David Healey - Red Sniper

“Honaker, what the hell?” Vaccaro demanded.

“We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,” Honaker said, keeping the rifle pointed at them.

“Jesus, Honaker, we’re almost there. What the hell are you doing? We made it!”

“Is that what you think? That you made it? Drop your rifle, Vaccaro. Put your hands on your head. All of you.”

They had no choice. They did as they were told.

“What the hell is this about?” Vaccaro demanded. “What are you, some kind of Russian agent?”

The rifle didn’t waver. The four of them weren’t spread very far apart, so that Honaker covered them all easily with the weapon. “You don’t get it, do you? Bring our boys home! It sounds good, but it’s not that simple. Far from it. Nobody can let Whitlock here go back and tell the American public that the Russians are holding some of our men prisoner. The Russians are supposed to be our allies. How do you think that will make President Truman look?”

“Honaker, this is insane. Why did we go on this mission in the first place if we weren’t supposed to bring anyone home?”

“You can thank Senator Whitlock for that. The old man has clout. There was no stopping him. It was strictly a back channel operation. He was going to send somebody to spring his precious grandson from the Gulag camp no matter what, so I went along as insurance, just in case we actually made it.”

“Why did we cross all this territory? Why did you let us get this far?”

“You weren’t supposed to. Hell, I even cut the oil lines in the C-47 that flew us here, but the damn thing made it on one engine. If it hadn’t been for that goddamn Cole, you never would have made it this far. I could never seem to get the drop on him. That hillbilly has eyes in the back of his head. With any luck, Barkov is finishing him off right about now.”

“Honaker, this is insane!”

“No, what’s insane is the fact that you made it this far.” Honaker turned the rifle on Inna. “If it hadn’t been for this Russian bitch springing her lover boy in the first place, I doubt we would have made it out of the village.”

Vaccaro shook his head, puzzled. “But what about you? If we didn’t make it, you sure weren’t going to.”

“Some things are bigger than me or you, Vaccaro. It didn’t really matter if I made it out or not, so long as nobody else did.”

Whitlock spoke up. “I don’t believe you, Honaker. I’ll bet you had some kind of deal going with the Russians, you and whoever is behind this in the U.S. Government. You’re a coward at heart. Anyone can see that. You were going to get out of this somehow. The lone survivor.”

Honaker gave a wry smile and shrugged. “Do you really want to call the man pointing a rifle at you a coward? You might be right, though, about the escape clause. It wouldn’t be so bad for me if it worked out that way. With any luck, that’s just how it’s going to play out, with me as the lone survivor.”

Both Whitlock and Vaccaro had their eyes locked on the muzzle of the rifle, which looked big as a cannon and black as death. The rifle never moved. Honaker’s gaze never left them.

Inna had started crying when Honaker made his explanation. She pulled off her mittens to wipe her eyes. Now she was wracked by big sobs, her arms crossed across her chest. She seemed to fold up on herself, squatting in the snow, all the resilience that she had shown over the last few hours evaporating.

Honaker said in a taunting voice, “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll make it fast. You won’t feel a thing. Who do you want me to shoot first, you or your lover boy?”

Inna sobbed harder. Honaker gave a little laugh, as if he found it all amusing.

Whitlock spread his arms in a supplicating gesture. “Please. You can at least let her go. She’s Russian, after all.”

“No chance,” Honaker said. “I’m real sorry about this.” He put the rifle to his shoulder to aim it.

Whitlock said, “Honaker, if it’s money you want—“

Inna was still on her knees, sobbing. Distracted by Whitlock, Honaker didn’t see her right hand come up, quick and fast. She held the small pistol she had kept tucked in her boot. Pop. The noise of the gun was almost absurdly small. A slug smaller than a pencil eraser hit Honaker in the chest and he stared down in surprise at the bullet wound. The hold was no bigger than if he had been poked with a knitting needle. Didn’t even hurt. He was too startled to react.

Inna stood and took a step toward him, keeping the pistol level. Pop. Another slug hit Honaker. She moved forward again. Pop. Pop.

The tiny soft-nosed slugs didn’t have much energy, but they still tumbled through his chest cavity like rolling dice, flattening out as they went. He suddenly found it hard to breathe. Honaker dropped the rifle and clawed at his chest.

Inna kept coming at him. Honaker seemed to remember the pistol in the holster on his belt. The tiny slugs had torn him up, but hadn’t killed him yet. He fumbled for the big .45 to put Inna down.

Inna was so close now that the muzzle of the tiny gun was practically touching him. Honaker kept his eyes on her as he went for his pistol. Inna fired her last shot. Pop. The slug hit him just above his right eyebrow. It made a tiny hole going in, like a fly had landed on his forehead. The mushrooming slug emerged out the back of his skull, spilling bits of brain across the snow like overcooked gray-green scrambled eggs.

Honaker’s knees buckled and he went down like a rag doll. Just a few seconds had elapsed from Inna’s first shot. It hadn’t been enough time for anyone else to react.

“Sweet Jesus,” Vaccaro said.

Inna stood there, gun down at her side, any trace of her crocodile tears gone. She looked deflated, but not all sorry.

Finally, Whitlock touched her shoulder. “Come on, Inna. You did the right thing. It was him or us. Now, let’s get out of Russia. There’s our ride home, just waiting for us.”

They turned and started walking toward the Americans on the Finnish border. As they walked closer they could see that the soldiers still had their weapons raised, as if expecting trouble. Vaccaro glanced over his shoulder. Nobody there—if you didn’t count Honaker’s carcass.

“Those guys sure are edgy,” he said. “I wonder—”

That’s when the Americans opened fire.

Cole heard the shooting in the distance and started running in that direction. It sounded as if his friends had run into serious trouble. The snow, up to his knees in places, weighed down every footstep. He willed his legs to move faster. Who was shooting? Why? Had another group of Russians somehow gotten ahead of them to cut off their escape? Maybe there was some kind of patrol at the border. None of it made any sense.

Just run, goddamnit, he ordered himself.

He trotted out of the valley where he had confronted Barkov and ran up a hill at the end, ignoring his ragged breathing as he dodged boulders and shrubs on the way up. At the top he looked down and saw the skirmish taking place.

Closer to him, he could see his companions taking shelter behind a rock. Two bodies lay in the snow, sprawled in a way that Cole was all too familiar with. Dead. He thought one of the bodies might be Vaska’s. The other body, which lay a little ways off, was harder to identify.

He got down in a crouch so that he wasn’t outlined against the sky. He put the rifle to his shoulder and looked through the scope. The others were caught out in the open, trying to use a rock and a half-assed bush for cover. Vaccaro was behind the rock, returning fire. Whitlock had found a rifle and was shooting back, but it was likely he couldn’t shoot worth a damn, considering that he was a pilot, of all things. Inna crouched behind the bush, hands over her ears, trying to make herself as small as possible. Bullets plucked at the snow around them.