Ghost Sniper (29 page)

“So what now?”

“Now . . .” He took a drag from the cigarette. “Now we get Pope to appoint you Mexico chief of station.”

She gaped at him. “Are you high?”

“What's wrong? You don't want the job?”

She sat up in the seat. “Want the job? How are we going to get him to give it to me?”

“We won't leave him any choice.”

“What about Dan?”

Gil shrugged. “What about him?”

“He was counting on your help with the sniper.”

“Dan can handle Rhett Hancock.”

“You know him?”

“I know
about
him. He's a good shot, but he's nothing special. Besides, if I stick my nose into that fight down in Toluca, Pope will recognize my kill patterns and figure out I'm still alive. I can't risk that. I went through too goddamn much trouble getting myself killed.”

“Well, if I have to keep your secret, I at least want to know how you did it—and why.”

He stopped for a red light and looked at her, the merest hint of a grin on his face. “I can see what he sees in you.”

Her face flushed, and she looked out the window. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

Gil chuckled and pulled through the intersection. “
Why
is my secret, but
how
is easy enough to tell . . .”

72

ZHANGJIAJIE, CHINA

12:50 HOURS

Out of the fog appeared a flatbed tow truck with the ramp down, its yellow lights flashing atop the cab.

“This is gonna taste like shit!” Gil snarled, locking up the brakes and skidding cockeyed up the ramp, seemingly out of control. The battered black Land Rover caromed off the back of the cab and careened over the guardrail to disappear into the fog.

The exploding airbag was a problem for the first half second—the hot gas and powder stinging Gil's eyes as he released the seat belt. But the vehicle rolled over to the right as planned, and he opened the door, allowing the centrifugal force to throw him clear. After that it was simply a matter of spreading his arms and legs, soaring away though the fog in the black wing suit.

Unable to see the surface of the river, he kept an eye on the altimeter Velcroed to his wrist, conscious of the fact he was picking up a good deal of speed as he descended. Thirty feet from the surface,
the mist cleared well enough to see, and he braced himself for impact, skidding into the water at an angle of 20 degrees doing better than sixty miles per hour. The impact bloodied his nose, knocked the wind out of him, and dislocated his shoulder, but he rolled onto his back and kept himself afloat until Nahn came motoring out of the morning fog to haul him into a small boat.

They were ashore within three minutes, where Nahn reset his shoulder by sitting on the ground, putting his foot into Gil's armpit and giving his wrist a stiff pull. The joint popped back into the socket, and Gil sat up with a groan, working the shoulder.

“How was your flight?” Nahn asked with a grin.

Gil got to his feet, unzipping the soaking wing suit. “The service was a little slow.”

They were in a van headed for Chongqing ten minutes later. Upon their arrival at a secluded airfield, the two were flown in a private plane to within a few miles of the Vietnamese border, where both men parachuted out of the aircraft at low altitude, gliding over the border to land safely in northern Vietnam, where Nahn's nephews were waiting to take them to Hanoi.

From Hanoi, Gil was able to access his bank account in the Cayman Islands and make all the necessary arrangements for his trip to Mexico.

At the airport, Gil and Nahn shook hands.

“Thanks, old friend. I owe you more than I can repay. And don't worry. The man who betrayed you will pay for what he did. You have my word.”

Nahn smiled, saying,
“Ai làm n
y ch
u.”
Roughly translated: Whoever sows wind shall harvest storm.

73

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

16:00 HOURS

Midori appeared in the doorway to Pope's office. “You wanted to see me?”

He looked up and closed his laptop. “Come in and shut the door.”

She did as she was told, taking the seat before his desk and crossing her legs.

The vein in his head was pulsing, though his face showed no outward emotion. “You've been a very bad girl.”

“Oh?” she said innocently. “How so?”

“Lazaro Serrano is dead.”

She shrugged. “I don't know what that's got to do with me. I've never even been to Mexico.”

“Fields isn't answering his phone.”

She shrugged again. “It isn't my day to watch him.”

“Yet it appears you've been doing exactly that. What's more, last night you took personal control of a UAV”—an unmanned aerial
vehicle—“and more than twelve hours of surveillance footage have been illegally purged from all three data bases.”

“Again,” she said, “I don't know what that has to do with me. The CIA doesn't have stealth drones in the skies over Mexico. The president himself said so last week on national television.”

He sat staring at her.

“You can't have me prosecuted, Robert. We both know that. So you can either get over it, fire me, or have me killed. Which is it going to be?”

Pope ignored what he considered hyperbole. “Is Fields dead?”

She laced her fingers in her lap. “Extremely.”

He reddened. “Ortega?”

“No, but Crosswhite has him on ice. I don't expect he'll kill him unless Ortega does something stupid.”

Pope took off his glasses and tossed them onto the desk. “So who's running the goddamn show down there?”

“Mariana Mederos—and she appears to have all of her ducks in a row.”

“Does she, indeed? What are her intentions?”

“I don't know. I suppose we'll both have to wait and see.”

“This is entirely unacceptable!”

Midori grabbed the arms of the chair and sat forward. “Do you ever listen to yourself?
Unacceptable
, Robert? You assassinated an American diplomat!”

He darkened. “I'm not the first director to do so.”

“And you might not be the last, but Alice Downly was
your
last—at least as long as I'm working for you. I won't be party to it. I've gathered enough intelligence to demonstrate that you were complicit in her death. If I turn up dead, that intelligence goes public. And I'm not just talking about WikiLeaks. You can fire me, and I'll go away quietly—I'm not a vindictive person—but I have no control over what happens after I'm dead. My protector is beyond your reach.”

“Your
protector
?” He opened the middle desk drawer, taking the
top from a prescription bottle and swallowing an anxiety pill, chasing it with a drink of water. Then Pope tossed the pills back into the drawer and slammed it shut. “Damn you!”

“Damn
you
,” she said quietly.

“I trusted you!”

“I trusted
you
.”

Pope stood up from the desk and went to the window, looking out over the campus with his arms folded. “What about Hancock?” he said finally.

“Crosswhite and Vaught are organizing the defense of Toluca. They plan to kill him during the battle. That's as much as I know.”

He turned around. “Battle? What the hell's going on down there?”

“Crosswhite couldn't get to Serrano in time to stop the Ruvalcabas from moving to take over the city. The fighting began about an hour ago. The Mexican government has its hands full in Mexico City, where the Ruvalcabas are causing chaos, which means they're not sending any reinforcements.”

“So it's civil war.”

She shook her head. “Not really. Just another battle for a Mexican town while the federal government keeps its back turned. More like business as usual, I'd say.”

“I want to talk to Crosswhite. I assume you're in contact?”

“He won't talk to you. He's made it clear you have no say in what's going on down there right now.”

“He and Mariana are working together?”

She nodded. “Vaught is with them.”

Pope stood stroking his chin. “They're setting themselves up to take over Mexico station.”

“Robert, with Fields dead and Ortega fully compromised, they
are
Mexico station.”

The die was cast, and the CIA director saw there was nothing he could do about it. “What do they need from me?”

“They haven't asked for anything. They don't trust you anymore;
not after you turned them over to Fields. He tried to have them both killed. I'll take it on faith you knew nothing about that—and if you did, I don't ever want to know.”

“Who killed Fields?”

Not entirely convinced it was the correct move, Midori stuck to the plan and followed Gil's advice. “Mariana projected his movement; she acted first.”

Pope's eyes widened. “You're telling me she preempted him?”

“That's correct.”

“She did it herself?”

“Of course not. She maneuvered him into position for Castañeda's people.”

“She's learning,” he muttered, retaking his chair. “Her plan must be to consolidate the drug trade under Castañeda. Bad choice. But with Serrano dead, Ruvalcaba becomes a nonstarter.”

“She can work with Castañeda. He respects her—at least for now—and he's content to honor the truce.”

“Time will tell the truth of that. Where is she now?”

“She's safe. That's all she'd say.”

He elected not to waste time trying to get Midori to betray Mariana. “How much do your assistants know about this?”

“I've protected you completely, Robert—like I always do. The only difference is that I've taken steps to protect myself as well.”

He sat thinking. “Who's she sending after Ruvalcaba? She must have someone in mind.”

Midori kept her poker face. “All she would say is that she's sending someone who knows what they're doing.”

“Then we'll just have to trust her,” Pope decided. “With Hector Ruvalcaba out of the way, Castañeda becomes the last major player. The southern cartels will fall in line under his leadership to avoid a war, but we'll have to keep an eye on things down there. If another upstart shows his face . . .”

“Mariana will already have a professional team in-country to take him out.”

He chuckled, in spite of his annoyance at having been outmaneuvered. “Yes, I suppose she will, provided that their little coup is successful.”

Midori watched him closely as he spent the next couple of minutes pondering the mathematical probabilities, muttering at last to himself, “Something doesn't quite add up, though. There's an unknown variable left over at the end of this equation.”

Seeing genuine puzzlement in his eyes, Midori smiled inwardly, delighted that Pope had no idea Gil Shannon might still be alive.

74

TOLUCA, MEXICO

14:30 HOURS

The first firefight between the Toluca police and the Ruvalcabas took place near the center of town. Entirely by chance, two patrol trucks spotted a car with four of Ruvalcaba's men sitting at a traffic light. The police attempted a traffic stop, and the cartel members opened fire.

One police officer was wounded in the hand, but all four Ruvalcabas were killed by automatic weapons fire. After that, word spread through town, and within a half hour, the civilian population was in lockdown mode; they were not strangers to drug violence in their streets.

Crosswhite and Vaught stood inside an Oxxo carryout store near the scene of the shooting, talking with Chief Diego and Sergeant Cuevas. Crosswhite had reached town only fifteen minutes earlier, but Vaught had briefed him fully by phone prior to his arrival.

“I understand your desire to hold the center of town,” Crosswhite
told Diego, “but this isn't that kind of fight. There's nothing of value here, either to us or the enemy. The center of town is a symbol—nothing more. We have to hunt these people down and kill them.”

“But if we give up the center of town,” Diego said, “the people will think we've abandoned them and go over to the enemy.”

Crosswhite began to argue, but Vaught caught him by the arm. “He's right. We have to hold the center of town. Symbolism is important here.”

“Goddamnit, we don't have enough men for that!”

“If I may?” said Sergeant Cuevas.

Crosswhite nodded.

“Twenty-five men can hold the center of town if the rest maintain a close orbit, crisscrossing at regular intervals to give the appearance of a greater presence. In the meantime, the patrols can sweep the streets and engage when necessary.”

Crosswhite liked the idea in principle. “That will work until nightfall. After that, they'll block many of the streets with
narco­bloqueos
, and we'll have to modify the tactic. But I like the plan. It should get us through the day and keep the people from thinking we've run out on them.”

“But after dark, we'll pull the patrols much closer to the center,” Diego insisted. This was a tactic similar to that used in the north along the border before the truce with Castañeda had been struck. By day, the police had patrolled freely, whereas by night, many towns had been forced to suspend police services altogether to avoid their officers being killed in ambushes.

Crosswhite wanted to employ much more aggressive tactics, but it wasn't his police department, and the men weren't trained well enough for night action. Still, he wasn't satisfied to fight a holding action. He took Vaught by the shoulder and walked him aside as three other officers came into the store to talk with the chief.

“With everyone bunched up together around the center of town tonight, Hancock's gonna have a target-rich environment to work with.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Vaught said. “We should detach from the main body and be ready to move on him the second he fires.”

“He'll have skirmishers. We won't be able to run right up on him the way you did last night.”

“I'll talk Cuevas into giving me that grenade launcher of his. We'll hit 'em hard and fast. Hell, we might even get Hancock in the barrage.”

“If we could be so lucky,” Crosswhite said, snatching a pack of cigarettes from the rack behind the counter.

Vaught grinned. “Gonna pay for those?”

“I'm defending the city. If that's not payment enough, they can root through my pockets when I'm dead.”

Sergeant Cuevas stepped up and tossed a fifty-peso note onto the counter. “I have Diego's permission to detach my team after sundown to work with you. There will be seven of us to move on the sniper when he fires. One of us should get through to him.” He offered Vaught his FX-05 with the AG36 40 mm grenade launcher.

Vaught took a dip from his can of Copenhagen. “I won't need it if you're coming along, Sergeant.”

“I've fired the grenade launcher only twice,” Cuevas said. “I'm sure you have a better eye for it.”

Crosswhite tore the cellophane from the pack of smokes. “Vaught's not trained on the weapon system. That makes you the grenadier, Sergeant.” He turned for the door. “Thanks for the cigarettes, by the way.”

When he was gone outside, Cuevas looked at Vaught. “Did he really kill Serrano?”

Tucking away the tobacco can in his pocket, Vaught nodded. “Are you conflicted by that . . . believe you should arrest him?”

Cuevas smirked and started for the door. “I'd sooner arrest him for stealing the cigarettes.”