Rob Hutton had made sure the women had all the equipment they needed. He had also chosen quite an interesting delivery method. All they had needed to pick it up was a boat, which Luka Mikhailov had been more than happy to provide.
They piloted the vessel several miles out into the sea, where Casey used a flashlight to signal the aircraft Hutton had sent in. The gear was then thrown out the plane’s door and dropped into the water a quarter of a mile away. The women fished the big, floating bag out of the sea and headed back to port.
Back in the hotel room, they sorted through the equipment and went over the details of the operation one final time.
According to the satellite imagery, the compound consisted of nine buildings. Neither Luka nor any of his men had ever been inside, so they couldn’t provide any additional insight. The team would have to move fast.
Hutton had made their rules of engagement perfectly clear. Any and all persons encountered at the compound were to be considered hostile and the team was authorized to deal with them accordingly.
Their objective was also made perfectly clear. If the Kammler Device was anywhere in the compound, the United States wanted it. They also wanted any documentation, research, data, or personnel associated with it. If possible, they were to take the men known as Thomas Sanders and Armen Abressian alive. Finally, they were to secure the EMP bombs.
It was a tall order, not the kind of clear-cut, get-in-and-get-out assignments they liked to be given, but Athena was part of Delta, and this was the type of mission Delta was often given. If it was easy, the saying went, there’d be no need to give it to Delta.
Standing by, the team had two F-16 fighters from Aviano Air Base aloft over the Adriatic to lend support. As a last resort, Casey and Company were authorized to call in airstrikes to level the entire compound. Only the United States would be allowed to leave with the Kammler technology. Should the F-16s have to violate Croatian airspace and engage targets on Croatian soil, the Defense Department would figure out a way to pick up the diplomatic pieces later.
At 3:00 A.M., the Athena Team left their hotel and drove toward the tip of the Istrian peninsula.
In a copse of trees, just south of the compound, they hid the car and unpacked their gear.
It was a clear night with a bright moon. The women used camouflage paint sticks, or combat Maybelline, as they liked to call it, to mute their faces.
When they were all suited up and had checked their radios and weapons, Casey gave the command for them to move out.
The team crept silently through the darkness and approached the compound from the southwest. It was perched on a high hill and they had picked the most difficult spot for their breach. The southern edge of the former monastery sat on a craggy, almost sheer rock face sixty feet high.
Because this side of the compound was so inaccessible, Hutton and the team back at Bragg believed that it would have the fewest security resources devoted to it. Because of its dramatic view, it was also where the monastery’s church had been built. From the huge generators arrayed outside to the amount of activity they saw coming and going, it appeared to be the nexus of everything that was happening at the compound.
Cooper was the best climber on the team, so she was in charge of picking out the course they’d take up to the top. After identifying the easiest and fastest routes, she immediately discounted them. Had she been in charge of security for the compound, that’s exactly where she would have planted intrusion sensors, or worse, antipersonnel devices.
Selecting her first handhold, she grasped a small outcropping of rock, dug her boot into a narrow fissure, and led her team toward their objective.
The women moved like demons in some medieval nightmare scaling a castle wall. Hand over hand they climbed, never slipping, never slowing down. While things often went bad in operations, sometimes they went well, and this was one of those times. It was as if they had climbed this piece of rock a thousand times before.
Though none of them was foolish enough to jinx the operation by saying so, they all felt that it was a good indicator of how their assignment was going to go. That was until they had almost reached the top and they heard the explosion.
Luka Mikhailov and his men had jumped the gun.