Red Ice (20 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
 

Chinatown

12:15pm

Choi’s shout from Tanner’s right made the OUTCAST leader spin in that direction. He spotted the shooter, an Asian male with a bloody shoulder pointing a pistol at the van. Choi rose from between two cars.

“Freeze!” the DEA agent yelled.

The wounded Asian spun toward Choi and both men fired at the same time. Choi staggered and dropped. The attacker lurched when Choi’s rounds struck him. As the DEA agent fell, Both Tanner and Liam opened fire, the twin 5.56mm streams of lead ripping apart the gunman’s torso. The assailant took another step, his face twisted into a hateful stare before he collapsed onto his chest and went still.

“Danny!” Vessler cried.

Tanner spun and fired another burst at the car Vessler was behind. “Stay where you are until we’re clear!” he said over the radio. “This is being recorded by those people over there. Need to maintain plausible deniability.”

“Fuck that. That’s my partner!”

Tanner turned to the van to find the rest of them already onboard. He jumped in and told Dante to go. The van accelerated down the street while he pulled the door shut.

As they reached the intersection, Dante leaned on the van’s horn. Ahead of him, cars slammed on their brakes and sped out of the intersection, allowing the van to shoot across the street without incident.

Liam pinned Hong to the floor while Stephen administered a tranquilizer patch to the Triad leader’s neck. After a minute the bound man stopped struggling as the drug took effect.

“Liam, Nay,” Tanner said, unzipping the jumpsuit. “Get changed and switch weapons. Dante, drop the three of us off at the hotel, then you and Stephen head for the safehouse. We’ll pick up Casey and Danielle and meet you there.”

#

“Why can’t we take the elevator?” Halverstaff moaned as the four stepped out into the hallway.

“Because if the enemy is smart, they’ll have blocked them off or turned them into kill boxes,” DuPree said.

“But we’re fifteen floors up.”

Then I suggest you save your breath for the climb down.”

“Which stairwell?” Danielle asked.

“East is closest,” Casey said.

“And probably guarded,” DuPree added.

Can’t be too many guards in the stairwell. Worse comes to worst, we can duck into a lower floor and change staircases.”

They jogged down the hall, DuPree leading, then Casey, with Halverstaff and Danielle bringing up the rear. They reached the fire door and DuPree used the small window in the door to check the landing. “Looks clear, but once we’re out there, keep moving unless I say stop. Danielle, keep an eye up above us. I’ll worry about what’s below. Stay as close to the wall as possible. Let’s move.”

DuPree opened the door quietly and started down the stairs, the P-90 to her shoulder and sweeping the next landing and set of stairs. Casey was next, his pistol sweeping high, then low. Halverstaff, who was unarmed except for a folding multi-tool sheathed to his belt, scurried after them. Danielle stepped out onto the landing and gently closed the door behind her before catching up to the others, her MP5 pointing up the stairwell.

They made it without incident to the fourteenth floor and then heard a shout from above. Gunfire rained down at them, bullets sending sparks flying as they struck the railing. Danielle judged the shooter to be four floors above them, and fired a pair of short bursts upwards. She heard a grunted curse and the gunfire stopped.

Dupree was already on the landing between the fourteenth and thirteenth floors. Casey was behind her, his pistol aimed up. Halverstaff was a few feet behind his boss, his expression bordering on panic. Danielle took the stairs three at a time, thankful for Tanner’s insistence that the team stay in shape.

#

In a fit of rage, Seonwoo placed four shots into the already dead bodyguard who had told him Casey was gone. For some reason’s the corpse’s expression of satisfaction annoyed him. “Are you sure he isn’t here?”

“Yes, sir.” Ryeon replied. The battle for the suite had been short and vicious, costing Seonwoo two of his henchmen, but they had killed the three foes they had found, all bodyguards. The suite was wrecked, inundated with bullets holes and buckshot from the KS-23s.

Yoon entered the bedroom. “Maybe he was never here.”

Seonwoo shook his head emphatically. “No, too many bodyguards here. He was here, but there must be a secret escape route or hidden room. We must—”

“Dragon Five to Dragon leader!” a voice on the radio called out. The man guarding one of the hotel’s two fire stairwells relayed his message. “Target is in the east stairwell, four floors below me!”

Seonwoo’s smile was unpleasant. “Yoon! Take two men, use the elevator and get below them, then go up the stairs.” Yoon nodded and left at a run, shouting out the names of the men he wanted with him.

Seonwoo turned to Ryeon. “Contact Cho in the west staircase, then both of you join Jee in the east stairwell and drive them down to the eighth floor. I’ll be on the eighth waiting for them. Go now!”

Ryeon ran out. Seonwoo reloaded his pistol and his Uzi, then turned and walked out of the bedroom. He couldn’t get the dead bodyguard’s expression out of his mind.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
 

Nob Hill

12:21pm

The van roared into the Trans-Continental Marsh Hotel’s driveway at forty miles an hour. It slid to a stop in front of the hotel’s main doors, causing several people to stare at the vehicle in puzzlement as the side door slid open. The puzzlement turned to fear as three people wearing full combat gear came storming out of the van cargo hold, shouting “Out of the way!” By the time they reached the doors, the van was roaring out of the driveway.

Once inside, Tanner called out, “Homeland Security. I need everyone to evacuate in a quick and orderly manner, right now!”

A man in a suit with an engraved name tag hurried over. “I’m the day manager, Fredrick Langston. What’s going on?”

“You have terrorists here attempting to either kill or kidnap a Special Assistant to the President. I need the people on the ground floor to evacuate and everyone else to stay in their rooms and lock their doors.” Distant gunfire rattled as Tanner spoke the last three words.

“Of course.” The man pulled out a walkie-talkie and hit the push-to-talk button, relaying Tanner’s instructions to his staff.

Langston began to repeat the announcement as Tanner and the others raced for an elevator. One look was enough for Tanner to see they weren’t going up that way. He turned to Langston, who had followed them. “Any other elevator we can use?”

“There’s a service elevator for the banquet rooms, but that only goes up to the fourth floor. It’s around the corner, near the storage rooms.”

“No good. We’ll have to do this the hard way. He tapped his radio. “Six, this is Prime. We’re on the ground floor. Where are you?”

“We’re on the way down, east stairwell, just reached the twelfth floor. We have at least two Tangos above us in pursuit, but there’s no telling where the rest are.”

“Copy. We’re on our way.” Tanner addressed Langston. “Call the police and tell them east staircase!”

#

Danielle exchanged her nearly empty magazine for a full one. “Tanner’s in the building. Ground floor!”

“Might as well be on Venus for all the good it does us,” Halverstaff said.

“Morton,” Casey said in a resigned tone.

“What?”

“Shut up.”

They made it to the eleventh floor without incident. Danielle caught glimpses of the men above her when they leaned out for a quick glimpse or an even quicker burst of gunfire. What they weren’t doing was getting closer.

They started down the stairs to the tenth floor. “DuPree!” Danielle called out, her attention on the stairs above them. “I think we’re being herded!”

The young Secret Service agent stopped and bit her lip. “We keep going,” she said. “If your team’s coming, the farther down we are, the closer we’ll be to them.”

There was a loud boom from below that echoed through the staircase. Danielle’s radio came alive. “Prime to Six. We’re in the stairwell. “Your location?”

“Coming up on tenth. We are missing a lot of Tangos. Suspect they may be trying to cut us off from below.”

“Understood. We’re coming up now. Prime out.”

“Tanner’s in the stairwell,” Danielle called out to the others. “He’s on his way up.”

They reached the tenth floor and continued down. Danielle fired at their pursuers, her unease growing with every passing second. Where was the rest of the enemy?

As if answering her mental question, the sound of another door opened below, this one closer, but the echo made it hard to estimate which floor. It closed with a bang and DuPree fired down the stairwell. “Enemy on the sixth floor!”

“Six to Prime. We have Tangos on the sixth floor landing.”

#

With Tanner in the lead, the three OUTCASTs had reached the second floor landing when they heard a door somewhere above them open violently, then someone shooting down at them. The team stopped and hugged the wall to stay out of sight.

Tanner raised his MP5 so that it pointed up into the stairwell. “Copy. We’re four floors below them. We’ll close and engage.”

He motioned Naomi and Liam past him and they ran up the next flight of stairs. Naomi stopped at the next landing, stopped and raised her MP5 so that she covered the landings and stairwell above. Liam continued on to the third floor. As soon as he was out of Tanner’s sight, the OUTCAST leader charged up the stairs, past Naomi and up the next flight of stairs. Liam was on the third floor landing, doing the same thing as Naomi. As Tanner raced past him and started up the stairs leading to the fourth floor, Liam fired a short burst up the stairwell. Tanner heard the bullets striking the railing three floors above him, but kept charging up the stairs.

He reached the next landing, between the third and fourth floors just as a man leaned over three landings above and fired. Tanner backpedaled as the swarm of slugs slammed into the railing and the concrete floor around it. Somewhere above, he could more gunfire, but couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

Tanner stepped to the left and fired up at the enemy. The Triad gunman grunted and pulled back, discouraged. Naomi passed behind Tanner and raced up the stairs to the fourth floor. “Liam!” Tanner shouted, “Move!”

The ex-SEAL sprinted up the stairs, sliding a shell into the M-203PI under the MP5’s barrel. “Go!” He pointed the grenade launcher up the stairs and pulled the trigger. The shell rocketed out of the barrel with a
poomf
. It raced up three floors, struck underneath the landing above where the gunmen were and dropped to the ground, spewing thick blue smoke. Before Tanner could say anything, Liam shoved a gas mask into his chest. “Take this!” He was already wearing one around his neck.

Tanner slipped the gas mask on, then took the stairs three at a time, ran past Naomi and continued up. Liam was a few steps behind, slowing only long enough to toss Naomi another gas mask from his satchel, eject the old shell from the M-203 and slip in a new one. Naomi put on her gas mask and followed them.

#

“Dragon Two to Dragon Leader. Armed intruders below us.”

Seonwoo scowled. He stood in the eighth floor hallway with Yuh. “Kill them.”

“We are trying! The enemy is—” Gunfire drowned out Yoon’s words.

“Dragon Two! Are you there?”

“S-still here, Dragon… .Leader. I am wounded, but I can still fight.”

Seonwoo considered the facts and made a decision. “All Dragons, this is Dragon Leader. Kill the target and anyone with him. Dragon Two, keep those intruders from getting past you. Dragon Seven, press them. Leader, out.”

He looked back at Yuh. “We’re moving.”

“Yes sir.”

They ran down the hallway to the stairway entrance. They heard the gunfire echoing while they closed in on the door. A door ahead of them opened and a man stepped out. Before he could say anything, Seonwoo fired his Uzi from the hip, ripping the man from stomach to throat from a distance of twenty feet. As the bloody figure slumped to the hallway floor, Seonwoo and Yuh ran past him, reaching the stairwell door. After a glance though the window to make sure it was clear, the two charged out onto the landing.

Below them, Seonwoo saw blueish smoke hiding the stairwell below the eighth floor. He felt his throat begin to burn. “Dragon Two! What is happening?”

No answer.

Seonwoo stifled a curse and snarled at Yuh. “Up the stairs!”

“But Sergeant Yoon and—”

“Dead or almost. Now move.”

#

“Smoke below!”

Danielle glanced down and saw the smoke filling the stairwell wafting up the shaft. “It’s my people!”

They were between the ninth and tenth floors, DuPree on the landing between floors, Casey and Halverstaff on the stairs and Danielle on the tenth floor landing. The sporadic gun battle had worn away both their nerves and their ammunition.

DuPree saw two armed men racing up the stairs from the eighth and opened fire, sending a dozen 4.7mm rounds downrange. Some struck the railing, but the rest hit the trailing man in the leg, hip, chest, and arm. The combatant stumbled sideways, smashed into the wall and buckled at the knees.

“We need to get out of here!” Halverstaff screamed. He turned and ran back up the stairs, bumping into Danielle and knocking her off balance. She stumbled to her left just as gunfire from above struck the floor where she had been standing. The aide screamed as bullets smashed into his left leg and arm, spinning him around in a pirouette as he went down.

Danielle regained her balance in time see three gunmen race across the landing between the eleventh and twelfth floors, firing over the rail in her direction as they ran.

“They’re charging us!” she shouted as she ducked and stepped back under the cover of the landing.

DuPree was forced back from the railing as the man she had just wounded opened fire, despite the amount of blood he was losing. She yelped as hot steel struck her gun hand, and the P-90 fell from her hands.

On the landing above, Danielle changed magazines, pulled the MP5’s bolt back and moved to her right, standing in front of the staircase going up. She heard the men on the landing above, heading for the stairs that would take them down to the next landing and the staircase she stood in front of.

As soon as she saw the legs on the stairs, she opened fire with her MP5 on full auto. Sparks flew as the steel railing was pummeled by a number of bullets. Enough of them ripped into the enemy’s legs to take them down, sending both men tumbling to the landing, twenty feet from Danielle.

The third North Korean dropped from the landing above onto Danielle’s landing. The soldier landed off-balance, his hand slamming into the rail. His Skorpion machine pistol flew out of his hand and disappeared over the rail.

She swung her MP5 around and pulled the trigger, but the “click” of the hammer falling on an empty chamber sent a sharp adrenaline jolt through her system.

Her intended target went for the pistol in his belt. Danielle hurled the MP5 at him and the spinning machine gun struck the gunman in the arm with an audible
crack
. The man’s eyes to “widened in pain as his pistol went flying out of his hand. His expression morphed into to hardened determination as he pulled a dagger from a belt sheath.

Danielle was scared shitless. Fear. She had her SOCOM on her hip, but the knife-wielder was only seven feet away and he would be on her before she could draw and fire.

Her hand went for her pistol anyway.