Target America: A Sniper Elite Novel

by Scott McEwen

  Couture grinned, the jagged scar on the left side of face standing out. “I’ve been a show-off all my life, Mr. President—and so far it’s served me well.”

  49

  LANGLEY

  Pope was at his desk, waiting in the dark, when the phone rang. “This is Bob Pope.”

  “Hello, Robert.” Lijuan’s voice was soft and sounded very sad.

  “Are you okay?” he asked gently.

  “I haven’t been mistreated, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

  “How long have you known?” she asked. “From the beginning?”

  “Yes.” He gripped the receiver. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “I’m not angry with you. I was trying to run off and leave you holding the bag when I was arrested. Did they tell you that? Or was it you who sent them after me?”

  “You know me so well,” he said. “How did you not see through me?”

  “Your love blinded me. I didn’t think a man like you could ever love a woman if you knew she was planning to betray you. But you’re shrewder than I thought—more cold.”

  “I gave you so many opportunities to tell me.”

  “Yes, and like a fool, I let them all pass, didn’t I?”

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  “I need to ask you a favor,” he said finally.

  “I won’t betray my people, Robert.”

  “No,” he said. “I know better than to ask that. I need your help with a one-hundred-eighty-bit encryption. It’s on a laptop belonging to the Chechen who smuggled the bomb into the country. He’s dead, and there are no other leads. We’re running out of time.”

  “That’s the reason they put me through to you. I knew it must be something more than love.”

  “This is very painful for me, Lijuan.”

  “I wonder if you feel pain the way others do,” she said thoughtfully. “I don’t think so.”

  “Will you help me?”

  She remained quiet for a long moment. “A one-hundred-eighty-bit key is uncrackable inside of a year, Robert. You know that. I created an algorithm that might have managed it in eight months, but it was only theoretical. Please get out of Langley, Robert. There’s no chance of finding that bomb. There never was.”

  “Li, please give me something.”

  “Do you promise to come and visit me in whatever dungeon they send me to?”

  “If they’ll allow it, yes. Of course I will.” But he knew they would never allow it.

  “Then tell me about the Chechen.”

  Over the next few minutes, he told her all he knew about Nikolai Kashkin. Then he waited quietly as she thought things over.

  “You may be in luck,” she said finally.

  He sat up straight in his chair in the dark office, reaching to turn on the desk lamp and grab a pen. “What is it?”

  “Well, he was your age . . . a simple old-soldier type—not a technical wizard. So if he used a commercial AES 180-key generator and installed it on the computer himself, he may have used the default settings to generate the key, which, theoretically, might give you a chance to replicate it.”

  The default settings! Pope thought. My God! How did I not think of that? I’ll tell you how: common sense has eluded you all your life. How are you going to manage without this woman?

  “You’re already off in your own little world now, aren’t you?” she said.

  “You know me,” he replied. “I have to hurry, Li, but thank you very much. I’ll come to see you as soon as they’ll permit it. I promise.”

  “You know that wisdom tooth I told you about?” she asked. “The one that came in crooked?”

  She had never told him about a crooked wisdom tooth. “What about it?”

  “It’s beginning to bother me. I wonder if they’ll let me see a dentist here.”

  “I’m sure they will.” His voice sounded thin and reedy to him.

  “I love you,” she said. “I look forward to seeing you again, Robert—someday.”

  “I love you too,” he said hoarsely, knowing now that she was carrying a cyanide capsule in a false molar.

  “Good luck to you, Robert.” The phone clunked in the cradle at her end, and the connection was severed a moment later.

  He stood immediately up from the desk and made his way back to the lab without even hanging up the phone.

  50

  LANGLEY

  Haroun al-Rashid was strapped to a seat at the back of the plane, still dressed in his pajamas. His sister-in-law sat toward the front, facing the tail, also in her pajamas, with her hands still secured behind her back.

  “Don’t bother pretending you don’t speak English,” Gil said, pulling a black trash bag from the roll and giving the box to Crosswhite. “You and your brother Akram have been living in Canada for the past eight years, and you’ve been under surveillance for much of that time. So tell us where to find the nuclear weapon that Kashkin smuggled into the country, and this won’t have to get ugly.”

  Haroun smirked, recognizing Gil’s face from the dossier he and his brother had received from the AQAP network. “You are going to die soon.”

  Gil frowned. “Kashkin is dead.”

  Haroun didn’t seem surprised to hear the news. “Do you think Kashkin will be the last? Do you think you can fight all of Islam?” He shook his head. “Sooner or later, you will be killed—and your wife will be killed too.”

  Gil glanced at Crosswhite. “I reckon that covers the formalities.”

  Crosswhite put out his hand for the bag. “May I?”

  Gil gave him the garbage bag, and Crosswhite slipped it over al-Rashid’s head, smoothing the plastic over his face to dispel most of the air. Haroun tried to bite his finger through the bag, and Gil delivered him a straight punch to the face, breaking his nose. Crosswhite sealed the bag at al-Rashid’s neck with a strip of duct tape.

  “Catch you on the flip side, dick head.” Crosswhite smacked him across the back of the head.

  Haroun did not panic the way most prisoners did when the air quickly began to run out. He drew shallow breaths, keeping calm as he rationed the tiny bit of air remaining in the bag.

  “Looks like somebody’s had some training,” Crosswhite observed.

  Gil gave Haroun a stiff jab to the solar plexus. Haroun gasped and then began to struggle against the restraints, sucking the plastic in and out of his mouth.

  “That got things rolling,” Crosswhite said happily.

  “Where is the bomb?” Gil asked in a calm voice. “Tell us the truth, Haroun, and this stops.”

  Haroun began to thrash his head around, trying to locate an air pocket within the bag that did not exist. His breathing became increasingly rapid, the plastic sucking in and out of his mouth. A short time later, his head slumped to his chest, and he was out.

  Crosswhite tore the bag open and pulled it down over his head. Blood ran from al-Rashid’s busted nose over his lips and chin.

  Haroun’s sister-in-law moaned aloud at the sight, knowing she was next.

  After sixty minutes without results, Gil and Crosswhite stepped off the plane for a smoke break, leaving a few other SEALs to watch the prisoners.

  “What do you think?” Gil asked.

  Crosswhite shrugged, lighting a cigarette. “I go until you say quit.”

  “That’s not what I asked you.”

  Crosswhite exhaled. “I don’t think he knows a thing about that damn bomb. We just put the fucker through an hour of hell, and he didn’t say a single word. But what the fuck do I know, Gil?”

  “What about Akram’s wife?” Gil said, the idea of torturing a woman beyond repugnant to him.

  “She only speaks Greek.” Pope had told them Akram found her living on the streets of Athens, converting her to Islam be
fore he married her.

  “I’ll see what Pope thinks.”

  • • •

  A HALF HOUR later, they marched Melonie al-Rashid into an office there in the hangar and sat her down at a desk, freeing her hands and giving her a bottle of water. A few minutes later, the phone on the desk rang, and Gil picked up the receiver, handing it to Melonie.

  She looked at him suspiciously, taking the receiver and putting it to her ear. “Hello?” she said in her own language.

  “Is this Melonie al-Rashid?” asked Iosif Hoxha in slightly accented Greek.

  “Yes,” she answered. “Who is this?”

  “My name Iosif Hoxha. I’m Albanian, but I grew up in Kakavija on the border with your country.”

  “I recognize the accent,” she said.

  “Have you been harmed?”

  “They hit me once, but I haven’t been seriously harmed—not yet.”

  “That is good,” he said, keeping his voice friendly. “The Americans do not want to harm you, but you must tell me everything you know about the atomic bomb that your husband and his friends have brought into the United States. That is the only way I can guarantee your safety.”

  “What atomic bomb?”

  “Melonie, you must not play stupid. They will hurt you like they did Haroun.”

  “I do not doubt that,” she said shakily, “but there is no bomb. Akram goes to kill the American assassin—the sniper.”

  “Where is Akram now?”

  “Somewhere in America. Please, will you tell these people I know nothing about a bomb! If I did, I would tell them. I want to return to Athens. Will you help me get home?”

  They went round like this for another three minutes before Hoxha was satisfied that Akram had kept her in the dark about most of his business. “Okay, Melonie. I will call the American commander and explain what you have told me. Good luck to you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Hoxha broke the connection, and she put the phone down in the cradle, finally opening the bottle of water and drinking it all gone.

  “I’m guessing she didn’t tell him a damn thing we can use,” Gil said to Crosswhite.

  “She told him something,” Crosswhite said, seeing it in the young woman’s eyes. “I don’t know how useful it’ll be, but she told him something.”

  51

  MONTANA

  As it began to grow dark, Marie Shannon stood on the house’s back porch, looking up at the ridge where Buck Ferguson’s two youngest sons, Roger and Glen, had pitched camp to keep watch over the ranch. A storm was coming in from the west, and she was growing concerned about the distant rumbling of thunder.

  Buck came out the back door and stood beside her, a Colt .45 on his hip.

  “It’s fixin’ to blow,” she said. “You should probably call the boys down for the night. I don’t want ’em struck by lightning.”

  “They’ll be fine. They’ve been camping in these mountains all their lives. If Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t kill ’em, these mountains sure as hell won’t.”

  She smiled. “Thank you again for coming, Buck.”

  “Gil would do the same for us if it was the other way around. We take care of our own out here, always have. You’re too young to remember, but when I was over in Vietnam, your daddy used to look in on Liddy and the boys for me. He was a good man, your daddy.”

  “And Liddy was a good woman. I remember she used to bring me warm chocolate chip cookies.”

  “Yeah, she was a dandy,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s a shame they’re both long gone. But then again, ain’t nothin’ meant to last, is it?”

  “No, I reckon not,” she said sadly.

  They sat on the porch talking until the wind began to blow and the rain began to drive.

  “I’d really feel better if you called ’em down, Buck.”

  He smiled at her in the porch light. “Honey, they’re grown men. You don’t think they know enough to come down on their own if they start gettin’ wet?”

  “At least call ’em for me?”

  Buck took the cell phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. “As usual,” he said. “No signal. That tower they put on my land ain’t worth a holey shirt.”

  “Maybe it’s the storm.”

  “That ain’t helping, but service around here is always spotty, even in good weather.”

  • • •

  UP ON THE ridge, Roger and Glen were nice and dry in their tent, both of them lying on the same sleeping bags they’d used during the war. Each of them had an AR-15 carbine, and they’d brought Kashkin’s scoped Mauser along as well. They lay in the dark listening to the thunder, the wind buffeting the tent. There was sporadic lightning, but it didn’t seem dangerously close.

  Roger, the youngest at twenty-two, had killed three Taliban during his first tour in Iraq, but Glen, twenty-five, was not yet blooded, at least not that he knew of. He’d fired a few thousand rounds in combat but never knew if he’d hit anyone. He kind of hoped not.

  “Think it’ll blow all night?” Roger wondered.

  “Weather Channel said it will.”

  “Weather Channel don’t know shit about mountain weather.”

  Glen lit a cigarette with a First Marines Zippo lighter and tossed the pack at his brother. “Think anybody could see the glow of the cherry through the tent wall?”

  “Who the hell would be out in this?”

  Glen rolled onto his elbow, his face faintly visible in the glow. “We’re out in it.”

  Roger lay on his back, tapping an ash from his cigarette onto the front of his Carhartt jacket and rubbing it in. “If it’s gonna blow all night, we might as well make our way back down to the house. We can’t see shit from in here anyhow.”

  “Let’s give it an hour,” Glen said. “It might ease off.”

  “The old man’s right,” Roger said. “Bastards won’t make another try at Gil anytime soon. If they were super committed, they’d have sent more than one dude the first time. I think they probably shot their wad for now. Their priority is the nuke.”

  “Sons a bitches,” Glen muttered. “Where you think it’s at? I bet it’s in New York. Those fuckers love shittin’ on New York.”

  “That’s why I think it’s DC. They won’t bother LA on any account. Even Chechens aren’t stupid enough to blow up Hollywood. Everybody likes our movies too much.”

  “Buncha hypocrites.” Glen exhaled smoke through his nostrils.

  They bullshitted awhile longer and smoked another couple cigarettes before deciding it was likely to rain all night. “If it quits, we can always come back up.”

  They crawled out of the tent, slinging their weapons barrel-down over their shoulders as they walked the ridge line in the downpour.

  It was Roger who saw the red laser dot appear on the back of his brother’s head in the driving rain. At first he thought his eyes were playing him tricks, but his instincts were fast to set him in motion.

  “Get down!” He shoved Glen forward, spinning to unshoulder his carbine.

  He did not hear the 5.56 mm NATO round that struck him in the forehead, dropping him in his tracks. Just as Glen did not hear the rounds that struck him in the back. He hit the ground without ever grabbing for his weapon.

  Duke rose soaking wet from a copse of junipers fifty feet away, strolling forward to stand over the bodies that lay crumpled on the muddy horse trail, slinging his suppressed M4 and raising the infrared binocular up onto his forehead.

  Akram stood from his place among the rocks and came forward.

  “See, it’s like I told you,” Duke said over the sound of the storm. “Even these idiots knew ya gotta hold the high ground . . . but then, you desert folk probably don’t see much high ground where you’re from. Am I right?” He laughed and turned around, ordering two other men to drag the bodies from the trail into the junipers
. “Likely gonna be a long, wet night. You all better get used to the idea right now and stop standin’ around with your hands in your pockets.” Then he walked off, mumbling beneath his breath, “Ya haji pricks.”

  52

  MONTANA

  The power to the house went out, and Buck stood up from the couch where he’d been reading the latest internet news about the intensifying search for the nuke. Lightning flashed, and Janet saw him clearly for a brief instant, his hand on his pistol.

  “Probably just the storm,” she said. “It happens out here a lot.”

  “My place too, but this ain’t a good night to be in the dark.”

  Marie came hurrying down the stairs with Oso growling, gripping Gil’s Springfield Armory .45. “Something’s wrong,” she whispered. “Oso’s upset.”

  Oso went straight to the back door and began to scratch at the locked dog door.

  “Wake Hal up!” Buck said, drawing the pistol. “Janet, you and Marie get upstairs. Take Oso with you.”

  Hal was already coming down, a carbine in each hand. He crossed the room and gave one to his father. “We got movement outside by the stable, and it’s not the boys.”

  AFTER CUTTING THE power and phone lines, Akram gathered his team of twenty men in the stable and stripped off his soaking jacket. The odor of horse manure was offensive to him, and it made him feel unclean. He ordered Abad and the rest of the men to cover the entrances. The Muslims were equipped with civilian-grade, first-generation night vision goggles, but Duke had brought along his third-generation military-grade binocular, which allowed him to see in infrared in addition to utilizing ambient light.

  “If anyone comes out of the house,” Akram said, “shoot them immediately.”

  Duke sat down on a bale of hay. “So what’s our next move gonna be?”

  “I’m not sure,” Akram said glumly. “I hadn’t planned on it raining.” Where he came from, rain had never been a problem. “I’ll take the TAC-50 up into the loft. You set up down here, and we’ll wait for Shannon to show himself.”