Jack Coughlin - Dead Shot

He had four magazines with fifteen rounds in each clip, and Kyle thumbed out the bullets one by one to personally examine them for any defect. The shiny brass cartridges were laid out side by side on the white towel, gleaming in the overhead light, each a marvelous little piece of engineering built precisely by Beretta to fit the barrel of the 9 mm pistol. They were all soft-tipped rounds designed to avoid a ricochet indoors. The bullet would create an entry wound as small as a dime, but once it slammed into bone, the soft nose would splinter with the impact of a small grenade and shred everything around it. It was not supposed to exit the body. Swanson always enjoyed watching movies in which shooters used their knives to carve an X on the tip of a bullet to make it open up. Fantasy. The rounds were already designed to do that. Start screwing around with your rounds and you will screw up the barrel and the accuracy of the weapon; then you are the one who is screwed. He reloaded the magazines.

The little Ruger five-shot revolver was even easier, but the maintenance was performed with the same amount of care. Open the cylinder, visually inspect it, clean it, load it, and bingo, it was ready. The Gerber knife was easier still. Just wipe down the blade, which gleamed along the cutting edge that had been honed in the armorer’s shop. Field strip and op check on all weapons. Good to go.

Comfortable with his personal arsenal, he slipped into his night outfit: black jeans, black sneakers and socks, long-sleeved black turtleneck T-shirt, and black windbreaker. A woolen balaclava mask was rolled up into a watch cap and adjusted for a firm fit and so his eyes could see out of the openings. The Gerber went into one pocket; the Ruger was on his ankle and the Glock snug in the shoulder rig. He turned out the lights and lay on the bed to let his eyes adjust to the gathering darkness.

Swanson closed his eyes and lay there for thirty minutes, breathing slowly, trying not to fall asleep because he had work to do tonight. Thoughts of Shari Towne flitted at the edge of his consciousness. As a lieutenant commander in the Navy, she had been given a hero’s funeral at Arlington, her coffin rolled to the gravesite on a horse-drawn carriage. The box was virtually empty because she had been riddled by gunfire and blown apart by two satchels of explosives. There was no family present at the funeral. Shari’s father had died years before, and her beautiful mother died in the same attack that stole Shari’s life. Shari was the end of the family line.

Kyle wasn’t there for the ceremony because he had been stashed in a secret medical clinic abroad recovering from bullet wounds of his own. He now considered it ironic that he and Shari were both officially buried at Arlington, yet neither was really in that hallowed dirt. He felt that they were still together, and she occasionally visited him in dreams that were so vivid he could describe exactly what she was wearing. They could not speak to each other, they could not touch, but they could be together for an almost tangible moment, no more than a heartbeat, and she always had that glorious smile. Now another face was also showing up, unbidden, in his thoughts, that of Delara Tabrizi.

Stop it, he commanded himself. This is getting me nowhere. Keep on the mission, and the other stuff will sort itself out. God, I need some rest.

Green Light. That order came straight from the top. Finding out so unexpectedly where the man known as Saladin was provided a very narrow window of opportunity. This was the person responsible for the poison gas attack on London, and he was now blackmailing the world. The decision was made to take him off the board while there was a chance and to seize the formula and plans for the weapon. The president was absolutely right that the United States did not assassinate people. But the dead man who used to be Kyle Swanson did.

Darkness had fallen, and it was raining when he opened the window, a nice French rain that alternated between a fine mist and a wet mop in the face. Anyone watching would avoid looking upward, and amateurs would seek shelter. Since he had turned off the lights, the assumption would be that he was sleeping. Three floors below, an alley stretched along the back of the hotel. Empty. No darker shadows huddled within the other shadows.

Kyle stuffed a hotel towel into his jacket, stepped through the window onto a ledge, faced the wall, and closed the window behind him.

The Lizard had provided maps and layouts from satellite imagery and building blueprints, and the room had been chosen because of its proximity to steel latticework erected for some outside renovation. The Lizard had measured it to be exactly eleven feet from the window. Kyle scooted carefully along the wet ledge, grabbed the scaffolding, and was down in the alley in seconds. He went into the shadows of a garbage bin, dried off with the towel, and tossed it.

Turning his back to the street and cupping his hand to shield the light, he pushed a button and the dial of his watch illuminated with a soft blue glow. It was almost 2200 on the dot, two hours before midnight, and Paris was open for business.

Swanson used a combination of taxis and the subway system, frequently doubling back and walking through stores to check for followers, and only when he was convinced that he was alone did he edge to the northeast and into the Nineteenth Arrondissement.

The first time past the house, he had a cab drive aimlessly around for ten minutes, and they passed the small compound without slowing. He got out of the taxi four blocks away at a small restaurant, where he went in, ordered a glass of red wine, and made a cell phone call.

Sybelle arrived within twenty minutes, dry and playing the part of a girlfriend. “Hi,” she said and touched his hand. She sat down at his table and also ordered a glass of wine, and Kyle explained what they needed to do. Urban warfare is a sniper’s specialty because all windows and buildings and fences offer places to set up a hide. He had no intention of allowing the coming fight to be fair, and he and Sybelle could check out the place as a couple on the street without arousing suspicion. They would look for ways to tilt the playing field in Kyle’s favor.

Swanson put some money on the table, and the two of them left, squeezing beneath Sybelle’s small black umbrella. They approached the house from the north, walking slowly along the old sidewalk, with Kyle’s arm around her waist. She snuggled closer and giggled, working on the cover as both of them swept the area with their eyes and ears.

Saladin had strong security. Two sentries stood in the courtyard, and newly mounted cameras were at all corners to watch the surrounding streets and the interior grounds. Guard on the roof. A street person stumbled past them, drinking from a bottle. External surveillance. Plus whoever was inside. Probably an alarm system. Not just good security, Kyle thought, but too much. Like they were expecting someone. Me?

Sybelle and Kyle walked back to the restaurant, and she pulled a pair of night vision goggles and small binoculars from her purse and handed them to Swanson. He would go back out onto the rain-slick streets now for a deeper recon from the shadows. “I’ll have some coffee so I can be close by if you need backup,” she said.

“I assume you saw everything that I did,” Kyle said. He had a puzzled look. “But did you feel that something seemed out of place back there?”

She crossed her arms. “That flicker of light at the window of the corner building. Somebody else is watching that place.”

“Yeah,” said Kyle. “We’re not the only game in town.”

K YLE S WANSON DID NOTtry to intellectualize the assassination. He had been ordered to do the job and given free rein to carry it out. Besides, he believed that the bastard had earned this as the price for organizing the London attack on a crowd of innocent people and for slaughtering prisoners in awful experiments. The only question that Swanson had was how soon he could pull the trigger, then go into the madman’s lair and get the data on the poison gas. It had eluded him in Iran, and he did not want to miss again.