“What are the demands?” Murdock asked.
“First, he said I had to surrender my whole army to the legitimate president. I told him I didn’t command the army, President Ocampo does. Then he said I had to surrender Camp Bravo, at once.
“When I refused, he pushed the dead lieutenant out the door. That was almost four hours ago.”
An aide came in the room with a message. The colonel read it and he sagged against the table.
“I have word that a corporal was released by this Colonel Cardona. As he walked out the door of the communications center, he was shot in the back six times and died instantly. Cardona says the corporal is the second hostage to die. I must act quickly.”
“How many men does he have?” Ed DeWitt asked.
“He claims he has a hundred. Some of our people saw him enter the building late last night. They say they saw twelve men.”
“Is there any underground access to the building?” Jaybird asked.
“No, only the surface doors. It does have a small basement.”
“Are there windows?” Murdock asked.
“Yes, but now they have blinds drawn on all of them.”
“Metal blinds?”
“No, fabric.”
“You have a helicopter?”
“Yes, three of them. One will carry six men.”
“You have some tanks?”
“Yes, two.”
“Let us talk a minute,” Murdock said. He and the other two SEALs went to the corner of the room and threw out ideas. Murdock grabbed them and formed his plan.
They went back to the map.
“Colonel, bring your tanks up to the least sensitive part of the building, say where they keep records, files, the noncommunication part.”
“I can do that.”
“Order them up now and have them manned and ready to fire.”
The colonel nodded to his aide, who left the room.
“Now, we’ll want to get our equipment, then your chopper will put six of us on the roof. The rest of my men will be situated around the front of the structure. Where would he keep the hostages?”
“Probably in the basement behind a locked metal door.”
“Good. Our men will fire into the windows. I want you to put one tank round into this side of the building at the exact time that we land on the roof in the chopper. My men will fire special rounds through the window that will explode inside. Then we will come down from the roof through the access door and clear the building.
The colonel frowned. “Will this work?”
“Yes. The shot into the wall will confuse them. Our special twenty-mike-mike rounds exploding inside the rooms will paralyze them. Then we swing down the stairs with our submachine guns, and they will be easy targets.”
“Let’s give it a try. I don’t want to lose any more men.”
“We need an hour to get set up. Have your chopper land as close to our quarters as possible. We’ll also need a truck for transport.”
“Yes, easy. Right this way.”
An hour later, the chopper circled a block away from the communications building as the two tanks swung into place fifty yards from the back wall of the structure.
DeWitt had Bravo Squad in firing positions fifty yards from the front of the building.
“When we hear tank fire, we shoot out the windows with the 5.56 rounds,” Ed DeWitt told his squad. “Do your assigned windows. Then at once aim your laser through the broken window so the round will go inside and detonate there. Everyone with me?”
A chorus of yeahs came back.
Murdock saw the tank operator give the signal he was going to fire. The chopper wheeled and headed for the rooftop.
The tank fired one round that exploded against the back of the building. By then, Murdock couldn’t see the results. The bird had touched down on the roof, and he and his Alpha Squad boiled out of it. Bill Bradford was the first one to the roof access door. It was the built-up kind, probably with steps leading down. It was not padlocked on the outside.
Bradford caught the handle and tried to turn it. Locked. He blasted the area just below the handle twice with his MP-5 silenced sub gun and the door swung inward. He jumped to one side. No shots came through. He looked in, then stepped inside and vanished.
“Clear down here on the third floor,” Bradford said on the lip mike. “Looks deserted.”
The other SEALs went down the steps quietly. They heard shots from the outside, then muted explosions downstairs.
Murdock looked around. There was a staircase to the left next to the wall. They moved that way. He waved Jaybird to take a look. He carried a borrowed MP-5 submachine gun and eased down the steps one at a time. Then he swung the weapon around and pulled off a three-shot burst of silent rounds. He jolted down the rest of the way to the second floor.
“Hold fire on the second floor, twenty-mike shooters,” Murdock said on the lip mike. “Alpha Squad’s now on floor two near the back. Hold your twenty fire here.” The rest of the squad raced down the steps and found Jaybird checking out a man in green and brown cammies.
“Dead,” Jaybird said. “Only one up here. The rest of them must be on the first floor. This one was a lookout, I’d guess. He doesn’t look more than about twelve years old.”
The stairs didn’t continue to the first floor. On the far side of the big room they found two doors and beyond them more space with desks and cubicles with snapshots of family on them. Through another door they could see a stairway leading down.
The squad checked three more rooms but found no one there. Murdock took the lead at the stairs. He edged up to them and looked down. There was a landing halfway down, then the stairs turned for the next run to the ground floor.
Murdock heard an explosion and lunged back away from the shrapnel of the 20-mike-mike. “Hold the twenty fire on the first floor,” Murdock said to the Motorola. “Alpha Squad soon to be in residence.” Then he surged downstairs to the landing. His MP-5 was on full auto, and he sprayed a dozen rounds in one direction, whirled, and fired six more the other way. Ching lunged down the steps to back him. He saw four men huddled in one corner. Their weapons had been abandoned and they held up their hands. Three men on the other side lay sprawled where the 20-mike-mike rounds had caught them in the open and laced their bodies with shrapnel wounds, killing them.
Two shots blasted into the silence from directly ahead of them. Both were high. Ching swung his MP-5 around and sent a dozen silent rounds slamming into a desk and thin partition where he had seen movement. A high, snarling yell pierced the big room, and slowly, a man stumbled out from the partition, a rifle falling from his hands as he took one look at his executioner and pitched forward on the floor.
“No dispare!” a voice called from behind them. Murdock turned to see a figure stand. She was short and he guessed no more than fourteen. She wore cammies and her long hair had been bound up and hidden under a floppy hat. She held both hands high over her head and she had no weapon.
Ching yelled something at her in Spanish, and she lowered her hands.
Ching asked her something and she shook her head. Then he shouted in Spanish, but there was no reply.
“The rest of Alpha Squad come on down,” Murdock said in the Motorola. “Let’s clear this place and find the hostages.”
The girl motioned to Murdock. “Hostages this way,” she said in English. She led them to the far corner of the room where a stairway went to a basement.
Murdock used the Motorola. “Holt, get the front door open, but be careful until we get this floor cleared. The rest of you get it cleared quickly.”
The girl pointed down the steps. He saw a steel door with a pair of steel bolts.