The Fate Of Nations: F.I.R.E. Team Alpha: Book One (10 page)

              “Firing!” Burgett said, and activated the detonation switch.

              A shower of sparks and molten metal spewed from the line of incendiary gel. Acrid smoke billowed as the gel melted through the door. Five seconds later there was a loud clanging sound as the door fell into corridor.

              The four operators charged into the control room; Carter and Burgett turning to the left. Defontain and Roth entered just behind them; each clearing a specific section of the room of threats.

              A guard appeared from behind a filing cabinet. Carter shot that guard twice in the chest then tuned his muzzle on a second guard that was using a large control console as concealment and aiming a handgun. Carter shot him in the shoulder; carefully avoiding any damage to the console. The explosive bullet blasted the guard’s arm from his body, spun him around, and sent the man thudding to the floor. Carter shot him in the head.

              An unarmed technician leapt at DeFontain and tried to pull her rifle from her grasp. She drove her right foot into his left knee and felt bones shatter. The technician wailed in pain and collapsed onto his uninjured knee in front of her. She kicked him in the face, shattering the bones of his face and propelling him, airborne, into a wall six feet away. She shot him three times as he slumped to the ground.

              A burst of gunfire came from the far right corner. Roth reacted in a micro-second. Seeing each bullet as though she were watching a slow-motion replay; she side stepped the barrage calmly, went to a knee as more shots passed over her, sighted the guard carefully as he fired the rest of his magazine at her from behind a desk, and shot him his left eye.

              “Clear!” Carter shouted.

              “Clear!” The other operators affirmed.

              Carter went to the main control console. “I’ll open the cells and turn off the security system. You get to work their computer.”

              “On it,” Burgett acknowledged, stepping over the guard he had dispatched.

              Carter turned to Roth and DeFontain. “You two watch our asses,” he ordered.

              He keyed his radio. “Harvard from Prowler; do you copy?”

              “This is Harvard; I copy,” William’s voice replied via the radio. “We are outside our package’s cell and ready proceed.”

              “Stand by,” Carter ordered.              

              Carter flipped several switches and was able to see the over two thousand cells in the prison open on a bank of closed circuit television screens. Outnumbered hundreds to one and taken by surprise, the handful of guards that were still on the detention floors were quickly overwhelmed by escaping prisoners. Carter tripped more switches; opening the many blast doors that were intended to contain rioting prisoners in a single section of the prison.

              Two floors above Carter the cell doors opened Williams and Sains entered the Martens’ cell. Dressed in a filthy florescent green jumpsuit he was cringing and chained to the floor in the corner of the closet-like cell. Mertens was sickly-thin, his face covered an ungroomed beard, and his eyes seemed hurt by the light coming from the corridor. The cell reeked of human waste and sweat. The corridor outside the cell was filling with confused, panicked prisoners.

              Williams drew a twenty-eight inch sword from a scabbard on his back, pulled the chain restraining Mertens tight with his left hand. The twenty-pound, hyper-alloy blade sliced cleanly through the carbon steel chain; freeing Mertens.

              Williams spoke in perfect French. “Mr. Mertens, I am a United States military officer. You are coming with us,” he said, taking Merten’s by the arm and helping him to his feet. Mertens seemed incapable of standing without help.

              Sains stepped closer and hoisted Mertens over his shoulder.”I’ve got him,” he said. “Just hang on, Buddy,” he told Mertens.

              Williams spoke into his radio. “Prowler; Harvard has the package.”

              “Confirmed Harvard; proceed with extraction.” Carter’s voice replied.

              In the control room, Cater activated the prison’s public address system. Speaking in French, he addressed the prisoners. “Attention prisoners!” he said. “I am the leader of a multi-national force that is attacking this prison! Your cells are open and the security system has been disabled! All the containment doors have been opened! There are breeches in the walls on this building’s first floor; one is on the southeast corner and the other on the northeast corner! The fences have been breached to the south! There are underground members waiting nearby to assist you! Good luck!” He repeated his announcement in German and English.

                            Carter retuned his radio. “Machine Head from Prowler; the team is ready for extraction!”

              Outside, the three American helicopters were again over the prison compound. The Cheyenne fired another missile into the prisons second floor wall, almost directly opposite the breach the Team Alpha had entered through. Another missile from the Cheyenne blasted through the prison’s wall and destroyed its primary electrical control system.

              One of the Mohawk’s strafed the troops that were fighting the fires in the compound with its fixed, nose-mounted fifty caliber machine guns. The other used its dual turret-mounted twenty millimeter automatic cannon to clear the prison guards from the building’s roof.

              Inside, Carter felt the building shudder as the missiles fired by the Cheyenne struck the walls. The electricity failed suddenly and the room was then lit only by dim, red emergency lights. "That was the electrical room being taken out and our exit being opened,” Carter said. “Gadget, are you ready?”

              “Yes, Boss,” Burgett answered, removing a palm-sized, square-shaped device from where it had been attached to one of the control room’s computers. “This gizmo imprinted a plague program directly onto this hard-drive. The next time someone boots up the terminal, the plague program will infect the entire DPS network. A few minutes after that all their records will be wiped out.”

              “Good,” Carter said. He placed a time delayed thermite grenade on the console that controlled the security system, ensuring that it could not easily be restored and used to lock down the facility. "Let’s move out.”

                                          [][][]

              William’s and his group had joined the flow of prisoners as they pushed toward the staircases that led to the lower levels and out of the building; the elevators being useless now that the prison was without electrical power. When they reached the stairs they separated themselves from the escaping prisoners by taking the stairs up to the roof while the prisoners ran downward toward the breaches in the prison’s wall. With Williams in the lead and Sains in rear and still carrying Mertens, they moved upward.

              Sains stopped suddenly; his psychic senses having detected danger. “Contact directly above us!”

              There was a metallic clink and a Williams saw the pin from a conventional grenade bounce off the stair three feet in front him; the grenade itself falling toward his group from the landing directly above them. In a single, fluid action Williams lunged forward; caught the grenade in his left hand, twisted his body to fall onto his back against the stairs, and threw the grenade back to where it had come. He rolled onto his belly as the grenade exploded; pelting his back with bits of flesh and bone that had once belong to grenade’s owner. McNamara and Nagura bounded over Williams before he could rise.

              Having holstered her machine-pistol in favor of two palm-knives in anticipation of close combat in the tight confines of the stairwell, Nagura met the four surviving guards on the landing. She killed the first guard by slicing one of the five-inch, hyper-alloy blades across the left side of his neck. Her more than human strength combined with the micron-sharp edge of her blade to all but decapitate her enemy with single stroke; leaving the head attached to the body only by a few strands of skin a sinew.

              Nagura kicked another guard’s weapon to the side as he turned his muzzle toward her; deflecting his shot into the stairwell’s wall. In the same motion, she kicked the guard with same leg; shattering several of his ribs and sending him forcefully into a wall. In blindingly fast secession she thrust one blade and then the other through the ceramic and steel breast plate of the guard’s armor and into his chest, and then drew the blade in her right hand blade across his abdomen; slicing through his armor; creating an inches-deep gash of a wound.

              McNamara seized a third guard by his collar, lifted him off his feet with his right hand and, wielding the man like a club, swung him into the fourth guard knocking him violently into the wall. Still holding the third guard with one hand, McNamara tossed him over the stair’s safety rail; sending him to a fatal, seven story fall. Getting to his knees the fourth guard tried to raise his rifle. McNamara kicked him in the face; his enhanced strength crushed the man’s head between McNamara’s foot and the unyielding stone wall. McNamara felt the bone shatter under his boot and saw the front of the skull flatten and deform; gore spurting out of the eye sockets, nose and ears.

              McNamara looked upward, seeing a clear path to the roof. “Clear!” he reported.

              “Machine Head two-zero, this is Harvard; I’m coming out with four.” Williams said into his radio before smashing open the door to the roof. 

              Carrying Mertens, Sains was the first to board the waiting Mohawk as it hovered a few feet over the roof. McNamara and Nagura followed with Williams behind them.

                                                                                    [][][]

              As Carter and his group exited the secondary control room, they heard the grenades DeFontain had placed at the corridor junction detonate. Two of the guards that had tried to approach the Alpha operators were killed instantly. The remaining four retreated around a corner.

              “Go through them!” Carter ordered, firing a rifle burst toward the corner.

              The group advanced toward the junction; firing as they moved. The guards were forced to stay behind the walls by the barrage until Defontain and Burgett rounded the corner and fired three round bursts into each guard.

              Carter didn’t hesitate. “Come on,” he ordered.

              Moving through the maze-like corridors the four operators made their way toward the wall-breach created by the Cheyenne on level two; avoiding the stairs and the mass of manic prisoners. Bodies of dead prisoners and guards littered the floors. Screams could be heard as prisoners took vengeance on their captors instead of escaping. Red emergency lights gave a surreal quality to the chaos.

              Gunfire could now be heard throughout the prison; the prisoners having seized weapons from the guards. Smoke was growing thicker in the air as fires started by enraged prisoners were added to those created by the missile strikes. Sprinklers had been activated adding to the chaos by sending small streams of bloodstained water flowing down the corridors and making the floor slick. The scene was almost classically demonic.

              Coming to another junction, Carter halted the group; his paranormal senses of hearing and scent telling him that there were enemies lying in wait around the corner. As Roth had done earlier, he used the camera display feature of his scope and goggles to look around the corner while keeping his body behind cover. He was greeted with gun fire; several bullets striking near where his hand and rifle had just been.

              “Americans!” a voice from around the corner said in broken English. “We will kill these prisoners if you do not surrender!”

              Lying on his belly, Carter again used his rifle scope so he could use it to pear around the corner again. The image from the scope was displayed in a small video window on his left goggle lens. He moved his rifle around the corner. Through the electronic sensor he saw six guards who had barricaded the corridor with office furniture and were holding three prisoners as hostages; one of them a blond, teenage girl.

              Carter brought the weapon back around the corner.”Six guards have put up a barricade, and they have three prisoners hostage,” he told his group.

              “Americans!” one of the guards shouted. “Come out now or we kill them!”

              Carter ignored the command. He briefly scanned the corridor the team was in, and then drew a conventional .45 caliber pistol and attached its sound suppressor. He shot out the two nearby emergency light fixtures.

              He turned to his teammates. “On three, I want all of you to take out the lights in the barricaded hallway. I’ll take care of the rest.”

              “Boss,” Defontain injected, “If we take out the lights it will pitch black. There won’t even be enough light for our light intensifiers and we might not be able to tell the hostages from the guards with thermal imaging.”

              Burgett touched DeFontian’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. The boss has better night vision than any pair of hi-tech glasses will ever give you.”