Стивен Хантер - Game of Snipers

“Where are you?”

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

“Okay, I’ll send the message.”

“Great. And thanks, man. When I get out of this, we’ll have a good laugh.”

“You got it.”

He rose, put the phone in a trash can. He went back to the store proper, got another one off the shelf, and bought it, feeling very Secret Agent Man. He’d be able to present an unopened plastic-sealed phone to Juba, who’d never know he’d made a call. What were the odds that the feds were intercepting his parents’ emails?

Are we going anywhere? Or are we just going away ?”

Juba looked at his watch, pulled over to the edge of the highway.

“Okay, little boy,” he said. “I need to make contact. Phone?”

Juba took it, ripped it from its plastic packaging, which he threw out the window, scraped clear the code of the calling card, tapped it into the phone. He had fifteen minutes.

He dialed a number.

“Yes, I am fine. I need a new pickup. Tell them I am on U.S. Route 127, just past the border of Michigan. I will stay on 127. How much time will it take to intercept?”

He paused. A car passed, then a van.

“Okay. Yes, we are in a dark blue Impala. License: Michigan L11 245. Thank you.”

He turned to Jared.

“Okay, a town called Greenville, about three hours ahead. We will go to a shopping mall on the south side of town — Walmart, not Sears. We are looking for a van, a Chevy, tan, license 276 RC678. Can you remember that?”

“No.”

“276 RC678. Pay attention.”

“What state?”

“Ohio.”

“How did they know we’d be in Ohio?”

“They know everything. Now, get rid of that phone. Sink it in water.”

Jared did as he was told. The phone went into a stream he found about fifty yards in. It occurred to him that this would be a great time for Juba to dump him. Or, he could dump Juba. He could take off now, disappear for a day or so in the Ohio farm wilderness. Then he could turn himself in. The best criminal lawyer in Michigan, whom his dad would hire, would get him a deal. He’d snitch out Juba, and they’d drop whatever thought they had about putting him away for mashing Mrs. Potato Head.

But he knew he couldn’t do that. He’d crossed the line. No matter how much he missed the easy pleasures of his old, meaningless life, he could never go back to it. He was jihadi now.

And, of course, Juba had not left.

About an hour further on, Juba, confident they were not under observation, ordered Jared to pull over. He reached into the Kmart bag, pulled out the plastic-wrapped file, and climbed into the backseat.

“Continue to drive. Eyes open, under the speed limit, nothing stupid.”

“Got it.”

Jared drove on, as one of the drearier sections of rural Ohio, its northwest corner, rolled by monotonously, but it wasn’t long until he heard some — well, what? Grinding? Sawing? Some kind of mechanistic sound. The rearview revealed nothing, but he managed a quick look-see on a smooth section of road and saw Juba, hunched over in concentration, his arm like a piston as it plunged ahead, was withdrawn, and plunged ahead again. In a few seconds, Jared realize what he was doing: shortening the shotgun stock.

Juba looked up.

“I cut it down. Easier to hide, and I can cover it with a jacket.”

Jared gulped. He did it again when the filing stopped, and he heard the weird thunk-thunk of Juba inserting more shells into the extended magazine of the shotgun.

Greenville, Ohio (I)

At the Ohio Highway Patrol station on U.S. 75 outside Dayton, Nick stood at a much abused lectern and addressed the troops.

“You need to be very careful. We think this guy popped three drug dealers in Detroit. He will shoot. Big, tough Arab guy, we don’t know what name he’s operating under, but over there, where he got his start, he was called Juba. He may be with a kid, early twenties, slight, American citizen of Arabic heritage, sort of his interpreter and facilitator. But he may have dumped the kid, as he knows we’re all in on the two of them.”

The guys on the folding chairs were police-appropriate: crew-cut, gym-big, crisp as Honor Guard Company in their immaculate uniforms, seeming to share a single expression of wary attentiveness. They had faces built for Ray-Ban Aviators and flat-brims, and they all carried plastic Glock .40s on their patent leather Sam Browne belts. They were duty guys, and what more could you ask for?

“Sir,” someone said, “a triple first-degree is big-time. But we know you got here by emergency chopper from Detroit. You’re FBI, but not out of the Detroit Office, and that fellow with you is a ‘consultant,’ meaning a guy who knows a lot about a certain thing. So I’d like just to ask, politely, what’s going on?”

“As some of you may have surmised, there is a national security connection, but I am not at liberty to divulge it. The Detroit thing is a helpful pretext to get me troops without having to explain things. Let me just say this guy is thought to be very dangerous in ways not connected with Detroit, and that it is in the highest national interest — and urgency — to take him off the page right now.”

He watched them watching him. Like most State cop shops, it was a shabby installation off the highway, innocuous except for the OHP shield on a sign outside and the two dozen black-and-whites outside.

“Why here, why now?”

He backgrounded them, finishing on, “We’re working on the theory they stole the Impala in Hudson — blue, plates Alpha-Four-Five-Five-Charlie — and dumped the Benz outside of Hudson. So they’re headed south on 127. Since they’d been going forty-eight straight, I think they bunked somewhere and got on the road again maybe late last night. Still heading south. Don’t know if it’s random or they’re aiming toward a certain destination.”

“But you see it as this part of Ohio?”

“Yeah, and so far they’ve shown a tendency to stay off the interstates, because they know that’s where you guys are and they fear you guys. They know you pay attention. So my bet is, they’re still on 127 headed toward Greenville. So our target would be a dark blue ’13 Impala.”

Nick had more.

“Really, guys, do not go all heroic on me and try for a one-man intercept. This guy has tons of combat experience in the sandbox and he is a world-class shot. He’s got a twelve-gauge semi-auto and a box of double-aughts, stolen from the drug stash. With that gun, he’s too good to go man on man against. He will not miss. He will not go down to .40, unless it clips the central nervous system. Are you that good while taking incoming double-aught? I didn’t think so.

“So, note road and direction and pass on by. Don’t even pursue at a distance. You’ve done your job. Last thing we want is a rolling-felony-stop massacre as in Dade County. We can’t catch him, we’ve got to ambush him. We’ve got to be there in force or we’re looking at a shooting event like you wouldn’t believe. Like you wouldn’t survive. If we get the ID, we’ll go to helicopter then, airborne, try and monitor them while we throw together some kind of roadblock, way overgunned for the occasion. I’ve got SWAT people coming in from Lansing and Columbus and Dayton; they’ll do the rough stuff, if it comes to that. They like rough stuff.”

Nick turned to Swagger.

“Can you think of anything?” Nick asked Swagger, standing just off to the side of the lectern. He turned back to the men before Bob could answer and said, “My associate here has been in more gunfights than probably anyone this side of Frank Hamer, and, as you can see, he’s more or less alive.”