“Whatever we can.”
Adam then said, “The van. My keys are in it, and it’s unlocked. Maybe Biery can pick it up.”
Chavez nodded and called Gavin, who was in a cab on the way to the scene. “I need you to get Adam’s maroon Mitsubishi Grandis out of the alley behind Club Stylish. When you get it, give me a call, I’m sure we’ll need a pickup.”
“Okay.”
FORTY-ONE
Meyer and his team of shot-up SEAL Team Six operators managed to make it six blocks before the 14K closed in on them.
From the moment the first gunshots rang out at the club on Jaffe Road five minutes earlier, all across Wan Chai mobile phones chirped and text messages were received. Word spread quickly to 14K gunmen that their turf was under some sort of attack, and they were all ordered to descend on the corner of Jaffe and Marsh, the location of Club Stylish.
Coordination between the various groups of 14K was a disjointed mess, especially so in those first minutes, but the sheer number of goons on foot, on motorcycles, in cars, and even in the MTR rushing to the area ensured that Meyer and his team would be outnumbered fifteen to one. The Triads did not know Zha had been kidnapped — in fact, only a small fraction of them would know who Zha was in the first place. All they knew was that there was a shoot-out at the club and a group of heavily armed gweilos were trying to get away. Someone reported they were in a black van, and that made it just a matter of time before Meyer and his element were caught like roaches in the light on the narrow, crowded streets of Wan Chai.
They had driven east up the alley until it ended at Canal Road, then took that south until they could go east again on Jaffe. As they passed shuttered businesses and high-rise office and apartment buildings, the driver of the van, Special Warfare Operator Terry Hawley, veered left and right to avoid slow-moving and oncoming traffic.
In the back of the van, Zha was facedown and still tied and hooded, the injured men were busy wrapping quick bandages around their gunshot wounds, and Meyer was in comms with the extraction team, telling them his element was minutes away.
But things went south as soon as Meyer finished the transmission. They rolled into the intersection of Jaffe and Percival, less than a half-mile from the shoot-out and into the ultra-ritzy Causeway Bay area, when an automatic rifle was fired by a plain-clothed man in the backseat of a Ford Mustang convertible. Special Warfare Operator Hawley was hit in both arms and the chest, and he slumped forward over the steering wheel.
The twelve-passenger van swerved in the rain, skidded perpendicular to the road, and then flipped onto its side, sliding thirty yards until it crashed into the front of a light bus, a sixteen-passenger vehicle used for public transportation.
Hawley was killed by rifle fire, and another special warfare operator broke his shoulder in the crash.
Meyer was dazed, and broken glass had cut his chin, cheeks, and lips, but he kicked open the back door of the van and rallied his men. The dead and the wounded were either carried or helped along, and the prisoner was held on to, and the men shuffled into an alleyway that led toward the water, some four hundred yards to the north.
They had not been out of the street for more than a few seconds when the first of dozens of police cars raced to the scene and began pulling bewildered Hong Kongers out of the public light bus.
Three hundred yards west of the crash, Chavez, Ryan, and Yao ran through the rain, pushing past late-night crowds and leaping out of the way of emergency vehicles of all types that either raced toward Club Stylish or headed toward the popping gunfire to the east.
Crossing the eight lanes of traffic at Canal Road, Adam caught up to Chavez and said, “Follow me! There is a pedestrian walkway between those condo towers there, we can head north of Jaffe and come up from a quieter street.”
“Let’s do it,” Ding said.
As they ran on, Yao asked, “What’s the plan when we get there?”
Domingo answered back, “We wing it.” Then he clarified, “We can’t do too much for those boys, but I’ll bet they’ll take any help we can give them.”
The seven surviving SEALs were overtaxed with responsibilities. Two men carried their dead comrade; one man kept a firm gloved hand on FastByte’s collar, pulling the young hacker along, and his other hand on his SIG Sauer pistol. The two operators with serious leg wounds were helped along by the SEALs still able to walk under their own power, even though one of the ambulatory SEALs himself had a broken shoulder. He had dropped all his gear, and now all he was able to do was help the man with the wounded knee hobble along while at the same time doing his best to fight his body’s urge to go into shock from the pain of the broken shoulder.
CPO Meyer helped Reynosa, who had lost a sizable chunk of meat out of the back of his left calf.
Meyer and one other operator were still able to use their small, suppressed HK PDWs as a primary weapon. Two more men had their pistols in their hands, but the other three surviving men could not even get a gun into the fight because they were fully engaged, either dragging someone or dealing with their own injuries.
Meyer’s team’s ability to fight had been depleted more than sixty percent in five minutes.
They struggled along as fast as they could, winding through parking lots and back alleys, doing their best to stay away from police vehicles racing through the streets, and pockets of 14K who gave their positions away by screaming and shouting, wild from the chase.
The rainfall and the late hour kept passersby to a minimum here, a few blocks from the lively restaurant and bar location of Lockhart Road, so Meyer knew that any fighting-age males grouped together were likely a threat.
As they approached a shuttered row of shops at the foot of a skyscraper under construction and cocooned in a latticework of bamboo, Bannerman called out, “Contact left!” and Meyer fixed his laser onto three young men running up a side street with rifles in their hands. One of the toughs fired a wild burst from a folding-stock AK, sending sparks and asphalt off the street and into the air near the SEAL element, but Meyer and Petty Officer Wade Lipinski each opened fire with their MP7s, killing all three combatants in a matter of seconds.
The threat was eliminated, but the gunfire from the AK and the eruption of car alarms on the street were bad news for Meyer and his team. The roving bands of Triads would be able to pinpoint them easily.
They kept moving, heading north toward the water and doing everything they could to stay under cover, as thumping jet-powered helicopters circled overhead and spotlights whipped across the high buildings all around them.
It seemed to Jack Ryan as if every damn siren in Hong Kong was now in operation in or around Wan Chai. Even before the short barking of rifle fire echoed through the canyons of skyscrapers a few seconds ago, Jack’s ears were ringing from police and fire department sirens, as well as from his firing the shotgun back in the alley behind the club.
He ran on through the pedestrian walkway, following Adam, who had taken the lead, and he felt the weight and bite of the Beretta 9-millimeter tucked inside his belt. Without Adam, Ding and Jack would have run straight into police roadblocks and racing gangs of 14K crews every few seconds. So far they had passed only one group of five or six men, whom Adam identified as probable 14K gunmen. Jack wondered if he would see these guys again when and if he made contact with the JSOC operators who had kidnapped FastByte.
From the sound of a new volley of shooting it was clear the American direct-action team was still heading north. They were just a few blocks from Victoria Harbour.