by Chase Austin
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 were also 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.
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 premise 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 of 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 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 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 approached forward carefully once the flash subsidized. The lobby was deserted. The men took 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 of the hall. The commandos padded down noiselessly in a 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 the others with his right fist to wait.
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, taking the cover of the wall and gently turned the d
oorknob 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 would have thrown in grenades first in the room, 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.
The next was a grenade that crossed the threshold and rolled in the corridor. The blast was earth-shattering. The other commandos immediately withdrew.
Shahrukh, in the ballroom, heard the disjointed exchange of gunfire with concern.
So did Wick, Jessica and everyone else in the team who were still at 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, bathing 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 in the second-floor lobby through the back stairs 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 back and one got hit on his leg. The rest of the men turned around to face the two shooters and shot blindly. Blake who was 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 had the incisive power to penetrate the hallway parapets behind which the terrorists took cover. The bullets from the enemy had no such barriers.
For the first time in his life, Blake felt helpless. The enemy was fast and agile. There was no time to reorganize the team against the assault.
“Grenades, throw grenades,” Blake shouted.
However, the terrorists acted first. A hand grenade sailed out from the bend and landed in the lobby near the dead bodies of the first line of the commandos. The rest of the men had less than 3 seconds to react. They all moved back, but the retreat was not fast enough. The grenade exploded with an ear-splitting blast. It peppered the two first-in-line commandos with steel ball bearings. Blood, flesh, smoke, and dust.
The four terrorists holed up in the room suddenly sprang into action, leaving their safety nets. They felt the waves of the blast in their rooms and a balloon of dust rising. Their guns aimed at the broken door.
Blake and his men were now jammed in between the two shooting teams. The tables had turned, and Blake was acutely aware that his team’s chances had dropped severely. Seven commandos were still alive but one of them was badly hurt. Six men against six terrorists. The commandos needed to regroup quickly if they had to survive. Blake spoke in his lip-mic and his men quickly re-organized in two teams, of four and two, facing opposite directions.
Blake led the team of four who would be taking on the terrorists in the room. The second team that had two Marines faced the other side. After a pause of a couple of minutes, Blake fired four tear gas canisters in the room. At the other side of the lobby, two grenades flew in the direction of the shooters. The two terrorists behind the bend had already expected this and had taken cover. Inside the room, amidst the bullets and tear gas, the four terrorists felt the noose tightening. The 3,000 square feet room had suddenly started to shrink. Death seemed very real. They all looked at each other and found the fear each of them felt reflecting on the other faces as well.
Two Marines decided to flank the room from the other side. They paused at the edge of the open door and then quickly jumped the space to get to the safety of the wall.
The militants saw shadows in the smoke and pressed the triggers. Bullets raced to the door to meet flesh and blood.
The commandos heard the crackling assault rifles and tried to speed up, but a couple of stray bullets still found their way into one Marine’s calf muscle. The other one just got lucky.
The Marine duo covering the opposite side of the hallway slowly moved towards the bend. They could not wait for the two shooters to disappear into the building.
In the dust and smoke they rapidly moved forward, taking positions. Crossing the bend, they found another straight hallway at the end of which stood a shadow. As soon as the silhouette spotted the Marines, he started firing. They took cover and retaliated. The silhouette took advantage of this momentary break and disappeared again. When the Marine duo checked the hallway, it was vacant. They signaled each other and the two of them rushed towards the spot.
The visibility was still low. Fifty yards in the corridor, the first Marine had to stop. He had accidentally tripped a booby trap with his foot and it only meant one thing.
One of the Marines had thrown two grenades in the hotel room when the blast in the adjacent corridor shook the floor.
Blake was two men down. His own situation wasn’t good either. His ears were ringing and his brain was numb.
In the room, the four terrorists were now three. The two grenade blasts in the room had taken the life of one. These three had to now find a way to get out of the mess. They decided to shoot their way out of it.
In the hallway, three distinct gunshots from the room. And two distinct footsteps from across the bend, coming for them. Blake looked at his men. There was no way there were going to get out of here alive.
“Cap, we will be fight till death.” Blake saw one of the injured Marines trying to get up. The other injured Marine had decided to step up too. Including Blake, they were a total of five men still standing amidst the massacre.
Chapter 49
Onyx Hotel, The Marina, Houston
Mac was glued to his laptop’s screen. He saw four bright dots, one over another. The team had landed on the roof.
“Everything good?” Mac hissed in the earpiece.
“Yes, what next?” Jessica asked.
“You will find a door somewhere to your left. That’s your entry.” Mac’s job as a guide had begun.
“What’s happening?” Wick asked as he heard the sound of bullets in the building.
“As per the internet live feeds, there is a battle going on at the second floor. A MARSOC team was seen to be going in thirty minutes earlier.”
“You can watch this on the Internet?” Wick was surprised.
“Yes, people with mobile cameras are live feeding this on their social media channels.”
“I thought there was a media blanket on covering this.”
“Yes, but on social media, people post all kind of shit.”
“Bloody hell. If we can see it, then the terrorist handlers can also watch it and alert their men in the building. Can you check if there is any live feed about us landing on the roof?”
“Okay, but it will take some time.”
“
Do it fast, I need to know if the enemy knows that we are here.”
Twenty minutes later, Mac came back with an answer. No one had expected anyone to land at the burning floor, so no camera was pointed at it after it was done burning for several hours.
Chapter 50
Onyx Hotel, The Marina, Houston
Blake and his men now stood in the hallway facing both sides. Let the enemy come for them rather than the other way around.