“You want to stand down till the weather clears?”
“Negative. We can work around a little snow. I’ll send four men to his room. Distribute the rest downstairs in case he tries to squirt.”
Russ said, “I’ll stay in the stairwell. Cut off his escape if he makes it past your team.”
Trestle Actual shook his head. “Negative. Babbitt wants you off the X.”
“We don’t have to tell him, do we? You will have blizzard conditions outside. All Court has to do is make it out a door or window and your op is going to go tits up.”
“Babbitt wants—”
Russ said, “I don’t give a shit what Babbitt wants. You are the onsite commander. It’s your call. You’ll take the heat if you fail. Be flexible about this, man. Babbitt’s in the rear with the gear; we do what we have to do in the field.”
Nick would not relent. “I don’t want you in the way.” He pointed his finger in Whitlock’s face. “That’s fucking final.”
Whitlock shrugged. “It’s your call, dude. Just trying to help.”
Nick added, “Relax, Dead Eye. Gentry’s not going to squeeze by us. We’ll lay waste to his room, put his ass down right there.”
Lennart Meri Tallinn Airport is no bustling airport compared to the major air transit hubs of Europe, but this Tuesday morning, at three A.M., in a full-on snowstorm, there was virtually no activity in the outer hangars northeast of the end of runway 26, some half mile from the main terminal.
Virtually no activity.
One small hangar did have a few lights on, and a large portable fan heater blasted warm air across the floor. A Gulfstream 200 was parked in the center of the space, still wet from its flight over from Helsinki and its long wait on the tarmac in the customs clearance portion of the airport. Next to the G-200, a white twelve-passenger van sat parked facing the exit.
Eight men also occupied the small hangar; some sat on trunks and loaded weapons, others affixed knee and elbow pads to their bodies, and one man stood near the closed hangar doors, pacing back and forth, frustrated in his attempt to get a signal from his phone to bounce off a satellite somewhere up through the thick soup of clouds.
Their makeshift staging area was far away from security and customs, but they prepared themselves as quickly as possible, because they knew their luck could not last. Some airport rent-a-cop might get curious or some ramp agent might come looking for a place to sneak a quick nap, and their activities here would be discovered.
The team prepped with extreme efficiency; they’d been doing this sort of thing for years. Each man had his primary, the HK MP7 PDW, or personal defense weapon. It was built for close-quarters battle, as it was both more powerful than a submachine gun and less bulky than an assault rifle.
They also carried SIG Sauer nine-millimeter pistols on their hips, Peltor ComTac II radio headsets under their helmets, and light Kevlar body armor across their chests and backs. They had the option of wearing full SAPI (Small Arms Protective Insert) plates made of high-tech ceramic that would stop a rifle round, but all their intelligence had led them to believe that their target was not carrying a rifle with him. The Kevlar would stop any handgun round, so it would do for this evening’s operation.
The men checked their watches, actuated the laser sights and flashlights on their guns to test them, and finished double-checking their Velcro pouches to make sure everything they needed was in place.
Trestle Actual finally got through to Townsend House, though he had to leave the hangar and stand in the snow to get a signal. It took a moment for the two-way ID check, but just like the preparation of their equipment for tonight’s operation, both Trestle Actual and the recipient of his call had executed enough ID checks to make them second nature and correspondingly fast.
Lee Babbitt, code name Graveside, knew better than to ask the team leader of his strike force a lot of unnecessary questions. Babbitt knew Nick considered him to be an REMF, a rear-echelon motherfucker, and the last thing Babbitt wanted to do was give any of his front-line men the impression that he was micromanaging his shooters from four thousand miles away. So instead of asking questions, he used these quick briefs before missions to provide last-minute intel to his operators in the field. “Weather isn’t going to get much better till midmorning. Might slack off a little before dawn, but the front is basically stalled right over the Baltic, so you’ll just have to contend with the snow. We’ll have no overhead viz on you.”
Nick’s gear and helmet were already covered in white from standing outside the hangar. “Understood.”
“You’ve spoken to Dead Eye?”
“Met with him a few hours ago. He’s a squirrelly motherfucker, isn’t he?”
“He’s a singleton,” replied Babbitt, as if that explained everything.
“He’s got a room one floor below the target, he can hear it when Gray Man moves around, and he’ll let us know if there is any change of disposition.”
“Dead Eye wanted to do the action himself.”
“Yeah,” said Nick. “He made that clear. I told him to sit his ass down in his room and stay the hell out of our way.”
“Good.” Babbitt paused a moment. Cleared his throat. “We end Gentry tonight, got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We had hoped to do this on the ship. Not in an urban environment. Less messy that way.”
“Roger that. We’ll keep it contained.”
Babbitt’s voice took a lower, graver tone, the change noticeable even over the crackling sat phone. “Do that, but know this. Collateral damage, in this very special case, will be understood as a necessary evil. Mr. Gentry is a clear and present danger to the United States of America. We cannot and we will not forfeit this opportunity to eliminate him.”
Nick had been briefed on this, of course. This was no kill/capture mission. This was get in, shoot the son of a bitch till he was flat on his back, shoot the son of a bitch some more, then get out. If some locals got in the way, then, Nick understood, he was to shoot his way through them to get to his target.
Nick, and the other seven men of Trestle, were all good with that.
“Got it,” he replied. It was no small thing to steel oneself to shoot noncombatants, but Nick had done it before, and Nick knew Townsend Government Services had been brought into this hunt not because they were saints, but because they got shit done.
Babbitt added, “When it’s over, you get pictures, that’s mandatory, but you leave the body, get back to the airport, and get out of there. If the weather is below minimums, just exfiltrate overland and we’ll get you extracted ASAP.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good luck, Nick. Remember… For America.”
Now there was a pause on Nick’s side of the conversation. “You know… if you ever wanted to tell me what this prick did to earn his shoot-on-sight sanction… now would be the time.”
Babbitt replied tersely, “Just do your duty. Graveside out.”
Nick ended the call and stowed his sat phone. As he stepped back into the hangar, Trestle Two came up to him; he’d already put on his helmet and goggles, he was head-to-toe in black ballistic gear, and his MP7 PDW hung straight down from his chest. In his hands he carried Trestle Actual’s primary weapon. “We’re ready,” he said, and he held out the HK.
Nick took the gun. “Good.”
“I don’t suppose Graveside finally came through and told you what this is all about?”
Nick shrugged now, dropping the sling over his head and positioning the PDW on his chest. “Same as ever. Management doesn’t tell labor anything except the rah-rah shit. ‘Do your duty, God and country, Gentry is a clear and present danger.’”