A waiter bolted out of the kitchen with plates of breakfast entrees. Weng spotted a tray of glasses beside the door. He removed his phone, pretending like he was talking on it as the waiter returned. Weng jammed the phone in his pocket and hoisted up the tray of glasses. Holding them high to conceal his face. He picked up his briefcase with his free hand and pushed the door open, darting to the walk-in cooler. “Open the door. NOW,” he said into his concealed microphone.
The cooler door swung open, held by Matt. Weng entered and set the glasses down. “Does it lock?” Matt couldn’t see a lock. “Hold it closed.”
Weng worked quickly, popping the latches on his briefcase, which was completely empty. He removed the entire top section of the case of tomato sauce. It was a faux case. The top of it composed eight thin containers as thick as tuna fish cans. Each holding enough tomato sauce to pass for full cans if opened. Beneath the faux top, was a metal box with rounded sides resembling the tomato sauce cans. Inside, were two Type 06 9x19mm Chinese submachine guns with suppressors and 50 round helical magazines. Weng quickly put them inside the briefcase. He then removed two NORINCO CF-98 9mm sidearms, stuffing one inside his jacket and handing the other to Matt.
Weng replaced the faux top on the cans and hid the cart between shelves. Matt tore off his deliveryman coveralls, revealing a dark suit and tie underneath. Weng snapped the briefcase closed and they both left the walk-in cooler.
They headed toward the kitchen door, surprising a waiter who barreled through from the other side. Weng pretended to be lost, speaking in a thick Chinese accent. “Lestloom?” The waiter gave a puzzled look, then understood. Directing them toward the restroom. Weng bowed to him. He and Matt cut across the restaurant, headed back to the General Assembly building.
“Send up the overwatch,” Trest ordered Douglas.
“Yes, sir. AOD taxiing to runway now.”
The stealth drone pulled out of Hangar 302, guided by Douglas from the box. It wound through the taxi-way toward runway 25, and took off heading east. Cleared by the Holloman tower under the guise of a training mission, it banked north and climbed to ten thousand feet, beyond sight of anyone watching with a naked eye.
The image from the AOD’s camera showed the lone, sand-brown ground control station.
“AOD above and circling,” Douglas reported to Trest. “All clear.”
“SITREP Cobra-22?” McCreary inquired over his headset.
Hughes, call sign Cobra-22, split off from Ghost Two and Merrick, who was Cobra-24. Hughes quickly strode up a narrow hallway running along the east side of the General Assembly building. There were too many UN translators in the hall for the Force Recon Marine to reply to McCreary. Translators from all over the world arriving at their respective translation booths, overlooking the General Assembly.
“Repeat Cobra-22, SITREP?” buzzed in Hughes’s earpiece.
Hughes found the door to translation booth 101 and entered, closing it behind him. He popped open his briefcase, removing a military grade Door Jammer, fitting it in place so nobody could enter the translation booth. Trest reserved the booth through back channels to make it appear as though the Taiwan government requested it. Hughes stood in the small, dark room facing a large, plate-glass window, twenty feet above the General Assembly floor.
“Cobra-22 to Falcon. Just arrived at TB,” Hughes reported into his microphone. Quickly removing the collection of black steel components from his briefcase. Assembling them into a Remington five-piece .308 Concealable Sniper Rifle (CSR). He screwed a suppressor to the barrel of the rifle and expanded the bipod legs, setting it on the translator desk. Hughes peered through the scope, lining the reticle up on the empty podium facing the assembly.
Ambassadors were filing into the General Assembly, taking their seats. There was no speaker at the podium to serve as a stand-in for Hughes, so he angled the rifle up and to the side. Imagining a spot where the speaker’s head would be, inches away from the microphone.
Hughes went to the window, crouching below the sill to keep out of sight. He marked a dot on the lower corner of the glass. Eyeballing a path that lay between the tip of his barrel and the podium. He removed a small rubber suction cup and stuck it over the dot, then cut around it with his glass-cutting tactical pen. Holding the suction cup while he cut so the removed piece didn’t fall to the assembly below.
Hughes returned to the CSR and peered through the scope. The hole matched perfectly and would prevent the shattering of the large window. He pulled the bolt-action on his sniper rifle, slid it forward and locked it down. Injecting a .308 caliber round into the chamber. The CSR was ready to fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Weng strode calm and cool to the Chinese section of the General Assembly. Taking a seat in a padded tan chair beside the Chinese Ambassador. They were both in the row behind Weilen, who took the only seat at the desk allotted to China. Weng set the briefcase beside his feet, ready to open it at a moment’s notice.
Weng scanned the podium area and the shadowy corners beyond. The podium backdrop was dark-green marble, and also served as the front of the three-person booth of the General Secretary, overlooking the assembly. Behind the booth was a narrow golden section of the back wall with a massive seal of the United Nations. On both sides of the narrow gold section were curved, protruding walls made of brown rib-like slats. These arced around like an amphitheater, housing the translator booths overlooking the assembly. Rows of lights perched above the curved walls, shining down on the elevated podium platform. Weng saw nothing out of the ordinary. A radio transmission sounded over his earpiece in Chinese. “In place at the grid.” Weng’s eyes traveled up the brown-ribbed structure to the lighting grid above, but couldn’t detect his counterpart.
Matt crouched down near the grid out of the assembly view, inspecting the lights. He was looking for a spotlight that he could aim and point down on the assembly. Hal told him in the brief that the ghost suits were vulnerable to bright light. If Matt could sweep the light around the Chinese President, he might reveal the assassin before he reached the President.
“SITREP Cobra-24?”
Merrick appeared with a briefcase, entering the balcony section at the rear of the auditorium. A handful of delegates dotted the seats above the General Assembly. Merrick sat in the back row — setting the briefcase on the seat beside him — popping the latches. “In position,” he said in a soft voice through a concealed microphone in his lapel.
“Remember, secondary targets,” McCreary said. “Two and three.”
“Roger that.”
“Are they in place?”
A wooden gavel hammered down three times from the chair of the UN General Secretary.
“Negative,” Merrick said. “Coming to order.”
“Please take your seats,” the General Assembly President said. His voice booming over the assembly speakers in a South-African accent. “The one-hundred and twenty-second plenary meeting of the General Assembly is called to order…”
“Ghost Two, SITREP?” McCreary asked.
“In position.”
Two UN guards in decorative uniforms marched to the elevated podium. Taking statuesque positions facing the assembly. Frozen like toy soldiers.
“Secondary targets in place,” Merrick said over his microphone.
“Copy that.”
“Falcon to Cobra-22… Status of primary target?”