by Chase Austin
Despite age, Helms had not lost his sharpness. Wick had thought of the same strategy while going over the blueprints with Mac.
“Who is the new guy?” he asked without betraying his emotions.
“Landon, he is one of the best marksmen, has four years of field experience and he has volunteered for the mission.”
“You trust him?” Wick asked.
Helms nodded. “Will you do it?” he asked.
“I cannot tell you that. You will walk two blocks in that direction.” He pointed in the direction of going away from the hotel. “You will not look back. You will take a cab to the airport and take the jet that brought you here. Your wife needs you. You need to tell her the situation and get her prepared for every eventuality. You will not watch TV; you will not go to the Internet. You will not try to find out anything about the mission until someone calls you and asks you about it. Then you will deny any knowledge of this mission. Can you do that?”
Helms nodded his head. He could’ve said no but something inside him told him to do what Wick was telling him to do. Maybe he was too blinded by his own emotions and he needed to get away from all this to collect his thoughts and focus on the next course of actions.
Wick saw Helms turning around and walking away. He stared at him for a few minutes. From the inside of the SUV, everyone was looking at the proceedings. They could not hear anything but by the look of it, Wick had convinced Helms to walk away for some strange reason.
Was the mission abandoned?
Chapter 46
Wick walked back to the SUV and pulled the door open. Jessica, Landon, Mac and Eddie stared at him.
“Helms won’t be coming back. We are going ahead with the mission but if any of us is captured or killed in the mission, he cannot be linked to us. It’s time to cast your vote again. If anyone is changing his or her mind, he or she can leave.”
No one said anything so Wick continued. “Jessica, what do you know about the chopper?”
“Helms pulled out some favors to get one,” she replied.
“What about the blueprints? How well do you understand them?”
“We know our way around,” Landon spoke.
“Two teams. Jessica and I; Eddie and Landon. Got it.”
They nodded.
“Jessica you will lead our pair. Landon, you will lead yours. You guys know your way around as you have had more time to study the blueprints. Eddie and I will learn on the job. Once we are in, we will see how it pans out. Mac, you will help us navigate through the hotel.”
“I knew it would come down to this,” Mac said. He grabbed his bag and took out four tiny wireless tracking devices and a programmed master key to unlock any hotel room.
The four of them took the elevator to the roof of the American General Center building. Jessica led the way to the helipad at the roof. She walked in first, followed by Landon, Eddie, and Wick. Mac waited in the SUV parked in a parking lot, a couple of blocks away from the complex, connected with them through the wireless earpiece.
“Captain Marc Anthony.” A man standing in front of a ten-million-dollar bird gave a crisp salute to the team.
“Thank you, Captain, for your help.” Landon came forward to shake his hand.
“It’s my duty to serve my country whenever required. These bags are for you.” Marc gestured at four bags sitting comfortably near the helipad. Everyone instinctively moved forward to grab the bags. “Don’t worry, I have not looked at what’s in them,” Marc spoke from behind.
Each bag had two Glocks, seven magazines, and a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. Wick liked the MP5s, since unlike AK-47s, their bullets did not ricochet. Kevlar vests, fireproof fatigues to cover their clothing, explosives, balaclava helmets, night vision glasses, grenades and satellite phones, everything was there. But the most important thing was the several meters of special polyester abseil ropes designed for a rapid descent from the choppers along with the large oven-mitt-sized gloves. Without the gloves, the rope would shear the skin off their palms.
The pilot saw the four people getting kitted at a fast pace. In ten minutes, they were ready to go.
“Captain, one more thing, for security reasons we cannot disclose our identities. And this cannot leak to the media. Hope you have no problem with that.” Landon said.
“I understand.”
“Let’s go,” Jessica ordered the captain.
On her orders, the two Safran Ariel 2C2 turbine engines of the Airbus H155 started to warm up and the five carbon fiber blades started to lift the plane vertically.
Once in the air, they could see the weakened flames on the Onyx roof. That was where they would land. The plan was to make an immediate landing, creating an illusion that the chopper was just flying over the building on its way to its destination. If the plan succeeded, then the team would have the element of surprise on their side.
No one attempted to settle in the helicopter. The destination was not far, and the five-ton machine was soon hovering over the Onyx.
“Thanks, Captain.” Landon smiled.
The special polyester abseil rope, tethered to a boom, came down fast. Then the four bodies slithered down. Wick was first, then Jessica, Eddie, and Landon last.
The roof was isolated. The militants had possibly thought that the fire on the two floors would be enough to keep this way of entry blocked. If that was the case, then the team would not find much resistance. But if the hoax didn’t work out, they would soon be facing heavy enemy fire.
Chapter 47
Onyx Hotel, The Marina, Houston
Three SUVs made their way through the empty streets of Houston at a hundred miles per hour in near-total darkness. They screeched to a halt a block away from the Onyx. Sixteen highly trained and seasoned Marines were riding in those heavy vehicles. All of them wore body armor, knee and elbow pads, and a specialized cut-down helmet with night-vision goggles affixed in a pop-down, pop-up mode.
They carried an arsenal of weapons, ranging from pistols to shotguns, to sniping rifles, to light and heavy machine guns. None of them had bothered to bring silencers. Their presence would be known within seconds of their arrival, and once they hit the ground, there was a chance they’d need every extra bullet and grenade they could carry. They were heading directly into the thick of things.
The situation was of life and death, but the sixteen men were used to it and every last one of them was eagerly anticipating the battle that lay ahead.
A voice crackled over their earpieces announcing that they were two blocks from the target. In the resulting flurry of activity, optic rifle sights, red laser dot pointers, and night-vision goggles or NVGs were turned on, gear was shifted, and those who weren’t already cocked and locked did so. The men were soon going to be in a race against time to fight the trained enemies before they could build an offense.
Blake and his team had also been provided with the hotel blueprints but in such a short time, it was impossible to understand the hotel’s complex layout and plan an effective operation. But Blake had agreed just because General Shelton asked personally for him and was relying heavily on him and his men. The sixteen troopers were being dropped into the middle of a hostile environment where they were guaranteed to draw heavy enemy fire.
As soon as his SUV came to a halt, Blake opened his side of the door and was off, his weapon up and trained. His men moved swiftly towards their target in their pre-planned positions without uttering a word. All sixteen were able to talk via a secure internal radio link consisting of an earpiece and lip mike, but any communication was to be kept to an absolute minimum.
As they approached the building on foot, Blake could feel the emptiness of the streets and hear the gunshots. He knew that the distinct sound could only be from the AK-47s. There was no sign of life at the hotel. The windows were draped with curtains, and lights were switched off. Reaching near the cordoned off area, he took out the hotel blueprints once again and then looked up at the massive hotel complex in frustration.
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sp; Their guide stood ready near the building. As soon as they loomed near the building, Ted, a security officer in the Onyx and now their point person, approached them. He was in the CCTV room on the first floor when he saw the gunmen walking out of the toilet of the hotel, shooting at everyone at the reception area. Then they moved towards the lift when Ted thought of leaving the premises through the fire exit.
“How many men?” Blake asked him.
“Initially they were two but then their numbers swelled.”
“Can you give us an exact number?” Blake asked him to recall the images again.
“Eight to ten.” Ted was not sure, but he gave it his best shot.
“Cable TV connections in the hotel, from where are they managed? Can they be disconnected?” Blake knew that the only way terrorists inside would be able to know if the commandos were venturing inside was through the news channels. In the race for TV ratings, the news channels had no idea the kind of damage they were doing to the rescue mission.
“It needs to be done from inside the building.”
“Any other options?”
“I can try to call the cable company and they might help us suspend the feed.”
“Do it now.”
Ted opened his flip phone and called his guy in the cable company. He was at home after his shift ended but agreed to help.
“He is saying he needs twenty minutes.” Ted looked at Blake while clutching the phone.
“Ask him to do it fast.”
“Sure, sir.” Ted repeated the request on the phone.
“Last thing, can you decipher this?” Blake gestured at the blueprint.
Ted looked closely at the printed paper. It took his untrained eyes a moment to decipher the blueprint but soon the hotel structure started to emerge in front of him. Taking the CCTV room, where he sat, he started to see the fire exits, lobbies, and the rooms.
Blake keenly observed the man. Would he be able to be of any help was the question, but he had no other available option.
Chapter 48
Onyx Hotel, The Marina, Houston
The main door of the Onyx was locked. The team’s demo man rushed to the locked entrance and slapped two thin adhesive ribbon charges on it. He carefully linked them together with a loop of orange Primadet cord and stepped back, pressing his body up against the wall. “Breaching charge ready,” he said.
Blake listened as the other two elements of his team checked in. and then gave the thumbs-up signal to his door breacher.
“Fire in the hole!”
The sixteen troopers in front of the building lowered their heads as the charges were tripped, blowing the door off its hinges. The point man already had the pin on his flash-bang grenade pulled and wasted no time. He chucked the pyrotechnic through the open, smoking doorway and yelled, “Flash bang away!”
Every trooper sealed his eyes shut in anticipation of the blinding white-hot light of the grenade. At the sound of the thunderous explosion, the team moved, storming the first floor in a well-orchestrated maneuver. The point man entered the hotel first and immediately swept the space to the right as the second man came in and swept it to the left. The reception was deserted. Slowly the sixteen men started to take positions in the reception area.
The sixteen men moved in tandem covering their flanks one after another. Multiple phone cameras and the live telecast of the MARSOC teams getting into the hotel gave Taliban handlers enough reason to make contact with the men in the hotel.
“The Marines are coming. Go for the cross position,” the handler instructed Shahrukh, who knew what his handler was talking about. He instructed his men. On his orders, the two men guarding the tenth floor rushed to the second floor of the hotel to join the four already there.
Shahrukh’s handler called him again. “The hostages are only useful as long as you can use them as a shield. If at any point of time, you feel threatened, don’t saddle yourself with their burden.” Shahrukh agreed.
Shahrukh and Yakub were in the ballroom. With them were five hostages, all blindfolded, and they could easily become a burden in a battle of bullets.
The six terrorists on the second floor had begun to prepare for the biggest test of their training. The 3,000 square feet room on the second floor soon started to look like a battlefield with couches, cabinets, and refrigerators in the form of barricades. Four of the terrorists then wedged themselves in the small spaces behind the blockades, with the barrels of the AK-47s peeking out.
Their eyes on the big screen, everyone in the Situation Room seemed tense, watching yet another attempt to free the Onyx.
Blake led his team of commandos on to the second floor. They carefully ascended the stairs as per Ted’s direction. Ted was at the rear, behind the team. A commando reached for the door leading to the second floor’s lobby and tossed a flash grenade inside. Bathed in a blinding yellow flash, the lobby lit up like Christmas.
The commandos moved forward carefully once the flash subsidized. The lobby was deserted. The men took up their positions. The silence was eerie, as if someone already knew of their arrival. Sweeping their MP5s in front, they walked towards the first set of doors. The commandos padded noiselessly down the hall in single file, two feet apart, slightly crouched.
“There is an open door here,” the commando leading the file hissed on his microphone.
Blake, who was third in line, looked in the direction. A sliver of light from the room spilled on to the hall. He signaled others to wait, with his right fist.
They tossed in another flash grenade and swiftly entered the room, their weapons covering the room from corner to corner. The space was clear.
A distinctive click. Someone had bolted a door in the lobby. Blake quickly came out of the room and saw his commandos watching the third door to their right.
He signaled one of his commandos to check the door. The commando moved forward, using the cover of the wall and gently turned the doorknob clockwise.
Locked. Stillness.
Blake signaled another one of his commandos, the door breacher. “Blast it,” he said.
The man walked to the door and placed a pole charge on the door. As the commandos moved back, the demo man expertly drew an electrical wire and drew it till the end of the corridor. The commandos tensed themselves along the corridor, weapons ready. The demo man hooked the wire to a simple battery that he pulled out of his pocket. An electric current surged through the wire into the detonator. The deafening sound of the door blowing away into pieces rocked the corridor.
In normal circumstances, they’d have thrown grenades into the room first, but these were not normal circumstances. There could be hostages in the room. So, even before the smoke had settled, the commandos charged in through the splintered door. Four AK-47s opened up from inside.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The first two commandos collapsed on the floor just outside the door. The terrorists had a small target to shoot at; the commandos were going in blind.
Next to cross the threshold, and roll down the corridor, was a grenade. The blast was earth-shattering. The other commandos immediately withdrew.
In the ballroom, Shahrukh heard the disjointed exchange of gunfire with concern.
So did Wick, Jessica and everyone else in the team who were still on the top floor.
A sharp crack of the Kalashnikovs and muted sound of MP5s.
“We’ve been hit. We’ve been hit. Commandos down.” Blake heard these words, but in the melee of smoke, dust, and gunfire, it wasn’t clear who was saying this, and who was hit and where. Blake waved his hand to clear the air. He saw three more commandos on the ground, bathed in a pool of blood. His heart sank. He knew who the three bodies were.
Just over thirty minutes into the operation and they had suffered a serious setback. Casualties were unacceptable in a seek-and-destroy mission.
In the confusion, no one had noticed that a door behind the MARSOC unit was opened and two shooters had snuck into the second-floor lobby through the back sta
irs without making a sound, waiting for their chance at the bend.
The commandos retreated away from the door, towards the stairs from where they had entered the lobby when two AK-47s had gone mad.
The commandos were not ready for a major fire from behind. The lobby was long and plain. There was no place to take cover. Two more commandos took the bullets on their backs and one got hit on his leg. The rest of the men turned around to face the two shooters and shot blindly. Blake who had been at the front, was now at the back as the battlefield was turned one hundred and eighty degrees. The low-velocity MP5 bullets raced to find their targets but they neither had the velocity nor the incisive power to penetrate the hallway parapets behind which the terrorists took cover. The bullets from the enemy had no such barriers.