Chapter Forty-Seven

Bull Dozer had lost his cigar.

Somewhere between getting trapped on the forty-eighth floor and the M-6–assisted breakout, he’d misplaced his box containing his one and only unlit stogie. Strangely, he still had the empty box, but the last cigar was gone.

“What am I going to smoke when I get to the top?” he grumbled.

The 7CAV was flying up the stairways now. All NKVD opposition was being crushed, thanks to Hunter’s clown plane and Johnson’s expert gunners. The unlikely tactic was winning the day, even though, at times, it felt like the building was coming down on top of them. Every floor from the fiftieth up to sixty-eight had been blown out in the advance. In some cases, if the floor was heavily booby-trapped, it caused the building to sway violently. But it did not fall.

The unusual bombardment killed dozens, then hundreds, of NKVD gunmen with each barrage. There was nowhere to run, and they had no weapons comparable to the M-6. By the seventy-second floor, the assault team was moving so fast, they were taking over floors before Johnson’s guys could even fire into them.

Then they reached the 105th floor. As always, Dozer went to open the fire door, expecting to see, as in the floors below, an empty shell with lots of broken and burned office furniture lying around.

But 105 was different.

Dozer peeked in to see as many as five hundred NKVD cops looking back at him. They all appeared haggard, many were wounded, many were without combat weapons. The last-ditch guys, Dozer thought quickly. Get by them, and we’ve got this thing dicked.

But the Russians came right at them, and suddenly Dozer was fighting for his life. Sheer numbers allowed the assault team to push their way into the lobby, but it was quickly packed with so many struggling bodies, Dozer couldn’t even raise his M-16 to fire. He was using his fists and the rifle’s butt instead. One Russian came at him with an AK-47 with no ammo clip but an extra-long bayonet. He lunged at Dozer’s chest, but when the tip of the blade hit his empty cigar box, the man pulled back and tried again. This gave Dozer enough time to push his M-16 into his attacker’s stomach and squeeze the trigger.

The result was a bloody mess, but Dozer didn’t care. He took the man’s bayonet and started slicing his way through the Russians. It felt like he was in a dream. The battle turned into a rugby scrum stretched out for the entire length of the 105th floor. Brutal hand-to-hand combat, falling over old desks and office chairs, flattening cubicle walls, using massive copying machines for temporary cover. It was madness. The floor was soon slippery with blood.

Still anyone’s game, the Americans kept pouring onto the floor from the stairwell, but they were coming in a very thin stream. And while many of the Russians had run out of ammunition, they were swinging their bayonet-tipped AK-47s like medieval swords—one swipe in the right place and you were KIA. Plus, as these guys were the cream of Zmeya’s crop, they all seemed to be tall, hulking Slavic giants. On brute strength alone, they were beginning to win the battle.

Then a miracle for the Allies. At that moment, Jim Cook and the JAWS team broke through the booby-trapped stairwell on the northeast side, and a second wave of Allied fighters streamed onto the 105th floor from the opposite direction. Mercs mostly, they threw themselves onto the gang of Militsiya gunmen from their rear.

With two groups of Americans pushing the Russians from front and back, the NKVD line finally began to break. The Militsiya policemen began stumbling back over themselves as they were stabbed or shot by the stampeding Americans. Hacking with the bayonet with one hand and firing his M-16 with the other, Dozer was leading the charge. Blood, guts, and computer paper were everywhere. As everyone tripped over old telephone wires, huge sections of the suspended ceiling fell on top of the combatants. It was the most unlikely battle any of them had ever fought.

It went on like this for five more brutal minutes, but the Russian resistance finally ended. The wide-open office where the battle had been fought was devastated. Dead and dying NKVD policemen were everywhere.

Finally, Dozer blew his whistle and it was over.

As his men greeted the JAWS team and the mercs, Dozer just threw down his weapons, exhausted beyond words, covered in water and sweat and blood.

Then he spit on the nearest NKVD policeman’s body and said, “Smile about that, you assholes.”

But there was one more grisly sight awaiting him.

Once the 105th floor was secure and their dead and wounded brought back down, Dozer sent his deep recon guys to check out the next four floors.

If another assault was going to be needed for the top floor penthouse, he wanted to launch it as close as possible to their goal.

The recon team that went up to the 106th floor quickly declared it empty and free of booby traps. The same for 107 and 108. But the guys who went up to 109 called back to Dozer within two minutes.

“You might want to come see this,” one told him.

Dozer quickly went up to the 109th floor. The recon team was spread out in the lobby in defensive positions. The squad leader led Dozer to an executive-style suite. The door had been blown off.

Dozer looked in to find another scene from a nightmare. Even in this building of horrors, it gave him a start.

Inside were a dozen young women. They were all blonde, all lovely, all spitting images of Dominique. These were the girlfriends procured for the NKVD’s despised CRPP, the Committee of the Revolution for the Protection of the People.

But all the girls were covered, nearly head to toe, in blood. One practically fell into Dozer’s arms, begging him to rescue her. Behind them was a sex-and-torture chamber filled with toys and restraining devices. But scattered about were the bodies of the four remaining committee members.

They’d all been mutilated by knives, broken glass, and even teeth. As battle-hardened as he was, the gruesome sight was almost too much for Dozer to take.

He immediately sent the girls down along with a medic. Then he looked back into the blood-soaked room.

“Jesus, who could be responsible for that?” the recon man asked him.

Dozer just shrugged and said, “Well, I don’t think any of those guys killed themselves.”