Tom Clancy - Command Authority

Minutes after they arrived, the cases on the stage lay open and empty and the black-clad paramilitaries were geared up and ready for action. Their primary weapon was the nine-millimeter H&K MP5 submachine gun, a state-of-the-art weapon for close-quarters combat. On their hips they carried P7 pistols, also made by the German firm Heckler & Koch, and various fragmentation, smoke, and concussion grenades hung from their vests.

Jack had spent the past fifteen minutes quietly watching GSG 9 get ready for their raid, so he was surprised when Eastling appeared at his shoulder. He was more surprised to see Eastling wearing a bulletproof vest over his shirtsleeves and tie. He winked at Jack and said, “Good news, old boy. We get to be part of the action.”

Ryan stood up from the stage. He noticed the Englishman was carrying a second vest in his hand.

Eastling said, “We will go behind the trucks delivering the trigger men, traveling with the detectives. We can wait downstairs while the takedown goes on, and we can enter with the first team of gents from the BfV when it’s all over.”

“Great,” Jack said, though he wasn’t sure just how great this actually was.

“No guns for us, I’m afraid.” Eastling winked again. Ryan could see the adrenaline of the impending raid was already amping up the Englishman’s mannerisms. “Personally, I have no use for the damn things. I know you are a real trick shot, though. How many terrorists did you kill last year?”

Jack said, “It was the one who shot me that reminds me to leave the gunfighting to the professionals.”

“Too right, Ryan. We’ll just come up the stairs when they give the all-clear.”

After CIA analyst Jack Ryan donned the bulletproof vest over his shirt and tie, he was given a zip-up jacket with the word POLIZEI in gold on the back, and handed a radio by a Bundesgrenzschutz detective named Wilhelm.

At one a.m. they climbed into Wilhelm’s unmarked car and drove to a staging area just two blocks from the target location. Here the GSG 9 men stood by their armored vehicles and smoked, and several ambulances and more police vehicles, including a paddy wagon, were all parked in a darkened underground garage.

After a call through the radios, Wilhelm, Ryan, and Eastling—the other British intelligence officers remained behind in the theater—began walking up the street, passing local police who were now blocking off the streets in the neighborhood. Wilhelm led Ryan and Eastling along behind another group of armed uniformed police officers to yet another staging area, this one just across the street from the target building. Just as they arrived, the GSG 9 men came in their own vehicles, their trucks driving slowly up Sprengelstrasse with the lights extinguished, and the twenty-four commandos leapt out from the back of the trucks and lined up in two teams of twelve. One group unlocked the car repair shop door with a skeleton key, and the other used a portable ladder to gain access to the fire escape, and they began moving slowly up toward the roof. Inside the repair shop, a barking dog was silenced with a tranquilizer gun, and then this team headed up a staircase to the first-floor offices.

Now Wilhelm, Ryan, Eastling, and several uniformed state police officers crossed the street and entered the target building. They climbed the stairs to the offices on the first floor, and here they stood together in a hallway near the stairs up to the second-story artists’ studio. Just ahead of them, the GSG 9 team waited a minute at the stairs, and then they began moving up to the second floor, disappearing from view as they ascended into blackness.

Ryan leaned close to Eastling’s ear and said, “They know they are here to arrest the terrorists, right? We won’t be able to tie the attacks in Switzerland to the RAF if we end up with a room full of bodies.”

Eastling whispered back, “You’d be surprised what a room full of bodies can tell you.” He winked. “No stress, the shooters know to give the guerrillas every chance to surrender peacefully.” He put a hand up. “Of course, if the bad guys decide they want to shoot it out, these German commandos will kill everything that moves. That’s just what they do.”

The GSG 9 team moved up the stairs to the second floor and into the artists’ collective, and they found the space to be mostly open; there were a few partitioned-off areas here and there. Shelves of paint, rolling carts of art supplies, and easels with half-finished paintings were positioned around the room. Large windows on all four walls allowed the moonlight and glow from the streets below to filter in, so the German paramilitaries were able to head toward the narrow staircase to the top floor without using their flashlights. Many of the windows had been left open, so the room was cold and breezy.

When they were halfway across the floor, a transmission came from the leader of the team who had taken the fire escape to the roof. “Mannschaft Eins, fertig.” Team One, ready.

The team leader in the studio replied with a whisper, “Verstanden.” Understood.

At the bottom of the stairwell, the team leader looked up into the darkness. The door at the top of the stairs was open, and he saw a flickering dim glow, like that coming from a television screen somewhere in the flat above.

He turned around to face his team to give the hand signal to order them to prepare to assault up the staircase, but just as he raised his arm, the sound of a loud slap echoed in the room, and the team leader spun around to his right and fell, crashing into a rolling cart full of art supplies.

The crashing sound in the huge, nearly empty room sounded like a small bomb going off. Men dropped to their kneepads and scanned the room with the huge flashlights attached to the tops of their guns.

The closest men rushed to their leader and realized he’d been shot. He was facedown at the bottom of the stairs, and they assumed the bullet had come from the flat above, so two men fired their MP5s up into the flat to suppress the threat while others pulled their leader out of the line of fire.

Ulrike Reubens leapt from the couch when she heard something crashing into the rolling cart downstairs. This was not one of the rats that occasionally kept her jittery at night. The noise was too loud for that. No one had said anything to her about any of the studio renters staying late this evening.

Ulrike had just made it into the kitchen when the gunfire erupted in the stairwell in front of her. She leapt back in surprise, screamed, and fumbled with the MPL hanging over her shoulder.

An air horn began to blow on the stairs, which meant someone had tripped the wire on the way up. She raised her weapon in front of her just as she was bathed in a brilliant white light.

The first man through the doorway opened fire on the armed subject in front of him, perforating the woman with eight rounds of nine-millimeter NATO ammo. She crumpled to the ground before she fired a single shot from her gun.

Jack Ryan had expected the takedown of the RAF safe house to begin with the muffled sounds of detonating concussion grenades two floors above him. Instead, the stillness in the dark hallway where he waited was broken by multiple automatic weapons firing directly above where he crouched. Instantly, police radios began to crackle, and the shouts of men echoed from the studio through the stairwell.

Ryan and the men around him instinctively ducked lower to the floor. Wilhelm turned to Ryan and Eastling—he looked like he was trying to decide whether he should shepherd them back downstairs, as the fight was closer than he had expected.