Red Ice (19 page)

#

“Prime to Two. Status?”

Liam grimaced as another volley of gunfire ripped into the roof’s overhang. He and Stephen were still stuck on the roof; their attempt to climb down the fire escape ladder had been spotted almost as soon as they started. Forced to climb up again, with bullets nipping at their heels, Liam and Stephen were trapped.

“Problem, Prime,” he returned. “Door guards reacted quicker than expected. They’ve got us pinned down up here.”

Liam heard shouts and more gunfire from below. “Striker to OUTCASTs!” Vessler’s tone was tense. “We have five suspects outside the front entrance. Bystanders are clear.”

“Use CS, Two,” Tanner directed. “Striker, Fastball, get clear.”

“Copy, Prime,” Liam said. “CS is on its way.”

Stephen had already taken a CS canister from his belt, pulled the pin and tossed it over the side. Liam followed with a CS canister of his own, and both slipped on their gas masks. In a matter of seconds, they could see the thick smoke of the tear gas billowing from the street below. The gunfire stopped.

The pair climbed down the fire escape ladder, their movements hidden from below by the gas irritant. They reached the second floor and moved toward the balcony doors. Stephen pressed a small square of C-4 with a timer between the door handles, set it for ten seconds, and activated it. Then Stephen took a flash-bang grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and nodded to Liam, who had his own primed flash-bang grenade in hand. “Two to Prime. Executing entry in Five … Four … Three … Two… .”

The doors disintegrated when the C-4 exploded. Three seconds later, two flash-bang grenades rocketed through the now open doorway.

CHAPTER THIRTY
 

Nob Hill, San Francisco

12:08pm

From the window of his suite, John Casey could see the smoke over the Golden Gate Bridge. Looking out another window would show him the activity over at the airport, while a third would overlook where the BART bombings had occurred. Nob Hill was a perfect place from which to survey the city and the disasters befalling it.

Feeling depressed, he turned away. The presidential suite lived up to its name, a fitting place for a world leader to stay. If it was his choice, he would have booked a smaller suite, but his Secret Service protection team insisted on the suite, with which they were intimately familiar; the same security team that protected the president when he was in town also guarded the president’s special assistant.

The only thing out of place were the two tables set up at right angles in the center of the room, filled with computers, tablets, radios and other pieces of electronics Casey didn’t recognize. Danielle sat in an office chair, her eyes flicking back and forth between screens. Casey wanted to stand behind her and stare at the data she ogled, but decided it was better not to distract her.

“They’re executing entry.” Danielle ignored the other three people in the room. Milt Younger was the head of Casey’s security team. A former Green Beret, Younger took his job seriously. He didn’t like the OUTCAST team, whom Casey had introduced as “special consultants,” and was even less pleased at having one of them in the midst of his security cordon.

On the other hand, Jenifer DuPree was on her first protection assignment. A short-haired redhead, she kept her opinion about Danielle’s presence to herself, but Casey did notice she managed to place herself in a position to see what was happening on Danielle’s screens at all times.

“I still don’t like it,” a nasal-toned voice said.

Casey glanced at his aide. Morton Halverstaff III was from a blue-blooded New England family with strong political ties and a general support for left-of-center policies. Morton’s uncle was a retired U.S. Senator and his father a cabinet secretary. When the family had “suggested” that the newly minted Ivy League graduate needed a job as an assistant to the president, the POTUS had farmed the new generation of Halverstaffs off on Casey. “Maybe a glimpse into the reality of the world will benefit him,” the president had said.

Privately, Casey thought Halverstaff was an over-bred idiot whom he wouldn’t trust with anything more complex than a stapler. But he was stuck with him, so he kept him away from the team, knowing that their tolerance for stupidity was lower than his.

“You don’t have to like it.” Casey motioned to the television. “What’s the latest?”

“Ten confirmed dead and another fifteen injured at the bridge.” Halverstaff was slumped on the couch, his lean frame sprawled across most of it. “The BART and airport are still trying to get a handle on things.”

“I hate not knowing.”

Halverstaff sat up. “Maybe should I go down and see—”

Casey glared at his aide. “Stay right there.”

“But—”

“First rule of government, Morton; Stay out of the way of people doing their jobs. They’re focused on rescuing people, not photo ops or briefings. If they need us, they’ll call.”

Halverstaff flopped back into the couch. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t think for a second I like being up here instead of down there. Twenty years ago, I would be down there. But not today. Today, we sit and —”

“We’ve got trouble.” Danielle rose to her feet, her eyes on a screen to her left. She reached for her pistol sitting on the table next to her laptop, much to Younger’s annoyance.

Casey looked at her. “Who’s got trouble—OUTCAST?”

“No, we do. We have an elevator coming up filled with Asians and at least four more taking the fire stairs.” She squinted at her monitor. “They just knocked out the elevator and stairwell security cameras.”

Younger frowned, his hand slipping under his jacket. “Are you sure? They can’t get to this floor — wait, how did you access the hotel security system?”

“I hacked it from here,” Danielle replied distractedly. “And they overrode the card reader system. They’re coming.”

Younger pulled out his SIG Sauer P229 with one hand while grabbing for his radio with the other. “All stations, this is Younger. We have a security breach, coming from the elevators and the stairs. Subjects are heading up and are to be considered armed and hostile. We are evading with BLOODHOUND, over.”

Halverstaff reached for the hotel phone, picked up the receiver and crinkled his forehead. “No dial tone.”

Casey produced his cellular and tried placing a call out. “No signal.”

“They’ve cut the landlines and are using a frequency jammer for the cell-phones.” Danielle pulled a P-90 from a bag at her feet and held it up. “Anyone know how to use one of these?”

“I do.” DuPree took the compact submachine gun and hefted it a couple of times, getting used to the feel of it.

The outside doors opened and three agents who had been guarding the suite doors came in. “Any ID on the attackers?” one of them asked.

“North Korean Special Forces.” Danielle holstered her pistol while answering.

“Bull–”

“Enough.” Younger began issuing instructions. “Dupree: Send the panic signal to the local office and to hotel security. Griffith, Jackson: Escort Director Casey to the emergency exit. Hobbs: You and the rest of the team watch the hallway from your end.”

Danielle pulled out her MP5 from her bag along with several magazines. “Need a hand?”

Younger considered her for a few seconds. “Stay with the director. He may trust you, but I don’t know your skill level with that weapon, and I don’t have time to find out.”

#

Once the North Korean strike team reached the target floor, they stopped only long enough to wedge the elevator doors open with a pry bar. They then moved with purpose toward the presidential suite.

The rest of the Secret Service detail assigned to Casey was waiting for them. As soon as the North Koreans came into view, the agents opened fire with their P-90s and P229s. The North Koreans returned fire and the hallway became a death zone, filled with live fire that tore into walls, fixings and humans with equal vigor. The Secret Service agents were driven back toward the suite, giving ground slowly, some trading their lives for time. The last one went down in a bloody mess just short of the suit’s double doors.

While they looked like other suite doors, the ones to the presidential suite were constructed differently. Made from steel, they were designed to withstand most gunfire and minor explosions. The same with the hinges — reinforced, heavy-duty, designed to withstand tampering and applied force.

But Seonwoo had already accounted for this engineering fact.

The KS-23 shotguns fired 23mm rounds, the equivalent of a 6-gauge. Loaded with “Barricade” rounds, shells with solid steel projectiles, the two North Koreans armed with the weapons began blasting the hinges of the doors. Steel deformed and buckled under the assault. When the shotgunners pulled back to reload, other commandos moved in and placed small packs of Semtex into the holes and dents. The strike team moved down the hall far enough to avoid any backblast and detonated the charges. The explosions ripped through the already weakened hinges send the doors topping into the suite.

“Go, go, go!” Seonwoo shouted.

#

The emergency escape route consisted of a hidden door in the back of the suite’s master bedroom closet. The door led to a narrow, steel-lined shaft with a ladder bolted to the opposite wall. Known only to a few senior agents in the Secret Service, the exit was designed for cases like this – to be used as an escape route in the event of a direct attack on the suite’s occupants.

DuPree went down the ladder first, followed by Casey, then Halverstaff. As Danielle was about to get onto the ladder, there was a string of small explosions followed by the sound of steel hitting something solid echoing through the suite. Younger, who was standing by the exit door, shoved Danielle onto the ladder. “Get going!” he snapped. “We’ll give you time to get away!”

“But you—”

“No buts! Move it!” He closed the door behind her and she could hear the steel bolts sliding into place.

“What happened?” DuPree called up.

“Keep going!” Danielle shouted.

#

The fight was short, but vicious. The suit’s doors fell in and the North Koreans charged, each man taking a different sector and cutting loose with their machine guns. The storm of bullets ripped into chairs and couches, shattered lamps and statues and tore through wood. Several of the suite’s windows turned opaque as the bulletproof glass was struck by the gunfire.

Secret Service Agent Dan Griffith was out in the open and died in the hail of fire before he could shoot back. Younger and Agent Winston Jackson fired back from the master bedroom’s doorway, Younger’s SIG and Jackson’s P-90 taking down two of the enemy soldiers. The enemy didn’t hesitate, but turned and fired as a group, shattering the bedroom’s door frame and the wall around it. Jackson was sent down in a spray of blood and gore, while Younger keeled over as both his legs were shredded and bullets slammed into his Kevlar vest, breaking several ribs. His gun skittered out of his reach on the floor. Before he could summon the strength to move toward it, the enemy was on him. A foot came down on his hand, pinning it to the floor. He tried to pull it free, but he felt himself weakening.

“Where is Mr. Casey?” a voice demanded.

“G-gone,” Younger managed to say. He was beginning to fade, the pain lessening along with his consciousness. “You’re too fucking late.”

Younger closed his eyes and died.

#

The escape shaft ended inside the closet on the fifteenth floor, in a room that was never rented when the POTUS was in town. Fortunately, it was vacant now, too. “Now what?” Halverstaff asked as he flopped onto the bed.

“We keep moving,” DuPree replied calmly, but Danielle could see the white knuckles as she gripped Danielle’s borrowed P-90 tightly.

“Surely they can’t find the escape shaft.”

“DuPree’s right,” Casey said, pulling out a SIG P229 from a kidney holster. “They may know about the escape shaft, we don’t know for sure. We need to keep moving until we’re completely out of danger. DuPree, you lead. Danielle, take rear guard.”

Danielle held up a gadget. “The radio doesn’t seem to be affected. I can call the team and let them know what’s happening.”

Casey shook his head. “They’re in the middle of an active mission.”

“Director,” Danielle urged. “I’m ninety percent sure that these are North Korean special forces operators, which means Rhee’s people. Do you really want them running loose in a hotel full of innocent, unarmed guests?”

Casey’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and then he nodded. “Go ahead, inform them. But their mission comes first.”

Danielle nodded while transmitting. “Base to OUTCAST Prime: We have a Condition Omega.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
 

Chinatown

12:08pm

When the balcony doors blew in, they sent glass fragments across the room, slashing several of the men around the table. Kim threw up a hand to shield his face from the flying shards. Ignoring the stinging pain from multiple cuts, Kim started to draw his Baek Du San pistol as two grenades came hurtling in. Recognizing the grenade type, he aborted the draw. Instead, he dropped to the floor, curled into a tight ball, closed his eyes tight, crossed his arms in front of his face and stuck his index fingers into the opposite ears.

The two sets of flashes and loud explosions rocked him like a physical blow. He counted to three, then uncurled rolled to his knees. More on instinct that thought, he pulled his pistol and fired rounds in the direction of the balcony doors.

Lights danced across his eyes and his ears rang hard. Although his vision was blurry, he could see that the others in the room were stumbling around, unprepared for the stunning blow of the flash-bangs.

If there is no other way to keep him out of American hands, kill him.

With Major Rhee’s order echoing through his mind, Kim spun toward Hong, his pistol pointing at the Triad leader. Before he could pull the trigger, something hard slammed into his shoulder, sending him reeling back against the door. Pain shot through him, clearing his head. A second shot missed his skull by a few inches, burying itself in the door behind him.

Kim spun back toward the window and saw Cheng aiming a pistol at him. Kim fired quickly, three of his 9mm rounds finding Cheng and sending him back against the table. A masked figure darted into the room from the balcony, weapon raised. Kim and the intruder spotted each other and fired at the same time. Cheng stumbled into the line of fire and the Triad enforcer staggered as two sets of rounds struck him in the chest and back. As the Red Pole’s bloody body dropped to the floor, the door behind Kim popped open and the door guards came charging in, pistols drawn. Kim shoved his way past them and darted out the door as a burst of gunfire slammed into the 49s.

More gunfire from the third floor told Kim the enemy was also upstairs. Ignoring his pain, he pulled out a grenade from his pocket, yanked the pin and tossed it into the room he just left. The explosion was mild compared to the flash-bang, but it made his head ring again.

Despite the throbbing pain, Kim forced himself to head for the stairs. As he reached the top of the stairwell going down, three canisters fell from the floor above, landing a few feet from him and spewing a cloud of thick white smoke. As he caught a whiff of CS gas, Kim forced himself to run down the stairs, stopping at the bottom only long enough to replace his pistol’s magazine with a fresh one. He ignored his bleeding shoulder and the stares from the shocked kitchen staff.

Three armed Triad enforcers came charging into the kitchen. At the sight of weapons, the kitchen staff fled.

“Upstairs!” Kim yelled. “The Mountain Lord is under attack!” The three 49s raced past him and up the steps. Kim raced for the kitchen door.

#

Liam’s experience and reactions saved him.

As soon as he saw the oval sphere fly into the room, he shouted, “Grenade!” He planted his foot and threw himself backwards out the door. Stephen, who was about to follow him in, flattened himself against the brick facing next to the door. Liam mirrored him on the other side of the doorway.

The grenade exploded inside the room, the fragments ripping through anything in their path — flesh, wood, paneling and glass. The detonation blew out what little glass was left in the windows, sending it into the street.

Liam reversed direction and barreled into the room. He saw five bloody bodies lying motionless and two that were moving. One was an old man, blood-drenched and weakly trying to use a chair to pull himself up. The second person was William Hong, who was climbing to his feet, bloody, but otherwise looking relatively unharmed.

Liam launched himself across the table, slamming into the Triad leader and sending them both to the ground. Still stunned by the explosions, Hong tried to lash out, but Liam was faster, stronger and in full control of his senses. The former SEAL easily blocked the weak strike and rolled the crime lord onto his stomach. He pulled two riot cuffs from his belt and secured Hong’s arms.

Stephen followed Liam in but went around the table and checked the other bodies. Most of the others were dead. The old man, unarmed but still alive, glared at him. “Y-you will… pay for this-this…outrage!” he choked out.

Stephen recognized the speaker as Kuang Lieh, one of the senior Triad leaders. “You will pay before me,” Stephen said in fluent Arabic, then in heavily accented English, “Turn over.”

The old man spat bloody mucous onto the floor. “So you can shoot me in the back?”

“Have it your way.” Stephen let the Colt dangle from the sling and grabbed Lieh by the lapels. He hauled him to his feet, spun him around, and shoved him face down on the table. Two sets of riot cuffs were quickly used to bind Lieh’s arms, then he dumped the bound Triad leader into a chair.

Liam hauled Hong to his feet, but before he could say anything, Danielle’s voice came across the radio.

“Base to Prime. We have a Condition Omega.”

#

Tanner and Naomi had reached the second floor. They were sweeping the hall when Danielle’s transmission alerted them to new problems.

“What’s happening, Six?” Tanner demanded.

“An attack team penetrated the hotel’s security system. We’re off the floor but the Secret Service detail is dead. The panic signal was sent, but no telling when they get here. We can’t stay here but Casey insists your mission comes first.”

“Two here,” Liam said. “We have the objective. We just need to get him the hell out of here.”

The sounds of people rumbling up the stairs alerted Tanner. He spun as the first Triad gunman came into view. The 49 stumbled as the CS hit him and Tanner fired a long burst that nailed him from groin to shoulder. As he fell backwards, Naomi stepped forward and fired down the stairs, a dozen 5.56mm rounds tearing into the other two men on the steps. All three tumbled in a tangled heap.

“Prime to Five!” Tanner said. “Bring the vehicle
now
!”

“On my way!”

They heard yelling from below. “More trouble!” Naomi said.

“Two, get the objective out here now! Three, Flash-bangs down the stairs!”

Naomi nodded, took a flash-bang from her harness, pulled the pin and tossed it down the stairwell. Tanner followed Naomi’s grenade with his own flash-bang just as Liam and Stephen came through the door to Tanner’s right, dragging Hong between them. The explosions below were followed by screams.

The CS gas began to dissipate. “Three, Four, stay with Hong. Two, rear guard.”

Tanner descended first, his Colt Commando leading the way down the stairs. Six steps down, he saw armed men in suits below them, stunned by the flash-bangs. One 49 at the base of the stairs managed to clear his head enough to see the oncoming danger. He raised his Ruger .357, but Tanner nailed him with a six-round burst that ripped him from left shoulder to right hip. As he dropped, Tanner cut down a couple more still-stunned and blind 49s near the stairs with four-round bursts.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the OUTCAST operators stepped over the fallen and moved quickly through the kitchen, Tanner leading the way.

#

The shoulder wound hurt like hell, but the pain focused Kim’s perception. He had managed to get out via the restaurant’s front doors with a small cluster of customers who decided to flee. The CS had made his eyes water and caused him to cough a few times, be he got clear of it quickly. Inside a doorway a hundred feet up the street from the restaurant, he pulled the phone out of his pocket, despite the white-hot pain in his shoulder. He opened the outgoing call log and placed a new call to the most recently used number.

“Yes?”

“The Americans attacked the restaurant,” Kim said through gritted teeth. “I do not know if Hong is still alive.”

“Where are you?”

“Outside. The Americans came in through the windows and the roof, used tear gas and grenades. I cannot get back inside and I am wounded.”

Kim could hear the steel in Rhee’s tone, cold and sharp. “Make sure Hong is dead. Nothing else matters.”

“Understood, sir.”

#

The OUTCAST team rammed through the kitchen doors into a service hallway. To their left was a server station, along with three servers huddled in the alcove. All three blanched at the sight of the armed and gas-masked team, but Tanner put his finger up to his gas mask in the universal sign of quiet. The servers nodded, their eyes wide with fear.

OUTCAST moved out into the dining room. A number of customers were on the floor or behind a makeshift barrier in an attempt to stay out of any gunfire.

“Prime to Striker. We have Hong. Status?”

“Stalemate,” Vessler yelled. “Two or three hoods inside the front door are keeping us from entering. CS gas has almost dissipated. A few customers ran as soon as the shooting started upstairs.”

“Copy. Five, where are you?”

“On Washington,” Stephen returned. “Twenty seconds out.”

Tanner peered across the dining room. “Everyone stay down, you’ll live longer!” he shouted, the gas mask muffling his voice.” Two, you’re with me on point! Three, rear guard!”

Liam moved past Naomi, Stephen and Hong while Naomi dropped back. They fast-walked toward the glass doors separating the dining room from the lobby. Three gunmen stood inside the small lobby, uncertain what to do next. One of them saw the approaching intruders and shouted a warning to the others.

Liam and Tanner fired through the glass doors, shattering them and ripping into two of the 49s. As they fell, the third Triad gunner fired, but he shot high and wide, shattering a decorative lantern above and behind the team. Before he could adjust, Tanner and Liam killed him with a paired burst of 5.56mm rounds.

“Striker, hold your position.” Tanner stepped through the shattered doors. “There’s too many witnesses for you to greet us as friends. But stay low, because we’re sending a few bullets your way.”

“Copy.”

Tanner led the others out onto the sidewalk. The team’s van skidded onto the street and screeched to a stop a few feet away from them. Most of the CS gas had dissipated, though a few stray wisps still hung around.

Tanner spotted Vessler crouching behind a car ahead and to his left. He whispered into his radio, “Striker, down!” then fired several bursts in Vessler’s direction, ripping up the car’s trunk, hood and bursting the rear driver’s side tire. He heard shouts and screams and turned to see dozens of bystanders watching the action, many videoing it with their smartphones.

“Move it!’ Tanner bellowed. Naomi and Stephen hauled the now-struggling Hong toward the cargo door Dante had slid open.

Then Choi’s voice made their blood run cold. “Shooter!”