Dietrich and Volodya were approaching the hospital from the south and were a block away when Volodya spotted Taleb walking toward the military hospital from the north, about seventy yards away. The Palestinian was also dressed in the common sailor garb, though his small, compact physique and Arab features made him an unlikely friend for the two tall, burly, blond Europeans. Nevertheless, the appearance didn’t have to hold up for very long.
The three men met each other in front of the hospital. Volodya smiled and said effusively with an artificially strong Russian accent for the sake of any Chinese listening in, “Ah, Mohammed, how are you, you old bastard?”
Volodya handled the conversation while Dietrich whispered, “Ready to go when we hear the signal.”
Douglas triggered the microphone. “Roger that, Dietrich, signal coming shortly.”
Releasing the mic trigger, he took a deep breath, then said to Fei and me, “Alright, lads, let’s see if Dietrich's little scheme works.”
Fei nodded. He picked up a cheap disposable cell phone and dialed a number from memory. He spoke one word in Chinese, which, given what happened next, must have meant, “Go.”
Five seconds later, gunfire erupted on the far side of the building from Ivanov, Dietrich, and Taleb. Five old Ak-47’s thundered away, plowing bullets into the rear entrance of the military hospital. Those weapons were wielded by five homeless men who, until an hour before, had been penniless as well. Now they were each richer by $10,000 and one disposable cell phone. Their job was to create a ruckus at the back entrance of the building, distracting the fifteen to thirty PLA soldiers inside on the first floor and drawing them away from where the real action would take place.
Not for the first time, I mentally thanked Douglas for bringing along someone as cold-bloodedly genius as Dietrich. Putting homeless people in mortal danger was cruel, dastardly, and doubtlessly a war crime of some sort, but it was damnably clever.
Taleb was the first of the three mercenaries to walk into the hospital. The three guards in the reception area had jumped up at the sound of gunfire and were looking down the hall toward the other side of the building where all the noise was coming from.
As the mercenaries had planned, Taleb shot the leftmost guard with his silenced .40 caliber pistol. That Chinese soldier, a woman, had been seated at the reception desk. The two Europeans, armed identically to Taleb, dispatched the other two guards in the same manner. Without a word, they moved to the staircase next to the elevator bank in the hallway behind the reception desk.
Taleb led Volodya and Dietrich quickly upstairs. Dietrich, at the rear of their little column, had to pause briefly at the fourth floor when a gangly Chinese soldier opened the door directly behind the ascending mercenaries. The soldier, who looked to be all of sixteen years old, merely gawked at the armed men in grimy worksuits running up the stairs. The People’s Liberation Army, it seemed, was sending its best soldiers to the war in Taiwan and leaving the lesser warriors to guard hospitals in mainland China.
Dietrich, standing six feet away, shot the soldier in the head and continued running up the stairs. Taleb didn’t even slow down until he reached the door at the sixth floor.
Dietrich whispered, “Third door on the left.” Ivanov and Taleb nodded. They did not need to be reminded. If the team had worked together before in the field, Dietrich probably wouldn’t have felt the need to remind them of this last crucially important detail.
Taleb had his hand on the push-in door, with Ivanov behind him and Dietrich at the rear. No one had any idea how many soldiers would be on the floor, though we all hoped that most had been drawn to the other side of the building by our diversionary homeless gunners.
Looking back at Ivanov and Dietrich, Taleb gave a small nod. The other two returned it, and Taleb violently pushed in the door, his silenced pistol instantly raised.
Nothing. No one was in the hallway. The medical staff must have had some procedure to stay where they were or hide in patients’ rooms when they heard gunshots. Whatever garrison had been present to guard the special guest had apparently moved downstairs to deal with the fake threat.
Without a moment’s hesitation, the three mercenaries stacked up outside the third door on the left. Taleb glanced briefly at his phone and saw that the Bee still showed three guards in the room. He must have heard a snippet of conversation among the guards, because he held up a palm to tell Ivanov and Dietrich to wait a moment as he put his ear up to the door. In a voice that barely qualified as a whisper, he said, “Two left, one straight ahead.”
Ivanov and Dietrich nodded.
Taleb turned the knob and threw the door open. The three guards were indeed still inside, their rifles unslung but not aimed anywhere in particular.
Ivanov fired first, hitting the Chinese infantryman who was on the far side of the room next to the patient’s bed. Taleb and Dietrich dispatched the other two guards sitting to the left of the entrance with two rapid shots each.
And then they were alone with the patient.
“Taleb, cut the restraints on his legs.” Dietrich, nominally in command of the shooters for this mission, gave the order. The short Saudi withdrew a standard combat knife from a hidden sheath under his shirt and cut the restraints that held the patient’s feet and legs to the bed. Volodya took the left hand, Dietrich the right.
The patient didn’t have much to say about the goings on in his room; he was only faintly conscious of his surroundings. When Dietrich slung him over his shoulder, the man let out a minor groan and said, “What the fuck are you doing?”
Dietrich wasn’t really paying attention. He responded simply, “Shut up.”
The gunfire on the other side of the building was dying out. It sounded like only two of the five rifles were still firing. Douglas’s voice came over their radio earpieces. “Time to go, lads. Get that bloody invalid out of there.”
Dietrich said, “On our way out now.” He looked at the other two. “You heard the colonel.”
Taleb led the way again, though this time Ivanov took the rear and Dietrich walked between them, the semi-conscious man slung over his shoulder. The descent down the stairs did not prove as easy as the ascent.
At about the time the mercenaries were bounding down around the third floor, two Chinese soldiers opened the door on the second floor and entered the stairwell. They must have been ordered to go back upstairs, possibly to fire on the unknown attackers from above. Or maybe the PLA were responding to some alarm the mercenaries had unknowingly triggered. Whatever the reason, the mercenaries were just as startled as the Chinese soldiers by the sudden appearance of enemies on the stairs.
Recovering quickly, Taleb fired a shot into the first soldier’s chest. A stupid mistake, that. The silenced pistol lacked the power to punch a bullet through the Kevlar body armor that was standard issue for most PLA infantry units. The shot succeeded only in knocking the soldier off his feet.
Ivanov killed the soldier’s companion quickly, but the lucky Chinese soldier who had taken a round to his body armor had time to flick the safety off his rifle and fire a wild, full-automatic volley of Ak-2000 fire into the stairwell before Taleb corrected his aim and put a bullet into the man’s skull.
Every Chinese soldier for a thousand yards around had heard the thundering gunfire coming from the opposite side of the building where they were focusing all their attention. The mercenaries all knew that it was merely a matter of time now before the PLA garrison shifted to investigate what was happening on the front side of the building.