RW16 - Domino Theory Read online

  I’m not exactly sure what they have in mind. Golf with hand grenades?

  In any event, I am well aware that my mortal carcass doesn’t spring back as quickly from the whacks of everyday life as it once did. Further, I believe that while I have a duty to impart my wisdom to the next generation, I know full well that I don’t have to get my balls shot off in the process. So, to the extent possible, I have started to delegate.

  Which is why I stayed back with the captain and listened on the radio while Shotgun moved toward the house with Team Alpha.

  * * *

  “We’re at the window,” reported Shotgun, who was acting as Alpha’s commo man. “Interior is clean.”

  “Proceed,” ordered the captain.

  Shotgun dropped to his knees, letting Corporal Sesha Nadar climb up onto his shoulders. Then Shotgun rose slowly, boosting Nadar to the window. After double- and triple-checking that the hallway was clear and that there wasn’t a wired alarm, Nadar tried pushing up on the window to open it.

  You’d be surprised how many windows in theoretically secure buildings aren’t locked. But this one was locked.

  Not a problem.

  The corporal took out a small suction cup and placed it on the windowpane. He looped a string through the hook at the back of the cup, then twirled it around his thumb. Pulling a glass cutter from his tac vest, he cut a large, less-than-perfect circle. A gentle tap, a quick pull, and he had a hole a little bigger than his forearm. He reached in and found the two locks securing the window.

  Sixty seconds later, Team Alpha was inside the building, moving down the hall toward a back staircase about fifteen feet from the window. The guard in the vestibule at the doorway was a little more than a hundred feet away, down the long, darkened corridor. If he was awake — again, you’d be surprised — his only view of the hall was through a small window at the side of the interior door. Though dim, the red light above his head made the vestibule where he was far brighter than the hallway, and the very slight glare on the glass made it nearly impossible to see through without pressing his eyes against it.

  And why would he even bother? His job was to protect the interior. That meant watching the door to the outside, not the inside. The hall was the last place he expected a threat.

  Corporal Nadar, on point, slipped into the staircase. Nadar and everyone else on the team were wearing night goggles.

  Trotting up the steps, he tiptoed to the landing and went down to one knee, looking down the hallway.

  It was clear.

  The corporal counted off the doors, mentally marking their targets — rooms five, eight, and twelve, odds left, even right. Shotgun, meanwhile, went forward to the landing at the front of the building to act as a lookout there; Sergeant Phurem stayed by the back stairs. The other six men split into twos, each taking a room.

  And then the fun began.

  I wasn’t there, but I had worked with the team during the run-throughs, so I have a fairly good notion of what happened next. The team members waited by each door, looking toward the sergeant for a signal to proceed. As soon as he lowered his arm, they entered each room — there were no locks — moving quickly and as quietly as possible.

  The rooms were monklike cells, one student per room. The only furniture in each was a bed and a small chair. There were no closets or bathrooms.

  The Squadron Zero members approached the beds, each taking a side. The man on the right had a small towel in his hand. He clamped it over the sleeping man’s face and held it there for a few seconds. The other man was poised with his submachine gun, ready to strike the sleeper’s head with its butt if necessary.

  It wasn’t, not in any of the rooms. The towels each contained a heavy dose of chloroform, a primitive though effective knockout agent.

  Sweet dreams, dark princes.

  Two of the three targets struggled initially, choking just a bit as their half-sleeping brains struggled to make sense of the strange direction their dreams had suddenly taken. Then their bodies went limp. The third man went off to a deep slumber so quickly that the Indian corporal with the towel wasn’t positive he even went out. Just to make sure, he removed a syringe from his vest and supplied a shot of a Demerol-like sedative.

  Trussed and slumbering, the three tangos were removed from their beds. One by one they were taken from the rooms and carried back to the staircase where the sergeant was waiting.

  At this point, you may be thinking: Why not just slit their throats and be done with it?

  Good question, grasshopper. And while there aren’t always good answers to good questions, in this case there is.

  Two of the men being carried down the hall were terrorists whom our sources indicated had carried out an intelligence mission in India roughly six weeks before. Special Squadron Zero wanted to “debrief” them — find out who had helped them get in and out of the country, how much they had learned, where they had stayed, etc.

  Oh, their target would be nice, too. Our information was that it was related to the Commonwealth Games — not exactly a big surprise. No fewer than two dozen terrorist groups were said by various Indian intelligence agencies to be targeting the Games. Knowing exactly which venue they were aiming at and why would give us more information about what the terror groups knew of India’s vulnerabilities.

  The third man was a spy, planted by the ministry that had formed Special Squadron Zero.

  Who was who?

  Another good question — but this one couldn’t be answered by anyone on Team Alpha, or Special Squadron Zero for that matter. Not even the captain knew. Nor did I.

  Did I hear someone make a joke about all tangos looking the same? How un-PC.

  The information wasn’t given to us to help protect the identity of the spy in case things went very far south. Whether a good decision — read “bad” — or not, it greatly complicated our situation, since we wouldn’t know whose throat not to slit if things went sideways rather than all the way south.

  Which naturally would mean we’d just kill them all and be done with it.

  The snoring tangos were carried from their rooms to the staircase. The team prepared to exit the building the same way they had come in.

  Exactly thirteen and a half minutes had passed. The marine assault team, on schedule and ready for action, was six and a half minutes from touchdown. By Sergeant Phurem’s watch, they were two minutes and twenty-nine seconds ahead of schedule. Getting out of the building only required another ninety seconds; they were that far from christening Special Squadron Zero with a successful op.

  Then the sergeant noticed that tango number two, removed by Corporals Takin and Vasari, alias Smith & Wesson, was not one of the men they were assigned to grab.

  The man had a mole where he was supposed to. But he had a scar on his cheek that didn’t match the description. And by even the roughest guess at his size, he came up six inches short.

  “Maybe he just received the scar,” said Corporal Vasari.

  The sergeant admitted it might be a possibility, but wondered about the height.

  “It was just an estimate,” said Takin.

  Sergeant Phurem frowned, and looked at Shotgun.

  “We can’t take that chance,” said Shotgun. “We have to look for the right guy, and take him, too.”

  Shotgun volunteered to go through the rooms and look. The sergeant had no other choice. He told his best man, Corporal Baskar Bhu, to help.

  “You have three minutes,” the sergeant told them. “Three minutes and then you leave. Everyone else goes now.”

  “Plenty of time,” said Shotgun. “Piece of cake.”

  * * *

  Yes, that is what we call ironic foreshadowing. Glad you’re keeping up.

  * * *

  There were twenty-four rooms on that floor. The team had gone into three, which left twenty-one to check out. Shotgun and Corporal Bhu split up. If my math is correct — and the nuns at St. Ladislaus Hungarian Catholic School were pretty much sticklers in arithmetic — that
gave Shotgun and Corporal Bhu something in the area of seventeen seconds to check each room.

  They gave it a good try. Shotgun was in his third room when he heard Corporal Bhu whisper that they were out of time and had to get going.

  The message was followed by a gagging noise — exactly what you’d expect to hear if Corporal Bhu was being strangled.

  Shotgun started to back out of the room he was in. As he reached the hall, he heard something else — the heavy thump-thump-thumber-rump of the approaching assault helicopters.

  ( II )

  Unsure where Corporal Bhu was, Shotgun glanced across the hall, looking for an open door. They were all closed.

  This was no time to play eeny-meeny, but Shotgun had no choice. He went to the door opposite the room he’d just been in, put his hand on the knob, and pushed in.

  There was a “student” sleeping on the bed. No corporal.

  Or was the student faking?

  Shotgun, MP5 aimed at the figure beneath the blankets, went over to see. The terrorist-in-training was lying faceup, snoring gently.

  And damned if he didn’t look exactly like the man they were supposed to take out, mole and all.

  Shotgun took the syringe of Demerol out, pulled aside the blanket, and plunged the needle into the man’s neck. The sharp prick woke him, but a smack across the forehead settled any objection. It probably also sped the drug’s effect.

  “I’ll be back,” Shotgun told the man, leaving him to go look for the corporal.

  By now, the helicopters were nearly to the roof. Someone downstairs began to shout. Shotgun went to the next door. Realizing he was running out of time, he kicked the door open.

  He saw a figure standing in the middle of the room, framed by the light, gun in hand.

  Shoot or be shot?

  Not really a choice. Shotgun fired. His first bullets slammed into the man’s gun, sending it to the floor.

  The next six or seven buzzed through the man’s stomach, cutting him nearly in half.

  Shotgun took another step to his right and saw Corporal Bhu on the floor.

  He was gasping for breath. His neck had been broken, but he was still alive.

  No one has ever confused Shotgun with a nurse, but he knew enough from his training as an Army Ranger that he had to immobilize the corporal’s neck before moving him. There are special neck and back braces for that sort of thing, with nifty inflatable cushions and well-designed straps that hold you tighter than Aunt Clara’s hug at the family reunion. But lacking special equipment, Shotgun had to improvise — he pushed up the bed, reached underneath, and broke off one of the wooden slats. Snapping it in two, he fashioned a crude splint, which he secured with the handcuffs and tape from his vest. It wasn’t very pretty, but it was enough to keep the corporal’s neck from falling off his body.

  As gingerly as he could, Shotgun lifted him onto his back.

  “Shiva,” muttered the corporal.

  Shotgun had no idea what that meant, but took it as a good sign and headed for the stairwell.

  * * *

  While all of this was going on, your faithful correspondent was watching through a pair of night-vision binoculars as the marine helicopters came in. They were aboard four Mi-8TVs, outfitted for spec ops warfare though not quite as well armed as the one that had dropped Special Squadron Zero off.

  Captain Birla was talking to the assault team’s leader, Colonel Singh, theoretically providing him with complete, up-to-the-second intel on what to expect at the site.

  I say theoretically, because despite the captain’s loquacious nature, he did not mention the fact that eight of his men were in one of the target buildings, let alone what they were doing.

  You may conclude from that that Special Squadron Zero’s snatching mission was a secret even from the rest of the members of the operation. If you concluded that, you may go to the head of the class. There will be no homework for you the rest of the semester.

  I’d been listening to Alpha over the radio, and knew that Shotgun and the corporal were still inside. So when Sergeant Phurem radioed the captain for instructions, I was ready for his exasperated roll of the eyes.

  “Well, get out of the building,” said the captain.

  I broke in.

  “Shotgun, what’s your status?”

  “Second-floor staircase, coming down with the corporal. Shit.”

  I heard a blast of gunfire over the open mike.

  “Keep talking to the marines,” I told Captain Birla. “I’ll go get them.”

  I may have used a few more adjectives and the occasional verb to describe what I was going to do, but you get the drift.

  * * *

  The gunfire near Shotgun wasn’t coming from the tangos on the second floor. They didn’t have guns; their weapons were all locked away in the armory room on the first floor.

  The burst of automatic rifle fire that echoed down the stairwell came from above. One of the marine assault teams had blown its way through the roof and entered the stairwell. Apparently they’d seen a shadow below and followed a policy I generally endorse: Shoot first, ask questions not at all.

  Shotgun threw himself against the side of the stairwell, avoiding the bullets. He waited for another burst, making sure he was out of the line of fire, then began sliding down the steps toward the first floor.

  By now, the student terrorists were fully awake and aware that they were in serious trouble. As Shotgun reached the landing, he saw two men run to his right in the direction of the window.

  There was nothing to do but follow.

  He took two steps. Then the hall filled with light — a flash-bang grenade had exploded nearby as the marines came into the building.

  A word of advice: if you’re in a situation like that, about the worst thing you can do is wear night goggles.

  And don’t look at the light.

  Shotgun had done both. Temporarily blinded and unable to hear — even with his earplugs, the gun blasts in the stairwell had screwed up his hearing — Shotgun ran in the direction of the window where they’d come in. Unfortunately, he’d gotten himself turned around in the confusion, and was running the other way.

  He realized this about fifty feet down the corridor, but by then it was too late. He kept his head low, and just kept running, trusting that the others in the building were as confused as he was.

  He bumped into two or three people, bowling them over. Somehow he managed to get to the end of the hall. He opened the door and pushed into the vestibule, where the guard was spraying the nearby darkness with an AK47.

  As the guard glanced behind him, Shotgun leveled his MP5 and fired, catching him in the neck and face. That took care of one problem, but left him another — the marines the guard had been shooting at.

  * * *

  I was about fifty yards from the building when Shotgun came over the radio with his predicament.

  “They got me pinned down, inside and out,” he said. “I don’t want to hit the marines, but sooner or later they’re going to hit me if I don’t.”

  Shotgun was hunkered down with the corporal behind a desk in the vestibule. Glass and bits of the wall were scattered on the floor around him. He’d closed the door behind him, but there was no way to lock it from his side.

  The Indian marines had practiced this assault several times a night for the past several days, and they were moving like clockwork across the campus. This was actually in our favor, because I knew exactly where the three men were that had Shotgun pinned down. I changed course and headed toward them. At the same time, I told Sergeant Phurem over the team radio to get the hell out of there with their “packages.”

  The marines who had Shotgun pinned down were hunkered behind a group of boulders a foot and a half high at the edge of a wide but shallow ravine flanking the building. During their dry runs, they had encountered heavy machine-gun fire from the vestibule, then been counterattacked on their left and right flanks. They’d learned their lesson a little too well, and were paying
more attention to their sides than the door when I ran up.

  “Marcinko!” said one of the marines.

  “Easy,” I told him. “What’s our situation?”

  “Four or five men, near the door,” said the marine. “We’re waiting for Corporal Presi to come up with the grenade launcher.”

  “Good. But some of our men are pinned down on the other side of the building. They got too close,” I added, knowing they wouldn’t mind hearing that the members of Special Squadron Zero had made a mistake. “Can you swing around between the buildings and take some of the pressure off? I’ll wait for the corporal and the grenade launcher.”

  They were happy to help.

  Inside, Shotgun was waiting for my signal when two of the tangos slipped into the vestibule with him. Both had been to the armory and had AK47s in their paws.

  They looked at Shotgun.

  He looked at them.

  They raised their rifles.

  He fired his submachine gun.

  Advantage — Shotgun. Both men fell back against the door, sprawling into the hallway.

  “How we doing, Dick?” he asked over the team radio.

  “You’re good. Come on,” I told him.

  I held my breath as he sprinted from the building. Assuming the marines stuck to the program, there was no one else on this side of the building to shoot him. But few plans survive first contact with the enemy, and I was worried that a wayward marine might take a potshot at the hulk running from the building.

  If they did, they missed. Shotgun lumbered across the open field, legs churning, lungs double-pumping. He sounded like a bull coming across at a one-legged matador. He slid in next to me on one knee.

  Corporal Bhu groaned.

  “I think his neck is broken,” Shotgun told me.

  “Then don’t bounce him around.”

  “I’m trying to be careful.”

  Shotgun explained what had happened inside, then told me the last “package” was still upstairs.

  “I hit him with a shot, but I couldn’t take him and the corporal,” he said. “Not with his neck so bad.”