David Healey - Red Sniper

Vaccaro, Whitlock, and Inna. That meant the two dead men were Vaska and Honaker.

Cole moved the scope to focus on their attackers. Seven men—an eighth soldier lay face down in the snow. Probably Vaccaro’s handiwork. The soldiers were clearly Americans, driving Jeeps with the big white star on the hood. Those were U.S. Army uniforms. Our boys. So why the hell were they shooting at us? Maybe they had somehow mistaken the rescue team for Russians, although that seemed unlikely.

He put the scope closer to his eye, straining to make out any detail. He was shocked that he recognized one of the attackers. Major Dickey. Dickey would sure as hell be expecting Senator Whitlock’s grandson. He had been the one who recruited Cole, after all. He had set up the whole damn mission. Through the scope, Cole watched Dickey pop off a few shots from his sidearm. None of them had seen Cole up on the hill.

Cole’s thoughts raced. What the hell was going on here? Unless Dickey was seriously blind, he would have recognized the other Americans. He was the one who had sent them out here. Yet he was here waiting for them. Waiting to ambush them.

It could only mean that he didn’t want them to cross that border into Finland.

Cole was done thinking about it. There wasn’t any good reason for Dickey to be leading this trigger happy welcoming committee. Cole wasn’t going to sit up here on this hill and watch Vaccaro and the others get shot.

The crest of the hill made an ideal shooting position. He felt kind of exposed, but overall he couldn’t have asked for a better vantage point. Cole lay down in the snow, splayed his legs out behind him, got his elbows settled deep into the snow, and put the rifle between a couple of rocks that gave him at least some protection. The sinking sun was at his back, so that was to his advantage.

As he settled into position, he realized that his heart was pounding. No wonder. First, the encounter with Barkov had poured about a pint of adrenalin into his system. Then the run up hill through the snow toward the sound of the shooting had left him winded. The crosshairs danced around more than he would have liked. Got to cut out them cigarettes, he thought.

He took a couple of deep breaths. Getting some oxygen back into his system. Cole felt his heart slowing. He had gotten so that he could almost will his heart muscle to beat more slowly, in the same way that you could clench or unclench a hand. His breathing smoothed out. This time, when he put the crosshairs on a soldier’s head, they didn’t dance at all.

It was just over two hundred yards. An easy shot. He pulled the trigger nice and smooth. The soldier went down.

Cole worked the bolt, picked another target. Fired.

Target. Fire. Target. Fire. Target. Fire.

Four down. Cole picked them off like birds on a wire. He tried not to think about the fact that he was shooting Americans. Right now, they were the enemy.

Their attackers couldn’t figure out where the shots were coming from. Cole’s attack had taken the wind out of their sails, that was for damn sure. Major Dickey started to get that panicked look that Cole had seen on more than a few faces in the last few months—usually German faces. Through the scope, Cole saw him say something to one of the shooters, who put down his rifle and got behind the wheel of one of the Jeeps, leaving the other Jeep. The two remaining men saw what was happening and climbed aboard. They got the Jeep turned around. Dickey and his boys weren’t planning to stick around and get shot, now that the tables had turned.

Cole stopped shooting.

The Jeep tore off through the snow, hopping and skidding like a jack rabbit on the slick track. He tracked its progress up the unpaved, snow-covered path, and then the Jeep went around a bend and disappeared.

He watched the Jeep drive away, and then checked his rifle. He hadn’t planned on a firefight and was down to his last couple of rounds. Not good. But the border was just ahead. Hopefully, no more shooting would be involved in reaching it.

He looked down again at Vaccaro, Whitlock, and Inna. They seemed to have made it through unscathed.

Was it his imagination, or did he hear the whine of a truck engine in the distance? He shrugged it off, thinking that it was just the Jeep making its getaway, or maybe the ringing in his ears. Cole started down the hill toward the others.

Down below, what was left of the team watched Cole approach. His arrival wasn’t exactly graceful. The slope was steep and the snow was slick. Once Cole got going, he half slid down, dodging boulders as he went, trying to keep the rifle out of the snow. Somehow, he got to the bottom without falling on his face—or on his ass, for that matter.

Over to the west, the sun sank lower through a layer of clouds that resembled the scales of a fish belly. Cole knew that the high, thin clouds promised good weather.

It was plain that Vaska and Honaker had seen their last sunset. Cole looked down at Vaska’s body. The Russian had been a compact, sturdy man, and now he made a compact, sturdy corpse. Courtesy of the welcoming committee, a bullet had caught him through the neck, so Vaska wouldn’t have suffered long. Looking down at the body, Cole felt a pang of regret. He had liked the old man. He reached down and pushed Vaska’s eyelids closed.

He walked over to Honaker, whose body lay several yards away. There hadn’t been any love lost between him and Honaker, but that didn’t mean he was pleased to see him dead.

Cole looked more closely at Honaker’s body. He had been shot multiple times by a small caliber weapon. He knew that Inna had a gun like that. He looked toward the others, puzzled.

“Somebody want to tell me what happened?”

“Honaker was some kind of double agent,” Vaccaro said, shaking his head. He filled Cole in on what had happened.

When Vaccaro finished, Cole said: “You know what? I never liked that son of a bitch. You all right, Inna?”

“Yes.” Her voice, sounding as if it had come from a long way off, was not convincing. Cole knew it was not an easy thing to take someone’s life, even when he deserved it. Killing another human being for the first time, up close, sent your head down a slope even more slippery than the one Cole had just navigated. She seemed all right for now, though shaken. It would bother her later when she woke up in the depths of the night. Cole knew about that.

“You done the right thing,” he said. “It was him or you, from the sounds of it.”

“Shouldn’t we bury them?” Whitlock asked.

Cole shook his head. He thought that Harry Whitlock was ever the Boy Scout, trying to do the decent thing. “There’s no time,” he said. “Vaska would understand. Honaker, well, to hell with him.”

“What happened to Barkov?” Vaccaro wanted to know.

“I reckon that what’s left of him is gonna get shit out by a wolf come tomorrow morning.”

Inna gave a gasp of surprise and pointed toward the slope that Cole had just come down. A lone figure was slipping and sliding toward them. They could see it was a Russian soldier. He reached the bottom and starting running awkwardly toward them through the snow. He wasn’t carrying any weapons.

“What the hell,” Vaccaro said. “Looks like you didn’t get them all, Cole. You’re slipping.”

Cole raised his rifle. “I can fix that.”

“No!” Inna shouted. “I think I know him.”

Cole kept the crosshairs on the Russian soldier’s chest, just in case there was any funny business. The Russian raised his arms as he got closer. Through the scope, Cole could see that the soldier was still mostly a boy. The look of exhaustion on his young face was clear. He had some bruises across his cheekbones. This kid had taken a beating—more than one, from the looks of it. One thing for sure, he wasn’t looking for a fight.