Both went crashing down, and swift kicks in their nuts took them out of combat. Broker hopped out and duct-taped their mouths, muffling their groans, and a minute later the two hoods were in the vehicle, immobile.
Broker looked up and down the street and across it. The street was quiet. No one came out of the apartment blocks opposite. Probably seen and experienced enough to mind their own business.
He looked down the street at Bwana. ‘All done here,’ he said into his collar mic. Bwana gave him an acknowledging nod and climbed into his Wagon.
They drew the SUVs to the next street, where Tony was lounging against a large NYC Department of Transport truck parked sideways and sectioned off by traffic cones. He guided them to park in a rough triangle when they approached, closing the view to onlookers. Tony, dressed in blue overalls with the DOT’s logo, rapped the driver’s window. Another stringy man climbed out, similarly dressed, bumped fists with Broker, and silently helped them transfer the five hoods.
Broker took hold of the legs of the last hood and Bwana, his shoulders. ‘Don’t ask. That’s Eric, another of my guys,’ he replied when Bwana looked at the truck and back at him.
Tony drove away when they had finished.
‘He’ll keep driving till we tell him to RV with us,’ Broker said and then grinned at Chloe. ‘That was smooth work. You had them down before I could join you.’
She chuckled. ‘You’re old, Broker. You wouldn’t have been of much help in any case.’
Bear cut in before he could reply. ‘Let’s hustle, shall we? The gang will soon notice the absence of their street patrol.’
They climbed in Bwana’s ride, and he pulled off, merging in the traffic unobtrusively.
Bwana stopped a couple of buildings away from the warehouse, on the opposite side of the street, and stepped out. They had a clear view of three of the CCTV cameras on the corners of the warehouse from that spot. ‘Broker, you’re the one they would have seen the least of, since Chloe and you were away from the sight of the front door and windows.’
Broker got out without a word and then stuck his head back in the window. ‘Ageist, that’s what the lot of you are.’
He turned his jacket inside out in the shadow of the vehicle — most people tend to remember upper clothing — and walked down the street, which was still empty. An hour had passed since their first entry in the street, but it was still deserted. Kids at school, guys either stoned or at work, moms at work.
He looked at the warehouse from the corner of his eyes as he walked past it and thought he detected sounds from inside and distant movement deep inside the window, but he couldn’t be sure. He went down to the far end of the street, pulled out a rolled-up newspaper from his jacket pocket and read it as he walked back. Nothing had changed in the second pass.
The other four were standing in the shade of the SUV when he reached them. All of them had turned their jackets inside out, and Chloe had tied her hair up and tucked it under a baseball cap. All of them were wearing dull-colored combat trousers with large pockets. The jackets concealed their guns in their shoulder or hip holsters, and carried their spare magazines, and their leg wear had large and deep pockets down the thighs, knees, and legs, for more magazines, a backup gun, duct tape, plastic ties and first aid kits. Each one of them had blades strapped to their chest or down their backs or trouser legs.
Bear and Chloe dug out road barriers and signs and each walked two hundred yards down and placed them across the street. On top of the barriers they hung large ‘Road Temporarily Closed’ signs.
Bear adjusted the sign at his end and looked at it critically for a moment. Broker said the NYPD would stay out of this. Wonder if they’re watching. He stopped thinking about it and placed smaller signs at the entrances to the apartment blocks on the street.
Roger and Broker watched them while keeping an eye on the warehouse.
Bwana climbed inside the SUV from the passenger side and lifted a long, heavy case from behind the seat. He unwrapped a Remington M24A3 sniper rifle from the case and put it together with practiced ease. The Remington, along with the Barrett, were his sniper rifles of choice, and as he slapped a Leupold Ultra M3 scope on it, he remembered the last time he had used it had been in Iraq.
The target then had been a planner and banker for terrorist organizations and was the brains behind several suicide bomb attacks in Europe and Africa.
Clare had green-lighted the assignment, and a three-man team had followed him from country to country before deciding on the hit in Iraq. The target had been paranoid about his security and had never stayed in the same country for more than a month and, even then, stayed only in apartments for less than a week, places that his organization had vetted and secured.
Broker had picked his trail up by tracking down his advance team, who went to the apartments and secured them by paying cash and, on the rare occasion, by card — a mistake that Broker gleefully capitalized on.
The three-man team had worn white dishdashahs, the long, one-piece dress traditionally worn by men, covered their faces with gutrahs, the headpieces, and had followed the target in a Toyota Saloon that had seen better days. Three days of sweltering heat in Dora, Baghdad, choking dust, and endless traffic, and they were no closer to finding a pattern to the target’s movement or a spot for the hit. The target’s apartment was surrounded by gun-toting men all day and night, and was struck off immediately as a take-out site.
Conscious that the target could leave the country at any time, they finally decided to take out the target the next day.
There were two constants in the target’s movements — one was the street he took in his heavily armored Land Cruiser once he exited the apartment. This street led to a crossroad where the vehicle took any exit randomly.
The crossroad would be the site of the hit, since the vehicle slowed down almost to a stop to allow for oncoming traffic.
The other constant was the target’s seating in the Land Cruiser. The target sat in the rear, next to a window, directly behind the driver.
The sniper’s hide would be the flat roof of an apartment block — apartment block was being generous to the bombed-out building — behind the target’s building, taller than it, with a clear view of the street.
The bullet would have to traverse a shade over two thousand yards in the heat of the day, a temperature of around a hundred and ten Fahrenheit and a wind speed of eight meters/second. Difficult shooting conditions, but Bwana had shot in those conditions before.
The challenge was to get the target to lower his window, which was made of toughened, bulletproof glass.
The three-man team occupied the roof of the building at dawn the next day. The building was deserted, a hollow shell, through which the ghosts of the dead wandered.
Bwana and his spotter surveyed the roof and positioned his Remington on the site that afforded the fullest view of the street. Bwana set the Harris bipod up, put together the rifle, took wind and temperature readings, and then did what the best snipers did — lay down prone and willed his metabolism to slow and went inside himself. His spotter did the same.
The third man went down to the street and did a check of their comms — barely detectable earpieces and microphones that were covered by the folds of the gutrah.