Sniper Elite (34 page)

The major looked to General Couture for permission to carry out the request.

“Do it,” the general said. “And tell them to add Captain Crosswhite to that list.”

The major left the room. Couture said to Metcalf, “The MPs aren't going to find any of them, are they?”

Metcalf shook his head. “I honestly don't know, sir . . . but it's a hunch.”

“Sirs!” An intelligence officer with the CIA pointed to the screen. Gil had just taken out the first sniper from seventy-five yards.

They turned and watched as he eliminated the other two. When Gil shot the third sniper in the side of the head, his plate of food went flying.

A short time later they watched as he took out a pair of roving sentries at fifty feet with a model 1911 .45 from the prone position.

Metcalf drew a breath and let it back out. “That's Master Chief Shannon. I'm sorry, General. It is one of mine.”

Couture looked at Metcalf, then back at the screen and then back at Metcalf. “The SEAL who jumped into Iran? How do you know?”

“Because he's too stubborn to give up his 1911 for a higher-capacity forty-five.”

Couture smirked and held his hand out to the screen. “The way he shoots . . . it doesn't look like he needs one.”

“That's exactly what he said to me,” Metcalf muttered.

They continued to watch as Gil popped the sniper on the roof, and then held their collective breath when the door opened and the villager emerged to investigate the commotion . . . everyone except General Couture, who griped, “Now you've done it, Shannon!”

But the villager went back inside.

“He'll wait to see,” Metcalf said. “Then he'll go in after him.”

It happened as Metcalf predicted, and they all waited again, breath bated, while Gil was inside with the Tajik. At last, he reemerged dressed in the heavy mountain garb.

“Who the hell is that?” the General asked. “Is Shannon dead?”

The Air Force lieutenant tightened the shot so they could see Gil's monocular sticking out from beneath the hood.

Couture looked at Metcalf, pointing at the screen. “That son of a bitch is going to give me a heart attack.”

Metcalf couldn't help the sardonic grin that crossed his face. “Perhaps you shouldn't watch, General.”

“T-yeah, right,” the General smirked. “Everyone listen up! For the duration of this exercise, everything—and I mean
everything
—you people see and hear is to be considered beyond top secret. Is that clear?”

The room was filled with “Yes, sirs.”

“We will now treat this as if it were a sanctioned rescue operation,” he went on. “That means I want a pair of Predators in the air and loaded with warshot. Cynthia, get on the horn to Creech and make that happen.”

“Yes, sir.”

Couture glanced at Metcalf. “The nautical term was for you there, Captain.”

Metcalf gave him a wink. “I thought as much, sir.”

“Major Miller!”

“Yes, General.”

“Get the president on the horn. If this is going to be our last hurrah, by God, we're doing it by the numbers.”

Within three minutes, the President of the United States was on the line.

“Mr. President, this is General Couture. I'm sorry to disturb you, sir.”

“What is it?” the president said, his voice anxious.

“Mr. President, at this time we're looking at a live infrared UAV feed from over the Panjshir Valley. Though it remains unconfirmed at this time, sir, we are witnessing what
appears
to be an unauthorized mission to liberate Warrant Officer Brux from the enemy.”

“Are you fucking kidding me!” the president snarled.

Couture's reply was crisp. “No, sir.”

“Exactly what the hell are you seeing?” the president demanded.

Couture described what they had witnessed so far and that the unidentified shooter had just shot another sentry dead from beneath a donkey cart.

“Who the hell is it?” the president wanted to know.

General Couture watched as Gil hefted the body from the road onto his shoulder, dumping it into the donkey cart and covering it with a tarp. “Though his identity remains unconfirmed, Mr. President, we believe it may the same operative who carried out Operation Tiger Claw.”

There was an extended silence at the president's end, so Couture continued. “Sir, I've ordered a pair of Predators armed and into the air in case we end up having to assist him in bringing Warrant Off—”

“You just said you don't even know who know who the hell it
is
!” the president hissed.

It was at this moment Couture realized the president wasn't assessing the situation from a rational point of view. “Mr. President, allow me to be clear, sir . . . confidence is quite high that this operative is a member of DEVGRU.”

“General, here's what you're going to do,” the president said, his aggravation clear and evident. “First, you're going to keep those drones on the ground where they belong. Second, you're going to continue to monitor this situation and keep me apprised. You are to take no direct action of any kind. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“If this
hero
manages to bring that woman out of there alive, we'll
have no trouble playing the success of the mission to our advantage. If he fails, then he's disavowed, simple as that. That was the deal in Iran, was it not? These SEALs seem to be comfortable with that arrangement, so let this hero's fate be a lesson to the rest of them. Understood?”

Couture eyed the screen as Gil ducked into a long building with a dozen horses standing beside it in a stone corral. “Mr. President, with respect . . . this operative is very good—possibly the best we have. With our help, he stands a legitimate chance of success.”

“Do you even know what his plans are, General?”

“No, sir, not specifically.”

“Well, suppose we
do
get involved and that poor woman dies anyhow?”

Couture didn't immediately respond.

“I asked you a question, General.”

Couture glanced at Metcalf and shook his head in resignation. “I see your point, Mr. President.”

“I thought you might,” the president said. “This isn't your doing, General, and it sure as hell isn't mine. I see no reason either of us should swing for it. Now, I'll ask you this: are you in a position to stop him without wiping out that village in the process?”

“Not at this time, sir, no.”

“Then we're not responsible for his actions, are we?”

“Not in a manner of speaking, sir, no.”

“Very good,” the president said. “Keep me apprised through the normal channels.”

The line went dead. Couture hung up the phone. “Shit.”

“What's the bottom line?” Metcalf asked quietly.

Couture dry-wiped his mouth, glancing at the screen where Gil was yet to reemerge from the stable. “Master Chief Shannon—if that's who we're watching—has been disavowed.”

Inside the stable, Gil felt comforted by the familiar smell of horses and manure. He found the sorrel-colored mount he was looking for near the back, a few hands higher than the other animals and with stronger flanks. He needed the strongest horse he could get for what he had in mind, and after watching this particular horse carry its rider through the grueling paces of an entire buzkashi match during the day, he believed it had more than enough endurance. The trouble would be getting the animal to Sandra undetected. He sure as hell couldn't bring Sandra to the horse, carrying her over his shoulder, fighting a running gun battle all the way.

He slipped a coarse wool blanket over the animal's back and pulled one of the buzkashi saddles from a pile in the corner. It had metal stirrups, and both pommel and cantle were higher than those
of a Western cowboy saddle, creating a deeper seat designed to help keep a buzkashi rider from falling off.

“It's not exactly a Hamley Formfitter,” he muttered to himself, cinching up the single girth strap, “but it'll have to do.”

The door opened at the other end, and Gil instantly faded into the corner, drawing the Ka-Bar from the sheath strapped to his thigh. He watched the man through infrared, noting the AK-47 barrel slung up over his left shoulder. The horses began to fidget in their stalls, tamping at the floor and snorting. Gil realized they were smelling his sudden adrenaline dump.

“Achmed?” said the interloper. “Achmed!”

Gil guessed that Achmed must be the dead guy outside in the donkey cart, so he grunted a response and began coughing as though he were trying to hack something up from deep in the back of his throat.

The interloper came straight toward him in the darkness, unable to see Gil except for the faint silhouette of the mountain cloak. “Achmed,” he said, followed by a bunch of harsh-sounding gibberish that Gil didn't understand.

When the unlucky fellow came within arm's reach, Gil grabbed him by the shoulder of his coat and rammed the Ka-Bar up through the bottom of his jaw to penetrate so deeply into the brain that the tip of the blade scraped against the top of the skull. The Pashtun was dead on his feet, though his body hadn't quite gotten the message, twitching spasmodically as Gil lowered him to the dung-covered dirt floor. He cleaned the knife on his victim's jacket and jammed it back into the sheath.

He got up and stood on the body to peer out the gap between the roof and the top of the mud wall. Seeing the strobe flashing in his infrared viewfinder farther up the hill, beyond another cluster of buildings, he estimated the distance to Sandra's quarters at ninety yards. This was too far to walk the horse without better knowledge
of the layout. Besides, he wanted to make a careful reconnoiter of Sandra's quarters before moving in to take it over. At least, he had to consider the possibility that Forogh had been caught and forced into helping the enemy to set up a trap.

The God of War is a fickle son of a bitch,
his father had always been fond of saying.
Don't ever trust his ass
.

Gil folded the body into a corner and piled it over with saddles before slipping back outside. He backtracked his route for a short distance south, then turned west for the river. Having memorized the sentries' sectors during his long vigil from on high, he felt confident that he'd cleared the southwestern corner of the village. There were no guarantees, of course, but his instincts told him that he was safe for the moment. After moving north along the river for fifty yards, he turned east again toward the back side of the building where he had dumped the sentry into the donkey cart. As the infrared strobe continued to illuminate the night sky with its intermittent flashes, Gil found it eerie to flip up the infrared monocular and see only darkness over the rooftop where he knew there was light. He glanced farther up at the stars, wondering if the strobe had been picked up by an Air Force UAV yet, guessing that somebody somewhere was probably having themselves a shit hemorrhage by now. He also wondered idly whether the MPs had been sent to his quarters to look for him.

He stood on a rain barrel and crawled onto the roof of the building, setting the .45 beside him. If any innocent Tajiks came snooping around this close to Sandra's quarters, he'd have to shoot them dead without a thought. From this height, he could just see the windows and doorways to Sandra's cluster of buildings over the rooftops between there and where he was. He brought up the sniper rifle and sighted on the open doorway next to Sandra's. Four men with blankets over their shoulders sat at a table playing
teka
—an Afghan card game—by candlelight. Either they had only recently lit the candle,
or the light of the flame had been too dim for his optics to detect from high on the slope.

The door to Sandra's place suddenly swung open, and Ramesh stepped out. Gil immediately recognized him as the brute who had cut off her finger. In the moments before the door closed again, Gil saw her, and a sense of urgency swept through his veins. She was lying on the bed, doubled up beneath heavy blankets with a man and a woman sitting beside her in the warm glow of an oil lamp. They seemed to be caring for her.

Gil held Ramesh in his sights as he walked eastward toward the decoy building. Forty yards up the slope, he stopped and knocked at a door on the north side of the lane. The door opened and Aasif Kohistani stepped out, pulling his winter coat closed as he led Ramesh at a brisk pace back toward Sandra's quarters.

Kohistani and Ramesh went into the building. They were inside for perhaps five minutes before coming back out. Ramesh turned west and stepped inside where the sentries were playing cards. Kohistani went east back to his house. As Gil shimmied carefully back from the edge of the roof, he wondered if the Hezbi cleric could feel the shadow of death moving with him up the lane.

The God of War is a fickle son of a bitch, Mr. Kohistani.

General Couture stood staring at the screen with his arms crossed over his chest, watching intently as Gil shimmied slowly back from the edge of the roof. Captain Metcalf was beside him. The unexpected sighting of Aasif Kohistani minutes before had caused a stir in the room, leaving everyone convinced that Sandra Brux was definitely being held inside the building marked by the strobe.

Couture leaned closer to Metcalf. “If you have someone you can call in to assist your man,” he muttered, “now would be the time to do that.”

Metcalf looked at him in confusion. The president had just ordered them to stand down.

“You're telling me you don't have anyone you can call?” the general asked.

Metcalf scratched his head. “Well, the truth is, General, we've already sent for them . . . and the MPs can't seem to find them.”