“Yeah, boss.”

Brewer stepped up to the helo now, but she did not climb in.

Zack of course knew she wasn’t going along into combat, but he extended a gloved hand to help her aboard anyway, just to be sarcastic.

She ignored it. “I’ve got to get back to Castle Enrick. Destroy that aircraft so I don’t regret that decision.”

Hightower said, “Yes, ma’am. We’ll save all those unappreciative suits at your fancy party. No sweat. Enjoy the champagne and finger sandwiches.”

She turned away and climbed into the other helo.

Zack turned to Court now and shouted over the sound of the turbines spooling up. “You know what the worst part of this shit is?”

“What’s that?”

“If we all die, nobody’s going to even notice I got killed. Everybody will be like ‘Oh shit, the Gray Man got fragged by some Russkies in Scotland.’ Nobody’s going to remember ole Zack getting popped.”

“Watch my back. Keep me alive. Problem solved, Romantic.”

“Night Train.”

Court cocked his head. “What’s that?”

“Night Train. My new code name. What do you think of that?”

“When did it change?”

“It hasn’t, officially, but Matt is thinking it over.”

“Good luck with that, Romantic,” Court said. He looked down at his aching left hand, the tight wrappings on it, and he thought about Zoya.

CHAPTER 59

   As the Ground Branch team augmented with the two Poison Apple assets flew towards their target, there was an important piece of intelligence that they were missing.

Jenner and his team fully expected to encounter a sizable force of Russian Bratva gangster shooters, but they had no idea the target location also contained thirty GRU Spetsnaz-trained mercenaries.

There was an incredible force multiplier effect involved in dealing with a cohesive unit of men as opposed to a group of thugs of the same number. Thirty special operators who’d trained together and had fought together in the past posed a formidable, perhaps insurmountable, obstacle to the success of the CIA paramilitary mission here.

But without this knowledge the Direct Action Penetrator touched down behind a grove of trees two kilometers from the church and the airfield, ensuring that no one at the target location could hear it. Ten men leapt out and began moving up towards their destination through light rain and heavy mist.

Court was near the back at this stage; he wouldn’t take the front until they arrived at the door to the church. For now he just jogged along through the heavy vapor, holding his slung rifle up with one hand. Trudging their way through short grass, he and the others came upon a flock of sheep. They moved through the animals, guns high in front of them.

Court ran along with Hightower, Greer, Stapleton, Lorenzi, McClane, Jenner, Travers, a guy Court thought he heard someone call Partridge, and some other asshole Court didn’t know at all.

They made their way higher on the hill, saw the graveyard through the heavy mist in front of them, and dispersed left and right.

Lorenzi and McClane were the two snipers on the team, and once they crested the rise of the hill, they dropped down behind a low stone wall, took up positions, and looked through their 416s’ scopes, scanning the stained-glass windows of the church, just forty yards away.

As Zack, Court, and the rest of the team crouched and moved through the tombstones, they slowed and took knees when they heard their headsets come alive.

Lorenzi said, “Four has a target. Top left window. Armed with an AK.”

McClane came over the net next. “Seven has eyes on one combatant in the top right window. He’s got a Dragunov. Did I miss some intel giving us a heads-up that the Russian mafia had snipers with sniper rifles on this op?”

Court waited to hear Jenner give the order for the snipers to engage, but before he spoke the booms of gunfire from the church sent Court, Zack, and all six Ground Branch men in the cemetery diving behind tombstones.

A pair of masked men rose from behind grave markers, not more than forty feet away from Court, and they raked the Ground Branch team with automatic fire. Partridge went down before firing a shot, and the team member Court didn’t know spun away, blood ejected from the side of his head, and he fell facedown in the grass.

He was clearly dead.

Court fired back, sending both men back to cover, but the flicker of muzzle flashes came from the front door of the church, and Court dropped flat again, slamming his injured hand on the hard earth as he did so.

Behind Court, both snipers fired. Lorenzi took down his target, then began scanning for a second, while McClane killed the man in the top right window with the Dragunov sniper rifle, but he was himself immediately shot by a second sniper, well hidden in the darkened bell turret window, half shrouded in mist.

Court shouted to Zack. “This is well-coordinated fire! These fuckers know what they’re doing all of a sudden.”

“So do you! Shut up and shoot somebody!”

“I’m saying, this isn’t Russian mob! These are Spetsnaz. Let’s flank east through the cemetery, try to divide their fire.”

Zack moved over to Court’s tombstone, chased by rifle rounds fired from in and around the dilapidated gothic church. He dove in behind Court and actuated his radio. “TL, Nine and Ten request a move to the south to flank target and approach from rear.”

“TL, request approved,” Jenner shouted back, then said, “Two and Six, see if you can flank to the north.”

Jenner was ordering Travers and Greer to break away from the body of the team and begin moving off to the left, shielded by low boulders in the tall whipping grasses of the cemetery. This left only three men in the fight in the graveyard itself, but attacking the structure from multiple directions would inevitably draw fire away from Jenner and the other two here.

Court and Zack moved low through the grasses, out of the cemetery and then along a driveway on the south side of the church. As soon as they made it into the open, fresh gunfire rained down from the church bell turret, kicking up rocks and splashing rainwater into the air.

“Son of a bitch!” Zack said as he ran for concealment behind a parked van. Diving into the mud, he looked back for Six.

Court Gentry appeared in the air, crashed into Zack, and knocked him down. The younger man rolled on the ground, clutching his taped and splinted hand in obvious pain.

Rounds tore into the van, forcing the men to press their bodies and faces lower into the muddy water and gravel.

Zack said, “Dude, you’re a bullet magnet!”

“I’m lucky like that.” As he rolled up to a knee and shouldered his rifle, he said, “Zakharov snuck some tier ones over here from Russia. Mercs or active duty. Why would he do that, just so they could pull security at his staging area?”