“Command, this is Covington, roger.”
“Fuck!” Malloy snarled in his circling helicopter.
“Take her down some?” Harrison asked.
The Marine shook his head. “No, up here they might not even notice us. Let’s stay covert for a while.”
“What the hell?” Chavez observed, looking at his father-in-law.
“Inside-outside?” John speculated.
Grady was at the point of losing his temper. He’d tried a total of seven times to make a call with his cell phone, only to find the same infuriating fast-busy response. He had a virtually perfect tactical situation, but lacked the ability to coordinate his teams. There they were, those Rainbow people, standing in a bunch not a hundred meters from the two Volvo trucks. This couldn’t last, though. The local police would surely start securing the area soon. There were perhaps a hundred and fifty, perhaps as many as two hundred people now. standing in little knots within three hundred meters of the hospital. The time was right. The targets were there.
Noonan crested the hill and started driving down to where the team was, wondering what the hell he’d be able to do. Bugging the building, his usual job, meant getting close. But it was broad daylight, and getting close would be a mother of a task, probably beyond the range of possibility until nightfall.Well, at least he’d taken care of his primary function. He’d denied the enemy the chance to use cell phones-if they’d tried to, which he didn’t know. He slowed the car for his approach, and saw Peter Covington in the distance conferring with his black-clad shooters.
Chavez and Clark were doing much the same thing, standing still a few yards from Clark’s official car.
“The perimeter needs firming up,” Ding said. Where had all these vehicles come from? Probably people who happened to be in the area when the shooting started. There was the usual goddamned TV van, its satellite dish erected, and what appeared to be a reporter speaking in front of a handheld Minicam. So, Chavez thought, now the danger to his family was a goddamned spectator sport.
Grady had to make a decision, and he had to make it now. If he wanted to achieve his goal and make his escape, it had to be now. His gun-containing parcel was sitting on the ground next to his rental car. He left it on the ground with Roddy Sands and walked to the farthest of the Volvo commercial trucks.
“Sean,” a voice called from the cargo area, “the bloody phones don’t work.”
“I know. We begin in five minutes. Watch for the others, and then carry on as planned.”
“Okay, Sean,” the voice replied. To punctuate it, Grady heard the cocking of the weapons inside as he walked to the next, delivering the same message. Then the third. There were three men in each of the trucks. The canvas covers over the cargo areas had holes cut in them, like the battlements of a castle, and those inside had opened them slightly and were now looking at the soldiers less than a hundred meters away. Grady made his way back to his Jaguar. When he got there he checked his watch. He looked at Roddy Sands and nodded.
Team-2’s truck was starting down the hill to the hospital. Noonan’s car was directly in front of it now.
Popov was watching the whole area with his binoculars. A third military truck came into view. He looked at it and saw more men sitting in the back, probably reinforcements for the people already outside the hospital. He returned his attention to the area that already had soldiers. Closer examination showed . . . was that John Clark? he wondered. Standing away from the others. Well, if his wife were a hostage now, that made sense to let another-he had to have a second-in-command for his organization-command the operation. So, he’d just be standing there now, looking tense in his suit.
“Excuse me.” Popov turned to see a reporter and a cameraman, and closed his eyes in a silent curse.
“Yes?”
“Could you give us your impressions of what is happening here? First of all, your name, and what causes you to be here.”
“Well, I-my name-my name is Jack Smith,” Popov said, in his best London accent. “And I was out here in the country-birding, you see. I was out here to enjoy nature, it’s a nice day, you see, and-”
“Mr. Smith, have you any idea what is happening down there?”
“No, no, not really.” He didn’t take his eyes away from the binoculars, not wanting to give them a look at his face. Nichevo! There was Sean Grady, standing with Roddy Sands. Had he believed in God, he would have invoked His name at that moment, seeing what they were doing, and knowing exactly what they were thinking in this flashpoint in time.
Grady bent down and opened his parcel, removing the AKMS assault-rifle from it. Then he slapped in the magazine, extended the folding stock, and in one smooth motion stood to straight and brought it to his shoulder. A second later he took aim and fired into the group of black clad soldiers. A second after that, the men in the trucks did the same.
There was no warning at all. Bullets hit the side of the truck behind which they’d been sheltering, but before Team- I had the time to react, the bullets came in on their bodies. Four men dropped in the first two seconds. By that time, the rest had jumped away and down, their eyes looking around for the source of the fire.
Noonan saw them crumple, and it took a second or so of shock for him to realize what was happening. Then he spoke into his tactical radio: “Warning, warning, Team-1 is under fire from the rear!” At the same time his eyes were searching for the source-it had to be right there, in that big truck. The FBI agent floored his accelerator and dashed that way, his right hand reaching for his pistol.
Master Chief Mike Chin was down with a bullet in each sipper leg. The suddenness only made the pain worse. He’d been totally unprepared for this, and the pain paralyzed him for several seconds, until training reasserted itself, and he tried to crawl to cover. “Chin is hit, Chin is hit,” lie gasped over the radio, then turned to see another Team1 member down, blood gushing from the side of his head.
Sergeant Houston’s head snapped off his scope, and turned right with the sudden and unexpected noise of automatic-weapons fire. What the hell? He saw what appeared to be the muzzle of a rifle sticking out the side of one of the trucks, and he swung his rifle up and off the ground to the right to try to acquire a target. Roddy Sands saw the movement. The sniper was where he remembered, but covered as he was in his camouflage blanket, it was hard to track in on him. The movement Fixed that, and the shot was only about a hundred fifty meters. Holding low and left, he pulled the trigger and held it down, walking his rounds through the shape on the side of the hill, firing long, then pulling back down to hit at it again.
Houston got one round off, but it went wild as a bullet penetrated his right shoulder, blasting right through his body armor, which was sufficient to stop a pistol round but not a bullet from a rifle. Neither courage nor muscle strength could make broken bones work. The impact made his body collapse, and a second later, Houston knew that his right arm would not work at all. On instinct he rolled to his left, while his left hand tried to reach across his body for his service pistol, while he announced over the radio that he was hit as well. It was easier for Fred Franklin. Too far away for easy fire from one of the terrorists’ weapons, he was also well concealed under his blanket. It took him a few seconds to realize what was going on, but the screams and groans over his radio earpiece told him that some team members had been badly hurt. He swept his scope sight over the area, and saw one gun muzzle sticking out the side of a truck. Franklin flipped off his safety, took aim, and loosed his first .50-caliber round of the fight. The muzzle blast of his own weapon shattered the local silence. The big MacMillan sniper rifle fired the same cartridge as the .50-caliber heavy machine gun, sending a two-ounce bullet off at ?,700 feet per second, covering the distance in less than a third of a second and drilling a half-inch hole into the soft side of the truck, but there was no telling if it hit a target or not. He swept the rifle left, looking for another target. He passed over another big truck, and saw the holes in the cover, but nothing inside of them. More to the left-there, there was a guy holding a rifle and firing-off to where Sam was. Sergeant First Class Fred Franklin worked his bolt, loaded a second round, and took careful aim.