Chapter Sixteen #3
The five Libyans climbed the steep, winding road to the village in the dark.
They moved quickly and efficiently. Any passerby would know from their near uniformity and the severe facial expressions bobbing up and down in the vapor of their exhalations that they were up to no good.
But no locals walked the hillside road at five thirty in the morning in a snowstorm, so the Libyans arrived undetected into the cobblestone streets of the Swiss hamlet.
Each operator also had a small handheld radio attached to his belt and connected to an earpiece.
With a single command from their leader, they separated on the western edge of Guarda, continued individually to the east, each through a different little pedestrian passageway.
This tactic ensured that anyone looking out their window would only see one of the men.
If an alarm was raised and the villagers began to talk about strangers, they all might well think they saw the same individual.
On the far end of the town the kill squad re-formed like a biologic entity, detached cells rejoining in a petri dish.
The leader consulted his GPS and turned to the left at an unpaved track that continued from the ledge on which the tiny hamlet was situated, up the hillside and into the forest, only visible in the distance after they donned their night observation devices.
The leader updated the team from the information on his GPS.
“Four hundred meters.”
The snow had picked up even more; the swirling bands of flakes had turned to thickening sheets of falling white.
The Libyans had seen snow before, during training in Lebanon or on other missions in Europe, but their bodies were wholly unaccustomed to this cold.
Forty-eight hours earlier, this very team of operators had sat in a Tripoli apartment working with an electronic surveillance detachment to try to locate the source of a ham radio broadcast emanating from the city that had made comments critical of Colonel Qaddaffi.
It had been nearly one hundred degrees in that cramped room, so the cold of the eastern Swiss valley was a shock to their systems indeed.
They almost passed the shack. Only the GPS coordinates provided by the Tech had saved them hours of wandering through the woods.
By now their Skorpions were out of the gym bags, the bags were hanging from their backs, the weapon’s folding stocks were deployed, and the guns were raised to the low ready position, stocks pressed against shoulders and sights just below the sightline of their night vision goggles.
Each man took a careful position around the cabin. They reported in one by one.
The leader was first. “One in position, ten meters from the front door. No movement. The windows are shuttered.”
“Two is with One.”
“Three on west side. One window. Shuttered.”
“Four at east side. One window. Shuttered.”
“Five at back. No windows, but there is a utility shed alongside the main building. A secure padlock on the outside. Nothing else back here.”
The leader said, “Five, stay at the back. Find cover and be ready. Three and Four, come to the front. We will enter as a team.”
“Understood.”
—
Gentry slept dreamless in his sleeping bag next to the hole in the floorboards that led to the earthen basement. The pain meds had dulled the ache in his thigh and given him the respite needed to relax. His sleep was deep, restful.
Brief.
—
The leader retrieved a fragmentation grenade from his belt.
He pulled the pin and moved slowly to the front door with his hand on the spoon.
Two was in front and preparing a breaching charge when he noticed the door was not completely shut.
He turned to his leader and motioned to the crack in the door.
The leader nodded, turned to the two men behind him, and whispered “It’s open. Get ready.”
Number Two pushed the door open quickly and knelt down so that other weapons could train on any targets inside. It was completely dark at first; even the night vision equipment could not make out the features inside.
One lobbed the grenade into the room underhanded.
Two, Three, and Four stepped to the edges of the cabin to avoid the blast. The grenade left the leader’s hand and disappeared into the dark, but the sound of the missile’s impact with a hard surface came too early.
As the leader made to turn away from the door, the grenade reappeared in his night vision goggles, bounced out of the cabin, and landed in the snow in front of the door.
Fortunately for the Libyans, all four saw the sputtering grenade in time.
They dove for cover, either to the snowy ground or around the edges of the cabin.
The explosion whited out the goggles of the three men facing in the weapon’s direction, and a fourth man was hit in the elbow and knocked down by a small piece of shrapnel.
Collecting himself quickly, the leader ripped his now-useless goggles from his eyes, returned to the edge of the door, and entered, firing into the dark.
Number Two and then Three followed, but within two seconds the leader’s shout made the others stop dead in their tracks.
“Mantrap!”