"Anything happening?"
"No, One, the police are staying where they are. And the helicopter is flying around somewhere, but not doing anything."
"The bus should be here in fifteen minutes. Stay alert."
"I will," Three promised.
"Okay," Noonan said. "That's a time-stamp. Mr. One calls Mr. Three about every fifteen minutes. Never more than eighteen, never less than twelve. So-"
"Yeah." Clark nodded. "Move it up?"
"Why not," Stanley said.
"Rainbow, this is Six. Move in and execute. Say again, EXECUTE NOW!"
Aboard the Night Hawk, Sergeant Nance moved left and right, sliding the side doors open. He gave a thumbs up to the shooters that they returned, each man hooking up his zip-line rope to Drings on their belts. All of them turned inward, getting up on the balls of their feet so that their backsides were now dangling outside the helicopter.
"Sergeant Nance, I will flash you when we're in place."
"Roger, sir," the crew chief replied, crouching in the now empty middle of the passenger area, his arms reaching to the men on both sides.
"Andre, go down and look at the courtyard," Rene ordered. His man moved at once, holding his Uzi in both hands.
"Somebody just left the room," Noonan said.
"Rainbow, this is Six, one subject has left the command center."
Eight, Chavez thought. Eight subjects to take down. The other two would go to the long-riflemen.
The last two hundred meters were the hard ones, Malloy thought. His hands tingled on the cyclic control stick, and as many times as he'd done this, this one was not a rehearsal. Okay… He dropped his nose, heading toward the castle, and without the anticollision lights, the aircraft would only be a shadow, slightly darker than the night better yet, the four-bladed rotor made a sound that was nondirectional. Someone could hear it, but locating the source was difficult, and he needed that to last only a few more seconds.
"Rifle Two-One, stand by."
"Rifle Two-One is on target, Six," Johnston reported. His breathing regularized, and his elbows moved slightly, so that only bone, not muscle, was in contact with the mat under him. The mere passage of blood through his arteries could throw his aim off. His crosshairs were locked just forward of the sentry's ear. "On target," he repeated.
"Fire," the earpiece told him.
Say good night, Gracie, a small voice in his mind whispered. His finger pushed back gently on the set trigger, which snapped cleanly, and a gout of white flame exploded from the muzzle of the rifle. The flash obscured the sight picture for a brief moment, then cleared in time for him to seethe bullet impact. There was a slight puff of graylooking vapor from the far side of the head, and the body dropped straight down like a puppet with cut strings. No one inside would hear the shot, not through thick windows and stone walls from over three hundred meters away.
"Rifle Two-One. Target is down. Target is down. Center head," Johnston reported.
"That's a kill," Lieutenant Harrison breathed over the intercom. From the helicopter's perspective, the destruction of the sentry's head looked quite spectacular. It was the first death he'd ever seen, and it struck him as something in a movie, not something real. The target hadn't been a living being to him, and now it would never be.
"Yep," Malloy agreed, easing back on the cyclic. "Sergeant Nonce-now!"
In the back, Nonce pushed outward. The helicopter was still slowing, nose up now, as Malloy performed the rocking-chair maneuver to perfection.
Chavez pushed off with his feet, and went down the zipline. It took less than two seconds of not-quite free-fall before he applied tension to the line to slow his descent, and his black, rubber-soled boots came down lightly on the flat roof. He immediately loosed his rope, and turned to watch his people do the same. Eddie Price ran over to the sentry's body, kicked the head over with his boot, and turned, making a thumbs-up for his boss.
"Six, this is Team-2 Lead. On the roof. The sentry is dead," he said into his microphone. "Proceeding now." With that Chavez turned to his people, waving his arms to the roof's periphery. The Night Hawk was gone into the darkness, having hardly appeared to have stopped at all.
