Execute Authority

by Dalton Fury

  Slapshot had given him an earful already. The sergeant major, accompanied by the squadron’s master breacher, Digger, had found him outside the bombed-out apartment flat, and after a quick medical assessment to ensure that Raynor hadn’t suffered anything more than a minor concussion, Slapshot had proceeded to tear him a new asshole. Raynor took the criticism without protest, recognizing the spirit in which it was being given. Slapshot was technically correct about Raynor’s operational status—he was a squadron commander now, a coach, not a quarterback—but what Slap was really pissed off about was the fact that Raynor had gone after Shiner with zero backup. He was right, of course, but Raynor wasn’t sure what he could have done differently in the moment. No doubt that would be a topic of discussion in the post-mission hotwash once they were back home at Bragg.

  Interspersed with the colorfully worded inquiries about Raynor’s sanity, Slapshot let slip that Stitch had located the sniper’s shooting position on the mountain and recovered the weapon—a Russian-made Dragunov sniper rifle. The weapon was now in the hands of the Greek police, but hopefully it would yield some solid evidence to support Kolt’s visual identification of Miric as the killer.

  Not that it would matter much in the long run. The primary mission was over. POTUS was safe aboard Air Force One, probably halfway to Germany or some other contingency destination. Now all that remained was for the squadron to turn into pumpkins—Delta-speak for the end-of-mission transition. Raynor’s operators were all accounted for, either at the hangar or at the international airport, preparing to fly out commercial once Greek authorities reopened the airspace. It wasn’t Raynor’s job as squadron CO to oversee the travel arrangements—the folks in the Unit cover shop handled that, which meant he pretty much had no more excuses not to phone Webber at Bragg.

  “Racer,” Webber growled over the line. “About damn time.”

  To call Raynor’s relationship with Colonel Jeremy Webber unconventional was a monumental understatement. Webber had been his CO for a long time, which was unusual to begin with. By all rights, one or both of them should have been promoted out of the Unit—but Webber had risen about as far as time and politics would allow him to, and Raynor … well, Raynor’s career trajectory had been about as predictable as a ricochet.

  Eight years earlier, following a disastrous mission in Pakistan—a disaster for which Raynor was solely responsible—Webber had pulled the plug on Kolt’s career, declaring him persona non grata to the Unit. Then, just three years later, while Kolt was drowning his sorrows in a bottle of Old Grandad, Webber had come to him with an offer of redemption: an off-the-books mission to locate a small group of MIA Delta operators being held captive by a Pashtun warlord in Pakistan.

  Initially, Raynor had assumed that Webber was using him, playing on his guilt to get him to do something that no one with official status could do, and maybe even secretly hoping that Kolt would meet his end on that unsanctioned operation, thus balancing the cosmic scales for the lives that had been lost because of Raynor’s earlier screwup. Maybe all of that had actually been true at the time, but after completing that mission, and thwarting a terrorist plot to take over a CIA-run black site, Raynor had been given an unprecedented second chance, regaining his rank and operational status.

  It had not been easy. Returning to the Unit meant going through the Unit’s unique Relook process, essentially a repeat of Delta selection, and a rite of passage to prove you were still physically and mentally fit to return to Delta’s ranks. He’d barely skated through tryouts the first time as a young, fit Ranger officer. Relook was, without question, the most grueling experience, physically and emotionally, that he had ever endured, but even more challenging was the naked antipathy of his former mates, who believed the PNG was a life sentence.

  But he had not failed. He had made his own luck.

  Kolt realized now that Webber must have seen something in him, some unrealized potential, and even though he wasn’t really sure what it was, Raynor had made it his personal mission in life to justify Webber’s faith in him.

  Raynor braced for impact while fumbling with the thought of leading with some bullshit excuse. But before he could launch into an explanation, the colonel added, “Outstanding job, by the way.”

  Kolt wondered if it had been meant sarcastically. That wasn’t Webber’s style, but this was an unusual situation. “Sir?”

  “You singlehandedly ran down the man who assassinated the Greek prime minister,” Webber went on. “From POTUS on down, I’m told you’re the man of the hour.”

  Raynor still couldn’t tell if Webber was being disingenuous. “It was Shiner. Rasim Miric.”

  “Shiner,” Webber echoed. “Your bogeyman? The one-eyed sniper, from the Rat abortion in Bosnia? You’re sure?”

  “PID. My front sight was on his forehead. He grabbed an innocent kid before I could break the shot, but I saw his face. It was him.”

  “Small world, Kolt. Langley and JSOC are scrubbing the intel traffic to see how we missed the pre-mission threat. We’ll add that to the parameters.”

  “I had the shot, sir,” Kolt said. “I hesitated.”

  “No doubt there will be some international fallout over this. Greeks lost several men in the blast, with a few more on the bubble.”

  “Damn, sir,” Kolt said. “That sucks.”

  “You’ve been around long enough to know how it works, Kolt. Can’t control all the variables.” He paused, then added, “Regardless, we can close that target folder.”

  Raynor took a deep breath before answering. “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “He blew himself up, Racer,” Webber said. “CNN is already running the Greek authorities’ statement, so it must be true.”

  Now that was definitely sarcasm, Raynor thought with a faint grin. “Desperation and suicide aren’t Shiner’s style. Neither is martyrdom.”

  “Faked his death. You give him a lot of credit, Kolt.”

  It wasn’t really a question, but Raynor felt compelled to present his argument. “He led me straight back to that apartment and thirty seconds later, everything inside was vaporized. That was either a contingency or a rookie mistake. Shiner isn’t a rookie, and he hasn’t stayed alive and off the radar this long by making mistakes like one.”

  Webber hummed thoughtfully. “Well, either he’s dead or he isn’t. Find out.”

  * * *

  “He is dead.” Kostas Drougas waved a hand dismissively, the unfiltered cigarette in his hand leaving trails of smoke in the air. “We have his body. Thanks to you.”

  Raynor thought he detected a faintly accusatory tone, but decided to chalk it up to cultural differences—Drougas spoke English well, if not fluently—and the fact that the EKAM commander was clearly redlining in the stress department. Although it was just midafternoon—only about four hours had passed since the assassination of the prime minister—the counterterrorism officer looked exhausted. Like the legendary figure who had inspired his Secret Service code name—Hercules—Drougas, a broadly built man with salt-and-pepper hair, looked like he was holding the weight of the world on his shoulders. The inevitable relentless demand from politicians and reporters alike for answers—answers that could not be simply pulled out of thin air—had already begun. Raynor knew from personal experience that this shit sandwich, and ultimately most of the blame for failing to prevent the tragedy in the first place, would land squarely on Drougas and the counterterror operators who, despite being underfunded and constricted by senseless political decisions, managed to get it right ninety-nine times out of a hundred. None of those earlier successes would matter, though.

  The irony of it was that Drougas would blame himself, too.

  Raynor glanced past the police colonel to the bombed-out remains of the apartment building. The site was crawling with investigators in hazmat suits. An area of several square blocks had been cordoned off, the residents of neighboring structures presumably removed from their homes, and probably relocated to a police facility for questioning.
There wasn’t really anything for Drougas, in his capacity as commander of the antiterrorism unit, to do on site. Actionable intel following something like this came out of forensic laboratories and interrogation rooms. Kolt guessed he was there because it was where his superiors expected him to be.

  “I’d like to see the body,” Raynor said, returning his attention to the police official. He had supplied Drougas with the identity of the sniper, though he had not gone into detail about his personal history with Miric or explicitly told Drougas—or anyone else aside from Webber—of his suspicions that Shiner had faked his death, but the Greek policeman was canny enough to see where Kolt was going with his request.

  Drougas sighed. “The remains were taken to hospital. I will arrange for you to see them, but there is not much to see. The blast…” He simulated a miniature explosion with his fingertips. “But it is your one-eyed man. I do not doubt this.”

  “Why not?”

  Drougas put the cigarette between his teeth and then tapped his cheek under his right eye. “The eye. It is made of glass.”

  “Right or left eye?”

  Drougas gave an irritated snort and moved his finger to the opposite cheek. “Left. Right. I don’t remember. How many one-eyed men did you see going into the flat?”

  Raynor let the question slide. If Shiner had gone to the trouble of staging the death scene with a body double, he would not have screwed up a major detail like the placement of the prosthetic eye. “The eye survived intact?”

  Drougas waggled a hand. “More or less.”

  “Find anything else interesting in there?”

  “Aside from what remains of three police officers who won’t be going home to their wives and children tonight?” Drougas shook his head. “The flat was rented a week ago by someone calling himself Nikos Roupa. That name appears to be an alias. He listed his previous residence as Komotini. It is a city in the north. Many immigrants there. Turks. Slavs. Many Muslims. The owner of the building said that he spoke with an accent. Bulgarian, she thinks. She also confirmed that this so-called Roupa appeared to have a false eye.”

  “That’s Miric,” Raynor said. “He’s Bosnian.”

  “As you say.” Drougas gave his cigarette a disdainful flick. “The man you captured. He is with Epanastatikos Agonas.”

  Raynor was familiar with EA—the name translated to “Revolutionary Struggle”—currently the most active of Greece’s many far-left terrorist organizations. Formed in 2002 from the remnants of a similar group called November 17, they were an anarchist paramilitary group opposed to capitalism, globalization, and American influence in Greek politics. They were your garden-variety rabble-rousers dabbling in bank heists and attacks on government-owned buildings using IEDs. More recently they’d added assassination attempts to their portfolio.

  Drougas took another drag from the cigarette before tossing it over his shoulder. “We are running down his known associates. We may also be able to link the explosives to other EA bombings.”

  “Miric isn’t a Marxist.”

  “A hired gun, then.”

  “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that EA would pass up a shot at POTUS?” Raynor asked.

  “America is not the center of the world, my friend, no matter what you Americans believe. A dead American president changes nothing in Greece. A dead prime minister not only leaves a vacancy at the top, but it creates fear among those who would seek to fill it. And among the public. Our country has been on the edge for so long. This may be the push that sends us into oblivion.” Drougas shook his head again, then straightened as if trying to shed his exhaustion. “From a kilometer away, it is a wonder this one-eyed sniper was able to hit anyone at all.”

  “Not this sniper,” Raynor replied. “Shiner doesn’t miss.”

  Drougas’s eyes narrowed in a scrutinizing stare. “You don’t believe it was really him in there, do you?”

  Raynor still wasn’t ready to commit to that position. “I’ll know when I see the body.”

  * * *

  On the way back to his car, Raynor took out his phone and scrolled down his contact list. Hawk’s number leapt out at him and he almost called her directly, but then thought better of it. Instead, he sent a text message to Slapshot, instructing him to have Hawk and Shaft meet him at Laiko General Hospital.

  Prior to joining Delta, Cindy “Hawk” Bird had been a 74D—army-speak for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Specialist—searching for WMDs in Iraq and Libya, a job that required both technical expertise and critical thinking. Kolt wanted her and Shaft to help him make sense of the physical evidence the police investigators had collected, starting with the human remains. It was a perfectly reasonable request, and because Delta operators did not rigidly hew to the regular army chain-of-command procedures, there was nothing inappropriate about contacting either of them directly. But there were other reasons why Raynor tried to avoid casual interactions with Cindy Bird.

  Hawk was an operator and one of Kolt’s mates, the same as Digger and Slapshot. Just one of the guys. He believed that, and scrupulously treated her that way. His expectations for her were no different than for anyone else in the squadron. She had earned the right to be treated that way, both through her performance in the Delta pilot program to train female operators, and in her subsequent actions in combat situations. She and Raynor had fought together, bled together, and saved each other’s asses more times than he could count. But none of that changed the fact that Kolt was both physically and emotionally attracted to her and, unless he was reading the signs wrong, she to him as well.

  They were both professional enough to resist the impulse to act on those feelings. In their line of work that kind of relationship could end more than just a career. But Raynor knew the sparks of sexual tension between them had not gone unnoticed by others in the Unit, and possibly some outside it as well. So, to ensure that no one drew any wrong conclusions about the nature of their relationship, Raynor made a point of adding an extra layer of insulation between himself and Cindy Bird.

  The hospital was only about a mile from the blasted apartment, but Raynor waited for Hawk and Shaft to arrive before going in. The Delta operators had changed into the generic work uniform. Hawk’s black hair was pulled back in a ponytail that protruded from the opening at the back of her cap, and swished back and forth behind her as she walked toward him. She had vaguely Asian features, which were mostly hidden from view by the cap’s visor, and her loose-fitting windbreaker concealed a lithe, athletic body that was—pound for pound—as strong and tough as most of her fellow operators.

  Raynor realized he was staring at her and forced himself to look away.

  “Hey, boss,” Shaft called out. “You good?”

  It occurred to Kolt that he had not explained his reasons for requesting Hawk and Shaft to join him, and that the location of the meeting must have caused the medically trained operator to assume the worst.

  “It’s not me,” he explained. “They’ve got—” He stopped himself. No sense in creating bias. “A body was recovered from the apartment that blew up. It’s probably the shooter, but I want to get a second opinion.”

  The two assaulters exchanged a glance, then Shaft nodded. “Lead the way.”

  Raynor did so, and was directed by the receptionist to the hospital morgue, where a medical examiner from the Forensic Science Division was waiting with the remains of the man tentatively identified as Nikos Roupa.

  Drougas had not been exaggerating the extent of damage caused by the blast. The pieces of the body lay on a stainless tray table like a partially assembled jigsaw puzzle, a puzzle with a lot of pieces missing. The blast had stripped away a considerable amount of muscle tissue and pulverized the bones, particularly in the torso, which, to Raynor’s untrained eye, suggested that the man—he couldn’t bring himself to believe that it was actually Miric—had either been holding the bomb when the detonation occurred, or wearing it.

  Raynor had seen his share of carnage over the years. It wa
s worse, a lot worse, when the body on the slab belonged to a mate, but even when the victim was a complete stranger—or an asshole terrorist suicide bomber—there was an indefinable wrongness about it. It didn’t look like Miric on the table, but then again, it didn’t look like anyone anymore. He saw Hawk flinch a little as she got a look at the pieces and knew he wasn’t the only one who felt it.

  He stood back and let Shaft and Hawk take the lead. They listened patiently as the medical examiner, in his best broken English, inventoried the pieces and explained their significance.

  Based on bone measurements, the body was male and approximately 170 centimeters—five feet, six inches—in height. There was nothing left of the hands, so fingerprint identification was impossible. The lower jaw had been pulverized but the medical examiner was confident that a positive identification from dental records would be possible, provided of course that those records existed in the first place. There were no dental or medical records for Rasim Miric, at least none that Raynor had been able to locate, but if the body wasn’t Shiner—if it was, for instance, a random homeless person that Shiner had grabbed off the street—such a record might exist. The same was true for DNA identification, but it might be hours or days before a search of those records yielded a result.

  Then the medical examiner showed them the one piece of evidence that he believed might expedite the process: Shiner’s glass eye.

  Despite the commonly used nomenclature, ocular prosthetics are not typically made of glass, but rather from a shatter-resistant acrylic compound called polymethyl methacrylate, better known by the trade name Plexiglas. The blast had driven the convex shell deep into the skull cavity, which had kept it mostly intact; enough so, the medical examiner assured them, that they would be able to determine the point of manufacture and, quite probably, the identity of the recipient.

  Of course, Raynor thought, even if the eye had belonged to Shiner, that wasn’t proof positive that the rest of the body did, too.