Thunder Run (Maelstrom Rising Book 6)

by Peter Nealen

  If we didn’t live through the next twenty-four hours, it would be a moot point. Then maybe I’d see him again, along with Phil, Dwight, and all the other buddies I’d buried or had to leave behind over the last fifteen years.

  I really had to put that train of thought behind me.

  Looking around at the situation, I saw that the Recon Marines and SEALs had the crowd decently cowed. “We’re heading up top. My team’s down another man, and we can do more good up there.”

  Weiss nodded. Bealer looked like he was going to argue, but another glance at the situation showed him that I was right. Especially as one of Holbrook’s squads came inside, apparently with instructions to help out. There was only so much that thirty guys could do, focused on one entrance. Especially since the other two sections were going to be sending squads to reinforce—the side and rear entrances were even smaller and could be held by a squad with the right positioning and firepower.

  And I knew that the infantry guys had brought as much ammo as they could pack. They weren’t the only ones.

  I circled my fist above my head. “Team Ten! On me.”

  The team closed in as I headed up toward the entryway. If the majority of the enemy forces closing in on the lawn were to the southeast, near the entrance, then that was where we needed to go.

  The fact that I’d have to go past Scott’s body on the way back to the stairwell we’d come down didn’t have anything to do about it. At least, that was what I kept telling myself.

  Maybe that made me a coward. I could face armored vehicles, drones, and automatic weapons, but looking at the body of one of my best friends was too much.

  But so far, I’d successfully compartmentalized my grief. I needed it to stay back in that dark, locked chamber in my mind until this was over.

  We threaded our way through our prisoners and the Recon Marines and SEALs who were securing them, and stepped out into the massive foyer at the front of the building.

  Smoke drifted through the three-story-high room, obscuring most of the bullet-pocked armored glass that formed the front wall and doors. Marble-faced square pillars held up the ceiling above us, and several of Holbrook’s shooters were using them for cover, barricaded and aimed in at the armored glass doors. More were set up in the recessed doors leading off to either side, and even more had barricaded on the corners of the corridors leading off to left and right.

  I led the way off to the left and the second major stairwell. Hanging out in that open space, exposed to the spiderwebbed glass and the lawn beyond, where I could almost make out the shape of a six-wheeled EBRC Jaguar reconnaissance vehicle sitting between two trees near the street with its 40mm cannon pointed at the front of the building, would be a very bad idea. The armored glass might be proof against regular machinegun fire, but not cannon fire.

  Honestly, though, despite the threat those armored vehicles posed—not to mention the kamikaze drones that we’d first faced in Nitra, and I was sure the EDC already had deployed around the building—right at that moment, snipers were probably much more of a threat. And I had no doubt that they had some out there on the perimeter, watching the entryway through their scopes, fingers hovering near triggers.

  There were two Marines on the stairs, one covering up the steps, the other covering down the hallway. There were too few of us on the ground not to take security seriously in every position we held. There were too many doors, too many rooms we hadn’t had time—and still didn’t have time—to clear. So, we had to strongpoint wherever we went firm.

  “Friendlies.” It wasn’t strictly necessary, since I’d seen the junior Recon Marine barricaded on the door look toward us as we came out, and he’d clearly recognized us as friendlies. But again, this was the sort of situation where you had to be extra careful. We were already in a precarious enough position without risking a blue-on-blue.

  “Bring it in.” The kid at the door looked like he was about twelve to me, despite the wispy attempt at a mustache he was growing over his lip.

  We moved into the stairwell and crowded in at the base of the first flight, where the second Marine, short, dark, and built like a tank, was covering up the stairs. “Any movement?”

  The shorter fireplug of a Marine didn’t look away from his sector as he answered me. “Not so far. I think we might have surprised them a little.”

  “Still not as much as we would have liked. They responded way too fast.” I stepped up onto the first step, looking over the Marine’s shoulder. “We’re heading up.”

  “Did we get everybody?” The Marine still kept his eyes and muzzle trained on the landing above, his thumb resting on his selector switch, but he sounded somewhat understandably eager. Young Marines are aggressive and mission-oriented.

  “Unfortunately, no.” I brought my own rifle up and started up the stairs, even though Chris was probably already getting impatient with me for taking point. “We’re missing two.”

  “Fuck.” Both Marines echoed the sentiment at about the same time, with the sort of emotional commitment that only young hard chargers who knew enough about the mission to understand how bad it could potentially get could come up with. They were personally offended that we’d missed a target, while at the same time feeling a certain personal responsibility, as if all of us—them included—had failed, somehow.

  Never mind the fact that it was something beyond our control. For all we knew, the two missing Councilors were sick. Or they were busy with other things—it wasn’t as if domestic and political matters within the EDC’s sphere of influence were exactly calm or well-ordered at the moment. It still felt like a failure to these young Marines.

  It wasn’t a bad thing, necessarily. It was what kept their drive going. When it didn’t work against morale.

  And morale gets important when you’re surrounded and far from relief.

  “We’ll find ‘em. Right now, just watch your sectors and be ready to rumble.” It might not be the greatest motivational speech in the world, but I never called myself a self-help guru, never mind a Big Marine Corps motard. Especially not when surrounded and with my brother’s corpse still cooling on the other side of the building.

  Then we were moving. I quickly climbed the first flight of steps, turning to cover as much of the next flight and the landing above it with my muzzle as I could.

  We headed up flight by flight, leapfrogging to each landing, covering above and below as we got high enough that we no longer had eyes on the Marines who held the base of the stairs. We stayed alert, watching each door as we went past it carefully.

  By the time we were halfway up without any signs of resistance, I was starting to wonder just how much security the Council had really had. It seemed awfully strange that we’d killed or captured maybe a platoon-sized element charged with protecting a group that had been so desperate to hold onto power that they’d put the French nuclear arsenal in play only a few months before.

  Maybe the blind spots regarding the knuckle-draggers who make up security and military were just a little too hard to get around. We could hope, though it wouldn’t change the situation with the growing military force outside the building.

  I was moving back up toward the point as we leapfrogged our way up. The stairs were getting to be a slog. Twenty-eight floors is a long way to climb, and it’s a lot harder going up than going down. I was one flight below Greg when the door beside him cracked open.

  I surged upward, despite my protesting muscles, leveling my rifle at the door. Greg was covering the flight above him, and he couldn’t turn fast enough.

  My finger was already resting on the trigger, selector on fire, as my red dot settled on the widening crack as the door opened.

  But I held my fire. The wide-eyed, pudgy young woman peering out into the stairwell squeaked in terror and jerked back, slamming the door shut. No immediate threat there.

  At least, not for the moment. I briefly considered pursuing and securing her, but then shook off the notion. Everyone in the building knew we were there. E
veryone outside the building knew we were there. Trying to keep our movements from being broadcast at that point was next to impossible.

  We’d just have to maintain security high and low and keep moving.

  My quads were burning and my heart was pounding as we kept going up, and I knew I wasn’t alone. None of us were spring chickens anymore. I was glad that we hadn’t brought our rucks down to the Council chambers. Hauling them back up twenty-eight floors would have been murder.

  Finally, two floors below the top, I paused and keyed my radio. “Chatty, Deacon. We’re two floors down. Coming up stairwell number two.”

  “Roger, Deacon.” The transmission was a little scratchy, even that close. There was a lot of concrete and steel around us, not to mention whatever electronic warfare the EDC might be waging. “Be advised, we’re about to get off the roof. There’s a lot of drone traffic up here, and I think some of them might be the same ones we saw in Slovakia. Feels really exposed up here. Gomułka agrees.”

  “Roger.” I leaned against the wall, catching my breath as I thought. I didn’t remember a lot of the floor plans for the top floors—we knew where the stairs were and the fastest ways down to the Council chambers. I’d kind of skimmed the rest, mainly looking for what might be security. The main security station, I knew, was on the fourth floor, behind the Council chambers, but that was about it. “Drop our rucks down the stairs and we’ll meet you on the twenty-eighth floor.”

  “We’ve already got them down there. See you in a few.” Leave it to Tony and Reuben to think ahead.

  It took only a couple of minutes to get the rest of the way up to the top floor. Chris and David paused at the door, Chris putting his hand on the handle and David leveling his rifle at the joint where the door opened. David nodded once, and Chris flung the door open, then followed David through, half a step behind him, muzzle coming level over his shoulder.

  The hallway was empty, though as we flowed down it toward the second roof access, I could see some movement through the narrow windows in the doors to either side. It was furtive, and when any of us turned toward it—which we did regularly, still covering each door as we moved past—the faces pressed to the glass quickly disappeared. The office dwellers up here wanted nothing to do with the men in green, wearing plate carriers and helmets and carrying battle rifles.

  David slowed as he got close to the corner. “Friendlies coming in!”

  “Come ahead!” Reuben’s voice echoed down the hallway despite the cheap carpet underfoot. They’d sunk a lot of money into this building, but you wouldn’t know it from the quality of the construction.

  David moved to the corner and eased around it before lifting his muzzle toward the ceiling. The rest of us followed, though Greg turned the corner only to swing around and barricade on it, watching back the way we’d come.

  Tony and Reuben had moved out into the hallway from the stairs, posting up to cover each direction. As we came into view, Reuben jerked a thumb back at the stairwell as a couple of the GROM shooters came through the door. “Rucks are back there.” His own was sitting next to him. “What’s the plan, boss?”

  With the roof no longer a viable position, we needed to rethink the plan. Gomułka was standing just inside the hallway, directing his operators to new positions, but I couldn’t see Arkadiusz, which meant there wasn’t much we could say to each other. That was the one major weakness of this plan—the GROM guys spoke some English, and we spoke some Polish, but neither group was quite fluent enough when the chips were down.

  So, I decided. “Right now, I think we split into two elements. That way we can support the GROM guys and maintain situational awareness without worrying about the language barrier.” Or different comms, which had also been a sticking point. “I’ll take Alpha and find a vantage point overlooking the front.” Then I had to pause and choke back the lump that was suddenly in my throat. Because I had to replace Scott, as much as I didn’t want to.

  “Tony, you take Bravo and find a spot overlooking the back and the cathedral. I don’t trust these bastards not to use the church as a vantage point or sniper nest.” It would fit the EDC’s attitude.

  Tony just nodded stoically, while Chris looked back and forth between us. I could feel Chris restraining himself from playing pastor or therapist. But he knew as well as I did that this was neither the time nor the place.

  It took a couple of minutes for each of us to go in and get our rucks, while the rest covered the hallways and the office doors alongside them. The GROM guys were holding security themselves, but there were a lot of doors and only so many shooters.

  We could hear scraps of radio chatter between Burkhart’s and Tucker’s teams and the infantry sections, but so far, things were still quiet. I remembered my own comment about this being a hostage situation. It seemed I was more right than I’d imagined.

  Once we had all our gear on our backs again, it was time to move. I nodded to Tony, and then Chris, Jordan, Greg, and I headed for the front. Tony, Reuben, and David headed toward the back of the building in a tight triangle.

  The four of us moved fast, still shifting to cover each doorway and cross hallway that didn’t have a GROM shooter on it as we went. I could hear Holbrook on the radio in the meantime.

  “All stations, India Quebec Seven. We have eyes on what appears to be a company-sized element moving in to reinforce the cordon near the traffic circle. We’ve counted two platoons of APCs and what appears to be several special-purpose armored vehicles.”

  Those were probably intended to get assault forces up to the doors under fire. We were running out of time.

  Chris found a door that looked like it opened onto an office in the right place. A GROM team was set up next door. He stacked on it, I grasped the handle and threw it open, and we flowed inside.

  The room had clearly been intended to be an office, but it appeared it was currently being used for storage. Stacks of printer paper boxes stood on the floor, along with several desks shoved together and a stack of chairs in the corner. Cheap blinds shut off the view out the windows, at least for the moment.

  “Greg, stay on the door.” I started threading through the stacks of boxes toward the windows, shrugging out of one strap of my ruck. “Keep the blinds drawn for now. I don’t want them to know we’re up here until it’s too late.”

  Easing my ruck to the floor, I shifted one of the hanging slats so I could out without exposing myself too much. We had a good view of the whole city from up there, including the lawn in front of the Council building, what was left of Elisabeth Park, and the growing number of Belgian and EDC armored vehicles out there. Not to mention the quad-rotor and fixed-wing drones that were circling the building in ever-thickening numbers.

  As I watched, an armored VBMR Griffon rolled forward with a massive speaker system in place of a turret. A moment later, a voice blared, loud enough to rattle the windows.

  “Attention, those inside! You are surrounded! If you surrender and release the Council and their aides unharmed, you will be treated well!”

  The guy on the PA clearly had learned English as a third or fourth language.

  “If you do not surrender, we will be forced to enter and take the building by force.” Definitely third or fourth language. “You have one hour to respond.”

  I glanced at my watch as I knelt and started to pull some of the surprises we’d brought out of my ruck. “Well, looks like we’ll get to try to repel an assault, after all.” I keyed my radio. “Knife, this is Golf Lima Ten. Any contact with Sandman?” Sandman was the MEU headquarters callsign. They were the Marines’ point of contact for the Ground Combat Element once it got on the ground.

  “This is Knife. Sandman has landed and is encountering light resistance outside of Zeebrugge. They’re ETA is still about two hours out. But we have air support on Ready Five on the Eisenhower, and the Vipers are turning around as we speak.”

  I looked out at the armored vehicles outside. We were probably going to need that air.

 
Provided they didn’t storm the building before the birds could get to us.

  It was going to be a long two hours.

  Chapter 30

  We needed every bit of that hour.

  We’d brought four AT-4 single-shot rockets, but they were going to be a rough option if we were inside. An AT-4’s backblast is no joke. I knew of at least one Marine who’d been on react duty on an embassy in the Middle East, who’d negligently discharged one of the 84mm anti-tank weapons inside his quarters. He’d had to get medevaced.

  So, we’d have to head up to the roof to use those, and that was going to be more than a little difficult, if the EDC had kamikaze drones up. We’d seen those damned things in action in Nitra, and they were death on anyone who was exposed to the sky. We’d shot a few of them down, but they moved fast, and hitting them required extremely fast target acquisition and engagement, along with not a little luck. And from what Tony and Reuben had said, there were too many drones up for that to be an option. By the time we got one or two, another four would be on us. We were going to have to work from inside.

  That presented several of its own problems. The Council building might have been a bit shabby on the inside, but it had still been built with security in mind. There was no way to open the windows, which were made of armored glass. That could work to our advantage—we could stay behind the armored windows and call for fire once the birds got on station. That would probably have to be our primary course of action.

  But we had brought a couple other surprises along, and so had the other teams. Together, we had brought about six of the same drones we’d used to kill those Pumas outside of Wroclaw. The supply in Europe was limited, but it had been decided that this was potentially enough of a game-changer mission that we’d brought them.

  Yeah, the rucks were heavy as hell. We’d also known that we weren’t going to be going far with them. If we had to E&E out of Brussels, it would have to be without the rucks. That had been accepted from the get-go.