Early that morning, when Court told Fitzroy he would rescue his family, he immediately decided to go to Guarda, Switzerland, to his massive weapons cache hidden in the forest. He had a half dozen other stores around the continent, but nothing like Guarda.
Guarda was the mother lode.
The heavy metal.
The first case housed a black Swiss Brügger & Thomet MP9 submachine gun. He pulled it out of its foam bed and snapped a loaded magazine into the mag well, affixed the sling to its buttstock, and lifted it over his head to push it outside the trapdoor onto the floor above him. Another case held a sub-load, a nylon and canvas rig full of loaded magazines for the weapon that would strap both to his thigh and his utility belt. He tossed this through the hole above him as well.
For the next five minutes Court went through case after case. Into a huge duffel he stuffed all manner of small arms and explosives. Into a smaller bag he placed a black tactical suit, a face mask, ballistic eyewear, a small surveillance scanner that would allow him to pick up short-distance communication, and a pair of binoculars.
Finally, just before five a.m., Gentry climbed out of the basement, following behind the two duffels he pushed out in front of him. He left the entrance to the basement cache open. He drank from a half-frozen water bottle, washed down a couple of mild painkillers for his thigh, used the chemical toilet a second time, and pulled a sleeping bag from a shelf. He rolled it out on the floor, unlocked the latch of the front door, prepared the cabin’s defenses a bit, and then climbed inside his bedding. He set the alarm on his watch to seven thirty. A couple hours’ sleep would have to be enough to get him through another long day.
They came for him just after five. The minivan slid to a stop at the bottom of the hill. To the passengers, it seemed as if the driver had been out of control on the slick streets for virtually the entire two-and-a-half-hour drive from Zurich. The driver’s lack of skill in such conditions was understandable. There was black ice on the road, and the visibility was next to nil at times. Plus these Middle Easterners’ orders were to get to the blinking dot on their GPS as fast as possible, and the Tech was calling them on the satellite phone every ten minutes for an update.
There were five of them, Libyan external security officers from the Jamahiriya Security Organization, a fire team from the best of Qaddafi’s men. All ex-army commandos, each knew his Skorpion SA Vz 61 machine pistol like a trusted friend. The leader was forty-one, stern-faced and bearded, dressed in civilian adventure travel attire like the rest of his team. He sat in the passenger seat, incessantly barked admonitions at the commando behind the wheel, unforgiving of the man, though all knew the driver was more accustomed to negotiating desert dunes in an armored jeep than he was icy mountain switchbacks in a minivan.
Still, they made it to Guarda in good time and parked their vehicle in the lot by the train station at the bottom of the valley. The driver lifted the hood and quickly removed the distributor rotor and threw it into his gym bag, thereby rendering the vehicle useless until he returned. They then found the little road up the hill, spread their formation as wide as possible across it, and began their ascent on foot.
Each man carried his little Skorpion in a gym bag with its stock folded, and a backup pistol in a shoulder holster. Different operators carried grenades and breaching charges as well. They all wore knit caps, heavy cotton pants, and the same black parkas, an expensive name brand associated with professional athletes.
Also in their gym bags were night vision goggles; they remained stowed for now.
The five Libyans climbed the steep, winding road to the village in the dark. They moved quickly and efficiently. Any passerby would know from their near uniformity and the severe facial expressions bobbing up and down in the vapor of their exhalations that they were up to no good. But no locals walked the hillside road at five thirty in the morning in a snowstorm, so the Libyans arrived undetected into the cobblestone streets of the Swiss hamlet.
Each operator also had a small handheld radio attached to his belt and connected to an earpiece. With a single command from their leader, they separated on the western edge of Guarda, continued individually to the east, each through a different little pedestrian passageway. This tactic ensured that anyone looking out their window would only see one of the men. If an alarm was raised and the villagers began to talk about strangers, they all might well think they saw the same individual.
On the far end of the town the kill squad re-formed like a biologic entity, detached cells rejoining in a petri dish. The leader consulted his GPS and turned to the left at an unpaved track that continued from the ledge on which the tiny hamlet was situated, up the hillside and into the forest, only visible in the distance after they donned their night observation devices.
The leader updated the team from the information on his GPS.
“Four hundred meters.”
The snow had picked up even more; the swirling bands of flakes had turned to thickening sheets of falling white. The Libyans had seen snow before, during training in Lebanon or on other missions in Europe, but their bodies were wholly unaccustomed to this cold. Forty-eight hours earlier, this very team of operators had sat in a Tripoli apartment working with an electronic surveillance detachment to try to locate the source of a ham radio broadcast emanating from the city that had made comments critical of Colonel Qaddaffi. It had been nearly one hundred degrees in that cramped room, so the cold of the eastern Swiss valley was a shock to their systems indeed.
They almost passed the shack. Only the GPS coordinates provided by the Tech had saved them hours of wandering through the woods. By now their Skorpions were out of the gym bags, the bags were hanging from their backs, the weapon’s folding stocks were deployed, and the guns were raised to the low ready position, stocks pressed against shoulders and sights just below the sightline of their night vision goggles. Each man took a careful position around the cabin. They reported in one by one.
The leader was first. “One in position, ten meters from the front door. No movement. The windows are shuttered.”
“Two is with One.”
“Three on west side. One window. Shuttered.”
“Four at east side. One window. Shuttered.”
“Five at back. No windows, but there is a utility shed alongside the main building. A secure padlock on the outside. Nothing else back here.”
The leader said, “Five, stay at the back. Find cover and be ready. Three and Four, come to the front. We will enter as a team.”
“Understood.”
Gentry slept dreamless in his sleeping bag next to the hole in the floorboards that led to the earthen basement. The pain meds had dulled the ache in his thigh and given him the respite needed to relax. His sleep was deep, restful.
Brief.
The leader retrieved a fragmentation grenade from his belt. He pulled the pin and moved slowly to the front door with his hand on the spoon. Two was in front and preparing a breaching charge when he noticed the door was not completely shut. He turned to his leader and motioned to the crack in the door.
The leader nodded, turned to the two men behind him, and whispered “It’s open. Get ready.”
Number Two pushed the door open quickly and knelt down so that other weapons could train on any targets inside. It was completely dark at first; even the night vision equipment could not make out the features inside.