Sam Wick Ultimate Boxset

by Chase Austin

  Five minutes later, Shahrukh got a call from the handler. “How are things?”

  “Only Yakub and I are alive,” Shahrukh said.

  “Where are you both?”

  “In room 0724 with two hostages.”

  The handler thought for a moment about the situation. “What are their names?” he asked.

  “Olivia Helms and Peter Jacob,” Shahrukh responded.

  “They will send reinforcements, but it will take some time. Keep in mind that the hostages are of use only as long as you don’t come under fire, because America weighs their safety more. If your lives are threatened, then don’t saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately shoot them.”

  “We understand.”

  “Remember, every nation prefers to claim that no hostages were harmed during their operations. That everyone was saved. So, use their weakness to your advantage. And stay alert.”

  “We will.”

  And the line was disconnected.

  Chapter 52

  Onyx Hotel, The Marina, Houston

  “Mac, which floor has the pool?” Wick asked as soon his comms were switched on.

  “Seventh,” Mac said.

  “There is a shooter near the pool. We need to move fast.” Wick instructed the others.

  They nodded. They walked in pairs, through the narrow passage behind the elevators on the nineteenth floor. At the beginning of the eighteenth floor, they discovered the bodies of three women hostages laid out in a triangular formation. They did not move the bodies for fear of booby traps, and just crossed over them carefully.

  As they kept moving down, sweeping every floor for terrorists, their movements were soon fine-tuned to drill-like perfection. For opening any door, they used the master key given to them by Mac. As soon as the LED in the automatic lock beeped green, the first person would shove the door wide open and point his weapon ahead into the room. This move would startle anyone hiding behind the door.

  Room 0724, like any other room, had a brown wooden door with an oval brass number plate. It stood at the head of a narrow passage that led to five other rooms – 0721 through to the 0725 – that were hidden from view behind the guest elevators.

  Wick drew the master key out of his pocket and inserted it into the key slot. The tiny LED light on the door lock blinked, turned green and beeped. He then shoved the door forward.

  Crack! Crack!

  A burst of two AK-47 bullets hammered the bottom of the door. Shahrukh had been standing behind the door, his rifle ready and cocked. Wick had startled him. As Shahrukh fell back, his bullets punched and splintered the door. A bullet grazed Wick’s right arm. He quickly backed off and took cover with his back pressed to the wall.

  The sound of the shots ripped across the atrium. Shahrukh and Yakub kept up the intensity, and the shooting continued.

  Instinctively, the others spread out. The four of them covered various parts of the polygonal floor. Jessica covered the area closest to the bank of elevators near the room; Eddie stood in the corridor to the right; Landon covered the corridor across the atrium. Wick was still the one closest to the room. All their weapons pointed at Room 0724.

  Shahrukh and Yakub’s bullets whistled and cracked across the corridor as they broke the sound barrier. Across the atrium, Landon took shelter behind a four-foot-high wooden table used to hold flowers. Intermittently, he raised his head to fire a few shots at the room. Just then, he heard the crack of a bullet as it whizzed past and felt the sensation of a hard slap. The bullet had split his ear in two. His ear went numb. Blood poured onto his black t-shirt. He cupped his left hand over his ear… it was filled with blood.

  “Fuck,” Eddie shouted, “You are bleeding.”

  “You expected water?” Landon said dryly. With that, he pulled out a white field-dressing pack out of his pocket and put it on his ear. The white bandages quickly turned red.

  Meanwhile, the fusillade of bullets from the room had bent the brass balustrade and shattered the glass below it. The terrorists were cornered, but they would not go down without a fight. They opened the door of the room to fire and tossed grenades at the enemy. Their ‘fire discipline’ surprised Wick and others. The two men inside fired only single shots, and they kept jockeying their firing position. Any two shots rarely came from the same location. Their room was a defender’s delight, a natural pillbox that had evidently been chosen with care. It was set in the corner of a corridor, protected by the bulge of the elevators on the right. The door was set at least four feet inside the wall, protected by the rooms on the left.

  Wick and others, on the other hand, had a restricted field of fire. That was why the terrorists had chosen the Onyx and not any other location for the siege. The Onyx, with its atrium and multiple exits, offered them many more options to battle it out. It was indeed a very well-thought-out operation.

  Chapter 53

  Irfan-Ul-Haque – the Great Cleric – relayed the information he had received from Shahrukh’s handler to the Professor who was in constant touch with him via a secure line.

  “Who are the hostages?” Professor asked.

  “Peter Jacobs and Olivia Helms,” the Cleric told him.

  “Kill them.”

  “But they might be helpful in making the siege longer.” The Cleric was surprised.

  “I will not repeat myself.”

  The Cleric didn’t respond this time. He knew he had no other options than to comply.

  The handler called Shahrukh again. “What’s the situation?” he asked.

  “There is already a team outside the room, firing at us. We are outnumbered.”

  “Get rid of the hostages.”

  “But…”

  “Do it. I’m keeping on hold. Go on, do it, do it. I’m listening…do it.” Shahrukh had to comply. He stared at Yakub with helplessness and shot Peter. Olivia shrieked. Getting up, she limped helplessly towards the door. Yakub took aim at her and before she could cross the door, multiple bullets riddled her body.

  Wick had to lose his train of thought when he heard the shriek followed by gunshots. Someone was running towards them and before Wick could understand anything, Olivia’s body flew out of the door. Her back had innumerable bullet holes and she hit the floor face down.

  A grenade flew in close proximity to her and landed in the lobby. Wick jumped without waiting. The grenade exploded in mid-air. Steel splinters rushed to meet Wick’s body. By the time he landed, he knew many of them had found their way into his bullet-proof vest. Without it, he would have been dead meat.

  This was getting out of hand. They had to blast open the door since the terrorists were easily able to open it, at will. They had to take away this control from them. Jessica ordered Landon and Eddie to provide her with covering fire. While she crawled closer to the room, Wick pulled Olivia’s dead body away from the door. There was silence from inside; perhaps the terrorists had paused to reload their weapons.

  Jessica placed the charge on the door, and the explosion managed to partially splinter it. As soon as the door was breached, Wick lobbed multiple grenades into the room. There was an ear-splitting explosion. The firing from within the room had begun, and it instantly subsided. Jessica and Wick kept lobbing stun grenades into the room. Landon and Eddie kept up the pressure with intermittent cover fire. The firefight was slowly tilting towards Wick’s team. The dull subsonic sounds of the MP5, like a coconut hitting the floor, versus the AK-47’s firecracker sound, echoed through the atrium.

  In the incessant firing, Wick and Jessica didn’t have the time to check if there were any hostages in the room.

  In the hotel elsewhere, the guests cowered in fear.

  Chapter 54

  Landon and Eddie kept firing at the door to keep the terrorists from breaking out. But they had begun running low on ammunition. Jessica opened her bag and took out some Molotov cocktails. She lit them one by one and flung them at the door. The cocktails crashed through the gap in the door and set the room on fire. The curtains obs
curing the view quickly burned away. Black smoke billowed out of the room. The fire also triggered off the hotel’s sprinkler system. Water spurted out of spouts in the ceiling, extinguishing the fire. This gave them a clear view of the room from outside.

  Shahrukh and Yakub rushed into the bathroom for shelter. Wick and Jessica lobbed more grenades into the room, but they proved futile. The terrorists opened the faucets in the bathroom. Water started to fill the bathtub, spreading out into the room and gushing into the corridor outside.

  At the same time, Shahrukh and Yakub also had a conversation with their handlers who kept them at it with motivational speeches. “The manner of your death will instil fear in the unbelievers. This is a battle between Islam and the unbelievers. Keep looking for a place to die. Keep moving.”

  “Insha’allah,” they responded earnestly.

  “You’re very close to Heaven now. One way or another we’ve all got to go there. You will be remembered for what you’ve done here. Fight till the end. Stretch it out as long as possible.”

  It was past midnight and Room 0724 and its vicinity resembled a coal pit. The fire had charred the whitewashed walls around the room. The corridor was indistinguishable from the black granite facade of the elevators. The firefight and the water had turned the area around the room into a slushy puddle. The grenade blasts had knocked the light fittings out in front of the room and lift area. They had also smashed the false ceiling to reveal a thick mass of black electrical cables. Cable TV routers and wires hung limply like creepers. The corridor filled with half an inch of water, turning the red carpet into a soaking bog.

  What Jessica and Wick didn’t know was that one of the grenade blasts had injured Yakub grievously. There was no way he could be saved.

  While sitting in the van, Mac decided to make himself useful by tuning into the various frequencies, to see which of them were being used by the terrorists. Eventually, he succeeded in latching on to one. Mac captured their conversation on his device.

  “How are you, my brother?” The handler asked them.

  “Praise God. Yakub has passed away.” Shahrukh sounded weak.

  “Really? Is he there?”

  “Yes.”

  “May God accept his martyrdom.”

  “I’m sitting in the bathroom with the taps on,” Shahrukh said, looking at Yakub’s dead body.

  “Don’t let them arrest you. Don’t let them knock you out with a stun grenade. That would be very damaging. Fire one of your magazines, then grab the other one and move out. The success of your mission depends on you getting shot,” the handler suggested.

  “Jessica, one of them is dead. Only one is left.” Mac hissed in his lip mic.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “Snooping on the frequency they are using to talk to their handlers. He is going to come out. He doesn’t want to be captured.”

  “Thanks.”

  Eddie was on guard at the fire exit near five o’clock. Landon was with him. Wick was still near the door, with a four-foot-high housekeeping trolley next to him that stood shielding him from any shots from the room. He felt dazed and tired. The travel, firing, and explosions had numbed him. It was the thought of Stan that kept him going.

  Jessica took stock of the situation. The four of them were tired, but she had to regroup them and launch another assault on the room.

  Suddenly a short burst of fire echoed through the atrium. It was difficult to tell the location of it, but the gunfire did not come from within the room. It was in the atrium.

  ‘Who’s firing?’ they wondered. Was it the MARSOCs or the SWAT Teams?

  There was a second burst. This time very close to where Wick stood. The bullets drilled the wall and blasted out puffs of white dust. “Damn,” Wick yelled as he darted back into the corridor for cover.

  The figure fired again, this time from within the narrow niche of the elevator door. Still unsure about the identity of the shooter, Wick raised his MP5, but Jessica motioned him to hold back.

  She shouted frantically. ‘The man is in black. It could be one of ours.’

  The figure continued to fire and move towards Eddie and Landon who quickly took cover. Wick shot a glance out of his cover. It was Shahrukh in black tees with his AK-47. He had taken advantage of the dark corridor and a lull in the fighting and broken out of the second door of the room opening into the lobby, determined to shoot his way out. Wick’s thumb slipped his MP5 selector to a three-round burst, and he aimed and fired two quick bursts. The MP5 rattled.

  Shahrukh was hit in the leg. He staggered and limped back towards the elevators.

  Enraged, Shahrukh screamed, “You coward, why are you hiding? If you are worth your salt, come out and fight.” He then ran for cover himself.

  Eddie appeared from the shadows and took aim at the place where Shahrukh was hiding. Shahrukh was now being shot at from two different directions. Eddie shouted, “Now why don’t you come forward?”

  A tense stand-off ensued. Both held their positions. Eddie and Landon were almost out of ammo, and they informed Jessica and Wick about it. Now, the two of them had to stop Shahrukh from slipping out in the dark into the other side of the corridor.

  Wick asked Eddie to go onto the next floor and fling grenades at Shahrukh’s location from there. Wick wanted to create an illusion that Shahrukh was now trapped from all directions. Either he could surrender or die.

  Wick and Jessica reloaded their weapons while Eddie ran up to the eighth floor. He had just two hand grenades left, and he had to make them count.

  Shahrukh kept firing single shots, inaccurately, from his hideout in the elevator passageway, but he was now clearly out of his depth. Eddie positioned himself nearest to the place from where Shahrukh was firing and lobbed two grenades at it in quick succession. With the twin explosions, the firing stopped.

  Wick threw a stun grenade into the atrium. And in the blinding light, he spotted the body of the dead terrorist lying in the corridor. He aimed his MP5 and fired one quick burst at the body. No movement. He walked down the corridor. Shahrukh lay inert on the floor, his dead eyes staring at Wick. His AK-47, five magazines and a pistol lay beside him. Empty cartridges lay scattered around.

  Jessica swung open what was left of the door to Room 0724. It was a compact battle zone. The terrorists had used the room’s two doors as a barrier. They had used the minibar and a study table as firing positions. She stepped on hundreds of AK-47 brass empties. The windows, the bed, and a sofa were half burned. The carpeted floor was soggy and strewn with shoes and clothes. She aimed her weapon at the bathroom. The door was open. A terrorist lay on his back on the bathroom floor. Shrapnel had passed through his right eye. This was Yakub.

  Inside the room, Peter Jacob also lay dead.

  Outside, Wick rolled over the dead body of the woman that lay in the corridor and immediately recognized her. She was Olivia Helms. He looked back at Eddie who looked shocked and disturbed. He knew who Olivia was.

  The terrorists had been neutralized, but the operation did not end there. The MARSOC teams carried out room intervention operations in the rest of the hotel, moving from the top downwards.

  The Onyx was eventually cleared of civilians. Bodies of the dead civilians were removed by the noon next day. Guests from all floors were thoroughly screened again and handed over to the hotel authorities. The bomb disposal squad conducted their Render Safe Procedure, sweeping the hotel for live ordnance and ammunition, and searching for possible booby traps before the building was handed over to the hotel authorities.

  Chapter 55

  The news channels were awash with the news of victory over terror. Once again, they were trying to give the ominousness of the attacks a positive spin, but the people actually affected were the ones who knew that no amount of positivity could bring their loved ones back from the dead.

  The dead were in thousands. In the absence of any official figures, the estimate game had already begun on various news channels. TV debates had already started,
with hashtags and with quotes, in a bid to make them trend on social media. After the initial condemnations and sympathies from the politicians and public figures alike, the blame games had also started within the various stakeholders responsible to keep America safe.

  Wick, Jessica, Eddie and Landon stood in silence as the medical teams rushed inside the Onyx to tend to the hostages. Wick had called Helms a few minutes ago to deliver the news of Olivia’s death. It was one of the hardest things to do in life – letting a father know that his child was no more. Helms said nothing, he just listened to what Wick told him and then he disconnected the call.