Authors: Craig Reed Jr
Red Ice (24 page)
Tanner hit the dirt as the North Koreans opened fire. The swarm of bullets passed over his prone body, digging into the dirt walls of the gully or striking the scattered rocks. The other four OUTCASTs, above and to either side of the gully, fired back, multiple 9mm bursts punching into the half-dozen western-dressed gunmen. Tanner returned fire a heartbeat later, adding his firepower to the team’s. Trapped with nowhere to hide, the North Koreans died quickly.
Tanner got to his feet and ran for the opening. The others descended the gully’s sloping walls and joined him.
“Bring the Wasp,” Tanner told Stephen, who brought the robotic aircraft down with a few taps on the tablet’s screen. Dante picked up the drone and secured it to the back of Liam’s harness.
The mine tunnel was wide and level, but there were no lights, no sign that anyone had been in the tunnels for a while. With their NVGs making them look like aliens, Liam and Tanner lead the way, staying near the walls. The others followed, Naomi and Dante behind Tanner, while Stephen trailed Liam.
Twenty yards in, the tunnel split into two passages, one going in the same direction of the main tunnel, while the other branched off to the left at a forty-five degree angle. Tanner signaled the team to stop.
“Which way?” Liam asked.
Tanner stared into the tunnel ahead of them. “I’ve got footprints going this way.”
“Got footprints here too. Do you want to split up?”
“No. Too easy to get lost in these tunnels. We’ll continue along the main passageway until we either find something or run out of tunnel.”
They continued on. After a few more yards the tunnel veered left, then a few after that, tracked right. The farther in they went, the more twisting and uneven the tunnel became, as if the miners had been drunk. They heard sounds, distant and badly distorted by the tunnel’s echoes. Wary of an ambush, the team took each turn and twist slowly.
The tunnel made a sharp turn right, then after a few yards, a hairpin turn left. As they started around the sudden turn, Tanner saw movement in the tunnel ahead. “Back!” he warned, just as the tunnel lit up with multiple assault rifle and machine gun fire. The team hugged the floor while slugs ricocheted off the tunnel walls.
The wall to Tanner’s right exploded as hundreds of bullets slammed into it, showering him and the others with rock dust. Liam, the nearest to the corner, slid a shell into his grenade launcher and stuck his MP5 around the bend. The
whump
of the M-203 being fired was lost in the last few seconds of the barrage. The gunfire was erased by an explosion. A large cloud of dust and smoke came around the corner, filling the tunnel with a dense cloud.
“Liam,” Tanner said. “That was stupid. Trying to cave us in?”
Liam yanked the MP5 back, opened the grenade launcher’s breech, letting the spent shell fall to the floor, then reloaded. “It stopped them, didn’t it?”
The team surged to their feet and raced around the corner, weapons up and seeking targets.
#
Rhee charged out of the tunnel, followed by Muhn and his men. The two combatants manning the machine gun stiffened to attention, but Rhee waved them down. “Blow the tunnel!” he snapped as he stormed past them. “And bring that machine gun to cover the tunnel leading into the complex.”
He stomped into the guard room, the men sitting there coming to attention. “You four help your comrades move that machine gun station, and guard it.” The men saluted and rushed out of the barracks.
“Muhn,” Rhee said. “I want two of your soldiers to guard the escape tunnel until I return. Make sure they help the guards get the machine gun set up and ready to fire before we get back.
The scar-faced man nodded. He tapped two of his subordinates on the shoulder and they broke away from the group.
Rhee glanced at the others. “Hyoung and you two—with me.”
When they emerged into the main caverns, Rhee inspected the area before he saw the guard commander at the security station. “Report!”
“We have intruders.” P’il said quickly, pointing at one of the monitors.
Rhee gazed at the monitor, where masked figures trotted down the tunnel toward the camera, until one of them pointed his weapon at it and pulled the trigger. A distant gunshot echoed through the tunnels as the video signal dissolved to snow.
Rhee’s scowl deepened. “Get
every
fighter you can into that tunnel and stop them.”
P’il nodded and left at a run, barking orders into his radio.
#
Dust and smoke filled the tunnel ahead of them. The team charged ahead, fingers on triggers. There was no gunfire as the dust began to subside.
After a few yards, the tunnel widened to twice its width. Bodies in green fatigues were lying around what had been a tripod-mounted DShK machine gun. Blood was everywhere, as Liam’s grenade had brought down a large chunk of the roof down on the defenders. A couple of the fighters and the machine gun had been crushed by a boulder a quarter the size and weight of a compact car, while others had been struck in the head and shoulders by smaller rocks.
“Keep moving,” Tanner urged.
Another opening, located at the other end of the wider tunnel, was the only exit. The team negotiated the jumble of rocks, aware that another cave collapse could occur at any moment. Once they reached the opening, Dante removed the Night Wasp from Liam’s harness, and with a few taps on the tablet from Stephen, sent the drone into the tunnel’s airspace
Tanner and Liam looked over Stephen’s shoulder as the former CIA agent piloted the micro-drone through the tunnel. This passage felt newer than the entrance tunnel; it sloped up more gradually and lacked the accumulation of rocks and dust. The wooden support frames supporting the tunnel roof also appeared to be modern.
After fifteen yards, the passageway opened into a cavern, longer than it was wide. Half a dozen overhead lights illuminated everything in the chamber. Stephen sent the drone up so that it was above the lights and near the relative safety of the dark ceiling.
As the aerial camera swept the room, Tanner and Liam eyed the control tablet. They saw prison cells lining the walls, a dozen steel cages on each long side. Fifty or sixty men and women, dressed in rough and dirty clothing, yelled and carried on at half a dozen guards standing in the middle of the cavern. One of the guards was speaking rapidly into a radio, and several more glanced in the direction of the opening where the drone had entered.
Liam motioned to the screen. “How you want to do this?”
“We hit them hard and fast,” Tanner said.
Naomi leaned over. “Wait. Swing the camera around so it’s pointing at the walls above the cages again.”
Stephen performed the action and the team could now see blocks along the walls, with wires running from one block to another.
“Shit!” Liam breathed. “Looks like the place is rigged for a massive detonation.”
Naomi nodded. “More than enough to bring the roof down, that’s for sure. See if you can trace where the wires are going.”
The drone moved again and the team followed the wires. Naomi pointed at the screen. “Wires exit through the opening there on the other side of the chamber.”
Liam shook his head. “Which means the entire place could be rigged.”
“Plan doesn’t change.” Tanner straightened up. “We just hit them even harder and faster.”
The team turned and charged into the tunnel. Shouts came from ahead, only a few at first, but swelling as more and more people added their voices to the cacophony. There were words in the babble of voices, but none in English, and the percussive assault of metal striking metal punctuated the vocalizations.
One of the guards closest to the tunnel saw the OUTCAST unit charge out of the tunnel. He screamed and spun toward the team only to go down as Tanner triggered the grenade launcher and sent a load of buckshot into him. The blast also smashed into another guard, shredding his arm and leg and knocking him to the tunnel floor.
The rest of the team opened fire, the flurry of 9mm rounds cutting through the guards’ bodies before any of them could get a shot off. As the last guard fell, Tanner reloaded his M203 while he moved across the chamber, Liam behind him and to his left. The rest of the team followed. To either side, the prisoners shouted at the infiltrating squad, arms thrust between the bars to plead for release.
“Should we let them go?” Dante asked, pausing to look into one of the overcrowded cages. He wanted to free them.
Tanner shook his head. “They’re safer here for the time being. Let’s keep moving.”
Stopping long enough to retrieve the drone, the team raced into the next tunnel.
The assault on the ranch house was the worse Sarah Vessler had ever experienced.
The suspects were not strung-out druggies with stolen, half-functioning weapons, but hardened soldiers with military-grade weapons and a willingness to fight to the death. As the task force began deploying from the Bradleys and MRAPs, heavy gunfire greeted them from the ranch house and barn.
An RPG was launched from the ranch house’s second floor. It shot across the dark field, where it struck one of the MRAPs, rocking the fourteen-ton vehicle and blanketing the assault team with shrapnel. The M2’s opened up again, raking the house and barn with more .50 caliber rounds.
Vessler crouched in the shadow of the Bradley. Despite the MRAPs suppression fire, the enemy wasn’t giving up.
“OUTCAST Six to Striker. Are you all right?”
Vessler remembered the drones overhead. “OUTCAST Six, this is Striker. We need those party favors onboard the Cobras.”
“Copy, Striker. Moving Cobra Bravo to cover the barn. Dropping party favors from Cobra Alpha in three, two one…”
#
A hundred feet above the ranch house, Night Cobra Alpha hovered silent and invisible in the night sky. The drone’s camera pointed at the house below, giving Danielle, who was five hundred yards away, a real-time update of the situation. Using the tablet, she adjusted the drone’s position and released three of the flash-bang grenades. The incendiary devices struck the roof, bounced off, and exploded in mid-air, bright flashes of light and sound stunning the defenders.
As soon as the flash bang grenades were released, Danielle dropped three CS canisters. All three struck the roof, rolled down the sloping steel and fell to the ground. As they landed, they began spewing thick, acrid smoke. Rifle and machine guns from inside the house fired blindly into the heavy smokescreen. Danielle moved the Cobra and repeated the drop sequence, releasing the other half of the mini-drone’s cargo onto the structure. In a few seconds, the house was shrouded in tear gas.
She checked Night Cobra Beta, saw it had reached its new position over the barn, and dropped its entire load at once.
“OUTCAST Six to Striker. Party favors have been passed around.”
#
Vessler watched as the mix of smoke and flash-bang grenades hammered the ranch house and barn. The Bradleys, which up to now had not been involved in engaging any target outside of ICEHOUSE, rotated their turrets in opposite directions and fired their autocannons. Each burst sent ten 25mm APDS-T rounds into the ranch house and barn, ripping into concrete, wood, glass, steel and flesh.
By now the tear gas had spread, entering the house and barn through the damaged windows and walls. The gunfire from both locations was lessening, the defenders either unable to continue, or waiting for better shots.
From the strike team, half a dozen more CS canisters were blasted into both the house and barn, obscuring both structures even more.
“Striker to all Sun elements: Move it, now!”
Over at the barn, the single usable DShK and the six defending North Korean engineers blindly traded fire with the MRAPs, which replied with long bursts from CROWS-mounted M2s, the .50 rounds ripping through the wooden walls and into multiple defenders. Under the covering fire of the M2s, the agents assigned to secure the barn raced toward it. The rest of the task force charged the ranch house. They triggered off short bursts from their own weapons as the M2s continued shooting into both buildings.
#
Despite the firepower of the Bradleys and MRAPs, several agents went down as the strike team stormed the buildings. A three-round burst from one of the Bradleys obliterated the ranch house’s front door. The barn doors, riddled with both 25mm and .50 caliber rounds, fell apart and tumbled to the ground.
At Vessler’s command, a dozen flash-bang grenades sailed through the holes in HEDGEHOG. The multiple explosions of light and sound seem to last for hours, but in fact lasted less than ten seconds. As the explosions died away, the team stormed inside.
Gunfire met them, dropping two of the first agents inside the house. The strike team replied with their own gunfire, all thought of arrest or seizing evidence replaced with instincts of survival. No quarter was asked or given, even the badly wounded suspects tried to continue the fight, forcing the strike team members to kill them.
The fighting was room to room, gunfire exchanged at point-blank range—and when guns ran dry—hand to hand. More than one agent was killed or injured by the well-trained North Koreans in hand-to-hand fighting, as knives became the preferred close-in weapon of choice.
Five minutes of savage fighting saw the ground floor in task force hands, but at a heavy toll; none of the defenders survived, and the number of injured and dead agents was into double digits. Vessler ordered the wounded to be taken outside onto the covered porch while she considered her next move.
Vessler knelt at the base of the stairs. Splattered with blood from both friend and foe, she was stressed, her joints and limbs aching. She and half a dozen agents had been ready to charge up the stairs, but after the fight on the first floor, none were eager for round two.
“Striker, this is Gandolf. HAYBALE is secured. Three friendlies dead, four wounded. No prisoners. SOBs went down fighting.”
Vessler exhaled slowly. “Copy, Gandolf.”
“Striker, there’s tons of fertilizer in here, along with three trucks, explosives, fuel oil, and what looks like the parts to several detonators. Looks like these bastards were constructing Oklahoma City-sized truck bombs.”
Vessler felt herself get cold. “Ramrod, did you—”
“Copy, Striker,” Mulkerin said. “I have my OD guys on their way. Gandolf, don’t touch anything without my boys’ say-so. If any of that stuff goes off, there won’t be enough of you left to fit into a thimble.”
“Copy, Ramrod. We’re staying away from it all.”
Vessler took deep breaths to steady herself, then felt nauseous as she inhaled the smells of blood, smoke and other smells of combat. “Striker to OUTCAST Six…”
“OUTCAST Six here.”
Vessler felt a surge of anger at Danielle’s calm demeanor, but dismissed it. The tech specialist had done her share of fighting, but her skills were needed elsewhere on this battlefield. “I need you to run Cobra over for a look-see at the second floor of HEDGEHOG. We have the first, but the cost was high.”
“Copy. Cobra’s on the way now.” After a couple of minutes, Danielle said, “Looks like half-a-dozen suspects still on the second floor.”
Vessler’s head dropped. “Striker to Ramrod.”
“Ramrod here.”
“I need your Bradleys to rake HEDGEHOG’s second floor. We’ve lost good people taking the ground floor. I don’t want to lose any more.”
“Any prisoners?”
“Zero. They fought to the death. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I have. I still say my boys should have gone in. They have experience fighting fanatics.”
“Not like this, Ramrod.”
Mulkerin snorted. “Stand by, Striker. My boys will show these shitheads the meaning of firepower.”
“Striker to all: Ramrod’s going to air-condition the second floor. Stay low and be ready.”
The heavy hammering of two M242s was accompanied by the sound of breaking glass, tearing wood and shattering plaster. After ten seconds a high-pitch whine started up and what sounded like a swarm of angry bees ripped through the walls. Vessler watched as the railing on the second floor landing was chewed apart as if it was being eaten by a swarm of invisible termites, and the walls were shredded to almost the point of non-existence. There were a couple of screams from upstairs, short bursts of gunfire, but neither lasted long.
After thirty seconds of intense fire, it stopped, and the silence was as intense as the noise had been.
“Ramrod to Striker. That’s it. Any more and we risk collapsing the house. I doubt anyone up there survived that.”
“Thanks. Striker to all Sun elements: Take it upstairs.”
They crept up the stairs slowly, senses wide open to the first sign of trouble. At the head of the stairs, the team split up and swept each room. Most of the rooms were horror scenes, torn bodies on the floor with blood and gore everywhere.
“Striker,” an agent called out. “We have a live one! Front bedroom at the end of the hall.”
Vessler dashed from the main bedroom to the other side of the house. One of the task force members met her at the door. “He won’t last long. Hell, as shot up as he is, I’m surprised he isn’t dead already.”
The man lay in the middle of a pile of bodies. His clothes, a flannel shirt and jeans, were soaked in blood—both his and that of the others around him. One arm lay across his body. He slowly turned his head to look at Vessler with hate-filled eyes. Vessler walked over to him, staying out beyond his arm’s reach despite his wounds. “You’re under arrest.”
He spat at her, the bloodied saliva making it only a few inches before striking the blood-soaked floor. “Americans,” he said in accented English. “You will lose.”
“We won this round, buddy,” one of the agents in the room said.
The North Korean chuckled, then coughed and his breathing became labored. “D-do you think so?”
Alarm bells rang through Vessler’s mind. “Everyone out! Now!”
Her tone garnered an instant response and the three men raced for the door. As Vessler turned to follow, she saw the man relax in death and the grenade he’d been holding close to his body rolled free. She yelled, “Grenade!” and then threw herself across the hall and into another bedroom, sliding across the floor to put a dresser between her and the explosion. There was the crack of the grenade and she felt everything shudder. She waited a few seconds, then raised her head.
“Everyone okay?”
A chorus of affirmative replies greeted her still-ringing ears, and she got up slowly. “Ramrod, this is Striker: I need your medics in here ASAP. Gandolf, leave half your men at HAYBALE and bring the rest of them over here. Someone check the basement, while the rest of you check the bodies. Watch for booby-traps.”
