He entered the large grassy area used as a parking lot, then pulled himself under a pickup truck. From here he could see the black BMW parked closer to the main house. Court used the cover of the vehicles now to move quickly; he crawled under the work truck, then around a Toyota sedan, and he’d just made it between the cluster of covered motorcycles and scooters when he dropped flat and still. The other sentry passed by closer to the villa; he made no more of an effort than the last man, and he turned north along the western side of the main building. When he made the right to go back to the east he disappeared from Court’s view, so Court rose, used his NODs to scan the villa again, checking in the window for the man who’d made a couple of appearances there, and decided now was the time to move.
The American stayed tucked low between the bikes as he advanced, then he raced over to the BMW. Squatting down low to move around it, he saw no one in the windows, and although the first sentry’s flashlight beam shone on trees on the eastern portion of the property in Court’s view, the sentry himself was still on the other side of the building.
Court stood up and raced through the darkness for the French Colonial building across forty yards of open ground.
After forty minutes pushing through the vegetation-covered canal, Mikhail finally made it into position across from the villa and climbed out of the water, up into the brush and trees on the southern side of the canal opposite the Wild Tigers compound. He pulled his rifle out of its drag bag, extended the bipod under the fore end, popped the rubber caps off the image-enhancing/thermal scope, and settled down behind the weapon.
He saw a few lighted windows ahead of him, and a swinging flashlight’s beam coming from a source on the far side of the old French Colonial house, but otherwise he could see nothing through the scope itself. He reached up to flip it to the thermal setting to see if there were any heat registers indicating human forms moving around outside the property, and he began scanning from left to right.
Court made it around to the southwestern side of the villa, where the building’s big diesel generator rested on a platform at the corner. He lay down next to the big noisy unit, only because it was directly below the third-floor window that he’d identified as his point of entry.
Now one of the sentries passed just twenty-five feet south of Court, crossing the open grassy area Court had just crossed himself. He tucked himself tighter under the bottom lip of the generator, the heat of the diesel device warming his wet clothing while he lay there.
Finally the sentry turned to his right and began walking along the rear, western side of the villa’s grounds.
Court scanned left and right with his NODs and saw nothing of interest. He was about to begin climbing onto the rumbling generator when he decided he would make another quick sweep of the area, this time with his thermal monocular, on the off chance someone was moving on the road without vehicles.
He pulled off the hat with his NODs and slipped them in his pack, grabbed the monocular from his cargo pocket, and removed its rubber cover. He turned it on and began scanning across the canal, across the rice paddies, and all the way out to the unpaved road, a hundred yards to his southeast.
Mikhail looked through his thermal rifle scope, sweeping the compound slowly. He saw a figure move into and then back out of a window on the third floor, and he saw a sentry with a flashlight moving off to the west towards the back of the location.
Quickly he realized that the largest heat register in his scope’s view was not a threat at all. It was a big generator on the concrete pad on the southwestern corner of the main house. Mikhail couldn’t see anything there in his thermal sight other than a large white-hot glow, so he didn’t spend any time searching it. And when he detected no other threats, he determined the entire compound was secure on this side, other than the roving guards and the man peeking out of the third-floor window from time to time.
He touched the push-to-talk button on his chest and whispered, “Anna Seven to Anna One. In position at waypoint Omega. I have two mobile sentries patrolling the target grounds, and one static but intermittent subject on the third floor of the target location, south side. Suggest you continue your approach in the canal to the south and advise me when you are two minutes out. I’ll talk you in.”
The reply came after just seconds. “Anna One to Seven. Roger. Estimated arrival time, zero five minutes. Will advise when we are making the final turn before Omega.”
Mikhail took his hand away from his PTT button, returned it to his rifle, and continued scanning with his thermal scope, looking for any more heat registers in the villa’s windows.
Court wasn’t sure what he was looking at, so he pressed a button on the top of his monocular, reversing his thermal’s polarity from white hot, to black hot, and then back again.
There was something out there in the trees.
Court had barely moved a muscle while he scanned, but now he froze solid. A single, small thermal signal appeared on the far side of the canal, fifty yards or so from where he now lay, and just yards from where Court himself had lain prone minutes earlier as he surveilled the property from the far side of the canal. From the small size of the register he first thought it might have been an animal, but upon zooming in with his monocular on the small object, he realized he was looking at the head and shoulders of a man, the visible portion of a figure lying prone, facing Court and the villa. From the broken thermal outline Court thought the figure might be positioned behind a sniper rifle.
Court remained motionless for several seconds; he even slowed his blinking. He felt certain this person must have just arrived on the scene; otherwise he would have noticed Court crossing the canal, crawling through the vehicles, then racing across the open ground, all right in front of him.
And now Court lay directly in the line of sight of the sniper.
If the man had a rifle, then he definitely had a scope on it, and if he had come out here for a nighttime operation, Court felt sure the scope would have either night vision or thermal imaging capabilities. Court was rooting like hell for the latter, because although he might not be detected on a night vision scope if he didn’t move, Court knew with thermal optics the warmth of the big generator above him would white out the sniper’s scope when focused in his direction.
Either way, Court knew he couldn’t move from his position as long as that sniper was there.
But who was he?
This guy couldn’t have been with the Wild Tigers, the American surmised, since he seemed to be conducting surveillance on the Wild Tigers location.
Court thought over the possibilities. Was this man with Colonel Dai? Was he with the group who’d hit the ship in Po Toi? Could he even be one of the CIA Special Activities Division paramilitaries who were getting themselves in position to launch a raid on this location?
Court dismissed the latter as the most unlikely of all possibilities. Brewer had been clear that SAD were waiting on Gentry’s signal to helo into the area. If she was telling the truth, it was highly doubtful they would put one man so close into an overwatch position.
But other than ruling out SAD, Court didn’t have a clue who this guy was and what kind of a threat he posed. All the American knew for sure was that he was pinned down for as long as that sniper lay there facing his way.
Shit. He couldn’t do a thing about the man fifty yards away with his folding knife, and it was getting hot here next to the diesel generator.
And then, just when he thought the prospect for the success of his mission was at its lowest point, he heard the sound of engines in the distance.