Assassin's Silence: A David Slaton Novel (48 page)

Slaton nodded to say he would.

The copilot, who was working the radios, said, “I have our fighters on frequency. The call sign is Ruger Two-Two. They’re already shadowing the target, about five miles in trail. We’re eighteen minutes from the merge.”

Slaton picked up his sniper rifle. “All right. Let’s see if we can make this work.”

SEVENTY-THREE

The three aircraft merged in an empty sky over an empty land. The first debate was short-lived.

Ruger 22, the flight of two F-22s, was established three miles behind and one thousand feet above the MD-10. They requested that Bryan join up high as well, two thousand feet above, and make his final approach from high to low.

“Not gonna happen,” Bryan said on their discreet frequency, his tone suggesting that he outranked the woman flying the lead F-22. “I want to come in underneath. It’ll be harder for them to see us, and also less chance that they’ll be alerted by our wake turbulence, which tends to sink.”

The flight lead of Ruger 22 didn’t respond right away, which Bryan took as a victory of sorts. Then over the radio, “Ruger Two-Two copies. Reach Four-One, come five right.”

Bryan banked into a turn to edge the compass 5 degrees right, then nosed over until the altimeter read five thousand feet above sea level. The MD-10 had descended and was now cruising at six thousand feet. Bryan speculated, and his copilot concurred, that there was only one reason for the MD-10 to be flying at such a low altitude—it was the height from which they would drop their poisonous load. It was also another bit of circumstantial evidence to confirm that an attack on Ghawar was imminent. Bryan was happy they weren’t any lower because the terrain in the area was roughly two thousand feet above sea level. To be down in the weeds at night, in unfamiliar terrain, would have grayed what little color remained in his hair.

“You’re nine thousand feet in trail, sixty knots of overtake,” called Ruger 22, giving the first horizontal range estimate. The C-17 was a mile and a half back, but gaining fast. Both pilots looked ahead and saw nothing.

“Target speed two-hundred-twelve knots.”

“Pretty slow,” said McFadden from the right seat.

Bryan nodded agreement. “About how fast you’d go if you were preparing to open the belly doors on an airplane in flight. A release could happen any time. What’s the distance to the estimated initial point we were given?” Langley had forwarded the MD-10’s flight plan, and one navigation point had been highlighted near the northern edge of the oil field.

“Thirty-two miles.”

Bryan nudged all four throttles forward, but it was a delicate dance. After passing the MD-10, they would have to slow to match speeds and then climb to the same altitude. Finally, in the most sensitive maneuver, they would gradually slow to put their sniper in position.

More corrections came from Ruger 22, and Bryan applied them. They were less than a mile in trail when McFadden, whose eyes were younger, said, “There!”

Bryan craned his head forward and looked out the window. Sure enough, a sleek dark shadow materialized. It was running dark, just as they were, no navigation or anticollision lights—a massive form floating in an obsidian sky.

“It looks like a KC-10 from here,” Bryan remarked, referring to the aerial tanker, derived from the same airframe, that he and McFadden had rendezvoused with countless times in skies across the world.

“Yeah,” said McFadden. “Only this one isn’t carrying gas.”

The two Guardsmen exchanged a look, then in unison watched the shadow that was quickly filling the windscreen.

“You know,” Bryan said. “I sure hope them belly doors don’t open right now.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.”

“At least the weather is cooperating. That high stratus deck is killing what little moonlight there is. Let’s hope it stays that way.” Bryan heard another correction from his fighter escort and this time ignored it—he was virtually flying formation on the aircraft above. That would change as soon as they moved ahead. At that point, they would be totally reliant on the fighters for guidance.

“Confirm external lights are off.”

“Check,” said McFadden.

“All right, two minute warning. Willis, you ready?”

“Yes, sir,” crackled the sergeant’s voice over the intercom. “Blackout conditions in place.”

“All right—drop the ramp!”

*   *   *

Slaton had been in the back of many military transports. He’d even had the occasion to jump out of a few. Never had he used one as a shooting platform.

The wind noise was considerable, though not overwhelming thanks to the earmuff-type headset provided by Sergeant Willis. Slaton felt the eddies of a three-hundred-mile-an-hour breeze stir the stale air that had built inside the cargo bay, and he felt the controlled warmth ebb, drawn into the cool desert night as if into the vacuum of space.

Bryan’s drawl crackled over the headset. “We’re in front now. Another three thousand feet and we’ll climb to go co-altitude with the target. From there it’s up to you to put yourself in position.”

Slaton checked his weapon was ready, including the scope.

Bryan again. “You never said—how close do you need to get?”

“You think I’ve done this before? It’s not going to be an empirical thing. I just need a sight picture I can make work.”

“TLAR,” Bryan suggested.

It was a term Slaton was familiar with:
That looks about right
. “TLAR,” he agreed.

“Fair enough. Be warned, I can’t hear you very well—too much wind noise on your mike.”

Slaton adjusted the thin boom microphone closer to his lips. “That better?” he asked.

“It’ll have to do.”

Slaton moved aft where Sergeant Willis was studying the situation. They stood ten steps from the edge of a loading ramp that was wide enough to accommodate an M1 Abrams main battle tank. And beyond that—a half-mile drop to an unseen ocean of sand swales. The wind swirled mightily, whipping Slaton’s hair and snapping at his shirtsleeves.

As a trained sniper, he had worked with countless weapons in hundreds of situations. Never had he encountered anything like this. The wind, the engine noise, the intercom, a target and a shooting platform that both moved in three dimensions. What other challenges would arise? What complications had he not foreseen? His was a mind-set of preparation and routine. What he was about to do—shoot two men piloting a weapon of mass destruction—verged on madness.

The sergeant pointed behind the rear door. “Since we’re coming from underneath,” he said, “you won’t see the jet until we’re almost in position—our big-ass tail is gonna block your view.”

Slaton saw the problem—the C-17’s massive T-tail hovered high behind them. “How far back should I go?” he asked, gesturing to the ramp’s aft edge where the heavy-gauge steel floor gave way to an abyss.

“The farther back you go, the sooner you’ll see him. Take it as far aft as you can stand.”

Slaton sighed. “Yeah … I was afraid you’d say that.”

*   *   *

He settled into a prone shooting position, two sandbags provided by Willis giving support to his weapon. He tried to project an image in his mind: the nose-on silhouette of an airliner falling into view. How many times had he lay planted on his stomach trying to visualize a shot, trying to assimilate in advance all possible variables? Tonight those variables were simply unknowable.

He was traveling at roughly three hundred miles an hour, his target slightly less. His standard 7.62mm round would have to penetrate a multi-ply windshield that—according to Bryan—was tempered to withstand a strike from a large bird at two hundred and fifty miles an hour. The windscreen he had to breach was also angled roughly 30 degrees upward and canted to the side. To further complicate things, the glass in front of one of his targets would slant to port, the other to starboard. Would his round penetrate cleanly or deflect? Would his sight picture be subjected to refraction, as when one looks into water at an angle?

How would the atmospheric conditions affect his bullet path? In sniper school, the instructors had quibbled over relative humidity and temperature. A three-mile-per-hour crosswind was a serious concern. Here Slaton was dealing with a tailwind of three hundred miles an hour, some small, incalculable component of which would be from the left or the right—no way to tell which. Bryan had also warned to expect aerodynamic turbulence at the nose of the MD-10, like the bow wave from a freighter plowing through heavy seas. Only this bow wave was invisible, no way to tell where it began and ended. In essence, he was facing the mother of all ballistic puzzles.

So Slaton did what all good shooters did. He took a deep breath and relaxed.

The shot would come naturally, as it always did. The hard part was the waiting.

SEVENTY-FOUR

He lay on his belly in total darkness, his legs wide for stability. Slaton was three feet from the edge of the ramp, a lip of dull steel that gave way to a half-mile drop. He had positioned slightly closer to the edge moments ago, but the turbulent airflow induced movement on the gun’s barrel, and so he’d pulled back.

The swirling night air was cold, countered by hot engine exhaust that shredded the slipstream on either side. Through his planted elbows he felt vibrations in the airframe, a constant thrum conducted through the ramp’s thick steel into flesh and bone. If all that wasn’t distracting enough, Sergeant Willis had walked through the cargo bay and disabled every source of illumination. The sparse desert outside shone an occasional light, and seemed to blend perfectly with the odd star peering through the clouds above. Altogether it gave Slaton the discomforting sensation that
he
was flying, but with no orientation of up or down. Simply hurtling feet-first through a hurricane-swept void.

He forced away the distractions and concentrated on his scope, elevated to where his target would soon appear.

“Climbing now,” said Bryan over the headset, his tone hushed like a soldier patrolling enemy territory. “We’re one mile in front, speed matched. Five hundred feet below.”

Slaton saw something, blinked once, and there it was. The engines stood out most prominently, their hot sections evident in the low-light scope. He pressed the sight firmly to the orbit of his eye—at this range it didn’t matter, but there was undeniable comfort in the fact that no light whatsoever could escape to highlight their position. He increased the magnification and settled his sight on the cockpit. Fortunately, the instrument lighting inside had been toned down, and even from a mile Slaton could distinguish two melon-like heads behind the angled windscreen.

The pilots were talking.

Bryan again over the headset, “We’re level now, one hundred feet below the target’s altitude. Beginning to slow. Range fifteen hundred yards.”

Slaton sensed a drift to the right. He was about to issue a correction when he realized he was facing backwards and would have to invert every command. A complication he should have foreseen. “Five degrees right,” he murmured into his headset. He felt the C-17 bank ever so slightly, and the drift was arrested.

At this range both targets were in the field of view of his scope. All things being equal, Slaton decided to take the captain first—an earlier discussion with Bryan had convinced him that the control mechanism for the drop system was likely on that side of the cockpit.

When Bryan called, “One thousand meters,” Slaton began shifting between his two targets. He wanted to take the first shot from as close as possible, hoping that minimum range would overcome the long list of ballistic variables. Too close, however, and they might be seen. So far the pilots seemed focused inside, talking and referencing their instruments. Slaton shifted his optic to the belly of the MD-10, and had just enough angle to discern the irregular shape of the clamshell doors. They were still closed. But for how long?

“Five hundred meters,” said Bryan, his voice growing tense. “We’ll be over the top of the oil field in five minutes.”

Slaton swung his sight back to the cockpit. What he saw was not good.

*   *   *

“I have to pee,” said Walid, rising from his seat.

“Do it quickly, we are almost there.”

Tuncay watched his copilot head toward the back, knowing he would be quick because the holding tank was in plain view from the lavatory door. He checked the navigation computer. Twelve miles to go. He reached down to the switch that activated the belly doors—it had been fitted with a red safety guard, lest anyone bump it by accident while reaching for a dropped pencil. In what could only be a reaction to stress, Tuncay found himself fantasizing, wishing he could release his five thousand gallons of radioactive sludge on the headquarters of Arabian Air, the airline that had discarded him after eighteen good years. The thought of having such vast lethality poised under a fingertip was remarkably empowering. It made him think of the end of World War II, when the crew of an American bomber—the name escaped him—dropped the world’s first nuclear weapon on Japan. Was this how those men had felt? All-powerful? In truth, he was happy no mass casualties would result from what he was about to do. A few oil workers, perhaps some Bedouin—that would be the worst according to Ghazi. Maybe a handful of others in the cleanup effort. Casualties were not his intent, only an unavoidable side effect. Tuncay was no crazed jihadist—he was simply a man trying to reach a dream.

He flicked up the guard and saw a simple silver toggle switch. With one tap, a rain of radioactive hell would devastate the House of Saud’s cash machine. Tuncay gazed through the forward windscreen. He saw nothing but a pitch-black night.

*   *   *

“One hundred meters! Shoot dammit!”

“One of the targets left the flight deck!” Slaton responded.

“I’m pushing up the power to match his speed,” Bryan announced. “We can’t risk getting any closer.”

Slaton felt a change in vibration, then a surge of acceleration as the C-17’s big turbofans spun faster.

“The second pilot might have gone to activate the release mechanism,” Bryan said.

“I know,” Slaton replied, having already reached the same damning conclusion. His finger touched the trigger, beginning the deadly pressure. At the range of one football field the captain’s head looked like a pumpkin in his sight.