Reflexive Fire - 01 (28 page)

   Shaking like a French soldier, the last security man bailed out the backdoor, 7.62 rounds chasing him on the way out but failing to land on target.  As the door swung shut on its springs, they heard the rattle of machine gun fire out on the street.  One of the assault trucks isolating the casino had taken care of the retreating gunman.

   “Stairs, right!” Deckard said, attempting to get things moving again.

   First and Second Squad moved towards the staircase that led up to the offices while Third Squad secured the casino floor, ushering civilians out both exits.  The platoon medic moved in to treat casualties.

   Jumping in the stack, Deckard followed the assaulters up to the second floor.  First Squad was just reaching the top when a grenade flew through the air and bounced off the wall next to him.

   Kurt Jager stepped over a body, triggering a burst into a stocky guard brandishing a pistol.

   Disco strobes flashed everywhere, Canto-pop blasting over a stereo system, the whorehouse rapidly being taken down by the numbers as it was flooded with assaulters.

   The scant intelligence Samruk had received with the Operations Order had placed Peng in one of two locations within Panghsang's exotic nightlife.  The casino or the whorehouse; it was a toss-up, so they crashed both parties at the same time. 

   Killing Peng was instrumental to the dismantling of the UWSA.  Of Chinese origin, not a whole lot was known about the elusive figurehead of Burma's largest narco-militia.  No known family, didn't carry a cellular phone, paranoid, and with a large entourage of bodyguards, but no one seemed to know much more about the Golden Triangle's most prolific narcotics producer.

   Second Platoon had stormed through the front door, executing the bouncers before they could reach for weapons, and hit the lounge, securing the ground floor in seconds. 

   The party came to an abrupt halt.  Second Squad flexcuffed the bartender and secured the liquor cabinet while Third Squad went for the stage and rounded up the prostitutes.  First Squad lined up the whorehouse's customers, to see if any of them matched the photo they had of Peng.

   This is starting to look like a B-grade porn,
Kurt mused.

   Thankfully, someone kicked over the stereo and unplugged the strobe lights.

   The platoon sergeant took charge, directing one squad to evacuate the girls and continue to secure the ground floor while the others began working their way up.  The remaining twenty Kazakhs flowed upstairs.

   Reaching the landing, the German mercenary saw the hall lined with private rooms, the doors covered with bed sheets tacked to the walls.  This was where the action happened.  The Kazakhs proceeded with gusto, apparently curious as to the goings on up in the second floor.

   Four assaulters stacked on one entrance and pushed through the stained bed sheet, moving inside.  Screams sounded from inside, not the high-pitched voice of a female prostitute but coming from the mercenaries themselves.

   More yelling in Russian ensued before the curtain peeled open and a squat Chinese man in business attire stumbled into the hall, fumbling to buckle up his pants.  Looking up he made eye contact with Kurt, paused for a moment, and then ran down the stairs. 

   Behind him, a deceptively tall woman walked out as the curses in Russian continued.  Huge breasts were literally mounted to her chest, the product of a plastic surgeon's careful work.  Kurt frowned as she strode past him in high heels, now noticing the penis dangling between her legs.

   Other, more natural born women and their patrons were ushered out of their rooms.  The men were cross-checked to make sure none of them were the High Value Target, or HVT, before cutting them loose as well.  So far they had no positive matches. 

   Kurt spun, hearing someone scream somewhere down the hall.  Storming down the corridor, he found which room it had come from.  Inside, four Kazakhs were struggling to get a naked man under control as he thrashed back and forth.  Flinging one commando off his back, the Burmese man pushed another squad member into a chair, knocking them both over.  The other two attacked, one going for his legs and taking him to the ground while the other tried to secure his arms.

   The crazed look in the man's eyes told Kurt that he was most definitely sampling the UWSA's product, the methamphetamine sending him into a frenzy.  With what appeared as super-human strength, the drug addict managed to fight back, taking a bite out of one of the Kazakhs and kicking free of the other.

   The drug left the man feeling no pain, allowing him strength that was well beyond the threshold of normal men.  The mercenary who had been bit in the shoulder stumbled off in pain, while the others readied a counter attack, preparing to take him down.  Kurt let them tackle the meth head again before stepping in.

   Tightening his grip, Kurt slammed the stock of his rifle into the addict's face.  The junkie screamed before focusing in on the German with wild eyes.  Lunging towards him with bared teeth, he almost broke free of the Kazakhs' grasp a second time.  Kurt struck again, this time holding nothing back.

   The second blow stunned him, but Kurt didn't stop there, following up immediately and pounding at him a third and fourth time until he fell to the floor permanently.  His blows had caved in the addict's skull, leaving him in a pool of his own blood.

   Unfortunately for him, the methamphetamine addict had left them with little choice.  The mercenaries had tried to restrain him rather than using lethal means, but the man had jeopardized the safety of the team with his drug-fueled frenzy.

   Shouts echoed throughout the second floor as Russian voices called out that all rooms were clear.  Back out in the hall, a commando stood guard on the narrow stairwell leading up to the third floor.  Looking up, Kurt saw a heavy steel door which looked to be secured with multiple locks from the inside. 

   The front to the building hadn't even been that secure, other than a few bouncers, probably half asleep until the platoon arrived.  For an internal door it was definitely out of place.

  
What the hell was up there?

   “Bollocks,” Richie cursed, fumbling with a stick of C4.

   The demolition team was left over exposed in the middle of the bridge while they wired explosives in place.

   The bridge only afforded them enough space to drive a single vehicle halfway down, to provide some semblance of cover fire if needed.  A short walk twenty meters or so to the opposite river bank marked the far western boundary of the People's Republic of China.  A lone Chinese border guard watched from the other side, occasionally shouting at the demo team but not daring to do much more.

   On the Burmese side, four more assault trucks from Third Platoon waited, guns pointed towards China, just in case.  Richie and the two engineers he had trained felt like fish bait, hung out to dry on the bridge that linked the growing superpower to the Third World.

   It was called a Bailey bridge, an invention developed out of necessity during the Second World War.  The trusses were prefabricated and trucked into position to be assembled by hand, no special machinery needed.  Bailey bridges had the advantage of being easy to build, the ability to span about sixty meters of river, and able to support commercial trucking.

   The Kazakh engineers worked the trusses on both sides of the bridge while the retired safe cracker reached between the wooden planks to gain access under the bridge where he could find the sway braces.  The long metal rods connected underneath the main structure, forming an X that maintained the bridge's rigidness.  Using the same type of plastic flexcuffs for securing prisoners, Richie ziptied one-pound sticks of plastic explosives to each sway brace in his section, maintaining control of the leads that primed each charge.

   Leaving the Kazakh commandos to their task, Richie retrieved his roll of detonation chord off the nearby assault truck, glancing up at the gunner who was eyeballing Red China nervously.

   “Fucking cunt,” Richie muttered under his breath.

   He hoped all this trouble was worth it.  Apparently the boss thought the Chinese might try to chase them into Burma.  Gunfire was already raging inside Panghsang, the other two platoons going to work. 

   Unreeling the det chord, he strung it out in a circle around his charges before cutting the line with his folding blade and tying each end together in a square knot. 

   By now, the two engineers had finished their work and came to him with the leads to their own charges.  They had placed one-pound charges between the channels on each truss and half-pound charges on each piece of diagonal bracing in their section of bridge.  According to his calculations, it should be enough to bring the bridge down.

   The three man demolition team tied their leads into the round main that Richie had laid out.  With all ten charges tied into the det chord, Richie set about stringing a dual primed British junction into his system to detonate all of the explosives simultaneously.

   The British mercenary had the entire system rigged, when the first gunshot sparked off one of the trusses just a few meters away.

   The PKM on the assault truck belted out a long burst, stitching the Chinese border guard on the other side from crotch to chest, the Type 56 rifle he had carried falling silent.  Not willing to waste another moment, Richie pulled the pins, starting the burn sequence on the time fuse.

  
Now you've done it.

  
Muzzle flashes from the Chinese side announced that they had in fact kicked the hornet's nest.  Turret gunners in all five trucks fired back, dumping lead into Chinese territory.  With gunfire now flying in both directions across the Shweli River, the demo team jumped on their truck.

   Richie had cut a full two minutes of time fuse to give them plenty of time to make it to the minimum safe distance.  If the truck broke down on the bridge after they initiated, they'd need every second of it.  The ex-con's phobia wasn't based on irrationality, but rather experience.  He bore the scars to prove it.

   The driver threw the vehicle in reverse and stepped on the gas.  The machine gunner let it rip, the muzzle flash illuminating the bridge as the truck lunged backwards.  Bullets coming from the Chinese side rang the side of the truck like a cowbell, as well as slamming into the metal struts of the bridge on both sides.

   The driver came too far to one side, scraping a long streak of paint along the bridge before arriving on the Burmese side of the river.  Cutting the wheel, the driver pulled the truck behind a small stone wall for cover, the turret gunner rotating his machine gun back on target.

   Now it was a full blown fire fight, the border guards being joined by the Chinese military, if the amount of incoming fire was any indication.  Richie looked at his watch.  Another minute until the bridge blew, but it might as well have been another hour while in contact with the enemy.  They had to stay in position to make sure the job was done before seeking cover deeper in Panghsang.

   The Chinese troops could always commandeer one of the flat keeled junks moored at the docks and put men on their side of the river, but they would be without heavy armor or heavy weapons, not to mention conducting an illegal border crossing.  The premise of the entire mission was that the Chinese would not be willing to instigate an act of war over their assault on Panghsang.