The Sniper ignored him, his entire essence focused on the target. Lights were going on in the compound, which meant whoever was in the plane had alerted the guards. There wasn’t any more time.
The Sniper squeezed the trigger.
The sub-sonic round raced down the barrel, through the sound suppressor and through the night sky. It punched through the thin plywood wall of the building and hit the target in the side of the head, taking most of his skull with it as it continued across the room and buried itself in the rough wood floor.
The Sniper was on his feet, breaking the rifle down.
The light turned green and Gant stepped off into the darkness as the load-master shoved the pallet. Barely two seconds after leaving the aircraft, Gant’s chute snapped open, jarring him.
He barely had time to glance down, note the ground was coming up fast, get his body into landing position: feet and knees together, knees slight bent, elbows rotated in front of his face as his hands pulled on the risers to try to slow his descent.
Gant slammed into the ground, the impact up the right side of his body until he came to a halt, breathing hard. He took that split second to savor being alive, then he quickly got to his feet and unbuckled his harness. He put on night vision goggles and scanned the area for the pallet. He spotted the other parachute about forty feet away and he made his way toward it, his MP-5 sub-machinegun at the ready.
The small plug in his ear came alive with the information that the warlord had been shot. For Gant that was good news, confirming that the two thermal images he had spotted were indeed his targets. He nodded as he reached the padded pallet with the motorcycle strapped on top of it. The targets were close.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
In the Cellar, the radio traffic from Maine was being relayed by the Combat Talon through secure Milstar satellites to the small speakers set in the room’s ceiling. Nero was back from his treatments. He used to take them in the office, but now that it was Ms. Masterson’s domain, he had agreed to take them in the small room in back of the office that was his inner sanctum. The doctor and nurse had just left, the door swinging securely shut behind them and he had returned to the front room.
Nero was coughing as he lay on the couch, his lungs laboring to draw air in. Hannah Masterson was perfectly still in her chair, listening as the Talon reported that Gant was away cleanly and the aircraft was taking up a racetrack over the targets in order to relay their thermal position to Gant.
“Very good work,” Nero said when he finally got the coughing spate under control.
“Nothing has been achieved yet,” Masterson said.
“Where is Neeley?” Nero asked.
“Gant sent her to Alabama to look at the latest cache site.”
“Now that was a mistake,” Nero said. “Bailey was there.”
“Yes, it was a mistake,” Masterson agreed. “He still has too much of the Lone Ranger in him. It was a subconscious reaction toward Ms. Neeley. He has the same problem with Doctor Golden. I discussed it with him just a little while ago.”
“And how did Mister Gant react to the discussion?”
“If he survives this contact, we’ll find out.”
Gant kick-started the dirt bike and revved the engine. He wasn’t going to sneak up on the targets riding the noisy machine, but he didn’t need to sneak nor did he need to track. The eye in the sky and orbiting satellites would do the tracking for him. He turned on the small GPS display set on top of the center of the handlebars. It was up-linked to the aircraft and satellites circling overhead. The back-lit screen came alive, took a few seconds to access both the orbiting GPS satellites to fix his position, and synch into the transmission from the Talon, which was tracking the people on the ground using its thermals.
A small flashing dot appeared in the very center. Gant’s own position. He twisted the throttle, keeping the clutch in neutral, anxious to get going. Two tiny red dots appeared — the targets. A line across the bottom displayed the barely visibly direction and azimuth to the targets: Bearing 160 degrees. Range 3,740 meters.
As he watched, the two dots crept across the screen slowly, moving southwest. Gant looked up. Through the night vision goggles, he could see a dirt road along the edge of the clearing, a lighter line against the dark black background of the thick forest. He raced toward it, and then turned south.
“Immediately inform me if the targets stop moving,” Gant ordered, the throat mike transmitting the message to the orbiting Talon. The last thing he wanted to do was race up on a sniper who was ready to shoot. And he couldn’t keep watching the GPS and drive at the same time.
“Roger that.”
“Status of reaction force from the encampment?” Gant asked.
“Two boats are shore-bound from the island. We are in contact with them and will coordinate to prevent fratricide. We’ll put them on your GPS as soon as they are on the ground and live on their own vehicle GPS.”
“Link me to them on this frequency,” Gant ordered.
“Roger that. You are call sign Alpha One. They will be Bravo Two. Over.”
There was a crackle of static, then the voice was back. “Bravo Two, you’ve got Alpha One on the net. Over.”
“Who the hell are you?” a new voice demanded, the lack of proper radio etiquette indicating the degree of confusion.
“This is Alpha One,” Gant said. “I radioed you from the air and am now on the ground on motorcycle in search of two targets. They are trained Special Operations soldiers, one a sniper. So approach with great caution. Over.”
“No shit. They just shot one of our detainees through the head inside his room. What the fuck is going on?” There was a short pause. “Over.”
“The two targets are our mission,” Gants said. “We would like one taken alive, the other can be eliminated. Over.”
There was a longer pause. “You mean killed? Over.”
“Roger that.”
“Fuck. Will comply. But why take one alive?”
“Do it,” Gant snapped.
Gant goosed the motorcycle and crested a slight bump in the road. The trail descended into a narrow lane in the forest, the lighter line of the dirt trail turning darker. He did not like the look of that. “Talon, azimuth and distance to targets?”
“One five two degrees. Two thousand, three hundred and six meters. They are still on the move on foot. Over.”
Gant accelerated down into the thick Maine forest. The trail wasn’t taking him directly toward them but it was closing the gap.
“This is Bravo Two. We are on land and mounting our vehicles. We have one Humvee and one Ford F-150 pickup. We are heading toward the targets. Sounds like they’re heading for the main logging road that heads for the hard-top state road. We are up-linking with Talon now on GPS. Over.”
Gant pushed his speed, knowing that the targets had to have a vehicle parked near the logging road. If this were a normal police procedure, it would be the time to call the State Troopers and the local Sheriffs. Have road-blocks set up. But if this were normal Gant wouldn’t be here and the Cellar wouldn’t be involved. And if he made that call, there would be many local people grieving in the morning over the loss of their loved ones. Also, he doubted that the locals could take one of the two alive — the incident in Virginia had proven that the targets were more than willing to give up their lives.
This was the Cellar’s job. His job. He’d have one shot at it.
“We’re mounted,” the CIA reaction force team leader announced. “We’re heading for the logging road. Over.”
“Can you interdict?” Gant asked.
“We’ll know that when we get there. Depends how quick they get to their vehicles. Why did they do this? Who are these guys?”