Ghost Sniper

by Scott McEwen

  77

  TOLUCA, MEXICO

  20:30 HOURS

  Night was falling as Hancock briefed his security team on the west side of town. His wounds from the night before were stitched and dressed, but the deep gash on his inner thigh was still suppurating, and the sutures threatened to tear if he lowered into a crouch.

  “Remember,” he said, “we don’t have to kill them all. We just have to break their spirit. They’ll try to isolate me like they did last night, so it won’t be possible for me to take more than one shot from any position. Your job is to keep them off me long enough for me to displace. Once we’ve got them confused and disorganized, that’s when the rest of our people will attack from the east.”

  “What do we do about Serrano being dead?” someone asked.

  “Fuck Serrano!” Hancock stepped into the fellow’s face. “Ruvalcaba has plans to kill Castañeda and take over business in the whole damn country. That’s who we work for! Understood?”

  The man nodded and took a step back, glancing at his compatriots, who looked at him askance.

  For Hancock, the issue had become even more personal since the night before. Not only could Vaught still identify him, but in the process of almost killing him, he’d damn near forced the sniper to castrate himself on a broken beer bottle. That was too close for comfort, and Hancock planned to even the score.

  There was no way to penetrate the center of town—yet. Police presence was too heavy, so he selected a pharmacy on a corner four blocks from el centro and set up on the roof. Putting his eye to the scope, he watched from three hundred yards as police trucks crisscrossed the intersection at irregular intervals.

  “No one’s on foot,” he mumbled. The police were either hiding inside the buildings or maintaining a cruising speed high enough to make themselves hard to hit at a distance. With the city on lockdown, there was no civilian traffic, so it was safe for them to ignore the traffic lights.

  The sound of a distant gun battle erupted to the south. The shots trailed off after a few seconds, and Hancock wondered dully who’d gotten the better part of the exchange.

  Light from a streetlamp glinted off a glass door as a police officer stepped from a coffee shop. Hancock squeezed the trigger on instinct. The door shattered a third of a second later, and the officer was blown in half at the waist.

  “Time to move!” he hissed to the two men lying prone just behind him, getting up as quickly as he could without tearing his stitches.

  SERGEANT CUEVAS SPRANG from a table inside the coffee shop and ran to the door where the lieutenant lay blasted open on the sidewalk. The glass was blown toward the lieutenant, which meant the shot had come from the west.

  Crosswhite and Vaught were already up and priming their weapons, moving past him out the door.

  “He’s displacing!” Crosswhite shouted. “Let’s move!”

  Vaught, Sergeant Cuevas, and two other officers loaded into an armored truck. Crosswhite took three more in another, and both trucks sped off down the street in the direction of the shot.

  Chief Diego remained in the coffee shop, now their command post, alerting all patrol units by radio that the sniper’s attack had begun.

  Sergeant Cuevas floored the accelerator. “He must have fired from the roof of the pharmacy.”

  Vaught sat beside him on the passenger side, while the two officers in back aimed their rifles over the top of the cab.

  Four narcos darted in front of the pharmacy, blazing away with AK-47s, but the bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the windshield. The men fumbled to reload, and the cops in the back opened up with their FX-05s, killing one narco and wounding another in the leg.

  Cuevas braked hard and cut the wheel left, tromping the accelerator to pursue the fleeing men around the corner, running over the wounded narco and killing him.

  Vaught let out with a guttural “Hooah!”

  Crosswhite, in the truck right behind them, cut the wheel right to circle around the pharmacy in the opposite direction. A car sped out of the alley just in front of him, and he rammed it aside with the heavily armored truck. The officers in back fired directly down into the car, killing everyone inside. A second car sped out of the alley and slipped around behind them. Crosswhite caught a glimpse of the gringo sniper’s face in the backseat and shifted into reverse, jamming the pedal to the floor and throwing his arm over the back of the seat to see where he was going.

  The car sped away around a corner, and he cut the wheel to spin the truck back around. He grabbed the radio and barked out a description of the car—a midnight-blue Dodge Charger—and that it was headed in Vaught’s direction.

  Vaught answered that they’d already spotted the car and were in pursuit.

  Crosswhite shifted into drive, and a flaming Molotov cocktail impacted the windshield, engulfing the front of the truck and obscuring his vision. He turned on the wipers and pressed the washer fluid button, but the reservoir was empty. The wiper blades quickly melted from the heat of the flaming gasoline and smeared the glass with melting rubber.

  “Fuck!” He dismounted and grabbed a fire extinguisher from the behind the seat.

  Before he had a chance to use it, they were engaged by automatic fire to the right. One of the officers in back was hit and dove out on Crosswhite’s side of the truck, holding his shattered forearm. The other two men returned fire and drove the gunners back around the corner, but yet another narco jumped out and fired an RPG.

  Crosswhite and the wounded officer threw themselves flat as the rocket impacted the cab of the truck and exploded, killing both cops in back.

  Crosswhite fired through the flames, knowing from experience that the enemy would use the fire as cover to press its attack. Three narcos went down, and he grabbed the wounded officer by the harness, helping him up. They fell back behind a line of three parked cars to fight a holding action.

  “Drove right into an ambush!” he said, changing magazines.

  The wounded officer fired his pistol over the hood of a car. “It’s a thing that happens.”

  SERGEANT CUEVAS DROVE as fast as he could but couldn’t catch the gringo sniper’s car. More units were converging on the area, but the west side of town had been left out of the patrol box because there were too many crooked streets and tight turns.

  “We should have anticipated.” Cuevas shook his head in aggravation. “He’s leading us into a trap!”

  “I think you’re right,” Vaught said. “Break off! Let ’im go.”

  “Chinga su madre!” Cuevas hit the brakes and watched the Charger disappear around a corner.

  “It’s okay.” Vaught glanced up at the rooftops to check for enemy rocketeers. “He’s saying the same thing right now.”

  78

  TOLUCA, MEXICO

  20:45 HOURS

  Hancock sat watching out the back window of the car. “Shit. They’re not following!”

  The driver pulled to a stop in front of an alley where ten narcos lay in ambush, three of them holding RPGs. “Should I go back?”

  “No. Fuck it, they’re onto us,” Hancock answered. “They’ll pull back to the center of town now and circle the wagons. We’re gonna have to dig them out of the square.”

  The guy in the passenger seat, busy talking on the phone, looked back at Hancock. “Our people destroyed the other truck four blocks over. They have two cops pinned down, and it sounds like more are on the way. What do you want our people to do?”

  “Let’s go!” Hancock banged his fist urgently on the back of the seat. “If we can draw these assholes into a stand-up fight, we can wipe them out!”

  The driver shouted for the men in the alley to load into their cars and follow.

  Hancock ejected the magazine from the Barrett, topping it off with a single .50 caliber cartridge and slapping it back in. “Call our people on the east side and tell ’em to begin their attack.”
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  CROSSWHITE AND THE wounded cop huddled behind the wheel hub of a shot-up SUV, using the engine compartment as cover. The enemy was not moving to take them out, but nor would it allow them to retreat.

  “Why haven’t they fired another rocket?” wondered the cop. “We should be dead by now.”

  “Because they’re using us as bait.” Crosswhite searched desperately up and down the street for an avenue of escape, but there just wasn’t any cover. “They want to draw us into battle and smash us.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “If they have the numbers, they can. We don’t even have a radio to warn our men away.”

  As if to emphasize the point, a police truck rounded the corner and came roaring down the street, siren wailing. A rocket streaked out of the alley and blew off the tail end, throwing wounded cops into the street and sending the truck careening out of control into a building.

  Crosswhite fired on the alley and ran out to recover the wounded policemen. Dragging them to cover behind the wrecked and burning truck, he shouted for the driver to warn the other units away—but the man didn’t hear him because he was already on the radio calling for more help.

  Vaught and Sergeant Cuevas arrived from the opposite direction with two more trucks right behind them.

  “We gotta get the fuck outta here!” Crosswhite said. “A pitched battle is exactly what we don’t want!”

  “Roger that!” Vaught slung his weapon and reached to help a wounded man to his feet.

  Another RPG, fired from a rooftop this time, hit the last police truck in line and set it ablaze, effectively blocking their southern avenue of escape.

  Crosswhite took a shot at the rocketeer. “Who’s selling these cocksuckers all the goddamn rockets? It’s like fuckin’ Fallujah out here!”

  Sergeant Cuevas fired a 40 mm grenade at a caged storefront and blew open the door. “Put the wounded inside the shoe store! This is our command post.”

  “It’s more like the Alamo,” Crosswhite growled, heaving a wounded man over his shoulder. “But it’ll have to do.”

  They moved the wounded men inside, and Crosswhite helped the cop with the shattered forearm lash the wounded appendage to his harness, giving him his spare pistol ammo. “Remember your training,” he told him. “Hold the pistol in the crook of your leg to reload, and jack it against the heel of your boot to release the slide. Got it?”

  The cop nodded.

  “Good man!” Crosswhite bashed him on the shoulder and went to the door.

  The police had positioned the remaining two trucks in front of the building to provide more cover, mounting a light machine gun to the roll bar.

  “We’ve got more men on the way,” Cuevas said. “We’ll be okay.”

  “Until Hancock sets up at the north end of the street,” Crosswhite said. “These are your men, Sergeant, but I’d get that gunner down out of the truck. He’s a prime target.”

  Cuevas stepped over and ordered the gunner to set up beneath the truck with the bipod, covering the north end of the street. Then he reached into the cab for the radio to brief Chief Diego on their situation.

  Having done what little he could for the wounded, Vaught came over, wiping his bloody hands on his trousers. “Whattaya think?”

  Crosswhite swiped at his bleeding forehead, where a piece of spall from a ricochet had cut him open. “Hate to say it, but Diego should pull the rest of his people back and let us die on the vine; stick to his plan and hold the center of town. But he won’t do that. He’ll send every man he’s got to save our asses.”

  “And so would you,” Vaught said.

  “I dunno . . . maybe.” Crosswhite was pissed at himself for letting things get so badly muddled so early in the battle. “Those RPGs change the entire ball game. I didn’t expect they’d have so many. And once Hancock shows up with that fuckin’ fifty of his, we’ll be like ducks at a carnival.” He lit a cigarette, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs. “Goddamn him!”

  “We’ll get it sorted out,” Vaught said confidently.

  Crosswhite counted two walking wounded and three critical. “We don’t even have stretchers. They got rockets, and we don’t even have fucking stretchers to evacuate these men.”

  “Hey, let’s focus on what we do have.”

  “Which is what?” Crosswhite asked him. “What’ve we got, dude? We got ten men with rifles and two walking wounded! We’re barricaded in a goddamn shoe store, and every truck that rolls in here to relieve us is gonna get blown up. I’m telling you, I’ve seen enough combat to know when you’re fucked. And, buddy, we’re fucked.”

  “Unless we make a break for it right now and leave the wounded behind.”

  Crosswhite took a drag. “Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  Vaught shook his head, knowing that wasn’t an option.

  “Exactly. So we’re back to being fucked.”

  Sergeant Cuevas came into the shop. “Bad news. I’ve explained the situation about the rockets to Diego, and he says Ruvalcaba’s men have begun attacking from the east. He doesn’t like it, but he’s agreed to pull the rest our forces back to the center of town. There’s no more help coming.”

  Crosswhite exchanged grim glances with Vaught.

  “Maybe we can hold out until daylight,” Vaught ventured. “The government can’t ignore this battle indefinitely—not with Serrano being dead.”

  Crosswhite exhaled smoke. “Don’t kid yourself.” He dropped the cigarette and stepped on it. “I didn’t kill that asshole in time to make any difference here. Let’s hope Mariana has better luck killing Ruvalcaba. At least that way things won’t be a total loss.”

  Mariana had called him earlier in the day, telling him that Fields was dead and that she had a plan to remove Hector Ruvalcaba—a plan she didn’t dare share with him over the phone.

  79

  SAN CRISTOBAL, CHIAPAS STATE, MEXICO

  22:00 HOURS

  Gil knocked on the door to Mariana’s expensive though rustic hotel room in the town of San Cristobal de las Casas, the same city where the Zapatista Revolt had taken place more than twenty years earlier. She answered the door and let him in. A fire burned in the fireplace to ward off the damp chill in the air.

  “Build the fire yourself?” he asked, reminded of his hearth back home in Montana—a hearth he would never see again.

  “The bellboy built it for me. I don’t know anything about building fires.”

  He tossed his rucksack onto the bed. “That’s for you—in case things go bad.”

  She opened the ruck and saw that it was stuffed with banded American cash. “Gil, this is an awful lot of money.”

  “And you’ll need it if Crosswhite and I get killed. There’s a little black book in the side pouch there with the names and numbers of people who can help you disappear. They already think I’m dead, but if you tell them you got their names from me, they’ll help you. They’re reliable men: retired Navy SEALS living outside the US—soldier of fortune types, but rock-solid people.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Don’t mention it. It’s something Crosswhite should have done for you already, but he doesn’t think ahead. It’s just not how he is.”

  “He’s definitely an in-the-moment kind of guy,” she agreed. “What do you think of Poncho?” They hadn’t yet had a chance to talk about the ex-GAFE operator that Castañeda had sent along to assist Gil.

  He nodded. “My gut tells me he’s reliable. We’ve talked, and there’s nothing sloppy about him. I get the feeling he’s not really a personal fan of Castañeda, but it’s too soon to tell.”

  “And if you guys are successful? Will I see you again?”

  “Probably not, but I’ll give you a call to let you know when Ruvalcaba’s dead. After that, it’s up to you to handle Pope.”

  “I’m afraid of him.”

&nb
sp; “You’re smart to be afraid, but don’t ever let him see it. When this is over, wait a week—maybe ten days—then call him and tell him to meet you down here in Mexico. Do not go to him. Buy him dinner in a ritzy restaurant and break the situation down for him in black and white. Don’t ask him for a goddamn thing. Tell him how things are: that you’re the new chief of station. He’s smart, so he’ll already be leaning in that direction. It’ll be your job to erase any doubts he might have.”

  She was less convinced. “How do you know that?”

  Gil shrugged. “I know him. I know how his mind works . . . what he values. You’ll be the one to give him a stable border, and that will make you valuable.”

  “But I haven’t done anything.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “You took a helluva risk acting on your own initiative to put Castañeda in charge. You did that. Pope respects boldness of action. Now, the key is to succeed and take credit for the operation. He’ll know Crosswhite helped, but that won’t matter. He’ll also know you had help from other assets here in Mexico, and that’s what being chief of station is: managing assets. Hell, that’s all Pope is, an asset manager, and he’s damn good at it.”

  She smiled. “Except he let his most valuable asset get away.”

  Gil wondered if that was true. “Well, it’s not a mistake he’ll make again, so bear that in mind.”

  “He won’t be pissed about Fields?”

  “What’s to be pissed about? You’ve demonstrated Fields was the wrong man for the job. Pope has no ego. He’s the most practical man alive—too practical, in fact. That’s his weakness: he forgets how impractical everyone else is.”

  “Will I have a way of getting in touch with you?”

  “You can get a message to Midori if there’s an emergency, but don’t worry. You won’t need me. You’ll have Crosswhite—unless he finally figures out how to get himself killed. And be sure to keep Vaught on your ledger too. Don’t let DSS have him back. He’s a renegade, and that’s a good card to have in your deck. His career in DSS is probably shot anyhow.”