Let me pause long enough here to give you a quick primer on hostage rescue in the twenty-first century. It is a lot different from what it was when I got into the hop & pop business a couple of decades ago. The first thing we used to do in a hostage situation was to control the phones. If the bad guys wanted to talk to anybody, they had to go through us. Nowadays, tangos are more than likely to have digital cell phones. They can pretty much call who they want to, and breaking into their conversations can be difficult. And then, there is the Internet—with its own phone capabilities, E-mail, and instant messaging. So controlling access to the bad guys is a lot more complicated than it was just a few years ago. So, to put it simply, the dynamics have changed, and we have had to change with them.
Now we carry scanners that allow us to monitor digital cell networks. We can shut down the cellular repeater stations in a specific neighborhood if we have to. And we know how to hack our way into most ISPs11 so that we can commandeer a system being used by terrorists to communicate.
But that didn’t help us here and now. Now, I had to get the perimeter set up. I had to get floor plans of the school, and I had to make sure that every one of the assault team was reading from the same page of the score. There was not a lot of time. If we didn’t get these kids out within a couple of hours or so, the press was going to make our job impossible. You look skeptical. Don’t be. Hostage rescue and publicity are not compatible. Take my word for it: the clock was ticking.
Takeover plus 00:21:44. The perimeter was contained. There were only three tangos—we knew that for certain. And that fact told me they’d have to hold the hostages in tight groups to control ’em. Our audio equipment, backed up by the sniper teams, indicated that students were being kept in the two front-side classrooms on the left side of the schoolhouse as we faced it, and the sixteen adults were crowded into the principal’s office in the right rear, guarded by an unknown female tango. I had my sniper team set up in the rear, and two teams from the Metropolitan Police armed assault group SO-19 set up in the front. Most of the work a sniper does is intelligence gathering, not shooting. This was certainly the case here, as we tracked the tangos’ every move.
We had our first lucky break when Digger O’Toole was able to sneak and peek close enough to the school to set some listening devices close in. We were also able to lay our hands on a second laser mike, courtesy of No Such Agency. These devices can take sounds off a window at a distance of 150 yards. We use them in denied areas like Moscow and Beijing to eavesdrop on officials who think they are secure. NSA’s London station had one in transit out near Lakenheath Air Force Base. It was choppered in within the hour, delivered onto the playing field at St. Paul’s School on the South Bank of the Thames, and rushed over Hammersmith bridge. I’d already set one Big Ear out front. The second was positioned at the rear.
00:42:21. From what I could see and hear from the communications equipment we were able to muster, Elevator Lady and her two compadres expected us to hit the doors simultaneously. And that was the way they were defending the building. The Cubanol bomb was the big question. No one had mentioned it, and from what my sniper teams could see, T-3, who was holding the students in the right-hand classroom hostage, was keeping it out of sight.
00:43:11. Mick called into the school on the phone line. I listened in as the telephone in the principal’s office brinng-brinnged three times. Then a female voice answered.
“What do you lot want?”
Mick’s voice was even and reassuring. “My name is Owen. I’m one of the people outside. We want to know that the children are all right. We’d like to stay in contact with you. And we’d like to be able to retrieve the principal’s body from the front steps.”
“The children are fine. Take the bitch away. But I don’t want to talk to you.”
“What do you in there want?”
“Independence for Northern Ireland.”
“That’s something I can’t do for you,” Mick said, “and I’m not sure that holding a bunch of children is going to help you achieve it. Let’s talk about things we can agree on.”
“Sod off.” The phone in his hand went dead.
“Fuck,” Mick said to no one in particular.
00:46:10. I let Rotten and Boomerang work on an assault plan. Like most SpecWar commanders, I believe in bottom-up planning. So I try to let my senior enlisted do the initial work. They know their people and they’re usually better equipped to plan an op than I. As usual, they’d been war-gaming in their heads for almost an hour now, and what they came up with was so good it was almost the kind of plan I’d devise myself.
They’d designed a keep-it-simple-stupid operation. With only three targets to neutralize, and the main doors booby-trapped, we’d send one two-man and two three-man elements through the windows and take ’em all down in a matter of seconds. It was straightforward and it was workable. But it lacked something… Roguish. You see, if my men and I can think of an assault plan, it’s probable that the bad guys have thought of the same possibilities. And so I always like to add a little something that no one thinks of, to make my takedown foolproof.
00:51:00. In this case, I happened to think about how a bunch of Peruvian special forces rescued a passel of hostages inside the Japanese embassy in Lima a few years back. The hostages had been taken by a group of Marxist terrorists from the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. Peruvian special forces that had been trained by my old CIA pal Jim Wink12 tunneled their way under the embassy and then struck from three points at once, disorienting the terrorists and bringing all but one of the hostages out.
I’d noticed a sewer line running parallel to the school. In London, sewer lines are often six to eight feet in diameter, and they are used to conduit electrical cable and other materials through foundations and into buildings. I asked Mick for a street plan and discovered that one of the sewer feeders on Latymer Court ran directly under the school basement. I dispatched Nigel and Digger into the sewer to run a fast recon. The answer from my now-stinky SEALs was that we could work our way directly below the school kitchen and pantry, both of which were in the basement. My idea was to place a shaped charge there, and use the explosion to cause a diversion. And just as the tangos’ attention was sidetracked, we’d hit Brook Green School in three places at once.
01:09:40. Mick Owen called. “The PM’s people are calling. I’ve been ordered to set up negotiations in the next hour, Dick.”
“Stall ’em. You know and I know that if we start talking, they’ll kill someone to show how serious they are.”
“I know it, and you know it, but—”
I cut him off. “Mick—I’m almost set. Give me half an hour.”
“Either you are a ‘Go’ in fifteen minutes, or I’ve got to stand you down.”
“Roger-roger, Mick. Fucking loud and fucking clear.” Shit. Time was running out. Either we were going to move now, or this fucking thing was going to drag out for a l-o-n-g time and more people would die. I pulled Goober off sniping detail. He’d go in with me as Alpha group. Rotten Randy, Nigel, and Nod would form the second team—Bravo—while Boomerang, Timex, and Digger would be the third assault group: Charlie. With his SAS snipers covering the front, Mick moved the SO-19 sniper team to the rear of the building. If either team had a clean shot, by which I mean a head shot, they would take it—but only at the precise instant we initiated.
Now, two of our tangos were women. That did nothing to make me alter my assault plan—or my resolve to take no prisoners. Many cops and soldiers have a natural hesitation about killing women. I do not. In fact, my men and I train so that we can shoot women without thinking about it at all. Because in that split second of hesitation, the woman will kill you. Besides, I am an EEO kind of Rogue, and I believe that all tangos, male and female alike, should get an equal chance to ride that magic carpet to HELL.
01:14:21. I radioed Mick that we were a GO. We split up and began our approach. The approach is the most difficult and least practiced element of dynamic entry. M
ost teams cannot approach their target without sounding like a herd of elephants. Moreover, they do not utilize cover, so the bad guys can see them coming. Not us. Our approach would be slow, deliberate—and silent. We would use the lengthening shadows and come from oblique angles.
I wanted Elevator Lady all for myself. So Goober and I took the port-most classroom, which would be white seven o’clock on the Colour Clock Code favored by SAS assault teams—the left front side of the building. Boomerang, Timex, and Digger took black one (rear right-hand side), and Rotten, Nigel, and Nod, who still sounded like a countertenor, would hit white six and take down T-3, to avenge their fallen shipmate.
We’d changed into black assault gear: BDUs, CQC vests, Kevlar helmets and goggles for the guys, and a black watch cap and goggles for me, because I hate the fucking helmets. I’d made sure that Rotten had brought our own Motorola radios. At least they worked 50 percent of the time, which gave us an advantage over Brit comms, which I’d discovered were as worthless as the electrical wiring in an MGTC. We all carried suppressed MP5s. There was a reason for this. First, submachine guns make an awful lot of noise, and I didn’t want to panic the kids or the adults. Second, maybe we’d get off the first bursts without being noticed, which would mean we’d be able to neutralize (read kill) the baddies sans problems. And third, if we heard a normal-sounding shot, it wouldn’t be us shooting.
01:17:30. I led the approach, moving cautiously from the mouth of Latymer Court, keeping well out of any ambient light thrown by the work lights shining on the school. To my left was a block of three-story row houses. I used them for cover, moving from house to house, my MP5 at low ready. Behind me, Goober carried the six-foot assault ladder with padding on both rail ends. The ladder would be set just below the windowsill, allowing me to rake the window with the steel bar I carried in a scabbard, then make entry. Six feet behind Goober, Rotten Randy, Nigel, and Nod moved cautiously, Nod and Nigel carrying the ladder and Rotten Randy providing rearguard cover.
We’d progressed not a hundred feet when I heard Mick’s voice in my ear. “Fuck-fuck-fuck.”
I silent-signaled a stop. “What’s up?”
“Chopper,” he said. “Fucking television news chopper is crossing into the no-fly zone. Get your people out of sight now.”
We did not need this kind of shit. Not now. Not after the day I’d been through. If it were up to me, I would have had the police shoot the fucking thing down. But that would have been politically imprudent. It didn’t matter that by trying to get pictures, these assholes, whoever they were, were putting people’s lives in danger. They didn’t fucking care. It was all grist for their news mills. Worse, television choppers are now commonly equipped with night vision atop their four-hundred-millimeter lenses, so we couldn’t just duck into the shadows and wait ’em out.
It wasn’t fifteen seconds before I heard the whomp-whomp-whomp of the chopper somewhere out there, the noise getting louder and louder. We had to disappear. I ran for the closest house and tested the door. It was, of course, locked. I smashed it with my foot just below the doorknob, busting it wide open. We’d pay the owners later. “Inside.”
We crammed into the vestibule of the darkened house and waited. The chopper engine thundered closer, echoing off the neighborhood’s houses. I pressed the transmit button. “WTF, Mick?”
There was silence in my ear. I didn’t like the stillness because it gave me time to think about all the things that could go wrong.
• The windows might not shatter quickly and we’d get hung up silhouetted against them.
• The windows might blow in, right atop the hostages.
• T-3 might explode his device and we’d all be vaporized.
• A single hostage might be killed or injured because of something we’d forgotten to factor into our plan.
And then, the rolling thunder began to recede, and Mick’s voice came back to me, breaking into my pessimistic reverie. “Solved,” he said. “You can get on with it.”
01:21:21. We maintained radio silence as we crept through the most dangerous segment of the approach: the thirty yards of bare ground that separated the grove of chestnut trees from the school building. The work lights had been focused into the windows, which gave us some security, as anyone staring out would be blinded by blue halogen lamps. But it didn’t guarantee we wouldn’t be seen.
By the time I reached the corner of the red brick schoolhouse I had sweat through my BDUs, even though the temperature had fallen into the low forties, and I was wet from the drizzle. I let Nod, Nigel, and Randy slip past Goober and me, crabbing toward their target window.
01:22:35. We began the setup. I unslung my MP5 and made sure I had a full mag loaded and a round in the chamber. I went over Goober’s equipment, and he inspected mine. And then, looking down the foundation at Rotten, we began to set our ladders in tandem, bringing them up under the windowsill, and setting them firmly in the wet grass.
Except, setting them was a problem. The earth was soggy, and the ladder feet would not plant firmly. Yeah, that meant it was Doom on Dickie time again. But to be honest, language didn’t matter, because whether I was being screwed in Vietnamese, or by Mother Nature, it was no fun being fuckeefuckeed.
I let my fingers do the talking. Next to me, Goober stood, ready to KILL. But tonight he’d have another assignment. His job would be to brace the ladder by jamming his back against the wall and holding it firmly in place while I made the assault. With luck, I’d make it inside and hit Elevator Lady before she could react. Goober’s face told me he wanted to be more integral to the takedown than play the buttress role. Well, that might have been the case if Butch was alive and we still had a three-man assault team. But it was impossible now.
It was almost Show Time. I tested the ladder. It was solid. I pulled my goggle strap tight and topped everything off with the black knit watch cap. Goober looked me over and tapped me once on the left shoulder, signifying that I was good to go.
But before we initiated, I wanted an intel dump from the sniper teams and a confirmation that all my men were ready to go over the rail. We didn’t want the bad guys right in the window as we hit, even with the explosive diversion in the basement. And we had to attack simultaneously. I pressed the “transmit” button on the radio and whispered, “Sit-rep?” into the throat mike.
“Bravo go.” That was Rotten Randy’s basso profundo.
Boomerang’s nasal voice echoed in my earpiece: “Charlie go.”
“Sniper one go.”
“Sniper two go.”
“IED go.”
I glanced up toward the light reflecting off the windowpane. My heart was thumping in my chest. I slid around and put my right foot on the bottom-most ladder rung, testing its position. Goober’s eyes stared as I put my weight on the ladder and went up one rung, then another, hunching over as I climbed to keep myself well below the windowsill so as not to silhouette myself.
At the third rung I was almost doubled over to keep out of sight. Which made it…Show Time.
“Initiate!”
I hadn’t even gotten the third syllable out when a huge explosion shook the schoolhouse. I felt the concussion in the soles of my assault boots. But I didn’t have time to think about it. I popped up and raked the glass around the windowsill with the steel rod in my left hand, shattering it and making a path for us.
It broke into hundreds of shards and fell around me. Goober suddenly nudged up beside me and let three three-round bursts go, providing suppressive fire. Shit—he wasn’t supposed to be there but the ladder didn’t fucking move, so who cared. I brought my MP5 up and went through the window—goddamn frame snagged my watch cap and pulled the fucking thing off—swung my butt high to clear the sill (don’t need no friggin’ glass fraggin’ Dickie’s ass), and brought my legs up, around, and over. I vaulted. My right boot hit the floor. Then my left.
MP5 up, I was scanning and breathing just the way I should have been. I didn’t tunnel, either: there was too fucking much rage
in me to make any mistakes. These tangos had killed one of my people, a brother SEAL. And now they’d taken innocent children hostage, which gave them a nonappealable death sentence in the book of justice I carry in my head.
At times like this, things almost always happen as if in Slo-Mo. And so, let me describe what I saw. There were thirty or so kids on the floor, all hunkered down and facing the door. Except, almost every one of their eyes had turned toward the sound of shattering glass. Their expressions told me they were about to panic—their mouths open as if to scream. In the doorway stood Elevator Lady. Her left arm clutched a blond-haired girl—a shield against anyone attacking down the corridor. EL’s extended right hand held a Czech-made Skorpion machine pistol, pointed down the corridor.
I was already inside the room by the time Elevator Lady realized she’d been snookered by the explosion downstairs. Her eyes widened when she saw me. That was when the kids began screaming. A few started to scramble to their knees. I screamed, “Down-down-down, kids. Everybody down. Everybody stay down.”
Elevator Lady swiveled, scrunched her body tight behind the kid, and began to swing the machine pistol toward the children. Toward me.
But it was much too late for her. The verdict was in—and Elevator Lady had been found guilty as charged. My MP5 was already up and off safety before she’d even begun her move. I had a perfect shoulder mold with the MP5’s retractable stock. I concentrated on putting the front sight between EL’s eyes, six inches above her young hostage’s head. I acquired a perfect sight picture, and squeezed the trigger.
At six yards, even though my heart rate may be way above 150, I always hit precisely what I aim at. A three-round burst of frangible SWAT 9-mm carbine loads caught Elevator Lady in the tiny triangle separating the bridge of her nose from her forehead. Her head literally exploded from the kinetic force of the high-energy rounds. She dropped through a cloud of her own blood, brain, and bone fragments, her left arm still clutched around the hostage.
Detachment Bravo Page 5