Barry Eisler - The Detachment

“Depends partly on what toys you brought us,” Dox said.

Kanezaki got up and went to the back of the plane, then came back with a couple of long canvas bags. He set one on the floor and handed the other to Dox.

Dox unzipped the bag and grinned like it was Christmas morning. “Well, goddamn,” he said, extracting and hefting a long black carbine. “Knight’s Armament SR-25, integral suppressor, twenty-round magazine, and oooh, the Leupold Mark 4 HAMR. Haven’t played with one of these before. Gonna be somewhere I can zero it?”

“We’ll find a place,” Kanezaki said. “Lots of open fields where we’re going.”

He knelt and unzipped the other bag. “Here’s your commo,” he said. “INVISIO Digital Ears X5 Headset and X50 Multi-Comm. Hands-free, in the ear, boom mic. All encrypted and we’ll all be able to talk to each other.”

“Other weapons?” Larison asked.

Kanezaki reached into the bag and took out a pistol I was quite familiar with. “HK MK23 SOCOM, Knights Armament suppressor. One each.”

He handed it to Larison, who reflexively checked the load. Treven said, “Great gun, but with the suppressor it’s the size of a rifle. What do we carry it in?”

Kanezaki went to the back again and came back with a large black attache case. He opened it. An HK with attached suppressor was held in place with foam inside. “I know there’s no good way to conceal one of these on your body in an urban environment,” he said. “But you can access it inside the bag in less than a second. By the time it’s out, it won’t matter who sees it. And if the attaches aren’t the right cover, I have gym bags, too.”

Treven nodded, satisfied.

I said, “Body armor, I hope? You know, just in case.”

“Dragon Skin vests,” Kanezaki said. “Capable of stopping multiple 7.62 rounds.”

He pulled out a folder and opened it. “This is a satellite and street view of the school and environs,” he said. “Some of it is Google; some is military. It should at least give you some ideas. I have a van waiting on the other end. After we land, we’ll do a drive-by.”

We looked at the maps. The school was a square brick building outside the downtown, two stories, surrounded mostly by dirt and grass fields. It had one main entrance, but secondary points of ingress and egress on the other three sides.

“If all four shooters plan on using the front entrance,” I said, “then we’re good to go. But if they split up, we’ll need a man on each side of the building. Which leaves us one short to engage the drone operator.”

Kanezaki looked up. “You’re not counting me.”

“That’s right,” I said, “I’m not. Tom, we’ve been through this before. You’re a great intel guy but you’re not a door-kicker. Pick the wrong entrance to cover, and you might wind up in a one-on-four. It doesn’t make sense.”

Dox said, “I think there’s a better way.”

We all looked at him. He said, “Look at these buildings around the school. What do we have here…a church, a video store, car dealer, and a Holiday Inn, it looks like. Nothing but flat fields in between, and from any one of those vantage points, I have full coverage of two sides of the school. With a spotter on the ground for target confirmation, and my new friend the SR-25 here, and with the distances being so short, I could drop four targets in four seconds. If Tom here does the spotting for me, I say that would free up Treven and Larison to cover the other two sides of the building. And free up Rain to engage the drone operator, wherever he’s set up shop.”

I didn’t know whether he really needed Kanezaki to do the spotting, or if he was just giving him something to do to placate him. I said, “Either the spotting for you, or the driving for me. Depends on where and when we locate Gillmor, and what the terrain is like.”

No one objected. I thought it was a sensible approach. Treven and Dox were the two best combat shooters, Dox was the only sniper, and that left me for the guy operating the drone, who would likely be alone and, even if armed, distracted by the task at hand.

“What’s security like at this school?” Treven asked.

“In ordinary times,” Kanezaki said, “nonexistent. But with all the speculation about attacks on schools, a lot of towns are putting police in place at the entrances. I think we’ll see some of that.”

Treven nodded. “Security theater.”

“Exactly,” Larison said. “One or at most two bored cops at the entrance with their .38s holstered? Speed, surprise, and violence of action, and they’ll be dead before they even realize there’s a problem.”

“The area looks like eighty percent farmland and fields,” I said. “Lots of room for privacy. If your friend can’t give us a fix on Gillmor’s cell phone, we’re going to have a hell of a time finding him.”

“I’m working on it,” Kanezaki said grimly. “In the meantime, let’s see if can figure out from these maps where we would set up if we were Gillmor.”

We spent the rest of the flight refining our plan and getting some much needed sleep. When we landed, it was evening, and though residual heat still radiated from the tarmac as we got off the plane, the day was getting cooler. We pulled on baseball caps and sunglasses just in case anyone was looking for us all the way out in Lincoln. “Only way to travel,” Dox said, the SR-25 bag slung over his shoulder as we headed to the car rental to get Kanezaki’s promised van.

We picked up food, then drove out to the school. The sun was getting low in a blue, cloudless sky that went on forever, and even in the van, the air smelled of cut grass.

The school was on the edge of town, an area that was mostly single family houses, with a few farms and a single mixed office and retail center. I thought the plotters might have chosen the school for its relative remoteness: fewer potential witnesses to describe aspects of the carnage the plotters didn’t want seen.

A little farther out, we passed a construction site. Dox said, “Hang on, I like the look of this.”

We circled around and drove back through the plume of dust we’d kicked up on the road behind us. “Doesn’t look like much is happening here,” Dox said.

He was right. There was no equipment and no material, just a four-story I-beam and cinderblock skeleton without even a chain-link fence around it. No windows in place, no roof, no doors.

“I believe what we’re looking at,” Dox said, “is an abandoned building site, popularly known as a victim of America’s ongoing recession. Also known as an ideal urban sniper hide. Look at that-line-of-sight to the front of the school, two-hundred yards. Easy pickings. I’d like to go in when it’s dark and confirm, but I believe we just found my place. What time are our terrorists due to arrive?”

“The assembly’s at eight forty-five,” Kanezaki said. “So probably just after that.”

“Well then, I propose we insert me at zero three hundred, the still of the night. I’ll zero the rifle at first light. Won’t be many people around, and the suppressor will reduce the sound some. You didn’t bring a sleeping bag, did you?”

“Shit, no,” Kanezaki said. “I didn’t think of it.”

“That’s all right, I’m sure there’s a Wal-Mart around here. I’ll pick up some thermal hunting gear and a foam pad to prone out on. Watch the sunrise, it’ll be nice.”

We got Dox his gear, and went back to the building site after dark. Dox went in, and reported that he liked what he found. Then he and Treven, who looked the most at home in the area, checked us into an anonymous highway motel, two adjoining rooms on the second of two floors. We ate and checked the gear and went over our plans. Kanezaki used a satellite phone to call his telephone company friend. Apparently, Gillmor had his phone on the day before in Lincoln, but it was off now.