and a weapon’s worst enemy, dirt. Like a good Timex watch, the MK23 had taken a licking and kept on ticking—or in this case, kept on firing.
Johnston and Loiselle had bright and shiny new toys to play with, Rainbow having recently switched from the M24 sniper rifle to the Knights Armament M110 Sniper System, equipped with Leupold scope for daylight conditions and the tried-and-true AN/PVS-14 night sight. Unlike the bolt-action M24, the M110 was semiautomatic. For the assault teams, it meant Johnston and Loiselle, shooting cover fire, could put more rounds on target in a whole lot less time.
At Clark’s direction, each sniper had earlier done a walk-about of the area, circumnavigating the blocks surrounding the embassy compound, picking out perches and sketching out his fields of fire. Of the spots Chavez and Weber had chosen as their entry points, Johnston and Loiselle would be able to provide absolute cover—until the teams entered the building proper, that was. Once inside, the assault teams would be on their own.
Fifty minutes after sunset the team sat hunkered down in their makeshift command post, lights out, waiting. Through the binoculars Clark could see the faint glow of light seeping through the embassy’s plantation shutters. The exterior lights had popped on, too, four twenty-foot-high poles, one at each corner of the compound and each topped with a sodium-vapor lamp pointed in toward the building.
An hour earlier the muezzin’s call to salaat had echoed over Tripoli, but now the streets were deserted and quiet, save the distant barking of dogs, the occasional car horn, and the faint voices of the People’s Militia guards still on perimeter duty around the embassy. The temperature had dropped only a few degrees, hovering somewhere in the upper eighties. Between now and sunrise, as the heat dissipated into the cloudless desert air, the temperature would plummet another thirty degrees or more, but Clark was confident that by sunrise the embassy would be secure and Rainbow would be packing up. He hoped with no friendly casualties and a few live bad guys to hand over to ... whomever. Who would oversee the post-mission mop-up and subsequent investigation was probably still being debated.
Somewhere in the dark a cell phone trilled softly, and a few moments later Richards appeared at Clark’s shoulder and whispered, “Swedes on the ground at the airport.”
The Swedish Security Service, the Säkerhetspolisen, fielded the county’s antiterrorist division, while the Rikskriminalpolisen, or Criminal Investigation Department, was its version of the FBI. Once Rainbow had secured the embassy, it would be turned over to them.
“Good, thanks. Guess that answers the question. Tell them to stand by. As soon as we’re finished they can come in. Nothing about our timeline, though. Don’t want that getting out.”
“You think the Swedes would—”
“No, not intentionally, but who knows who they’re talking to.” Though Clark thought it unlikely, he couldn’t discount the possibility of the Libyans throwing a wrench into the works: The Americans came here, failed in their mission, and now people are dead. A publicity coup for the colonel.
It had been nearly twenty-four hours since the embassy had been stormed, and still no sign of life from inside. Clark had chosen 0215 as their go-time, reasoning that the terrorists were likely assuming any assault would come with nightfall. Clark was hoping the delay would cause them to relax, even if only a bit. Plus, statistically, the hours between two and four in the morning were when the human mind starts to lose its edge—especially human minds that have been saddled with the twin demons of stress and uncertainty for the past twenty-eight hours.
At 0130 hours Clark told Johnston and Loiselle to get ready, then gave the nod to Richards, who in turn gave it to Lieutenant Masudi. Five minutes and an extended walkie-talkie discussion later, the Libyan reported back: the perimeter guards were ready. Clark didn’t want some nervous grunt taking a pot-shot at his snipers as they moved into position. Similarly, he had Stanley and Chavez on the binoculars, keeping a close watch. However unlikely, there was always the possibility that someone—a sympathizer or just some asshole private who hated Americans—might try to signal the terrorists that the game was about to start. If this happened, there wouldn’t be much Clark could do except recall Johnston and Loiselle and try again later.
With Johnston and Loiselle geared up, M110s draped across their shoulders, Clark waited five minutes, then whispered to Stanley and Chavez, “How’re we doing?”
“No change,” Ding reported. “Some walkie-talkie action, but that’s