“Sterling, Dobler. You both have C-5 and detonators?”
“Roger,” they both said at once.
“We’re going to do the rest of the twenty windows on the ground floor. I want one 5.56 round through the unopened windows. Followed closely by EAR rounds. Work out your territory. Start it now.”
Two 5.56 rounds belched fire and broke the tops of two windows. Before the sound died, a dozen more rounds exploded at the block wall and shattered windows in the communications building. The EAR rounds followed shortly.
“Dobler, Jaybird, hit that front door. Better take extra C-5 with you and do the locking device, then the four hinges. Go.”
JG Ed DeWitt crammed his long frame against the doorjamb and edged around it to check the hall just inside the first room at the rear door.
“Never seen anyone down there,” Lam said.
“Let’s try it,” DeWitt said. “Keep those flashbangs handy. Remember, over a hundred friendlies in here.” He led the way down the hallway, his Bull Pup set for two-shot bursts, his finger on the trigger.
They moved twenty feet to a cross hallway. DeWitt looked one way, and Lam the other way.
DeWitt swore. “I’ve got six coming this way. They have automatic rifles and are pushing half a dozen sailors in front of them. Hold your fire.”
Down the hall the first two Chinese men fired between the sailors. The rounds whined down the corridor.
“What the hell should we do now?” Lam asked.
De Witt pulled back as another burst of automatic rifle fire tore off part of the corner of the hallway he had jolted back into.
“The fuckers mean business,” Lam said. “They must know we’re here. How can we fight them with a human shield of sailors out front?”
3
Already DeWitt had jerked the safety pin from a flashbang grenade and flipped it around the wall down the corridor.
“Grenade,” someone in the hallway bellowed.
“Cover up,” DeWitt said into his lip mike. “Flashbang.”
The SEALs had just time to cover their ears with hands and shut their eyes tightly when the series of jolting explosive sounds took place, followed by six super-brilliant flashes of light that penetrated their eyelids even though they were closed and around the corner from the grenade.
A second after the last flash, the SEALs pushed around the corner and opened their eyes. Six men writhed on the floor. One with a submachine gun leaned against the wall. DeWitt drilled him with two rounds of 5.56mm from his Bull Pup.
Another man staggered to his feet. He had on civilian clothes and held an M-l6 rifle. Lam dropped him with a three-round burst from his MP-5. A blue-shirted sailor jumped on a third man who was groping for his weapon.
“We got them all,” the second class said when he saw the three SEALs come around the corner. “Need to tie this one up or waste him.”
DeWitt tossed the sailor a plastic riot cuff, and watched as the man tied the terrorist’s hands behind his back. Now DeWitt saw that the man was Chinese.
“How many more of them in here?” DeWitt asked.
A chief rolled over and got to his feet. He shook his head again and kept blinking. “Can’t hear a damn thing yet, sir, but I’m damn glad to see you. They got us hog-tied upstairs. Must be twenty of them. All Chinese bragging about an invasion. They really land troops over on Kaneohe Bay?”
“What we hear.” DeWitt looked at the rest of the sailors. “Men, we need two of you who know this place best. The rest of you get outside and well away from here. Who can help us go after these Chinks?”
The chief brightened. “I heard that. I can help. Me and Allison. The rest of you, out the back door. Move.”
They rushed out. Lam put another riot cuff around the prisoner’s ankles and the chief shook his head again.
“Damn those bastards are loud. First time I ever heard one. Okay. We’re in the west wing. Nothing in here but admin. No Chinese at all. Most of them are upstairs. Two at the main door and one as a connecting-link man halfway up the stairs to the third.”
“You have any casualties in the takeover?” DeWitt asked.
“Two dead, six wounded. Our CO, Captain Browder, thought they were joking. They shot him in the head. Couple of our guys had hideouts on their ankles. Killed one of the bastards before they ran out of ammo.”
“How do we get to them?” DeWitt asked.
The chief waved them forward. “Oh, Lieutenant, I’m Master Chief Carpenter, top EM in this place. Got a spare weapon?”
DeWitt handed him a.25-caliber automatic from his right ankle. Carpenter chambered a round and waved them forward. They went the same way the Chinese had been going.
“Back stairs,” Carpenter said. “Nothing much on the second floor but some offices. Head man is on the third with the vital transmitters, the one studio, all the electronics and readouts and screens so we know what the fuck we’re doing. This end we’re going up holds records, transcriptions, the big humidity-and-temp-controlled storage room for all our mainframe tapes. Doubt if they’ll have a man in there.”
“So how close to the terrorists can we get?”
“They tell us they aren’t terrorists, they are soldiers. Either way, we can get within maybe a hundred feet of them. I’d guess you don’t want to blow up any of our equipment up here if we can help it?”
“Right. The admiral wants to be back on the air ten minutes after our takedown.”
“Sounds like old Hairy Ass. That’s what we call the admiral. He’s got more body hair on him than Robin Williams, the comedian.”
He held his finger to his lips now as Ed DeWitt and Lam and the whole Bravo Squad started up the wooden stairway. Not a board creaked. The second floor proved to be clear. Lam and Ostercamp checked it out. Then they worked on up the steps.
At the third floor they came to double doors. Master Chief Carpenter held up his hand and they all froze. He edged the door inward an inch and studied what he could see through the opening. He let it ease closed.
“Two of them, with weapons slung. You have any suppressed weapons?”
DeWitt took a look, then waved Colt Franklin up.
“Single shots. Silenced. Two of them, make sure.”
Franklin nodded and edged the muzzle of his weapon through a two-inch opening between the door and the jamb. He waited a moment, then pulled the trigger, moved his sights, and fired again. He held up two fingers and then pointed his thumb down. Lam edged the door open and slipped through, followed by DeWitt and Carpenter and then the rest of the squad. Lam checked the two Chinese soldiers. Both were dead of heart shots. There was a partition ahead and another door. This section of the third floor was about twenty feet long, which left the main part beyond the wall ahead. They found the temperature-controlled area and dozens of racks of storage for tapes and supplies.
The area was clear of any more Chinese.
DeWitt waved his men forward toward a pair of doors in the wall between them and the rest of the Chinese. They were spread out with four at one door and five at the other when a pair of Chinese in civilian clothes ran through the doors shouting something in Chinese, both with submachine guns up ready to fire.
Below in front of the communications building, the EAR rounds had produced exactly one Chinese man who jumped out a ground-floor window and kept rubbing his eyes as he ran right into Alpha Squad. He was quickly tied up and left behind the wall.
“Do the door,” Murdock said in his mike, and Jaybird and Master Chief Dobler sprinted for the front door. There were no shots at the two SEALs. They applied the explosives, set the timers, and faded along the wall fifty feet, then held their hands over their ears. The explosions of almost a full pound of C-5 were enough to blow down a small building. In this case it blasted the double doors off their hinges and slammed them backward into the building.