by Jack Murphy
Aghassi had to cut a deal. He would have the sicarios put out of business in exchange for the information he wanted. They agreed. The nephew would lure the sicarios out of their safe house and then run. Nikita would provide the talent needed to complete the task.
The kid in the blue ball cap strolled right up to the front door and started banging on it. The cartel hitmen were known to be taking their siesta at home this time of day after a long night out on the town. Now the kid was screaming. Aghassi had told him to get the hit men real riled up and tell them that some left over Ortega cartel men were stealing their cars parked outside. Finally, the distraction worked. When the boy saw the Sicarios opening the door, he bolted down the street.
Nikita exhaled, his finger tightening around the trigger.
He waited an additional second for all four men to make it outside.
The range was already dialed into his scope which would allow him to fire and compensate for the bullet drop caused by gravity. With a four mile crosswind, the sniper knew he would have to hold a half mil into the wind to compensate.
The crosshairs in the Schmidt & Bender scope lined up on the first shirtless gunmen who had exited the house. Shifting his point of aim for his wind hold, he held his sights on his target let the first round fly. The bullet carved a path through the heat mirage rising off the desert sand, leaving a trail of ripples in its wake.
Crimson blossomed on the sicario's chest a moment before he collapsed in the middle of the street. One of his comrades looked over upon hearing him fall and was similarly dropped dead in his tracks by Nikita's follow up shot as he quickly transitioned between targets. The third man dropped to the ground, thinking that someone was firing at them from down the street, not understanding that a sniper had them in his sights. The Kazakh sniper frowned, having to adjust the position of the rifle by aiming down at the pavement in front of the cartel shooter. Going into the prone had been a smart move on the gunman's part as he now presented a smaller target but knowing which direction the gunfire was directed from would have been more useful.
Nikita squeezed the trigger twice firing one shot in succession of the other. The 7.26 Long Range bullets skimmed down into the street and ricocheted off the pavement before penetrating the top of his target's skull.
The last man fired off the pistol in his hand at absolutely nothing in a panic before Nikita drilled him in the chest.
“Targets are down,” Nikita announced over the net.
“I got the kid back in the car with me. We are peeling out now.”
“I will be at the rendezvous in five.”
Throwing his hood off, he sipped on the camelbak straw clipped to his sleeve, gulping water down. As he got to his feet the four children playing soccer stared right through him in amazement. They had frozen the moment they heard the shooting, not fully grasping what was happening. Now they were looking right through a man who had appeared from nowhere. He looked like a disembodied head floating in the air with a large black rifle suspended beneath him.
As one, the children took off running back to their parents.
Nikita kicked the abandoned soccer ball after them but it was ignored. They would come back for it later on once they worked up the courage. Most of them would tell their parents that they just had a close encounter with Dorian Gray.
As a sniper, he was convinced. Both the HK 417 and the new uniform that had come in on the pallet had worked flawlessly. As he knelt back down to police up his expended brass shell casings, a background sensor embedded in the collar of the uniform detected slight changes in light conditions and immediate surroundings. Slowly, the uniform began to shift colors and intensities to blend as closely as possible to current environmental conditions.
The Canadian company that manufactured the technology called it ChromaCamo after the Chromatophore in Chameleons that allow them to change their skin pigment. The uniform was still being looked at by the lazy and bloated US Army acquisition process, but Deckard knew the company's CEO and managed to secure a specially made recce cut of the ChromaCamo for his sniper before the entire project would get bought up and classified by the Special Operations community.
Placing the spent brass in his pocket, Nikita held the 417 at the ready just in case of chance contact and began heading out to the cross roads where he would be picked up by Aghassi.
As he walked, the ChromaCamo uniform continued to alter its color, changing from sand and foliage colors to that of rock and slate as he moved from his firing position and slid down hill towards the road. Back at their compound he had sat down on one of Ortega's imported Italian couches while watching television and a fellow Samruk employee nearly jumped out of his skin when he noticed that Nikita had turned blood red, the uniform matching even unnatural environmental colors.
Reaching the base of the hill, the sniper walked to the side of the road as Aghassi pulled up in his car. The spy almost drove right past him, the camouflage doing its job so well that he almost went unnoticed while standing in the open. Pumping the breaks, the car came to a halt.
Nikita smiled.
They were just getting started.
25
Aghassi was on lead as they climbed up to the high walls that surrounded the Jimenez fortress.
It was actually an old Spanish Colonial fort as he had discovered while milking information about the site from his sources. According to local legend, it was built on top of older Mayan ruins on orders from an insane Spanish General who had been suffering from syphilis. Jimenez as it turned out was just the latest in a long line of blood thirsty maniacs who had occupied the top of the mountain. It seemed to be a tradition.
The climb was up a sheer rock wall while challenging it was not particularly technical in nature. He had been a rock monkey in a past life and made quick work freeclimbing up a crevice in the rock. As he moved up the wall he reached back to the rappelling harness he wore and pulled off pieces of equipment to secure into the cracks in the rock.
They had begun climbing just before midnight and were already several hundred meters up the cliff. Nikita was slowly climbing hand over hand below him. They had approached through the jungle after nightfall, walking as far uphill as possible before beginning their ascent upwards to the fortress. The only way into the compound was by driving up a single lane road carved out into the side of the mountain that was heavily guarded and monitored. At least that was what Jimenez was banking on.
Aghassi was ready to try the back door.
Retracting a spring loaded camming device, the half moon metal discs retracted which allowed him to jam it into the crack in the rock. Once he let go, the discs extended again and held tight to act as an anchor point. Their climbing rope was then secured to the anchor and each climber tied into it just in case they fell. While Nikita had some experience operating in the mountains, this was his first technical climb and he was struggling to grunt his way up the cliff.
While he lacked the finesse of an experienced rock climber, he was making up for it with the raw strength and endurance that one would expect from a professional soldier from Central Asia. The extra kit they carried on their backs probably was not helping matters either but the tools of the trade were necessary.
The cliff face transitioned seamlessly into the stone bricks where the fortress walls began. This was where things began to get tricky. A strain sensitive cable had been strung across the wall half way to the top that, if triggered, would set off an alarm and bring Jimenez' personal guard down on them. All it would take was one guard looking down over the edge of the wall to see the two mercenaries dangling below and it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Identifying a route to the top, Aghassi utilized hand holds and foot holds he found in the gaps between the stones that were about as wide as his pinky finger. Those might be considered to be huge by the standards of a professional rock climber but even he was struggling at this point. Sheets of sweat were pouring down his face as he finally got to the cable. Sticking a camming de
vice between two stones he made another anchor point and tied into it to give himself a rest.
He shook his forearms out in an attempt to release some of the lactic acid that had built up in the muscle tissue. While his legs were not strained, his entire upper body was aching. He had a couple minutes before Nikita could muscle his way up into position so he began to prepare some equipment.
Jimenez was a real piece of work. As he had questioned contacts and sources who had been in different parts of the compound, Aghassi was able to put together the basic layout of what it looked like inside and develop an entry corridor for him to utilize. By aggregating all of the information he had collected he was able to discern which security devices had been employed and where they were located. His entry analysis then factored in the defeats for each mechanism and determined the kit he would carry into the objective.
Literally overflowing with narco-dollars, Jimenez had been able to hire some of the finest security specialists in America to fly down and install his alarm systems and help him develop a physical security plan. As it turned out, he also kept several IT technicians on hand to monitor the various systems he had installed in the compound. If Aghassi was able to figure out specifically which American security firm had been hired for the job he would be sure to drop dime on them to the FBI when he got back to the States. As it was, this was going to be the most dicey, surreptitious entry he had ever conducted.
When he did his risk analysis he figured that it would be worth it, even if success was a long shot. Penetrating the cartel's electronic network, his clandestine telephone system, and whatever else they could find would make it much easier to take down the cartel piece by piece as Samruk International broke into its full stride in Oaxaca. If the mission was compromised, he and Nikita would certainly be killed but it would not force a change in the overall operation parameters. Jimenez already knew that people were trying to kill him.
Aghassi wore a Kifaru Koala pouch that rested over his stomach and was held in place by a harness that was strapped across his back. Inside was a silenced Glock pistol in a quick draw configuration, the rest of the space taken up by his breaking and entering equipment.
Suddenly he was torn away from the wall, the nylon loop he had secured himself to the anchor with strained as the dynamic climbing rope stretched beneath him. Looking down he saw Nikita at the base of the wall. Exhausted and in desperation, he had grabbed onto a sapling tree growing out from between the rocks. When it came free in his hand he fell free from the cliff and would have fallen to his death if he wasn't snapped into the rope.
Now the mercenary was swinging by the rope, the sling on his HK 417 rifle nearly choking him out.
“Son of a bitch,” Aghassi cursed under his breath.
When Nikita finally stopped oscillating back and forth he was able to grab on to a handhold to stop his movement and begin climbing again. Completely out of breath, the sniper came up underneath him and off to one side. Nodding his head to his partner, Nikita unslung the rifle to pull security as best he could while Aghassi worked.
The cliff had been their first major obstacle, the strain sensitive cable would be the first system that he would have to defeat to continue onward. Although no serious thought was given to the idea of someone scaling the side of the mountain, whoever had installed the security systems had at least considered it.
This type of cable was usually woven through chain link fences and the like to detect people climbing over but served the same purpose on the stone wall of the cartel compound. The strain sensitive cable was of the coaxial variety that emitted an electrical charge down its length from the control panel to the termination unit located somewhere inside the compound itself.
Inside the cable would be an electrical conductor which was insulated and then encased inside a braided metal sheath. When human or animal movement created any kind of vibration by moving along the cable it would trigger an alarm. Given more time, Aghassi could find a way to stack alarms and give the enemy the perception that the cable was malfunctioning, that way they would disregard the actual intrusion. As it was, he had to desensitize the cable as best he could and then they would carefully climb over it. The security contractors could have installed a more thorough system but again, they had relied on the geography itself to keep unwanted visitors from approaching any way but by road.
Carefully cradling the cable in one hand, he slowly sliced through the plastic sheath that surrounded the cable. With that task completed, he closed his folding knife, stashed it in the Koala pouch and pulled out a collapsible plastic canteen. He then attached a modified screw top that he had glued a small tube to that ran from the canteen. Just as a medic would advance a catheter into a patients arm for an IV drop, he pushed the tube into the cable.
Nikita lowered his rifle for a moment, wiping sweat from his brow.
Aghassi then squeezed the plastic canteen, pushing the water down the tube and into the strain sensitive cable. When all the water had been pushed into the cable, he withdrew the tube and zipped everything back in place inside the Koala pouch. Filling the cable with liquid would prevent the sensors inside from bouncing, desensitizing it to the vibrations as they climbed over and around it.
Before moving on, he made sure the anchor was still secure and rigged it for an abseiling movement on the way back. They would quietly repel down once they completed their mission. Assuming they survived.
One at a time, they slowly and cautiously climbed over the cable, still careful not to disturb it. The cable was desensitized, not deactivated. At least the cracks between the massive blocks that made up the fortress wall facilitated their advance by giving them something to hold on to. They would free climb the remaining ten meters to the top of the wall.
At the lip of the ancient stone wall Aghassi was finding that the jungle growth made it even trickier to negotiate his way to the top. Peering over the edge, he did his best not to turkey neck it, but in the end it was too difficult to cling to a slick stone wall with plants growing out of it several hundred meters up with nothing to break your fall so he just took a quick glance. He didn't see or hear anyone so Aghassi grabbed the edge of the wall and pulled himself up for a better look.
There was no one on the walkway of the fortress wall in front of them, but with the area lighting turned on in the adjacent courtyard, he could see someone patrolling the wall on the other side of the compound with a sub-machine gun in their hands. From his angle, he couldn't see if there was anyone in the courtyard below, but that also meant that they couldn't see him.
“We're clear,” he whispered to Nikita before slithering over the wall.
Drawing his suppressed Glock 19 pistol, the mercenary kept watch while Nikita gasped and made his way up to the top. Stone buttresses lined both sides of the thick exterior walls. Inside the compound were two courtyards, one with a soccer field where the outer walls merged with an old abandoned church, and the second courtyard was what they were looking into now. Across the courtyard was a single story modern building that had been erected amid the crumbling colonial architecture that housed the elite of the cartel, their bodyguards, and servants. Next to this was a larger two story red brick building that looked to have been built decades prior and refurbished only recently. There was a decent sized antenna farm on the roof for transmitting by satellite, VHF, and by microwave. This was Jimenez' private residence.
“Over there,” Aghassi pointed to a tall circular tower that rose into the night sky. The old watch tower was similarly abandoned and left to waste. Situated on the outer wall, the tower had been built right between the two courtyards and was a part of the interior wall that separated them. Before Aghassi could make his move, they needed to get Nikita into position to cover him if something went wrong.
Staying low, they crept along the wall to the tower. The intelligence that they had been provided indicated that there was currently no way up to the top. The wooden ladders and stairs inside had long since rotted away; however, the roof remained
intact. Over time it had become overgrown with vegetation sprouting up from the top. Climbing into a perch like that was usually a death wish for a sniper, but Aghassi would need Nikita's added situational awareness and the sniper's chance of discovery elsewhere in the compound was very high with constant roving patrols.
Digging through his assault pack, Nikita palmed a telescoping pole, a rolled up caving ladder, and an evil hooking metal device called an Afghan hook. The hook consisted of two metal bars with dozens of two to three inch spikes sticking out that made it look like a very nasty weapon but it was actually made to help Navy SEALs scale the high compound walls that were often found in Afghanistan.
Securing the base of the Afghan hook to the caving ladder, Nikita unwound it. The caving ladder was nothing more than two metal cables with horizontal metal rungs stretching between them. Next, he extended the pole to its full fifteen meters and locked it into place. Aghassi watched the roving patrol on the other side of the courtyard stop for a smoke break.
Next, the pole was clamped to the hook and ladder assembly via a small magnet at the end. Aghassi waited until the patrolling guard turned around, taking a puff off his cigarette.
“Do it.”
Nikita swung the pole up on the back side of the tower until the hook disappeared over the top. Pulling the pole back, the caving ladder now hung from the side of the tower that faced out, concealed from those inside the compound. Collapsing the pole, Nikita placed it back in his assault pack. Before he began his ascent, he gave a hard tug on the ladder. When the ladder was pulled it released a second swing arm on the Afghan hook that came down and secured on the opposite side of the lip of the roof, locking it in place.
The Kazakh cursed to himself as he swung onto the ladder with both the assault pack and his rifle slung across his back.
Aghassi watched as the guard flung his cigarette down and rubbed it out under his shoe. He held his breath as the Mexican gunman turned around and began walking towards his position. Just when it looked like he would be forced into a confrontation, the guard turned and walked down the wide stone steps into the courtyard.
