Undeclared War (20 page)

Settling back behind his weapon, Max snugged it into his shoulder. “According to the scale on that aerial photo you guys came up with,” Max said, “the shortest range I'll have to deal with from the billboard to the southeast corner of the building will be 122 meters. The longest range will be 165 meters to the far northeast corner. Since I'll be so high up in the air on the billboard, my aim into the sixth floor will be a flat shot.”

Raising his head, Max slipped several 168-grain supersonic match rounds from a ten-round red plas
tic holder into the magazine of the opened bolt action of the rifle. He closed the bolt and chambered a round in the rifle. He fired a shot that had a much louder, sharper “crack” to its report than the soft thuds of the EBR subsonic. The “clang” from the target sounded much louder when the bullet impacted an instant later.

“Why the steel target?” Bear asked.

“In case I have to put a round into somebody,” Max said as he looked up with a blank expression on his face. “Deckert said that he could make a new barrel for this rifle within a couple of hours, and destroy the old one completely. As long as I police up my fired brass either here or at the target, there won't be anything to use as forensic evidence to connect this gun to this shop. That steel gong makes sure that there's not going to be any fired bullets laying around that could be matched up to something the police find.”

“It's a weird mission having to look out for the legal end,” Bear said thoughtfully.

“Yeah, it is,” Max said as he settled back down behind his weapon. With a smooth, practiced motion, he eased back the bolt of the rifle and caught the ejected empty brass from his last shot before it sprang from the receiver.

“From what I can tell, Reaper's between a rock and a hard place,” Max said as he looked at the brass cartridge case he held between his fingers.

“I figure that I wouldn't be around if it wasn't for him and what he did for me back in Storm,” Max continued. “He has whatever help I can give him. If
it takes a big chunk of my time afterwards because of some legal bullshit—so be it.”

The ex-sniper punctuated his comment with another shot. The muffled crack of the bullet, immediately followed by another loud clang from the steel gong, took less than a second. The deformed slug fell to the ground among the others that had been fired that day.

“I think I'll just wait until you're done,” Bear said thoughtfully. “Maybe I should use that same steel target.”

“Maybe,” Max agreed.

As Max finished up with his weapons, Bear drew out the Jackhammer from its case. The gun looked like something from a science fiction movie but was reasonably light and easy to handle. He had one cassette locked in place in the weapon and was ready to fire. Deckert had told Bear that the new Jackhammer had been test-fired and operated properly. But Bear wanted to familiarize himself with the firing characteristics of the very odd gun.

“Okay, Bear,” Max said as he got up from his firing position, “the range is all yours.”

“Great,” Bear said and he stood a little to the side of where Max had been. The Jackhammer didn't eject fired cases. The ammunition stayed in the chambers of the cassette through the firing cycle. With no ballistic marks being left on shotgun pellets when they were fired, he didn't have to worry about leaving traceable projectiles lying about. So Bear just tossed an empty can downrange as a target. Before the can hit the ground and bounced, Bear
snapped the Jackhammer up to his shoulder and pulled the trigger.

Boom…Boom…Boom
roared out as Bear fired a three-round burst in under one second. Gouts of dirt erupted into the air as the shot loads smashed into the backstop. The empty can was nowhere to be seen—it had almost disappeared when the first swarm of buckshot smashed into it. Even Bear was startled by the power and sound of the Jackhammer. Max just stood there for a second, stunned.

“I think you got it, Bear,” Max said.

“Yeah, it does look that way,” Bear said with a big, wide grin across his face. “You know, I think I may like this gun.”

Preparations for the operation moved forward rapidly and smoothly—a reflection on the level of professionalism of everyone involved. Reaper wanted the team ready to launch at 1900 hours. That would give them time to transport to the area, including a cushion in case something went wrong, something as simple as bad traffic. Reaper wanted to put Max and his gear on the street by 2015 hours at the latest.

It had been an incredible rush to get everything together. When the preparations were done and they stood ready to go, there was plenty of time to do one final briefing and a brief-back. For now Reaper declared them good to go, with only the final details to be worked out.

Deckert had proven himself more than capable, even without the use of his legs. He had almost literally stripped the shelves of their fledgling company to make certain that they all had what they needed for the mission. When the gear he wanted turned out to be something they didn't have, he simply went
out and bought the stuff. Reaper knew he owed a deep debt to these men. Not only did they risk a lot, including their freedom, to help him get his family back, some of them had emptied their wallets out to pay for it.

Some of the setup for equipment had just been funny. For the op they would employ the weirdest insertion platform any of them had ever even heard of before. Max's pickup truck had been fitted up with a well-used camper shell that Deckert had behind the shop building. Keith had said that someone years back had given him the camper as a deposit on a high-level gun that the guy never came back for. After a few years had passed, he considered the camper abandoned and thus his property.

The only trouble with the camper was the fact that it had been up on cinder blocks and the lifting jacks had been torn off years ago when the camper fell over during a windstorm. Watching two SEALs, a Marine, and an Air Force PJ trying to lift the camper onto the pickup truck would have been a good video for one of those “funniest moments” shows.

Eventually, with much grunting and a liberal amount of cursing—Bear could swear in five languages besides English—they finally mated the camper with the truck. They adopted Ben's suggestion and applied copious amounts of dirt, mud, and a little rust-red spray paint, effectively matching the splotches of bird shit and peeling paint that already streaked the silver truck.

Removing the screws allowed the window between the camper and the truck to be fully removed, so that now any of the guys could crawl through
from the cab of the truck to the camper and vice-versa. Ben and Max made bets as to just how long it would take Bear to crawl through the window—Bear declining to take up that particular challenge, arguing it was beneath him.

Pulling out the central convertible table/bed combination inside the camper made room for Max's shopping cart disguise prop. Deckert had spotted a reasonably rusted shopping cart sitting in a ditch behind a shopping mall while out buying commo gear for the team. He and Bear had driven back out and grabbed up the cart, as well as an assortment of milk crates, boxes, and general junk.

Max draped himself with some of the worst clothes that could be found, along with rubber boots that had seen better days. He had a pair of rubber-soled boat shoes with him that he slipped into the pockets of the very ratty overcoat Ben had pulled from his car trunk. The shoes were for climbing up the ladder to the billboard, the coat had been the one MacKenzie put on when changing a tire in bad weather.

With his cleaned, tested, and zeroed TTR-700 rifle in its case underneath his filthy fisherman's sweater, Max was now one of the best equipped and most dangerous street people soon to haunt the corridors of downtown Detroit. Max didn't carry a sidearm, but he did have a razor-sharp Gerber Command II combat knife in its scabbard hanging pommel-down underneath the left side of his sweater. A strategic hole in the sweater made the knife quickly available.

When slid silently from the black nylon of the scabbard, the nearly seven-inch-long blade with a
serrated back edge at the tip made for an intimidating tool. Its appearance alone would make anyone Max might run into on the street pause before accosting him further.

To take care of communications, Deckert located several sets of Motorola “Talkabout” T5420 radios. The little transceivers, not much bigger than the average cellular phone, were about as secure as the Motorolas Reaper and Bear had used back in the SEAL Teams. The little hand-held radios had fourteen available channels and thirty-eight quiet codes to cut back on interference. Those same codes would help add to the communications security of the team. A two-way boom mike and earphone setup helped complete the communications rig. The voice-activated transmitter made it possible to use the radios hands-free.

A little discreet tinkering with the radios by Deckert deactivated the call tone that announced an incoming signal. It wouldn't do to have a radio beep, no matter what the tone, while Reaper and Bear tried to silently infiltrate what could be considered an enemy stronghold. Rechargeable batteries were abandoned since they just didn't have the time to charge up enough sets to use before Reaper wanted the operation underway.

Fresh batteries were installed in all of the radios and carefully tested. The little sets had a two-mile range over flat terrain; they would do extremely well over the limited distances of the mission site. Deckert taped a set of tested spare batteries to the back of each radio—just in case.

“It's amazing what one can buy at RadioShack,” Deckert quipped lightly.

Ben MacKenzie wore his normal clothes, a long-sleeved denim shirt and dark Levi's. He would maintain the watch on the operation from inside the cab of the pickup truck. Deckert reprogrammed the police scanner that Max had installed long ago to make certain that they were matched to the local Detroit police and emergency frequencies. He set up a second scanner for State and Federal frequencies. For weapons, Ben had his own pump-action Remington shotgun, one with a standard five-shot magazine and an eighteen-inch barrel. A pistol grip replaced the stock of the Remington to make it more manageable in the close confines of the truck cab. The shotgun was Ben's primary vehicle weapon and he had clips installed under the front seat of the truck that held the shotgun securely and concealed.

Underneath the dash of the truck, Max had a second weapon secured, a blued-steel Smith & Wesson six-and-a-half-inch barreled Model 29 .44 magnum, the Dirty Harry gun itself. The big revolver showed signs of long, but careful, use. And the cylinder, filled with Federal Gold Medal 250-grain metal-cased slugs, gave it a deadly look. After showing it to Ben and Bear, Max slipped the magnum revolver back underneath the dash into a hidden holster accessible by the driver.

“Why drag such a huge thing around, even if you do carry it in a truck?” Bear asked.

“Full metal-jacketed loads,” Max said with a smile, “high velocity. They kill cars dead.”

“Uh-huh,” was Bear's only comment.

For his personal weapon, Ben used what he had brought with him, turning down Deckert's offer of
anything in the shop. Ben slipped a 9mm Glock 19 into a concealed holster in the Bianchi K. O. 200 fanny pack secured around his waist. Two spare magazines rested in the pouch of the fanny pack. The magazines and weapon were loaded with Winchester 125-grain silvertip hollow points, a load Ben said had served him well for years.

As a backup weapon, Ben wore a Brauer lightweight ankle holster holding a simple five-shot Smith & Wesson Chief's Special revolver. The compact little snub-nosed revolver had been modified by having the spur of the hammer removed. Other than that it remained a stock gun. Loaded with Federal 125-grain .38 Special jacketed hollowpoint Hydra-Shok ammo, the little gun could still be a potent stopper.

When Bear asked Ben why he carried such a small weapon in such an outdated holster, the smaller man answered simply, “You can draw it easily when sitting in a car, or an ambulance.”

Giving the statement a little thought, Bear realized the logic of the man's choice. Sitting in a car, you could reach an ankle easily. When sitting, it would actually be faster to draw from than a belt or shoulder holster—something that made a lot of sense given Ben's job as an emergency medical technician, riding around in ambulances all day long.

The time had come for Reaper and Bear to gear up and make ready for the operation. Bear had tested all of the weapons, and Reaper had made time to check-fire them himself. Everything was mechanically fine and operating properly. Bear winced a bit as they finished up on the range. When Reaper
asked him about it, Bear said that it was nothing, only a headache. After going back in the house to get ready for the op, Bear reappeared his old smiling self again after taking what he said was a handful of aspirin.

The gear both men would wear on the operation had been spread out across their beds. Everything they had was new, unworn, and unexposed to their everyday environment. There would be no isolated hairs, fibers, or anything else to give forensic people something to track. One couldn't seal off everything, but Bear and Reaper were determined to make sure they left as little as possible behind.

Black Royal Robbins 5.11 range pants, the choice of the FBI and other agencies, had also been the choice of Reaper and Bear on the op. A set of PACA Thunder concealable body armor went over their brown T-shirts. The Level IIIA vests, made of a hybrid Zylon fabric over 0.200-inch thick, had proven capable of stopping a 9mm full-jacketed slug moving at 1,639 feet per second.

Wrapping the waist straps around the flexible black vests snugged them in tight to their sides. Neither SEAL would be wearing the hard trauma plate that would have given them additional armor protection. The plates would have reduced their range of movement and they had a hard climb ahead of them to get on top of the Factory building. Armor couldn't protect everything, no matter how much of it you wore, so you simply had to decide when enough was enough and go with what worked for you.

Generic long-sleeve black cotton shirts went on over the vests. The shirts could be bought all over
the country at department stores, but still they removed the labels from them. Slipping on the black Bates Spyder Sidewinder leather/nylon boots, both SEALs pulled the laces tight. The soft-sided flexible boots had a deeply formed rubber outsole that gripped well and made climbing a little easier.

A BlackHawk CQB/Emergency rescue rigger belt went on over the pants. The heavy belts were made of 7,000-pound tensile strength black-nylon webbing and had a 5,000-pound test black-anodized aluminum nonlocking snap carabiner snapped through the parachute-grade adapter that was part of the belt's construction. If they had to, both SEALs knew that they could hang by the belts and trust them to support their weight.

Pouches and holsters went on the belts. Reaper had the special thigh holster on his right side to hold the Serbu Super-Shorty shotgun. On his left side, he secured an Omega TalonFlex MP5/Flash Bang thigh rig pouch. The pouch held two spare thirty-round curved stick magazines for Reaper's MP5K-PDW. Each magazine was filled with a full thirty rounds of EBR 9mm Hush Puppy ammunition. With the magazine in his weapon, Reaper would have ninety rounds for the entire op—and he planned to come back with most or all of them.

What Reaper wouldn't be carrying on this operation was any flash bang distraction grenades. He had chosen his specific ammo pouch so that he could carry a half-dozen spare Mark II bean bag 12-gauge rounds, three in each flash-bang pocket. The Serbu Super-Short was a handy little shotgun, but it had a very limited magazine capacity.

In his right front pants pocket, Reaper slipped in his Emerson Commander-BTS knife—clipping it to the pocket so that its Wave feature could snap open the blade if needed. Reaper made a mental note to himself to keep an eye out for his Emerson CQC-7BW. That knife had disappeared along with Musclehead and his injured arm. He would have to try and get it back, while maybe discussing philosophy with Musclehead along the way.

Over his shirt, Reaper secured a Chalker sling, designed and patented by a fellow SEAL some years before. The Chalker allowed almost any shoulder weapon to be carried by a single attachment point. The weapon could then be shouldered without breaking the seal on a gas mask—something that wasn't a consideration for Reaper on this mission.

The sling also allowed a weapon to be dropped immediately so that a secondary weapon could be drawn—the dropped weapon hanging down from the center of the wearer's chest. Lastly, it was just a very good sling to climb with, and there was going to be a lot of climbing on this operation.

A Chalker Hi-port weapons catch was secured to the upper left shoulder strap of Reaper's Chalker sling. He clipped the standoff adapter at the back of the MP5K-PDW's receiver to the brass snap shackle on the center front of his chest. The snap shackle was rated at five hundred pounds breaking strength, so Reaper felt it could securely hold his submachine gun.

The Gemtech Raptor suppressor was attached to the barrel of the MP5K-PDW, the suppressor secured to the three lugs on the H&K weapon's barrel. The Hi-port adapter had a quick-release Velcro strap to it
that wrapped around the suppressor on the weapon and secured it to the upper part of Reaper's left shoulder. The MP5K-PDW was so short that even with the nine-inch-long black Raptor suppressor installed, it still didn't stick up past Reaper's left shoulder. It would be well out of the way while climbing.

A pair of inner shells from a set of FOG—Fast-rope Operator Gloves—went on Reaper's hands. He didn't need the protection of the normal heavy leather padded outer FOG shells for this operation. But the glove liners would protect his hands, and help keep him from leaving any fingerprints around. Under the front of his belt, Reaper tucked a black Hatch Nomex balaclava hood.

The Nomex hood would protect his face from the flash and heat of a fire or explosion, not something Reaper expected to need. But it also covered his face with a nonreflective black cloth, all but his eyes. The hood prevented either SEAL from requiring black face paint. Black camouflage makeup was something that would be hard to get off quickly if they had to shed their gear and blend into a group of civilians.