Within a minute, he had cut a gate in the fencing through which everyone could—and quickly did—easily pass.
The runway was about fifty meters wide. An inspection, which the team leader considered the most dangerous activity of this part of the operation, was required. A good leader, he had assumed this responsibility himself; he walked quickly in a crouch down the dotted line marking the center of the runway toward the small terminal building.
The man with the suppressed Uzi walked down the runway halfway between the dotted line and the left side, and the man with the sniper’s rifle did the same thing on the right.
All the others made their way toward the terminal off the runway, about half on one side and half on the other. Most of them were now armed with the Mini Uzi, which is smaller than the Uzi and much larger than the Micro Uzi. The Kalashnikovs, as much a part of their try-to-pass-as-the-locals disguises as anything else, had joined the jalabiya robes and skullcaps in the Land Rover.
They had gone about halfway down the runway when a dog—a large dog, from the sound of him—began to bark. Or maybe it was the sound of two large dogs.
Everyone dropped flat.
The man with the Dragunov assumed the firing position, turned on the night sights, and peered down the runway.
He took his hand off the fore end and raised it with two fingers extended.
The team leader nodded.
The two shots didn’t make very much noise, and there was no more barking.
The team leader considered his options.
It was possible that the shots had been heard, and equally possible that someone had come out of the terminal to see why the dogs were barking on the runway, or that they had come out—or were about to—to see why the barking dogs had stopped barking.
That meant the sooner they got to the terminal, the better.
But the problem of having to inspect the runway remained—that was the priority.
The team leader activated his microphone.
He spoke in Hungarian: “Trucks, lights out—repeat, lights out—to one hundred meters of the terminal. Hold for orders.”
There was no need to give orders to the others; they would follow his example.
He got to his feet and resumed his inspection, this time at a fast trot, still crouched over.
The sniper and the man with the suppressed Uzi followed his example. The men off the runway, after a moment, followed their example.
They came to the dogs, lying in pools of blood where the animals had fallen, about a hundred meters from the terminal building.
The team leader could now see the flicker of fluorescent lights in the terminal building itself, and in the building beside it, which he knew housed the men—four to six—and their families—probably twice that many people—who both worked and lived at the airport.
And he could hear the exhaust of a small generator.
That was powerful enough to power the lights he saw now, and the two dozen or so fluorescent “floodlights” around the perimeter fence, but it wasn’t powerful enough to power the runway lights.
He looked up at the control tower. There was no sign of lights, flickering fluorescent or otherwise.
Runway lighting would logically be on the same power as the control tower.
That meant he was going to have to find the much larger generator, see if he could start it, and see if there was enough diesel fuel to run it.
If he couldn’t get the runway lights on, the whole operation would fail.
He spoke Hungarian into his microphone again: “Change of plans. Cleanup will have to wait until we get some of these people to show us the runway lights generator and get it started for us. Commence operations in sixty seconds from ...” He waited until the sweep second hand on his wristwatch touched the luminescent spot at the top “... time.”
The next stage of the operation went well. Not perfectly. No operation ever goes perfectly, and that is even more true, as the case was here, when the intelligence is dated or inadequate, and there has been no time for thorough rehearsals.
There had been several rehearsals, but there had been no time to build a replica of the airport and its buildings. And if there had been time, they had had only satellite photography, old satellite photography and thus not to be trusted, to provide the needed information.
They had improvised, using sticks and tape to represent the fence and the buildings, and guessing where the doors on the buildings would be.