Ghost Sniper: A Sniper Elite Novel (8 page)

15

MALBUN, LIECHTENSTEIN

14:30 HOURS

Gil and Lena were headed for the airport in a rented car. Lena was driving, and Gil had a hand inside his jacket as they sped along the snowy mountain road, his eye on the side-view mirror.

Lena kept a firm grip on the wheel. “Are you going to tell me why they wanted to castrate you?”

Gil shivered involuntarily, flashing back to the pinking shears. “Thank you for saving my ass.”

“It wasn’t your ass that I saved—and you’re evading my question.”

“I killed a bunch of their friends in Istanbul awhile back—freed some girls who’d been sold into prostitution.”

She cut him a surprised glance. “The Russian rescue that was in the news? That was
you
?”

He still had his eye on the side-view mirror, a bad feeling rising up in his gut. “Me and a grumpy Spetsnaz guy, yeah.”

“No wonder,” she said. “You’ve brought them international at
tention, and it’s hurting their business. They won’t rest until you’re dead.”

He shrugged. “It might not have been the smartest thing I ever did, but it needed doin’.”

“The Russian mob is everywhere. Aren’t you afraid they’ll go after your wife in the US?”

He looked at her. “Somebody else already tried that. No. I’m not worried.”

They were approaching a tight curve bearing to the left, and Lena downshifted to slow the car. “Sabastian will help them find you—because of me.”

“Well, he hasn’t wasted any time,” Gil said, seeing a black sedan appear in the mirror. “This is them. Keep driving!”

He opened the door and bailed out as they went through the curve, rolling into a snowbank and springing to his feet. He pulled the Springfield .45 from his jacket and charged the approaching the car.

Shocked to see the American suddenly coming at them, the driver braked hard, putting the vehicle into a slide on the snowy road as Gil planted his feet, thrusting the pistol forward.

“
Hoo
-yah!” he growled, emptying the pistol rapidly into the windshield of the oncoming car. The bodies danced around in their seats. One man bailed out the back door, and Gil shot him through the neck as he rolled to a stop. The sedan plowed into a snowbank and stalled.

The only one still alive was in the guy in the passenger seat—the same guy who had intended to remove Gil’s private parts. He was bleeding from two holes in his chest and one through his cheek. Most of his teeth were shot out, and it was obvious that he was paralyzed, probably due to a bullet nicking his spinal cord.

Gil opened the door, reaching inside to snatch the Russian’s pistol from his lap. “Watch close now.” He shot the Russian in the face and jerked his body from the car, dragging it to the guardrail and throwing it over the cliff. He did the same with the other three bodies.
Then Gil got into the car and took off after Lena, who, to his surprise, had pulled to the side of the road to wait less than a mile beyond the curve.

He pulled up beside her, his adrenaline still pumping but glad she’d waited. “Thought I told you to keep driving.”

She grinned, her blue eyes shining. “If this is going to work, you’ll have to get used to me not doing what I’m told.”

“Roger that. Can you hide me in Switzerland?”

“Absolutely.”

He put the car in motion toward the cliff and stepped out, watching it drop over the edge and go careening downhill into the tall mountain pines. The sky was dark, threatening snow, and he knew that no one would likely spot the vehicle before spring.

The second he got back into Lena’s car, she leaned across the seat and planted her mouth on his, pulling at his belt.

“Lena, we gotta go.”

“Why?” she said, aggressively yanking at the buckle. “Didn’t you get rid of the evidence?”

“What about Sabastian?”

“Halfway to Stuttgart by now.” She was openly wanton, biting at his lips. “I’m not kidding, Gil. Take your pants down!”

16

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

12:03 HOURS

Paolina practically threw Vaught’s breakfast at him as she brought it from the stove, shoving the plate across the table to smack against his glass of orange juice. Crosswhite had left before sunrise without telling Vaught where he was going, and Paolina hadn’t said more than two words since he’d gotten out of bed. He didn’t bother to thank her for cooking, knowing she’d only spit his words back at him. He was afraid of her and didn’t want to antagonize her, particularly when Crosswhite wasn’t there to protect him. Her resentment was palpable now, and he felt it was probably best to leave as small a footprint in her world as possible.

If Crosswhite didn’t return before he finished eating, he would wash his own dishes, and then go back to the guest room and shut the door. There was a television back there to pass the time. He was curious where Crosswhite had gone, believing it must have something to do with the operation, but he knew that Paolina was too loyal
to tell him anything Crosswhite didn’t want him to know. Oddly enough, this didn’t really worry him. Crosswhite was so straightforward about everything that Vaught couldn’t help trusting him. What you saw was what you got with Crosswhite.

He drew a breath and stood up from the chair, making his way to the sink.

“Leave them,” she said without turning around.

“Thank you for breakfast.” The words slipped out before he could pull them back, and, of course, she didn’t answer.

He went back to his room and closed the door, switching on the television. The news came on shortly, and within fifteen minutes, Chance Vaught learned that he’d been reported dead to the entire world. He knew it was coming, but the report still hit him hard, and he panicked for a minute, feeling unexpectedly trapped and alone. The news ended a few minutes later, and he switched off the television, getting up from the bed and stepping out into the living room, where Paolina sat on the sofa reading to Valencia.

“I’m sorry,” he said, putting his hands into his pockets. “I apologize for jeopardizing what you and Crosswhite have here.”

She looked up at him, holding his gaze for a moment, and then went back to reading.

He shrugged and went back into the room, closing the door.

A HALF HOUR
later, Paolina heard someone rap on the steel gate to the carport. Assuming that it was a neighbor, she set aside the book, telling Valencia to wait for her on the couch, and stepped outside into the carport, calling,
“Quién es?”
Who is it?

“I’m with the Institute of Health, señorita,” a young man answered in Spanish. “There’s been a case of dengue fever in the neighborhood, and we have to speak to everyone to make sure they know the symptoms and how to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in and around their homes.”

This was common in Latin America. Dengue fever was caused by a virus spread by mosquitoes, and this was the government’s usual
response to an instance of the disease in any neighborhood. Paolina crossed the carport and peeked out the slot in the door to see a young man in his early twenties wearing the Institute of Health uniform and the proper ID tag around his neck. She knew that if she didn’t open the gate to take his literature and listen to his little spiel about the disease, either he or someone else would keep coming back until someone had heard them out. She pulled the latch to unlock the gate, and it burst violently inward, hitting her in the face and knocking her backward.

The young man clamped his hand over her mouth and kicked the gate shut. He had a gooey wet cloth in his hand that stunk of something medicinal. She felt herself beginning to go unconscious and stopped trying to breathe, pulling a razor-sharp stiletto from the small of her back beneath her shirt and swiping viciously at his groin.

She got him pretty good, just missing his penis and cutting deep into the thigh muscle. He let go of her instantly, seizing his crotch in both hands and shouting for help. Paolina stumbled dizzily backward and fell to the concrete, the effect of the chloroform too strong to resist. Two more men rushed in as she struggled to get up. They fell on her and slapped her unconscious, taping her mouth, and quickly securing her hands and feet with duct tape.

“Get her into the van!”

Vaught was still watching television in his room. He heard the young man’s shout and lowered the volume to listen for more. Hearing nothing else, he ran the volume back up.

Valencia slid off the couch and went to stand in the open doorway. Seeing two men in the process of kidnapping her mother, she immediately began to scream.

Hearing the scream, Vaught ripped open the bedroom door and was already moving at full speed by the time he vaulted over Valencia and into the carport. The two men lifting Paolina from the concrete watched in stunned confusion as he came at them, having had no idea there was anyone else in the house. Vaught drove his knee into the closest man’s face, knocking him backward against the door with
his nose smashed flat, blood jetting. Then he spun smoothly around with a high backward kick that caught the second man in the side of the head and sent him sprawling.

The counterfeit health worker was bleeding in the corner and didn’t want any part of the fight, so Vaught ignored him, turning back to the first guy as he struggled to rise. He put him back down with a punch to the trachea and snatched Paolina’s stiletto off the ground, using it to stab both men in the throat before finishing off the imposter from the health department with a brutal kick to the temple. Then he lifted Paolina up and swept her into the house past Valencia, who was still crying. He set the young woman on the sofa, pulled the tape away from her mouth, and began freeing her hands and feet as the chloroform wore off.

She came awake flailing, and he grabbed her wrists.

“You’re okay!” he said in Spanish. “Look at me! You’re okay!”

Paolina jumped unsteadily to her feet and tottered over to her daughter, sinking to her knees and taking the frightened little girl into her arms to settle her. “Mommy’s okay. Mommy’s okay . . .” She glanced at Vaught. “We have to leave—now.”

He glanced around. “Where the hell are we gonna go?”

“Daniel said if anything ever happened while he was out of the city to go to Juan Guerrero.”

“Who’s Juan Guerrero?”

Still dizzy, she got to her feet and lifted Valencia into her arms. “The police chief in Toluca.”

“Toluca’s thirty miles south of here. Where the hell is Crosswhite?”

“Guadalajara.”

“What the hell’s he doing up in Guadalajara? That’s a six-hour drive. Did he fly? When’s he coming back?”

She moved toward the bedroom. “Stop complaining, Chance. Call for a taxi.”

“Goddamnit,” he muttered. “Right when you think things can’t get any more fucked up.”

17

TOLUCA, MEXICO

The gringo sniper’s Barrett XM500 .50 caliber sniper rifle rested on the floor, propped on its bipod near the end of a long hallway in an abandoned elementary school. At the opposite end of the hall was a one-square-foot opening cut into the base of the concrete wall overlooking the street one story below. Almost a quarter mile away, at the far end of the avenue, was a church where a young lady’s first communion ceremony was taking place. Taped to the wall, knee high off the floor, was an eight-by-ten color photo of Police Chief Juan Guerrero.

Rhett Hancock sat against the steel door of an empty classroom, studying the gentle features of the face in the photograph. He would have time for only one shot, and it would have to be on the correct target. The chief had a gentlemanly look about him: dark eyebrows and soft brown eyes set in an oval face. His hair was cut short without style, and to Hancock he looked more like a gardener or a waiter than a defiant cop.

The Barrett XM500 was not a common model like the M82A1 or the M107. This rifle was of a bullpup design, with the action located behind the trigger, allowing for shorter overall weapon length. It was a variant of the old M82A2, which had never generated much interest on the weapons market. Another difference was that the XM500’s barrel remained stationary when the weapon was fired, facilitating greater accuracy at long ranges.

Hancock’s partner, Jessup, sat around the corner at the far end of the hallway. After Hancock’s shot, he would quickly shove the concrete block they had cut from the wall back into place to prevent anyone from pinpointing their location. The rifle report would be muffled by the building and covered up further by the clanging church bell.

Hancock stared at the photo, visualizing the shot in his mind’s eye. There was no greater feeling, no greater thrill in the world to him, than shooting another human being at long range. He had become addicted to the experience almost immediately during the Iraq War, and though the cartels were paying him extremely well, he would have gladly done the work for food money. He was willing to shoot anyone. Man or woman—it didn’t matter.

He used his own modified ammunition, having paid a munitions expert in Nevada to design him a special soft-tipped round that would pancake to the size of a hubcap upon entering the human body. As it was, the standard .50 caliber sniper round did a devastating amount of damage—the hydrostatic shock of the impact being hundreds of times more powerful than the body could absorb—but Hancock sought maximum devastation with every shot now, like a junkie needing a larger and larger fix as his addiction progressed. He had used the special round to blow Alice Downly’s guts all over the street, and it still made him snicker to think about the way she had exploded. One second a raving lunatic—the next, total obliteration.

The phone vibrated in his pocket with an incoming text message:
“listo,”
meaning “ready.” This was the signal from their man inside the church letting him know that Guerrero would soon be coming
out the front door, as they had hoped. There had been some initial concern when the informant reported that the police car had been pulled around behind the church, but apparently the chief was feeling lucky today.

Well
, Hancock thought, putting on his protective earmuffs,
I’m gonna
give the dude a stiff dose of a bad time
.

He felt his blood begin to thrum as he slid in behind the rifle to peer through the Leupold 4.5-14x50 Mark 4 scope. The church doors were open, and people were coming out slowly. The first person to really catch his eye was the young lady whose special day it was. She was dressed all in white and shone like a beautiful pearl in the bright sunlight. Next, there was the chief of police, standing perfectly in his crosshairs between two other policemen. The timing was sublime, the shot pristine, and there was no hesitation, no need to even think. Hancock squeezed the trigger, and the 600-grain projectile streaked down the hallway at 2,800 feet per second, blasting out through the hole near the floor and speeding its way down the street to strike Chief Juan Guerrero in the base of the throat, severing the spinal cord perfectly. Guerrero’s neck disintegrated. His head went twirling up into the air like a pop foul, slinging blood on the little girl’s dress in bright globs of crimson as his body dropped to the sidewalk. The head landed and bounced once before coming to rest near the feet of one of the other policemen.

No one in front of the church heard the faint report of the rifle over the clanging of the bronze bell above them, but many saw the chief’s head ripped from his body, and no one needed to be told what had done it. Bedlam ensued as everyone began to scream, scrambling back inside the church for safety. One of the policemen grabbed up the little girl and swept her inside along with the rushing throng.

As Jessup slid the block into place, plugging the hole, Hancock stripped off his ear protection and rolled onto his back, laughing uproariously. The vision of the chief’s twirling head was more comical to him than any cartoon had ever been in his youth.

Jessup ran up the hall, shouting for him get up and move, but
Hancock rolled to his side, holding his belly as he continued to roar with delight.

Jessup grabbed the Barrett by its carrying handle and snatched up the spent shell casing. “Rhett! We gotta get the fuck outta here!”

Hancock did not seem to hear him, his laughter continuing in a maniacal craze.

“Rhett!” Jessup kicked him in the ass with the side of his boot. “Get the fuck up!”

But Hancock did not rise until he had finally laughed himself out, nearly two minutes later. He sat up against the wall. “Oh, fuck me!” he said, wiping the tears from his face. “Oh, Christ, it was beautiful—a once-in–a-lifetime shot!”

Jessup could have cared less. “You’re gonna get us fucking killed! We gotta go!”

Hancock chuckled one last time, exhausted from his fit. “Calm down, Cochise. There ain’t nobody lookin’ for us. They think we’re long gone. Besides, they’re all too busy piling out the back of that goddamn church.”

“Ruvalcaba’s people are waiting in the alley, but they’re not gonna wait all day!”

Hancock stuck up his hand, and Jessup hauled him to his feet.

“Fuck, Rhett. Sometimes I wonder what the fuck is wrong with you.”

TWO HOURS LATER,
they sat in a cantina on the outskirts of Mexico City, safe in the heart of Ruvalcaba’s territory. Hancock was drinking straight from a bottle of Jose Cuervo, and Jessup sat across from him, nursing a beer.

“Are you sober enough to comprehend some bad news?” Jessup asked harshly.

Hancock nodded slowly.

“I just got a call from Oscar, and it looks like the snatch-and-grab at Crosswhite’s place must have gotten fucked up. All three of Ruvalcaba’s people are MIA, and the place is crawling with cops. I
told you we should have shot the bastard instead of fucking around with him. Now he knows we’re after him, and he’ll go to ground.”

Hancock shook his head drunkenly from one side to the other. “Nope. No, he won’t. He’ll come after me. And that’s okay. It’s what I want.”

“ ‘He’ll come after me!’ ” Jessup echoed sarcastically. He shook his head. “You’re dreaming.”

Hancock gripped the bottle by its neck and held it in his lap between his legs, inching closer to the table. His eyes lost their glassy appearance, and he seemed strangely sober all of a sudden. “I had a little talk with one of my own sources late last night.”

“What source?”

“Never mind. What’s important is what I found out.”

A doubtful frown appeared on Jessup’s face. “And what’s that?”

Hancock tossed the tequila bottle into the corner and braced his elbows on the table top. “Crosswhite’s a contender.”

Jessup cocked an eyebrow. “A contender for what?”

Hancock turned to look over at the bartender. “Hey, cabrón! Where the fuck is my steak?”

The bartender disappeared into the back, and Jessup let out a weary sigh. “You never asked for a steak.”

“I just did,” Hancock said. “Didn’t you hear?”

“Are you gonna tell me about Crosswhite?”

“Yeah.” Hancock got up from the table and went to the bar, pulling out his penis and pissing into the drain at the base of the bar stool, which was not an uncommon sight in some of the older, rougher cantinas. “Turns out the guy was part of Operation Earnest Endeavor. He’s a Medal of Honor winner. The leader of a special Ranger unit in Afghanistan. They were one of the first teams in-country, even before the bombs started to drop.” He finished taking his leak and shook himself dry, zipping up his pants and coming back to the table.

“And that’s why you think he’ll come after you?” Jessup asked.

“Fuckin’-A, he’ll come after me.” Hancock sat back and spread his arms. “This ain’t the kinda dude to spend the rest of his life hiding
from nobody. He’ll look to end this shit, and that’s gonna bring his ass right into my crosshairs, Cochise. Wait and see.”

Jessup took a swig from his beer. “Cochise was an Apache, you stupid shit. How many times I gotta tell you I’m a Sioux?”

“Name me a famous Sioux.”

“Sitting Bull, jag-off.”

“Fuck that.” Hancock glanced over his shoulder, looking for the bartender. “I ain’t callin’ you no goddamn Sitting Bull.”

Jessup took another drink. “We need to talk about these last two missions, Rhett. Today was the second time you tried to get me killed. If I can’t count on you to perform like a professional, I’m the fuck outta here.” He’d been on the roof with Hancock in Mexico City on the day of Downly’s assassination, acting as Hancock’s spotter. Downly had been in the open from the time she had exited the vehicle, and Jessup had kept calling for Hancock to shoot her, but Hancock had chosen to shoot the ambassador and two of the DSS agents first, wasting valuable escape time. Jessup had ducked into the stairwell only seconds before Vaught had reached the roof and killed their security team of crooked policemen.

Hancock yawned and stretched. “I’m getting hungry.”

“Or better yet,” Jessup said, “why don’t we split? We’ve got plenty of money now.”

“No,” Hancock said, shaking his head. “If you wanna split, split. I’ll start taking things more seriously, if you want, but I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I don’t give a fiddler’s fuck about the money. Shit, you can have mine. This is the only the fucking thing I was ever any good at, and I’m gonna keep right on doing it until somebody better comes along and stops me.”

But Jessup knew it went deeper than that, and he couldn’t help but wonder if it might be better for everyone involved for him to put Hancock down himself. There was, after all, such a thing as taking shit too far.