Corsen swung the chopper around in a left-hand bank and they approached the island from the south.
The muted buzz of the inbound helicopter reverberated through the air. Turcotte pulled a double-edged commando knife from the sheath on his combat vest. Holding the blade, he stood and threw in one smooth motion. He sprinted for the wall while the knife was still in the air.
The point hit the guard in the neck. The guard’s hands went to his throat, dropping his weapon. He staggered, went to his knees, then used one hand to try to steady himself as the other grabbed the handle of the knife protruding from his throat.
Turcotte reached the wall and jumped, grabbing the guard’s left leg and pulling him down on top of him. Turcotte was surprised when the body was lifted off of him as if pulled by a string. Yakov had the guard in his large hands. With a quick twist, he finished what Turcotte had started. He tossed the body into the bushes.
Turcotte stood and, with great effort, boosted Yakov up on the wall, then reached up and grabbed the Russian’s hand. Yakov reached down and pulled Turcotte up with one quick heave. He did the same with Kenyon.
They lay on top of the thick prison wall, getting their bearings. The main building was only twenty-five feet away. It had an administration center and two long wings of cells.
Turcotte spotted a guard on this side of the building, inside the wall. The man held a submachine gun in his hands.
Turcotte slithered over the wall, followed by Yakov and Kenyon. There was the sound of helicopter blades coming from the south, drawing the guard’s attention.
The inbound helicopter not only drew attention away from the wall, but it covered up the slight noise Eagle Force made as it landed on the roof of the main building and kept anyone from looking up and possibly seeing the black parachutes against the lit sky. One by one, the parachutists touched down, their chutes collapsing.
Mickell was the trail man in the airborne formation. He could see the canopies from the other jumpers draped all over the top of the roof. He braked and felt his knees buckle slightly as he made a perfect landing in the center of the roof. Two of the first jumpers were already at work, prepping a charge on a locked door that barred their way down.
Mickell looked up as the OH-58 swooped in from the south, its bright searchlight blinding the guards on the ground as it settled in toward the landing pad. The man in charge of the demolitions gave Mickell the thumbs-up. Mickell signaled for him to wait.
The skids of the bird settled on the concrete landing pad. Two guards were moving forward toward the aircraft from the front, trying to identify it. Corsen suddenly twisted his throttle to flap the blades. The two guards bent their heads even farther and covered their eyes at the sudden onslaught of wind.
As they did so Jones and Shartran leaned out of the open back doors, one on either side, and gunned down the guards, using their silenced MP-5s.
“Tiger, two down LZ,” Gillis reported over the radio as he got out. Jones and Shartran started sprinting for the front door, their weapons at the ready. Corsen rolled off the throttle and waited, weapon at the ready…
Mickell signaled. There was a flash and hiss as the charge ate through the lock. The door swung open and the ten men slipped in, Mickell in the lead. They halted at the foot of the stairs and the team split. Four men headed toward one wing, while the other six began work on the other.
They fanned out on the second floor, moving in a practiced routine. They began clearing, cell by cell. The first indication that anything unusual was happening in the building finally occurred — the muffled roar of a machine gun echoed up from the east wing.
Turcotte slid through a ground-floor entrance that was open and stepped through to the right while Yakov stepped to the left, Kenyon staying safely behind them.
“Turcotte, east wing,” he whispered into the mike as he and Yakov turned for the hallway.
A figure stepped out in front of them and Yakov cut the man down in a hail of bullets. The roar of a machine gun to their left startled both men.
Gillis let up on the trigger of the squad automatic weapon, SAW, with a satisfying click. “Tiger, one down first-floor foyer, main building.”
He swung the muzzle slightly to the left as another door opened and a half-dressed guard stepped out waving a pistol. As he pressed the trigger. Gillis could see the outlines of other men behind the first. He decided to make a clean sweep of things. Keeping the trigger depressed, he swept the doorway and then stitched a pattern on the walls.
The 5.56mm, steel-jacketed rounds tore through the brick wall and made a carnage in the guardroom. Gillis fired until he expended all hundred rounds in the drum magazine. When the bolt slid forward and halted for lack of ammo, he expertly pulled another drum out of the bag on his hip and reloaded.
“Tiger, a bunch down, first-floor foyer, main building.”
Gillis swung his barrel to the left as two figures stepped out of the hallway from the east.
“Friendly, Wolf element!” Turcotte yelled. He looked around the main foyer. Two large double doors were off to the left. “There!” He remembered the plans Duncan had managed to get hold of — those doors led to stairs going down to the old solitary confinement area.
Turcotte led Yakov, Kenyon, Gillis, and the other men to the doors. Gillis slapped a charge on the thick wooden doors. They all dove for cover, then the doors blew wide open. Gillis led the way in with a burst of fire from the SAW.
“We need them alive!” Turcotte yelled, seeing the wide row of stairs leading down. He pushed past Gillis and took the stairs two at a time. They ended at a steel door with dire warnings printed in several languages. Turcotte recognized the international symbol for bio-hazard.
More men came down the stairs, weapons at the ready. Colonel Mickell in the lead.
“Mike!” Mickell called out, seeing Turcotte. “We’ve got both wings secure. My men are checking the exterior, but I think we’ve got it all.”
“Can you get us in there, sir?” Turcotte pointed at the doors.
Mickell responded by yelling orders. A demolitions man ran up with a heavy backpack. He put it on the floor, pulling a cylindrical black object out. Working rapidly, he placed it on a tripod, one end eighteen inches away from the steel.
Turcotte knew it was a shaped charge, designed to focus a blast of heat and force at exactly the distance it was from the door.
“Fire in the hole!” the demo man called out, causing everyone to scatter for cover. Turcotte grabbed Kenyon and dove behind a desk that had been a security checkpoint. There was a loud bang, causing his cars to ring. Poking his head above the desk, Turcotte saw a four-foot-wide hole had been torched through the steel.
“Wait for it to cool,” the demo man advised as Turcotte approached the hole. Turcotte threw a chair across the bottom of the hole, the wood arms hissing as they met the red-hot metal. He grabbed a flash-bang grenade off his combat vest, pulled the pin, and tossed it through the hole. As soon as it exploded, he followed it through, diving headfirst, his belly sliding over the chair.
Turcotte rolled left once, then to his feet, weapon at the ready. He froze as he saw the white-coated bodies crumpled all over the floor amid the sophisticated equipment. He slowly stood.
The Mission had completely gutted the level and put in a Biolevel 4 lab. Turcotte considered the situation. Had the virus already taken over here? Had there been an accident? But the guards had seemed fine.
“What happened to them?” Mickell demanded, carefully stepping through the hole in the door.
Turcotte knelt next to a body and looked closely. He had seen this before. Deep under the Great Rift Valley. “They were killed by the people they worked for. The Mission is covering its tracks.”