by Tom Clancy
So Meyer exerted his execute authority to do the unexpected and snatch the target right here in the back of the club by the alley.
It wasn’t anyone’s idea of a perfect situation. DEVGRU normally operated with a much larger force, with better command and control and communications, and a much better sight picture of the target area. But this was what was referred to in the business as an “in extremis op,” a rush job, to be sure, and the first rule of in extremis ops was to make the best of an imperfect situation.
The two-man SEAL recon team had left the building not five minutes earlier, but it became clear to Meyer almost instantly that things had changed in the past five minutes. Where he expected to see four or five bodyguards at the round corner booth, he now saw ten.
They were tough, jacketed men with short haircuts and hard stares, men standing around the table with no drinks in their hands.
Meyer then heard a shout from one of his men on the right, and it was the last thing he had hoped to hear tonight from his men scanning the crowd.
“Contact front!”
Things went bad quickly. A single 14K soldier back by the bar near the entrance was partially shielded by a group of businessmen standing there, and he took the opportunity to yank a.45 pistol from his waistband. With the protection of the cover provided by the civilians, he raised his weapon and squeezed off two rounds at the first armed gunman through the door, grazing the man once on the left arm and once squarely on the ceramic body-armor plate on his chest.
The Navy SEAL closest to the wounded operator dispatched the Chinese shooter with a three-round burst of tiny but hard-hitting 4.6x30-millimeter bullets to the forehead, blowing the top of the man’s head off and over the crowd of men around him.
Within the next two seconds, throughout the strip club some twenty 14K Triads went for their guns.
And all hell broke loose.
* * *
When Chavez found himself in no-man’s-land as the firefight started, he did the only thing he could — he went into self-preservation mode. He dropped flat on the floor, rolled to his left, knocking chairs and people down along the way, trying like hell to get himself out of the crossfire between the Americans and the Triads. Along with other men who had been sitting along the raised dance floor, he made his way through the tables there and then pressed himself tight against the edge of the riser.
He wished like hell he had a pistol. He could pick off some of the opposition and help the JSOC men in their mission. But instead he covered his head as men in tailored suits and dancers in thongs and body glitter crashed on top of him, desperately trying to scramble away from the gunfire.
Through this he did what he could to maintain his situational awareness. He peered into the crazed crowd, saw pistols and sub-guns firing here and there, and heard the mammoth boom of a shotgun blast from up near the bar. The crowd looked like rats scattering in the amber lighting, with the SEALs’ red laser targeting devices and the sparkle from the disco ball providing additional frantic movement to the scene.
* * *
Chief Petty Officer Meyer realized in seconds he had led his team into a hornets’ nest. He had been prepared for resistance from Zha’s bodyguards, but he intended to mitigate that resistance with speed, surprise, and overwhelming violence of action. But instead of a manageable fight against an equal number of bewildered opponents, Meyer and his force of six other operators found themselves in the middle of a shooting gallery. Adding to this, the large number of civilians in the club, in the crossfire, forced his men to check their fire unless they saw a gun in the hand of one of the figures moving in the dark of the club.
Two of the chief petty officer’s men had already pulled Zha over the top of the big round table in the corner and onto the floor in front of the booth. The spiky-haired Chinese man was down on his face on the ground; one SEAL jammed his knee in the back of his neck to hold him still while the SEAL’s rifle scanned for targets across the club at the long bar near the entrance.
He fired two quick bursts at the origin of a gunshot near the entrance, then dropped his rifle to its sling and went back to work on securing his captive, while Meyer himself took a 9-millimeter round to the chest plate of his body armor, tipping him back for a moment. The CPO recovered, went prone on the floor, and then fired at the flash of a handgun blast back at the bar.
* * *
Jack Ryan found Adam Yao “tagged and bagged,” still struggling against his bindings next to his vehicle. The Mitsubishi’s passenger door was unlocked, so Jack reached in and grabbed a folding knife from Yao’s backpack, and he cut the CIA officer’s wrist bindings free in seconds.
Popping handgun fire and short, disciplined bursts from automatic weapons came from the nightclub. Ryan pulled the hood off Yao and then yanked the smaller man to his feet.
Jack shouted, “Any guns in the van?”
Adam pulled the tape off his mouth with a wince. “I’m not issued a weapon, and if I got caught with—”
Ryan turned and ran unarmed toward the back door of the club.
* * *
Chavez had found fair cover from the crossfire, flat on his face, pressed up against the side of the stage. He was completely out of view of the SEALs, and completely exposed to armed Triads who had taken positions of concealment or cover behind tables, at the long bar at the front of the establishment, or mixed between the civilians in the crowd. As the gunfire raged around him, Ding was not a combatant in this, and he looked and acted like any of the other terrified businessmen huddling in the center of this maelstrom, trying to ride out the gunfight by thinking small.
Ding wondered if the commandos would be able to make it back down the hall, up the stairs, and out into the alley before they were cut down by all the 14K shooters. Their original objective, capturing Zha Shu Hai alive, seemed out of reach from his admittedly poor view of the action.
Chavez figured that if they could exfiltrate at all, they would be exfiltrating back out through the hall and up the back staircase. He shouted into his earpiece between bursts of fire in the room.
“Ryan? If you are out back, get your ass to cover! This shit looks like it’s about to spill out into the alley!”
“Roger that!” Ryan said.
Just then, a Triad armed with a stainless-steel Beretta 9-millimeter pistol crawled up beside Chavez, using the stage to remain hidden from the American commandos.
Chavez recognized that the man could make it to within ten feet of where the JSOC snatch team was positioned by the back hall without them seeing him. There, he could simply stand up and dump rounds from his Beretta at point-blank range into the men who would be more focused on all the shooters at the long bar some hundred feet away from them.
Chavez knew the young tough with the pistol wasn’t going to squeeze off more than a few of his gun’s seventeen rounds before he was sawed in half by return fire, but it was a good bet he’d kill an American or two first.
The 14K goon rose to a crouch, his tennis shoes just inches from Chavez’s face, and he started moving closer to the commandos, but Ding reached out and grabbed the man’s gun hand, pulled him off balance and then down onto the floor. Ding yanked him back behind an overturned table, fought for the handgun from the surprisingly strong Chinese man, and finally rolled on top of him, twisted the Beretta back, broke two of the Triad’s fingers in his right hand, and peeled the gun free.
The Triad screamed, but his screams were lost in the gunfire and shouting in the club. Ding head-butted the man twice, breaking his nose the first time and knocking him senseless the second.
Ding stayed low behind the table, concealed from the Triads shooting up at the bar, and he dropped the magazine out of the butt of the Beretta, checking how many rounds he had. It was nearly full, fourteen bullets, plus one in the chamber.
Now Domingo Chavez had a gun.
* * *
Chief Petty Officer Meyer’s problems were compounding by the second, but he’d been in this line of work for too long t
o allow fear, confusion, or mission overload to take control of his faculties. He and his men would keep their heads in the game as long as they still had a pulse and still had a mission to accomplish.
Zha had been flexi-cuffed and dragged back into the hall, part of the way by his shirt and the rest of the way by his spiked hair. As soon as he was at the foot of the stairs up to the rear exit, Meyer’s team began collapsing back, covering for one another as they reloaded.
Two of the SEALs had taken rounds to their body armor, but it was Special Warfare Operator Kyle Weldon who caught the first serious injury. A 9-millimeter round hit him square in the kneecap, sending him face-planting in the hall. He dropped his HK PDW, but it remained attached to his body by the sling, and he quickly fought off the pain enough to spin around so that one of his mates could grab him by the pull straps on his body armor.
Seconds later his mate was himself shot. Petty Officer Humberto Reynosa took a ricocheted round through his left calf as he dragged Weldon, and he fell down in a heap next to his buddy. As Chief Petty Officer Michael Meyer provided cover up the hallway and out into the club, two more SEALs scrambled back to grab both operators and pull them closer to safety.
Meyer slipped in the blood as he backed up the stairs behind them. He then regained his footing and centered his laser-aiming device on a 14K gunman wielding a pistol-grip shotgun, who appeared at the mouth of the hall. The American fired a three-round burst into the man’s lower torso before the Triad managed to get a shot off.
SWO Joe Bannerman, nearest to the back door up the stairs and farthest from the fight, somehow managed to take a bullet in the back shoulder from a Triad who leapt out of the restroom with his gun spraying lead. The bullet pitched Bannerman forward, but he stayed on his feet and kept going, and Petty Officer Bryce Poteet blasted the Triad with a twelve-round spray of jacketed lead.
* * *
Ryan had done as instructed by Chavez and sought cover. He’d just crossed the alleyway and dived between several reeking garbage cans when headlights from the mouth of the alley approached. It was the black twelve-passenger van that dropped off the SEALs just a few minutes earlier; no doubt it had gotten the call to come back around and pick them up.
No sooner had the van slammed on its brakes at the exit to the club when the door flew open. Jack watched from between two plastic bins as a bearded American with a bloody right shoulder raced out into the alley and began scanning for targets in the opposite direction. A second man came out and scanned with his rifle high back toward Jack and beyond.
Moments later Jack saw FastByte22, or at least someone wearing the same clothes as FastByte22. He was hooded and his wrists were tied, and he was being shoved forward by an American operator.
* * *
Meyer was last out of the door. He spun toward the van in time to see Zha thrown into the open side door of the vehicle; then men jumped, limped, or were helped in after him.
Meyer kept his weapon trained down the staircase until the door closed, then followed his mates into the van.
As he made it into the vehicle, he spun around to check his “six” while still crawling across his prostrate colleagues.
The back door to the club burst open and two men in black leather jackets stepped out. One wielded a black pistol and the other a 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip.
CPO Meyer dumped a half-magazine into each man, sending them and their weapons tumbling into the alley as the door closed again behind them.
“Go!” Meyer shouted, and the van accelerated up the alley to the east.
* * *
As soon as the van moved past him, Jack emerged from between the garbage cans and rushed toward the back door, desperate to check on Chavez. “Ding? Ding?” he said into his headset.
When he was still twenty-five feet from the door, a white SUV turned into the alley from the west on squealing tires. It raced closer, accelerated after the panel van holding Zha and the Americans.
Jack had no doubt this SUV would be full of 14K reinforcements. He made it to the shotgun lying by the dead Triad, picked it up off the ground, and then stepped into the center of the alleyway. He raised the weapon and fired a single shell into the street just in front of the approaching vehicle. Buckshot ricocheted off the asphalt and shredded both of the front tires, sending the SUV veering off to the left and crashing through the glass windows of an all-night market.
Jack heard a noise close on his right, turned, and saw Adam Yao running toward him. He continued on past Jack to the back door of Club Stylish. As he ran he said, “There will be more where they came from. We have to go through the club to get out of here. Throw down the gun and follow me. Keep that mask on!”
Jack did as he was told and followed Adam.
Yao opened the door and immediately saw blood streaked down the stairs. In Mandarin he shouted, “Is everybody okay?”
He made it just a few steps down before being confronted by a man pointing a pistol in his face. Instantly the gunman realized he was looking at two unarmed men in civilian dress, not geared-up shooters. “Where did they go?” he demanded.
Adam replied, “West. I think they are going to the Cross-Harbour Tunnel!”
The Triad lowered the weapon and ran past them up the stairs.
Down in the strip club, Adam and Jack were met by a scene of carnage. A total of sixteen bodies lay on the floor. Some moved in the throes of agony, and others lay still.
Seven 14K Triads lay dead or dying, with three more less gravely wounded. Six club patrons were dead or injured as well.
Adam and Jack found Chavez, who himself was heading toward the stairs up the hallway. When he saw them he held up a small handheld computer. Jack recognized it as belonging to Zha Shu Hai. Ding had picked it up off the ground where FastByte had been bound by the SEALs.
Ding slid it into the inside pocket of his sport coat.
Adam said, “We need to keep moving. Go out the front like everyone else.”
The CIA officer led the way, and Ding and Jack followed him.
Ryan could not believe the inside of the nightclub. Every table and every chair was flipped on its side or upside down, broken glass was everywhere, and blood seeping out of bodies or smeared on the tile floor shimmered in the spinning light from the disco ball that, somehow, managed to stay intact and operational.
The shrill wail of sirens got louder and louder out on Jaffe Road.
Yao said, “It’s going to fill up with police around here quickly. They always move in when the fighting is done over here in the Triad neighborhoods.”
As they headed up the stairs, Jack said, “Whoever those guys were, I can’t believe they pulled it off.”
Just then the sound of gunfire erupted once again. This time it came from the east.
Ding looked at Jack. Softly he said, “They haven’t pulled it off yet. Go back down and grab a gun off of one of those bodies.”
Jack nodded, turned, and rushed down the stairs.
Yao asked Chavez, “What are we going to do?”
“Whatever we can.”
Adam then said, “The van. My keys are in it, and it’s unlocked. Maybe Biery can pick it up.”
Chavez nodded and called Gavin, who was in a cab on the way to the scene. “I need you to get Adam’s maroon Mitsubishi Grandis out of the alley behind Club Stylish. When you get it, give me a call, I’m sure we’ll need a pickup.”
“Okay.”
FORTY-ONE
Meyer and his team of shot-up SEAL Team Six operators managed to make it six blocks before the 14K closed in on them.
From the moment the first gunshots rang out at the club on Jaffe Road five minutes earlier, all across Wan Chai mobile phones chirped and text messages were received. Word spread quickly to 14K gunmen that their turf was under some sort of attack, and they were all ordered to descend on the corner of Jaffe and Marsh, the location of Club Stylish.
Coordination between the various groups of 14K was a disjointed mess, especially so in those
first minutes, but the sheer number of goons on foot, on motorcycles, in cars, and even in the MTR rushing to the area ensured that Meyer and his team would be outnumbered fifteen to one. The Triads did not know Zha had been kidnapped — in fact, only a small fraction of them would know who Zha was in the first place. All they knew was that there was a shoot-out at the club and a group of heavily armed gweilos were trying to get away. Someone reported they were in a black van, and that made it just a matter of time before Meyer and his element were caught like roaches in the light on the narrow, crowded streets of Wan Chai.
They had driven east up the alley until it ended at Canal Road, then took that south until they could go east again on Jaffe. As they passed shuttered businesses and high-rise office and apartment buildings, the driver of the van, Special Warfare Operator Terry Hawley, veered left and right to avoid slow-moving and oncoming traffic.
In the back of the van, Zha was facedown and still tied and hooded, the injured men were busy wrapping quick bandages around their gunshot wounds, and Meyer was in comms with the extraction team, telling them his element was minutes away.
But things went south as soon as Meyer finished the transmission. They rolled into the intersection of Jaffe and Percival, less than a half-mile from the shoot-out and into the ultra-ritzy Causeway Bay area, when an automatic rifle was fired by a plain-clothed man in the backseat of a Ford Mustang convertible. Special Warfare Operator Hawley was hit in both arms and the chest, and he slumped forward over the steering wheel.
The twelve-passenger van swerved in the rain, skidded perpendicular to the road, and then flipped onto its side, sliding thirty yards until it crashed into the front of a light bus, a sixteen-passenger vehicle used for public transportation.