Chapter 54: The Tiger, the Bear, and Al Queda

Early morning business hours found the streets surrounding the Masi’shen Embassy crowded, bumper to bumper, barely moving. A small delivery van inched along in the traffic. When it reached the intersection of a side street it turned, went to the next street, and turned again to come up to the Embassy’s rear delivery gate.

A second delivery van continued down the front street until it approached the Embassy’s front pedestrian gate. It slowed, turned, inched up onto the sidewalk and stopped.

Two helmeted Ranger guards approached the van, motioning the driver to back off the sidewalk, their hands on their holstered stun pistols.

Behind the Embassy, the first van turned hard and crashed through the chained gate. Two hooded men jumped out, each with a machine pistol in one hand. Each grasped a spring-loaded dead man’s switch in their opposite hand, held low and close to their leg. They paused, listening, watching the angry guards coming at them.

A rocket-propelled grenade streaking a spreading plume of exhaust burst from a fourth floor window across the front street. It blew the Embassy doors open. The blast and its shrapnel tore through the people, the staff and visitors inside. It blew the double doors away and knocked the outside Rangers off their feet. Two hooded men leaped from the van and fired machine pistol bursts between the fallen Ranger’s helmets and body armor into their exposed necks. A third hooded man waited in the van. All clenched their dead-man’s switches in a tight grip.

The sounds of the RPG explosion and gunfire cued the attackers in the rear to raise their weapons and knock down the approaching guards. Their driver moved the van up against the delivery ramp. One gunman slapped a charge on the rear entrance door, backed away, and blew it, shattering the door inward. He charged inside, firing as he went, sweeping his fire from side to side. The other gunman came close behind, killing any survivor found moving. They ran through the delivery stock room into an open hallway and beyond. They kicked office doors open as they charged along, shooting anyone they found. Their driver waited outside, in the van.

All of them kept a tight grip on their detonator switches. Heavy wires led to bulky wrap-around explosive vests.

Two gunmen charged through the ruined front doors. They ran past the bodies scattered behind desks, jumped those fallen on the floor, and swerved around two laying in the open hallway. They ran for the stairway and charged upward, leaping two and three steps at a time, looking up past the overhead railings. One frightened secretary looked down in fear; a burst of fire knocked her backwards. They charged out onto the second floor. The attackers split in different directions. They sprayed short bursts down the hallways; they kicked in office doors and shot everyone.

“We’re under attack!” co-pilot Kim screamed at her pilot, frantically motioning downward with her hand, fingers pointing down. Pilot Adams swung the nose of the over-watch Interdictor down, horrified to see smoke and dust billowing out from the Embassy’s main entrance. A second RPG streaked across the street to explode into the Embassy’s third floor. Flame, shattered glass, and debris blew out of the upper story windows and rained into the street below. Panicked drivers tried to back away. Their cars rammed into others packed behind them. Horns sounded, doors flew open, and frightened, screaming people ran for safety.

“Stun, stun, STUN the whole building!” Adams screamed at Kim. He swung their craft down, as close as he dare, sweeping its nose from side to side, hoping their stun beam would stop the attackers.

It did. No one anticipated what followed.

Scattered about the building, the four attackers staggered and fell unconscious. Their hands relaxed. The dead-man switches triggered. Four suicide vests packed with outer layers of shrapnel—ball bearings, nuts, and nails—exploded. Anyone within range of the fallen attackers was cut to pieces. Office walls were shredded; people hidden inside were killed.

Outside, front and back, the van drivers slumped in their seats. Their hands relaxed, the switches triggered their cargo of military-grade explosives. The force of the blasts, front and back, crushed the Embassy building between them. It came crashing down. Everyone trapped on the side streets died, their cars and themselves lifted and thrown into the building fronts. The impact and the blast wave shattered the walls. They collapsed in dust and rubble.

The hovering Interdictor cockpit blew inward and killed both pilots. It was thrown upward in a high arc and crashed three blocks away, punching down through a two-story office complex. Most inside died.

Moans and cries of pain cut through the near-silent aftermath. Flames burst out in the rubble. They grew and spread, threatening those trapped under it. A few brave rescuers came running; others stared, some fled.

The wail of sirens grew in the distance; the pounding throb of a Swiss Police helicopter led them.

An attacker lay bleeding out on the floor behind the fourth story window across the street. His RPG launcher lay empty beside him, his face and throat slashed open by the spray of glass blasted from the window he’d partially raised for his firing position.

Search and Rescue

A rescue shuttle rushed in with half a dozen droids equipped with tools for lifting, cutting and bracing debris for safe removal. Another half dozen very small search droids were released into the rubble to search for survivors. Human and Masi’shen personnel assisted Swiss police and rescue services authorities at the scene of the fallen Masi’shen Embassy building.

Everyone in the streets immediately outside the Embassy was killed during the attack, by gunfire and shrapnel and the blast force. Bodies were lined in rows for transport to the Geneva morgue.

“Where was the Ambassador? Does anyone know?” a police inspector asked.

“Ambassador Jon’a-ren had arrived earlier,” he was told by a Swiss government official on the scene. “His secretary called my office earlier this morning to confirm our appointment. I was to meet with him. Then this ... horror happened! I must assume he is somewhere ... somewhere under all of that!” the official stammered.

An Interdictor overwatch guarded the estate grounds. A detachment of Rangers in full battle dress stood at closed gates, doors, and behind windows, expecting a secondary attack. Berl’ahan and his squadron had flown in for the aftermath and coordinated intelligence gathering efforts with their orbital resources.

“Every byte, thread, and link. All of it,” he ordered. “We require a total forensic analysis of all communications leading up to the attack. All closed-circuit cameras on all routes. We already have video showing the vans’ approach prior to off-loading the attackers, and the explosions. Now we must track them back to their origins!”