by Tom Clancy
After a moment, Ricci turned to Simmons and handed him the vapor detector.
“I’ll go in first, take down the attendant,” he whispered. “Stay close, and don’t forget the regs.”
“Right.”
Ricci got his radio out of its case on his belt.
While the explosion he was setting off would be small and contained, any explosion was by definition noisy, and therefore would be heard by those in the building unless masked.
Ricci had arranged for something even noisier to do just that.
* * *
A few blocks east on the crosstown avenue, two men in the white uniforms of emergency medical responders had been waiting patiently in the cab of a double-parked ambulance.
After receiving Ricci’s cue, the driver cut the radio and turned to his partner.
“We’re on,” he said.
They raced into traffic toward Gang Central, the ambulance’s light bars flashing, its siren cranked to peak volume and howling like a thousand tortured wolves.
Seated across a desk from Obeng in the warlord’s second-floor office, Le Chaut Sauvage heard the ululant wail of the rapidly approaching medical vehicle and tilted his head toward the window.
“Is that one of yours?” he asked, his voice raised over the deafening clamor.
Obeng shook his head no.
“An ambulance,” he said.
The Wildcat gave him a questioning look.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes,” Obeng assured him. He was almost shouting to be heard. “Even here people get sick.”
* * *
As he leaped up through the small crater in the garage floor, Ricci didn’t know whether it was the detonating C2 or the eardrum-piercing shrillness of the ambulance siren that shocked the attendant from his dozy position on the chair.
Not that it made a jot of difference to him.
The attendant shot to his feet now, his chair crashing onto its back, his features agape at the sight of men in visored helmets and tactical camo outfits pouring out of a rubbled, dust- and smoke-spewing hole that hadn’t existed a split second before.
Ricci swiftly bound over to him and pressed the squirter of the dimethyl sulfoxide cannister clenched in his gloved fist.
The attendant raised his hands over his face on reflex, but the stream of odorless, colorless DMSO…
A chemical with myriad properties that was originally an incidental by-product of the wood pulping process, used as a commercial solvent for fifty years, a medical organ and tissue preservative for about forty years, and a pain reliever and anti-inflammatory with limited FDA approval for slightly less than thirty years…
A chemical that in the past decade or so had attracted the close attention of nonlethal weapons researchers because of its instant penetration of human skin and its capacity to completely sedate a person on contact and without side effects if administered in sufficient concentration…
The DMSO running down over the attendant’s outthrust palms and fingers made him crumple like one of the foam training dummies Ricci sometimes used in hand-to-hand combat practice.
Ricci caught the attendant in his arms to ease his fall, lowering him gently onto the floor. Then he quickly rose and scanned the garage for ways to reach the building’s aboveground levels.
There was a single elevator about ten yards to the right. Not a chance his men were going to box themselves into that death trap.
His gaze found the door leading to the stairwell to his far left, on the opposite side of the garage.
He turned toward the rest of the men, now standing back-to-back in a loose circle, their individual weapons pointed outward, covering all points of the garage while they peripherally watched for his gestured command.
Ricci was about to wave them toward the stairs when he heard the distinct sound of the elevator kicking in. He glanced in its direction, his eyes fixing on the indicator lights over its door.
It was coming down the shaft from the ground floor.
Coming down fast.
Grillo had likewise turned to face the elevator, his eyes narrowed behind his helmet visor.
He watched its door slide open seconds after its hoisting motor activated, appraised its passengers at a glance.
Don’t forget the regs, he thought, needing no real incentive. The man and woman inside were a couple of honest Injuns if there’d ever been any, probably customers leaving one of the quasi-legit businesses right upstairs.
They took maybe a step out of the car and then froze at the scene that met their eyes, both simultaneously noticing the assault team, the unconscious garage attendant, and the debris-strewn hole in the floor.
Grillo didn’t give them a chance to recover from their initial confusion.
He whipped his hand down to his belt, unholstered his stingball pistol, and pulled the trigger twice.
The mini-flash bangs it discharged hit the floor directly in front of their feet, the fragile rounds shattering like eggshells against the hard cement to produce startlingly loud reports and blindingly bright bursts of light.
The couple staggered dazedly, the woman covering her eyes with both hands, the man tripping backward to sprawl with the upper part of his body inside the elevator and his legs stretched out. Its door tried to close, struck his hip with its foam rubber safety edging, automatically retracted, tried to close again, hit him again, the whole sequence repeating itself over and over as he writhed there on the floor of the garage.
Grillo put the stingball gun away, satisfied with how the weapon had delivered. Poor guy was going to have some bruises to show for his unexpected adventure, but what could you do?
He looked at Ricci.
Ricci completed his interrupted hand signal, waving at the stairwell door.
His team dashed across the garage in its direction.
* * *
The men climbed the stairs as one, as trained, a single composite organism armored in synthetic materials, their guns bristling like deadly spines.
A few steps below the first-floor landing they paused for Rosander to peer around the corner with his telescopic search mirror, a low-tech, reliable, simple tool. Ricci’s cardinal rule was in play here: Use the fiber-optic scope when you wanted maximum stealth, but when the actual insertion began, when speed was of the essence, you didn’t want to screw with finicky shit like flexible electronic coils and video apertures.
Nobody in sight, they hustled up onto the landing. Ricci motioned for two of them, Seybold and Beatty, to split off from the others and cover the first floor. This was an organism that could divide and reassemble itself as required.
Up the next flight of stairs, ten now having become eight; Ricci and Rosander were in the lead.
Midway to the second floor, on the next landing, Rosander again stuck the pole around the corner and saw the reflections of three men on the mirror’s convex surface.
He signaled quickly. Two fingers pointed at his eyes: Enemy in sight. Then three fingers in the air, revealing the number of opponents on the way down.
“Militia,” he mouthed soundlessly to Ricci, who was squatted beside him.
Ricci nodded.
His men readied themselves in the short moments available. This time they wouldn’t be facing a bleary-eyed garage worker or a couple petrified with astonishment, literally struck blind on the way back to their car after booking a trip to paradise at the ground-floor travel agency.
They held their guns at the ready.
The militiamen continued downstairs toward the landing.
Ricci’s hand was raised, motionless, slightly above shoulder height: Hold your fire.
It was his show. His and Rosander’s. They could not worry about taking accidental hits from their own teammates behind them.
The militiamen were carrying assault rifles, Russian AKs. One of them glimpsed the assault team below.
His gun muzzle came up as he grunted out a warning to his companions.
Ricci squeezed the trig
ger of his baby VVRS, its electronic touch control set for maximum blowback. Lethal as lethal could be. And quiet.
The militiaman fell to the landing, spots of crimson on his chest. Then a quick burst of gunfire from above, bullets swarming down the stairwell.
The still body of the guy he’d hit pressing against his shins, weighty against his shins, Ricci stayed put and swung his weapon toward the remaining two. The mirror in one hand, Rosander had lifted his gun with the other and was already spraying them with ammunition. A second man collapsed, rolled downward, olive fatigues stained red. The third kept standing, got off some more counterfire, and Ricci heard a grunt from Rosander as the pole of his inspection mirror flew from his fingers and went clattering against the metal risers below.
Edging back against the handrail, out of the shooter’s direct line of fire, Ricci triggered his gun again, aiming for the legs, and when he saw the legs give out, finished the militiaman with a sustained burst to the chest.
Silence. A pale gray haze of smoke.
Ricci looked around at Rosander.
The visor of his helmet was splashed red. Dripping red where he’d been hit. Ricci could not see his face through it.
He glanced at the others behind him, shook his head. They couldn’t linger here in the enclosed stairwell. They had to keep moving. The exchange of gunfire had been brief and probably wouldn’t have been heard too far beyond the concrete walls of the fire stairs. But it might have drawn the attention of someone nearby.
Keeping his eye on the mission, Ricci ordered his unit to resume its hurried advance.
As they passed over the bodies lying across the stairs, Grillo snatched the search mirror from where it had dropped.
They would need it later on.
* * *
The strike team pushed through the door to the second-floor hallway, each of its members familiar with the floor plan, knowing the exact location of Obeng’s office at the rear of the building.
The thing none of them knew was what sort of obstacles to expect along the way.
The corridor was empty as far as they could see. Closed office doors on either side. Then, perhaps ten yards up, an elbow bend. They would need to turn it, head down another short, straight length of hallway, round another corner. And then they’d be there.
Easily said.
They ran forward, guns at hip level, eyes sweeping the sides of the hall.
Ricci saw a door open a little. Third ahead on the right. He signaled a halt, pointed to it. His men fanned out, sticking close to the walls for cover.
Watching.
Waiting with their guns angled toward the door.
The crack widened, widened, and then a muzzle poked through.
The wait extended. An eternity of seconds. More of the weapon appeared. A semiautomatic pistol. Its barrel slipped tentatively outward into the hall.
That kind of firearm, that kind of cautiousness, Ricci was betting they were dealing with a cop here.
He looked into the eye peering out at him through the crack.
“Toss it!” he said.
The hand ceased to move but held onto the pistol.
Ricci kept looking into that eye. The man behind the door could see how his team was equipped, the serious ordnance they were carrying. Maybe he’d have the brainpower to realize he was outclassed.
“We’re not interested in you. Or any other officers with you,” Ricci said. “Lose that gun, come out with your hands up, you’ll be fine.”
There was another hanging pause.
Ricci couldn’t afford to delay any longer with this small fry.
“Last chance,” he said. “Give it up.”
The opening between the door and its frame widened.
Ricci lifted his weapon, prepared to fire.
The pistol dropped from the man’s hand onto the corridor floor. Then he stepped out of the office, arms raised above his head.
A uniform, sure enough.
Ricci moved forward, kicked the relinquished gun aside, then grabbed the cop by his shoulder and pushed him face against the wall for a frisk.
He patted him down hurriedly, found a revolver in an ankle holster, and handed it back to one of his men, a young recruit named Newton. The cop wasn’t packing anything else.
Ricci hauled his captive away from the wall and stayed behind him, his gun pressed into the base of his spine, his free arm locked around his throat. Using him for cover in case anyone in the office decided to do something stupid.
At his nod, Grillo and Simmons moved to either side of the half-open door, flanking it, their weapons steady in their hands.
Ricci slammed it the rest of the way open with his booted foot.
The office was nearly bare. A couple of chairs, a metal desk with a push-button telephone on it, a trash can beside the desk.
Two more uniforms were inside, both with their hands high in the air.
Ricci glanced at Newton.
“Dump whatever weapons they’ve got in there,” he said, indicating the trash can with a jerk of his chin. “The phone, too. Then pull the can out into the hallway.”
Newton did as he was ordered.
Ricci thought a moment, then shifted his eyes back to the now-empty phone socket on the wall. He still had the first cop in a choke hold.
“You already ring your boss to tell him we’re here?” he said into his ear.
The cop didn’t respond.
“I can hit the redial button, see who answers, find out what I need to know myself,” Ricci said. “Be better for everybody if you save me the time.”
The cop still didn’t answer.
Ricci pushed the snout of his gun deeper into his back.
“I mean it,” he said.
The cop hesitated another second, then finally nodded his head.
Thirty seconds later, Ricci and Newton had backed into the corridor, leaving the disarmed cops in the office.
“Stay put for half an hour, then you’re free to leave,” he said from the doorway. “You get the urge to do something different, you might want to keep in mind we don’t mean your boss any harm. And that no outsider’s worth getting killed over.”
He pushed the door shut, turned to his men.
“Obeng and his guest of honor know about us,” he said. “But we’re between them and the elevators and stairs, the only routes out of the building unless they want to start jumping out windows, and it’s a long drop down the hill from Obeng’s office. So they either go through us or they’re stuck where they are.”
He looked from one man to the other. Their eyes were upon him.
“Cornered animals fight hard,” he said. “Capice?”
Nods all around.
Ricci inhaled.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s move.”
They continued up the hall toward Obeng’s roost.
* * *
At the final bend in the corridor, Grillo held out the search mirror’s curved pole, glanced into it for barely a second, pulled it back, and turned to the others behind him.
“Four of Obeng’s goons, headed straight toward us with AKs,” he whispered to Ricci. “Not a dozen feet away in the middle of the corridor.”
“Take them out,” Ricci said. “I want it done yesterday.”
The strike team launched around the corner in a controlled rush, firing short, accurate bursts with their guns.
Two of the militiamen dropped before they could return fire, their weapons flying out of their hands like hurled batons. The remaining pair split up, one breaking to the left, the other to the right.
Ricci heard the whiffle of subsonic ammo from a baby VVRS, saw the man on the left fall to the floor, arms and legs wishboned.
One to go.
The militiaman who’d run to the opposite side of the corridor was bent low against a closed door, practically flattened against it, seeking a modicum of cover in the shallow recess as he poured wild volleys into the hallway.
Ricci hugged the wall, aimed, fired
his weapon, unable to get a clean shot at his target. His sabot rounds whanged against the door frame, missing the gunnie, but causing him to duck back and momentarily lay off the trigger.
Ricci knelt against the wall. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Grillo and the others take advantage of the distraction and dash up the hall toward Obeng’s office.
He held his weapon absolutely still. Let the gunnie lean out of that space one inch. Just a single goddamned inch…
Up ahead, Simmons was sweeping the entrance to Obeng’s office with the ionic vapor detector, checking for explosives that might be rigged to a tripwire or similar gimmick. Good. The rest were in their entry-preparation positions. Grillo and the newbie Harpswell on one side of the door. On the opposite side, another green recruit named Nichols held the rammer, while the more experienced hands, Barnes and Newton, stood behind him.
Suddenly, movement from where the militiaman was huddled. His back still pressed to the door, he lifted his hands. The tip of his AK tilting outward. His knees unfolding slightly.
Ricci inhaled through gritted teeth.
This was going to be it.
As the gunnie scuttled into the hall, his weapon spitting bullets, Ricci caught him with a single shot to the center of the chest. He went down hard, his green fatigue shirt turning brilliant red.
Ricci pushed from the wall, racing around the fallen bodies in the corridor to join his team. He could see Simmons complete his scan, move himself out of the doorway—
His eyes widened. Nichols had suddenly moved toward the door with the rammer, was swinging it back for momentum, about to drive it against the jamb, unaware of Barnes reaching out to stop him.
“Hold it!” Ricci shouted. “Fucking hold it!”
He could see Nichols try to check himself, but the warning registered an instant too late. His entire upper body was already into the forward swing.
The rammer hit the door and it flew inward with a crash, and that was when the attack dogs came lunging out. Pit bulls, five of them, silent and vicious, their voice boxes surgically removed. Called hush puppies by the SWAT personnel Ricci had known in his police years, too often encountered in crack-house raids, they were usually maddened from drugs, torture, and starvation, reduced to a core of frenzied, bestial aggression by their keepers.