Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

Maybe no news is good news, Sigler thought. Guess we’ll find out in about five minutes.

Four minutes and fifty seconds later, the crew chief at the gun twisted around and tapped him on the arm. The Night Stalkers crew members wore headsets that gave them access to their own radio net and internal comms, but as a matter of operational security, they didn’t have Cipher element’s frequency. The Delta team’s radios did include a separate channel so they could communicate with the Night Stalkers—who were using the unit callsign ‘Beehive’—but this close to the objective, the last thing Sigler wanted to do was mess with the radio settings. At this point in the mission, gestures and hand signals were the preferred form of communication.

Sigler passed the tap on to the rest of the squad, and almost in unison, they gave their equipment a final pre-combat inspection.

Rainer’s voice squelched in his earpiece. “Eagle-Eye, this Cipher Six. Let me know when you’re in position. Over.”

A few hundred yards ahead, the lead Black Hawk executed a tricky near-vertical descent, flaring into a hover just a few feet above the arid terrain. Though he couldn’t see them, Sigler knew that the six Eagle-Eye snipers were piling out of their ride and establishing a defensive over-watch position a kilometer away from the target.

The helicopters were quiet, but the desert was a big empty place and sound carried. Even at this distance, the insurgents in the building were probably sitting up and taking note. The Black Hawks were always at their most vulnerable during touchdown, when they were close to potential hostiles and unable to execute any kind of evasive maneuvers. It would be the job of the snipers to deal with any opposition during the interminably long half-minute or so required for other two Night Stalker birds to debark their passengers.

The snipers gave the ‘all-clear’ a moment later. Immediately, Sigler heard a change in the pitch of the turbines, and then he felt his stomach lurch and rise into his throat as the helicopter dropped like a runaway elevator. The downward motion stopped abruptly, and Sigler saw the crew chief waving, giving his all-clear.

The ground looked tantalizingly close, but Sigler knew from experience that night-vision devices screwed with depth perception, and with forty-odd pounds of gear strapped to his body, it paid to err on the side of caution. With his knees bent slightly to absorb the impact, he jumped from the hovering helo. As soon as his feet made contact, he dropped into a low shooter’s stance and began moving forward, sweeping the foreground with the barrel of his HK416 assault rifle.

The squared-off outline of the building was visible about fifty meters away, but it looked as desolate as the rest of the bleak landscape.

“Last man out!” someone behind him shouted into the radio, and then the Black Hawk’s turbines roared and the downdraft of the helicopter’s ascent nearly blew Sigler over. When the maelstrom began to subside about ten seconds later, he keyed his mic. “Cipher Six, this is Cipher One-Six. We’re in position. No sign of rain. Over.”

“Roger, One-Six. You know what to do.”

Sigler gestured for his team to line up behind him, and he began advancing toward the building. He stayed in his hunched over stance, his gaze flitting between the front of the building and the ground directly in front of him.

“Cipher element, this is Eagle-Eye two. Nothing on thermals.”

Sigler frowned in dismay but kept moving. The cinderblock structure, unlike the shoddy house they had raided the previous evening in Ramadi, was an effective enough insulator to mask heat signatures from the thermal scopes.

The six men reached the front of the building. Sigler lined up beside the entryway—there was no door. Three operators were behind him, while the remaining two men posted at the corners to watch the sides and the rear of the building.

Unit SOP called for a dynamic entry, moving in fast, identifying and eliminating hostiles in the blink of an eye, but Sigler hesitated. The open doorway, a dark hole in the green-gray of the building, beckoned him. Without a door to kick down, it would be the smoothest entry ever. What could be easier?

Too easy.

Instead of giving the signal that would start the countdown, Sigler eased forward and peeked around the doorpost.

Someone behind him hissed a warning. Almost from day one in basic training, soldiers were taught to never present a silhouette target to an enemy. If the insurgents were inside, waiting to meet the attack that they must surely suspect was coming, then he was a dead man.

No shot came.

The green display of his night vision showed what looked like sleeping forms, wrapped in blankets. There was no sign of movement within.

Sigler eased back. Nothing about this felt right.

It was decision time; he had to either go now or abort. His instincts were screaming for him to do the latter, but he didn’t have a shred of evidence to back up that call.