by Jim Riley
Oberg gave me about sixty seconds to get used to all my gear before he came back online. “Listen up. I need to brief you, then you’re going to be turned over to someone else.”
Fuck. Every time I got used to someone, I was handed off like a two-dollar hooker at a bachelor party. Oberg wasn’t anyone I’d go get drinks with, but at least I was starting to figure him out. I didn’t complain, though. It would have seemed unprofessional.
“Here it is.” His tone had changed, and it seemed more serious. Almost apologetic. “The situation is that we have a group of twenty-four armed men that have taken over the JP Goldstein building.” He went on to lay out the briefing information using the standard SMEAC format. SMEAC is an acronym for Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration and Logistics, Command and Signal. Much of the information I knew. For that matter, some of the information had come from me. That didn’t matter. The purpose of a briefing was to make sure everyone, and I mean everyone, was on the same page. One of most dangerous things about any tactical situation, besides hesitation at a critical moment, was a communications failure. No matter how insignificant the information seemed to be, everyone had to be on the same sheet of music.
The SMEAC went somewhat according to Hoyle at first, with me finding out there were actually twenty-four known terrorists in the building. I had only seen part of them. They were armed with automatic small arms. No demands had been made yet, but a dialogue had been started. The black case I had seen had, in fact, been a bomb.
However, the real bomb was the one Oberg dropped on me. He had paused, and at first, I wondered if it was simply for effect. Until he informed me that the bomb wasn’t ordinary. It was a WMD. Nuclear, to be exact.
“A suitcase bomb?” I thought back on all the stories I had heard about the weaponry coming out of Russia. At first, the tales had seemed more like fiction … then someone had defected and eventually acknowledged the existence of such things. Still, I never thought one would ever make it to our shores.
“Yep.” Oberg went on with the briefing, stopping every once in a while to ask me if I was tracking. He told me that the terrorists were holding two-hundred-and-some-odd prisoners in the cafeteria of the building on the fourth floor. They hadn’t announced their conditions for release yet. According to them, all the exterior doors were booby trapped, and all approaches to the building were monitored. If anyone tried to approach, they would detonate the bomb. HRT was taking them at their word on that.
“No unobservable approaches?” I asked. I assumed I knew the answer, but I had to ask.
“Only the one you got your gear through.”
“Any real tiny operators on your team?”
He laughed at that one but didn’t respond.
“Mission?” What I was wanting to hear was the mission objective or objectives. I had a feeling I knew what it was going to be, but, once again, it had to be laid out in no uncertain terms.
“Secure the bomb, and do not allow it to be detonated.” That sounded simple.
“Prisoners? Second objective?”
“Not your concern.” It was cold, but it was obvious. I knew it was the correct decision, as I’m sure everyone else in the TOC and CP did. It didn’t make it easy, but there was no other way. If that bomb went off, it was all a moot point anyway.
“ROE?” I asked, wanting to know the rules of engagement. This was the stuff that lawsuits were made of. Killing someone wasn’t the problem. Killing someone outside of the ROE could bring both civil and sometimes criminal consequences. I had a feeling, based on my mission and the consequences if I failed, the ROE were going to be extremely lax. I was not prepared for what he told me, though.
“There aren’t any.”
“Clarify.”
“How much clearer can I be?” Oberg sounded frustrated, but I knew that he would have asked the exact same question I just did.
“Who else is in the TOC?”
He paused then said, “Stinson, me, and Master Sergeant Todd Davis.”
“What’s a Master Sergeant doing there?”
“It’s his equipment, and he’s going to be on the mic when you move out.”
“I’m a little confused. Is he an advisor or is this some kind of military mission now?” I knew the Posse Comitatus Act prohibited the military from being utilized to act as law enforcement on U.S. soil. What I didn’t know was that there were exceptions to that rule.
“Joint venture.”
I wasn’t getting to where I wanted to go quick enough, so I flexed my muscles a little. “Put me on speaker, Oberg.” He complied.
“Gentleman, I feel like we’re about to have a party, and the surprise is going to be on me.”
“What else do you need to know?” It was Stinson. I recognized his voice.
“Let me be succinct. We have a nuclear device in the building, along with two-hundred-plus hostages. We have a terrorist group at the controls. We have the best assault team in the world cooling their heels and probably pissed off at not getting the opportunity of their career. You have a forty-seven-year-old SWAT guy with some Star Wars equipment who is going to find the bomb and secure it. To do that, you have given me the green light to kill anyone that gets in my way or jeopardizes my mission in any way. By implication, that includes civilian hostages as well. Should I fail, we will no doubt all be blown to hell. Do I have it correct?”
“Sounds right to me.” It was Stinson again.
“Who owns this mission?”
“It’s a joint mission.”
“Bullshit. If it goes bad, someone’s going on the chopping block.”
“It’s me.” It was a new voice that I didn’t recognize.
“Is that you, Master Sergeant?”
“No. This is Colonel Percy Rodriguez.”
I hadn’t heard him come into the room and assumed Oberg had simply failed to, or been told not to, tell me he was there.
“Very well, Colonel. Do I have the situation correct, as I laid it out?”
“You seem to.”
I was wanting a little more feedback and wasn’t getting anything. There was silence, and then Rodriguez spoke again.
“You up to doing this, Sergeant Moffat?” It wasn’t a question, but a challenge.
“Are there any other options?”
“No.”
“Then I guess it doesn’t matter if I’m up to it or not.”
“Talk plain and get to the point, Sergeant.”
“I have seen firsthand how the government will throw the simple soldier or police officer under the bus when things don’t go right. Just ask the HRT sniper at Ruby Ridge. I have no hesitations about doing a risky mission or throwing myself on a grenade for my men. But I’ll be damned if I will be a scapegoat if things go bad. I feel pretty exposed here. If this bomb goes off, all you’ll have to do is say that some rogue cop from Colorado played hero and got half of St. Louis blown up.”
“Stand by.” It was Rodriguez.
The seconds ticked by, and eventually I heard a female voice over the line. “Please hold for Admiral Temple.”
I recognized the name and knew that Admiral Joseph Temple was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Go ahead, Admiral,” the female voice said.
“Sergeant Moffat?”
“Yes sir.” I was out of my league here and knew it.
“Admiral Temple of the Joint Chiefs of Staff here. I understand you have some concerns about your mission.”
“Uh. Well. I was uh, just, uh ... ”
“Let me make this perfectly clear for you, so you don’t have to worry about it. The mission you have been asked to do is for the good and national security of your country. We are breaking new ground here by acting in conjunction with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and quite honestly, we don’t know how it will end up. In hindsight, we may all be branded as criminals for violating the constitutional laws of the land. Then again, we may be looked at as visionaries. It really doesn’t matter right now.
If you fail at your mission, you won’t be around to be prosecuted. I will. However, I can and do promise you that you will not be made a scapegoat. You will be labeled a hero, no matter what the outcome.”
“Pardon me, Admiral, but I don’t care if I’m called a hero. I just don’t want to be called a traitor or a rogue.”
“I promise.”
“Fair enough.”
“Then make it happen, son, and good luck.”
Normally, I would have found it to be pretty heady stuff to be talking to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but by this time, my “overwhelmed” meter had been pegged.
Chapter Five
I had been in my jumpsuit and LBV for about thirty minutes by this time and was starting to feel comfortable in them. I had even gotten used to the see-through information constantly in front of my eyes and had noticed that when the subgun wasn’t in my hand, the crosshairs disappeared from my HUD. A new voice sounded off in my ear, and I assumed I had been handed off to the Master Sergeant.
“That you, Master Sergeant?”
“It’s me, but you can just call me Sarge. Dell, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, Dell. Let’s show you what you’ve got to play with.”
If I died now, I would die happy. I had the coolest equipment known to man in my hands. Even if I’d had a year, I probably couldn’t have learned to exploit it to its full potential. I had about ten minutes.
He began with my helmet. Not only did it transmit what I was hearing, seeing, and saying back to the TOC, they could control it from there. That’s how it had come on when I first put it on, I discovered. The view of the HUD could switch from natural light to infrared NVGs and even thermal. The TOC could also send visual data to the HUD. For instance, in this case, Sarge put a layout of the first floor of the building in front of my eyes. As if that weren’t enough, he also told me the helmet and shield had ballistic resistant capabilities equivalent to a level IV ballistic armor.
I found out the jumpsuit I was wearing also had a level III rating. Pretty amazing, I thought. Bulletproof from ankle to neck, and it didn’t weight much more than a pair of blue jeans.
Next came the best part. The weapon system. I had been chomping at the bit to get to it. The reason there was no bolt on the weapon, Sarge explained, was that there was no empty cartridge to expend. Instead of the bullet being driven down the barrel via an explosion from burning gunpowder, the bullets were propelled using electromagnetic propulsion. He began to give me an overview of the quantum physics technology involved when I stopped him.
“Don’t care, Sarge. Tell me it works every time, and let’s skip it.”
He did give me the in-flight and terminal ballistics of the bullets, though, since it was pertinent. They were a .28 caliber, specially-built bullet that traveled about the same speed as some slower 9mm handgun rounds at 1050 fps and weighed about as much as well. There were also frangible, which meant they came apart on impact. The end result was that it was a very effective subsonic bullet that maximized what it could from its weight and speed. Since there wasn’t any gunpowder exploding in the chamber or coming out of the barrel, and since the bullet traveled below the sound barrier, eliminating the sonic crack, it was, for all practical purposes, the first truly silenced firearm. I responded with the only remark I could think of that captured my amazement, “Cooool.”
Without getting too technical, Sarge did tell me that the battery for the unit was in the stock of the gun, and that’s why it was so heavy back there. He said that one of the few frailties of the weapon was that if you lost the battery pack, it was of no more use as a weapon than a baseball bat. He warned me not to be butt-stroking anyone. Clearing the weapon was a simple matter of flipping the lever I had seen on the right side of the receiver, which released the barrel, causing it to break open and hinge forward.
“Like a Daisy BB gun,” I commented.
“Sort of. Maybe a $68,000 one, I guess. It’s called a M28.”
“If it’s silent anyway, why the suppressor?”
“It’s not suppressed. Just a heavy barrel to offset the weight of the stock. Otherwise it would be way out of balance.”
I whistled in reply. Nothing but the best. I wondered if I could get Chief Stalone to buy ten of these for the team.
“What’s the ops plan?” I asked Sarge, before he got into the toys on my vest.
“You’re gonna have to go back up the wire cable shaft to the sixth floor.”
“Can’t.”
“What’da you mean, you can’t?”
“I barely fit coming down, and that was without all this gear on.” I hesitated, reminded myself to improvise, and suggested, “I can strip down and haul it up with a rope, then get refitted up there.” I was dreading that climb.
“Okay. Once we get you up there, you’ll enter the sixth floor the same way you left the third floor. Through a broom closet. From there, we’ll get you down to the room where the bomb is.
“I saw those guys with the bomb on the third floor. How did it end up on the sixth floor?”
“No clue why they moved it, but we know for a fact it is on the sixth floor now.”
I was hesitant to question him but needed to feel as certain as they seemed to be. “You’re sure?”
“Thermal imaging. We have several satellites tasked to this incident. We know where everyone in the building is. Well, almost everyone. There are a few dead spots.”
“Dead spots where?”
“Like where you are right now, and the west stairwell.”
I wasn’t overly concerned. Hell, I was impressed as all get-out with what they were able to do.
“After you get to the sixth floor, you’ll have two patrols of two men each to deal with. Then, all that’s left is the office where the head guys are holed up with the bomb. Once you get in there and control the bomb, HRT will hit the building and come get you and the package.”
“That’s all that’s left, huh?”
“Piece of cake.”
“Oorah.”
“That’s the SEALs. Army is Hooah.”
“You Army, Sarge?”
“Delta.”
“What does Delta say?”
“Nothing. But Hooah will do for right now.”
“Can I trust the Colonel, Sarge?” It was a question out of left field, but I needed to know.
“I do.”
“Good enough.”
Sarge was just about to start giving me the lowdown on the rest of the tools in my arsenal when he stopped. “Company’s coming.” My HUD suddenly switched to the floorplan for the bottom floor, and I watched as two black dots moved down the marked-off hallways. “They may be coming your way, so let’s get prepared.”
I walked over to the light switch, flicked it off, and kicked the overalls to the side. I wanted the room to look right if the guy stuck his head in. I still had a lot of my gear in the corner that hadn’t been hidden away yet, but he would have to come all the way into the room to see that. If that happened, I would already be committed to do something with him anyway.
I noticed that as soon as the lights went out, my HUD went to infrared, and I wondered if Sarge had done that from the TOC, or if was an automatic thing. I let the curiosity pass, since I had other things to think about at the moment.
“They’re stopping,” Sarge told me even though I was also watching them on my HUD. “They have been guarding this end of the building all day but haven’t been too interested in this last hallway until now.”
“Any way they’re picking up noise or radio transmissions from here?”
“No, we’re monitoring their UHF channel. We’d know if they were curious about something.”
“What if they were notified by cell phone?” I was pretty pleased with myself for thinking of that.
“Nope. We’re now covering all transmissions emanating from the building, as well as eavesdropping on several conversations between the bad guys.”
“What are the conversat
ions yielding?”
“We’ve got two hours before they blow that building up.”
“I thought there were some negotiations going on. Isn’t there a chance to stall?”
“They’re negotiating just to keep us out of there. They haven’t even given us any real demands yet. They came here to blow that building up. Nothing else. They just don’t know that we know. That makes you our only hope.”
I had been watching the black dots on the HUD. They had stopped down the hall and around the corner from my room and were just standing around. Suddenly one of the dots started moving my way. The other stayed behind. I didn’t know what it meant but I didn’t like it.
“Don’t do anything unless you absolutely have to. We don’t want you taking on this whole building. Let him go unless he gives you no recourse.”
“Roger that,” I whispered from the off-side of a filing cabinet which was on the hinge side of the door, and where I’d taken cover. I watched as the black dot walked into a couple of rooms down the hall from the equipment room where I was. It was kind of like playing a video game, and if Sarge would have told me that by putting the crosshairs on him and pushing a button I could have zapped him, it wouldn’t have surprised me. Unfortunately, even with all the next-century weaponry I had, death was still going to come directly from me to them. Or from them to me, I guess.
“He may be looking for the crapper. There’s one down there but it’s past the equipment room. Be ready.”