Circle of Death - Strike Back Series 05 (2020)

by Ryan, Chris

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘Until they can break open the doors manually and crash through the gate. That’ll take some time. Fifteen minutes, Langley reckons.’

  Bald snapped his gaze to the east, straining his eyes. Beyond the columns of smoke and flames he saw that lights at Los Altos had been extinguished. The whole town was in darkness. The lights were still on at the president’s place.

  ‘Emergency generator,’ Hulk explained. ‘Mansion runs off its own backup supply in case of power failure. Same deal as the barracks.’

  ‘What if the soldiers call for help?’

  ‘Won’t work. The hackers have knocked out the power in the surrounding area. Communications towers, mobile masts. Whole area is off the grid. They can ask for help but their messages won’t get through.’

  ‘You should have told us,’ Porter fumed.

  ‘There’s no time for this. You need to get those charges planted at the fence, right now. Clock’s ticking.’

  Bald grunted. ‘He’s right, mate. Get moving.’

  Porter stared at the barracks for a fleeting moment. The flames quickly spread, churning noxious grey smoke into the sky. Alarms were piercing the air. Emergency announcements were being made over the loudspeaker in Spanish. Porter could imagine the chaos inside the base, the soldiers frantically trying to break out of their barracks blocks as the fiery inferno raged a short distance away.

  Fuck it.

  Time to move.

  He picked himself up off the ground and grabbed the container with the explosive charge.

  ‘Remember,’ Hulk said in an undertone. ‘As soon as you reach the firing point, detonate the diversionary charge. That’ll draw the guards over like flies to shit. Once they’re in range, hit them with the Claymore.’

  ‘Don’t link them batteries up until you’ve set the charges,’ Bald added. ‘Don’t want to get blown to shit like Plastic Paddy.’

  ‘Got it,’ Porter said. ‘Cover me.’

  Then he advanced beyond the grove, the container in his right hand and the Claymore satchel hanging from his side. His M4 was attached to a sling connected to his plate carrier vest, allowing Porter to anchor the weapon across his back. A necessary adjustment they had made back on the training ground. The guy planting the charges needed both hands to rig up the devices and link them to their respective batteries. No way he could do that and keep hold of his weapon at the same time.

  Porter ran on for twenty metres, then dropped to his front and started crawling on all fours towards the south-west corner of the fence, a hundred metres away. At his six o’clock, Bald and Hulk were checking their arcs, peering through the night scopes attached to their weapons. Dudley would be covering Porter from his position atop the hillock, three hundred metres to the rear, Bald knew. Ready to drop any guards who spotted Porter.

  Bald arced his sights across the ground near the guardhouse. Mr Tall and Buzzcut were chatting to one another and pointing in the direction of the fire coming from the army base. The blaze was glowing brightly, lighting up the night sky.

  Not a missile.

  Not an airstrike.

  A cyber-attack.

  The plan was solid, Bald thought. With the soldiers trapped inside their base, they would be unable to rush over once the charges kicked off at the president’s estate. They would eventually smash their way out of their barracks, of course. But by then it would be too late. The assault team planned on spending no more than a few minutes inside the stronghold. A real in-and-out job. Get in, get the hostage. Get the fuck out again.

  He refocused on Porter, watching him through the green glow of his night scope as the guy reached the fence and planted the charge near the base of the tower. Then he backtracked ten metres and set up the Claymore, placing it so that the front was facing the same section of the fence where the explosive charge had been planted.

  Porter inserted the blasting caps into the fuse wells, slinked away from the fence and began unspooling the electrical wires connected to the mine and the diversion charge.

  He slithered back to a point fifty metres from the Claymore and sixty metres from the fence. As far as the wires would extend. They had rigged two thirty-metre lengths of wire together for each device, allowing Porter to put as much distance between himself and the breach as possible.

  Now he lay down in a sparse patch of scrub, detached his M4 from the leash buckle and laid it flat beside him on the ground for easy access. Gripped the clacker for the charge in his right hand. Clacker for the Claymore next to the rifle. Bald looked on as his mucker did a mental three-count.

  Then Porter squeezed the firing lever.

  The boom was deafening. Like a million carburettors backfiring. A deep rumble shook the ground as a huge orange fireball gushed upwards from the fence, belching flames and smoke into the pre-dawn sky. The explosion tore through the wire mesh, creating a breach big enough to drive a truck through. Flames coated the detergent-and-fuel-soaked tower, and from somewhere inside the grounds Bald heard the machine-like wail of an alarm. Above the shrilling and the hiss and roar of the flames, there was a chorus of panicked shouts.

  He swung his M4 back to the main gate. Through his night-sight, he could see several figures streaming out of the front entrance of the main building, a hundred and fifty metres away. Counted eleven of them in total. Well-built guys dressed in plain long shirts and trousers and boots, armed with M16 assault rifles. Some of them were fiddling with bits of clothing and kit. The off-duty guards. Woken up by the surge at the barracks, probably. Now in full-blown panic mode.

  The guards had clearly fallen for the trap the team had set. Bald watched them racing towards the breaching point, believing that they were under attack from that corner of the stronghold. At the guardhouse, Mr Tall and Buzzcut had turned away from the barrier as they watched their eleven comrades sprinting across the compound. Buzzcut shouted out to one of the passing figures. The guy paused briefly and yelled something back. Bald couldn’t understand him, but it sounded distinctly like an order.

  Don’t move. Stay here. Watch the gate.

  The guy ran on. Mr Tall and Buzzcut stayed put.

  ‘Guards heading for the breach,’ Bald reported. ‘Eleven of them.’

  ‘Claymore, ready!’ Hulk called out to Porter. ‘Coming your way!’

  Bald tightened his fingers around the grip on his weapon and scanned the breach, searching for any sign of the enemy.

  At first he couldn’t see a thing. The smoke was too dense. The flames were still eating away at the base of the tower and the surrounding wire.

  Then he glimpsed a figure surging through the large hole in the fence. A copper-skinned guard in a long-sleeved white shirt and a pair of sandy-brown trousers. He had his rifle aimed in front of him, shouting at the top of his voice as he headed for the killing zone directly in front of the Claymore.

  A couple of metres behind him, six more guards were spilling out of the breach in a rough chevron formation. They looked like infantry at the Somme, charging across no man’s land.

  Then Porter detonated the mine.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Bald felt the shudder in his bones as the Claymore kicked off. There was a whoosh as the explosion fanned outward across the front of the stronghold, shredding the area around the fence. Then the clattering of steel, and in the background the agonised screams of men as hundreds of metal fragments tore into the onrushing guards, smashing bones and lacerating vitals.

  The smoke cleared, revealing a scene of carnage. There were body parts everywhere. The ground was a bloody tangle of limbs and intestines and torsos. Bits of flesh dangled from the torn ends of the wire-mesh fence. The Claymore had wiped or killed or maimed most of the guards. Bald saw one man sprawled beside the fence hole, screaming hysterically as his bowels slopped out of a wide gash in his stomach. Another guy had been severed at the torso. Bald saw his upper body lying next to the breach. Couldn’t see the guy’s legs anywhere. The Moon, maybe.

  ‘Move!’ Hu
lk roared. ‘Make for the guardhouse!’

  Bald scrambled to his feet alongside the ex-SEAL. They surged clear of the mango grove and broke across the strip of ground between the trees and the perimeter fence, rushing through the flame-illuminated scrub. The guardhouse was a hundred metres away. The smell of burning metal and the putrid stink of burnt flesh thick in the air. Bald could hear the cries of dying men and the shriek of the sirens inside the mansion, the distant hiss and rumble from the electrical fire raging further to the east.

  Fifty metres away, Porter shot to his feet as well. He ran over to the rest of the assault team and reached Bald and Hulk in another few strides. Then the three of them dashed towards the guardhouse, forty metres away at their one o’clock.

  Behind the front barrier, Mr Tall and Buzzcut had turned away from the entrance, transfixed by the massacre at the breach. They were in a state of shock, probably. They hadn’t expected to see their mates get blown to shreds. They would be wondering what to do. Go over and help or stay put and defend the entrance?

  Then Buzzcut evidently heard the pounding of boots and spun round in surprise. His eyes flicked from the barrier gate to the gravel path. To the three armed men running towards them.

  The guy had just enough time to register a look of dumb surprise. He opened his mouth as if to shout a warning to his comrade. Then he spasmed as Dudley plugged him from four hundred metres away. Two unseen bullets slapped into his neck and shoulder. The guy did a drunken pirouette before he fell away, dead flesh slapping wetly against concrete.

  Mr Tall saw his mate dying and lost his nerve. He turned and bolted towards the guardhouse. Diving for the nearest available cover.

  A smart move. But taken way too late. Hulk opened fire, giving him the good news with three rounds from the M4. The first bullet smacked into Mr Tall’s kneecap, shattering bone. The second and third shots struck him higher up, punching holes in the side of his torso. He landed a metre or so away from the guardhouse, writhing in pain before Dudley finished him off from long-range with a couple of well-aimed shots to the face. Blood gushed out of the holes in his head in bright-red jets.

  Bald added the guy’s death to the clicker-counter in his head.

  Two dead at the guardhouse, he thought.

  Eleven guards cut down by the Claymore.

  Thirteen targets dealt with.

  That leaves five fuckers to put down.

  They charged through the barrier gate, sidestepped the slotted guards and moved quickly down the driveway towards the front of the main building, fifty metres away. Bald could hear the blood rushing in his ears, his heart beating furiously inside his chest. Hulk was moving alongside him at his three o’clock, with Porter lagging a couple of paces behind, breathing heavily.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, keep up!’ Bald shouted back.

  They scudded forward, passing the carriage circle and the two white Ford Explorer SUVs Bald had spotted earlier. From across the stronghold he heard an anguished cry of pain. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the breach and saw three rounds thwacking into a wounded guard crawling away from the flames, smacking into his arms and legs. Dudley’s handiwork. At first Bald thought the redneck’s aim had been piss-poor. Then he saw another injured guard jerking wildly as he stumbled away from the breach, two rounds nailing him in the back of the leg.

  Dudley isn’t shooting to kill, he realised.

  The guy was deliberately clipping the wounded guards. Making sure they couldn’t walk or use a weapon. As a bonus, their hideous screams would draw over any remaining guards, luring them to their deaths.

  Effective.

  But also fucking cruel.

  Then Bald heard a crash.

  He swung round just in time to see two burly guards bursting out of the mansion. The guy in front was a bald-headed man mountain. His shirt and trousers looked like they had been shrink-wrapped around his enormous muscles. The second guy looked like the Man Mountain’s long-lost twin. Only paler and thicker around the midriff. He was round chested and chubby faced, with cropped black hair that sat like a leather skullcap on top of his head.

  They broke forward across the covered porch, gripping their M16s. Rushing head-on to meet the three attackers.

  Twenty metres away from the assault team.

  Bald registered all of this in a microsecond. There was no way that Dudley could put the drop on them, he knew. The redneck was too busy shooting up the wounded men at the breach.

  It’s down to us now.

  Bald already had his weapon raised. His right hand was clasped around the trigger grip, his left hand securely holding on to the fore grip for stability. Fire selector switched to semi-automatic.

  He angled his sights up slightly, aiming for Man Mountain’s trunk. It was a nice big target to aim for.

  The guy was fifteen metres away when Bald fired twice.

  The bullets scythed through the air and smacked into the guard as he raced forward, striking him in the jaw. The lower half of his face disintegrated in a spray of blood and teeth. The guard jerked backwards as if he’d run into a clothesline. He fell away and landed so heavily Bald half-expected the ground to shake.

  Two metres to the right, Skullcap was dropping to a kneeling firing stance beside a marble statue of a naked Hercules. Porter came up alongside Bald, breathing raggedly as he fired twice at the Venezuelan. The first round was all over the fucking place. It smashed into the statue several inches to the right of the target, taking off a chunk of Hercules’ penis. His second effort was marginally better, slapping into Skullcap’s right ankle. The guy howled in pain and reached down to clutch his shattered leg.

  At which point Hulk opened fire. He swept forward, loosing off a couple of quick rounds at the target. Skullcap spasmed as the bullets thumped into his shoulder blade and chest, knocking him backwards. As if someone had just struck him across the face with a sledgehammer. Hulk fired again, drilling him in the guts. The deal-closer.

  The guard slumped down beside his comrade, his weapon falling from his grip and clattering to the ground. He was dead before he kissed the paving slabs.

  Bald stole a glance at Porter. Wondered again if his old mate had lost his edge. No time to berate the guy. Keep the momentum going. Don’t stop.

  He broke into a run, moved swiftly past the two slotted guards. Another quick look over his shoulder at the south-west corner. Both the wounded guards had stopped moving. Bald couldn’t see any more movement coming from that direction. The defenders had been annihilated. If anyone else was still alive, Dudley would neutralise them.

  Fifteen men down, he calculated.

  Three targets left. Including the two guards in the basement.

  ‘Keep moving!’ he barked.

  They raced on. Away from the sounds of the dying men at the breach and the smell of charred flesh and metal.

  In another dozen paces they reached the porch, pushed through the front door and swept into the hallway. Moving in a rough formation, with Bald on the left, Porter in the middle and Hulk to the right. Weapons up, telescopic stocks resting against their shoulders, index fingers feathering the triggers. Ready to double-tap any lurking targets. Dudley would remain in position outside the compound, covering the approaches to the mansion, keeping an eye on the barracks and putting down any wounded guards at the breach.

  The siren was even louder inside the stronghold. They crossed the hallway and hit the marble-floored foyer. Which looked like something out of a drug kingpin’s wet dream. The walls were covered in gold and marble detail. A diamond chandelier the size of a spaceship hung from the ceiling. There were gold statues of naked women mounted on columns, expensive-looking oriental rugs, huge paintings of the president and his mistresses.

  On the left side of the foyer a blood-red-carpeted stairwell led up to a central balcony overlooking the entrance, with a portrait of the president in his military garb hanging from the wall. A door off to the left opened into a dining room. To the right, another door led to a private librar
y. Both doors were open. At the opposite end of the foyer, ten metres away, an arched entrance led to a great room facing out towards a terraced patio and swimming pool, with corridors veering off to the left and right. The corridor to the left, Bald knew, led towards the kitchen and pantry. There was a door midway down that corridor that provided access to the basement.

  That’s where we’ll find Fuller.

  They knew all this because they had spent countless hours at the camp, poring over floor plans and mapping out the distances from one room to the next. They knew the layout better than their own mothers.

  They advanced with controlled aggression through the foyer, Hulk and Porter clearing the library area on the right. Bald moved on and caught a glimmer of movement at his left.

  Coming from the dining room.

  He swivelled round. Arced his sights across the space.

  Finger tensing on the trigger.

  Then he saw her.

  A middle-aged woman in a housemaid’s uniform, cowering beside the long dining-room table. Bunch of polishing and cleaning kit on the floor beside her. She screamed at the sight of Bald and threw herself to the floor, babbling in Spanish.

  In the same beat, Bald saw the blur of motion at his three o’clock.

  He spun round. Saw a guard appearing around the corner from the great room. A solidly built guy in a denim shirt, with oily black hair and stubble that looked like it had been scrawled on his face with a sharpie.

  Rifle pointed directly at Bald.

  There was no time to react, Bald knew. The guy with the oily hair was midway across the foyer. The business end of his rifle was lined up with Bald’s centre mass. A distance of five metres. Almost impossible to miss at that range. No time for Bald to bring his weapon across, aim and unleash a couple of rounds of his own.

  I’m fucked.

  In the next half-second he heard two rapid light cracks.