by Marcus Wynne
Bin Faisal was in the box.
And Hans’s operators were in Costas’s box.
Close behind the two trailing Dutch streetwalkers were two of Costas’s shooters, heavy-set middle-aged men with the look of grocers or butchers, each armed with a Skorpion machine pistol ideal for close work. As Hans’s surveillance vehicles began to stir along bin Faisal’s route, Costas’s crew moved, too. Costas’s plan took advantage of the surveillance team’s focus on their moving target, which left them vulnerable to the unseen foe stalking them from behind. The streetwise November Seventeenth terrorists had identified all of Hans’s lurking cars, and waited till the movement of the suspect vehicles paralleled bin Faisal’s. That simultaneous motion cemented the target identification and marked the vehicle occupants for death.
Costas craned his head out his open window and inched his car into the traffic. His target vehicle, a battered mud-brown Audi that moved faster than it looked, was six cars ahead of him.
“Send the message,” he said to Anna.
She reached out and plucked his pager from his belt, then entered the numbers 666 into the message body and hit broadcast, which sent the message simultaneously to all the network pagers.
It was the release code for his shooters.
Once they had that message, they were free to kill their identified targets and any targets of opportunity. The shooters on foot would fall back to predesignated rally points where other November Seventeenth operators in cars and vans would pick them up and take them away before the police could respond. The nearest police station was the thinly manned tourist police post in the Athens Hilton, and their first responsibility was to the hotel guests.
Killing time was here and now.
In the back of the delivery van parked two blocks from the hotel, the DOMINANCE RAIN kidnap team checked their equipment and made sure it was handy. One man examined a slap syringe, designed to inject a powerful tranquilizer on contact. Another operator set into his belt already-looped plastic flexicuffs for the subject’s hands and feet, then tossed underhand to the man across from him a black hood for bin Faisal’s head.
Hans’s voice crackled over the radio net, tinny in each man’s earpiece. “Subject is moving. All call signs, this is Zero, Bravo-Two has the eye.”
“Zero, Bravo-Two, roger I have the eye,” came the response from a streetwalker.
A DOMINANCE RAIN operator, a hulking man with the battered cheekbones of a boxer and a wad of tobacco in his cheek, spat into a sawed-off pop can and said, “Are we up?”
The senior man looked back from his seat behind the driver. “We’re all up.”
The driver nodded and nosed the van out into the street. He pulled into the turn lane that would take him onto Vasilissis Sofias, glancing into his rearview mirror to make sure that the heavy Chevy Suburban with the blacked-out windows was right behind him. When there was a break in the traffic, he goosed the van across and onto the side street where Ahmad bin Faisal strolled, cigarette in hand.
“This is Charley-One,” the driver said, his words picked up by the microphone mounted on his visor. “We’re on Route Blue, in position.”
“Charley-One, Zero.” Hans’s voice was calm and clear on the radio. “Roger you on Blue, in position.”
The voice of the driver in the Suburban came over the net. “Zero, Charley-Two, Blue, in position.”
“Roger Charley-Two,” Hans said.
Just ahead of them, idling at the curb in a shiny blue Volvo, was Bravo-Two, one of Hans’s teams of one driver and one spotter. The Volvo pulled out and closed on bin Faisal, who ambled along, looking in the shop windows through their grated gates, still closed at this time of the morning. The four streetwalkers, two in front and two behind, who boxed bin Faisal began to close on him as well, the leading surveillance operators slowing to let the man come to them, the training ones stepping up their pace. The Volvo driver looked and saw the van grow in his rearview mirror. He nodded and said into his radio, “Charley-One, I have you visual.”
The van driver looked back at the team leader, who nodded. The driver gripped the wheel more firmly, then said, “Charley-One has the eye, Charley-One has the ball. All call signs, stand by, stand by, stand by.”
In the back of the van, the men positioned themselves: two rows of two men each directly behind the door, their hands free; one man braced beside the sliding door, his hand on the handle, the security man off to the other side, a H&K MP5SD silenced submachine gun held in his hands, ready to return fire if there was trouble. The driver eased a H&K MP5K, the machine-pistol variation with a four-inch barrel, into his lap. Like a cruising shark on final approach to its prey, the van pulled close to the sidewalk and idled along, a half block behind Ahmad bin Faisal.
“C’mon, c’mon,” one man muttered, bracing himself with one hand on the van’s roof.
The driver said, “Stand by.”
Dale and Charley stood on the corner across the street from where bin Faisal approached on foot. They watched with anticipation as the van began to slow down behind the unsuspecting terrorist leader.
“You ever seen this before?” Charley said.
“Not from this perspective,” Dale said. “Done it a couple of times.”
“Not me,” Charley said.
“It’ll be over before anyone knows what’s going on. Four guys, one for each arm and leg, throw him in the van, shut the door, and move out. They’re only a couple of seconds out of the van. They bag him, tag him with some tranquilizer, and move to the rally point while the cover vehicle blocks behind them. Clean and sweet.”
Charley looked up and down the street. “Couple of pedestrians, light traffic . . . should be a go.”
Dale pressed his elbow against the pistol concealed beneath his light windbreaker. “Let’s do this thing,” he said, touching his teeth to his lip. “We’re good to go.”
The two November Seventeenth assassins following Hans’s streetwalkers split up. One jogged across the street, nimbly dodging traffic; the other continued on his side of the street. The two men exchanged glances, then moved in quickly on their prey. They fell into step, closing in behind their chosen targets, then drew their Skorpion machine pistols, lengthened with a dull silver silencer, from beneath their baggy windbreakers.
They fired just as Hans’s operators looked back over their shoulders.
The only sound was the clatter of the bolt and the tinkle of spent casings striking the sidewalk. At short range, the machine pistols poured 750 rounds per minute into the surveillance streetwalkers. Both of them dropped instantly, their backs mottled with holes that spouted blood across the sidewalk. After pausing for a moment to put a short burst into the downed operator’s head, the November Seventeenth shooter jogged back across the street to meet his partner. They both began running down the block in the same direction as Ahmad bin Faisal.
A short distance behind them, Costas and Anna pulled up beside the four-door Fiat sedan they were following. Just as the driver looked over, Anna leaned out the window, the mini-Uzi in her fist, and fired a long burst into his head and shoulders. The Fiat veered to the right and crashed to a stop against a parked Audi. Costas stomped on his brakes, and Anna jumped out, changing magazines as she went. The surveillance man in the passenger-side front seat threw up his hands as though he could block the bullets that came through the windshield. Anna fired from almost contact distance through the glass, putting a long burst into the face and skull of the surveillance operator. She turned and coolly reloaded as she hurried back to the car and got in beside Costas, who rested his hand on the .45 tucked in his waistband.
“They’re done,” she said.
Costas scanned the road ahead, the cars slowing to see what had happened, and saw in the rearview mirror his two shooters running from their killing.
“Here is Stavrous and Dimitri,” he said.
The two men threw themselves into the backseat, their weapons out.
“Go! Go!” the first one shouted.
He pulled wide around a Chevy Suburban with blacked-out windows and a slow-moving delivery van.
The DOMINANCE RAIN operator behind the wheel of the van saw the whole thing. “Who the fuck is that? They hit somebody right back there!”
He tilted his head and snapped into the hands-free microphone. “Charley-Two, this is Charley-One, we have unknown shooters engaging targets in the street, Zero, do you copy?”
From a block away, slightly uphill, which gave them a good vantage point, Charley and Dale watched the shooting unfold. Dale leaned forward, his weight on the balls of his feet, and reached beneath his coat for his pistol.
“They’re coming this way,” he said. “Get the cover car to block them, we can take them on the street.”
Charley reached out and took Dale by the arm. “Don’t go out there!”
Dale shrugged off his hand, drew his pistol, and, holding it under the open front of his jacket, crossed the street, dodging cars like a football receiver dodged blockers.
“Shit!” Charley said. He drew his own pistol and began to pick his way across the street, following in Dale’s wake.
In the back of the delivery van, the DOMINANCE RAIN team leader, his words terse but carefully controlled, said, “Where’s the target?”
The driver said, “He’s stopped on the sidewalk.”
“We take him now,” the team leader said.
The driver nodded in assent, then said, “Stand by!”
He slammed on his brakes and the van shuddered to a stop. In the back, the door man yanked the door open and the four-man snatch team exploded out, two of them scrambling across the hood of a parked car to get at the Arab, frozen with fear on the sidewalk. Bin Faisal barely had time to turn his head away before a beefy forearm struck the nerve plexus in the side of his neck and hard hands grabbed at his arms and legs.
In the November Seventeenth car, Anna gripped the dashboard with one hand to steady herself and said, “They are taking him now!”
Costas cut the wheel sharply to the right and pulled in front of the van at a forty-five-degree angle.
“Take them!” he said.
The back doors opened and the two shooters in the rear sprang out. Anna opened her door and followed them. Costas set his foot on the brake, then drew his pistol, keeping his free hand steady on the steering wheel.
The DOMINANCE RAIN operator behind the wheel of the delivery van barely had time to raise his weapon before Anna fired a long burst into his face. That stopped the van for the time being. She circled around the front of the van while her two partners went around to the rear. On the sidewalk four men struggled with bin Faisal. She closed on them, her weapon steady in her hands, coming to nearly contact distance so as to be sure not to hit her fellow terrorists. The nearest man to her saw her and turned suddenly, letting go his grip on bin Faisal’s leg, rushing her and grabbing her weapon. He forced the muzzle away from his chest and into the air. Her short burst went into the sky. Anna gripped the mini-Uzi fiercely and drove her knee into the man’s groin. She pulled one hand from his iron grip and raked at his eyes while she drove her knee again and again into his groin. He was big and strong and she was losing the tug-of-war for her weapon, but still she hung on, determined not to let go. She clawed harder at his eyes, and his grip loosened for just a moment, just long enough for Anna to lever the muzzle back on-line with the man’s thick chest and squeeze the trigger. The five-round burst tore into his chest. The mortally wounded operator fell back a step, stumbled, then went to one knee. Anna put her weapon to his head and squeezed off a short burst into his skull.
The DOMINANCE RAIN security man leaped out the van door, his MP5SD held at the ready. He pressed the muzzle of his submachine gun against the baggy windbreaker of the November Seventeenth terrorist at the rear of the van and pressed his trigger, blowing the terrorist back against his partner. The remaining terrorist grabbed the muzzle of the MP5SD and shoved it to one side, then brought his Skorpion up and thrust it in the security man’s face, then fired a short burst that opened the other man’s skull, dropping him cross-legged in the gutter.
The three DOMINANCE RAIN operators struggled with bin Faisal, whose fear made him strong. Dimitri, the remaining terrorist, emptied his magazine across the back of the operator closest to him. Anna stepped around the front of the man with her reloaded mini-Uzi in her fists, arms extended and locked, and closed in on the two remaining DOMINANCE RAIN operators. Suddenly her face blossomed red, like a gruesome flower, and she fell backward onto the sidewalk streaked with blood. A cover shooter from the Suburban had fired his M-4 at her from the backseat, the muzzle blast from the unsuppressed weapon stunning his partner in front.
Dale sprinted down the sidewalk, his boots slapping the concrete as he came. He saw the flurry of action, heard the shots, and saw people going down. The Glock was warm in his hands as he closed to be sure of his shots. The muddle of men struggling on the sidewalk made that necessary. He forced himself to control his breathing—a deep breath, hold, a deep breath, hold—and eased the pounding behind his eyes so that he could fight. The female terrorist went down, and a shot cracked close by his head, from the other terrorist or from one of his own, he couldn’t tell. The remaining male terrorist, fumbling to reload his machine pistol, suddenly jumped and twitched as though pulled by marionette strings as a cover shooter from the Suburban, his M-4 tucked tight in his shoulder, put a three-round burst into him. Dale’s attention was tunneled in on the terrorist going down; he had his Glock covering the man going down and missed the motion in the front seat of the car blocking the van.
Charley was behind him, moving up fast, and he saw the man in the front seat of the terrorist-blocking car duck low.
Costas watched Anna fall, and his rage rose as a fierce fighting force in him. He ducked low as he threw open the door, moving surprisingly fast for a man of his age and bulk. The battered old government-model .45 automatic was clenched in his fist. He saw the man running down the sidewalk toward them stop short of the car and point his pistol at someone behind the van; that gave him the opening he needed. He slipped around the open door and braced himself low across the hood and aimed.
Charley shouted, “Dale! The car, behind the car!”
His words were lost in the clatter of gunfire. Still running, he threw his Glock up and snapped a quick shot at the man leaning over the hood of the car. The older man was fast; he turned and fired two quick shots at Charley.
Dale saw the movement at the hood of the car, saw the flash of the pistol going off, saw the old man aiming at someone behind him. For a moment his attention was split. He looked over his shoulder and saw Charley crouched as though hit.
“Hey!” Dale shouted, to draw the shooter’s attention away from Charley. “Right here!”
He snapped fast shots that ricocheted off the hood of the car, leaving grey streaks that appeared as though by magic. The old man behind the pistol swiveled like a tank turret and Dale saw, in slow motion, the gaping muzzle of the .45 suddenly flaring bright and rising off the hood of the car. There was a sudden punch in his chest and he staggered back a step, still trying to acquire the target and then he heard a snapping sound in his skull that brought bright light to his eyes, a bright light that blotted out everything else, and in his last moment of consciousness he felt the concrete unfold beneath him like a quilted blanket across a bed.
Charley saw Dale’s head jerk sharply to the right and the sudden bloom of blood spout from his head. Even as his friend crumpled to the sidewalk, Charley fixed his front sight on the terrorist behind the hood of the car and walked forward, every step a shot that splintered his opponent’s face. He ran forward to the downed terrorist, kicking the .45 free from the man’s limp hands, then quick-scanned 360 degrees. All the shooters from the cover car were out; some of them covered the oth
ers, who were throwing their dead and wounded into the van. One operator was already behind the wheel of the van.
Charley went to Dale and knelt beside him. “Help! I need help here!”
Dale was still breathing, but a wound in his upper chest and an entry wound in his skull spouted blood. Charley pressed his hands against the wounds. Two of the operators pushed him out of the way and grabbed Dale up by his arms and legs and ran with him into the back of the van.
“Mount up!” one shouted. “We’re out of here!”
Charley ran to the closing van door. A hard hand grabbed his jacket and yanked him in while someone else slammed shut the door. The van floor was awash in blood. Charley sat on one body, still warm—there was nowhere else to sit. Pressed into the rear corner, Ahmad bin Faisal, his hands cuffed behind him and a black bag over his head, whimpered with fear.
“Motherfucker, motherfucker . . .” a DOMINANCE RAIN operator chanted as he worked on Dale, tying pressure bandages in place.
“We’re gone!” the driver shouted. Everyone grabbed for a hold as the van tore away from the curb, followed by the Suburban, leaving the limp bodies and bullet-riddled car of the November Seventeenth terrorists behind.
ATHENS, GREECE, HANS’S SURVEILLANCE SAFE HOUSE
The Dutchman gripped the edge of his worktable as though it might fly away. All of the speakers carefully ranged around the battered table crackled with panicky voices and the sounds of gunfire.