Стивен Хантер - Game of Snipers

“We got you guys out just in time. How’d they know? Is there a leak?”

“This is what they do,” said Juba. “It is their job. No leak, just them reading the signs.”

“Maybe so,” said the Syrian. “Anyway, we were stuck at a roadblock for a while, they were doing a search of vehicles headed out of Greenville onto the interstate. We thought we might have to use this.”

He patted something on the floor covered with a tarpaulin, pulled the canvas back, exposing a Russian PK on a bipod, its long belt of 7.62 RPD gathered in a heap under the receiver.

“Bad news, but then a few car lengths before we got there, they tore it up and pulled out. I don’t know why.”

“The hand of Allah?” said the boy.

“Possibly they didn’t want a gun battle on the highway,” said Juba.

“Ever since, we’ve been driving without incident. The radio says something about murders in Detroit, three dealers.”

“It was necessary,” said Juba.

“It’s of no importance. All the same, I wouldn’t return to Detroit anytime soon.”

“Who are you guys?” asked Jared.

“Cartel,” Juba said. “They have the capacity to support my enterprise. They have been paid a great deal for their interest.”

“You will meet Señor Menendez shortly,” said the Syrian. “He is a great and powerful man. A visionary. With his might behind you, you cannot fail. We will also abandon this rattletrap van and continue our journey in comfort.”

“Where are we going?” asked Jared.

“Little boy,” said Juba, “you do not ask men like these such questions. They are professionals. You show them respect by allowing them to do their jobs.”

“Anyway,” said the Syrian, “you should know that all items you requested have been acquired and are where they need to be. Your rifle came in from Mexico with a recent large shipment and awaits for your hands to assemble it. You will not be bothered at the shooting range we have for you. All things will happen as they have been planned.”

Juba sat back. He settled into the seat. He seemed, for the first time, without tension. The van rolled through the dark.

Dawn cracked the eastern horizon behind them. Gray light spilled from the sky. They shared the road with semi-trailers, a few SUVS, all of which flew by them in the left lane. Lights came and went, and the only sound was of men breathing. Jared was full of questions, but he asked none. Cartel? That bothered him. They were ruthless, had no ideology except greed, and became allies only via payment. But Juba clearly trusted them, and without them, he’d be sitting in a Greenville cell, waiting for his father’s lawyer to arrive, wondering if he had the guts to take the fall for the woman or sell out Juba for less jail time. He hoped he never had to discover the answer.

They slowed, the blinker was activated, and the van left the highway, taking an exit, somewhere in the vastness of rural America. He wanted to ask, “Are we there?” but thought it a bad idea.

The van pulled into a farm, drove around the back of the house to the barnyard, where a large black SUV awaited. The van came to a halt.

The Syrian said, “Sir, that package still in the compartment, that is a weapon, no?”

“It is,” said Juba.

“You must leave it there. You must not be armed in the presence of Señor Menendez.”

“I understand. I have no other weapons.”

“And you?” he asked Jared.

“No, of course not.”

“All right, out. Enjoy the fresh air.”

They climbed from the van, and indeed the fresh air seemed like a reward. Jared inhaled, almost becoming dizzy from the pleasure of it. He was still ticking, despite it all.

A man got out of the SUV and opened the back door. Another man got out, thin, handsome, Hispanic, of grandee heritage, in a well-tailored blue suit and black loafers. His Rolex was gold as were his tie clip and his cuff links. His teeth were white and perfect, his hair thick and well cut, his manner smoothly aristocratic.

“Sir,” he said, “I welcome you. I am Menendez.”

The Syrian translated from the English to the Arabic.

“It is an honor, señor,” replied Juba.

“As you have been told, all is in waiting. From here on, things will go smoothly. Your visit is much anticipated.”

“Excellent,” said Juba.

“And this young man?”

“He is my assistant. Young but eager. Has proven himself in action twice during the past few days. Jihadi to the core.”

“I am Menendez,” said the grandee. “Welcome, and congratulations on your accomplishments. If you have impressed the great Juba, you have impressed me.”

“Thank you,” said Jared.

“You are a very brave young man,” said Menendez. “And you are safe now.”

He clapped him on the shoulder to point him on the path to deliverance, but the hand had a gun in it, and he shot the boy in the back of the head.

Zombieland

It got big fast after Greenville and Detroit. It wasn’t just the three murders; it was the concordance of the Juba prints with Israeli intelligence files, a wide circulation of his curriculum vitae at high echelons, as well as Juba’s own awareness that he was being hunted. The zombie posse, as Swagger had christened them, decided to move into a larger operation.

Task force MARJORIE DAW ceased to exist. It was seconded to the Counterterrorism Division, which put unlimited manpower and computer time at the disposal of those hunting Juba. But the unit wasn’t broken up. Instead, Nick and his assistant Chandler and consultants Swagger and Gold were moved to a suite of rooms on the Counterterrorism Division floor in the Hoover Building, and Nick had direct access to Ward Taylor, the Assistant Director in charge of CTD. They were to be the intelligence staff, the out-of-the-box thinkers, who provided guidance and zeal to the larger, more plodding operation. Taylor and Nick were friends. Taylor had worked under Nick in Dallas and done very well, while at the same time not being one of those guys who could never be wrong and had to get ahead or die. He was okay.

Swagger’s first matter of business under the new setup was to meet with the computer genius Jeff Neill, another Nick ally from way back, and see what could be teased from the mysterious machines on the floor down one flight.

“Not much,” Neill explained to him and Gold, whom Bob had dragooned for his elegant speech and manners. “Mr. Gold’s people had a village name, therefore a specific area in southern Iraq. Their possibility index was quite limited, a few square miles. They didn’t even have a program. They just took pix of everything.”

“Our program was Mr. Swagger,” said Gold. “He performed exceptionally well, up to the point of carrying an Uzi on a commando raid against the target.”

“I wish we could get ours to do that,” said Neill with a laugh. “But ours just sits there, hums and filters and occasionally freezes up.”

“So,” said Swagger, “if we run the attributes against imagery from the U.S. national weather satellites, we’ll come up with too many.”

“By a factor of several million, I’d guess. You need a more precise limiting function. The smaller, the better. Region: too big. State: too big. County: probably too big. Sector of county: now you’re talking. We can task a bird to snoop it out, we can design a program to hunt for the things your eyes looked for and saw, all that shooter stuff, and we could probably find it. But until you get me that, I can’t do much for you.”

“Okay, I’ll put that one on hold for a bit. Now, another question.”

Bob explained about the sustenance of a long-range shooting program, via reloading tools, powder acquisition, premium bullets in .338 caliber, perhaps virgin shell casings, a chronograph, wind direction vanes, a Kestrel Pocket Weather Meter, perhaps a computer and app for solving the necessary algorithms for sight adjustment, as well as the optics and mounts and cleaning tools themselves, and other things too numerous and Mickey Mouse to mention. “Not available at your local Sportsman’s Warehouse,” he said. “A couple of retail outlets, one in Colorado, one in Pennsylvania, both of which also do considerable mail order, plus a bigger outfit, called Sinclair International, all of which service that community. It’ll grow; we’re lucky it’s still pretty small. The big lick in competition shooting is something called Precision Rifle Competitions, popping up wherever there’s room, the west mostly, but the big suppliers haven’t really gotten on that bandwagon yet.