“Affirmative.”
“Use them. There may be some fire down the hall. We’re moving up now.”
He and Lam ran for the door. It was locked. Murdock took an eighth pound of C-4 from his webbing and pressed it firmly against the door handle where the lock should be. He saw well enough with the night vision goggles to put in a detonator and set it for two minutes. He whispered the time to Lam, pushed the activator, and both men ran for the first room and lunged inside.
A minute later, the cracking roar of the explosion shattered their nerves and turned the black hallway into noontime daylight. Then the roar swept past them down the hall. Murdock grabbed Lam’s hand, and they went to the door. He looked down the hall and saw the door blasted flat on one side and hanging by a hinge on the other side. Beyond that he could see little.
A machine gun chattered from somewhere in the void. It was shielded by something down the hall that Murdock couldn’t see over or through.
“No firing,” Murdock said into his mike. “We don’t know where those hostages are. They probably don’t have them out as a human shield, but you can’t tell.”
The weapon down the hall ahead fired again. Then the bullhorn snapped on.
“You lose, American SEALs. We just killed the ambassador. Next comes the second man in command. You now have eight minutes left in your second ten-minute period.”
“A green flare,” Lam whispered into his mike. “I have two. I could put one into the wall thirty, forty feet down there and see what it will show us.”
“Go,” Murdock said.
Lam fired the flare from his Colt Commander. It was designed to lift high in the air and descend slowly on a small parachute. At least here it would burn. How bright would it be?
Murdock waited. Lam fired it a moment later, and it hit the far wall, bounced down the hall, and popped into a pale green light at once. Murdock saw the sandbags and a mounted machine gun. Directly in back were four soldiers. Even with the penetrating power of the night vision goggles he could spot no civilians.
“Take them out,” Murdock said. “Lam and I are out of your firing line.”
At once the SEALs’ machine guns and two long rifles cascaded a rain of fire against the sandbags and enemy gun. Two of the soldiers went down in the first barrage. The next one battered and riddled the top sandbags, and a round nailed the machine gunner, who had managed only a short burst before he died. Murdock saw the fourth man lift up and dart toward a door at the side of the hall. He didn’t make it, spinning to the floor with two rounds in his chest.
“Cease fire,” Murdock said on the radio. The SEAL guns fell silent. Murdock studied the area behind the gun again through his night vision goggles. Movement. Who? A man in a white shirt. A civilian.
“Everyone move up to closer cover,” Murdock said. He and Lam darted ahead to the blasted door. The machine gun lay on its side, ten yards ahead. Murdock could see two hall doors open. A soldier ran from one, looked back down the hall, then fired a four-round burst and vanished again. The green flare weakened and soon burned out, leaving the hallway dark.
Now Murdock could see through the goggles more civilians being moved down the hall.
“No return fire. Civilians in the hall. DeWitt, take four men and run to what must be a back door down this wing. I think all of the defenders are with the hostages. We’ll try to surprise them if they try to leave the building. The rest of you, move closer but maintain cover between moves.”
Murdock touched Lam, and they ran into the wing and pushed into doorways on both sides just past the machine gun. Murdock cleared the room on his side with his goggles. They all had moved on. Why? Where were they going?
He checked for bodies. Only the three soldiers showed. No civilians. No dead ambassador. Was the army man bluffing? What good to kill a hostage if no one could see it?
Ahead, Murdock heard a door close. Where? He hadn’t thought of the second floor. Nowhere had he seen stairs leading upward.
“Ed. If you can get inside that back door down there, check to see if there’s a stairs to the second floor. If so, block it and set up a fence across the hall.”
“That’s a roger, Cap. Almost to the door. We’ll move carefully.”
Murdock adjusted the NVGs and moved into the hallway with Lam in tow. They worked ahead on silent feet. Murdock checked both open doors they passed. No bodies. Where were they going?
The bullhorn blasted into the silence. “Well done, SEALs, but not good enough. We have the edge in manpower, and we know the terrain. You’ve found no American bodies? True. I made the living ones carry the two dead ones. Now for a final solution to our little problem. We are at a stalemate. I have the prisoners, you have the better weapons. However, to use those weapons, you run the risk of killing the reason you came in here.
“Oh, to add to your stress, we have a radio report from our commander that your helicopter and two of the fighters that came with it have been shot down and crashed in flames. That should make you think about your mission. You have no way to get out of here.”
There was a moment of silence.
“No response? I didn’t think so. This is the situation. Each of our hostages is holding a live grenade with the safety pin pulled. All that is keeping them alive is not dropping the grenade or letting the arming spoon flip off. Right? Soon some of them will become tired and one or more bombs will go off. None of my men are near them. You can’t find them or get past us. Now you must surrender.”
Ed DeWitt heard most of the talk as he and his four men slipped in the rear door. He had the other pair of NVGs. The things were heavy, clumsy, and not a favorite of the SEALs, but they did come in handy now and then. He looked past a doorway just inside the hall and listened. He heard movement in the room directly above him.
Where were the stairs? He looked along the hall again and fifteen feet ahead saw the steps leading up. One room showed on both sides with doors closed. He took Franklin with him and edged up to the door. Silently, he twisted the knob and pushed it open. No response. He looked inside with the NVGs and saw no one. The other side door yielded the same results.
Ed looked at the stairs. Somebody was upstairs. The man on the bullhorn sounded like he was in the hallway. It extended far down ahead of him. He saw at least six or eight doors in the misty gloom of the greenscape.
He touched the other three men, and they all moved to the steps and slowly went up them. One flight with a landing on top almost against the wall. They all stopped and listened. Again there were movements of feet and some whispers. The civilians?
They paused on the landing in the dark. DeWitt could see the new hallway on the second floor. There were more doors opening off it as if this were a dormitory.
Before DeWitt could move, the door opposite him opened, and a soldier left, locking the door behind him. He felt his way toward the steps with one hand out in front. The other hand carried an automatic rifle.
As the soldier came closer, DeWitt grabbed Fernandez’s sniper rifle and waited. When the Colombian soldier was a step away and still blinded by the darkness, DeWitt swung the heavy rifle like a club, hitting the soldier in the throat. The man dropped the rifle, and it clattered to the floor. DeWitt surged on top of the man as he fell. The soldier grabbed his throat, then wheezed twice and his head rolled to one side.
DeWitt certified that he was dead, then found a key in his pocket and went to the door the soldier had just left. He turned the key in the lock and edged the door open. With his NVGs, he saw that the people inside were civilians.
“U.S. SEALs here,” he whispered. “Quiet. Is the ambassador here?”
A man stepped forward, tears running down his cheeks.