Ghost Sniper (9 page)

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.

18

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

11:10 HOURS

CIA Director Robert Pope was talking with Clemson Fields in his office. Pope was tall, in his midsixties, with a head of thick white hair and boyish blue eyes peering out from behind his glasses. His professional relationship with Fields dated back to the Cold War. They weren't what most people would consider friends, but neither man was the type who valued friendship a great deal.

“. . . and you have a soft spot for Shannon,” Fields was saying. “That could be problematic for us. He does whatever the hell he wants—like this nonsense with Blickensderfer's fiancée. He wasn't trained by the CIA, and I think you're trying to teach an old dog too many new tricks.”

“His unpredictability is what makes him effective,” Pope said. “And his loyalty to me is unquestioned.”

“For the moment. What about Crosswhite?”

“Crosswhite belongs to me lock, stock, and barrel. If need be, I can use the girl and the baby to control him.”

Fields sat back in the chair. “And Shannon will stand for that?”

“Gil understands that Crosswhite is reckless and needs a firm hand.”

“And now Shannon is getting reckless.”

“He got horny,” Pope said dismissively. “Not having your ashes hauled will do that to a man.”

Fields was skeptical. “I think you'd better be careful not to ask too much of him. He's too principled. And he's not young anymore—he doesn't have anything left to prove. If he stops believing in what we're doing, you'll have to retire him.”

A dark shadow fell over Pope.

“I don't mean
retire
him,” Fields said. “I mean pension him out.”

“Know this now,” Pope said, pointing a finger at Fields. “No one ever touches Gil Shannon. Is that understood?”

“Completely,” Fields replied easily. “That was a poor choice of words. But my point stands. He's too principled for what you have in mind for the ATRU. You're selecting targets that won't be defined well enough by his standards.”

“Gil's a specialist,” Pope said. “I have no intention of using him as a general-purpose operator. That's what men like Chance Vaught will be for, and the other men I'm recruiting. Speaking of which, I want you to activate one of our people in Europe—someone out of Berlin. I want Blickensderfer dead as soon as possible. If Gil ends up shagging Lena Deiss for more than a few days—and I have to assume that to be a strong possibility—Blickensderfer might move against him.”

“I'll see to it,” Fields said. “And what happens if Shannon disapproves?”

“Gil will have nothing to complain about. He's got the girl, and he doesn't have to pull the trigger. If he has any complaints after the fact, they won't be of any concern to me.”

“If you say so,” Fields remarked. “Now, what about Hancock?”

Pope rocked back in his chair, scratching at his neck. “That's a serious problem. We have to neutralize him before the Mexican gov
ernment can make a positive ID. If they can prove one of our own people pulled the trigger on Downly, they'll throw this entire incident right back in our faces.”

“Will the president clear the ATRU to handle this?”

Pope nodded. “He already has. I told him I want Vaught, so Vaught officially belongs to me.”

“Then that takes care of that, but there's something else.”

“Yes?”

“Mariana Mederos flew down to Guadalajara early this morning and then flew back to Texas a few hours later. I have no idea what she was doing down there. Did you send her?”

“She must have gone down to meet with Crosswhite.”

“About what?”

Pope chortled. “Kids pass notes in class when the teacher's back is turned. A good teacher learns to tolerate a certain amount of it. They're both patriots. Crosswhite is probably just looking out for Paolina. I can't blame him.”

“Do you want Ortega to look into it?”

“No,” Pope said. “Don't use Ortega any more than necessary. Crosswhite already had to punch his lights out. Next time he might kill him, and I don't need the hassle of replacing the Mexico chief of station in the middle of this mess.”

When Fields was gone, Pope's Japanese American assistant, Midori Kagawa, came into the room. She was in her early thirties, with shoulder-length black hair and a round face. Aside from being a genius in her own right, Midori was the single person in Pope's life that he trusted absolutely. “Should I have him watched?” she asked. “He obviously has doubts.”

“Fields doubts everyone and everything,” Pope said. “That's why he's still in the game. But, yes, you'd better begin your electronic intrusion. Be extremely careful. Fields is nobody's fool.”

“What about Mariana Mederos?”

“I'm not sure yet.” Pope was staring out the window. “Something happened between her and Crosswhite down in Cuba, something
that brought them closer together. I have no idea what it was, but it's been intriguing me for a while now.”

“Isn't it obvious?” Midori said.

He looked at her. “You mean sex?” He shook his head. “No, whatever happened, it was nothing as trivial as sex. We'll have to keep an eye on that relationship. Despite what I said to Fields, it could become a thorn in my side if I'm not careful. Mederos and Crosswhite are both too damn smart for my own good.”