Target America: A Sniper Elite Novel (14 page)

He didn’t hear the shot because it was muffled by the house, but when the .30 caliber round struck him, it tore out his right floating rib and a good deal of flesh along with it. Kashkin wasn’t aware of any pain, just the queer sensation of having instantly had all the air sucked from his lungs.

Marie knew she’d hit him from the way he’d grabbed his side. Her shoulders were aching from sitting hunched over the mattress all day, but she shrugged it off and worked the bolt to ram another round into battery before placing the reticule of the scope right below Kashkin’s chin.

She drew a breath, held it . . . and squeezed the trigger a second time.

The round hit Kashkin dead center in the sternum and slammed him onto his back. He landed with his arms splayed out at his sides, and though all that Marie could see of him now was the sole of his right boot propped up on a rock, she knew she’d taken him out.

She sat back from the bed and looked up as Janet hurried into the room.

“He’s down,” she said, getting stiffly to her feet and taking her jeans from the edge of the bed. She stepped into them and gathered up the pee-stained bedspread, stuffing it down the laundry chute in the hallway. “I’ll wait til dark, then rig the travois to Tico and go up and get him. We’ll bury him on the ranch.”

28

MONTANA

Marie sat in the saddle atop the ridge in the light of the moon, looking down from the back of Gil’s Appaloosa mare. Kashkin was flat on his back with his eyes wide open, staring up at the glowing crescent in the sky, his arms splayed as if to embrace the heavens. The ground beneath him was stained black with his blood, and there were two cruel-looking bullet holes in his khaki Swiss Army shirt. The Mauser lay near a small rucksack water pouch, and pieces of a shattered satellite phone were scattered at his feet.

Oso sniffed at the body and growled low in his throat.

Marie pulled a Winchester model 94 in .45 caliber from the saddle scabbard and stepped down from the horse.

“Back,” she said to Oso, and he obeyed, sitting on his haunches.

Walking over to the body, she stood on the left arm and prodded Kashkin in the neck with the muzzle of the rifle to make certain he was dead before returning the Winchester to the scabbard. She gathered up the Mauser and rucksack, shouldering the ruck and pulling back the bolt on the rifle to eject the 7.92 mm round. It landed on the ground,
and she crouched to pick it up, holding it in front of her discerning brown eyes.

The “boar’s tooth,” Gil called it . . . the round that might have killed her had she missed. She put the round into the pocket of her Carhartt jacket and gripped the Mauser with both hands, pivoting on her right foot to gaze out over her father’s ranch. It was hard reality to accept, but war had once again come to this land, and she was now no less a combatant than her husband was. She had killed another human being in a sniper duel, and this was a claim that even few Navy SEALs could make.

“Damn you, Gil,” she whispered.

She hung the Mauser from the saddle horn by the shoulder strap and did the same with the ruck. Then Marie went to stand over the body once again, her hands on her hips as she nervously chewed her lower lip. She didn’t want to touch the corpse, but there was no other way to get it down the hill. She pulled on her leather roping gloves and crouched to take hold of Kashkin’s left wrist, pushing the arm down against his side. He had been dead for six hours, so he was only about three hours into rigor mortis. Full rigor occurred at twelve hours, when the muscles were at full contraction, so he wasn’t yet stiff as a board, but he wasn’t entirely limber, either.

Within a half hour, she had him wrapped in a game bag and strapped to the travois attached to Tico’s saddle. She was mounted up and ready to start down the hill when it occurred to her she hadn’t seen Oso for the past five or ten minutes.

She called to him, and he barked twice from a distance. It was the same bark he used whenever he had treed a raccoon, and she knew that he wouldn’t come unless she went and got him. He was very hardheaded that way. So she shucked the Winchester out of the scabbard and dismounted.

“We don’t really have time for this, Cazador,” she muttered, taking a flashlight from the saddlebag and starting off through the juniper pines in the direction of the barking. She called out again to get a better fix on the dog’s location, and he answered as he had the first time. A minute later, she saw him sitting on his haunches in the beam of the flashlight beside a green Timberline tent some two hundred feet back from the
ridge. The tent was pitched in a copse of junipers, and there was nothing outside it save for a small pile of coals that Marie found cold to the touch and a pair of white boxer briefs draped over a branch.

The sight of the camp was enough to make her sick to her stomach. The idea that someone had been camping up here without a care in the world, waiting patiently to blow her husband’s brains out, both frightened and infuriated her. She unzipped the tent and shined the light inside to see a large green backpack, a blue sleeping bag, and a pile of cooking equipment. There was also the lingering odor of an unwashed human being. Quickly rifling through the pack, she found the usual incidentals, numerous bags of backpacking food, and a small laptop computer. She crammed everything into the backpack then hurriedly struck the campsite, making sure to scatter the charcoal from the fire.

Forty minutes later, she stood beside her mother in the well-lighted stable looking down at the dead man lying in the center of the gray plastic tarp.

Oso sat across from them whining.

“He doesn’t look much like a Muslim to me,” Janet remarked.

“Me neither.” Marie knelt beside him and went through the cargo pockets of his olive drab trousers. She found his German passport, driver’s permit, and the key to a rental car.

Janet knew they were both way out of their depth. “We should call somebody, honey.”

“Like who?”

“Like you
know
who. I understand ya don’t wanna hear it, but we gotta tell Gil sooner or later, and there ain’t no point to waiting.”

Marie folded the tarp back over Kashkin’s stiffening body. Then she went to the wall and picked up the phone, calling Gil’s number and being sent straight to voice mail. She swore under her breath and left a message for him to call her right away.

29

CANADA,
Ontario, Windsor

Haroun al-Rashid knocked on the door of his brother’s house, shouldering past his sister-in-law as she opened it. “Akram!”

“In here,” said Akram al-Rashid, seated in the kitchen and eating breakfast. He stood up from the table, recognizing the distress in his younger brother’s voice. He was thirty-five, light skinned, and athletic looking, with short black hair. Akram was handsome when clean shaven, but this morning he had a dark five o’clock shadow, and he was dressed sloppily in a white tank top and gray sweatpants. “What’s wrong?”

“Kashkin is dead.”

If Akram found this news overly disturbing, it didn’t show. “How do you know?”

Haroun explained about the phone call the evening before and that Kashkin had never called back. “So the American must have killed him,” he went on, clearly agitated. “Now you’ll have to go to Detroit and gather our men. We assured our people back home that we could deliver the American’s head, and if we fail to do it . . .”

Akram nodded, crossing his arms and leaning against the kitchen counter. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “It would be bad if we failed to deliver.”

“Very bad,” Haroun agreed. “We gave that stupid Chechen a lot of money, and now that he’s dead . . .” He looked around nervously and then held out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I have no idea who has control of the bomb, Akram. That idiot disconnected before I could even ask. The entire operation could be in jeopardy, for all we know.”

Akram had spent six years as a Royal Saudi Marine, and at times like this, he still emanated an aura of military confidence. He was not a man to be shaken easily, but his brother Haroun, a bookworm, was very excitable and dependent upon Akram for moral support and encouragement.

Akram gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Kashkin was an experienced strategist. A very intelligent and capable man. He would never have gone after the American until the bomb was safely delivered to his people. Don’t worry.”

He glanced at his twenty-four-year-old wife, who stood in the living room looking worried, saying something to her in Greek that Haroun did not understand. She answered him timidly and went into the bedroom and closed the door.

“She is pregnant,” Akram told his brother. “We just found out.”

Haroun’s eyes lit up. “Congratulations, brother!”

Akram seemed not to hear it. “Listen. If I do not return from killing the American, it will be your responsibility to marry Melonie and raise my son—as it
will
be a son. Allah has told us so.”

“But . . . but I don’t speak Greek. How could I even—?”

“You will learn,” Akram said heavily. “She is obedient and loyal, but she is not very smart and could never learn our language. So it will be up to you—your responsibility. You’re my brother, and I will be counting on you in the event that Allah summons me into the void.”

Haroun lowered his head. “I will learn Greek. I promise.” He knew that for Akram to travel so far into the United States on such an intrepid mission, with American law enforcement on such high alert, would be near suicide. He looked up. “She will accept me?”

Akram shrugged. “What choice will she have? But do not worry. We have discussed it, and she understands her duty.” He sat down to
finish his breakfast, bidding his brother to take the chair across from him. “Now, enough doomsaying.”

Haroun was still frustrated that Kashkin had provided so little information. “He said the American was stalking him, but he was very calm about it, very accepting.”

“As we should all be at such a time.” Akram tore off a piece of unleavened bread and put it into his mouth. “I have vetted this American. He is a man who does things his own way. This makes him unpredictable and dangerous—as Kashkin has apparently learned—but it also makes him vulnerable.”

“Our people in Detroit will follow you?”

“Of course,” Akram said, pushing runny egg yolk around on his plate with a piece of bread.

The uncertainty was apparent on Haroun’s face. “And you trust that stinking pig mercenary we hired? Duke?”

Akram shook his head. “I trust his greed. His greed is very reliable.” He chuckled and reached out to muss his brother’s hair. “Relax. It’s taken a long time for us to become established on this continent, but soon the American military will begin to understand with great clarity that the war has finally come to their homeland—that we are now in their rear among their families and supply.”

“The bomb will teach them that in very certain terms,” Haroun said gravely.

“Yes, but it’s unfortunate the first bomb was detonated prematurely. We’re going to need another, so be sure to squeeze Faisal for more. Tell him that soon we’re going to need money from his personal account.”

“Do you already know where to find another weapon?”

Akram shook his head. “No, but once the second bomb goes off, and our friends abroad see how successful we were, how vulnerable the US really is, doors are going to open. Everyone is always afraid of the largest wolf in the pack—until he stumbles.”

“And then others fall upon him?”

“They fall upon him quickly, before he can get back up.”

30

LAS VEGAS

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department was somewhat different from other metropolitan police departments in that the LVMPD was a joint city-county police department for both the city of Las Vegas and Clark County, Nevada. The department was not headed by a chief of police appointed by city officials but rather by a sheriff elected by the citizens of Clark County. This meant the LVMPD was not under the direct control of either the city or the county. It was under the direct control of Sheriff Jack Moleska, and Jack Moleska didn’t appreciate being bothered at home during breakfast by a bunch of G-men in dark suits.

“Exactly who are all you people?” Moleska said, standing on his front porch in his pajamas looking at a veritable crowd of Secret Service agents on his lawn. He was tall, with thinning dark hair and a narrow face.

“We’re with the Secret Service, Sheriff.”

“All of you, huh?” Moleska handed back the agent’s identification. “And you say you have some kind of warrant?”

“Yes, sir.” The agent produced a single-page warrant, offering it to
Moleska. “This warrant is issued by the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, DC.”

“Uh-huh.” Moleska took the time to read the entire warrant. It directed him to provide a “secure perimeter” outside the Luxor hotel and casino while “federal agents” entered the hotel for the purposes of taking into custody a “subject wanted for questioning.”

He looked at the agent. “So who the hell’s the subject?”

“I don’t know, sir. I haven’t been given that information.”

“Well, where’s the warrant for him?”

“I don’t have that information either, sir.”

Moleska stood looking at the Secret Service man. “So is this an FBI operation? Secret Service? Marshal Service? Ninja Turtles? Who?”

“There again, Sheriff, I haven’t been made privy to that information.”

Moleska gestured with the warrant. “Do you serve this kind of warrant often, Agent Rivers? I ask because I’ve never seen anything like it in thirty-five years of law enforcement. With the exception of”—he had to read the letters directly off the warrant—“the USFISC letterhead, this so-called warrant doesn’t actually
name
anyone at all.”

“It names
you
, sir.”

Moleska narrowed his gaze. “Okay, you listen . . . this is
my
city.
My
county. So you go back to wherever you came from, and you tell the federal government that I’m not an idiot. I can read between the lines as well as anyone, and this warrant directs me to stand by and watch what amounts to some kind of
federal abduction
. Not only will I not be a party to it, but I won’t allow it to take place inside my jurisdiction. Understood?”

“Understood, sir.” The agent lifted his hand and spoke into his sleeve.

A few moments later, the back door to one of the government sedans opened up, and a tall, white-haired gentleman came strolling up the concrete drive smiling.

“Hello, Sheriff,” the man said, offering his hand. “My name is Pope. May we have a word in private?”

Like most people, Moleska couldn’t help being disarmed by Pope’s boyish smile. “Sure, step inside.”

He turned and opened the door, allowing Pope to precede him into
the house. Moleska shut the door, and the two of them crossed into the living room. “Now, what’s this all about?”

“Sheriff, I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Moleska held up the warrant. “
That’s
why nobody’s mentioned on this piece of paper. The CIA has no authority inside the US.”

“That’s correct,” Pope said. “Unfortunately, however, there’s a live nuclear weapon loose inside the country, and we’re the agency with the best chance of finding it before it goes off—which we expect to be in about thirty-six hours. That leaves us very little time for following the rules, as I’m sure you can understand. So I tell you this in all candor, Sheriff . . . if you refuse to look the other way on this . . . if you force the book on us . . . our one and only suspect is going to lawyer up and laugh while the clock on a Russian suitcase nuke ticks down to zero.”

The sheriff lowered his gaze, folding the warrant in half. “Let me get dressed. I’ll be right out.”