by Chase Austin
David Blake, the stocky thirty-two-year-old, was a ten-year veteran of the Marines and one of the most respected and decorated officers in the entire MARSOC.
He and his team had arrived in Houston five hours ago, but they had orders to not to leave the hangar without General Neller’s order. Whatever was happening in Houston was their area of expertise, yet no one had called them. So, all they could do was wait and watch the news.
It was almost eleven in the night when Blake got a call from General Neller, “Blake, we’ve been called. Make us proud.”
“We will, sir,” Blake said it with absolute sincerity.
“I’m waiting for the good news. All the best.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Blake looked at his men. They all were ready and raring to go. Not even one of them looked unsure or tired. This is what he wanted from his men, that is why he had personally been involved in their selection to his team. It wasn’t as if someone gave these men to him and asked him to lead them. It was his team, and he had been the reason why these fifteen men were there. Looking at them, he felt responsible and proud.
They were placed just eight miles off the city. He signaled the drivers to ready the SUVs.
“Team,” Blake shouted. The fifteen men instantly looked at him. “Its time,” he said.
The team kitted while running on the concrete road. Each commando was carrying over thirty pounds of gear. For each of the commandos, this was the most important mission of his life. His trial by fire. They were armed with 9 mm semi-automatic Glocks holstered on their thighs. Heckler and Koch MP5 sub-machine guns and AK-47 completed the rest of the ensemble. Stun and fragmentation grenades bulged in the pouches of their bulletproof Kevlar vests over army combat fatigues. The Kevlar had two hard armor panels in the sleeves both in the front and the back of the jacket to protect against Kalashnikov bullets. Night vision goggles rested on their helmets.
Blake looked at his men as they settled in the vehicles. The information was still scarce and trickling in painfully slowly. The team only knew that there were seven to eight terrorists in the hotel but there was no information on the number of hostages. All they knew that it was on the American soil and it was the biggest reason to act now, more than anything else.
Chapter 45
Wick and Eddie rushed to the door as soon as the plane touched the runway. Outside, two black Suburban SUVs were already waiting for them. Jessica and Mac stood in somber silence near the first SUV, waiting for the jet to come to a halt. Three suits stood near the second Suburban, waiting to take Basit in their custody.
“Thank you, officers,” Jessica said as soon as the suits put Basit in the Suburban. The men nodded their heads and without saying a word turned around. Jessica then looked at Wick, and as soon as his eyes met hers, he knew something was wrong.
“We need to go,” Jessica said, before he could ask anything.
Inside the SUV, Wick found a new face alongside Mac. Stan was missing, but he said nothing. He wanted to know more before asking any questions. As soon as the SUV rolled on the concrete, Jessica took the onus on herself to explain what had happened in the last ten hours.
“Your information was correct,” she said. “Six cities were hit this morning between 10 and 11 am. More than five thousand are dead, and the number is still rising with every hour as more and more bodies are being recovered from the debris. The attack on Philadelphia is neutralized, Manhattan is also free after a bloody fight. Houston is a different story. Terrorists have taken over the Onyx at the Marina and have been inside for more than nine hours.”
“Where are we going?” Wick asked.
“Helms has a plan, but it will not fly without you.”
“Does the President know about this?”
“No, he had shut Helms out from the proceedings in the Situation Room.”
“What the hell? Is he gone mad?” Eddie said.
“I don’t know what’s in his mind. He still thinks that he is dealing with amateurs. His indecision had cost us a lot of time and now we are far behind in our response.”
“Do you have a blueprint of the hotel?” Wick asked.
Mac knew this would come up. He rolled out multiple landscape-sized printouts in the cramped space of the SUV. They all peered over the pages for the next ten minutes while Mac explained the various entry points of the hotel.
“What’s the current situation of the target?” Wick asked.
“The terrorists have set afire the hotel roof and its top two floors. The fire department is not able to do anything about it due to the fear of getting shot at. The building is completely shut down.”
“What about their demands?”
“None so far.”
“Where’s Stan?” Wick finally asked.
Jessica and Mac looked at each other. They didn’t know how to say this. Mac finally decided to tell him. Wick’s reaction was of pure shock and sadness. He and Stan had worked together on more than one occasion. He was a good soldier and a great man. No one spoke for a long time. Wick stared out of the window. His teeth clenched.
Helms was waiting for the team a block away from the American General Center. As soon as the SUV came to a stop near him, Helms got in.
Wick looked at him. Helms looked tired, with bags under his eyes. He seemed genuinely relieved finding Wick and Eddie in one piece. The SUV moved towards the American General Center.
“Sam and Eddie, thank you.” Helms started with the one thing he wanted to say in person from the moment Wick and Eddie had agreed to go ahead with the suicide mission of getting Josh Fletcher out of the Taliban stronghold.
“Thank you, sir, but yesterday is old news. Why are we here?” Eddie said.
Wick just kept a straight face, hiding the storm brewing inside him since he heard about Stan.
“What I am going to ask you is dangerous and will have long-term repercussions, but we are left with no other choices. So, if any of you do not want to go ahead with what I am going to ask you for, you can just open the door and leave.”
“No matter what, I’m in, sir,” Jessica spoke before anyone else. She had decided to go ahead with whatever hair-brained plan Helms had to kill those bastards. This was personal for her, more than others.
“Thank you, Jessica, but I would still prefer if you would hear what’s ahead for you. As per my sources in the White House, the terrorists have not put forth any demands. That could only mean two things. Either they are waiting for something before they tell us what they intend to do with the hostages, or they simply don’t have any demands. In the second scenario, the situation is more terrifying. No demands mean they probably will kill everyone and may take the whole building down with them. I tried to explain this to Hancock, but he is not listening to anyone except Walter Raborn, and Raborn is somehow convinced that they will call. With me telling you all this, we are already in grey territory and if we proceed to take things in our hands, then this will definitely be considered as a crime of the highest degree. I’m already at my retirement age and I can live with this blot for the rest of my life but all of you have a long career and life ahead so asking you to sacrifice everything on my wish is selfish and wrong.”
He paused and spoke again, “Now I ask again, think about your options and if you want to leave it from here, you are welcome. No hard feelings.” Helms looked at them, evaluating the five faces.
“I’m in,” Jessica repeated here stance.
“Me too.” Mac was second.
“Count me too.” Eddie was third.
“I’m in, sir.” The guy whom Wick was not yet introduced to, was the fourth.
They all looked at Wick, who was still silent. “I need to talk to you in private,” he said, looking at Helms. He opened his side of the door and got out. Helms looked uneasily at the rest of the crew and then followed Wick’s lead.
Wick walked till he was at a respectable distance from the SUV. He turned around and found the NSA Director walking behind him. In the bright street
light, Wick observed Helms carefully. His shoulders slouched, his walk was slow, and his face lacked its usual charisma. This was not the Helms Wick had known all these years.
“What’s going on?” Wick directly cut to the chase when Helms was a comfortable distance from him.
“What do you mean?”
“I can understand your frustration with Hancock and Raborn but there is something that you are not telling us.”
Helms stared at Wick for a moment longer. His face was blank. Helms didn’t know how his own face looked right now. Was he so obvious? Was he losing his grip? Maybe he was getting too old that people could now read him like an open book.
“Where is Olivia?” Wick asked. He knew Olivia was doing an internship in the Onyx. He didn’t know which division of the Onyx.
“How do you…?” Helms let the question disappear in the air. He was surprised at Wick’s awareness. How did he know this? All he understood was that it was futile to hide his situation from Wick. “She is in the hotel.”
“Onyx?”
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
“Not sure. Her number is not reachable.”
“Last contact?”
“Eight hours ago.”
“Is this why you want this crack team?”
“No,” Helms retorted.
“What if she’s dead?”
“It’s a possibility.” Helms was slowly finding his composure. The steely determination in Wick’s eyes was giving him strength too. From the moment he had heard Olivia’s and Martha’s voices on the phone, he had been emotionally unhinged. Now he felt as if he was getting back into his element.
“What if she is alive but dies in the skirmish?”
“I have thought about it. The priority is to save most of the hostages.”
“You know, no one can guarantee a win here,” Wick said.
“I know.”
“What’s the plan?”
Helms signaled at the American General Center. “There is a chopper waiting at the top of this building. I have pulled some strings to get special permission for it to fly despite restrictions in air traffic. It will take you to the top of the Onyx. Because of the fire, that is probably the only place where the terrorists are not looking. You will find five bags with the required ammo, Kevlar vests and fireproof clothes at the helipad.”
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 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, 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 round of 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 by 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 ho
ur 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.