Target Deck - 02 (27 page)

“We're clear,” he whispered to Nikita before slithering over the wall.

Drawing his suppressed Glock 19 pistol, the mercenary kept watch while Nikita gasped and made his way up to the top. Stone buttresses lined both sides of the thick exterior walls. Inside the compound were two courtyards, one with a soccer field where the outer walls merged with an old abandoned church, and the second courtyard was what they were looking into now. Across the courtyard was a single story modern building that had been erected amid the crumbling colonial architecture that housed the elite of the cartel, their bodyguards, and servants. Next to this was a larger two story red brick building that looked to have been built decades prior and refurbished only recently. There was a decent sized antenna farm on the roof for transmitting by satellite, VHF, and by microwave. This was Jimenez' private residence.

“Over there,” Aghassi pointed to a tall circular tower that rose into the night sky. The old watch tower was similarly abandoned and left to waste. Situated on the outer wall, the tower had been built right between the two courtyards and was a part of the interior wall that separated them. Before Aghassi could make his move, they needed to get Nikita into position to cover him if something went wrong.

Staying low, they crept along the wall to the tower. The intelligence that they had been provided indicated that there was currently no way up to the top. The wooden ladders and stairs inside had long since rotted away; however, the roof remained intact. Over time it had become overgrown with vegetation sprouting up from the top. Climbing into a perch like that was usually a death wish for a sniper, but Aghassi would need Nikita's added situational awareness and the sniper's chance of discovery elsewhere in the compound was very high with constant roving patrols.

Digging through his assault pack, Nikita palmed a telescoping pole, a rolled up caving ladder, and an evil hooking metal device called an Afghan hook. The hook consisted of two metal bars with dozens of two to three inch spikes sticking out that made it look like a very nasty weapon but it was actually made to help Navy SEALs scale the high compound walls that were often found in Afghanistan.

Securing the base of the Afghan hook to the caving ladder, Nikita unwound it. The caving ladder was nothing more than two metal cables with horizontal metal rungs stretching between them. Next, he extended the pole to its full fifteen meters and locked it into place. Aghassi watched the roving patrol on the other side of the courtyard stop for a smoke break.

Next, the pole was clamped to the hook and ladder assembly via a small magnet at the end. Aghassi waited until the patrolling guard turned around, taking a puff off his cigarette.

“Do it.”

Nikita swung the pole up on the back side of the tower until the hook disappeared over the top. Pulling the pole back, the caving ladder now hung from the side of the tower that faced out, concealed from those inside the compound. Collapsing the pole, Nikita placed it back in his assault pack. Before he began his ascent, he gave a hard tug on the ladder. When the ladder was pulled it released a second swing arm on the Afghan hook that came down and secured on the opposite side of the lip of the roof, locking it in place.

The Kazakh cursed to himself as he swung onto the ladder with both the assault pack and his rifle slung across his back.

Aghassi watched as the guard flung his cigarette down and rubbed it out under his shoe. He held his breath as the Mexican gunman turned around and began walking towards his position. Just when it looked like he would be forced into a confrontation, the guard turned and walked down the wide stone steps into the courtyard.

By now Nikita was almost to the top. He was using the overhand technique to scale the ladder to balance himself. With a flimsy cable ladder hanging in the air without support, it could be hellacious trying climb it because the climber's lower body would push the ladder out while the upper body pulled it in. The solution is for the climber to bring his arms behind the ladder and grip the rungs while climbing with his feet normally to distribute the weight evenly.

Once at the top he reeled the ladder in behind him and spoke into his radio headset.

“Spooky-One?” Nikita's voice came over the ear bud that Aghassi wore.

“I got you.”

“Give me one minute and then move out.”

Nikita crawled cautiously across the top of the tower. He had the best vantage point of anywhere on the entire mountain but if the aging structure caved in he was finished. It appeared that there were some lead shingles underneath the overgrowth that spilled over the edge of the tower, rather than decaying wooden beams.

Digging into his sniper tool kit he pulled free a set of garden sheers. Clipping short pieces of vegetation, he secured them to his 417 rifle with rubber bands. The Chromacamo uniform had already shifted color slightly to match the surroundings, the overall shading remained dark as it had been nighttime to begin with. He then made sure his suppressor was still fixed on the barrel properly. For this mission he had loaded a magazine of sub-sonic rounds. With the suppressor in place, each shot would be so quiet that the only audible sound would be the hammer inside the gun striking the firing pin. The bullets were great for low visibility work but only had an effective range of fifty meters or so before they lost enough velocity that they began to tumble through the air.

Extending the Harris bipod legs attached under the rifle, he set down into a position where he could cover Aghassi from.

“Ready,” he whispered into his headset.

“I'm moving.”

Aghassi began moving from the tower down the wall that partitioned the two courtyards. Down below, the roving patrolman was looking at the ground absently.

“You're clear.”

They only had time to conduct a couple rock drills before the mission, no scale model, no rehearsals, they were flying by the seat of their pants. Aghassi wasn't even sure if he had all the right equipment he would need to penetrate the drug lord's server room.

Nikita came off glass. At close range there was no need for even the three power magnification that he had dialed the scope down to. The infiltrator below moved through the shadows towards Jimenez' villa. The guard had turned around and was heading back towards the stairs.

“Stop,” Nikita whispered over the radio. “He's moving.”

Aghassi crouched, holding his pistol at the ready.

Nikita looked through his scope, the crosshairs moving on the lead edge of his target as he walked. Someone called out in Spanish from across the courtyard. Looking over, Nikita saw that someone had walked out from the one story structure that Aghassi was heading to. He carried on a conversation for a few moments and then the guard turned to walk inside. Both Samruk operatives breathed a sigh of relief when he closed the door behind him.

“They are inside,” Nikita informed him.

“Keep an eye out.”

“I will.”

The sniper watched as Aghassi hurried along the walkway on top of the wall to the opposite end of the courtyard. Once he reached the one story building he hung himself over the lip of the wall and lowered himself down. Gently, one foot at a time, he stepped onto the rooftop. Rather than enter on the ground floor where there would be the most security measures, he had opted to try the second story window into the villa which could be accessed from the adjacent rooftop as the two structures had been placed side by side.

The firm that installed the alarm and detection systems utilized layered security features but as he had found out, there were some gaps in them. The windows and doors on the bottom floor were wired into an alarm with contact strips; however, the second story windows were simply locked with a metal film embedded in the glass in case someone shattered it. Once the glass broke, it would break the circuit running through the metal film and trip the alarm.

Aghassi wouldn't be resorting to anything so crude. As their inside sources had reported, Jimenez attended religious services in the crumbling church at the front end of the compound this time of night. The lights inside his villa were turned off.

He slid a screwdriver under the widow and pressed up on the handle to make a small gap. Next, he reached into his bag of tricks and slipped a thin rubber airbag into the crack. Removing the screw driver, he connected a small hand pump to the airbag and began inflating it.

“God damned penis pump,” he cursed. It was taking too damn long.

“We got all night,” Nikita said sarcastically, having heard him on the net.

Below them, they could hear voices again.

“Maybe not.”

“What is it?”

“They changed out the guards. Hurry up.”

Reaching into the open Koala pouch, he palmed one of the metal bypass rods he carried and slipped it under the crack in the window created by the open airbag. The rod was L-shaped to come around and manually unlock door and window latches. It took a few tries but he finally managed to unlock the window and slide it open.

“He's coming up the stairs,” Nikita hissed.

Aghassi grabbed the window by the frame and threw himself inside and into the dark.

Nikita watched his partner disappear into the open window. A second later it was shut and the guard began his patrol unaware of the intrusion.

“Are we clear?”

“The guard didn't see anything,” the sniper transmitted.

“Okay. Let me know if you see any activity around the villa.”