The boxy Renault had become a sniper’s mobile hide, and Swanson took it out of gear, pulled on the emergency brake, but left the motor idling as he made one last visual sweep of the street. A few people were around the open Government House, but no one was looking his way. He slithered into the back of the vehicle and took out the weapon, squelching the normal urge to hurry and keeping his breathing normal. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
Now on his stomach, he peeled the tape away from the lid and held the handle to keep the trunk lid closed while he also stripped off the tape from the lock catch bar. Gun in one hand and the makeshift rope handle in the other, he allowed the trunk lid to rise another few inches. He saw an open lane to the target and let the lid rise even higher. Swanson listened to the sounds of the street. He disdained using the earplugs preferred by some snipers, because they dulled the senses and the shooter could not hear the enemy or what’s around him. Kyle would rather be deaf than dead.
Elevation was no problem since they were all almost at street level, and there was no detectable wind, which in any case would have made no left-or-right difference at this range. He eased the lid open the rest of the way, brought the M-61A1 to his shoulder, and acquired his first target, the busy officer. The view in the scope was so close and clear that Swanson could see that the man’s cheeks were pitted with acne scars, and the sniper exhaled and turned the job over to his muscle memory; he had practiced this very shot thousands of times. The finger caressed the trigger with a gentle, steady pull and unleashed a round that struck the officer right at the bridge of his nose, the fabled medulla oblongata shot, which impacted the lower brainstem and tore through the area that controlled almost everything in the body. The back half of the officer’s head exploded away and the body cartwheeled back over his chair, fanning up a wave of blood.
Before that body hit the ground, Kyle had moved the rifle slightly and shot the radioman through the head, which was totally pulped. The victim had been so totally relaxed that his arms just fell to his sides and the body stayed in the chair.
The semiautomatic rifle and its shooter were acting as a single unit, cycling through the job, and Kyle swung the other direction by a few degrees and popped the two guards with shots to their hearts. Boom, boom, pause, boom, boom, and it was all over in five-point-seven seconds.
He pulled the rifle back with his right hand while lowering the trunk lid with his left until it locked with a firm snap. The few people in the plaza were on the ground in fear, shocked by the unexpected gunfire and staring at the dead soldiers, as Kyle climbed back behind the steering wheel and released the emergency brake. The battered Renault puttered away at an average speed, turned at the first corner, and disappeared.
20
Iranian colonel Yahya Ali Naqdi of the Army of the Guardians took a great deal of pride in viewing things not as he wished they were but as a situation actually was. Artists lay down one careful brushstroke at a time, and time and talent determine whether the painting will be great or just colors scrawled on canvas. His invasion had proceeded nicely up to this point. The first phase was a success. He had gotten Iranian troops on Egyptian soil without opposition.
With the massacre of the soccer team, the attack on the Iranian ship, and the atrocities inflicted on tourists in Sharm el-Sheikh, most Egyptians felt their military forces, their police, and the coalition government had failed in their primary duty of protecting the people. In the public eye, the Iranian troops were regarded as rescuing heroes. In reality, Naqdi had established military control over the vital oil routes and effectively controlled the Suez Canal. Oil and gasoline prices were already spiking around the world, a problem that would continue.
The colonel understood, however, that the few thousand soldiers he had down in Sharm might look powerful, but they could not hold out there indefinitely. It was time for Phase Two: for the Muslim Brotherhood to capitalize on the opportunity. All Naqdi’s men had to do was keep up the peaceful facade in the south while the Brotherhood stirred the mobs into a frenzy. The Brotherhood had made substantial political gains, even winning the presidency, but it was not in real control. That lay, as always, in the hands of the generals. Now was the time to reorganize the unruly mobs into an alternate army supported by the people, drive south and link up with his Iranian commandos. Supplies and ammunition were sufficient to last until that main force could reach them.
The colonel unfolded the latest communiqué from his chief of staff, Major Mansoor Shakuri, down in Sharm. Four soldiers had been killed at a government office building, and the evidence indicated that it was the work of a sniper. Another brushstroke. The colonel added in the two murdered soldiers whose knifed bodies had been found in a ditch by the airfield, and the downed plane that had mysteriously exploded while landing, killing all of the troops who were aboard.
He had learned of the separate development in which soldiers of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were being moved into the general area. That hardly mattered, because Naqdi had no intention of fighting them. Still, the Saudis’ maneuvering was a sign that a great snake was beginning to stir.
This apparent sniper attack indicated that special forces, probably Americans or British, were being inserted and hiding. It was expected. Major Shakuri would just have to brace for more minor attacks, and the general in command at the airport would have to make the men extra vigilant. Just keep the lid on for a couple more days, he thought, and it should all be over.
He also was interested in Shakuri’s search for the CIA agent, Kyle Swanson, who had not yet been found. The sweep by intelligence officers had discovered that Swanson had been a guest at the Blue Neptune Hotel at the time of the attack and had a flight reservation on one of the passenger planes that never took off. He probably was still lurking around the area. They had also determined that Swanson had been traveling in the company of the well-known British Egyptologist Tianha Baily, who the colonel now believed was also a British spy. She, too, had disappeared.
After hitting the Iranians at Government House, Kyle Swanson drove the Renault carefully toward the waterfront. Help was on the way.
The intel weenies back in the States had been busy with their maps, overlays, look-down images, drones, and computer models, and the Shackle communication from the Lizard had instructed him to do an eyes-on confirmation of a proposed landing site for a small unit. Four operators and an Air Force Combat Controller would be fast-roping down from a stealth-modified Black Hawk helicopter at 0300 tomorrow morning to link up with Kyle and become the pathfinders for a large assault that almost everyone thought was inevitable, sooner or later. Along with the Combat Control Team communications suite, they would be bringing in a lot more toys, firepower, and talent. Importantly, he would no longer be alone.
The GPS coordinates took him away from the heart of the Red Sea Riviera and up the coast to a quiet point across from the two small islands that comprised the Ras Mohammad National Park a few miles offshore. Normally, it was a tourist playground that featured spectacular diving into underwater caves, but this area also had cleared out for safer surroundings. He kept driving around until he found a small coastal shelf that was rugged and bare around the land edges, impractical for earning a living by farming or fishing but ideal for a surprise special ops landing on the dominant jagged ridge. He parked and sat for thirty minutes, letting the fresh breeze sweep through the open windows, and he did not see another soul. Even the usual ferry service over to the islands had been suspended. It was too far from Sharm for roving Iranian land patrols, and they had nothing at sea. Barring an unforeseen development, this place should do just fine.