Nick knew the type. Ward didn’t care about helping people or reducing crime. He was in it for the paycheck, or bragging rights, or both. The eight-power scope brought into grand detail the fat face and soft body. Jack was looking up and down the street for his contact, and he looked agitated and angry.
Nick figured Jack wasn’t happy to be away from his reports and stacks of paperwork he probably enjoyed wading through. But it was time for Jack to get a cold reality check.
Nick pushed the analysis of Jack Ward out of his mind and focused on killing the son of a bitch. The man was nothing but a total coward who had shot Anne because he’d been too scared.
The fears of meeting the boss were gone now. In fact, at that moment, Nick didn’t care whether he lived or died. All he wanted to do was to exact revenge on the disgrace before him. If Jack Ward’s superiors wouldn’t punish him, then Nick would. He clicked off his safety.
Nick had calculated the range, the bullet drop, and the windage. And as he pulled the trigger slowly back, he thought about how this man had not only shot Anne, he had tried to plant a weapon in her hands after the fact.
The rifle exploded like a cannon, its sound amplified to a deafening boom in the small, dark, enclosed van. As the gun knocked Nick back, his right hand was already working the bolt to reload.
Jack never knew what hit him. Like all long shots, the bullet ripped into him before he ever heard the shot. Jack, now lying on the ground, screamed in panic and tried to stop the blood pouring from his chest.
“Nick, we need to go,” Allen said, his voice nervous. “Do you need to shoot again?”
Nick put the safety on the weapon and pulled it from his shoulder.
“No,” he said. “Unnecessary. It was a clean shot. Let’s go.”
Allen started the van up and drove down the ramp of the parking garage, remembering what Nick had said about getting in the enemy’s head. Killing enough of them would make them ineffective, regardless of their overwhelming strength in numbers.
Allen knew Nick had just fired the first shots of his war. He doubted the other side had anyone as ready for this war as Nick.
Chapter 42
The getaway went off without a hitch. They had paid their parking fee, admitted to the employee they had heard a shot, too, but informed him it had sounded like it was blocks away.
It had just echoed back and forth in the parking garage, they told him. He actually seemed to believe it.
“Man, Knoxville is getting crazier and crazier,” the staffer said.
They drove to the mall, where they ditched the van for good and grabbed Nick's green Caprice. From there, they headed for their motel outside Knoxville.
Meanwhile, several hundred miles away, Whitaker learned of the shooting and went into panic mode. He had good sources, but he barely beat the media on hearing the news of the shooting of Jack Ward.
Of course, it was understandable that he barely beat the media in this instance. About thirty people had been on the sidewalks around the building when Nick pulled the trigger.
With the noise of the rifle, the Knoxville Police Department had received more than one hundred emergency calls to 911 in less than sixty seconds. Initially, the Department believed it was dealing with a terrorist sniper. Calls were made for the SWAT team to assemble. But besides calling 911, people were also calling the media.
The broadcast channels broke into commercial breaks, and the cable media soon followed. In just over five minutes, CNN was broadcasting “early reports” of a possible terrorist attack in Knoxville.
Just moments before CNN had the story, a source of Whitaker’s had called him in D.C. and said there had been a shooting at the building where the FBI was headquartered in Knoxville. The man explained that he just heard it on the scanner and would call back when he heard more.
He didn’t need to. Whitaker already knew. It fit the profile. Angry vet still madly in love kills the man responsible for killing his wife. And with that, he felt a cold fear creep into his stomach.
Nick Woods wasn't going to hide out in the mountains, thankful to just be alive. No, he had gotten his hands on a rifle and was hunting again.
Chapter 43
The press releases prepared by Allen Green were written to catch your attention. And they did.
The bold headline said, “Who shot FBI Agent Jack Ward in Knoxville yesterday, and why?”
Allen and Nick had driven to Chattanooga, another city in Tennessee with more than 100,000 people, the day after the shooting to send out the release. Allen had a list of fax numbers for newspapers throughout east Tennessee, as well as regional and national newspapers.
He knew the only chance the press release had was for whoever picked it up off the fax to recognize it. He figured the east Tennessee papers were his best chance.
Allen had hoped to wake up early and shoot the faxes out by 8 a.m., but he overslept, true to his night-owl character, and didn’t make it to a Kinko’s copy center until just after 10:30 a.m.
There was no line, so he walked up to the fax machine and began punching in the various area codes and fax numbers. He soon had the machine shooting out his three-page fax across the country. Allen hoped those on the receiving end were in the right mood to fully read and hopefully follow-up on the press release he had worked on for hours.
The release immediately announced in the first paragraph that FBI agent Jack Ward had been killed by gun-nut Bobby Ferguson. The shooting by Ferguson was in retaliation for Ward’s actions in the recent botched raid.
The press release stated that Ward had negligently and wrongfully killed his Bobby Ferguson’s wife Anne.
While the shooting was revenge at its core level, the press release stated that the story was much deeper.
Allen had then described the story of how Bobby Ferguson was actually former Marine sniper Nick Woods, who had served covertly in Pakistan against the Soviets. The rest of the press release read quite similar to Allen’s story in The New Yorker.
The fax ended by saying each media outlet would receive a call within a couple of days.
Nick and Allen had purchased dozens of disposable cell phones from several stores with money from Nick's pack, and it was with these cell phones that Allen would call each media outlet.
For Allen, the work over the next two days proved to be the most frustrating work he’d done in some time. Setting up in yet another hotel room, this one in Nashville since Nick thought they should leave Chattanooga immediately after sending the faxes, Allen worked nearly non-stop from eight to five for the next two days.
And with all that work, he achieved nothing.
The reasons why no one would pick up the story were many. Reporters were out of the office. Editors had reviewed and shot down the story -- isn’t this the same story you just denied a couple of months ago, they asked?
Even those who got past his denial and began to probe as to why he had later retracted the story found it absurd to believe that secret agents had apprehended and threatened Allen, planting evidence on his computer.
And they supposedly burned down a building, too? This was nothing but an out-of-this-world conspiracy theory.
Allen diligently kept good notes of each phone call and marked off each news source as it became clear they wouldn’t do anything on the story. At his highest point, he thought three organizations might do the story: The New York Times, Time magazine, and 60 Minutes.
The New York Times came the closest before bowing out. The reporter from there said her editor thought the story might be plausible except it didn’t make sense that Allen would change his story because of secret agents or threats. No good reporter would cave in and give up the truth, she said in a sanctimonious voice.
Of course, he'd once felt the same way. But being abducted, assaulted, and threatened had a way of changing one's point of view.
Allen gave up on the media, at least for now.
Chapter 44
In Fredericksburg, Virginia, Whitaker used his key
to open a heavy steel door on the side of a rundown warehouse. He and Tank entered the huge warehouse and slammed the door behind them.
Inside, men lifted weights off to the left. Whitaker had bought enough weights and machines to make most small gyms jealous. Whitaker believed a team should lift and live together as much as possible. It kept his teams tight and forced them to push themselves harder than if they were lifting alone.
The equipment sat on the concrete floor and lacked even the comfort of rubber matting, but his men didn't care. Each had worked out in far worse conditions.
Whitaker heard heavy metal music blaring from a boom box on the floor. His men pushed and pulled weight in impressive amounts, sweat pouring from their bodies. He nodded to the leader of Strike Team Two, who supervised the team of eight men.
Whitaker kept walking and fought the urge to join his men. He knew Tank wanted to, as well. Probably worse than even he did. Seeing the men of Strike Team Two lifted Whitaker's spirits.
These men were professionals. Killers of the highest order. And he had four more strike teams just like them. Five teams. Eight men each. Forty of the best commandos in America. All waiting for a target.
Whitaker knew he could bring Nick Woods down if he could just determine his location. He walked into his office with Tank, which was one of several rooms built inside the shitty-looking warehouse. From the outside, it looked like those around it. But from the inside, it had been retrofitted and upgraded to a command post, complete with the latest command and control equipment.
Whitaker had located his command post in Fredericksburg, Virginia, for several reasons.
First, it was near Washington, D.C., where he often had to go to meet with one of Senator Gooden’s aides.
Second, unlike D.C., Fredericksburg lacked the traffic of commuters or a first-rate police force with experienced, nosy detectives. It had less than 30,000 people and an average police force.
Finally, the city was close to Quantico, where the Marine Corps had plenty of ranges for practicing weapons drills and assaults. The base also had miles of woods for the teams to practice in. Strike Team Five, in fact, was training in Quantico today.
Whitaker always felt the location of his command post had been nothing short of brilliant. Actually, the entire setup of his unit by Sen. Gooden had been pure genius, and everything could keep going as planned as long as he took down Nick and Allen.
Whitaker took a seat at his desk and sighed heavy. Tank plopped down across from him in a guest chair.
“What’s ailing you, Boss?”
Whitaker rolled his neck in a circle and groaned. Tank said nothing. He knew when to keep his mouth shut. Whitaker took his eyes off the ceiling and looked at Tank.
"We've got one shot to get Nick and Allen," he said.
"Why's that?"
"Because we know they're going to go after Colonel Jernigan. He's their only remaining clue at the moment. But if we miss taking them down during their hit on him, then we'll be stuck on the defensive. We'll have no idea what their next moves are, and they'll pick us apart."
"Then we need to make sure we take advantage of this opportunity," Tank replied.
"Indeed. We've got two teams here on rotation, doing nothing but training. I want both of them with us to North Carolina."
"Sixteen men, plus us? That's a lot of firepower."
"We may need it," Whitaker said.
"And do we warn Col. Jernigan that he may be in deep shit?" Tank asked.
"Of course not," Whitaker said. "He brought this on himself, so if he catches a bullet, it just saves us the trouble down the road. Plus, I don't want him looking nervous. Nick Woods can smell a trap from a mile away. We can't let him get away this time."
"He has a habit of that. Afghanistan. Just recently."
"Don't remind me," Whitaker said. "Let's hit the locker room and change into gym clothes. We'll hit the weights hard before we saddle up tonight."
"Roger that, Boss."
Chapter 45
Nick Woods watched Col. Russ Jernigan through a pair of binoculars as he stepped from his home and walked to his Jeep Grand Cherokee. Jernigan followed the same routine as he had the three days prior.
Nick scribbled a notation in his sniper logbook and noticed Jernigan was running three minutes ahead of schedule today. Still, the man left his home each morning between 7:45 and 7:48 a.m.
In addition to recording Jernigan's habits, Nick noticed a few men who also had their eyes on Jernigan. Two sat in a car at the end of the street. There were at least four in full camouflage in the woods behind his house.
Nick figured there were probably a couple more somewhere he hadn't seen. The shot was doable from where he lay more than seven hundred yards away.
He was across the street from Col. Jernigan's home and more than twelve homes down. It was a cattycorner shot, angling away. Difficult, even for Nick, but he'd pulled off more difficult shots.
His best shooting location for the shot was in the other direction, but Nick had seen several men in full camo working their way around it. So, he'd use this second location. Not ideal. But safer. And more unpredictable for his enemy.
Nick had upgraded his rifle. A couple of weeks earlier, he'd snuck onto the base where the Marine Corps hosted its sniper school training grounds. Quite quickly, he selected a couple of poorly trained snipers in their first week of sniper school and snuck up on them one night. He'd shined a bright flashlight in their faces and surprised the shit out of the tired and exhausted trainees.
But through the light, they'd seen his pistol and given that they were unarmed -- no live ammo, just blanks -- they had little recourse.
In the end, he'd talked them into voluntarily giving up their weapon. Nick even fired a round into the air, so that their story about being robbed by some crazy man had more credibility.
Then Nick had booked it out of the area, humping across the woods through an escape route that avoided roads and hit every thicket and swamp he could find. It was only two klicks to the road where Allen was driving up and down, waiting to pick him up.
None of that extra precaution on the escape had been necessary as the training staff hadn't been in the field and the two men hadn't been given a radio for their routine training exercise. It took more than six hours before the MPs were even alerted, and by then Nick lay on his bed in a hotel room just twenty miles away in Jacksonville, N.C.
He'd already showered and cleaned up.
Nick had spent the next week getting familiar with the rifle he'd stolen, which felt like an old friend from back when he served. It was the same rifle, caliber, and scope as he'd used, so it took little time to get familiar with it. He'd fired more than a hundred rounds through it on an abandoned farm thirty minutes away while Allen Green spent the week working the phone and a laptop to find exactly where Col. Jernigan lived on base in Camp Lejeune.
Allen had worried he'd have to stake out the bar scene again, as he had the first time, but in the end, he managed to get through to a couple former friends from the news world. Several were starting to believe Allen's crazy story of being framed.
He had, after all, had an impeccable reporting record for the past thirty years. All the insiders had known he'd been working on a major story for months and months. To have been that mistaken about a story then turn around and admit he'd been wrong was so farfetched for a veteran reporter of Allen's stature that many former friends were kicking themselves for abandoning him so quickly. One of his best friends had paid back an old favor and tracked down Col. Jernigan's home address through a couple of military contacts he had relationships with.
And now just a little more than three weeks after drilling FBI Agent Jack Ward from a parking garage in Knoxville, Nick Woods lay behind a much better rifle and planned to blow away Col. Jernigan the following day. He'd prepped the battlefield, studied his exit route, and planned all kinds of surprises for Whitaker's men who were "guarding" Jernigan.
These dumb sons of bitches were abou
t to tangle with one of the best warriors America had ever produced, and they'd been getting sloppy after guarding the same man and following the same routine for three weeks straight. In a word, they were screwed, Nick thought.
Chapter 46
Nick Woods lay behind the M40A1 rifle the next morning, watching Col. Russ Jernigan's home as the sun burned off the early morning fog.
The rifle felt familiar, and it should. It was the precise weapon he'd used to hunt down the Russkie Spetsnaz in Afghanistan. He had worried when he stole the rifle in the dark from the two training Marines that he might end up with an M40A3, something the Marine Corps began fielding around 2003.
The M40A3 was heavier and used an improved scope, which wouldn't have bothered Nick. What would have bothered him was learning the new rifle with the level of familiarity he had with the older M40A1. In short, he wouldn't have been able to in just a matter of weeks. Nor, in even a year or two.
He'd spent hundreds of days and nights with an M40A1 -- some cold, some wet, some hot. Many of those nights in training, and quite a few in war.
And lying behind the M40A1 sniper rifle all these years later, he felt the comfort and familiarity one might find with an ex-girlfriend they had dated for years. With this rifle, he knew her tendencies, and he knew how to make her sing.
Col. Russ Jernigan's door opened, and there he stood in his camouflage uniform looking down at his keys and an attaché case. Just another day at work, or so he thought.
Nick Woods cursed under his breath, feeling real anger that such a despicable man had reached the high rank of Colonel. The man couldn't control his mouth and protect Top Secret information, something Lance Corporals and Corporals did on a regular basis -- for about one-tenth the pay.
Seeing his face through the scope, Nick swallowed down his emotions and tried not to think about the fact that this man was the one truly responsible for Anne's death.
Sold Out (Nick Woods Book 1) Page 15