Filed to story: American Sniper: The Last Round (Carl Oliver) Book PDF Free
“All right, people, let’s look sharp,” said Base Six. “Game time.”
“Ah, Base Four, Flashlight has debarked and the motorcade is about to commence,” Carl heard over the radio. Then, “All right, people, let’s look sharp. Game time.”
“Carl, that’s it, the show’s begun.” It was Payne nearby.
“Okay,” Carl said, “got you clean and simple and am all set.” But he wished he had a rifle and in fact felt like a simpleton without one.
He was a good four hundred yards from the president’s speech in the fourth-floor room of an old house on St. Ann, but he didn’t look toward the park; he looked back, toward and over the French Quarter. Seated at a table, he stared through a Leupold 36? spotting scope that he had carefully aimed at the church steeple still another thousand yards out. It was the steeple from which he’d predicted the shot would come. Payne and a New Orleans uniformed cop named Timmons were with him, Payne on the radio, Timmons just more or less there.
He heard the security people on their network.
“Ah, Base Six, this is Alpha One, we are progressing down U.S. Ten at approximately forty-five miles per hour, our ETA is approximately 1130 hours, do you read?”
“Have you, affirmative,” said Base Six. “Units Ten and Twelve, be advised Flashlight and friends are moving through your area shortly.”
“We have it under advisement, Base Six, everything looking fine here, over and out.”
Carl thought it was like a big air-mobile operation in the ‘Nam, an orchestration of elements all moving in perfect syncopation and held together by some command hotshot on the radio network, as the various units through whose sector Flashlight moved called in their reports.
“Ah, Base Six, this is Ginger Dragon Two, we have all quiet in our secure zone at present,” he heard Payne speak into the phone.
“That’s a roger, Ginger Dragon Two, we’re reading you, our apprehension teams are on instant standby.”
“Anything yet?” Timmons now asked him. He was a large, dour man, whose belly pressed outward against his uniform; he seemed nervous.
Carl’s eye was in the scope. Though the target was so much farther out, he could see three ramshackle arched openings under the crown of the steeple, each louvered closed, each dirty and untouched.
“It’s the middle window,” Payne now said calmly.
“I know what window it is,” Carl said. Why were these guys talking so much? “I have no movement.”
“Maybe he’s not there yet,” said Timmons.
“Oh, he’s there. It’s too close to time. He’s there.”
If he’s anywhere, Carl thought, he’s there. He’s sitting very still now and though we can’t see him, he’s drawing himself together for the shot. He’s probably taken as close as can be constructed to this shot a thousand or so times, maybe ten thousand times. I know I would if I were in his shoes. But he’s a little nervous; he’ll want to be alone and he’ll want it quiet. If there are others in the room with him, then they’re just sitting there, not making any noise, letting him accumulate his strength.
According to Colonel Davis, a very skilled FBI embassy penetration team had discreetly planted light-sensitive sensors in the belfry, and the sensors had recorded data to suggest that every night between four and five A.M. a working party of five men entered the room and made preparations. Carl assumed they were soundproofing the walls and building a shooting platform to get the proper angle into the president’s site fourteen hundred far yards away. At the precise moment, three or four of the louvers would be removed; he’d scope and shoot and the team would replace the louvers. The window of vulnerability was maybe ten seconds.
“Ginger Dragon Six, we are beginning our apprehension maneuver.”
“Keep it discreet, apprehension teams.” Carl recognized Colonel Davis, who was running this operation, the one concealed within the larger drama of the president’s arrival and security.
“Fuckin’ A,” said Payne, “they getting ready to nab the sucker.”
Carl looked at his watch; it was only 1115 hours now, still an hour from the shooting event.
“Man, I hope your Federal team has got it together. This is a very nervous cat, he’s got spotters himself making sure he hasn’t been blown.”
“These are the very best guys,” Payne said. “These guys have been training for this one a long time. Lots and lots of dues gonna get paid off today, I can tell you. It’s payback time.”
Something melodramatic and movielike in Payne today irritated Carl.
“Ginger Dragon Two, you have the best angle on the target, you have anything to announce?”
“He’s talking to you, Oliver.”
“That’s a negative. But if they’re there, they probably came in late last night; and they’ll be real quiet. Tell him that. Lack of activity is to be expected.”
“Uh, Ginger Dragon Six, this is Dragon Two, uh, spotter has a negative so far.”
“Is he sure?”
“Oh, Christ,” said Carl. “Tell him they’re there, goddammit, and that I’ll sing out when I get a visual confirm, and that that will be at the point of shooting, and goddammit, he better get set to bounce his people in there fast.”
Now wasn’t the time to begin doubting the scenario. They all believed in the scenario, they’d discussed it dispassionately all afternoon yesterday.
“Uh, confidence here is still high, Dragon Six,” said Payne.
That’s what ruined operations and that’s what killed people in the field-that sudden, last-minute spurt of doubt, like the lash of a whip: it made people morons. So many times Carl had seen it; it was exactly what sniping wasn’t.
“We may have to go early,” said Ginger Dragon Six.
“Do that, and you got nothing,” said Carl. “He’s there. Goddamn, I can feel him. Oh, he’s there and he’s on his rifle, and he’s just settling into it.”
He wished he had a rifle too.
“Okay, Alpha Team, this is Base Six, Flashlight’s ETA is now just five minutes.”