Night of the Assassin: Assassin Series Prequel by Russell Blake (people reading books .TXT) 📗

waiting to race out, filled with armed men who could be at the gangplank in fifteen seconds from the time the signal was given. It seemed like suicide to Raul, but it wasn’t his job to craft a better plan. He was only there to shoot, which he was now perfectly positioned to do.

This may have been his first assault but he had enough common sense to understand that even when the commandos prevailed, and they would prevail eventually due to vastly larger numbers, the cost in human life would be high on both sides, whereas a surgical strike could have accomplished much the same result with minimal special forces casualties. It was inefficient, which offended his sense of symmetry more than anything.

He watched as the two men staggered their way down the pier and then returned his full attention to the bridge. Their men, by the time they made it to the two sentries, would be out of sight of the bridge due to the angle of the hull. Unless of course, the two moved, in which case the plan would be a disaster, or alternatively, would need to be aborted. Walking headfirst into a killing zone was generally bad strategy anywhere in the world, not just in Mexico, and he couldn’t see the commander barreling forward if the plan was doomed to failure. At least he hoped not.

The sentry on the exterior of the bridge was carrying a machine pistol of some sort – it looked like an Uzi to Raul. That meant limited useful range and accuracy. The Uzi was an antiquated design with an effective range of two hundred meters, which was fine for typical close-quarter urban combat, but lousy for applications requiring accuracy at a distance. A better and more popular choice as far as Raul was concerned was the Kalashnikov AK-47, which had double the effective range in single fire mode, or at least three hundred meters in full-auto mode; or probably the best weapon, and his personal favorite for dependability and accuracy in a mid-range assault rifle, the American-built M-4. Its five hundred meter effective range and extremely high muzzle velocity made it the ideal choice for assault applications, which more than compensated for its relatively small slug size. He’d fired all three with Emilio for years and could disassemble and reassemble any of them in a matter of seconds, so he knew whereof he spoke.

Their luck wasn’t going well so far. The two smoking sentries on the dock moved toward the men, so any engagement would take place in plain sight of the bridge. That would mean a full-blown firefight with no cover, likely with a very high toll on the special forces’ side. He exhaled, stilling his mind in preparation for the imminent attack, and zeroed the Barrett M82 sniper rifle in on the bridge sentry’s upper torso. The .50 caliber M1022 slug would tear a hole through him the size of a baseball at that range so there was no question in his mind that it would only take a single trigger pull to dispatch him. It would be a few more seconds before the shit hit the fan so he slid two more full magazines next to the rifle, where he could quickly change them out once he was empty. The man in the bridge was still his biggest concern. He made a mental note to always carry one magazine of full-jacketed armor-piercing rounds in case he needed to slice through an inch of metal or reinforced glass.

It was show time. He fixed the bridge target in the crosshairs and waited for instruction. The commander was watching the approach and not liking what he saw. He, like Raul, understood that if the bridge sentries weren’t caught unawares, the assault would become a slaughterhouse, with his men taking heavy casualties. After struggling with an internal debate, he murmured into the com system. One of the two men on the dock had an earpiece, and upon hearing the commander’s instructions, grabbed his friend and turned him around, as if only now noticing the two smoking men cautiously approaching them. The mission had been aborted.

“Shit,” the commander hissed, and began pacing, mulling over his choices. Now they’d probably have to just pull up in armored vehicles and do this the hard way, shooting it out with no element of surprise.

Raul bit his tongue, but then decided to advance his idea, purely in the interests of keeping his role in the assault interesting and getting some more practical experience. Taking out a single sentry from almost a thousand meters wasn’t really much of a challenge. It was a single shot. Maybe two, if they would send someone to find some armor piercing rounds.

“Sir. Might I have a word?” Raul asked.

The commander regarded him with surprise. Raul was one of his best men, but he never spoke. He was a loner, with no close relationships within the corps.

“This isn’t a great moment.”

“Yes, sir. I know, sir. I just had an observation that came to me as I was watching the target that may be of some use to you, sir,” Raul explained, sucking up his pride and taking the expected supplicant tone.

“Very well. Make it quick,” the commander barked. “We need to coordinate a frontal assault before this goes on much longer.”

“Permission to approach, sir?”

“Get on with it.”

Raul moved to the commander’s side, and spoke in a low, calm tone, explaining his ideas and arguing for an amphibian assault. The commander listened carefully, and then cut him off after forty-five seconds.

“That would require far more stealth and luck than we’ve had tonight. It’s a good strategy, and I appreciate your sharing it with me, but I don’t think we can afford to waste two more hours preparing it. No, I think we’ll do a good old fashioned frontal assault and take our punches. In the end, we’d have to do one anyway if your plan failed, so my call is to just cut to