Стивен Хантер - Game of Snipers

At one point, he sent the boy on an errand, got himself a cup of coffee, returned to the table, and just sat. He didn’t appear to be unusually wary or agitated. It was clear he trusted the kid, who, after all, could have sold him out as a way of walking away from flattening Theola Peppers’s face. But the kid was back, and the sack revealed — another freeze, thank you — that he’d bought a phone.

“Disposable,” said Nick. “One call, then into the river. If we track the phone, the GPS signal just takes us to the river. Standard operating procedure.”

The two rose to leave. Upright, Juba was large for his ethnic grouping, with that linebacker’s body and the sparkle, the large and powerful muscles evident with each step, even though he was slightly pigeon-toed. He and the boy ambled out of Mickey D’s, back into the world, all proteined-up for fresh outrage.

“Is that it?” Nick asked.

“One more segment we think is them. Another camera, looking down the hall toward the west parking lot exit, number 2B.”

“Please,” said Nick.

This one, at least, explained something. The two were shuffling nonchalantly to the doors, Juba with fourteen inches of sawed-off shotgun wrapped in what appeared to be a hoodie. They opened the doors, stepped out, the doors closed behind them, and—

A second later, they were back, their postures changed radically. Now their faces were clenched, in fear or anger, clearly alarmed, bursting with a palpable need to move or flee or pull guns on something.

“Freeze it,” said Nick. “He saw us. The kid, I mean. Mr. Supervisor, as far as I can make out, that entrance looks directly east?”

“Yes, sir,” said the security chief.

“That’s exactly where we were laying off, goddammit. So the kid sees the chopper, and the plan is shot. Little fucker. Look at the time.”

According to the data window, it was 16:13:34 p.m., thirty-seven seconds before the moment the SWAT truck and its five wingmen began to rush the Impala.

“Okay,” said Nick.

The images started moving again. Juba was speaking urgently to the boy and seemed to reach into his package as if to unlimber the Remington and get ready to go to war. But the kid grabbed him and began to pull him. They advanced toward the camera — another freeze, unfortunately, didn’t provide a better facial of either — and disappeared, clearly to exit, one way or the other, off camera.

“So the kid talked him out of going jihad on Greenville, Ohio,” said Bob. “Saved a lot of folks from getting whacked.”

“I’ll be sure to mention it to his parole officer … Mr. Supervisor, that’s it? You don’t have any exteriors of these guys pulling away in the seconds before the squad cars arrived?”

“Nothing my people could see,” said the supervisor.

Nick gestured to Chandler, who’d made it down by car and joined the party a few minutes earlier.

“Jean, I want people to go to every retail outlet on every street surrounding the mall and check the security cameras. Maybe somewhere there’s coverage on who picked them up and in what kind of vehicle. Meanwhile, arrange for our tech people to get the stuff Supervisor Gray’s cameras covered back to D.C. for analysis.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nick’s phone rang. It was D.C.

“Fuck, not again,” he said. “How many times can I resign?”

He slid it on, ID’d himself, said, “Yes,” and listened, nodding. It was a detailed conversation, perhaps three minutes long. “Yeah,” he finally said, “good. Late but good. But it points the way.”

He hung up and turned to Bob and Chandler.

“It was Cyber Division. The kid emailed his buddy. Fifteen fifty-nine. Off a disposable. Juba sends him to buy a disposable, he does, but he sneaks in a quick update to Johnny Jones, to give his mom a heads-up. They just accessed the GPS to give us the location, which, unfortunately, is where we’re standing right now.”

“The jihadi who missed his mom,” Swagger said.

“Yeah, but it’s the pattern. Whenever Juba needs to make contact with whoever, he sends Jared out to buy a disposable. One call, then into the river. But Jared sneaks in an email or a call to his pal, to reach his mom, and we’re on that. See, if we can nail the area, get our reaction team in place, ready to chopper to the site, we can nail him. That’s how we’ve got to do it.”

“So we’ve got to anticipate where he’ll be,” said Bob. “We get the area tight enough, everything falls into place.”

“He’ll do it again. He misses Mom. He’ll always miss Mom. So you’ll work with the computers to come up with a filter to pinpoint the area, we’ll scour the wires for reports, and also look at it from the weapons acquisition point of view, all of which will point us to an area. The kid is the key to the whole thing.”

On the road in Iowa, maybe Kansas

The dream again. Now, after so long.

In this version, he is trapped. He is unarmed. He cannot move his arms. The American sniper smiles, fiddles, takes his time, locks himself into the weapon skillfully, slowly. He peeks up from the scope just for the pleasure of seeing it all laid out before him.

The flash.

Juba awoke. Where was he? It was dark, someone was near to him, he felt the closeness, the movement in and out of the other’s lungs, their limbs tangled, the sourness, the vibration, the motion, they couldn’t move, they were oppressed under some kind of lid. The coffin’s?

“You are awake?” asked the boy.

“I am. We are still in the truck?”

“It’s been so long, I hardly remember. I’m numb. I’m also very hungry.”

“I’ll tell them to stop for more French frieds,” said Juba.

“French fries ,” the boy corrected.

At that point, at last, the lid above them raised.

Three men peered down at them, the silhouettes of their cowboy hats showing against the highway illumination.

“All right, my friends,” said one in Arabic, “it’s time to come out.”

Slowly, hands helped Juba unwrap himself from the boy, supported him as he searched for power in his legs and arms, hoisted him clear so that he could almost stand, though his legs were soft and weak, and one momentarily gave out.

“Where are we?” he said.

The vehicle sped through the night. Outside, an occasional light slid by, nothing prominent, merely a sign of human habitation. He looked forward, saw nothing but the cone of headlights illuminating a road with a pair of lines down the middle of it. The lines flashed by like tracers. The beat of the engine came through to him, concealed under every surface he touched.

“We’re going west,” said the Arabic voice. It seemed one of the Mexicans was along as translator, for he had Arabic skills, and even in the dark, squinting, confused, Juba could tell that his face had significantly different features. He was some kind of transplanted Syrian, judging from the accent.

Next, they pulled the boy out.

“About time,” said the kid. “I am so thirsty. Got anything to drink?”

“Who is this?” said the Syrian. “We were told only one.”

“He is with me,” said Juba. “He is fine.”

Jared jumped in with, “I’m his go-between. I’m the guy who introduced him to America. I happened to be with him when the shit hit the fan, that’s why I’m here.”

“He is jihadi,” said Juba, in English.

It was the best thing anyone had ever said about Jared.

They stopped, and a man ran in an outlet for food. Burger King, not McDonald’s. Better hamburger, French frieds not so good.

They drove again, through the night.

The Syrian caught them up.