Massive Attack (A Guy Niava Thriller Book 1) by Dana Arama (diy ebook reader TXT) 📕

still, despite all this, I wasn’t calm. I should have been more relaxed. They were the most experienced agents we had. There was no reason that we couldn’t break-in successfully, neutralize the threat, and save the hostages. And yet I wasn’t completely relaxed. Did they understand the priority of this break-in? That the lives of thousands of people about to embark on those planes were more important than Yassin’s life? My anxiety prompted me to ask them, just before they made their way out of the room, to switch off all their communication and recording devices. I said, “The orders from above were to take out Yassin and then we were asked not to touch him and then to take him out again…” I took a deep breath and added, “The orders I am giving you now are going to determine your plan of action.” I looked into the eyes of each and every member of the team. “I believe the man to be guilty. He planned a series of devastating terror attacks and because of that, and since he is the only one who can stop these horrendous acts, we need him alive. So, despite the fact that the son of a bitch deserves to die, don’t kill him. Please remember that they may have explosives tied to themselves, so don’t let him commit suicide either.”

My parting speech being finished, I let them walk out the door, then breathed out what I thought was a sigh of relief. But, in fact, as soon as they were out of my sight and on their way to the attacking position, my lungs were screaming for air.

***

If the break-in went off without a hitch, I would be very surprised. The takeover was not a miracle but an intricate mission, which required all the agents to respond almost instantaneously as the situation evolved. This break-in was composed of many dynamic variables. I waited impatiently by the screen, and the tension grew and grew. My fingers drummed in a uniform rhythm on the table, my foot had a life of its own and without any connection to the rest of the body, it refused to stop tapping. When I heard in the earpiece the familiar, ‘Three, two, one, go!’ I jumped up from my seat. I knew that all the forces broke into the suite simultaneously, from different angles, because surprise is the most important element in a forced entry

All eyes of those who were in the makeshift operations room were glued to the screens. The coordinator Major Key had left behind said, “In the left dark room, there is a problem. The explosives didn’t work.” I felt the tension in his voice, he announced: “I repeat, there is a problem in the left room, the explosives didn’t go off.”

A second before we heard the explosion, we saw the door of the main entrance being torn off its hinges. As soon as there was an opening, a spread of fighters swarmed the area, just like in the instructional tapes I’d watched at the Academy a decade ago. The professional terrorist, who had stood by Yassin the whole time we’d surveilled the suite, turned sharply towards the torn door and took aim with his weapon. He managed to shoot at the agents a fraction of a second before the agent on the right shot two very precise, silenced shots. The professional terrorist’s bullet hit the ceiling. We heard the burst of gunfire and the metallic sound of the shells hitting the marble floor. We received the message saying ‘Clear’, and our eyes jumped to the left. The agent on the left fired at the position where Murat Lenika had been standing a moment before, taking care not to hit the computer screens, but Murat had disappeared.

The commanding agent, standing in the center of the room, knelt down and shot Yassin with the anesthetic. Just as we’d feared, Yassin constituted a small target because he was sitting on the floor and also because of the boy in his arms. Despite the difficulty, we heard the call of ‘Okay, clear’ we’d been waiting for. We all let out a sigh of relief, but we knew that the mission was far from being over.

As if in slow motion, the doctor’s mouth opened in a soundless cry of alarm. He got up from the floor, leaning on one hand with the other hand held up high. The stethoscope hanging around his neck rocked to its own rhythm. I feared that someone might shoot him by mistake and bit my lip so as not to interfere. The coordinator quietly warned: “The doctor is in the line of fire.” That was enough for them not to shoot him.

While agents had been breaking in through the main entrance, two more men had come down from the roof and entered the room like monkeys. They were accustomed to breaking through brick, but before them was thick glass. The terrorist standing there took two accurate shots at the agents and then hid behind the bed. Dan, the agent who had entered from the north, was hit directly in the chest and was thrown back. Curt, who’d broken in from the west, made his way towards the terrorist and, in two large strides, shot him twice in the head, turning the terrorist into a heap of lifeless limbs on the floor, surrounded by a puddle of blood. We heard ‘clear’ and immediately he asked, “Are you okay, brother?”

“Okay,” Dan answered shortly, and I heard pain and frustration in that one word. I knew he would overcome the frustration and so I scanned the area. Murat Lenika was still missing. A few seconds later, he came out of the dark room with a gun in his shaking hands. Three of the agents shot six fatal shots. They called out ‘clear’, in unison.

I heard Linda say from the side, “We are left only with Yassin for interrogating.”

“They did what they had to do.” I answered. If