“Romeo Two, this is Charlie Two, over.”
“Romeo Two, go.”
“Be advised, we have two sentries on the roof.”
Nine hundred fifty feet above the LCC roof, Ding Chavez wanted to reply to the German-accented spotter that he couldn’t see shit. Only the GPS on his arm was directing him toward his target. It was down there somewhere, and he’d deal with any shitheads on the roof when he got there. Unless … “Charlie Two, Romeo Two. I’m not going to see those guys till I land on them. Are you in position to engage?”
Back on the ground, the sniper shook his head, and the spotter replied on his behalf, “Not at this point, Romeo, but we’re trying to get a target.”
“Roger that.”
Chavez felt for the UMP on his chest. It was there, in position, right over his body armor. He’d have to use it as soon as his feet touched the roof.
If his feet touched the roof. If he missed the roof, if some miscalculation took him off course or if some low-level gust pushed him away at the last second, then the entire mission would be in serious jeopardy.
And if a gust came at the wrong time, pushing Ding to the eastern parking lot, where the big chopping rotor blades of the Mi-8 were spinning, Chavez would not stand a chance.
He checked his altimeter and his GPS and then pulled his toggles, adjusting the canopy of his ram-air chute above him to turn him slightly to the south.
At 10:30 on the nose, the Mi-8 approached the LCC. Safronov was still watching the video comm link to the helicopter, and Nabiyev saw the big bunker-looking building with the large bright lights on the roof. He took the camera from the cameraman and positioned it against the window so that Safronov himself could see. Georgi told Israpil that he would meet him inside the front door in minutes, and then Georgi ran out of the launch control center with several of his men. They descended the stairs, crossed the dark entry hall, and opened the blast-proof iron doors.
Four Jamaat Shariat gunmen took positions in the open doorway, but Georgi himself stood to the side; he only looked around the iron door, lest someone lurking out in the snow try and take a shot at him.
Behind them the foreign prisoners were led into the hall, then huddled against the wall by two guards.
The Russian helicopter landed at the far end of the parking lot, seventy yards from the blast-proof doors of the LCC, directly in the spotlight beams from the roof.
Safronov looked out the door into the swirling snow illuminated by the lights. He radioed his men on the roof and told them to be ready for anything, and to not forget to keep an eye out toward the back of the building as well.
The small side door of the chopper opened, and a bearded man in a hat and coat appeared. He covered his eyes against the light and slowly began walking across the hard-packed snow in the parking lot.
Georgi was already thinking about what he would say to the military commander of Jamaat Shariat. He would need to make certain the man had not been brainwashed, even though he had noticed no evidence of that in their previous conversations.
Chavez watched the chopper land, then turned his focus back to the roof of the LCC, two hundred feet below his boots. He would make his landing, thank God, though he would land faster and harder than he wanted. As he descended with a sharp bank to the south he made out one … two sentries posted there.
One hundred fifty feet down.
Just then the roof access door opened below him, sending more light across the roof. A third terrorist came through the door.
Fuck, thought Chavez. Three tangos, each on a different compass point from his landing site. He’d have to take them in rapid succession, nearly impossible when dealing with a rough landing, spotty lighting, and a weapon that he could not even bring to bear until he cut away from his canopy before it pulled him over the side of the roof.
One hundred feet.
Just then, Ding’s headset came to life.
“Romeo Two, Charlie Two. Have one target in sight on northwestern roof. Will engage on your command.”
“Waste him.”
“Repeat last command?”
Fucking Germans. “Engage.”
“Roger, engaging.”
Chavez turned all focus away from the man on the northwestern portion of the roof. That was no longer his responsibility. If the sniper missed, well, then Ding was fucked, but he couldn’t think about that now.
Twenty feet.
Chavez flared his chute and landed at a sprint. He kept running, pulled the disconnect ring on his chute and felt it drop free from his body. He grabbed his suppressed HK and spun toward the man at the access door. The terrorist had already lifted his Kalashnikov in Ding’s direction. Chavez dropped to the roof, rolled over his left shoulder, and came out of his roll on his knees.
He fired a three-round burst, catching the bearded terrorist in the throat. The AK flipped into the air, and the tango fell back into the doorway.
The suppressed gunfire, while certainly not silent, would not be heard over the sound of the Mi-8’s rotors.
Ding had already shifted focus to the right. As his eyes spun, he caught a distant unfocused image of a sentry on the northwest corner as his weapon rose, and then the left side of the sentry’s head exploded and the man dropped where he stood.
Chavez focused, though, on the man at the eastern portion of the roof now, just twenty-five feet or so from where the American knelt. The terrorist did not have a weapon up, though he was looking right into Ding’s eyes. As the Dagestani struggled to bring his sights to this new target who had just dropped out of the night sky, he shouted in fear.
Domingo Chavez, Romeo Two, double-tapped the man with two .45-caliber rounds to the forehead. The man backpedaled a few steps as he fell.
Ding stood, relaxed just slightly now that the last threat had been dealt with, and he reached for a fresh magazine for his UMP. While doing so he watched the stumbling sentry, waiting for him to fall onto the cold concrete roof.
But the dead man’s body had other plans. His rearward momentum continued to carry him back, and Chavez recognized in an instant of horror that the body would fall off the roof. He would land in a heap right in front of the door below, right in the lights illuminating the man walking from the chopper.
“Shit!” Chavez sprinted across the roof, desperate to catch the sentry before he tumbled off and gave away the entire operation right at its most vulnerable point.
Ding let go of his HK, launched off the ground, and in the air he reached at full extension for the dead man’s uniform.
The Jamaat Shariat gunman fell backward over the edge of the roof.
79
Israpil Nabiyev climbed out of the helicopter and stepped into the light. Before him the huge building sat in the snow. The thirty-two-year-old Jamaat Shariat leader squinted and took a step on the hard snow, then another, each step bringing him closer to the freedom that he had sought for these many long months he’d been held prisoner.
The butt of a rifle struck Nabiyev in the back of the head, sending him tumbling onto the snow. The blow dazed him, but he climbed back up to his knees, tried to get up and walk again, but two of the guards from the helicopter grabbed him from behind and secured his wrists with metal cuffs. They turned him around and pushed him back onto the chopper.
“Not today, Nabiyev,” one of the men said over the whine of the helicopter engines. “The LCC for the Rokot system looks a lot like the LCC for the Dnepr system, doesn’t it?”