Echo Six: Black Ops 6 - Battle for Beirut (16 page)

Thank Christ, the useless arm. If they'd hit the other side, I'd be as much use as a tailor's dummy.

He knew he was finished, and the next burst would take him. The gunners were out of his vision behind the heavy steel door, their gun resting on a heavy wooden bookshelf they'd thrown over to use as a breastwork. He fired single shots to conserve ammunition, as he was unable to change clips with only one arm. But even the armor piercing rounds failed to pierce the layers of thick oak, and he knew he only had seconds to live.

Suddenly, a man skidded down next to him. Shimon Goldstein. He'd acquired a weapon and had worked his way around the chaos of the banking hall. In a fluid movement, he dragged Talley to his feet, and together they charged the gun. Another stream of bullets sliced around them, too low, before the gunners realized their mistake and angled the barrel of their weapon upward. But it was too late, and they were on them. Both men emptied their clips, turning them into strips of bloodied flesh, and the PK was silent.

Goldstein wasn't finished. They now had a clear line of sight to the four hostiles behind the bank counter. He threw himself behind the machine gun, lined up the sight on the Hezbollah fighters, and pulled the trigger. They died, cut down by the heavy bullets of their own gun. Talley looked at the Mossad man and nodded his thanks.

"Thanks for that. They had me cold."

He waved the gratitude away. "You'd do the same for me."

"Yeah."

He glanced down at the weapon Goldstein had used. An HK 416, as used by most of his troopers.

"Where did the assault rifle come from?"

He grimaced. "I took it off one of your men. He had no more use for it."

"Who?"

Guy came alongside them with the rest of the men. He supplied the answer.

"It was Ray Bennelli, one of the new men. He caught a burst from an AK-47. It almost cut him in half."

Talley nodded, remembering the cheerful Italian-American who'd come to Echo Six from Delta Force.

"We'll try and get his body back when we're done here. If there's no chance, you know what to do."

Guy nodded. "I'll see to it."

It was standard procedure; if a body couldn't be retrieved, they would use explosives to destroy it. A modern variant of the Viking funeral pyre.

"Let's get downstairs, and pray those hostages are down there and intact. Who do we have watching the building entrance?"

"I assigned Buchmann and Gonzalez. They've got it covered."

"If they get past Buchmann, we're really in trouble. Let's go see what we have down here."

He started down the stone steps, fearful for what he'd see at the bottom. The light was poor, and he took out his flashlight. He played it around the narrow space and found it was a small lobby, about two meters on each side. There was another door in front of him, even heavier than the one in the banking hall. Made of heavy steel, something like the watertight door of a submarine, it could only be the main entrance to the vault. And then his heart missed a beat as the wash of light from the beam picked up a crumpled shape on the floor, a girl, lying on her face, a pool of blood beneath her body.

He had to shoulder his MP7, as he only had the use of one arm. He reached down and touched her neck, the artery where there should have been a pulse. Nothing. She was dead, and he was almost too fearful to turn her over and confirm it was Nava. The men were crowding in behind him, and Guy knelt down to take a look.

"It may not be her," he murmured.

Talley stared at him. "I just can't look."

His number two nodded and gently, very gently, turned the girl over. It wasn't her. Instead, another extremely pretty girl with a Western face. Smooth skin and huge dark eyes. Just like Nava. But it wasn't her.

"Poor kid," he said quietly. He wanted to say 'Thank God', but it wasn't appropriate. She wasn't his girlfriend, true, but she was someone's daughter, maybe someone's girlfriend or wife, another victim of Hezbollah. He looked at Guy.

"We’d better open the vault. She may be in there."

"The UN Commissioner could be in there, too," Guy gently reminded him, "I know how you feel, Boss, but you should remember the real reason we're here. The Admiral wouldn't be pleased if he thought you were turning it into a personal crusade."

He nodded. "Open it! Let's take a look."

Gonzalez spun the wheel that unlocked the vault, and two of the men helped him swing open the heavy door. The smell inside was appalling; a large number of people imprisoned in an almost airless space, with no facilities for cleaning or sanitation. But they were alive. At first, they cowed away from the beam of the flashlight. The room was almost soundproof, and they would have been unaware of the battle going on above them. Then there was a shout, a shout of pure, unadulterated relief.

"They're alive!" Guy shouted, "The kids, the Westerners, Thank God! What about Jensen?"

A man came forward with his hand outstretched, a man Talley recognized from Ben Gurion Airport. Andreas Jensen.

"Commander, my God, it's almost impossible to believe you came for us. We thought they were going to kill us all."

"Commissioner, it's good to see you alive. Excuse me, I have to check something out."

While the man waited with a puzzled expression on his face, Talley shouted for Nava. There was no reply, only blank faces; the happy chatter of children and stunned expressions of adults who'd been counting the number of hours they had left to live. She wasn't among the hostages. He felt his spirits sink low; it could only mean one thing. If she hadn't been taken hostage, she must have died during the shelling in Beirut. Nava was dead. He knew that deep down there would be a dark, black hole in his soul, a hole that would take a long, long time to heal. Perhaps it never would.

"Boss, we need to get these people out of here. Otherwise this rescue will turn into a massacre."

"You're right. You lead them out, and I'll cover our six."

"Are you okay?"

He realized his number two was looking at his useless arm, and he automatically started to massage it with his other hand.

"I'm fine."

"I'm sorry she wasn't here."

"Me too."

Guy started herding the hostages up the stone steps, spreading the troopers around the children in a tight protective cordon. Goldstein waited with Zaki, and they fell in with Talley as he brought up the rear.

"How's the arm?" Shimon asked him.

Talley gave him a sharp glance.

"I'll live."

He grunted in response, and Talley smiled to himself as he noticed two of his men fall in either side of him, like a protective detail. The banking hall was clear of hostiles, and only bodies lay strewn across the floor. Guy's voice came into his earpiece.

"We're out in the open, and the shooting has stopped. I reckon Alpha Six has pulled back."

"Copy that. I'll find out what the bastard is up to."

He keyed his mic. "Alpha One this is Echo One. What is your situation?"

He had to wait a few seconds, and then the familiar guttural voice came back.

"We're reforming one klick east of the main entrance."

"What happened, Werner?"

A pause. "The UAV fired off the Hellfires, and all we had left was aerial surveillance of the target zone. The enemy brought up a mobile flak gun, a ZSU quad-barrel, and it carved up my unit. I lost six men during that attack, Talley. I'm not prepared to lose any more."

If he'd waited a little longer, the two attacks would have gone in at the same time, and the outcome may have been very different.

But he didn't make the comment. Best had enough problems of his own.

"What's your plan? Can you make the LZ?"

"My intention is to sweep around to the north, out of sight of the enemy. We should be there in forty minutes."

He did a swift calculation. It sounded about right. They needed ten minutes to exfil Masnaa camp, and thirty minutes for the Sea Hawks to come in to pick them up. But before he replied to Best, he suddenly thought of what the man had said earlier.

"Werner, the ZSU. Is it still operational?"

"It is. The gunners are protected behind an armored shield. It's a bastard to hit."

"You know what it'll do to the Sea Hawks? We have to destroy that gun before they come in."

At first he thought the German had gone, but finally he answered, "I can't do anything from here. They're fully alerted to our presence. Any kind of an attack would be suicide. You'll have to hit them from behind."

Except the enemy knew they were there as well.

"Roger that. We'll do what we can. Be at the LZ in forty minutes, no later."

He heard a double click as Best acknowledged. He found Guy.

"You heard?"

"I heard. He's a stupid, arrogant bastard, but he's right, we'll have to take it from behind. Leave it to me, Boss. I'll need three men and all the grenades we have left. If we…"

He was interrupted by a shout from Buchmann.

"Hostiles coming in from the east. I estimate forty men, maybe more."

Talley grimaced. "It looks like we have a fight on our hands before we can take out the gun. Now would be a good time to stage an ambush. The more of them we can pick off, the less we'll have to fight later when we destroy that flak gun."

"I'm on it," Guy acknowledged.

"This is Echo Three," he heard Rovere call on the commo.

"This is One, go ahead."

"We have bandits coming in from the west. We estimate twenty upward, and they're only five minutes out. If you're on the way back, I suggest you hurry it up."

"Understood, Echo Three. We have a situation here. Hold them as long as you can."

The attack came a few seconds later. As well as the main force, there were two small groups, about ten men apiece, on each flank. They descended on the square, and what had been quiet a moment before, was swept with a hail of gunfire from either side. The Echo Six troopers flung themselves down again and returned fire. Bullets churned up the square, and Talley's main concern was for the hostages. He looked back at the solid structure of the bank, and with deep regret found Jensen to order them back inside.

"It's the only way. We're surrounded by Hezbollah on all sides, and we need to keep you safe while we sort this one out."

Commissioner Jensen gave him a hard stare. "Are you sure you can get us out of here, Commander? It doesn't seem likely, not the way it's going."

"Just get inside, Commissioner, before they shoot your fool head off!"

The man looked startled for a moment, but he realized the danger they were in and began shepherding the hostages back inside the building. He was only just in time, for the main force of Hezbollah suddenly arrived, and the firing intensified, so that it seemed impossible for anyone to survive in the square.

"Pull back, inside the building!" he shouted to his men.

He crouched low, still firing, and shoulder-to-shoulder with Guy they retreated, giving the rest of their men covering fire as they darted inside. Bullets chipped chunks of masonry from the brickwork as they dived through the heavy wooden doors, and troopers rushed forward to slam them shut. More rounds smacked into the woodwork, but it was solid enough to resist the bullets.

"I reckon that should hold them for a while," he murmured, almost to himself.

Guy overheard him. "These people are pretty handy with RPGs, Boss, so it won’t be long before they start using them. If this was Plan B, we need Plan C."

"I reckon you're right." He looked around for Drew Jackson who had the encrypted communications system. There was no sign of him.

" Where's Drew? We have to call in air support. It's the only way. They're standing by on the Nimitz, and Brooks won't leave us hanging here. Not with a UN Commissioner."

Guy shrugged. "I haven't seen him since we came back out of the vault. I'll check around."

He came back a few seconds later, his face grim. "He was outside helping the hostages, just before Hezbollah hit us a few moments ago. No one saw him come in."

Talley felt the dark clouds of defeat gathering over them. It had always been touch and go whether they could succeed, but Alpha Six's attack going in early had sealed their fate. Instead of a fragmented and chaotic enemy force, Hezbollah had regrouped and rounded on Echo Six like a wounded leopard. Their only way out was air support. Yet without their Drew Jackson's encrypted satcom, they were crippled, blind. It may still be possible to get through to Admiral Brooks, but it would be uncertain and messy.

There was yet another problem. Alpha Six brought the laser target designators they would need to call in an airstrike, and Werner Best's men were a long way away, outside Masnaa camp. Except… He keyed his mic.

"Alpha One, this is Echo One. Do you read?"

"Go ahead."

The German's voice was more subdued, muted, and most of the arrogance had left him after they were forced to pull back.

About time.