Ahead in the distance a new pinprick of light grew into a thumbnail of light as he closed on it. It was the town of Rochino, and just east of that a palatial mansion rose from the trees, four stories high and surrounded by outbuildings and other structures.
This was the target, the objective waypoint.
The X.
As he neared Rochino, Court reluctantly unfastened a wool blanket he’d lashed over his legs and he tossed it over the side, letting it fall away to the forest below.
Now he ran his hands over his body and in the cockpit around him, putting his hands on each piece of his critical gear, methodically making one last check that everything was both secure and positioned for easy access.
Over a black cotton fleece and black cotton pants that would have been no real protection from the cold without the wool base layers under them, Gentry had only a few pounds of equipment strapped to his body. It was not much gear, but Court had cut kit for mobility and ease of access, and he’d cut weight for speed.
He’d spent months preparing for tonight, and his load out reflected this. He wore a Glock 19 nine-millimeter pistol in a thigh rig with an attached silencer that reached all the way to his knee on the outside of his right leg.
On his lower back was a nylon pack that held two cables, each one attached to a climbing harness under his clothes, and they were both spooled around electric spring retractors. One of the cables was quarter-inch climbing rope; the other was a thicker bungee cord. Collapsible remote activated grappling hooks were attached to the end of each cord, with the rubber-tipped noses of the titanium hooks protruding from the nylon bag for quick access.
On his belt he’d strapped the controls for the retractors and the hooks, a cell phone — sized panel consisting of four small three-position levers.
Also adorning his utility belt was a multi-tool in a pouch and two black-bladed combat knives in quick-access sheaths.
He wore a small backpack stuffed with clothing and a medical kit, and on his black, low-profile chest rig, magazines for his nine-millimeter were fastened in Velcro pouches, as well as a 26.5-millimeter single-shot flare gun that looked like a snub-nosed revolver with a fat barrel. It was loaded with a smoke grenade, and several more ballistic smokes adorned his chest rig, held in place with Velcro straps.
On his right ankle Court wore a Glock 26, a subcompact nine-millimeter pistol. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to go for the 26 since it was not suppressed, but Court had been around long enough to know to be prepared.
Back when he was with the CIA, his principal trainer’s name was Maurice, and Maurice used to preach preparedness versus luck with a mantra, often shouted into Gentry’s ear when he’d left something to chance. “Hope in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up first!”
That visual never left Court when hoping for the best, or when preparing for the worst.
Court shivered in the cold; he missed that blanket already, but he ignored the discomfort, checked his altitude, and pushed the control bar forward again for more lift.
With a jaw fixed in determination he looked to his target in the distance, reached to his center console, and added full power to the engine.
At Townsend House in D.C., the fourteen men and women in the signal room watched an infrared black-hot heat signature float over a hazy white forest on the other side of the world. After a command from a surveillance technician over the commo link to the drone pilot, a laser reached out from the UAV. It touched the moving craft like an invisible finger and then reported the speed and altitude back to the sensor operator.
A disembodied male voice spoke through the headsets. “He’s in the climb and accelerating.”
Babbitt was still trying to get his head around the event unfolding in front of him. “How does he expect to make it to the target area without the Russians hearing that thing?” he asked.
A young man answered from his desk near the front of the room. “We assume he will cut power for stealth. The wind is inland from the water, at his back. Even with the weight of the engine and the cockpit, that microlight’s glide ratio is good. If he climbs to a thousand feet or so, he can sail a good two or three klicks while totally silent.”
“And then what? He just lands on the lawn?” That seemed, to Babbitt, like a terrible idea. Even though the first rays of morning light would not appear over northwestern Russia for another four hours, everyone in the basement signal room knew Sidorenko’s property was crawling with gunmen.
A female voice said, “We think he will try to land on the north side of the property—crash-land is probably the better term. There is less security there, but still, he’s going to have to pull a few tricks out of his sleeve to make this happen.”
Babbitt did not avert his eyes from the screen. He said, “He’s thought this through. He knows what he’s doing. If he’s got a way in, he’s got a way out.” The prospect of losing this opportunity to get his man was almost too much to contemplate. “The UAV team on site. How close are they?”
Jeff Parks was still at his boss’s side. “They are in Rochino. Two klicks from the X.”
Lee called out to the room in a voice unnecessarily loud, considering he was wearing a head mic. “Who’s in contact with the UAV team in Rochino?”
“I am, sir,” said a middle-aged African American woman. She stood at her workstation to Babbitt’s right, the coiled wire of her headset hanging from the side of her head down to her commo box.
“I want their second drone in the air and loitering on station. Bring the other ScanEagle down and refuel it. We can’t lose him when this is over.”
“On it, sir.”
Parks said, “Lee, there are fifty armed men around that dacha. We have to allow for the possibility that this will end, tonight, right inside those walls.”
Babbitt chuffed. “If Sid’s boys kill him, we don’t get paid. Tonight I’m rooting for Court Gentry.”
Court looked at the moving map on his thigh one last time, then pulled the tablet off his leg and tossed it over the side of the microlight. He then reached down between his knees to the tiny console and flipped a switch, killing power to the engine behind him. The propeller slowed, then stopped; all engine noise ceased and, other than a soft flapping of the wind over the fabric of the delta wing, Gentry was enveloped by the silence and stillness and darkness of the night.
The sensation was startling. He soared quietly through the air, riding a powerful and comforting tailwind eight hundred fifty feet above the treetops, his target dead ahead at twelve o’clock. He flipped down his NOD’s and the green haze from his image-intensifying equipment, diffused by the wet lens, added to this surreal experience.
He descended slowly, sailing silently toward his objective waypoint, a spot just above the tiled roof of the massive dacha in the center of the target location.
He’d be involved in furious activity in moments, but for now there was little to do but hold the control bar steady and clear his mind to prepare himself for the unknowns of the impending op.
And, Court admitted to himself, there were a hell of a lot of unknowns.
He was not here by choice, although he was under contract. The man in the dacha at his target location, Gregor Sidorenko, was the head of a large and dangerous Bratva, or brotherhood of Russian mafia, and Sidorenko had spent the past year chasing Court, quite literally, to the ends of the earth, sparing no expense in the hunt.