“Major Dowling-Smythe is at the scene now with a couple of observers,” Wentworth said. He pulled a large and highly detailed street map out from under the blueprints and smoothed it out on the tabletop. “They have an infrared scope set up in this Port Authority office building on the top floor… right here. The major says there’s a great deal of heat coming from the target’s fourth floor.” He stopped and glanced at Roselli. “That’s the fifth floor to you boys from the colonies.”
“Leave it to the Yanks t’ get it wrong,” Randolph said, and the others chuckled, including the four SEALs.
“What kind of heat?” Dunn wanted to know. “A stove?”
“Probably an open flame,” Wentworth said. “Major Dowling-Smythe reports smoke coming from the windows as well. It’s our guess that the terrs are busily burning the evidence.
“And that’s why the minister wants us to go in quickly. If we can catch them now, before they’ve had a chance to dispose of the evidence of their dirty work, the goodies might give us a handle on the whole terrorist gang.”
“So,” Major Fred Billingsly, the colonel’s chief aide, said as he looked up from the map. “No hostages this time?”
“Not that we know of… unless you want to count those records. I can’t stress that part of the op enough, gentlemen. We suspect that this safe house was a storage facility — a library, if you will — for a very great deal of the gang’s paperwork. There will be lists of contacts and informants, pay records, expense sheets, sources of money from overseas, lists of provisioners and gunsmiths and sources of weapons and explosives, rosters of active members, maybe even lists of sleepers they have hidden away in sensitive positions in the government or elsewhere.”
“Hell,” Roselli said. “Sounds like even the tangos can’t escape the terror of bureaucracy anymore.” The others laughed.
“Just so,” Wentworth said. “If we’re very lucky, there will be notes kept during their planning meetings, maybe write-ups or reports or schedules that will describe their current operations. We know this group has been damned active, both in uniting the RAF and the active remnants of the Provos into something new, something called the People’s Revolutionary Front, and in planning for something new and very big either here or on the Continent. We haven’t been very successful in penetrating their new organization. This is our chance to see just exactly what they’re up to.”
“Are we sure they’re all still in there, Colonel?” Higgins wanted to know.
“For that matter,” Dunn added, “how many people are we facing in there? Any ideas?”
“Both good questions,” Wentworth said. He nodded toward the woman in BDUs in the corner. “That young lady over there started this whole show, so to speak. Her name is Summers, and she was invited into the house by one of the terrorists. She, ah, didn’t know he was a terrorist at the time, of course.”
“Probably she didn’t get to see his calling card,” one of the SAS men joked.
“She claims to have seen five people inside,” Wentworth continued. “The two Korean suspects, one male, one female. The man who took her and a girlfriend to the house… and he, according to Miss Summers, is dead. Plus two other gunmen, one of them with a foreign accent that Miss Summers thinks was German. Of course, it was unlikely that she would see everybody in there. Our observers have sighted in on two terrs on the roof armed with M-16 rifles, plus at least three more armed men visible inside the front windows on the fourth floor.”
“Fifth floor,” Roselli murmured. Higgins nudged him in the side with an elbow.
Wentworth ignored them both. “The IR scope may have as many as seven people spotted in that fourth-floor front room, though with the fire in there we may not be getting accurate readings. We’ve also gotten fuzzy readings from as many as four or five targets at a time on other floors. Based on this, our Intel chaps are guestimating the total hostile force at between twelve and sixteen shooters. I think we should extend that number to twenty, just to be on the safe side.”
“Twenty, Colonel?” Cartwright said. “And you want to send in four whole sticks? One would do.”
A “stick” was two four-man SAS teams, eight men in all.
Wentworth smiled, a cold expression. “Don’t worry, gentlemen. I have a feeling that there’s going to be more than enough fun to go around this time up.”
Roselli had been in more than his share of house assaults, both in training and in real life. Looking at the small fortress represented on the colonel’s blueprints, he was sure that Wentworth was right.
7
“Okay, right,” Wentworth said. “This is the way we’ll do it. Hoskins… you’ll have the first crack at them. Take your stick in on the helos. We’ve spotted two hostiles on the roof… about here. We’ll hit them with snipers from across the road as you approach. Your boys should be able to abseil to the roof without opposition.”
“Right.”
“Jenkins.”
“Sir.”
“Your troop will take up position ahead of H-hour here, in the flat adjacent to the target. We’ve already quietly evacuated this whole section of the street, of course, and boys from S-section have been in there all morning, very, very quietly taking bricks out of the wall.”
“They have a boroscope in place yet?”
“Not yet. There’s always a chance your prey is going to notice that little black straw poking through his wall. Our lads have it down to the plaster, though, and you’ll be able to take a quick look around before you go in.”
“Right, sir.”
“Dunn.”
“Sir.”
“Your boys will knock at the front door, then take the ground floor. We expect the heaviest concentration of enemy firepower to be there.” Pulling several of the architectural blueprints to the top of the stack, he unrolled one to show the ground-floor plans. “You’ll want to have a close look at these before jump-off,” Wentworth continued. “Just inside the front door, here, you’ll be facing a stairway up and down, with a landing overlooking the front lobby. Make enough noise there, and it might distract them, keep them from investigating upstairs.”
“You can count on us, Colonel.”
“Potter, you’ve got the fourth stick. You’ll be in reserve across the street. I’ll either throw you in where you’re needed, or use you for the mop-up afterward. I’ll also expect you to manage the sniper team.”
“Yes, sir.” Sergeant Major Christopher Potter sounded a bit disappointed at being left out of the initial assault.
“What about us, Colonel?” Roselli said.
“What about you? If you’re thinking of coming along, forget it. Your bosses would flame my arse if anything happened to you boys.”
“Shit, Colonel,” Brown said. “We lose SEALs in training accidents all the time. This don’t look no different to me.”
“Yeah,” Jaybird said, echoing the sentiment. “It’s a piece of cake.”
“Look, Colonel,” Roselli said. “Tell you what. Brown here is one of the best snipers in the whole SEAL program. We call him ‘Magic.’ Give him a Barrett .50 or an M21 and he can reach out and touch someone from a thousand meters. You could put him with your snipers, as an extra set of eyes, couldn’t you?”
“Well, I suppose… ”
“Of course you could! And as for the rest of us, I suggest you let us tag along with Sergeant Major Dunn. I agree that we might get in the way with the other groups. We haven’t trained with you as a unit, and we might turn left when you’re expecting us to turn right. That sort of thing is especially tricky working out of choppers or crowding through a narrow opening, like the one you’re going to put in the wall.