Page 168 of Cry Havoc

But Tom had already dropped the phone. He picked up the Walther sub gun, pulled the bolt to the rear, and rushed for the door.

Tom dashed down the hallway.

Serrano was on his heels.

“Tom, wait!”

The SEAL brushed past an Asian woman in an evening gown on the arm of an older man in a black tie and ivory dinner jacket.

“Move!”

At the door to room 213, he tried the handle.

Locked.

“Tom, stop!”

Instead, he stepped back, turned, and mule kicked the door just to the left of the lock mechanism. The door flew inward, and Tom crashed into the suite an instant later.

When Serrano entered, he found his friend staring down at a body in a white robe. The Frogman knelt, turned the body over, and felt for a pulse. The front of Ella’s robe was stained with dark blood. He looked up at Serrano and shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Tom.”

But the SOG operator didn’t hear him. Tom was on his feet and running back into the hall.

“Dammit, Tom, we need him alive!”

Tom sprinted to the top of the bifurcated staircase and scanned the floor below where a string quartet played Franz Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” to a well-dressed crowd that had continued to socialize following high tea. They were paying less attention to the viola, cello, and violins than they were to the two men who had just passed them making their way toward the front of the hotel. Tom caught sight of a tall, dark-haired man with his arm around Dvornikov, drawing stares as he supported someone people assumed had had too much to drink. They disappeared into the lobby before Tom could take a shot.

He caught Trân’s gaze. The CIA man had his hand in the small of his back behind his suit jacket and was looking in the direction of the two Soviets. Serrano appeared at the gallery next to Tom, his 1911 in his right hand.

“They’re going for the water,” Tom said, bounding down the stairs. He could hear Serrano behind him.

Tom took the stairs two at a time, a teak banister to his left and white walls adorned with photos of Thai royalty on his right. Green bamboo grew from planters in all four corners of the room rising all the way to the second floor, reminding Tom of his time in the jungle.

The landing was just off the entrance to the lobby facing the river. Halfway down the right staircase, he saw movement to his left. Trân was drawing his pistol. It took Tom less than a second to realize that there were new threats in the Oriental.

He pushed the fire selector on the sub gun to its first setting—full-auto—just as three men in suits stepped through the door, suits that were too dark and thick for Bangkok. They zeroed in on Trân and were raising what Tom recognized as Polish PM63 RAKs, weapons that were a concealable combination of sub gun and machine pistol. The metal stocks were extended, but all three had kept the folding vertical grip stowed, which told Tom that they were professionals.

Tom aligned the gutter sights on the top of his weapon and depressed the trigger as he continued moving down the stairs, stitching the closest man up his left side with eight rounds of 9 x 19mm Parabellum. He moved the sights to the next man, but the room erupted in chaos and confusion with guests obscuring his line of sight as they tried to escape, one tripping over the cello and cracking his head on the marble floor.

Tom heard Trân’s Hi-Power bark. It was followed by a full-auto burst from a PM63.

Tom hit the landing and put two rounds into the head of the man he had hit from the stairs, pushing his way through the crowd yelling “Get down! Get down!” as he searched for the other shooters.

He saw Trân down against the far wall and ran to him. He had taken three rounds across his abdomen and another in his left arm.

“Shit,” Tom said. “Put pressure on it, brother.”

“Get him,” Trân said.

Tom stopped assessing the wounds, looked Trân in the eye, and moved to the side of the door that led to the lobby. Serrano was across from him, pistol at the ready. Tom ejected the partially spent magazine and stowed it in his front left pocket. He reached back to his left for a full magazine and inserted it into the mag well, nodding at Serrano.

“I’m up.”

“What do we have?”

“Trân is down. A security man is carrying Dvornikov. There are at least two other shooters; one’s a thick, stocky white guy, about forty with a crew cut. I didn’t get a good look at the third. I bet they are going for a boat, just like we were.”