“Top of the stairs, Hawke,” he heard Fitz say, and then the muffled brrrrp of Fitz’s HK submachine gun was exploding inches from his right ear. Lead from the tangos above was whistling by his head.
“Down!” Fitz shouted, and Hawke went prone on the steps, putting the sights of his own HK on a mass of figures at the top of the steps. Fitz propped his gun on Hawke’s shoulder and emptied a whole mag, obliterating the rush of tangos down the stairs.
“Behind us!” Fitz shouted as he reloaded. “Coming up the steps!” Concrete and other debris was raining down on them as rounds tore up the wall and the stairs above them.
Hawke’s submachine gun had gotten trapped under his body. He reached behind him and grabbed a frag grenade off his web belt, pulled the pin, and let it bounce down the stone steps.
“Adios, muchachos!” he shouted. The tangos saw the grenade coming and started to retreat in a jumble back down the steps. By then Hawke had his Sig Sauer 9mm pistol on them and was firing into them. The heavy loads were incredibly effective. Men just crumpled at the bottom of the steps. Then the frag exploded and nobody was moving.
“Let’s move!” Fitz said, and he and Hawke scrambled up two more flights of stairs to the top floor, firing heavily at anything that moved. The heavy fire was returned, and huge chunks of concrete and tile exploded from the walls just above Hawke’s head. He saw two twinkling yellow muzzle flames in the smoke and emptied his mag in that direction. The firing stopped.
There was smoke up here, too, which was good. It meant Froggy or Cosmo had already made it this far and detonated smoke grenades. At the other end of the hallway, he saw shadowy figures. The loud exchange of automatic weapons fire meant Bravo squad was hard at work. As long as Vicky was alive, he didn’t care who found her. He saw Fitz in the haze, motioning him forward.
Mounting the final step, he saw that Fitz was standing in front of a plain door and that Froggy and Cosmo were there, too, crouched on one knee.
There was shouting coming from behind the door. He heard Vicky cry out. He didn’t wait for Fitz’s command, he just lashed out at the door with all the strength he had in his right leg. The door splintered inward.
Hawke, Fitz, Cosmo, and Froggy were through the door low, firing even as they rolled across the floor to either side of the door. Three men, one woman, Hawke made out, as he dove for the floor.
“It’s her!” Hawke yelled, “She’s on the bed! Vicky, don’t move!”
A gaunt, hollow-eyed man with long greasy hair bent over the bed holding Vicky by the throat with one hand, a gun in the other. Another man, fat and sweating, stood bare-chested at the foot of the bed, desperately trying to fasten his trousers, his plans rudely interrupted. Hawke recognized the two Russians instantly. Rasputin now had the .45 at Vicky’s temple, while the fat man, Golgolkin, had pulled his little automatic out of his pocket.
When he heard Alex call Vicky’s name, Rasputin turned and aimed his .45 directly at Hawke’s head. Alex, in the act of getting to his feet, fired so quickly that he’d pumped half a dozen shots into the skeletal man before he knew he’d squeezed the trigger.
He saw the heavy loads blow Rasputin against the wall, several dark stains beginning to bloom on his chest and abdomen. He was already going white, gone. He collapsed behind the bed as Alex turned his weapon on the fat one, the one named Golgolkin, and emptied it into his naked, sweating torso. He’d taken the two Russians out, just as he’d promised Gloria.
“Vicky, get on the floor!” Alex shouted as Golgolkin crumpled, dead before he hit the floor.
His clip expended, Alex ejected it, pulled a spare from the mag-holder strapped to his forearm, and slammed it into the grip of his Sig.
“Alex! Watch out!” he heard Fitz cry. He whirled as the bathroom door flew open and a tall, skinny boy dressed only in his jockeys opened up with an AK-47. The staccato noise of the weapon lasted but a second. Froggy, still on the floor, his Beretta in a two-handed grip, had put a small neat hole right between the boy’s eyes.
Alex climbed to his feet. Three down. He whirled around looking for someone else to shoot.
He saw two other bodies lying at Fitz’s feet. Somehow, he’d missed all that. He looked at the bed. Vicky was gone. He ripped the bed away from the wall and saw her, half-hidden by the first Russian Alex had killed. She’d done just as he said and rolled to the floor.
He bent down and pulled her up into his arms. Her hair and face were matted with blood but he soon determined it wasn’t her own.
“Alex—” she started, but he cut her off. Her eyes were wide, naked with fear, but there was definitely recognition.
“No time,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Can you walk?”
“No, but I can run,” Vicky said with a feeble smile.
As he helped her to her feet, Fitz’s voice was in his headphones.
“Hostage is clear,” Fitz said. “Alive and well. How about it, Bravo?”
“Clear,” he heard Boomer say.
“Anybody down?”
“Nobody but bad guys,” Stoke said.
“Yeah, same,” Boomer echoed.
“Then let’s fooking get out of here,” Fitz said.
54
Having cleared two rooms, Stoke, Boomer, and the two Gurkha Bravo guys burst into a third. It had only one guard.
When Stoke kicked the door open, they saw the guard had dropped his AK-47 on the floor and was standing flat against the far wall with his hands in the air, red-eyed and white-faced with fear.
“I think you can handle this one alone, Skipper,” Boomer said to Stoke. He and the two commandos moved farther down the hall where the firing was heaviest. Stokely moved into the room, sweeping his HK back and forth until he reached the terrified young guard.
“What the hell wrong with you, boy?” Stoke said, sending the guard’s AK-47 rattling across the floor with a kick of his boot. “Big old black man scare you so much you ain’t even going to put up a fight?”
“I—I have orders to execute him, señor,” the guard said in trembling but perfect English. “If there is any rescue attempt. But I do not want to do it. They say they kill me if I don’t do it!”
“Execute who?” Stoke asked, looking around the room.
“Him,” the guard said, pointing at the bed.
At first, Stoke thought the bed was empty.
Then he saw some movement under the sheets and saw whoever it was had pulled the sheets up over his head. Stoke walked over and ripped the sheets off. It was just an old guy wearing some ugly-ass pajamas.
“Get out the damn bed, my brother, you free at last,” Stoke said, prodding him gently with the muzzle of his HK.
“Fuck you,” the old guy said.
“Fuck me? I come and rescue your damn ass and all you got to say—hey, hold the phone, I know you! You goddamn Fidel, ain’t you? Hell, you Fidel Castro! Man, you world famous!”
“Go away,” the old guy said. “Leave me to die in peace.”
“Peace? You call this peace? Hand grenades going off, submachine guns firing all over the place? You deaf or something? Now get out that bed.”
“Where is my son?” Fidel said. “They promised he would not be harmed. No one will tell me.”
“Where’s his son, asshole?” Stoke asked the guard.
“They took him last night. To Havana.”
“Alive?” Castro asked, staring at the guard.
“Sí, Comandante. He was alive when they put him in the truck. I swear it.”
“Hey, Comandante, get out the bed and put these damn pants on,” Stoke said, throwing him a pair he’d found draped over a chair.
“Why?” Castro said. “I’m not going anywhere.”