OUTCAST Ops: Red Ice

CHAPTER THIRTY

From the window of his suite, John Casey could see the smoke over the Golden Gate Bridge. Looking out another window would show him the activity over at the airport, while a third would overlook where the BART bombings had occurred. Nob Hill was a perfect place from which to survey the city and the disasters befalling it.

Feeling depressed, he turned away. The presidential suite lived up to its name, a fitting place for a world leader to stay. If it was his choice, he would have booked a smaller suite, but his Secret Service protection team insisted on the suite, with which they were intimately familiar; the same security team that protected the president when he was in town also guarded the president’s special assistant.

The only thing out of place were the two tables set up at right angles in the center of the room, filled with computers, tablets, radios and other pieces of electronics Casey didn’t recognize. Danielle sat in an office chair, her eyes flicking back and forth between screens. Casey wanted to stand behind her and stare at the data she ogled, but decided it was better not to distract her.

“They’re executing entry.” Danielle ignored the other three people in the room. Milt Younger was the head of Casey’s security team. A former Green Beret, Younger took his job seriously. He didn’t like the OUTCAST team, whom Casey had introduced as “special consultants,” and was even less pleased at having one of them in the midst of his security cordon.

On the other hand, Jenifer DuPree was on her first protection assignment. A short-haired redhead, she kept her opinion about Danielle’s presence to herself, but Casey did notice she managed to place herself in a position to see what was happening on Danielle’s screens at all times.

“I still don’t like it,” a nasal-toned voice said.

Casey glanced at his aide. Morton Halverstaff III was from a blue-blooded New England family with strong political ties and a general support for left-of-center policies. Morton’s uncle was a retired U.S. Senator and his father a cabinet secretary. When the family had “suggested” that the newly minted Ivy League graduate needed a job as an assistant to the president, the POTUS had farmed the new generation of Halverstaffs off on Casey. “Maybe a glimpse into the reality of the world will benefit him,” the president had said.

Privately, Casey thought Halverstaff was an over-bred idiot whom he wouldn’t trust with anything more complex than a stapler. But he was stuck with him, so he kept him away from the team, knowing that their tolerance for stupidity was lower than his.

“You don’t have to like it.” Casey motioned to the television. “What’s the latest?”

“Ten confirmed dead and another fifteen injured at the bridge.” Halverstaff was slumped on the couch, his lean frame sprawled across most of it. “The BART and airport are still trying to get a handle on things.”

“I hate not knowing.”

Halverstaff sat up. “Maybe should I go down and see—”

Casey glared at his aide. “Stay right there.”

“But—”

“First rule of government, Morton; Stay out of the way of people doing their jobs. They’re focused on rescuing people, not photo ops or briefings. If they need us, they’ll call.”

Halverstaff flopped back into the couch. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t think for a second I like being up here instead of down there. Twenty years ago, I would be down there. But not today. Today, we sit and —”

“We’ve got trouble.” Danielle rose to her feet, her eyes on a screen to her left. She reached for her pistol sitting on the table next to her laptop, much to Younger’s annoyance.

Casey looked at her. “Who’s got trouble — OUTCAST?”

“No, we do. We have an elevator coming up filled with Asians and at least four more taking the fire stairs.” She squinted at her monitor. “They just knocked out the elevator and stairwell security cameras.”

Younger frowned, his hand slipping under his jacket. “Are you sure? They can’t get to this floor — wait, how did you access the hotel security system?”

“I hacked it from here,” Danielle replied distractedly. “And they overrode the card reader system. They’re coming.”

Younger pulled out his SIG Sauer P229 with one hand while grabbing for his radio with the other. “All stations, this is Younger. We have a security breach, coming from the elevators and the stairs. Subjects are heading up and are to be considered armed and hostile. We are evading with BLOODHOUND, over.”

Halverstaff reached for the hotel phone, picked up the receiver and crinkled his forehead. “No dial tone.”

Casey produced his cellular and tried placing a call out. “No signal.”

“They’ve cut the landlines and are using a frequency jammer for the cell-phones.” Danielle pulled a P-90 from a bag at her feet and held it up. “Anyone know how to use one of these?”

“I do.” DuPree took the compact submachine gun and hefted it a couple of times, getting used to the feel of it.

The outside doors opened and three agents who had been guarding the suite doors came in. “Any ID on the attackers?” one of them asked.

“North Korean Special Forces.” Danielle holstered her pistol while answering.

“Bull—”

“Enough.” Younger began issuing instructions. “Dupree: Send the panic signal to the local office and to hotel security. Griffith, Jackson: Escort Director Casey to the emergency exit. Hobbs: You and the rest of the team watch the hallway from your end.”

Danielle pulled out her MP5 from her bag along with several magazines. “Need a hand?”

Younger considered her for a few seconds. “Stay with the director. He may trust you, but I don’t know your skill level with that weapon, and I don’t have time to find out.”

Once the North Korean strike team reached the target floor, they stopped only long enough to wedge the elevator doors open with a pry bar. They then moved with purpose toward the presidential suite.

The rest of the Secret Service detail assigned to Casey was waiting for them. As soon as the North Koreans came into view, the agents opened fire with their P-90s and P229s. The North Koreans returned fire and the hallway became a death zone, filled with live fire that tore into walls, fixings and humans with equal vigor. The Secret Service agents were driven back toward the suite, giving ground slowly, some trading their lives for time. The last one went down in a bloody mess just short of the suit’s double doors.

While they looked like other suite doors, the ones to the presidential suite were constructed differently. Made from steel, they were designed to withstand most gunfire and minor explosions. The same with the hinges — reinforced, heavy-duty, designed to withstand tampering and applied force.

But Seonwoo had already accounted for this engineering fact.

The KS-23 shotguns fired 23mm rounds, the equivalent of a 6-gauge. Loaded with “Barricade” rounds, shells with solid steel projectiles, the two North Koreans armed with the weapons began blasting the hinges of the doors. Steel deformed and buckled under the assault. When the shotgunners pulled back to reload, other commandos moved in and placed small packs of Semtex into the holes and dents. The strike team moved down the hall far enough to avoid any backblast and detonated the charges. The explosions ripped through the already weakened hinges send the doors topping into the suite.

“Go, go, go!” Seonwoo shouted.

The emergency escape route consisted of a hidden door in the back of the suite’s master bedroom closet. The door led to a narrow, steel-lined shaft with a ladder bolted to the opposite wall. Known only to a few senior agents in the Secret Service, the exit was designed for cases like this — to be used as an escape route in the event of a direct attack on the suite’s occupants.

DuPree went down the ladder first, followed by Casey, then Halverstaff. As Danielle was about to get onto the ladder, there was a string of small explosions followed by the sound of steel hitting something solid echoing through the suite. Younger, who was standing by the exit door, shoved Danielle onto the ladder. “Get going!” he snapped. “We’ll give you time to get away!”

“But you—”

“No buts! Move it!” He closed the door behind her and she could hear the steel bolts sliding into place.

“What happened?” DuPree called up.

“Keep going!” Danielle shouted.

The fight was short, but vicious. The suit’s doors fell in and the North Koreans charged, each man taking a different sector and cutting loose with their machine guns. The storm of bullets ripped into chairs and couches, shattered lamps and statues and tore through wood. Several of the suite’s windows turned opaque as the bulletproof glass was struck by the gunfire.

Secret Service Agent Dan Griffith was out in the open and died in the hail of fire before he could shoot back. Younger and Agent Winston Jackson fired back from the master bedroom’s doorway, Younger’s SIG and Jackson’s P-90 taking down two of the enemy soldiers. The enemy didn’t hesitate, but turned and fired as a group, shattering the bedroom’s door frame and the wall around it. Jackson was sent down in a spray of blood and gore, while Younger keeled over as both his legs were shredded and bullets slammed into his Kevlar vest, breaking several ribs. His gun skittered out of his reach on the floor. Before he could summon the strength to move toward it, the enemy was on him. A foot came down on his hand, pinning it to the floor. He tried to pull it free, but he felt himself weakening.

“Where is Mr. Casey?” a voice demanded.

“G-gone,” Younger managed to say. He was beginning to fade, the pain lessening along with his consciousness. “You’re too fucking late.”

Younger closed his eyes and died.

The escape shaft ended inside the closet on the fifteenth floor, in a room that was never rented when the POTUS was in town. Fortunately, it was vacant now, too. “Now what?” Halverstaff asked as he flopped onto the bed.

“We keep moving,” DuPree replied calmly, but Danielle could see the white knuckles as she gripped Danielle’s borrowed P-90 tightly.

“Surely they can’t find the escape shaft.”

“DuPree’s right,” Casey said, pulling out a SIG P229 from a kidney holster. “They may know about the escape shaft, we don’t know for sure. We need to keep moving until we’re completely out of danger. DuPree, you lead. Danielle, take rear guard.”

Danielle held up a gadget. “The radio doesn’t seem to be affected. I can call the team and let them know what’s happening.”

Casey shook his head. “They’re in the middle of an active mission.”

“Director,” Danielle urged. “I’m ninety percent sure that these are North Korean special forces operators, which means Rhee’s people. Do you really want them running loose in a hotel full of innocent, unarmed guests?”

Casey’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and then he nodded. “Go ahead, inform them. But their mission comes first.”

Danielle nodded while transmitting. “Base to OUTCAST Prime: We have a Condition Omega.”