Crossfire (28 page)

The shooter had gotten the idea from the episode of The Sopranos where, after Tony had whacked Ralphie, he and his nephew had cut the mobster’s head and hands off to prevent identification if the body washed up.

Not that he intended to get rid of Captain Jack’s body quite yet, because he still had tomorrow’s bloodfest to plan for, but anything that would cause the cops to divide their forces was, in his view, a good thing.

Fortunately, the town had emptied out, making it easy to rent a motel room in one of the hot-sheet places across the county line. The V in the VACANCY sign had burned out, but it still managed to get the point across.

One major advantage to the place was that the desk clerk, a kid with piercings in his nose and eyebrows, was too busy blowing people away on his PSP to pay all that much attention.

‘‘Fifty bucks for a hour,’’ he said. His acne-pitted face didn’t glance up from the Grand Theft Auto mayhem taking place on the small black rectangular screen. ‘‘Two Ben Franklins for the night.’’

Irritation spiked. The shooter knew that lack of control was both a regrettable and an often risky flaw in his personality, but that didn’t stop him from arguing the price. ‘‘Last time I was here it was one.’’

The kid shrugged bony shoulders draped in an oversized black Megadeth T-shirt depicting a shark rising out of the flames of hell. ‘‘It’s Buccaneer Days.’’ On the screen a gangbanger had just shot a cop in the head and stolen a police car. ‘‘You never hear of supply and demand?’’

The shooter refrained, just barely, from pointing out that if there’d been any demand, the parking lot wouldn’t be nearly deserted and there wouldn’t be any goddamn room to rent out in the first place. Then he reminded himself that the desk clerk’s lack of interest tended to be run-of-the-mill for such hooker havens, which is why the shooter had chosen it. Like it wasn’t as if he could drag a body unnoticed through the gilt lobby of the Wingate Palace.

He handed over the money in exchange for a pair of thin, yellowed sheets and a single equally thread-bare towel that might once have been white but was now a dingy shade of gray.

He chose a room at the far end of the row of outer blue doors, then, after dragging the dead Marine out of the van, he held him upright, making it appear, if anyone did happen to glance out a window, that a queer guy on a bender had gone shopping for some back-door sex.

He carried the captain into the bathroom, stripped off his clothes, and dumped him in the bathtub, just as Tony had done with Ralphie.

Not wanting to get an infection, he took some time to clean the wound from the graze he’d gotten when the Marine, who’d caught on to the fact that he was about to lose his van, and maybe his life, had grabbed hold of the KA-BAR knife just before it had plunged into his heart.

The shooter sucked in a sharp breath as the peroxide bubbled and stung. Then after taping the gauze over the cut, he stripped off his own clothes, got out his bloodied KA-BAR again and the hacksaw and had just started when a loud banging interrupted his work.

At first he thought it was the cops at the door. Fuck. He’d known it’d been a mistake to go to that meeting at the church. But he’d have risked more trouble taking the chance on being missed. He’d been between a fucking rock and a hard place and, as he had his entire life, he’d taken the hard.

But the banging wasn’t on the door. It was the bed in the room next door slamming against the wall to the accompaniment of bedsprings and the sound of a man shouting, ‘‘Ride the Blackbeard’s sword, you fucking cock-sucking wench!’’

From the giggle high enough to shatter glass, the shooter guessed that the sword-riding wench wasn’t insulted by the description.

A shouted, ‘‘Aaaagh!’’ signaled the pirate’s release.

There was the sound of a toilet flushing. One that continued to run long after the bowl would’ve emptied. Despite the city’s no-smoking-in-indoor-places law, the shooter heard a match strike.

Then the TV came on, with the unmistakable bass beat of a porn flick. Obviously Blackbeard and his rent-by-the-hour wench were taking an intermission before getting on to the next round.

Which left the shooter free to go back to work.

Thanks to the carbide blade, which cut through flesh as if it were butter, it didn’t take that long. The job was bloody, but that was why Captain Jack was in the tub.

Once he finished, he stuffed the head and hands into separate trash bags, then loaded them, along with the torso, arms, and legs, into the container, surrounding it with the dry ice.

The plan was to dump the body in the marsh. The head and hands in the ocean. That way, even if the various parts did escape getting eaten by gators, sharks, and fish, good luck on the cops’ ever managing to put the pieces of Humpty Dumpty together again.

‘‘Meanwhile,’’ he said, chuckling at his own cleverness, ‘‘I’ll keep the captain on ice.’’

He drained the tub, ran the shower into it, watching the blood swirl down the drain. Then he took a shower himself, making sure to scrub between his toes, and rubbing the bar of soap against his chest, where droplets of blood might have been caught.

As the pair next door began doing it again—with Blackbeard assuring the wench that she could suck the white off rice—he splashed the bleach over the tub, the same way Tony had instructed Christopher to do after they’d dismembered that poor fuck Ralphie, and sent it, too, washing away.

After getting dressed again, he dragged the container back into the van. Then drove off to the oversized storage locker he’d rented to keep his guns in.

He pulled into the locker, took out the cans of spray paint, and within fifteen minutes, had covered up the jumping fish logo on the van.

With his mission accomplished, the shooter was smiling as he loaded his cache of weapons into the now plain white van.

Quinn was not an inflexible guy. Hell, that’s what he’d always liked about being a SEAL; as carefully as you might plan a mission, something always happened that required you to change.

The ability to adapt was what made a SEAL different from the pack. It was what he’d always prided himself on.

So. Thanks to those tangos’ RPG, the team now had a change of mission. No sweat.

Except, humping up a two-thousand-meter climb in what was rapidly becoming a whiteout definitely was living up to the SEAL motto that the only easy day was yesterday.

The high elevation was searing the men’s lungs. Others were throwing up, which only added to their dehydration.

But they continued on, snow and sleet stinging their faces, forging their way up the mountain, every man aware that a single misstep could send him tumbling hundreds of feet into the dark crevasses below.

And then things got worse.

The snow stopped falling. The sun came out, blindingly bright, and before long they were literally baking inside their ceramic bulletproof vests.

‘‘We’ve got to dump some of the weight,’’ Zach said.

‘‘A few of the Rangers have asked permission to take their backplates out,’’ Quinn said.

‘‘Shit.’’ Zach glared up at the sun. ‘‘I knew this was going to be a clusterfuck from the get-go.’’ He yanked off his helmet and dragged his hand through the hair he’d kept long to blend into the population.

He stopped, held up a hand. Since he was the most senior officer still alive, the responsibility for getting the men who’d survived the initial crash and battle out of here alive fell on his shoulders.

‘‘Okay,’’ Zach said. ‘‘Here’s the deal. Those who want to take your backplates out, do it now.’’

One of the young soldiers didn’t hesitate. He pulled off his vest, took out the backplate, and hurled it down the mountainside.

The others followed suit.

‘‘Those are the most expensive damn Frisbees they’ll ever throw,’’ Quinn said to his friend.

‘‘And watch us get our ass chewed for losing them,’’ Zach said.

With the loads lessened, they continued on, reaching a grouping of mud huts. The population of the small village had evacuated so suddenly that many of the residents had left their small stoves burning. Shifting columns of dark smoke rose into the morning sky.

‘‘This isn’t good,’’ Quinn said, scanning the village and the mountains beyond.

‘‘Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?’’ Zach countered.

He instructed the troops to go through the huts and gather as many weapons as they could find. Though this was the most heavily armed region in the world, there weren’t as many as he’d hoped, but both men figured that any gun that wasn’t going to be aimed at them could only be a good thing.

‘‘We’ve got something,’’ Sax Douchett, Quinn’s longtime spotter, said. He’d always had the best eyes on the team, able to see like a hawk even without a scope. ‘‘I just saw the sun glinting off an object at two o’clock.’’

Quinn turned slowly, appearing not to be zeroing in on any one particular spot. He also began moving around, just in case he happened to be in any enemy sniper’s spot.

‘‘Could be binoculars,’’ Sax said.

‘‘Or a rifle barrel.’’ Which Quinn figured was more likely, given their circumstances.

‘‘Well, we can wait to find out,’’ Sax said.

‘‘Or we can go after the guy before he comes after us,’’ Quinn said.

‘‘Roger that,’’ Sax said.

One problem with being taller than your average SEAL was that it was really hard to just disappear into the landscape. Especially a landscape as bleak and empty as this one.

Strolling with apparent nonchalance in case he was being observed, he went into one of the huts, where he found a pair of the baggy trousers and shirts men in this part of the mountains wore.

Since the owner had to have been a good foot shorter, and fifty pounds lighter, there was no way they’d fit Quinn. But he didn’t plan on wearing them anyway. Using his KA-BAR, he cut them into strips. Then took a second pair and did the same thing.

SEALs might be prepared for anything, but they didn’t tend to carry sewing kits with them.

No problem, though, since Lucas Chaffee did.

Using a pair of needle holders and gut suture— fortunately the always overprepared medic had brought along a shitload of the stuff—and some superglue, he created ghillie suits for both himself and Sax.

Needing a distraction, Zach instructed the Rangers to torch two of the huts. On one level Quinn regretted destroying anyone’s home, but the cache of AK-47s, grenades, and handguns left behind suggested that these weren’t exactly the homes of the local Welcome Wagon greeters.

Using the distraction, he and Sax slipped out of the village, their white suits blending into the sun-glistening snowfields. Although both men were wearing their blue shades, Quinn could only hope that the sun was proving as much of a distraction for the tangos as it was for him.

Unfortunately, the bad guys not only knew this terrain a lot better than Quinn did, but they also had a head start.

Quinn and Sax humped up the mountain, the frigid air still and silent except for the crunch of their snowshoes on the ice and snow and the sound of their breathing, which, despite all the hours of PT that had them in beyond excellent aerobic condition, still wasn’t easy at this elevation.

Although he never would have made the mistake of saying it out loud, Quinn had just thought So far, so good, when bullets began pinging off rocks and kicking up snow.

He and Sax hit the ground as one. Crawled on their bellies, more bullets hitting all around them, behind a boulder.

Quinn lifted his rifle and scanned the area above them in a long sweep, found the guy hidden behind some trees that had fallen behind a snowdrift.

Obviously the shooter thought he was invisible to the naked eye. Which he was, but he’d made the common mistake of confusing concealment with cover, assuming that being hidden would protect him.

Like a bullet couldn’t slice through some damn tree branches and snow?

‘‘Give me a check,’’ he said to Sax.

The spotter shot the laser. ‘‘Thirteen hundred and fifty-seven yards. Wind’s north, northeast about three miles per hour. Five minutes to the left.’’

Which made it no factor.

There were all sorts of intricate formulas Quinn kept in the journal he never went on a mission without. But any sniper worth his rifle could do the equations in his head.

Motion. Distance. Weather. Angle and speed of the bullet.

All flashed instantaneously through his mind as he braced against the boulder, leaned into the stock of the rifle, looking through the scope with his right eye and dialing in the focus ring until the guy and his trees stood out in sharp relief.

He could’ve been starring on Quinn’s own personal HDTV.

He locked the crosshairs on the guy.

Time slowed. Quinn’s eyesight sharpened. He could hear the faint sound of the wind in the top of the few trees that managed to grow this high up in the mountains, imagined he could even hear some distant conversations, but tuned them out. They weren’t important.

Even his sense of smell became heightened as he inhaled the tang of fir and a cigarette and wood smoke on the wind.

The five S’s of the sniper’s mantra, which he’d repeated a thousand times in training, in real life echoed in his mind: slow, smooth, straight, steady squeeze.

He took a breath. Partially exhaled.

Then gently, with the same practiced skill he would use to bring a woman to climax, Quinn pulled the trigger.

The bullet exploded from the rifle with a muzzle velocity of more than 2,550 feet per second. Although he knew there were those who’d say it was impossible, Quinn’s senses were so heightened he could actually see the vapor trail of the bullet leaving the rifle.

An instant later it exploded the guy’s chest, spinning him around.

‘‘Got him,’’ Sax said.

‘‘There’ll be another.’’

Without lowering the rifle, Quinn worked the bolt with the thumb and two fingers, ejected the spent cartridge, and loaded a fresh round.

Sure as hell, a guy came out from what appeared to be a cave cut into the side of the mountain and stared down at the dead shooter.

‘‘He’s dead,’’ Sax said.

‘‘Just doesn’t know it yet,’’ Quinn agreed, even as the guy raised his own rifle, scanning the snowfields in their direction.

Inhale. Exhale.

Count it out.

One.

Two.

Three pounds of pressure on the trigger.

Through the scope he saw his target’s black eyes locked on him.

The brief flicker of surprise that showed on the craggy, weather-hewn face cost the tango his life as Quinn eased back on the trigger, then nailed him where he stood.

Before Sax had time to congratulate him on the hit, at least a dozen men came tearing out of the cave, AK- 47s blazing, looking as crazy as a swarm of mosquitoes kamikazing around a bug zapper.