“The broken bathroom window? The tiny, almost imperceptible blood trail to the stolen car?” The muzzle fell back a millimeter as the wei considered her words. “Then the extremely obvious break-in at the Slovenia’s World’s Elite Winter Sport storage facility? Where the only items stolen were two electric snowmobiles?”
The gun pulled away. “You have endangered the mission.”
“Really?” Aunush asked as she handed him the binoculars. “Those seven green splotches in that house? That’s Brandt and his team.”
The wei peered through the lens, then snapped them down. You could tell he wanted to punish her. Really, he probably wanted to kill her except for that lingering doubt at the base of his skull. Could he have found their mutual enemy? Could he take them out without her?
The answer to both of those questions was no.
“Remember,” the wei said, clearly trying to stay in control, “we have your Watcher back at the hotel.”
Oh, shudder the thought. Aunush simply held her hand out for the wei to return the binoculars as the sniper fired every twenty seconds or so to put pressure on Brandt.
“So,” Aunush asked the wei. “Do you have a rocket launcher or something to add to the mix, or are you going to let my sniper do all the work for you?”
With a snap of his fingers, one of the soldiers brought over what looked like an AK-47 rifle on steroids. Aunush watched as the Chinese soldier put the tripod base on the QLZ-87 grenade launcher. Basically the Chinese, not big on originality, had copied the Russian rifle model and then developed it into a magazine-fed grenade launcher. Maybe not original but innovative. The thing had easily fit on the back of the electric snowmobiles that Aunush had conveniently left for the rest of the team at the storage facility. She’d even put the keys in the ignitions just in case they didn’t see the connection.
That was how she and the sniper, along with the Chinese team, had made it up the mountain without Brandt being any the wiser. The electric motors were nearly silent. It was said you could stalk deer on a clear winter day and never have them hear you coming. After having her bones rattled on the long journey up the slopes, Aunush wasn’t so sure about that claim, however they had made it up the mountain to their perch on a peak across from the chalet without detection.
Now, however, Brandt was well aware of their presence. Although strangely his team was huddled together by the fireplace. Strange. But his odd tactics mattered little.
As the sun rose to the east and the soldier set up the grenade launcher next to her, there was no reason to deny herself that sweet, sweet moment of revenge.
Davidson’s fingertips bled as he gripped a sharp outcropping of rock.
Lopez grunted below him. “No hurry, dude.”
Ignoring the pain shooting down the back of his hand and settling into his wrists, Davidson found another handhold and hauled himself another meter. He glanced up the long chimney to finally find light. Not much farther.
Which was a good thing. Between the strain of the climb and the cold, he would be lucky to be able to pull the trigger, let alone hit something. As they neared the top of the rocky shaft though, the crevices became more frequent and easier to hold. They were at the lip of the long crack in the rock that served as the chalet’s chimney.
“Ready,” Davidson announced.
Lopez projected down the shaft. “Three.”
Davidson braced his feet on Lopez’s shoulders, releasing his hands so he could swing the sniper rifle from his back and prepare to fire. He kept reminding himself that he didn’t have to hit anything. He just had to give that other sniper pause. A seven-second pause. Exactly seven seconds.
If he missed...if the sniper still fired despite his attempts...if Brandt and the others didn’t haul ass as fast as they thought they could...then Lopez’s whole plan fell apart. Or at least the first salvo of his plan would fall apart. There were plenty of other opportunities for this to go south in the second phase.
“Two.”
Davidson tucked the rifle up against his shoulder, picturing where the sniper was set up. It had to be on the eastern peak directly across from the chalet. The guy would have good shelter. Then Davidson moved on to calculating the wind-shift between the peaks. And then mainly praying his damaged fingers could still work in the extreme cold.
Prepping for the shot, Davidson took in a long, deep breath, then exhaled as the air in front of him steamed. He let it dissipate and then dug his heel into Lopez’s shoulder.
“One!” Lopez announced as he pushed up, forcing Davidson out of the chimney.
The world was a blur of snow, but Davidson didn’t count on a visual. He trusted his instincts and fired once. But not in time. A rocket-propelled grenade’s red streak reddened the pristine snow as it shot across the crevice between the peaks.
The first wrinkle in Lopez’s plan.
“Run!” Davidson yelled to the team below as the corporal lowered him behind the lip. “No!” Davidson yelled, but Lopez wouldn’t shove him back up.
“We’ve got to trust the plan,” the corporal explained.
As the mountain shook from the explosion, Davidson wasn’t so sure about that.
Brandt literally flung Rebecca ahead of him and dragged Bunny behind the Bombardier to shelter. Just in time as the chalet burst into flames. The beautiful little cottage now a conflagration.
The first hitch in Lopez’s “sniper Whack-a-Mole” plan. They hadn’t counted on RPGs, although seriously they should have. But why the hell hadn’t the enemy opened with those? Why go with sniper fire if they had the muscle of RPGs?
“But I think Osip killed Nikolay for the fragments here,” Rebecca protested. He ignored her. “Brandt, the fragments are here.” He ignored her again. Whatever was here or wasn’t here wasn’t their problem. Surviving was.
“Sarge, orders?” Harvish asked from up front. Brandt didn’t ignore him.
“Stick to the plan,” Brandt said.
“Until it comes unstuck,” Talli added.
Their seven-second plan was probably fucked, however, it was the best one they had.
Seven.
Harvish opened the front door to the Bombardier.
Six.
The point man climbed in, staying low, not leaving a target to shoot at.
Five.
Talli opened the passenger side door for them and then slipped in beside Harvish.
Four.
Brandt urged Rebecca into the backseat.
Three.
Bunny climbed in.
Two.
He joined his team, closing the door behind him.
One.
The roar of the Bombardier’s engine filled the alpine air as Davidson popped back out of his hole. He didn’t bother to even aim. He just fired and fired again and again, trying to give those shooters across the divide something to focus on other than killing his team.
Lopez tried to pull him back down, but Davidson refused to budge. He braced his feet against the stone wall to support his weight and continued to fire, honing in on his target. Searching the snowy white cap for signs of movement. Or better yet a splotch of red.
“Damn it,” Lopez growled. “Get down here.”
Davidson didn’t bother to argue, not with the Bombardier still sitting there like a sitting duck. Why the hell weren’t they moving? The rest of the team was supposed to be gone, down the ridge by now.
He’d effectively stalled the opposing sniper, but that damned RPG gunner fired again. And if Davidson knew anything about trajectories, it was heading straight for the Bombardier.
Rebecca watched through the back window with a sick fascination as the rocket shimmied its way across the open air, glistening in the early morning light. If she didn’t know better, it seemed harmless. Just a bright sparkler coming at them.
“Incoming!” Talli shouted.
No kidding.
But the vehicle was practically buried in snow. The engine couldn’t overcome the weight of what the storm had dum
ped on the Bombardier’s struts. Any path they had cut last night was long buried.
“Fuck it!” Brandt cursed and reached over, leaning on the Bombardier’s throttle.
The engine screamed, stripping gears, tearing itself apart, but the vehicle jerked backward, tipping them over the ledge just as the rocket streaked overhead, sending a shower of sparks on the Bombardier’s roof before exploding against the plateau exactly where they’d been a second ago.
Her relief was short-lived as the Bombardier started picking up speed, coursing down the slope, backward. Rebecca gripped the seat, stifling a scream.
So it came as no great surprise when Harvish announced, “I’ve lost steering!”
Davidson fought Lopez, who tugged on his leg. He couldn’t stop shooting. Even though the other sniper was occasionally popping off a shot, Davidson had to keep that RPG gunman busy.
“Dude, get down here!”
Ignoring the corporal again, Davidson fired and then took a split second to look down the slope as the Bombardier careened across the snowy decline. If it had been Lopez driving, Davidson would have guessed the trajectory was planned. But since it wasn’t Lopez, he assumed the vehicle was out of control.
At the least though it was heading in the right direction. Down the mountain. Back to civilization. Away from the sniper. Away from the RPG.
Davidson swung his rifle back in time to see a figure on the far slope stand up in order to angle the rocket launcher toward the fleeing Bombardier.
Calibrating within a split second, Davidson fired. He hit the man square in the forehead. He and his damned RPG launcher tipped over the tip of the peak, tumbling to the valley below.
A bullet kicked up off the chimney right in front of Davidson.
The other sniper had been waiting for his moment. Too bad he missed.
Davidson ducked down beneath the solid stone.
“Finally,” Lopez sighed.
“Had to take care of something,” Davidson answered, finding it hard to get settled. He had to wedge in next to Lopez.
“More important than this?” the corporal asked.
What could be more important than making sure the rest of the team got away safely? More to humor the corporal than anything else, Davidson followed the light of Lopez’s flashlight.
Okay, maybe there was something more important.
“This is...” the wei sputtered. “This is unacceptable.”
Aunush wasn’t sure exactly how many black ops the man had run, but the RPG operator’s death had been a foregone conclusion to her. She had tried to warn the Chinese how incredibly accurate the other sniper’s aim was. Had they listened?
So Aunush had given her sniper instructions to take his time. Find his window and then take it. She doubted he’d actually hit the other sniper though. Even with her sniper’s skills the wind was against them, but the sniper came so very close, forcing the other shooter back down his rabbit hole.
Of course by now the sedan-sized snowmobile was out of range. No matter. They were not about to lose the thing. Its rattling motor and screeching transmission could probably be heard all the way back to Ljubljana.
Making sure the sniper was covering her, Aunush headed down the shallow slope to the sheltered snowmobiles.
“Well?” she asked the wei.
For some odd reason the man didn’t seem quite so gung-ho to chase down Brandt as he was before. Unfortunately, his country’s existence depended upon it. Aunush swung her leg over the electric snowmobile’s seat and then revved the throttle, although it didn’t quite have the same thrill as the purr of a combustion engine. However, the nearly silent motor would still come in handy.
The sniper climbed onto the snowmobile next to her.
Without a look back to the Chinese, they gunned it down the slope. These two mountain peaks dovetailed together. Within minutes hers and Brandt’s paths would cross for a final time.
Davidson carefully used his knife to pry the tablet fragment from the surrounding stone while Lopez waved away the smoke from the chalet fire burning beneath them like a cauldron.
“Great hiding place,” the corporal coughed.
Which it actually turned out to be. At least for the fragments. For many of the same reasons Lopez chose the chimney to execute his plan, Nikolay had hidden his pieces of the tablets here. Completely inaccessible except from the top of the stone chimney. Who would think to look here? How many had come to this alpine cottage looking for these pieces of the Ten Commandments? Only to leave empty-handed. Davidson dug out the last piece and handed it to Lopez.
“All part of the plan, my friend,” the corporal grinned.
Even though Davidson no longer had an eyebrow to raise, Lopez got the message.
“Still,” the corporal pressed, “it’s pretty damned cool.”
Yes, it was. Davidson couldn’t argue, but now they had to move into phase two of the plan. Which happened to be about five times shakier than phase one.
Lopez’s face lit up however. “Let’s do this!”
“Tree!” Rebecca screamed from behind the him.
But Brandt couldn’t do jack shit about it. Streaking backward down the mountainside with absolutely no steering was turning out to be, well, challenging.
The Bombardier hit the damned tree, throwing everyone forward and then back as the vehicle spun sharply, continuing its runaway course down the slope. Spinning, the winter world went by them in circles.
A windshield shattered. Did a stray branch break? Then the window next to Rebecca cracked, in the perfect shape of a bullet hole.
Fuck.
“Stay down!”
Fighting vertigo, Brandt tried to spot the shooter. There. Coming from the left. A snowmobile. Where the hell was the sound though? Several other snowmobiles crested the ridge, angling straight for them.
Using the point of his elbow to clear the rest of the window, Brandt fired, but as they spun away he was sure he’d missed. “Talli!”
“Working it,” the shooter said as he leaned over Harvish, leveling his rifle against the blown-out driver’s-side window frame.
Not bothering to wait for the vehicle to make the full turn, Brandt fired, hitting a snowmobile in the ass. Compensating for the arc, Brandt fired again, hitting the snowmobile’s flank again.
Why the hell wasn’t the gas tank blowing?
Another snowmobile cut across his path. Brandt fired, but more importantly studied the vehicle. No wonder they weren’t exploding as they should. They had no fucking gas tank to explode. The fuckers were electric.
From the other side of the Bombardier, Talli fired, but it seemed no use as a swarm of silent snow gnats surrounded them. Flitting side to side. Small and maneuverable.
Unlike the spinning Bombardier that might as well have been a barn door with a huge bull’s-eye painted on it. And with no steering ability whatsoever, there were absolutely no evasive maneuvers to be had.
They were so screwed.
Brandt still fired though. Keeping in mind this was all part of the plan.
A horrible, horrible plan, but still a plan.
“Brandt!” Rebecca screamed.
He jerked around to find a snowmobile right alongside the back window. Brandt could never fire in time, yet a shot rang out as bright red blood stained the guy’s chest. The snowmobile veered off, heading toward the trees.
Brandt found Harvish, his gun arm across Talli’s back. “Figured if I couldn’t steer, I might as well shoot.”
Good figuring. Before he could thank his point man, the other six gnats seemed intent on revenging their fallen comrade.
Hell if Brandt was going to let that happen.
Davidson gulped air, trying to catch his breath as he slid down the mountainside. Literally slid. The metal shield beneath his knees barely skimming the powdery snow.
“Shield boarding!” Lopez yelled above the wind whipping at them.
Great. Another extreme sport. Davidson’s fingers ached from the cold as they grippe
d the shield’s leather straps. This wasn’t just shield boarding, but doing so at a nearly ninety-degree downward angle. By the YDS mountain grading system? The system that warned skiers of how dangerous a trail was. This slope would be rated a triple, triple X.
Death is imminent even if fully prepared, would have been the warning. And he and Lopez were anything but.
Teeth chattering, Davidson leaned a tiny bit to the left, guiding his path to avoid a mogul up ahead. Of course Lopez hot-dogged it, sliding up the side and then flipping back down next to Davidson.
“Ha!” Lopez announced. “I’d like to see Shaun White try that!”
So would Davidson since it would mean he would not have to be streaking down the mountain next to the Olympian. He would be safely and warmly watching from a safe distance away.
Davidson eyed a slope that more gently made its way down the mountain, but he knew they couldn’t take it. Not if they wanted to fulfill Lopez’s plan. Of course they didn’t even know if the rest of the team was still alive. They just had to go on faith.
Make that go full speed ahead.
Leaning down, making his shape more aerodynamic, Davidson pulled ahead of Lopez as the corporal cursed. If they were going to do this, they might as well make it interesting.
Aunush laid the snowmobile up on one strut, letting the metal undercarriage take the bullet meant for her. Damned if Brandt and his team weren’t making the most of firing from a circling vehicle. They were simply laying down arcing fire. Like a large metallic porcupine.
And given what had happened to the last man who tried to approach the vehicle to fire directly inside, none of the Chinese had dared venture closer. And she was not about to commit her sniper to such a foolhardy move.
His strength was long-range kills. Close-quarter was her specialty. And patience. The Chinese were busy firing, taking tiny bites out of the vehicle.
Why bother?
Betrayed 02 - Havoc Page 24
