by Marcus Wynne
LTC Block got a visual on the 747 his radar had picked up long ago, and he was careful to maintain the minimum safe distance the FAA asked. The 747 lumbered towards Dulles, part of the regular stream of civil aviation heading into Dulles or Ronald Reagan International; those were the planes he was up here to protect.
Or to shoot down, if it came to that.
LTC Block didn’t like to think about that. He’d done all his thinking – and deciding – about that course of action when he’d received his orders and his contingency briefing. If required, he’d do so. Not without regret, not without all due consideration from the involved chain of command, and not without giving every possible second to the benefit of the doubt. But if required, he’d do it.
It was a hard thing, but then that was what men like him were for.
“Pert” Tart followed his commander up to a higher cruising altitude. He too had spotted the 747, and watched it dwindle in the distance. It gave him a good feeling to know he was up here, armed to the teeth, ready to defend his people, the people on those planes. And Pert, in the true way of the warrior, lusted deep in his heart for the opportunity and for God to put his enemy in his sights. He tapped the fire controls lightly and followed LTC Block in yet another banking turn, high above the capital.
1
On board the 747 descending towards Dulles over the rolling hills of Virginia, an Air Marshal sitting in First Class looked over her shoulder at her partner across the aisle. He nodded to her, a smile of relief on his face. It had been a long flight, but then, they all were, weren’t they? Especially with the operations tempo they had been working since this Sword of Allah incident…not that the tempo had slackened since Flight 923. She thought for a moment about Hunter James, who had been one of her instructors in FAM Basic a few years back. Like many of the female trainees, she’d nursed a serious crush and attraction for the quiet and intense legend.
“Strong and silent, that’s how I like them,” she murmured under her breath.
She looked over at her seat companion, head resting against the window, lightly snoring. Just another civilian. 400 of them or so on this flight. Souls On Board. She smiled, lightly, a satisfied smile. She liked her job, the travel, the perks…but most of all, the part she liked was knowing that except for her team mates and the flight crew, none of these people knew who she was, or that she was there to protect them.
And nothing was going to happen to them on her watch.
Ever.
2
Up in the cockpit, the pilot worked through his approach checklist. He inclined his head towards the two F-16s vanishing in the distance.
“Glad to see those guys up here. Makes me a little nervous, though, knowing they’re ready to go hot on us if they had to….” He said.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” the co-pilot said. “We got F-16s in the air, a crew of Air Marshals, and me with my big fat gun! You’re the safest sky jockey in this air space.”
The pilot laughed. His co-pilot was armed with a handgun, a member of the Federal Flight Deck Officer Program. “I’m glad you’re up here.”
The co-pilot grinned till the pilot looked ahead again. Then the cocky grin slipped from his face, to be replaced, if anyone had been looking, by a look of sudden sadness and despair.
Chapter Three
“I don’t know how I feel about this,” Basalisa Coronas said.
She stood with her arms crossed, and watched on a large television monitor as two military interrogators and a liaison from CIA stood over the Filipino assassin, now strapped naked into a metal chair that looked disturbingly like an electrical execution chair.
“It’s legal,” Hunter said. “He’s an enemy combatant, admitted as much. So he’s treated like a prisoner of war, and we have the findings to conduct more rigorous interrogations…”
“I know it’s legal,” Lisa snapped. “I said I don’t know how I feel about it.”
Hunter saw that her eightfold armor had snapped into place, and the cold basilisk face mask she wore to hide her feelings was locked down.
“What about it disturbs you?” he said.
She was silent for a long time. She tilted her head to look up at him.
“I never thought I’d see a scene like this played out on American soil,” she said softly. “This, this looks like something out of a Nazi movie. World War 2. Schindler’s List. And it bothers me…he looks like one of my cousins. He could be one of my cousins.”
“But he’s not.”
“No. He’s not.”
Hunter said, “This isn’t what I signed on for, either. But like it or not, it’s part of the way it’s played out now. We weren’t the ones that declared the war. We’re just the ones who have to fight it. 9/11 saw to that.”
Lisa crossed her arms as though hugging herself.
“Some kids I grew up with, they were Nisei, second generation Japanese-Americans. Their grandparents, and their parents when they were kids, they were in the Manzanar camp on the West Coast,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘How could that happen in America?’, and I remember, when I was going through Quantico, I looked around at all the other agent trainees and thought, ‘That’s why we’re here…so nothing like that happens again.’ But it is happening again. He’s a Filipino, and a Muslim, a soldier in a war without armies, without countries, without borders…and if it keeps going this way, we’ll see camps, just like Manzanar. And if we’ve done it before, then we could do it again. And this time, I’m part of it.”
Hunter turned away from her and looked up at the video monitor.
“We’re law enforcement, not military, Lisa. Though the lines are pretty damn vague for us in CT. It’s going to be us, and people like us, that make sure that there aren’t any camps.”
“How?” Lisa said. “We going to fight them? Take up arms against our bosses?”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Hunter said dryly. “I subscribe to the management theory that if you shot two out of every three middle managers, you’d see a quantum increase in performance, productivity, and morale.”
Hunter could sense the grin spreading across her face, feel the change in her energy radiating outwards.
“I like the way you think, Hunter James,” she said. “I got a few bosses that could use some management like that…”
The two of them laughed and laughed, while on the unwatched monitor, the Filipino assassin twisted futilely against his metal restraints.
1
“He’s Abu Sayeef, one of his,” the CIA liaison, who looked like a Gary Larson cartoon about middle aged bureaucrats. But this man, Ed Null, had been a hardcore street operator in the middle east for many moons before his assignment to this task force; despite his heavy experience in the middle east, he had an excellent understanding of the dynamics of fundamentalist Islamic operators, and Abu Sayeef in the Philippines was most definitely that. “He’s pretty soft for one of his, though. Too used to the booze and round eye pussy, this one. Got a taste for the good life, and he was made to see the errors of his way pretty quickly. He’s not a hard core believer…he’s just a nut job that likes to kill people and the context of Islam makes that easy and justifiable. All it took was my brand of gentle persuasion and the promise of a light sentence and some money…”
“You’re going to pay this guy off?” Lisa said in disbelief.
“Oh, hell no,” Null said. “But he thinks so.”
Hunter laughed. “You’re a duplicitous man, Ed Null.”
“Can you spell that word?”
“No.”
“Jesus, Hunter, you been reading Word of the Day or what?”
“So what did he give up?” Lisa said.
“Everything,” Null said blandly. “He’s part of their exchange program. Abu Sayeef rents his shooters to SOA, SOA funds Abu Sayeef. Long standing model. He’s been operating here for AS for over a year; AS rents him to SOA. SOA uses him for training some people, and assigns him to whack Hunter here. Why, he don’t
know why, his is not to question why, his is to hunt and make other people die. Didn’t know I was a poet, did you, Hunter?”
“You’re not,” Hunter said. “Doggerel, maybe.”
“There you go with the big words again.
“So what do we have?” Lisa said.
“What we have, Agent Coronas,” Null said, almost formally. “is an address of a warehouse out in Cicero they used for training. Some numbered accounts for drawing monies out of. Some interesting insights about the people he trained in close quarters work -- right up both of your alleys, by the way -- most of them were white.”
“Chechnyans?” Hunter said.
“Nope. Plain jane white bread Americanos. And a sprinkling of ethnics, but no middle easterners that he made.” Null paused. “And he met Sword of Allah.”
“And?” Hunter said.
“Said the guy looked Arabic, spoke Arabic. Good English, but he doesn’t know enough accents to be of use to us there.”
“What does he mean he looked Arabic? He was dressed like it, what?”
“Description was dark brown skin, black hair, dark brown eyes, thick eyebrows, pronounced hook nose…”
“That’s Arabic?”
“He thought so.”
“So the address?”
“Well,” Null said. “I figure you two are the gunslingers around here. I’m just a fat old field man. Thought you might want to rustle up your HRT mad dogs and go kick a door or two. Or three.”
“Old fat field man?” Lisa laughed. “Okay, Null. Saddle up and grab your gear. You can go with us.”
“Thought you’d never ask,” Null said. “I got me a new LMT SOPMOD/M-4 out in the car I need to break in.”
2
“We’re sure seeing a lot of each other,” Hunter said to Ole Bjornstadt.
The younger assault team leader grinned, shrugged, then said, “You want in on this, Hunter?”
“I think I’ll sit it out,” Hunter said. “You’ve been giving me quite the workout lately.”
“You’re welcome if you want,” Ole said. He looked at the pudgy Null. “Anybody else?”
“Nah,” Null said. “I’ll just hang out here with the grown ups and look tacti-cool. Like my new toy?”
Ole took the LMT M-4, shouldered it, eased open the bolt. “You should try shooting this thing some time, Mr. Null. They’re really fun.”
“Smart ass,” Null said. “Gimme that before you hurt yourself.”
Ole walked away laughing. The rest of the HRT team was assembled in a parking lot five blocks away from the targeted building, a two story warehouse on the outskirts of Cicero, a decaying industrial suburb of Chicago on the O’Hare flight path. Since they’d taken the address from the failed Sparrow, they’d had a helicopter making occasional overflights, and plain clothes cars with surveillance agents lurking on the corners surrounding the warehouse. A surveillance van, with thermal imagers and parabolic shotgun mikes and other arcane devices parked for awhile across the street. There were a few heat signatures, but nothing that indicated any humans in the building. But there was never a sure thing when dealing with men with guns, so the HRT made their immediate entry plan to enter hard and fast, and to come heavy, with the expectation of resistance from foes that they might not have been able to image.
Hunter, Lisa, and Ed Null sat together in one of the ubiquitous black Suburbans.
“We’ll just stay here till they kick and clear,” Hunter said. “When we get the all clear, we’ll enter with the forensics crew and see what there is to see.”
“Nobody in there, huh?” Lisa said.
“Nothing on the imagers…they haven’t penetrated the building with audio, the close surveillance crew is going to go in and slip in an optic camera with sound and see what they can find…the HRT is raring to go, though. I got a good feeling about this….about the entry, I mean. I suspect that any bodies we find in there are going to be cold, long cold, and everything else buttoned up,” Hunter said.
“We’ll see,” Lisa said.
“Wish they’d hurry up,” Null said. “There’s a great hot dog stand near here, best Chicago hot dogs, chili, and home made soup. We can get a late lunch over there.”
“Sounds good to me,” Hunter said.
3
Across the street from the warehouse was an auto repair shop with a high roof; an HRT sniper team staked it out as an excellent place to cover the front of the warehouse from. The team climbed onto the roof with the help of a ladder provided by the shop owner, who huddled in the back of the shop with his employees while the snipers climbed up. On the roof top, they had an excellent and clear field of fire all across the front and left sides of the building.
Rhino Onofrey eased himself into the prone behind his 7mm Remington Magnum and settled the eyepiece of his scope to just his sweet spot.
“Nice,” he said.
His spotter, Dale Ross, said, “Yeah. Only place better would be that church tower behind us.”
Rhino looked over his shoulder. “Sure would be. Probably full of spiders and birds nests, too. This is great for us.”
The two men settled in behind their expensive optics and went to work scanning every inch of the warehouse they could see and all of their designated field of fire.
Above and behind them, from the very top of the bell tower steeple above the old church behind them, another sniper peered at them through the cross hairs of his expensive Kahles optics, and calculated the time it would take him to work the bolt of his M-24 to take out both snipers as well as engage his primary targets.
4
HRT hit the building high and low.
Since they had the aviation assets, Ole put two assault teams on the entry: Red Team would fast rope onto the roof, tear off the roof access door with a fireman’s hooligan tool, then work their way through the second floor and clear it; Blue Team would ride to the door in multiple Suburbans, dismount and hit the main door fast and hard and clear the first floor.
Simple, fast, hard, and direct.
The Hostage Rescue Team way.
Ole was deep in the zone, the semi-meditative state most conducive to professional violence, calculating everything, listening to the terse communications on his radio headset.
“Stand by,” he said, his tone relaxed, almost bored.
“Red Team one minute out,” the voice of the helicopter pilot said in Ole’s ear piece.
“Blue Team rolling…now. Execute, execute, execute,” Ole said.
The idling Suburbans goosed forward, accelerating but not too much, rolling quickly from their staging point a block down the street from the warehouse. Traffic was light, as they had anticipated.
Ole heard the heavy beat of the Blackhawk approaching, and saw the warehouse grow closer as though in slow motion.
The Blackhawk passed overhead, just a few seconds ahead of the Suburbans, and Ole saw the ropes fall out of the doors, and then his men were on the ropes, sliding down like deadly heavily armed black spiders onto the roof top. The Suburbans eased to a stop (no skidding, that was the sign of amateurs, a pro, and the HRT is nothing but pro, eases in smoothly, in control the whole way…) and the big men in black poured out, lined up, and hit the door -- breacher was up, slapped the door charge in place, stepped back…BOOM! And then the point man was through the smoking breach and the rest of the stack followed him in…
And the sniper hidden in the church bell tower watched calmly through his scope, cross hairs fixed on the breached door where a steady stream of black clad men poured into the warehouse.
5
“Nary a thing, huh?” Null said into his radio microphone. “Roger that. We’re coming up.”
Lisa and Hunter nodded.
“No bodies anywhere,” Null said. “Let’s go…”
Their designated driver started up the Suburban and eased out into the light traffic, making his way to where other Suburbans, blue lights flashing, blocked the street and access to the warehouse.
“Nothing at
all?” Lisa said.
“No, there’s evidence in there,” Null said. “Just no bodies, no people hot or cold. Your forensics crew is rolling in from the other side; they’ll be able to get right to work.”
“Good,” Lisa said. “Give me the mike.”
Null handed her the handset.
“Forensics, this is Coronas,” Lisa said tersely. “Are you in yet?”
“Roger Lisa, this is Forensics 1, we’re going in right now. The van is parked right in front. Come on in, the water’s fine.”
“Coronas out.” She handed back the handset. “They’re on track.”
Hunter opened the door as the Suburban slowed. He and Lisa and Null got out and walked up to the breach point, nodded to the HRT shooter there, then stepped cautiously through. Madeline Ferral, one of the CIDG forensics team, met them there.
“Do you want the tour or just an overview? We’d rather not track anymore people through here till we’re done,” Ferral said crisply.
“Overview will do, Ferral,” Lisa said. “What have you got?”
“We’re still unpacking, but we’re already on the video in the main floor of the warehouse. It’s been taped off, some chairs in there. Configured like an aircraft.” She looked at Hunter. “Also some wrestling mats in one corner, probably where they were doing the training. Some mattresses in a side room, we’ll get hairs and fibers in there, and of course we’re working for prints. We’ll get some DNA as well with hair, and there’s a bank of showers in the back. Upstairs it looks as though they had one room configured as a computer room; nothing left in there but power leads and some dead cable connections. Computer is on that. There is one main room up there; you’re going to want to look, but give us a few minutes to get set up. It looks as though it’s the office area where the video was shot. And there was one thing we moved as soon as we got pictures of it…”
