The kiln’s diameter was tall enough to stand in, but Avery still instinctively moved at a half-crouch, head down, with his M4 leading the way into the seemingly endless darkness of the tunnel. Poacher and Flounder were behind him at four foot intervals, with Flounder frequently swinging his HK416 back around to check their six an instinctive but unnecessary check, since Mockingbird or Reaper would have alerted them to anyone following them down the shaft. They covered the distance as quickly as they could without having the sounds of their footfalls bounce off the interior of the tube and into the factory.
01:04. The team reached the end of the kiln, which came to an abrupt dead end five feet in front of an open space in the floor. Looking down, Avery saw that the surface of the tunnel dropped straight down into the clinker cooler. He once more fastened his rifle to his vest.
Pressing his hands to the walls of the shaft, Avery carefully and silently lowered his weight into the cooler tank, then crept slowly forward the length of the tank and got down on one knee near the flimsy rubber flaps that led directly onto the idle conveyor belt which ran across the main floor of the factory interior.
Avery withdrew his silenced Mk 23 SOCOM pistol from its holster and leaned forward to peer through the flaps. The air seeping through felt cold and sterile, with a metallic taste. He heard voices chattering somewhere inside, the scraping of metal on metal, and the high pitched shrieking whine of power tools, but he saw no one from his limited, obscured vantage point.
Once the tools powered down, Avery tilted his head, held his breath, and opened his jaw slightly to hear better and concentrated on the voices. It sounded like rapid-fire Dari. Several seconds later, from another direction, he heard a smattering of Russian, which was answered with laughter.
A couple minutes later, Mockingbird hit the transmit button ten times in two second intervals, indicating that he’d made a sweep around the exterior of the building with Avery’s Radar Scope II and detected ten occupants on the ground level.
Avery raised a hand and motioned for Flounder to come over to him.
From a compartment on his vest, Flounder extracted the thin, flexible fiber-optic cable with a fisheye camera in the tip. Imperceptibly slow, he moved the cable between and barely past two of the flaps, careful so as not to disturb them and create movement, and panned left to right.
Avery and Poacher huddled close to see Flounder’s small handheld monitor.
To the right of the conveyor belt, about twenty-feet away, they watched four dark-skinned Pakistanis in lab coats, including one they immediately recognized as Ali Masood Jafari, working on a milling machine. There were many industrial grade machine tools. Avery couldn’t identify all of the equipment. Much of it was probably dual-use and legitimately purchased. A couple workstations were contained within a glass compartment, accessed by an airlock, with a decontamination station, and there several hazardous materials suits hung near the entrance.
Flounder continued panning the camera and stopped on two Russians standing nearby. One had an SR-3 submachine gun hanging casually from a sling around his shoulder. The second had a pistol holstered at his hip. They watched over the Pakistanis from a distance, giving them space to work. The Russians had relaxed posture, but they looked focused and alert. They weren’t going to become complacent and lazy from long guard duty.
There were also three Afghans or Uzbeks, with beards, craggy faces, steely eyes, and black turbans. Two had pistols; one had a rifle slung over his shoulder.
Flounder continued sweeping the assembly floor with the fisheye camera, but, given the poor line of sight his current position offered, he couldn’t locate the HEU containers. That was possibly a good sign. It meant they were still working to bring the weapons assembly plant online and were not yet ready to start making weapons. The canisters were probably still sealed and in storage somewhere.
Suddenly, a new voice resonated, this one distant and speaking Ukrainian-accented Russian. One of the Pakistanis gave a startled jump, looked over his shoulder, and gave an irritated scowl. Flounder moved the cable, following the Pakistani’s line of sight to a tall, wide man with a mustache and angular face who had just come down the metal staircase in the far corner of the assembly floor.
It was Aleksander Litvin.
Avery felt his blood simmer. His finger tensed over the SOCOM pistol’s trigger. His visceral reaction arose mostly from the prospect that Cramer would not be far behind Litvin, and Avery had to calm himself so that he didn’t do something impulsive, but the seconds passed and the American traitor never appeared.
Instead, Litvin was accompanied by another unpleasantly familiar face.
Mullah Arzad sported his ever present scowl as he hurried past Litvin to get an update from Ali Jafari. Litvin and Arzad looked satisfied with what they heard from the Pakistani scientist, and, after several more minutes, Litvin yawned and disappeared back up the stairs, leaving Mullah Arzad and the others on the assembly floor.
01:30. Four minutes after Litvin stepped away, Avery hand signaled to Poacher and Flounder to prepare for entry. They’d execute a silent take-down of the main level, then, with their silenced weapons, they could perform a stealth sweep over the next two levels. They didn’t have the manpower to take any prisoners. Anyone they encountered was a dead man.
Avery made sure that his M4 and other gear were securely fastened to his vest, so that nothing would rattle around or get snagged on anything as he slipped through narrow entrance into the mill building. It would be too cumbersome maneuvering with the rifle through the narrow space going from the cooling tank onto the convey belt, so he was going to use the SOCOM pistol for the takedown. Besides, the silenced pistol was a hell of a lot quieter than the rifle, and all of the targets were within a hundred feet, half of them unarmed.
Avery studied the feed on Flounder’s handheld monitor, and then peered back through the flaps, acclimating himself to the layout of the factory floor and the positions of the tangos, especially the two armed Russians, who, from where they stood, would easily see the first man making entry. The Russians needed to be taken out first. They’d be the best Litvin had to offer, KGB- and spetsnaz-trained. Avery didn’t imagine that the Pakistani scientists and technicians would be armed. The Afghan and Uzbek fighters were the second priority threat.
Avery nodded to Flounder, who then shut the surveillance gear down, replaced the items on his vest, and switched to his own SOCOM pistol. The expression on Flounder’s face showed that he’d mentally made the switch to combat mode and was ready to kill.
So was Avery, just like before going into the terrorist safe house in Yazgulam. Everything else, including Cramer, was far removed from his thoughts. Squatting, on the balls of his feet, ready to pounce, Avery positioned himself just behind the dangling flaps, with his finger indexed over the Mk 23’s trigger guard.
Poacher held up his hand with upright fingers and counted off five seconds.
Avery launched himself through the flaps onto the conveyor belt.
An alert Russian saw him immediately, and Avery dropped him with two fast subsonic .45 hollow points to the face before the Russian’s brain could process what his eyes saw and transmit the proper signal to his gun hand or to his mouth.
Avery jumped off the stationary conveyor belt onto the floor, with Poacher coming through the flaps right behind him, as the second Russian swung his SR-3 in their direction, and someone shouted something in Pashtu. Avery and Poacher both took up aim and fired until the Russian hit the floor.