram of the building that they drew by hand from what they saw and photographs Jack had taken immediately following the action. These were HRT photos and would not be seen elsewhere, including a court of law. These showed the gore of the scene. Rick empathized with the team members. He’d seen worse, all those years ago in Mosul, but that didn’t make it any better.
The room layout behind the store had been modified to minimize fields of fire for anyone invading the space. The HRT never had eyes on more than three terrorists at one time. Arms caches stood throughout. In the first room the team entered, they found the store owner and one young man who seemed to be acting as the security guard for the group.
He died first, but the old man attempted to pick up the gun. He went second. These two takedowns were quick and accomplished without the HRT taking return fire. The young man had fired his submachine gun, but in a panic and the rounds impacted high on the wall and into the ceiling.
As they moved toward the next door, they came under fire as the targets in the next room fired through the false wall. Two team members were hit in the torso, but their body armor protected them. They were able to continue the mission. The team took cover. The rules of engagement strictly prohibited blind shooting. The targets were under no such restriction. They continued to fire, but no other shots impacted HRT members.
Truck moved to the doorway where he threw a flashbang into the next room. He, Xandrie, and Tony rushed through the doorway into full auto weapons fire. The shots were mostly high, but three more rou
nds impacted Truck’s body armor. The other two came in low and provided covering fire to give Truck time to dodge and roll, establishing a position behind a heavy cabinet. Once they determined that only combatants occupied the room, the HRT engaged using a heavy volume of fire, which allowed the other team members to join them and expand the breach.
One target successfully escaped the room while two were neutralized. They followed the same routine into the third room.
They followed the flash bang in, but this time, by crawling. They avoided the expected automatic weapons fire that tore up the door frame. One target stood brazenly with a shotgun and fired toward the lower half of the doorway. The flechettes ripped a pattern around the door and the wall beyond it. Then he fired a second and a third time. Xandrie’s gun jammed as she stood to engage him. She dropped it, while simultaneously pulling her Glock 17 and fired at the target holding the shotgun. She painted a pattern around his body. He didn’t go down but he stopped shooting.
The other HRT members provided covering fire, but once again, targets fired at them through the wall. Six armor piercing rounds ripped through Xandrie’s body armor, clean through her body, and into her back armor.
With the introduction of the new threat and the fact that they hadn’t seen any civilians, Jack authorized return fire through the wall. They emptied magazines, reloaded, and kept firing. Truck cleared the door in time to see the brothers blow the breaching charge. One other in the room fired wildly, forcing Truck into cover.
They neutralized the last target quickly, and made to follow the escapees, but that’s when they found Rick on the ground with them. The older man who survived unscathed was their primary target, Ahmed al-Suqami. The man who died in Ahmed’s arms was his younger brother Marwan.
“I’m okay if that scumbag never learns my name,” Rick said. In America, even if Ahmed was held in solitary confinement, he could meet with his lawyer and share information that could be turned into a fatwa, a religious edict. The last thing Rick needed was to be on a terrorist’s hit list. He looked at the drawn faces of the team. “I’m sorry that they both didn’t die.”
People Raged: and the Sky Was on Fire-Compendium (Rick Banik Thrillers Book 1) Page 12
