“Mancuso!” Carter shouted up the stairs. “Your bodyguards are dead. I know you’re up there; I can hear you breathing. It will go easier for you if you come down. I have people above you. There is nowhere to go.”
After a few moments later Mancuso struggled in view; dressed only in a pair of scarlet, silk pajamas and slippers. Without his cane he leaned heavily on the staircase’s railing. Negotiating each step with difficulty Mancuso raised his trembling hands. “I surrender,” he said; his voice was broken and fearful. “I will cause you no trouble.”
“I know,” Carter said before shooting Mancuso twice in the head.
Burgett immediately searched the corpse. “I have a mini-computer,” he said holing up the palm sized device he had retrieved from Mancuso’s waistband.
Carter nodded. “Grab it and let’s go.”
[][][]
The guards that had attempted to defend the maintenance room had fallen quickly once the supporting Mark-23 power suits had been destroyed. Sains was already removing the access panel and filter to the air conditioning system in preparation for deploying the VX-B nerve gas. “Good to go here, Grumble,” Sains said, placing the canister in the central air duct.
“Get your masks back on,” McNamara ordered, before pulling his own gas mask over his face. Once he had seen that all the operators had their masks in place, he activated his radio.
“Grumble to all call signs,” he said into his microphone. The maintenance room is secured; we are ready to deploy.
“Prowler for Grumble,” Carters voice replied through McNamara’s headphone speaker. “Gadget and Prowler confirm; you are ready to deploy,” Carter as Burgett helped him pulls his mask on without the use of his injured arm. Burgett then donned his own mask
“Harvard and Dancer confirm; you are ready to deploy,” Williams relied as he and Nagura put on their own masks.
“Grumble to all call signs status.” McNamara ordered.
The operators with McNamara gave him a thumbs-up gesture to indicating that they were ready for the gas to be deployed.
The remaining team members confirmed their readiness, in turn.
“Prowler, ready for deployment.”
“Gadget, ready for deployment.”
“Dancer, ready for deployment.”
“Harvard, ready for deployment.”
McNamara opened the gas canister as Sains turned the circulation fans on to maximum speed. Seconds later the sounds of choking, convulsing men could be heard throughout the building. This was followed by a silence broken only by the low hum of the circulation fans.
“Remember,” McNamara said. “This gas is still lethal for three minutes after release; so keep the masks on for at least four minutes.”
“Prowler for all call signs,” Carters voice said of the radio network, “rally at the tunnel stairwell.”
Minutes later, the team had reassembled. “Is every one alright?” Carter asked passing his eyes over each team member.
Defontain looked up from examining Burgett’s wounded shoulder. “The IBOS did a decent job on this wound,” she said. “But your arm should be immobilized,” she added taking a sling from her field medical kit and helping Carter fit his arm into it.
“Alright,” Carter said, checking his watch. “We proceed as planned. Gambler, Brains, you go set up your sniping nest. Gadget, send the go code.” Roth and Sains left to comply with Carter’s orders.
Burgett extracted a long range field radio from his pack and an eighteen inch external antenna to it. Entering a series of commands into the notebook-sized device he transmitted a preprogrammed micro-burst message to the other FIRE teams and their higher commands. The entire transmission took less than a second
Seconds later Burgett looked up and smiled. “All teams report in position and ready to assault, Boss!”
“Let’s move,” Carter said, leading the way down the spiral staircase.
They made their way down a short access tunnel having to step over several enemy troops that had been killed by nerve gas. At the end of the corridor a set of locked fire doors blocked entrance to evacuation tunnel’s check point. “The gas won’t have penetrated beyond this point, so the guards at the tunnel entrance will still be alive,” Carter said. “And watch out for those automated guns. Gadget, get set to blow the door, Grumble, Harvard, and Defontain, get ready with the IMS-7s.” The three operators each took a knee and prepared the shoulder fired missiles for firing.
Two minutes later, Burgett had finished placing the charges on the fire doors. “I’m set, Boss,” he reported.
Carter assured himself that all his operators were at a safe distance from the coming explosion. “Do it,” he said.
“Firing!” Burgett said, activating his detonator.
The shaped charges destroyed the door’s lock and hinges allowing it to fall neatly into the corridor sending a metallic clanging sound echoing down the hallway. Before the echo had ceased the three Alpha operators fired their missiles.
The first, fired by McNamara, pierced the armored guard box cleanly and detonated while four feet from the ground. It sprayed hundreds of tungsten carbide pellets in all directions. The four guards that occupied the box were reduced to hole-ridden, bloody masses of mangled flesh.
Burgett’s missile struck the first automated gun turrets, causing several rounds of its twenty millimeter ammunition to explode in its magazine. The turret itself was blown away from the wall leaving a charred, jagged hole in the wall where it had been mounted.
DeFontain’s missile struck the second turret. The shaped explosive warhead tore through the turret’s armor and burned into the corridor’s wall leaving bits of concrete and conduit falling in fragments to the floor. The corridor was now filled with thick, acrid smoke.
“Brains, for Prowler,” Sains voice over the communications net. “I have a read on the other teams, they are entering the barracks now.”
“Understood, Brains,” Carter replied.
“Prowler, this is Pirate,” the voice of Mason Price said over the radio, identifying himself with his call sign. “I’m coming down with all assault elements.”
“Confirmed,” Carter answered. “Check you fire,” Carter told his team. “The other teams are coming down.” Moments later Teams Bravo, Echo, and Foxtrot emerged from the stairwell.
“Alright people,” Carter said. “We assault as planned. Let’s go!” Each team formed into a loose formation and charged down the tunnel.
Chapter 11
The guard post at the end of the tunnel was quickly; overwhelmed by the assembled FIRE teams before they could raise an alarm. Announcements being broadcast over the Central Command’s public address system told Carter that the facility’s garrison was still responding to the attack on the barracks compound as though it was an attempt to assassinate Mancuso. Carter hoped it would be at least several minutes before the enemy realized that the real target was the Central Command itself.
“Let’s get moving,“ Carter said. “Good luck and good hunting people.”
The teams dispersed to assault their respective targets. Williams led McNamara and Nagura toward the security control room, while Carter, Burgett and DeFontain toward the facility’s main control room. The other three teams made their way upward toward the ground floor to continue the assault.
Suddenly finding enemy soldiers inside a building they thought was secure, the guards the Alpha operators encountered died before they could comprehend the danger. Unarmed technicians and maintenance workers fled in terror as the invaders mowed down any opposition with ruthless efficiency. A frantic, desperate voice of a man was giving orders over the public address system; trying to move security forces to deal with a situation that he obviously did not yet fully understand.
“Brains for all teams; all call signs,” Sains voice said overt the radio’s speaker.
“Go for Prowler.” Carter said without breaking his pace.
“Be advised,” Sains said. From their vantage point on the tw
elfth floor of the officer’s barracks, Sains and Roth could monitor what was transpiring in the area around the Central Command compound. “Renner and his unit have opened up on the compound with their mortars and we have firefights along the target’s entire perimeter.”
That’s it Renner, Carter thought. Make the bastards think their under attack by a division.
“Understood,” Carter said, firing a one handed shot from his handgun the struck an enemy soldier in his chin and effectively decapitated him. “Advise on any arriving enemy reinforcements.”
“Roger that,” Sains replied.
Enemy troops were crowding into the corridors from every direction. Unsure of how many attackers were in the building or of their exact location; they simply ran toward the sounds of gunshots. Unarmed workers were trampling one another in frantic attempts to remove themselves from the deadly crossfire. Panicked screams melded with the alarm claxtons and gunfire until anyone without hearing protection was deaf or near deaf. The distinctive, acrid odor of gunpowder and explosives was thick in the air.
Williams, McNamara, and Nagura shoved their way passed a trio of terrified maintenance workers as they fought through a squad of enemy guards; killing them without breaking stride. Opposition stiffened as they neared the security control room. The sleeping quarters and living area for much of the Central Command’s guard force were near security control room and the guards, despite their surprise, were responding to the blaring alarms and rushing to their respective stations and finding themselves confronted by the invading Alpha operators.
The Alpha element fired on the move, overwhelming the defending guards with their inhuman speed and ruthless violence. In minutes they had killed dozens of enemy troops and stood in front of the ten foot blast doors that led to the security control room.
While Nagura watched for more enemies, McNamara removed his pack and retrieved a thermos-sized canister of pure, pressurized oxygen. Next he extracted a thirty-six inch, insulation-wrapped hollow metal rod and screwed a threaded end into the oxygen canister. Lastly he removed another nozzle-tipped metal tube of equal length, attached to the end of the first tube, and opened the valve on the canister.
“Light me!” he said.
Williams pressed the button a small on small acetylene torch the size of a large cigar and touched it to the nozzle of the device McNamara held. Packed with rods of iron and magnesium that were being bathed in pressurized pure oxygen the nozzle-ended rod belched forth a steam of molten metal that cut cleanly through steel blast door.
McNamara wielded the thermal lance like a hose; using the fiery stream to cut along the door’s threshold. In seconds the huge door fell into the security room, in shower of fragments and molten sparks. Before in had hit the ground Williams tossed a stun grenade through the freshly made hole. Nagura was in the control room a nano-second after the grenade’s detonation followed quickly by Williams and McNamara.
Despite the debilitating effects of the grenade, the twelve guards manning the control room desperately sprayed fire toward the recently cut opening. Several rounds from an assault rifle stitched McNamara across his torso; forcing him back several feet and knocking him to his knees and, finally to fall face first to the floor.
Nagura fired a burst into the chest of the soldier that had shot McNamara; the ultra-powerful rounds from her machine pistol easily piercing the soldier’s body armor and sending micro-explosive bullets to detonate deep within the man’s body. Nagura shot three more guards as they held down their rifle triggers and sprayed desperate fully automatic return fire; unable to effectively aim their weapons through the blinding haze and dizziness produced by the stun grenades.
Williams engaged the guards to Nagura’s left; singling out an unusually large guard to be killed first. He put a single round into the man’s forehead reducing his head to bits of flesh and fragments of skull. Shooting on the move, Williams dove underneath a hail of bullets fired by another guard. He fired a burst as he fell; his shots found the guard’s chest and abdomen and slammed him backward to fall heavily to the floor. Williams shot the next guard from a prone position, rolled to his right, and killed next with another three shot burst to the chest.
Having recovered, McNamara rose to his knees and dealt with the remaining enemies. Raking his sub-machine gun fire from left to right, he put two rounds into the chest each of the guards with a single squeeze of the trigger. He then shot each man in the head where they lay.
“Are you alright?” Williams asked McNamara.
“Yeah,” the Canadian replied, getting to his feet. “Nothing got through the vest. Stung like hell, though,” he added, moving toward the security consoles that controlled the doors and locks throughout the central command. “Let’s clear the way for Renner and the Boss.”
[][][]
As Carter and his group neared the main control room the number of fleeing civilians diminished. Turning the corner into the corridor that led directly to the control room, Carter and his groups were greeted a volley of concentrated gunfire that drove them back around the corridor junction’s wall.
“Gadget, see if you can get eyes on that threat,” Carter ordered.
Burgett made adjustments to his rifle’s scope, took a knee, and moved his rifle around the corner. The image recorded by the scope was displayed not only on his own goggle display, but on Carter’s and DeFontain’s as well. Through the scope the Alpha operators could see that the several of the First Earth Guardsmen had collected a number of civilian workers and were using them as human shields. They were lined up in front of the enemy troops who were, in turn, in front of the doors to the control room.
“Boss, we have to kill the control room technicians,” Defontain said. “But we cannot kill all of those people!”
“Yeah, Boss,” Burgett agreed. “Those people are probably just cleaning ladies and janitors.”
“Break out some flash-bangs,” Carter ordered. “We’ll treat this as a hostage rescue with a dynamic entry.” Burgett and Defontain each readied a stun grenade.
“On three,” Carter ordered.
Three seconds later Burgett and DeFontain tossed their grenades around the corner toward the cluster of guards and hostages. While Carter and his teammates were protected by their IBOS’ headphones and goggles, the blinding flash and incredibly loud crack of the detonations caused seconds of blindness and deafness for both the hostages and their captors. Their senses overwhelmed by sound and light, the First Earth Guardsmen lost control of their hostages; who were themselves stunned into inaction.
Carter led Burgett and Defontain around the corner at a run. Each operator engaged the enemy troopers with precise single gunshots. In the following ten second, the three Team Alpha members had shot twelve enemy troops in their chests and heads; their shots missing the hostages by inches. The disorientation from the flash-bang grenades and the feeling of shots passing so near to them panicked the hostages into wild flight or screaming paralysis. Most of the hostages had been splattered with blood from the troopers who had been hit by the high explosive rounds from Team Alpha’s weapons. The walls and floors were plashed with blood and bits of flesh. Two of the fifteen hostages lay dead; killed by the guards in the seconds before they were cut down themselves.
Carter hauled a hostage to his feet. “All of you get out of here!” he shouted, shoving the man down the corridor. “Go, go, go!” he added.
Defontain and Burgett also began herding the still dazed survivors away from the control room doors. “Get as far away from here as you can!” Burgett yelled. “The killing’s not done yet!”
After the hostages had departed, Burgett examined the ten foot by ten foot blast door that protected the main control room. “They must have a manual override for this door. Harvard and the others had all the other doors open for us.”
“We planned for this,” Carter said. “Get to work. We’ll cover you.” Burgett began applying a line of incendiary charges along the doors frame.
Carter and DeFontain
each set a grenade for proximity detonation and placed it at the corridor junction twenty feet from the control room’s entrance. “Fast would be good, Gadget. I can hear reinforcements coming,” Carter said. “They’ll be on us in seconds!”
Burgett had placed the last detonator in the line of charges he had attached to the door. “Ready,” he announced. “These charges are more powerful than what I usually use; so give them plenty of space and don’t look directly at them while they’re burning.”
“Do it,” Carter ordered.
An intense white light flickered steadily and a shower of sparks poured from the line of incendiaries and traveled ten feet down the hallway. The odor of burnt metal was thick in the air as the steel doors crashed to the floor. Burgett and Carter charged into the control room and took the guards within under fire as DeFontain guarded the hallway from the enemy reinforcements.
The control room was cavernous. Thousands of optical crystal computer drives stretched to the ceiling eighty feet above and covered every inch of the one hundred ten foot length of the far wall. Computer consoles were present by the hundreds, arranged in rows at the room’s center beneath a supervisor’s podium that was suspended from the ceiling, and dozens of huge view screens lined the walls on either side of the doors. Catwalks lined and staircases led to five tiers of work stations that ringed the room and rose to the ceiling eighty feet above.
Carter moved to the left as he entered the control room as the guards sprayed rifle-fire toward the threshold. Beginning with the guard furthest to his left, he killed six guards with precise shots from his pistol. His explosive warheads carved out grapefruit-sized cavities at the center of their bodies.
Rifle fire came from one of the catwalks above. Carter rolled beneath the catwalk and out of the guard’s line of fire. He fired directly upward, his rounds passing through the catwalk and into the feet and legs of three guards. Two fell onto the catwalk. One was silent the other screaming in agony while trying to staunch the blood spurt from a stump that was once his left foot. The third tumbled from the catwalk almost directly in front of Carter. Carter stomped on the man’s head, crushing the skull against the concrete floor and smashing the brain.
The Fate Of Nations: F.I.R.E. Team Alpha: Book One Page 25