by Dalton Fury
The last man to go, who not coincidentally was Miric’s leading candidate, proved hardest to find. By that point, Miric was intimately familiar with the terrain, moving quickly and stealthily from one likely hide to the next, his senses fully attuned to any disruption in the environment. His one good eye was for shooting, but when it came to hunting another man in the woods, his ears and nose were far more useful. Men had a smell, Americans especially, with their soaps and shampoos and perfumed deodorant body sprays. The things they ate and drank were full of toxins that oozed from their pores. Their breathing, too, was a dead giveaway. He needed only a few seconds at each potential shooting position to determine whether his prey was there. The last candidate, however, almost eluded him.
It took him just ten minutes to visit all the places from which a shot would have been possible, but there was no sign of the young SWORD soldier at any of them. Miric retraced his steps, spending a little more time at each location, but with no better results. He checked his wristwatch and saw that only a few minutes remained to him.
Had the young man found a way to completely lose himself in the landscape? Or had he chosen an unconventional shooting position?
Rasim Miric considered these two possibilities for no more than thirty seconds before deciding it did not matter. The young man had performed better than any of his peers, but to win the competition, he would have to score a kill shot and return to the assembly area.
Miric hastened back to the spot he would have chosen first and settled in to observe the target through his spotter’s scope. As he lay there, listening to the last few seconds tick away, he heard a faint rustling sound. He looked up from the scope and saw movement in the ground cover just a few meters away. It was the young militiaman, and he was on the move, low-crawling toward a spot that would put him almost exactly parallel to Miric.
Miric smiled to himself. The boy had not made the same mistake as the others, finding his shooting position and staying put. Instead, he had hidden himself somewhere else and waited, literally until the last minute.
Miric watched as the young man deployed his rifle, positioning its bipod. The one drawback to waiting so long was that the militia sniper would have only a few seconds to find his target in the scope, determine range, and adjust for variables like wind and bullet drop.
Miric eased closer to the man, careful not to betray his presence. The boy was breathing fast and making too much noise now, which allowed Miric to move up beside him.
The boy took a deep breath, let it out. Took another. Miric raised the scope to his eye and found the distant target. He knew from his earlier visit that the steel target was about 820 meters away, at the outer edge of the reliable range for the boy’s Remington 700 SPS .308 rifle.
There was a familiar metallic rasp as the bolt was slid back, and a faint click as the round seated. The boy took another breath. Held it.
The report resonated through Miric’s body but he kept his attention unflinchingly focused downrange.
The steel target dropped with the impact.
The boy let out his breath in an audible sigh of satisfaction and immediately started breaking down the rifle.
“Good shot,” Miric said aloud.
The boy froze for a moment, then looked back and saw the man who had been stalking him. “Ah, shit.”
Miric chuckled. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You did better than all of your friends. And you made the shot.”
The young militiaman grinned. “Easy-peasy. I could make that shot in my sleep.”
“Is that so? Tell me, Easy-peasy. What is your name?”
“Lyle … uh, I mean Sergeant Dooley.” He paused a beat, then added, “My friends call me Lizard.”
“Lizard.” Miric nodded approvingly. “How old are you, Lizard?”
“Twenty.”
“Twenty. When I was your age, I had already killed ten men.” He let that sink in a moment, then lowered his voice. “I have a confession to make. This is not just training exercise.”
“No?”
“No. Is test. I am looking for someone to help me with special assignment.”
Lizard’s eyes went wide with awe and anticipation, just as Miric knew they would, but there was a note of suspicion in his reply. “What kind of assignment? I ain’t gonna do nothing illegal.”
“Who decides what is legal? Your government itself is illegal. The colonel knows it. It is time to act. Now.”
“Colonel J?”
“Yes. Why do you think he brought me here? You want to take back your country, no?”
“No.” Dooley blinked, then shook his head. “I mean, yes. I do.”
Miric scooted closer so he could speak in a low whisper. “This must remain between us. Secret, you understand?”
The young man nodded, but then repeated his question. “What kind of assignment?”
“I think you know, Lizard.”
The young man swallowed nervously. “I … um … Do you … Why me?”
Miric smiled again. “You are a natural.”
PART TWO
FIRST TARGET
TEN
The call from Brian Kelly a week later caught Raynor off guard, partly because he had expected the analyst to slow-ball his request, but mostly because he didn’t think he’d find any leads worth a shit.
He immediately headed to the SCIF, where he found Kelly tucked in at his cubicle, shaking the last few drops of Java Monster Mean Bean energy drink from a can. Kolt made a mental note of the product; if Kelly’s lead proved actionable, he would have to hook him up on his next visit.
He clapped a hand down on Kelly’s shoulder, giving him what he thought was an encouraging squeeze.
“What’s up, brother?” Kolt said with a smile. “Something new?”
Kelly winced—probably jumpy from all the caffeine, Raynor thought, since he hadn’t really squeezed that hard. “Colonel Raynor. That was fast.”
“It was either you or the long O course with the boys, and I’m not getting any younger. And dude, it’s Racer. Calling me ‘colonel’ makes me think the JSOC commander is standing behind me.”
“Umm, right. So, I collected all the images available of the guy the Greek police are identifying as the assassin. I also pinged the agency for any images that hadn’t been released to the public yet. They didn’t have anything useful. The Greeks released all the best captures in hopes that someone might recognize him. So, basically, I don’t have a whole lot to work with here. The images we’ve got are low res. It’s like trying to find a match of a specific car when all you know is the color and only one or two numbers from the license plate.”
“You know we’ve done that before,” Kolt reassured him. “You’ll get it.”
“Maybe the vehicle analogy isn’t the best,” Kelly said. “We’ll only be able to find matches from people who are actually in the databases that we have access to, and that’s only a very small percentage of the population.”
Raynor nodded patiently. He was well accustomed to Unit intel analysts underpromising and always overdelivering, but it seemed to be part of the process. “But you did find something?”
“This.” Kelly clicked his mouse and brought up an image on his monitor. It was a still frame taken from a surveillance camera, and showed a dark-haired man standing at a counter in what looked like a customs checkpoint, perhaps in an airport. One of the man’s eyes was covered with a flesh-colored adhesive patch.
Raynor’s pulse quickened. “Fuckin’ A, brother. You’re the shit!”
“It’s only a thirty-two percent match with—”
“It’s him,” Kolt insisted. “Where was this picture taken?”
“Walk-up customs border station in Detroit.”
“Detroit? As in Michigan? He’s here? In the States?” Without realizing it, Raynor had let his voice rise to nearly a shout, which caused Kelly to flinch again.
“It looks that way, I mean, if it is him. The passport belongs to Vladimir Zdorovetskiy. Russian. Been li
ving in the U.S. for five years. Naturalized in 2013. The passport photo is a little bit different because it shows him with both eyes, but evidently the border patrol guy thought it was the same guy.”
“Where is he now?”
“Excuse me?”
Kolt pointed at the screen. “This asshole is in the United States. We need to find him before he…” He faltered. Before he what? Who is he hunting now? “Where did he go next?”
Kelly looked up in consternation. “I might be the shit, sir, but I can’t shit intel.”
Raynor stared at the image. The adrenaline pumping through his veins had left him feeling cold all over. “What about the network of surveillance cameras Homeland Security has in every city in America? We can track him.”
“That’s technically true, but…” Kelly shrugged. “It’s not as Jason Bourne simple as they make it look on TV. You need NSA-level computing power, and even with that, it’s still easy to fool the system if you know what you’re doing. But even if I could do it … I can’t. We don’t have the authority to conduct an investigation on American soil. We’d need a directive from way above JSOC for that.”
Raynor knew the analyst was right on all counts, just as he knew that no one in any U.S. law enforcement agency would take him seriously, not if all he had to give them was a couple pictures and a gut feeling. “Then backtrack him.”
The analyst stared at him dumbly.
“If you can’t look for him here,” Raynor said, speaking slowly as if to a child, “then let’s figure out how he got here. Connect his movements. I know he was in Athens a few days ago. How did he get from there to here? Give us something I can take to Webber and the CG.”
Kolt could see Brian Kelly’s lips pursed together behind his luxurious beard as if he was fighting to hold back a sarcastic retort. After a few seconds, his lips parted just enough for him to utter a single word. “Fine.” Then, as if considering, he added, “but I’m swamped with a dozen other pressing target folders as it is.”
“I know, man, you guys bust your asses around here,” Kolt said. “I tell you what. I’ll trade your personal time to run this stuff down for a tandem jump with Digger and a day of pistol shooting with Hawk.”
Kelly snapped his head toward Kolt. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, man,” Kolt said. He wondered which of the two incentives had been more attractive to the analyst. “You’re doing me a huge favor. Deal?”
“Hell yeah, it’s a deal.”
Raynor knew he was asking a lot of the man, and knew that he should probably be more grateful for what the analyst had already accomplished, but he didn’t have time to coddle. Shiner had moved a lot faster than he would have believed possible. He had already chosen his next target, and if he was in the United States, it meant the target was too.
Nobody in the world could convince Kolt otherwise.
* * *
“Let me get this straight,” said Special Agent in Charge Jess Simmons with a weary sarcasm that was audible over the telephone line. “The guy who didn’t take out Champ when he had the chance in Athens, and who blew himself to smithereens, is now back from the dead and ready to take another crack at it. Am I tracking?”
It wasn’t the reaction Racer had hoped for, but it wasn’t completely unexpected either. Simmons was an arrogant rule-bound jackass, but he was also the only person Racer could think of with the authority to do something about the threat Shiner represented on short notice and without going through the byzantine bureaucracy that came with major threats to the homeland.
“Look, Jess, I can’t tell you why he didn’t take the shot in Athens. Maybe Champ wasn’t his target. But he is here now. I’ve got a picture of him at the border crossing in Michigan.”
“So he didn’t really blow himself up? He was just pretending?”
“Come on, Jess. Remember who you’re talking to. I’ve got better things to do too. The shooter staged his death and the forensics will prove it.” He said this with more confidence than he actually possessed. He did not doubt that Miric was alive, but it was doubtful the Greek authorities would reach that conclusion before Shiner made his move.
Simmons considered this for a moment. “Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I believe you, Raynor. What do you want me to do about it? I mean, beyond what I already do every day to keep Champ safe from the hundreds of crazies who also want him dead?”
Racer fought to keep his temper in check. He gazed out through his office window across the Unit parking lot, heavy with Harley-Davidsons and pickups, making sure to keep his composure. Slipping into full hothead mode would definitely not get him closer to his objective. “Shiner isn’t just a crazy radical with an axe to grind. You saw what he did in Athens. You were standing right there.”
“We have protocols to deal with potential sniper threats.”
“Tell that to Midas,” Racer shot back, and instantly regretted it. That had been his own failure as much as anyone’s. “Look, Jess. I’m telling you that my best unofficial assessment is that Shiner is in the U.S. He’s traveling under an alias. Vladimir Zdorovetskiy. That’s something you can investigate. That’s all I’m asking you to do. Pull that thread and see where it leads.”
“It’s not enough, Raynor.” Simmons’s tone was now several degrees cooler. “Someone way above your pay grade needs to show me an explicit threat to the president’s safety.”
“When it becomes explicit, it will be too late for you to do anything about it,” Racer said through clenched teeth. “Are you tracking that?” He slammed the phone back in its cradle.
“Looks like those people skills are working for you,” Slapshot remarked.
Racer glanced up to find his sergeant major leaning against the door of the office, arms folded over his broad chest. “Speaking of people skills, it’s rude to eavesdrop.”
“Yeah? It’s also rude to compartmentalize shit that affects me and the boys, too.” Then, without waiting for an actual invitation, he strode in and collapsed into the chair opposite Raynor’s desk. “So let me guess. Nobody believes you when you say that Harvey the Rabbit is real.”
Raynor blinked at him. He had not updated Slapshot with Kelly’s latest discovery, but the harsh truth was that it was no more convincing than anything else he had to offer as proof. “Do you believe me?”
“You asking for a no-shitter, boss?”
“From you, I expect nothing less.”
Slapshot blew out his cheeks in a long sigh. “Well, Racer, I haven’t been zipped up in a body bag following you yet.”
“He’s here, Slap. We’ve got a picture of him at the Detroit border crossing. My gut tells me he’s going after POTUS.”
“That was Simmons you were talking to?”
“Yeah. He’s got protocols.”
“So go to someone else’s boss,” Slapshot said, “like starting with Wrangler Zero-One.”
Kolt knew he would have to do exactly that. He had been skating around barging into Colonel Webber’s office to lay it all out for him.
“And tell him what? That I’ve got a gut feeling?” Raynor sagged back in his chair.
“How long have you been looking for this guy?”
Raynor eyed his friend, trying to figure out if there was any subtext to the question. “You think I’ve lost perspective?”
“How long?”
Kolt searched his memory. “I think the first time it occurred to me that Miric might be freelancing was in … oh-five, I guess. Back when everyone was talking about Juba.”
“The Baghdad Sniper?” Slapshot nodded. “That was just a myth. Enemy psy-ops.”
“Right. But we still lost a lot of guys to AQ snipers, and not just rumors, but some of the classified intel reports matched Shiner’s MO. It got my attention. I poked around a little, pinged some folks who had been part of the Balkan Task Force, trying to figure out what happened to him. I wasn’t obsessed with him or anything.”
“I knew you’d been keeping an ear out, but I didn’t realize he
’s been on your radar this whole time.”
“Sorry, brother,” Kolt said, “I wasn’t intentionally trying to keep you out of the loop.”
“And until last week, you didn’t even know for sure that he was real.”
Raynor straightened in his chair and fixed Slapshot with a hard stare. “Your point?”
“He’s a phantom, Kolt. Full stealth mode. Even if Simmons gets on board, finding this guy before he takes another shot is going to be next to impossible.”
“That’s my point.”
Slapshot shook his head. “You aren’t going to find him by looking for him. If he is in the States, he’s probably gone to ground somewhere. He can wait. Months, if he has to.”
Raynor shook his head. “I don’t think so. He made it from Greece to Detroit in record time. Must be supported by someone that knows what they are doing. The second hit must be happening soon. Otherwise why the risk of hurrying across so many borders?”
“You really think he’s going after POTUS now? Even though he didn’t take the shot in Athens when he had the chance?”
Raynor nodded. “I’m banking he was fucking with us. Like you said, it’s a psy-op. That was just his opening move. More of a diversion, but a warning just the same.”
“So you and I have to sign up for making sure he doesn’t get a chance to notch another national leader?”
“I need you on board, Slap,” Kolt said. “I’m not sure we have the authority to do much, though. We don’t operate on American soil.”
There was a gleam in Slapshot’s eye as he replied. “How exactly would you define the term ‘operate’?”
ELEVEN
Like everyone else in the Unit, Cindy Bird was a slave to her dedicated Unit-issued phone.
She had been looking forward to a couple weeks of being out on the water under the tropical sun, even if it wasn’t a vacation, but when a call or text came in, the only correct response was to drop everything and check it, which was exactly what Hawk and the rest of her assault team did when their phones buzzed simultaneously not five minutes after they strolled into the hotel bar after their first day of boat training.