11
October 23rd.
Mike Ram:
There’s an old hotel down the block from Hatif’s little urban fortress. NATO had the locals clean it out for us two days ago, blaming it on a discovery of dangerous toxic mold. This covered any questions that might arise about why large numbers of men in bulky chemsuits crating big cases of equipment were moving in.
And they did. Richards double-checked that the joint-combined team had every contingency covered as soon as he arrived: They had bomb, bio and chem-agent sniffers and radiation detectors and scrubbers and MOPP gear and containment tents and bomb armor and disarming tools. There were also a handful of anonymous plainclothes players onsite that Richards seemed to know, though he also didn’t show any particular enthusiasm for seeing them there—they kept the greetings brief and official, and he didn’t introduce them. And German GSG supplied four of their best snipers and an extra two teams of armored backup (though their armor looks like underwear compared to our Tactical suits).
And then there was Attila and his assortment of grim-cool field operatives, all looking like they lived on coffee and pills and illegal cigarettes. Except Attila himself, who looks like a man who enjoys good food and drink—he really presents as a cheerful sort, at least to those he’s not wanting to kill. He actually hugged everyone he met, greeting them like some long lost cousin. Even you.
“Ah-hah! The serious Captain with the big shiny gun!” he roared as he slapped you on the back. “I have been hearing things about you! You seem to make quite the impression… Hey! Don’t let me forget: I have something for you…”
Then he was off to hug the life out of Ibrahim.
“Sweet guy,” Matthew whispered, still shaking off his own squeezing.
We got there at three in the morning local. Datascan wants to hit at something odd like 05:20, a certain time before the sun was actually up, and the ambient temperature was still sunk into the frosty overnight low.
At 04:40, they sent Ibrahim and Matthew out on a little walk, wearing a stripped-down version of the armor hidden by heavy coats and hats. Datascan wanted a closer look from street-level to compare to what it was getting from satellite.
“Nothing,” Becker gives us when they’re on the swing back. “No explosives emissions, no radiologicals. Unless they’ve kept it clean and exceptionally well-shielded.”
“This doesn’t rule out bio or chemical weapons,” Ibrahim interrupts from the sidewalk. “It also doesn’t give us a weapons inventory.”
“But we did get a head-count,” Matthew tries to lighten, sounding like he’s cold. “We got fourteen heat/sound images. Only four of which are up and moving.”
“CO2 emissions are consistent with that number,” Becker confirms. “We should be able to keep the targets locked. You’ll know where everybody is when you go.”
“Are we assuming one is Hatif and another is his jailbait?” Ibrahim wants to know. He doesn’t get an answer.
“Come back and suit up,” Richards orders.
“Good,” Matthew happily agrees. “Damn cold out here…”
“Here! Here! Look…” Attila draws you to the back of the dingy little room they used to store the crates for the armor. He drags out a pair of large cases and drops them on the little bed, which creaks in complaint. Then he gets distracted. “Hey… They say you carry an old Colt 1911 Government Model, very sweet—may I…?”
You oblige him, pulling the .45 from the small of your back and unloading the chamber. He takes it reverently, appreciating the grips, the balance, the tuning of the action.
“The forty-five—it put ya through the farging wall. Very nice. Look here…” He reaches into his own waistband and comes out with a nicely blued Colt Officer’s Model with well-worn wood grips. He quickly screws a suppressor onto the muzzle before offering it to you. “Good gun for this. Subsonic load so it silences nice, but still heavy on takedown.”
He watches proudly as you try the balance and sight the weapon.
“You take it,” he insists. “You are point—you need less noise, at least at first. Just promise to take care of it—I’ve had that one almost thirty years.”
“What about you?” you wonder politely. He pulls out a round-edged synthetic weapon with a thick grip.
“Belgian Five-seveN. Fires NATO five-point-seven armor-piercing rounds, same as the P-90. Low recoil. High capacity. You take my Colt.”
You smile and nod your gratitude.
“Now wait,” he gets back to the cases, attention flitting like a child’s. “These are for you. From General Sharavi—he had them sent over himself.” He pops the cases and throws them open. One is filled almost to being stuffed with a mass of neatly folded gray material, which Attila is all-too-eager to start unfolding so you can see what it is. The other has…
“Oh…”
Grayman Book One: Acts of War Page 43
