Echo Six: Black Ops 7 - Tibetan Fury (19 page)

"One man. I'll take him."

He stepped back into the corridor. The man heard him, turned, and Talley fired two shots from his suppressed pistol. Two shots, not loud enough to cause any alarm, except as the soldier dropped to the floor, another man came around the corner. He was carrying two mugs of tea and saw his comrade fall. His eyes flared, and his mouth dropped open to shout a warning. Both 9mm rounds tore into his throat, and he joined the first man in death. There was more noise as the clay mugs smashed on the hard concrete floor. He dragged the second body out of sight and listened for footsteps. There was nothing. No one had heard anything out of the ordinary. He keyed his mic.

"We're clear, move out."

The kitchen door opened, and Rovere emerged with Grace behind him. The menacing figure of Buchmann loomed in the rear.

So much for telling her to stay at the back.

He crept forward and found he was in full view of the main entrance. The staircase was right next to where he stood, but it was also easily visible by a soldier manning the reception desk. If they killed him, it would sound the alarm. He wracked his brains for another strategy, but before he could decide how to play it, someone banged on the main doors. The soldier climbed to his feet and went forward to unlock. Immediately, Talley signaled them to move while his back was turned. Seconds later, they were on the staircase.

They halted before the second floor and listened. People were moving around, some screaming orders, probably shouting for more light. But there was no one near, nothing threatening.

Maybe something’s going right at last.

"We'll keep going. Let's find these bastards, do the job, and get out of here."

They ran lightly up to the top floor, aided by the NV goggles while the Chinese blundered around in the dark. Then they almost ran straight into trouble. It was where the senior officers had their offices, and two guards were standing at the top of the staircase. The men had their assault rifles shouldered, and both were relaxed, smoking and chatting quietly.

No doubt it was a golden opportunity. The power failure meant their officers couldn't see them, and they were taking advantage to the full, enjoying a rare chance to relax on duty. It couldn't have been an easy assignment, guarding a Ministry of State Security General and his staff. No one reached the top in that organization without enjoying a reputation for handing out harsh and savage punishments for any infraction of the rules.

He used hand signals to indicate what lay ahead. Rovere and Buchmann nodded. The Italian drew out his silenced Sig and waited. Talley glanced around the corner again and saw the men were still deep in whispered conversation.

"Let's go."

They swung around the corner, shoulder to shoulder. The only light on the landing was a faint illumination coming from inside one of the offices. The guards would only have sensed dark shadows appearing from the stairwell. The threat wasn't apparent, and they squinted into the darkness to try and identify the newcomers. Talley and Rovere were under no such handicap. Each of them saw their targets clearly in the green glow of the NV, and a second later fired their first shots, running forward to catch the bodies before they hit the floor.

They eased them down, just as Grace and Buchmann joined them.

"Which is Xilong's office?" he asked her.

She went along the corridor, looking at the labels on the doors and pointed to one.

"Here."

The door had no glass window, so it was impossible to see inside. He nodded to Buchmann.

"Open it, and we'll go in together. Domenico, cover us."

The big German took a step back and launched himself at the door. As his shoulder touched the woodwork, it opened, obviously unlocked. A startled Chinese face stared at them, an officer, wearing the pips of a major, a star and a second star inside a circle. As Buchmann catapulted past him, he was demanding, “NÐ xiÎng yào shénme?”
‘What is this, what's going on?'

Then he stopped as he started size up the situation. The people facing him were not his own men.

Heinrich recovered like lightning from his headlong rush and gripped a mighty arm around the officer's neck. He clamped his other hand around the man's mouth and looked straight into Talley's eyes. The meaning was clear.

Can I kill him?

"Wait." He looked up and down the corridor, but so far no one had noticed anything out of the ordinary. He transferred his attention back to the captive.

"Major Xilong?"

Buchmann eased off a fraction to allow him to reply. Grace translated the question into Chinese, and he sneered.

"I understand English. Are you the criminals who invaded my country?"

Before he could reply, Grace answered, "It was the Chinese who were the criminals which invaded Tibet."

Before they got into an argument, Talley interrupted.

"Are you Major Xilong?" he asked again.

The man nodded. "I am Xilong, and you are all under arrest. Sergeant!"

An NCO stood behind Buchmann, his assault rifle pointed at his head.

"Put down your weapons, and your friend will live."

The German had other ideas. He swayed slightly to the right, and then pivoted to the left and smashed the rifle out of the man's grip with a mighty paw. The NCO went down as if hit by a lamppost. But Buchmann had been forced to let go his grip on Major Xilong, and the Chinese suddenly ducked away, rolled to the side, and disappeared behind a row of filing cabinets.

Talley charged after him, but Xilong had rushed into an inner room and slammed the door closed. While Buchmann finished off the sergeant with a massive blow that would have separated his spinal column, he checked over the door with Rovere. It was armored, like the door to a bank vault.

"It's a panic room," the Italian said in disgust.

Talley nodded. "Could be, or a secure room for documents and equipment, but it would serve the same function."

Grace inspected the door closely, looking at the printed signs in Chinese.

"It's a high security document store. There's something here about only authorized personnel can enter, you know the kind of thing." She looked at it again and noticed the digital display, "Yes, there's a time lock, and it's set for one hour. There's no way we'll get it open."

"Can he open it from inside?"

"No one can open it, inside or outside, not for an hour. It's the way these things work in an emergency."

"Damn, we almost had him. Forget it for now. We need to find the secondary target, our ticket out of Tibet. General Chang."

He went to the door and looked out. Still nothing.

"Grace, take a look at the nameplates on the doors, and find Chang's. Domenico, I need you to watch our rear. When we find him, we'll have to get out down that staircase mighty fast. I don't want a bunch of nasties blocking the way."

"Roger that."

The Italian positioned himself at the end of the corridor so he could see anyone approaching from either end. Grace waved to him to attract his attention. He ran up to join her.

"This is it," she whispered, "The sign says General Chang. I just tried it. It's locked, but there's someone inside. I heard them moving."

He nodded and waited for Buchmann to join them. He indicated the door.

"Let's try it again. Open it."

The big man drew his huge combat knife, held it in his right hand, and shoulder charged the door. This time, there were no slipups. General Chang was standing behind a huge desk, shouting into the phone. The desk was twice the size of the desk of the President of the United States. The famous, carved wood Resolute desk, built from the timbers of the British Arctic exploration vessel Resolute after it was trapped in the ice and subsequently broken up. The General was less than five feet tall and looked comical behind the big, impressive desk.

Chang was also very thin, with a smooth baldhead. He sported a pencil moustache, making him look like almost a clone of the Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek, deposed by Chairman Mao. Buchmann moved across to the phone like lightning and snatched out the cables. Chang stared at him in astonishment, and then he opened his mouth to shout. He managed a single word before the German punched him on the side of the head, and he slumped to the thickly carpeted floor, semi-comatose.

"Pick him up. We're leaving," Talley gave the order to Buchmann.

The big man lifted the diminutive General and started for the door. The Chinese was tiny. Buchmann was huge. It reminded Talley of King Kong carrying away the young starlet in the movie.

"We haven't completed what we came for," Grace said to him, "When Major Xilong emerges from the vault, he'll still be able to have those people killed."

Talley sighed in exasperation. "What you expect me to do? It would take explosives to open that door, and we're already out of time. At any moment, they'll rig up some kind of emergency lighting, and we'll be facing a major assault. We're lucky to have got this far. We can't push it."

"But those people…"

"We have General Chang. With any luck, we can use him to negotiate."

She glared at him, her lips pursed, her eyes wide with anger. She shook her head, but Buchmann had already left, and he pushed her after him.

"Later. Let's just get out of here."

They made it as far as the staircase before the alarm began to wail. It was a hand-cranked siren, like the old air raid sirens used in World War II. Someone had decided something was badly wrong. Guy called him from the first floor.

"Echo One, this is Two. We have a bunch of soldiers coming through the front. I'd estimate twenty men. They've started to fan out through the building. We'll have to waste them. We don't have a choice; otherwise we won't get out of here."

"Copy that. Can you get all of them?"

"We'll soon find out," was the laconic reply.

"Roger that. Try and keep the staircase clear. We're coming down."

"Did you get it all?"

"No. Xilong managed to avoid us."

"Understood. We'll..."

He stopped talking, and they heard the sound of firing. Guy's team had engaged the enemy. There was only one thing they could do. Get down as fast as possible and join in. Then get out of Dodge.

"Move it, we need to hit the stairs!"

They raced down, but only made it halfway before they heard the sound of heavy boots pounding up toward them. He nodded to Buchmann.

"Give me the launcher, and whatever you do, take care of Chang. If we lose him, it's all over."

"Here," the German growled, "Remember, there are only eight grenades. Four of them are loaded."

"Roger that."

There was no time to finesse it, and no need to worry about making too much noise. The gunfire from below was deafening, so a couple of grenades were unlikely to make much difference to the cacophony. He heard the men reach the floor below them and carry on up the staircase. He pulled the trigger of the launcher, fired again, and stepped back as the two missiles bounced down the staircase.

"Fire in the hole, two grenades. Keep your heads down."

Seconds later, two explosions shook the building, and the screams of wounded and dying men echoed around the passageways. He passed the launcher back to Buchmann.

"Keep moving, keep moving."

Broken, bloody bodies were sprawled on the staircase. Eight men in all, five of them were dead, the rest were badly hurt. There was no time to be concerned with who would live or die. Three men, even badly wounded, could do much damage from the rear. He pulled his Sig and pumped a round between the eyes of each man. The screams stopped, but Grace was appalled.

"Abe! You killed them."

"They were dying. I put them out of their agony."

I guess that's not the way they do it in CIA, nor in the nunnery. Time they changed their rulebook.

He plowed on down the staircase. A man darted out of a corridor on the second floor. He still had his Sig in his hand, and he double-tapped him. He was about to move on when he heard more men coming from a room along the passage. He unslung his MP7 and stood out of sight on the staircase until they were only a few meters away. Then he stepped out and pulled the trigger.

Six men, all of them hastily pulling on their uniform jackets and fumbling with their assault rifles. A full clip of 4.6mm steel jacketed rounds cut them down like wheat before a combine harvester. They were bunched up so tight that some of the armor-piercing rounds went through one man to slice into the soldier behind. He stopped firing, slammed in a new clip, and looked beyond them further along the corridor.

A man was slipping out through a door, a major. It could only be Xilong! Somehow, he'd worked his way out of the vault, so there had to be some kind of hidden hatch in the floor. The officer had descended to this floor, where he knew the soldiers were stationed and sent them to tackle the invaders. Talley snapped off a quick shot, but once again, Xilong slipped out of sight through another door and slammed it shut.

He keyed his mic, "Buchmann, this is One. Take the prisoner and get everyone outside to the trucks. Jackson, go with him. Grace, stay with them."