Chapter Twenty-Four
Ty
Rory sat on the curb like a good boy, but Ty could see from the way he shifted around on his haunches that his body ached.
Yes, it was always a great day when he got to bite the bad guy and make them holler, but Rory had two days of biting, and it was a full-body sport. His pain relievers weren’t up to the task, and Rory couldn’t have any more for a few more hours yet.
Ty would crank the heat once he got in the cab.
The back door had beeped its warning and then opened automatically.
“Rory, load, find a seat.” Rory lifted slowly from the sidewalk and moved to Ty’s side, where he gave the interior a sniff before he jumped in and made his way forward.
Ty focused tightly on the task at hand. Innocent people going on about their business didn’t look around to see if anyone had spotted them. Rookie mistake. What if Ty did lock eyes with someone? What could he do about it? In this circumstance, nada. Better to keep his head down.
Stepping forward, Ty squatted as his free hand came up onto Phossy Jaw’s back, and he sat the guy’s ass on the floor.
Reaching around to grab the padding, Ty lowered Phossy’s torso gently so his head didn’t slam into the metal surface.
Phossy’s face was already messed the hell up, no need to bash in the back to match the front.
With a push and a repositioning of his hands and another shove, Ty climbed in and shut the back doors behind him.
Protected by the windowless cargo area, Ty flipped on the interior lights and worked in the confined space to unroll Phossy. T-Rex should fold his guy into the rug with a single flap over the guy’s body. There wasn’t going to be enough space to do this with more than one tango.
He pressed his comms with his left hand while his right knuckles scraped up and down Phossy’s sternum to create enough pain to make good and damned sure that he was out. In his ear, Ty got static and remembered he’d set up the jammer.
No response on the radio.
No response from Phossy to the pain stimulus.
Ty laid his hand on the man’s chest to feel for the expansion of the guy’s lungs.
Phossy was out all right.
Out.
Like the Grim Reaper had visited out.
Ty couldn’t find the guy’s pulse.
“Shit,” Ty spat as he dragged his backpack off and dug out the medical equipment he’d brought. He looked over the air bag and the face mask; Phossy didn’t have the bone structure to allow the mask to seal properly.
Ty cast it aside. This was going to be a hands-on endeavor.
At least he’d zipped the guy’s hands together so his back was on a flat surface.
With a sigh and a shake of the head, Ty worked through the issues, knowing that he had no idea how long the guy had been without oxygen.
He weighed that with the story White had told about Nomad punching the guy in the jaw and the bone splintering into pieces of gravel.
If this man’s bones were compromised and Ty started CPR, Phossy’s ribs could turn to dust. He’d die. Just like that, dead.
If Ty did nothing, same.
Ty decided to try a one-and-done that he’d seen work in a space that didn’t allow for compressions.
“This is the definition of do-or-die,” Ty said as he raised the flat of his hand as high as he could in the confines of the van, then brought it down, distributing the shock of his strike along the man’s sternum hard enough that Phossy’s body convulsed.
Ty licked his fingers and painted the wetness over his cheek, and then held his head over Phossy’s nose.
A chill painted Ty’s flesh as Phossy exhaled.
Ty put his fingers to the man’s carotid, and this time he found a steady beat.
“Don’t die on me, Phossy,” Ty said, moving to the front seat and cutting the jammer. He pressed his sternal mic and called in his situation report to White. “I’m going to be honest here: I can’t babysit Phossy’s airway and drive at the same time. Please advise.”
“Copy Echo Two. Head right to Echo One’s location. I’ll have him waiting on the sidewalk. Phossy’s going to have to breathe on autopilot for five minutes, over.”
“Wilco.” Ty started the van and pulled out into the night street.
At the stop sign, he looked left, then right, then reached out and scritched Rory’s ears.
“Best partner in the whole world. You did everything on point. I’m going to tell Kira what a good boy you were, and I’ll bet she’s going to make you some of those peanut butter treats you like. ”
Ty wove through the narrow streets, slowing as he approached Tango Five’s building.
T-Rex stepped out of the shadows and over to the back of the van.
With a press of the button, the back door eased open, and T-Rex laid his guy inside. “Heard old Phossy had some breathing problems,” T-Rex said as he pulled the doors shut.
Since no one was in the road, Ty flipped on the light so T-Rex could be more efficient getting things in place.
“My guy’s breathing,” T-Rex said. A moment later. “Phossy’s breathing. Bet it was hell giving this guy mouth-to-mouth.”
“Luckily, it didn’t come to that.” Ty flipped the lights off.
“Looks like Rory had some fun. That bite mark is pretty deep.”
“If you don’t want the bite, then you shouldn’t be in the fight,” Ty chanted.
“Rough?”
“Not fun,” Ty said.
The next few minutes of silence were broken when Ty called out, “Nitro’s here. Get ready to jump out the back and take over driving.”
One more stat check because T-Rex was responsible for three sedated men. They were positioned back to belly in the cargo space, leaving one more spot for Tango Four.
Standing on the sidewalk, Rory sniffed around the streetlamp. As he lifted his back leg and left his mark, T-Rex drove off.
T-Rex would only be solo for two klicks up the street, then Jeopardy would be babysitter while T-Rex finished the round ups and drove toward the Seine, where they’d wait for the extraction team.
Nitro gave Ty a high five. “Looks like your guy went kinetic.”
“Surprisingly amped for a soap-slicked naked guy, fighting with a shower curtain weapon.”
“You’re kidding.” Nitro put his hands on his hips. “How the hell did that happen?”
“Door alarm gave him a heads up.”
The two started walking down the street, moving two blocks south, then one block east, and there it was, the last van of the night, their exit strategy.
It was time to go check on the production apartment.
***
Nitro, Ty, and Rory stood at the open apartment door and scanned.
The boxes were exactly as they’d been photographed by White’s team.
Rory took one sniff, then indicated for explosives without even walking into the room or being commanded.
“Okay, well that’s not good,” Nitro said. “Maybe we leave anything out here that might spark or cause static.”
“The men shucked their backpacks, and Ty set Rory to guard their equipment.
With a knife, Ty cut through the tent fabric to get a good look inside. It was lined with Mylar to reflect the body heat of the men working inside.
Would it raise the temperature enough to be comfortable? No.
But it would raise it enough so their fingers wouldn't stiffen up.
One of the boxes was open. There was a stabilizing gel around a vest. Other components were stacked in neat piles.
Ty and Nitro took a few minutes to understand what they were seeing, and as the picture started to clear, Nitro and Ty stood perfectly still, staring at each other in silent communication.
“Shit,” Ty hissed.
Nitro pointed to the side of the tent where whiteboards leaned against the tent poles. “You figure out what those say, take photos. I’ll bring White up to speed on the explosives.”
“Good call, man. You pegged this from the start.” Ty said as he squatted down to take pictures.
Nitro stepped outside before he pressed his comms. “Echo Five: White, we have suicide vest production. Over.”
“White: Copy. What’s the main ingredient, TATP?”
“Affirmative. The vests are wired for remote detonation. There’s documentation and schematics. Ty’s working on a translation.”
Over the comms, Ty heard. “White for Echo Two.”
“Hey, Nitro, keep going in here,” Ty said as he moved out into the hallway. He pressed his comms. “Echo two.”
“I need to call this in to DGSE and get someone headed to the site immediately. You’ll bring out what you can safely extract. I’m giving you four minutes to get out of the building.”
“Copy.” He turned his head. “Four minutes,” he whispered.
“Wilco.” Nitro with just enough volume for Ty to hear.
“Echo Two, give me a rundown of what you saw at first glance. Any specific information to warn DGSE about? Over.”
“The whiteboard seems to outline the master plan. The attacks are set for Washington, D.C. operation, ma’am.” Ty assessed the hallway. No one would hear him using his bone mic, but he didn’t want curious eyes on him. “They wrote in Russian. Over.”
“All right. You read Russian, so what did it say?”
“I glanced down the lists of places, distances, and time stamps. It seems they will take a bus full of people hostage, outfit them with the vests, and tell them that they are committing a series of robberies.”
“What kinds of places?”
“Banks. Jewelry shops. One, the target is a man’s briefcase at the airport.
The locations are in malls or high-population areas around the city.
” Ty swallowed. “It’s not a robbery. It’s a long-assed chain-terrorist attack.
There’s a script for what they will tell the hostages.
The instructions said how they’d keep the people calm by telling them it was about robbing.
You bring back the items, and you go free. ”
“Are you believing this shit?” broke through from Nitro. “The vests have radios and cameras for monitoring.”
“At a glance,” White asked, “why the distances between hits?”
“My guess,” Ty said, “They calculated the sound range so the hostages waiting their turn wouldn’t hear the explosions.
There’s a follow car on comms with the bus, managing the speed based on what the hostage is doing on site.
They divided a team of six on the bus: three in the first follow car and two in a second backup car.
There’s one more name, perhaps a TOC? That would make a cell of twelve. ”
“You have names?”
“Yes, ma’am, first names divided by lines and the vehicle.”
“I guess that way if the person tried to be a hero and screamed out that they were a bomb, sacrificing themselves for the good of others, then the car guy could just press the button to shut them up,” White said. “Might as well make their death easy – hope is a motivator.”
“I’m forwarding images to you now,” Ty said, pressing the send button, then bending to scrub his fingers behind Rory’s ears. “There’s more. There are notebooks. The whiteboard seems to be their overview.”
“I’ll send these images on to DGSE. Stand by.”
Nitro came to the door and handed Ty a box of computers, phones, documents, and a sample of the vest components.
“You’re not bringing home any of the explosives for shits and giggles, right?” Ty asked.
“TATP is not something I willingly mess with,” Nitro said. “Hey, man, you’ve been petting Rory. I need you to stay out of here, brother. I’m not risking you building up static electricity.” Nitro went back in to do a final check.
A few moments later, Ty heard in his ear, “White for Echo Two and Echo Five, I need you to leave everything you haven’t already gathered in place.
Exfil the apartment. Lock it behind you.
Get in the van and head to the extraction location to support the rest of your team. Get out. Get out of there now.”
In the distance was the scream of sirens.