10:00 A.M.
LOBBY
UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT BUILDING
FIRST AVENUE AND FORTY-SECOND STREET
NEW YORK CITY
Dewey leveled the MP7A1 in a strike position and switched the fire selector to manual—single shot.
There were four Iranian gunmen—Hezbollah—facing the front of the building, holding the lobby against the waves of law enforcement trying to breach the terrorists’ cordon. Each one of the four had to know that they would die. Yet they’d already accepted that, and today was about going out fighting against an enemy they’d been taught to hate. That knowledge somehow gave them strength. They were firing rounds back out through the front of the lobby toward First Avenue, holding back law enforcement as the kill team moved up to Dellenbaugh.
Dewey gave Murphy a stern look, as if to remind him to not do anything, not even move. Above all else, he didn’t want Murphy to fuck it up somehow.
Dewey paced slowly into the atrium, tucking behind walls and columns, not to hide but rather so as to not get hit by incoming fire from SWAT. The environment was too loud for the gunmen to hear him; their attention was not on a penetration behind them.
Dewey skulked until he was at the nexus of the lobby, near the elevators, behind the four gunmen who were approximately a hundred feet away. The gunmen were focused on what was happening on the outside, and assumed the lobby was secure behind them. The lobby was so vast that they didn’t notice him.
Dewey pumped the first slug into the back of the head of the terrorist to his right. A gunman at the left swung his AR-15 as he shouted. From across the atrium, Dewey registered the gunman’s movement and pumped the trigger on the submachine gun. A short burst of suppressed slugs hammered into the gunman’s upper chest and neck. A third gunman turned. The Hezbollah fired blindly, spraying bullets. Dewey ducked and pumped the trigger on the SMG. He heard bullets whistle over his head as the man shot at him then was caught by Dewey’s gun—kicked violently backward, off his feet, tumbling down onto the marble floor. The fourth man—looking behind him to see what had just happened—was abruptly struck in the head by a high-caliber bullet fired from across the street.