Chapter One
USS Phantom
4 April 2104
Carter wanted to see the sun again. Eighteen days on a submerged submarine seemed to have made time crawl by. Crossing the Atlantic while avoiding enemy naval patrols had necessarily prolonged the voyage. Carter and his team had passed the time exercising, reviewing mission plans, and maintaining equipment, but there were still too many idle hours, too much time to think. The waiting would be over soon. The Phantom was now nearing the French coast.
Carter had always been accustomed to getting to battle quickly. On this mission, there had been too much time to think about how important and potentially symbolic the current mission could be and how it could go wrong. Waiting was the curse of the soldier; it was the precursor to doubt.
There was a knock at the hatch of the cabin he was sharing with Williams. “Enter,” Carter said.
McNamara entered with Williams close behind. McNamara was carrying a bottle of whiskey and three paper cups.
“A good night to you, Lieutenant Colonel Carter,” McNamara said.
“What’s up, Mac?” Carter asked, setting the book that he had been reading.
“Boss, it is now 2401 Zulu, April 4th, 2104. Red Team went fully operational and took to the field five years ago today. That, sir, calls for a drink,” McNamara said.
“Mac, you know that booze is contraband on a submarine,” Carter said with less-than-heartfelt admonishment.
“Yes, sir, but that rule was made by officers. NCOs know better than to worry about such foolishness. Besides, we’re not crew on this tub.” McNamara said, placing the bottle on a small writing desk that was bolted to the cabin’s bulkhead. “We also know that any paranormal could chug a whole bottle of this stuff all by himself and not even get a buzz. It’s symbolic.”
He poured generous amounts of the whiskey into each cup and handed two of them to Carter and Williams. “Boss, if you would do the honors?”
Carter raised his cup. “To Red Team, the living and the dead,” he toasted.
“Red Team, the living and the dead,” Williams and McNamara said in unison, then drank.
“How is our team?” Carter asked.
“Edgy,” McNamara said. “They can’t wait to get out of this metal tube and get the job done. They’re a good bunch, but I still miss the old gang, even Muller.”
“Times change, Mac,” Carter said.
“Indeed,” Williams agreed. “For a brief time, five years ago, Red Team was unique. Now, with the formation of the Paranormal Army Corps, the new FIRE Teams are preeminent.”
“Well,” Carter said, “even if Red Team is disbanded, we’re all still unique. But with the forming of the Paranormal Army Corps, paranormal operations have become a lot more organized. There’s a full division of paranormal infantry now, plus an airborne brigade, a commando battalion and an aviation regiment. We just can’t play things as loose as Red, White and Blue Teams did. The PAC is effectively a fifth armed service and separate from the rest of the military. Counting the FNF personnel, the PAC has over twelve thousand members.”
“Sure,” McNamara concurred, “I understand the reorganization; normal troops just slow paranormals down. But Red Team was together for over two years. We had good mojo.”
“I miss the old gang too, but they were needed elsewhere to lead other teams,” Carter said. “If it weren’t for Pope’s grudge, Brandon would have his own team.”
“That’s a small matter, Douglas,” Williams said.
“The hell it is,” Carter retorted. “Team Delta should have been yours, but Pope called his Daddy and had you sidetracked. I won’t forget or forgive that, Brandon, even if you will.”
“I’m quite content to be your XO, and Monica is a good leader and an excellent officer,” Williams countered.
“Yes, she’s good. But you’re better and more experienced.” Carter said.
“If she heard you say that, you might be sleeping on the couch when you get home," McNamara observed.
“Just because she’s my wife doesn’t mean I can’t be honest about her abilities. She deserves to lead a team, but so does Brandon. She’d be the first to agree with me,” Carter said. “She tried to turn the Team Delta command down, but General Hicks overruled her.”
“Don’t misunderstand me. I loathe Colonel Pope, but dwelling on that loathing accomplishes nothing,” Williams said with his normal, somewhat annoying calmness. “I’ll probably kill him one day. But until that day, I shall endeavor not to think about him more than is necessary.”
“They offered me my own team, too,” McNamara said. “But I’d have had to let them make me an officer, and I just couldn’t let that happen. The general didn’t argue with me about not taking a command. I don’t know rather to be grateful or insulted.”
“I think he knows that some soldiers are just meant to be sergeants,” Carter assured him.
The electronic chime of the Phantom’s intercom interrupted the conversation. Carter activated the system. “Carter,” he answered.
“Ensign Garver, Sir,” the voice from the speaker said. “The captain asked me to inform you that we are now two hours from launch point.”
“Understood,” Carter responded. He turned to Williams and McNamara. “Have the team assembled in the ward room for a final briefing in five minutes. Then I want to run equipment and weapons checks one more time. Make sure to go over our insertion and extraction plans with Chief Donner.”
The two men left to go about their tasks. Carter, alone for the moment, retrieved a photograph of his wife from a duffle bag and allowed himself to look at it for several moments. She had once said that they would be each other’s reason for living. She had been right. She was his strength and his hope. He hoped he was giving as much to her. “Wish me luck,” he said to the photograph.
***
When Carter entered the Phantom’s ward room, the team was seated around the small conference table. He smiled when he saw that each had a paper cup filled with whiskey in front of them. McNamara stood and handed a freshly-filled cup to Carter.
“Found another reason to celebrate, have we?” Carter asked.
“Boss, aside from this being Red Team’s operational anniversary, tonight will be another milestone in history,” McNamara announced. “Tonight FIRE Team Alpha will be the first United States and allied military unit to conduct offensive wartime operations in Western Europe since World War Two. You’re damn right that calls for a drink.”
“Okay, Mac,” Carter said, “But this time the honor is yours.”
McNamara raised his glass. “To the Fast Intervention Raiding and Espionage teams,” McNamara toasted. “And to FIRE Team Alpha, good fortune,” he added.
With the toast over, Carter began the briefing. “All right, you’ve known for a while that this mission is in Europe, and you’ve probably figured out that it’s some kind of rescue mission. But until now, you haven’t been told what our specific target will be,” Carter said. “Our target is the central detention center for the WCA’s Directorate for Public Safety.”
“The secret police,” Sergeant Sharron Roth observed.
Carter turned to her, seeing hatred in her bright, hazel-colored eyes. “That’s right, Roth. The facility is not only where they hold their most important political prisoners, it is also the Directorate for Public Safety’s headquarters, so we’ll be leaving the Directorate a little present in their computer system while we’re there.”
Roth passed a hand through her brown hair. “They torture and kill their prisoners,” she said.
Carter looked at her for several seconds. Roth’s parents had both been captured and killed by the DPS in Israel as that country finally fell to invading WCA armies. Her body had visibly tensed at the mention of her parent’s murderers. For her, the mission was now fiercely personal.
“What they do to their prisoners is well-known,” Carter said. “This mission will give some of those prisoners a fighting chance to live. But we’re only here to get one man out.”
Carter called up several photographs of a bearded, middle-aged man on the bulkhead-mounted view screen. "This is Alec Mertens. Until his capture three months ago, he was the leader of the underground resistance to the WCA in Brussels, Belgium. Our job is to extract him and, in the process, allow as many prisoners as possible to get away.”
“So we’ll be using the larger prison-break to as a diversion to get Mertens out?” a bearded American sergeant asked. He was dark haired, broad-shouldered and stocky, a wrestler’s build.
“That’s right, Sains,” Carter said. “But we’re not just throwing the prisoners under the bus. The local underground has been alerted and will be ready to help them evade recapture, and we’ll destroy most of the vehicles and aircraft that would have been locally available for pursuit,” he added. “Most of them will probably still be recaptured or killed, but at least they’ll have a fighting chance.”
The next to speak was Christopher Burgett, a tall, slim American master sergeant with short black hair. “Sir, if the enemy has had Mertens for three months, what good will he be to us? I mean, the resistance must have completely changed their organization and procedures after he was captured. Besides that, even if they haven’t broken him mentally, he’ll sure as hell be broken physically.”
“That’s not our problem,” Carter responded. “We’ve been tasked with getting him out. However, you should consider this. We’ll be blowing the hell out of a prison that represents the power of the WCA, a place whose very existence is used to terrify people into obedience. We’ll be showing that the WCA and the DPS isn’t as all-powerful as everyone thinks. On top of that, we’ll be showing the European resistance fighters, who have been fighting the WCA with very little outside help for thirteen years, that they aren’t alone anymore.” Carter’s eyes panned over the team. “Any other questions?”
A question came from Okesa Nagura, an FNF Master Sergeant originally from the Kyoto, Japan corporate exclusion zone. “Sir, what are our orders concerning Mister Mertens if things should go badly and we are unable to extract him?”
Carter met her eyes, which were an extraordinarily light shade of green. “If for any reason we are unable to extract Mertens, he is to be killed.” Carter replied. “We’ll be doing him a favor. I don’t even want to think about what the enemy would do to him after a failed rescue attempt.”
Nagura nodded. “Understood,” she said, brushing aside a strand of ink-black hair that had escaped the restraint of the elastic band that held it in a short ponytail.
“All right, let’s go over the assault plan one more time,” Carter said. “Then it’ll be time to gear up and get going.”
***
Hangars were usually noisy places alive with sound of aircraft engines, power tools and metal clanging against metal reverberating off bulkheads and decks. But the forward hangar of the Phantom was quiet. Work was done with rubber-coated tools so that even if that one was accidentally dropped or struck another piece of equipment, the sound would not betray the submarine’s presence to a listening enemy vessel. Carter noted the difference between the Phantom and the conventional carriers he had been aboard. Watching the flight performing tasks that would normally produce a great deal of noise while making virtually no sound was, for Carter an almost surreal experience. Adding to the strangeness was the red light that illuminated the hangar. The red light had replaced the normal lighting twenty minutes ago so that Team Alpha and the flight crews’ eyes could adjust to the darkness they would have to work in when the Phantom surfaced and launched the helicopters.
The Phantom’s two forward hangars currently housed Team Alpha’s two Mohawk assault helicopters, while the aft hangar held the Cheyenne attack helicopter that would provide welcome air support for his team during the coming mission. The Phantom and her three sister ships were submersible helicopter carriers built from the keel up to insert and extract special operations forces. This was the Phantom’s first operational voyage.
Carter and his team waited in a ready-room adjacent to the hangar. From the hatch’s threshold, he watched for the deck safety officer’s permission to cross the deck and board the Mohawks. Chief Warrant Officer Alan Donner, the mission’s flight leader, and his pilots carefully inspected each of the sleek, slate-gray aircraft, paying particular attention to the missiles and rockets in the bays recessed into the fuselage and housed in pods protruding from the aircrafts’ sides. When they were satisfied, they closed the bay doors and gave the deck officer a ‘thumbs up’ sign. The deck officer waved the team over and they crossed the deck to board the aircraft. They were each laden with eighty pounds of weapons, ammunition, armor and equipment but were seemingly unencumbered by the weight.
Carter let his team pass by him as they walked to the helicopters. He looked each of them in the eye as they passed; the red lighting combined with the camouflage paint on their faces, and the black jumpsuits and body armor they wore gave them a fierce, almost demonic appearance. Nagura smiled slightly as she passed, but the others either simply nodded or merely allowed their own eyes to acknowledge him. He stopped the last in line, sensing that the woman was unusually ill-at-ease.
“You’ve been pretty quiet the last few days, DeFontain. Is there anything I should know about?” he asked the young Jamaican woman. She seemed so tense that her spine might snap.
“No, sir,” she answered, in thickly-accented English. “It is just first-battle nerves.”
“You saw lots of action in your old unit,” Carter said.
“Sir, you know that I declined to have my para-gene activated when I first joined the Army. I didn’t realize how many lives I might save with my gene activated until I’d actually seen Team Bravo in action when Sacramento was liberated. Back in my old unit, I was the team medic. I didn’t even carry a weapon. When I volunteered to go through the activation process, I had never considered even trying out for a unit like a FIRE team. Then before I knew it, I was through the FIRE team selection process and my para-gene had been activated. I got two weeks to get a handle on my new abilities, and then I went through eighteen months of operator training and was assigned to Team Alpha. My head is still spinning. I’m afraid that I will let you all down.”
“Sherri,” Carter responded quietly, placing a hand on her right shoulder. “You’ve been training with us for six weeks. You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have full confidence in you. I wouldn’t have brought you along for this mission if anyone on the team had objected. Not one of them did. Trust your training and trust the team. You’ll be fine."
DeFontain smiled slightly and relaxed a bit. “Thank you, sir.”
She climbed aboard the lead helicopter and Carter followed her, looking back to see Williams closing the large sliding doors of the passenger compartment of the second aircraft. Although each Mohawk could accommodate ten fully equipped troops, dividing the team into two aircraft guarded against losing the entire unit in the event one chopper was shot down or simply crashed. Even if that should occur, the surviving team members would attempt to carry out the mission. Additionally, if one Mohawk should be somehow disabled, the second could still extract the entire team along with Mertens.
The Mohawks’ co-pilot turned and handed a communication headset to Carter. “Sir, Commander Owens for you,” he said.
Carter accepted the headset. “Carter. Go ahead, commander.”
“We just got fresh telemetry from our drone,” Owen said. “We have clear weather and calm seas for launch. Moonlight is negligible. I’m going to take her up.”
“Thanks, commander,” Carter told the Phantom’s commanding officer.
“Good luck and good hunting,” Owens added.
“Same to you, commander, and thanks for the ride,” Carter said.
Carter felt the air pressure lessen as the Phantom began to ascend. Even as the sub was rising, the Mohawk pilots started the two turbo-jets that were mounted above the passenger doors on either side of the fuselage. In seconds, electric servos would unfold the main rotors and they would begin would begin to turn. Even in the sound-dampened crew compartment, the vibrations could be felt as the machine came to life.
Great steel and carbon composite doors opened above the helicopters, retracting along the hull. Cool, fresh air rushed into the hanger as maglev elevators lifted helicopters onto the sub’s foredeck. The Mohawks’ main rotors came up to speed and the helicopters rose from the deck and into the sky.
Using a video screen built into the arm of his seat, Carter saw the second Mohawk take position behind the lead craft and the Cheyenne gunship dart ahead. He watched the Phantom submerge and disappear. The whole launch had taken place with the Phantom on the surface for less than three minutes; it was fully submerged again less than ninety seconds after the choppers were aloft. Carter was impressed by the efficiency of the Phantom’s crew.
At first, only ocean could be seen from the small window next to Carter. He knew that most people wouldn’t be able to see even that with the naked eye. Forty minutes later a beach could be seen. Minutes after that, the motion-blurred form of trees and the occasional building were visible. Flying at nearly three hundred knots at heights no greater than seventy-five feet, the Mohawks were well below enemy radar; they would be there and gone before any observers on the ground could visually identify them as aircraft. High efficiency mufflers silenced all but the sound of their rotor blades slicing into the air. The pilots were themselves paranormals and the Mohawk’s advanced avionics were designed to complement their enhanced reflexes. This meant that the entire journey could be could be made at minimum altitude and maximum speed.
“Five minutes out, sir,” the pilot told Carter through the chopper’s intercom.
“Right,” Carter replied. He turned to the part of the team that was with him and opened a secure radio channel to the members on the second Mohawk. “Listen up, people! We’re five minutes out. Remember, the enemy has random roving patrols for fifty kilometers out from the target. There’s no telling if we’ll run into one or not. If we do, avoid detection if possible. If we have to engage, make it quick, make it quiet.” His order was acknowledged and the team began making last-minute equipment checks.
The Mohawks didn’t land when they reached the forest clearing that the team would disembark in; they merely slowed to seventy kilometers per hour and descended to twenty feet AGL. The team simply jumped, one from each side of each helicopter until all were out. They hit the ground and rolled into a prone firing stance, forming a rough circle.
Using the thermal imaging feature of the micro-electronic scopes mounted on each of their personal weapons and their multi-optic goggles, the team scanned the tree line for any activity. Carter, however, used only his eyes. His night vision was not only superior to any electronic device but was also not subject to the limited field of vision imposed by such devices. No one found an enemy.
“Form on me,” Carter ordered. “We’re twenty clicks from the target. We should cover that in about an hour. Brains, you have point; Grumble, take the rear; Bandaid, you stay close to me,” Carter said, using each operator’s tactical call signs. “The rest of you form up and move out. We’re on strict noise discipline, and watch your spacing.”
Sains sprinted away for a few seconds before the team followed him at slightly slower pace. The forest was thick, having not been managed by human hands in many years. Team Alpha moved through it like wraiths, their enhanced reflexes allowing them to move at what would have been a sprinting pace for unenhanced humans without compromising silence. Half an hour later, Sains stopped and took cover behind a fallen tree. The rest of the team instantly went to cover as well.
“Eight man patrol, half a click out,” he whispered into the microphone attached to his helmet. “Lightly armed, making a lot of noise.” He closed his eyes, filtering through the thoughts of each man until he settled on the patrol’s leader. Focusing, he achieved a telepathic link. “The leader is bored. He’s more interested in the bottle of the booze under his bunk at his barracks. Recommend we let them pass.”
“Confirmed, we let them pass,” Carter concurred.
The enemy patrol came as close fifty feet to Team Alpha’s position. Confident that they were safe in their own territory, their pace was leisurely and their attitude was casual. As they passed him, Sains concentrated on the sergeant leading the patrol. None of the enemy soldiers had any inkling that they were being observed.
When the patrol was far enough away, Carter keyed his radio. “Did you get anything?”
“Affirmative,” Sains said. “There are two other enemy roving patrols. One is five clicks to the east, the other five clicks to the west. We shouldn’t run into them, but if we do, the recognition password is ‘wormwood’.”
“Well done,” Carter said. “Move out, team, same formation.”
***
From concealed positions just behind the trees, the team could see that the prison compound lay in an open clearing in thick forest and was surrounded by three hundred yards of open ground and a triple-layer, thirty-foot tall chain link perimeter fence nearly two kilometers around. The compound itself held six buildings: the main prison building, three troop barracks for the Directorate’s forces, an administration building, and a large garage. The prison building itself was circled by another fence that separated it from the buildings in the compound. There were also four anti-aircraft emplacements, several equipment sheds and ten guard booths around the inner fence, with another five guard towers at intervals around its perimeter.
The compound also had a heliport with six landing pads and four hangars, which, if the team’s intelligence was correct, held four helicopters. There was also a small control tower between the perimeter and compound fences to the east of the prison compound. It was surrounded by a separate triple-layer fence with a guard-booth at the only gate.
In the center of the compound was the prison building itself. Seven stories in height and totaling one and a half million square feet of internal space, its outer walls were two meters thick and constructed of polished artificial granite that was as smooth as glass. Except for two massive blast-doors in the front and rear, there were no windows or openings of any kind. Ventilation was accomplished through hundreds of small underground ducts leading to concealed openings scattered throughout the prison grounds. The theory was that it would be impossible for an enemy to find and block all of the openings at once and the ducts themselves were far too small for prisoners to escape through.
The prisoners were held on the upper three floors. The floor immediately below was staffed at all times with at least one hundred armed and armored guards. Below that were living quarters for the entire guard force. This meant that any escaping prisoners would have to pass two entire floors full of guards. And, even if they managed to get out of the main building, they would be confronted by the headquarters garrison before even reaching the outer fences.
“Paint your targets,” Carter said. Roth, McNamara, Burgett and Sains switched their rifles’ scopes to target designation mode and painted four predetermined points on the main building’s walls with individually coded lasers. Once they had the lasers on their marks, they all grew very still.
“Is everyone set?” Carter asked. Each operator answered in the affirmative.
Carter activated his radio, tuned it to the frequency that allowed him to speak with the team’s helicopter crews, and spoke into the small microphone built into his helmet. “Machine Head, this is Prowler. Your targets are painted. I say again, your targets are painted.”
In a small forest clearing ten miles away from the prison, the Cheyenne gunship and the two Mohawk assault helicopters rose to hover just above the tree tops. “Confirmed, Prowler, the packages are ready,” the gunship’s weapons system operator replied from the chopper’s front seat.
“Send them,” Carter directed the gunship.
“On the way,” the weapons systems operator replied. As the missiles flew from the rails under helicopter’s weapon pylons toward their targets, the two Mohawk assault helicopters rose from their hiding place and moved toward the prison compound.
“Incoming,” Carter told his team.
Seconds later, the team could hear the missiles streak overhead. The first missile struck the building on the second floor and blasted a twelve-foot wide hole through the wall and into a lounge used by the prison guards. The next two missiles blew similar openings on the ground floor, on opposite sides of the building to allow escaping prisoners an exit from the building. The last struck the wall on the second floor but did not detonate on impact. Instead, it plowed its way through the exterior wall and several inner walls until its computerized fuse determined it had reached its programmed target: the prison’s main control room. The high energy plasma warhead filled the room with a cloud of superheated ionized gas that expanded at nearly the speed of light. Everything within the room was vaporized in an instant.
Moments later, the two Mohawks appeared from over the trees. The first fired a ripple of rockets into each of the four antiaircraft gun emplacements as the troops manning them struggled to respond to the attack. The other used its rockets to blast gaping holes in each of the fences to allow fleeing prisoners to escape. The Cheyenne appeared from another direction and fired six rockets into each of the DPS barracks as the men inside frantically attempted to dress and arm themselves. The Mohawks turned next to the four inner guard towers, raking them with automatic cannon fire. The Cheyenne’s next victim was the administration building; which received a volley of rockets.
The Cheyenne then turned its rockets on the garage. The exploding warheads ignited fuel and set the vehicles within it on fire. Next, the Cheyenne turned its thirty-millimeter automatic cannon on the dozens of vehicles parked around the garage. Following this, the three American helicopters laid waste to the heliport. All three helicopters then disappeared into the blackness, never rising above one hundred feet.
“Go!” Carter ordered. The compound had erupted in a chaotic mix of blaring alarms, flashing lights, running men, and fire. The smell of spent explosives, smoke and burning flesh laced the wind.
The team sprinted from the tree line; all of them covered the hundred meters to the perimeter fence in less than three seconds and leapt over it, landing on the run. Without slowing, McNamara and Williams fired on one of the inner fence’s guard booths using heavy sub-machine guns. The ultra-powerful rounds they fired pierced the bullet-resistant windows protecting the booth’s two occupants and riddled their torsos.
The entire team jumped the second fence and assaulted the prison building. The disorganized, shocked troops of the garrison offered little resistance. The compound was filled with half-dressed, surprised men still trying to comprehend what was happening. Carter’s team simply killed anyone who got between them and the main building.
When they reached the prison building, Carter and Sains each threw a hand grenade into the hole the Cheyenne’s missile had made in the second floor guard lounge. Instead of exploding after the standard six-second delay of conventional grenades, the sensor-fused grenades detonated three feet above the lounge’s floor; maximizing their killing power and allowing no time for the enemy troops to react. Sains and Carter vaulted into the destroyed lounge the instant after their grenades had exploded, followed quickly by the rest of the team.
The scene inside the building was no less chaotic than in the compound outside. Five guards lay dead in the lounge, victims of either the missile strike or exploding grenades. A discordant riot of shouting could be heard reverberating down the corridors. Screams of wounded men could be heard over the screeching of the alarms. Dust and smoke swirled around each other in the air.
Sains cocked his head slightly and held up a hand to stop the team from exiting the lounge. Using hand signals, he indicated that his psychic abilities had detected eight troops waiting for the team to exit the lounge. A few more gestures communicated the exact position of the enemy troops.
McNamara and Burgett flanked the threshold of the lounge’s doorway, the door itself having been destroyed by the explosions. Each tossed a grenade through the threshold; one left and one right.
Again the sensor-fused grenades exploded before hitting the ground, giving the prison guards no time to respond. Shrapnel tore through the guards. Sains did not sense any more guards in the corridor.
Carter switched his rifle’s scope to thermal imaging mode. Using the sensor to see the orange and red images of the guards through the lounge’s wall, he saw one of the heat-producing forms move slightly. He fired one round from his assault rifle through the wall, into the moving form. The figure stopped moving.
“Clear!” Carter said. “Proceed as planned.”
Carter led Burgett, Roth and DeFontain to the left and down a long corridor. The rest of the team followed Williams to the right, into a stairwell.
The guards had begun to rally. Five of them had taken position at a corridor junction and were defending the secondary control room, the objective of Carter and his group. The area around the room was a more secure area than the lounge. The walls were hardened to withstand a siege in case of a prisoner riot. Even Team Alpha’s ultra-powerful weapons could not penetrate them. Carter’s group was forced to seek shelter behind the walls of the preceding intersection as the guards maintained a constant barrage of gunfire. Carter could hear them calling for reinforcements.
“Keep up your fire!” Roth shouted. “They’ll give me my moment.”
“Right,” Carter said. “Give her cover!”
Carter, Burgett and DeFontain began a coordinated stream of gunfire that drove the defending guards to cover around the junction’s corners. Roth made an adjustment to her assault rifle’s scope. Keeping her body behind the wall, she moved her rifle around the corner, exposing only her hand and part of her arm to enemy fire.
The scope was connected electronically to a small video display that was projected onto her goggles’ left lens. This allowed her to see her enemy and aim her rifle through the scope’s sensors while remaining largely behind cover. She watched the enemy fire at the team for several seconds. Then there was a fraction of a second when all five of the guards allowed their heads to be exposed. In that instant she fired a five-round burst.
To her enhanced perception, that instant was extended in time. Even with her rifle firing at six hundred rounds per minute, she had aimed one bullet precisely at the head of each guard. The micro-explosive rifle bullets decapitated each guard and produced five clouds of pink mist.
“Move!” Carter ordered. The Alpha operators surged down the corridor, stopping at the junction where the decapitated guards lay.
“Set security,” Carter ordered.
DeFontain removed two grenades from her equipment harness. She set both grenades for proximity detonation and placed them on the floor just behind the junction’s corner.
“They’re set,” DeFontain reported; “Twenty seconds till they go active.” The team moved quickly away before the grenades armed themselves.
The single entrance to the secondary control room was located at the end of narrow, twenty-meter long corridor. The team charged down its length so quickly that the four troopers guarding the command center’s blast doors had no time to raise their weapons before being shot in the head at point-blank range.
“Get to work, Burgett,” Carter ordered, removing a tube of incendiary gel and detonators from a rear compartment of Burgett’s pack and handing them to the operator.
“It would have been faster to use a demo-pack,” Burgett observed.
“Faster, but no good, Carter said. “It would have damaged the equipment inside, and we need it intact and operational. That’s why we haven’t taken out the power station yet.”
Burgett opened the flashlight-sized tube of yellow gel and proceeded to squeeze it into the seams along the threshold of the blast door. He then placed four micro-detonators at roughly equal distances in the sticky gel.
“Ready,” he reported, taking a small remote detonation trigger from a pocket.
Carter quickly assured himself that DeFontain and Roth were well clear of the door, then moved away himself. “Do it.”
“Fire in the hole!” Burgett said and pushed the button.
A shower of sparks and molten metal spewed from the line of incendiary gel. Acrid smoke billowed as the gel melted through the door. Five seconds later, there was a loud clanging sound as the door fell into corridor.
The four operators charged into the control room. Carter and Burgett turned left, while DeFontain and Roth, hard on their heels, broke right. Each of them had a specific section to clear.
A guard had barely appeared from behind a filing cabinet when Carter shot him twice in the chest, then turned his muzzle on a second guard sheltering behind a large control console and aiming a handgun. Carter shot him in the shoulder, being careful to avoid any damage to the console. The explosive bullet blasted the guard’s arm from his body, spun him around, and sent him thudding to the floor, where Carter shot him in the head.
An unarmed technician leapt at DeFontain and tried to pull her rifle from her grasp. She drove her right foot into his left knee and felt bones shatter. The technician wailed in pain and collapsed onto his uninjured knee in front of her. She kicked him in the face, sending him flying into a wall six feet away. She shot him in the head as he slumped to the ground.
A burst of gunfire came from the far right corner and Roth reacted in a microsecond. Seeing each bullet as though she were watching a slow-motion replay, she sidestepped the barrage calmly, went to one knee as more shots passed over her, sighted on the guard carefully as he fired the rest of his magazine at her from behind a desk, then shot him in his left eye.
“Clear!” Carter shouted.
“Clear!” the other operators affirmed.
Carter went to the main control console. “I’ll open the cells and turn off the security system. You get to work on their computer.”
“On it,” Burgett acknowledged, stepping over the guard he had dispatched.
Carter turned to Roth and DeFontain. “You two watch our asses,” he ordered.
He keyed his radio. “Harvard from Prowler; do you copy?”
“Harvard; copy,” William’s voice replied. “In position and ready to proceed.”
“Stand by,” Carter ordered.
Carter flipped several switches and was able to see the over two thousand cells in the prison open on a bank of closed circuit television screens. Outnumbered hundreds to one and taken by surprise, the handful of guards still on the detention floors were quickly overwhelmed by escaping prisoners. Carter tripped more switches, opening the many blast doors that were intended to contain rioting prisoners in a single section of the prison.
Two floors above Carter, the cell doors opened and Williams and Sains entered Martens’ cell. Dressed in a filthy fluorescent-green jumpsuit, he was cringing and chained to the floor in the corner of the closet-like cell. Mertens was sickly-thin, his face covered by an ungroomed beard, and his eyes seemed hurt by the light coming from the corridor. The cell reeked of human waste and sweat. The corridor outside the cell was filling with confused, panicked prisoners.
Williams drew a twenty-eight inch sword from a scabbard on his back, pulled the chain restraining Mertens tight with his left hand. The hyper-alloy blade sliced cleanly through the carbon steel chain, freeing Mertens.
Williams spoke in perfect French. “Mr. Mertens, I am a United States military officer. You are coming with us,” he said, taking Merten’s by the arm and helping him to his feet. Mertens seemed incapable of standing without help.
Sains stepped closer and hoisted Mertens over his shoulder. “I’ve got him,” he said. “Just hang on, buddy,” he told Mertens.
Williams spoke into his radio. “Prowler, Harvard has the package. Repeat, we have the package.”
“Confirmed, Harvard, proceed with extraction.” Carter’s voice replied.
In the control room, Carter activated the prison’s public address system. Speaking in French, he addressed the prisoners. “Attention prisoners!” he said. “I am the leader of a multi-national force that is attacking this prison! Your cells are open and the security system has been disabled! All containment doors have been opened! There are breaches in the walls on this building’s first floor, in the southeast and northeast corners! The fences have been breached to the south, and there are underground members waiting nearby to assist you! Good luck!” He repeated his announcement in German and English.
Carter switched frequency on his radio. “Machine Head from Prowler, the team is ready for extraction. I repeat, ready for extraction.”
Outside, the three American helicopters were again over the prison compound. The Cheyenne fired another missile into the prison’s second floor wall, almost directly opposite the breach Team Alpha had entered through. Another missile from the Cheyenne blasted through the prison’s wall and destroyed its primary electrical control system.
One of the Mohawks strafed the troops fighting the fires in the compound with its fixed, nose-mounted fifty caliber machineguns. The other used its dual turret-mounted twenty millimeter automatic cannon to clear the prison guards from the building’s roof.
Inside, Carter felt the building shudder as the missiles fired by the Cheyenne struck the walls. The electricity failed suddenly and the room was then lit only by dim, red emergency lights. The computer monitors flickered as their battery backups kicked in. "That was the electrical room being taken out and our exit being opened,” Carter said. “Gadget, you ready?”
“Yes, boss,” Burgett answered, attaching a palm-sized, square-shaped device to one of the control room’s computers.
The device made a tell-tale whirring sound as the memory drive within it became active, imprinting a plague program onto the prison computer’s hard-drive. The beeping of electronic alarms began seconds later as the computer’s defensive software tried in vain to fight off the destructive software that the device had introduced.
“That’s it boss,” Burgett proclaimed. “The secret police’s whole computer network will be well and truly fucked in about ten minutes.”
“Good,” Carter said. He placed a time-delayed thermite grenade on the console that controlled the security system, ensuring that it could not easily be restored and used to lock down the facility. "Let’s move out.”
***
Williams and his group joined the flow of prisoners as they pushed toward the staircases leading to the lower levels and out of the building; the elevators useless now that the prison was without electrical power. When they reached the stairs, they separated themselves from the escaping prisoners and took the stairs up to the roof while the prisoners ran downward, toward the breaches in the prison’s wall. With Williams in the lead and Sains in rear still carrying Mertens, they moved upward.
Sains stopped suddenly, his psychic senses detecting danger. “Contact directly above us!”
There was a metallic clink and a Williams saw the pin from a conventional grenade bounce off the stair three feet in front of them. The grenade itself fell toward his group from the landing directly above them. In a single fluid motion, Williams lunged forward, caught the grenade in his left hand, twisted his body to fall onto his back against the stairs and threw the grenade back. He rolled onto his belly as the grenade exploded, pelting his back with bits of its former owner. McNamara and Nagura bounded over Williams before he could rise.
Having holstered her machine-pistol in favor of two palm-knives in anticipation of close combat in the tight confines of the stairwell, Nagura met the four surviving guards on the landing. She killed the first guard by slicing one of the five-inch hyper-alloy blades across the left side of his neck. Her more-than-human strength combined with the micron-sharp edge of her blade all but decapitated her enemy with single stroke; the head was only attached to the body by a few strands of skin and sinew.
Nagura’s right foot arched out, deflecting a guard’s rifle muzzle away from her with a low, inside crescent kick. She pivoted on her left foot and, in a single fluid motion, drove her right foot into the guard’s mid-section, sending him forcefully into a wall and shattering his ribcage. In blindingly fast succession, she thrust one blade and then the other through the ceramic and steel breast plate of the guard’s armor into his chest, then drew the blade in her right hand across his abdomen, slicing through his armor and opening an inches-deep gash that exposed his intestines.
McNamara seized a third guard by his collar, lifted him off his feet with his right hand and, wielding the man like a club, swung him into the fourth guard, knocking him violently into the wall. Still holding the third guard with one hand, McNamara tossed him over the stair’s safety rail into a fatal, seven-story fall. Getting to his knees, the fourth guard tried to raise his rifle. McNamara kicked him in the face, his enhanced strength crushing the man’s head between McNamara’s foot and the unyielding stone wall. McNamara felt the bone shatter under his boot and saw the front of the skull flatten and deform as gore spurted out of the eye sockets, nose and ears.
McNamara looked upward, seeing a clear path to the roof. “Clear!” he reported.
“Machine Head two-zero, this is Harvard coming out with four. Repeat, coming out with four.” Williams said into his radio before smashing open the door to the roof.
Carrying Mertens, Sains was the first to board the waiting Mohawk, its landing gear resting lightly on the rooftop. McNamara and Nagura followed with Williams behind them.
***
As Carter and his group exited the secondary control room, they heard the proximity grenades DeFontain had placed at the corridor junction detonate. Two of the guards that had tried to approach the Alpha operators had tripped the grenades’ motion sensors and were killed instantly by the blasts. The remaining four retreated around a corner.
“Go through them!” Carter ordered, firing a rifle burst toward the corner.
The group advanced toward the junction, firing as they moved. The guards were forced to stay behind the walls by the barrage until DeFontain and Burgett rounded the corner and fired three-round bursts into each guard.
Carter didn’t hesitate. “Come on,” he ordered.
Moving through the maze-like corridors, the four operators made their way toward the wall-breach created by the Cheyenne on level two, avoiding the stairs and the mass of manic prisoners. Bodies of dead prisoners and guards littered the floors. Screams could be heard as prisoners took vengeance on their captors instead of escaping. Red emergency lights gave a surreal quality to the chaos.
Gunfire could now be heard throughout the prison; some of the prisoners had apparently seized weapons from the guards and were putting them to use. Smoke was growing thicker in the air as fires started by enraged prisoners were added to those created by the missile strikes. Sprinklers had been activated, adding to the chaos by sending small streams of bloodstained water flowing down the corridors and making the floor slick. The scene was almost classically demonic.
Coming to another junction, Carter halted the group, his paranormal senses of hearing and smell telling him that there were enemies lying in wait around the corner. As Roth had done earlier, he used the camera display feature of his scope and goggles to look around the corner while keeping his body behind cover. He was greeted with gunfire; several bullets struck near where his hand and rifle had just been.
“Americans!” a voice from around the corner said in heavily-accented English. “We will kill these prisoners if you do not surrender!”
Lying on his belly, Carter again used his scope to peer around the corner. The image from the scope was displayed in a small video window on his left goggle lens. He moved his rifle around the corner. Through the electronic sensor, he saw six guards who had barricaded the corridor with office furniture and were holding three prisoners as hostages, one of them a blond, teenage girl.
Carter brought the weapon back around the corner. “Six guards have put up a barricade and they have three prisoners hostage,” he told his group.
“Americans!” one of the guards shouted. “Come out now or we kill them!”
Carter ignored the command. He briefly scanned the corridor the team was in, then drew a conventional .45 caliber pistol and attached its suppressor. He shot out the two nearby emergency light fixtures.
He turned to his teammates. “On three, I want all of you to take out the lights in the barricaded hallway. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Boss,” DeFontain injected, “If we take out the lights it’ll be pitch black. There won’t even be enough light for our light intensifiers and we might not be able to tell the hostages from the guards with thermal imaging.”
Burgett touched DeFontain’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. The boss has better night vision than any pair of hi-tech glasses will ever give you.”
“Get ready,” Carter ordered, ignoring the discussion of his abilities. “Three…two…one … go!,” he counted.
Roth, Burgett, and DeFontain burst around the corner and destroyed the light fixtures near the barricade, sending the corridor into total blackness. Protected by that blackness, Carter moved quickly to within six feet of the hostage-holding guards. Aiming carefully while still moving, he shot each guard in the face, just below the nose. His armor-piercing bullets plowed through their teeth and the back of their heads, destroying their brain stems and making tennis-ball-sized holes as they exited.
With the guards dead, Carter holstered his sidearm and activated the small flashlight built into his rifle’s fore-grip. He spoke to the prisoners in French. “Follow us,” he told them.
The flashlights from the rest of the Alpha operators pierced the darkness and they gathered around Carter. “Let’s go.”
In minutes they were looking down on the prison compound from the exit hole made by the Cheyenne. One of the Mohawks was waiting for them just above the ground while the Cheyenne hovered protectively nearby. The ground was littered with dead prisoners and guards. The buildings were still on fire and gunfire could be heard on all sides.
Carter activated his radio. “Machine Head one-zero, this is Prowler coming out with six. Repeat, coming out with six.”
Without warning her, he took the teenage girl in his arms and leapt the thirty feet to the ground. Burgett followed suit with another prisoner. Roth and DeFontain brought down the third. Once on the ground, Carter turned to the prisoners.
“You can’t come with us,” he shouted over the thunder of the helicopter’s rotors and battle sounds. “But we’ll cover you to the fence.” The girl hugged him and ran toward the fence. The team watched the rescued prisoners until they were through the fence and away. Roth, DeFontain and Burgett then boarded the waiting Mohawk.
Carter looked to the prison’s roof and saw the second Mohawk taking off and coming to a hover near the Cheyenne. “Harvard from Prowler,” Carter said into his radio. “Report status.”
William’s voice came through Carter’s speaker. “Harvard has the package and is ready for egress. All accounted for with no casualties.”
“Very well,” Carter replied. Assured that his mission was accomplished and each team member was accounted for, Carter boarded the Mohawk himself. The three helicopters sped away from the compound at treetop level. Leaving the prison compound in flames, they turned to rendezvous with another Phantom-class submarine for the journey home.
USS Phantom
4 April 2104
Carter wanted to see the sun again. Eighteen days on a submerged submarine seemed to have made time crawl by. Crossing the Atlantic while avoiding enemy naval patrols had necessarily prolonged the voyage. Carter and his team had passed the time exercising, reviewing mission plans, and maintaining equipment, but there were still too many idle hours, too much time to think. The waiting would be over soon. The Phantom was now nearing the French coast.
Carter had always been accustomed to getting to battle quickly. On this mission, there had been too much time to think about how important and potentially symbolic the current mission could be and how it could go wrong. Waiting was the curse of the soldier; it was the precursor to doubt.
There was a knock at the hatch of the cabin he was sharing with Williams. “Enter,” Carter said.
McNamara entered with Williams close behind. McNamara was carrying a bottle of whiskey and three paper cups.
“A good night to you, Lieutenant Colonel Carter,” McNamara said.
“What’s up, Mac?” Carter asked, setting the book that he had been reading.
“Boss, it is now 2401 Zulu, April 4th, 2104. Red Team went fully operational and took to the field five years ago today. That, sir, calls for a drink,” McNamara said.
“Mac, you know that booze is contraband on a submarine,” Carter said with less-than-heartfelt admonishment.
“Yes, sir, but that rule was made by officers. NCOs know better than to worry about such foolishness. Besides, we’re not crew on this tub.” McNamara said, placing the bottle on a small writing desk that was bolted to the cabin’s bulkhead. “We also know that any paranormal could chug a whole bottle of this stuff all by himself and not even get a buzz. It’s symbolic.”
He poured generous amounts of the whiskey into each cup and handed two of them to Carter and Williams. “Boss, if you would do the honors?”
Carter raised his cup. “To Red Team, the living and the dead,” he toasted.
“Red Team, the living and the dead,” Williams and McNamara said in unison, then drank.
“How is our team?” Carter asked.
“Edgy,” McNamara said. “They can’t wait to get out of this metal tube and get the job done. They’re a good bunch, but I still miss the old gang, even Muller.”
“Times change, Mac,” Carter said.
“Indeed,” Williams agreed. “For a brief time, five years ago, Red Team was unique. Now, with the formation of the Paranormal Army Corps, the new FIRE Teams are preeminent.”
“Well,” Carter said, “even if Red Team is disbanded, we’re all still unique. But with the forming of the Paranormal Army Corps, paranormal operations have become a lot more organized. There’s a full division of paranormal infantry now, plus an airborne brigade, a commando battalion and an aviation regiment. We just can’t play things as loose as Red, White and Blue Teams did. The PAC is effectively a fifth armed service and separate from the rest of the military. Counting the FNF personnel, the PAC has over twelve thousand members.”
“Sure,” McNamara concurred, “I understand the reorganization; normal troops just slow paranormals down. But Red Team was together for over two years. We had good mojo.”
“I miss the old gang too, but they were needed elsewhere to lead other teams,” Carter said. “If it weren’t for Pope’s grudge, Brandon would have his own team.”
“That’s a small matter, Douglas,” Williams said.
“The hell it is,” Carter retorted. “Team Delta should have been yours, but Pope called his Daddy and had you sidetracked. I won’t forget or forgive that, Brandon, even if you will.”
“I’m quite content to be your XO, and Monica is a good leader and an excellent officer,” Williams countered.
“Yes, she’s good. But you’re better and more experienced.” Carter said.
“If she heard you say that, you might be sleeping on the couch when you get home," McNamara observed.
“Just because she’s my wife doesn’t mean I can’t be honest about her abilities. She deserves to lead a team, but so does Brandon. She’d be the first to agree with me,” Carter said. “She tried to turn the Team Delta command down, but General Hicks overruled her.”
“Don’t misunderstand me. I loathe Colonel Pope, but dwelling on that loathing accomplishes nothing,” Williams said with his normal, somewhat annoying calmness. “I’ll probably kill him one day. But until that day, I shall endeavor not to think about him more than is necessary.”
“They offered me my own team, too,” McNamara said. “But I’d have had to let them make me an officer, and I just couldn’t let that happen. The general didn’t argue with me about not taking a command. I don’t know rather to be grateful or insulted.”
“I think he knows that some soldiers are just meant to be sergeants,” Carter assured him.
The electronic chime of the Phantom’s intercom interrupted the conversation. Carter activated the system. “Carter,” he answered.
“Ensign Garver, Sir,” the voice from the speaker said. “The captain asked me to inform you that we are now two hours from launch point.”
“Understood,” Carter responded. He turned to Williams and McNamara. “Have the team assembled in the ward room for a final briefing in five minutes. Then I want to run equipment and weapons checks one more time. Make sure to go over our insertion and extraction plans with Chief Donner.”
The two men left to go about their tasks. Carter, alone for the moment, retrieved a photograph of his wife from a duffle bag and allowed himself to look at it for several moments. She had once said that they would be each other’s reason for living. She had been right. She was his strength and his hope. He hoped he was giving as much to her. “Wish me luck,” he said to the photograph.
***
When Carter entered the Phantom’s ward room, the team was seated around the small conference table. He smiled when he saw that each had a paper cup filled with whiskey in front of them. McNamara stood and handed a freshly-filled cup to Carter.
“Found another reason to celebrate, have we?” Carter asked.
“Boss, aside from this being Red Team’s operational anniversary, tonight will be another milestone in history,” McNamara announced. “Tonight FIRE Team Alpha will be the first United States and allied military unit to conduct offensive wartime operations in Western Europe since World War Two. You’re damn right that calls for a drink.”
“Okay, Mac,” Carter said, “But this time the honor is yours.”
McNamara raised his glass. “To the Fast Intervention Raiding and Espionage teams,” McNamara toasted. “And to FIRE Team Alpha, good fortune,” he added.
With the toast over, Carter began the briefing. “All right, you’ve known for a while that this mission is in Europe, and you’ve probably figured out that it’s some kind of rescue mission. But until now, you haven’t been told what our specific target will be,” Carter said. “Our target is the central detention center for the WCA’s Directorate for Public Safety.”
“The secret police,” Sergeant Sharron Roth observed.
Carter turned to her, seeing hatred in her bright, hazel-colored eyes. “That’s right, Roth. The facility is not only where they hold their most important political prisoners, it is also the Directorate for Public Safety’s headquarters, so we’ll be leaving the Directorate a little present in their computer system while we’re there.”
Roth passed a hand through her brown hair. “They torture and kill their prisoners,” she said.
Carter looked at her for several seconds. Roth’s parents had both been captured and killed by the DPS in Israel as that country finally fell to invading WCA armies. Her body had visibly tensed at the mention of her parent’s murderers. For her, the mission was now fiercely personal.
“What they do to their prisoners is well-known,” Carter said. “This mission will give some of those prisoners a fighting chance to live. But we’re only here to get one man out.”
Carter called up several photographs of a bearded, middle-aged man on the bulkhead-mounted view screen. "This is Alec Mertens. Until his capture three months ago, he was the leader of the underground resistance to the WCA in Brussels, Belgium. Our job is to extract him and, in the process, allow as many prisoners as possible to get away.”
“So we’ll be using the larger prison-break to as a diversion to get Mertens out?” a bearded American sergeant asked. He was dark haired, broad-shouldered and stocky, a wrestler’s build.
“That’s right, Sains,” Carter said. “But we’re not just throwing the prisoners under the bus. The local underground has been alerted and will be ready to help them evade recapture, and we’ll destroy most of the vehicles and aircraft that would have been locally available for pursuit,” he added. “Most of them will probably still be recaptured or killed, but at least they’ll have a fighting chance.”
The next to speak was Christopher Burgett, a tall, slim American master sergeant with short black hair. “Sir, if the enemy has had Mertens for three months, what good will he be to us? I mean, the resistance must have completely changed their organization and procedures after he was captured. Besides that, even if they haven’t broken him mentally, he’ll sure as hell be broken physically.”
“That’s not our problem,” Carter responded. “We’ve been tasked with getting him out. However, you should consider this. We’ll be blowing the hell out of a prison that represents the power of the WCA, a place whose very existence is used to terrify people into obedience. We’ll be showing that the WCA and the DPS isn’t as all-powerful as everyone thinks. On top of that, we’ll be showing the European resistance fighters, who have been fighting the WCA with very little outside help for thirteen years, that they aren’t alone anymore.” Carter’s eyes panned over the team. “Any other questions?”
A question came from Okesa Nagura, an FNF Master Sergeant originally from the Kyoto, Japan corporate exclusion zone. “Sir, what are our orders concerning Mister Mertens if things should go badly and we are unable to extract him?”
Carter met her eyes, which were an extraordinarily light shade of green. “If for any reason we are unable to extract Mertens, he is to be killed.” Carter replied. “We’ll be doing him a favor. I don’t even want to think about what the enemy would do to him after a failed rescue attempt.”
Nagura nodded. “Understood,” she said, brushing aside a strand of ink-black hair that had escaped the restraint of the elastic band that held it in a short ponytail.
“All right, let’s go over the assault plan one more time,” Carter said. “Then it’ll be time to gear up and get going.”
***
Hangars were usually noisy places alive with sound of aircraft engines, power tools and metal clanging against metal reverberating off bulkheads and decks. But the forward hangar of the Phantom was quiet. Work was done with rubber-coated tools so that even if that one was accidentally dropped or struck another piece of equipment, the sound would not betray the submarine’s presence to a listening enemy vessel. Carter noted the difference between the Phantom and the conventional carriers he had been aboard. Watching the flight performing tasks that would normally produce a great deal of noise while making virtually no sound was, for Carter an almost surreal experience. Adding to the strangeness was the red light that illuminated the hangar. The red light had replaced the normal lighting twenty minutes ago so that Team Alpha and the flight crews’ eyes could adjust to the darkness they would have to work in when the Phantom surfaced and launched the helicopters.
The Phantom’s two forward hangars currently housed Team Alpha’s two Mohawk assault helicopters, while the aft hangar held the Cheyenne attack helicopter that would provide welcome air support for his team during the coming mission. The Phantom and her three sister ships were submersible helicopter carriers built from the keel up to insert and extract special operations forces. This was the Phantom’s first operational voyage.
Carter and his team waited in a ready-room adjacent to the hangar. From the hatch’s threshold, he watched for the deck safety officer’s permission to cross the deck and board the Mohawks. Chief Warrant Officer Alan Donner, the mission’s flight leader, and his pilots carefully inspected each of the sleek, slate-gray aircraft, paying particular attention to the missiles and rockets in the bays recessed into the fuselage and housed in pods protruding from the aircrafts’ sides. When they were satisfied, they closed the bay doors and gave the deck officer a ‘thumbs up’ sign. The deck officer waved the team over and they crossed the deck to board the aircraft. They were each laden with eighty pounds of weapons, ammunition, armor and equipment but were seemingly unencumbered by the weight.
Carter let his team pass by him as they walked to the helicopters. He looked each of them in the eye as they passed; the red lighting combined with the camouflage paint on their faces, and the black jumpsuits and body armor they wore gave them a fierce, almost demonic appearance. Nagura smiled slightly as she passed, but the others either simply nodded or merely allowed their own eyes to acknowledge him. He stopped the last in line, sensing that the woman was unusually ill-at-ease.
“You’ve been pretty quiet the last few days, DeFontain. Is there anything I should know about?” he asked the young Jamaican woman. She seemed so tense that her spine might snap.
“No, sir,” she answered, in thickly-accented English. “It is just first-battle nerves.”
“You saw lots of action in your old unit,” Carter said.
“Sir, you know that I declined to have my para-gene activated when I first joined the Army. I didn’t realize how many lives I might save with my gene activated until I’d actually seen Team Bravo in action when Sacramento was liberated. Back in my old unit, I was the team medic. I didn’t even carry a weapon. When I volunteered to go through the activation process, I had never considered even trying out for a unit like a FIRE team. Then before I knew it, I was through the FIRE team selection process and my para-gene had been activated. I got two weeks to get a handle on my new abilities, and then I went through eighteen months of operator training and was assigned to Team Alpha. My head is still spinning. I’m afraid that I will let you all down.”
“Sherri,” Carter responded quietly, placing a hand on her right shoulder. “You’ve been training with us for six weeks. You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have full confidence in you. I wouldn’t have brought you along for this mission if anyone on the team had objected. Not one of them did. Trust your training and trust the team. You’ll be fine."
DeFontain smiled slightly and relaxed a bit. “Thank you, sir.”
She climbed aboard the lead helicopter and Carter followed her, looking back to see Williams closing the large sliding doors of the passenger compartment of the second aircraft. Although each Mohawk could accommodate ten fully equipped troops, dividing the team into two aircraft guarded against losing the entire unit in the event one chopper was shot down or simply crashed. Even if that should occur, the surviving team members would attempt to carry out the mission. Additionally, if one Mohawk should be somehow disabled, the second could still extract the entire team along with Mertens.
The Mohawks’ co-pilot turned and handed a communication headset to Carter. “Sir, Commander Owens for you,” he said.
Carter accepted the headset. “Carter. Go ahead, commander.”
“We just got fresh telemetry from our drone,” Owen said. “We have clear weather and calm seas for launch. Moonlight is negligible. I’m going to take her up.”
“Thanks, commander,” Carter told the Phantom’s commanding officer.
“Good luck and good hunting,” Owens added.
“Same to you, commander, and thanks for the ride,” Carter said.
Carter felt the air pressure lessen as the Phantom began to ascend. Even as the sub was rising, the Mohawk pilots started the two turbo-jets that were mounted above the passenger doors on either side of the fuselage. In seconds, electric servos would unfold the main rotors and they would begin would begin to turn. Even in the sound-dampened crew compartment, the vibrations could be felt as the machine came to life.
Great steel and carbon composite doors opened above the helicopters, retracting along the hull. Cool, fresh air rushed into the hanger as maglev elevators lifted helicopters onto the sub’s foredeck. The Mohawks’ main rotors came up to speed and the helicopters rose from the deck and into the sky.
Using a video screen built into the arm of his seat, Carter saw the second Mohawk take position behind the lead craft and the Cheyenne gunship dart ahead. He watched the Phantom submerge and disappear. The whole launch had taken place with the Phantom on the surface for less than three minutes; it was fully submerged again less than ninety seconds after the choppers were aloft. Carter was impressed by the efficiency of the Phantom’s crew.
At first, only ocean could be seen from the small window next to Carter. He knew that most people wouldn’t be able to see even that with the naked eye. Forty minutes later a beach could be seen. Minutes after that, the motion-blurred form of trees and the occasional building were visible. Flying at nearly three hundred knots at heights no greater than seventy-five feet, the Mohawks were well below enemy radar; they would be there and gone before any observers on the ground could visually identify them as aircraft. High efficiency mufflers silenced all but the sound of their rotor blades slicing into the air. The pilots were themselves paranormals and the Mohawk’s advanced avionics were designed to complement their enhanced reflexes. This meant that the entire journey could be could be made at minimum altitude and maximum speed.
“Five minutes out, sir,” the pilot told Carter through the chopper’s intercom.
“Right,” Carter replied. He turned to the part of the team that was with him and opened a secure radio channel to the members on the second Mohawk. “Listen up, people! We’re five minutes out. Remember, the enemy has random roving patrols for fifty kilometers out from the target. There’s no telling if we’ll run into one or not. If we do, avoid detection if possible. If we have to engage, make it quick, make it quiet.” His order was acknowledged and the team began making last-minute equipment checks.
The Mohawks didn’t land when they reached the forest clearing that the team would disembark in; they merely slowed to seventy kilometers per hour and descended to twenty feet AGL. The team simply jumped, one from each side of each helicopter until all were out. They hit the ground and rolled into a prone firing stance, forming a rough circle.
Using the thermal imaging feature of the micro-electronic scopes mounted on each of their personal weapons and their multi-optic goggles, the team scanned the tree line for any activity. Carter, however, used only his eyes. His night vision was not only superior to any electronic device but was also not subject to the limited field of vision imposed by such devices. No one found an enemy.
“Form on me,” Carter ordered. “We’re twenty clicks from the target. We should cover that in about an hour. Brains, you have point; Grumble, take the rear; Bandaid, you stay close to me,” Carter said, using each operator’s tactical call signs. “The rest of you form up and move out. We’re on strict noise discipline, and watch your spacing.”
Sains sprinted away for a few seconds before the team followed him at slightly slower pace. The forest was thick, having not been managed by human hands in many years. Team Alpha moved through it like wraiths, their enhanced reflexes allowing them to move at what would have been a sprinting pace for unenhanced humans without compromising silence. Half an hour later, Sains stopped and took cover behind a fallen tree. The rest of the team instantly went to cover as well.
“Eight man patrol, half a click out,” he whispered into the microphone attached to his helmet. “Lightly armed, making a lot of noise.” He closed his eyes, filtering through the thoughts of each man until he settled on the patrol’s leader. Focusing, he achieved a telepathic link. “The leader is bored. He’s more interested in the bottle of the booze under his bunk at his barracks. Recommend we let them pass.”
“Confirmed, we let them pass,” Carter concurred.
The enemy patrol came as close fifty feet to Team Alpha’s position. Confident that they were safe in their own territory, their pace was leisurely and their attitude was casual. As they passed him, Sains concentrated on the sergeant leading the patrol. None of the enemy soldiers had any inkling that they were being observed.
When the patrol was far enough away, Carter keyed his radio. “Did you get anything?”
“Affirmative,” Sains said. “There are two other enemy roving patrols. One is five clicks to the east, the other five clicks to the west. We shouldn’t run into them, but if we do, the recognition password is ‘wormwood’.”
“Well done,” Carter said. “Move out, team, same formation.”
***
From concealed positions just behind the trees, the team could see that the prison compound lay in an open clearing in thick forest and was surrounded by three hundred yards of open ground and a triple-layer, thirty-foot tall chain link perimeter fence nearly two kilometers around. The compound itself held six buildings: the main prison building, three troop barracks for the Directorate’s forces, an administration building, and a large garage. The prison building itself was circled by another fence that separated it from the buildings in the compound. There were also four anti-aircraft emplacements, several equipment sheds and ten guard booths around the inner fence, with another five guard towers at intervals around its perimeter.
The compound also had a heliport with six landing pads and four hangars, which, if the team’s intelligence was correct, held four helicopters. There was also a small control tower between the perimeter and compound fences to the east of the prison compound. It was surrounded by a separate triple-layer fence with a guard-booth at the only gate.
In the center of the compound was the prison building itself. Seven stories in height and totaling one and a half million square feet of internal space, its outer walls were two meters thick and constructed of polished artificial granite that was as smooth as glass. Except for two massive blast-doors in the front and rear, there were no windows or openings of any kind. Ventilation was accomplished through hundreds of small underground ducts leading to concealed openings scattered throughout the prison grounds. The theory was that it would be impossible for an enemy to find and block all of the openings at once and the ducts themselves were far too small for prisoners to escape through.
The prisoners were held on the upper three floors. The floor immediately below was staffed at all times with at least one hundred armed and armored guards. Below that were living quarters for the entire guard force. This meant that any escaping prisoners would have to pass two entire floors full of guards. And, even if they managed to get out of the main building, they would be confronted by the headquarters garrison before even reaching the outer fences.
“Paint your targets,” Carter said. Roth, McNamara, Burgett and Sains switched their rifles’ scopes to target designation mode and painted four predetermined points on the main building’s walls with individually coded lasers. Once they had the lasers on their marks, they all grew very still.
“Is everyone set?” Carter asked. Each operator answered in the affirmative.
Carter activated his radio, tuned it to the frequency that allowed him to speak with the team’s helicopter crews, and spoke into the small microphone built into his helmet. “Machine Head, this is Prowler. Your targets are painted. I say again, your targets are painted.”
In a small forest clearing ten miles away from the prison, the Cheyenne gunship and the two Mohawk assault helicopters rose to hover just above the tree tops. “Confirmed, Prowler, the packages are ready,” the gunship’s weapons system operator replied from the chopper’s front seat.
“Send them,” Carter directed the gunship.
“On the way,” the weapons systems operator replied. As the missiles flew from the rails under helicopter’s weapon pylons toward their targets, the two Mohawk assault helicopters rose from their hiding place and moved toward the prison compound.
“Incoming,” Carter told his team.
Seconds later, the team could hear the missiles streak overhead. The first missile struck the building on the second floor and blasted a twelve-foot wide hole through the wall and into a lounge used by the prison guards. The next two missiles blew similar openings on the ground floor, on opposite sides of the building to allow escaping prisoners an exit from the building. The last struck the wall on the second floor but did not detonate on impact. Instead, it plowed its way through the exterior wall and several inner walls until its computerized fuse determined it had reached its programmed target: the prison’s main control room. The high energy plasma warhead filled the room with a cloud of superheated ionized gas that expanded at nearly the speed of light. Everything within the room was vaporized in an instant.
Moments later, the two Mohawks appeared from over the trees. The first fired a ripple of rockets into each of the four antiaircraft gun emplacements as the troops manning them struggled to respond to the attack. The other used its rockets to blast gaping holes in each of the fences to allow fleeing prisoners to escape. The Cheyenne appeared from another direction and fired six rockets into each of the DPS barracks as the men inside frantically attempted to dress and arm themselves. The Mohawks turned next to the four inner guard towers, raking them with automatic cannon fire. The Cheyenne’s next victim was the administration building; which received a volley of rockets.
The Cheyenne then turned its rockets on the garage. The exploding warheads ignited fuel and set the vehicles within it on fire. Next, the Cheyenne turned its thirty-millimeter automatic cannon on the dozens of vehicles parked around the garage. Following this, the three American helicopters laid waste to the heliport. All three helicopters then disappeared into the blackness, never rising above one hundred feet.
“Go!” Carter ordered. The compound had erupted in a chaotic mix of blaring alarms, flashing lights, running men, and fire. The smell of spent explosives, smoke and burning flesh laced the wind.
The team sprinted from the tree line; all of them covered the hundred meters to the perimeter fence in less than three seconds and leapt over it, landing on the run. Without slowing, McNamara and Williams fired on one of the inner fence’s guard booths using heavy sub-machine guns. The ultra-powerful rounds they fired pierced the bullet-resistant windows protecting the booth’s two occupants and riddled their torsos.
The entire team jumped the second fence and assaulted the prison building. The disorganized, shocked troops of the garrison offered little resistance. The compound was filled with half-dressed, surprised men still trying to comprehend what was happening. Carter’s team simply killed anyone who got between them and the main building.
When they reached the prison building, Carter and Sains each threw a hand grenade into the hole the Cheyenne’s missile had made in the second floor guard lounge. Instead of exploding after the standard six-second delay of conventional grenades, the sensor-fused grenades detonated three feet above the lounge’s floor; maximizing their killing power and allowing no time for the enemy troops to react. Sains and Carter vaulted into the destroyed lounge the instant after their grenades had exploded, followed quickly by the rest of the team.
The scene inside the building was no less chaotic than in the compound outside. Five guards lay dead in the lounge, victims of either the missile strike or exploding grenades. A discordant riot of shouting could be heard reverberating down the corridors. Screams of wounded men could be heard over the screeching of the alarms. Dust and smoke swirled around each other in the air.
Sains cocked his head slightly and held up a hand to stop the team from exiting the lounge. Using hand signals, he indicated that his psychic abilities had detected eight troops waiting for the team to exit the lounge. A few more gestures communicated the exact position of the enemy troops.
McNamara and Burgett flanked the threshold of the lounge’s doorway, the door itself having been destroyed by the explosions. Each tossed a grenade through the threshold; one left and one right.
Again the sensor-fused grenades exploded before hitting the ground, giving the prison guards no time to respond. Shrapnel tore through the guards. Sains did not sense any more guards in the corridor.
Carter switched his rifle’s scope to thermal imaging mode. Using the sensor to see the orange and red images of the guards through the lounge’s wall, he saw one of the heat-producing forms move slightly. He fired one round from his assault rifle through the wall, into the moving form. The figure stopped moving.
“Clear!” Carter said. “Proceed as planned.”
Carter led Burgett, Roth and DeFontain to the left and down a long corridor. The rest of the team followed Williams to the right, into a stairwell.
The guards had begun to rally. Five of them had taken position at a corridor junction and were defending the secondary control room, the objective of Carter and his group. The area around the room was a more secure area than the lounge. The walls were hardened to withstand a siege in case of a prisoner riot. Even Team Alpha’s ultra-powerful weapons could not penetrate them. Carter’s group was forced to seek shelter behind the walls of the preceding intersection as the guards maintained a constant barrage of gunfire. Carter could hear them calling for reinforcements.
“Keep up your fire!” Roth shouted. “They’ll give me my moment.”
“Right,” Carter said. “Give her cover!”
Carter, Burgett and DeFontain began a coordinated stream of gunfire that drove the defending guards to cover around the junction’s corners. Roth made an adjustment to her assault rifle’s scope. Keeping her body behind the wall, she moved her rifle around the corner, exposing only her hand and part of her arm to enemy fire.
The scope was connected electronically to a small video display that was projected onto her goggles’ left lens. This allowed her to see her enemy and aim her rifle through the scope’s sensors while remaining largely behind cover. She watched the enemy fire at the team for several seconds. Then there was a fraction of a second when all five of the guards allowed their heads to be exposed. In that instant she fired a five-round burst.
To her enhanced perception, that instant was extended in time. Even with her rifle firing at six hundred rounds per minute, she had aimed one bullet precisely at the head of each guard. The micro-explosive rifle bullets decapitated each guard and produced five clouds of pink mist.
“Move!” Carter ordered. The Alpha operators surged down the corridor, stopping at the junction where the decapitated guards lay.
“Set security,” Carter ordered.
DeFontain removed two grenades from her equipment harness. She set both grenades for proximity detonation and placed them on the floor just behind the junction’s corner.
“They’re set,” DeFontain reported; “Twenty seconds till they go active.” The team moved quickly away before the grenades armed themselves.
The single entrance to the secondary control room was located at the end of narrow, twenty-meter long corridor. The team charged down its length so quickly that the four troopers guarding the command center’s blast doors had no time to raise their weapons before being shot in the head at point-blank range.
“Get to work, Burgett,” Carter ordered, removing a tube of incendiary gel and detonators from a rear compartment of Burgett’s pack and handing them to the operator.
“It would have been faster to use a demo-pack,” Burgett observed.
“Faster, but no good, Carter said. “It would have damaged the equipment inside, and we need it intact and operational. That’s why we haven’t taken out the power station yet.”
Burgett opened the flashlight-sized tube of yellow gel and proceeded to squeeze it into the seams along the threshold of the blast door. He then placed four micro-detonators at roughly equal distances in the sticky gel.
“Ready,” he reported, taking a small remote detonation trigger from a pocket.
Carter quickly assured himself that DeFontain and Roth were well clear of the door, then moved away himself. “Do it.”
“Fire in the hole!” Burgett said and pushed the button.
A shower of sparks and molten metal spewed from the line of incendiary gel. Acrid smoke billowed as the gel melted through the door. Five seconds later, there was a loud clanging sound as the door fell into corridor.
The four operators charged into the control room. Carter and Burgett turned left, while DeFontain and Roth, hard on their heels, broke right. Each of them had a specific section to clear.
A guard had barely appeared from behind a filing cabinet when Carter shot him twice in the chest, then turned his muzzle on a second guard sheltering behind a large control console and aiming a handgun. Carter shot him in the shoulder, being careful to avoid any damage to the console. The explosive bullet blasted the guard’s arm from his body, spun him around, and sent him thudding to the floor, where Carter shot him in the head.
An unarmed technician leapt at DeFontain and tried to pull her rifle from her grasp. She drove her right foot into his left knee and felt bones shatter. The technician wailed in pain and collapsed onto his uninjured knee in front of her. She kicked him in the face, sending him flying into a wall six feet away. She shot him in the head as he slumped to the ground.
A burst of gunfire came from the far right corner and Roth reacted in a microsecond. Seeing each bullet as though she were watching a slow-motion replay, she sidestepped the barrage calmly, went to one knee as more shots passed over her, sighted on the guard carefully as he fired the rest of his magazine at her from behind a desk, then shot him in his left eye.
“Clear!” Carter shouted.
“Clear!” the other operators affirmed.
Carter went to the main control console. “I’ll open the cells and turn off the security system. You get to work on their computer.”
“On it,” Burgett acknowledged, stepping over the guard he had dispatched.
Carter turned to Roth and DeFontain. “You two watch our asses,” he ordered.
He keyed his radio. “Harvard from Prowler; do you copy?”
“Harvard; copy,” William’s voice replied. “In position and ready to proceed.”
“Stand by,” Carter ordered.
Carter flipped several switches and was able to see the over two thousand cells in the prison open on a bank of closed circuit television screens. Outnumbered hundreds to one and taken by surprise, the handful of guards still on the detention floors were quickly overwhelmed by escaping prisoners. Carter tripped more switches, opening the many blast doors that were intended to contain rioting prisoners in a single section of the prison.
Two floors above Carter, the cell doors opened and Williams and Sains entered Martens’ cell. Dressed in a filthy fluorescent-green jumpsuit, he was cringing and chained to the floor in the corner of the closet-like cell. Mertens was sickly-thin, his face covered by an ungroomed beard, and his eyes seemed hurt by the light coming from the corridor. The cell reeked of human waste and sweat. The corridor outside the cell was filling with confused, panicked prisoners.
Williams drew a twenty-eight inch sword from a scabbard on his back, pulled the chain restraining Mertens tight with his left hand. The hyper-alloy blade sliced cleanly through the carbon steel chain, freeing Mertens.
Williams spoke in perfect French. “Mr. Mertens, I am a United States military officer. You are coming with us,” he said, taking Merten’s by the arm and helping him to his feet. Mertens seemed incapable of standing without help.
Sains stepped closer and hoisted Mertens over his shoulder. “I’ve got him,” he said. “Just hang on, buddy,” he told Mertens.
Williams spoke into his radio. “Prowler, Harvard has the package. Repeat, we have the package.”
“Confirmed, Harvard, proceed with extraction.” Carter’s voice replied.
In the control room, Carter activated the prison’s public address system. Speaking in French, he addressed the prisoners. “Attention prisoners!” he said. “I am the leader of a multi-national force that is attacking this prison! Your cells are open and the security system has been disabled! All containment doors have been opened! There are breaches in the walls on this building’s first floor, in the southeast and northeast corners! The fences have been breached to the south, and there are underground members waiting nearby to assist you! Good luck!” He repeated his announcement in German and English.
Carter switched frequency on his radio. “Machine Head from Prowler, the team is ready for extraction. I repeat, ready for extraction.”
Outside, the three American helicopters were again over the prison compound. The Cheyenne fired another missile into the prison’s second floor wall, almost directly opposite the breach Team Alpha had entered through. Another missile from the Cheyenne blasted through the prison’s wall and destroyed its primary electrical control system.
One of the Mohawks strafed the troops fighting the fires in the compound with its fixed, nose-mounted fifty caliber machineguns. The other used its dual turret-mounted twenty millimeter automatic cannon to clear the prison guards from the building’s roof.
Inside, Carter felt the building shudder as the missiles fired by the Cheyenne struck the walls. The electricity failed suddenly and the room was then lit only by dim, red emergency lights. The computer monitors flickered as their battery backups kicked in. "That was the electrical room being taken out and our exit being opened,” Carter said. “Gadget, you ready?”
“Yes, boss,” Burgett answered, attaching a palm-sized, square-shaped device to one of the control room’s computers.
The device made a tell-tale whirring sound as the memory drive within it became active, imprinting a plague program onto the prison computer’s hard-drive. The beeping of electronic alarms began seconds later as the computer’s defensive software tried in vain to fight off the destructive software that the device had introduced.
“That’s it boss,” Burgett proclaimed. “The secret police’s whole computer network will be well and truly fucked in about ten minutes.”
“Good,” Carter said. He placed a time-delayed thermite grenade on the console that controlled the security system, ensuring that it could not easily be restored and used to lock down the facility. "Let’s move out.”
***
Williams and his group joined the flow of prisoners as they pushed toward the staircases leading to the lower levels and out of the building; the elevators useless now that the prison was without electrical power. When they reached the stairs, they separated themselves from the escaping prisoners and took the stairs up to the roof while the prisoners ran downward, toward the breaches in the prison’s wall. With Williams in the lead and Sains in rear still carrying Mertens, they moved upward.
Sains stopped suddenly, his psychic senses detecting danger. “Contact directly above us!”
There was a metallic clink and a Williams saw the pin from a conventional grenade bounce off the stair three feet in front of them. The grenade itself fell toward his group from the landing directly above them. In a single fluid motion, Williams lunged forward, caught the grenade in his left hand, twisted his body to fall onto his back against the stairs and threw the grenade back. He rolled onto his belly as the grenade exploded, pelting his back with bits of its former owner. McNamara and Nagura bounded over Williams before he could rise.
Having holstered her machine-pistol in favor of two palm-knives in anticipation of close combat in the tight confines of the stairwell, Nagura met the four surviving guards on the landing. She killed the first guard by slicing one of the five-inch hyper-alloy blades across the left side of his neck. Her more-than-human strength combined with the micron-sharp edge of her blade all but decapitated her enemy with single stroke; the head was only attached to the body by a few strands of skin and sinew.
Nagura’s right foot arched out, deflecting a guard’s rifle muzzle away from her with a low, inside crescent kick. She pivoted on her left foot and, in a single fluid motion, drove her right foot into the guard’s mid-section, sending him forcefully into a wall and shattering his ribcage. In blindingly fast succession, she thrust one blade and then the other through the ceramic and steel breast plate of the guard’s armor into his chest, then drew the blade in her right hand across his abdomen, slicing through his armor and opening an inches-deep gash that exposed his intestines.
McNamara seized a third guard by his collar, lifted him off his feet with his right hand and, wielding the man like a club, swung him into the fourth guard, knocking him violently into the wall. Still holding the third guard with one hand, McNamara tossed him over the stair’s safety rail into a fatal, seven-story fall. Getting to his knees, the fourth guard tried to raise his rifle. McNamara kicked him in the face, his enhanced strength crushing the man’s head between McNamara’s foot and the unyielding stone wall. McNamara felt the bone shatter under his boot and saw the front of the skull flatten and deform as gore spurted out of the eye sockets, nose and ears.
McNamara looked upward, seeing a clear path to the roof. “Clear!” he reported.
“Machine Head two-zero, this is Harvard coming out with four. Repeat, coming out with four.” Williams said into his radio before smashing open the door to the roof.
Carrying Mertens, Sains was the first to board the waiting Mohawk, its landing gear resting lightly on the rooftop. McNamara and Nagura followed with Williams behind them.
***
As Carter and his group exited the secondary control room, they heard the proximity grenades DeFontain had placed at the corridor junction detonate. Two of the guards that had tried to approach the Alpha operators had tripped the grenades’ motion sensors and were killed instantly by the blasts. The remaining four retreated around a corner.
“Go through them!” Carter ordered, firing a rifle burst toward the corner.
The group advanced toward the junction, firing as they moved. The guards were forced to stay behind the walls by the barrage until DeFontain and Burgett rounded the corner and fired three-round bursts into each guard.
Carter didn’t hesitate. “Come on,” he ordered.
Moving through the maze-like corridors, the four operators made their way toward the wall-breach created by the Cheyenne on level two, avoiding the stairs and the mass of manic prisoners. Bodies of dead prisoners and guards littered the floors. Screams could be heard as prisoners took vengeance on their captors instead of escaping. Red emergency lights gave a surreal quality to the chaos.
Gunfire could now be heard throughout the prison; some of the prisoners had apparently seized weapons from the guards and were putting them to use. Smoke was growing thicker in the air as fires started by enraged prisoners were added to those created by the missile strikes. Sprinklers had been activated, adding to the chaos by sending small streams of bloodstained water flowing down the corridors and making the floor slick. The scene was almost classically demonic.
Coming to another junction, Carter halted the group, his paranormal senses of hearing and smell telling him that there were enemies lying in wait around the corner. As Roth had done earlier, he used the camera display feature of his scope and goggles to look around the corner while keeping his body behind cover. He was greeted with gunfire; several bullets struck near where his hand and rifle had just been.
“Americans!” a voice from around the corner said in heavily-accented English. “We will kill these prisoners if you do not surrender!”
Lying on his belly, Carter again used his scope to peer around the corner. The image from the scope was displayed in a small video window on his left goggle lens. He moved his rifle around the corner. Through the electronic sensor, he saw six guards who had barricaded the corridor with office furniture and were holding three prisoners as hostages, one of them a blond, teenage girl.
Carter brought the weapon back around the corner. “Six guards have put up a barricade and they have three prisoners hostage,” he told his group.
“Americans!” one of the guards shouted. “Come out now or we kill them!”
Carter ignored the command. He briefly scanned the corridor the team was in, then drew a conventional .45 caliber pistol and attached its suppressor. He shot out the two nearby emergency light fixtures.
He turned to his teammates. “On three, I want all of you to take out the lights in the barricaded hallway. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Boss,” DeFontain injected, “If we take out the lights it’ll be pitch black. There won’t even be enough light for our light intensifiers and we might not be able to tell the hostages from the guards with thermal imaging.”
Burgett touched DeFontain’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. The boss has better night vision than any pair of hi-tech glasses will ever give you.”
“Get ready,” Carter ordered, ignoring the discussion of his abilities. “Three…two…one … go!,” he counted.
Roth, Burgett, and DeFontain burst around the corner and destroyed the light fixtures near the barricade, sending the corridor into total blackness. Protected by that blackness, Carter moved quickly to within six feet of the hostage-holding guards. Aiming carefully while still moving, he shot each guard in the face, just below the nose. His armor-piercing bullets plowed through their teeth and the back of their heads, destroying their brain stems and making tennis-ball-sized holes as they exited.
With the guards dead, Carter holstered his sidearm and activated the small flashlight built into his rifle’s fore-grip. He spoke to the prisoners in French. “Follow us,” he told them.
The flashlights from the rest of the Alpha operators pierced the darkness and they gathered around Carter. “Let’s go.”
In minutes they were looking down on the prison compound from the exit hole made by the Cheyenne. One of the Mohawks was waiting for them just above the ground while the Cheyenne hovered protectively nearby. The ground was littered with dead prisoners and guards. The buildings were still on fire and gunfire could be heard on all sides.
Carter activated his radio. “Machine Head one-zero, this is Prowler coming out with six. Repeat, coming out with six.”
Without warning her, he took the teenage girl in his arms and leapt the thirty feet to the ground. Burgett followed suit with another prisoner. Roth and DeFontain brought down the third. Once on the ground, Carter turned to the prisoners.
“You can’t come with us,” he shouted over the thunder of the helicopter’s rotors and battle sounds. “But we’ll cover you to the fence.” The girl hugged him and ran toward the fence. The team watched the rescued prisoners until they were through the fence and away. Roth, DeFontain and Burgett then boarded the waiting Mohawk.
Carter looked to the prison’s roof and saw the second Mohawk taking off and coming to a hover near the Cheyenne. “Harvard from Prowler,” Carter said into his radio. “Report status.”
William’s voice came through Carter’s speaker. “Harvard has the package and is ready for egress. All accounted for with no casualties.”
“Very well,” Carter replied. Assured that his mission was accomplished and each team member was accounted for, Carter boarded the Mohawk himself. The three helicopters sped away from the compound at treetop level. Leaving the prison compound in flames, they turned to rendezvous with another Phantom-class submarine for the journey home.