As hot as the day had been, and it had been nearly life threatening, despite the shade of the nets, the night was bitter. Konstantin shivered despite himself and despite the robes he wore over his battle dress. And the breeze didn't help. Unconsciously he pulled his headdress tighter to him, at the same time pressing on the earpiece cum microphone he wore, as did his men.
'Browned skin and contacts, fake beards or not, we're going to stand out like sore thumbs, you know,' Galkin said, holding up his rifle for emphasis. This close, it was easy enough to see both, despite the dust laden breeze, blowing out of the northeast from Saudi Arabia's Rub al Khali, or Empty Quarter.
The Romans had called the place, 'Arabia Felix,' Happy Arabia, this based on the income from harvesting and trading incense, as well as trade generally. Sadly, the bottom had nearly dropped out from the frankincense and myrrh markets many centuries past, while, conversely, the market in oil, which Yemen didn't have much of, had grown enormously in decades recent. Thus, while Saudis may have tooled around the desert in four-wheel drive Mercedes, it was more common to see Yemenis on dirt bikes doing the same. Or hearing them.
Seeing but not hearing them would have been considered odd. That was one of the little weaknesses to the plan. Konstantin had accepted the weakness as necessary if he were going to be able to get to Yusuf's palace close enough, which meant quietly enough, to do the job in time to get picked up and brought home. His dirtbikes were as silent as the weapons his men carried.
Still, as long as the viewer was some distance away, then the procession of keffiyeh-covered, dishdasha- clothed men, with their robes hiked up around their waists, probably wouldn't invite much comment or attention.
And the arms they carried, that couldn't be hidden under robes?
'Oh, hell, this isn't Europe, or even Russia; everybody in Yemen who isn't a slave carries a rifle,' Baluyev answered Galkin's objection. 'Besides, it's dark.'
'Even some of the slaves are armed,' Konstantin said, 'depending on how trusted they are.'
'See? Even the slaves.' Baluyev stopped for a moment, a curse on his lips. 'Fuck; when did we get so used to using expressions like ‘even the slaves'?'
Konstantin shrugged. Who knew, after all? It wasn't as if the institution had ever gone out of style completely. Why, in the heyday of the Soviet Union virtually everyone in it or controlled by it had been a slave.
'Never mind,' the major said. 'We have this job to do, now. Maybe someday we can do something about some other problems. Maybe.'
The shocks made more noise than the engines, squeaking in outraged protest as the dirtbikes slammed down onto the sand after skipping over the tops of dunes. The breeze had died down, though it left a great deal of dust hanging in the air. And it was still cold.
We look so much like Arabs, thought Konstantin, who loathed Islamics on general principle and had since Afghanistan, that the only way we could look more Arabic is if I have everyone stop and fuck Galkin.
I don't think that's necessary, though. Besides, even if it's a fair approximation of Islamics, it's unfair to Galkin.
That this might not have been fair to the Islamics, either, bothered the major not at all. He really didn't like, rather he utterly loathed, the religion and all its followers. Only solid self-discipline let him work with them at all. And he avoided that where possible. He hadn't, for example, taken the Arabic speaker Stauer had offered him.
Konstantin took one hand away from the handlebars and checked his wrist-mounted GPS. Yes, the old man had thoughtfully sent them receivers for GLONASS, the Russian system. No, thank you, Chief. I'll use the Americans' system. They seem able to keep more than a dozen satellites operational at any one time, something we have signally failed at doing.
Putting his hand back on the handlebars, Konstantin slowed, then slowed some more. He spotted the palace-and this was a real palace, large, imposing, and decorated to the point of tackiness and beyond-through the dust, some five kilometers distant. It was brightly lit. If the old man's reports were to be believed, and Konstantin had reasons to trust the old man's reports going back decades, it was quite well guarded.
Too brightly lit for them to be using night vision, Konstantin thought. Not that they'd be likely to see us at this range, or even quite a bit closer, with the best night vision and no lights around the place. We continue.
With that, he cut left, followed by the other five men in the team. One by one they entered a wadi that ran generally south, toward the sea, then followed it to where it ran rather close to the palace.
The Arabs had known for many centuries something that western optical science had only keyed into but recently; at night the human eye had a hell of a time making out pixels of a certain size and the colors didn't make all that much difference. In short, the checked keffiyehs worn by Konstantin and his men made superb camouflage.
This was all to the good as it was a five-hundred-meter belly crawl from the point of the wadi nearest the wall around Yusuf's palace to that wall. Outside the wall was little but sand and rocks and the very occasional bit of scrub . . . those, and a heavy layer of dust still floating on the air, courtesy of the late northeast wind blowing out of the Rub al Khali.
Konstantin lifted his head up and swept his gaze along the crenellated walls, both on the palace roof and the surrounding grounds wall, with his NVGs. The old man had provided Dutch manufacture for these, which was both more thoughtful and more practical than the GLONASS receivers that sat unused back with the helicopters. The palace was bright enough that he thought it better to leave the lens caps on, to gather light only through the peep holes in those caps. This worked surprisingly well. They'd already lain there through one changing of the guard. Ideally, they'd have waited through another to establish how long the shifts were, hence how long they'd have to operate before discovery. But there just wasn't enough time for that.
Besides, two hour shifts are the universal norm. And where did they go?
Guards? Guards?. . . Ah, there's one, the major observed, in both senses of the word. That guard, off by the right corner of the curtain wall, as Konstantin faced, held his rifle at the slope and tucked into the crook of one arm. He smoked a cigarette but, otherwise diligent, faced outward. And if there's one there . . . Konstantin looked left. Uh, huh. There at the left corner. That one was not particularly diligent, facing inward with his back against the wall. Of his rifle the Russian could see no sign. Of guards on the roof, likewise there was no sign.
And so we'll make our entrance where the guard is a slob. Konstantin used two fingers to beckon up Litvinov and Kravchenko. But take care of the diligent one, first.
'Yes, Comrade Major?' Kravchenko whispered.
Konstantin pointed at the more alert guard, to the right. 'He's your job,' he said. 'On my signal.'
Without another word, Kravchenko and Litvinov headed on their bellies in that direction. Baluyev was next up.
'Stay here and watch, Praporschik. Report. On my command, turn on the cellular jammer.'
'Yes, Comrade Major.'
Then, leading the remaining two, the major shifted the direction of his crawl about twenty degrees to the left.
There are at least nine different ways to kill a sentry, in theory, more or less quietly, and without the use of firearms. It's that 'in theory' part, coupled with the 'more or less' part, that so often prove problematic. People fight back, gouge, bite, scream . . . even the gushing of blood from a severed artery makes its quotient of sound. Moreover, no army really teaches even its special operations personnel to knife or strangle or bludgeon an enemy standing ten feet above them. It just doesn't work that way.
For those cases, there are quiet firearms. In this case, those firearms were a brace of PSS pistols, firing silent, subsonic, piston-driven SP-4 ammunition. Galkin, with Konstantin, held one. Kravchenko, with Litvinov, held another. All five men stood now, backs against the wall, waiting for a report from Praporschik Baluyev.
'Problem, Comrade Major,' Baluyev said. All heard it in their earpieces. 'I saw someone else walking the parapet. And the one above you is now facing out while the one at the other end is facing in.'
'He's being blown, Comrade Major,' Kravchenko whispered in the softest imaginable voice, though he couldn't quite hide the tremor of amusement contained therein. 'We can hear him . . . err . . . them.'
The major hadn't quite been expecting this. He thought frantically for a minute. Shit. A third person and one we can't take out the same time as the others. No, this just can't be done. 'Can't.' Shit, shit, shit.
