“That gives us time,” Zmeya said to himself. “But we’ve still got to get that copter up here.”
The Allied assault force had advanced a hundred feet inside Tower Two when they were stopped in their tracks.
The Militsiya had set up four 50-caliber machine guns at the top of the pair of escalators that connected the foyer to the first level of the building.
Just out of range for a grenade toss, the NKVD gunners had the entire sweep of the lobby, plus a thick granite railing to use as cover from return fire below.
Dozer and many of the raiders were pinned down directly across from the blown-away front entrance. While Allied soldiers, mostly the Free Canadians, had taken up positions outside the building and were exchanging gunfire with the last of the Chekskis, those assigned to the assault force were getting increasingly jammed up near the still-smoldering entranceway. The lower lobby was already dangerously crowded, and the Militsiya gunners were regularly shooting down into it with their quartet of big 50-calibers. Good cover was hard to find.
Five minutes into this, Dozer got a message from the lighthouse back on Nantucket. Two 7CAV men had been left behind to monitor the 616, and they had two intercepted messages for him. First, they’d learned from the chatter that, as part of their security plans, the NKVD had wired up every fire escape, elevator, and stairway inside Tower Two with plastic explosives—with one exception. The emergency staircase on the southeast corner of the building was still clear. This was how the NKVD would fight its way out, if it came to that. But as far as the lighthouse techs could tell, the stairway was open for both attacker and defender alike.
Dozer passed the news to Jim Cook. The JAWS commanding officer signaled to his men in the lobby, just out of the fire zone. Not a half minute later, they all signaled back. His guys had scanned the air with their electronic sniffers and confirmed the 616 intel. The entire building reeked of explosive materials. Cook’s men also added that all of the building’s elevators had been disabled.
The JAWS guys were experts in explosives and would start clearing an alternate stairway immediately, but it was impossible to say how long that would take.
Dozer grimly acknowledged Cook’s report. At least now they knew where this fight was going to take place. In the stairwell on the southeast corner of the building and in confined lobbies and hallways beyond. The Allies would still have to fight floor by floor, for 110 floors. Even Hunter’s plan said there would be no other way to do it. But there would be no spreading out into the building itself; it would be a narrow battlefield, and that usually meant lots of casualties.
Dozer returned to the radiophone and asked the lighthouse for the second message. It was just as bleak. Radio intercepts from the 616 confirmed the five missing Russian destroyers had been spotted off Long Island.
They were heading for New York City at full speed.
Chapter Forty-Four
The Cobra Brothers were in the pilots’ ready room aboard the Isakov when the call finally came.
They’d been waiting for the red radiophone to ring for the past hour. Now Don had a short conversation with the carrier’s battered communications room. Not much of the equipment was working there, but it was enough for the techs to get an emergency call from Hawk Hunter.
“He gave coordinates for five surface vessels headed south and the message: ‘Assistance appreciated,’” the tech told Don.
Scrambling their new Kamov gunships, the Cobras were airborne forty-five seconds later.
They immediately headed southwest at top speed and began long-range radar sweeps of the area where Hunter reported encountering the five ships. It took a couple of wipes, but on the third, the five blips suddenly appeared.
They were not sailing in a necklace formation; instead they were line ahead, like a spear pointed at New York City.
Yet they were all bunched together for some reason. The lead destroyer was only about a quarter mile ahead of the last ship in the group, extremely close when sailing at night. Plus, the Kamovs’ defensive weapons suites said the destroyers’ antiaircraft radars were hot and interacting.
Something else was going on here.
The Cobras’ FLIR screens suddenly picked up a small blip zipping between the ships. Flashes of antiaircraft fire were following it in the dark. Don was the first to figure it out.
“Freaking Hawk,” he said into his helmet mic. “He’s nuts. …”
“He sniffed some of the hal-lou, brother,” Phil explained. “Sometimes it takes a while for the powder to wear off.”
By that time, the Cobra Brothers were close enough to see the action through their night-vision goggles. The light show was being caused by Hunter’s clown plane flying madly between the Russian ships, taunting them to fire at him. But more than that, he was actually buzzing the bridges of the ships, doing the stop and hover, firing his M-16 into their control rooms, and then zooming off again.
He’d forced the destroyers to bunch up so they could establish patterns of cooperative fire—and they had to slow down considerably to do this. Every second they could be delayed from reaching New York would be a huge help—Hunter’s thinking all along. Plus, they would make good targets for someone with some ammo.
Both Cobras streaked over the little drama and, interpreting all its elements, fired off three bursts from their cannons at about a thousand feet. Combined, they lit up the ocean for miles.
It was their signal to Hunter.
We got this.
The Wingman understood right away. They saw him do a complete flip and then an extreme wing wag.
And then he was off, heading back to the battle in New York City.
The next ten minutes were so surreal, the Cobra Brothers thought maybe they’d somehow gotten a whiff of the powder, too.
They’d spent the scramble time taping English translations over their Kamovs’ panel lights. They’d gotten about a third of them done when the call arrived. The rest were still in Russian.
The Kamov was not unlike the AH-1 Cobra. Since it had dual controls, they could each fly one alone, without needing a copilot to ready and aim the gun. Unlike a lot of Russian helicopters that drove like trucks, the Kamov was made of composite materials and had that interesting Ugly Sister aerodynamic look. As Hunter had said, they flew like Ferraris.
They also packed a wallop. Each was carrying four Stutsia antiship missiles, plus two 30-millimeter cannons in a movable nose turret. And because this was a naval version of the Kamov, each was carrying a single 9ZN homing torpedo.
But there was a problem. The Cobras might sink two of these ships—and the first one might be a complete surprise since the destroyers were probably painting the Kamovs and assuming they were friendly aircraft that had just chased the bug away—but copters were slower than attack jets, and even if they got the first two, by that time, the gunners on the other three would have them locked in, and that would be the end of it.
But still, it had to be done.
They came out of the nearly full moon and attacked the last ship in line. Squeezing their fire buttons at the same moment, the Cobras sent two antiship missiles each rocketing off their rails. Designed to home in on electronic signals, all four slammed into an area right below the destroyer’s bridge, most likely its combat room.
The combined explosion was tremendous. The ship broke in two, this time from the top down. It was soon dead in the water and sinking—at least the Cobra Brothers knew what the green fire button on the far left of their weapons panel meant.
But the trouble was, one missile would have been enough to easily sink the ship, two for sure. Four had been overkill and instantly depleted their supply of antiship missiles.
Now they had four ships and just one torpedo apiece, though, luckily, they’d translated its switch before liftoff. But the Russian ships were now tracking them with radar-controlled guns. And those guns were going ho
t.
Phil and Don Cobra had been working together for years. Each knew what to do. Phil swooped in on the next destroyer in line, firing his nose cannons but drawing fire from the rest of the ships. Meanwhile, Don snuck in from the opposite side and laid a 9NZ torpedo right on the stern of the ship third in line. The explosion created a strange blue flame, and the destroyer split in two. One half sank immediately, the other just kept on going, but with a lot of fire and smoke.
Before the surviving ships could react, Don played the part of moving target and Phil launched his torpedo. It clipped the bow of the second destroyer, blowing it off in one huge piece, definitely a mortal wound.
It had been lucky shooting. But two destroyers remained, and all the Cobras had left were their nose cannons, with only a couple dozen shells between them. Not good odds.
They knew that all of their efforts would add up to nothing if even one of the destroyers made it to New York, so they decided to disable, if not sink, both remaining ships. It would be an extremely perilous mission, though, as it meant coming right in on a ship’s weapons-packed broadside and trying to hit its rudder or props.
They wished each other good luck, both knowing this would probably be the end.
But just as they were beginning their attack, both destroyers suddenly blew up and sank.
A little smoke, a little fire, a huge explosion of water, and then they were gone.
Just like that.
Chapter Forty-Five
Twenty minutes.
That’s how long the Allied assault force had been pinned down in the lower lobby of Tower Two.
They didn’t have the luxury of time. They had to seize this gigantic building and kill everyone inside it in just one hour. Before the army made its move. Or before the ghost destroyers of Convoy 56 showed up.
The JAWS team had begun the hairy assignment of clearing the building’s northeast stairway of booby traps, but it was going to be time-intensive. The only way the present assault force was going up was by way of the southeast stairway, which they imagined was thick with NKVD defenders by now.
But before they could do anything, they had to get out of the lower lobby.
Suddenly, someone hit the floor on Dozer’s right. The man was wearing all-black camos and had dreadlocks falling out from under his Fritz helmet.
It was Catfish Johnson, CO of the Righteous Brothers, an all-black SF unit. They specialized in highly mobile special-ops artillery, a rarity, and they were damn good. They used the 75-millimeter M-6 field gun exclusively and were providing high-caliber defensive fire against the surviving Chekskis around Tower Two. But now they were needed by those inside.
“How can we help, Bull?” Johnson asked.
The 7CAV’s commanding officer pointed out the enemy machine-gun emplacements holding up everything. Then he indicated a large exterior stained-glass window located to the left of the NKVD positions.
“I’m sure that’s a work of art,” he said of the stained-glass window, “but can you guys put a couple of rounds through it?”
“We can,” Johnson replied. “But you’ve got to know we’re loaded with highly explosive shells. Lighter to carry than that deep-penetrating stuff. So, if we put two in the hole, we’re going to start a fire. Do we want a fire in here?”
Dozer just laughed at him.
“Believe me, Cat,” he said. “If we could have figured out a way to burn this fucking building down, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
Two minutes later, Dozer saw multicolored lights streaming through the stained glass.
He yelled for everyone to hug the floor. Two violent explosions followed in quick succession, raining pieces of tinted glass down on the American fighters below.
When Dozer looked up again, there was nothing left of the machine guns or the gunners—or the stained-glass window or the escalators.
Just as Catfish had promised, though they’d also started a fire in the upper part of the foyer.
“That could be a problem,” someone called out.
But then Dozer calmly reached up and pulled the fire alarm directly over his head, saying, “If this is pressure-fed, this could be our lucky day.”
No sooner were the words said than the sprinklers in the ceiling above them exploded in carousels of water. It quickly turned into a deluge, enough to put out the fire in just a few seconds.
There was some applause, some cheers, but then the indoor rainstorm did not stop. Dozer pulled the fire alarm again, hoping to turn it off, but to no effect. In seconds, the entire assault force in the lobby was soaking wet.
Dozer blinked the water from his eyes and blew his whistle again. Mostly air bubbles came out, but the sound was loud enough to be heard.
Stuck for so long, the Allies charged through the smoky, flooded lobby, heading for the southeast stairway.
The attack was moving again.
Chapter Forty-Six
Catfish Johnson had originally positioned his M-6 mobile artillery pieces out on the WTC plaza to defend the assault force against attacks from outside Tower Two.
The cluster bomb strikes had been astonishingly effective. More than two thirds of the Chekskis, along their extensive defense crescent, had been killed. Their bodies were everywhere. And those few who’d been wounded weren’t going anywhere.
But hundreds of Chekskis were still in the area. Many of them had taken up positions inside surrounding buildings and were firing at the Allied positions around the base of Tower Two. They’d become an army of snipers.
Johnson had given the use of half his guns to the Free Canadian ground commanders to help eliminate these threats. It was a simple strategy. If someone saw a gun flash from an open window, he put an artillery shell into it.
But with the successful assist they’d given the assault team to get out of the lower lobby, at Dozer’s request, Johnson repositioned the rest of his guns facing in toward Tower Two, to help the assault force move up the southeast corner stairways, one floor at a time.
The M-6 was one of the few field artillery pieces that could be hand-transported. The secret was in its modular design. It broke down into ten primary pieces, each one light enough for one man to carry. Johnson’s men could put one together and be firing in less than two minutes.
Johnson had been on the radiophone with Dozer the entire way; he heard how the stairwells were indeed full of NKVD fighters and they weren’t giving up easily. So, they’d started an odd routine once Dozer reached the eighth floor.
Johnson had ten M-6s arrayed in front of Tower Two. Instead of battling it out with the Russian police in the eighth-floor stairwell—vertical close-in fighting was the worst—Dozer marked the contested floor with a flare shot out the nearest window. He yelled for his guys to duck, Johnson’s men put two shells through the window, and that’s all it took. The few NKVD gunmen who survived the mini-barrage escaped to the next floor, where Dozer started the whole process over again.
This wasn’t how it was planned at all—literally clearing the building one entire floor at a time had been anticipated, before they realized there was really only one way up—but this approach worked amazingly well. Going up one or even two floors at a time, they reached the thirtieth floor in just ten minutes. They were on the thirty-fifth floor just a few minutes later, and they had no reason to slow down.
But that’s when Johnson started doing some calculations.
His M-6s could elevate to seventy-three degrees—and that was just enough to hit a target on the forty-fourth floor—but no higher.
After that, the boots would be on their own.
Sixty-six floors up, Zmeya was on his radiophone directing the building’s defense and constantly referring to his Plan B.
Though dreamed up to stop an army assault on his headquarters, it was working just fine against the Americans. For Zmeya, there was nothing like drawing pre
y into a trap.
His plan was simple. There was only one way up or down—that was the southeast stairway. Many of the offices on individual floors had been booby trapped as well, making a large part of the skyscraper a vertical minefield.
The Americans were using M-6 light artillery guns, great weapons, but Zmeya knew its firing angle limitations. Give or take a few feet, after the forty-fourth floor, the invaders would lose all artillery support.
His plan was to draw them farther upward than that. Past the forty-fifth, forty-sixth, and forty-seventh floors and beyond. Zero opposition, nothing but the clanging of retreating boots overhead. Make them think we’re giving up the fight.
Then, when the assault force reached the fiftieth floor, they would come up against a wall of Militsiya—dozens of fighters firing into the stairwell with hundreds more waiting in the wings. All they had to do was keep firing down the staircase and replace any dead or wounded with new bodies. There was no way the Americans would get past them.
This is exactly what happened—but there was more to Plan B. The Americans did a quick strategic retreat back to forty-eight, only to find NKVD gunmen had infiltrated through the northwest booby-trapped stairway and were on the forty-seventh floor below.
In a matter of minutes, the NKVD had trapped two thirds of the Allied assault force—more than thirteen hundred fighters—in the southeast stairwell between the forty-eighth and fiftieth floors.
Down on the plaza, Catfish Johnson was putting together a rescue party comprised of his own men plus some Free Canadians.
The assault team was trapped, sucked in by the clever Russians. He’d taken one last grim message from Dozer: “We’re going to try to work ourselves back down.”
Then there was gunfire, and then his radio went dead.
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