In the Crosshairs: A Sniper Novel

by Sgt. Jack Coughlin

  “A congressional inquiry? On what?” Why was a plane flying so low? A busy little airport? He kept his eyes on Gibson. Flexed his calf muscles.

  Gibson was showing off now, proud of his machinations. “The gentlewoman from Nebraska received information that the CIA is running drugs again, along with some photographic proof. The thing that will interest you even more is that she also believes Excalibur Enterprises is involved in the scheme.” Gibson poked a finger at Swanson. “You’ve been identified as a rogue agent. Your cover is blown and your reputation will be ruined no matter what Congress decides.”

  Swanson couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Bullshit, Gibson. There’s nothing like that going on. Excalibur will eat her for lunch if she takes on Sir Geoffrey Cornwell.”

  “Oh, that will eventually become clear, but in the meanwhile the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will enjoy a field day with televised hearings, and my pet congresswoman will get lots of free TV time. Your friends at the agency will sacrifice you to save their own butts, partner.”

  Swanson shrugged and put his manacled wrists in his lap. “You’re not my partner, and you’re dumber than a box of rocks to try something this looney. Cut to the chase, Gibson. What happens next? How is this fairy tale of yours supposed to end, you delusional moron?”

  KASHMIR, PAKISTAN

  “MY GOODESS,” SAID INGMAR Thompson with a slight tsk-tsk of surprise as he read the screen of his phone.

  Bruce Brandt frowned. “I don’t like to hear you say that.” He was eyeing a cool silver belt buckle the size of a saucer as they passed a shop in the bazaar.

  “We have to go to a car that’s waiting for us a block from the office. Right now.”

  Brandt kept his frown. “I hate to bring this up, but won’t that area be crawling with cops because we killed that ISIS dude?”

  “Apparently, it isn’t, and please keep your voice down.”

  “But I’m bargaining for that buckle, man. And the fleshpots are one street over. We have many things to do right where we are.”

  Thompson reached out and wrapped a big mitt around his friend’s left biceps and gave a pull. Trying to stop Bruce from talking occasionally required direct and decisive action.

  “Five dollars U.S.! Not a penny more. Last offer,” he called to the shopkeeper holding the intricately carved silver belt buckle and watching as the big American almost pulled the customer almost off his feet.

  “Ten! It is worth twenty-five,” he responded, following them.

  “Seven,” Bruce shot back, trying to break his friend’s grip. Ingmar propelled him forward.

  “Seven is good,” the shopkeeper said. “But by the beard of the Prophet it is worth fifty dollars.”

  “Let me go, Ingmar. Let me pay and we’re out of here.”

  “Hummph,” Thompson grunted with dissatisfaction as he loosened his hold on his fellow sniper.

  The dark sedan with glazed windows was waiting, the engine running. A Pakistani policeman shooed other traffic around it. Thompson ducked into one rear door and Brandt slid in the other, saying, “Look what I just bought!”

  “How much did you pay?” asked Khan Dajani, the driver, looking back in the mirror. He was an American of Pakistani heritage and had the local accent and looks.

  “Stole it for seven bucks.”

  “You paid too much,” Dajani said, laughing. “I could have gotten it for three.”

  “Well, you weren’t there, were you, Kahn?” Brandt snapped. He held up the big chunk of polished silver and looked at the design. Worth seven, easy. Probably more.

  “Why are we here?” Thompson asked the man in the front passenger seat, a black man with a high hairline.

  “Kyle Swanson is in trouble and you’re going in to get him.” Roger Lincoln sketched the situation verbally as Kahn pulled into the traffic and a police motorcycle moved in front as an escort.

  Brandt and Thompson were silent during the quick update.

  “Things are moving fast on this one, guys,” Kahn said. “The buzz is that another Benghazi is unacceptable.”

  “So Ingmar and I are going in to take on the Taliban, the ISIS goons, any Afghan Army soldiers and pissed-off civilians who may be standing around and rescue Swanson and Gibson and that crazy Nicky Marks. All by our lonesome we’re going to do this? We just got through killing a guy a few blocks over.”

  Khan looked in the mirror again. “You was volunteered again, mate. If you get killed, can I have that buckle?”

  23

  GIRDIWAL, AFGHANISTAN

  “YOU LOST ME SOMEWHERE along the line,” Swanson said, easing his lower legs against the chair, feeling for advantages while keeping his eyes locked on Gibson. “Your whole story seems pointless. You kill me, the agency kills you, and other operators take our place. There is never a number one.”

  “There is! I’ve always been the best. Always better than you.”

  Swanson gave a chuckle. “It doesn’t matter, Luke. Can’t you understand that? Nobody but you cares, and you’re laying it all on the line out here in a mud hut in the middle of Afghanistan, where nobody will ever hear about it.”

  “You’ll know what happened out here. I’ll know what happened. That alone would be enough.”

  Swanson raised his handcuffs level with his eyes. “And this is how you prove it? You with a gun and me taped to a chair and without a weapon. Where’s the glory in that? Anyway, get on with it.”

  “The people will know, Kyle. The ones around here and up and down my network. Those are the ones who matter. They know me as the Prince, and that I run a tight kingdom. When they hear that I killed the top CIA shooter in one-on-one combat, my legend will be at its zenith.” Gibson’s eyes had taken on the unusual sparkle of a serial killer.

  “A prince.” Swanson cracked a smile. “Honor without honor. What a crock.”

  Gibson checked his watch, getting antsy, ready to go.

  Swanson guessed that he only needed a few minutes alone, but Gibson wouldn’t stop his spiel of self-glorification. “There’s one big problem with your idea, Luke. It’s all built on the premise that you kill me. Unless you pull the trigger right now, it won’t happen. I will kill you, and, deep down, you’re afraid because you know it’s true. So let’s do it … partner.”

  Gibson snapped on the bait. “Yes, I’m going to leave now, and Hamid will remain as a guard until three o’clock. At that point, he will put the key to the cuffs on the table and also leave. If I come back at dawn and you’re still here, I will shoot you on sight.”

  “And if I get out, you hunt me down.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Luke, you’re more trouble than you’re worth. Go already. I’ll see you again in a few hours.”

  Gibson was upset that Swanson didn’t seem angry or worried. He turned, removed the key to the handcuffs from his pocket, and motioned for the boy to go outside with him. “I’ll give him a few instructions in private. Just understand that he may be young but he’s just fine with a gun. One order is to shoot you if you try to cause trouble.”

  “You know I’ll have to kill him,” Swanson said as Gibson and the boy exited into the night.

  “It’s your only hope,” Gibson said, throwing a protective arm around Hamid’s shoulder as he closed the door. “He is one of my young lions, however, and is tougher than he looks. He might even be able to take you out.”

  * * *

  TICK. TICK. TICK. SWANSON counted fifteen seconds before moving. He didn’t care why Gibson had taken the boy outside, only that they’d left him alone. The handcuffs rattled when he made his move, inching the chair away from the table using the toes of his boots and rocking his body.

  He lost his knife when he was knocked cold by Gibson, the pistol had been stolen, and the Excalibur was propped against the wall next to the AK-47. It might as well have been on the moon. This didn’t mean that Swanson was without assets, though.

  He was tightly taped to the chair, but by stretching his arms down and pushi
ng his legs up he was able to snag the left leg of his trousers and pull it out of the boot; the tape held the cloth and not the flesh beneath, which made for a minuscule bit of freedom. He wiggled his feet as high as they could go. Inside of thirty seconds, he had his hands between his calves, searching blindly with his thumbnails for a different piece of tape. No one had ever said he could take only one knife with him on a mission. Screw fairness.

  The thumbnail caught the top edge of a strip of easy-pull medical adhesive that stretched vertically up the back of his left leg. A casual pat-down normally touched only the outside of the feet, searching for an ankle holster. An amateur might even rub the crotch area, but the back of the calf was seldom touched.

  It was there that Swanson had secured a folded straight-edge razor. Almost a minute had passed by the time he worked it free, and there were still no sounds from outside. He hoped that whatever the boy was doing to serve his prince would last for a while. No bets on that.

  Swanson held the razor at lap level before opening it, and it glittered. Holding it with his forefinger and thumb, braced in his palm, he went to work. The old-fashioned blade cut though the individual sticky strands of tape with a minimum of sawing and he was able to part the bands of tape across the top of his right leg, then his left, until they barely hung together.

  That allowed him just enough freedom to extend the razor to his ankles and slice those bands, too. To the naked eye, he would appear to be as immobile as before. Two minutes had passed. He folded the straight blade and pushed it far up the sleeve of his left forearm. Then he pulled the chair back near the table and sat and waited, hands in plain sight on the wood, cuffs in place, trying to look resigned to his fate and not sweat the details of the coming attack. There were too many unknowns. Just let it flow.

  * * *

  HAMID SEEMED A BIT unsteady when he reentered the house and shut the door. The truck engine that was fading away was evidence that the boy was now alone with the prisoner, and, despite apparently having all the advantages, he was nervous. The Prince had told him not to worry. Hamid took the chair facing Swanson at the table and placed the AK-47 between them, with the barrel pointed at Swanson and a finger near the trigger, then plopped the small key for the cuffs beside it. When the prisoner hardly looked up, more confidence flowed into the young captor, who ranted a few Arabic curses. Swanson just sat there, unmoving.

  Long minutes passed. Swanson knew that his silence and his manner would foster the illusion that the boy was in control, and the young fighter wouldn’t be able to maintain that baleful glare and menacing attitude for long. Swanson yawned, planting in the other man’s mind the suggestion that he, too, was sleepy so late in the night.

  Hamid adjusted his position in the chair, leaning back to a more comfortable position, hands pulling farther away from the Kalashnikov. There was no danger evident in the room. He was in control.

  Swanson slowly rotated his hands and put them on his thighs, so that the palms faced upward, then rested again. No reaction. With a mighty surge, he grabbed the table by the edge and threw it at Hamid as hard as possible, following with a leap that was powered by his legs as the few remaining threads of tape parted. The gun spun away, and the astonished boy cried out as the table crashed into him, followed by Swanson’s full weight. The connecting links of the steel handcuffs were jammed across Hamid’s throat, and Swanson pushed down viciously to crush the windpipe and simultaneously head-butt Hamid under the bridge of the nose. Physics and biomechanics did the rest. The nose shattered on impact, and the resulting hemorrhage sent a torrent of blood spewing outward, but because the victim was on the floor, more blood also poured back down the throat and into the lungs, further stressing the fractured larynx. The boy flailed wildly at the table, the strangling handcuffs, and Swanson. Death closed in fast and with a lot of pain. It sounded as if he was calling for his mother.

  Swanson kept the pressure on until he was sure that Hamid was gone, then crabbed away from the debris. Luke knew something like this was going to happen. He threw the boy to me as a sacrifice to buy time because he really wants the one-on-one stalk and kill. This was just to tire his prey. Swanson banished the thought as fast as it had appeared, because there was no use dwelling on the past, even if was only a minute ago.

  The razor had remained in his sleeve during the attack, so he slid it out, spread it open and cut through the tape that still bound him to the chair with easy strokes. The chair fell away with a clatter, allowing him to peel off the sticky strips one by one.

  When it was all off, he stretched his muscles luxuriously. Truly free, and still alive.

  * * *

  HE DUG THE AK-47 from the debris and gave it quick check. The banana clip was fully loaded. Then he recovered the Excalibur, which had been severely damaged. Gibson had taken the time to waste the weapon so that it couldn’t be used against him from a distance.

  Sand spilled from the barrel, the trigger housing had been battered with a hard object, and the magazine was gone. The front scope lens was cracked. No .50-cal ammo anywhere to be seen. Swanson would take it along all the same to keep the technology secret, and also because the Big E wasn’t yet out of the game.

  After a drink of water and answering the call of nature from having sat tied up for so long, Swanson moved to his next task, which had come to him while he was bound to the chair. Somewhere high above, a drone was circling with a load of high explosives, but he had no direct control over it. The reverse was true, because electronic beacons had been sewn into the clothing of both members of the sniper team before they had departed, which meant that a missile might be coming down the chimney if Gibson decided to rain down some hellfire.

  Swanson cut the small tracking device from beneath his collar and tossed the gizmo into a bucket of water to drown it. Gibson had probably already gotten rid of his, too, leaving the drone as blind as a really big bat. Step two was to get the heavy drag bag that protected Excalibur on an active mission. The weapon itself was what caught the eye of someone curious, not its cloth container. A strong zipper ran the length of the case, with an inch-round fob for opening and closing the metal teeth. Swanson pried the metal fob open and extracted another round object that rested inside like a Russian nesting doll. Carrying it over to the damaged rifle, he plugged the button into a tiny slot beneath the battery pack normally used to power the scope. It activated with a soft beep and began sending signals to the blind drone. Swanson was back on the grid.

  With the AK in hand, he toured the little house, memorizing directions and moving about slowly, aware that Gibson’s hint that he would return at dawn was worthless; he might be standing outside right now. The man-to-man stuff was a crock, too, and Swanson didn’t want a trip-wire booby trap to ruin his day.

  But he needed to gather supplies, and he had to have some food. In a quick sweep, he gathered up carbohydrates, sugar, liquid, a spoon, some cord, plastic wrapping, and anything else that might prove useful, including the needle and thread he found in the bedroom. The half-used roll of duct tape spoke for itself. Some first-aid stuff. A cloth bag to carry it all. On the kitchen counter was a half-eaten plate of stew. On the stove was a covered pot of the same. Somebody had had a meal, so odds were it was probably safe to eat, and he wolfed it down cold.

  The one thing that was guaranteed to be in a safe house was weaponry, stored somewhere out of sight. Swanson looked around. It had to be under the rugs, but if Gibson was going to plant an improvised explosive device anywhere, it would be where Swanson was sure to look for some armament. Forget it. With the AK at the ready in his right hand, the bag of goodies in his left, and Excalibur across his back, he went out through a window.

  24

  KAISERSLAUTEN, GERMANY

  “THIS MAKES NO SENSE.” Ryan Winters grabbed a yellow no. 2 pencil, scratched his scalp with the eraser, then stuck the pencil behind his ear. The streams of data on the screen didn’t lie, but neither did it add up. Things just didn’t work that way. He sighed and headed in
to see Marguerite del Coda again.

  “Boss?” It was more of a sorrowful plea than a question.

  Del Coda had the look of a pit viper after giving up any hope of a quiet evening. “What?”

  “It’s that thing in the Wakham Corridor again.”

  “Is the new drone in place?”

  “Getting there.”

  “And the backup team? Brandt and Thompson?”

  “Also still getting there. Not about any of that.”

  She fingered the small, spiky necklace of orange coral at her throat. Clapped her hands once and stared over the rim of her glasses. “I have no time for riddles, Ryan. What is it?”

  Winters said, “Watch this.” He activated a large screen on the wall. “Before Gibson and Swanson left, we attached tracking beacons on their clothing, remember?”

  “Of course.”

  “Here’s the imagery after they dropped into Girdiwal.” Two bright green dots appeared on the magnified screen in the middle of a grid map. “Both beacons going strong and being read by both the gun drone and the cargo plane that delivered them. Signals are loud and clear.”

  “I see them.” She was impatient, but Ryan Winters was a supremely logical person and would spell it all out at his own pace.

  Winters made a fluttering motion with his fingers and the screen clock spun faster. “Time passing. Time passing.” The clock slowed, as did the finger dance, and he said, “Watch.”

  One of the tracking signals disappeared. “That was Luke Gibson. No communication was made to explain why.”

  “Whoa!” Marguerite said. “We got a distress call from him that Swanson was chasing him. Did Swanson bring him down, you think? Kyle killed Luke?”

  “Swanson’s beam is still strong in that frame. But according to the beacon he hadn’t moved. Neither had Gibson, at the time his signal was lost. They were still together at the target safe house.”