He had performed countless parachute jumps in the past, both in training and on operations; high altitude jumps, low altitude jumps, he had done them all. But he had never done anything like this, freefalling from the edge of space out of the bomb doors of a secret stealth aircraft. A normal high-altitude jump was done from 35,000 feet; Cole was jumping from 120,000 feet, which was why he needed the helmet and the special suit — without them, the pressure and lack of oxygen at such a height would kill him within seconds. Such a high altitude jump had certainly not been done before in quite the same way, and it was unlikely to ever be done again.
He had managed to control the tumbling effect soon after he had been released, forcing his body into the right shape to attack the atmosphere, flying straight down, head first like a human arrow.
It was pitch black, and he just had to rely on his instruments. Moving his hands from their position at his sides at this speed would have radically compromised his stability however, and he was glad to have a secondary set of instruments on his chest, angled upwards so that he could see them.
He still couldn’t see the ground, but saw that his coordinates were good. His altimeter read one hundred thousand feet, and he started to angle his body, flattening it until he was spread out, his speed decreasing slightly in relation to the increase in surface area he now presented. He stabilized in that position, and then checked the altimeter again. Twenty thousand feet.
He opened the chute, and immediately felt the shock of the huge braking effect generated by the billowing canopy, pulling him seemingly back up into the sky.
He could have pulled the chute lower — common practice to get in under the radar — but he knew Steinmeier didn’t have such a system, and whoever was at the house would simply be making best use of the Mark One Eyeball, and human eyesight would be unlikely to pick up the black camouflaged parachute against the pitch dark, cloudy night sky. The controlled descent from 20,000 feet, however, would give him the time necessary to deploy his other equipment.
45
As the parachute sank slowly towards the earth, Cole started to be able to make out the house below and slightly off to the southwest.
Steinmeier’s house was situated on a minor road off the L227 through Kreith, a large, three-storey Alpine chalet-style detached house at the end of a long driveway. The approach road had a fair few houses, and then the land was wooded before opening out to fields around the house. Visibility around the property was good, which was probably one of the reasons it had been chosen.
Cole knew the layout of the house, and of the grounds, and knew where lookouts and sentries would be posted, if Hansard had had time to arrange such things.
He was never going to be able to see anyone ten thousand feet below and hidden in the tree line, so he locked in his course, let go of the parachute’s steering handles, and pulled off the helmet from the suit’s neckpiece.
The cold hit him even through his woollen balaclava, but the helmet’s removal was necessary if he was to use the equipment he had brought with him; equipment that would even the odds and give him a chance to make it to the house and rescue his family.
46
By the time he was at eight thousand feet, Cole had the Zeiss M-760 thermal-imaging night-vision goggles secured around his head, the butt of the Accuracy International Arctic Warfare Super Magnum sniper rifle nestled securely into his shoulder.
The rifle was engineered for cold weather conditions, and was one of the most accurate rifles available — reports said that back in 2009 a British sniper had killed two Taliban machine gunners in Afghanistan from 2,475m away, which equated to more than a mile and a half.
The conditions for that kill had been perfect, however, which was definitely at odds with what Cole now faced. Not only would he be firing from an unstable platform high in the air above the house, but the weather was bad, visibility nonexistent, and he would be using a modified sight.
To make his shots count, he was going to have to account for current altitude, his drop in altitude that would occur between the pull of the trigger and the bullet leaving the barrel as he continued his parachute descent, the effect of the wind for both the normal current, and the unnatural altitude-induced ground effect. They would be the hardest shots he would ever have to make.
47
As he descended closer, goggles sweeping the area constantly, he began to pick up the eerie, red and yellow images of people stationed around the house, contrasted against the luminous green of the background night vision.
There were six of them stationed in the grounds directly surrounding the house, with six more spread out through the tree line, below and to the front of him as he drifted in from the north east.
The rifle’s magazine held six rounds only, and he knew he would not have time to reload — by the time he had fired six shots and reloaded, he would already have landed. Therefore, each shot would have to count.
It made more sense to use his altitude and the element of surprise to go for the men in the tree line with the six rounds. They would be snipers, using trees for cover as they monitored the grounds. If Cole took out the men around the house instead of the snipers, he would be shot as soon as he landed. He therefore decided to leave the grounds guards for later, and dedicate his initial resources into getting rid of the snipers.
From his current altitude he could just make out their positions, seemingly prone on the ground with sniper rifles of their own, completely unaware of Cole coming in towards them from above.
The faint, coloured images were small, ridiculously so, but Cole made mental notes of each of their positions, and clicked up the goggles from his face.
He then pulled his rifle in and up, his right eye fitting into the rubberized cup of the modified Zeiss sniper scope, which was essentially a barrel-mounted version of the goggles, including close magnification of the thermal night vision image.
As Cole descended through the thin, cold night air, he selected his first target, on the far left.
He controlled his breathing, his right eye concentrating fully on the fuzzy thermal image of the sentry. He checked windings, adjusted the sight according to all the other factors he had considered, checked his aim again, breathed out slowly, held the breath, and caressed the trigger.
48
Six thousand feet below and five hundred feet ahead, Shane Trejo lay on the soft loam of the pine forest floor and waited, checking the house through his own night vision scope.
Dan Albright and some of his men were already in the house, some guarding directly outside, whilst Trejo and five others covered fields of fire from the safety of the tree line.
He had already been there nearly six hours, and was coming up for relief, changing positions with someone inside the house, which meant he would be able to get some food and a hot drink.
He moved his left hand around and checked the luminous dial of his watch. It was 11.42pm, just eighteen minutes until his break. He turned to look back down through the sight, but never made it, as a 300-grain .338 Lapua Magnum bullet entered the top of his spine from the top right, blowing half of his left rib cage out across the soft loamy ground as it exited his body in an explosion of blood and cartilage.
49
One down, Cole registered, even as he turned the fearsome weapon towards the memorized location of the second sentry.