The Last Line (31 page)

At the same instant, Schmidt's M-1014 boomed, the noise deafening in the narrow hallway, the weapon angled sharply to fire downward toward the floor in order to avoid hitting Dominique. The doorknob and a square foot of the door smashed in and the door flew open. Leaning around the door frame, Rogers underhanded an M-84 stun grenade—colloquially known as a flashbang—into the room.

The flashbang gave them a decided edge. The dazzling strobe effect of a white-hot burning mixture of aluminum and magnesium generated a glare measuring over a million candela, and the bang hit 180 decibels within five feet of detonation. The flash was enough to blind people in the room for about five seconds, while the noise overwhelmed the senses, causing shock and disorientation.

Teller just hoped that it would be
enough
of an edge.

FOX TWO

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2320 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

Patterson pressed the three-number code. The last digit was a 1, and he chuckled as he said, “Press one for English, dudes.” Then he pressed
ENTER
.

The flash bounced off the walls of houses on both sides of the street, as did the crack of the explosion. The gentle curve of the claymore unit, with its embossed
FRONT TOWARD ENEMY
across the convex face, contained a flat layer of C-4 explosives behind seven hundred steel balls embedded in resin, each about an eighth of an inch in diameter. When the C-4 went off, the steel balls hurtled out in a fan-shaped cloud spanning 60 degrees and traveling at almost four thousand feet per second.

The ideal range for the weapon was fifty yards, which allowed for a good dispersion pattern, but Patterson had been forced to set the mine on the street in front of the target house, in this neighborhood a range of less than four yards. That meant the claymore's projectile cloud was still tightly focused when it struck Hotel Two's front door, sweeping through the first few emerging gunmen like a vast, bloody scythe.

Patterson reached his planned hide a moment later, dropping the detonator and unclipping his H&K. The fact that he'd been rushed had resulted in a less than perfect shot. The front door and part of the wall to either side had disintegrated, and three or four gunmen, at least, had been cut down.

Someone at the house had seen him moving into position, and automatic gunfire began snapping and hissing around him an instant later.

Kneeling behind a rotted and crumbling fence, Patterson returned fire. The H&K SD5, excellent for close-in CQB, was less than optimum out on the street. At a range of over forty yards, he couldn't see the red dot from his laser sight and had to aim at moving shadows spreading out into the street.

He heard the boom of Schmidt's combat shotgun to his left.

At the same instant, he saw someone emerge from the open front door of Hotel Two, someone carrying what looked like a length of pipe balanced on his shoulder.

Oh …
Jesus!

 

Chapter Sixteen

MARIA PEREZ HOUSE

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2320 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

20 APRIL

The gunman was holding Dominique tightly from behind, a pistol pressed up against the side of her head.
“¡Oye!”
the man screamed.
“¡Oye, ustedes allá! ¡No fuego! ¡Tengo la chica aqui!”

Then everything began happening at once.

The gunman crouching beside the door with a drawn pistol crumpled as bullet holes loosed blossoming puffs of plaster dust beside him. At the same instant, the bedroom door seemed to explode, with chips of wood whirling past her face. A black tube with rows of holes down the side skittered through the opening and across the floor, passing to her right.

Dominique knew immediately what it was—a flashbang stun grenade. She squeezed her eyes tight and twisted away to her left, bending forward as far as she could.

The flashbang detonated somewhere behind her, the strobe of dazzling magnesium-aluminum light so brilliant it glared through her eyelids, the concussive blast quite literally deafening. The man holding her tightened his grip convulsively; Dominique's wrists and legs were still tied, but as the grenade's multiple detonations slammed at her senses, she snapped her head up and back, connecting
hard
with her captor's nose.

Black-garbed men wearing ski masks and night-vision devices were storming in through the open door.

FOX ONE

MARIA PEREZ HOUSE

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2320 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

They were taking a hell of a chance, Teller knew, but it was a justified one, more justified than it might have seemed at first glance. The man holding Dominique needed her alive, needed her as a bargaining chip, as a get-out-of-jail-free card, as a guarantee that the American strike team wasn't going to shoot him out of hand. He knew that the moment he pulled the trigger, he was a dead man, so he was far more likely to open fire at the strike team than at his prisoner.

Hostage rescue teams rely on three key assets in a takedown: surprise, overwhelming firepower, and sudden violence of action. The team had lost the element of surprise, but violence they still possessed in abundance. Storm into that bedroom hard enough, loud enough, and violently enough and the gunman would almost certainly freeze, just for a moment—and in that second or two while his brain was juggling the problem of killing the hostage or killing his attackers, of surrendering or fighting or running, the strike team would have its chance.

Of course, that reasoning wasn't foolproof. In combat there are never certainties, only probabilities, possibilities, and the nightmare of plain random chance. The gunman's finger might tighten on the trigger because of shock or muscle spasm, and then Dominique would be dead.

If the team did nothing, if they let the gunman negotiate an escape, Dominique would almost certainly be killed anyway as soon as he no longer needed her.

All they had to ride on was the flashbang and sheer violence of action.

Marcetti, Schmidt, Rogers, and Teller rolled around the doorjamb and through the shattered door, moving left and right to gain separate angles on the target. Three bright dots of laser light danced across the gunman's head inches to the left of Dominique's face.

Then they had some unexpected help from Dominique herself. As he came through the door, Teller saw her bend far forward, then snap her head back, smashing the gunman's nose with the back of her skull. His grip loosened, and she pitched herself forward,
almost
breaking free—

Her head was clear. Teller tapped the trigger of his H&K at the same moment as Marcetti and Rogers, and the cartel gunman spun to the side.

At the same instant, a fist-sized hole opened in the bedroom's east wall between two others already there, emitting a spray of concrete and plaster dust. The gunman's throat and upper chest simply came apart in a dark scarlet spray, his head literally torn from his body.

“Clear!” Marcetti called.

“Clear!” Teller, Rogers, and Schmidt echoed, pivoting with their weapons to check every corner of that blood-drenched room. The flashbang, Teller noted, had rolled under the bed and set fire to the sheets, and flames were beginning to lick against the wall.

No matter; they had plenty of time yet. Teller stepped forward, stooping to help Dominique.

But something was horribly wrong.

FOX TWO

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2320 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

Patterson saw the shadow with the pipe on its shoulder turning to face him, saw another shadow stoop and point. He began tapping off three-round bursts, trying to hit those shadows … but then there was a flash and a streak of motion, something hurtling straight toward him faster than the eye could really register.

The rocket-propelled grenade hissed a few feet above his head, then struck the brick wall of the ruined shell of a house behind him. The blast picked him up and smashed him sideways through the rotting fence.

He lost consciousness when he hit the street.

VICENTE HOUSE

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2320 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

An instant after dropping the hammer on the remaining Tango in the bedroom, Procario saw the flash from the RPG out of the corner of his eye, saw the streak and the detonation of the five-pound rocket across the street, saw Patterson hurled through the fence and sprawling onto the pavement.

“Man down!” he called. “Fox Two is down!”

Swinging the long, heavy barrel of his Barrett .50 to the right, Procario looked for a target.
There …
two men just emerging from behind the front wall of the Vicente house and entering the street. One carried the empty tube of an RPG-7 launcher; the second was pulling a fresh round from his backpack and helping the first man reload.

“No you don't,”
Procario said, and he squeezed the trigger.

The man carrying the grenade launcher came apart.

FOX ONE

MARIA PEREZ HOUSE

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2321 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

Teller heard Procario's call of “man down” over the tactical channel, but his mind was grappling with another problem, even more immediate, if subtle. Three of the four bodies in the bedroom had been struck by BMG rounds, and the result was a charnel-house horror of blood and body parts, so much so that the west wall of the bedroom was almost completely covered by gory splashes of the stuff.

What was wrong?

He pulled his combat knife and cut through the ropes tying Dominique's hands and legs. Her eyes opened, but she was having trouble focusing. He pulled off the gag. “Are you okay? Jackie! Are you okay?”

“What?” she said. “Chris? I can't hear you.”

The assault team had been wearing earpieces that automatically blocked out gunshots and louder noises, but Dominique had caught the full force of the detonating stun grenade. She would be okay … she
had
to be okay …

As he turned to help her sit up, he glanced out through the smashed-in door at the two bodies laying outside in the hall.

Then it clicked, and he shouted the warning,
“Threat to the rear!”

MARIA PEREZ HOUSE

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2321 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

Enrico Barrón had been playing dead for almost three minutes now, lying on the floor, his legs beneath Jose Flores's dead body. Through slitted eyes, he'd seen the assault team—Americans, with those black utilities, vests, and NVDs they
had
to be Americans—move down the hall in single file, blast open the door, and storm through into the bedroom. His pistol lay on the floor next to his hip; his hand was inching toward the weapon. His hand closed on the grip as he heard the Americans shouting, “Clear!”

With both Carlos and Juan dead, they would be checking the bodies, and they would find that he was unhurt. Clearly, they were wearing some sort of ballistic armor under those tactical vests, or the vests themselves were armored, because Jose had pumped three rounds into one of them without visible effect.

He would have to shoot at their heads, which were protected only by wool balaclavas and the plastic and metal complexities of those night-vision goggles they wore.

“Threat to the rear!”

Damn!
What had given him away? He lunged to his left, jerking his legs out from under Juan's body, raising his weapon as he did so, squeezing the trigger again and again and again. Gunshots banged loud in the narrow hallway; one of the American commandos staggered, hit …

Barrón was on his feet and running down the hall toward the stairs.

VICENTE HOUSE

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2321 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

The RPG gunner was dead, torn in half by Procario's shot, but other cartel gunmen were racing across the street now, headed toward the front of the Perez house. One of them ran toward Patterson's still form, motionless on the pavement.

Procario swung the muzzle back to the left, tracking just ahead of the running man, his finger tightening on the weapon's trigger.

Nothing happened.

Damn it to hell!
A rookie's stunt; the Barrett .50 fired from a five-round magazine, and in the past four minutes or so he'd engaged five targets. His chamber was locked open, the magazine empty.

Swearing viciously, Procario thumbed the mag release, then groped for a fresh load sitting on the table beside him. He snapped it home and chambered the first round just as the running cartel gunman reached Patterson, standing directly over him, and began firing his M-16, emptying a twenty-round magazine into the motionless body.

A terrible, icy calm descended over Procario as he watched the gunman reload, then turn and begin jogging toward the front of Hotel One. Other men were crossing the street from Hotel Two, all of them heavily armed. The temptation to shoot the man who'd just killed Patterson was almost overwhelming, but Procario suppressed the impulse. The cartel force was storming into Hotel One now, cutting off Fox One's route of retreat. This wasn't about simple-minded revenge.

It was about which tactics would best help the team inside that house.

FOX ONE

MARIA PEREZ HOUSE

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2321 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

Teller scooped up his H&K as the gunman in the hallway fired wildly into the room. Marcetti was hit, a round striking him in the right shoulder and spinning him around. Schmidt triggered his shotgun; the frangible round splintered a section of wall as the cartel gunman got to his feet and started running. Teller and Rogers both fired three-round bursts, tracking the man as he vanished behind the bedroom wall … and then the target was gone.

Lunging forward, he brought the weapon up to his shoulder as he rolled around the doorjamb and into the hall.