eye out for what could be a climbing path up the hill, and after about a hundred yards Zamo spotted a small pile of loose rock on the trail.
We all dropped to one knee and hugged the side of the hill as Zamo scanned straight up and confirmed, “This is the way.” He also said, “I don’t see an entrance to a cave… but I see, like, overhanging flat rocks…”
I peered through my scope at the high hill and I could see rock strata jutting out, casting moon shadows across the face of the hill. The entrance to the cave would be under one of those overhangs.
So what’s the plan? If Chet and Buck were with us, we’d sit here for a week with charts and diagrams, then call Howard and ask him to call Washington for clearance. But I had a better plan—go up the hill, find the cave, kill The Panther, go down the hill.
Brenner, however, had a few add-ons—Zamo was to stay here and cover our backs, then he, me, and Kate would go up and look for the entrance to the cave, but only one of us would go in. And who would that be? Well, whoever thought of this.
Brenner whispered, “Watch for tripwires—flares or booby-traps.”
Thanks for that.
I went first, Brenner was behind me, and Kate brought up the rear as we began our ascent. The climbing path was mostly rock ledges, like a steep staircase cleared of loose stone. But now and then a piece of stone would fall and make a very loud noise, which I knew wasn’t as loud as I heard it in my head.
I was happy with the small M4, which, as advertised, was light and compact, and I was sure it would be excellent in caves. The moonlight was bright enough to see the way, but not bright enough to see a tripwire, so I felt my way carefully, brushing my fingers around the stone ledges to feel for a wire.
This was slow going, but the idea was to surprise The Panther, without being surprised ourselves by tripping a wire and getting blown to pieces. Or at the very least, tripping an illumination flare that would light us up like deer in the headlights, followed by a long burst of AK-47 fire.
We had no way of knowing for sure if there were any such devices on the approach to the cave, but if I was living in a cave, I’d damn sure put something on the path to alert me to visitors.
And there it was. I felt it with my hand—a taut metal wire about six inches above the wide ledge I was about to crawl onto.
I turned and motioned to Brenner, who was about ten feet behind me, using the hand signal for tripwire, which if you’re interested is like pantomiming stretching a rubber band.
Brenner nodded, and I turned back and did a crab walk carefully over the wire. You can’t cut it because it could also be set to trip if the tension is released. So you leave it, mark it, and move on. I draped the wire with my white handkerchief and kept climbing.
Brenner got over the wire, followed by Kate, and we continued on.
We were about halfway up the hill, which was maybe fifteen hundred feet high, and the slope was becoming less steep, and this had the effect of making it more difficult to see ahead to what was over the next strata of rock.
Then something caught my eye to the right and I froze. It was a man about fifty feet away sitting on the same rock ledge that I was on. It took me a few seconds to realize that this was the sniper’s perch, and that the man, who was leaning back against the rock, was not moving because he was dead.
I signaled to Brenner, who passed the signal along to Kate. They climbed to the ledge below me where they could see the dead man.
I moved sideways to my right and got to the sitting man, whose head was tilted back as though he was moon gazing. I could see that Zamo had hit his target full in the chest, slightly right of the heart, but fatal nonetheless.
The man’s rifle, lying to his side, had the distinctive shape of the Soviet-made Dragunov sniper rifle, which it probably was. More importantly, the rifle had a nightscope whose lens was still illuminated, and I reached out to take it.