Mick Reavers yelled into his CO’s ear, “Great weather to jump in. Who’s the crazy bastard that came up with this plan?”
Harris smiled. “We’ve been in worse situations, Mick. Just make sure you hike up your skirt before you jump. We wouldn’t want it to get caught on anything.” Reavers gave his boss the bird. Harris smiled at the big slab of beef before him and slapped Reavers on the shoulder. Returning to his spot at the end of the stick, the commander checked the altimeter strapped to his left wrist and waited for the signal.
Through the eerie red light of the cabin, the green jump light began to flash. Almost instantly Reavers raised his right hand and gave the signal for the men to stand by. Seconds later, Reavers gave the go signal and leapt from the open ramp of the Combat Talon. Tony Clark came next, then Jordan Rostein, and lastly Dan Harris pivoted and leapt from the plane.
All four men turned one hundred eighty degrees in the air and assumed the free-fall position known as the frog—arms and legs extended and bent slightly upward. In the darkening sky, the luminescent tape on their helmets helped them keep track of each other and line up. Beneath them and to the south, the White House was easily identifiable.
RAPP WAS RECEIVING steady updates from Langley while he tried to think of potential problems. He had identified many, but there were two he could actually do something about.
He turned to Adams and asked, “Is that door to Horsepower locked?”
“Yes.”
“Does the S-key open it?”
“Yep.”
Rapp pointed to Adams. “Take the monitor off, quick.” As Adams started to do so, Rapp grabbed his lip mike and said, “Control, I am sending Milt up to the roof to guide the team through the tunnel.”
General Campbell came back, “Are you sure we need to do that? They’ve studied the blueprints.”
“We can’t afford any screw-ups. Milt knows the way.” Rapp flipped his lip mike up. “Milt, bust your ass back over there and grab my silenced pistol from Anna. I don’t want you using yours. Tell her to hurry back over here because I need her help. Then you get up to the back staircase that leads to the roof. Someone will be talking to you on the radio and telling you if the coast is clear. When you hear that the snipers have taken the shot at the terrorist in the guard booth, I want you to pop that hatch immediately. If that terrorist is still alive, you are to put him down. You cannot allow him to say anything over the radio.”
Rapp grabbed the monitor from Adams and started him down the stairs. “Hurry up, Milt.”
Adams raced down the stairs with amazing agility for his age and disappeared into the tunnel. Rapp checked his watch and listened to the radio chatter coming over his headset. Waiting for Rielly to get back, he tuned the monitor into the surveillance unit that was mounted just outside of Horsepower. The image of the back of the terrorist’s head appeared on the screen.
Less than thirty seconds later, Anna Rielly hustled up the stairs, out of breath and holding her side.
Rapp looked at her and asked, “Is it your rib?”
Rielly nodded with a look of pain on her face.
“Just hang in there a little while longer. Here’s what I need you to do.” Rapp held up his S-key. “There’s a door on the other side of this, and that key opens it. In that room one of the terrorists is watching surveillance monitors. We might need to take him out, but we don’t want to unless we absolutely have to.”
“So you want me to open the door with this?”
“Yes. I’m gonna open this door, and once I do that, we have to talk in whispers. Just do everything I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it, and we’ll be fine.” Rapp punched in the code for the door, leaned on the handle, and stepped into the landing area. He set the monitor and his MP-10 on the ground. Dropping to a knee, Rapp moistened the jagged end of the S-key with spit. When he had it wet enough, he grabbed the doorknob with one hand and brought the tip of the key to the lock. Looking back and forth between the monitor and the lock, he began to slide the key in. It was inserted a third of the way when Rapp stopped. The terrorist leaned back his chair and clasped his hands behind his neck. Rapp didn’t move, didn’t breathe for five seconds; then slowly, he slid the key the rest of the way in.
He leaned back and gestured for Rielly to join him on the ground. Pulling her close, he whispered into her ear, “When I give you the signal, I want you to grab the key and the doorknob. After that, if you hear me say the word ‘Go,’ open it as quickly as possible and then get out of the way.”
THREE MD-530 LITTLE Bird helicopters worked their way up the Potomac River. The small, agile, and quiet helicopters were being flown by the elite pilots of the Army’s 160th Special Operations Regiment—the Night Stalkers. Each helicopter carried four Delta Force operators. The commandos stood on the chopper’s landing skids, two to a side.
The helicopters approached the group of bridges just to the south of the George Mason Memorial Bridge, skimming the windswept waters of the Potomac. Instead of climbing to fly over the bridges, the pilots of the 160th continued to hug the deck.
Under the four bridges they went, working their way north and closer to the White House. They were to stay out of sight until given the green light. The choppers closed on the Arlington Memorial Bridge and began to slow. When they reached it, the three choppers pulled in under the bridge and hovered. This was where they were to wait.
Meanwhile, a second flight of three Little Birds worked its way up the Anacostia River to the northeast. The three helicopters passed over the Frederick Douglass Bridge and turned north. Skimming over the roofs of apartment buildings and row houses, they cruised at an easy sixty knots, keeping the noise of their rotors and engines nice and quiet. The choppers passed around the east side of the Capitol so no one out on the National Mall would notice them. The wind buffeted them as they turned west and cruised over the roof of the Department of Labor. Dead ahead, five blocks away, was the monolithic structure of the Hoover Building. The choppers slid in over the rooftop and hovered just five feet above the structure. That was where they were to wait.
The operators standing on the skids were loaded for bear. Each man was outfitted with the latest in body armor, including ballistic Kevlar helmets and throat protectors. Gas masks were readily accessible in spare pockets, as were night-vision goggles. Ten of the twelve men carried suppressed MP-10s. The eleventh carried a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun, and the twelfth carried the heavy 7.62-mm M60ES machine gun. All of them were confident they could overcome anything they met, with one exception: the bombs. If the SEALs didn’t find a way around them, they would be in for a real nasty operation.
51
FOUR BLOCKS AWAY from the White House, in the bell tower of the Old Post Office, Charlie Wicker slid in behind his .50 caliber Barrett sniping rifle and was looking through his Leupold M1 Ultra 10x scope. On the wooden platform next to him his fellow SEAL sniper Mike Berg was doing the same thing with another of the exact same massive weapon.
The acoustic top was on the shooting platform. Constructed out of plywood and lined with foam, the covers would absorb ninety-five percent of the significant noise when the .50 caliber rifles were fired. Wicker was very confident the shot would work. So confident that he thought he would get the Tango on the first shot. If he didn’t, he knew Berg would. The odds of them missing from this distance were almost zero.
The only thing that had made him nervous was the weather. Wind and rain did funny things to the flight of a bullet, things that he couldn’t always control and that drove him nuts. The wind had been steadily increasing for the last several hours, but as if they had been given a gift from above, it had just died down. Unfortunately, Wicker knew, the reprieve would only be temporary. They were in the proverbial calm before the storm. The black sky was descending from east, and the relative calm would not last.
Wicker had been listening to the play-by-play as his team members jumped out of the back of the Combat Talon and was relieved the operation was under way. He would
make the shot count.
Only Wicker could hear what was being said between Harris and the other three jumpers. Having too many operators on the radio created unneeded confusion. Berg was to take his shot after he heard Wicker take his. There would be no commands, no signals. Nothing to distract the second shot. Berg would shoot when he was ready.
The two snipers could clearly hear their spotters outside the blind callingout the descent of the four SEAL Team Six operators. Wicker focused entirely on the task at hand. His whole body was molded to the big .50 caliber rifle as the crosshairs of his scope stayed centered on the terrorist’s head. Wicker felt no remorse over what he was about to do. The man he was about to kill had put himself in this situation, and he had miscalculated the skill of his opponent. He naively sat behind the bulletproof glass thinking he was safe.
AT ONE THOUSAND feet Mick Reavers pulled the rip cord on his parachute, and his rapid descent stopped. Looking up, he checked to make sure his double canopy had unfurled itself properly, then maneuvered himself into position for the short glide onto the roof of the White House. Reavers didn’t bother to look to see if his team members were in position above him. His job was to stay on line so the others could follow.
Harris had also opened his chute as close to one thousand feet as possible. After he got himself sorted out, he did a quick count of the airfoils beneath him and moved in to line up behind Rostein. At the same time he looked over at the tall steeple of the Old Post Office and said, “Slick, this is Whiskey Four. Do you copy? Over.”
“I copy, Whiskey Four.”
“We’re getting close.”
“Just give me the bingo.”
Harris floated down looking beyond his men at the street and traffic lights. Suddenly, he felt a gust of wind, and then a raindrop touched his cheek. Looking back to the east, he could see a wall of driving rain marching toward him. The heavy stuff looked to be less than a mile away. Harris looked down and tried to judge how close Reavers was to touchdown. Harris checked his altimeter and then looked back to the lead chute. He waited patiently, watching Reavers glide in from the darkness toward the roof of the White House.
Harris waited to the last possible moment and said, “Bingo, Slick. I repeat, Bingo!”
Wicker heard the call and began a slow, even exhale. He had already lowered his heart rate to fewer than forty beats a minute and was completely at ease. The terrorist was offering him a full-profile shot, and Wicker held the center of the crosshairs just above the man’s ear. With a steady constant pressure, he began to squeeze the trigger, and with a loud report the bullet was away.
The recoil from the massive rifle jolted Wicker back several inches. Another round was chambered, and as he maneuvered his scope in an attempt to reacquire the target, he heard Berg’s massive fifty launch its round at the target. Wicker brought his scope back in on the guard booth a second later, but there was nothing to shoot. The only thing in sight was a large hole in the bulletproof glass the size of a fist.
Reavers came in hot. He had felt the wind picking up and had adjusted accordingly, allowing himself to drop like a rock for thirty feet, and then at the last second, he pulled down on the risers and filled his chute with air. When his feet hit the roof, he opened the vents and got enough slack in his canopy to collapse one side of it. Clutching at his shoulder hooks, he pulled them from the main harness and wrestled the chute to the ground. Reavers bundled the chute quickly, threw it out of the way, all the while running for the guard booth.
On the way, he reached for his machine gun and said, “Whiskey One is down and on the move.”
By the time Reavers got to the guard booth, his silenced MP-10 was up and ready. As he looked inside, he saw the semidecapitated body of a terrorist lying on the floor. Reporting his findings, he said, “Tango one is out of commission.” Reavers looked up for a second to see how the others were doing and then began to check the guard booth for booby traps.
Clark and Rostein came in much the same as Reavers. There was a pattern that was developing, though, and as Reavers finished circling the guard booth, he grew alarmed. Each man overshot the previous man’s landing area by a good twenty feet. Reavers looked up and saw his CO struggling to get down as the wind picked up. With no time to waste, Reavers began running toward the western edge of the roof. As he did so, the rain started to fall.
Commander Harris was allowing himself to drop at a dangerous rate in an effort to get down before he overshot the landing area. With less than fifteen feet to go, he pulled on his risers as hard as he could. The chute fluffed with air, and just as the commander’s feet hit the roof, a forty-mile-an-hour gust grabbed the parachute and yanked Harris toward the edge.
RAPP KNELT OUTSIDE the door to Horsepower, intently watching his monitor. Rielly knelt next to him, afraid to speak. They had been sitting in silence for several minutes waiting when Rapp noticed her look of fear. A little bit of fear was a good thing, but too much could lead to freezing in the heat of battle, and they couldn’t afford that right now.
Rapp pushed the lip mike of his headset up and leaned close to Rielly. Whispering in her ear, he said, “Don’t worry, Anna. Everything is going to be fine.” Rapp moved away and smiled.
Rielly looked at him with eyes filled with dread. She leaned in close and whispered in his ear, “I don’t want you to die.” Then she hugged him and kissed him on the cheek.
Rapp’s heart fluttered, and he felt a feeling in his stomach that he hadn’t felt in a long time. With a huge grin on his face, he pulled her close, touching his forehead to hers. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve been in worse situations than this. Much worse.” He felt like kissing her, but held back. “Besides, you owe me dinner.”
This finally got a smile from her, and after a couple of seconds, she added, “All right. Just don’t do anything stupid before I get a chance to pay you back.”
Before Rapp could reply, he heard Commander Harris and Charlie Wicker talking on the headset. Rapp pulled his mike back down and pointed to the doorknob.
Rielly nervously put one hand on the knob and the other on the key. Rapp brought his silenced MP-10 up with both hands and clutched the extended stock firmly between his cheek and shoulder. With his eyes on the monitor, he kept the gun level and ready to fire. He listened to the news as the shot was taken and then the words that the first SEAL was down. Rapp looked for the slightest sign that the terrorist was onto something. The seconds passed by, and there was nothing. It appeared they had eliminated the Tango on the roof without alerting the others. Then came the news that the second and third SEALs were down. Rapp started to ease up just a bit. Amazingly, everything was going off as planned.
HARRIS WAS HELPLESS as the wind filled his chute and yanked him toward the edge. Passing by one of the chimney stacks, he reached out with his left hand. This slowed him for only a second as the force of the gale peeled him away from his temporary brick mooring. Several feet off the ground, he was again airborne and headed for the edge.
“Whiskey Four is in trouble,” announced Reavers as he sprinted across the narrow flat section of the roof. Pumping his legs as fast as they would move, he saw his CO slow for a second and then start moving. Reavers gained on him, and when he thought he had a chance, he dropped his weapon clear and leapt, both hands extended.
Reavers caught Harris’s right boot, and they came to a skidding halt. Only half of Harris’s upper body was on the roof. The other half was dangling over the edge, the parachute fully inflated by the driving storm continuing to tug him from Reavers’s grip.
With Reavers preventing him from floating away, Harris got enough play in one of the main straps to undo the clasp and let it go. The chute instantly flattened and began snapping in the wind. With the tension reduced, the other clasp was free and released in seconds. The parachute then floated away for about fifty feet until it hit the southeast corner of the West Wing. There it came to rest flapping in the wind, hugging the building.
* * *
RAPP HONEST
LY THOUGHT they were about to pull off the infiltration without a hitch. And then he heard the call that Whiskey Four was in trouble. His ears perked up, and his eyes intently watched the small monitor at his feet. The terrorist on the screen was sitting with his back to the door. Rapp could see the Tango’s AK-74 leaning against the table within arm’s reach.
After several tense seconds it came over the radio that Whiskey Four was okay and that the team was proceeding into the mansion. Rapp eased a bit, and then he saw the Tango come forward in his chair. Rapp’s body shifted forward as he continued to watch the small screen at his feet. The Tango had seen something on one of the monitors, but Rapp couldn’t see what it was. When the terrorist’s left hand reached out, Rapp noticed what looked like a radio sitting on the console.
“Go!” The word came from his mouth without any thought or pause.
Rielly turned the key, twisted the knob, and shoved the door open. Rapp was moving through the opening instantly, his silenced MP-10 hugged tight, and his left eye boring down the sights. The terrorist’s head was framed perfectly. The radio was coming to his mouth. He had already got the name Rafique out and was just starting to say something else.
Rapp squeezed the trigger once and held it for a second. Two rounds spit from the end of the silencer and hit the Tango directly in the back of the head. The hollow-point Glaser rounds breached the skull and released a total of six hundred sixty lethal miniature projectiles. The terrorist was propelled forward, his head landing on the console and his radio dropping to the floor.