by Tom Clancy
“Don’t worry,” Shorty said. “You’ll get paid.” He set his weapon on the dinner table and moved forward while Blondie and Blackie backed off to cover them all. Dennis Cooley took the rope to the Prince first, yanking his hands down behind his back.
There! Robby looked up. Jack had set his shotgun on the top shelf of the walk-in closet, along with a box of shells. He had to reach to get them, and when he did so, a holstered pistol dropped to the floor. Jackson winced at the sound it made, but grabbed it from the holster and tucked it into his belt. Next he checked the shotgun, pulling back the bolt—there was a round in the chamber and the gun was on safe. Okay. He filled his pockets with additional rounds and went back into the bedroom.
Now what? This wasn’t like flying his F-14, with radar to track targets a hundred miles away and a wingman to keep the bandits off his tail.
The picture ... You had to kneel on the bed to see out of it—Why the hell did Jack arrange his furniture like this! the pilot raged. He set the shotgun down and used both hands to slide the picture aside. He moved it only a few inches, barely enough to see out. How many ... one, two ... three. Are there any others ... ? What if I leave one alive ... ?
As he watched, Jack was being tied up. The Prince—the Captain, Robby thought—already was tied, and was sitting with his back to the pilot. The short one finished Jack next and pushed him back onto the couch. Jackson next watched the man put hands on his wife.
“What are you going to do with us?” Sissy asked.
“Shut up, nigger!” Shorty replied.
Even Robby knew that this was a trivial thing to get angry about; the problem at hand was far worse than some white asshole’s racist remark, but his blood turned to fire as he watched the woman he loved being handled by that ... little white shit!
Use your head, boy, something in the back of his brain said. Take your time. You have to get it right on the first try. Cool down.
Longley was beginning to hope. There were friendlies in the trees to his left. Perhaps they’d come from the house, he thought. At least one of them had an automatic weapon, and he counted three of the terrorists dead, or at least not moving on the grass. He had fired five rounds and missed with every one—the range was just too great for a pistol in the dark—but they’d stopped the terrorists cold. And help was coming. It had to be. The radio van was empty, but the FBI agent to his right had been there. All they had to do was wait, hold on for a few more minutes....
“I got flashes on the ground ahead,” the pilot said. “I—”
Lightning revealed the house for a brief moment in time. They couldn’t see people on the ground, but that was the right house, and there were flashes that had to be gunfire, half a mile off as the helicopter buffeted through the wind and rain. It was about all the pilot could see. His instrument lights were turned up full-white, and the lightning had decorated his vision with a stunning collection of blue and green spots.
“Jesus,” Gus Werner said over the intercom. “What are we getting into?”
“In Vietnam,” the pilot replied coolly, “we called it a hot LZ.” And I was scared then, too.
“Get Washington.” The copilot switched frequencies on the radio and waved to the agent in the back while both men orbited the helicopter. “This is Werner.”
“Gus, this is Bill Shaw. Where are you?”
“We have the house in sight, and there’s a goddamned battle going on down there. Do you have contact with our people?”
“Negative, they’re off the air. The D.C. team is still thirty minutes away. The state and county people are close but not there yet. The storm’s knocking trees down all over the place and traffic is tied up something fierce. You’re the man on the scene, Gus, you’ll have to call it.”
The mission of the Hostage Rescue Team was to take charge of an existing situation, stabilize it, and rescue the hostages—peacefully if possible, by force if not. They were not assault troops; they were special agents of the FBI. But there were brother agents down there.
“We’re going in now. Tell the police that federal officers are on the scene. We’ll try to keep you informed.”
“Right. Be careful, Gus.”
“Take us in,” Werner told the pilot.
“Okay. I’ll skirt the house first, then come around in and land you to windward. I can’t put you close to the house. The wind’s too bad, I might lose it down there.”
“Go.” Werner turned. Somehow his men had all their gear on. Each carried an automatic pistol. Four had MP-5 machine guns, as did he. The long-rifleman and his spotter would be the first men out the door. “We’re going in.” One of the men gave a thumbs-up that looked a lot jauntier than anyone felt.
The helicopter lurched toward the ground when a sudden downdraft hammered at it. The pilot wrenched upward on his collective and bottomed the aircraft out a scant hundred feet from the trees. The house was only a few hundred yards away now. They skimmed over the southern edge of the clearing, allowing everyone a close look at the situation.
“Hey, the spot between the house and the cliff might be big enough after all,” the pilot said. He increased power as the chopper swept to windward.
“Helicopter!” someone screamed to O’Donnell’s right. The chief looked up, and there it was, a spectral shape and a fluttering sound. That was a hazard he’d prepared for.
Back near the road, one of his men pulled the cover off a Redeye missile launcher purchased along with the rest of their weapons.
“I have to use landing lights—my night vision is wasted,” the pilot said over the intercom. He turned the aircraft half a mile west of the Ryan house. He planned to head straight past the house; then he’d drop and turn into the wind and slide up behind what he hoped was a wind shadow in its lee. God, he thought, this is like Vietnam. From the pattern of the flashes on the ground, it seemed that the house was in friendly hands. The pilot reached down and flipped on his landing lights. It was a risk, but one he had to accept.
Thank God I can see again, he told himself. The ground was visible through a shimmering curtain of rain. He realized that the storm was still worsening. He had to approach from windward. Flying into the rain would reduce his visibility to a few feet. At least this way he could see a couple of hundred or so—what the hell!
He saw a man standing all alone in the center of the field, aiming something. The pilot pushed down on the collective just as a streak of red light rocketed toward the helicopter, his eyes locked on what could only be a surface-to-air missile. The two seconds it took seemed to stretch into an hour as the missile passed through his rotor blades and disappeared overhead—he immediately pulled back on the control, but there was no time to recover from his evasion maneuver. The helicopter slammed into the middle of a plowed field, four hundred yards from the Ryan house. It wouldn’t move again until a truck came to collect the wreckage.
Miraculously, only two men were hurt. Werner was one of them. It felt as though he’d been shot in the back. The rifleman pulled the door open and ran out with his spotter behind. The others went next, one of them helping Werner while another hobbled on a sprained ankle.
The Princess was next. She was taller than Cooley, and managed a look that contained more than mere contempt. The little man spun her around roughly to tie her hands.
“We have big plans for you,” he promised when he finished.
“You little scum, I bet you don’t even know how,” Sissy said. It earned her a vicious slap. Robby watched, waiting for the blond-haired one to get in the clear. Finally he did, moving back toward the others....
26
The Sound of Freedom
Pellets fired from a shotgun disperse radially at a rate of one inch per yard of linear travel. A lightning flash blazed through the windows, and Ryan cringed on hearing the thunder immediately after—then realized it had followed too quickly to be thunder. The shot pattern had missed his head by three feet, and before he understood what had passed by him, Blondie’s head snapped back, ex
ploding into a cloud of red as his body fell backward to crash against a table leg. Blackie was looking out the window in the corner and turned to see his comrade go down without knowing how or why. His eyes searched frantically for a second, then a red circle the size of a 45-rpm record appeared in his chest and he was flung against the wall. Shorty was tying up Cathy’s hands and concentrating a little too much. He hadn’t recognized the first shot for what it was. He did with the second—too late.
The Prince sprang at him, knocking him down with a lowered shoulder before himself falling on the floor. Jack leaped over the coffee table and kicked wildly at Shorty’s head. He connected, but lost his balance doing so and fell backward. Shorty was stunned for a moment, then shook it off and moved toward the dinner table, where his gun was. Ryan lurched to his feet too, and threw himself on the terrorist’s legs. The Prince was back up now. Shorty threw a wild punch at him and tried to kick Ryan off his legs—then stopped when the warm muzzle of a shotgun pressed against his nose.
“You hold it right there, sucker, or I’ll blow your head off.”
Cathy already had the ropes shucked off her hands, and untied Jack first. He went over to Blondie. The body was still twitching. Blood was still pumping from the surreal nightmare that had been a human face thirty seconds before. Jack took the Uzi from his hands, and a spare magazine. The Prince did the same with Blackie, whose body was quite still.
“Robby,” Jack said as he examined the safety-selector switch on the gun. “Let’s get the hell away from here.”
“Second the motion, Jack, but where to?” Jackson pushed Shorty’s head against the floor. The terrorist’s eyes crossed almost comically on the business end of the Remington shotgun. “I expect he might know something useful. How’d you plan to get away, boy?”
“No.” It was all Cooley could muster at the moment. He realized that he was, after all, the wrong man for this kind of job.
“That the way it is?” Jackson asked, his voice a low, angry rasp. “You listen to me, boy. That lady over there, the one you called niggah—that’s my wife, boy, that’s my lady. I saw you hit her. So, I already got one good reason to kill you, y’dig?” Robby smiled wickedly, and let the shotgun trace a line down to Shorty’s crotch. “But I ain’t gonna kill ya. I’ll do somethin’ lots worse—
“I’ll make a girl outa you, punk.” Robby pushed the muzzle against the man’s zipper. “Think fast, boy.”
Jack listened to his friend in amazement. Robby never talked like this. But it was convincing. Jack believed that he’d do it.
So did Cooley: “Boats ... boats at the base of the cliff.”
“That’s not even clever. Say goodbye to ’em, boy.” The angle of the shotgun changed fractionally.
“Boats! Two boats at the base of the cliff. There are two ladders—”
“How many watching them?” Jack demanded.
“One, that’s all.”
Robby looked up. “Jack?”
“People, I suggest we go steal some boats. That firefight outside is getting closer.” Jack ran to his closet and got coats for everyone. For Robby he picked up his old Marine field jacket that Cathy hated so much. “Put this on, that white shirt is too damned visible. ”
“Here.” Robby handed over Jack’s automatic. “I got a box of rounds for the shotgun.” He started transferring them from his pants to the jacket pockets and then hefted the last Uzi over his shoulder. “We’re leaving friendlies behind, Jack,” he added quietly.
Ryan didn’t like it either. “I know, but if they get him, they win—and this ain’t no place for women and kids, man.”
“Okay, you’re the Marine.” Robby nodded. That was that.
“Let’s get outa here. I have the point. I’m going to take a quick look-see. Rob, you take Shorty for now. Prince, you take the women.” Jack reached down and grabbed Dennis Cooley by the throat. “You screw up, you’re dead. No fartin’ around with him, Robby, just waste him.”
“That’s a rog.” Jackson backed away from the terrorist. “Up slow, punk.”
Jack led them through the shattered doors. The two dead agents lay crumpled on the wood deck, and he hated himself for not doing something about it, but Ryan was proceeding on some sort of automatic control that the Marine Corps had programmed into him ten years before. It was a combat situation, and all the lectures and field exercises were flooding back into his consciousness. In a moment he was drenched by the falling sheets of rain. He trotted down the stairs and looked around the house.
Longley and his men were too busy dealing with the threat to their front to notice what was approaching from behind. The British security officer fired four rounds at an advancing black figure and had the satisfaction of seeing him react from at least one hit when a hammering impact hurled him against a tree. He rebounded off the rough bark and half turned to see yet another black-clad shape holding a gun ten feet away. The gun flashed again. Within seconds the woodline was quiet.
“Dear God,” the rifleman muttered. Running in a crouch, he passed the bodies of five agents, but there wasn’t time for that. He and his spotter went down next to a bush. The rifleman activated his night scope and tracked on the woodline a few hundred yards ahead. The green picture he got on the imaging tube showed men dressed in dark clothes heading into the woodline.
“I count eleven,” the spotter said.
“Yeah,” the rifleman agreed. His bolt-action sniper rifle was loaded with .308 caliber match rounds. He could hit a moving three-inch target the first time, every time, at over two hundred yards, but his mission for the moment was reconnaissance, to gather information and forward it to the team leader. Before the team could act, they had to know what the hell was going on, and all they had now was chaos.
“Werner, this is Paulson. I count what looks like eleven bad guys moving into the trees between us and the house. They appear to be armed with light automatic weapons.” He pivoted the rifle around. “Looks like six of them down in the yard. Lots of good guys down—Jesus, I hope there’s ambulances on the way.”
“Do you see any friendlies around?”
“Negative. Recommend that you move in from the other side. Can you give me a backup here?”
“Sending one now. When he gets there, move in carefully. Take your time, Paulson.”
“Right.”
To the south, Werner and two other men advanced along the treeline. Their night-camouflage clothing was a hatchwork of light green, designed by computer, and even in the lightning they were nearly invisible.
Something had just happened. Jack saw a sudden flurry of fire, then nothing. Despite what he’d told Robby, he didn’t like running away from the scene. But what else could he do? There was an unknown number of terrorists out there. He had only three armed men to protect three women and a child, with their backs to a cliff. Ryan swore and returned to the others.
“Okay, Shorty, show me the way down,” Ryan said, pressing the muzzle of his Uzi against the man’s chest.
“Right there.” The man pointed, and Ryan swore again.
In all the time they’d lived here, Jack’s only concern with the cliff was to keep away from it, lest it crumble under him or his daughter. The view from his house was magnificent enough, but the cliff’s height meant that from the house there was an unseen dead zone a thousand yards wide which the terrorists had used to approach. And they’d used ladders to climb up—of course, that’s what ladders are for! Their placements were marked the way it said in every field manual in the world, with wooden stakes wrapped with white gauze bandaging, to be seen easily in the dark.
“Okay, people,” Ryan began, looking around. “Shorty and I go first. Your Highness, you come next with the women. Robby, stay ten yards back and cover the rear.”
“I am adept with light weapons,” the Prince said.
Jack shook his head emphatically. “No, if they get you, they win. If something goes wrong, I’m depending on you to take care of my wife and kid, sir. If something happens, go so
uth. About half a mile down you’ll find a gully. Take that inland and don’t stop till you find a hard-surface road. It’s real thick cover, you should be okay. Robby, if anything gets close, blast it.”
“But what if—”
“But, hell! Anything that moves is the enemy.” Jack looked around one last time. Give me five trained men, maybe Breckenridge and four others, and I could set up one pisser of an ambush ... and if pigs had wings ... “Okay, Shorty, you go down first. If you fuck us up, the first thing happens, I’ll cut you in half. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Then move.”
Cooley moved to the ladder and proceeded down backward, with Ryan several feet above him. The aluminum rungs were slippery with the rain, but at least the wind was blocked by the body of the cliff. The extension ladder—how the hell did they get that here?—wobbled under him. Ryan tried to keep an eye on Shorty and slipped once halfway down. Above him, the second group was beginning its descent. The Princess had taken charge of Sally, and was coming down with Ryan’s daughter between her body and the ladder to keep her from falling. He could hear his little girl whimpering anyway. Jack had to ignore it. There wasn’t room in his consciousness for anger or pity now. He had to do this one right the first time. There would be no second. A flash of lightning revealed the two boats a hundred yards to the north. Ryan couldn’t tell if anyone was there or not. Finally they reached the bottom. Cooley moved a few feet to the north and Ryan jumped down the next few feet, gun at the ready.
“Let’s just stay put for a minute.”
The Prince arrived next, then the women. Finally Robby started down, his Marine parka making him invisible against the black sky. He came down quickly, also jumping the last five feet.
“They got to the house just as I started down. Maybe this’ll slow them some.” He held the white-wrapped stakes. It might make the ladders harder to find.