Jack Coughlin - Kill Zone

Gates considered the situation at this new point. Shari Towne had been taken out in the attack on the Jordanian ambassador’s car. He would like to have had visual confirmation on Sims and Turner, but he had seen a lot of plane crashes and the odds were overwhelming that they were both cooked. Nothing had been heard from them since the shootdown. So three of the people who had learned about the letter were dead, which left three elusive Marines-Swanson, Dawkins, and Middleton.

The master sergeant aboard the ship was proving to be invisible, which won an approving smile from Gates for the Spec Ops veteran. It would take some luck to dig him out, particularly if he had the assistance of other people on the boat, but sooner or later he would be discovered. Gates just had to leave that in the hands of the NCIS people for the time being. Dawkins had no proof of whatever he might claim, so he was relatively harmless and totally isolated at sea.

He turned to the problem of General Middleton and Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson, who apparently had been on a rampage in Syria. The stakes for catching those two were enormous. The whole plan hung on finding them. One of his Sharks in Syria was dead, and the second was in the custody of the Syrian army, but alive and helping track Swanson. That didn’t worry Gates, because all Sharks were expendable. The risk was part of the big pay and benefits package.

But Swanson had freed General Middleton and had so far eluded the Sharks and the Syrian army. Gates had sent a message to the Rebel Sheikh requesting more jihadists to augment the search, because the more eyes they had looking, the better. It was best not to count too heavily on the Basra cleric, however. He was a slippery devil.

Gates went to a bar built into a wall of his office, where he kept a bottle of Absolut vodka in the freezer. He poured some into a tall glass and added ice cubes, club soda, and a slice of lime. He stirred and drank, letting his thoughts roam.

Google Earth was an excellent map program that could be used without pinging the military system. He called up the image of lower Syria and projected it on a large plasma screen. The southern area of the country jumped into view and he worked the mouse to increase magnification and tilt the image.

Not much there, he thought. Mostly flat and brown, with some stretches of cultivation. He put his mind in Spec Ops mode, placed the cursor on the village of Sa’ahn, and used the pointer tool to trace and measure possible routes of evasion. He had plenty of time, because the sniper and the general would be hiding in the daylight hours.

Swanson would avoid populated areas. The Syrians had helos in the air, but they had to cover a search area of several hundred square miles and probably would not see him. With so many helicopters searching, Swanson and Middleton had to keep their heads down during the day. If Gates were in the sniper’s boots, he would head south tonight and make a dash to the Jordanian border tomorrow at first light.

He sipped his icy vodka and tonic. Then he minimized the Google Earth map and brought up the digitalized copy of Swanson’s military jacket. Quite the package: a real war fighter and a gold-plated pain in the ass. Buchanan had screwed up by picking him for the job. Gates thought the man would be a terrific Shark Team leader, but would never flip for money.

He had to be stopped. Both Swanson and Middleton had to be killed. First they had to be found, and who better to look for Spec Ops types than Shark Teams who knew all of the tricks of that dark art? Victor Logan, a violent cretin in many ways, was one of the best, but Gates decided to lend the Syrians some more specialized assistance.

He tapped into his private database to see what was available. There was an unmanned aerial vehicle, a pilotless UAV with a video link, on the ground in Jordan, and he sent instructions to get it into the air. It would be one more thing from which Swanson would have to hide. Gates added the Shark Team that was helping to train Hezbollah fighters in a remote part of Lebanon. That team had a serviceable UH- IE Huey helicopter with miniguns slung on the sides. He also sent in another team from Israel, where the two Sharks were acting as counterinsurgency advisors with the Israelis on how to trap Hezbollah guerrillas. They would drive over in their armored Humvee. He sent a coded message through a Syrian contact to the search team in the desert. Five well-trained Sharks brought a lot of expertise to the operation. Plus the new Iraqi jihadists. A lot of eyes.

Gates studied the Marine’s personnel jacket some more, looking for anything that might help. This sniper had already proven to be very aggressive, so Middleton and Swanson would be watching for the watchers. Middleton probably would have the strong binos, while Swanson would use the powerful Unertl telescope on his SASR, the big. 50-caliber M82 Special Applications Scope Rifle. That was a hog of a weapon, a real bone-breaker that Gates knew well from lugging one himself. That would slow Swanson down even more when it came time to run.

Every pound Swanson carried would weigh him down a fraction, and the SASR was 37 pounds even before adding the ammo. The sniper had to be carrying a big pack, more weapons, and maybe some other gear, too. He would start to shed the unneeded items, but in the current time frame, he was losing the speed contest. This was the moment to catch them, while they were at rest and before they could start moving again.

Gordon Gates slammed his drink down onto the thick glass top of his desk. The rifle! Of course! He scrolled down through Swanson’s jacket to read about Swanson’s recent assignment to Sir Jeff Cornwell’s company, advising in the development of a new generation of sniper rifle. Vague stories had been carried in the gun magazines about the experimental weapon with the magical, highly computerized scope, and Cornwell had garnered the venture money needed to take it into production. Gates did a web search for the rifle through “sniper” Web sites until he found the name of the weapon: the Excalibur. He waded through a bunch of sites about King Arthur’s sword before coming up with some of the specs on Cornwell’s futuristic gizmo. It was lighter than the SASR by far, so maybe Swanson had this thing along, the Excalibur, and if he did, he might save on weight, but there was a potential weakness. Gotcha!

Gates opened his private electronic Rolodex and found an overseas telephone number. London. A quiet British voice answered.

YOUSIF AL-SHOUM WAS BIDINGhis time. Logan had been correct, that the sniper would go to ground during the daylight hours, so moving fast was neither necessary nor wise. Al-Shoum rested in a large tent that had been set up beside the road near the village and watched his soldiers probe up the road for more mines and booby traps. Not far from the tent was the burned and blackened hulk of the BTR-80 troop carrier that had triggered the mine. The two men whose heads were above the armor were decapitated by the blast, and the fuel tank ruptured and exploded, which took out three more men. Al-Shoum was alive only because he had stayed behind with the second BTR to communicate with Damascus. Otherwise his own head would have been sticking out of the forward hatch of the lead vehicle.

The Syrian intelligence officer had had his fill of surprises for one day. Five of his men had died in the BTR ambush. Another was killed at the front door of the house in the village, along with one of the American mercenaries. The house with eleven jihadist fighters from Iraq was blown to pieces and they were all dead. Parts of the Frenchman who was everybody’s intelligence contact were found in the smoking ruins of his demolished home. The guard who was taped to the Zeus and the gunner who tried to fire it were dead. Two pairs of sentries at the checkpoint down the road had been slain. Two pair! The Marine general was gone. Enough was enough.