Ghost Target

by Nicholas Irving

Ramsey Xanadu never subscribed to the notion that it was better to be lucky than good, but he had to admit that it was his good fortune to intercept a police-band radio call of the Reaper getting into a late-model dark blue Ford Mustang with an accomplice.

  Someone had snapped a picture of Vick Harwood placing a heavy kit bag into the trunk of the car. The picture had made its way to the Macon police, who immediately shared it with the FBI, which meant Xanadu had immediate access, also.

  Markham’s main concern was to kill Harwood before the Reaper remembered what had happened in Kandahar and Helmand Provinces.

  “We will have a bead on this car in a few minutes,” the pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Stu Benton, told Xanadu.

  “In a few minutes he can kill a few more politicians,” Xanadu said.

  “Fine by me. I’ll slow-roll the info to you then,” Benton said, chuckling through the microphone.

  “Don’t be a smartass, Benton.”

  They hovered slowly above the park, watching the mayhem, looking for clues that possibly Vick Harwood had escaped and evaded detection even after the camera had snapped a picture of him.

  “Bingo,” Benton said.

  “What you got?”

  “My intel inside the FBI room tells me that it’s a 2016 Ford Mustang and they’re working a warrant for tracking its GPS. Address associated with the car is about twenty miles from here in the country. Some cabin on a farm. I’ve got the address. That’s all they’ll give us.”

  “Perfect place to hole up,” Xanadu said.

  “FBI is going to beat us there. I say we wait until we’ve got a lock on the car and then we just nuke it,” Benton said.

  “Not a bad idea, but if they’re at the cabin and the FBI gets to him first, that’s not good for us. So let’s hit the cabin. FBI’s still in Savannah. They’re just now spinning rotors so let’s go,” Xanadu said.

  “Roger that,” Benton replied.

  The experimental helicopter pivoted midair and raced to the programmed grid coordinate that led them to the cabin in less than ten minutes.

  “No car,” Benton said.

  “There’s a garage. Probably parked in there,” Xanadu said.

  Xanadu was back in the monkey harness leaning out of the helicopter with his rifle at the ready. Looking through his thermal scope, he saw through the window the heat signatures of two human outlines seated at the table.

  Put a cap in their ass. Never know what hit them, Xanadu thought.

  “Going to hit the two dudes at the table,” Xanadu said.

  “Don’t have confirmed ID and the car is not confirmed in the garage,” Benton warned.

  “Best case, it’s Harwood. Worst case, well, it’s collateral damage,” Xanadu said.

  “Can you tell if it’s a white guy, black guy, anything?”

  “Thermal just gives me body heat,” Xanadu said. “They’re both glowing in my scope. Just sitting there. How far out are we?”

  “Quarter mile,” Benton said.

  “Okay, here we go,” Xanadu replied. He adjusted his scope, and put the crosshairs on the smaller of the two men, because he didn’t think Harwood had put on fifty pounds since getting out of Walter Reed. If anything, he’d lost weight on all that hospital food.

  “Hold steady, Stu,” Xanadu said. He leaned fully outside of the aircraft, pulling the nylon strap taut so that if it were to break, which would be nearly impossible unless it was cut, he would fall several hundred feet straight down. The smaller man’s head was perfectly still in the crosshairs. Xanadu was known more for his shoot first, ask questions later policy, and true to form he held steady in the hovering aircraft as he squeezed the trigger on the rifle. The sound suppressor muffled the shot and the whispering rotor blades muted any noise from the rifle. Xanadu watched his shot pierce the protective metal mesh on the windows, saw a spark, and said, “Oh, shit.”

  He never had time to determine if his shot was on target, because an enormous fireball erupted from the house.

  “Hang on!” Benton shouted into the microphone.

  “Hanging. What the hell was that?”

  “Think the Reaper mind-fucked you, bro. That was a propane gas explosion.”

  Xanadu thought about the unmoving bodies. Something had happened in that house and Harwood had been there. The Reaper wanted the evidence destroyed. Xanadu gave the man credit for thinking through the problem set.

  Being outwitted by Harwood meant the sniper’s memory was coming back. Not a good thing for MLQM or him, personally. Xanadu reached back with his large hand and used his muscled forearm to pull himself into the racing aircraft.

  “Where we going?” Xanadu asked once he was back inside.

  “Away from this nuclear explosion,” Benton replied.

  Xanadu looked out the port-side cargo opening and saw the billowing orange ball that would have every county and city police officer in a fifty-mile radius racing to it.

  “FBI is waving off, too. They boarded but now are returning to Hunter,” Benton said.

  “That’s unusual.”

  “Only chatter I’m getting from those guys is that the police chief talked to them about evidence found in Dillman’s house.”

  “Oh shit. Thought that was cleaned,” Xanadu said.

  “Evidently not.”

  The helicopter nosed over and sped toward Hunter Army Airfield, small-town lights slipping beneath them.

  * * *

  Harwood parked Lanny’s Ford Mustang in the parking lot of the Breakfast Club on Tybee Island. Monisha had dozed off in the front seat and had eventually woken before crawling into the backseat, where she was now sound asleep. The Atlantic Ocean, beyond the diner, showed the first edges of before-morning nautical twilight appearing. Muted gray tones pushed against the black horizon with the slightest lick of orange.

  During the drive, Harwood had done the battlefield geometry. While it was not a wise decision to put himself on an island with only one way out, he was about four hours ahead of the FBI and everyone else that wanted him dead or captured.

  When Monisha had slipped between the bucket seats into the backseat, she’d left her purse on the floor of the passenger side. Harwood leaned over and retrieved Monisha’s smartphone from her purse and saw on the locked screen multiple text messages asking about her “availability.” Apparently, she was quite popular as a fourteen-year-old call girl, and that made Harwood sad. His foster parents had pimped out the girls and boys with whom he had been placed. That memory surged through his mind like a freight train.

  He had turned, lightly grasped Monisha’s hand, and pressed her right thumb against the home button, which recognized her thumbprint. The phone came to life and he dialed the one number he knew from memory. The phone rang three times before being answered.

  “Command Sergeant Major Murdoch, this line is unsecured,” Murdoch said.

  “Rangers lead the way,” Harwood replied.

  After a long pause, Murdoch said, “Indeed they do, son. I understand the training is a little tough right now?”

  Murdoch’s pause and redirect to his official duties indicated to Harwood that Murdoch knew he was in trouble.

  “A little rough, Sergeant Major, but I think I know how to fix it,” Harwood said.

  “Do tell, Ranger.”

  “Crater analysis and blue force tracker. As I’m teaching these snipers I just realized that they need to be aware of the location of all friendly elements on the battlefield, private and military, especially if crater analysis is involved afterward.”

  Another long pause. “That’s an excellent point, Ranger. I’ll have some of the ops folks make note of that and send you any updated teaching points on that topic.”

  “I would appreciate that, Sergeant Major,” Harwood said.

  “I assume you need it soon?”

  “Well, I’m in the middle of a session right now.”

  “Roger that. Keep your head down and school ’em, but don’t milk ’em,” Murdoch said, and ended the call.
/>   “Roger, out,” Harwood whispered into the phone.

  He had called the one man he believed he could rely on to keep the faith and help him. Speaking in partial code, he had communicated to the sergeant major to check out which other friendly forces might have been on the battlefield the day of the mortar attack on his position. He remembered that day three months ago in pieces.

  School ’em but don’t milk ’em?

  What the hell was the sergeant major talking about? He wondered.

  Milk ’Em? MLQM? It had to be a clue. Murdoch said nothing without purpose.

  Fragmented images danced in his mind. He now realized that one sliver came back to him when he saw Monisha tied up on the bed by Lanny and Stoner, now dead. Like a jagged puzzle piece, the memory of the three men “escorting” three women from adobe huts in Sangin moments before the mortar attack came hurtling into place. He positioned that puzzle piece next to the fact that the mortars had come from behind him after one of the men had scanned the terrain with binoculars. But really, the only way to get a direct hit on his and Samuelson’s position would have been for someone to have a ten-digit grid coordinate locked into their mortar ballistic computer. And there were only one or two ways that could happen. Someone could have checked the blue force tracker data before heading out on a mission with the express purpose of firing on his position, or someone could have been one-in-a-trillion lucky and guessed correctly.

  Harwood didn’t believe in luck or those kinds of odds.

  Milk ’em. MLQM.

  His conversation with the sergeant major hinted that MLQM was one of the groups that was chasing him. Harwood finally decided to disconnect the GPS on Lanny’s car. He reached into the glove box, removed the owner’s manual, found the fuse-box display, opened the box beneath the steering wheel, and removed the panel that controlled the GPS. It was a calculated risk to wait this long, but he was tired of being chased and wanted those chasing him, the ones that wanted him dead, to know he was in their domain. Then he had driven to Tybee Island.

  He was now hunting them.

  A flock of pelicans glided low along the ocean’s surface. The orange-tipped leading edge of the sun was painting the morning sky. Someone dressed in cook whites flipped a cardboard sign on the front door from CLOSED to OPEN. Monisha twisted in the backseat and mumbled, “Where we at?”

  “Beach,” Harwood said. “We’re going to eat breakfast and leave.”

  “Why come all this way if we can’t stay for a bit? Love the beach,” Monisha said, more awake now.

  “Want to talk to you about all those texts on your phone,” Harwood said.

  “You been in my phone!”

  “Yes. Needed to make a call. And I’m hanging on to it for the time being.”

  “The hell you are,” Monisha said.

  “I’ve got social services on speed dial here. Either play by my rules or they come get you,” Harwood said.

  “Ain’t nobody from the gov’ment awake right now, so I know that’s bullshit,” Monisha said.

  Smart girl, Harwood thought to himself, but he pressed her.

  “They have a twenty-four-hour hotline. We do this my way, okay? We go in, eat breakfast. I go for a short run. You enjoy the beach. Then we leave.”

  “Run? Where you running to?”

  “Just for exercise,” Harwood said. He looked at her in the rearview mirror, caught her eyes. She was processing everything he was saying.

  “I’m hungry,” she said. “And a little scared.”

  “You should be, but I’m going to make sure you’re okay. I did it last night and will continue to do so. Understand?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said.

  “All right then, let’s eat.”

  They got out of the car and were the first customers to the restaurant. The salty air felt good. He sucked it in and felt his mind clear even more. Harwood figured he had maybe another three hours before he had to be off the island. While breakfast was being prepared—he ordered the farmer’s special and she ordered blueberry pancakes—Harwood asked Monisha to sit in the booth next to him and help him navigate her phone.

  “This here’s Twitter. Hit the hashtag for Black Lives Matter. That’s where you’re the hero,” she said. Just as before at Georgia Southern, the tweet stream was collapsing every second with new tweets about how Harwood had shot Senator Kraft, whom some believed to be a law-and-order racist. Harwood is taking it to the man! #BLM!! Or Vegas placing odds on next victim of #HeroHarwood!

  “Who you gonna shoot next?” Monisha asked.

  He looked at her and said, “I haven’t shot anyone.”

  “Please. I saw you kill those two men like it was nothing.”

  “I killed them because they were going to kill us. For being different than them. Just because they could. Or thought they could.”

  “Well, excuse me for having a hard time believing that you didn’t kill them others. They saying it was your rifle and everything.”

  “I’m sure it was my rifle. I’m trying to figure some things out, okay?”

  Their breakfast came. Monisha stayed next to Harwood despite her spoken concerns. He sensed she felt safer with him and even next to him. She was a scared child forced to live in an adult world well before she should have been. They devoured their breakfasts and walked back to the car after Harwood left thirty dollars in cash for a twenty-dollar breakfast. He retrieved his rucksack from the car and shouldered it as he popped the trunk and dug through Lanny’s kit bag, pleasantly surprised by what he found.

  “That where you keep your rifle? In there?” Monisha asked.

  “I keep a lot of things in here, little girl. Now you see that bench? Go sit on that for about half an hour. I’m going for a run.” He pocketed the keys and pointed at a bench in the dunes that afforded a view of the ocean and a pier that jutted into the water.

  “Can I have my phone?”

  “No. I need it to take some pictures.”

  “Don’t be looking at my photo stream,” she said.

  “I won’t. Just need to take a few pictures,” Harwood said. He locked the car and began jogging. He looked over his shoulder and saw Monisha staring at him, her arms crossed and her black long-sleeved shirt and blue jeans making her look out of place at the beach in August. It wouldn’t be long before beachcombers showed up and noticed her.

  He crossed the street and ran along side streets until he found the Tybee Creek beach, the work out feeling good, but having little to do with why he was running. After about a mile, he saw what he was looking for. The sun was above the horizon and he was glad that he had chosen the westerly approach, preventing him from being silhouetted against the flaming ball. He found a few sand dunes and unshouldered his rucksack. He retrieved a spotter’s scope from one of the pockets and dug its tripod into the sand. Invisible sand fleas bit at his arms and legs, but he concentrated on his mission.

  Through his lens, he saw the compound of the chairman of the board of what most soldiers knew as “Milk ’em,” or the MLQM contracting company. After his conversation with Murdoch, he’d used Monisha’s phone to search MLQM and had pressed on the “Leadership” icon. At the top of the page was General “Buzz” Markham’s picture, chairman of the board. A quick internet search showed him as the owner of a “home” on Tybee Island.

  MLQM’s private military contractors were in Afghanistan when Harwood was wounded. Ramsey Xanadu had been one of the malcontents unhappy that Harwood was getting some attention for killing so many Taliban commanders. Harwood recalled that Xanadu had begun leaving the wire of Kandahar operating base within hours of his team every time they would scoot out in their Humvees or in an MH-60 helicopter. These memories were reappearing in his mind, like a lost patrol of soldiers emerging from the forest. Perhaps rescuing Monisha was healing for him. Helped his mind reboot and reset to its original formatting; maybe even upgrade, like a broken bone growing back stronger.

  He studied the fortress through the scope. That was exactly what Ge
neral Buzz Markham’s Tybee Island home was: a three-acre fortress. It had high walls on the north end with two guard towers on the east and west sides. He noticed two guards staring into the early morning with binoculars. They had AR-15s hanging from their outer tactical vests held in place by snap links attached to two-point slings. He was a good four hundred yards away and so far, he believed he had been undetected.

  Where the concrete wall ended, razor wire tapered off into the ocean on the east and the sound on the west. Most likely, there were underwater sensors, as well. He used Monisha’s phone to snap several pictures, though their efficacy was doubtful once he blew them up and developed a target folder. The sun continued its ascent. Two boats bobbed in the distance, fishermen most likely. Final assessment: The compound was a formidable fortress with high walls, sharp razor wire, alert sentries, and one canalized route of entry.

  * * *

  The sniper was in perfect position to shoot General Markham—the worst offender of them all—if the dumbass would just step outside his fortress. Scanning, waiting, and scanning some more, the sniper continued to come up empty. The only targets were the two guards.

  Shoot them? Why not? They were pawns protecting the king. By now the king knew that he was in trouble. Might as well start taking his pieces off the board more quickly and send a clear message the noose was tightening.

  The sniper leveled the crosshairs on the guard furthest away. These were tough shots, but not the toughest the sniper had ever made. The image of a young military age male staring through binoculars to the west swayed in the retina display. Thinking, anticipating, and timing the shot, the sniper squeezed the trigger, sending a bullet into the temple of the guard, who folded straight down inside his turret.

  Quickly moving the rifle aim to the nearest guard, the sniper dealt with the sway, did the same anticipating and timing. The guard had turned his head toward the western turret. The guard towers were maybe one hundred yards apart. He’d heard his comrade fall. As the guard was intuitively turning back in the direction from which the shot must have come, the sniper’s crosshairs were a fraction to the left of the guard. It wasn’t perfect, but the shot sliced through the guard’s neck, causing him to spin and fall halfway out of the tower.