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SEAL Team Six Hunt the Falcon(42)



Neto used a handheld radio to check with CIA surveillance out front, which reported that the colonel had returned and the visitor was still inside.

Light glowed from both floors, but the brightest space was the room behind the second-story balcony. The door was open, and strains of music drifted out.

Cal snapped together the twenty-inch parabolic dish of a KB-DETEAR listening device, aimed it at the open balcony door, and listened through headphones. Even though the room was approximately 150 feet away and well within the device’s 300-yard range, he wasn’t able to hear past the water splashing in the balcony fountain and the easy-listening jazz playing inside.

Meanwhile, Mancini launched the two experimental nano quadrotor drones that DARPA had given him to test. They ran on tiny lithium batteries, were the size of human fingernails, and looked like little metal insects. Manny succeeded in maneuvering them through the balcony door via a handheld wireless joystick but was unable to get the video they beamed back to appear on the eight-channel portable DVR monitor he had set up on the ground.

“What’s the problem?” Crocker whispered over his shoulder.

“The software’s not working,” Mancini answered, adjusting the knobs on the DVR. “It’s always the software.”

Mancini had also brought an RQ-11 Raven, a bird-shaped unmanned aerial vehicle used by the U.S. military, but because its wingspan exceeded four feet he didn’t think the Raven could hover in front of the window without being seen.

Crocker was willing to try anyway.

Monitoring the dials on the gadget in his briefcase, Manny replied, “Probably won’t work anyway. The house is protected by a spectrum analyzer and signal process block.”

“What’s that mean in plain English?” Crocker asked.

“Any type of digital or analog-based surveillance we launch will be interfered with and risks being detected.”

They were too close for Crocker to even think of giving up. Noticing a low-hanging tree branch that was reachable from the top of the wall, he decided to access the house the old-fashioned way—by climbing into the yard.

Neto, however, had reservations. “I don’t know about this, Crocker,” he said. “There’s too high a risk you’ll be discovered.”

“Don’t worry. We do this shit all the time.”

“What happens if you’re discovered?”

“Blame it on me.”

Although Crocker was the team’s lead climber, he was moving awkwardly because of his injured back, so Ritchie volunteered. They armed him with a silenced subcompact SIG Sauer P239, smeared black nonglare cammo on his face, handed him a small digital camera, and wished him luck.

As he was ready to launch, Neto whispered, “Establish a quick ID and pull out.”

“Yes, sir,” Ritchie said.

Crocker watched Ritchie scale the wall and from the top of it jump and grab the branch. He shimmied along it and dropped into the yard.

The wall prevented them from observing Ritchie roll on the lawn, hide behind a bush, and spot the lone guard standing with his back to him sixty feet away. He appeared again in their line of vision using a trellis and a drainpipe to climb to the balcony. He vaulted over the balcony railing, entered the house, and disappeared from view.

Crocker counted the minutes on his watch. Three…five…ten…his anxiety growing. He was starting to think that this might have been a bad idea when he saw a black shape scurry over the balcony rail and reach with his foot for the trellis. Ritchie paused to flash them a thumbs-up, then slipped and fell.

Crocker heard a sickening thud when Ritchie hit the ground, then footsteps running across the yard. He was already halfway up the wall, ignoring Neto’s anxious whispering at his back. Within three seconds he had jumped up and grabbed the cedar branch, pulling himself toward the yard.

Hearing a gunshot and then a man shouting in Spanish, he looked down and saw a Venezuelan soldier standing over Ritchie, pointing an AK-47 at his head.

Completely vulnerable as he hung from the branch, Crocker took a deep breath, shifted his weight to his left arm, and used his right to find the HK45CT pistol with full-sized Ti-RANT suppressor. From fifty feet away he aimed and squeezed three rounds into the soldier’s back and watched him buckle at the knees and fall.

Letting go of the branch, he hit the ground and rolled. Ignoring the lightning bolt of pain from the base of his spine, he got up and crossed to Ritchie.

Ritchie’s eyes were open, and his right hand held his jaw. When Crocker carefully pulled Ritchie’s hand away, he saw his jawbone and a row of lower molars. The round had hit him near the chin and exited near his ear.

Crocker used his index and middle fingers to fish the shattered teeth and bone out of Ritchie’s windpipe. The injury didn’t appear life threatening, since the bullet hadn’t hit a major artery. Nevertheless, Crocker quickly completed the last three steps of the medical ABCD checklist.