From God’s vantage point on the knoll, the snipers had a clear view of Kelsey and Elli. Both women were in the northwestern corner bedroom, and should any move be made against them, God was in a position to put an immediate stop to it. The ‘unchanged’ status of the hostages meant that no move had been made to harm or release the women. Enough time had passed, in Dawson’s opinion, to determine that the hostages were not going to be released.
‘Say status of Tangos, God.’
‘Count is five — three plus two,’ the sniper answered, identifying a total of five men; three inside with the hostages, and two outside on patrol.
‘I read you, God,’ Dawson replied. ‘Heaven to Angel.’
‘Angel here,’ Edwards answered. ‘I read you, Heaven.’
‘Halos are unchanged. Confirmed Tango count is five. Tangos are three and two. You have a green light, Angel.’
‘Green light acknowledged, Heaven. Angel out.’
Dawson looked up from the charts and out the bridge windscreen. Through the thick, moisture-laden air, the shore was a distant green-brown haze. Somewhere in that haze, his men were moving.
61
A few days ago, I was in the arms of a beautiful woman in Moscow, Dima thought as he spat on the ground near the cabin. Now, I’m in a godforsaken swamp.
Late Saturday night, he and another ex-soldier named Ilya had been flown halfway around the world to Canada, then driven across the Blue Water Bridge into Michigan. Now he was on patrol in a swamp while recovering from the combined effects of jet lag and a hangover.
Dima swatted another of the interminable parade of mosquitoes that had tormented him throughout the past day. As he rubbed the spot on his neck where the ferocious insect had bitten him, he noticed a flash of light from across the open marsh. He studied the small hill where he’d seen the bright flare of reflected sunlight, then there was another flash.
Dima crouched low alongside the levee. He’d seen light flares like that in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and they’d always been man-made.
‘Josef,’ he called into his lip mike.
‘Da,’ the Georgian answered.
‘It’s Dima. I saw a reflection flash on a nearby hillock, northwest of camp. Request permission to investigate.’
‘Granted. Hold position until I get someone out to replace you on patrol.’
Josef knew that the reflection Dima had seen was probably nothing, but to ignore even the most mundane observation on a mission like this invited disaster.
‘Ilya, take Dima’s post on patrol.’
Ilya got up from the ancient couch, slung a submachine gun over his shoulder, and walked out the cabin’s front door. When he neared the northwestern corner, Dima threw a short wave at him and crawled over the levee.
‘Hey, Gorski,’ Ahsan said quietly, ‘I think someone might have spotted that scope of yours.’
From beneath the lightweight camouflage tarp that concealed his prone body, Gorski pulled his face away from the telescopic sight on his sniper rifle and surveyed the area in front of him. As a two-man unit, he and Ahsan were collectively known as God because they could strike down like a bolt of lightning out of the sky.
‘I see him, about ten o’clock,’ Gorski replied, the long barrel of his custom-built .50-caliber rifle defining twelve o’clock relative to their position on the knoll.
‘Yep, he called out a replacement, then moved into that patch of woods. I’ll keep an eye on him; just wanted to give you a heads-up.’
‘I appreciate that,’ Gorski replied to his protector.
From the knoll, Gorski lined up a shot through the front window of the room where the two hostages were being kept. He rechecked the settings on his scope, making certain he had the distance and wind adjustments dialed in to his satisfaction.
Gorski’s earpiece crackled. ‘Angel to God, we’re moving.’
‘I read you, Angel,’ Gorski replied.
Gorski pulled back on the set trigger until it clicked into place. This step expended most of the energy required to fire the weapon, thus removing the slight tug induced by a cold trigger pull. At this distance, even the smallest shudder of Gorski’s rifle could easily throw a shot wide of the mark. If need be, death was now just a few ounces of pressure on the hair trigger away.
Using hand gestures, Edwards put Angel into action. The squad broke up into two fire teams — the first composed of Edwards, Rodriguez, Hepburn, and Gilgallon, and the second made up of Gates, Detmer, and Darvas.
As Edwards’s team clambered over the earthen levee and began moving toward the cabin, Gates took aim on the Tango patrolling near his team’s position. Two shots flashed in rapid succession from Gates’s venerable, government-issued 1911 Colt .45; a double tap of 230-grain ball ammo drilled a hole the size of a half-dollar in the Tango’s forehead. The man’s head snapped backward from the impact; the rest of his body followed, and he landed with a muffled thump on the ground.
A burst of automatic-weapons fire shattered the glass of a window in one of the cabin’s back rooms. Detmer answered with a fusillade from his .50-caliber machine gun that splintered the aging clapboard siding and removed both sashes of the double-hung window.
Protected by Detmer’s punishing cover fire, Edwards’s team reached the cabin’s back door. Rodriguez kicked it in with such force that the lockset ripped free of the wooden stile.
Edwards tossed a flash-bang grenade through the cabin door. The SEALs shielded their eyes as the grenade exploded inside with a nonlethal combination of a blinding flash of light and a sonic assault that knocked most victims senseless. The SEALs then poured into the smoke-filled cabin, each man training both his attention and the barrel of his weapon on a pie-shaped wedge of space that expanded in front of him. The overlapping wedges were each man’s field of fire, and each was responsible for what happened in his lethal zone.
The main room was clear. Edwards motioned for Gilgallon and Hepburn to check the rooms on one side while he and Rodriguez cleared the room on the other.
Josef had just zipped up his pants after relieving himself when he heard Misha firing from the rear bedroom and the back door crashing open.
‘Fuck!’ Josef cursed, realizing that they were under attack.
He pulled the 9-mm pistol out of his shoulder holster and began counting slowly, waiting for the inevitable explosion of a concussion grenade — a device he had used many times to immobilize people he’d been sent to capture rather than kill. Three slow seconds passed, then the wood-frame cabin shuddered from the grenade’s sonic assault.
The noise was still echoing off the plaster walls when Josef bolted from the bathroom, across the short hall, and into the far bedroom, where the hostages were being kept. Both women were still tied to their chairs, frightened but apparently unaffected by the deafening blast. Josef swept the room, looking for any armed targets; it was clear. Then, without hesitation, he raised his pistol and took aim at Elli.
Gorski saw the bedroom door fly open as a swarthy black-haired Tango entered the room where the Halos were being kept. With his pistol held chest high in a two-handed grip, the man swept the room from left to right. Then he turned his pistol toward the Halos. Gorski gently squeezed the hair trigger. With a satisfying crack, the .50-caliber round erupted from the barrel in a blast of expanding superheated gas.
Most of what had been Josef’s head splattered against the long wall of the room in thousands of tiny bits of bone fragments and gore. The pistol, which he had aimed directly at Elli’s face at point-blank range, jerked upward as Gorski’s round slammed home.