Red Ice (2 page)

“Striker to Calvary! What’s happening?” Silence answered her. “Son of a bitch!”

“Curse later!” Choi shouted. They were close to the gate. “We have to—”

An RPG round from the office building roof struck the concrete ten yards in front of their vehicle. The warhead shattered the ground, fragments scything through the air with enough force to shred both the Suburban’s front tires and perforate the radiator and several hoses. Almost at once, the SUV’s dashboard lit up with red and yellow warning lights as the vehicle began slowing. More machine gun fire hammered the wounded transport.

“Stop!” Vessler yelled. “We need to get out of this deathtrap now!”

Choi brought the dying Suburban to a stop thirty yards from the gate. The three DEA agents piled out, Daniels dragging the bleeding Pelton with him. Twenty yards away, the other SUV was still moving, but it was clear from the damage it had taken that it wouldn’t last long enough to get past the gate.

Vessler motioned the second Suburban to approach them in the SUV. It took fire from two different machine guns but managed to cover most of the distance before it died, all four tires shredded with steam rising from the ruined engine. The doors open and two agents rolled out, placing the bulk of the vehicle between them and the machine gunners. “We’re screwed, Vess!” one of them shouted. “Hart and Swarez are dead!”

Vessler felt the cold certainty of death come at her and there was nothing she could do about it.

Unseen by the combatants on either side, a drone hovered two hundred feet over the battlefield, watching.

CHAPTER TWO
 

2:25am

“It’s bad.” The frumpy-looking woman with a short, conservative haircut and Lennon-like glasses sat in the back of the van. She might have been mistaken for a college instructor if it wasn’t for the fact that she wore black Battle Dress Uniform (BDU), body armor, and was armed with a pistol and a MP5 slung across her body. She stared at the screen of a large tablet, where the drone’s feed showed her the battle going on around the pier. “The DEA team is pinned down and it looks like the SFPD contingent has been taken out.”

“Damn it!” The van driver was dressed exactly like the woman in black BDUs, though his MP5 was on the floor next to him. His dark hair was cut short, his face long and thin with a slight Simian cast to it. Deep brown eyes flicked to the rear view mirror and back to the road.

“How far out are we, Dante?” the man in the passenger seat said. He was tall, fit, with rugged good looks and mismatched eyes — one pale blue while his other was so black that it appeared not to have a pupil. His condition was known as heterochromia, and while it made him instantly recognizable, it also imparted a certain sense of unease to anyone seeing him for the first time, something Tanner found useful from time to time in his line of work.

“A minute,” Dante Alvarez replied.

“OUTCAST Prime calling Bloodhound.” Tanner spoke into the vehicle’s dash mounted radio.

“Bloodhound here.” John Casey replied. “How bad?”

“Bad. The DEA strike team’s getting slaughtered, and it looks like the SFPD presence has been eliminated.”

“Reinforcements are on their way. Ten minutes.”

“You know I’m not going to wait for them.”

“I know. We have medical standing by at the rally point. Good luck. Bloodhound out.”

Tanner looked at his tech specialist. “Danielle, can you pinpoint the ambushers?”

She nodded while her eyes remained fixed on her tablet. “I have five men on the roof of a building adjacent to the pier. Three of them have light machine guns and at least one RPG. Another group—twelve to fifteen men with assault rifles and RPGs—are near the ship.”

“Any activity on that ship?”

“None visible. Decks are clear from what I can see.”

“What’s the plan?” Dante asked.

Tanner Wilson tapped his radio transmit button. “Prime to Two.”

“Two here,” Liam Reilly returned. He rode in the second van along with Naomi Washington and Stephen Shah. Both vehicles were black in color, with no distinguishing markings as they sped south down Third Street. “Situation is problematic. How do we do this?”

“The surviving DEA agents are near the Chavez street gate. Team One will go in after the survivors. Team Two will hit the office building and neutralize those machine guns.”

“The ambushers have security teams covering the exits.” Liam, a former member of SEAL team Six, possessed the most combat experience of the team.

Tanner looked back at his technology expert. “Danielle, swing Wasp over the buildings between us and the pier.”

“On it.” After a few seconds she said, “No one on the roofs — wait, I have three men on a roof at the corner of Chavez and Michigan. Armed with RPGs and assault rifles. Second team on the roof on the corner of Marin and Michigan, same deal. Marin is blocked by burning vehicles. The security team covering Chavez is on the buildings to the right, half way down.”

Tanner got out of the seat and went into the back. He slid open the breech of the M203PI grenade launcher mounted under the MP5’s barrel. Taking an olive drab shell with white markings and a gold head from a belt pouch, he slid it into the breech. “Prime to Team: We’re going in hot. Two, you and I are going to hit the security team guarding Chavez as we approach. Use HEDP rounds.”

“Copy.”

Danielle put her tablet away and stood, making sure her MP5 was ready. She flipped a switch and the van’s roof rolled back, exposing a three-foot by two opening. Tanner stepped up on a small platform fixed to the van’s floor, beneath the hole. He could hear the traffic and feel the cool wind. He crouched, staying inside the opening until the right moment.

“Chavez coming up!” Dante called out.

“As soon as we turn, punch it!” Tanner shouted. He grabbed a handhold welded to the ceiling and braced himself. Danielle knelt next to the sliding cargo bay door, gripping the door handle tightly.

Dante spun the wheel hard and the van slid into a left turn, accelerating. Tanner rose through the opening in the van’s roof and into the night air. Cesar Chavez Street was a wide road, with single story business buildings on either side. Dante drove right down the middle of the street on the yellow center line, engine at full roar.

Tanner caught movement on the buildings to his right. A burst of light briefly lit up the people standing there. The RPG warhead they fired screamed between Liam and Tanner’s vans, missing both vehicles. It struck a parked car thirty feet behind Liam’s van and exploded, instantly transforming the vehicle into flaming wreckage.

Tanner ducked inside the van just as he heard several fragments strike the vehicle’s roof. He shot up out of the van quickly, adjusted his aim, and fired.

The forty-millimeter High-Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP) round arced into the air and fell toward the rooftop. Liam’s round was a couple of seconds behind Tanner’s, but both landed among the gunmen and exploded, ripping the attackers apart with twin explosions. Tanner waited for return fire, but none came and both vans flew by the building unchallenged.

Ahead, Tanner could see the pier’s gate and beyond that, flashes of gunfire. He tapped his radio to change frequencies. “OUTCAST to Striker, can you read me?”

A woman’s voice, strident and angry, answered him. “Who in the hell is this?”

“Your only way out. We’re coming in.”

“What in the—”

“John Casey sent us to get you out. How many of you are there?”

“Five. One seriously wounded! We’re taking fire from the office building and the crates along the dock!”

“We’ll handle the office building. Stand by to haul ass. Be there in twenty. OUTCAST out.” He switched back to the OUTCAST team channel again. “Two, office building is yours. Take the lead. We’ll distract the Tangos, you hit them.”

“Right.”

Tanner leaned forward. “Dante, slow up and swing right. Two’s coming through.”

Dante followed the instruction while the second van shot past them and raced toward the gate. Dante increased speed again, drifted left, aiming for the gate to the left of the gatehouse. The second van skidded to a stop in front of the office building. Tanner’s van shot past them at sixty miles an hour and accelerating.

The steel-pipe frame welded over the van’s grill slammed into the gate first, the van’s weight and speed at seventy miles an hour far too much for the chain-link gate to resist. The gate slammed opened and the van flew through.

#

Liam was the first one out of Team Two’s van, He was six-three and muscular, but he moved lightly on his feet as he raced toward the glass doors. Behind him were the other two members of Team Two, Naomi Washington and Stephen Shah. They were dressed and armed the same way as Team One, their MP5s seeking targets.

The three were an odd grouping. Naomi was a tall African-American woman, model beautiful, despite being dressed for war. Stephen, on the other hand, wouldn’t have looked out of place in any marketplace from Morocco to Afghanistan. But they moved together like a well-trained team, which they were.

They reached the entrance, a pair of glass and steel-framed doors. Liam reached for the door and pulled on it. When it gave under his pull, he opened it wide enough for Stephen to step through, followed by Naomi. When each one stepped clear of the door, Liam followed them in, then took the lead, forming the point as the trio moved down the hall in an arrowhead formation.

#

Sarah Vessler crouched behind what was left of her wrecked Suburban’s front passenger side wheel-well, her LAR-15 clutched in her hands. Choi was crouched at the rear of the same vehicle, engaging in a lopsided duel with the machine gunners on the office building roof. Between them, the slumped form of Pelton lay up against the SUV. He was still alive, but in bad shape. Daniels was using the vehicle’s first aid kit in an attempt to save the young DEA agent’s life.

The sound of something crashing through the gate made Vessler look in the direction of the car, just as a dark colored van roared into view. She could see the upper body of a man firing at the office building, then launching a projectile of some sort toward the roof.

With grim determination, she rose and fired a burst in the direction of the cargo pallets already offloaded from the
Seven Lucky Dragons
. She yanked herself down as several streams of bullets from that direction tore into the Suburban. She heard a pop coming from the office building and moved to her right, raising her head just enough to see a cloud of expanding smoke. The man in the van fired another projectile at the roof. This time she saw it explode over the building, releasing another smoke cloud.

The black van skirted around the two Suburbans, putting their bulk between it and the machine gunners, who fired erratically now as the smoke interfered with their line of sight.

The van’s side door slid open and a woman who reminded Vessler of the aging hippies she dealt with over in the Haight-Ashbury section of the city stepped out. Only this hippie was armed and dressed for war in all black, with body armor. The hippie opened fire in the direction of the ship. Vessler heard more gunfire from the office building where the ambushers’ machine guns had been firing from, then the machine guns went silent.

“Is this all of you?” the woman demanded.

“Yes!” Choi shouted.

“Move it!” the man standing inside the van shouted, shooting a burst in the same direction as the hippie did. He followed it up with a projectile from a grenade launcher slung under the MP5’s barrel. “That tear gas isn’t going to last long!”

“Brock, Meechim!” Vessler snapped at the two survivors from the other DEA vehicle. “Help Daniels get Pelton into the van. Danny, suppression fire on my mark… Mark!”

Both DEA agents rose and fired long bursts, sending as many rounds as they could in the direction of the ship. The other three agents grabbed Pelton and dragged him toward the van. The man standing up inside the van fired another projectile from his grenade launcher, while the woman fired several short bursts. The two grenades the man had fired in the direction of the ship were spewing thick green and red smoke, blocking their view of most of the ship.

“Danny,” Vessler yelled, “Move it!” Both DEA agents sprinted for the van. The others were onboard, guns pointed in the direction of the smoke. Choi and Vessler leapt in, followed by the woman, who slid the door shut as the van’s driver gunned the engine and the vehicle shot forward.

“Who the hell are you guys?” Vessler demanded.

#

As Team Two moved down the hall, an Asian stepped into view ahead of them. Snarling something in Chinese, the man tried raising his AK-47, but died as three four-round bursts all hit within a heartbeat. The team sprinted until they reached the body, needing only a quick look to confirm the gunman was dead. Stephen kicked the AK away from the body while Naomi and Liam checked the stairwell where the dead man had come from. On a signal from Liam, all three opened their M203s, slipped in one of the olive drab shells and closed the breech.

The three ran up the stairs, leapfrogging each other as one covered the other two. They had just reached the landing between the second floor and the roof access when the door above opened. A group of Asian men came staggering down the staircase. There were dressed in business clothes, but all five had pistols thrust into their belts. The team recognized the eye-watering traces of CS gas, commonly known as “tear gas,” that wafted in with the men and instantly understood what had happened.

“Freeze!” Liam barked.

None of the men froze. Instead, they went for their pistols. All three team members triggered their grenade launcher, the buckshot rounds turning the grenade launchers into massive large-bore shotguns. The pellets ripped into the first three men, knocking them down like bloody pins in a macabre bowling alley. Short bursts from Naomi and Stephen dropped the other two.

The trio ran up the stairs, nimbly hopping over the bodies. On the roof, they quickly swept for more gunmen. Finding none, they raced downstairs.

#

Without warning, the speeding van made a bootlegger’s turn, tossing Vessler and the others around like dice in a cup. They rocketed toward the gate, leaving a thick cloud of smoke and the stench of burned rubber in their wake. The hippie put her MP5 down and grabbed a large first aid kit from a rack behind the driver’s seat. The man standing on the platform was firing in the direction of the ship. The driver, dressed like the other two, was fully focused on maneuvering at high speed.

The woman looked over Pelton, the first aid kit open next to her. After a few seconds she yelled up at the man in the hole. “Tanner! One seriously wounded, gunshots and other trauma!”

As they closed in on the gate, Vessler saw three figures in black charge out of the office building and climb into a second van.

Vessler leaned back against the van’s side and wondered who these people were.