Flashpoint

19

Murdock looked at his men and the effect of the hostage killing on them. “Anybody see the electrical master switch?” he asked.

“Yeah, around back,” Mahanani said. “Back by that door we came in.”

“Run back there fast and turn off the power now,” Murdock said.

Mahanani took off at a sprint.

“They have to be down this corridor in front of us,” DeWitt said. “No place we’ve seen the other way could hold the hostages.”

“Same on our wing. We move down here fast until we get some fire. Then we figure. Lam and I are out front. Five yards and use doorways for cover. Let’s go, Lam.”

Murdock and Lam ran across the lobby and down the new hallway one door each, then paused. No reaction. They charged down the hallway again, passing two doors this time. Ahead fifty feet they could see large double doors.

Murdock used the Motorola. “DeWitt, clear rooms as you move up. We’ll clear rooms from here on up.”

Murdock twisted a doorknob and pushed the panel in. No reaction; the office was empty.

Suddenly, the hallway and the rooms went starkly dark. The contrast was total. Murdock pulled down his NVGs and let his eyes adjust to the night vision. The green hue came in slowly, then firmed. He went to the door on the right and motioned to Lam, then realized he could see. Murdock kicked in the door and scanned the room. One civilian held up his hands. Murdock raced into the room and fastened his hands and ankles with plastic riot cuffs and left him.

Back in the hallway, he touched Lam and pushed him forward. The next room on the left had two soldiers looking out the window. Before they could swing their rifles around, both SEALs fired. The soldiers went down and didn’t move. Lam ran over and checked to be sure they were dead.

At the hall, the two paused. They were ten feet from the big double doors. The Colombian army officer who must be in charge had no power to run his PA system, unless he had a handheld bullhorn.

The sound came the same time as the thought.

“Clever, Americans, but it won’t work. We still have your people and will execute the ambassador in exactly three minutes.”

Murdock used the radio. “Take cover in the rooms or doorways. We’re going to open or blow down the double doors you might have seen. Ed, you have the NVGs?”

“Affirmative.”

“Use them. There may be some fire down the hall. We’re moving up now.”

He and Lam ran for the door. It was locked. Murdock took an eighth pound of C-4 from his webbing and pressed it firmly against the door handle where the lock should be. He saw well enough with the night vision goggles to put in a detonator and set it for two minutes. He whispered the time to Lam, pushed the activator, and both men ran for the first room and lunged inside.

A minute later, the cracking roar of the explosion shattered their nerves and turned the black hallway into noontime daylight. Then the roar swept past them down the hall. Murdock grabbed Lam’s hand, and they went to the door. He looked down the hall and saw the door blasted flat on one side and hanging by a hinge on the other side. Beyond that he could see little.

A machine gun chattered from somewhere in the void. It was shielded by something down the hall that Murdock couldn’t see over or through.

“No firing,” Murdock said into his mike. “We don’t know where those hostages are. They probably don’t have them out as a human shield, but you can’t tell.”

The weapon down the hall ahead fired again. Then the bullhorn snapped on.

“You lose, American SEALs. We just killed the ambassador. Next comes the second man in command. You now have eight minutes left in your second ten-minute period.”

“A green flare,” Lam whispered into his mike. “I have two. I could put one into the wall thirty, forty feet down there and see what it will show us.”

“Go,” Murdock said.

Lam fired the flare from his Colt Commander. It was designed to lift high in the air and descend slowly on a small parachute. At least here it would burn. How bright would it be?

Murdock waited. Lam fired it a moment later, and it hit the far wall, bounced down the hall, and popped into a pale green light at once. Murdock saw the sandbags and a mounted machine gun. Directly in back were four soldiers. Even with the penetrating power of the night vision goggles he could spot no civilians.

“Take them out,” Murdock said. “Lam and I are out of your firing line.”

At once the SEALs’ machine guns and two long rifles cascaded a rain of fire against the sandbags and enemy gun. Two of the soldiers went down in the first barrage. The next one battered and riddled the top sandbags, and a round nailed the machine gunner, who had managed only a short burst before he died. Murdock saw the fourth man lift up and dart toward a door at the side of the hall. He didn’t make it, spinning to the floor with two rounds in his chest.

“Cease fire,” Murdock said on the radio. The SEAL guns fell silent. Murdock studied the area behind the gun again through his night vision goggles. Movement. Who? A man in a white shirt. A civilian.

“Everyone move up to closer cover,” Murdock said. He and Lam darted ahead to the blasted door. The machine gun lay on its side, ten yards ahead. Murdock could see two hall doors open. A soldier ran from one, looked back down the hall, then fired a four-round burst and vanished again. The green flare weakened and soon burned out, leaving the hallway dark.

Now Murdock could see through the goggles more civilians being moved down the hall.

“No return fire. Civilians in the hall. DeWitt, take four men and run to what must be a back door down this wing. I think all of the defenders are with the hostages. We’ll try to surprise them if they try to leave the building. The rest of you, move closer but maintain cover between moves.”

Murdock touched Lam, and they ran into the wing and pushed into doorways on both sides just past the machine gun. Murdock cleared the room on his side with his goggles. They all had moved on. Why? Where were they going?

He checked for bodies. Only the three soldiers showed. No civilians. No dead ambassador. Was the army man bluffing? What good to kill a hostage if no one could see it?

Ahead, Murdock heard a door close. Where? He hadn’t thought of the second floor. Nowhere had he seen stairs leading upward.

“Ed. If you can get inside that back door down there, check to see if there’s a stairs to the second floor. If so, block it and set up a fence across the hall.”

“That’s a roger, Cap. Almost to the door. We’ll move carefully.”

Murdock adjusted the NVGs and moved into the hallway with Lam in tow. They worked ahead on silent feet. Murdock checked both open doors they passed. No bodies. Where were they going?

The bullhorn blasted into the silence. “Well done, SEALs, but not good enough. We have the edge in manpower, and we know the terrain. You’ve found no American bodies? True. I made the living ones carry the two dead ones. Now for a final solution to our little problem. We are at a stalemate. I have the prisoners, you have the better weapons. However, to use those weapons, you run the risk of killing the reason you came in here.

“Oh, to add to your stress, we have a radio report from our commander that your helicopter and two of the fighters that came with it have been shot down and crashed in flames. That should make you think about your mission. You have no way to get out of here.”

There was a moment of silence.

“No response? I didn’t think so. This is the situation. Each of our hostages is holding a live grenade with the safety pin pulled. All that is keeping them alive is not dropping the grenade or letting the arming spoon flip off. Right? Soon some of them will become tired and one or more bombs will go off. None of my men are near them. You can’t find them or get past us. Now you must surrender.”

Ed DeWitt heard most of the talk as he and his four men slipped in the rear door. He had the other pair of NVGs. The things were heavy, clumsy, and not a favorite of the SEALs, but they did come in handy now and then. He looked past a doorway just inside the hall and listened. He heard movement in the room directly above him.

Where were the stairs? He looked along the hall again and fifteen feet ahead saw the steps leading up. One room showed on both sides with doors closed. He took Franklin with him and edged up to the door. Silently, he twisted the knob and pushed it open. No response. He looked inside with the NVGs and saw no one. The other side door yielded the same results.

Ed looked at the stairs. Somebody was upstairs. The man on the bullhorn sounded like he was in the hallway. It extended far down ahead of him. He saw at least six or eight doors in the misty gloom of the greenscape.

He touched the other three men, and they all moved to the steps and slowly went up them. One flight with a landing on top almost against the wall. They all stopped and listened. Again there were movements of feet and some whispers. The civilians?

They paused on the landing in the dark. DeWitt could see the new hallway on the second floor. There were more doors opening off it as if this were a dormitory.

Before DeWitt could move, the door opposite him opened, and a soldier left, locking the door behind him. He felt his way toward the steps with one hand out in front. The other hand carried an automatic rifle.

As the soldier came closer, DeWitt grabbed Fernandez’s sniper rifle and waited. When the Colombian soldier was a step away and still blinded by the darkness, DeWitt swung the heavy rifle like a club, hitting the soldier in the throat. The man dropped the rifle, and it clattered to the floor. DeWitt surged on top of the man as he fell. The soldier grabbed his throat, then wheezed twice and his head rolled to one side.

DeWitt certified that he was dead, then found a key in his pocket and went to the door the soldier had just left. He turned the key in the lock and edged the door open. With his NVGs, he saw that the people inside were civilians.

“U.S. SEALs here,” he whispered. “Quiet. Is the ambassador here?”

A man stepped forward, tears running down his cheeks.

“Yes.”

“Murdock,” DeWitt whispered into his mike, “I have the whole staff, all safe and well. No grenades. You are facing a force of one man.”

“Roger that,” Murdock whispered back. He began to edge forward. The bullhorn had been pushed out one of two rooms into the hall. It was silent now. Which room? Murdock picked the first one to clear or to kill. He moved to the very edge of the door and looked around. No one in the room.

He waved at the men to stay where they were, even though he knew they couldn’t see him. The other room across the hall had the door open.

He stepped that way silently and started to look around the doorjamb. A figure stepped outward, nearly colliding with him. Murdock brought the butt of the MP-5 submachine gun upward in a vicious butt stroke that connected with the man’s chin and rocked his head backward.

The man dropped the bullhorn, stumbled backward a step, and then fell to the floor, his neck broken. Murdock checked for a pulse at the carotid, then used the mike.

“DeWitt, troops. This thing is over. Holt, move outside through the back door and see if you can contact that chopper. He must be hanging around somewhere.”

“Mahanani, go turn on the lights,” Ed DeWitt ordered. “The hostages are all well. None was killed. Two have wounds from the assault and takeover. From what I hear, there were only about twenty soldiers here. We took out a lot of them, and the others ran for cover.”

“Everyone just hold in place except Holt until we get lights. Then we’ll move outside and find an LZ. SEALs, do we have any casualties?”

No one replied. “Alpha Squad, report in on hurts,” Murdock said. All checked in as not wounded. The same for Bravo Squad.

The lights blossomed, and everyone was blinded for a minute.

Murdock heard the people coming downstairs. He looked at the last man he had killed. He was a Colombian sergeant and had two grenades in his belt, but both had the safety pins still in them.

Ten minutes later, outside near the spot where the chopper would land, a red flare burned brightly. The ambassador and the rest of his people stood to one side, hugging each other. Some cried. Others looked back at the embassy that had been their home for years.

They heard the chopper coming in. The SEALs were in an extended perimeter defense, lying on the blacktop of the parking lot. They saw no movement around the once again blacked-out embassy.

The bird came in and landed, and Jaybird and Murdock ushered the civilians to the chopper door and helped them inside. Once they were all on board, the SEALs piled in the door and found floor space wherever they could.

The Sea Knight was on the ground a minute and twenty seconds, then the crew chief slammed the hatch and it lifted off.

Murdock went up front and used the bird’s radio. He raised the carrier and reported a success so far.

“Now all we have to do is get back to Camp Bravo, and we can call it a completed mission.”

Don Stroh tried to talk, but Murdock cut him off. “Sorry, Stroh, can’t talk right now, I have some people to take care of. See you soon.”

Murdock grinned. Damned if he was going to get another fucking mission before this one was even completed. Twice during the next hour, Murdock heard reports from the F-14s flying cover that they had blips on their radar. The bogies tended to come forward to within about thirty miles of the chopper and then headed back the other way.

They landed at Camp Bravo and said good-bye to the Tomcats that went back to the carrier.

The civilians were met by two State Department officials who took them into Cali by bus. The ambassador shook Murdock’s hand once more before he left.

The SEALs gathered up their gear and caught a ride back to their barracks. Murdock knew there was another job for them out there in Don Stroh’s little black book, but he’d be damned if he was going to talk about it before he had that steak dinner, a long, hot shower, and at least twelve hours of sleep.

Damn, but he was tired. He didn’t even think how long it had been since he’d seen a bunk. Just like hell week. Hoooooooyah!