23:06. From the hills on the south, the team dug in, lay completely still, and observed the facility. After thirty minutes, the two men in the tower were relieved, and Avery and Poacher decided to bid their time before moving against the target, since a fresh set of eyes would be more alert and not yet have grown complacent.
After several minutes, one of the men in the tower raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth, said something, and waited for a response. So there was someone still awake inside the facility who the guards were communicating with.
Continued observation, however, indicated that the guards did not appear to check in with anyone on a regular basis, and they didn’t see either of the guards use a radio in the twenty minutes that transpired next.
During this time, another pair of men, one of them brandishing an AK, emerged from the mill and did a patrol around the factory grounds. They stayed within the perimeter of the twelve-foot high chain-link fence.
When the roving guards came around the south end of the fence, their voices carried through the still air to the hills. They spoke Uzbek with a smattering of Russian. IMU mercenaries that comprised the elite of the Taliban’s ranks, and they probably had Russian/Soviet army training, too.
00:38. Reaper remained behind, maintaining his sniper’s perch, and covered his teammates’ approach as they descended the rocky hills quickly and carefully, taking precise, deliberate movements so as not to kick any loose rocks, while staying within shadows. Reaper watched over them, keeping a bead on the two guards in the tower through his rifle’s Hensoldt 6 x 42 scope, which was adjustable and accurate out to six hundred meters.
Once they breached the outside of the fence, Avery and the others would still have to cover the distance to the kiln, and that was an area with large swatches of land illuminated by lamps. It would be nearly impossible for the guards in the tower, if they were halfway alert, not to see the intruders. So, Reaper patiently awaited the signal to drop the two guards, or, if it appeared they had spotted the team, he’d take them out immediately, hopefully before they could raise the alarm.
00:57. Avery stopped at the bottom of the rocky hills in a low gully, where the shadows and hills still provided adequate concealment. Sixty feet of clear, flat land lay between them and the fence. They’d be out in the open and exposed, and it was a bright night. If nothing else, the men in the tower, if they were looking, would at least see dark shapes scurrying across the land below them.
00:59:27. Poacher pressed the push-to-talk clipped on his vest near his left shoulder three times with a two second break between each transmission, the signal to Reaper to execute.
Reaper passed his scope’s illuminated reticle over the first guard in the tower, who leaned forward with his arms resting against the platform’s railing, gazing into the Tajik countryside. Reaper centered his crosshairs over the man’s bearded face. The second guard stood four feet away, his back slightly half turned to his partner, smoking a cigarette, totally ignorant to the fact that he had precious seconds left to live his life.
The pad of Reaper’s index finger firmly tapped the trigger, pressing it back until the striker ignited the cartridge’s primer. His shoulder absorbed the subsequent recoil as the stock forcefully kicked back. He caught a quick glimpse of the hole bursting open in the space between the Afghan’s nose and upper lip, while blood, bone, and brains exploded out the back of his head. As the body dropped, Reaper shifted his aim, acquired his next target, and blasted the wide-eyed, dumbfounded expression off the second guard’s face as the man raised his walkie-talkie toward his mouth. The cigarette dropped from his lips, and he landed on top of it.
The MSG-90’s suppressor reduced the muzzle flash sufficiently that no one could possibly have seen it unless their eyes were fixated directly on Reaper’s position when he pulled the trigger, and the silencer rendered the rifle’s report inaudible to anyone inside the target building, although Avery and the Sideshow operators, in the hills below, still faintly heard it.
Reaper hit the transmit button twice, signaling that both targets were down, indicating that they were clear to proceed.
Avery immediately popped up from the gully and broke into a full-out sprint. He quickly covered the distance to the perimeter fence, tracked for threats through his rifle’s sights, and hand-signaled for Poacher, who dashed over. Flounder was next, followed by Mockingbird.
Meanwhile, Reaper scanned the facility through the lens of his scope, pausing over the heavy front doors of the mill building, the vehicle entrance, and the tower’s scaffoldings, looking out for more targets to emerge and finding none. No additional lights lit up, no sirens blazed, and no armed guards came rushing out in frenzy. The plant was still and quiet and it seemed no one inside had been alerted to the kills.
Now they needed to act fast, before anyone tried to raise the dead guards on the radio or someone walked by and noticed they were down.
00:59:54. Reaching the fence, Avery dropped into a low crouch in the darkness. Coming up beside him, Poacher pulled a pair of mini bolt cutters from his vest. He quickly snipped the links one at a time, starting near the ground and going up and over in an arc, then he ripped the section of fence out with his hand.
With Mockingbird covering them with his HK416, Avery immediately slipped through the hole in the fence and dashed across the ten meter distance to the rotary kiln in a half-crouch. Avery’s body wasn’t moving as easily as when he functioned at a hundred percent, and he pushed his legs harder. His breathing was labored, and he felt slow and heavy, but there was no going back now.
With his back flattened against the kiln, Avery covered the others with his M4 until they reached his position. Then he snapped his rifle onto his vest’s harness, and Poacher gave him a boost up the outer wall of the eight foot tall cylindrical material feed shaft. Avery’s gloved fingers just barely graced the edge. He squeezed hard to compensate for the poor grip and muscled his weight onto the top shaft, swung one leg over, and rested there. He leaned forward, the movement sending waves of fresh pain coursing through his chest, to reach down and help Poacher up.
Both men then hauled Flounder, easily the heaviest and least agile man on the team, up the side of the shaft, while Mockingbird kept his back against the base of the tower, HK416 shouldered, and kept a lookout until all of the team had dropped into the dark space of the shaft one by one.
01:02. Avery let his legs absorb the impact as he dropped into the shaft, a little less gracefully than he had intended. He shouldered his M4, switched on his rifle’s night optic image intensifier, and peered through the scope down the length of the tube. They didn’t use tactical lights, which could potentially give away their position to the enemy, if any were present in the mill building. He stepped forward into the thick darkness of the rotary kiln, and heard Poacher drop down the shaft behind him.
The air in the kiln was dry, heavy, and smelled of old gas. It was like being inside an old, unwashed oven, but hopefully no one turned on the heat or decided to pour a couple hundred tons of slurry from the mixing tower through the kiln. Rocks and pebbles crunched beneath their feet and scrapped across the kiln’s surface, sounding like fingernails on a chalkboard, so Avery lifted his feet high with each step, to avoid kicking more rocks and debris around.