“All at once,” DeWitt said. “We storm the wall. Franklin and me at the door. Ready, go.”
The six men charged the wall without taking a shot. DeWitt nodded. He had guessed right. The defenders must all be working the front of the building. He tried the doorknob. It was locked. He put three slugs into it from his G-11 with the caseless rounds, and the door swung inward. He jolted his head out and looked inside, then jerked it back.
Two shots slammed through the open space. He used the radio. “Murdock. We’re at the back door. Have it open, some opposition. Check who you shoot at. We’re some distance from you guys.”
DeWitt jerked a grenade off his webbing, pulled the safety pin, and let the arming handle pop off. He delayed a full second, then tossed the bomb through the door and hugged the outside wall. The grenade exploded as soon as it hit the floor inside. DeWitt and Franklin charged inside one to the right, one to the left.
Not even the moonlight showed inside the room. Both men lay still, waiting for some enemy movement. After two minutes, DeWitt swore softly. He pulled down his forgotten NVGs and looked around the room. It was a storeroom. Looked like they took in freight and supplies there and then distributed them. He saw one door leading away, then spotted the head and shoulders of a man sprawled behind some boxes. DeWitt checked. He was dead.
“Room clear,” Ed said, and the rest of his squad rushed inside.
He pointed at the door, but the others didn’t see it. A stream of light slipped under the barrier. He eased up beside the door and tested the knob. No lock. He edged the door open an inch and tried to look through. He needed more room with the NVGs. At six inches, he could see inside. More supplies, but these were seemingly laid out in some order and set in neat rows and piles. He edged the door on open and looked all around the room.
“Second room clear,” he said and went inside. Two doors led away from there. He tried one of them and saw a long corridor. At the far end was something that looked like a chandelier. The whole place was lit up like day.
The other door led into a larger room that looked like part of a kitchen. Then he saw the kitchen through some open serving windows. No help, but no soldiers, either. He went back to the first door.
Quinley called to him. “Down here, JG. Something strange. There’s a door behind a wall covering, but the door won’t open.”
DeWitt looked at it. A door with a handle but no lock, yet it wouldn’t open. He stepped back and put four rounds about where the locking mechanism should be near the handle. Nothing happened. He fired four more times directly in front of the doorknob. The heavy door shuddered, then edged inward an inch.
Murdock waved his men back and pushed the door open slowly. Inside it was totally black. He pulled down the NVGs and looked again. He grinned.
Steps led downward. Directly in front was a rack that held a dozen full wine bottles.
“The embassy wine cellar,” he said and pulled the door closed.
Back at the long corridor, Franklin and Fernandez took the first door on the left. They kicked it open, waited for gunfire, then charged inside. Nobody home. It was a dormitory room set up with four beds. A door beyond led to a bathroom.
The next door down the hallway was similar. The third on the other side of the hall responded with a dozen rounds through the door when Mahanani kicked at it. He put six rounds into the door lock and shoved it open, staying on the wall side and out of the line of fire. Four more shots came through.
Quinley leaned around the wall and drilled a dozen rounds from his caseless-bullet submachine gun. A strangled cry came and then silence. DeWitt looked around the door at floor level. A pair of rounds ripped through the wooden jamb just over his head. A splinter gouged into his cheek.
He pulled back, took a grenade off his webbing, popped the pin, let the handle fly, and held the bomb two seconds before he rolled it into the room. It exploded in two seconds, and he and Jefferson charged into the place when the shrapnel stopped flying. They found one soldier and a darkeyed girl lying behind a low bed. Both were dead from the grenade.
The rest of the hall produced no surprises, and they edged toward the central room with the chandelier. They had heard gunfire down another hall before. Now DeWitt checked in.
“We’re in a lobby of some kind,” DeWitt said. “Lights all over the place, no bad guys.”
“We’re about four doors away,” Murdock said. “Lots of activity down here. Any sign of the hostages?”
“None. They might not even be here. We’ll hold here until you arrive.”
Five minutes later, Murdock’s crew cleared the last room, which turned out to be the ambassador’s private office, and joined DeWitt in the lobby.
“You didn’t tell me there was another wing to this place,” Murdock said.
DeWitt shrugged. “Hey, you didn’t ask.”
A booming voice in English cut through the answer.
“Americans, you must give up your try at rescuing the hostages and surrender to us. If you do not, one hostage will be shot for each ten minutes you delay. You have no chance to get to us. The hostages are in the room immediately in front of us. We can fire over them at you, but you won’t be able to fire at all without killing the twelve U.S. State Department officials. See how hopeless it is? Surrender now, or we will kill the first victim, the ambassador himself, in exactly eight minutes.”
19
Murdock looked at his men and the effect of the hostage killing on them. “Anybody see the electrical master switch?” he asked.
“Yeah, around back,” Mahanani said. “Back by that door we came in.”
“Run back there fast and turn off the power now,” Murdock said.
Mahanani took off at a sprint.
“They have to be down this corridor in front of us,” DeWitt said. “No place we’ve seen the other way could hold the hostages.”
“Same on our wing. We move down here fast until we get some fire. Then we figure. Lam and I are out front. Five yards and use doorways for cover. Let’s go, Lam.”
Murdock and Lam ran across the lobby and down the new hallway one door each, then paused. No reaction. They charged down the hallway again, passing two doors this time. Ahead fifty feet they could see large double doors.
Murdock used the Motorola. “DeWitt, clear rooms as you move up. We’ll clear rooms from here on up.”
Murdock twisted a doorknob and pushed the panel in. No reaction; the office was empty.
Suddenly, the hallway and the rooms went starkly dark. The contrast was total. Murdock pulled down his NVGs and let his eyes adjust to the night vision. The green hue came in slowly, then firmed. He went to the door on the right and motioned to Lam, then realized he could see. Murdock kicked in the door and scanned the room. One civilian held up his hands. Murdock raced into the room and fastened his hands and ankles with plastic riot cuffs and left him.
Back in the hallway, he touched Lam and pushed him forward. The next room on the left had two soldiers looking out the window. Before they could swing their rifles around, both SEALs fired. The soldiers went down and didn’t move. Lam ran over and checked to be sure they were dead.
At the hall, the two paused. They were ten feet from the big double doors. The Colombian army officer who must be in charge had no power to run his PA system, unless he had a handheld bullhorn.
The sound came the same time as the thought.
“Clever, Americans, but it won’t work. We still have your people and will execute the ambassador in exactly three minutes.”
Murdock used the radio. “Take cover in the rooms or doorways. We’re going to open or blow down the double doors you might have seen. Ed, you have the NVGs?”