The Coward's Way of War (26 page)

“Many of the bugs don’t work very well in such an environment,” Prince admitted.  He had a habit of flinching away from the real soldiers, even though Justin had been at some pains to convince him that the soldiers weren't dangerous to
him
.  Unless, as he’d added in the privacy of his own thoughts, the nerd screwed up by the numbers and got people killed.  “They don’t have any sophisticated ECM gear, as far as I can tell, but the hospital is designed to limit transmissions into and out of the building.  I’m having to relay signals from bug to bug just to extend my reach, which breaks down the bandwidth and...”

“Never mind the technobabble,” Justin said, impatiently.  “Just give me the breakdown.”

America’s enemies – and not a few of its own citizens – would have been astonished and horrified if they had realised just how many advances American scientists had made in remote surveillance devices.  Each of the bugs Prince had deployed was tiny, barely visible to the naked eye and almost completely undetectable without very capable counter-surveillance equipment.  Flying through the air, they could be covertly inserted into almost anywhere, allowing American soldiers to literally look into their enemy’s territory without being detected.  The live feed from the bugs showed the various people in the hospital, breaking them down by category and retransmitting the data to each of the soldiers.  The secure and highly classified network – as far as they knew, only the British and French knew that it existed – was impossible to hack and almost impossible to shut down.  The tiny bugs had survived fires and bomb attacks...and kept transmitting.

“They’ve moved most of the hostages up here,” Prince said, tapping the 3D image of the hospital.  “The live feed” – he nodded to one of the monitors that had been hastily erected in the room – “shows that they’re all tied up and completely helpless.  I have names and faces on most of them, confirming that they’re definitely people we know to have been working in the hospital before the terrorists attacked.  A handful of other hostages have been allowed to work down among the patients, treating their wounds; several remain completely unaccounted for, at least at the moment.”

Justin nodded slowly.  There were, according to the bugs, no less than ninety terrorists in the building, all male and heavily armed.  Most of them were stationed to guard the hostages or prevent anyone from sneaking into the building, with a handful occupying a set of rooms at the centre of the hospital.  So far, Prince had been unable to sneak a bug inside the rooms, but judging by the stream of vitriol being uploaded onto the internet, Justin would have bet good money that they were using the rooms to film Johnston’s speeches.

“The infected patients are here,” Prince added.  “I think that many of them are dead or about to die.”

“Yeah,” Justin agreed.  “I think we’d better get on with the mission before more of them die.”

He silently cursed the bastard who had created Henderson’s Disease as he slipped down into the staging area and briefed the main team.  The exact number of Delta Force soldiers was highly classified, even to men who had served with the unit for years, but the higher-ups had done him proud and assigned over seventy commandos to his team.  He wished that they’d had more time to train together, now that they knew the scope of the problem, yet there was no time.  They would have to go in as soon as darkness began to fall.

“You know your orders,” he said, once he’d finished the briefing.  The men stared back at him evenly, trusting him to lead them in the right direction.  They looked rather slovenly in some ways, but no one with any experience of soldiers would have mistaken them for anything other than crack troops.  These men considered themselves to be among the best in the world.  “The National Command Authority” – the President, up in Washington DC – “would like the terrorist leaders alive.”

He allowed his gaze to sharpen.  “Your priorities are rescuing the hostages and preserving your own lives,” he added.  “If there is no choice, shoot the bastards and let me worry about reporting it to Washington.”  It wouldn't please his commanders, but if it was a choice between losing one of his men or a hostage, and taking the Reverend Johnston alive, he would throw the Reverend into Hell himself.  “Take your positions and stand by for the order.”

***

Clarence Williamson rubbed his forehead as he marched to and fro, trying to look intimidating.  The early hours of guard duty at the hospital, once they
’d taken it from the white folks who ran the building and made it a haven for the BAM, had paled, even the thrill of seeing the nurses flinch every time he looked at them.  He had been tempted to ask one of the bitches for something to cure his headache, but the section leader had been firm, ordering the men to have nothing to do with any of the women.  Others had bitterly resented that order, claiming that raping the nurses would be bound to convince the federal government to roll over and give the movement what it wanted, but Clarence understood.  The value of a threat, he knew from growing up in a large family, tended to fall when the threat was actually tested.  If the BAM started to hurt or kill the nurses, the forces outside might just attack the building and to hell with the remaining hostages.

He scowled as he felt the sweat under his mask.  The headache had started hours ago and refused to fade, even though he’d popped a couple of painkillers he'd recovered from one of the rooms,  His entire body felt as if he were running a temperature, leaving him convinced that he was burning up from the inside.  He stared down at the assault rifle his section leader had placed in his hand, feeling the barrel shake as his hands shook.  They seemed too sweaty and clammy to be trusted, yet what could he do?  The BAM wasn't very tolerant of weakness in its ranks.

The thought made him wince.  It had been two weeks since he’d last snorted some magic dust and the cravings were hitting him hard, yet what could he do?  Whatever hard drugs remained in New York after the shipping and overland traffic were blocked were commanding vast prices, prices far beyond those a simple young black man without prospects could muster.  The BAM wouldn't help with that, either, not when the Reverend Johnston believed that drugs were yet another tool of the white folks for keeping the black man down.  Perhaps, in another life, Clarence would have agreed with him, but he’d become hooked before he had any real understanding of the world, let alone his place in it.  There were few prospects for a man without degrees or any kind of training.

He scratched his face again, silently cursing the orders he’d received from his leader.  They were not – ever – to remove their masks.  It felt as if his face was covered in itchy sores, as if his skin was drying and flaking off under the mask, yet he couldn't even remove his mask to rub in some cream.  If the others felt any discomfort, they hid it well; he couldn't admit to weakness in front of them.  They would only mock him, if his superiors didn't simply execute him out of hand.  They’d done it before to those who had let the movement down.

One of the nurses was staring at him, her eyes wide with horror and fear.  He allowed himself to leer at her and she stumbled backwards, convinced that he intended to knock her to the ground and have his way with her.  Clarence didn't want to admit it, not even to himself, but he wasn't in any shape to have sex, even with a willing partner.  The throbbing in his head was only growing worse.  He stumbled out of the room, leaving the nurses under the supervision of the other young fighters, and headed down towards the main doors.  They had been turned into an armed fortress by the fighters, covered by most of the heavy weapons in the movement’s arsenal.  They paid little heed to him as he stumbled outside and into the warm evening air, heading towards a flowerbed that had been planted in happier times.  He felt a tidal wave of vomit rising up within him, but before he could be sick a hand grabbed him and yanked him backwards.  He had barely a moment to realise that a man, wearing a black combat outfit, was standing right behind him...just before his neck was broken and he fell to the ground, dead.

***

It had taken
far too long to sneak through the hospital grounds, but Justin was rather pleased with the results.  The terrorists had helped – purely by accident, of course – by leaving most of the burned-out vehicles in place, which the commandos had used for cover as they crept towards the building.  The enemy had been patrolling the grounds, yet their patrol patterns had been predictable and, judging by their patterns, not a task entrusted to their best men.  He looked down at the man he had just killed, frowned, and bent down to remove the mask.  A moment later, he swore silently as he saw the sores on the man’s face.  The terrorist had been suffering from the early stages of Henderson’s Disease.

Pressing himself against the wall, he slipped closer to the main entrance.  It seemed impossible that he wouldn't be seen, but he knew as well as anyone else just how lazy guards could become when they
knew
that there was no one out there.  The Hostage Rescue Teams from the NYPD had been held well back, while their negotiators had been talking to the Reverend Johnston, trying to offer enough concessions to keep the hostages safe.  Justin had no particular compunctions about lying to the enemy, even though he was sure that someone would complain loudly, after the fact.  The terrorists had given up all rights when they’d stepped outside society’s shared consensus and taken hostages. 

He held up a hand in front of the other four commandos, holding out four fingers and using them to count silently down to zero.  At zero, they lunged forward, coming towards the enemy fighters at lightning speed.  No one outside the Special Forces could have grasped just how fast they could move, if pressed; Justin was on his enemy before he even knew he was there.  He cut the man’s throat with an economical slash, hoping and praying that all of them could be killed in silence.  A second fell, then a third, but the fourth started to scream in agony.  Corporal Monahan killed him with a thrown knife, too late.  The terrorists inside the building had been alerted.

“Shoot,” Justin ordered.  All around the building, Delta Force snipers opened fire, servicing their targets with brutal efficiency.  Every terrorist in view, be he a patrolling guard or someone foolish enough to stand in front of a window, was picked off quickly and neatly.  The snipers went for headshots every time.  “Hit the door!”

The terrorists had closed the hospital’s main gate, a door strong enough to survive a car bomb or a RPG.  The weapon the Delta Force commandos unleashed was a Javelin antitank missile, one designed to punch right through the most advanced and dangerous tanks in the world.  The explosion shattered the hinges and blew the door fragments into the building, almost as dangerous as a fragmentation grenade.  There was no longer any time for stealth.  The commandos threw themselves through afterwards, picking off the few surviving terrorists, even shooting the dead bodies in the head just to make sure.  If they were lucky, the terrorists would still be trying to adapt to the new reality, but just in case they were wrong.

“Hit the thumper,” he ordered.  He couldn't suppress a spurt of excitement, despite the danger of relying on a weapon that had never been tested in the field.  “Hit it now!”

The lights flickered and, a second later, faded out of existence.  He waited as his NVGs adapted to the dim surroundings, picking off a pair of terrorists who were running towards the sound of the guns, wondering if the emergency systems would come online.  The thumper was a highly-classified piece of technology that produced something akin to a very localised electromagnetic pulse.  If the device had worked as the designers had promised, everything the terrorists had above a basic tech level – which unfortunately included most of their weapons – would have been rendered useless.  They would no longer be able to use the hospital’s internal security systems against the commandos.

“All seems dead, sir,” Prince’s voice said, in his ears.

“Good,” Justin said.  He switched his radio to the general channel, silently relieved that the designers – who had sworn that the Delta Force-issue equipment wouldn't be affected by the Thumper – had been right.  “All units, go!”

There was no longer any point in stealth.  Fifty commandos were now heading towards all points of entrance, while a pair of helicopters was swooping in from the distance to land more commandos on the roof.  The terrorists would know that they were under attack; the question was, could they react in time to do anything about it?

Expect nothing less than treason and betrayal from the white man!  He is bent on one cause, keeping the black man down, for the black man is his natural superior.  Trust nothing that he gives you, even money, and hold him in complete contempt.  It is no sin to lie to a white man, or to exploit him as you see fit, for rest assured; given half the chance, he will do the same to you.

-Reverend Johnston

New York, USA

Day 18

Reverend Johnston had been quietly amused to discover that the hospital had its own recording room, one far more advanced than the one he used to record his sermons for the movement.  It had always astonished him that the establishment had never tried to crush him like a bug and, at first, he had taken the precaution of rarely speaking in person to people he didn't know or trust.  Later, when he'd realised that God was on his side and the white establishment was too scared of black rage to dare lift a finger to him, he had grown bolder.  Henderson’s Disease was just another way to expand his power and deal a blow to the oppressive government.  Many Americans – including many brothers – had died to bring democracy to foreign parts, but never to America.  How could anyone think otherwise?

The sudden loss of power stunned him.  Everything had gone dark.   A moment later, as they stepped out of the sealed room, he heard the sound of shots echoing though the building.  The soundproofing on the chamber was extremely good; they hadn't heard anything until the power failed, leaving them in darkness.  Even the emergency lightning had failed.

“Reverend,” one of his men shouted.  He was one of the few with any actual military experience, although that was stretching the term considerably.  Jo-Jo had been at Paris Island for several weeks before the Marine Corps had decided they didn't want him anywhere near their operations, at least to hear Jo-Jo tell it.  Johnston had no idea if his stories about racist drill instructors and an entire training company that hated blacks were true; he’d used them in his sermons anyway.  Black men who joined America's army did nothing, but fight and die for the white man.  “The building is under attack!”

Johnston winced as the entire building shook.  He'd underestimated the establishment, clearly; he would never have thought that they had the nerve to attack the hospital and attempt to recover the hostages.  And after all the trouble it had taken to ensure that the hostages – particularly the nurses – were left unmolested!  The gunfire was almost continuous now, broken by explosions and the sounds of things breaking; he didn't want to think what might be broken now.  He heard someone screaming for his mother in a thick ghetto accent and knew that at least one of his men was mortally wounded.

“We have to get you out of here,” Jo-Jo snapped.  In the darkness, he was almost invisible; the rifle he carried glittering oddly in the tiny flickers of light.  “Reverend...”

Johnston nodded.  He hated to leave his men, but the cause was greater than any single man, even him.  It was his duty to survive and ensure that they did not die in vain.  “Send a runner along to the hostage room,” he ordered, as Jo-Jo pushed a pistol into his hand.  Johnston was already armed, but he accepted the weapon gratefully.  The white establishment might have long tried to disarm the blacks, yet it was easy to obtain weapons and the BAM cared nothing for the agreements raging over the Second Amendment.  Gun control was just another way to keep them down.  “I want all of the hostages killed before they can be rescued.”

“Yes, Reverend,” Jo-Jo said.  There was a disappointing eagerness in his tone, one that made the Reverend frown.  He took no pleasure in terrifying nurses – indeed, the nurses were trying to help all of their patients, white or black – yet the BAM had to make their point.  They could not be cowed into submission, nor were they foreign stooges like the Nation of Islam, who were servants to the Arabs.  Johnston hated Arabs, almost as much as he hated the white man, for the Arab slave traders had been selling black men as slaves long before there had been a country called America.  “I shall see to it at once.”

He pushed two of his men forward and ordered them to escort Johnston down the rear stairs, towards the exit.  If they were lucky, there would be a chance to escape...

***

Justin threw a grenade around the corner, waited for it to explode and then threw himself down the corridor.  The terrorists had emplac
ed a defensive position that might have been worthwhile, had they set it further back from the corner.  As it was, the grenade had killed both of the guards and destroyed their fortification, leaving bloody chunks on the floor.  Justin stepped over the remains, spied a fairly-intact body and fired a single shot into his head, before advancing further down the corridor.  A pair of terrorists popped out of a door up ahead and he picked them both off before they could fire.

“Two doors down,” Prince’s voice whispered in his ear.  Now that the assault had begun, he could expand his network of bugs without worrying about ECM.  The bugs, too, had largely survived the thumper.  “There are four terrorists; three hostages.”

Justin motioned to his companions, cursing under his breath.  Grenades were worthy weapons when it came to MOUT – military operations in urban terrain – yet they couldn’t be thrown into a room occupied by enemy fighters and hostages alike.  The weapons simply didn't discriminate between friends and foes.  Justin might have risked it if the hostages wore body armour, or were on the verge of being shot anyway, but there was no way to know if that were the case.  Prince’s bugs weren't capable of picking up
that
level of detail.

He raised his voice.  “Surrender now and I will see to it that you get a fair trial,” he yelled.  It was worth a shot.  If the enemy didn't know he was out there, they had to be deaf.  The grenade he’d used earlier would have been audible all over the hospital.  “If we have to come in there, men in white coats will have to pick you up using tweezers.”

There was a long pause.  “We surrender, man,” a weak voice said, finally.  There was a clashing sound as guns and assorted weapons were thrown to the ground.  “We surrender; we want our lawyers and...”

Justin came in hard, rifle raised and ready for treachery.  The terrorists had their hands raised in surrender, but the commandos took no chances, knocking them to the ground and securing their hands and legs with plastic ties before searching them roughly.  A moment later, the nurses – who looked alarmingly rumpled, even in the half-light – were secured as well.  They were going to hate their rescuers in the morning, he knew, but there was no choice.  Hostages had been known to act oddly when there was no chance of escape and bond with their captives, even to the point of willingly aiding them in their plans.  It was even possible that a terrorist was hidden among the hostages; after all, some of the young nurses were black.  After the building was secure, there would be time to sort out the guilty from the innocent.

He tapped his radio, reporting in and warning the reserve forces that the bound hostages and terrorists were there and then led his men up the stairs.  They were converging rapidly on where the hostages were held and he prayed, desperately, that they were in time.

***

Lindsey had been trying to get comfortable when the shooting started.  Apart from a han
dful of nurses who had been pressed into service, the hostages had remained tied up unless they needed the toilet.  The guards had been surly lately when the hostages had requested that they be allowed to go answer nature’s call and she – and everyone else – had been trying to hold it in as long as possible.  It wasn't easy to relax with her hands tied behind her back – at least not as easy as some videos she’d watched over the years with Doug had suggested – but she was trying.  She was lying face down on the cold hard floor when all hell broke loose.

The building shook as explosions echoed out in the distance, seemingly close enough to bring the entire building crashing down in flames.  Lindsey winced as some of the nurses began screaming, all self-control gone in the wake of the latest disaster.  The guards moved among them, clubbing the loudest with the butts of their guns until they shut up, but it was clear that they were nervous as well.  Some of them had boasted to the hostages, taunting them with the thought that no one would come to rescue them and they would eventually become the playthings of their captors, but now they looked as if their nemesis was tapping on their shoulder.  Lindsey found herself praying that the police – or whoever it was attacking the building- found them before the terrorists finally decided to kill them.  It didn’t look as if it would be long before they died.

“Stay down, bitches,” one of the guards snarled.  Several nurses had been trying to sit up, not an easy task with tied hands.  One of them was kicked hard in the gut and curled up, gasping in pain.  Another was rolled over and harshly groped before she was pushed back in her corner.  The guards had been reasonably disciplined, but no longer; they grew harsher as the sound of explosions and gunfire came closer.  “Why don't you...?”

An explosion, louder than any of the previous explosions, shook the building so hard that plaster drifted down from the ceiling.  She heard medical equipment, including some items so expensive that purchasing them had cost the hospital a significant percentage of its budget, crashing to the ground, shattering as they struck the hard floors.  Screams, some clearly torn from dying throats, could be heard in the distance.  The guards exchanged worried glances; one of them pointed a gun down the corridor and fired a long burst, shooting at nothing as far as she could see.  There was certainly no return fire.

A man came in the other entrance and was very lucky not to be shot down by his own people.  “Get the bitches lined up and cut their throats,” he snapped.  His face was sweaty and, she realised in a flash of sudden insight, terrified.  He too was facing justice, something he had never thought he would face.  It was easy to mock the government when the massed might of the federal government’s forces of law and order were held back by petty worries, written by people with no direct experience of living near the gangs.  When the gloves were finally taken off...the gangsters would be smashed like bugs.  “Hurry!”

One of the guards reached over and pulled Lindsey to her feet.  His hand ripped through her blouse and roamed under her shirt, groping her breasts quickly and brutally.  Lindsey felt a hot flare of rage burning through her and she brought up her foot hard, slamming it right into his groin.  He doubled over, screaming as a uniquely male agony burned through his body, sending Lindsey falling back on her ass.  His comrades closed in, kicking and beating at her, just before a fresh burst of gunfire rang out and they fell to the ground, dead.  New figures stormed into the room, knocking down the handful of surviving terrorists and securing them.  They looked frightening in the half-light, yet she was very relieved to see them.  They
had
to be friendly.

“Don’t worry,” one of them said.  He looked hellishly intimidating with a mask covering his face, but his voice was friendly and welcome after two days in the company of terrorists.  “We’re on your side.  The rescue teams are moving in now.”

***

Just
in watched as the remaining nurses were checked quickly and then left where they were, leaving him to check the captured terrorists.  One of them had a record longer than his arm, a string of petty offences that had started small and developed into rape and murder; another, oddly enough, had tried to join the Marine Corps before washing out during Basic Training.  They were both important figures in the BAM, yet they weren't the real target.  He checked the dead bodies and scowled.  Reverend Johnston had escaped.

“Come on,” he ordered, shortly.  The building was filling up now as National Guardsmen were moving up to secure the ground floors.  The remaining terrorists fought and were killed, or surrendered.  “Martin; find me the Reverend.”

“I'm working on it,” Prince said, sharply, too bothered to remember that he was supposed to be intimidated by the commando.  “Sergeant, most of the terrorist groups have been wiped out or captured, but...”

He broke off.  “I don't have any bugs in the rear passages,” he added.  “They have to be there, if only by elimination.  There’s no way they can have escaped, not with the entire building surrounded by armed troops.”

Justin had less faith in a building guarded by armed forces from several different units, but he held his peace.  Motioning to his men, he followed the map down towards the rear of the building, where the hospital’s supporting staff had once been based.  The terrorists had driven them out and into their waiting hands, but they hadn't done anything else with the area, much to his surprise.  There was a way out, yet he knew that he had a team covering it.  The only other possibility was that the Reverend Johnston had somehow managed to escape under their very noses.  It seemed impossible.

He found the door into the rear area and tested it gingerly.  It was locked, so he kicked it as hard as he could with his armoured boot.  The door shattered inwards in a shower of sawdust and splinters, allowing him and his men to slip inside, weapons raised and ready.  No ground of fighters attempted to block their way, but he could hear movement in the distance, down the stairs.  Someone was definitely trying to escape in the darkened halls.