Super Sniper

by Rawlin Cash

  The bottom of the gangway was unguarded. It was also carpeted, which allowed Hunter to creep up quietly. At the top was a large deck with two more Nigerian guards. One of them was drinking tea from a glass. Hunter took them both out with the Glock and scanned the rest of the deck. It was empty. He could hear music and people on the upper deck. He could also hear a child crying.

  There were people down on the pier now, catering staff dressed in servers’ uniforms and chef’s hats. They rolled food carts and carried silver trays and were waiting around the bottom of the gangway for permission to board.

  The yacht didn’t have much outdoor deck space. The Crown Prince was protective of his privacy and paparazzi were known to rent helicopters to get a view of what went on on the decks of super yachts. For that reason, almost all of the luxury amenities on the yacht were inside, spread across four levels.

  Hunter entered an area that looked like a fancy European restaurant. The decor was classical with polished wood and leather furnishings. The room was empty and he passed through it to a staircase that led to the second level. That was the main receiving level, where the Crown Prince would enter from the helipad on the front deck. It was the area supposedly designed as a replica of the Titanic, although Hunter had to believe the real thing had been less gaudy. The wood was polished to such a sheen it looked like plastic, and all the glass was mirrored in a way that gave the area the feel of a nightclub.

  He passed under a massive chandelier. Two Filipina maids were in the corridor ahead with a cart loaded with fresh linens. They went into a room to make up the beds and he crept past.

  At the end of the corridor was another staircase with a guard seated at the top. Hunter could see him from around the corner in a mirror. The man was in his twenties. He looked strong with muscles formed from a military training regimen. He was carrying the same assault rifle as the other guards. If anyone ever fired them, the damage would be heartbreaking.

  There was a brand on the man’s arm of the Crown Prince’s insignia. It was clear form the scar tissue it had been applied when the man was very young. He’d been born to this. He knew nothing else. Hunter wondered if he had even known his parents.

  It was almost sad to put the bullet in him but that’s what Hunter did.

  The guard had been sitting on a plastic chair outside a bedroom. The room’s door was reinforced with an extra lock and looked like a brig. Hunter took a key from the dead guard and unlocked the door.

  The stench inside hit him in an overpowering wave.

  Immediately, Hunter rose his hand to his mouth and told the occupants to remain silent. At one side of the room were two girls sitting on a bed, their wrists handcuffed to a brace on the wall. They looked up at him with terrified eyes. They were in their teens, maybe sixteen, and it was clear from the swelling on their wrists and the filth of the bed that they hadn’t been moved in days, maybe weeks.

  At the other side of the room was a man with his back to the door. He was unconscious, chained the wrong way to a chair so that his body draped over the back. He bore the same brand as the other guards and had been whipped near to death. His back was in shreds and his shoulder blade was visible through the open wounds.

  Hunter thought for a minute. The most humane thing to do would be to kill the man. There were flies on his back and the wounds weren’t going to heal.

  If he’d found a situation like that in Iraq or Afghanistan he could have called it in. In Mexico the police would have responded. Even in the most corrupt Mexican states, where the cartels owned everything form the governor down to the hospital janitorial staff, someone would come out to a scene like that and take the girls.

  But here?

  This was Saudi Arabia.

  It was a kingdom, not a country.

  It didn’t belong to its citizens. Everything was the king’s property, including the prisoners in that brig. There were no cops who’d board the boat. There was no hospital that would take in the prisoners.

  They were in his house.

  All of it.

  The boat. The island. The city of Jeddah. The entire two million square kilometers of Saudi Arabia. The twelfth largest nation on earth, thirty-three million people, all of it was his. There was no hope for these prisoners.

  Zero.

  They weren’t alone. The Kingdom was home to ten million migrant workers, non-citizens with zero political rights, zero property rights, zero civil, social, economic, or human rights of any kind. They were workers who poured into the kingdom in their thousands, from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Indonesia, and were treated as the property of their Saudi employers. Their passports were confiscated, their contracts were written in Arabic, which they couldn’t read, and they were prohibited from paying taxes or receiving equal standing before the law. Social welfare, insurance, and labor rules explicitly excluded them. The United Nations had ruled repeatedly that there were over half a million domestic servants in Saudi Arabia, mostly from Africa, who are subjected to rape and physical abuse from their employers and lived in conditions of near-slavery.

  Zero.

  That’s the chance those prisoners had.

  The right thing to do would be to kill them.

  But Hunter couldn’t do it. How could he? Who was he to decide they were better off dead?

  Was that what mercy looked like?

  He approached and they cowered in fear.

  “English?” he said.

  They nodded.

  “You’re safe,” he said. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  They began to cry.

  “Stay quiet. And wait here. I will come back.”

  As he said the words, he had no idea if they were true or not. Maybe he would come back. Maybe he wouldn’t. But it kept them quiet.

  He took one last look at the dying Nigerian. Miraculously, the man was awake. He had turned his head and was trying to speak.

  Hunter leaned closer to him.

  “Kill me,” the man said weakly.

  Hunter drew the Glock and looked the man in the eye. The man nodded. There was not a trace of doubt.

  “How many guards are on this boat?” Hunter said before pulling the trigger.

  The man shut his eyes. He was gathering his strength. He had to pull himself out of the agony he was in and bring his mind back to the world.

  He opened his eyes. He wet his lips with his tongue. “Twenty,” he said weakly.

  “Do you think you can walk?” Hunter said.

  The man shut his eyes again. He had no strength left. No courage. Then he opened them.

  “Let me help you,” the man said.

  Hunter nodded.

  He unchained the man and helped him to his feet. Half carrying, half dragging the man, he brought him to the corridor, down the staircase, and back to the main hall. The two maids were no longer there.

  Hunter brought the man to the center of the room, to the foot of a sweeping Mahogany staircase that wound in an arc around the massive chandelier.

  “Can you cry out?” Hunter said.

  The man tried but it wasn’t very loud.

  Hunter did it for him, crying out as loud as he could like a man in agony.

  Then he left the man there, blood dripping from his bare back, propped up on the pillar of the staircase.

  Hunter ran to the side of the room and took cover behind a huge globe on a stand. The globe was about three feet in diameter and with its stand, provided plenty of room to hide behind.

  It was only a minute before the first guard arrived. He could have been the dying man’s brother. He had the same features, the same brand on his arm. He arrived on the upper level at the top of the stairs and when he saw his companion below he laughed out loud. Then he called for the others.

  He walked down the stairs and when he reached the bottom, he said “You fool. Now you’re a dead man.”

  The dying man summoned all his strength to answer.

  “We’re all dead men,” he said.

>   Other guards began to arrive. They were amused the prisoner had made it this far. They laughed. They called for the rest on their radios. They prodded the dying man with their guns. They shoved him with their boots. Hunter waited. Guards trickled in from all their various positions and got ready for some sort of sport they were going to play in the final moments of the dying guard’s life.

  They were like dogs. Loyal to the death, unless the leader turned on one of them. Then they all turned in a heartbeat on the man who was no longer part of the pack.

  Hunter put a new clip in his gun. He stood up and began firing the Glock. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. He emptied the clip in about four seconds and dropped seventeen guards, all with shots to the head, before the clip emptied.

  The remaining guards came at him in a rush. He kicked the first in the knee, ducked, rose and punched the second in the throat, bent forward and let the third fly over him, rose with his head into the first man’s face, slit his throat with his knife, and turned on the last man standing. The man had a knife in his hand and hunter caught him by the wrist just in time to stop the blade entering his face. He jabbed up and into the man’s chest three times in rapid succession.

  Then there was a gunshot. It was the man he’d throat-punched. He was holding a handgun and had missed Hunter by a fraction of an inch. He had the gun trained on Hunter and the look on his face said he wasn’t going to miss a second time. Hunter was about to dive for cover, he wouldn’t be fast enough but he had to try, when a bullet hit the man with the gun in the side of the head and he slumped over, dead.

  The prisoner had picked up a gun and taken the shot.

  Hunter looked at him, still holding himself up against the pillar, surrounded by the bodies of twenty dead comrades.

  “Where’s the Crown Prince?” Hunter said.

  There was panic on the boat now. Everyone remaining on board had heard the gunfire. Maids and servants were running down corridors, men’s voices could be heard shouting.

  Hunter ran his tongue over his teeth. He was ready to kill the son of a bitch and there was no one left to stop him.

  The dying guard motioned with his head up the stairs and to the left. Hunter ran to the stairs, stepping over the dead bodies, and reloaded the Glock. He climbed the stairs and stopped at the top and looked back. The dying guard nodded at him. Hunter nodded back, then turned and ran toward the front of the yacht along a broad, bright corridor decorated with chandeliers and red carpeting. At the end of the corridor he could see through a glass wall to the Crown Prince’s helicopter, which was frantically being fired up by the crew. There was a flight crew and a few guards preparing the craft.

  Hunter ran past frightened maids and servants. They were coming out of the bedrooms. Across the chaos, he could see a group of three men standing outside the last room. They wore the traditional garb of the Saudi elite, the long white robes with red and white scarves on their heads.

  Hunter rose his gun and took out all three without knowing who they were. He didn’t care. He had a brief window to take out the Crown Prince and he wasn’t going to waste it.

  He knew the Crown Prince would be replaced by another man just like him, someone just as bad, maybe even worse. He was the son of the king and the king had many sons, and dozens of brothers, nephews, uncles, and other potential heirs.

  Killing the Crown Prince would change nothing. It would achieve nothing.

  But it had to be done.

  A million senseless kills that changed nothing, that was how wars were won. You did it over and over and eventually your job was done.

  Fifty-Seven

  Hunter checked the corridor was clear before entering the Crown Prince’s quarters. It was a vast room with walls of glass that extended right to the bow of the boat. At the front was a four posted bed and in high seas the waves crashed right up against the glass panes. The décor was even more opulent than the rest of the yacht with white marble, brass, red leather, and gilded wooden furniture. It reminded Hunter of the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

  The Crown Prince was standing in front of the bed. He was clothed and four female servants were in front of him in a vain attempt at protection. His sex slaves were on the bed under the covers. There were three of them, a boy and two girls. None looked older than twelve.

  “Mohammad bin Faisal bin Nayef al Saud?” Hunter said.

  The man looked at him like he’d just been summoned by the voice of God.

  “Guards,” he cried.

  “All dead,” Hunter said.

  “There will be more. Hundreds. You’ll never get away with this.”

  “Sure I will,” Hunter said.

  The Crown Prince looked at him, reading him. He was used to reading people. He knew what this was.

  “You’re the sniper,” the Crown Prince said. “You killed Al-Wahad. And the ambassador.”

  “And now you,” Hunter said.

  The Crown Prince looked around the room. Hunter knew he was trying to buy time. Sooner or later there would be hundreds of guards. The entire police force of the city would come. The national army would come. There would be war. But all of it would be too late. It couldn’t do a thing to protect him. The Crown Prince would be dead and Hunter would be gone.

  The servants knew it and Hunter motioned for them to get out of the way. They went to the bed and sat next to the children.

  “I can make you rich,” the Crown Prince said. “Not just rich. Super rich. The kind of rich ordinary people can’t even understand.”

  “They can understand it just fine,” Hunter said. “More money? Who can’t understand that?”

  “You could do anything.”

  “I can already do anything,” Hunter said.

  The children and servants watched from the bed. Hunter knew they wanted to see the Crown Prince dead. The end had come and he was alone.

  Hunter motioned at the servants and said, “Get those children out of here.”

  The women took the children from the bed and covered them in blankets.

  “Go get all the children, including the girls locked in the brig, and put them on the helicopter. Tell them to fly to an American embassy outside Saudi Arabia.”

  The women ran off to gather the rest of the children, leaving Hunter and the Crown Prince alone. The room was quiet. Peaceful. At any moment, guards could storm in, but right then it was just the two of them.

  “You can take me in,” the Crown Prince said.

  “What for? They’d only release you.”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Do what? Kill you?”

  “There are many ways to skin a cat.”

  Hunter smiled at the choice of words. “The only thing stopping me from pulling this trigger right now is that a bullet’s too good for you.”

  “Please,” the Crown Prince said, falling to his knees.

  Hunter knew what he had to do. His only regret was that he didn’t have time to draw it out. He wanted the Crown Prince to understand what he’d lost. He wanted to see the despair on his face before he died. Dying was too easy. A bullet was too merciful.

  The Crown Prince made to speak but Hunter rose his hand to stop him. “I know what you want. You want to justify your actions.”

  “If I’m going to die, I deserve to have my say.”

  Hunter shrugged. “I think you’ve had your say.”

  “Everything I did was the Will of God.”

  “Who are you to decide the Will of God?”

  “If Allah did not will it, it wouldn’t be.”

  Hunter walked over to him and smacked him in the face with the butt of his gun.”

  “Well then, Allah’s going to love that.”

  The Crown Prince stumbled back. His face changed to anger. “Do it then,” he said. “If that’s what you’re going to do, do it. Pull the trigger.”

  Hunter put his finger on the trigger. He was tempted. He’d been in the room over ninety seconds. He was running out of time. He could see the helicopter outs
ide on the pad. The first of the children had boarded but it was still waiting for more.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “How about I tell you my take on Allah’s Will, and you just shut up and listen?”

  “You Americans are so vain,” the Crown Prince said. “You’re going to stand there and gloat while my fighter jets fly in to destroy you.”

  Hunter smiled. It was true, he was playing with the man. He should have shot him by now, but where was the fun in that?

  “Your jets can’t strike while you’re on board,” he said.

  “My guards will come,” the Crown Prince said.

  Hunter let out a laugh. He looked at the Crown Prince with contempt. The man seemed so insignificant, sniveling, blood coming from his nose. And yet, this was a man who’d ordered the death of three presidents. He was the man who’d tried to co-opt the most powerful nation in history to his own ends. It was no wonder he thought it was all God’s will.

  “You’re a man who know’s where he comes from,” Hunter said.

  “Of course I know. I’m heir to the Royal House of Saud.”

  Hunter nodded. “It’s good to know where you come from.”

  “I can trace my blood back hundreds of years. Not like you mongrel Americans.”

  “Maybe we can’t all trace our lineage,” Hunter said. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t have one. We all go back the same distance.”

  “Such rubbish,” the Crown Prince said.

  “We all go right back to the beginning,” Hunter said.

  “It’s not the same,” the Crown Prince said.

  Hunter shrugged. “You’re a student of history, right?”

  “Yes,” the Crown Prince said.

  Hunter knew he’d studied history in the best schools in the world. He’d even published papers on the Second World War.

  “You know that the Germans, at the end of the Second World War, they kept fighting long after it was clear they’d lost.”

  “They fought to the absolute death,” the Crown Prince said, betraying a pride in the Nazi regime.