He looked at her nephew. “Colin?”
“Same here,” Colin said, although his voice was tremulous. “Man, you did so good,” he said. “You saved me.”
“You got us here, and you stayed cool,” Kealey said. “It was a team effort. You saved all these people, too,” he added with a sweep of his arm behind him. “Your tweet said the hostages were in two groups. Where are the others?”
“They’re in a room across the hall.”
“How many altogether?”
“Fifteen, maybe twenty people. They separated us down the middle.”
“The number of guards with them?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Your best guess,” Kealey said. ”It’s important.”
Colin looked thoughtful. “I think they split in half,” he said. “There was him, you know”-he glanced back at the dead gunman’s body-“and a second guy, who left the room when he heard the noise out there. The one you got with the knife. Then there was a third guy, who I’m guessing you shot at the door.”
“So you’re saying there were only a few in each room. That’s it?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Ryan, I heard gunfire downstairs,” Allison said.
“Those were point men for the hostage takers being picked off by SWAT personnel,” Kealey said. “I heard it, too. The enemy was patrolling in twos, and there were a dozen bursts from FBI Glock twenty-twos. Nothing since. Our boys are working their way up here methodically, standard operating procedure, and they may not be in time. Not if the guys in the other room figure out they’re licked.”
He didn’t have to finish the thought. Allison knew what he meant.
Kealey retrieved his weapon and slid his arm through the leather strap. He pulled in a breath, blew air out his cheeks, and turned toward the door. Everyone else in the room was standing there, looking at him, awaiting instructions.
“You’re all going to stay put,” he said. “Help is on the way. I’m-”
He stopped.
“What is it?” Allison asked.
Kealey held up a hand to silence her. He tilted his head toward the window, listening. Allison saw his expression go from thoughtful to sharply attentive.
“Ryan?”
“Hush!” he snapped.
She and Colin were silent.
Kealey listened some more, wanting to confirm what he’d heard. The sounds were rapidly getting louder. They were overlapping in multiples, the telltale whoop of rotors accompanied by the whine of turbocharged engines.
He turned back to Allison, saw the question on her face as she also picked up on the growing sound. Within seconds it had swelled to fill their ears.
“Ryan…?”
Kealey looked at her. “Choppers,” he said, throwing down his assault rifle an instant before the room was awash in white light. “Lose your weapon-fast.”
CHAPTER 10
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Baltimore-Washington International Airport was the second embarkation point for the four Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters designated for the mission. The first was a closely guarded heliport at Marine Corps Base Quantico, which encompassed almost 75 square miles of forest in Prince William County, Virginia, and was also home to the FBI Academy, where the Bureau’s elite Hostage Rescue Team was stationed as a major tactical component of the Critical Incident Response Group. Optimized for rapid force delivery capabilities, each of the choppers had been boarded by twenty heavily armed HRT personnel in full combat garb. A pair of MH-6 Little Birds had then accompanied them to BWI for final deployment; these nimble, lightweight choppers would provide aerial recon and fire support when the Black Hawks reached their target.
Only 9 miles south of downtown Baltimore, BWI was an ideal staging point for the second-front unit, the official order for which was issued by FBI director Charles Cluzot under the direct authorization of the president. The SWAT teams were officially designated first front because they were already on-site. However, their sweep-and-secure ingress would take time. If they met resistance, they might not be able to provide the kind of RTA-Rapid Target Attack-ordered by the commander in chief.
Honed and practiced in a realistic city mock-up constructed deep in the Prince William County woodlands, the HRT’s swarm and penetration techniques relied on multiple elements acting in tight coordination: flooding the site with assault teams while snipers on adjacent rooftops-and gunners in so-called monkey harnesses riding the skids of the Little Birds-covered them from all sides.
The helicopters’ arrival at the convention center was logged at 6:23 p.m. EST. Within a minute of that time, the lead Black Hawk had already banked in low over the building, delivering a stream of CS powder to clear it of hostiles who might be on the rooftop, a necessary precaution even though none had been observed by the AW139 already on-site. The windless conditions were favorable for use of the CS, limiting dispersal to the target area and thus making it unlikely that civilians would be affected.
After a brief interval the chopper returned with the others, all four lowering to stationary hovers above both the new and old sections of the convention center complex. Then hatches opened, rope lines dropped from their hoist brackets, and the rappel teams made their descent onto the rooftops, eighty of them sliding down one after another in swift succession.
Using safety handrails as anchor points, they straddled their ropes and began their descent with a springing hop-skip, their backs straight, legs spread, bodies leaned outward from the sides of the building.
Meanwhile, radios crackling, the teams raced across the tar to previously identified access doors, breaching them with their rams.
In their dark gray uniforms, body armor, vests, helmets, and face shields, bristling with M16s and combat shotguns, tacs almost resembled warrior beetles to the pilots of the departing choppers as they packed into the service stairs and then hurried down toward the building’s fourth floor to begin their sweep.
Kealey was facing the window as the top-rappel team came sliding down in their harnesses, their boots flat against the side of the building. Kicking jagged edges of broken glass from around the steel window frame, a half dozen of them poured into the conference room in their tactical gear, machine guns leveled.
One of them shouted, “Toss your weapons onto the floor in front of me. Then put your hands up over your head!”
“We’re unarmed,” Kealey said. His hands were raised, and he used his toe to point to the MP5K on the floor. “Your sniper team in the church took this guy out. They can confirm.”
“Everyone in the room, raise… your… hands!”
The man had drawn the last three words out as a way of giving them added emphasis. He couldn’t have said them louder, since he was already yelling.
Kealey hadn’t expected his pronouncement to change ingress protocol. Nor this: “I’m Ryan Kealey. We sent the messages that brought you here.”
A man picked up Kealey’s gun. His face was invisible behind the black, skintight balaclava, which covered his face from the bridge of his nose down, and the goggles, which concealed the rest. He kept his weapon trained on Kealey.
With a reverse chop of his upraised forearm, one team leader signaled the other that this room was clear. He chopped forward to indicate to his unit to assume a file formation beside the door. The team leader who was staying behind had been talking into his throat mike. Finished, he walked over to Kealey. He did not remove his amber goggles or raise his balaclava.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Ryan Kealey-”
“Who are you with? ”
“She’s Company. I’m former,” Kealey said. He had forgotten, for a moment, the priorities in securing a hot zone. It didn’t matter what indigenous occupants were called, but where their loyalties lay. “We were here to attend the nursing dinner,” he said. “Look, there may be more gunmen in the room across the hall. These guys and some of the dead men on the steps are Eastern European. I don’t know why they’re here or who they work for. I do know they’ve threatened to kill all the hostages-”