Locked On

So Ding flew his ram jet chute through the snow alone.

The video feed showing Nabiyev in the back of the Mi-8 came online when a crewman boarded the chopper at the airport, shortly before takeoff. Nabiyev could speak directly with Safronov in the launch control room, though the video and audio were understandably a little choppy. Still, the camera served its function. It scanned around the helicopter to show just four men on board other than Israpil himself, who had been taken out of his handcuffs and dressed in a heavy coat and hat. Georgi asked him to look out the window and confirm when he could see the lights of the LCC, and the Dagestani prisoner positioned himself to do that.

The Rainbow sniper recon team that had been watching the LCC all day had moved from one thousand yards’ distance to only four hundred under cover of night. Now they were positioned deep in the grass with eyes on the rear of the LCC. They watched the building through their scopes. The intermittent lighting and the snowfall made the view through their glass confusing, but the spotter noticed a pair of long shadows moving against a steel heat exhaust unit on the north side of the roof. After tracking the movement for a long time, he saw the head of a man come into view for just a few seconds before it moved below his sight line. The spotter confirmed this with his sniper, then fingered the send button on his radio.

“Romeo Two, this is Charlie Two, over.”

“Romeo Two, go.”

“Be advised, we have two sentries on the roof.”

Nine hundred fifty feet above the LCC roof, Ding Chavez wanted to reply to the German-accented spotter that he couldn’t see shit. Only the GPS on his arm was directing him toward his target. It was down there somewhere, and he’d deal with any shitheads on the roof when he got there. Unless… “Charlie Two, Romeo Two. I’m not going to see those guys till I land on them. Are you in position to engage?”

Back on the ground, the sniper shook his head, and the spotter replied on his behalf, “Not at this point, Romeo, but we’re trying to get a target.”

“Roger that.”

Chavez felt for the UMP on his chest. It was there, in position, right over his body armor. He’d have to use it as soon as his feet touched the roof.

If his feet touched the roof. If he missed the roof, if some miscalculation took him off course or if some low-level gust pushed him away at the last second, then the entire mission would be in serious jeopardy.

And if a gust came at the wrong time, pushing Ding to the eastern parking lot, where the big chopping rotor blades of the Mi-8 were spinning, Chavez would not stand a chance.

He checked his altimeter and his GPS and then pulled his toggles, adjusting the canopy of his ram-air chute above him to turn him slightly to the south.

At 10:30 on the nose, the Mi-8 approached the LCC. Safronov was still watching the video comm link to the helicopter, and Nabiyev saw the big bunker-looking building with the large bright lights on the roof. He took the camera from the cameraman and positioned it against the window so that Safronov himself could see. Georgi told Israpil that he would meet him inside the front door in minutes, and then Georgi ran out of the launch control center with several of his men. They descended the stairs, crossed the dark entry hall, and opened the blast-proof iron doors.

Four Jamaat Shariat gunmen took positions in the open doorway, but Georgi himself stood to the side; he only looked around the iron door, lest someone lurking out in the snow try and take a shot at him.

Behind them the foreign prisoners were led into the hall, then huddled against the wall by two guards.

The Russian helicopter landed at the far end of the parking lot, seventy yards from the blast-proof doors of the LCC, directly in the spotlight beams from the roof.

Safronov looked out the door into the swirling snow illuminated by the lights. He radioed his men on the roof and told them to be ready for anything, and to not forget to keep an eye out toward the back of the building as well.

The small side door of the chopper opened, and a bearded man in a hat and coat appeared. He covered his eyes against the light and slowly began walking across the hard-packed snow in the parking lot.

Georgi was already thinking about what he would say to the military commander of Jamaat Shariat. He would need to make certain the man had not been brainwashed, even though he had noticed no evidence of that in their previous conversations.

Chavez watched the chopper land, then turned his focus back to the roof of the LCC, two hundred feet below his boots. He would make his landing, thank God, though he would land faster and harder than he wanted. As he descended with a sharp bank to the south he made out one… two sentries posted there.

One hundred fifty feet down.

Just then the roof access door opened below him, sending more light across the roof. A third terrorist came through the door.

Fuck, thought Chavez. Three tangos, each on a different compass point from his landing site. He’d have to take them in rapid succession, nearly impossible when dealing with a rough landing, spotty lighting, and a weapon that he could not even bring to bear until he cut away from his canopy before it pulled him over the side of the roof.

One hundred feet.

Just then, Ding’s headset came to life.

“Romeo Two, Charlie Two. Have one target in sight on northwestern roof. Will engage on your command.”

“Waste him.”

“Repeat last command?”

Fucking Germans. “Engage.”

“Roger, engaging.”

Chavez turned all focus away from the man on the northwestern portion of the roof. That was no longer his responsibility. If the sniper missed, well, then Ding was fucked, but he couldn’t think about that now.

Twenty feet.

Chavez flared his chute and landed at a sprint. He kept running, pulled the disconnect ring on his chute and felt it drop free from his body. He grabbed his suppressed HK and spun toward the man at the access door. The terrorist had already lifted his Kalashnikov in Ding’s direction. Chavez dropped to the roof, rolled over his left shoulder, and came out of his roll on his knees.

He fired a three-round burst, catching the bearded terrorist in the throat. The AK flipped into the air, and the tango fell back into the doorway.

The suppressed gunfire, while certainly not silent, would not be heard over the sound of the Mi-8’s rotors.

Ding had already shifted focus to the right. As his eyes spun, he caught a distant unfocused image of a sentry on the northwest corner as his weapon rose, and then the left side of the sentry’s head exploded and the man dropped where he stood.

Chavez focused, though, on the man at the eastern portion of the roof now, just twenty-five feet or so from where the American knelt. The terrorist did not have a weapon up, though he was looking right into Ding’s eyes. As the Dagestani struggled to bring his sights to this new target who had just dropped out of the night sky, he shouted