“Roger.”
Back up the bluff, Gil scanned the silhouetted terrain below. There was no light inside the house; not so much as a candle burning. “I can’t see much of anything from here,” he said. “It’s just too dark. Advise Ivan I’m moving in closer.”
He began to slither forward down the slope, knowing that if Kovalenko possessed even a chintzy nightscope, he was a dead man.
“Stop!” Midori said. “A man with a rifle just climbed out the opposite side of the house from Ivan.”
Gil backed into his hide among the brush. “What’s he doing?”
“Nothing. Just waiting.”
“Do I have line of sight from my position?”
“Negative,” she said. “He’s still around the corner. Ivan’s asking what he should do.”
“Tell him to hold position.” Gil knew that Dragunov would willingly defer to his judgment because he held the high ground. “We’ll give the situation time to develop.”
Inside the house, Kovalenko decided that his enemies did not have night vision capabilities. The badly wounded Tapa had voluntarily crept past the kitchen window three different times without taking a bullet. So Kovalenko sent Zargan out the side window with orders to stalk the American sniper. He understood they might be under infrared satellite surveillance, but there was simply no other choice.
“We have to put an end to this,” he said to Vitsin and two other Spetsnaz men. With Zargan outside now, there were only four of them left in the house, and though Tapa was bearing up well under incredible pain, he was fast losing what little remained of his combat effectiveness. “Either we fight our way out, or we die here on this fucking goat farm.”
“I’ll stay behind to cover your withdrawal,” Tapa said, holding a Kashtan submachine pistol against his leg, his right arm now bound tightly across his chest with a torn bedsheet.
Kovalenko patted him on the good shoulder, regretting having sacrificed him for a shot at Gil. He knew in his gut that the American was still out there and still very much alive, because the goats were still bleating in their pens, when they should have been bedded down for the night. “We’ll take you with us if we can. First, we have to find out whether we have an open avenue of escape.”
“Is it just me,” asked Anatoly, a Chechen born in Moscow, “or are the goats carrying on more these past couple of minutes?”
“It’s not you,” Kovalenko said. “They picked up just before Zargan went out the window. The enemy is near — probably around the blind side of the house. Get ready now. You’re next out.”
32
Midori’s dark eyes watched the giant plasma screen in front of her as Anatoly climbed out on the west side of the house, her shoulder-length black hair falling forward as she leaned in slightly. “A second man just climbed out the same window.”
“Roger,” Gil replied in her left ear.
In her right ear, she heard Dragunov rub his thumb over the mike in acknowledgment, realizing he wanted to remain completely silent now that two of the Spetsnaz were outside the house with him.
“Make sure you’re giving Ivan second-by-second updates,” Gil reminded her.
“Neither Chechen is moving,” she answered, her eyes fixed on the infrared heat signatures. “They’re facing north and south — both holding at the corners.”
The first man stepped cautiously past the corner of the house and held his position, scanning the terrain over the open sights of an AS Val, a Russian-made silenced automatic rifle in 9 mm.
“Gil, you’ve got line of sight on the first target. Can you see him?”
“Negative,” he said. “It’s all ink down there. You don’t have a giant spotlight on that satellite, do you?”
She smiled, running her fingers over the keyboard. “I’m going to see if I can help you another way. Adjust your aim as best you can, then hold position.”
“Roger.”
She watched as he adjusted the aim of the rifle barrel toward the corner of the house.
“That’s what feels best to me,” he said, “but I can’t really see the house.”
“Copy that,” she said. “You’re a few degrees off. Stand by.”
“Roger that.”
She heard the doubt in his tone, but that only made her all the more determined, quickly bringing up a trajectory overlay normally used for aiming artillery rounds and placing it over the video feed. She then right-clicked on the Spetsnaz man and — zooming in for the best resolution — drew a straight line to the bolt on Gil’s rifle.
“Gil, adjust three degrees left.”
She watched as he overadjusted slightly, keeping her eye on a separate screen to make sure the target hadn’t moved. “Now half a degree back to the right.”
Gil adjusted a fraction of a degree, and the barrel came perfectly in line with the line she had drawn across the screen. “Your horizontal aim is perfect,” she said. “How do you think you are on the vertical?”
“Feels good. I’ve been holding this angle all day.”
“In that case, you should be clear to fire.”
Gil didn’t hesitate. She saw the rifle buck against his shoulder and the heat signature of the gasses expelled from the end of the suppressor. In the other screen, the Spetsnaz man flew backward off his feet, writhing on the ground for a moment and then falling still.
“Target down!” she said as the second Spetsnaz man turned and moved toward his downed compatriot. “Ivan! If you move fast around the north side, you can take the second man from behind!”
Dragunov didn’t hesitate, either. She watched him take off around the front of the house, rounding the far corner as Anatoly was pulling Zargan into the lee of the building. He fired twice, with both hands gripping the 1911 before him. Anatoly sprawled forward onto his face, and Dragunov danced away again, sprinting back around the front of the house to return to the safety of the blind side.
“Better than a video game!” his gravelly voice growled excitedly in her right ear.
Midori grinned. “Nice shooting, boys. Two tangos down. Gil, Ivan is back in position.”
“You’re a natural, Midori. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Pope was there watching over your shoulder.”
She glanced over her left shoulder to see Pope smiling at her from the corner, propped up in a hospital chair, flanked on either side by General Couture and White House Chief of Staff Brooks. A pair of navy male nurses sat nearby, monitoring Pope’s vital signs. They had arrived ten minutes before the sun set on Sicily.
“Look there,” Pope said quietly, pointing up at a second bank of monitors.
She looked up at a wider angle of the surrounding countryside. A car with a light bar on the roof was coming quickly up the road. “Master Chief, there’s a patrol car approaching fast a quarter mile from the east. I’m guessing they must have heard Ivan’s pistol shots.”
“Marvelous,” Gil replied.
33
“What the hell is going on out there?” Kovalenko snarled.
Vitsin threw himself against the wall to the right of the window, stealing a quick glance outside to see Anatoly’s body sprawled over Zargan’s. “They’re both dead!”
Without warning, Tapa burst out the back door, headed for the blindside of the house with the submachine pistol thrust before him. Without morphine, his pain had begun to increase exponentially over the past few minutes, and he knew that within the hour, he would be completely useless. It was better to die in combat than to have to be killed by his comrades.