by Jack Carr
Reece could have tested his Echols Legend hunting rifle on most any public rifle range but the next two weapons would attract far too much attention. He was sure he was breaking half a dozen federal laws as well as various sections of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by failing to turn in his weapons case and a few more by liberating the gear, heavy weapons, and explosives from the armory, but those charges would pale in comparison to the crimes that he was about to commit. He pulled his 10.5-inch barreled M4 assault rifle from inside the hard-sided Pelican case and inserted a thirty-round PMAG into the mag well. Essentially a shorter version of the weapon that most U.S. troops used in combat, Reece’s rifle had been spray-painted in a tan and brown camouflage pattern. The railed forend of the rifle held an ATPIAL infrared laser that was only visible through night-vision devices, but it also had a visible-laser setting that Reece selected. A Surefire Scout Light was mounted at an angle on the weapon’s right side between two rails for easy access from the vertical foregrip. On the flat top of the rifle’s receiver, an EOTech holographic weapon sight was mounted with a 3x magnifier sitting directly behind it. The sight worked much like the head-up display on a fighter jet, allowing the shooter to keep both eyes open and use the reticle image reflected onto the sight’s “windshield” as an aiming point. By looking through the magnifier, the illuminated image of the reticle was still visible, but the target appeared three times closer, allowing for a greater effective range. In a close-quarter battle situation, the shooter could quickly flip the magnifier out of the way, or remove it completely, for faster target acquisition.
Reece resumed his supported prone position and fired a round at the box target as carefully as he did with his .300 Win Mag. The assault rifle’s trigger was nowhere near as light or as clean as the one on his Legend, but recoil was far lighter, almost nonexistent with the suppressor attached. Contrary to popular belief, the suppressor did not “silence” the report of the rifle or the supersonic crack of the bullet, but it did make it more difficult to determine the shooter’s position and lowered the noise level just as a car’s muffler does the sound of an engine. As usual, technology had outpaced the military’s outdated acquisition process, resulting in U.S. servicemen and women going into combat without the best gear and weaponry available. Reece would have loved to be running a suppressor from SilencerCo, but bureaucrats who would never see combat ensured that he only had access to decades-old accessories, as part of political haggling that had nothing to do with putting the best gear into the hands of America’s warriors.
Reece fired two additional rounds, which gave him a three-round group on the two-hundred-yard target. The tiny .224-inch holes on the target were too small to see with only 3x magnification, so Reece traded the rifle for his binoculars. The three-shot group was about the size of a fist and was centered on the target. Thousands of miles of air travel had not caused his zero to shift but you never knew unless you checked. Reece rose to a kneeling position and pressed the pressure switch to activate the visible laser, firing at and shattering a rock fifty yards from his position.
Reece moved the selector switch to SAFE and cleared the weapon before pressing the two takedown pins on the port side of the rifle’s receiver. He pulled the pins until they locked open and removed the 10.5-inch barreled upper receiver from the weapon’s lower. He then retrieved a second upper from the Pelican case and attached it to the same lower receiver. The second upper wore a longer 14.5-inch barrel with a 40mm grenade launcher attached underneath. A Trijicon ACOG sight was mounted to its top, along with another ATPIAL laser aiming device. He removed the Knight’s Armament suppressor from the shorter upper and placed it on the longer barrel before confirming that both the ACOG and the laser were zeroed correctly. He reassembled the rifle with the short barrel and suppressor and placed everything back into the case.
The last weapon was one that, as an officer, he hadn’t used in quite some time. The Mk 48 MOD 1 was a compact, belt-fed light machine gun that basically served as an improved version of the old Vietnam-era M-60. Like his far more compact assault rifle, the Mk 48 that he’d checked out of the armory was painted camouflage and fitted with both a laser aiming device and an EOTech sight. Reece set the weapon down on its bipod and lifted the feed cover. He placed a five-round belt of 7.62x51mm ammunition into the top of the feed tray, closed the cover, and pulled the bolt to the rear, where it locked into place; true machine guns fire from an open-bolt position. Unlike the rifles, which he controlled with minimal muscle tension, he bore down hard on the Mk 48 to control the weapon. Reece found the box in the sight and pressed the trigger, which fired two rounds before he could release it. He reacquired the target and fired the remainder of the belt. The binoculars showed at least four .30-caliber holes in the target in addition to the one he’d fired from his Legend. As far as he was concerned, that was damn good for a belt-fed machine gun. He repacked all of his gear into the back of the Cruiser and concealed the weapons cases and ammo cans under the blanket before stacking his luggage on top. His business concluded, he climbed back into the driver’s seat and made his way back to the interstate.
• • •
Flagstaff, Arizona
As Reece headed east and then north, he steered toward Flagstaff, where he had one last important stop to make. He pulled into the Mount Elden Assisted Living and Nursing Center and walked through the main entrance. He asked for directions to Judy Reece’s room and signed himself in as “Jim Watson” before heading down the hallway. When he opened the door to the small but immaculately kept room, he saw his mother sitting upright in a recliner. She wore a white sweater and khaki pants, hair perfectly coiffed and her makeup a bit smeared. Despite her condition, and with the help of the understanding staff, she’d maintained her outward dignity as a southern lady.
She seemed to take no notice of him as he walked in the door and shut it behind him. He gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, taking a seat on the couch directly across from her. He’d been in high school when she had her first stroke, and though she recovered physically, she was never the same again. Her dad used to joke lovingly, “She didn’t play the piano before and isn’t going to start playing now.” Not surprisingly, she began showing signs of dementia in her late sixties and after his father’s death she went downhill quickly. It took every dime that his father had left behind to put her in a place that would take good care of her, and she had quickly become a staff favorite. Reece made it to Flagstaff as often as he could, though never as often as he intended, sitting with his mother and reading to her from her favorite books. In reality, much of the mother he knew was already gone. Still, he had to say goodbye to what was left.
His mother rarely spoke these days and when she did, it never made much sense. On a good day, she would ask you what time it was every thirty seconds. She seemed to listen, though, and she stared past Reece toward the window as he told her the whole story. If she were lucid, he would have spared her the pain of knowing that her beloved daughter-in-law and only granddaughter had been slain in their home, guilty only by association. Under the circumstances, he was pretty sure that she didn’t understand and he needed to get it off his chest. Growing up, he could always tell his mother anything. When he finished telling her of the tragic events that had transformed his life, her face remained unchanged. Then, without breaking her gaze from the window, she spoke softly but clearly.
“In Judges, Gideon asks God how to choose his men for battle. The Lord told Gideon to take his men down to the river and drink. The men who flopped down on their bellies and drank like dogs were no good to him. Gideon watched as some of his men knelt down and drank with their heads watching the horizon, spears in hand. Though they were few, they were the men he needed. You’ve always been one of the few, James. Keep watching the horizon.” Chills shot over Reece’s body. She looked into Reece’s eyes and, for a second, he knew that she was there and that she understood.
“I love you, Mama,” Reece said as he kissed her on the forehead and h
eaded for the door, tears in his eyes.
CHAPTER 39
Oak Tree Gun Club
Newhall, California
“PULL!” HORN SHOUTED, raising his over/under shotgun and tracking the rapidly moving targets. As he fired, a pair of bright orange clay discs exploded in quick succession over the green shrubs in front of his barrel. He broke the gun open, allowing the spent shells to eject onto the shooting position’s elevated wooden deck.
“Well done, Steve,” a slightly annoyed Josh Holder commented as he moved forward to take his shooting position. This was his first time on the course and he was visibly impressed by the first-class operation. The Oak Tree’s owner had made more money in tech than he would be able to spend in one lifetime and didn’t seem to mind that his gun club didn’t make any money. For him, the real value was in knowing how uncomfortable its existence made the Los Angeles liberals.
Horn was shooting a Krieghoff K-80 Crown Grade Sporting model 12-gauge shotgun. He had purchased it at one of the special operations fundraisers he had attended with Tedesco and Admiral Pilsner. It had cost more than the average American’s car and had come at an even steeper price because some other asshole had tried to outbid him on it. The glossy stock of Turkish walnut, the Germanic deep-relief engraving, and the precision fit and finish of the world-class competition shotgun were lost on Horn. All he knew was that it was the type of gun that others would envy. The bidding package even included a trip to Germany to tour the factory and have dinner with Dieter Krieghoff himself, though Horn never made the journey. He did take the tax write-off for supporting the charity, of course.
His assistant booked him two lessons a week with the best shotgun instructor in Southern California, who trained Horn until he could outshoot nearly anyone with whom he might walk a sporting clays course. Never one for a fair fight, he always made sure to shoot with partners who couldn’t match his skill level. Holder was one of the few people who intimidated Horn and he wanted this meeting in his comfort zone, not Josh’s.
“Pull,” Josh Holder ordered, swinging his rented Remington 1100 toward the crossing pair, clipping the first target and missing the second. Sporting clays was not his game.
“You have to swing through both clays, Josh. These aren’t rifles.”
“Thanks for the tip, Horn,” Holder said without the requisite enthusiasm.
Agnon recorded both men’s scores as they walked to the golf cart that would carry them to the next station.
“What are we going to do about Reece?” Holder cut to the point of their outing.
“Well, Josh, your wannabe jihadi asset couldn’t manage to kill him even when guided in with a drone to his exact location. That would have been perfect! It would have looked like some crazy ISIS type had been radicalized online and was trying to get laid by his seventy-five virgins.”
“Um, seventy-two, sir,” Saul Agnon said, speaking up from the backseat for the first time since leaving the gun club’s pro shop.
“What was that, Saul?” asked Horn without turning his head to look at his lieutenant.
“I believe it’s seventy-two virgins.”
“Whatever,” Horn continued. “The bottom line is that was our best shot at him without raising too many red flags. The evidence would have pointed to some crazy lone-wolf terrorist who had seen Reece in the paper with the coverage of the Afghanistan debacle and then from the additional coverage of his family’s funerals and decided to martyr himself for the cause. Case closed.”
“First off, that was the Hartley’s classified asset,” Holder corrected. “It still boggles my mind that you even know about it. Secondly, I just ran the agent, gave him the instructions. I didn’t train him up.”
“It’s still your fuckup, Josh. Don’t worry, the Hartleys don’t blame you, but they are done helping. We need you to handle this.”
“Let me remind you that you guys were supposed to take him out overseas. I’ve more than pulled my weight on this.”
“You’re the right man for the job, Josh.”
“I work for J.D., not you.”
“What do you want?”
“I want points on this thing.”
“Fine. We can’t afford to dilute this thing much further but you can have a piece.”
“I want ten percent.”
“Horseshit, I’ll give you two. Two percent of this is enough to set up your unborn grandkids.”
“Five percent or Reece is your problem.”
Horn stared ahead silently as he steered the cart.
“Five it is, but you get jack shit unless you take him out.”
“Fine. Any preference on how I do it?”
“Can’t you just ‘suicide’ him like you did his little buddy? You know, make it look like he is so distraught by what happened in Afghanistan and to his family that he just couldn’t take it and decided to eat a bullet. No one would question that. How many veterans kill themselves everyday anyway?”
“Sir, estimates run from one-point-five to twenty-two,” Agnon offered.
“That was rhetorical, Saul. Stop interrupting.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s easier said than done, Horn. Reece is on alert now. He knows he’s being hunted. He’s probably using prepaid phones and I’d be surprised if he goes home again. Without DOD’s drone assets and access to national intelligence databases, it will be tougher to find him. Not impossible, just tougher.”
“If he drove a newer car we could just hack its GPS system, get his location, and send my contractors to kill him. He’d be no match for the fifteen battle-hardened mercenaries we pulled back from overseas to handle this. Too bad he drives that ancient piece-of-shit Land Cruiser.”
“Horn, do not send those Neanderthals to kill him. They are tied to you and the Hartleys through your military contracts. Plus, they are the hammer. We need a scalpel.”
“Can you get it done or not?”
“I said I’d get it done, Horn. I just need to find him again. We might not be able to track his old truck but we can find his reporter friend’s car.”
“Good. I will consider this in your hands now.” Horn stopped the cart behind the pro shop and stepped out. “Let me know when you finish it. I need to get back to L.A. Enjoy the rest of the course. You need the practice.”
• • •
“You drive. I need to make a call,” Horn said as they approached his Aston Martin Vanquish S, its silver color cleverly called Skyfall by the marketers at the British car company. Horn couldn’t bring himself to buy a Tesla, the car that most of his competitors in the California finance world seemed to prefer, chalking up their concern for the environment to a moral vanity he simply could not stand. No matter how fast, an electric car could never muster up the mixed feelings of admiration and jealousy that his twelve-cylinder Aston Martin did when he dropped it with a valet.
After ensuring that Agnon had carefully slid the Krieghoff into its leather case and set it in the backseat, Horn lowered himself into the passenger side and pulled out his phone. He disconnected it from the car’s Bluetooth and stared impatiently at the screen, though he knew that the canyons surrounding Oak Tree blocked all cell service.
Saul cautiously maneuvered the sports car down toward the freeway, expecting every turn to draw criticism.
Once back in cell range, Horn made a call.
“It’s Horn. I need you to get creative on dealing with James Reece.” Without waiting for an answer, Horn terminated the connection.
“Who was that?” Agnon asked his boss.
“That, Saul, was the final option. Now, keep your eyes on the road and let me get some work done.”
Agnon did as he was told.
CHAPTER 40
Wyoming Backcountry
THE BIGGEST ADJUSTMENT for Reece, when it came to targeting individuals on his own personal crusade, was the lack of intelligence support. Overseas, an entire contingent of support personnel, not to mention the massive U.S. intelligence apparatus, was on hand to hel
p guys like Reece find, fix, finish, and exploit the enemy. On this mission, not only did Reece lack that support, but he had to do it all without creating a trail of evidence. It wasn’t that he was afraid of getting arrested, since no punishment from the state could match what he’d already endured. He had to elude the law and postpone the death he knew was coming. It just couldn’t happen until his mission was complete. The longer Reece could keep the other side, and the law, in the dark, the better.
Knowing that he was already dead from a tumor growing in his brain was nothing short of liberating. His sole focus was on bringing justice to those who had taken everything from him. He felt no restraint, no moral conflict. He was clear in his purpose and vision. Understanding the violence he was about to bring to those who had killed his wife, daughter, unborn son, and Teammates gave him an odd sense of peace.
Reece had set aside a week for surveillance, only to discover that his target readily broadcast his every movement to the world via social media. It was if he were saying, “Here I am, come and kill me.” Having lived low-profile for his entire professional life, this mind-set was baffling to Reece. Boykin’s movements were routine and predictable, and the terrain and timing were ideal for what Reece had envisioned back in Coronado.