Below him on North Quaker Lane, five pairs of headlights moved slowly to the edge of the property at the front of the safe house grounds. When they rolled under the streetlight closest to the driveway, this revealed them to be five large black SUVs. They stopped one hundred feet in front of the guard shack and just sat there. They weren’t threatening anyone or anything, but they were a curious sight indeed.
The five SUVs were from Uber, and Court had ordered one to go to that location with each of his five phones. He’d texted each driver with instructions to wait at the end of the driveway. The drivers inside the vehicles didn’t know anything more than that; when they found themselves forming into a motorcade with other drivers, they likely assumed a group would be coming down the driveway from the big property any minute and piling in to go to dinner or to another location.
But Court didn’t care what the drivers were thinking. He was only concerned about what the CIA guards on the property were thinking. He knew everyone would see a motorcade of big black SUVs and immediately think “feds” or other government entity. He had planned this so that every eye on the property would look out to the cars at the end of the drive. If he had created some threatening diversion, explosions or fireworks, for example, he knew security here would order the south wing of the property locked down tight, so he kept his diversion mild. Just government-looking vehicles forming in the distance.
Court turned his attention from the five SUVs and focused again on the clock tower. The defensive plan of Alexandria Eight, Court had read in the plans sent by Hanley, had called for either one or two guards on the clock tower landing. Court was hoping for one, but when he got his NODs centered on the tower and then looked just below it at the landing, he saw three men standing there.
Shit.
He reached for the weapon on his right hip. It was a Ruger Mark 2 Amphibian, a stainless steel .22 caliber rim fire pistol with an integral suppressor.
But then he decided to change his tactics on the fly. As he descended closer to the men he took his hand off the pistol, and he let go of one of the brake handles on his parachute rig and quickly pulled his knife. At thirty feet above the landing he cut away his equipment bundle, then quickly grabbed his quick-release harness, pulling it to release the entire rigging from his back.
The backpack crashed on the landing and Court landed right behind it, hitting the surface and dropping low, just inches behind the first sentry, who swung around at the noise right behind him. Court came up under the man’s M4 rifle, ripping the weapon away with one hand and pulling against the guard’s rifle sling. This yanked the man forward, with his chin leading the way.
Court rocked the man with an uppercut palm strike to his chin.
The first guard crumpled to the ground unconscious before the other two men even knew what was going on.
Both remaining security officers spun into action now—one reached for the radio on his shoulder while his hand went down to draw his pistol, and the second brought his rifle up towards the movement less than ten feet away on the landing. Court drew his suppressed Ruger .22 and shot the first man in the forearm, knocking his support hand off the rifle and causing the weapon to drop free, where it hung by its sling.
Quickly there was a second snap of Court’s integrally suppressed pistol and a small flash of light. The radio handset in the second guard’s left hand shattered. As he drew his pistol with his right hand Court fired another round from the nearly silent pistol. The small round slammed into the barrel of the pistol in the man’s right hand, knocking it away. It bounced off into the darkness on the landing.
The officer in front reached again for his rifle hanging from his chest, but Court closed the distance, slapped the gun to the side, and pressed the long suppressor of his Amphibian into the man’s forehead. In an aggressive whisper he said, “A lot of dumb assholes have died for Denny Carmichael. That ends tonight. You don’t want to be the last one to die, do you?”
Though Court’s gun was pressed to one man’s head, his eyes were on the second man, ensuring he wouldn’t try to run for the door to the stairwell. When the man turned to do just that Court took his steel pistol and struck the right temple of the man under his control, dropping him unconscious to the ground. Then Court turned and aimed at the fleeing guard.
Court fired twice, striking the man once in each thigh. The security officer dropped flat on his face, unable to operate his wounded legs.
The dark figure who had appeared from the sky now advanced along the narrow landing, overtaking the young guard as he kept crawling for the door.
Court reached into a pouch on the wounded man’s own load bearing vest, and he retrieved two tourniquets. While the man squirmed Court applied one high to each of the two thighs, stopping the bleeding instantly, but also completely disabling the appendages, as they went numb in seconds. He spoke softly to the terrified man below him.
“I doubt I hit anything vital, so you probably don’t need the tourniquets, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take for you to wake up and call for help.”