As the snipers snapped down their periscopes a new vehicle appeared out of the woods of the distant mainland.
“Busy night,” the guard muttered, stepping out of the shack and slapping his mittened hands together to try to get some feeling in them.
“This is a restricted area,” the guard said, as the passenger slid down his window.
“I have a pass,” the man said.
The guard had no time to react to the sight of the silenced muzzle.
“Camera Four is out,” the intercom announced to Boris on his lonely vigil at the front desk. “And five just flickered. Go check it out.”
“Got it,” Boris sighed, picking up his walkie-talkie and trudging to the front door. He slid his card through the reader, a newfangled innovation in his opinion and totally unnecessary, and opened the door. The last thing he saw was the masked figure in front of him.
“Security, this is Boris.” The radio crackled with static and was half unreadable.
Markov set his bottle of vodka down and belched then pressed the microphone button. “Yes? What is wrong?”
“The plug came undone again in this damned wind,” Boris said. Or Markov thought he did, the reception was terrible. “There, how is that?”
The screen for the right-hand door camera flickered for a moment and then came to life. After a moment Boris stepped in view by the door. His head was down and covered by a heavy fur hat with the flaps down, but from the way his uniform was blowing it was reasonable wear for the out-of-doors.
“I’m going in,” the guard said, sliding his card through the reader.
As the panel van backed up to the loading dock the new car accelerated down the causeway, it’s passenger now standing in place of the guard wearing the same style uniform and markings.
“Teams,” the driver said into his microphone.
“Team One, place.”
“Two… place.”
“Three, place.”
“Go,” he said, quietly, sliding to a stop in front of the main doors.
The back doors of the panel van crashed open and the single external guard had just enough time to wake up from a vodka induced haze and see the four heavily armed attackers before he died. Two more shots and both cameras were out.
“Boris” opened the front doors and drew two pistols. One shot took out each of the internal cameras and then he stepped to the side as the entry team trotted past. The lead of the team slapped a ring of thermal entry plastic onto the steel door while another slapped a breaching charge in the center. All four of the entry team turned to the side, covering their eyes with their arms, as the plastic was ignited. There was a moment of searing white and a sharp “crack” and clang as the refractory steel was first burned through and then slammed backwards by the breaching charge.
At the side door the identical assault had opened up the loading area. Both teams were in.
A moment later an alarm began to shrill.
At the sound of the alarm Dr. Arensky sighed and pulled a small device out of his side pocket. He pulled a pin from the device and then pressed the only button on the face. There was a distant “crack” and all the lights went out: on the far side of the wall in the janitor’s closet was the main electrical breaker for the entire building.
At the first hoot of the alarm, which had been right on time according to their internal clock, the three rocket-men stood up, tracked in on the narrow slit openings of the bunkers and fired, all within the span of a second.
The US Marines in Iraq had recently started to use a “new” thermobaric rocket system against the insurgents. It was only “new” to the Marines, though: the Russians had been using it all the way back to the Afghanistan War.
Thermobaric, often incorrectly called “fuel-air”, rounds used heat, “thermo” and overpressure “baric” to create a devastating explosion. Early thermobaric rounds had used “fuel” as their delivery medium, spreading a gas over a wide area before detonating catastrophically. Newer systems, such as the rocket being used in this instance, used a specialized “slow-fire” solid explosive that, as it exploded, continued to carry molecules of the explosive along its blast front which, in turn, exploded.
This created massive overpressure inside of the bunkers, instantly killing everyone within, blasting off the reinforced rear doors and tossing body parts and chunks of machine-gun out through the narrow engagement slots.
Immediately after they fired, the snipers peaked up besides them scanning for targets. There were two potential reactions that the internal defense team could take. They could respond to the bunkers being hit or to the attack on the inside. In the event of attempted reinforcement of the bunkers… there were the snipers…
Team Two, the side-door team, blew down the cargo door on the side and turned immediately to the right. The internal door here was only wood and the lock blew off at the blast of a shotgun. As the door thudded open the lights went out. The alarm continued to shrill but only spotty emergency lighting, red and dim, came on throughout the facility. The team waited patiently, however, for what was about to occur as shotgun blasts, regular as clockwork, began to boom down the corridor.
Team One, the front entry team, spread out. Two team members started down the hallway to the left, two more to the right. As each team came to a door, the lead placed his shotgun against the lock, pulled the trigger and then stepped back. The trail then stepped forward tossed a head sized device into the room and the cycle was repeated.
The right-hand team did the same, moving down the corridor to Dr. Arensky’s office then passing by.
As the two teams spread out the driver of the sedan strolled into the main corridor and turned to the right. When he reached Dr. Arensky’s office, as the right-hand team reached the end of the corridor and tossed a device into the janitor’s closet, he knocked on the door, three times, with pauses between.
The door was jerked open as Dr. Arensky struggled into his heavy outer coat, the briefcase in his hand.
“This is madness,” the doctor said, sputtering.
“You do have it, though, yes?” the man asked. He was tall and broad with gray-shot black hair and a tanned face lined by much time out-of-doors.
“I have it,” Dr. Arensky snapped, lifting the case.
“Let us go, then,” the man said, lifting his arm to look at his watch and then nodding as a sharp crack sounded down the corridor. The crack, and flash of light, was followed by a series of rapid, short bursts of fire. Seven in all. “Our ride is on the way and we don’t want to keep them waiting.”
He waved down the hallway as the team of two men, one of them “Boris/Policeman” walked to the door. “Boris” casually tossed his last packet in the room and the two followed Arensky and the broad man out the front door.
From out of the cloudy sky, which was now drifting snowflakes downward, an Alouette helicopter dropped, twin to the one dropping to the rear of the facility. The team boarded silently, the broad man and “Boris” simultaneously pushing Dr. Arensky into one of the seats and buckling him in. When they were done, and in their own seats, the rest of the team was in and secured.