Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [288]
Back to the shooting place. He wouldn't want to be in the thickest part of the crowd, so he wouldn't want to be too close to the church. But he'd want to boogie out through that arch. Maybe sixty or seventy yards. Ten seconds, maybe? With a clear path, yeah, about that. Double it, just to be sure. He'd probably yell something like "There he goes!" as a distraction. It might make him easier to identify later, but Colonel Strokov will be figuring to sleep Wednesday night in Sofia. Check flight times, Jack told himself. If he takes the shot and gets away, he won't be swimming home, will he? No, he'll opt for the fastest way out—unless he has a really deep hidey-hole here in Rome.
That was a possibility. The problem was that he was dealing with an experienced field spook, and he could have a lot of things planned. But this was reality, not a movie, and professionals kept things simple, because even the simplest things could go to shit in the real world.
He'll have at least one backup plan. Maybe more, but sure as hell he'll have one.
Dress up like a priest, maybe? There were a lot of them in evidence. Nuns, too—more than Ryan had ever seen. How tall is Strokov? Anything over five-eight and he'd be too tall for a nun. But if he dressed as a priest, you could hide a fucking RPG in a cassock. That was a pleasant thought. But how fast could one run in a cassock? That was a possible downside.
You have to assume a pistol, probably a suppressed pistol. A rifle—no, its dangers lay in its virtues. It was so long that the guy standing next to him could bat the barrel off target, and he'd never get a good round off. An AK-47, maybe, able to go rock-and-roll? But, no, it was only in the movies that people fired machine guns from the hip. Ryan had tried it with his M-16 at Quantico. It felt real John Wayne, but you just couldn't hit shit that way. The sights, the gunnery sergeants had all told his class at the Basic School, are there for a reason. Like Wyatt Earp shooting on TV—draw and fire from the hip. It just didn't work unless your other hand was on the fucker's shoulder. The sights are there for a reason, to tell you where the weapon is pointed, because the bullet you're shooting is about a third of an inch in diameter, and you are, in fact, shooting at a target just that small, and a hiccup could jerk you off target, and under stress your aim just gets worse … unless you're used to the idea of killing people. Like Boris Strokov, colonel of the Dirzhavna Sugurnost. What if he was one of those who just didn't rattle, like Audie Murphy of the Third Infantry Division in WWII? But how many people like that were around? Murphy had been one in eight million American soldiers, and nobody had seen that deadly quality in him before it just popped out on the battlefield, probably surprising even him. Murphy himself probably never appreciated how different he was from everybody else.
Strokov is a pro, Jack reminded himself. And so he'll act like a pro. He'll plan every detail, especially the getaway.
"You must be Ryan," a British voice said quietly. Jack turned to see a pale man with red hair.
"Who are you?"
"Mick King," the man replied. "Sir Basil sent the four of us down. Sussing the area out?"
"How obvious am I?" Ryan worried suddenly.
"You could well be an architecture student." King blew it off. "What do you think?"
"I think the shooter would stand right about here, and try to boogie on out that way," Jack said, pointing. King looked around before speaking.
"It's a dicey proposition, however one plans it, with all the people sure to be here, but, yes, that does look the most promising option," the spook agreed.
"If I were planning to do it myself, I'd want to use a rifle from up there. We'll need to have somebody topside to handle that possibility."
"Agreed. I'll have John Sparrow go up there. The chap with short hair over there. He brought a ton of cameras with him."
"One more man to camp out in the street that way. Our bird will probably have a car to