The Shadow Agent

by Daniel Judson

  Still kneeling, Tom leaned down and looked through the Denali’s rear window to the front cabin.

  He said to the driver, “Hey.”

  The man ceased firing and turned his head.

  “What’s your name?” Tom whispered.

  “Lyman.”

  “Watch Torres. When she moves, cover her.”

  Lyman nodded, turned forward again, and resumed his selective return fire.

  Tom moved in a crouch around Torres to the very edge of the rear quarter panel.

  He looked at her again, waited for her to nod, and then bolted out into the open.

  The instant that Tom had vacated the corner, Torres leaned around it just enough to point the M4 up the bank.

  She laid down covering fire, and another fighter had been added to the mix.

  Tom scrambled over the rain-softened ground toward Garrick. It was a short sprint, but the shooter by the sedan had gotten off three shots in the few seconds that Tom was exposed.

  The fact that this person was firing into a darkened and heavily wooded area from an elevated position put him at a disadvantage, but that wouldn’t last forever.

  It was only a matter of time before the shooter figured out the angle and made the necessary corrections to his aim.

  And sooner or later his eyes would adapt to the low light.

  At that point, Tom would have only the denseness of the woods working in his favor.

  Tom reached the rock and dropped beside his teammate.

  “We need to move,” Garrick said.

  “I’m on it.”

  “A four-on-four firefight is a stalemate unless we move.”

  “I know. I’m going right, Torres is going left. There’s an asshole at the top of a bank that’s trying to zero me. Keep him down, at least.”

  “Copy.”

  Tom removed the Glock from his raincoat pocket and braced himself against the rock, waiting for Garrick to signal that he was ready.

  When Garrick did, Tom broke into another mad dash out into the open, heading for a tree ten feet away.

  It wasn’t the nearest tree, but it was the only one that Tom could see with a trunk thick enough to conceal him.

  As Tom made his move, Garrick rose above the rock and opened up with his AR.

  A skilled shooter could work the trigger of a finely tuned AR-15 fast enough to make the semiautomatic rifle fire nearly as rapidly as a fully automatic variant.

  Garrick was clearly such a shooter.

  As Tom made his run to the right, he had to trust that Torres had observed him and was making her run to the left.

  If the two of them worked their way tree by tree to a flanking position, they could apply enough pressure on their attackers to force them to displace—into clear view of those near the Denali.

  In the darkness of these woods, however, Tom and Torres would almost immediately lose visual contact, so they each would be maneuvering at their own pace.

  There was no way to guarantee that they would reach their objective at the same moment, but there were many more steps that needed to be taken before they got to that point.

  There was any number of things that could still go wrong with Tom’s plan.

  Safely behind his first tree, Tom was searching for his next cover position when he sensed movement nearby.

  Something rose from the ground just twenty feet up the bank from him.

  That motion was accompanied by heavy breathing, as well as the sounds of clothes rustling and twigs snapping.

  It wasn’t till Tom saw a human figure standing upright that he finally understood what was happening.

  The man who had been ejected from the Denali during the rollover had survived, though barely. His head was bleeding—the thick layer of blood covering his face glistened black in the darkness—and the left sleeve of his jacket was torn to shreds, his bare arm hanging limp at his side.

  Even in the low light, Tom could see that his left arm was connected only by tendons and tissue.

  Secured to his torso by its duty sling was his M4, which he gripped with his right hand. Oblivious to Tom’s presence, the badly injured man raised his weapon and lurched awkwardly toward the three shooters on the steep bank.

  He was standing straight-backed as he moved—nothing close to the shooter’s hunch and soldier’s glide he had displayed back in the factory.

  Tom had no choice but to abandon his cover and attempt to reach Lyman’s teammate as quietly and quickly as possible.

  He made his move, rushing toward the stunned man, but it was too late.

  The man opened fire, and Tom was caught out in the open as everything went to hell.

  Fourteen

  The injured man’s aim was nonspecific, and his weapon, which he’d set to automatic fire prior to the crash, muzzle-jumped by at least forty-five degrees during the first prolonged burst of 5.56.

  Despite having an unobstructed view of the three enemy fighters, he hadn’t managed to hit one of them.

  All he had accomplished, in fact, was to give away his presence as well as Tom’s.

  The three shooters pivoted to return his fire, and Tom barely had enough time to hit the ground.

  Undaunted by the imminent danger—or more likely unaware of it—the stunned man lowered his carbine till it was roughly level, then let go with another burst of automatic fire.

  The muzzle climbed again, his wild shots missing, but those returning his fire did so with more precision.

  The stunned man’s carrier vest took several rounds, the impact of which he did not seem to register, thanks to the vest’s steel chest plate.

  The last few shots of the return burst, however, were head shots—one creased the side of his neck, causing him to grunt. Another grazed his ear.

  A third struck him square in the forehead, dropping him dead in front of Tom.

  Within seconds, the shooters had turned their attention back to Garrick and Lyman, who were doing their part by keeping the pressure on.

  No longer under fire, Tom elbow-crawled the remaining few feet to the fallen man, found the quick-detachment mount located at the castle ring of his carbine, pressed it to release one end of the sling, and then pulled the weapon free.

  Placing the Glock on the ground, Tom sought out the man’s spare magazines—a mistake, he realized too late, because the shooter at the top of the bank had resumed his harassing fire before Tom could locate what he was seeking.

  Having repositioned himself so that he was out of Garrick’s line of fire, the shooter was now directly above Tom.

  This fresh fire drove Tom to abandon his search for the backup mags, and in his scramble for cover, he’d also been forced to leave the Glock where he’d laid it down.

  Returning to the temporary safety of his tree, Tom lay on his side and released the magazine from the carbine. A narrow aperture running down the side panel allowed for a fast ammo count.

  Out of the thirty rounds this mag was capable of holding, ten remained.

  Not a lot.

  Reinserting the mag, Tom thumbed the selector switch from full-auto to semiautomatic.

  He needed to make every round count.

  Rising to a kneeling position and facing the bank, he leaned his right shoulder against the trunk for greater stability. The M4 was equipped with a Trijicon ACOG optic, which featured an illuminated red chevron reticle and bullet-drop compensator with a 4x32 magnification.

  During his firearms training at Raveis’s compound in rural Tennessee, Tom had handled a large variety of weapons, along with nearly every optic imaginable—the ACOG included.

  He also understood that he needed to sight the shooter farthest from him first, because that would be the more difficult shot to make.

  Once that initial target was taken out, the ones nearer to him, who would be alerted to his presence by his fire, could be acquired more quickly.

  The man he now had in his field of view was also the one closest to Torres, who was out there somewhere, exposed as she mo
ved from cover to cover.

  Getting his entire team out alive—as well as what remained of Raveis’s men—was all that mattered to Tom.

  The near-complete darkness made his target all but invisible—except for the instant the man fired his weapon and the flash from its muzzle showed his face perfectly.

  It took only two such flashes for Tom to know he had the man zeroed.

  Those milliseconds of bright light were also enough for Tom to continue to gather essential information.

  This man was wearing a tactical vest, and his carbine was a CZ 805 Bren, which was a European weapon.

  In Tom’s experience, most private-sector operators with military experience opted for the platform on which they had put in the most time—the weapon they had trained on and carried with them during deployments.

  A European weapon more often than not meant a European shooter.

  What really mattered to Tom at this instant, though, was that this man was without a helmet, and this made what Tom needed to do considerably easier.

  Holding the reticle on the exact spot of darkness where he had last seen the man’s bare head, Tom waited with his finger inside the trigger guard for a third muzzle flash to confirm his aim.

  The instant that flash came, Tom pressed the trigger, holding it back till the weapon’s minor recoil settled down and the reticle returned to its target, at which point he eased the trigger forward just enough for it to reset with a click, then pressed it straight back again.

  This process took less than one second to complete, and in that time two rounds had been sent downrange, one behind the other.

  The orange light from the man’s final shot lasted just long enough for Tom to witness the effects of a pair of intermediate-caliber, high-velocity rounds on an unprotected human skull.

  Tom didn’t linger on that kill, however, because he had just announced his location and needed to displace.

  Though the tree he’d been leaning against protected him from the shooter above, it offered no cover from the two who remained on the bank, one of whom had immediately turned back toward Tom and opened up.

  Tom bolted, continuing his rightward sweep, moving past smaller trees as he sought out one large enough to shield him.

  In the air around him, rounds buzzed like hornets.

  Tom needed to negate the advantage the shooter on the road had gained by repositioning, but he also needed to protect himself from the two remaining attackers on the slope, and the only way to do that was to cross enough distance to achieve an angle that would allow one obstacle to block all attackers.

  The problem, though, was that the deeper he ventured into the woods, the farther he got from his team by the Denali, and the farther he got from them, the more he was cut off.

  Tom reached a tree that suited his needs and got down low behind it.

  Instantly, the fire from the bank ceased, though the sounds of shooting from that direction continued.

  Garrick and Lyman were once again drawing the fire of the two entrenched attackers.

  Tom peered around the tree, but the dozens of saplings between him and the fighting obscured his view. Even muzzle flashes were lost. Moving to the other side of the tree, he scanned the top of the crest, looking for that shooter but seeing no sign of him.

  A moment of odd stillness passed while he waited and watched.

  It wasn’t until the familiar report of the heavier-caliber rifle reached Tom’s ears that he was able to locate his tormentor—but the sound wasn’t coming from above, and Tom knew right away that the man had given up hunting Tom and had returned to the clearing that the Denali had created.

  He was now providing overwatch to his two remaining teammates.

  Rising to his feet, Tom began to make his way back toward the firefight, but instead of following a straight return path, he pursued a wide circle, taking a few steps up the steep incline for every forward step he took.

  The sooner the shooter in the overwatch position was taken out, the better.

  Fifteen

  Crouched low, Tom wove at a steady pace around the trees, careful of the uneven terrain and ever aware of the fact that he could barely see the ground at his feet.

  As he moved through the crowd of saplings and drew closer to the cleared bank, he began to spot muzzle flashes again.

  Closer still, and he could make out the shape of the Denali and the half-buried rock near it.

  The bright-orange flashes from those two places told him that Garrick and Lyman were still doing their part.

  But in battle the tide can turn all too quickly, and the advantage of holding a position can easily pivot into the disadvantage of finding oneself pinned down.

  With that in mind, Tom pressed on, continuing to circle up the bank. As he neared the top, he slowed dramatically to minimize the sounds he was making as he moved through what was essentially a web of narrow, leafy branches.

  When the crest was just a few feet away, he got down onto his belly and, cradling the carbine in his elbows, crawled up to the pavement’s edge, facing the parkway.

  There to his left was the shooter, in the kneeling position.

  The night sky was overcast, so there was no moon or starlight, and no streetlight was visible due to the winding nature of the road, but the engine of the waiting sedan had been left on, and its amber-colored running lights provided exactly the level of illumination Tom needed.

  This shooter’s dress and gear were nearly identical to those of the man Tom had viewed through the ACOG, but the weapon this man was shouldering was an M14.

  Among those in the US military who opted for the higher-powered M14 were Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance sharpshooters, and the last man who had tried to kill Tom—and everyone he cared about—had been a former recon marine named Ballentine.

  Tom had put a bullet into Ballentine’s head, but the possibility of yet another highly skilled operator hunting him—someone, perhaps, with whom he and Cahill had once served—sent a chill down his back.

  Moving slowly, Tom rolled onto his right shoulder and placed the stock of the M4 between his pecs, then straightened his right leg while extending his left leg forward, resting his left foot on the pavement.

  Even the relatively light recoil from the 5.56 round could destabilize a shooter in an off-balance position, and Tom’s extended left leg provided just enough counterweight to give him the stability needed to take fast and accurate follow-up shots.

  Raising the M4 so that its stock was at the center of his chest meant that the distance between Tom’s eye and the optic would be greater than usual, but this wasn’t a problem with the ACOG; Tom could see clearly both the bright-red reticle at the scope’s center and his magnified target twenty feet away.

  His index finger was outside the trigger guard as he adjusted his aim till the reticle was placed directly over the man’s left temple.

  Then he eased his finger inside the guard and hovered it just above the trigger.

  Those movements affected his aim, but only slightly, and within a second he had the reticle back on target.

  Tom was exhaling lightly through pursed lips when the shooter’s M14 emptied, and in a well-rehearsed movement the man immediately dropped down to the prone position so he would have some concealment as he reloaded.

  In doing so, he disappeared from Tom’s view.

  It took only a minor adjustment for Tom to find him again, but the man had already ejected the spent twenty-round mag and was pulling a fresh one from a pouch on his vest.

  His moves were fast and efficient.

  It was then, as the man was inserting the mag, that he saw Tom.

  There was time enough for a moment of cognition—and for the man to release the bolt, chambering a round—before Tom pressed the trigger once, let it reset as he had done before, and pressed it again.

  Rising to his feet, he moved forward in a low crouch, his carbine trained on the downed man.

  Tom grabbed the weapon, laying the M4 on the pavement and
completing a quick brass check before shouldering the M14.

  His view of the two remaining attackers was unobstructed, and he aimed at the one to his right, directly in front of Lyman’s position.

  The M14 was equipped with a Leupold 10x40 mm scope, and within seconds Tom had the etched crosshairs on the prone man’s back.

  Six feet to that man’s left was the other shooter, lined up with the rock Garrick was using for cover.

  Tom shifted the scope in that direction and saw something he wasn’t expecting to see.

  That shooter was a woman.

  A woman with dark, loosely curled hair.

  Just like Stella’s.

  Tom hesitated, but only for an instant, because he caught a flash out of the corner of his right eye.

  He swung the M14 in that direction in time to see that Torres had completed her flanking maneuver and was just twenty feet from the remaining male shooter.

  The flash had been the quick burst she had unleashed at the surprised man.

  Tom swung the M14 back to the woman, reaching her just as she was turning to open fire on Torres.

  If he killed her, any valuable intel she possessed would die with her.

  Who had sent her team? How had they known where to find them? Why an assault-style attack at all, and why after his meeting, when they could have easily—and more quietly—taken out Tom as he had walked alone from the train station?

  Tom needed to know all that she knew, that was true.

  But he had to do something, and he had to do it fast.

  When the woman’s weapon came into his view as she was taking aim at Torres, Tom placed the crosshairs on the heart of her weapon, between the box magazine below the receiver and the optic directly above it.

  Then he made a last-second correction, intuitively adjusting for his elevated angle, and fired.

  The .308 round struck a fraction of an inch below the bolt, piercing the weapon clean through and destroying it before the woman was able to fire.

  Fragments of the bullet’s jacket shattered, scattering thin shavings of brass into her face as the impact of the round sent the weapon flying out of her hands.

  If the woman hadn’t been stationary, and had Tom been under fire, there was no way he would have made that shot.