Ghost Sniper: A Sniper Elite Novel (25 page)

66

TIJUANA, MEXICO

23:00 HOURS

Fields couldn’t believe his eyes.

“I send you two jamokes to do a job that should have taken you two minutes, and this is how you come back looking? What did you do, pick a fight with Manny Pacquiao?”

Fito was humiliated and angry, his broken tooth hurting him, but he resisted the urge to smart off, knowing they’d fucked up big-time. “A gringo showed up.”

“What gringo?”

“I don’t know. We’ve never seen him before.”

Fields sat looking back and forth between them. “One man did this to you? Why didn’t you shoot him?”

Fito looked at the floor. “He took my gun.”

“Took your gun.”

“He was a professional.”

“I’m sure he was,” Fields remarked. He described Crosswhite, but the cousins looked at each other, shaking their heads.

“No, he didn’t look anything like that,” Fito said. “This man had light-brown hair and light-colored eyes—almost gray.”

Fields had no clue who else it could have been. He looked at Memo. “What about you? You don’t talk anymore?”

Memo looked at the floor.

“His jaw’s broken,” Fito said. “We just came from the hospital. They wired it shut.”

“This is fabulous.” Fields got up from the edge of the bed in his hotel room. “One looks like he was hit by a truck, and the other one’s a mute.” He let out a sigh, longing for the days of the Cold War, when professional assets were plentiful and Congress never asked any hard questions.

“Listen,” he said, turning around. “There’s a woman in town; she’s getting some information from a contact. Once I’ve got the intel, you’re going to dispose of her. Is that clear?”

“How soon?”

“Within the next couple of days, but I’m having doubts as to whether or not you can even handle a girl.”

“We can handle her!” Fito insisted. “We just got surprised by this guy. You didn’t tell us there might be some crazy gringo running around down there.”

“Well, you’d better be able to handle her,” Fields said. “Because I’m not paying a dime for the ass kicking you two clowns received today. Did you even get into the house?”

“Yes!” Memo said through clenched teeth.

“I got in through an unlocked door on the roof,” Fito lied. “The house was empty.”

“This was before or after your spanking?”

Fito averted his eyes. “Before.”

Fields opened a file on his laptop, showing them photos of both Mariana and Jessup. “Here is a list of bars and clubs. That’s the motel he’s staying at. I don’t know where she’s staying yet, but she’s stalk
ing him, so go find her and stay on her! Do nothing—and I mean
nothing
—until you’re given the word. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“About this gringo you ran into . . .” Fields stood thinking. “Did he say why he was there? Did you tell him anything—anything at all?”

Fito shook his head. “We just asked him what he was doing there, and he sucker punched Memo. I went for my gun, but he was too fast.”

When the boys from Baja were gone, Fields called Pope on the secure satellite phone.

“We’ve got a new player,” Fields said. “The Baja boys ran into a gringo outside Ortega’s place. He literally beat them up on the sidewalk in front of the house and left them lying there.”

“Sounds like something Crosswhite would do,” Pope remarked.

“That’s what I thought, but I described him, and they say no. This guy had light-brown hair and light-colored eyes.”

“You just described half the men in America.”

Fields chuckled. “You should see these two clowns. Whoever it was really worked them over. One has a busted nose; the other’s jaw is wired shut.”

“Has Mariana made contact with Jessup?”

Fields was startled.
Goddamn that Midori!
But he recovered quickly enough. “I don’t know yet. I’m expecting first contact tonight.”

“I don’t want anything happening to her,” Pope said. “She has a great deal of potential.”

Which is exactly why she has to go
, Fields thought to himself. “That’s understood. You have no idea who this new player might be?”

“No. He must be working for Ortega. You still have no intel on who took his wife and kids?”

“Nothing factual, but it almost has to be Serrano. Or maybe that Federale captain—Espinosa
,
I think his name is—the crooked cop who turned Vaught over to Ruvalcaba’s people.”

“What about the leak at the PFM?”

Fields was not accustomed to Pope asking so many pointed questions. It meant that he was beginning to lose confidence. “I don’t know where that stands.”

“Three of their deep-cover agents have turned up dead,” Pope said. “You weren’t supposed to give them anyone but Mendoza.”

“I felt we needed to increase our odds.”

“How many names did you give him?”

“All of them.”

There was a short pause at the other end of the line. “I realize you have a tough job down there, Clem, and I realize you’re working with the junior varsity, but you have to do better.”

Coming from Pope, “you have to do better” was tantamount to an ass chewing. “I understand,” Fields said. “Do you have anyone you can send me?”

“I gave you Crosswhite, Vaught, Ortega, and Villalobos. Those four men were all you should have needed. Now you’ve pulled Mariana into the lineup. I want this operation wrapped in three days, Clem. That’s all I can give you. After that, I’ll have to call in a whole different team.”

Pope broke the connection without another word, and Fields threw the phone at the wall. Then he grabbed his jacket and headed out into the night for the first time in years.

67

TOLUCA, MEXICO

02:00 HOURS

The moment Hancock had gotten word that a lone police truck was patrolling the northern part of town, he’d gone straight into action. Northern patrols were not rare, but the Toluca police force was less than half its normal size now, so the northern sector was generally overlooked after dark. The report was that the truck carried a machine gunner, which probably made the patrol feel safe operating alone. Machine gunners were prime targets in any war, and Hancock was ready to give the police an education.

He lay prone on the rooftop of a single-story house overlooking a well-lit four-lane avenue. After a half hour of waiting, the truck finally drew into view at two hundred yards, coming toward him at an oblique angle up the street. He scanned the men in the back of the truck, spotting the white marks on the helmet of Ruvalcaba’s informant. The gunner was making a futile attempt to appear small behind the machine gun.

Hancock smiled, centering the crosshairs on the front of the gunner’s helmet and squeezing the trigger. The Barrett .50 caliber bucked against his shoulder, and the machine gunner’s head exploded inside the helmet.

To Hancock’s surprise, the truck suddenly accelerated up the avenue at high speed in his direction. A second later, he heard the rumble of a Dodge Hellcat V8 engine screaming up from behind.

“What the—” He looked over his shoulder to see the black-and-white Charger screeching to a stop on the far side of the avenue. Four heavily armed cops dismounted and dashed across the street.

He turned for a shot at the driver of the pickup, but he was too late. The truck had already veered up onto the sidewalk.

Having just gone from predator to prey, Hancock sprang to his feet. The cops crossing the avenue called out to one another, shouldering their weapons and opening fire.

“Goddamn Ranger tactics!” he snarled, running for the stairs with a hail of bullets flying past his head.

He scrambled down the concrete stairwell, dragging the rifle behind him as he wriggled out a back window. His only secondary weapon was the Sig Sauer .357. This was the reason most snipers did not work alone. If he’d had Jessup to back him up with an M4, his situation would have been much less urgent.

An explosion blasted open the steel door to the front of the building, and that’s when Hancock really felt the devil bite him in the ass. The last thing he wanted was be to run down from behind and wind up in a Mexican prison. He turned and thrust the barrel of the Barrett back through the window, firing at the first figure to come into view. The policeman’s chest exploded inside his body armor, and the other officers dove for cover.

“Keep moving!” someone shouted in English, repeating it immediately in Spanish.

“Vaught!” Hancock hissed acidly, retreating out the back of the house.

Automatic fire tore through the door behind him as he slammed it shut and kicked over a pile of construction timber to block it.

Another burst of fire, and a round tore through his shoulder. The sniper lost his balance and pitched over into a table. Scrabbling back to his feet, he dashed across a courtyard and hurled the Barrett over a seven-foot brick wall, the top of which was lined with shards of broken beer bottles set in cement to discourage people from scaling it. Hancock leapt up and grabbed the top of the wall, feeling the glass cutting into his fingers. He threw a leg over, and the glass bit into the inside of his thigh, ripping open the crotch of his trousers and slicing his penis.

He dropped down on the far side of the wall and grabbed up the rifle. The scope didn’t appear to be broken, but that didn’t matter. He was out of the fight, wounded, and in need of immediate extraction.

Running through the night, Hancock called for his two bodyguards to pick him up at a prearranged emergency extraction point two hundred yards up the street. They were waiting for him when he got there, and he dove into the backseat, pulling the door closed. “Go!”

The driver sped off.

“What happened?” asked the man in the passenger seat.

“The sons of bitches laid a trap!” He grabbed his medical bag from the floor on the backseat and rifled through it. “They even sacrificed a man to draw me out!” Wriggling his bloody trousers down to his knees, he examined his torn penis and was relieved to find that the cut was less severe than he’d thought. The bloody member would need only a couple of stitches, but he wouldn’t be laying any pipe for the next few weeks. The bullet wound to his shoulder was a through-and-through, and the wounds to his legs and hands were nothing—just more superficial combat damage that no veteran soldier would let himself worry too much about.

“But I need a shitload of stitches,” he grumbled, unscrewing the lid from a bottle of alcohol. “Get me to the medico.”

“Was it the Americans?”

Hancock’s veins were burning with anger. “Who the fuck else?” He poured the alcohol over his penis and swore viciously at the pain, slapping a patch of gauze over and binding it tight with tape. “They want a war,” he muttered, tearing off the tape with bloody fingers and jamming the roll back into the bag, “I’ll give ’em a goddamn war! I’ll give ’em a war they’ll wish they never fuckin’ had.” He looked at the passenger, who was staring aghast over the back of the seat at his bloody genitalia. “Call Ruvalcaba! Tell him to send me at least a hundred men. No more fuckin’ around! We’re gonna kill every last cop in this fucking city!”

68

TIJUANA, MEXICO

02:30 HOURS

Mariana arrived at her motel having drunk more than she’d planned.Paying the cab driver and keying into her room, she did not notice the blue sedan that followed her from the nightclub. She dropped her purse on the bed and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. Just as she was stepping into the shower, there was a knock at the door.

Thinking it must be one of the twins checking up on her, Mariana wrapped herself in a towel and went to have a look through the peephole. It was Fields.

“Shit!” she whispered, realizing he must have tailed her.

She got dressed and answered the door. “What are you doing here? I told you I’d call when I had something.”

He stepped pugnaciously into the room, invading her space and forcing her to take a step back.

“What have you learned?” he asked, moving toward a chair.

“I’m making good progress . . . and I didn’t say you could sit down.”

“I didn’t ask your goddamn permission!” His eyes were flinty and cruel. “Now close the door and tell me what was said! In case you haven’t noticed, I’m done putting up with your shit—and so is Pope!”

There was a cold, predatory nature about him tonight, and his right hand was hidden inside the deep pocket of his overcoat. From the bulk of the weapon, she thought it must be a silenced pistol. She closed the door and took a chair near the wall, now more paranoid than ever.

“Start talking,” he said, not kindly.

She told him about her evening with Jessup in detail, omitting his obsession with the twins, who were due back any time.

“You’ve got him on the ropes, for Christ sake. Why didn’t you invite him back here? One smooth fuck, and you’d have had the whole enchilada tonight!”

“I already told you that’s not going to happen!”

He glared at her. “If you can’t get Jessup to give up Hancock, you’re useless. Do you understand what
useless
means in our business?”

“
Hancock
? You already know his name?”

In his entire career, Fields had never let an asset’s name slip. There was no better proof that this upstart little bitch was getting under his skin.

“I also know where to find Crosswhite’s family.” He let that hang in the air a moment. “I know exactly how to hurt him. So if you don’t give me the sniper’s location by this time tomorrow night, I make a phone call—just one—and your
friend
will be sorry he was ever born. Have you forgotten he has a baby on the way? I haven’t. You’re a slick little cunt, but you are not as slick as you might think.” He got up from the chair and dumped her purse onto the table.

She jumped up from the chair. “Get your fucking hands off my things!”

He snatched her satellite and cellular phones, along with her passport, and jammed them into his pocket.

“You son of a bitch! Give those back!”

He gestured with the bulky weapon hidden in his pocket. “Step away.”

She did as he said, and Fields went to the door. “If I were you”—he pointed at her crotch—“I’d put that thing to good use and get this operation wrapped up.”

He stepped out and drew the door shut behind him.

Mariana stood staring at the door. What was she going to do now? There was no way Jessup would give up the gringo sniper over lunch the next day—not unless she seduced him—and she was sure that Fields would follow through on his threat to have Paolina and the baby murdered. Hell, now that he’d stolen her passport, she couldn’t even return to the US without going to the American consulate and suffering through days of bureaucratic red tape.

FIELDS WAS ABOUT
to pull out of the parking lot when he saw the twins arrive in a cab, instantly recalling having seen them at the curb in front of Villalobos’s motel two days before.

“You clever bitch,” he muttered, now wanting to strangle Mariana with his bare hands. Fields backed into the shadows and sat watching the girls pay the driver. By the way they walked to their motel room, just three doors over from Mariana’s, it was easy to see they’d been drinking.

He got out of the car and walked across the parking lot to the twins’ room, listening at the door. They talked for a couple of minutes, and the television came on. He went around back and listened at the bathroom window for the shower, then he walked back around to the front, drawing a ball-peen hammer from his coat pocket and standing off to the side as he knocked on the door.

“Quién es?”
Tanya asked. Who is it?

“La pizza.”

Tanya opened the door a crack, keeping the security chain in place. “We didn’t order—”

Fields rammed the door open with his shoulder and bashed Tanya in the head with the ball of the hammer. She dropped to the
floor without a sound, and he kicked the door closed with his heel, stalking directly into the bathroom and ripping back the shower curtain. Lorena spun around, eyes wide, and he bashed in her skull. She fell to the bottom of the stall, and he beat her over the head a second time for good measure, wiping the hammer clean with a towel and dropping it into the toilet. Blood poured from Lorena’s head, mixing with the shower water and running down the drain.

Before leaving, Fields ripped Tanya’s clothes from her body to give the appearance of sexual assault and dumped both purses onto the bed, stuffing their money into his pocket. He found Villalobos’s suppressed pistol and jammed it into his coat. Tanya was still breathing when he left.

As he walked to his car, it occurred to Fields that he hadn’t killed anyone in more than twenty years. He’d almost forgotten how invigorating it could be.