Weapon of Vengeance (34 page)

The 84mm Carl Gustav produced by Saab had an effective range of approximately 1,100 meters against troops in the open and could also take on an armored target 700 meters away. Unlike other such weapons, it used a rifled barrel to spin stabilize its projectile. Both Boucher and Ontong were comfortable with it, though, like most Aussies, they preferred to call it the Charlie Gusto.

A rocket launcher team normally comprised two men and could get off four to five rockets in a minute. With just one man firing and reloading, the rate of fire dropped to less than half, since the user had to bring down the launcher, crack open the rear, slide in a new rocket, close the breech, and hoist it back onto his shoulder.

Boucher was aware of this, but it did not bother him. He needed only to fire twice before he dropped the weapon and melted away. With surprise on his side, it would be a cakewalk. Ontong, coming into action minutes later, might not have that working for him, but he would be able to exploit the shock of the opening assault.

Boucher pulled over in the spot he had reconnoitered; it was on a curve, a blind spot from the security post in front. Not the optimal position, but keeping in view the security deployment, it was the best possible one.

Quickly moving to the rear of the van, Boucher reached for the already loaded weapon and also the second rocket, to be ready for an instant reload.

Taking position off the road, clear of the vehicle, he raised the launcher to his shoulder.

*   *   *

Mohite halted the elevator at the seventh floor and held the door open for Ruby. “Please go to Mr. Gill's room … that one,” he pointed out, forgetting that Ruby had had a tour of the seventh floor a couple of days ago. “I will let him know you are here.”

Ruby walked past the elevator security guards and headed for Ravinder's room. The ping of the elevator door behind her let her know it had closed. She threw a quick backward glance.

Both elevator guards had turned to see off the minister and had their backs to her.

Altering direction, she swiftly crossed to the other side of the corridor and headed for Chance's room. Using the red access card she had purloined earlier, she eased open the door and entered.

The guards did not see which room she entered. They had heard Mohite tell her to go to the boss's room and assumed she had. In any case, they did not perceive her as a threat; there was scarcely a cop in Delhi who'd not heard of the attack on the ATTF chief's house and how his lionhearted daughter had responded.

*   *   *

Jennifer, returning from checking the stairwell guard at the end of the corridor, did see Ruby enter Chance's room. She noticed that Ruby did not pause at the door, which to her implied that someone had opened the door for her or—

Chance? Isn't he supposed to be on the eighth floor? Or does Ruby have an access card to his room?
Neither thought felt good. Her relationship with Chance was still too new; she had yet to understand him or feel secure about him.

But Ruby's presence in the secure area alarmed her, even though she was not privy to Ravinder's and Chance's suspicions. And this unrestricted entry into Chance's room perturbed her. Frowning, she headed down the corridor.

If Chance is two-timing me
 … She felt a surge of anger.

Caught up in an admixture of alarm and jealousy, Jennifer forgot to radio her sighting to the control room. Or to call the reserve guard to back her up.

Both were big mistakes.

*   *   *

After letting herself in, Ruby halted in the center of Chance's room. She did not switch on the lights; with the curtains pulled back, there was enough light.

A black hard-shell suitcase was on the wooden rack beside the TV. It had been with Chance as long as she could remember. Having lived with him, she knew his habits. The suitcase was locked. Chance was also forgetful; especially when it came to numbers. He always used his birth date for the suitcase. Ruby rotated the numbers of the combination lock. The case clicked open. She sighed with relief. Chance hadn't changed.

Hasn't he?
She pushed that thought away.
Not now, damnit! Focus!

The pistols were exactly where she had known they would be; at the base, wrapped in a piece of thick, soft cloth. She quickly unfolded it and found a pair of classic Browning Hi-Power pistols.

His choice of weapons has not changed.

Chance always carried a spare pair. Ruby had banked on it. Picking them up, she tested their heft. They fit with the comfort of an old sweater.

A silencer and two spare magazines were also wrapped in the same cloth. The magazines, each with a capacity of thirteen rounds, were full.

Ruby did the math. A total of fifty-two rounds in the four magazines.

If that is not enough, nothing is.…

Swiftly loading one weapon, she chambered a round, clicked on the safety, and slid it into her waistband. After thrusting the spare magazines into the pocket of her baggy jeans, she loaded the second pistol, again chambered a round, and began to screw on the silencer. Her fingers were confirming the silencer was fitted on securely when she heard the door behind her open. Ruby swung around, holding the pistol behind her.

Jennifer strode into the room, spotted Ruby, and ground to a stop. Behind Jennifer, the solid wood door slowly swung shut. Its click masked the snick of the safety catch being pushed off by Ruby.

“What are you doing here? Where is Chance?”

Before Ruby could reply, a thunderclap rang out. The windows' panes rattled as the 84mm HEAT rocket fired by Boucher boomed out.

“What the hell was that?” Jennifer instinctively turned toward the sound, alarm on her face. Then another boom, as the rocket struck and exploded. This one was closer, much louder. Jennifer ran to the window.

Ruby stood stock-still. In her mind's eye, she could see Boucher bring the launcher down from his shoulder, crack open the loading port, and shove in the second round, then raise it to his shoulder and place his eye to the sights. Her body tensed.

Jennifer saw the expression on Ruby's face. That Ruby had shown no surprise at the explosions registered with her. Jennifer halted again in midstride, and her hand reached for the gun on her belt. It was moving like a blur of lightning.

Equally fast, Ruby's hand came out from behind her back.

The sight of the silenced weapon almost froze Jennifer, but the point of no return had been crossed. She clawed out her weapon, going for it,
knowing
it was futile, yet
hoping
.

Jennifer's weapon started to come level, aligning on Ruby. Her finger had already completed half the trigger squeeze.

*   *   *

Boucher's first rocket slammed into the roadblock on the road to Ashoka Hotel. Fired from four hundred meters away, the FFV551 HEAT round punched through the waist-high wall of sandbags and ravaged the men behind. There were no screams. None of the four men survived long enough to scream.

The six at the other end of the road were alive, but overwhelmed by the shock and by the debris that billowed out and now lay like a dark cloud over the roadblock. They were trying to figure out where the attack had come from when there was another massive flare of sound and light.

Boucher had fired again.

The second shot, an FFV441B HE rocket, was aimed at the hotel's eighth floor. It slammed explosively into the wall of the hotel, missing a window by inches. The thick stone walls stopped the HE round, but Boucher's job was not to cause damage. It was to cause a diversion.

The explosion echoed harshly through the eighth floor, rattling the windows, shattering some. Bits of plaster broke free from the ceilings.

*   *   *

The second explosion masked the plop of the silenced pistol in Ruby's hand. The 9-millimeter round caught Jennifer in her face, just above the upper lip. She was thrown backward. The pistol in her hand fired. The bullet thudded into the ceiling, sending out gouts of plaster.

Jennifer hit the ground with a sickening thud. Life deserted her.

The smell of blood rose, mingling with the smoke curling out of the Browning in Ruby's hand. For a second she froze, but her training took over.

Time was short. She raced for the door.

*   *   *

Ravinder was pacing the corridor on the eighth floor when Boucher's first rocket demolished the roadblock. Galvanized, he ran for the elevator; he had to get to the control room. He was halfway there when the second rocket struck, just a few windows away from the conference hall.

Silence returned. But he knew the attack had just begun and that rockets fired from a distance could only be a diversion.

From the other end of the hallway, he saw Chance and Peled racing toward him. They had only one thought: The delegates needed to be secured.

“Code Red.”
Grabbing the radio from his belt, Ravinder snapped into it. “I say again, Code Red. Lock down the floors.”

*   *   *

Outside. Boucher dropped the rocket launcher and raced away, headed to the cabstand two hundred meters down the road. He would commandeer a car from there. In his head, he had already begun to race toward the airport.

What Boucher had not factored in were the snipers on all sides of the hotel roof. Ruby had known of them, but had conveniently forgotten to mention them when the two Aussies showed some reluctance during her briefing. Their lives meant little to her, considering she was putting her own on the line.

Despite the confusion below, the Indian Army sniper manning the side from which Boucher had fired was watching his area with eagle eyes. He spotted Boucher when he started running. Though he had seen the flares of the launcher's back blast, he had not seen Boucher due to the overhang of a tree. But the minute Boucher ran for the cabstand, that cover had been removed.

The sniper did not hesitate. Rocket launchers going off and men running away from the place they'd been fired. For him, the picture was clear. The weapon in his hands steadied. His crosshairs sought out the running man and homed in. He took a lead to compensate for the target's motion. His finger curled around the trigger of his Dragunov sniper rifle and began to squeeze.

Its 7.62
×
54mm rimless round raced forward at a velocity of 830 meters per second and covered the distance before Boucher had managed to take one more stride. The bullet smashed into Boucher's back, tearing out his heart.

No second shot was required.

*   *   *

Having dropped Thakur off at the conference hall, Mohite was returning to the control room. He was in the elevator when the rockets exploded. The canned music playing kept him from hearing either of the blasts. Unaware that the summit was under attack, he was entering the control room when Ravinder's voice erupted out of the radio.

“Code Red!”
Ravinder's voice was strident with urgency. “I say again, Code Red. Lock down the floors.”

“What the hell is happening?” Mohite asked the men at the monitors.

*   *   *

The minute Ontong heard the first rocket fired by Boucher explode, he grabbed hold of the rocket launcher from his van. He knew Boucher's second one would soon be on its way.

He had already loaded the launcher, with a second also ready to go. After double-checking everything, Ontong shouldered the weapon and stepped out of the bushes as the second rocket fired by Boucher slammed against the top-floor walls.

Starting the count, Ontong steadied the launcher on his shoulder and took careful aim.

Ten, nine, eight …
Ontong fired.

*   *   *

Ontong's HEAT round smashed into the security post at the hotel's entry gate. Its boom, much closer now, echoed dully through the control room.

Mohite ran to the monitor for the main gate. It had suddenly gone dark.

Unaware that the rocket had killed the camera, Mohite thumped the monitor, trying to will it back to life.

“What the fuck happened?”

*   *   *

Reloading swiftly, Ontong was now in a hurry to get it over with and get clear. He had no idea what had happened to Boucher, but didn't wish to tarry here a second longer than he had to.

Moving swiftly to his left, he got the security post at the hotel exit gate into his gunsight. Hurriedly steadying himself, he fired again. But in his hurry to finish and get away, he forgot that the Maruti van behind him was on his left when he had fired the first time. When he moved left to acquire the second target, he had strayed too far to the left. The van was now directly behind him, just meters away.

He'd made a small mistake, but a fatal one.

The furiously flaming back blast of the rocket launcher caught the van head-on. Ontong had reversed the van before he'd parked it, so he could take the weapon out from the luggage compartment and bring it into use instantly. So the back blast caused the fuel tank to explode, smashing the van into smithereens. Flaming shards of metal sliced out in every direction, scything through everything in their way.

Ontong was one of those things.

*   *   *

Ontong's second rocket destroyed the security post at the hotel's exit gate. Another monitor in front of Mohite went blank as its camera too succumbed. However, the carnage at both gates was still visible from the peripheral vision of the cameras mounted in the porch. He could see that both posts were in serious trouble.

Galvanized, Mohite grabbed at his radio and screamed, “We are under attack! Both gates are down. All seventh-floor security personnel and reserve guards move down and reinforce the lobby.” His voice was shrill with anxiety. “They must not get through. Seal everything off.”

He kept shouting instructions into the radio as he ran. Accompanied by the three men held in reserve in the control room, he ran for the elevator. As it opened, he grabbed both the elevator guards also and hauled them inside. They all went down. And responding to his orders, the guards at the stairwells on either side also grabbed their weapons and headed down.