Execute Authority

by Dalton Fury

  As the policeman ushered the still-shocked tenant down the stairs, Hawk took another step back, masking the peephole in the door behind her with her back while she thumbed her cell to call up her teammates. A few minutes later, she heard a light rap on the door and peered through the peephole. She could see Shaft, oddly distorted by the peephole lens, with a ten-foot piece of rolled-up carpet over one shoulder. Several others were just off the edge of her viewport, but she could make out two more large rolled pieces of carpet. It was past the close of business but not so late that anyone in the neighborhood would be suspicious of a carpet delivery. H-hour was still a ways off. Hawk opened the door and stood back as her mates silently filed into the apartment.

  Once they were inside she turned and peered through the peephole for a full two minutes, watching the opposite apartment to see if anyone would come out to investigate her visit. No one did.

  She pulled away from the door and went to join the others. While she dug out her tactical light-armor vest, she watched the others unroll the carpets, exposing the gear and weapons they’d need for the hit that night. One of her mates—Venti, so named for his Starbucks addiction—had climbed onto a desktop and was boring a hole in the wall, about an inch below the ceiling. The ACUSTEK low-noise drilling system equipped with a diamond-tipped Teflon-coated drill bit made almost no sound at all, but there was still a risk of discovery, which was why the other assaulter, Joker, was standing by with his HK MP5K-PDW at the ready while Shaft readied the snake camera.

  Venti looked down and nodded, then reversed the drill motor, backing the bit out to reveal a hole barely larger than the diameter of a cigarette. He moved the drill rig aside and took the camera from Shaft, inserting it into the hole. The camera, which was connected via Bluetooth to Shaft’s laptop computer, showed only darkness for a moment, but then a tiny spot of light appeared on the screen, increasing in size as the camera moved closer to the exit hole on the far side. Hawk held her breath in anticipation of her first glimpse inside the objective.

  The two apartments had the same basic floor plan, but reversed, and shared a long wall in the front room and one bedroom. Heavy blankets covered the windows, which explained why the recce team had been unable to detect any activity inside. The room was dark except for the light issuing from a television screen on the opposite wall, but the camera was in FLIR mode and the interior was fully revealed. The volume on the TV set was turned down, but Hawk could see that it was tuned to a news broadcast, with Greek captions running across the screen. Venti slowly rotated the camera, revealing more of the room, including the six human figures that occupied it.

  Shaft raised a hand, giving the signal to freeze, and the camera stopped moving.

  There were four men and two women. All were quietly—almost pensively—watching the television. Two of them looked like they might be on the verge of nodding off, but the others appeared alert, almost manically so. No one spoke, and whenever someone moved to sip from a water bottle or take a drag from a cigarette, it was with a deliberate slowness, as if they knew that someone might be watching. Hawk studied the faces and recognized four of them from the list of suspected Revolutionary Struggle members Drougas had supplied. Souri was there, but so was someone else they had not expected to see. She reached out a finger and tapped the screen. “That’s Dmitris Xiros,” she whispered.

  Shaft nodded and keyed the mic of his MBITR radio. “Noble Two-One, this is Noble Alpha-One.”

  He spoke quietly, but Hawk heard him clearly in the earpiece of her own comms unit. She also heard the reply from Barnes, who was on the roof with Stitch and a second assault team, preparing to rappel down and go in through the windows. “Send it, Alpha.”

  “Looks like the party’s here tonight. We’ve got six crows in the front room watching the boob tube. Xiros is here.”

  “Xiros? Hercules won’t be happy about that,” Barnes said after a moment. “All right, stand by.”

  Hawk surmised that Barnes was relaying the news to Raynor, who was following the op from the JOC. While they waited, Hawk continued to scrutinize the feed, and saw something she had missed before.

  “Subguns,” she whispered. “On the coffee table. I make four of them. Might be MP5s.”

  Shaft looked, then nodded. “Venti, get another camera in the bedroom. Let’s make sure there aren’t any other surprises in there.”

  The other assaulter nodded and headed into the adjoining room with his silent drill rig. A moment later, Barnes’s voice returned over the comms. “Alpha-One, we have execute authority from Racer. We’ve got our targets contained, so we’re going to move now. What’s it look like in there?”

  Shaft quickly described the layout of the room and the location of the suspected terrorists, assigning each of them a number. He did not fail to mention the small arsenal sitting on the coffee table.

  “Shit,” Barnes said. “Hercules wants these guys alive, if possible.”

  “That ain’t really up to us,” Shaft pointed out.

  Before Barnes could respond, Venti broke in. “Putting the camera in now.”

  Shaft hit a couple of keys and the screen split to show the feed. The pane on the right revealed the room in glorious monochrome.

  “Uuuuuhh … don’t think I want to sleep in that bedroom,” Shaft muttered.

  Although there was a mattress, tilted up against the wall, the room appeared to have been repurposed for storage, specifically the storage of at least three dozen twenty-liter plastic buckets, the kind restaurants used for food prep. Hawk was pretty sure the containers weren’t full of sliced pickles. The buckets were all lidded, with thin tubes—possibly wires—sprouting from holes drilled in the top of each.

  “Okay,” Shaft said. “That’s not good.” He looked up at Hawk. “I’m thinking ANFO.”

  Hawk did some quick mental math. “About half a ton, I’d say. Enough for a couple of small car bombs. What do you want to bet they’re planning to hit the state funeral?”

  “Who the hell knows?” Shaft said.

  “That stuff’s pretty stable, right?” Hawk asked.

  Shaft nodded. “You need a small high-explosive booster charge—say a couple sticks of dynamite—to achieve detonation. Explosive breach is out. Nine-bangers are good.”

  Hawk saw what he was driving at. Their plan was to blast their way into the residence with shaped charges, and then deploy flash-bang grenades to stun the crows inside. By the numbers, it would take a lot more concussive force than that to detonate the ammonium nitrate and fuel oil mixture in the buckets, but she also knew they would all be staking their lives on that calculation. “What if they’ve already got them rigged with HE triggers?”

  “That would change things, yes,” Shaft said.

  Shaft keyed the comms again and updated Barnes with this latest wrinkle.

  The young troop commander considered his reply for several seconds. “Okay, we’ll have to scrub the wall breach. Take your element in through the front door.”

  Shaft switched back to the feed from the first camera. No one in the front room had moved. Two men were seated in chairs to either end of the sofa. Xiros was one of them.

  “We’ll stay with the window charge. No change to our breach point,” Barnes went on. “Alive is the preferred option, but I’m not telling you to ignore the combat ROE. This is a designated hostile target.”

  “Roger. Give us two mikes to get set.” Shaft turned to Joker. “Take point. Venti, number two. I’m pushing the stick.”

  Cindy Bird listened to Shaft give the lineup, saying a silent prayer that she wouldn’t be sidelined again.

  “Hawk, you’re our eyes.”

  She bit back an angry protest, and instead simply said, “Roger.”

  Shaft was the boss, and he probably had his reasons for leaving her behind. Venti and Joker were both seasoned door-kickers, and it just made sense to put them at the tip of the spear. But how was she ever going to get to their level if she was always warming the bench?

  She
turned to the computer, staring at the screen with laserlike focus in an unsuccessful attempt to hide her disappointment. As her teammates headed for the front door, Hawk picked up the laptop and moved into the apartment’s kitchen, where she hoped the appliances would give her an additional layer of cover in the event that a stray round came through the walls.

  Shaft’s voice came over the comms. “This is Alpha-One, we’re set. Ready to execute.”

  Barnes spoke next. “Golf-Two, cut building power on ‘two.’ I say again, on ‘two.’ How copy, over?”

  The recce team operator with the call sign Noble Golf-Two, who was standing by at the electrical main for the building, signaled his readiness. “Cutting power on two, roger.”

  “Alpha-Four, give final target update. Over.”

  Hawk started a little when she heard her call sign. In fact, it kind of pissed her off.

  How the hell did Barnes know I was going to be stuck with the cameras?

  Hawk looked back at the dual screen. No change to the room with the containers. The other camera showed the six crows in the neighboring apartment, still watching the television news, completely unaware of what was about to happen in their world.

  She keyed her mic. “This is Alpha-Four. No change; six crows unaware and chilling in the living room. Over.”

  “All elements, this is Noble Two-One, I have control. Stand by … Five … four…”

  As Barnes started the countdown, Hawk realized she was squeezing the pistol grip of her suppressed PDW.

  “Three … two…”

  The television screen in the apartment went dark, which only slightly changed the image from the camera feed. The six crows barely reacted, as if a sudden power outage was an everyday event.

  “One … execute. Execute. Execute.”

  The blankets over the windows erupted inward and then crumpled to the floor, revealing a pair of Delta assaulters climbing through each, trailing tactical ropes, their faces hidden by NODs and black balaclavas. Something flashed into view briefly in the corner of the display, right about where the front door would have been.

  Hawk watched as the seated figures reacted now, but their movements were jerky and uncoordinated. One of them reached for the coffee table, then just as quickly slumped back onto the sofa, stopped cold by a controlled pair from one of the assaulters.

  Hawk kept a keen eye on the screen while holding her push-to-talk only centimeters from her mouth, ready to send Shaft or Barnes a message if needed. One of the men seated in a chair threw his hands up, then appeared to have a change of heart and also made a move toward the arsenal on the table. He too went down.

  But not before getting his finger on the trigger of a subgun.

  Hawk let out a gasp as she saw one of the assaulters near the window take a burst from the dying crow’s MP5. She couldn’t make out the man’s call sign patch, but judging by his broad shoulders and compact build, she knew it had to be “Stitch” Vickery. The burst knocked Stitch back, through the blown-out second-story window, erasing him from the fight.

  Hawk knew that Stitch’s armor had probably taken the brunt of the attack, and since he was still clipped in to his rappelling line, the fall wasn’t likely to be a problem, but even so, a wounded eagle on the objective was every operator’s worst nightmare. It was a brutal reminder that any one of them could buy it, anytime. And seeing your buddy go down could be a fatal distraction, no matter how prepared for it you thought you were.

  Which was probably why the rest of the assaulting force didn’t see one of the female crows making a dash for the edge of the room.

  “Shit,” Hawk whispered to herself. “Squirter.”

  Even as she said it, she realized that the squirter was not heading for an exit. She was running for the bedroom.

  Hawk jumped in over the assault net. “This is Alpha-Four. Female entered bedroom with containers.”

  There was no immediate answer from the assaulters.

  Hawk watched the female close the bedroom door behind her and jam something under the doorknob, some type of locking device that angled down to the bedroom floor. With the door secure, the woman immediately started dragging the heavy containers in front of the door, creating a secondary barricade. Her actions seemed a little too rehearsed to Hawk.

  That bitch isn’t panicking. She knows what she’s doing!

  “Alpha-Four, bedroom door is barricaded with the containers,” Hawk said, trying to remain calm. She watched the woman intently, expecting her to do something crazy.

  Shaft came up next. “Roger, we’re on it.”

  “No explosives,” Hawk added. “I say again, no explosives.”

  “Alpha Four, this is Two-One, we’re working a mechanical breach now.” It was Major Barnes. “Is the woman armed?”

  Barnes’s transmission from inside the target apartment directly to Hawk barely registered. She had been watching the woman dig around a few desk drawers, obviously looking for something. When she stood back up Hawk would swear she saw something in the woman’s right hand: a metal capsule about the size of a tennis ball.

  Holy shit!

  At that instant, Hawk knew that she had the only eyes on the problem, a problem that might potentially drop the entire building, and certainly kill her and her mates next door. There was only one correct response.

  “All elements, this is Noble Alpha-Four. FIRE DRILL! FIRE DRILL! FIRE DRILL!”

  As soon as the warning was given, Hawk jumped from her position on the floor in the kitchen, left the laptop behind, and triggered the SureFire tactical light attached to the rails of her PDW. She launched into motion, sprinting across the front room and into the door of the bedroom.

  The room smelled of tobacco, stale sweat, and body odor. A mattress lay on the floor a few steps away, the linens strewn haphazardly across it. Beyond that was the wall that separated Hawk from the bedroom filled with a thousand pounds of improvised explosives and the female terrorist with a complete case of the ass against the world.

  Her earpiece was filled with subsequent calls from her mates, repeating the code word “fire drill,” the signal for every operator to unass the target building without question or delay.

  There was no way to know for sure what the woman intended, but Hawk was certain that the only chance of stopping her was to take the blind shot. At least give the woman something else to think about and give her mates time to clear the building. She pointed the muzzle of her suppressed subgun straight ahead at chest level, toward where she last knew the woman to be standing, flipped the selector to full auto, and squeezed the trigger.

  The copper-jacketed rounds punched through the plaster, throwing up a cloud of dust and wood smoke that swirled in the beam of her tactical flashlight. Hawk kept firing at the same spot as she moved forward, stepping directly onto the mattress, and then past it. The tightly grouped shots formed a hole in the wall big enough for her to shove a fist through, but Hawk put more than her hand into the hole.

  Without breaking stride, she raised her right boot and shoved it with all her power into the small hole her bullets had created. She recovered her balance, took several steps back, then lowered her right shoulder and crashed into the wall like an All-Pro outside linebacker, smashing through the drywall to make the hole even larger. She frantically raked the insulation from the space between the walls before kicking out the target apartment’s drywall side, and kept pushing, finally forcing her head and shoulders through into the room of the neighboring apartment.

  “Alpha-Four, where the hell are you?” Shaft said. “Get the hell out of there, over.”

  Hawk ignored the call. She raised her weapon to let the SureFire light up the room, revealing the tightly packed rows of plastic buckets. Just past them, between the barricaded doorway and the desk, was the female crow.

  The cyclic barrage had done more than just tear a hole through the walls. At least some of the rounds had gone clear through and struck the intended target.

  The woman was kneeling, her T-shi
rt crimson with blood. She stared, unblinking, into the high-intensity tac-light, her face a blank slate, showing neither pain nor emotion. She made no effort to clutch at her wounds, but after a moment, raised both her hands and brought them together in front of her.

  There was something in her right hand, the same familiar baseball-sized metal capsule Hawk had seen on the screen.

  “Grenade!” Hawk shouted, even as she took aim and squeezed the trigger of her PDW.

  Nothing. She had emptied the entire magazine into the wall.

  The mortally wounded terrorist fumbled for the ring attached to the safety pin.

  Frantic, Hawk let go of her primary weapon, allowing it to fall the length of its sling. She immediately drew her backup, realizing too late that in doing so, she had lost control of the SureFire. The light beam now shone down at the floor, but there was just enough ambient illumination for her to make out the silhouette of the woman with the grenade.

  Hawk extended the Glock fully, picked up the front Trijicon night sight, made a minor adjustment to place it on the woman’s nose bridge, then aimed and fired in one smooth, practiced motion.

  The woman’s head snapped back hard against the wall, her body slumped in an awkward position, gravity slowly pulling her toward the floor. As Hawk settled the sight picture on the terrorist a second time, she heard the distinctive thump of something hard hitting the floor.

  The grenade.

  Shit!

  If the female crow had succeeded in yanking out the safety pin, then Hawk had five seconds … maybe five seconds … to get through the wall and kick the grenade away from the buckets of ANFO.

  One Mississippi.

  Hawk braced her elbows against the edges of the hole and heaved herself forward, squeezing her lithe body between the wall’s vertical two-by-four studs. The plaster crumbled under her weight and she spilled into the room, crashing onto the buckets.