Chapter 11

The two SEAL units were ready to go. In the interest of lowering the chance of discovery, they moved out about 12:20 AM. To allow for unforeseen difficulties, they allowed five hours to reach the targets. Nobody expected it to take that long, but some allowance was made for Murphy's Law. In both cases, there was no chance of entering the buildings via the main entrance without attracting too much attention.

The alternative path was taken. The SEAL team entered the nearest office building to the target and went to the lowest subbasement. There they found the entrance to the tunnel housing the electrical services conduit. This tunnel was nearly eight feet in diameter and partially filled with various electrical cables. There was a service catwalk that the SEAL team was able to follow to reach the next building, namely, the target building. This part of the job had been easy—apparently, no one had realized that entry to the target building could be gained this way.

Security at the Chrysler Building was remarkably lax. The last time the maintenance port in the subbasement had been opened, the crew, when they left, had just hung the closing panel on the studs and put only a couple of nuts in place to make sure that the panel would not accidentally fall off. At that, the nuts were only thumb tight, so the pushing from two strong men was enough to wedge the panel aside. Furthermore, no resident seemed to notice the noise it made as the panel fell to the floor.

The team of 28 SEALs moved out and checked this basement for any occupants or for any other thing of interest. Nothing was found but the residue from rat and roach infestation. Just in case it might be needed, a demolition charge was attached to the electrical cables to be set off by a radio signal in case it was expedient to cut the electrical service to the building. They didn't want to have to do that, because it would kill the elevators, forcing everybody to use the emergency stairs. That would be a damned tiring walk from top to bottom, even if nobody was shooting at you.

The bottom floor was devoted to building services, so there were no people normally down there, and that's what the SEALs found. The team formed up and moved up to the next level. They were in no great hurry, since they wanted daylight by the time they reached the fourth floor. They moved on up through several subbasements, finding nothing but miscellaneous items stored in these basements.

Eventually, they reached the ground floor that was devoted to administrative services for the building. Most of the space was set aside for use by the SS-type guards. These were the fanatic personal bodyguards for the Boss of Bosses. They thought that they were "hot stuff" in their fancy uniforms and openly-worn side arms. Each floor had a small armory mostly stocked with 9 mm ammunition for the machine-pistols these bodyguards used. They never really expected to need it, so much of the ammunition was well out of date and of problematical value.

There were a few guards on duty, but most of the security was provided by the massive steel doors that covered the multiple entrances from the street. Some clever knife-work disposed of the guards without alerting the rest of the building, and the controls on the security doors were jimmied to bypass the time-lock. All of the doors were opened so that the additional forces needed to secure the building could easily enter through the street doors.

Precisely at 7:00 AM, six Strykers drove up and six squads of heavily armed Marines were welcomed into the building by the SEALS. Once everybody was in place, the first overt assault was made on the SS barracks on the second floor. This was the floor where most of the active building guard was billeted. These men were no better fighters than one would find in the average street gang, so the SEALs and Marines had no trouble in eliminating them within 30 minutes. The reason it took that long was the sheer number of them. Their main function was intimidation, and they did that by strutting around in overwhelming numbers, waving their machine pistols and shouting at the unarmed civilians unlucky enough to be seen by the thugs.

Anyway, these thugs were efficiently eliminated by the well trained SEALs and Marines that swept through their barracks. Unfortunately, a few of the thugs managed to escape to the floors above and warn the better trained guards up there of what was going on. As a result, the assault on the second floor was not going to be as simple as the previous floors.

There were not as many defenders on the next floor up, but they were better trained and were motivated to fight, not to show off. Each of the stairway and elevator exits were defended by troops with machine pistols and light machine guns. Normally, this would have been enough to stop any but the most fanatical attack on the defenders, but the Marines had brought along a way to counter the machine gun nests.

They had small, remotely controlled robots which were armed with light machine guns of their own. The robots had a combination of wheels and tracks which made it possible for them to climb normal stairs, so that was no problem. They also had small RPGs which were capable of blasting the exit door to smithereens, so the robot could easily gain access that way. Of course, the robot was also capable of riding up on the elevator and shooting as soon as the door opened. Some robots were lost in the firefights, but there seemed to be an endless supply that were delivered to the building and immediately ready to replace a damaged or destroyed robot.

The Marines were detailed to do the slogging work of clearing the building and the SEALs were pulled out and returned to their warehouse staging point. The adjacent streets were patrolled by Strykers and Helicopters so that reinforcements could not be brought in by the bosses or the unions.

The attack on the Empire State Building was virtually identical to that on the Chrysler Building, except that the NOA/NON faced mercenaries from Pakistan and India. These men were much better trained and more tenacious fighters, so the firefights were more intense, but the outcome was ultimately the same. The union employers of the mercenaries were bean counters to the core, so they would not pay for armament heavier than light machine guns. The upshot was that it took a little longer, but our troops were able to overcome the opposition.

In both buildings, once the barracks floors had been cleared and the few surviving defenders had been chased to higher floors, the fighting descended into a kind of one-on-one fighting that was both bloody and dirty. There was no question that the men on both sides of the fight were scared shitless, but they continued to fight until the question was settled.