by Peter Nealen
As we got set up, we could still hear the battle going on outside. It sounded like the front entrance was taking a pounding, even as the fast movers continued to fight it out overhead. Even through the thick walls and ceiling, we could hear the thunder of afterburners and the distant boom of explosions.
We’d just gotten set when we started to feel a heavier, rhythmic vibration thrumming through the walls. The helicopters were coming in.
At the door, I braced my rifle against the frame, trained on the open stair door ahead of us, and waited.
Chapter 31
The EDC’s rescue force moved fast. Only a minute or two after the vibration from the helos peaked, the first flashbang bounced down the stairs. The detonation reverberated up and down the concrete stairwell. It would have been pretty bad, being stuck in that glorified concrete tube with that concussion. Fortunately, we had some good standoff, and we were shielded from the worst of it by the walls.
It was also as good a “we’re coming” signal as we were going to get. I braced myself, leaning into the rifle, the forearm clamped to the doorframe with my off hand. It was harder to angle the weapon to use my offset red dot, but I’d cranked the scope down to one power and turned up the reticle’s illumination. It may as well be a red dot at that point. I put that glowing red bit right about at chest height in the doorway and lightly rested my finger on the trigger, letting my breath out slowly.
Footsteps rattled on the stairs as the EDC shooters descended. A moment later, a black-clad, armored form blossomed in my sights and I squeezed the trigger.
He was being careful. Seeing the open door ahead, he’d hedged his bets, slowing so that the next man could cover down the stairwell while he moved toward the door with his muzzle first. He was almost fast enough.
My bullet hit him just as his finger was tightening on the trigger. He was looking the wrong way—he’d spotted the GROM operator in the opposite doorway first, thanks to the angles involved—and when my round smashed into the edge of his plate and ricocheted into his side, he jerked and triggered a burst of 4.6mm MP7 fire into the wall.
Then all hell broke loose as every shooter, Marine, GROM, and Triarii, who had a line of sight into that doorway started dumping rounds into the two lead EDC soldiers.
Both were smashed off their feet in seconds as 5.56 and 7.62 rounds tore through limbs, chests, throats, and skulls. The number two man, the one focused on the next flight of stairs down, was shielded by his buddy’s body for a moment—and the first man was dead in the next second after I shot him, as half a dozen rounds tore into his side and head—but he was facing the wrong way, and as the number one man slumped, I shot him in the back of the skull, under the base of his helmet as he was shoved forward by the impact.
More gunfire poured into the doorway, blasting bits of concrete off the stairs, thumping into the two bodies, and chipping bloody paint off the railing. It didn’t last long, as the men behind reared back and got the hell out of the fatal funnel before they exposed themselves. But the message had clearly been delivered.
A moment later, I heard more gunfire from other side of the floor. They were trying to push the north access, too, hopefully with about the same degree of success.
We were in a relatively good defensive position. We could bottle them up in that stairwell for a while.
And I was sure they knew it and were already trying to figure out how to fix it.
Without targets, we stopped shooting. Ammo was limited, and the Marines’ fire discipline was almost as good as ours. And the EDC was staying out of sight for the moment.
They adapted fast. This time, the flashbang didn’t just get tossed down the steps.
Granted, it took a couple of tries. The first one bounced off the doorframe and back into the stairwell. I thought I heard a curse before it went off, the concussion ringing against the concrete. The second one, though, made it through and into the hallway.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but I still ate a lot of the concussion. Flashbangs don’t just rely on the flash. And while the hallway was a bit better acoustically than the bare concrete of the stairwell, it was still essentially an enclosed tunnel, and it funneled the blast right into our faces.
I got rocked. My head immediately started to hurt and my ears were ringing. I cracked my eyes open as the first black-clad shooter came through the opening.
My equilibrium had been battered enough that even at less than ten yards, my first shot missed. Well, not entirely missed, but clipping a man’s shoulder isn’t a kill shot. Fortunately, the Marine behind me shot him in the face a split second later. He’d been far enough away from the flashbang that it hadn’t really affected him.
The fact that we’d placed the Marines farther back in the hallway saved us. Two more shooters dropped as bullets cracked down the hall, and then the EDC gave up and stopped trying to force their way onto the floor.
Unfortunately, they’d sacrificed the three men now leaking blood on the cheap carpet to get to the door that we’d propped open and slam it closed.
We should have pulled the pins and ripped the damn door off. I was sure I wasn’t the only one thinking that. But it was too late.
Through the narrow window in the door, I could see dark figures hurrying down the stairs. I was pretty sure they’d posted security on the door itself while they rolled downstairs.
My head was pounding, but it wasn’t the first time I’d had to think tactically while beaten to a pulp. The bad guys had two possible courses of action if they were going to try to bypass us. They could go around to one of the staircases that didn’t have roof access and try to flank us. That was the most dangerous possibility I could think of at the moment. “Gunny Ortiz! We need shooters on the other two stairwells! Now!”
He was right at my elbow. “Already on it.”
I breathed a little easier at that, despite my headache. And then the other possibility occurred to me.
“Hold on. They’re not just here to kill us. We’re on the target list, but…”
“But the Council’s going to be their primary focus.” Jordan was already ahead of me, though in my defense, he hadn’t just all but eaten a flashbang. “They’re going for the Council. They probably hope that they can keep us bottled up here while they grab them and get out.”
“And then they can flatten this place if they feel the need to.” That would take a lot of firepower, and it probably wasn’t the plan, but the EDC would probably be a lot less reticent about forcing their way in and clearing floor by floor once their principals were out of harm’s way.
I turned to Ortiz. “What do you think about forcing that door and trying to cut them off?”
His eyebrows climbed toward his helmet. “Didn’t we evac the roof because of the drones?”
“We did. Two of the GROM guys died because of them. But that was before they landed on it. How eager are they going to be to put fire on the roof when they’ve got helos and their own shooters there?” It was a long shot, especially given how canalized our approaches would be, but if we could secure the LZ, then we could keep the Councilors bottled up for a while longer. The MEU was still most of an hour out—provided that hadn’t changed again—and every minute we could buy would bring us closer to relief.
I was trying not to think too hard about the fact that we still had two Councilors out in the wind somewhere.
One problem at a time.
With the door shut—presumably held shut with a boot if not wedged closed—we had a bit of breathing room. Unfortunately, they had to know that, too. I was under no illusions that the EDC thought we were out of the game. “Gunny, I need two shooters.” For a moment, I wasn’t sure if he was going to hand over two of his Marines to Triarii control, but Ortiz didn’t hesitate.
“Moreau, Gough, go with Matt.” He pointed as he called out the two Marines, one skinny and kind of gawky-looking, who I’d already noticed always seemed to be breathing through his mouth, the other almost as skinny, but in a lean, Doberman sort of wa
y.
“On me. Friendly coming out!” I rolled out into the hallway, Jordan on my heels, and headed back toward our OP.
What I had in mind wasn’t guaranteed to work. If the EDC’s shooters maintained their security properly—and they might have the numbers to do it right—then we might just end up in a worse fight. If they’d decided to try to flank us, this might not work at all.
“Strawberry, Deacon. We are coming toward you with two Marines. Don’t shoot us.”
“This is Redball.” Chris had always been pretty cheerful about his callsign, which was making fun of his SEAL background. “I see you. What’s the plan?”
“We’re pushing toward the secondary stairwell. EDC troops are trying to bypass us. We’re going to drop down one floor, flank ‘em, and cut them off from the roof.” I was breathing a little harder than I liked, but it had already been a long, rough day.
And it was far from over.
“You need us?” Chris wasn’t always the most aggressive person, but at the same time, he was still a former SEAL and a Triarius. A Grex Luporum Triarius at that.
“Negative. Hold your position and watch our backs.” They’d need to break down the OP, or else leave the comms, drones, and the .50 behind, and I wasn’t willing to leave that kind of firepower unattended. So far, the building’s occupants had mostly appeared to be leaf-eaters, but that could change if the right opportunity presented itself.
We forged past the door, Chris and I exchanging short waves as we spotted each other, just to give each other a little warm and fuzzy that we saw each other and knew that we were friendlies. Both of us had seen blue-on-blue shootings in the past, and neither wanted to see it happen amongst us.
The Marines were following behind Jordan, so I wasn’t as worried about them.
Four more Marines were posted up on the stairwell door as we approached. Once again, just to be on the safe side, I called out to them. “Friendlies.”
“Bring it in.” The Marines didn’t complain about the linkup procedures. The sergeant who appeared to be in charge looked like he’d been around a bit—there was a hook-shaped scar on his cheek. After the fights we’d already been through—and just how far out in the breeze and outnumbered we were—I expected that everybody was getting a little twitchy.
I moved up the hallway, stopping behind a Recon Marine who was on a knee on the corner, his M27 aimed in at the door. “Any movement?”
“Not so far.” He didn’t take his eyes off the door as he spoke.
“Okay. We’re going through that door, down one floor, and then over to hit the roof access staircase. Questions?” I stayed behind the Marine, wanting to make sure that Jordan, Moreau, and Gough were all on the same page.
“Nope.” Jordan had done enough of this before. The Marines might have questions, but they weren’t going to let Triarii see them hesitate.
“On me.” I stepped across the hallway, pausing at the edge of the door just long enough to feel Jordan’s hand on my shoulder, then I threw the door open—as best as I could, given the soft close mechanism bolted to the top—and swung through.
The staircase was identical to the roof access stairs, except that it stopped there at the twenty-eighth floor, and there was no flight up. So, I kept my muzzle trained on the flight down as I pinned the door and cleared the threshold for Jordan and the Marines to get in past me.
The staircase still appeared to be abandoned. I couldn’t hear any movement down below, either, and there was no way to stay absolutely silent in echoing those staircases, my battered hearing notwithstanding. So, they weren’t trying to flank us. They were simply trying to bypass us and get the Councilors out.
That smacked of a specific order from a politico, not a soldier. But I’d take it.
We flowed down, picking our angles to make sure we weren’t exposed to any part of the stairs below without first covering it with a muzzle. Fortunately, we only had to go down one flight.
With Moreau covering down the staircase, we risked leaving the flight up alone. After all, there were four Recon Marines covering that door behind us. So, Jordan, Gough, and I focused on the twenty-seventh floor.
Jordan had moved up to take point. He hauled the door open and went through, Gough on his heels, and I followed, pulling Moreau along with me.
We quickly cleared the immediate area around the stairs. The hallway was deserted—the Council’s hangers-on appeared to all be on lockdown. Just as well. With Jordan and Gough in the lead, we flowed quickly down the hall toward the roof access stairwell.
I’d half expected the EDC shooters to have security in the hall, outside the stairs. They didn’t, fortunately. We got to the door in seconds. I keyed my radio as Jordan and Gough stacked on the door and Moreau covered our six. “Knife Five, Golf Lima Ten Six. Hitting the door.”
“Roger. Standing by.”
Gough had tapped on Jordan’s shoulder and held out a flashbang where he could see it without taking his eyes off the door. Jordan nodded, then shoved the door open about six inches.
Gough threw the banger through the gap and Jordan hauled the door shut. The bang still went off before it was all the way closed, but the majority of the blast was funneled into the stairwell.
Then Jordan was riding the door open, his rifle leveled, and he and Gough made entry, their weapons roaring.
The next few seconds were crucial. Jordan went low, Gough went high. I followed Gough while Moreau backed Jordan.
A body had already fallen down the stairs, and I stepped on him as I shifted right to get a shot at the black-clad figures crowding back from the landing above. Gough had hit them hard—another body was slumped on the landing, one arm draped down the steps.
One of the lead shooters hadn’t turned and run, but was backing up with his MP7 pointed down at us. He was still moving, though, and I shot him, the first round punching into his front plate and knocking the wind out of him before my follow-up shot, faster than I’d intended, clipped the top of the plate and ricocheted up under his chin. He fell backward, further tangling up the men behind him.
At the same time, Ortiz’s Marines hit the top door. And they weren’t screwing around.
I only found out later exactly what had happened. One of the biggest of the Force Recon Marines, a massive meathead named Tollefson, hit it with all two hundred ninety pounds of Marine, gear, armor, and weapon, and slammed the EDC shooter who’d had his boot braced against the threshold across the stairwell, bouncing him off the railing. Another Marine tossed another flashbang, Tollefson ate the concussion, and then the rest were flowing through, gunning down everyone they saw wearing black and carrying a weapon.
The stairwell was briefly a hell of hammering gunfire and spurting blood. Jordan had shot two more who had been heading down, and was taking some return fire from below, quickly answered and silenced.
The Marines pushed the fight, too, surging up the stairs as fast as they could shoot and cover their angles. They barely paused at the roof access hatch, which was still open. Only fire superiority—thanks more to superior aggression than anything else—kept that hatchway clear until two of them could pop through.
One immediately dropped, blood pouring from beneath his helmet. His buddy kept shooting as another Marine dragged the body out of the way and mounted the steps to replace him.
Then the first man, halfway out onto the roof, was hit and fell on his face, his boots still dangling down the steps. That rooftop was not a healthy place to be.
But we had to take the rooftop or lose the fight.
Two more Recon Marines braved the fire that was zeroed in on the hatch and made it through, clearing the way for the rest to flow up the steps. Gunfire hammered back and forth, and the thunder of the bigger fight outside was now even more audible, as a pair of fast movers chased each other across the sky, just visible past another Marine’s shoulder. The air war wasn’t calming down.
By the time we got to the roof, the Marines had spread out and were pushing the fight, runni
ng from cover to cover, driving the enemy back with concentrated firepower. There was a surprising amount of cover up there, with the various environmental control machinery and telecom equipment that studded the roof.
Two NH90 helos were still on the roof. They probably should have pulled off, but fortunately, the EDC hadn’t yet degenerated to the point where its commanders treated its elite shooters as expendable mooks to be left to die when things went sideways.
Once we were up on the roof, we drove toward the nearest NH90. We still had to stay low and use as much cover as we could, especially since that thing still mounted a door gun, but speed was essential.
I might have been a bit ambivalent about using the Council and their staffs and lackeys as hostages, but I had no such feelings about using combatants as meat shields. If we took control of even one of those helos, the EDC would be less likely to use drones on us.
The EDC shooters were falling back toward the helos, but that gave us the lull in the fire we needed. As long as they were between us and that door gun, the door gunner wasn’t likely to open fire.
I slipped quickly from a vent to the main telecom box, topped with what looked like a dozen satellite dishes. That put me within a dozen yards of the helo.
Leaning out, I ignored the shooters with their MP7s and put my red dot on the door gunner. He was armored up and wearing a face shield along with his helmet.
So I shot him about half a dozen times. The impacts alone should do something, and hopefully one of those rounds would hit something soft.
It did. He collapsed back into the bird, clutching his throat as crimson washed down the front of his body armor.
Two of the surviving EDC shooters turned toward me, but the Marines gunned them down in seconds. The crack of 5.56 fire, suppressed as it was, was a little lighter than the heavier reports from our OBRs, but at that range, the smaller bullets were just as devastating.
I rushed the bird, Jordan right behind me. Several of the EDC shooters were already aboard, one of them trying to treat the door gunner I’d shot in the neck. Several of the others appeared to be yelling at the pilot.