Chandra’s job would be to fire a heartbeat before Alterman, aiming slightly away from the target, breaking the window to leave a clear path for Alterman’s bullet. Although with Chandra shooting through glass—the convention center architects had used a fairly standard glazed laminate for their floor-to-ceiling windows—it was always possible that his round would be sufficiently deflected to hit the mark.
But that wasn’t something they expected. Made for precision shooting, their NATO Ball Special 7.62mm loads weren’t especially frangible. They would not break up or lose their shape on impact with the layered glass. The church steeple itself was a good hide, offering them shade and concealment, and the torpid weather conditions eliminated wind as a variable in the bullets’ trajectories. All factors considered, both snipers wouldn’t need spotters. Second shots here were not an option. And both men knew it.
His cheek against the HK’s black synthetic stock, Chandra saw the gunman continue to press his weapon into the hostage’s throat while facing the Company guy, or whatever he was, who had come running into the conference room and had taken down one of the hostage takers in a slick, nasty bit of business. It did not look to Chandra like he was making any progress in getting the mark to surrender. Just moments before the Company guy had raised his assault rifle. Classic standoff. But with a weapon to the throat of a hostage and the SWAT teams already closing in, time was not on the snipers’ side.
“Ready to do this?” Alterman said, as if reading his thoughts. They had been given full discretion on proceeding with the drop, and the senior agent was clearly in sync with him on the pointlessness of waiting.
“Yeah.”
“On my count,” Alterman said.
Chandra resumed his rhythmic breathing, centering the target in his crosshairs and then tilting the gun up by a tiny degree.
“Standby,” Alterman said. “Four, three, two, one ...”
Chandra exhaled on the one, aimed in the center of his own faint red circle and, at Alterman’s fire command, gave the trigger of his rifle a smooth pull.
His full metal jacket NATO slug broke the conference room’s sheet-glass window with a crack and drilled harmlessly into the wall above their mark’s head. An imperceptible moment later, Alterman’s full metal jacket round entered the room, twinkling as it passed through the down-turned chopper beacon.
Out in the corridor, Allison heard what sounded like the sharp tak of a stone bouncing off the windshield of a car, a high-pitched whine, and then the screams. The first cry came from Colin. She had heard that whoop at enough U of V Cavaliers basketball games to be sure of it. The rest of the yells came from many different people, men and women. But there were no sounds of gunfire, not from within the room.
She went rushing into the conference room. As Allison moved clumsily on cramped legs, she became aware of the rumbling of automatic weapons fire in the distance. It sounded different than what she and Kealey had heard before. This was rhythmic, deeper, somehow coordinated.
It was instantly forgotten as she swung into the room. She nearly tripped over the throat-cut guard at the door, splatting through the pool of his blood as she swerved around him, her eyes seeking Colin. She saw the people who’d been crowded together at one end of the room rising slowly, like time-lapse plants, looking as stunned and overwhelmed as she was. Then she saw Kealey crouched beside her nephew, comforting him. Colin was squatting and was covered with blood. It looked like he had been the loser in a paintball competition, and her first thought was that they had failed Colin, failed him totally and horribly. He was covered with such a massive quantity of blood that her mind initially refused to accept what she was seeing. She was a doctor; she’d seen people bleed. She was very aware that the five and a half quarts in a human body Colin’s size was a lot of blood when you saw it draining out. But this much ... How was he even awake? As she scurried forward, dropping the gun, her eyes scanned for a wound. Perhaps in his back, his shoulder ...
“Colin!”
His eyes snapped toward her. He was sobbing openly, but not from pain. Something resembling a smile pulled at his mouth.
“He’s okay,” Kealey told her. His voice seemed far away, hollow, like he was in the bottom of a trash can.
Kealey helped Colin up by the arm.
And then, behind Colin, she saw the fallen gunman. He was lying facedown, splayed like a crime-scene chalk outline. The back of his head was gone, disintegrated, tiny bits of white showing around its gaping remnants like the pieces of a broken eggshell. There was the source of all the blood.
She was crying by the time she reached Colin. She threw her arms around him, felt his weight fall into them—but only for a moment, as he sought to stand on his own.
“I’m okay, Aunt Allison,” he said, sounding like the little boy she used to hug, when he let her, on birthdays and holidays.
“I love you,” she said. “I was so worried.”
“Me too,” he replied, weeping.
Her fingers feeling Colin’s scalp just to be sure, she turned to Kealey while she held him. “Thank you,” she sputtered.
“Wasn’t all me,” he said. Facing the exterior wall, he made a show of unshouldering his weapon and placing it on the floor before walking toward the shattered window. “We got some help. And I’m guessing there’s more on the way.”
“Those shots ... ?” Alison asked.
“From the church,” Kealey said as he reached the empty window frame and flashed a thumbs-up at the steeple. “It’s the only place that has a direct line of sight.”
Allison sought out the church, could barely see it in the dark. Then a helicopter moved in, throwing a bright white light across the steeple as it rotated toward the broken window. She looked away.
Kealey returned to her side a moment later. “I have to go,” he said.
“Why?” she asked.
“I have to get upstairs to the ballroom. The one where Julie was supposed to give her speech.”
Allison released her nephew. “Dear God, forgive me!” she said. ”I forgot.”
“No need to apologize,” he said. He bent to retrieve the gun. “We’ve been thinking in little, bite-size pieces.”
“But we don’t even know if she’s—”
“There’s a lot we don’t know,” Kealey interrupted. “So let’s take things one at a time. How are you?”
“Don’t worry about me, Ryan.”
He regarded her closely. “You sure?”
She nodded.
He looked at her nephew. “Colin?”
“Same here,” Colin said, although his voice was tremulous. “Man, you did so good,” he said. “You saved me.”
“You got us here, and you stayed cool,” Kealey said. “It was a team effort. You saved all these people, too,” he added with a sweep of his arm behind him. “Your tweet said the hostages were in two groups. Where are the others?”
“They’re in a room across the hall.”
“How many altogether?”
“Fifteen, maybe twenty people. They separated us down the middle.”
“The number of guards with them?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Your best guess,” Kealey said. ”It’s important.”
Colin looked thoughtful. “I think they split in half,” he said. “There was him, you know”—he glanced back at the dead gunman’s body—“and a second guy, who left the room when he heard the noise out there. The one you got with the knife. Then there was a third guy, who I’m guessing you shot at the door.”
“So you’re saying there were only a few in each room. That’s it?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Ryan, I heard gunfire downstairs,” Allison said.
“Those were point men for the hostage takers being picked off by SWAT personnel,” Kealey said. “I heard it, too. The enemy was patrolling in twos, and there were a dozen bursts from FBI Glock twenty-twos. Nothing since. Our boys are working their way up here methodically, standard operati
ng procedure, and they may not be in time. Not if the guys in the other room figure out they’re licked.”
He didn’t have to finish the thought. Allison knew what he meant.
Kealey retrieved his weapon and slid his arm through the leather strap. He pulled in a breath, blew air out his cheeks, and turned toward the door. Everyone else in the room was standing there, looking at him, awaiting instructions.
“You’re all going to stay put,” he said. “Help is on the way. I’m—”
He stopped.
“What is it?” Allison asked.
Kealey held up a hand to silence her. He tilted his head toward the window, listening. Allison saw his expression go from thoughtful to sharply attentive.
“Ryan?”
“Hush!” he snapped.
She and Colin were silent.
Kealey listened some more, wanting to confirm what he’d heard. The sounds were rapidly getting louder. They were overlapping in multiples, the telltale whoop of rotors accompanied by the whine of turbocharged engines.
He turned back to Allison, saw the question on her face as she also picked up on the growing sound. Within seconds it had swelled to fill their ears.
“Ryan ... ?”
Kealey looked at her. “Choppers,” he said, throwing down his assault rifle an instant before the room was awash in white light. “Lose your weapon—fast.”
CHAPTER 10
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Baltimore-Washington International Airport was the second embarkation point for the four Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters designated for the mission. The first was a closely guarded heliport at Marine Corps Base Quantico, which encompassed almost 75 square miles of forest in Prince William County, Virginia, and was also home to the FBI Academy, where the Bureau’s elite Hostage Rescue Team was stationed as a major tactical component of the Critical Incident Response Group. Optimized for rapid force delivery capabilities, each of the choppers had been boarded by twenty heavily armed HRT personnel in full combat garb. A pair of MH-6 Little Birds had then accompanied them to BWI for final deployment; these nimble, lightweight choppers would provide aerial recon and fire support when the Black Hawks reached their target.
Only 9 miles south of downtown Baltimore, BWI was an ideal staging point for the second-front unit, the official order for which was issued by FBI director Charles Cluzot under the direct authorization of the president. The SWAT teams were officially designated first front because they were already on-site. However, their sweep-and-secure ingress would take time. If they met resistance, they might not be able to provide the kind of RTA—Rapid Target Attack—ordered by the commander in chief.
Honed and practiced in a realistic city mock-up constructed deep in the Prince William County woodlands, the HRT’s swarm and penetration techniques relied on multiple elements acting in tight coordination: flooding the site with assault teams while snipers on adjacent rooftops—and gunners in so-called monkey harnesses riding the skids of the Little Birds—covered them from all sides.
The helicopters’ arrival at the convention center was logged at 6:23 p.m. EST. Within a minute of that time, the lead Black Hawk had already banked in low over the building, delivering a stream of CS powder to clear it of hostiles who might be on the rooftop, a necessary precaution even though none had been observed by the AW139 already on-site. The windless conditions were favorable for use of the CS, limiting dispersal to the target area and thus making it unlikely that civilians would be affected.
After a brief interval the chopper returned with the others, all four lowering to stationary hovers above both the new and old sections of the convention center complex. Then hatches opened, rope lines dropped from their hoist brackets, and the rappel teams made their descent onto the rooftops, eighty of them sliding down one after another in swift succession.
Using safety handrails as anchor points, they straddled their ropes and began their descent with a springing hop-skip, their backs straight, legs spread, bodies leaned outward from the sides of the building.
Meanwhile, radios crackling, the teams raced across the tar to previously identified access doors, breaching them with their rams.
In their dark gray uniforms, body armor, vests, helmets, and face shields, bristling with M16s and combat shotguns, tacs almost resembled warrior beetles to the pilots of the departing choppers as they packed into the service stairs and then hurried down toward the building’s fourth floor to begin their sweep.
Kealey was facing the window as the top-rappel team came sliding down in their harnesses, their boots flat against the side of the building. Kicking jagged edges of broken glass from around the steel window frame, a half dozen of them poured into the conference room in their tactical gear, machine guns leveled.
One of them shouted, “Toss your weapons onto the floor in front of me. Then put your hands up over your head!”
“We’re unarmed,” Kealey said. His hands were raised, and he used his toe to point to the MP5K on the floor. “Your sniper team in the church took this guy out. They can confirm.”
“Everyone in the room, raise ... your ... hands!”
The man had drawn the last three words out as a way of giving them added emphasis. He couldn’t have said them louder, since he was already yelling.
Kealey hadn’t expected his pronouncement to change ingress protocol. Nor this: “I’m Ryan Kealey. We sent the messages that brought you here.”
A man picked up Kealey’s gun. His face was invisible behind the black, skintight balaclava, which covered his face from the bridge of his nose down, and the goggles, which concealed the rest. He kept his weapon trained on Kealey.
With a reverse chop of his upraised forearm, one team leader signaled the other that this room was clear. He chopped forward to indicate to his unit to assume a file formation beside the door. The team leader who was staying behind had been talking into his throat mike. Finished, he walked over to Kealey. He did not remove his amber goggles or raise his balaclava.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Ryan Kealey—”
“Who are you with?”
“She’s Company. I’m former,” Kealey said. He had forgotten, for a moment, the priorities in securing a hot zone. It didn’t matter what indigenous occupants were called, but where their loyalties lay. “We were here to attend the nursing dinner,” he said. “Look, there may be more gunmen in the room across the hall. These guys and some of the dead men on the steps are Eastern European. I don’t know why they’re here or who they work for. I do know they’ve threatened to kill all the hostages—”
As he spoke, he heard the familiar sizzle of flash-bang grenades. Not only was the M84 designed to blind and deafen the enemy, but it also sent the equivalent of an electric shock through the eyes and into the brain, scrambling all thought, while simultaneously hammering each side of the skull with what felt like a mallet. The fluid of the ear was so severely compromised by the explosion, it was almost impossible to remain upright. The result was that if any of the hostiles in the vicinity of the blast had been holding a gun to a hostage’s head, they would have been debilitated before they could fire. It would also have floored most of the hostages, keeping them below incoming gunfire. The two blasts were followed by the equally familiar pops of the M4 carbines the assault team had been carrying.
Six shots. There was no other gunfire. The ordeal was over.
“Please let us go there,” Allison said. “Our friend Julie Harper—”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. You have to remain here,” said the team leader.
“Or what?” she demanded.
Kealey answered before the team leader could. “Or they’ll cuff and book you.” He regarded the HRT officer. “The exhibition hall,” Kealey said. “I’m sure the SWAT team has reached it by now.”
“I can’t provide you with any information—”
“I’m not asking for any. I’m telling you,” Kealey said. “You’d be on your way down there if they hadn’t.�
�
The man shifted uncomfortably but said nothing.
“The president will want to know about the woman who was running the show there, Mrs. Julie Harper. Would you please get us clearance to check ASAP? It’ll make our lives a helluva lot easier—mine now and yours later.”
The tac studied Kealey for a long moment, then said into his throat mike, “Command, this is Griffith. I need a check on a Ryan Kealey. K, kilo ... ?”
Kealey spelled it for him, and the team leader spelled it back, adding the appropriate radio jargon for clarity.
Kealey didn’t blame the man for checking. But it reminded him why he had always been a solo operator and believed that looking into a person’s eyes told you everything you needed to know, and more than any file could possibly tell you.
Before turning to organize triage, the young man identified himself to Kealey as Special Agent London Griffith. Kealey didn’t ask about the name. Maybe over a beer one day he would. Right now he didn’t care. Griffith had finally removed his goggles, and he left Kealey and Allison standing where they were while medics arrived to check on the former hostages. Colin went with them.
He gave his aunt a hug and Kealey a handshake before going to the cots that were being brought into the corridor. The dead men had been covered with black vinyl sheets, but they could not be moved until a postmortem team arrived to photograph the scene and—for purely tactical reasons—analyze the effectiveness of the steeple takedown and the flash-bang assault. It was felt that providing care for the hostages would be better accomplished where there were no dead bodies and where the air didn’t smell of oily silica gel.
Kealey and Allison stood there in silence, holding hands. It was only an hour before that they were acting like tourists, chatting about fish, and looking forward to a relaxed evening and a little social triumph for their friend.
The Operative Page 13