Dead Shot (3 page)

“Yes, sir,” Freedman said, not looking up. “An Iraqi physicist who we thought had disappeared in 1992 showed up two weeks ago in Baghdad. He arranged a surrender to an Army intel officer and claimed to have vital information about a new weapon of mass destruction at a place he called the Palace of Death.”

Sybelle, studying her red fingernails, interrupted. “A WMD? I thought we killed that old horse and buried it a long time ago. Everybody looked everywhere and nobody found anything.”

“Save the questions and comments,” said Middleton. “Go ahead, Lizard.”

“Other than saying it was a chemical-biological agent, he was reluctant to give much real information until he was formally given immunity from prosecution and protection for himself and his family. He was kept under wraps until yesterday, when a meeting was set up at Coalition Headquarters for the first formal interrogation, and he was being delivered by an armed escort of four soldiers. A sniper picked him off before he got there and also killed the officer in charge of the escort detail.”

“Talk to me, Double-Oh,” said Middleton.

“A good piece of shooting,” said Master Gunny Dawkins as he went through the photographs of the corpses. “The first bullet hit the officer by going through the unarmored point beneath the armpit of his vest and took out the internal organs right to left, including the heart. Then
the Iraqi was hit in the jugular vein along the neck, just above the collar of his armored vest, left to right. Exit through his throat.” He closed the folder. “One of those might be a lucky shot. Not two. This sniper hit what he was aiming at, and both victims bled out on the spot. My conclusion is that this was another attack by Juba.”

The general closed the drawer with his foot and slid the chair forward so he could rest his arms on the desk. “What’s your take, Captain Summers?”

“I agree with Double-Oh. It’s got to be Juba, sir. Shoots, kills, and disappears. We don’t know whether he is just one man or several different snipers, whether he is even real or just some Arabian fairy tale to pump up the spirits of the jihadists. Whatever, he’s the best they’ve got, and pulling off an assassination like this in the Green Zone enhances his reputation.”

Freedman did some calculations in his head. “I figure the shooter had a target area of no more than an inch. The unprotected opening between the vest and the sleeve of the first victim was only about an inch wide, and the sniper squeezed a bullet in there. The second shot was exact enough to hit the vein, an even smaller target. I can work up the ballistics, angles, and all that if you want.”

“Not necessary,” said Middleton. “The people in Baghdad are doing that, and we will have their data when it comes in. What is interesting is that he knew exactly who to shoot and when the target was going to appear in a certain place at a certain time. Total inside information.”

“Liz, did the informant say anything else worthwhile before he got popped?” Double-Oh crossed his right leg over his left knee, taking up even more space. Sybelle pushed him.

“An intel report arrived just before we came in here for the meeting,” interjected Middleton. “The scientist said he had escaped from a laboratory in Iran, and he gave a general location near the Iraq border.”

“He used that particular word, sir? Escaped?”

“Right. So, people, that’s our mission. We are going to do a little snoop and poop and find that mysterious lab.”

Middleton stood and stretched, throwing his arms wide, then put his hands on his hips. “So we’re going in. Sybelle, you will stay here this
time and oversee the operation. Spin up an infiltration team and get them over to Doha. Double-Oh, you will lead the team on the ground. On your way over, detour out to Sir Geoffrey’s boat and pick up Swanson. Give them a briefing, and then you two hustle down to Kuwait. Order anything you need through Lieutenant Commander Freedman.”

The Lizard blew out a short breath of relief. He did not like to travel far from his desk. “Sir, is it wise to use Gunny Swanson on this? According to Captain Summers, he really needs some down time.”

Double-Oh answered. “Liz, if there is any fucking chance at all that we might bump into Juba while we run this job, I want our best shooter along to cover my ass. I’ll put my money on Kyle, tired or not.”

“Then he can sleep on the plane to Kuwait,” said General Middleton. “Get to it, people. Go get me some pictures of this Palace of Death.”

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

T
HE ROYAL WEDDING OF
Prince William and the beautiful Barbara Seldingham, the future king and queen of England, was a plum for the press. A billion people would gather around television sets from Africa to Australia to watch the splendid event.
A billion!
Maybe more.

Television stations wanting to personalize the coverage could send a reporter and crew to London but could not transport their own mobile rigs overseas and had to lease the needed technical equipment. Every such company in the region had been booked for months in advance, and others were created just for that purpose.

Edinburgh All-Media Ltd., in Scotland, was one of the small companies founded to serve the huge demand. It had filed papers for a business permit, found a storefront office, then bought and reconfigured two vans especially for commercial television use, including external generators to power computers and editing gear inside the cargo areas. One was immediately rented by a television station in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the other was leased to a cable company in Italy. The two trucks were given distinctive purple and white paint schemes.

Juba wore a jumpsuit that matched those colors as he drove the lead van away from the city center and onto the City of Edinburgh Bypass, the A720. He slipped on dark sunglasses as he turned east, directly into the morning sun, and drove on until the A720 merged with the A1 at Old Craighall Junction. The second van followed, and they crossed the border at Lamberton.

They made the journey of a twisting 420 miles to London in a single day, entered the city, and maneuvered to the cordoned-off far end of Kensington Park that had been reserved for the regiment of production trucks that would support the television horde. There was a short line of trucks waiting to get in, and the two vans from Edinburgh All-Media slid into position at the rear. A policeman told them to stay with the vehicles until the security teams cleared them. For thirty minutes, they followed as the line grew shorter until Juba drove onto a special parking pad caked with detection sensors, where a four-man squad and their bomb-sniffing dog thoroughly combed the vehicle and found nothing. Once cleared to be inside the quarantine area, a van could not leave until after the wedding.

Juba was given a map with a specific parking slot highlighted with a yellow marking pen: the very back row, against the Cyclone fence. The other purple and white van had a slightly better spot, one row in front and about fifty yards away, to the left. The Italians had more clout than the station from Arkansas.

The driver of the second van caught a late train back to Scotland, where he would dismantle the little office of Edinburgh All-Media Ltd. Juba did not have far to go: he was spending a few days with his mother and father at their small place in the West Midlands, the home of his boyhood.

I
N THE
M
ED
,
A
streak of sunshine as bright as a spotlight came through the slightly parted curtains over the porthole and hammered the face of Kyle Swanson until he woke up. It was almost noon. Everyone passing in the corridor outside had been content not to awaken him and had tiptoed around his cabin door. After stretching, he took a shower and shaved. By the time he put on fresh jeans and a golf shirt and running shoes, he almost felt human. His head hurt.

Stepping outside, he found that the storm had passed on and had been replaced by a calm green sea and a sunlit sky, and the
Vagabond
was heading east at about twenty knots, churning into the deep water.
No land was visible. A squadron of seagulls followed the white wake, and the temperature was warm.

Up one deck, he entered the main cabin of the yacht, a spacious lounge with a full bar in one corner and a comfortable arrangement of sofas, soft chairs, and heavy antique Chinese tables. A giant flat-screen television set and an electronic entertainment center were built into one bulkhead. Sir Geoffrey Cornwell was hunched forward and reading news reports flashing on the screen of a laptop computer. A retired colonel from the British Special Air Services, Jeff had built a fortune making and selling state-of-the-art weapons systems. He seldom got excited and was very aware that warriors handled stress in different ways. It was not exactly a secret that they got drunk on occasion to deal with the stress.

Jeff raised his shaggy eyebrows. “Rough night?”

A carafe of chilled orange juice was on the buffet, and Kyle poured a glass and drank it before answering. He filled a thick ceramic mug with coffee and picked up a small bowl of fruit at the buffet. “Was drunk. Now sober.” No apologies.

Lady Patricia was reading a magazine beside a large window that provided a panoramic view of the passing sea. She looked up, took an elegant pull on a small, thin cigar, and blew away the smoke. “You are our wayward boy, Kyle. You were quite naughty last night, but we’ve seen you worse. Do it again, however, and I shall spank you.”

“Is that an offer, m’lady?” He smiled. Conversation made his head hurt.

“Don’t act the little pervert now. Ask Dr. Russell to give you something for your hangover.”

“I’m fine,” said Kyle.

“Spoken like a true warrior. You are truly a hard man, Kyle Swanson,” Sir Jeff said without looking away from the screen.

They sat in silence for a while, comfortable, and Kyle let his eyes close. In two minutes he was asleep again, with his head back against the sofa. Pat looked over at Jeff, who gestured that she should keep quiet. “Let him be,” he said. Jeff had just checked one of his e-mail accounts
and found an encoded message from Washington. Trouble was on the way, and Kyle was going to need all the sleep he could get.

C
APTAIN
R
ICK
N
EWMAN WAS
in a garage on a military base in North Carolina, up to his armpits in grease as he worked on his latest automotive restoration project, a 1955 Chevy Bel Air two-door hardtop with fender skirts. The outside skin of the old car was in decent shape, not much rust; the original baby blue and cream paint scheme was still visible, the chrome running trim undented. The interior needed major renovation, but it would just take some time and money to make it cherry again. The engine, though, a rare 350 V8, was for shit, and the deeper he dug into its guts, the shittier things got. It would cost a fortune to replace the whole thing, which was against the rules for a serious hobbyist and car trader like Newman. He had bought the car for nine thousand dollars at an Alabama estate sale and planned to restore it personally and sell it on the upside of $50K. It would take years. “Hey, Cap’n! You got a phone call over here,” shouted a motor pool Marine.

Rick wiped the grease from his hands and picked up the receiver. “Captain Newman,” he said.

“Hey, Rick. This is Sybelle Summers calling from Trident in Washington.” The voice was some hybrid of a normal tone, authoritative sandpaper, and a purr.

“Hi, Sybelle. Long time,” he said, suddenly alert. “What’s up?”

“We’ve got a job for you, my friend. Get back to your office right away and call me back on a secure line. Top Secret.”

“On my way,” he said. “Fifteen minutes.” He hung up, closed the Chevy’s hood, and hurried away to clean up and get to his desk. The Bel Air would have to wait. Newman was part of a Marine Special Operations Company that comprised four platoons. The rotation had one platoon in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, one in training at this secret base in North Carolina, and the fourth on ready alert, sitting on a short leash, ready to go anywhere in four hours.

When he spoke to Sybelle Summers on the secure link, her orders were quite simple and explicit. He was to choose five more designated operators for a black mission, get over to Camp Doha, in Kuwait, and link up there with Master Gunnery Sergeant O. O. Dawkins, who would give them a full briefing. Eight men would be going in, and Newman’s group would provide the guns in case something went wrong.

She gave him only a brief overview to help pick the specialists he would take and said he could plus up with scouts, snipers, or anyone else he needed. Trident would chop them from their current assignments and arrange the temporary duty. To Newman, it sounded like he was going to need shooters to provide firepower for a special op. He had plenty of good ones from which to choose. He would rather work with people from his own team, highly disciplined and well trained, who already knew each other. His group would click together like a well-oiled military machine. Hughes, Tipp, and Rawls for certain. Two more and himself. The addition was easy. His group was six. Double-Oh made seven. Who was the eighth?

Newman began making calls of his own.

Darren Rawls faked a move to the right, pulled back, and went up and up and up. Rawls, with a thirty-one-inch vertical leap, seemed to levitate in slow motion as he flicked his wrist and delivered a jump shot from the top of the key. His sneakers hit the concrete court as the ball finished its arc to the basket with nothing but net. “Game over, Rabbit. Pay me the money,” he told Joe Tipp, a lanky white boy who was better at football than hoops. Both were sweating hard in the North Carolina sun that baked the hidden, off-limits military installation. They were the lead instructors in an escape and evasion training mission and had started the young members of the platoon through the assigned exercise at dawn. The first and fastest would be approaching the finish well after dark. At sundown, when the trainees were exhausted but feeling confident about having made the distance, Rawls and Tipp would hunt them down, one by one, and capture them. Then the fun would begin in the interrogation hut. Until then, they
might as well play ball or take a nap. Their beepers sang out at the same moment.

Travis Hughes was out pillaging and terrorizing the countryside on his Suzuki Hayabusa GSX1300R. The speed limit was 65 mph, but Hughes had not pimped out his bright red rice-burner to go 65. The Marine staff sergeant, a sniper team leader, wore a blue bandanna around his head, dark sunglasses, creased black leathers with an Outlaws patch, and biker boots. Long red hair flew behind him as he stormed back toward the base. The blonde at the bar had been with Marines before, and when the beeper stuttered on his belt, she knew he was gone. She walked with him outside and gave him a long wet kiss when he powered up his machine. She nibbled his ear and said, “Stay out of trouble this time, Travis.” Hughes revved up the bike. “Don’t think I can do that, darlin’,” he said and launched the motorcycle out onto the road, laughing into the sharp wind that whipped around him. He bent low over the handlebars and cranked it up to a comfortable 110, hauling butt back to the base.

LONDON

Television reporter Kimberly Drake was only two years out of journalism school and still a little fish, even within her Arkansas station. She wanted to be considered a serious journalist, not just a talking head, and sometimes felt that her good looks were no advantage whatsoever. Every station had a beautiful anchor or weathergirl, and she could no longer even imagine an unattractive woman hosting a television newscast. To break out of Little Rock, Kim needed some big stories, and once she had earned her spurs and boosted her reputation, she could jump to a bigger station or at least a cable network.

Then, out of nowhere, the station management decided to send its own correspondent to the royal wedding, just like its big competitors, as part of the continuing battle for advertising dollars. Kimberly would
have happily either screwed or killed her news director to get the assignment but did not have to do either. Since the rest of the reporting staff was male and the female anchor was too pregnant to travel, nobody else even wanted the assignment! To the guys, it was just a wedding. Fluff, not like a Super Bowl or a war.

The station gave Kim the job but put very little money behind the trip. Tom Lester, a veteran cameraman, accompanied her, along with a young engineer who would work as a soundman for the stand-ups. The shoestring budget meant they operated out of a small purple and white production van that the station had hired at bargain basement rates.

Kimberly did not care. As she left the Royal Wedding Command Center Press Office in London with her new laminated credentials on a chain around her neck and walked toward the media production area in Kensington Park, she felt like a real reporter for the first time in her life.

It was not until late that night that reality sank in. Because of her low status, Kim’s truck had been assigned a space far away from the parade route, on the very back row. From the camera position atop the van, she could overlook the vast media lot that had been cordoned off, and she was jealous that another purple and white van from the same company, rented by an Italian cable operator, had been given a slightly better spot about fifty yards away.

She had never seen so many media types. British journalists were as aggressive as pit bulls, and reporters and television people from dozens of other countries were arriving, also wearing press credentials for the big event. There were hundreds of them around, many of whom she recognized, although they did not know her. The network people were right at the front! Media money was everywhere. Private residents had fled the city and rented out their apartments and homes at exorbitant rates. Restaurant prices doubled around the heart of the press operations because the reporters were on expense accounts.

Kim Drake stood atop her van and sipped a cup of coffee and stared out over the media throng. She had to admit she was a little fish over here, too. A guppy swimming with sharks.
I’ll show them. I’ll show them all.