"What happened?!"
The officer snapped his head toward the direction of the explosion.
The radio on his shoulder immediately crackled with urgent calls: "Explosion in the south side of the city! All units go to high alert, stand by!"
A flicker of hesitation crossed the officer's face. He looked at Jamie, then glanced at Song Heping and the others, and finally waved his hand irritably.
Jamie immediately motioned everyone into the vehicle. The engine gave a low growl and the SUV pulled away from the checkpoint at speed.
After they had driven a few hundred meters, Jamie finally let his tense shoulders relax a little and wiped at the nonexistent sweat at his temple:
"Luck. But we have to move faster. The whole city's about to go into maximum alert."
The vehicle accelerated along the empty streets, with the occasional armed pickup blowing past, flashers strobing.
Fatima Women's Vocational School was in a relatively quiet neighborhood in the west of the city. The SUV killed its lights and ghosted to a stop in the Shadow two blocks short of the school gate.
On both sides of the alley, high adobe walls loomed, piled with discarded building materials that offered excellent visual cover.
The faint glow of the dashboard read: 03:17.
"This is as far as I can take you."
Jamie lowered his voice, fingers tapping lightly on the steering wheel.
"Any closer and we'll definitely be spotted. Rashid will have hidden sentries around the school. This is one of their primary search areas."
Song Heping nodded but didn't get out immediately.
He rolled the window down about two finger-widths, letting the icy pre-dawn air spill into the car.
The street was dead silent, only an occasional bark drifting in from far away.
He closed his eyes and listened for a few seconds.
The city was breathing in uneasy sleep, but some frequencies were off.
Too quiet—unnaturally quiet.
"Two elements." Song Heping turned to the back seat. "I'm with Ivan. Jiang Feng, Miroslav, you're together. Maintain radio silence unless it's an emergency. Working frequency: encrypted channel two. If there's a surveillance point, wipe it. Clean and fast."
They checked their gear in silence.
Pistols with silencers mounted, Daggers fixed where the hand would naturally fall, night vision goggles set to low-light mode.
Thirty seconds later.
"Out."
At Song Heping's command,
four dark figures slipped soundlessly out of the doors and quickly fanned out along the alley walls.
Jamie's car stayed where it was, a rock melted into the darkness.
Song Heping flashed hand signals—two up, two back, fifteen meters spacing, advance along the building shadows toward the school.
Their footsteps were cat-soft, avoiding broken glass and loose paving stones.
03:20—the city's drowsiest hour, but some eyes had to stay open.
When they were about a hundred meters from the school gate, Song Heping suddenly raised a fist—halt signal.
The four of them went still at once, merging into the shadow at the base of the wall.
He slowly turned his body, easing one eye around the corner.
The iron gate of Fatima Women's Vocational School was shut, the surrounding wall throwing a long black shadow in the moonlight.
And about fifty meters diagonally opposite the main gate, an old dark Lada sedan was illegally parked in the shadow at the mouth of a narrower alley.
The angle of the vehicle's parking was deliberate.
It had line of sight on most of the school gate and the walls to either side, yet sat squarely in a patch of darkness where the streetlight was out.
Song Heping pulled a compact monocular night-vision scope from his chest, extended it, and pressed it to his right eye.
In his view, the vehicle's details came into focus.
The car was old, a Nissan SUV.
The license plate was splattered with mud and hard to read.
Most importantly, there were two blurry human shapes in the driver and front passenger seats.
One man's head was tipped back slightly, possibly dozing; the other stayed upright, making tiny, almost imperceptible movements.
The window was cracked open, with an almost invisible thread of smoke slowly seeping out.
Song Heping pulled back behind the wall and tapped twice, very lightly, on his microphone.
Fifteen meters to the rear, Jiang Feng answered with the same rhythm.
They needed to close in and confirm.
Song Heping signed to Ivan behind him: hold position, watch the rear and flanks.
Then he sent a sequence of hand signals in Jiang Feng's direction:
two o'clock, vehicle, two possible targets, need close recon.
Jiang Feng nodded, indicating for Miroslav to move with him.
Song Heping meanwhile took Ivan on a parallel route, looping toward the target vehicle's rear quarter.
Using parked trucks, piles of junk, and jutting building features as cover, they moved slowly but steadily, never advancing more than ten meters at a time before stopping to observe.
At about twenty meters from the vehicle, Song Heping halted again, dropping to one knee behind a stack of discarded tires.
From this angle he could see the passenger side of the car.
Through the night vision, the man sitting there was looking down at something—probably a phone, the screen throwing a faint blue glow over his face.
Every so often the man raised a hand to take a drag, the ember flaring and fading in the dark.
At the same time, Jiang Feng's element had reached the other side of the vehicle, tucked into the shadow of an old newsstand roughly twenty-five meters away.
Through his night vision, Song Heping saw Jiang Feng's hand signals—two confirmed targets, both male, armed, shoulder slings observed, likely watching the school.
Song Heping replied: simultaneous takedown. I'll take the driver, you take the passenger. On three.
He turned to Ivan and pointed to the street behind the vehicle and to a building across the way, indicating that he was to cover any third party or unexpected movement from those directions.
Ivan nodded, ice-blue eyes calmly sweeping the assigned arcs behind his night vision. The VZ.61 Skorpion submachine gun in his hands was already ready to fire.
Song Heping drew his Glock 19 fitted with a silencer and checked the chamber.