THREE MD-530 LITTLE Bird helicopters worked their way up the Potomac River. The small, agile, and quiet helicopters were being flown by the elite pilots of the Army's 160th Special Operations Regiment—the Night Stalkers. Each helicopter carried four Delta Force operators. The commandos stood on the chopper's landing skids, two to a side.
The helicopters approached the group of bridges just to the south of the George Mason Memorial Bridge, skimming the windswept waters of the Potomac. Instead of climbing to fly over the bridges, the pilots of the 16011 continued to hug the deck.
Under the four bridges they went, working their way north and closer to the White House. They were to stay out of sight until given the green light. The choppers closed on the Arlington Memorial Bridge and began to slow. When they reached it, the three choppers pulled in under the bridge and hovered. This was where they were to wait.
Meanwhile, a second flight of three Little Birds worked its way up the Anacostia River to the northeast. The three helicopters passed over the Frederick Douglass Bridge and turned north. Skimming over the roofs of apartment buildings and row houses, they cruised at an easy sixty knots, keeping the noise of their rotors and engines nice and quiet. The choppers passed around the east side of the Capitol so no one out on the National Mall would notice them. The wind buffeted them as they turned west and cruised over the roof of the Department of Labor. Dead ahead, five blocks away, was the monolithic structure of the Hoover Building The choppers slid in over the rooftop and hovered just five feet above the structure. That was where they were to wait.
The operators standing on the skids were loaded for bear.
Each man was outfitted with the latest in body armor, including ballistic Kevlar helmets and throat protectors. Gas masks were readily accessible in spare pockets, as were night-vision goggles. Ten of the twelve men carried suppressed MP-10s.
The eleventh carried a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun, and the twelfth carried the heavy 7.62-mm M60ES machine gun. All of them were confident they could overcome anything they met, with one exception: the bombs. If the SEALS didn't find a way around them, they would be in for a real nasty operation. FOUR BLOCKS AWAY from the White House, in the bell tower of the Old Post Office, Charlie Wicker slid in behind his50 caliber Barrett sniping rifle and was looking through his Leupold Ml Ultra lox scope. On the wooden platform next to him his fellow SEAL sniper Mike Berg was doing the same thing with another of the exact same massive weapon.
The acoustic top was on the shooting platform. Constructed out of plywood and lined with foam, the covers would absorb ninety-five percent of the significant noise when the .50 caliber rifles were fired. Wicker was very confident the shot would work. So confident that he thought he would get the Tango on the first shot. If he didn't, he knew Berg would.
The odds of them missing from this distance were almost zero.
The only thing that had made him nervous was the weather. Wind and rain did funny things to the flight of a bullet, things that he couldn't always control and that drove him nuts. The wind had been steadily increasing for the last several hours, but as if they had been given a gift from above, it had just died down. Unfortunately, Wicker knew, the reprieve would only be temporary. They were in the proverbial calm before the storm. The black sky was descending from the east, and the relative calm would not last.
Wicker had been listening to the play-by-play as his team members jumped out of the back of the Combat Talon and was relieved the operation was under way. He would make the shot count. Only Wicker could hear what was being said between Harris and the other three jumpers. Having too many operators on the radio created unneeded confusion. Berg was to take his shot after he heard Wicker take his. There would be no commands, no signals. Nothing to distract the second shot.
Berg would shoot when he was ready.
The two snipers could clearly hear their spotters outside the blind calling out the descent of the four SEAL Team Six operators. Wicker focused entirely on the task at hand. His whole body was molded to the big .50 caliber rifle as the crosshairs of his scope stayed centered on the terrorist's head.
Wicker felt no remorse over what he was about to do The man he was about to kill had put himself in this situation, and he had miscalculated the skill of his opponent. He naively sat behind the bulletproof glass thinking he was safe.