Zoya had cleared the entire third-floor hallway, save for the last room at the end. She used the tip of her silencer to push open the door, revealing a dark bathroom. She started to turn away but noticed a big bag full of old towels in the middle of the floor next to a small door. She opened this door, leveling her Glock in front of her. As she expected, it was a closet, but the items on the floor just outside caused her to reach around the area to check for a false wall or a false floor in the little space.
Just as she did so, Ruslan came over her headset. “Anna Eight to all call signs. I’ve got subjects fleeing the compound on foot to the west. Multiples… three — negative. Four subjects. They’ll be out of my line of sight in five seconds.”
Zoya raced across the bathroom to the back window, then looked outside. Through her NVGs she could see three men running together, and a fourth halfway between the villa and the men in the distance. The man in back was quickly gaining on them from behind.
She flipped up her NVGs, pulled a ten-power night vision monocular from her belt, and focused it on the group of three men in front.
She was certain in an instant.
Fan Jiang was in the middle of the three.
“All call signs, be advised. Target is in sight, one hundred meters west of Omega and running to the west.”
Ruslan spoke next. “I’ve lost visual. They are out of my field of view.”
Zoya knew she could run down the stairs and take off into the back, but the lower floor had not been cleared of hostiles. She could climb out this window and try to make her way down the wall, but by the time she hit the ground Fan and the other three would have entered a tree line another fifty meters from where they now ran, and by the time she got to those trees they’d be long gone.
She held the monocular to her eye with one hand and watched the men running away. With her other hand she keyed her transmit button, knowing the best thing she could do right now was to thin the herd, to remove Fan’s protection.
“Anna One, I need every gun I can get pointed out the back windows in the next fifteen seconds. The subject is in a black hooded jacket and blue jeans. Second from the front of the group approaching the trees. Eliminate all other hostiles in sight before they get into the concealment of those trees.”
Vasily responded quickly. “All Anna signs able. Engage targets to the west from the second-floor windows.”
And then, to Zoya’s astonishment, the man who had been running behind Fan and the other two stopped running suddenly, shouldered his rifle, and pointed it at the others. She had assumed he was one of the Wild Tigers protecting Fan, but before her eyes, his rifle flashed, and the first man in the trio in front of him fell to the ground.
The crack of a gunshot came just as a second flash came from the rifle.
The man in white running right behind Fan Jiang fell to the wet grass, the gunshot boomed back to the villa, and Zoya watched the man with the rifle run forward now and tackle Fan Jiang to the ground.
He was a much bigger man than the three figures with him.
She jabbed at her PTT button again. “All call signs! The target has been… he has been abducted! There is some other party here at the Omega, and they have the target in pocket. I just see one subject with the target at this time and they are heading west on foot towards the trees. The man with the rifle is now your primary. Shoot him!”
Vasily was confused by Zoya’s call. “Confirm your last, Sirena.”
Zoya shouted into her mic now. “All call signs at Omega! The smaller man is Fan Jiang! Do not shoot him! The larger man is a hostile. I repeat, the larger of the two is hostile. Drop him!”
On the second floor, while Andrei desperately tried to stop the bleeding on Sasha’s leg, Vasily, Yevgeni, and Pyotr arrived at separate windows at the back of the villa at the same time. They broke out glass with the suppressors of their AKs, then raised them to look through their red dot holographic sights. Through their night vision goggles they could make out the two figures moving in the distance, and they distinguished their objective, Fan Jiang, from their target, the unknown subject who now had Fan Jiang by the arm and was pulling him farther away from the scene.
The sights on the short-barreled rifles were not enhanced, but rather simple holographic red dots: good for close-quarters battle, but less effective at distance. Still, the Zaslon men had the skill to hit a man-sized target on the move two hundred meters away.
All three operators looked through their night vision goggles, through the optics on the top rail of their weapons, and they lined up their red dots on the larger man, switched their weapons to fire a single round when the trigger was pulled, and began tracking their target to judge his speed so they could aim accordingly.
Just as the three men were preparing to fire, they saw the larger man stop abruptly, spin around, and drop to both knees. Next to him, Fan Jiang stumbled, looked at the man with the rifle, and then started to run away, taking advantage of the hostile’s action.
The unknown subject raised his weapon now, but he did not point it at Fan Jiang. Instead he pointed it back in the direction of the villa, 185 meters away.
Pyotr said, “What the fuck does he think he’s doing?”
Vasily shouted out, “I’m taking the shot!” He slipped his gloved finger onto the trigger of his weapon. As he started to put pressure on it he saw the flashes of gunfire coming from the rifle of the man on his knees in his sights. Vasily wasn’t worried; he knew he was in no great danger. For this man to even see a man-sized target in one of the windows at this distance would be a hell of a feat. Hitting his target on his first try after running like that would take superhuman skill.
And Vasily knew the man wouldn’t get a second try. He’d be dead in one second.
But as the Zaslon team leader began to fire his AK, a fireball erupted right in front of him in his window, and his night vision goggles whited out, blinding him.
To his left Vasily heard Pyotr and Yevgeni scream in surprise, and all three men lowered their weapons, dove for cover, and lifted their goggles so they could see.
An incredible explosion, louder than even the shotguns involved in the firefight, roared through the night, and the darkness outside turned to daylight. Inside the villa, those few lights still on went out completely, enshrouding the entire building in a blanket of darkness.
Vasily lay on the floor rubbing his eyes with a gloved hand in an attempt to clear them.
“What the fuck was that?”
Zoya’s voice came over the net. “The son of a bitch shot the diesel generator at the back of the villa! He blew it up to blind our NVGs! I can’t see a damn thing! We need to exfil Omega and go after the target, now!”
Mikhail’s voice came next, transmitting from his sniper’s hide south of the canal. “Anna Seven to One! We’re blind over here with that explosion! Our night vision gear is toast. Can’t see the PAVN units approaching the villa. Suggest you egress to the west, now! We’ll lay down suppressive fire as long as we can, then we’ll have to retreat!”
Vasily was up on his knees now. His goggles would be whited out for several more seconds, maybe up to a minute, and he didn’t have time to wait, so he activated the flashlight on the rail of his rifle. As he began moving to the staircase with the other men he punched his transmit button. “Anna Two, call in the helo. Get them here in ten minutes.”
“Roger that!”
Back in the hallway, he found Arseny kneeling over Sasha. He wasn’t even rendering aid.
Vasily could see that the fallen operator had bled out from his catastrophic leg wound.