He unzipped the massive canvas Bergen and from it he pulled three huge weapons. They were Russian Dragunov SVD semiautomatic sniper rifles. Each of the ten-pound guns had an eight-power scope and a ten-round magazine. All these sniper rifles already had a round in the chamber, as Court did not want the unmistakable noise of loading a round to carry across the large open field.
He opened the bipods under the barrels of the Dragunovs, positioned them in front of him, and then returned to his pack to retrieve a fourth long gun. This was a collapsed Kalashnikov RPKM light machine gun. It was similar to the ubiquitous AK-47, but it had a longer and heavier barrel and a seventy-five-round magazine. It wore a simple three-power scope and a carry sling.
Court assembled the RPKM and placed it in the grass five feet behind him, and then he rechecked the missile batteries and the hangar where the Iranian JetStar was rolling to a stop near the Antonov.
Satisfied he was good on time, he pulled two more items from his pack. They were RPG-32s, 72-millimeter antitank rockets. Each was housed in a yard-long firing tube, and each weighed six pounds. He opened the sights and the grips on the tubes, and then he laid them in the grass.
The last item taken from the pack was an electronic detonator, a small apparatus that looked like a cell phone, with a number of buttons and a backlit screen. He stood it up on the wet turf in front of him, and then returned his attention to the Dragunov sniper rifles.
He aimed one weapon at the man sitting in the control tower, two hundred sixty yards away, positioning the crosshairs on the only part of the target he could see from his position, the top of his helmet. The other soldier was standing behind him, but walking around the control tower, using his binos to monitor the action near the barracks.
Court let this rifle rest on its bipod and then he pulled the second rifle to him. This one he aimed at one of the Ukrainian soldiers on duty at the battery over the barracks, three hundred forty yards distant. He pulled a large beanbag from his backpack and used this to prop the buttstock of the weapon up, keeping the crosshairs on the target.
He placed the third Dragunov in the grass as close to the second as he could, and with it he aimed at the second sentry in the concrete structure on top of the barracks. This man was walking back and forth with his binoculars, just feet from his seated colleague, and although Court used another beanbag to keep his crosshairs positioned to a point near to where the man walked, he did not track his movements with the rifle.
Instead Court pulled a foot-long aluminum rod from his backpack, and he slid it through the trigger guards of the two Dragunovs positioned toward the antitank missile battery above the bunkhouse.
He blew out a long sigh.
This was going to be tough.
In all his preparation for this op he’d known the absolute most difficult aspect of the equation was the four Ukrainians who could fire wire-guided missiles from the protection of armored bunkers and then, calmly and easily, fly them across the airfield and right up his ass. The only way to prevent them from blowing him to bits, he decided, was to take all four men out while they were in the open. The problem with this plan was, of course, that once he fired his rifle at one target, the other men would only have to drop out of their chairs to be out of sight, where they could still operate their missiles with the onboard television cameras.
Even if he used a suppressed sniper rifle, the flash of light in the center of the air base would be obvious to anyone looking in his general direction, and suppressed gunfire was not silent; it would still carry across the open ground.
He knew he would have one chance before the men ducked down out of his line of fire. If he didn’t get them all at the same moment, the rest of the mission would be a moot point, because Court wouldn’t be alive to execute it.
So he would fire on all four men simultaneously at the beginning of his attack. He’d spent hours on the geometry, using maps and photographs of the air base, and he’d picked all his equipment accordingly.
He grabbed his binoculars and checked the meeting going on at the hangar. Apparently he’d missed the exchange, because the JetStar was closing its cabin door and, less than thirty seconds later, it began rolling back toward the taxiway.
Gentry’s heart pounded as time grew short. He pulled the detonator closer, just under his chin, then he took the Dragunov aimed at the control tower, and dragged it across the grass, and cradled the barrel in the crook of his right arm at his three-o’clock position. He supported the buttstock of this gun with his left biceps, and rested his left trigger finger against the trigger guard. To see through the scope he had to lean to his left and look upside down through the lens. He moved the gun slightly, then focused his attention on the other two rifles. These were in front of him, just four inches apart from one another, their triggers set to fire as one as soon as he pulled back on the aluminum rod resting against them. He looked through each scope and squeezed each beanbag a little to put the crosshairs in the right position. The seated man in the building was lined up perfectly, but the wandering guy with the binos was walking back and forth across the center of the crosshairs.
Court had spent a day in a ditch waiting patiently, but now things started moving very quickly. The JetStar taxied toward him on the runway. It would roll to the end and turn around to start its takeoff roll. The bigger Antonov had loaded up and it waited at the far end of the runway. Court looked left and right, and then back over his shoulder, making sure there were no canine patrols anywhere near him, and then he eyeballed the apron and the row of MIGs, and he saw there was no activity over there, either.
The Iranian jet was one hundred yards away and rolling up the runway on his left. Court started a silent countdown, and then began moving his head from one sniper scope to the next.
He checked the weapon aimed at the control tower. He had the seated man in his sights and the second man was behind him, walking in and out of the line of fire.
He checked the weapon pointed at the seated man at the barracks’ missile battery. The crosshairs were on his forehead.
He checked the other weapon pointed at the missile battery on the roof of the barracks. The moving target walked a little to the left of the crosshairs.
Gentry adjusted the beanbag and then went back to the first scope to repeat the process.
In the space of thirty seconds he checked each rifle three times, made millimeter adjustments when necessary, and continued his countdown, but added a second running clock in his head, and then a third, as he tried to time the movements of the two moving targets.
After one more look through his scopes and a quick glance at the Iranian jet, he put his left trigger finger on the trigger of the rifle positioned at his three o’clock, then hooked a finger on to the aluminum rod controlling the triggers of the side-to-side rifles at his twelve-o’clock position.
He checked all four targets again, looking into both side-by-side scopes and then upside down through the scope on the rifle in the crook of his right arm.
He waited a moment, willing the moving men to move into his crosshairs. “Now,” he said softly, and then he pulled back on the aluminum rod while, simultaneously, his left index finger pressed the trigger on the Dragunov positioned toward the control tower.
All three rifles fired at once, creating a single cacophonous report. The two guns in front of him were not supported by his shoulder, so they flew back into Court’s face as the bullets and hot gasses left their barrels. The gun pointed at his three-o’clock position lurched hard into his biceps.
In the control tower the window glass shattered, the seated man flew back out of his chair, and the man on his feet just behind him dropped his binoculars and fell to the ground.