James Lilliefors - Viral

Again, the alarms chirped. Two of them. Both men were closing in. He thought about Nadra Nkosi and Jason Wells, both of whom had wanted to be here. Stay calm , he told himself. Stay focused .

The first predator was less than three hundred meters away now. Probably close enough. The Heckler & Koch PSG1 had an accuracy range of more than six hundred meters, but Charlie wanted to be certain that he could get him with a single shot. And even then, he didn’t want to do it without knowing where the other man was.

Another sudden movement. The man in camouflage jammed himself forward through the brush and went down. Mallory tried to find him through the scope. Saw nothing. He looked at the monitor screen. Nothing. Where was Hassan?

Charlie listened to the quiet, identifying each of the sounds: light wind high in the branches; a bird calling from a tree; another lifting off into the air; a distant scurrying sound.

When he spotted the other predator again, he felt a surge of relief. He watched the man pull himself on his elbows into a closer cover, behind a tree stump and a thicket of branches.

The man mounted his gun on the branch of a fallen tree, this time sighting the window, it seemed. Charlie’s window.

Charlie stood in front of the window for an instant to let the man see him, then ducked away, falling to the floor and crawling across to the other window. He removed the bipod from the gun and pointed the weapon from a corner of the window. Adjusted his sight and dialed an elevation into the scope to correct for the arc of the bullet at three hundred meters. He found the man again in his cross-hairs. Saw the pores in his skin. The receding hairline. The hook on his cheek. The eyes—steady, obsessively steady, but focusing on the wrong window.

The predator pulled his head away from the sight for a moment, to give himself perspective. That’s when Charlie squeezed the trigger. The 7.62mm bullet cracked through the silence, striking the man in the left eye, snapping his head back. The sound of the shot echoed through the woods, along with frantic motion. Deer, probably.

Charles Mallory crawled to the back room and studied the woods where Hassan had been, moving his scope from side to side. Nothing. He listened. Heard twigs cracking, faraway footsteps. Someone running, perhaps, in the other direction. He planted the bipod on the table and adjusted his scope for a longer range. Saw a blur in the woods, moving away from him. He dialed an elevation for five hundred meters. Found the moving target skittering down a hill. But he was unable to get a clear view. He fired, missed. Fired again. The figure seemed to drop. Silence. Then he scrambled up, running. Mallory saw him through the scope, fired again.

He looked with his naked eye, saw nothing. Heard nothing. Fourteen minutes later, the perimeter sensors chirped. Il Macellaio was leaving the site. Fourteen minutes .

Charlie carried the sniper rifle out the front door. He got in the Jeep and drove back toward the two-lane paved road. A quarter mile down the gravel drive he stopped. Surveyed the woods through his scope.

But he saw nothing.

He drove on, more slowly, scanning the woods with his eyes.

Another eighth of a mile and then he saw him, to the left in the woods. Il Macellaio , lying on his side, facing away from the drive.

Charlie stopped the truck. He cautiously stepped out, aiming his rifle at the predator. Stepped toward him, watching his hands, which were still gripping his rifle. Waiting for him to move. The wound was in his shoulder, he saw. Probably not fatal. Charlie stood behind him, waiting for Mehmet Hassan to lift up his torso. To take a final shot. But nothing happened. If Hassan was not dead then, he was a minute later.

THAT EVENING, JON MALLORY posted the first installment, about alleged irregularities involving Champion Funds investments. The link with the criminal banking network was enough to start a chain reaction. It began with this paragraph:

“WASHINGTON—One of the world’s largest but most secretive private equity firms has quietly poured billions of dollars into unlikely corners of Africa and elsewhere in the developing world over the past eleven months through more than a dozen separate, but connected, corporations. These entities have purchased land and businesses and launched ambitious infrastructure and energy projects, in some cases working with unstable and corrupt regimes and a largely unregulated banking network controlled by developer Isaak Priest, according to sources familiar with the deals.”

Over the next several weeks, a succession of stories played out in newspapers and magazines, on television and websites internationally. When a good story gathered momentum, it became a kind of living organism, Jon Mallory had learned. But in this case, most of the big scoops came from The Weekly American .

The headlines cascaded into one another, as new revelations emerged on an almost daily basis:

Regulators Probe Champion Group

Gardner Foundation Linked to Isaak Priest Banking Network

Bio-Weapons Figure Ivan Vogel Tied to Gardner Project

How Landon Pine Became ‘Isaak Priest’

What is ‘Covenant Division’?

Perry Gardner’s Frightening Vision: A ‘New Paradigm’

‘Depopulation’: First Step in ‘New Paradigm’ Project

Gardner Accused of Orchestrating Sundiata Genocide

Mancala Was Focus of New Paradigm Project

‘New Paradigm’ Would Have Killed 8 Million Africans

CIA Reportedly Knew of Paradigm Project

Congress Shuts Down Covenant Division

Covenant Probe: Richard Franklin, Gus Hebron, Seven Others Indicted

Gardner Middleman Douglas Chase Commits Suicide

Perry Gardner Indicted on Eleven Counts

Jon Mallory sat on the porch of his rented waterfront home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Out back, the Patuxent River glittered with a cool morning sun and the dogwoods were in glorious bloom. Jon had decided to move away from the city at the beginning of March, to find a respite on the water where he could write his story and enjoy the changing season. The story had transformed Jon Mallory in many ways, not only the obvious ones. He had won accolades for his reporting and a lucrative book contract. But the attention seemed largely frivolous, a distraction from the things that mattered. For weeks he had found himself savoring the subtleties of his life, embracing feelings of gratitude that had no clear point of origin, noticing the nuances of nature as he hadn’t since childhood.

By late March, the international shock caused by the revelations about Perry Gardner and the “New Paradigm” were wearing off. The public had been riveted by the story through the winter, but attention spans were short and people seemed anxious for other news. Jon’s latest story, which began on the cover of The Weekly American , was a people story, about Sandra Oku and her return to Sundiata with her son and her fiancé. Roger had titled it: “Journey Home: A Sundiata Story of Faith.” Sandra was working to help Sundiata recover, but also to make the world aware of how and why the devastation in her country had occurred.

Jon Mallory was watching the reflection of the dogwood trees rippling on the river when his cell phone rang.

Roger Church.

“Hi, Roger.”

“I think he got off easy,” he said

“What?”

“Didn’t you hear?”

“No.”

“Gardner.”

Jon slid open the screen door. He clicked on the television. Saw the “Breaking News” banner on CNN. Switched to Fox and saw the same.

“What happened?”

“Self-inflicted gunshot.”

“Really.”