“Chicks, this is Nest,” a voice said in Brown’s radio headset.
“Nest,” the observer lying to Brown’s left replied. He was the coordinator for the entire sniper team, which consisted of Brown and five British SAS shooters. “Go.”
“Target traffic ended,” the anonymous voice said. “Stand by.”
The terrorist with the radio had been speaking into it, but according to the British army people monitoring the terrs’ radio traffic, his report had just been concluded.
“Target,” the voice said.
“Chick One, on the right,” another voice said.
“Chick Two, on the right.”
“Chick Three, on the right.”
“And Four, I’ve got the left.”
“Chick Five, left.”
“Chick Six,” Brown said, carefully drawing down on the terrorist with the radio, on the left. From this angle, with the target lying behind the pitch of the apartment building’s roof, he could see the man’s head, shoulders, and part of his back. It would have to be a head shot — rarely the preferred shot for a good sniper. A good hit meant an instant kill… but getting that hit was far more difficult than a shot against center-ofmass. “On the left.”
“Chicks, you are clear for maximum force on my mark,” the controller’s emotionless voice said. Fire sirens wailed in the distance, rapidly growing closer. “And four, and three, and two, and one, and fire!”
Six Accuracy International PM sniper rifles, all equipped with long, sound-suppressor extensions on their muzzles, hiss-thumped in near-perfect unison. The standing man lurched suddenly, two puffs of smoke shredding the front of a vest bulletproof against small-arms ammo, but not against highpower explosive rounds. A third explosion, silent at this range, gouged a fist-sized crater out of the bricks just beyond his face. That was why head shots were risky… and why sniper kills were backed up by multiple shooters. The body jerked back against the chimney, bounced off, then tumbled forward in a lifeless sprawl across the peak of the roof.
At the same instant, three explosive rounds slammed into the terrorist lying to the left. One was low, nicking the peak of the roof in a cloud of splintering shingle and ridge beam; the other two detonated inside the man’s skull, erupting in a bright red spray as his head exploded. The body jerked once, then slumped where it lay, motionless.
“Nest, Chicks,” the SAS observer reported. “Two terrs down on the roof. Roof clear.”
“Roger that. Shift to target area two.”
Brown had already worked the bolt on his rifle, chambering another round from the box magazine, then dragged his sight picture away from the two bodies on the roof to the line of open windows on the building’s upper floor. He could only see one tango there, lurking in the shadows behind the corner of the nearest window, but he didn’t have a very good angle on the opening. It did look like the fire inside was out, for the haze of smoke that had been emerging from the upstairs room all morning was thinning out.
He wondered if that meant that all of the terrorist documents the SAS hoped to seize had been destroyed already, and the assault was to be for nothing.
Well… nothing but the offing or the capture of some major bad dudes. In Magic Brown’s opinion, that was reason enough to go in.
“Chicks, Nest. What do you have?”
“One target, Area Two,” the observer reported.
“Any reaction?”
“Negative reaction at this time.”
“Hold one, Chicks.”
The fire sirens were growing in volume second by second. Somewhere behind the Port Authority building, a bright red fire truck wheeled up to the blaze that was still pouring clouds of dense, black, oily smoke into the sky above the Middlebrough waterfront. Brown saw some movement at a curtain behind one of the windows, too sharp to be the wind.
“Nest, Chicks,” the voice of the observer reported in Brown’s headset. “Two targets, Area Two. Scratch that… three targets.”
“Steady, Chicks,” the command center warned. “Wait for the birds… ”
Brown could hear them now, the far-off thumpeta-thumpeta of helicopter rotors, just barely audible above the much louder screech of the fire sirens. Almost as if to add emphasis, another explosion went off with a dull whoomp in the open area north of the Port Authority. The wind was changing now, shifting over out of the north, and bringing with it an acrid bite of the oily smoke that brought tears to Brown’s eyes. The curtains moved again…
“Chicks, Nest” sounded over Brown’s headset. “You are now clear for Target Two.” The thumping sound of the helicopter rotors was growing louder as the fire sirens dwindled, the one emerging almost seamlessly from the other. The terrorists would hear the helicopters’ approach any second now, but the fire control officer had to delay the snipers’ fire until the last possible instant. “And five, and four…”
Chun turned away from the window suddenly, stepping back into the room. She was certain now that she could hear something else, a dull and familiar thumping like a drumbeat behind the sirens.
Steiner was using a meter-long length of pipe to stir the fire in the barrel in the center of the room.
“I suggest you stay in radio contact with—”
There was a loud, rippling plop, and one of the Irishmen standing by the southernmost window spun back into the room, a pair of smoking holes gaping in his black bulletproof vest, and the right side of his head a violent scarlet smear. Next to him, another Irishman fell back as glass and wood splintered above his head, the raised window sash shattering in multiple explosions, another blast punching through his left shoulder. Curtains and windowsills all down the line of windows popped and fluttered as though blasted by a hot and deadly wind. Chun felt something sting her, high on her left arm.
“It’s the attack!” she yelled… but needlessly, for in the moment of gunfire, the far-off thump had swelled to an avalanche of sound, drowning out the sirens, drowning out the exploding rounds smashing through the windows, drowning out the whole world as helicopters thundered in low across the rooftops of Middlebrough from the east, from inland, opposite the direction of the fires and explosions.
So… that blast and all of the smoke had been a diversion after all.
A third gunman yelled something mindless and swung into an open window, his G3 assault rifle to his shoulder. Before he could trigger the weapon, however, his head and chest exploded in bloody fragments, the rifle’s plastic stock shattered against his shoulder, and his scream of rage turned to sheer agony, abruptly cut short as he tumbled in a bloody heap onto the bare wooden floor.
Steiner leaped clear of the barrel, grabbing the Uzi submachine gun he’d left on the desk. Katarina Holst, standing at the back of the room with another RAF gunman, shrugged her H&K subgun’s sling off her shoulder and dragged back the charging lever with a loud snick. The thump and scuff of boots on the roof sounded through the ongoing thunder of the helicopters above the building.
The door to the room burst open and another Provo burst in, his eyes wild. “Christ! We got a team on the roof an’ another comin’ in at the front door!”
Then a distant explosion sounded from somewhere downstairs, and all of the building’s lights went out.
8