“Madam Vice-President, we just got an op order forwarded to us from PACCOM. It seems that the Regan Battle Group has launched a NEO to rescue the president,” he said, then stood quietly, waiting for her reaction.
She was stunned. “You are telling me what?”
“Ma’am, at 0730 Z, the Reagan launched four Ospreys with a contingent of Marines and fighter escort to conduct a NEO.”
“Marines? They don’t do operations anymore. What are you . . .” she trailed off. Of course, now she knew to where all the Marines had disappeared. She looked back up. “And just who authorized this NEO?” Her eyes burned into General Litz.
“Well, according to this op order, it seems that the president did.” He handed the vice-president the first page of the printout. “See here? In the Mission Statement? It says ‘. . . in compliance with the direct orders of President Michael Eduardo, Commander in Chief . . .”
He looked at her for a reaction.
“And just when did the president give the Battle Group such an order?” she demanded.
The general swallowed, the hesitantly said, “Well, he did, sort of. During our last communications with him.”
“That was not a legal order. We have determined that while the president is under duress such as he is now, under isolation as he is now, it’s just as if he is under surgery or otherwise temporarily incapacitated, and his orders carry no legal weight. He doesn’t know the big picture and cannot make a reasonable decision.”
She seemed to be reciting this more to convince herself than the others.
“Besides, just how did the Reagan know about this?’
There were some downcast eyes among the flag officers as the general said, “Well Madam Vice-President, we don’t know at this time. But we are looking into it.”
“Do that. But first, we are not going to war over this. Get a hold of the Reagan and pull the plug on this thing.”
There was some more nervous shuffling of feet, and the vice-president felt a pang of apprehension.
“Madam Vice-President, we regret to inform you that we have been out of touch with the group commander up until now.” Admiral Keogh held up a satphone for her to see. “We were already going to do that, but the NEO task force itself, well it’s completely out of communications. They’ve got a Big Eye,” he looked furtively around the room, “and it has put a dead zone around them. The Big Eye can cut off all—”
“Yes, I know all about the Big Eye, General. I helped fund the prototypes. I know what it can do. General Johnson, the Big Eye is one of yours. Contact the crew and shut it off.”
“There seems to be a temporary communications problem with the Big Eye.” she said, looking embarrassed. “We haven’t been able to raise it.”
Temporary problem? So that was how this was going to be played, the vice-president thought to herself..
She began to feel control slipping away.
“According to the op order, there will be a window, at 0947 Z, that is a little over an hour from now, where the Big Eye will shut down the telecommunications jamming. They want to try and contact the president and also give out a warning to bystanders to get away because they are going to drop a Mk402. They want to minimize casualties. We can use that window to shut this off,” General Litz said, looking hopeful.
“And where is this task force now?” she asked dryly.
General Litz looked back to one of his strap-hangers who whispered in his ear. The general turned back to her and said, “According to our calculations, it should be over Indian airspace now. We are trying to get a visual with our satellites now.”
“Who is the commander of the Battle Group?”
Admiral Keogh stepped up, satphone in hand. “Rear Admiral Joshua Conners. Do you want to talk to him? I’ve got him standing by.”
He held out the phone helpfully.
The vice-president sat in thought for a moment. The dice had been thrown. If she picked them up from the table now, history would look on her as a weak. If the NEO could somehow work, she would be the strong vice-president who took forceful action. And if the NEO failed, well, she would be hanging her hat at 1600 Pennsylvania, and she could worry about weathering the storm from the pacifist crowd later. It was time for damage control.
“I don’t know about any of you, but I am sick-and-tired about all this BS stonewalling we are getting from the Indians. It is time to put an end to this. If the Reagan and some Marines have found an opportunity to get this done, then we sure the hell are going to back them up.”
The faces around her were stunned, to say the least. She looked at Dr. Ryan, who had pushed her way into the group once it was obvious something big was up.
“Get word to the bystanders around the embassy somehow that they need to get out of the area. But don’t do it too early. Just give them enough time to move back. A Mk 402 does not have that big of an effective casualty radius. Then prepare statements to give the Indian government through our friends stressing that this is not an act of war, but merely a NEO on what is officially our sovereign soil. Oh, and get Secretary Pitt off the ground now. I don’t want him still sitting at the airport when this all goes down.”
She paused for a moment.
“General Kantres, maybe it’s time to move the Quick Reaction Force. The barn door may already be open, but you never know.
“Come on people! Let’s get going on this! What else do we need to do to ensure a successful operation? Let’s go!”
There was an explosion of noise as people rushed to phones and computers.
Chapter 45
Thursday Morning, US Embassy, New Delhi
More and more men were coming into the courtyard with a sense of purpose. Sgt Niimoto watched them flank the door and take positions behind the columns. There were probably fifty or so men crowded down there. One man had picked up the torch again, lit it off, and was trying to sidle up to the small cut and enlarge it while staying out of the line of fire.
“Aye-aye, Gunny. I’ll wait. I’ll try for the cylinder first, and it that doesn’t work, I’m going to start taking them out,” he said.
He placed the phone down and raised his weapon. The last exchange had happened too fast for him to get off a shot, and he was not going to be left holding the bag this time.
The metalworker did not have a good angle for a nice clean cut, but the opening was nevertheless getting longer. Everyone was focused on the cut. A burst of muffled gunfire rang out, almost too muffled for him to hear up in the tower, but the sudden hail of return fire left little doubt as to what had happened. Sgt Niimoto didn’t consider the ambient temperature, spin drift, coriolis effect, or any other of the external ballistics he was taught. He was too close for them to have much effect. He tried to compensate for the bullet drop considering his height above the ground, focused on the cylinder, and slowly squeezed off a shot. Nothing happened. He could see chips of plaster and stone fly as rounds from inside the embassy and rounds from outside which impacted the doors ricocheted about. He sighted again and squeezed off another shot. Again, nothing. It looked as if his rounds didn’t have enough penetrating power to do anything to the heavy cylinder. OK, he would shift to more lively targets.
As he acquired a target, a man with a black t-shirt crouching behind a column, the volume of fire slowed, then stopped. Men peered around at the door, and the metal worker picked himself up from where he had hit the deck, picked up the torch, and tentatively, with encouragement from the others, started his cut again. He worked a small circle, and with a big shower of sparks, that circle fell into the embassy, leaving a rough 12-inch hole in the door. Someone gave a shout, and the Indians started firing into the hole. One man, tall and rangy, approached from the side with what looked to be a grenade. Sgt Niimoto shifted his aim, and as the man reached out to throw the grenade in, he took the shot.
The round, traveling at over 1200 feet per second, impacted the man’s right shoulder and entered his chest cavity. He staggered, dropping the grenade. A few m
en must have thought he had thrown it into the hole as they started firing again, but the shot man understood. Sgt Niimoto could clearly see the look of resignation on his face as he fell to a sitting position, staring at the grenade. There was an explosion, and Sgt Niimoto instinctively flinched. When he looked back through the scope, he could see the battered body of the man up against the embassy wall, blood welling beneath him. Another gunman, one of the ones in back of a column, was writhing in pain, clutching his leg. Sgt Niimoto could hear the man’s shouts from up in the tower. There was an increase fusillade of fire as two men ran up and grabbed the wounded man by the shoulders, dragging him out of the line-of-fire from inside the embassy.
Something small and round came out the hole. One of the Marines had thrown his own grenade. With a shout, the gunmen threw themselves flat. Trying to compose himself, Sgt Niimoto took aim at a gunman, and when the grenade detonated, he pulled off a shot. He quickly re-acquired the target only to see that the man was unharmed. Tony had missed. Snapping off a shot accurately was much more difficult than squeezing off a shot. He gave a grunt and slapped himself alongside his head. He had to do better.
He looked down at his remaining rounds: eight more in the clip and ten more arrayed in front of him. He had to make these count.
As the metalworker edged his way forward again, Sgt Niimoto put the scope’s crosshairs on the man’s shoulder blade. Reconsidering, he moved the aiming point to the man’s spine. At this elevated angle, he didn’t want the round skipping along the man’s shoulder blades. His target nervously crept forward, then reached out again and started cutting. Another man crept up along the opposite side of the cut and reached his weapon around, firing into the hole without exposing his body. Sgt Niimoto let out half a breath and squeezed the trigger this time. The rifle chuffed and kicked against his shoulder. He quickly shifted aim and squeezed again, aiming center mass at the gunman firing right into the embassy.
The first round impacted the metalworker directly on his spine, on the C7 vertebrae. The 178 grain round shattered the bone, sending shards throughout the unfortunate man’s lungs and heart. He was dead before he knew he had been hit. The second round also entered its target’s back, but lower and to the left. The gunman dropped, then tried to crawl out of the way. Another man rushed over to help him.
Two men crept up the grab the feet of the metalworker and drag him alongside the edge of the embassy building. A large, heavyset man met them and turned the prone body over. He seemed to notice something, then quickly tore off the dead man’s shirt. Sgt Niimoto has a sinking feeling as the man checked the body for an entrance wound on the chest. He flipped the body back over, pulled the bloody shirt back, and touched the wound there. Sgt Niimoto could clearly see the confused expression on the man as he checked the dead man’s chest, then the understanding dawn on his face as he looked at the dead man’s back. Hand still on the wound, he suddenly looked back over the courtyard and up. With one of the odd chances in combat, he happened to look directly at the tower and caught sight of Sgt Niimoto aiming down at him.
He brought his rifle to bear, not wanting to fire like this, to expose himself. He never really thought to drop back down out-of-sight as that would only prolong things. And he really did not want to hide anymore. He wanted to face his enemies. Through the scope, Sgt Niimoto could see the man’s eyes widen, a shout beginning to form as he started to swing his own weapon around. Tony Niimoto smoothly pulled back on the trigger sending the boattail round down from the tower, across the courtyard, and into the man’s throat. The man fell as if poleaxed, and Sgt Niimoto swung his weapon to take aim at one of the two men who had dragged the metalworker. To Tony’s surprise, the man jumped back and started pointing back at the embassy door. Somehow, they thought the round which had taken out the man had come from inside the embassy. Sgt Niimoto sighed with relief.
Over the next 15 minutes or so, Sgt Niimoto became a machine. Pick a target, wait for fire, then squeeze off a round. He took out a replacement metalworker with a headshot, but most were other gunmen. Fifteen shots, fifteen hits. Twelve obvious kills. He had contemplated keeping the last round for himself, like they do in the movies, but he realized that that would help nobody in the embassy, so he used it to take out an automatic rifleman who was pouring fire into the hole in the door.
He had called into the embassy to let them know he was out of ammo and to ask what he should do. They were understandably a little busy, but through PFC Rodriguez, Gunny told him to hold fast and wait. So he was waiting now. Yet another metalworker was cutting away at the door now, making progress. He had at least three quarters of a large square cut out, an opening which would be large enough to let at least two men enter abreast. And Sgt Niimoto didn’t have a way to stop him.
He looked back on the other side of the wall. There were a dozen or more men up on the makeshift stands, watching the progress of the men at the door. As he watched, one of the men seemed to be having problems with his phone. He kept looking at it. Then trying to call someone. He tapped a man next to him and said something. The man handed him his phone, but that one didn’t seem to be much better.
Bad comm will kill you, he thought as he moved back to watch the enemy’s progress.
Now that his killing mode had passed, he was thirsty again. But somehow, that didn’t seem so important anymore.
Chapter 46
Thursday Morning, US Embassy, New Delhi
When the first piece of the door fell in, a small circle of about 12 inches in diameter, incoming fire had intensified, and a round skipped off the deck to hit Sgt Chen in the calf. He seemed more angry than hurt, and he returned fire, cursing up a storm. But Gunny could tell that the shock was now setting in. Chen was quieter, somewhat distant. But he refused to go below.
The first grenade to come flying in somehow took them by surprise, despite the fact that they expected it. Somehow, no one was hit. The second grenade had dinged LCpl Steptoe, though. Nothing serious, but sobering none-the-less.
And now Sgt Niimoto was out of the picture. He had probably single-handedly kept the gunmen out of the embassy for the last twenty or thirty minutes, but there was nothing he could do now. And the Marines watched, almost mesmerized, as the new cut line slowly grew along the door. LCpl Kramer had tried to get enough of an angle to take out the man on the torch, but the hole was too small, and the volume of incoming drove him back. It was only matter of time now before the opening was cut.
No one had thought to disable the security cameras, so they could see on the monitors the gunmen massing to storm the embassy. An increased volume of fire suddenly came in the opening.
“Mother fucker! Again!” Sgt Chen yelled, grasping his calf, right where he had been hit before.
Another round had hit him, almost in the same place. Kramer rushed over to where Chen lay in back of Post 1, helping him up.
“Chen, you OK?” asked Gunny Mac.
“Oh sure, Gunny, if you count those cocksuckers shooting me in the goddamn leg again as being OK.”
He muffled some curses and Kramer bound the leg again, wrapping the bandage right over the existing one.
More rounds came to ricochet around the entrance. This position was becoming untenable.
He heard a shout from below him. “What’s happening up there?” It was the president, followed by a sheepish-looking Army major.
He shouted down, “Mr. President, can you please go back to the vault? We can’t do our job here if we have to worry about you. Major Defilice, can you please escort him back?”
They looked up at him, then moved back out of sight. Probably not back to the vault, he thought, but it was better than nothing.
He moved back to where he could see the front doors. The opening was getting close to being cut through. Well, he had to make some changes.
“OK, everybody listen up. We’ll pull back to the ladderwell and try to secure the hatch here. When they get in, they’ll probably take time to search the ground floor, and that’ll giv
e us time. We’re going down to the bottom deck where we can mass our fire. You know, like the Spartans when they fought the Persians. Let them come at us in small numbers. Sgt Chen, we need to carry you. I don’t want your blood to leave a trail to the ladderwell. OK? Let’s move it.”
“Uh Gunny?”
It was Sgt McAlister, speaking through the voice grill of the post. He turned around with a questioning look.
She looked at PFC Rodriguez who gave a slight nod, then she said, “Well, like we told you before, me and Jesus here, well, we kind of figure we should stay here.”
“No, I want you to fall back. We can’t stay here.”
“General Order Number 5, Gunny.”
“I told you before, I’m relieving you.”
“Well, we don’t see it that way.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “Look Gunny, we can cover that opening there, when they get it. We can fire right under the document slot and cover the whole thing. This glass here is bulletproof, so what can they do to us? You need the time, and we can give it to you.” She paused again. “You know we’re right.”
Gunny’s mind raced. He wanted to pull them back, to keep them safer. His thoughts flashed for a brief second to Colonel Parks, trying to teach his very green driver so long ago what it meant to be a leader. Now he knew what the colonel meant.
The cut line on the door was getting close to being completed. The rest of the Marines were waiting on his decision.
“Besides, Gunny. We’re all probably going to catch it today, and we’d rather go out on Post than hiding in some dark vault, probably getting shot in the ass by Fallgatter or Ramon,” she said with a laugh.
He made his decision.
“Roger that, Sergeant. Man your post.”
He raised up his arm in a salute. Both Little Mac and Rodriquez came to quasi-attention and returned the salute.
The Return of the Marines Trilogy Page 20