by D C Alden
‘You speak English?’
Sunglasses nodded, coughing.
‘Is Philip in the room?’ Mike showed him a CCTV still from Munich Airport.
Another nod.
‘How many guns?’
‘Two,’ Sunglasses said, gasping.
‘Bag him.’
Mike stripped off his raincoat, revealing his M27 and combat rig beneath. Around him the others pulled on safety goggles and checked weapons. They moved out into the fifth-floor hallway, leaving Sunglasses bound, gagged and hooded on the landing.
The hallway was empty, but Mike knew that wouldn’t last. He led them down the carpeted corridor, his weapon up and ready. There was barely a footfall or a rattle of equipment as they passed rooms six, eight, then ten. He heard music playing, a TV maybe, and the murmur of voices behind doors.
He held up a fist. The operators crowded the doorway around him, ready to breach. Mike produced a master keycard and held it up for the team to see. Pins were eased from stun grenades as Mike slipped the key card into the door.
The beep was deafening.
The green light blinked —
He threw open the door and took cover as the stun grenades detonated inside. Mike was first into the room, with Billy Finch right on his shoulder. Through the smoke, a bearded figured staggered, hands clasped over his ears. Finch’s double tap dropped him like a rag doll. Mike registered a flash and then the punch to his chest knocked him to the ground. Flynn stepped over him and opened up with the Benelli, the boom deafening in the confined space. Mike reached beneath his chest plate — his hand came up dry. Lucky bastard. He dragged himself to his feet as Flynn and Miller threw another guy face down onto the bed and cuffed him.
‘Room clear,’ yelled one of Finch’s SEALs.
‘All good?’ Finch asked, eyes flicking to the scorched impact hole in Mike’s rig.
The Team Leader nodded. ‘Lucky for me the guy was a good shot. Secure the floor, Billy. No one in or out.’
As Finch double-timed from the room, Mike inspected the body lying by the bathroom door. Half his face had been shredded by Flynn’s M4, as well as his shoulder, neck and right arm. He saw the gun lying at the man’s feet. He picked it up, dismantled it, and dropped the parts back on the carpet.
‘Nice try, buddy.’
He turned his attention to the man on the bed. He sat stiff-backed, flanked by Flynn and Miller. His appearance hadn’t changed since Munich.
‘Where’s the virus, Philip?’
The prisoner gave Mike nothing but a defiant smile. Mike whipped his hand back and slapped it off his face. Philip’s eyes drilled into Mike’s.
‘Got something to say, asshole? I know you speak English, so answer me now. Where’s the virus?’
‘Not here,’ Philip responded, spitting blood on the carpet.
‘What’s the inventory?’ he asked Miller.
‘Passports, cash, credit cards. Found a power lead but no laptop. No phone either.’
‘Bingo!’
Boswell was bent over the small refrigerator across the room. Carefully he removed a small plastic container and showed it to Mike. Inside were three pouches of clear liquid.
‘Is this it?’
Philip smiled. ‘Why don’t you try it and see?’
‘Where’s Marion?’
Philip’s smile melted momentarily. ‘Who?’
‘You’ll talk,’ Mike promised him. ‘It’s just a matter of time.’
Philip grinned, his teeth red with blood. ‘A commodity you do not have.’
‘Agreed, which means we’ll have to forgo your human rights to get the information we need. Bag him, get him outside,’ he ordered.
Mike keyed his microphone. ‘All call-signs, this is Task Force Leader. Package is secure and in transit. Clear a path to the vehicles.’
There was a burst of static in Mike’s ear and then he heard Tapper’s voice, almost drowned out by a thundering storm.
‘We’ve got a situation here. The local cops showed up, and there’s a crowd, a couple of hundred maybe, right outside the hotel. Transport had to bug out, and we’ve got hostiles covering the rear of the building.’
Mike went to the window and looked down into the street. The crowd had spilled out into the road and he saw blue and red lights crawling through the traffic, converging on their location. Sirens wailed across the city.
He tugged out his sat phone and dialled the consulate. Seconds later he was talking to Kappes.
‘Be advised, we have the package and the WMD but we are unable to exfil. Local cops have surrounded the hotel and there’s a pretty lively mob with them.’
‘You’re all over social media,’ the station chief told him. ‘The word is, a group of foreigners are trying to seize the hotel and take hostages. The ambassador is on the horn to New Delhi as we speak. How long can you hold out for?’
Down in the street, traffic had been brought to a standstill as hundreds of people poured across the road and joined the mob outside the hotel. ‘Not long enough.’
‘Find a safe haven and barricade yourselves in as best you can. We’re pulling out all the stops here.’
‘Roger that.’ Mike called down to Tapper on his radio. ‘Get everyone up to the fifth floor, right now. Tell Sanjay to lose himself in the crowd. Do it now.’
Mike hurried out into the hallway. He glimpsed frightened eyes as room doors slammed and locked around him. Finch’s SEALs had the fire escape door wedged open. Multiple footsteps pounded the stairs below.
‘Friendlies incoming,’ the senior chief told him.
Mike pulled a small rechargeable screwdriver from his kit. He removed the elevator control plate and cut all the wires inside. He had no idea if it would disable the lift but when the cops gained entry they would try that first.
Tapper and the rest of the team spilled out into the hallway. ‘We’ve secured the door on the ground floor but it won’t hold for long. What’s the plan?’
‘The plan is, we wait,’ the SOG leader told him.
Tapper’s face told him that was a bad idea. ‘Mike, that’s one angry mob down there, and the cops aren’t in control. If they get to us, we won’t be able to stop them. There must be another way.’
‘Kappes is working the problem. Until then, we find somewhere to hide and barricade ourselves in. Take a couple of guys and go room to room, clear the whole floor. After that, we block the stairwell.’
He walked over to Philip. Flynn had him stood facing the wall. Mike saw his head twitch under the hood as he stood next to him. ’If he tries anything, break an arm.’
‘Roger that,’ Flynn said.
The rest of the team pounded doors, then began kicking them in. They cleared the floor in less than a minute, then they went room to room, closest ones first, and started clearing them of furniture — tables, chairs, mattresses, anything they could carry was hauled into the stairwell and tossed onto the landing below. Before long they’d managed to create a very respectable blockade that would be difficult to negotiate. But not impossible.
The thundering from down below reached a crescendo and then they heard glass shattering and a huge roar.
’The main doors just gave way,’ Tapper said.
Mike ducked into one of the empty rooms and looked down onto the street. The mob was funnelling into the hotel like water down a drain. They were fired up as only Third World mobs could be, and hundreds of them waved sticks and other weapons. There would be no reasoning with anyone here today, no bargaining or pleading. And if it came to it, they didn’t have enough ammunition to stop them all.
He hurried back out to the hallway. Everyone was waiting for Mike’s next order. They were calm and assured, the ultimate professionals, a special breed who would normally be able to extricate themselves from pretty much any kind of trouble. But not here, not today. If the mob got to them, this would be their Little Big Horn.
The phone in his rig warbled. Kappes. Finally. He glanced at the display.
N
ot Kappes.
‘Stan, I can’t talk right now. We’ve got a situation and I need to keep this line clear.’
‘Got an eye in the sky right above you,’ Lando told him. ‘The whole street is under siege.’
‘I’m ending this call, Stan. Kappes is working the phones, trying to get us out of here.’
Mike was about to thumb the End button when Lando said, ‘You’re out of time, Mike. I’ve got an alternate exfil, an inbound Seahawk, ETA fourteen minutes. Can you hold off until then?’
Mike did the math. ‘There’re ten of us, Stan.’
‘She’s stripped down, but she can’t land, just in case the roof doesn’t hold. Move your team, Mike. I’ll call you back.’
‘We’ve got an inbound Seahawk,’ Mike told the others. He pointed to the hooded prisoner. ‘Get him to the roof, right now. The rest of you, we need to reinforce that barricade, buy ourselves fourteen minutes.’
The guys needed no incentive. They went to the closest rooms, dragging out beds, mattresses, wardrobes, and anything that could be prised off the floor or walls. All of it went down into the narrow stairwell. As Mike manhandled a thick mattress through the door, he heard a boom from below.
The roar that followed was terrifying, a vengeful crescendo of noise. Mike looked over the rail. Five floors below, the mob filled the fire escape, a solid crush of humanity rushing up the stairs. He held out his hand. ‘Flash bang.’
Finch handed him a stun grenade. Mike pulled the pin and dropped it down the shaft.
‘Grenade,’ he warned, covering his ears. The detonation rocked the stairwell like a thunderclap. A collective scream followed. Mike looked over the rail and saw panic. ‘Get some smoke down there, and more flash-bangs. Do it!’
Munitions were dropped over the rail. Repeated detonations shook the building, and purple smoke rolled up towards them. Then they were moving, up through the smoke to the roof. Mike held them one floor below and pointed at Finch.
‘When they close in on that barricade, put some rounds down there. Try not to hit anyone, okay? I’ll call when the helo is here.’
‘Roger that.’
Mike took the stairs two at a time. Up on the roof, Tapper, Flynn, Miller and Boswell were all crouched behind an air-conditioning unit. Between them, Philip was on his knees, a hood over his head. Mike hurried over and crouched down next to them. He checked his watch.
‘The chopper should be here in five minutes. It can’t set down, so toss that motherfucker inside as soon as he’s low enough. Where’s the WMD?’ he asked Boswell.
The CIA operator jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Sealed in a dry bag in my rucksack. We’re all good.’
Mike did a quick circumnavigation of the roof. There was plenty of airspace for a Seahawk to approach, but there were also lots of faces at the windows of the surrounding buildings. Mike prayed none of them were armed, and minded to take down a helicopter. His sat phone warbled and Mike snatched it out, crouching low behind some aluminium ducting.
‘Talk to me, Stan.’
‘We’ve got the chopper on visual, Mike. He’s a click to the south-east, coming in low and fast.’
‘Popping smoke now,’ Mike told him. He yelled across to the others. ‘Someone toss a smoke grenade. Helo needs a visual.’
Boswell sprinted across the roof and set down a canister. Yellow smoke billowed into the warm evening air.
‘Pilot sees yellow smoke,’ Lando relayed down the phone. ‘Thirty seconds out.’
Mike pressed the transmit switch of his radio. ‘All callsigns, fall back on my position right now.’
Two of Finch’s SEALs burst out of the fire escape door. Behind them, Mike heard the rattle of suppressed rounds and raced inside. Finch and one of his guys were shooting chunks out of a wall a couple of floors down. Mike looked over the rail. The mob were crawling all over the barricade, dismantling it as they went. The front runners were already past it and heading upwards.
Mike tossed the last of the smoke and flash-bangs down into the stairwell. He raised his weapon and squinted through the optics, sizing up a sliver of wall below. He fired, chopping chunks out of the concrete below. He heard rounds cracking off the walls and pinging off the metal handrail, praying they wouldn’t find a human target.
And then there was another roar, one that drowned out the screeching mob.
Mike slapped Finch on the shoulder. ‘We’re moving!’
He ran back up to the roof, the SEALs right behind him. They slammed the door closed and then the Seahawk rose up from behind the hotel and thundered over their heads in a steep circle, its rotors chopping the air. Mike ran to his men and helped lift Philip to his feet.
The Seahawk circled once then flared over the rooftop, its grey body settling into a hover a few feet above the asphalt. The noise was tremendous, and the downdraught battered them as they scrambled aboard. Mike squatted next to the crewman manning the M134 mini-gun.
‘Watch that door!’ Mike yelled in his ear. ‘Anyone comes through, fire a warning burst! No casualties!’
The crewman nodded behind his black visor. The aircraft bounced on the hot air as Mike helped get the others aboard. The Seahawk had a passenger capacity of five. Philip was strapped into a seat. Those without one just held on.
Mike gave the thumbs up to the crew chief, who relayed the order to the pilot. The engines wound up and the nose of the aircraft dipped as it cleared the edge of the roof. Then the chopper was falling like a stone between the surrounding buildings before the engines screamed again and the thundering rotors clawed for altitude. The docks slipped by beneath them and then they were feet wet, banking to the south-east.
Finch reached over and slapped Mike on the arm, pointing behind them. Mike turned, looking out beyond the tail of the aircraft, and saw a human wave spilling across that now distant roof. It had been a close-run thing, but Stan had come through.
Mike motioned to the crew chief, tapping his ear. The airman handed him a headset that was pre-dialled in. He hit the transmit switch.
‘Appreciate the pickup,’ Mike told him. ‘Where’re we headed?’
‘USS Independence,’ the crew chief told him. ‘It’s a thirty minute ride, so sit back and relax.’
Mike wanted to tell him that none of them could relax. He wanted to tell him that they’d just averted a disaster that would make Texas pale into insignificance. But he didn’t. Truth was, they were all grateful to be out of that hotel. But it wasn’t over, not by a long shot.
He stared at the hooded man sitting opposite, his hands and ankles bound with plastic ties, the warm wind whipping at his clothing. They had averted one disaster. Philip was the key to preventing another.
And that meant finding Marion.
Dry Run
They were soldiers of the Third Brigade Combat Team, First Cavalry Division, and their two armoured Joint Light Tactical Vehicles straddled either side of a muddy track twenty yards into the trees. Each vehicle was manned by a driver and a turret gunner, and both crews sat in silence, watching and listening.
The other six guys in the deployment were spread out along the nearby tree line, looking out over the flat Texas plain. They scanned the darkness with their magnified, low-light optics, partially comforted by the fact that their careful surveillance was further augmented by the unseen drones somewhere overhead, monitoring the terrain with their own thermal imaging systems. Yet despite the layers of technical sophistication, the reports coming out of Lubbock did little to steady the soldiers’ nerves.
They all knew about Baghdad. It was no secret what had happened to the Americans out there, and how they’d made the ultimate sacrifice in order to spare the city from the death plague that had cost the lives of twelve hundred America souls. None of them imagined that same virus would raise its vile head on US soil. And yet it had.
They’d been assigned a grid reference, which placed them twelve miles south of the hot zone and far from human habitation. Those people who lived close to the edge of the
exclusion zone had fled to one of dozens of relocation centres. The only people left in Lubbock were either hiding, dead or infected.
The detail commander, a Staff Sergeant of considerable operational experience, had gathered his men together and explained that, like most of them, he had a family, and it was his intention to return to that family after the crisis was over. His men, who put great trust in their Staff Sergeant, agreed. So, in the darkness of that Texas wood a pact was made; if their position was threatened in any way, they would shoot first and to hell with the Rules of Engagement. They were a team, and they would stick together no matter what.
So they waited in the trees, silent beneath that cold Texas sky, watching the fields for movement, for the infected. That’s when they heard a familiar rumbling to the south, one that peaked and faded across the flat terrain; low flying aircraft. The rumbling intensified and the unseen flight of aircraft rocketed overhead, thundering north towards the city of Lubbock.
And that could only mean one thing, the Staff Sergeant realised.
The order had been given.
Ray Wilson was still on the roof of the South Plains Mall, huddled with the others between thick tubes of pipework that stretched the length of the building.
Below them, death continued to stalk the streets of Lubbock.
There were bodies everywhere, scattered across the roads and sidewalks. As the hours passed the gunfire had been relentless, rattling across the city, and then it had slowly petered out. To the south and west the freeway was lifeless and littered with abandoned vehicles. Sometime after midnight the power to the city had failed. Downtown went first, its bright cluster of streets and buildings suddenly plunged into darkness. The rest of the city had followed, then the suburbs, as far as the eye could see. It was as if someone had drawn a dark blanket across the whole of Texas, and the spectacle had frightened Ray. Artificial light represented life, order, civilisation. In its absence, something primordial lurked. Like the infected.
