by D S Kane
Before any of the hitters could aim and fire their weapons, the mercs near the elevators began firing into the outdoor hallway. While their cover protected the hitters from mercs in the suites, they were easy targets for the mercs at the elevators. There had been over fifty hitters. The few that still stood as their peers fell away looked toward the elevators but none had enough time to take aim. It took less than fifteen seconds. Three wisely dropped their weapons and raised their arms over their heads. Cassie, Lester, and JD flew out of her suite and sprinted to the elevators. Now there were nearly fifty mercs and her two bodyguards acting as her shields. But nine of the fifty were wounded and had to be carried by others, leaving just thirty-two capable of running and gunning.
Shimmel asked over his cell. “Status?”
Cassie responded, “We’re all here at the elevators. Forty-nine mercs, nine of which are wounded, none dead. Ready for phase two. We’re holding both elevators here at the tenth floor, as you ordered.”
“Acknowledged. Send the men down both elevators to the lobby, seven men per elevator at a time. Remember that only one of these elevators reaches to the beach level. When you enter the elevator with the last load of mercs, call me before the doors close on ten.”
“Got it. Sending the first fourteen now.”
The first set of mercs took the two elevators to the lobby. The plan called for them to form a shield around the elevator doorway. She heard Shimmel call the mercs in the palm trees. “Snipers, get ready. Expect to hear gunfire. You’ll see action in about three minutes when the other mercenaries exit onto the beach. Shimmel out.”
“Cassie here, Avram. The last set of mercs, with me is ready in the elevator on ten. Doors are closing. Cassie out.”
The doors to the elevator scraped shut, scarred by bullet holes and dents from shrapnel made by grenades and large caliber shell impacts. The smell of cordite was overwhelming, adrenalizing her.
The descent took forever, and every scrape of the dented elevator against its path made her shudder. She stood in its center, wanting to wrap her arms around her family, closed her eyes, and imagined being safe with Lee, Ann, and her mother and father. Just a second to savor the image, but her imagination drifted, and instead she saw them standing next to the gaping hole that would soon be her open grave, the casket she was entombed within cold against her bullet-ridden copse.
As the doors began to open, she heard the pounding of bullets and fragmentation grenades from the raging battle in front of her. The lobby lights had all been shot out; the only light was muzzle flash. One of her mercenaries—standing right in front of Cassie—screamed and went down. Cassie recognized Sergeant Marie Porter. Another merc, Jason Pierson, a Corporal, shot the hitter, and dragged Marie into the center of formation surrounding Cassie. Marie wasn’t conscious and her blood poured from a chest wound. She couldn’t tell if Marie still breathed. Cassie thought, she took a bullet for me.
It all happened so fast. The mercs surrounding Cassie moved as a group, maintaining close formation as they proceeded toward the lobby stairs to the beach. One good thing: they were still working from the original plan. A miracle.
They sprinted in formation. At the stairs, mercs dropped two flashbang grenades followed by a fragmentation grenade. Then, ever so cautiously, they took the stairs down, stepping over four broken bloody corpses and the rifles they’d held when alive. The mercs reached the exit onto the beachhead and the medic, Captain Jamison, reported in via his Bluetooth earbud. “General, we’ve finished phase three. One additional wounded. Advise when to initiate phase four.”
* * *
Using his night-scope binoculars, Shimmel examined the exit from the lobby seven hundred feet away. He saw Jamison peeking from the doorway and took stock of the area between him and the beachhead. He counted the hitters. Every one of them had their weapon at the ready. He estimated somewhere between two and three hundred of them, spread out all over the beachhead.
Shimmel sighed. He’d have to slaughter all of them. “Snipers, fire now. Jamison, wait until you hear from me.” The snipers slaughtered hitters, three or four going down every second. Each of the twelve snipers could take aim and shoot in less than five seconds. Shimmel counted the shots and watched the hitters fall. After about twenty seconds, a few hitters found targets in the palm trees and returned fire. And some began retreating toward the parking lot.
The skirmish raged. When Shimmel’s snipers were done, two of his men lay on the ground at the feet of the palms they’d hidden in. “Now, Jamison. Pick up the wounded snipers on your way. Get to the yacht. Go, go, go!” More hitters headed from the parking lot of the hotel toward the beach, chasing the retreating mercs led by Jamison. Two of the mercs picked up the fallen snipers and dragged them toward the water.
Shimmel reached the boat’s deck and picked up one of the grenade launchers too heavy for the mercenaries to carry onto the beach. He aimed it about five feet in front of the stream of hitters and pulled the trigger. He reloaded. And fired again. And reloaded. A bullet flew past his head, close enough that he could hear it as it sailed by. He looked at the stream of hitters, fewer now. So many dead and wounded bodies on the ground among them. The ones still alive looked like angry red ants run amok. Shimmel pulled the trigger and reloaded once more.
Mercs waded through the water up to their waists and climbed aboard the yacht. Cassie dragged Lester onto the boat. He’d been hit in the thigh and was bleeding profusely. Shimmel nodded to her and helped her drag Lester to the front of the yacht. “Are any unaccounted for?”
Cassie completed a headcount. “All here. Nineteen wounded. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Shimmel nodded and signaled for the yacht to move. Two minutes was all he thought they would need to reach the subs.
Cassie looked over the flanks of the boat and said, “Avram, there are boats converging and headed toward us. Many boats. And, they’re gaining.”
Shimmel looked and saw yachts and fishing boats following them, firing rifles, AK-47’s and ground-to-ground missiles. He ordered Jamison, “Use missile countermeasures and fire overhead and slightly behind us.” He picked up the grenade launcher and told JD, “Grab one of the other launchers. You take port and I’ll take starboard.” As JD loaded a grenade launcher, Shimmel called the subs using his cell. “Man the machine guns. Target any boat or ship moving in your direction. Check your flanks and in front. We’ll worry about clearing a path to you. Use your torpedoes on the bigger boats. And, don’t hit us.”
He turned to Corporal Billie-Jo Casselton, a rail-thin, tall rangy woman, team leader of the snipers. “Take my place and work starboard. I’m getting the last grenade launcher to clear the path in front of the subs.” He handed her the launcher he’d used.
Even at peak speed the yacht crawled. The speedboats gained rapidly on them. Jamison steered toward where he expected the subs to be, alternately navigating and sending up waves of missile countermeasures. The speedboats closed the distance on their flanks and then disappeared in clouds of wreckage as Shimmel, Casselton, and JD hit them with rocket-launched grenades.
Shimmel feared that one of the speedboats would break through and close the distance. He feared the hitters the boats carried would acquire targets with killing accuracy. Casselton picked off everything within one hundred yards on the port side and then repeated her devastating shots on starboard. JD simply took her grenade launcher, handed her his own and reloaded for her.
The subs sat on the surface twenty meters in front of them, machine guns emitting flaming spits into the night. The yacht slowed and drifted alongside, and they began boarding, all except for Shimmel and the other three handling the grenade launchers. They kept targeting the boats and ships converging on their position. Shimmel counted twenty small boats still gaining on them.
As the last merc dropped through the conning tower of the larger sub, Shimmel faced his grenade launcher teammates, “We go now. Hurry. Leave the grenade launchers; they’re too heavy.” Shimmel wat
ched the few remaining boats driving hard toward the now-empty yacht. He set the timer on a small device and left it in the boat. In seconds they had fled below deck, sealed the hatches, and were submerging.
He gave coordinates to Captain Rogov. The sub moved off at peak speed. Avram watched the surface through the periscope. Three boats had reached the empty yacht and two more were less than ten yards away. The sub was about three hundred yards from the yacht. It was now or never. “Fire torpedos now.” Shimmel pushed the button that mated to the remote he’d left on the yacht. Three seconds later, everything around was splinters. The subs moved farther from shore, silent as sharks.
Shimmel went to the sub’s infirmary, where Jamison was tending to their many wounded. Sergeant Marie Porter was conscious, but her face had a gray hue and the morphine Jamison had administered left a calm grin on her face.
Corporal Jason Pierson hadn’t been so lucky. He’d been shot as he tried to board the yacht. His corpse lay on a hammock covered by a sheet, with his file of “General Instructions On My Death” resting on top of his chest. Blood seeped through the sheet where a missing section of his head made a large depression in the sheet. The GIOMD file was something Shimmel carried for each merc. Seeing it wrenched his heart. “Do you need any more help?”
Jamison shook his head. “No. I can do with the staff you’ve assigned me.” He faced a merc on a stretcher, picking up a scalpel to remove a bullet from the merc’s leg. The trip had been costly.
CHAPTER 30
November 1, 11:05 a.m.
Southeast of the Coast of Hawaii
Shimmel stood on the bridge. He looked through the periscope as the subs surfaced together, separated by about three-hundred feet. They had traveled about twenty-five miles south by southeast of the Big Island in calm waters. Early daylight kept the air cool. It was time to recharge the submarine batteries. He hoped for safety on the surface, off the shipping lanes. He headed to the tiny ready room of the sub.
Cassie and JD looked up as he entered. Cassie rose and hugged him. “Thanks,” she whispered.
Shimmel seemed embarrassed at the show of affection. “It’s my job,” he lied. “Now we have to draft a plan for our next move.”
He called William Wing on secure satphone and put the call on speaker. “William, it’s Shimmel. Sashakovich and JD are with me. Lester is in surgery, wounded and unconscious. What’s your status?”
“Everyone here is fine. I have bodyguards with Lee except when he’s at work, and they drive him there and back. And same for Ann, except I’ve bullied the school into letting a single armed bodyguard accompany her to classes. I don’t think there’s a great potential for something bad happening, but we’re being cautious.”
“Good,” said Cassie. “Now tell us what you’ve done with your assignments.”
Wing hesitated. “Well, uh, it’s been tougher than I expected. You see, there are Federal encryptions on the data I’ve been tracking. So, I had Lee look into it. It appears that some of the messages came from Lee’s old building, so someone at the agency’s been in touch with Houmaz. Of course, I determined that it wasn’t Lee; he was in California with you when most of the messages to and from Houmaz occurred. So, that suggests that either Greenfield or McDougal is the most likely party. Or both. I told Lee and he activated his basement keystroke save program to run on the high-security-cleared terminal in the agency’s basement.”
“Any results?” asked Cassie, remembering how Lee as the agency’s director of network security had used that program to alert her to the assassins that McDougal had sent after her, so many months ago. She shivered with the notion that he might once again be behind this. She had made the decision to let him live, in return for doing her bidding. Was McDougal now trying to kill her in return for the favor? Just as she had let Achmed Houmaz live and now he was trying to repay her with death.
She wondered if she’d made the same mistake twice. When will I learn? Now my “mistakes” are probably working together as a team.
Wing responded. “So, like all the others who enter the building housing Greenfield’s unnamed agency, Lee left his cell phone at the security guard’s desk in the lobby. But, he had taken apart a GNU Radio and brought that into the agency building piece by piece, contained in the lead-lined false bottom of his plastic coffee mug, carrying it right past the security guards at the lobby entrance. Once he’d reassembled the pieces in his office, he set the keystroke program in the GNU Radio to send the results to his cell phone, even though the phone was located in the security guard’s location. In the evenings, when he left the building and they returned his cell phone, he retrieved the day’s results of the ‘keystroke save’ program.”
Wing continued. “Yesterday, during your evac from Hell, Lee and I met at the house. We worked on coupled PCs. Lee’s job was matching the encryption protocol to who has access to it while I worked to crack the protocol along with about two hundred hackers that I sent it to as a challenge. None had enough of any message for them to understand its context, so we’re still the only ones who know what the messages mean. This morning, several emailed me to tell me that they have it solved. We ran their solutions and they indicate McDougal used the secure basement terminal to send messages to a server in the Middle East run by OPEC. No involvement from Greenfield. We were able to backtrace the receiver’s address and came up with Achmed Houmaz. Right now we’re reconstructing the messages using the cracker I got from Betsy Brown. She’s one of the best at this.”
“How long until you crack all the messages?” Cassie couldn’t hide the frustration and anger in her voice.
“It’s a heavy compute-intensive process and there aren’t any shortcuts I know. At least two hours, total. Probably four or five.”
“Rats.” She spit out the word.
* * *
Two hours earlier, Gault watched the yacht power away from the shore and had to restrain himself from clapping. That woman has more lives than a cat. He hoped she’d live long enough to take down Greenfield. Gault knew his recent decision had wrecked any chance he had for a career.
His new path had given him a new to-do list. Tasks he’d assigned himself.
He’d reconfigured the feeds back from his copy of Bug-Lok. Now, as far as the agency was concerned, Lee Ainsley was still being surveilled. But what would be reported to the agency was an endless loop of Lee’s last two weeks. When they found out, the agency would terminate Gault’s employment. Of that he was certain. And, they might go further. They might terminate him. Didn’t matter.
He thought about the bible story of Abraham and Isaac, where God told Abe to slit his son’s neck, to prove his devotion. Fuck this, he thought. As of now, I’m an atheist. It’s wrong for them to execute a teenager. This is one thing I can’t let happen while I stand by and do nothing.
There were two more things Gault had to do for Ainsley. He ate two jelly doughnuts from the ABC store in the high-end Wailea mall and went to find a store that could sell him a burner phone, his jaw working as he savored the flavors intended to wipe away his bitterness.
He found one in the lobby and called Swiftshadow Consulting Group. He couldn’t talk with Lee since, if Greenfield’s minders discovered his alterations to Bug-Lok, that would be reported back through the Bug-Lok recordings, and well, his fate as well as Ainsley’s would absolutely be sealed. “I need to speak with your medical officer if there’s one available.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m the only one at the office right now. I can take a message.”
“I have to speak with your resident medical officer. The life of one of your people hangs in the balance.”
“May I ask whose life? Most of our people are currently out on assignment.”
“I know all about that. I’m in Maui. Listen, this is urgent.”
He heard paper rustling and then footsteps. She was obviously hooked to the landline via a wireless headset. He heard her walking down a short hall and then a knock. The voices were muffled. “Okay, sir, I
have someone here who can help you. Adam Mahee.”
“Mahee here. Who are you? What’s this all about?”
“My name is of no concern. But Lee Ainsley’s life is in serious danger. Get a pen and paper. Write this down.”
More sounds of a desk draw opening and then, “Okay. Tell me what you think I need to know.” From the tone of voice, Gault knew the man wasn’t convinced.
Gault nearly shouted. “Listen up, asshole. Greenfield is surveilling Ainsley using Bug-Lok.”
“What’s Bug-Lok?” Mahee’s voice was louder now and higher in pitch.
“It’s a new technology his intelligence agency is beta testing. Greenfield is using him as a subject. It’s injectable and can alternately be digested. He may have administered it in coffee if Ainsley had some with Greenfield in his office. It has the side effect of making the subject nauseous. It tracks the subject wherever he goes, and hears and sees everything the subject does. If you don’t arrange to have it removed immediately, he can also be executed using a remote control. And if you tell him, Greenfield may be listening and will kill him on the spot.”
“And why would Greenfield do this? What does he think Lee knows that’s so important?”
“He wants to know where Sashakovich is. But there’s something else, and it’s even more vile. There’s a plan to execute Sashakovich, Ainsley, and their little girl.”
“I’m sorry. Please repeat. A plan to kill the three of them?”
“Yes. Get your best surgeon to remove it now. It lodges somewhere in the brainstem. Don’t you guys have ties to Mossad? They’re the ones who developed it.”
“Who the fuck are you?” But Gault had terminated the conversation.
* * *
In the basement of the Washington Gun Club, Ann pulled the trigger of the Beretta .22 caliber handgun, hitting the target dead center for the fifth time in a row. She thought, so boring. So easy. Lee smiled, his face showing his pride for her.