OUTCAST Ops: Red Ice

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Choi’s shout from Tanner’s right made the OUTCAST leader spin in that direction. He spotted the shooter, an Asian male with a bloody shoulder pointing a pistol at the van. Choi rose from between two cars.

“Freeze!” the DEA agent yelled.

The wounded Asian spun toward Choi and both men fired at the same time. Choi staggered and dropped. The attacker lurched when Choi’s rounds struck him. As the DEA agent fell, Both Tanner and Liam opened fire, the twin 5.56mm streams of lead ripping apart the gunman’s torso. The assailant took another step, his face twisted into a hateful stare before he collapsed onto his chest and went still.

“Danny!” Vessler cried.

Tanner spun and fired another burst at the car Vessler was behind. “Stay where you are until we’re clear!” he said over the radio. “This is being recorded by those people over there. Need to maintain plausible deniability.”

“Fuck that. That’s my partner!”

Tanner turned to the van to find the rest of them already onboard. He jumped in and told Dante to go. The van accelerated down the street while he pulled the door shut.

As they reached the intersection, Dante leaned on the van’s horn. Ahead of him, cars slammed on their brakes and sped out of the intersection, allowing the van to shoot across the street without incident.

Liam pinned Hong to the floor while Stephen administered a tranquilizer patch to the Triad leader’s neck. After a minute the bound man stopped struggling as the drug took effect.

“Liam, Nay,” Tanner said, unzipping the jumpsuit. “Get changed and switch weapons. Dante, drop the three of us off at the hotel, then you and Stephen head for the safehouse. We’ll pick up Casey and Danielle and meet you there.”

“Why can’t we take the elevator?” Halverstaff moaned as the four stepped out into the hallway.

“Because if the enemy is smart, they’ll have blocked them off or turned them into kill boxes,” DuPree said.

“But we’re fifteen floors up.”

Then I suggest you save your breath for the climb down.”

“Which stairwell?” Danielle asked.

“East is closest,” Casey said.

“And probably guarded,” DuPree added.

Can’t be too many guards in the stairwell. Worse comes to worst, we can duck into a lower floor and change staircases.”

They jogged down the hall, DuPree leading, then Casey, with Halverstaff and Danielle bringing up the rear. They reached the fire door and DuPree used the small window in the door to check the landing. “Looks clear, but once we’re out there, keep moving unless I say stop. Danielle, keep an eye up above us. I’ll worry about what’s below. Stay as close to the wall as possible. Let’s move.”

DuPree opened the door quietly and started down the stairs, the P-90 to her shoulder and sweeping the next landing and set of stairs. Casey was next, his pistol sweeping high, then low. Halverstaff, who was unarmed except for a folding multi-tool sheathed to his belt, scurried after them. Danielle stepped out onto the landing and gently closed the door behind her before catching up to the others, her MP5 pointing up the stairwell.

They made it without incident to the fourteenth floor and then heard a shout from above. Gunfire rained down at them, bullets sending sparks flying as they struck the railing. Danielle judged the shooter to be four floors above them, and fired a pair of short bursts upwards. She heard a grunted curse and the gunfire stopped.

Dupree was already on the landing between the fourteenth and thirteenth floors. Casey was behind her, his pistol aimed up. Halverstaff was a few feet behind his boss, his expression bordering on panic. Danielle took the stairs three at a time, thankful for Tanner’s insistence that the team stay in shape.

In a fit of rage, Seonwoo placed four shots into the already dead bodyguard who had told him Casey was gone. For some reason’s the corpse’s expression of satisfaction annoyed him. “Are you sure he isn’t here?”

“Yes, sir.” Ryeon replied. The battle for the suite had been short and vicious, costing Seonwoo two of his henchmen, but they had killed the three foes they had found, all bodyguards. The suite was wrecked, inundated with bullets holes and buckshot from the KS-23s.

Yoon entered the bedroom. “Maybe he was never here.”

Seonwoo shook his head emphatically. “No, too many bodyguards here. He was here, but there must be a secret escape route or hidden room. We must—”

“Dragon Five to Dragon leader!” a voice on the radio called out. The man guarding one of the hotel’s two fire stairwells relayed his message. “Target is in the east stairwell, four floors below me!”

Seonwoo’s smile was unpleasant. “Yoon! Take two men, use the elevator and get below them, then go up the stairs.” Yoon nodded and left at a run, shouting out the names of the men he wanted with him.

Seonwoo turned to Ryeon. “Contact Cho in the west staircase, then both of you join Jee in the east stairwell and drive them down to the eighth floor. I’ll be on the eighth waiting for them. Go now!”

Ryeon ran out. Seonwoo reloaded his pistol and his Uzi, then turned and walked out of the bedroom. He couldn’t get the dead bodyguard’s expression out of his mind.