No Fortunate Son (Pike Logan, #7)(70)

No panic. No wasted effort. The warehouse they were in was bustling with activity but without the usual shouting of orders you heard from a line unit. The men moved about with a calm detachment, each one preparing for his special role.

On the surface, it appeared that the GIGN had more than fifty soldiers crammed in the warehouse, but Knuckles’s practiced eye could pick out the regular gendarmerie from the counterterrorist commandos.

All were dressed in blue-black fatigues, and all had Kevlar helmets with Plexiglas face shields, but the similarities stopped there. The gendarmerie were armed with the standard FAMAS bullpup rifle, while the GIGN men sported SIG SAUER SG 553 carbines equipped with the latest optics and lasers. Both groups of men wore the same black body armor, but the gendarmerie’s was slick, with nothing but the plates front and back. The GIGN armor was bristling with equipment, from squad radios to flash-bangs, all cinched down tight, every piece in a specific location.

“What’s up with the six-guns?”

Knuckles turned and saw Brett Thorpe, the second in command of his team and the man he’d chosen to accompany him on the raid. Knuckles looked at one of the GIGN commandos, and sure enough, his sidearm of choice was a revolver. “I don’t know. Not something I’d take on an assault, but there’s got to be a reason. The regular police all have Glocks, so it’s not a lack of equipment.”

Brett said, “Well, other than that strange choice, they seem to know what they’re doing.”

“Yeah. I hate being in the back with American lives at stake, but maybe these guys will work out.”

Their FBI counterpart, a man who introduced himself only as Brock, overheard his comment and said, “Hey, no heroics. We’re here to observe and collect evidence.”

Dressed much like the GIGN, only with olive drab fatigues and subdued FBI patches, Brock held up an MP5/10A3 submachine gun. “We don’t use these unless things go to absolute shit. Understand?”

Knuckles said, “You mean this one chambered in ten mil? Seriously?” He looked at his loaned 10A3 and said, “Trust me, I won’t be pulling the trigger unless my life depends on it, because once I’m dry, I’m done. Our magazines are probably the only ten mil on the European continent. You guys ever heard of NATO standards?”

Brock scowled, and Knuckles drove home the knife. “What type of battery does the radio take? Something made on the moon?”

Brock started to say something, and Knuckles held up his hands in surrender, saying, “I got it. No joining the fight. Don’t worry about us. I’m not looking for a gunfight.”

Brock spit tobacco on the ground and said, “I’m not even sure why you SOCOM boys showed up. No reason.”

Having had enough fun, Knuckles backed off, not wanting to genuinely aggravate Brock. He’d worked with the FBI hostage rescue team and had a lot of respect for their skills. He knew how Brock felt, because he’d be just as pissed if two strangers showed up and told him he’d been ordered to take them on an assault.

“Hey, just following orders. We work for you. We appreciate the uniforms and kit.”

Mildly satisfied, Brock said, “Just remember, that patch doesn’t make you FBI. Okay?”

Knuckles nodded.

Brock said, “Good. We’re last in. Me and Boyd will take the lead. You follow. I’ll leave Lewis out front with the command vehicle. The hit goes down, you guys just look pretty. We’ll start the evidence sweep on whatever we find. Remember, this is a GIGN show.”

Knuckles pointed to the men around the video screen. “Did they lock the phone? Do we even have a floor, or are we taking down the entire building?”

“They’re still working it.”

While the Snapchat had given them a geographic location, it didn’t work in three dimensions. On a map, the grid from the video location appeared on top of a run-down housing complex, but, since there were four floors, it wasn’t enough information. The GIGN was trying to neck down a location using a little spoofing.

From the Wi-Fi signal used to send the Snapchat, the NSA had determined the name of the specific network the phone had used and had passed that to the French, but the node had ended up being a free service from a coffee shop four blocks away. Not a lot of help.

Because the terrorists had made the mistake of failing to turn off location services, the GIGN was hoping they also hadn’t told the phone to ask before synching with a known Wi-Fi network the phone had used in the past. They’d loaded a router spoofed with the coffee shop Wi-Fi signal onto a rotary-wing UAV—a little thing with four helicopter blades and a camera—and had launched it to the building. As there was no Wi-Fi in the run-down apartment complex, the phone should pick up the signal and automatically join, not knowing it was a dead link. From there, they hoped to trace the signal back to the phone.

The entire effort, from the US to the French, was reminiscent of Apollo 13, with one expert after another coming up with solutions for locating the hostages. Knuckles was proud that his organization had been the first to start down the chain.

Lucky for us, these guys aren’t the evil geniuses they think they are.

He felt his phone vibrate and saw it was Pike. Probably calling to yell at him for once again leaving him hanging. He looked at Brett and said, “I should probably take this. Keep an eye on the team. Flag me if something’s coming up.”