by Peter Nealen
We unbuckled, as risky as that was given the maneuvers we were undergoing, and started getting ready to hit the ground. Rucks went back on backs, magazines were inserted and bolts racked. Tony and Reuben kept their Mk 48s in Condition 3, with the belts on the feed trays but the bolts forward. Running around with a belt-fed with the bolt back could be disastrous. None of us entirely trusted the machineguns’ safeties.
Not everybody moved fast enough, and David was thrown across the cabin as the Osprey swung wide again, whether to avoid an obstacle or incoming fire I couldn’t tell. Scott caught him and held him by the pack straps as the bird righted itself. Then Scott shoved David back toward his own jump seat. The smaller man staggered back, dropped into the seat, and buckled himself in with a nod of thanks to Scott.
“One minute!” The crew chief held up a single index finger, which said more than his shouted words, which were almost drowned out by the roar of the engines.
We braced. If things were going to go bad, it would happen in the next few seconds. And we probably wouldn’t even see it coming. Flying that low, we’d crash before we even knew we were hit.
“Thirty seconds!”
The ramp was already coming down. I could see the houses and buildings racing by beneath us, looking almost close enough to touch. And then I could see a few muzzle flashes down below, not to mention a few fires belching black smoke into the sky.
Those didn’t look like they had anything to do with us. I remembered what Kowacs had said about unrest in Brussels. I hoped that was it. If one of the other birds had gone down, they were far enough away from the target building that we’d be looking at Black Hawk Down times ten to get to them.
Then the props were coming vertical and we were passing over the green dome and towers of the Belgian National Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. We didn’t have far to descend before the flat roof of the European Defense Council building suddenly came up beneath us.
The dark figures of SEALs in AOR-2 cammies and GROM operators in MultiCam were already spreading out toward the edges of the roof. I caught a glimpse of one of the CH-53s down on the ground just before the edge of the roof eclipsed it.
Something about it hadn’t looked right. I suspected—no, I was afraid—that it had been shot down and crashed. And the whiff of smoke on the air as the Osprey touched the top of the roof and I charged down the ramp, ducking almost double to get under the clamshell without either catching my helmet or my ruck, didn’t bode well, either.
I got outside, got about two yards from the ramp, and dropped to a knee, scanning the roof as the rest of the team fanned out from the ramp. A dozen columns of black smoke rose around the building. That had to be demonstrators or rioters—there were too many to be all from our birds. Though the possibility that they were also anti-aircraft emplacements hit by the Suppression of Enemy Air Defense strikes wasn’t exactly zero, either.
The SEALs had spread out to the edges of the roof, while the Marines were closing on the roof access hatches. We’d identified three hatches from the overhead imagery, but it looked like one of those was actually just another box full of machinery. There were only two.
I hadn’t been privy to the turf fights between the Marines and the SEALs as to who got to go in first. We had more experience, but being the outsiders, we hadn’t even been included.
As the Osprey pulled off, clearing the way for Tucker’s team’s bird, I could hear a bit more clearly for a moment. I could hear gunfire and sirens down below. I made sure that the team was all accounted for and on security, and then keyed my radio.
“India Quebec Five, Golf Lima Ten. Is that your bird down there?”
“Negative. But we do have a bird down, and India Quebec Seven is down three KIA.” Bradshaw paused, as a renewed burst of gunfire sounded. “You boys might want to hurry up. We’re getting hit from inside and outside down here already.”
That wasn’t good. A crashed bird, the cordon already getting hit as desperate pols inside pushed their security out to defend them and equally desperate security forces outside tried to justify their existence by pushing to rescue the pols, and we weren’t even inside yet.
Another glance around the rooftop confirmed that there was no security up there. This was probably the last thing their security planners had thought of. Who’d be crazy enough to fly in and land on the roof of the Council building itself?
Granted, if we hadn’t had a successful SEAD mission come in first, this wouldn’t have worked. And part of the infantry sections’ mission had been to work over any foot-mobile defenders on the rooftop with the Super Stallions’ door guns. It didn’t look like that had been necessary—we’d come in too fast and unexpectedly.
I turned toward the nearest hatch, where the Force Recon platoon was making entry. It didn’t appear to be well-secured, but it was latched from the inside. The Battalion Recon platoon was already getting a Halligan on the other one, down on the other side of the bulky block of machinery in the center of the roof.
The other Ospreys were coming down, taking some fire from below, and the SEALs were returning it. The Marines’ Vipers, that had accompanied the Super Stallions, roared past, their 20mms chattering as they swept the parking lots with cannon fire.
We moved to join the Force platoon, getting out of the way as Tucker’s Osprey came in. The wind plucked at us as we shed our rucks and stacked them next to the roof hatch, even as the latch gave way with a crack, and the Marines hauled it open, half a dozen M27 barrels leveled down through the opening, even as one of the Recon bubbas dropped a nine-banger through the hatch.
Then they were going through, plunging down the narrow steps and into the building, while we took up covering positions and prepared to follow.
We were on target. Now we just had to fight our way down and catch the Council before they could punch out.
Hold on, Tyler. At least until the MEU’s Battalion Landing Team can get here.
The last of the Marines clattered down the stairs and I followed, as Tucker and his team ran down the Osprey’s ramp behind us.
Chapter 27
Fortunately, the stairs were empty. The infantry sections down below on the grounds appeared to have drawn all the security forces’ attention, at least for the moment. We moved quickly down to the next floor, the Marines showing good movement and covering their angles. Stairways are a nightmare in close quarters battle, and while I had seen too much to have a lot of confidence in the US military’s training standards as time went on and politics became the most important leadership priority, at least it looked like the Recon bubbas were still keeping their skills up.
We had to slow until the Marines cleared the stairwell, at least down to the next floor below. The doors leading into the building proper were still closed. The Marines were securing the stairwell first.
That made some sense, given that our targets were supposed to be down on the second floor. But it exposed one of the major weaknesses of the plan. By bypassing that many floors, we ran the risk that we’d leave a substantial number of security personnel behind us, unsecured.
Securing the stairs would go some way toward making it less likely that we’d get hit from behind as we drove through to the Council itself, but there were only so many of us, in a building that could easily house several hundred people, and while most of them would be administrative staff, there could still be a lot of shooters.
We followed the Marines down toward the second floor. From the plans we’d studied, once we broke out, we’d have two routes through the halls and offices that surrounded the Council chambers. The Marines would take one, we’d take the other.
One of the Force Recon platoon’s teams had been allocated to secure the stairwell, and they were posting up in singletons about every two to three floors. Not ideal, but with the numbers we had, we couldn’t exactly afford to do more.
I was right behind the second Recon team, still about halfway between the third and fourth floors, when all hell broke loose.
Th
e point man was halfway down the last flight before the second floor, when the door flew open and three men in black fatigues, body armor, and helmets, carrying HK 417s with high-power optics, burst through, apparently heading for the roof.
I had to hand it to the Recon Marines. They were on point and ready to kill. Weapons were up and eyes hovering near their optics, while the EDC’s security men must not have thought that we’d have gotten that far, that quickly.
The two Marines in the lead opened fire without hesitation, smashing 5.56 rounds into the first two men before they’d even registered the woodland-camouflaged figures on the stairs. Training had taken over, so the first rounds hammered into body armor, the blows knocking both men back in the first few moments, until both Marines transitioned to the final part of the Mozambique drill and slammed their final shots through the two snipers’ skulls.
As the two men fell backward, the group behind them scrambled to get out of the fatal funnel, running back down the hallway and away from the stairwell door. The door didn’t close behind them, though, propped open by the two black-clad corpses collapsed across the threshold.
The Marines pressed the fight, charging down the stairs, the point man barely remembering at the last moment to round the corner, throwing himself across the landing to aim down the next flight. We weren’t at the bottom yet, and the EDC could still throw more shooters at us.
Remember what I said about stairs being a CQB nightmare? Especially when you’re outnumbered?
The Marines flowed past the low man and into the corridor beyond, more gunfire echoing through the door as we followed.
The door opened onto a long, broad hallway with doors along one side—the side that faced the outside of the building—and big, framed pictures and flags against the other. The tile floor was almost immaculate. I say almost because empty, smoking shell casings were already spinning across the shiny surface as the Marines exchanged fire with several more of the EDC’s security, who were falling back to an open door about halfway down the corridor.
We spread out from the door as we moved through, and a good thing, too. The Recon Marines were taking the corridor ahead—which was actually the way we’d been planning to go—but only had two men on the other hallway that intersected it. It appeared that there were four major halls ringing the Council chambers, and our stairwell came out right at the corner.
And even as we spread out, another group of six black-clad shooters came out of a door at the far end of the cross-hallway.
I was out in front, moving toward the outer corner and the wall, while David had pushed toward the two Marines who were barricaded on the inner corner. The rest of the team was still clearing the doorway when the oncoming shooters poured out into the hallway and opened fire.
My finger was already tightening on the trigger as I moved, the rifle coming up the bare inch and a half it needed to for my eye to find the offset red dot. I heard the bullets snap past my head as I fired, the suppressor coughing loudly in the enclosed hall, the bullet slamming into the lead shooter’s chest, just above the magazines in their pouches.
Of course, he was wearing body armor, so the round didn’t penetrate. But it knocked him back a step, and that bought us a split second.
Then David, the Marines barricaded on the corner, and I were blazing away, dragging our weapons from target to target as fast as we could pull the trigger and recover from the recoil. The hallway echoed and reverberated with the roar of gunfire, suppressed and otherwise.
I saw what happened in a series of snapshots. It was all too fast to catch everything.
A man in black fatigues, body armor, helmet, and balaclava staggering back as he took a hit to his plate carrier, just before a second bullet blew through his eye and snapped his head back.
Another hit in the shoulder, knocking him just far enough around that the next bullet clipped the edge of his body armor and sank into his chest. He staggered and dropped to one knee, blood spraying from his mouth and nose.
One of the men in the back rearing back as bullets chopped into his comrades, trying to get out of the line of fire, only to catch a bullet to the jaw, spinning him halfway around and sending him crashing to a knee with a spray of blood, before he was dragged back through the door as the handful of survivors retreated.
The hallway fell silent, the Marines having killed, captured, or suppressed the shooters in the other direction. I held my sector, still aimed in down the hallway, and called out. “Everybody up?”
“Scott’s down.”
Those two words hit me like a knife in the gut. But I couldn’t fold or even look back while I held security on the hallway. If I let myself start to come apart, we were all dead.
“Talk to me.” Maybe he was hit and incapacitated, but still breathing. But Jordan’s next words killed that hope.
“He’s gone, Matt.”
The awful finality of that statement was not lost on Jordan. He sounded like he was choking on the words as he spoke, coming up beside me with his own weapon up. Jordan might have been the prickliest of us, but he was still one of the team, and while he’d been a bit of an asshole when Phil had been killed, he’d never clashed with Scott like he had Phil. In fact, Scott had gotten both of them to settle down and knock it off more than once. He’d been the voice of reason when my patience had been at an end.
And vice versa. We’d been brothers and two sides of the same coin since I’d taken over the team from Hartrick. We’d leaned on each other a lot. Losing Scott was like losing my little brother and my right hand, all at the same time.
And I couldn’t afford to mourn him. Not yet.
“We’ve got him, Matt.” Burkhart’s team had been right behind us. “We need to hold the stairwell, anyway.”
I didn’t look back. I didn’t trust myself to talk right then, either. I just nodded, as I forced the grief down into a deep, dark compartment in the back of my mind, to be dealt with later. But it was a small comfort, right then, to know that we weren’t just going to leave Scott’s body lying in the hallway, even if it were less likely that it would be molested than if we were in the Third World somewhere.
“Moving.” My voice was surprisingly steady as I focused on the hallway ahead. Six doors lined the left side, leading to offices and other such rooms, and two back entrances to the Council chambers, one at each corner, stood on the right.
“Which door do you want, Matt?” Myers was at the corner, having doubled back to join his team at the intersection again.
“You guys take this one.” I pointed toward the far end of the hallway with my off hand. “We’ll push to the far end. They’ll be expecting us to make entry here, now that they know we hit this corner. Give us long enough to get there, and we’ll make entry simultaneously.” I figured that these were the back doors to the Council chambers, probably opening up just below the podium.
“Roger.”
Just as he acknowledged, the lights went out.
“You gotta be shitting me.” Jordan already had his PS-31s down in front of his eyes as he spoke. “Do they really think turning the lights off is gonna do shit?”
I dropped my own NVGs. It was still awfully dark in that hallway, since there wasn’t a lot of ambient light for the 31s to do their work, but I could see, and I could easily pick up my red dot. “Desperation, brother. It makes people stupid.” I was already moving as the Marines stacked up on the nearest door.
Every one of those six doors along the outer wall was a danger area. Shooters could come out at any second, if they’d staged in one of the offices—and knowing the kinds of people who made up the EDC, I didn’t doubt that they’d insist on minimal security personnel in the chambers themselves. High and mighty politicians and the “enlightened” elites who commanded society tended to think of the men who keep them safe as little more than dogs, and treated them that way.
Americans aren’t immune, either.
But we didn’t have the time to clear every room. Especially since I could already hear
gunfire elsewhere in the building.
“All Golf Lima units, this is India Quebec Seven. You might want to hurry up. We just repelled an attempt to break out the front doors. They retreated back into the building, but we’re facing increasing security presence out here on the lawn.” Simon Holbrook commanded Tucker’s infantry trail section. They hadn’t taken quite the beating that Bradshaw’s section had, but now they were going to be caught between the hammer and the anvil if we didn’t secure the Council and take the pressure off from inside. “The Vipers are almost bingo—they’re going to have to pull off soon, and we won’t have close air for a while.”
I moved down the hall, covering the next door to my left until Jordan could take it up, then moving past and focusing on the next. We sort of leapfrogged down the hallway, handing off each doorway to the man behind as we passed it, Burkhart’s team following in trace, barely a pace behind Greg, who was taking up the rear of the team.
Then two doors opened at the same time—one on the left, directly in front of me, and the other at the corner, the same back door to the Council chambers where the first group of shooters had popped out of.
If they’d hoped to catch us flat-footed, they failed. They probably should have thrown flashbangs or something. But they came out fast, flowing into the hallway from both doors, the nearest barely six feet away from me.
A point-blank shot from a 7.62 to the face is messy, suppressed or not.
The man in the lead didn’t really have a chance. He’d thought he was ready, going around the corner behind his weapon, but it came down to a fraction of a second’s reaction time. And mine was slightly faster, especially since I’d been expecting just this move. My finger had already been tightening on the trigger, the red dot hovering about where I expected his head to appear, even as the door opened.
My suppressor was about two feet from his head when the trigger broke, his own MP7 still not quite aimed in. The bullet snapped his head back, sending him crashing into the man behind him.