In a fit of rage, Seonwoo placed four shots into the already dead bodyguard who had told him Casey was gone. For some reason’s the corpse’s expression of satisfaction annoyed him. “Are you sure he isn’t here?”
“Yes, sir.” Ryeon replied. The battle for the suite had been short and vicious, costing Seonwoo two of his henchmen, but they had killed the three foes they had found, all bodyguards. The suite was wrecked, inundated with bullets holes and buckshot from the KS-23s.
Yoon entered the bedroom. “Maybe he was never here.”
Seonwoo shook his head emphatically. “No, too many bodyguards here. He was here, but there must be a secret escape route or hidden room. We must—”
“Dragon Five to Dragon leader!” a voice on the radio called out. The man guarding one of the hotel’s two fire stairwells relayed his message. “Target is in the east stairwell, four floors below me!”
Seonwoo’s smile was unpleasant. “Yoon! Take two men, use the elevator and get below them, then go up the stairs.” Yoon nodded and left at a run, shouting out the names of the men he wanted with him.
Seonwoo turned to Ryeon. “Contact Cho in the west staircase, then both of you join Jee in the east stairwell and drive them down to the eighth floor. I’ll be on the eighth waiting for them. Go now!”
Ryeon ran out. Seonwoo reloaded his pistol and his Uzi, then turned and walked out of the bedroom. He couldn’t get the dead bodyguard’s expression out of his mind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The van roared into the Trans-Continental Marsh Hotel’s driveway at forty miles an hour. It slid to a stop in front of the hotel’s main doors, causing several people to stare at the vehicle in puzzlement as the side door slid open. The puzzlement turned to fear as three people wearing full combat gear came storming out of the van cargo hold, shouting “Out of the way!” By the time they reached the doors, the van was roaring out of the driveway.
Once inside, Tanner called out, “Homeland Security. I need everyone to evacuate in a quick and orderly manner, right now!”
A man in a suit with an engraved name tag hurried over. “I’m the day manager, Fredrick Langston. What’s going on?”
“You have terrorists here attempting to either kill or kidnap a Special Assistant to the President. I need the people on the ground floor to evacuate and everyone else to stay in their rooms and lock their doors.” Distant gunfire rattled as Tanner spoke the last three words.
“Of course.” The man pulled out a walkie-talkie and hit the push-to-talk button, relaying Tanner’s instructions to his staff.
Langston began to repeat the announcement as Tanner and the others raced for an elevator. One look was enough for Tanner to see they weren’t going up that way. He turned to Langston, who had followed them. “Any other elevator we can use?”
“There’s a service elevator for the banquet rooms, but that only goes up to the fourth floor. It’s around the corner, near the storage rooms.”
“No good. We’ll have to do this the hard way. He tapped his radio. “Six, this is Prime. We’re on the ground floor. Where are you?”
“We’re on the way down, east stairwell, just reached the twelfth floor. We have at least two Tangos above us in pursuit, but there’s no telling where the rest are.”
“Copy. We’re on our way.” Tanner addressed Langston. “Call the police and tell them east staircase!”
Danielle exchanged her nearly empty magazine for a full one. “Tanner’s in the building. Ground floor!”
“Might as well be on Venus for all the good it does us,” Halverstaff said.
“Morton,” Casey said in a resigned tone.
“What?”
“Shut up.”
They made it to the eleventh floor without incident. Danielle caught glimpses of the men above her when they leaned out for a quick glimpse or an even quicker burst of gunfire. What they weren’t doing was getting closer.
They started down the stairs to the tenth floor. “DuPree!” Danielle called out, her attention on the stairs above them. “I think we’re being herded!”
The young Secret Service agent stopped and bit her lip. “We keep going,” she said. “If your team’s coming, the farther down we are, the closer we’ll be to them.”
There was a loud boom from below that echoed through the staircase. Danielle’s radio came alive. “Prime to Six. We’re in the stairwell. “Your location?”
“Coming up on tenth. We are missing a lot of Tangos. Suspect they may be trying to cut us off from below.”
“Understood. We’re coming up now. Prime out.”
“Tanner’s in the stairwell,” Danielle called out to the others. “He’s on his way up.”
They reached the tenth floor and continued down. Danielle fired at their pursuers, her unease growing with every passing second. Where was the rest of the enemy?
As if answering her mental question, the sound of another door opened below, this one closer, but the echo made it hard to estimate which floor. It closed with a bang and DuPree fired down the stairwell. “Enemy on the sixth floor!”
“Six to Prime. We have Tangos on the sixth floor landing.”
With Tanner in the lead, the three OUTCASTs had reached the second floor landing when they heard a door somewhere above them open violently, then someone shooting down at them. The team stopped and hugged the wall to stay out of sight.
Tanner raised his MP5 so that it pointed up into the stairwell. “Copy. We’re four floors below them. We’ll close and engage.”
He motioned Naomi and Liam past him and they ran up the next flight of stairs. Naomi stopped at the next landing, stopped and raised her MP5 so that she covered the landings and stairwell above. Liam continued on to the third floor. As soon as he was out of Tanner’s sight, the OUTCAST leader charged up the stairs, past Naomi and up the next flight of stairs. Liam was on the third floor landing, doing the same thing as Naomi. As Tanner raced past him and started up the stairs leading to the fourth floor, Liam fired a short burst up the stairwell. Tanner heard the bullets striking the railing three floors above him, but kept charging up the stairs.
He reached the next landing, between the third and fourth floors just as a man leaned over three landings above and fired. Tanner backpedaled as the swarm of slugs slammed into the railing and the concrete floor around it. Somewhere above, he could more gunfire, but couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
Tanner stepped to the left and fired up at the enemy. The Triad gunman grunted and pulled back, discouraged. Naomi passed behind Tanner and raced up the stairs to the fourth floor. “Liam!” Tanner shouted, “Move!”
The ex-SEAL sprinted up the stairs, sliding a shell into the M-203PI under the MP5’s barrel. “Go!” He pointed the grenade launcher up the stairs and pulled the trigger. The shell rocketed out of the barrel with a poomf. It raced up three floors, struck underneath the landing above where the gunmen were and dropped to the ground, spewing thick blue smoke. Before Tanner could say anything, Liam shoved a gas mask into his chest. “Take this!” He was already wearing one around his neck.
Tanner slipped the gas mask on, then took the stairs three at a time, ran past Naomi and continued up. Liam was a few steps behind, slowing only long enough to toss Naomi another gas mask from his satchel, eject the old shell from the M-203 and slip in a new one. Naomi put on her gas mask and followed them.