Target America: A Sniper Elite Novel (27 page)

71

MONTANA

Holding another human being dead to rights in the crosshairs can fill a sniper with an undeniable sense of invincibility. Akram had never before experienced that feeling of power, and as he watched the thermal image of Gil making his way up the slope on the back of the horse, the Remington sniper rifle resting butt down on his thigh, his face cracked into a smirk. For almost a year now, he had planned for Shannon’s death, and Allah had at last seen fit to grant him the privilege of killing the American at his own game.

He knocked Marie to the ground with the butt of the TAC-50 and took a knee behind a granite boulder, placing the reticule on Gil’s chest at one hundred yards. He fingered the heavy trigger, drawing a shallow breath as he began to gently squeeze, awaiting the surprise of the rifle’s report.

Marie had listened to the gunfight back at the ranch as Akram dragged her up the slope through the rocks, wondering who had arrived to help and where they had come from. She knew that her mother would soon die without medical attention, and she was hard pressed to
fight off an encroaching feeling of despair as Akram took her farther and farther away. The firing had died off fifteen minutes ago, leaving her to guess at the outcome of the battle below, but whatever the situation was back on the ranch, one thing was obvious: her captor was about to blow somebody out of his socks—and she was damned if she was going to just lie there on the ground like a half-wit and watch him do it.

She kicked out with both feet, catching Akram on the hip with the heels of her boots. The big rifle went off, and he whipped around angrily, snarling, “Stupid bitch!” and stomping her shin with a combat boot. He swung the rifle back down the slope, quickly working the bolt and squeezing off another shot.

“Yes!” he hissed in English, working the bolt again to squeeze off a third a shot. Then he jumped to his feet, holding the rifle high over his head in triumph.

“Allahu Akbaaaaaar!”
he shouted at the heavens.
“Allahu Akbaaaar!”
God is great!

He turned and stepped on the side of Marie’s face. “Your murdering husband’s brains are in the dirt, and his soul is burning in hell!” He ejected the spent casing and rammed another round into the battery. “Allah is indeed merciful! His greatness cannot be questioned!”

Marie felt the life running out of her, her will to fight slipping away. How could Gil be dead? It didn’t seem possible.

With what felt like the strength of ten men, Akram snatched her up by the hair again, putting his face close enough to hers that she could smell the stink of his coffee breath. “I have defeated your husband.” He shoved her forward contemptuously. “When we reach the truck, I will take you as a man takes the woman of his enemy, and my victory will be complete. If we were in my homeland, you would become one of my wives, and you would bear my children to the glory of God.”

She struggled to breathe with her panties stuffed in her mouth, stumbling numbly forward through the dark, her wrists bound so tightly behind her back that she no longer had feeling in her hands.

Akram chuckled, unable to suppress his overwhelming happiness. To be victorious—to enslave the women of your enemies—was a glorious prize granted by Allah in exchange for doing his will on earth. He had read of such glory and had dreamt of it many times as a boy, but
he had never truly believed it possible. The West had kept the East in a stranglehold for centuries with its superior technologies, but now times were rapidly changing—for the everlasting glory of Allah.

“I would take you here and now,” he said, feeling his ardor beginning to build, “but it’s too dark to see what I’m doing.” He chuckled again, obnoxiously.

Marie whipped around and kicked him, burying the toe of her cowboy boot firmly in his groin.

Every star in the universe seemed to explode before Akram’s eyes. He dropped the TAC-50 to grab himself between the legs with both hands, letting out a veritable squeal of pain as he collapsed to the ground.

Unable to see how badly he was hurt, Marie turned and ran as fast as she could through the fog, her cracked rib making it impossible to draw more than the shallowest of breaths through her nose as she careened down the dark slope, her feet quickly getting away from her. She tripped over a nub of granite in the narrow trail, pitching forward off her feet with no way to break her fall and struck the side of her head against a rock, knocking herself unconscious.

Back up the trail, Akram lay writhing on the ground, crying like a child, never having known such pain in his whole life. His entire essence was consumed by the throbbing agony, every labored breath felt like a desperate gasp for life. He vomited and shivered, sucking the vomitus back into his throat, choking and gagging as he attempted to expel the burning bile from his chest.

After what felt like an eternity, the pain at last began to subside, and he gathered his knees beneath him, hacking up the phlegm and bile lodged at the back of his throat. As his mind began to clear, he realized with much shame that this agonizing, humiliating experience was entirely his own fault. Allah had found him prideful in his victory and seen fit to punish him for indulging in physical arousal over the infidel woman at a time when he should have been focused on completing the mission. There would be time enough for earthly pleasures, but for now the enemy was almost certainly still searching for him, and his first responsibility was to escape and to evade, to ensure his further service to Allah.

Groping about, he found the rifle and used it to steady himself as he
got back to his feet, the lingering ache in his testicles a grim reminder that he had been dealt more than a glancing blow. He slipped the infrared monocular back on over his head and hobbled off down the trail in search of the woman. He found her about fifty yards down the slope, sprawled pathetically among the brambles with her hair a tangled mess of twigs and leaves, the side of her face split and bleeding.

He smacked her awake, and then grabbed yet another handful of her hair and pulled her to her feet, shoving her forward down the trail and giving her a kick in the rump to get her going. She had made her obligatory play at freedom, and he could respect that. But she had failed—and failure was stupid.

72

MONTANA

Oso kept his nose to the ground as he led Gil quickly away from the burning house to the northwest, and Gil soon realized that Marie had gone up the rocky slope west of the ridgeline overlooking the ranch. There were more than four hundred yards of open terrain between the house and the base of the foothills, and he couldn’t see anyone in his infrared NVGs. He didn’t entertain any fantasies that she had let out on her own; she never would have abandoned her mother by choice, not even to save her own skin. This meant she’d been taken as a hostage, or worse, and he didn’t kid himself about his chances of getting her back alive. The men who had taken her would be more than willing to give their own lives in exchange for hers, and quick, painless death wasn’t exactly part of their creed. They specialized in revenge, and quality vengeance called for the infliction of as much human suffering as possible.

Gil felt like a man riding out to meet the end of the world, and the Remington gave him little comfort. He’d have sooner faced down an atomic explosion with a squirt gun than what he was expecting to face
up in the foothills, and for the first time in his life, he understood what true fear really was: true fear was not being able to protect those you loved. He didn’t dare pray or to even hope for the best. He’d dealt out enough death and misery in his time to know better. Eventually the bell tolled for everyone, and to ask for an exception in your own case was cowardly and pointless.

He did chance to make himself one promise: no matter what else happened up there in the dark, he was going to kill every last son of a bitch on the mountain who had so much as looked cross-eyed at his wife, and if that meant God got his ass whipped in the process, so be it. He wasn’t asking any quarter, and he sure as hell wasn’t giving any.

He followed Oso up the slope with the Remington resting butt down on his thigh, finger on the trigger, and the reins in his left hand. He was putting a lot of faith in his body armor giving him an edge, but what the hell, he was up on a horse, practically daring the enemy to pick him off. What else was he going to put faith in?

About halfway up, Oso began to whine, smelling the excess adrenaline in the microdroplets of Marie’s perspiration and knowing that she was in danger. Gil knew by the dog’s rising anxiety that the scent was getting stronger and decided to dismount, knowing it would be safer to continue the pursuit on foot.

The Remington exploded in his hand, shot completely in half. A piece of the synthetic stock embedded itself deep in the side of his neck. The stallion started and reared up. Gil fought to stay in the saddle, knowing that a second shot would be on the way any second. Then the stallion dropped like a dead buffalo, its heart blown apart by a .50 caliber round. The shot echoed through the valley as Gil rolled clear of the dead horse. A third shot penetrated his Kevlar IBH helmet at an oblique angle on the left side of his head, tearing a half-inch furrow along his scalp front to back an inch above his ear. It grazed his skull, scorching the bone and knocking him cold.

He came to a minute later, with Oso licking and pawing at his bloody face. Gil stood up and tore the fractured helmet from his head. The NVGs were totaled, and one look at the Remington told him that the nightscope was equally fucked. He took a step, and the world began to spin. He lost his balance and toppled over. Clawing back to his feet,
he forced himself to take another couple of steps, but he toppled over once more.

He groped to his knees. Fighting to stay conscious, Gil grabbed Oso and unbuckled his collar, tossing it aside so the enemy above would have nothing to grab onto.

“Go get your mama!” he said, knowing he was sending the dog to his death. “Get your mama, Cazador! Kill the motherfuckers!”

He smacked the big Chesapeake Bay retriever on the rump, and Oso took off up the slope. “I’m right behind you!”

The world began to spin again, and he fell over.

A short time later, a man screamed somewhere up over the rise. A few seconds after that, Oso let out a horrible cry of pain, and Gil experienced an adrenaline surge strong enough to bypass the scrambled circuitry in his brain. He shoved himself to his feet and drew his .45, scrambling clumsily up the trail.

73

MONTANA

Marie knew that Akram would eventually rape and kill her, so if she was going to survive, her only hope was to stall for time and pray that someone caught up to them.

She pretended to pass out and fell to the ground.

Akram didn’t waste any time playing her game. He delivered her another swift kick in the butt. “Get up!”

The blow hurt like hell, but she continued to feign unconsciousness.

“If you don’t get up,” he said calmly, “I’ll piss on your face.”

Marie certainly didn’t want that, but it was better than getting killed, so she continued to play opossum.

“Stupid bitch,” he muttered, reaching down to unzip his fly.

A dog snarled in the fog, and he turned just in time for Oso to slam into him full tilt, sinking his teeth into Akram’s groin and taking him to the ground, thrashing his head from side to side like a frenzied mako shark.

Akram screamed and stabbed at the furious animal’s head. The blade glanced off the dog’s skull, partially severing the ear, but Oso con
tinued to thrash. Akram felt something pull free inside his scrotum, and he panicked, stabbing the dog again. This time the blade sank deep into the dog’s shoulder. Oso howled in pain and reeled away with the blade embedded to the hilt.

Akram rolled to his knees and reached to grab the TAC-50.

Too late, he saw Marie’s foot coming at his face. The toe of her boot caught him under the chin, and his head snapped back. He rolled over and caught her leg as she tried to kick him again, twisting her knee to bring her down and jumping up. He drew a Beretta from the holster at his side.

“Now I’m going to kill your fucking dog!”

“Machine gun—left flank!” a voice boomed through the fog at the top of the rise. “Kill anything that fuckin’ moves!”

Akram wheeled around, unable to see where the infrared binocular had fallen during his fight with the dog. Believing he might already be surrounded, he aimed the Berretta at Marie, but in the split second before pulling the trigger, he realized the report of the pistol would bring the enemy right down on his head, and he suddenly realized that he wasn’t yet ready to die for Allah. He holstered the weapon and grabbed up the TAC-50, taking off down the hill with one thought in mind: saving his hide. He gripped his groin as he ran to keep his injured testicles from jouncing around inside his trousers.

With the first signs of twilight now visible in the east, Gil appeared out of the fog gripping his 1911 pistol. He saw Marie sitting against a rock bound, gagged, and bleeding. He rushed to her side, pulling down the strip of cloth that held the gag in place and tossing her panties into the brush.

“Are you okay?”

“Thank God, you’re alive!” she sobbed, seeing the horrific wound to his head.

“Where are they, baby?”

“It’s just one. He took off down the trail. Cut me loose!”

Holding a small penlight in his teeth, he took a folding knife from his harness and carefully cut the bootlace from around her wrists. Her hands were purple and swollen.

“I can’t feel a thing,” she said, flexing her fingers. “I can barely move them.”

“They’re gonna hurt bad once the blood gets flowing.” He smoothed her hair back from her bloody, grime-covered face and kissed her.

“I’ll be back.”

“Forget him,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Help Oso. He’s over there in the scrub.”

Gil found Oso in the brush, lying on his side with the knife protruding from his shoulder. The dog was panting heavily, his heart was racing. Gil pulled the knife out slowly, and the dog whimpered, but once the blade was free, he rolled to his belly and got to his feet, holding the injured foreleg off the ground, licking Gil’s face, with his left ear hanging crookedly from the side of his head.

The sight of his battered wife and carved-up dog was enough to mitigate completely any and all ill effects the bullet had caused. Angrier than he’d been in his life, Gil stood and took an emergency flare from his harness, firing it into the air back toward the ranch. Then he pulled a strobe light from the same pouch and switched it on, setting it down on a rock.

“The team will be here soon. I’m goin’ after the cocksucker.”

“Don’t. He’s got that rifle.”

“I’ll shove it up his ass.”

“Where are the men you were shouting to?”

“There aren’t any.” He shrugged and smiled. “That was just an old Davy Crockett trick.” He crouched down to touch her face. “You gotta let me go kill this guy. He’s headed for the logging road, isn’t he?”

She nodded, touching his head wound, where she could see the white of his skull. “He said something about a truck.”

He got to his feet. “He’s takin’ the long way. I’ll get there ahead of him.”

She glanced down to see that a sizable chunk was missing from his boot. “What happened to your foot, baby?”

He grinned. “That little piggy went to market.”