The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

to break up his shape. Sound was a no-brainer and he watched his footsteps, choosing to backtrack a pace rather than step on dry twigs or loose gravel, and he had emptied his pockets of coins and checked the rattle of the rucksack before setting off. Silhouette was most prominent on top of gradients, and he always avoided the skyline, choosing to traverse slopes and keep the high ground above him. The shadow element shouldn’t be a problem tonight, but a bright moon or backlight could cast shadows every bit as noticeable as on the brightest of days.

Below him he knew that Romanovitch’s property would be quiet and inactive. It was one AM and as he reached the edge of the slope he could see that there was only one light on within the house, and a faint blue hue emitted from the security hub. He watched, using the binoculars, which were assisted for low-light conditions by a lithium battery and passive infrared beam. They struggled at this distance for night capability, but he could pick out the buildings and the two cars still parked on the driveway. King checked the perimeter, tracking the fence and using his own mantra of the five S’s to see if he could spot anybody in the darkness. To look past the form of a person and turn his attention to the visible tell-tale signs they could emit. His eyes slowly tuned in. Before long, he was seeing what he had clearly not been meant to. Throughout the grounds, there were dozens of men. He could make out the DPM, or disruptive pattern material of the camouflage clothing by looking for just the lighter patterns at first, and he could see the dead-straight lines - the shapes and angles at odds with nature - of long guns. Shotguns and rifles. Under the magnification of the binoculars some rifles even looked modified and customised with scopes, lights, laser dot pointers and underslung shotguns.

They knew he was coming.

66

 

A diversion wasn’t going to cut it. It would bring the men running. And they would be shooting. King had seen the focus of men were placed on both sides of the eastern gable of the house. This made the driveway a column with the attack at both sides at the end. As if he were going to come up the driveway as bold as brass. Highly unlikely. The pincer movement was a fine idea, but the men had deployed parallel to the drive, directly opposite each other and not at acute angles. This would mean that in a firefight, they would inflict casualties on each other, rather than merely obliterate their intended target. It was an idea from somebody without combat experience. Which was encouraging. King had assumed most of Romanovitch’s men would be ex-military. Maybe they were, but unlike the US, UK and NATO troops, there was a generation of Russian soldiers who had served their country with no combat deployment.

King had worked his way down the mountainside and made out more men flanking the house. Each man was placed at intervals of fifty-feet. If King couldn’t make his way between two men at fifty-feet, he wouldn’t be doing this. He had trained as a sniper and could use his surroundings to remain invisible. He had lain in wait for a target for four days, not thirty-feet from a manned Taliban observation post in Afghanistan. When the target had finally presented himself, King had taken the shot, waited another day and exfiltrated without being seen. But that was then, and this was now. He had had time on his side back then. With these men of Romanovitch’s waiting for him, King knew it was now or never. He either got Catherine Milankovitch out as a bargaining chip, or he killed Romanovitch to appease Helena.

There was no turning back.

King could see that the men had assumed that any attack would be coming from the front, with the men at the sides of the house being a backup to any attack, or perhaps a security cordon for Romanovitch inside. King neared the perimeter where the scrub met shrubs. In this case, a belt of privet. He shuffled forward on his belly, raised the binoculars and breathed steadily as he scanned the ground ahead of him. The binoculars gave him the low-light illumination, so he wound down the magnification to increase his field of view. The men were closer now, and he could see the slight movements which had alerted him further up the mountainside. The men were fidgeting. Weapons were moving. Eyes were on the driveway. King was sure that with this amount of men within the grounds, there couldn’t have been any motion sensors, and nor would the cameras be much use, unless they were all focused on the perimeter. He felt in the bag for the first IED and planted one of the electrical timer charges on the ground behind the belt of privet. He set the timer for fifteen-minutes and crawled steadily down the line of the perimeter, towing the bag behind him on a length of paracord. When he was opposite the largest group of men, he took out another electrical charge, checked the luminous dials of his watch, then set the second IED for ten-minutes. Against his normal SOP, or standard operating procedure, he made his way back along the line and crossed past the first IED with eight-minutes showing on his watch. He used his elbows and toes, keeping lizard-low as he reached the end of the garden and where the mountain slope extended upwards at ninety-degrees. The ground was difficult to cross quietly here, gravel had washed down, and the area was patchy grass and scrub, along with planted shrubs that hadn’t quite had the tending they needed. A buffer between the manicured ground and the wild mountainside. King took advantage of the cover and untied the rucksack, slipping it quietly