Volodya and Dietrich, by far the most creative men of the Lafayette Initiative, came up with the most brazen tactic to get into their building. They called in a food delivery for a nonexistent room. While the concierge tried to explain to the delivery man that there was no room 1515 and the delivery man explained that he needed to get paid for the food, Volodya and Douglas walked right on by to the elevators without being asked so much as a single question.
McCormick, the lone operator, was given the easiest entry assignment, a fairly new apartment building outside Quanzhou with state-of-the-art electronic security. The electronic system, however, was child's play for Fei, who opened the service entrance for McCormick from hundreds of miles away.
At 2:30 AM local time, each team began their assassinations. I switched rapidly between the video feeds from each team to make sure nothing went wrong, but I focused especially on Grant and Brook, the two SAS commandos who had yet to see combat in this war. Their first target was a pilot with a family, and I wanted to know right away if anything went wrong.
Lieutenant Brook, the more experienced of the two with burglary tools, unlocked the door to apartment 1203 in about a minute. Grant slipped nightvision glasses on, withdrew his full-dose-sedative dart gun from a jacket pocket, and stood ready.
When the lock clicked open, Grant pushed in the door slowly, attempting to stay quiet. However, the door creaked, and a sleepy Chinese woman whispered a question from the bedroom.
Grant moved quickly into the bedroom and shot his dart gun, catching the woman in the shoulder. She inhaled as if to scream, but no sound came out. The newest military sedatives from Taiwan targeted the victim's vocal cords first, ensuring silence. However, when she tumbled to the floor, her husband, the pilot, awoke and asked his own alarmed question in Chinese.
Brook had entered the bedroom as well by this point. He too had his dart gun out and hit the man with his first shot. Grant quickly put away his dart gun and retrieved his silenced pistol. “Go find the child and sedate her, I'll take care of this guy.”
Brook turned back to the entrance of the bedroom and saw a Chinese girl, no more than four years old, standing and looking at him with a look of horror.
Grant had not seen or heard the little girl. He nonchalantly walked over to the incapacitated Chinese pilot and fired two shots from his pistol straight into the man's head.
“Oh shit.” Brook actually said the words aloud. The little girl's jaw hung open and tears began pouring down her face. She surely would have screamed, but she seemed to be having difficulty pulling in her breath.
Brook's military training took over. He instinctively shot the girl with the dart gun he had in his hand. Unfortunately, that was the dart gun with the full sedative load. The girl instantly collapsed, unconscious.
Grant whispered, “Shit, was that the full dose?”
His hand trembling, Brook checked the weapon. “Oh God.” He radioed in. “Mr. Cortez, is there any way to save the girl?”
I looked to Fei, who kept his face neutral. “She needs to get to a hospital, quick.”
Grant cursed. “We can't call a bloody ambulance right now, can we?”
“Yes, we can,” Brook insisted loudly. “I didn't sign up to kill a toddler.”
“Christ, man, we call an ambulance, we're dead. The Chinese will hunt us down. If they don't kill us outright, they'll torture us and then kill us. Not to mention the mission will be a failure.”
Brook looked to the girl on the floor, her breaths becoming increasingly ragged. “Oh, shit. Look at her. We can't just let her die!”
I took a deep breath. “Lieutenant Brook.”
Brook seemed not to hear me. “We've still got time if we call in right now!”
I repeated myself louder. “Lieutenant Brook. Listen to me. Leave that apartment. I will take full responsibility for the deaths of any civilians. The blood is on my hands, not yours.”
Brook hesitated. “Mr. Cortez…”
Not allowing him to finish, I said, “This is a direct order, lieutenant. Get out of there now. Continue the mission.” Realizing I needed to explain the situation further, I said, “How many children will we save in Taiwan if we can cripple the Chinese air force? How many people will live? If you want to be humane, go kill more pilots. Get out of that apartment, right now.”
After a moment, Brook said in anguish, “Roger that, Mr. Cortez.”
Grant put a hand on his friend's shoulder. “She's gone, mate. Let's finish this thing.”
I changed video feeds just in time to see McCormick walking out of the first apartment he had entered, where three J-10 pilots had shared a single suite of rooms. McCormick had dispatched the trio without any of them waking up.
The other teams also had no trouble with the first round of assassinations. The teams quickly diverged in time taken for each apartment. Dietrich and Volodya moved quickly, with Dietrich working the burglary tools and Volodya ready to sweep each apartment for family members with his dart gun before he or Dietrich dispatched the pilot with two gunshots.
Douglas and Taleb moved much more slowly, doubtless at Douglas's insistence. He was far older than his Palestinian teammate and much more aware of everything that could go wrong. Taleb worked the locks, and Douglas crept into each apartment like a cat, taking time to figure out where every occupant was before he and Taleb executed simultaneous take downs across the apartment.
As the teams progressed through their apartment buildings, Fei listened into a police scanner for each of the three cities targeted by our teams — Fuzhou, Quanzhou, and Beijing. Fei had developed a program that would instantly alert him to any reports of murder or gunshots, the two most likely reports to come in about the night's activities.
I watched the various camera feeds, told myself everything was going according to plan, and worried about all the ways something could go wrong. I continued doing that right up until the time something did.
Their last targets killed, Taleb and Douglas returned to the foyer of their assigned apartment complex on Taijang Road in Fuzhou around 3:15 AM. Looking out the glass doors, they saw a police car pulling to the front of the building, its emergency lights ablaze and its siren wailing.
Taleb quietly asked Douglas in Arabic, "Are they here for us?"
Douglas replied, "No one saw us except the family members. If the police were here for us, there would be more than two of them."
Both commandos, however, withdrew the silenced pistols from their bags and stashed them under their work shirts. Each wore a surgical mask to hide their non-Chinese faces, but they were still obviously foreigners.
They exited the building with all the nonchalance they could summon. The policemen exited their car, pistols drawn, taking cover behind their car doors.
The policemen shouted an order in Chinese.
Douglas called back in French, "Nous ne parlons pas chinois!"
One of the policemen shouted back in broken English, "Get down with ground!"
Douglas saw that the policemen were too far away for the "I surrender" flashbang concealed in his workman duffel bag. It would likely dazzle only Douglas and Taleb if it went off.
In French accented English, Douglas said, "We are merely here to fix a plumbing issue with the boiler."
If the Chinese policemen understood his words, or cared, they did not show it. "Get down with ground!"
Douglas exchanged a glance with Taleb. "Absolutely," he called back to the policemen.
In a lightning quick motion, Douglas pulled the silenced pistol from his waistband while falling to one knee. Taleb, not knowing when Douglas would make his move, was a split-second behind.