Almost simultaneously, two more gaping holes appeared in the passenger side of the windshield and the team leader riding shotgun on this morning’s run to California met the same fate as his driver. Behind him, six uniformed men desperately struggled to disengage themselves from their safety belts, secure their weapons, and exit the besieged vehicle.
The sniper had done his job perfectly, now it was up to his colleague, Rocket Man, to take over. The shouts of the men in the rear of the van could be heard by Rocket Man as he knelt into a good firing position, the RPG firmly grasped in his hands, its dull gunmetal black launch tube resting atop his right shoulder. The rocket-propelled, armor-piercing grenade would arm itself in flight. He’d carefully computed the necessary standoff distance between where he estimated the van would come to a stop and his firing position, but he knew it would be a tough shot given the physical constraints of the ambush site. Still, he was considered the best man with an RPG on the team and he was intent on maintaining that hard-won reputation.
Pressing the launcher’s thick trigger he felt his body jerk back as the fin-stabilized grenade swooshed toward the van’s open side door. A great belch of smoke and flame erupted from the rear end of the tube as the grenade was released. Not waiting to judge the effect of his marksmanship, Rocket Man snatched up his second grenade and deftly inserted it into the empty maw of the launcher. He felt a wall of scorching hot air hit his masked face a millisecond before the sound of the grenade exploding inside the van hammered his ears. Looking up he watched as one of the van’s team fell to the ground, rolling around on the highway in flames. Even as the man was trying to beat out the flames consuming his head and shoulders, the dull craaack—THUD sound of a firing Barrett .50 rolled over the desert. With grim appreciation Rocket Man watched as the steel penetrator round brought an immediate, if rather messy, end to the burning man’s agony.
Raising the launcher up a second time, Rocket Man took an extra moment to carefully fix his sight on the burning van. Nothing appeared to be moving inside the gutted vehicle. Anyone who might have managed to escape through the far windows, rear door, or driver’s side door would have been taken care of by the Barrett. The crackling of the flames and the sickly sweet smell of frying flesh filled the air as the vehicle began to burn more fiercely across from him. Satisfied that his target was aligned, Rocket Man released the second grenade. It slammed into the passenger side door of the van, ripping the entire front end off the vehicle and scattering body parts from the two corpses up front out into the desert.
Setting down the launcher, Rocket Man swung his black Colt M4 carbine up from where it was hanging across his chest on a three-point black nylon tactical sling. He moved the lightweight assault rifle’s barrel up and down the kill zone searching for anyone unfortunate enough to have survived the twin blasts of the grenades and the Big Fifty’s heavy-ass high velocity slugs courtesy of his partner. Nothing moved. With a light wave he signaled the “All Clear” to his teammate.
He knelt, pulled a canteen from its pouch on his combat harness and took a long, deep swig of cool water. In the distance he could now hear the strident rattle of automatic weapons fire and he knew the rest of his mates were taking down the lead van. It was now his and the sniper’s job to engage any vehicles coming down the highway from the north. Cradling the M4 he checked the M203 40-mm grenade launcher attached beneath the carbine’s barrel. A single high explosive round was resting in the tube, its rounded copper-colored nose capable of easily stopping anything made by Dodge, Honda, or Jeep. Any civilians who had the bad timing to come along now would be considered collateral damage. Unfortunate casualties of war. He knew his God would overlook such trivial matters. Small sacrifices made in the preparation of the ultimate sacrifice yet to come.
Inside the first van pandemonium reigned. As the driver attempted to maintain speed and control, the security team in the back were shouting instructions at each other and readying their gear. The sharp RACCCCK! of German-made MP-5 10-mm submachine gun bolts echoed in the air as the men jacked the high velocity rounds into their weapons’ hungry chambers. The radio operator responsible for maintaining communication with the chase van and the command center at Los Alamos gave up entirely on the chase van and began calling for an airborne response team to launch out of Los Alamos immediately. Glancing out the heavily tinted back windows of the van he saw a plume of dirty white-gray smoke rising up from the base of the hill. So much for those poor bastards, he thought to himself. Who the FUCK is crazy enough to hit us?
The driver saw two civilian SUVs hurtling towards them side by side down the highway and shouted a warning to those in the back. By now his vehicle’s ruptured tires were flat, the van’s speed was a pathetic twenty-five miles per hour and it couldn’t maneuver worth a shit. Powerless except to keep the vehicle crawling forward, he watched as the SUVs spun sideways on the highway about 200 meters in front of him, blocking the highway. The side doors of the SUVs slid open and four men, all clad in black BDU uniforms, jumped out in unison.
The operator could guess from his antiterrorism training what was coming next. Slamming both his feet hard against the brake, he fought to bring the van to a stop and shouted the order to evacuate. Before anyone could heed his command, four modified M60 light machine guns firing 7.62 NATO ball ammunition sans tracer rounds began chewing the van apart. Inside, the security team and their driver were flailed alive by hundreds of incoming copper-jacketed steel core rounds.
On their leader’s order, the assault team began walking forward in a line, sending a continuous rhythm of alternating, well-aimed heavy fire into the van as they approached it. When they reached the van they ceased firing and listened carefully for the slightest movement or moan, any hint of life coming from inside. Nothing.
One of the attackers grasped the mangled handle of the passenger side door and yanked it hard. As he wrenched the door open, a blood-soaked form sprang out at him in a blur of arms and legs, landing almost directly on top of him.
“Fuck me!” he cried out and fired a round directly into his assailant. Only then did he realize his attacker was a corpse that must have been leaning against the door. The mutilated body now lay on the highway at his feet.
“Easy boys,” muttered the team leader. “No use wasting good fire on dead meat.”
Then he called, “Positions!”
The men quickly arranged themselves in a tight half-circle around the front part of the van.
“Breacher up!”
At this command, a fifth operator who was pulling rear security at the SUVs came sprinting forward. Simultaneously, one of the M60 gunners turned and ran back to man the roadblock. There, he rested his hot-to-the-touch and freshly reloaded machine gun atop one of the SUV’s hoods, pointing its smoking barrel south. With the .50 available to cover both ends of the ambush as well as anything that might try to fly overhead, the kill zone was now effectively sealed.
The breacher ran to the van and under the attentive guard of his security team clambered into the gutted vehicle. He climbed over the freshly butchered and bleeding bodies to where the secure storage compartment was located on the port side of the rear cargo area. There he placed and armed the explosive charge specially designed to open the compartment. Satisfied, the breacher slid back into the driver’s compartment and called, “Fire in the hole!” The trio outside the van kneeled and turned their faces to one side as the breacher squeezed shut the clacker of a Claymore antipersonnel firing device. With a soft WHOOMPH! the compartment’s titanium door was blown free.
Coughing slightly from the smoke inside the van, the breacher retraced his slippery path to where a metal-clad, medium-sized suitcase was now exposed. Reaching inside the reinforced compartment he grasped its handle and tugged the 30-pound case up and out onto the floor of the van. “GOT IT!” he yelled.
“Let’s move!” shouted the masked assault team leader. “We’re on the fucking numbers here!”
The breacher exited the van with his newly acquir
ed trophy and the group turned and ran for the SUVs. Once inside they pulled past the destroyed van and drove at a high speed toward the north end of the kill zone. As they approached, the sniper worked his way down to the highway, Barrett .50 in hand. Rocket Man, too, was standing by and ready for extraction. Minutes later the team was heading northbound at a law-abiding sixty-five miles per hour.
“Call the Colonel and tell him we’ve got it,” ordered the commander. “And let’s get out of these costumes. Halloween is officially over!”
As the call was made using a secure cell phone issued to them by the ever-trusting folks at Fort Bragg, the men pulled their tight black masks from their heads and stripped down to the khaki shorts and obnoxious t-shirts they wore underneath. Laughing and back-slapping each other as the SUVs roared past the first civilian vehicle they’d seen on the highway since the hit, they looked like a typical band of off-duty servicemen heading for a few days’ leave in Las Vegas, nothing more dangerous on their minds than gambling, drinking, and screwing. Within two hours they’d reach a small private airstrip and board a waiting private plane. From there they would take their just-acquired treasure to its new (though short-lived) home.
It was an odd sort of prize they’d killed so many men to obtain, one whose true power could only be released in the course of its own destruction.
Chapter
4
“It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.”
MAJOR GENERAL CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, On War, 1832, tr. Howard and Paret
Our chopper flight was fast, furious, and with little conversation. The LZ turned out to be the fairway of the eighteenth hole of a very posh country club near the dead lawyer’s house. A police squad car was standing by to take us to the crime scene and our driver, like the NSA flight crew, was a somber, serious bastard. I liked that. It meant they weren’t fucking around wasting my precious time.
I’d dressed as inconspicuously as possible—a pair of stonewashed blue jeans, black turtleneck, a pair of lightweight clutter boots, and a dark blue sports coat. Trace and Paul were likewise casually dressed. Less typical was the hardware we carried under our clothes. All of us were toting our favorite shooters. Mine was a Glock 26, an Austrian made 9-mm compact pistol with night sights. It’s small, lightweight, extremely accurate, and damn near impervious to the elements. I’d further outfitted my little bastard with a titanium drive rod and enhanced recoil spring plus an extended slide release. These simple accessory modifications made an already super-reliable close quarters battle pistol even better. I’d thrown a spare magazine for the pistol in my coat pocket and clipped my freshly issued Bureau of Diplomatic Security badge onto my belt, left side front. If I was going to be tromping around a crime scene, I figured I’d best look like part of the investigating team, not one of the criminals.
Trace favors a Kimber Compact .45 auto. Where she hides such a cannon on her trim figure I’ll never know…and don’t want to. Kossens leans toward the tried and true H&K USP .45 compact. I’ve seen the kid shoot. He’s Rogue class with the German auto and carries it in a Galco shoulder rig with two spare mags. It was a ten-minute drive from the makeshift helipad to the spot where the dirty deed had been done. Even though he was famous for his civil rights work, Beckstein must have charged somebody some seriously hefty fees for keeping their ass out of jail, judging from the neighborhood we were driving through. To the northwest of D.C., almost in Maryland, this was seriously expensive real estate. When we got near the crime scene, I was impressed to see whoever was in charge had shut down the entire vicinity. Police cars, their overhead emergency lights flashing, had been parked to form barricades at each end of the wide street. Uniformed officers, some carrying black AR-15 carbines on assault slings, were checking and identifying anyone trying to enter or leave the area. For the moment, this community had been sealed off from the rest of the city. As we were allowed to drive through the barricade, I noticed a few pairs of hard-nosed cops knocking on doors up and down the street. They were going house-to-house, notebooks in hand and scowls on their faces. Because my international security company, SOS TEMPS, trains cops, I’ve gotten to work with quite a number of them over the years. Trust me, these guys were not happy campers. House-to-house interviewing sucks anytime, but in this zip code it was probably torture. Most people in D.C. who can afford to live in digs like these don’t expect to be asked a bunch of seemingly pointless questions by some cop on the beat. Instead of wanting to help find their neighbor’s killer, they’d probably just be pissed that Beckstein’s murder was making them late to their fucking tennis match. A black Lexus parked at the curb was being carefully photographed inside and out by a crime scene team. A little farther down the street, our cop driver turned through an open black iron gate and came to a stop in the middle of a semicircular driveway.
“Here you go, sir. Ask for Captain Barrett, Homicide. He’s expecting you.”
“Captain Barrett? Not Danny Barrett… Big tall motherfucker?”
“Yep, that’s Captain Barrett. You can’t miss him, sir. Big as a fucking house.”
The patrol car slid away from the curb leaving us standing outside one impressive son-of-a-bitch mansion. “Be it ever so humble….” I heard Paul half-singing under his breath.
Sure as shit I knew Captain Danny “Big-As-A-Fucking-House” Barrett. We’d first met many moons ago when he was a young Marine captain in Vietnam working the CORDS program as an advisor. Like me, Barrett was a mustang officer who’d come out of the enlisted ranks with a full head of steam and a burning desire to kill as many Communists as possible before the war ended. His work with CORDS was impressive enough to catch the attention of the spooks at the CIA. They’d convinced the Corps to second him to their organization as a summa cum laude counterinsurgency expert. Danny Barrett played hard and fast in Vietnam. The Viet Cong put an impressive bounty on his head that they were never able to collect. Barrett finished the war as a highly seasoned and decorated major. I’d heard through the grapevine he’d retired a Lieutenant Colonel after twenty-five years of honorable service. What the fuck he was doing as a D.C. homicide detective I couldn’t imagine. But if Danny Barrett was in the AO it meant I wasn’t going to get jacked off by some no-nuts gumshoe that didn’t know nookie from a nukee.
With the kids on my six I headed toward the mansion’s front door.
“If it isn’t Richard-Motherfucking-Marcinko!”
And there was Danny Barrett, towering above me, just like I remembered him. At 6’8” and 310 pounds he remained the largest man I’d ever laid eyes on. The retired Marine officer was massive, and every ounce of his bulk was well-tuned muscle and sinew. He came down the front steps two at a time, his big paw outstretched. “Dan,” I replied as we shook hands, “How the fuck are you?”
“Good, Dick. Damn fine, actually. Unhappy as hell about what we’ve got here, though. Take a walk?”
I turned to Trace and Paul. “You guys start hunting. Check the backyards between here and the end of the block. I’ll catch up to you,” I told them. They nodded and went on their way.
Barrett draped a big arm around my shoulders and steered me across the wet grass. “Yours?”
“Yeah, new team,” I replied. “They were with me when I did the Salvadoran a few months ago. First trip together. They’re shit hot.”
“I’d heard it was you who pulled our ambassador’s daughter out. Nice work. Been a while since I’ve been to El Sal. Anything changed?”
“Yeah,” I chuckled as we reached a quiet spot around the side of the house, “there’s about twenty fewer guerrillas alive to disturb the peace!”
Danny lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew a long funnel of smoke past me. Then, shaking his big head back and forth like a hound that’s temporarily lost the scent, he said, “I heard the bullshit about the problem you had in Ireland. Also heard you leaned hard on some folks recently to get back in the game. You’re a real cocksucker with the Beltway crowd.”
Barrett eyed me carefully. I noticed he still held his cigarette low, a life-saving habit picked up in Vietnam.
“Fuck ’em,” I replied. “What about you? I’d heard you’d retired. Is the Marine Corps retirement program so bad these days that you hadda go get another job?”
The homicide detective laughed, the sound coming from deep within his thick chest and erupting in sharp bursts. “The Crotch treated me good, Dick. But I wasn’t hardly out the door before some fella called me from the P.D. and said they were creating a spot just for me as a captain in Homicide. When I asked why they thought I’d be interested, the guy mentioned the Agency. You know how they work. I suppose they figured it would be nice having me on-call and wearing a badge, given our long and prosperous association over the years.”
I nodded. The Agency likes to keep its operators close by, retired or otherwise. “Dan, OISA sent an NSA bird out to the Manor to haul our asses here. They mentioned something about nukes. What the fuck is going on?”
Barrett sighed then took another long drag from his cigarette before answering. “This lawyer—Beckstein—took two rounds in the face from an arm’s length away sometime last night. We’ve recovered one of the slugs. Custom round. A man-killer.
“Door was unlocked, security system off. The shooter just walked in and blew Beckstein away without missing a beat. This is no random killing or a home burglary gone sour. We got no witnesses and Beckstein’s bodyguard has an airtight alibi. He was across town screwing the drawers off of the victim’s seventeen-year-old daughter. Politically this thing is hot. Beckstein was well connected on the Hill. My boss is screaming for results yesterday.”
RW11 - Violence of Action Page 4