There was the sound of full automatic fire and three rounds of 9mm
jacketed hollow point rounds shredded the head of a wooden silhouette
target that was placed behind a battered table and chair set in the corner
of the wooden room.
"There, that was perfect." I said.
Krystal let the MP5 drop to her side and then leaned forward to study the target. "Could have gone to the left some." She stated.
"Probably the gun. As you have seen, things go a lot quicker than that, but we'll just work on getting you comfortable with submachine guns first." I explained.
I took another of the pressboard silhouettes and was slipping back into the slot that held it up. "We can try that again, but this time you will run in through the doorway and then hit it as fast as possible, try to…" my beeper interrupted me from finishing.
I pulled the device off my belt and looked at the readout. It was Clark calling me again. "It's Clark again. I have to go, practice a bit with the MP5 and get comfortable with it. We can do this some more later." I said apologetically.
"All right," she said. "How's tomorrow?" She asked.
"Perfect." I said, and then walked out the door of the close kill house.
I walked inside the building and into the elevator that would take me down two floors to Clark's office. I stepped out when the lift reached its proper floor and walked to the man's office door. I briskly knocked and waited for him to call me in, which he did.
I opened the door and stepped in. Arnavisca sat in a chair in front of the man's desk and Clark sat behind it, chewing on his trademark cigar. They both looked up as it entered.
"Mobilize the team, we found the bomb." He said, somewhat happily.
"Yes sir." I said and stepped back out of the office.
I placed my helmet on my head and adjusted the chinstrap. I looked down at the Heckler and Koch MP5-PDW that I held in my hands. The rest of my team was prepping around me, getting ready to take that bomb.
The briefing that John Clark had given me had told me that the bomb had been under transport in a personally owned 747 that was flying out of the Middle East. The plane had been under constant surveillance, but the terrorists had been unaware that Rainbow had been tipped off of the location of the weapon.
They had discovered the plane's course and discovered the airport at which it was scheduled to land and refuel before completing the last leg of its journey to New Zealand. They would land in Dejarra in Queensland, Australia. That was where we had decided to hit them.
Intelligence told us that it would be unlikely that the weapon would be detonated in New Zealand, but there was no telling what the terrorists would do. The longer they had the bomb, the more unpredictable they would be.
We had also identified the terrorist group that was primarily involved in these actions. It was a generic terrorist group from Russia that was determined to bring back the glory days of communism in Russia. They were devoted to the idea of a powerful, communist country, with a large military that would challenge the evil of capitalism in the west and such. They called themselves the democratic liberation front, but they were internationally known by the name, the sickle. They were responsible for several car bombings and robberies, but never anything this big.
The plan was that, during refueling, the tower would schedule several dozen flights for either take-off or landing ahead of the terrorist 747. This would give our team ample time to probe for an entrance into the aircraft. Krystal would set up with her SSG3000 in the control tower. From there, she would be able to fire into the cockpit of the plane and take out the pilot and co-pilot. This would effectively bring the plane to a stop on the runway. At that point, police would set up barricades on the runway to stop the plane from taking off, and two teams that had been inserted into the plane would spring into action and clean out the bottom two floors of the plane, then move up towards the cockpit.
I would be in charge of the team on the bottom floor of the plane while Arnavisca would take the top. We would work from rear to front, sweeping it clear until we would meet at the very nose in the first class section. My team would ascend the ladder and join up with Arnavisca's team for a final run at the cockpit. From there we would have control of the plane and the bomb, then the standard SWAT team with the police could take care of the rest, if they were needed.
The plan was sound, but it was dependant on several factors. My team would have an easy job since we would start from the rear cargo compartment, right where we were entering the plane. Arnavisca and his team would have the job of shinning up the empty elevator shaft, then climbing between the roof and fuselage to the upper rear cargo compartment where they could drop down into the visible area of the aircraft.
The passenger area of the aircraft is actually suspended inside the circular fuselage. This greatly improves strength in the event of a crash or fire, and would be perfect for Arnavisca's team to move into position covertly, but one wrong move and an operative would fall through the ceiling panels and into the passenger compartment below.
We got ready. SOCOMs all around, and fragmentation grenades. We all wore lightweight armor under our vests to reduce noise, and all had Nomex soft-soled boots.
We suited up and all climbed into a van that pulled up by the terminal. We all piled into it and felt it speed off towards the runway. Krystal carried her SSG-3000 to the control tower to set up some sniper support for us.
The van approached the aircraft from behind. We would not be detected from this angle, unless the cargo door was open and one of the terrorists was actually sticking his head out, the terrorists would never see us coming.
The planes had lined up for departure in front of the terrorist 747. I counted eight in front and two behind them. There was no way for them to move the plane, even if they had to.
I looked along the fuselage, finally locating the cargo door, along the underside of tube; I slid the van door open before it had come to a complete stop. Then jumped out. The rest of my team followed me as I sprinted for the cargo door, holding my PDW at the ready.
I held up against the cool metal of the fuselage. I felt the wind from the huge jet engines buffet me and the stink of jet fuel was powerful in my nostrils. I waved Alain DuBarry over, the young electronics tech for my group.
He let the PDW hang off its sling, then went to work on the door. It wasn't hard to get the door open; the hard part was to do it without letting the terrorists know that we were boarding the plane. When the pressurized door was opened, it would set off an alarm in the cockpit and they would send someone to investigate, no doubt, but with some electronic tweaking and a clamp that DuBarry had handy, we slid the large door open without any trouble or detection.
I let my PDW hang and pulled my SOCOM in case someone was in the rear cargo compartment, but it was empty.
We proceeded in. The cargo area was abandoned, so we moved up to where the galley was located, near the center of the underside of the aircraft. We reached it, still without any contacts. My team held position there while Arnavisca's team set up a small climbing rope that would allow them to shinny up the elevator shaft and into position above the passenger section.
Now all I could do was wait as Arnavisca and his team climbed up the shaft and slowly moved into position. When they were all there, we prepared to move. I heard Arnavisca's voice filter through on the radio. "Gold sniper, do you have a shot?" he asked.
I got ready. "Sights are hot, Blue Lead."
I could feel the tension in the air. "Gold Sniper, Fire."
I heard the two rounds explode outside, one after the other. I then heard a crashing and thudding noise as Arnavisca and his team dropped through the ceiling panels. I heard automatic gunfire.
A voice near me yelled out and a man in a white shirt ran out of a corridor and turned to run away from my team. I snapped up my PDW and fired a five round burst that traced him from left shoulder to right hip, smearing the shirt with red. I continued forward and past him in a low run. There were three more waiting for us at a pinch point in the corridor ahead.
They came out and opened fire on us as we entered the corridor. A hit grazed off my Kevlar helmet and threw me to the ground. I pulled back to where there was some cover and then returned a volley from my own weapon.
We didn't have time for this delay. I freed a fragmentation grenade from my vest and then rolled it down the corridor. Everybody from my team dived for cover or threw their arms around their faces.
The bomb detonated with a resounding band and flash. I felt the heat lick my skin, and then I was on the move again. We rushed down the corridor, searching for threats. Finally we reached the ladder that would allow us up into the crew and passenger compartments.
Slowly I climbed the ladder, making sure that my team was backing me up. I didn't know if there was anybody in the first-class cabin above me. There could be no one, or there could be a maniac with an Uzi trained right for where my head would be appearing momentarily.
I slowly poked my head over the opening above. I was relived. There was a desk immediately in front of the hole that would give me cover, and the three terrorists that I could see were more concerned with holding the corridor ahead of them. I quietly climbed up the rest of the ladder and then cleared it for the rest of my team to climb up.
While I was waiting for them, I raised my PDW and opened up on the three men. I held the trigger on the automatic weapon down and swept it from left to right, cutting them down in a straight line of death.
I looked back; my team had finished the climb up and had secured the rest of the room. I slowly moved forward, there was a wall that would conceal a staircase leading up to another first class section and the cockpit. I moved forward to where the second and third class passengers would be sitting.
The standard seats had all been yanked out and more cargo had been stacked and chained down in their place. There was one open crate that had two wires running out of it and into a laptop computer that was sitting on a table. A man was in the chair next to the laptop, but he was dead. Bullets made crisscrossing patterns across his back. In the case was the nuke.
I waved DuBarry forward. He knelt next to the nuke and examined it, then looked up at me and nodded, telling me that this one was the real deal.
I moved forward, stepping lively. I waved the team forward and continued on clearing out the plane.
The remaining terrorists in the plane offered very little resistance to us. We killed most of them, but managed to take a few prisoners.
The president met us outside of the plane, we were still in our combat uniforms carrying loaded weapons, but he came and shook each of our hands, then let us all know that there would be a ceremony at the white house that night to celebrate our successes.
This all happened in a daze. I felt a feeling of profound pride, pride for myself, pride for my organization, pride for my team. But then through all of that, I felt a sense of loss. The mission had cost us a lot; Duke was gone, not to mention Chavez's death.
I had grown though, at the start of all of this, I had been a young, idealistic operative, at the end, a weathered veteran in command of a team of crack soldiers in the war against terror.
I looked back at them, gathered around still in combats and carrying weapons. I saw the camaraderie, the professionalism.
I lifted off the balaclava that I had rolled up and worn like a toque. I felt the breeze cut through my hair.
We were it, we were the professionals. Wherever there was trouble, wherever innocents were being slaughtered, we would be there.
These strong, these few…
"There, that was perfect." I said.
Krystal let the MP5 drop to her side and then leaned forward to study the target. "Could have gone to the left some." She stated.
"Probably the gun. As you have seen, things go a lot quicker than that, but we'll just work on getting you comfortable with submachine guns first." I explained.
I took another of the pressboard silhouettes and was slipping back into the slot that held it up. "We can try that again, but this time you will run in through the doorway and then hit it as fast as possible, try to…" my beeper interrupted me from finishing.
I pulled the device off my belt and looked at the readout. It was Clark calling me again. "It's Clark again. I have to go, practice a bit with the MP5 and get comfortable with it. We can do this some more later." I said apologetically.
"All right," she said. "How's tomorrow?" She asked.
"Perfect." I said, and then walked out the door of the close kill house.
I walked inside the building and into the elevator that would take me down two floors to Clark's office. I stepped out when the lift reached its proper floor and walked to the man's office door. I briskly knocked and waited for him to call me in, which he did.
I opened the door and stepped in. Arnavisca sat in a chair in front of the man's desk and Clark sat behind it, chewing on his trademark cigar. They both looked up as it entered.
"Mobilize the team, we found the bomb." He said, somewhat happily.
"Yes sir." I said and stepped back out of the office.
I placed my helmet on my head and adjusted the chinstrap. I looked down at the Heckler and Koch MP5-PDW that I held in my hands. The rest of my team was prepping around me, getting ready to take that bomb.
The briefing that John Clark had given me had told me that the bomb had been under transport in a personally owned 747 that was flying out of the Middle East. The plane had been under constant surveillance, but the terrorists had been unaware that Rainbow had been tipped off of the location of the weapon.
They had discovered the plane's course and discovered the airport at which it was scheduled to land and refuel before completing the last leg of its journey to New Zealand. They would land in Dejarra in Queensland, Australia. That was where we had decided to hit them.
Intelligence told us that it would be unlikely that the weapon would be detonated in New Zealand, but there was no telling what the terrorists would do. The longer they had the bomb, the more unpredictable they would be.
We had also identified the terrorist group that was primarily involved in these actions. It was a generic terrorist group from Russia that was determined to bring back the glory days of communism in Russia. They were devoted to the idea of a powerful, communist country, with a large military that would challenge the evil of capitalism in the west and such. They called themselves the democratic liberation front, but they were internationally known by the name, the sickle. They were responsible for several car bombings and robberies, but never anything this big.
The plan was that, during refueling, the tower would schedule several dozen flights for either take-off or landing ahead of the terrorist 747. This would give our team ample time to probe for an entrance into the aircraft. Krystal would set up with her SSG3000 in the control tower. From there, she would be able to fire into the cockpit of the plane and take out the pilot and co-pilot. This would effectively bring the plane to a stop on the runway. At that point, police would set up barricades on the runway to stop the plane from taking off, and two teams that had been inserted into the plane would spring into action and clean out the bottom two floors of the plane, then move up towards the cockpit.
I would be in charge of the team on the bottom floor of the plane while Arnavisca would take the top. We would work from rear to front, sweeping it clear until we would meet at the very nose in the first class section. My team would ascend the ladder and join up with Arnavisca's team for a final run at the cockpit. From there we would have control of the plane and the bomb, then the standard SWAT team with the police could take care of the rest, if they were needed.
The plan was sound, but it was dependant on several factors. My team would have an easy job since we would start from the rear cargo compartment, right where we were entering the plane. Arnavisca and his team would have the job of shinning up the empty elevator shaft, then climbing between the roof and fuselage to the upper rear cargo compartment where they could drop down into the visible area of the aircraft.
The passenger area of the aircraft is actually suspended inside the circular fuselage. This greatly improves strength in the event of a crash or fire, and would be perfect for Arnavisca's team to move into position covertly, but one wrong move and an operative would fall through the ceiling panels and into the passenger compartment below.
We got ready. SOCOMs all around, and fragmentation grenades. We all wore lightweight armor under our vests to reduce noise, and all had Nomex soft-soled boots.
We suited up and all climbed into a van that pulled up by the terminal. We all piled into it and felt it speed off towards the runway. Krystal carried her SSG-3000 to the control tower to set up some sniper support for us.
The van approached the aircraft from behind. We would not be detected from this angle, unless the cargo door was open and one of the terrorists was actually sticking his head out, the terrorists would never see us coming.
The planes had lined up for departure in front of the terrorist 747. I counted eight in front and two behind them. There was no way for them to move the plane, even if they had to.
I looked along the fuselage, finally locating the cargo door, along the underside of tube; I slid the van door open before it had come to a complete stop. Then jumped out. The rest of my team followed me as I sprinted for the cargo door, holding my PDW at the ready.
I held up against the cool metal of the fuselage. I felt the wind from the huge jet engines buffet me and the stink of jet fuel was powerful in my nostrils. I waved Alain DuBarry over, the young electronics tech for my group.
He let the PDW hang off its sling, then went to work on the door. It wasn't hard to get the door open; the hard part was to do it without letting the terrorists know that we were boarding the plane. When the pressurized door was opened, it would set off an alarm in the cockpit and they would send someone to investigate, no doubt, but with some electronic tweaking and a clamp that DuBarry had handy, we slid the large door open without any trouble or detection.
I let my PDW hang and pulled my SOCOM in case someone was in the rear cargo compartment, but it was empty.
We proceeded in. The cargo area was abandoned, so we moved up to where the galley was located, near the center of the underside of the aircraft. We reached it, still without any contacts. My team held position there while Arnavisca's team set up a small climbing rope that would allow them to shinny up the elevator shaft and into position above the passenger section.
Now all I could do was wait as Arnavisca and his team climbed up the shaft and slowly moved into position. When they were all there, we prepared to move. I heard Arnavisca's voice filter through on the radio. "Gold sniper, do you have a shot?" he asked.
I got ready. "Sights are hot, Blue Lead."
I could feel the tension in the air. "Gold Sniper, Fire."
I heard the two rounds explode outside, one after the other. I then heard a crashing and thudding noise as Arnavisca and his team dropped through the ceiling panels. I heard automatic gunfire.
A voice near me yelled out and a man in a white shirt ran out of a corridor and turned to run away from my team. I snapped up my PDW and fired a five round burst that traced him from left shoulder to right hip, smearing the shirt with red. I continued forward and past him in a low run. There were three more waiting for us at a pinch point in the corridor ahead.
They came out and opened fire on us as we entered the corridor. A hit grazed off my Kevlar helmet and threw me to the ground. I pulled back to where there was some cover and then returned a volley from my own weapon.
We didn't have time for this delay. I freed a fragmentation grenade from my vest and then rolled it down the corridor. Everybody from my team dived for cover or threw their arms around their faces.
The bomb detonated with a resounding band and flash. I felt the heat lick my skin, and then I was on the move again. We rushed down the corridor, searching for threats. Finally we reached the ladder that would allow us up into the crew and passenger compartments.
Slowly I climbed the ladder, making sure that my team was backing me up. I didn't know if there was anybody in the first-class cabin above me. There could be no one, or there could be a maniac with an Uzi trained right for where my head would be appearing momentarily.
I slowly poked my head over the opening above. I was relived. There was a desk immediately in front of the hole that would give me cover, and the three terrorists that I could see were more concerned with holding the corridor ahead of them. I quietly climbed up the rest of the ladder and then cleared it for the rest of my team to climb up.
While I was waiting for them, I raised my PDW and opened up on the three men. I held the trigger on the automatic weapon down and swept it from left to right, cutting them down in a straight line of death.
I looked back; my team had finished the climb up and had secured the rest of the room. I slowly moved forward, there was a wall that would conceal a staircase leading up to another first class section and the cockpit. I moved forward to where the second and third class passengers would be sitting.
The standard seats had all been yanked out and more cargo had been stacked and chained down in their place. There was one open crate that had two wires running out of it and into a laptop computer that was sitting on a table. A man was in the chair next to the laptop, but he was dead. Bullets made crisscrossing patterns across his back. In the case was the nuke.
I waved DuBarry forward. He knelt next to the nuke and examined it, then looked up at me and nodded, telling me that this one was the real deal.
I moved forward, stepping lively. I waved the team forward and continued on clearing out the plane.
The remaining terrorists in the plane offered very little resistance to us. We killed most of them, but managed to take a few prisoners.
The president met us outside of the plane, we were still in our combat uniforms carrying loaded weapons, but he came and shook each of our hands, then let us all know that there would be a ceremony at the white house that night to celebrate our successes.
This all happened in a daze. I felt a feeling of profound pride, pride for myself, pride for my organization, pride for my team. But then through all of that, I felt a sense of loss. The mission had cost us a lot; Duke was gone, not to mention Chavez's death.
I had grown though, at the start of all of this, I had been a young, idealistic operative, at the end, a weathered veteran in command of a team of crack soldiers in the war against terror.
I looked back at them, gathered around still in combats and carrying weapons. I saw the camaraderie, the professionalism.
I lifted off the balaclava that I had rolled up and worn like a toque. I felt the breeze cut through my hair.
We were it, we were the professionals. Wherever there was trouble, wherever innocents were being slaughtered, we would be there.
These strong, these few…