Night of the Assassin: Assassin Series Prequel, Russell Blake [good story books to read txt] 📗

before anyone knew what had happened. Raul had questioned the logic involved but didn’t say anything. If it had been his operation he would have approached with a half dozen heavily-armed divers from the waterside, and used lines to climb up the side of the ship, or alternatively, taken out the two smoking sentries from the harbor end of the dock, firing from the waterline and killing them instantly before moving his squad onto the pier from the water, where nobody would be expecting any attack.

If he was one of the smugglers on the ship, and the marines’ intelligence on the number of armed men was correct, he would have had at least two lookouts, one with a night-vision scope, surveying the dock for the slightest hint of trouble. If there was going to be a gun battle, you’d want to pick the distance at which you engaged wisely, in order to be able to hold off any assailants while you made an escape. He’d have had a high-speed tender secured to the ship’s stern as a get-away contingency, and would also have had a man watching the water approach, just in case. Because you never, ever really knew – you had to expect the unexpected.

But it wasn’t his place to second guess his superiors and he was interested to see how the exercise would play out. He gave the marines a less than twenty percent chance of taking the ship without a battle, which meant that he’d see some real action. Finally. Albeit from a distance but, in truth, that was preferred. He’d long ago concluded that it was far safer to be sniping from afar than to be a hero rushing into a hail of slugs. Leave that to his peers. He’d pick off his targets with surgical precision before they knew what hit them.

Two large Norwegian wharf rats scurried down the dock, away from the ship and the two smoking men. These were big rodents; their bodies were a good eighteen inches long, with tails to match – scavengers the size of small dogs. The waterfront was infested with them and the city had long ago given up on trying to bring the population under control. Poison had been only moderately effective, and one genius had the idea of releasing a horde of hungry felines – which resulted in a feral cat infestation in addition to the rats, which were large enough to go ten rounds with a cat without breaking a sweat. Slicks of oil floated on the surface of the water from leaking bilges; the port had a pervasive odor of decay and long-dead fish.

Raul studied the battered ship’s bridge for signs of life, scanning slowly over the superstructure and taking his time at each of the helm’s reinforced windows. Those would pose a problem, as they’d be at least inch thick glass, designed to withstand the pressure of the massive waves that surged over the four hundred feet of bow and ship and slammed into the tower. He knew from his reading that oceangoing vessels were designed to withstand seas up to sixty feet in height, the theory being that waves didn’t get any larger than that. Of course, the hundred foot rogue waves that had been recorded with some regularity were ignored by the industry because if you built ships that could survive those, they would be too expensive. So everyone pretended that sixty was the maximum, and when hundreds of boats were lost in any given period, it was shoulder shrugs and profit statements that everyone focused on.

His night-vision scope illuminated the bridge in an eerie green. There were two armed sentries visible on the superstructure, one outside on the bridge walkway, and the other inside. He could just make out the gleam of binoculars from the interior, so in Raul’s opinion the chances of the commander’s scheme working had diminished to less than zero. He was glad it wasn’t his ass on the line for this one.

Perhaps, instead of the sea approach, Raul might have had a flight of four to six men parachute in, touching down on the rear of the ship, taking out the sentries as they descended. Virtually anything other than a direct assault down the dock. No wonder the military casualties in the drug wars were so high. With operational plans that amounted to brandishing a saber and screaming, ‘Charge!’ there could be little expectation of anything but a blood bath. He didn’t envy his fellow commandos their duty tonight. There was no way this would go well.

He adjusted his scope to compensate for the wind, and calculate the distance with his laser rangefinder. Six-hundred seventy-four meters. Like shooting fish in a barrel, he thought, allowing himself the luxury of a small smile. His face, like those of his fellow commandos, was blacked out with camouflage paint so as to avoid giving off any shine, lending his profile an evil glint akin to that of an escaped demon. The smile was anything but reassuring.

The commander gave the signal and the two undercover men exited the building, one holding a bottle of mescal in his hand and talking loudly in an inebriated slur. Given that there was no way they wouldn’t be spotted, the bright idea was that they were to be friendly, drunken dock workers, and once the two smoking guards were dispatched, they would pretend to engage in a scuffle and some ‘security guards’ would come running to break up the fight. When there were six men in total by the gangplank they’d breach the ship, and more would pour out of the building and reinforce them from there. In addition to the stun guns, the men on the dock would be equipped with grenades and machine pistols, as would the bogus security guards, so the presumption was that they could take the ship by surprise and keep the foe engaged until the main body of commandos made it down the dock. They had two vehicles