Again, he made the adjustment, controlled the breath, caressed the trigger. The red and yellow figure in his sight visibly slumped down, and although Cole couldn’t be sure where the bullet had entered, he knew it had struck home — and if it had struck home, the man would be dead, it was as simple as that.
Four thousand feet. Third target … Target down.
Three thousand feet. Fourth target … Target down.
Two thousand feet. Fifth target … Target down.
One thousand feet. Sixth target.
Cole was close now, dangerously close, and even though the weapon was suppressed, even the racking of the bolt was enough to give position away, travelling uninterrupted across the cool night sky.
When the final bullet racked home into the chamber, he saw the figure twitch on the floor. He had heard something, and was searching for the source of the sound.
Left, right, the sentry looked but could not identify the location.
Cole adjusted the sight, took aim, controlled the breath, the last figure large in his sight now, clear; and then the man looked up, and Cole caressed the trigger once more and watched in the eerie glow of the night vision device as the powerful Magnum bullet entered through the sentry’s mouth, down through his throat, and out of his back, and Cole could see the hot wet mass of the man’s organs spread over the forest floor.
Target down.
50
Cole had no time to rest on his laurels, letting the sniper rifle swing down on its sling as he grabbed the steering straps of the chute and pulled sharply to the left, drifting back over the tree tops.
There had been no reaction from the six figures around the grounds yet, and so Cole was confident he had not been discovered.
He was all too aware though that if the snipers didn’t check in, or if others were being sent to relieve them, their deaths would soon be discovered. And so even though Cole might ordinarily have favoured a more subtle approach, in this particular instance he quickly decided that bold aggression would have to be the order of the day.
Retrieving his silenced H&K submachine gun from the covered pouch by his side, he pulled it across the front of his body even as his hands went up to the parachute release straps.
He was just three hundred feet above the deep snow of Steinemeier’s large, open lawn.
51
Jeff Duncombe crunched through the deep, crystalline snow that seemed to cover every damn square inch of this forsaken wilderness.
He knew it was only just outside Innsbruck, but it might as well have been the frozen Arctic, and he exhaled slowly into the cold air, seeing his breath come out as steam in front of him.
He watched it drift slowly up into the black sky above him, and then he saw it — large, rectangular, coming down from the sky like a giant bat.
What the fuck?
Cole dropped from his harness at just twenty feet from the ground, night-vision goggles back on, sniper rifle now discarded, pulling up his H&K and shooting the first guard through the throat even before he landed, feet burying deep into the snow.
He turned on the spot, firing a rapid double tap into the forehead of another sentry off to his left, then turned again and caught the third man in the face with two more controlled rounds, the fuzzy red image flying back into the strange green, alien landscape described by the goggles.
Cole raced forward as the fourth man, fifty yards over to the left, started to react, and shot him with a short burst of full auto directly into his centre mass, dropping him instantly.
Cole continued moving forward as the parachute continued to fall the last few feet, four men already dead before it had even touched the ground.
Unsuppressed automatic gunfire broke out from the two far corners of the building, and Cole turned and saw the two remaining outside guards firing towards him from behind cover.
Cole saw a large wooden shelter off to one side, and dove over to it, hiding behind the thick walls as dozens of 9mm rounds drummed into the surface.
He then heard shouts from inside the house, and knew he couldn’t afford to wait any longer. He jumped up at the gap between the low wall and the shelter’s roof, submachine gun raised, and then there was a loud clang and a sudden burst of intense light.
Ducking back down behind the wall, the anti-glare function of the goggles just managed to catch it in time to save his eyes, but the goggles were now useless as the entire outdoor security lighting system came on, obviously operated by someone inside the building.
He discarded the goggles, blinked once, twice, and then burst up again, this time opening fire towards the left, catching the guard as he peered out from the corner, one of Cole’s bullets tearing through the man’s cheek.
He checked right in time to see the last man duck back behind the wall of the corner of the house, and then the front of his field shelter erupted in a hail of gunfire, directed from above and to the front.
Cole risked a quick glance and saw four men shooting down on him from open windows on the second floor.
Shit.
He was about sixty yards to the house by his reckoning, a distance a good sprinter could cover in just six seconds. With his weapons and equipment, however, it would take him more than twice that long, which would be much longer than the shooters would need to kill him.
He sank down and controlled his breathing, and then removed three thermal grenades from his tactical belt rig.
He exhaled quickly and violently and pulled all four pins in rapid succession, rising up and throwing them, one to the right corner, the other three towards the first floor windows, hoping his family weren’t in the same room as the shooters.
Not wasting any time at all, he scooted out of the shelter and broke into a full sprint towards the house, even as he heard the muffled whumpf as the thermal grenades exploded and felt the warmth of the incendiary flames flick at his exposed face.
He heard the shattering of windows above him, and saw with satisfaction the burning body of the sixth exterior guard staggering away from the corner of the building, trying to roll himself across the snow to put out the flames.
And then he was at the rear French doors, and with a heavy kick, the doors were smashed open, and Cole was inside.
Both Dan Albright and Stefan now knew he was there, but it didn’t matter.
He had made it to the house, and both men would soon be dead.
52
Cole swept rapidly through the living area, until movement to his right made him turn, the submachine gun an extension of him that tracked around with him, the trigger depressing almost of its own accord, releasing two subsonic rounds that flew across the room into another agent’s jaw, smashing through the inside of the head and out of the back of the skull on the other side.
The second man, following his partner through, was momentarily blinded by the spray of thick blood, bone and brain matter, and Cole used the distraction to fire another double tap straight between his blood-stained eyes.
Sweeping the weapon in tight arcs, Cole moved through the first floor areas, clearing each room in turn.
At the door, enter from the closed side fast and hard, sweep left to right, weapon tracking smoothly, ready to engage, just as he had learnt in his initially SEAL training over two decades before. Clear! sounded the mental confirmation in his head as each room was passed through, until he was at the foot of the stairs.