Tom Clancy - Command Authority

All the GSG 9 men hit the deck.

Ryan shouted for the uniformed policemen at the other end of the hall to come to his position here by the window, but they could not hear him through the persistent gunfire upstairs. Frustrated, he chanced a look back out the window, caught a glimpse of movement in the darkened room where he’d seen the flash of light.

Without considering the consequences of firing a gun in the vicinity of dozens of armed men, Jack raised the MP5 toward the open window and aimed the iron sights by putting the narrow blade at the front of the barrel in the center of the round ghost ring by his eye in the rear of the gun. Jack had not spent a great deal of time with the MP5—it wasn’t something that he’d used in the Marines, after all—but he’d shot the weapon before, and he knew enough about sub-guns to know it was a lousy weapon with which to take on a sniper at seventy-five yards.

Jack held his breath to steady himself, then pressed the trigger.

Nothing.

Quickly he looked down at the gun, saw the safety was set to S for sicher , or secure, and he flicked the selector switch to the single-shot indicator.

He aimed again, and then, just as he put his finger back on the trigger, he saw the flash of another shot coming from the room seventy-five yards away. Illuminated in the quarter-second of light, Ryan saw a bed, a man crouched behind it on the far side of the room with a gun pointed at the building. The gun had a scope and a bipod, but Ryan couldn’t tell anything else about the shooter or his weapon before the room was once again covered in darkness.

Jack adjusted his aim, concentrated on the spot where he’d seen the man, held his breath again, and pressed the trigger.

The little H&K jerked against his shoulder as he sent a round downrange. He fired again, and then a third time. He had no idea if he was hitting the sniper or not, but he hoped he would at least encourage the gunman to run.

After the third shot, Ryan went flat on the floor below the window. He didn’t want to press his luck against a man with a scoped rifle.

Two policemen ran up to Ryan, and he yelled at them to get down. They had the good sense to do what the American said; they hit the deck and then crawled over to his position, yelling at him with their pistols in their hands.

One of the men raised his head to look out the window, but Jack grabbed him by his sleeve and pulled him down hard. He had no idea if the sniper was still in the fight, but if he were, he would undoubtedly be focusing his attention on this window, where the incoming fire had come from.

The look of absolute conviction on the face of the American told the two German Landespolizei that they probably should just go ahead and move to another window before checking outside. They used their radios to direct a group of cops down at ground level to check out the building that the American CIA man had described, and they ordered the cops blocking off the streets to be on the lookout for a sniper trying to make his escape.

Then they disarmed the American. They had no idea where he’d gotten hold of a gun in the first place.

The entire gunfight in the West Berlin neighborhood of Wedding lasted only six minutes, but to Ryan it seemed like an eternity. The GSG 9 men upstairs finally pronounced the flat clear, but everyone remained low to the ground for several minutes until the police went to check out the sniper hide up the street and reported that the area was safe.

Jack was still on the floor in the hallway when Wilhelm walked up to him several minutes later. “We found the sniper position across the street.”

Jack stood up quickly.

“There is some blood on the carpet, and three holes in the drywall. You hit someone in that room, but they were apparently still able to collect their weapon and make an escape.”

Wilhelm reached out and shook Ryan’s hand. “Danke schön, Herr Ryan.”

“No problem,” Ryan said, but his mind was still trying to piece this all together. “How did the RAF know to have a sniper there? Did they know we would be hitting the flat?”

“I do not know.”

“Is that something they have ever done before?”

“ Nein. Nothing like this. Tonight we had two GSG Nine and one Landespolizei officer killed. Three GSG Nine and three Landespolizei were wounded. We have never suffered such losses against the RAF.”

It was several minutes more before Eastling and Ryan were allowed up to the third-floor flat. As they crossed the studio space to the stairs, they passed a lightly injured commando still receiving initial treatment from his teammates, and they saw blood, bullet holes, and broken glass all over the room.

Upstairs, the Germans used the big flashlights on the tops of their guns to look for a light switch. They found one by the door, but the light above had been shot out or blown up by a grenade in the battle. Eastling himself turned on a lamp in the attached kitchen and pointed it toward the main room, casting long shadows across everything.

Ryan waved his hand through the air to clear smoke still hanging, and he got his first good look at the room.

The first body he came across was that of a young woman. She was ten feet from the entrance to the stairs, lying on her back and disfigured by the bullet wounds over her upper torso and head. In the lamplight diffused by smoke, she looked ghostlike. An automatic weapon was several feet away from her. Jack thought it likely this was her gun and it had been kicked out of her reach as the commandos took the room.

He followed some men with flashlights down a hallway and into the bedrooms, and here he saw a total of eight more bodies. Four had guns still in their hands or near where they lay, and four more did not. The walls of one of the bedrooms were so peppered with holes there were places you could reach through into the living room. It was clear to Ryan much of this battle had taken place without the two warring sides even seeing each other.

Jack looked at Eastling. “No survivors among the RAF?”

Eastling shook his head in disappointment. “None at all.”

“Shit.”

All the dead were photographed where they lay and then dragged into the living room and lined up on the floor. While this took place, the police were already beginning their investigation.

Jack and Nick started looking around themselves, but after just a few minutes the radio squawked. “Herr Eastling? Herr Ryan? Can you come to the last bedroom down the hall, please?”

Eastling and Ryan walked to the smallest room in the house, the back bedroom. No bodies had been discovered in here, so they had all but ignored it on their first pass, but now, as Ryan stepped into the room and followed the path of flashlights, he realized why he and Eastling and been ushered in. There were two pictures on a small dressing table; they were smashed, and one was pocked with bullet holes now, but they clearly showed a young woman who matched the ID photo of Marta Scheuring.

“Scheuring’s room,” said one of the BfV men.

A search of the ten-foot-by-ten-foot space was already under way. There wasn’t much to look through, just a bed, a few tables, a pile of clothes in a basket in the corner, and a small closet stuffed with coats and other clothing.

It took no time at all for the BfV men to find a hollow space beneath several loose floorboards under the bed. A BfV investigator pulled a silver aluminum briefcase from the compartment. It was secured with a simple three-number combination, but the German put it on the bed and opened the lock with a tiny pick while Ryan and Eastling peered over his shoulder.

Inside the case were several notebooks and files. The detective shone his flashlight on the contents for the benefit of the Englishman and the American.