Furchtner was almost there, heading to the right side of the helicopter, to the comfort of Dieter Weber. But then he stopped, seeing inside the open right-side door to where Gerhardt Dengler was sitting, and decided to go to the other side.
"Okay, Team, stand by," Chavez ordered, trying to keep all four groups juggled in the same control, sweeping his binoculars over the field. As soon as the last were in the open…
"You; get inside, facing back." Furchtner pushed Brownie toward the aircraft.
"Off target, Rifle Two-Two is off the subject," Weber announced rather loudly over the radio circuit.
"Re-target on the next group," Chavez ordered.
"Done," Weber said. "I'm on the lead subject, group three."
"Rifle Two-One, report!"
"Rifle Two-One tight on Subject Dortmund," Homer Johnston replied at once.
"Ready here!" Loiselle reported next from the bushes at the back of the house. "We have the fourth group now."
Chavez took a deep breath. All the bad guys were now in the open, and now it was time:
"Okay, Lead to team, execute, execute, execute!"
Loiselle and Tomlinson were already tensed to stand, and both fairly leaped to their feet invisibly, seven meters behind their targets, who were looking the wrong way and never had a clue what was going on behind them. Both soldiers lined up their tritium-lit sights on their targets. Both were pushing - dragging - women, and both were taller than their hostages, which made things easy. Both MP-1D submachine guns were set on three-round burst, and both sergeants fired at the same instant. There was no immediate sound. Their weapons were fully suppressed by the design in which the barrel and silencer were integrated, and the range was too close to miss. Two separate heads were blown apart by multiple impacts of large hollowpoint bullets, and both bodies dropped limp to the lush green grass almost as quickly as the cartridge cases ejected by the weapons that had killed them.
"This is George. Two subjects dead!" Tomlinson called over the radio, as he started running to the hostages who were still walking toward the helicopter.
Homer Johnston was starting to cringe as a shape entered his field of view. It seemed to be a female body from the pale silk blouse, but his sight picture was not obscured yet, and with his crosshair reticle set just below Petra Dortmund's left eye, his right index finger pushed gently back on the set-trigger The rifle roared, seeding a meter-long muzzle flash into the still night air
–she'd just seen two pale flashes in the direction of the house, but she didn't have time to react when the bullet struck the orbit just above her left eye. The bullet drove through the thickest part of her skull. It passed a few more centimeters and then the bullet fragmented into over a hundred tiny pieces, ripping her brain tissue to mush, which then exploded out the back of her skull in an expanding red pink cloud that splashed over Gerhardt Dengler's face-
–Johnston worked the bolt, swiveling his rifle for another target; he'd seen the bullet dispatch the first.
Eddie Price saw the flash, and his hands were already moving from the execute command heard half a second earlier: He-pulled his pistol from the map-pocket and dove out the helicopter's autolike door, aiming it one-handed at Hans Furchtner's head, firing one round just below his left eye, which expanded and exploded out the top of his head. A second round followed, higher, and actually not a well-aimed shot, but Furchtner was already dead, falling to the ground, his hand still holding Erwin Ostermann's upper arm, and pulling him down somewhat until the fingers came loose.
That left two. Steve Lincoln took careful aim from a kneeling position, then stopped as his target passed behind the head of an elderly man wearing a vest. "Shit," Lincoln managed to say.
Weber got the other one, whose head exploded like a melon from the impact of the rifle bullet.
Rosenthal saw the head burst apart like something in a horror movie, but the large stubbly head next to his was still there, eyes suddenly wide open, and a machine gun still in his hand - and nobody was shooting at this one, standing next to him. Then Stubble-Head's eyes met his, and there was fear/hate/shock there, and Rosenthal's stomach turned to sudden ice, all time stopped around him. The paring knife came out of his sleeve and into his hand, which he swung wildly, catching the back of Stubble-Head's left hand. Stubble-Head's eyes went wider as the elderly man jumped aside, and his one hand went slack on the forestock of his weapon.
That cleared the way for Steve Lincoln, who fired a second three-round burst, which arrived simultaneously with a second rifle bullet from Weber's semiautomatic sniper rifle, and this one's head seemed to disappear.
"Clear!" Price called. "Clear aircraft!"
"Clear house!" Tomlinson announced.
"Clear middle!" Lincoln said last of all.
