Authors: JT Brannan
STOP AT NOTHING: 'Mark Cole is Bond's US cousin mixed with the balls out action and killing edge of Jason Bourne' Parmenion Books (36 page)
By the time he was at eight thousand feet, Cole had the Zeiss M-760 thermal-imaging night-vision goggles secured around his head, the butt of the Accuracy International Arctic Warfare Super Magnum sniper rifle nestled securely into his shoulder.
The rifle was engineered for cold weather conditions, and was one of the most accurate rifles available – reports said that back in 2009 a British sniper had killed two Taliban machine gunners in Afghanistan from 2,475m away, which equated to more than a mile and a half.
The conditions for that kill had been perfect, however, which was definitely at odds with what Cole now faced. Not only would he be firing from an unstable platform high in the air above the house, but the weather was bad, visibility nonexistent, and he would be using a modified sight.
To make his shots count, he was going to have to account for current altitude, his drop in altitude that would occur between the pull of the trigger and the bullet leaving the barrel as he continued his parachute descent, the effect of the wind for both the normal current, and the unnatural altitude-induced ground effect. They would be the hardest shots he would ever have to make.
As he descended closer, goggles sweeping the area constantly, he began to pick up the eerie, red and yellow images of people stationed around the house, contrasted against the luminous green of the background night vision.
There were six of them stationed in the grounds directly surrounding the house, with six more spread out through the tree line, below and to the front of him as he drifted in from the north east.
The rifle’s magazine held six rounds only, and he knew he would not have time to reload – by the time he had fired six shots and reloaded, he would already have landed. Therefore, each shot would have to count.
It made more sense to use his altitude and the element of surprise to go for the men in the tree line with the six rounds. They would be snipers, using trees for cover as they monitored the grounds. If Cole took out the men around the house instead of the snipers, he would be shot as soon as he landed. He therefore decided to leave the grounds guards for later, and dedicate his initial resources into getting rid of the snipers.
From his current altitude he could just make out their positions, seemingly prone on the ground with sniper rifles of their own, completely unaware of Cole coming in towards them from above.
The faint, coloured images were small, ridiculously so, but Cole made mental notes of each of their positions, and clicked up the goggles from his face.
He then pulled his rifle in and up, his right eye fitting into the rubberized cup of the modified Zeiss sniper scope, which was essentially a barrel-mounted version of the goggles, including close magnification of the thermal night vision image.
As Cole descended through the thin, cold night air, he selected his first target, on the far left.
He controlled his breathing, his right eye concentrating fully on the fuzzy thermal image of the sentry. He checked windings, adjusted the sight according to all the other factors he had considered, checked his aim again, breathed out slowly, held the breath, and caressed the trigger.
Six thousand feet below and five hundred feet ahead, Shane Trejo lay on the soft loam of the pine forest floor and waited, checking the house through his own night vision scope.
Dan Albright and some of his men were already in the house, some guarding directly outside, whilst Trejo and five others covered fields of fire from the safety of the tree line.
He had already been there nearly six hours, and was coming up for relief, changing positions with someone inside the house, which meant he would be able to get some food and a hot drink.
He moved his left hand around and checked the luminous dial of his watch. It was 11.42pm, just eighteen minutes until his break. He turned to look back down through the sight, but never made it, as a 300-grain .338 Lapua Magnum bullet entered the top of his spine from the top right, blowing half of his left rib cage out across the soft loamy ground as it exited his body in an explosion of blood and cartilage.
One down
, Cole registered, even as he turned the fearsome weapon towards the memorized location of the second sentry.
Again, he made the adjustment, controlled the breath, caressed the trigger. The red and yellow figure in his sight visibly slumped down, and although Cole couldn’t be sure where the bullet had entered, he knew it had struck home – and if it had struck home, the man would be dead, it was as simple as that.
Four thousand feet. Third target … Target down.
Three thousand feet. Fourth target … Target down.
Two thousand feet. Fifth target … Target down.
One thousand feet. Sixth target.
Cole was close now, dangerously close, and even though the weapon was suppressed, even the racking of the bolt was enough to give position away, travelling uninterrupted across the cool night sky.
When the final bullet racked home into the chamber, he saw the figure twitch on the floor. He had heard something, and was searching for the source of the sound.
Left, right, the sentry looked but could not identify the location.
Cole adjusted the sight, took aim, controlled the breath, the last figure large in his sight now, clear; and then the man looked up, and Cole caressed the trigger once more and watched in the eerie glow of the night vision device as the powerful Magnum bullet entered through the sentry’s mouth, down through his throat, and out of his back, and Cole could see the hot wet mass of the man’s organs spread over the forest floor.
Target down.
Cole had no time to rest on his laurels, letting the sniper rifle swing down on its sling as he grabbed the steering straps of the chute and pulled sharply to the left, drifting back over the tree tops.
There had been no reaction from the six figures around the grounds yet, and so Cole was confident he had not been discovered.
He was all too aware though that if the snipers didn’t check in, or if others were being sent to relieve them, their deaths would soon be discovered. And so even though Cole might ordinarily have favoured a more subtle approach, in this particular instance he quickly decided that bold aggression would have to be the order of the day.
Retrieving his silenced H&K submachine gun from the covered pouch by his side, he pulled it across the front of his body even as his hands went up to the parachute release straps.
He was just three hundred feet above the deep snow of Steinemeier’s large, open lawn.
Jeff Duncombe crunched through the deep, crystalline snow that seemed to cover every damn square inch of this forsaken wilderness.
He knew it was only just outside Innsbruck, but it might as well have been the frozen Arctic, and he exhaled slowly into the cold air, seeing his breath come out as steam in front of him.
He watched it drift slowly up into the black sky above him, and then he saw it – large, rectangular, coming down from the sky like a giant bat.
What the fuck?
Cole dropped from his harness at just twenty feet from the ground, night-vision goggles back on, sniper rifle now discarded, pulling up his H&K and shooting the first guard through the throat even before he landed, feet burying deep into the snow.
He turned on the spot, firing a rapid double tap into the forehead of another sentry off to his left, then turned again and caught the third man in the face with two more controlled rounds, the fuzzy red image flying back into the strange green, alien landscape described by the goggles.
Cole raced forward as the fourth man, fifty yards over to the left, started to react, and shot him with a short burst of full auto directly into his centre mass, dropping him instantly.
Cole continued moving forward as the parachute continued to fall the last few feet, four men already dead before it had even touched the ground.
Unsuppressed automatic gunfire broke out from the two far corners of the building, and Cole turned and saw the two remaining outside guards firing towards him from behind cover.
Cole saw a large wooden shelter off to one side, and dove over to it, hiding behind the thick walls as dozens of 9mm rounds drummed into the surface.
He then heard shouts from inside the house, and knew he couldn’t afford to wait any longer. He jumped up at the gap between the low wall and the shelter’s roof, submachine gun raised, and then there was a loud clang and a sudden burst of intense light.
Ducking back down behind the wall, the anti-glare function of the goggles just managed to catch it in time to save his eyes, but the goggles were now useless as the entire outdoor security lighting system came on, obviously operated by someone inside the building.
He discarded the goggles, blinked once, twice, and then burst up again, this time opening fire towards the left, catching the guard as he peered out from the corner, one of Cole’s bullets tearing through the man’s cheek.
He checked right in time to see the last man duck back behind the wall of the corner of the house, and then the front of his field shelter erupted in a hail of gunfire, directed from above and to the front.
Cole risked a quick glance and saw four men shooting down on him from open windows on the second floor.
Shit
.
He was about sixty yards to the house by his reckoning, a distance a good sprinter could cover in just six seconds. With his weapons and equipment, however, it would take him more than twice that long, which would be much longer than the shooters would need to kill him.
He sank down and controlled his breathing, and then removed three thermal grenades from his tactical belt rig.
He exhaled quickly and violently and pulled all four pins in rapid succession, rising up and throwing them, one to the right corner, the other three towards the first floor windows, hoping his family weren’t in the same room as the shooters.
Not wasting any time at all, he scooted out of the shelter and broke into a full sprint towards the house, even as he heard the muffled
whumpf
as the thermal grenades exploded and felt the warmth of the incendiary flames flick at his exposed face.
He heard the shattering of windows above him, and saw with satisfaction the burning body of the sixth exterior guard staggering away from the corner of the building, trying to roll himself across the snow to put out the flames.
And then he was at the rear French doors, and with a heavy kick, the doors were smashed open, and Cole was inside.
Both Dan Albright and Stefan now knew he was there, but it didn’t matter.
He had made it to the house, and both men would soon be dead.
Cole swept rapidly through the living area, until movement to his right made him turn, the submachine gun an extension of him that tracked around with him, the trigger depressing almost of its own accord, releasing two subsonic rounds that flew across the room into another agent’s jaw, smashing through the inside of the head and out of the back of the skull on the other side.
The second man, following his partner through, was momentarily blinded by the spray of thick blood, bone and brain matter, and Cole used the distraction to fire another double tap straight between his blood-stained eyes.
Sweeping the weapon in tight arcs, Cole moved through the first floor areas, clearing each room in turn.
At the door, enter from the closed side fast and hard, sweep left to right, weapon tracking smoothly, ready to engage, just as he had learnt in his initially SEAL training over two decades before.
Clear!
sounded the mental confirmation in his head as each room was passed through, until he was at the foot of the stairs.
It was always better to fight from the top down rather than the other way around, but there was no time for useless wishes – the situation was how it was, and that was the end of it; he would just have to make do.
Up above, he could see flames licking around the hall entry on the staircase return, and knew it would be from the thermal grenades he had thrown.
Hoping the flames would cover him, he took a moment to reload his weapon, and then charged.
At he reached the top of the stairs, he saw three bodies strewn over the floor, charred and burnt. A sound beyond the flames to his left made him reflexively turn, identify, and fire, and the fourth man he had seen at the window dropped dead to the floor.
He was close to his family now, he could feel it. But he also knew he had to keep calm, controlled, in charge of his emotions; he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.
And so he also swept each room on this floor, manoeuvring carefully through the flames, his flight suit mercifully inherently flame retardant. He had a feeling there would be no more guards – six in the tree line, six in the grounds, meant that six would probably be in the house. But Cole hadn’t survived so long by taking chances, and so went through each of the second floor rooms, clearing them in turn.
There was nobody else left on this floor, and as the flames from the grenades began to spread, eating away at curtains, wallpaper and plasterboard, Cole turned to the staircase and started up to the third floor.
There were just two rooms on the third floor, Cole remembered from his previous visits here – a small bathroom off to the right, and a large open-plan games room at the end of a short hallway on the left.
He checked the bathroom first – clear.
Then he turned his attention to the games room, stalking down the corridor carefully, very carefully, slow and controlled with each step onto the wooden floorboards.
He and Stefan had enjoyed good times in that same room, playing pool, listening to music, drinking beer and schnapps and talking and laughing into the small hours of the morning.
But no longer. Not anymore. This was now the room in which his old friend would die.