Ghost Sniper: A Sniper Elite Novel (17 page)

41

HUNAN PROVINCE, CHINA

17:00 HOURS

“I don’t understand why we didn’t take a plane to Zhangjiajie,” Lena said from the passenger seat of a stolen Land Rover as they rode north along the scenic S10 highway in Hunan Province. They had just crossed the eighth-highest suspension bridge in the world, spanning 1,080 feet above the Lishui River. Of the world’s one hundred highest bridges, forty-two of them were located in China.

“I wanted to see some of the country,” Gil said with a glance at the rearview mirror. “Look at those mountain ranges. They make Montana look like West Virginia.”

Lena, who had never been to the United States and thus could not appreciate the comparison, sat staring at the side-view mirror, watching the black Mercedes-Benz directly behind them. Three Russians had followed them from Chongqing, despite Nahn’s supposed efforts to throw them off the scent.

“A plane would have been a thousand times safer,” she said. “How long have you known we were being followed?”

“Since we left the hotel.”

“And you said nothing?”

“I didn’t want to worry you.” He put his foot on the brake pedal, slowing abruptly to agitate the Russian driver behind him as he’d done a half dozen times since leaving Chongqing three hours earlier. “I like knowing exactly where they are. I also like knowing they’re probably racking their brains trying to figure out what the hell we’re doing in China.”

“
Pffft!
I’m
still trying to figure out what the hell we’re doing in China.”

“We’re jumping the Dragon Wall.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “You know that Victor Kovats was killed jumping the Wall, right?”

“Who’s Victor Kovatch?”

“Ko
vats
. He was the Hungarian wing suit champion.”

“Oh, the
Hungarian
champion!” Gil chuckled sarcastically. “I’ll bet he had to be pretty good to be the Hungarian champ.”

She suppressed a smile, both amused and offended by his American air of superiority. “You should know the best wing suit fliers in the world are from Europe.”

He laughed. “And they’re apparently splattered all over China.”

She laughed, too, in spite of herself, slapping him on the shoulder. “You Americans think you’re so great!”

For reasons Gil could not quite pin down—competitive reasons, perhaps?—Lena brought out the conceit in him. “Well,” he said, “how many Europeans have HALO’d into Iran from the back of a Turkish 727?”

An experienced parachutist, Lena knew that a HALO jump was a High-Altitude, Low-Opening parachute jump employed by Special Forces to infiltrate enemy territory. Her jaw hung open. “You did that?”

He did not answer the question directly. “So who’s got bigger balls now? Me or Kovatch?”

“Ko
vats
,” she said quietly, her ardor beginning to smolder. She slid her hand along the inside of his thigh. “Why were you in Iran?”

He thought briefly about his plans for the future—should there be a future, considering the insanity factor of the jump he planned to make—and decided to share a classified secret: “I was sent in to assassinate a bomb maker and his pregnant wife.”

She sat back with a gasp. “You murdered a pregnant woman?”

He shook his head. “I shot her, but I didn’t kill her. I killed her husband and her father, though. Then I kidnapped her back to Afghanistan, and she gave birth to a baby boy that same night. The kid’ll probably grow up to become a damn terrorist, thanks to me. Last year, I killed the CIA man who ordered me to shoot her without telling me she was pregnant.” He took his eyes off the road just long enough to meet her gaze. “How do you like me now?”

She put her hand on his knee. “No wonder you can’t go back to your old life.”

“How could anyone go back?” he muttered, thinking of Marie. “The things I’ve done . . .”

Her voice felt thick to her as she spoke. “You and I were destined to meet, Gil.”

“Dunno about that.” He was eyeing the mirror again, wishing he could kill the Russians now instead of having to wait, but it was necessary to the plan. “Maybe we were—if you believe that kinda crap.”

An hour later, they were approaching Zhangjiajie, the city nearest to Tianmen Mountain National Park in northwestern Hunan Province. Tianmen Mountain was often called the Dragon Wall because of the winding, serpentine road that led up to the almost five-thousand-foot-high summit from which wing-suit fliers from all over the world launched themselves into the sky like Wile E. Coyote.

Victor Kovats had died there on October 8, 2013, during the World Wingsuit League Championships. His parachute had failed to deploy just shy of the landing pad, and he impacted the trees at nearly a hundred miles an hour.

When they arrived at their hotel, Gil parked in front and got out, smiling at the Russians as they drove slowly past and signaling for the driver to roll down his window.

The blond Russian stopped the car, staring with his dead blue eyes as he put down the window, waiting to hear what Gil had to say.

Gil saw the Bratva tattoos on the Russian’s neck. “You can park right over there and just bring our bags up to the room,” he wisecracked.

Without giving any indication that he’d understood, the Russian put up the window and pulled past the hotel.

Lena was afraid of the Russians outside of Switzerland. “Why do you antagonize them?”

“It was necessary,” he said, opening the back of the black Land Rover Defender to remove their bags.

An Asian man on a bicycle emerged from around the corner of the building and pedaled past in the same direction as the Russians. Lena recognized him at once as Nahn. “Hey, that’s—” She turned to Gil. “He got here ahead of us! You wanted him to see which car they were in!”

Gil gave her wink. “Never fuck with the United States Navy.”

She laughed and shook her head. “My God, you’re arrogant.”

“Only around you, baby.” He pulled her carry-on from the back of the truck and handed it to her. “Here. It won’t kill you to carry one up yourself.”

She laughed again, taking the bag. “Fuck you, Gil.”

42

PUERTO VALLARTA, MEXICO

15:20 HOURS

Mariana Mederos had rented a small apartment outside of Puerto Vallarta in order to remain close to Antonio Castañeda, pending completion of Crosswhite’s mission in Toluca. After Serrano and the gringo sniper were dead, she would have to make some decisions regarding her future with the CIA. For now, though, she had a purpose, and that was to arrange for any logistical support that Crosswhite might need from Castañeda’s people in the South. Under normal circumstances, she would have been afraid to remain in the same city as Castañeda, alone and unprotected, but she was beginning to see that, despite his ruthless nature, the former GAFE operator did adhere to a certain moral code. There was no way of divining the limits of that code, but it did provide a small degree of predictability.

She was walking north along the beach with her feet in the surf when her cellular began to ring in her bag. She did not recognize the number, but it was from the DC area code: 202.

“Hello?” she said, convinced that it would be Pope.

“I’m surprised you answered,” said Clemson Fields.

His voice had a nerve-grating nasal overtone that Mariana recognized at once. “What do you want?”

“I see you’re down in Vallarta,” he said. “Do you have time to meet me in Tijuana?”

Mariana’s desire to meet Fields in Tijuana—or anywhere else—ranked right up there with her desire to be eaten by a shark. “For what?”

“By now, I’m sure you’ve heard that Alice Downly was killed by an ex-Ranger sniper working for the Ruvalcabas. I’ve tracked his spotter, Billy Jessup, to Tijuana, and I need you to get close to him so you can learn the sniper’s location.”

“And how do you suggest I do that?”

“That will be up to you,” Fields said, “but Jessup has a fondness for Mexican women.”

“In other words, you expect me to sleep with him.”

“I expect you to do whatever you can to help end this crisis. I won’t waste time sparring with you, Mariana. You know the gringo sniper is hunting Agent Vaught and is therefore hunting Crosswhite as well. Even if you no longer care about the future of the CIA, I believe you do care about Dan Crosswhite. Or am I wrong?”

She realized that both Fields and Pope were under the impression that she and Crosswhite had slept together, and this annoyed her, but they were right to assume she cared about him. This annoyed her as well. They had discovered a weakness, and Fields was exploiting it.

Very well. If men were going to exploit her weaknesses, she would fly to Tijuana to exploit one of theirs, but sleeping with anyone was out of the question; she’d sooner resort to using a pair of scissors to get the information she wanted. “The spotter’s name is Jessup?”

“Correct,” Fields said. “I’ll fill you in on the gory details when you arrive. You can call me at this number with your itinerary. How soon should I expect you?”

“Maybe tomorrow afternoon. But all future meetings between you and me will be in a public place.”

He chuckled. “You’ve nothing to fear from me, Mariana. I’m not an assassin.”

“I’d never accuse you of possessing the courage, Clemson. I just don’t trust you as far as I can pick you up and throw you.”

There was a tense moment of silence at Fields’s end before he said, “I’ll wait to hear from you.”

With the call ended, she dug the satellite phone from her bag and called Crosswhite to tell him about the conversation.

“What do you think?” he asked her.

“It
sounds
legit,” she said, “but if Pope has been working with Serrano, how can they not already know how to find the sniper?”

“Consider this possibility: Suppose the sniper actually works for Pope. Suppose he’s part of a cell within the ATRU? If that’s the case, Fields might be in the dark. I don’t know how much he knows.”

“But if the sniper was part of the ATRU, Midori would know.”

“Not necessarily,” Crosswhite replied. “Midori said Pope has become more secretive lately—maybe even paranoid—and if
Pope
had Alice Downly assassinated, he’s got every reason to keep her in the dark.”

The idea chilled Mariana to the bone. Could Pope have gone that far? “But why would he want Downly dead?”

“Who the fuck knows?” Crosswhite said with disdain. “I’ve never understood how he thinks. Hell, he stabbed a dude in the face with an ice pick last year during the hunt for the loose nuke. He didn’t even give Gil a proper chance to interrogate the guy—just buried an ice pick in his face and started asking questions.”

Hearing this told Mariana that Pope was capable of anything. “Speaking of Gil, can you reach him by sat phone?”

“No. As long as he’s in China, he’s completely blacked out, and you can bet that’s exactly why he picked China, too. Whatever the fuck he’s up to, he doesn’t want Pope poking his nose in it.”

“What if he doesn’t make it back? Can you and Vaught handle the sniper without him?”

Crosswhite snorted. “Will we have a choice?”

That made up her mind. “I’ll leave for Tijuana in the morning.”

“Listen, I don’t want you taking any unnecessary risks for me.”

“Would you say that to me if I was a man?”

“You being a woman doesn’t have shit to do with it. The difference is that I care about you, and I don’t trust Fields any farther than I can throw his skinny ass.”

She laughed without sharing why. “This is the business we chose, remember?”

“That it is,” he admitted, knowing she had to go to Tijuana—regardless of the danger.

43

TOLUCA, MEXICO

15:25 HOURS

Dressed in a black SWAT uniform, Crosswhite tucked the phone into his leg pocket. “Fields is on the move.”

Vaught stood leaning against the outside wall of the police station, a dip in his lower lip, an M4 slung over his shoulder. “What’s he up to now?”

“He’s drawing Mariana north to Tijuana, away from Castañeda; says he’s got a line on the sniper’s spotter. Sounds like it might be a legit lead, but it’s too soon to tell.”

Chief Diego Guerrero was there too, equally armed, but he understood almost none of what was being said. “What’s happening?” he asked in Spanish.

“Our enemy in the CIA is making his move.”

Diego carried an ugly cut over his right eye from where he had collided with the barrel of another officer’s carbine the day before during a house-clearing exercise. He had begun to move much more
like a soldier over the past couple days of drilling. Crosswhite and Vaught were both satisfied with his progress, and they never passed on an opportunity to build him up in front of his men, who were catching on faster than he was.

All of the officers had taken to wearing black balaclavas over their faces whenever they patrolled in public now, as did Crosswhite and Vaught. This was not an uncommon sight in Mexico, and it solved the problem of Crosswhite’s drawing unwanted attention because he looked like a gringo. As expected, the Mexican Federal Police had spent less than a day investigating the ill-fated assault, rushing back to Mexico City as soon as possible, where they were still badly needed to maintain order in the wake of the earthquake.

“Does that mean the sniper will return?” Diego asked.

“It means that from this day forward,” Crosswhite said, “we should assume he’s already here. I suggest that everyone—you included, Chief—continue wearing their balaclavas when patrolling the city. That will make it impossible for him to single any of us out. He might decide to shoot some men at random to scare us off the streets. If he does, we’ll zero his position and outflank him.”

“How difficult will that be?” Diego’s fear of the sniper was evident.

Crosswhite put a hand on the young police chief’s shoulder. “A sniper always has the first shot. There’s nothing we can do about that, so we have to accept it. The trick is in knowing which direction to move after he pulls the trigger. Your men need to be vigilant at all times.”

A lieutenant stepped out the back door of the building, gesturing urgently with a sheaf of papers. Diego excused himself.

“What’s that about?” Vaught wondered.

“Looks serious, whatever it is.”

Diego returned, offering the papers to Crosswhite. “My men found these bodies on a road outside of town. We haven’t seen this type of civilian execution since before my brother was appointed chief.”

Crosswhite sorted through print-offs of a half dozen cell phone pictures. Three naked bodies had been found dumped on a dirt road: a man, a woman, and a girl, all of them obviously shot in the head. The printer quality was not the best, but there was no mistaking Agent Luis Mendoza’s protruding Adam’s apple in the profile pic of his blood-smeared face. Mrs. Mendoza’s charred breast was equally evident.

“Like I said,” he muttered, passing the pictures to Vaught and walking off. “He’s already here.”

Vaught opened the file. “Oh my God,” he whispered, seeing the little girl’s exploded head.

Diego saw the blood drain from his face. “Do you know those people?”

“It’s Agent Mendoza and his family.” Vaught turned away and vomited his lunch onto the ground between the wall and a parked police cruiser.