Back Blast

76

Five seconds after cutting power to the south wing of Alexandria Eight, Dakota spoke into his helmet-mounted headset. “Breach!”

The explosive ordnance expert on the team depressed the detonator, and a breaching charge on the wall just to the left of the steel double doors blew. A large water bladder covering the outside of the charge tamped the explosion, both keeping the men outside the wall safe from the backblast, as well as pushing the majority of the explosive power into the fortified wall.

Within seconds of the explosion the first two JSOC operators had their weapons through the oval-shaped hole in the wall. While they covered ahead, two more operators climbed through, took a knee in the hallway, and searched for targets in prearranged geometries of fire. The hallway was pitch-black, but both of these operators, as well as all the other men on the team, wore GPNVG-18s, state-of-the art night vision goggles that rendered the darkness before them in varying hues of green in a wide, ninety-seven-degree panoramic view.

Assaulters five and six were through the breach an instant later, and they moved down to the far end of the hallway to the small door that led straight to Denny’s office. They set a small breaching charge on the lock of the door, planning to enter and then take the other exit out of the office. They would then move up the small hall past the attic stairs and into the conference room.

Seven and eight moved straight between the cordon of armed men covering all angles, and these two ran to the wall just left of the conference room doors. One man carried a large shield-looking device in his hand, and he shoved it against the wall, affixing it with pre-placed adhesive. This large breaching charge was also backstopped with a water barrier, but it was designed to minimize the inward blast, so that hostages inside would not be injured.

Nine and ten, Dakota and Harley, moved into the hallway last. They each set two more small charges wide of the first two, both at shoulder height. These would blow small holes in the wall, creating gun ports so operators could cover the assaulters moving into the main breach.

While one operator connected the det cord to all three charges on the wall, the other men moved wide of the area, lined up in two stacks, one on each side, and prepared to execute the dynamic entry.

When the lights went out, Catherine King could not understand why Court Gentry sat calmly in his chair for several seconds, apparently sending a text message. And when the explosion in the hallway rocked the room and Catherine King screamed in shock, Denny Carmichael could not understand why Gentry cut him free from his bindings. It was too dark in the room to see any faces, but Denny wondered if Gentry was afraid of the attack to come and had some plan that involved Denny being ambulatory.

But Gentry just moved over to al-Kazaz and cut him free, as well.

Denny’s first inclination was to dive for Kaz’s throat. He wanted to kill the man who had ruined everything, the man who had hurt Denny’s nation and destroyed his reputation, the man who had tricked him and deprived him of everything in the past decade he had counted as a success. Nothing else mattered to Denny now, not even his own life.

But he didn’t go for Kaz’s neck, because when the JSOC men entered, as they would in mere seconds, Denny knew he’d only survive if he remained perfectly still.

Getting shot by army commandos would end his attack on Kaz long before he could strangle the life out of the younger man.

Catherine grabbed Gentry by the arm while he was still cutting the rope binding Kaz’s wrists. She implored him, her voice cracking with panic. “They will kill you as soon as they get through the door. They will not take you alive. You have to trade Carmichael for your freedom. It’s your only chance!”

“No. Once I entered here, I knew I would not be walking out.”

“You don’t have to do this! You know everything now. You can get out of here and—”

Court took her by the wrist and pulled her around the table, away from the two men. He walked to the wall next to the doors to the hallway, then he moved all the way to the end of the long table, close to the narrow hallway towards the attic stairs and Denny’s office. He could see Denny and Kaz just barely in the dark; they remained in their seats next to each other, facing the doorway to the hall.

They looked to him, straining to see him in the darkness.

Court checked his watch, then he unhooked his HK MP7 from the sling around his neck, and he placed it at the end of the long conference table.

He kept his hand on the weapon for a short time, while he tried to think of something to say. No words would come to him now. Catherine pulled at his arm, trying to get him to lie on the ground, but he pulled back, still staring at the two men in the low light.

“I promised Hanley I wouldn’t kill you, Denny. So I’m going to give Kaz a gun so he can do it for me.”

Court Gentry surprised everyone in the room by sliding the loaded weapon across the long, shiny conference room table, in the direction of the two men. As the HK spun towards them Court rushed down the hall to the attic stairs, pulling Catherine along behind him.

Denny Carmichael and Murquin al-Kazaz both launched to their feet, reaching for the gun skittering by on the table. They both knew the assault team would breach within moments, but they both also knew they were in danger as long as the other had access to a loaded weapon.

Kaz grabbed it by its short barrel, near the muzzle, but Denny managed to take hold of the grip of the weapon. While Kaz screamed in fear, Denny ripped the gun off the table and twisted towards Kaz, who still held on to it for dear life.

Carmichael jammed his finger onto the trigger, yanked it back, and fired a long fully automatic burst of 4.6-millimeter hollow point rounds into Kaz’s stomach at a range of one foot.

The weapon lurched in Carmichael’s hand, so he took hold of the forward grip to steady it.

The loud roar of the gun drowned out the tamped explosions on the wall fifteen feet away, and Denny’s eyes were locked on Kaz, whose expression of pure shock and agony shone bright as day in the fat red flames of the gunfire.

Denny emptied most of the magazine into the flailing body of al-Kazaz, then he spun to his left, aware suddenly of the noise, light, and motion there.

He turned wildly with the gun in his hand still firing, and then Denny Carmichael rocked back on his heels, slammed into the bookshelf behind him. The HK flew from his hand and then he dipped forward, dropped onto his knees, and fell down flat on his face behind the conference table, coming to rest across the legs of al-Kazaz.

He’d been shot twice in rapid succession, straight through his necktie and into his heart.

Dakota raced through the ragged breach and into the conference room. One of his assaulters in the gun port had just shot a hostage, he’d seen it through his NODs as he entered, but his main objective all along was to kill Violator, and that had not changed.

He lined up in front of his men, cleared the room, and moved right, towards the hallway there. With three operators on his heels, he led the way.

At the foot of the attic stairs he met up with the two men who had breached the door to Denny’s office. They’d reported no joy on the target, so they knew he was in the attic.

All six operators began moving up the steps.

Court shouted to Catherine King, twenty-five feet away in the attic. “Lie flat on the ground, facedown, hands out to your sides. Cross your legs at the ankles. No matter what happens, you don’t move till they move you. You do all that and you’ll be safe.”

Two decades of yoga had not instilled in Catherine the sense of calm necessary to endure all that was happening around her. She thought her heart would burst, but she complied with Court’s instructions, lying on the dusty old wooden floor near the stairwell. Looking across the darkened attic, she could barely see him, kneeling in front of a large backpack.

She called out to him. “Let me talk to them! Maybe I can—”

“No! Do not move from where you are!”

“Six, lie here with me! They will kill you if you don’t—”

“Just stay there, Catherine,” he ordered.

She looked at him again. Cocked her head. “What are you doing? What… what is that?”

Harley set the breaching charge on the door to the attic, unwound the det cord, and backed down a few feet. He called, “Fire in the hole!” and the explosion blew dust and splinters on the men all around.

Dakota took the second position as the assaulters rushed up and past Harley and through the blown door. As soon as they were in the dark room the first operator in the stack shouted, “Don’t move! Don’t move!”

Dakota stepped to the side and saw the woman from the Washington Post lying on the floor, in a compliant stance. Her head was down, her arms were out, and her legs were crossed behind her. Someone had given her a lesson in how to not get shot by a tactical team.

While the first assaulter kept his gun trained on her, a massive explosion to Dakota’s left knocked him off balance, all the way down to his kneepads.

The room filled with smoke, and when he spun around and looked in the direction of the noise he couldn’t see a thing, even through his panoramic night vision goggles.

All the men in the stack were in the attic now, covering the main part of the room with their rifles, desperate to find a target through the thick smoke.

Another noise came from the smoke. It wasn’t an explosion; more like the sound of an electric engine.

Dakota didn’t want his men running into a trap. “Hold positions! Hold till you can see your way forward!”

The smoke cleared a little, but the NODs weren’t cutting through it. Dakota called, “White light!” into his mic, then he flipped up his goggles and actuated the flashlight on the bottom of his rifle. Quickly the other operators followed suit.

The smoke was still thick, but they could see him now. Twenty-five feet away their target stood still in the middle of the room, his arms wrapped tightly around his body, his legs together.

His eyes on the six men in front of him.

Above him Dakota could see stars — there was a jagged eight-foot-long hole in the roof above Violator’s head.

Dakota shouted, “Contact front!” and he pressed his trigger.

And then, just like that, their target was gone. He fired straight up, into the air and through the hole in the roof.

The six JSOC operators stood there, guns trained on empty space. Dakota had gotten one round off, but he didn’t think he’d hit anything.

The team leader was the first to run forward. He looked up at the hole in the ceiling now, and he saw nothing but the nighttime sky.

Harley stepped up next to him. “There is no way that just happened.”