It took some shopping because many of the automobiles were either too small for his purpose or too new, with the cutoff SUV look or a hatchback. Within a half hour, he narrowed in on a dirty white Renault parked at the edge of a field. It probably dated back to the mid-1980s, and it had slick black tires, four doors, and the scars of having been in more than one fender-bender during its long life. It was a small box on wheels, but with a spacious trunk. It took only a couple of minutes to bend his wire coat hanger into a hook, slide it down the door beside the window, pop the latch, and get inside. His knife tore the ignition away from the steering column; he twisted the wires and sparked the engine to life. The Renault gave a couple of coughs, then chugged away, and he drove downtown, happy that his new escape-and-evade platform would never draw a suspicious glance.
A few bunkered-up guard posts manned by Iranian soldiers had been erected at key points throughout Sharm, although civilian police still directed traffic and apparently were also handling ordinary law enforcement duties. It was obviously an uneasy alliance, and the cops, none of whom were allowed to carry guns, were also staying low to the ground, fearful of the hard looks cast at them by the soldiers with automatic weapons. The soldiers were at ease, smoking cigarettes, laughing, and watching the women more than they watched the men or the passing vehicles. Perfect, thought Kyle. With nobody opposing them, the occupiers were getting sloppy, and their vigilance was dropping every minute that nothing happened.
He drove by what appeared to be the central government administration building, which stood out from its surroundings just as a county courthouse dominated so many small towns back in the United States. Over here they were almost always simply called “Government House.” Four soldiers wearing the deep olive green uniforms of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were clustered outside the front entrance. Two were simply standing there with weapons over their shoulders, watching civilians approach a young officer seated at a table stacked with papers beside the front door. He was apparently there to give army permission for some errand to be run, or something just as mundane. There was only a short line of five or six men waiting their turns, and they hesitantly approached him one at a time. At an adjacent table was a communications setup that connected the officer to a higher command level if there was a question. There were no questions; whatever its purpose was, the line moved along rapidly. The radioman was bored, leaning back in the chair with his ankles crossed, and flipped his cigarette into the street.
Good enough. Kyle kept going, scanning the opposite side of the street. Since he was near the center of the city, there were a number of multistory buildings that seemed in decent repair, and boxy air-conditioning units hung from some of the windows. That made sense, he thought, and also signaled that windows that were closed were to unoccupied rooms, for without any cooling air, the rooms would be unbelievably hot and stuffy, even in January.
The building was a definite possibility. He did some mental measurements and chose a pair of windows on the fourth floor of a building about two hundred yards down the street with unobstructed sight lines to the soldiers. The old fashioned double-hung windows gawked at him like open eyes. Decision time: inside or outside?
The whitewashed building was some kind of office complex, the natural habitat for a lot of lawyers and businessmen who would want to be near the main government building. It offered Kyle the definite advantages of all-around concealment and height for a sniper’s hide, and since most of the lawyers and other workers were probably staying home today, there would be only a small chance that anyone would interrupt him if he could occupy that supposedly empty room with the dirty windows. Get in, shove a desk in front of the door, throw together a hide in the back shadows of the room, then slowly open the window about a foot. That would work.
The downside was that he was alone and could not really watch his ass and the target at the same time. He could not be certain the offices were empty, and getting up and down the stairs, through open hallways, breaking locks, making the shot, then getting out across sidewalks and streets was definitely the more risk-laden move. Somebody could stumble upon him at any moment, for pure chance and the real world could always intervene, and it was wise to keep such dangers to a minimum. As much as he hated to admit it, some things were just beyond his control. Go to Plan B.
Swanson drove on until he found an abandoned shed outside of town, not far from the road, swung in behind it, and killed the motor. Pulling on a pair of gloves, he opened all four doors and wrestled the backseat out of the car, leaving it beside the shed as if were an outside sofa. After that, he burrowed through car junk into the trunk and tripped the lock from the inside; the lid rose smoothly for a few inches, then stopped. He got out and went around to the back to lift it all the way.
Unloading the clutter went quickly as he rolled away two spare tires and tossed the jack, a sealed quart of oil, and a wooden box of tools. In this area of the world, owners worked on their cars rather than drop the vehicles off for a day with an expensive mechanic. Within minutes, the trunk space was empty. He covered the flooring with the pillowcases with which he had wrapped the rifle, so as not to smear old oil and dirt on the clean dishdasha and attract unwanted attention.
Newer-model cars all have release triggers inside the trunk to prevent anyone from getting stuck, but his Renault was of a different day. He would have to improvise. A roll of duct tape from his bag performed the needed magic, as he taped over the locked mechanism to disable it, then used some thin 550 parachute cord to create a handle of twined loops on the inside of the lid. Back in the trunk again, he sprawled out to test if he could fire from the prone position. It would be tight, but he was satisfied. He pulled the lid closed with a rope made by twisting a sturdy length of duct tape and lashing it to the cord handle. The trunk was then taped shut on the inside, still unlocked but secure enough to avoid its flying open while he drove.
The final chore was to ready his M-16A3, and he snapped the two pieces of the semiautomatic rifle together, fitted in the pair of cotter pins, and attached the silencer. The scope was dialed in to two hundred yards, virtually point-blank range. A fresh magazine of ammo was clicked home after he polished each of the standard 5.56mm NATO rounds for a last time. He laid it down and spread the black bag over it, weighting the plastic sheet with his duffel.
A few minutes later, he was back cruising the target zone, a Joe Average Civilian looking insignificant but with a large pistol wedged beneath his thigh. The soldiers were still at the Government House, doing their paperwork thing as he passed without looking directly at them. The street might have been choked and busy on a normal day, but not under this cloak of a menacing military presence. With many people sticking close to home, a lot of parking spaces were created, and Kyle steered smoothly into one about two hundred yards from the officer at the table on the other side of the street. He parked before a two-story facility that apparently also housed a number of small businesses that dealt with the local government. Windows were closed or the air conditioners were on. No one was on the two small balconies overlooking the street, which was virtually empty.