Court looked at the kid once more, then lowered back to his scope.
Court’s mentor at CIA, a man he only knew by his code name of Maurice, was the first of many instructors who turned Court into a world-class long-distance marksman. He taught the young CIA recruit the math and the craft; he gave Court the confidence he needed to use his scoped rifle in the field to hit targets out over a mile.
Court could remember months of lying prone in fields in West Virginia, East Tennessee, and North Carolina, wearing ghillie suits, with a man-sized target so far away it couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. Maurice would spot for him, sitting at his side just like the young Syrian interpreter did now.
Maurice was a Vietnam vet, and he always said the same thing on the final shot of the day, which was always the most difficult. As Court concentrated on his breath, his heartbeat, while he labored to exert as much control over his involuntary muscles in order to line his sights up on a mile-plus long shot, Maurice would lean into Court’s ear and say a phrase that never left him.
“Send it and end it, kid.”
Court would fire, sending a boat-tail round across fields and lakes, over cabins and farms, and, more often than not, much more often than not, he’d hit his target, thereby ending the “threat.”
He’d send it, and he’d end it.
He thought back to those days, the fundamentals of the craft, and he fought again to remain calm. He forced himself not to feel any emotion at all. Any increase in heart rate, fluctuation in breathing, new sweating on his skin that could cause reflex muscle contractions. Anything different with his body at the moment he fired would affect his shot. It could send the round out of the barrel one hundredth of an inch from where he wanted the muzzle positioned for firing, but translated out across 1.81 miles, the round would end up several feet off target.
He blinked hard.
No . . . this was insane. He couldn’t even put his crosshairs on the target’s head at this distance, much less hold them there.
But as he peered through the optics, an idea came to him, and again, it came to him in Maurice’s calm but intense voice.
“Got a problem you can’t solve? Change the question, son. Branch out.”
Maurice had taught Court all about “branching,” or the ability to change tactics and plans as the need arose. It kept him from panicking, kept him flexible and on track.
He couldn’t hit Azzam’s head, and he knew the man was likely wearing plated body armor. The only chance in hell he had of hitting him at all would be if everyone around him simply moved out of the way.
Court spoke aloud in the darkened apartment hallway now. “Sending.”
He moved the scope off the men in front of Azzam, and he instead shifted his aim fractionally to the left. The crosshairs met on a flat steel plate of the big Typhoon armored personnel carrier positioned directly behind the group.
Court cleared his mind of thoughts, blew out half his air, paused briefly, and pressed the trigger.
Boom.
He knew the flight path of the round would take seven and a half seconds, so Court racked the bolt quickly, resighted through the scope, and aimed again, this time back to the right. He fired again. He’d rushed his second shot somewhat, but he’d taken just enough time to put the crosshairs back in the group of Russians, approximating where Azzam was standing among them.
Both bullets were in the air at the same time, and Court had time to rack the bolt and line back up to prepare for a third shot before anyone on the Russian special forces base had any idea that death was screaming their way at 2,700 feet a second.
CHAPTER 75
Ahmed Azzam shook hands again with the general for the camera, then turned slightly to reach for the hand of a tall Russian colonel. Both men smiled and made eye contact, and then both men’s brains registered a sudden, jolting, whip crack of noise between them. Before either man could perceive any danger, there was an impossibly loud clang of metal on metal, a spray of sparks on Azzam’s right and on the colonel’s left, and then Azzam shut his eyes as an involuntary response.
An instant later he spun away from the flash and sound, and he crumpled down into a ball.
* * *
? ? ?
Court just had time to get his eye focused back in the glass as the first round struck the steel wall of the APC, inches from where Court had been aiming. As expected, the sound, sparks, and flying bits of metal caused an immediate reaction in the group.
The idea was that the Russian soldiers would be well trained at hitting the ground when under fire, whereas the Syrian president, who was no combat vet, would take longer to react.
Unlike his sniper craft, this was no science. This was just a guess about how individuals would respond in a heartbeat.
* * *
? ? ?
But the second round Court fired at the crowd didn’t come anywhere near the Syrian president, who was already dropping to the ground. It instead struck the Syrian Army captain serving as a translator on the outside of his left upper arm, traveled through his body lengthwise, and tumbled out and into the side armor of a Russian major. If the bullet had still been traveling ballistic it would have likely made it through this man’s Kevlar, but since it struck the armor sideways, it merely pitched the officer over the Syrian president, and he fell onto the ground alongside the armored personnel carrier.
Every one of Azzam’s eight bodyguards had reacted to the sound of incoming sniper fire the way all humans react to such sounds; they recoiled automatically. But before anyone else on the scene had the presence of mind to act, the men recovered, turned for their protectee, and moved to cover him.
The eight men looked in the tight group for their president and panicked when they did not see him at first, but as the close-detail members realized he was on the ground, they worried even more.
Burly Syrians pushed their way through the Russians, some dead or injured; there was blood everywhere. Many of Azzam’s guards fell down in the process of getting to their president, but within six and a half seconds of the first shot hitting the Typhoon’s armor, two bodyguards had enveloped Azzam, and others began pushing Russians out of the way to get him clear of danger.
“He’s bleeding!” the lead protection agent shouted as soon as he saw the blood on Azzam’s collar. The president lay facedown in the dirt at first, but just as his two men shielded him, and others fought their way through the mass of Russians, both dead and alive, to get to their protectee, Azzam pushed himself up onto his knees. All the security men knew the bullets had come from the direction of Palmyra to the west, so they lifted him by the arms and began moving him around to the far side of the APC.
And it was in the execution of this move to safety that his lead bodyguard saw that Ahmed Azzam’s chin and right cheek were deeply cut, pouring dark rich blood.
It hadn’t been Court’s intended second shot that wounded Azzam, but rather the first shot. The big 647-grain bullet fired from the McMillan sniper rifle had exploded upon striking the steel APC, sending lead and brass fragments in all directions. Three men in the group were wounded with the shot, but none as much as Azzam. A hot, sharp, twisted fingernail of brass had ripped into his right cheek next to his lip at a speed of nearly six hundred feet per second, and it tore its way into his mouth, where it chipped two teeth and then exited out below his lip just above his chin.
The president pressed hard against the pain with his hand, and blood dripped through his fingers.
* * *
? ? ?
In the destroyed apartment building Court fired a third round, and on his right the young Syrian FSA soldier watched the scene through the binos.