by Peter Nealen
I kept pushing forward, even as Jordan’s rifle barked next to my ear, hammering rounds into the group flowing out of the Council chamber. He laid into them, dumping the mag into the mass of black behind the flickering weapon lights as fast as he could ride the trigger. Behind him, Chris had stepped partway out into the hallway to add his own fire.
The first man’s fall had knocked his number two off balance, slamming him back against the door frame. He had even less of a chance than the lead, and I blew his brains all over the wall before he could recover.
Then, without any other options, I was hooking through the threshold and into the room. If I didn’t clear it, we were going to be in a lot of trouble.
I ran right into the number three man.
Fortunately, I’d tucked my rifle under my arm as I went around the corner, stepping out and stomping on the corpses in the doorway so that my muzzle cleared the door at the same time I did. So, it was pointed right at the black-clad shooter’s sternum as he stepped back, hesitating fatally in the face of the two dead men behind me.
I slammed the muzzle into his chest and pulled the trigger, hammering him back into the number four man and knocking the wind out of him. The bullet had to have damned near shattered his front plate, but it didn’t penetrate. It still must have felt like getting hit in the sternum with a hammer, and it gave me the momentary pause that I needed to lift the rifle and shoot him in the head. The muzzle actually caught on his chin, and the bullet blew the back of his skull all over the inside of his helmet.
Then I was transitioning to the man who’d fallen on his ass when the number three had tripped over him, stepping backward into the room. He took a pair to the throat and forehead. His head bounced with the impact, and then he was still.
I stepped past the two bodies and swept my muzzle across the rest of the room. It appeared that it had, indeed, been set up as a ready room. A TV stood against the far wall, with three couches facing it, and a weapon rack—complete with cable locks—stood in the corner I was facing.
David had pushed in behind me, and as I finished my sweep, David called out, “Clear.”
There was no time to consolidate. We swung back out into the hallway, falling in behind Jordan, Chris, and Greg as they stacked on the Council chamber door, Greg behind Chris and Jordan, his rifle trained on the corner beyond and the last uncleared door on the left.
They didn’t hang out in the stack for long. Even before David had quite caught up with Greg, Jordan was going through the door, Chris right on his heels.
Chapter 28
The small backstage room was dark and cramped. And mostly empty of people, except for the one young man in a dark suit who was running for the stage, a warning already on his lips.
Jordan gunned him down as he put a foot on the step leading up to the dais and the podium. He fell on his face, sliding down the steps and leaving a smear of blood on the concrete before coming to rest in a crumpled heap on the floor.
I could already hear the screams coming from inside the Council chamber as I stepped into the room and took in what had happened.
Most of the back room appeared to be devoted to audiovisual equipment to support whatever presentations or speeches were going to be made in the mini-UN up there. A few screens were still glowing—the lights might be out in the hallways, but they hadn’t cut the power to the whole building.
We didn’t hang out for long. From the noise, I had no doubt that our targets were right on the other side of that door. Furthermore, it sounded like they hadn’t had the presence of mind to try to go elsewhere. I moved up to where Jordan was holding on the steps and squeezed his shoulder. “With you.”
He flowed up the steps and onto the dais. I followed, my rifle dropping level and sweeping to the right as he cleared the left corner, each of us stepping away from the door to clear the way for the rest of the team behind us.
At almost the same instant, possibly a couple seconds behind, Myers and his Recon team stormed up onto the dais from the other side.
The chamber was already in pandemonium. A mass of people, most of them middle aged and wearing suits, were jammed into the upper levels at the far end, toward the main entrances. They were all trying to stay behind the handful of armed security—these guys in suits rather than combat gear—who were barricaded on the entry doors, but it was equally clear that they’d heard the gunfire from behind the dais and were trying to stay away from that side of the room.
The chambers were set up like an amphitheater, with the dais raised high above the lower level, which stood about half a story below the entryway. We stood on a raised stage, just beside a semi-circular desk with a central podium, a massive projection screen on the wall behind it, and the modified blue-and-gold European Defense Council flags posted to either side.
We all just kind of stood there for a second, weapons up and scanning the chaos. Two more men in suits had stationed themselves halfway down the amphitheater, but they’d put their weapons down and raised their hands as soon as we came out onto the dais. Each man had gotten an extra bit of scrutiny, while covered by multiple rifle muzzles, before we’d moved on.
The panicking politicos were making too much noise—I knew that even if I let loose with my full bull-bellow, I probably wouldn’t be heard. But Myers had already figured that out.
“Everyone get down on the floor with your hands behind your heads!” Myers had seen what was going on, and had stepped up to the podium, pulled the microphone—which was apparently still functioning—toward himself, and roared into it. Feedback and static popped from the speakers set around the room at the auditory overload, and a few of the Council and their toadies slapped their hands to their ears.
The security men at the doors turned around to stare at us. For a split second, I could see the one I was covering think about it. But he decided discretion was the better part of valor, being all but alone with an MP7 against multiple OBRs and M27s. He unslung the weapon and slowly, carefully, set it on the floor, raising his other hand as he did so. The others followed suit.
Of course, the pols and their clerks and aides weren’t quite so quick to figure out how screwed they were. Several tried to bolt, a skinny man in a gray suit with slicked-back hair almost running over the security man who was following directions as he ran through the entryway.
He was back a second later, and he and all the rest were driven toward the center of the room as the SEALs came in, up on their M37A5s.
“Get down on the floor, face down, with your hands on your heads, fingers interlaced!” Myers wasn’t letting up on the volume. I almost winced at the blast of sound, myself. “Do it now, and you will not be harmed! Reach for a weapon or make any hostile moves, and you will be shot!”
I wondered, as we spread out, starting down the stairs at the base of the dais, if he was bluffing. I didn’t know exactly what the Marines’ rules of engagement were, but I’d seen enough that even if one of the pols had been reaching for a weapon, the man who shot him—or her—was going to get put through the wringer.
I’d seen it happen before. I’d seen the enemy use that to their advantage, too. And while I doubted that any of the EDC pols would risk their own lives, it was probably just as well if they thought the barbaric Americans—as soft as most of them were these days—would shoot them if they moved wrong.
After all, at a quick estimate, there had to be over a hundred people in that room. And there were less than fifty of us.
But while they shied back from the oncoming SEALs like frightened rabbits, most of them still weren’t responding to instructions. And Myers had had enough.
“GET ON THE FUCKING FLOOR IF YOU WANT TO FUCKING LIVE!”
That seemed to get through. The younger people—mostly the clerks and the aides, if I figured right—started getting down on their faces, showing their hands. The older ones, the Councilors and their senior advisors, took longer. As I moved down onto the floor with the rest of the team, covered by the Marines up on the dais, I sa
w a combination of disbelief, terror, and indignation on their faces.
They were the most powerful people in Europe—well, close to it. I suspected that there were even more powerful people behind these aging megalomaniacs. People with the kind of money and influence that could make things happen without them ever needing to show their faces.
That was why I doubted that this was going to work out. As we swept across the room, we pulled flex cuffs out of assault packs and began to secure the people lying on the floor. We started with the security first. They looked like they were too smart to throw their lives away for the sleek, wealthy elitists in the room, but you never knew.
It took time. One of us had to sling his rifle and manhandle each person, while another covered him. It only took a few seconds for each detainee, but that added up when you looked at the sheer number of people who were packed into the Council chambers. The SEALs and some of the Recon Marines were helping, but we still needed to have security on the doors. And the one constant of warfare is that the enemy always gets a vote.
“Golf Lima Ten, this is India Quebec Seven. We’ve got a bit of a problem out here.”
I stepped back from the old, fat German man I’d just flex cuffed. I was pretty sure he was Ludger Sorge, one of the five German reps on the EDC. “Send it.”
“We have what appears to be a company-sized element of Belgian Army coming up the street and toward the lawn. Jaguar recon vehicles and Pandur APCs. We’re going to be seriously outgunned in the next few minutes if they decide to push this. And close air has pulled off.”
They probably would push it. We might have control of the Council itself, but if the Council was just the public face for people even more wealthy and connected, then the Belgian Army would pull out all the stops to rescue them.
Or turn them into martyrs for the proles to rally around.
How well that would work wasn’t for me to say at that point. I’d seen plenty of evidence that the EDC wasn’t nearly popular enough for the general European population to get all up in arms about their deaths, but that wouldn’t do us much good if we all got killed along with them.
“What’s up, Matt?” Weiss had appeared at my elbow as I’d spoken on the radio.
“Word from the guys on cordon. Sounds like the Belgian Army’s about to crash the party.” I looked up at the entry doors. “I know we all have to be on the same page for this, but I’d suggest pulling the cordon out of the open and securing the entrances and exits from inside the building, where they’re not hanging out in the breeze.”
Weiss frowned. That hadn’t been part of the original plan, and while the Recon guys might still have a bit of their traditional, iconoclastic disregard for procedure, clearly the officers weren’t all that enthusiastic about going off the established plan.
If changing this would interfere with support or coordination with adjacent units, I could kind of see that. But in this case, our nearest support was a hundred klicks away, and pulling the infantry sections inside wouldn’t change much beyond that wasn’t in the brief.
Unfortunately, thanks to the nature of this operation and the way it had been planned, we didn’t have a single commander. This was a joint operation, and neither the Navy nor the Marine Corps had been able to agree on who was in the lead. Time being pressing, Gutierrez had suggested that I be placed in charge, but none of the regular military had agreed to put their people under Triarii control. So, we had this weird, ancient-Greek-style democracy of commanders, which meant we had to debate every single damned decision on the ground.
“I don’t know. We’d lose some of our eyes outside.”
“We’ll lose them anyway if those armored vehicles open up on them.” I started back toward the dais, lowering my voice. The prisoners didn’t need to hear this. As Weiss followed, Bealer saw us talking and started down one of the aisles to join us. “Besides, we’ve still got guys on the roof, and they’ve got a lot longer sightlines than those guys hunkered down in their Ranger graves on the ground.”
Weiss was still frowning, though he was clearly thinking it over as he looked up toward the entryway.
“What’s going on?” Bealer looked from one of us to the other as he joined us.
I told him, and he got pensive, too. SEALs were even less procedure-oriented than Recon Marines, but I suspected that having the suggestion come from a Triarius was a large part of the heartburn over this decision.
I briefly considered pointing out the very true fact that since the infantry on cordon were all Triarii, they were technically under my command, and if I wanted to tell Holbrook, Bradshaw, and Obregado to bring their boys in, there wasn’t a damned thing any Navy or Marine Corps officer could do about it. But under the circumstances, antagonizing the guys we needed to rely on in combat probably wasn’t the best course of action.
Scott would have advised me against it. That thought brought a pang that I had to beat down savagely. We weren’t out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.
We were just getting started.
“Golf Lima Ten, this is India Quebec Five.” Bradshaw sounded calm on the surface, but I knew him well enough to catch the tension under the surface. “We’re getting some elevated drone activity out here, and a lot of movement on the perimeter. Mostly cops, but there are some plainclothes types watching us, too. They haven’t taken a shot yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”
“Linkup with friendlies is going to be a lot harder if we don’t have anyone outside.” Lieutenant Bealer didn’t seem to be all that thrilled with the idea of barricading in the building, either.
“We’ll still have men on the roof. The GROM guys are up there, and my machinegunners.” I felt like I was repeating everything, and it annoyed me. The flash of anger was enough to clear my head and momentarily banish my grief over Scott. I looked at Weiss. “Have you got comms with the MEU?”
He grimaced. “Working on it.” Pulling back his sleeve, he looked at his watch. “Even best case, though, they’re still going to be two hours out.”
I nodded. “Like it or not, gentlemen, as far as the enemy is concerned, this is now a hostage situation. And while it’s possible, I doubt that they’re going to want to drop the building, killing everyone inside, unless they can make damned good and sure that it looks like we did it. We have to hold out at least two more hours, until ground units can get here to relieve us. We’ll be able to defend this position a lot longer if the bad guys can’t get a shot at us.”
I was right, and they knew it. Bealer was still chewing on it, and Weiss, for all his friendliness earlier, didn’t seem to find the idea of conceding to a Triarii commander all that appealing. But I could tell that they knew that there weren’t any better options.
The burst of machinegun fire outside was audible even in the Council chambers. “Taking fire. We need to get out of here now.” Holbrook’s voice was raised but he wasn’t panicking. Yet.
“Pull ‘em.” Weiss looked and sounded like he was afraid he was going to regret the decision, but with real lives on the line, he must have finally figured that Americans mattered more than his political future as an officer.
I hoped that Weiss was one of the good ones. Granted, in my experience most of the good officers got out as captains, but that was the way things went. I nodded to him and keyed my radio, as if I hadn’t been ten seconds away from just doing it without his agreement.
“All India Quebec elements, this is Golf Lima Ten Six. Fall back inside the building and barricade the entry and exit doors. I say again, we are holding the building from the inside. Chatty, Santa Ana, the boys at the front might need some cover fire.”
“This is Santa Ana. Already on it.” As I would have expected. Tony and Reuben each had their radios on, and they weren’t the kind to sit still when brother Triarii were under fire.
None of us were. It was why we were Triarii.
I turned back to the crowd of Councilors and flunkies on the floor. “Let’s finish getting these clowns secured. Then I’m t
aking my team up to the roof.” I might prefer to have the trail sections barricading the doors from the inside, but I wanted better eyes on the overall situation.
Of course, then it got more complicated.
“Hey, Matt?” Jordan looked up from the tablet that had the target profiles on it. “Some of these pictures are really shitty, but I think we’ve got a problem.
“We’re missing two Councilors.”
Chapter 29
“Well, that ain’t good.” Weiss had a talent for understatement, apparently.
If any Councilors were out in the wind, they could form a “Council in Exile,” or some such thing, and continue to access the EDC’s resources while claiming its authority. This little op wouldn’t have accomplished much of anything except give the EDC some victimhood propaganda.
And I could already imagine what they’d have to say about it. What they probably were already saying about it. The media cycle being what it was, I could almost guarantee that there were a dozen breathless and inaccurate news reports currently on multiple channels about the “Siege of the Council Building.” And while I knew we had hackers and our own set of trolls hard at work, the social media environment had to be something else.
“There’s not a damned thing we can do about it yet.” I looked out toward the entryway again as I heard more muffled gunfire. The faint whiff of smoke came through the open doors. Holbrook must have popped HC smoke grenades to cover their retreat into the building’s lobby. “We need to hold this position until the MEU gets here. We can’t go busting out to go politico-hunting while we’re surrounded in broad daylight with open ground all around us.”
“The longer they’re at large, though…” Bealer wasn’t happy, and I couldn’t blame him. Nothing about this operation had gone right yet.
Scott’s cooling corpse back at the stairs was only the most obvious example. I forced myself not to think about him. Not yet. When the Council was secured, or we were evac’ed and back on the Iwo Jima, whichever came first, then I could mourn him.