Crossfire

Again, to all the men and women of the U.S. military— and their families—for their service and sacrifice, especially my favorite sailor, MA3 Keith Danalewich, and Air Force Technical Sergeant Trae, who’s currently deployed in Afghanistan.

And, as always, to Jay.

Heartfelt thanks once again to everyone on the extraordinary NAL team, especially my fantastically supportive editor, Laura Cifelli, and the super efficient and always cheery Lindsay Nouis. You all are the best!

Also, thanks and a wave across the sea to Maxim Popenker, of St. Petersburg, Russia—a lieutenant in the Russian Air Defense Force turned writer—who was kind enough to answer my questions about silencers and, more specifically, about a little-known Russian Special Forces rifle I wanted to give my serial sniper.

Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
, Hamlet

‘‘Do you really have to leave so soon?’’

‘‘Now, darlin’.’’ Brigadier General John Jacob paused while tying his spit-polished shoes long enough to nuzzle the neck of the lusciously naked blonde lying in the middle of the rumpled sheets. ‘‘You know I do.’’

‘‘Just a few more minutes?’’ She arched her back like a sleek Siamese, displaying the voluptuous breasts, which, although not natural, were still damn fine.

He was tempted. What male wouldn’t be? A former Miss Watermelon Belle, Meredith Hawthorne was one helluva good lay. But he’d begun to suspect that she had set her sights on marrying up.

Her husband—who hadn’t even gone to one of the academies but had come up through the OCS ranks— had made only captain before joining the faculty of the Admiral Somersett Military Academy. While he was not only a retired brigadier general but had graduated from West Point, as had all the males in his family going back to the Revolution.

He was also, if Meredith was to believed—and it stroked his ego to accept her word—a better lover. But, dammit, he’d been honest about his intentions from the start. They were both married. Neither was looking for commitment. Both had reasons to keep their affair discreet.

As the highly visible commandant of a very successfulathletic department (which brought in beaucoup bucks from ASMA alumni), he was on the fast track to be commander of the college whose roots had first been established in the Lowcountry to supply the government with a citizen corps of cadets during the War of 1812.

His wife, the daughter of a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, whom he’d married solely for her social and Pentagon connections, had served him well. Loyalty prevented him from putting her out to pasture just because some blond beauty queen gave the best blow job in the South.

‘‘Your husband’s going to be home at eighteen hundred hours,’’ he reminded her.

He should know, given that he’d been the one to send Captain Hawthorne to Savannah on a recruiting trip. Both VMI and The Citadel had their eyes on a seven-foot-tall high school basketball center, but Jacob had every intention of winning the phenom for ASMA.

One more trip to the Final Four, and he figured that plush commander’s office with its stunning view of the Somersett River bridge, and the harbor beyond, would be his.

‘‘I know.’’ She sighed prettily, drawing his attention back to her breasts. ‘‘It’s just that every time I’m with him, I wish I was with you.’’ She touched a hand to his face. On a distant level, he admired the way she allowed the single tear to trail down her cheek. ‘‘In fact, just the other night, when he was upstairs, playing war games on that damn computer, I was thinking that maybe I should just tell—’’

‘‘Don’t.’’ He grasped her wrist. Tight enough to make her flinch. ‘‘You’re not going to tell your husband anything. Because if you do, I’ll make sure he’s shipped out of here so fast that pretty blond head of yours will spin. And given that you dropped out of college when you nabbed yourself an officer and a gentleman, it’s not as if you have a lot of career skills.’’

His face was inches from hers. His other hand tangledin her long hair, holding her gaze to his. ‘‘Unless you decide to take that pretty cock-sucking mouth of yours out on the pro circuit.’’

She frowned. Her eyes swam. This time the tears were real. ‘‘That’s nasty.’’

‘‘That’s what we’re about.’’ His tone was hard. He could have been raking a cadet over the coals for an honor code infraction. ‘‘We get together twice a week to do the nasty. I get my rocks off, and you get a man who, instead of treating you like glass, knows you like rough sex and likes giving it to you the way you want it.’’

‘‘That’s it?’’

Hell. Realizing that this could get out of hand, he backtracked. ‘‘No.’’ This time it was he who touched a hand to her unhappy face. ‘‘You’re right. It was cruel and uncalled-for. You know you mean more to me than that.’’

He stroked her cheek. ‘‘But we’ve got to be careful. If your husband gets so much as an inkling of what’s going on, I could kiss my future good-bye.’’

‘‘That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?’’ She sniffled, but from the tilt of her chin, he could sense she was regaining the spirit that came so naturally to stunningly beautiful women. Women accustomed to the attention of men. ‘‘You becoming commander of ASMA.’’

‘‘It’s important.’’ He was not above lying. When necessary. But this was the absolute truth. ‘‘But you need to keep your eye on the big picture.’’

‘‘Which is?’’

‘‘I’m going to need a proper hostess once I move into the commander’s house.’’

Blue eyes narrowed. ‘‘I assume that would be your wife.’’

‘‘You’d assume wrong.’’ He stroked her arm and felt her body soften. ‘‘You know that Eleanor and I haven’t been living as man and wife for some time.’’

‘‘That’s what you told me.’’

He could also tell she hadn’t entirely bought the story. He didn’t blame her, but again, it was the truth. His bride had let him know early in their marriage that she found sex messy and distasteful. So long as he behaved discreetly, and never slept with any of her friends, she’d been more than willing to allow him his little affairs.

‘‘Our marriage has always been’’—he paused for effect—‘‘complicated. But it’s become more and more difficult for us to live under the same roof. So we have an agreement that as soon as I become commander, we’ll divorce. At which time Eleanor will receive a substantial financial settlement.’’

From the way her smooth brow furrowed, he could tell she was sensing the lie. ‘‘Why would she give up the opportunity to play lady of the manor?’’

‘‘Simple. Because she’s never enjoyed the role of an officer’s wife.’’

‘‘You could certainly have fooled me.’’

‘‘She’s a good actress.’’ And a spectacular hostess. Having always believed in giving credit where credit was due, he allowed that Eleanor Longworth Jacob’s inborn Southern graciousness was part of the reason for his success. ‘‘But she’s growing weary of the part.’’

His lover’s hair had tumbled over her shoulder. He smoothed it back, brushed his hand over her breast, and felt her heart pick up its beat. ‘‘Besides, there’s another reason she wants to be free as much as I do.’’

‘‘What’s that?’’ Her flesh was warming. Tempting him even as he played her.

‘‘She’s in love.’’

‘‘You’re kidding.’’

‘‘On the contrary. And there’s more.’’ Like putty in his hands, her mouth softened beneath his as he pressed a line of kisses from one side of her lips to the other. ‘‘Her lover just happens to be a woman.’’

Her head snapped back. ‘‘Your wife is a lesbian?’’

‘‘It seems so.’’

‘‘When did you find this out?’’

‘‘I’ve always suspected. But that’s all it was. A feeling. She confirmed it last month.’’

‘‘Wow.’’ He could see the wheels turning in her head as she absorbed the lie. ‘‘Talk about ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’’’

She tilted that busy little head and studied him. Despite her Barbie doll body and sugary Southern belle charms, Meredith Hawthorne was a cold, calculating female. It was one of the things he honestly admired about her.

‘‘If that got out, it could really screw up your chances for making commander.’’

‘‘Exactly.’’ He kissed her longer. Deeper. Leaning her back against the pillows. ‘‘Which is why I’m counting on you to keep my secret.’’

He skimmed his lips down her rosy torso. He didn’t really have the time for this, but neither did he want to risk her deciding to come clean with the cuckolded captain. ‘‘For just a little longer. Until we can be together.’’

Slender thighs opened. ‘‘In the commander’s house,’’ she said.

‘‘Absolutely,’’ he agreed robustly as he clamped his mouth over her and closed the deal.

Five minutes later, twenty minutes before Captain Hawthorne was due back from Savannah, Jacob, with his future firmly back on track, left the house six blocks from the ASMA campus.

It was a pretty neighborhood. Brick sidewalks were shaded by leafy green trees lined up like soldiers in front of tidy 1930s-style bungalows; the Stars and Stripes flew crisply from every porch; lawns were neatly trimmed, gardens darkly mulched.

It was dog days in the Lowcountry, the air so scorchingly hot it rippled along the ground as he strode with military bearing to the black Cadillac parked in the Hawthornes’ driveway.

A sound like a tree branch cracking overhead shattered the summer silence.

Although he’d spent his entire life around weapons, Brigadier General John Jacob never heard the shot that penetrated his skull.

He was dead before he hit the bricks, crimson blood oozing from the hole left by the copper-penny-colored rifle slug.

One shot. One kill.

Afghanistan, eight months earlier

Quinn McKade never claimed to be psychic. But when you spend the first eight years of your life with your parents on the run from the cops, and the next nine years bouncing from foster home to foster home, you pick up a lot of survival instincts. Ones that had proven helpful during his years in the SEALs. And he wasn’t getting good vibes about this mission.

He’d known, as his team had sat around the Bagram air base waiting for all those REMFs—rear echelon motherfuckers—to get their collective brass asses in gear, they were in trouble from the get-go. After a series of delays, they were three hours and fifty-eight minutes from sunrise, and if there was one thing more dangerous than humping up the side of a Kush mountain beneath the full moon, it was climbing it in daylight, when they’d be silhouetted against the white snow and gray sky.

While the mission would be challenging, it was still doable. Until a contingent of CIA, Marines, and Army Rangers crashed the party at the last minute, forcing a major change in logistics.

The original plan had been to do a rope insertion, the helo hovering low while they slid down in the dark. The number of troops now piled into the Chinook, awaiting takeoff, would require an actual skids-downlanding. In a snowstorm. On one of the steepest mountains in the Hindu Kush.

Not, in Quinn’s mind, a good idea, but since both the LT and Chief Zach Tremayne had already stated their case to the head sheds in command of the joint task mission, it wasn’t exactly as if anyone had a choice.

His team—like all SEALs—were loyal servants of the U.S. government. They’d go wherever they were sent, do whatever they were told, face off against enemies anywhere around the world, all day, every day.

And they’d damn well succeed, or die trying. The lawless area along the Afghan/Pakistani border had already become destabilized as various factions struggled for supremacy; last week’s earthquake, which had shaken up more than the mountainous land, had made things worse.

Conventional wisdom might have supposed having the quake take out one of the terrorist camps was a good thing. And it was. But like everything else about this crazy country—which just happened to be the dark hole of terror, where the deadly 9/11 plot was hatched and nourished—nothing was black and white.

Sure, some bad guys had conveniently been buried beneath tons of rock. But the downside was that another al-Qaeda leader—dubbed Rambo due to his tendency of going off on his own tangents rather than sticking with any united terrorist program—had taken advantage of the disaster to make a move to control the entire region.

That, along with the taunting videos he’d been putting out via the Internet the past six months had definitely put him in the U.S. military’s crosshairs even before he’d started spreading the word among local farmers that the Great Satan had sent the infidel U.S. soldiers to destroy their crops. Which, given that poppies were their only livelihood, tended to make those enraged farmers fight like mad dogs backed against a wall.

Quinn was no fan of the drug trade. Nor was any other military man he’d ever met. But they had more important things to concern themselves with than burning crops. Hell, there were fields of poppies growing right outside the gates of the forward command post, for Chrissakes!

According to the latest intel, Rambo was holed up in one of the many subterranean tunnels. Quinn’s team had been tasked with finding the ratlines supplying him, locating the ‘‘bat cave,’’ then calling massive amounts of ordnance down on it.

Which should have been just another day at the office.

‘‘A trained monkey could plan a mission better than this,’’ he complained to Zach.

‘‘Trained monkeys are planning this mission,’’ the chief responded.

Fortunately, their pilot, Shane Garrett—a member of the army’s elite SOAR Night Stalkers—was the best copter jockey in the business. He’d shuttled the team on so many successful missions over the past nine months, they’d come to think of him as their lucky charm.

The helo, which had been flying nighttime lights out, had just flared to land, its huge tandem rotors churning furiously in the thin mountain air, kicking up clouds of ice and snow around the windows and open ramp when Garrett shouted, ‘‘RPG!’’ from the cockpit.

The rocket’s fiery glare was blinding as it hurtled toward the left side gunner’s door.

The rocket-propelled grenade slammed through the side, slicing hoses, spraying hydraulic fluid all over the team before blowing the M4 Quinn had been holding to pieces.

Then the shit well and truly hit the fan.

The first twenty minutes after the crash was a bloody blur of violence. With enemy fire turning the helo into a camouflage-painted colander, they had no choice but to evacuate.

The lieutenant was dead. As was the Chinook’s co-pilot and many of the Rangers, who, following their creed, Rangers Lead the Way, had charged off the Chinook right into a barrage of bullets, grenades, and RPGs, pouring in at them from a well-camouflaged bunker that hadn’t been visible from the air.

The Marines had also taken heavy casualties. If they’d been on Omaha Beach instead of in this damn Afghan snowfield, the scene could have come straight out of Saving Private Ryan.

Shouts and curses flew as the mixed team of SEALs, Rangers, and Marines tried to create order out of chaos. Bodies lay on the ground, too many of them not moving. A Marine was sprawled with his boots still on the ramp, his torso in the snow. Through Quinn’s night vision goggles, the blood pooling beneath the kid’s helmet took on an eerie green fluorescent tint.

Shane had caught a tracer round in the leg. Proving that an army flyboy could be as tough as a SEAL, he’d managed to drag himself off the bird and was now lying on his stomach with them, behind a dead donkey that had had the misfortune to become a casualty of war.

Proving the old military cliché about no battle plan surviving first contact with the enemy, their radio battery was too cold to work. Not that it would’ve been much help anyway.

‘‘Don’t have to check my handy-dandy J-Fire reference guide to know that we’re too near the enemy to call in for close air support,’’ Zach said.

Quinn agreed. No way would Command risk a friendly-fire incident.

Which was a good thing, because killing one of your own was about as bad as it got. Unfortunately, it was nearly as bad to have tangos whipping your ass.

SEALs preferred to work in the dark. Hell, as he’d been taught in BUD/S training, they fucking owned the dark. Unlike Rangers, who liked to go into a battle zone with guns blasting away like they were reenacting the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, SEALs worked covert missions, getting in and out without drawing attention to themselves. Which is why they got away with their beards and long hair, the better to fit into the general population.

On those occasions when Quinn found himself in a firefight, a preternatural calm, which Zach insisted on calling his ‘‘spooky sniper zone,’’ would settle over him. But now, as the damn bunker rats began targeting the injured who lay bleeding in the snow, a temper he usually managed to keep reined in set his blood boiling.

‘‘The fuckers know we’re not going to leave our wounded,’’ he said.

Leave No Man Behind was a Special Forces motto. One written in stone.

‘‘They’re trying to draw us out,’’ said Zach, who, since the LT had been killed, was now in charge of whatever mission they managed to cobble together. ‘‘Which means we’ve got three choices.’’

A tango popped up from the bunker.

Quinn casually picked him off with the M4 he’d retrieved from the snow to replace the one he’d had blown away in his hands. Unfortunately, its owner, who appeared to have been shot everywhere his helmet or armor didn’t cover, no longer needed it.

‘‘We can sit out here and die by enemy fire.’’ Zach continued his assessment of the situation. He ducked as a bullet from some overeager Ranger flew over his head. ‘‘Or, dammit, friendly fire.’’

‘‘Or get rid of the enemy fire,’’ Quinn concluded.

He’d long ago accepted the fact of war that men— and, increasingly, women—die. And that the best way he could help the wounded was to remove the danger by taking out the enemy.

‘‘Looks like door number three,’’ Zach decided as the Kalashnikovs’ muzzles continued to flash from the bunker, shredding trees and making holes in the snow all around them.

‘‘The only choice,’’ Quinn agreed.

‘‘Roger that,’’ said Shane, who, despite his wound, had also grabbed a rifle from one of the fallen Rangers. The snow around his leg was beginning to look like a frozen strawberry margarita.

The enemy had already proven that they would do anything to win this war. They also looked prepared to shoot all day if that’s what it took. Their countrymen had sent the British packing in the 1800s and early 1900s, and after years of warfare, they’d beaten the Russians’ butts in the late part of the last century.

They were tough, brutal, and driven, willing to take the battle to the limit. And unlike the Americans they were currently trying to kill, these guys didn’t have any rules of engagement.

Which meant they had to go.

Now.

Even though it involved close-in shooting, Quinn, being the designated sniper and therefore the team’s best marksman, was the logical choice for the assault.

‘‘You get to play cowboy,’’ Zach said.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Quinn grinned. ‘‘Yippee-ki-yay.’’

While the others provided cover fire, he rolled across the snow toward an outcropping of rock behind and about five feet above the bunker.

Meanwhile, the enemy kept blasting away with those damn AK-47s the Russians had left behind, the red tracers hitting all around him, looking like an outbreak of measles on the white snow.

A bullet zinged off the eyelet of his right boot. Quinn decided if he survived this clusterfuck he was going to have the boot bronzed.

He reached the rocks, wishing as he clambered up them that Mother Nature had given him Zach’s long, lean runner’s body. At six foot five, two twenty-five, he wasn’t much of a mountain goat. But he did make one helluva big target.

He pulled himself onto the ledge, slid into the zone, and began blasting away.

Quinn had no idea how long he kept shooting. Even Zach, who was better at keeping track of such things, told him it could have been seconds. Minutes. Maybe even hours.

Afterward, they gathered up their wounded, dragging them into the bunker to get them out of the driving sleet and snow.

During that time Zach and Quinn stayed outside, atop the rocks, trying to reach anyone who could send in another Chinook to evacuate the wounded, but the radio refused to work.

One of the men left the bunker. ‘‘Excuse me, Chief,’’ he said, ‘‘but I think I might just be able to help.’’

‘‘Who the hell are you?’’

‘‘Tech Sergeant Dallas O’Halloran at your service. I’m a CCT.’’

Zach exchanged a look with Quinn, who shrugged. ‘‘What the hell is an Air Force combat controller doing on this mission?’’

‘‘Coming to your rescue?’’ O’Halloran asked with what Quinn thought was inordinate good cheer considering what they’d all just gone through.

CCTs were techs that hardly any civilians even knew existed. Although the Air Force had a reputation among Special Forces as ‘‘three push-ups and you’re in,’’ the selection process for combat controller was nearly as daunting as it was to become a SEAL.

Not only were they geniuses when it came to coordinating weapon-laden aircraft, they had to be able to fit in with SEALs and Delta Force on the ground. Which was why there were less than a hundred of them out there.

And hoo-yah, it appeared Quinn’s team had drawn one of their own.

‘‘I was a last-minute addition,’’ O’Halloran explained. ‘‘But, Chief, this is your lucky day.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ Zach drawled, ‘‘I noticed that right off the bat when that RPG took down our bird.’’

‘‘That was bad,’’ the CCT agreed with typical Spec Ops understatement. ‘‘But I’ve got the answer.’’

He dug into his rucksack and pulled out a radio with a thin whip antenna. ‘‘I learned about this handy-dandy gizmo from a female sailor I met while she was on shore leave in the Green Zone.’’ He began twisting dials. ‘‘They have them on ships. It allows them to talk to anyone in the joint services, whatever the frequency.’’

‘‘Cool,’’ Zach said.

O’Halloran flashed a grin that could’ve lit up the Kush for a month of Sundays. ‘‘Fuckin’ A.’’

He got through, but the news was not good.

‘‘Sorry,’’ the voice from the command and control center said. ‘‘We’ve gone way beyond the thirty minutes to daylight window.’’

‘‘I realize that, sir,’’ O’Halloran said.

He frowned. When he exchanged a look with the other two men on the rocky ledge, Quinn knew they were all thinking the same thing. Back in the first Gulf War, just as dawn had been breaking, a Spectre gunship had delayed returning to base long enough to help out an embattled unit of Marines. Unfortunately, the rising sun had allowed an Iraqi with a deadly surface-to-air missile to see the gunship, which subsequently crashed, killing all fourteen people aboard.

‘‘But we’ve got wounded, sir.’’