with its fair share of that. Worse still, the good colonel’s intelligence service had refused to give the Swedes blueprints to their own damned building, so they were out of luck there, too.
The good news was the embassy building did not have a basement, and the floor plan looked relatively open. No chopped-up hallways and cookie-cutter spaces, which made room clearing tedious and time-consuming. And there was a wraparound balcony on the second floor overlooking a large open space that abutted a wall of smaller rooms along the west wall.
“Forty by fifty feet,” Chavez observed. “Whaddya think? Main work area?”
Clark nodded. “And those along the west wall have gotta be executive offices.”
Opposite them, down a short hall that turned right at the base of the stairs, was what looked like a kitchen/dining area, a bathroom, and four more rooms, unlabeled on the plans. Maybe storage, Clark thought, judging by their size. One’s probably the security office. At the end of the hall was a door leading to the outside.
“There’s no electrical or water on these plans,” Chavez said.
“If you’re thinking sewer to get in,” Richards replied, “forget it. This is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Tripoli. The sewer system is for shit-”
“Very funny.”
“The pipes are no bigger around than a volleyball, and they collapse if you look sideways at them. Just this week I’ve had to detour twice on the way to work to avoid sinkholes.”
“Okay,” Clark said, bringing things back on track. “Richards, you talk to Masudi and make sure we can get the power cut when we give the go.” They’d decided to leave the utilities on, lest they agitate the bad guys this close to Chavez and his teams going in.
“Right.”
“Ding, weapons check?”
“Done and done.”
As always, the assault teams would be armed with Heckler & Koch MP5SD3s. Noise-suppressed and chambered in 9 millimeters with a 700-round-per-minute rate of fire.
Along with the standard load-out of fragmentation grenades and flashbangs each man would also be armed with an MK23.45-caliber ACP with a modified KAC noise suppressor and a tritium laser aiming module-LAM-with four selector modes: visible laser only, visible laser/flashlight, infrared laser only, and infrared laser/illuminator. Favored by Navy Special Warfare teams and the British Special Boat Service, the MK23 was a marvel of durability, having been torture-tested by both the SEALs and the SBS for extreme temperature, saltwater submersion, dry- firing, impact, and a weapon’s worst enemy, dirt. Like a good Timex watch, the MK23 had taken a licking and kept on ticking-or in this case, kept on firing.
Johnston and Loiselle had bright and shiny new toys to play with, Rainbow having recently switched from the M24 sniper rifle to the Knights Armament M110 Sniper System, equipped with Leupold scope for daylight conditions and the tried-and-true AN/PVS-14 night sight. Unlike the bolt-action M24, the M110 was semiautomatic. For the assault teams, it meant Johnston and Loiselle, shooting cover fire, could put more rounds on target in a whole lot less time.
At Clark’s direction, each sniper had earlier done a walk-about of the area, circumnavigating the blocks surrounding the embassy compound, picking out perches and sketching out his fields of fire. Of the spots Chavez and Weber had chosen as their entry points, Johnston and Loiselle would be able to provide absolute cover-until the teams entered the building proper, that was. Once inside, the assault teams would be on their own.
Fifty minutes after sunset the team sat hunkered down in their makeshift command post, lights out, waiting. Through the binoculars Clark could see the faint glow of light seeping through the embassy’s plantation shutters. The exterior lights had popped on, too, four twenty-foot-high poles, one at each corner of the compound and each topped with a sodium-vapor lamp pointed in toward the building.
An hour earlier the muezzin’s call to
Somewhere in the dark a cell phone trilled softly, and a few moments later Richards appeared at Clark’s shoulder and whispered, “Swedes on the ground at the airport.”
The Swedish Security Service, the Sakerhetspolisen, fielded the county’s antiterrorist division, while the Rikskriminalpolisen, or Criminal Investigation Department, was its version of the FBI. Once Rainbow had secured the embassy, it would be turned over to them.
“Good, thanks. Guess that answers the question. Tell them to stand by. As soon as we’re finished they can come in. Nothing about our timeline, though. Don’t want that getting out.”
“You think the Swedes would-”
“No, not intentionally, but who knows who they’re talking to.” Though Clark thought it unlikely, he couldn’t discount the possibility of the Libyans throwing a wrench into the works: The Americans came here, failed in their mission, and now people are dead. A publicity coup for the colonel.
It had been nearly twenty-four hours since the embassy had been stormed, and still no sign of life from inside. Clark had chosen 0215 as their go-time, reasoning that the terrorists were likely assuming any assault would come with nightfall. Clark was hoping the delay would cause them to relax, even if only a bit. Plus, statistically, the hours between two and four in the morning were when the human mind starts to lose its edge-especially human minds that have been saddled with the twin demons of stress and uncertainty for the past twenty-eight hours.
At 0130 hours Clark told Johnston and Loiselle to get ready, then gave the nod to Richards, who in turn gave it to Lieutenant Masudi. Five minutes and an extended walkie-talkie discussion later, the Libyan reported back: the perimeter guards were ready. Clark didn’t want some nervous grunt taking a pot-shot at his snipers as they moved into position. Similarly, he had Stanley and Chavez on the binoculars, keeping a close watch. However unlikely, there was always the possibility that someone-a sympathizer or just some asshole private who hated Americans-might try to signal the terrorists that the game was about to start. If this happened, there wouldn’t be much Clark could do except recall Johnston and Loiselle and try again later.
With Johnston and Loiselle geared up, M110s draped across their shoulders, Clark waited five minutes, then whispered to Stanley and Chavez, “How’re we doing?”
“No change,” Ding reported. “Some walkie-talkie action, but that’s probably the word getting passed.”
At 0140 Clark turned to Johnston and Loiselle and nodded. The two snipers slipped out the door and disappeared into the darkness. Clark donned his headset.
Five minutes passed. Ten minutes.
Over the radio came Loiselle’s voice: “Omega One, in position.” Followed ten seconds later by Johnston: “Omega Two, in position.”
“Roger,” Clark replied, checking his watch. “Stand by. Assault teams moving in ten.”
He could hear a pair of “Roger” double-clicks in reply.
“Alistair… Ding?”
“No movement. All quiet.”
“Same here, boss.”
“Okay, get ready.”
At this, Chavez handed his binoculars to Clark and joined his team at the door. Weber and his team, who were tasked with the ground-floor breach on the front/west corner wall, had farther to go to get into position, so they would go first, followed four minutes later by Chavez and his shooters.
Clark scanned the embassy compound one more time, looking for movement, changes-anything that didn’t pass his k-check, or kinesthetic check. Do this kind of thing long enough, he’d learned, and you develop something akin to a sixth sense. Does it feel right? Any nagging voices in the back of your head? Any unchecked boxes or overlooked
