Стивен Хантер - Game of Snipers

“I set up a site for them, but the key ingredient was that it had to be findable, traceable. I had to build factors into it so someone like Agent Neill or one of the Israeli wonderkids could deconstruct it and trace it back to its origin, which would be the i 8 that I had in my hand, presumably linkable to someone else. It sounded like a key to an elaborate plot.”

“You did all this?”

“I did all that.”

“What was the website called?”

“I don’t know. I showed them how to set it up, but they didn’t want me to see what it was. So I just know it’s there, and all that will be revealed when the time comes.”

“Can we find it, Neill?” asked Nick.

“Without a name or a web address, not likely. There’s more — they probably haven’t posted it yet. It’s all set up to go, but they don’t want anyone discovering it prematurely. So it’s ready, and they dump when it’s appropriate to their plans — that is, when they want us to find it.”

“Not helpful,” said Nick.

“Yeah, but you still learn stuff,” said Mr. Wakowski. “I’ll play Agatha Christie here, if you don’t mind. Their plan is to use the ballistics program to snipe somebody. The shot will be taken from Pluto. They will leave the iPhone so it will be found. Agent Neill will hire a lab to crack it, and they will see something that leads to the website, deconstruct it, and track it back to whoever the Mexican vulture keeper stole the iPhone from. Ergo: he’s blamed, no one even knows they were in play. Maybe he’s dead. That’s what I’d do if I were (a) running this thing and (b) totally insane.”

“I think we figured that out on our own already,” Nick said. “But since you’re a genius, let me ask a more general question. Does this seem like the sort of thinking you’d affiliate with the kind of criminal organization we’re talking about?”

“Excellent question,” said Mr. Wakowski. “The answer is no. Our boys — the happy tots who reached out to me — are more forceful and direct by far.”

“What is this thing typical of?”

“It’s got high-IQ intelligence agency written all over it. CIA, Mossad, MI5, Chinese Ministry of State Security, Russian MV — real big boys in the game. Someone used to playing deflection shots, in love with the false-flag paradigm, fully aware of media tendencies and how it’s all going to play out on a stage when the cable morons get on it and distill it to mouth-breather level. In my experience, they love to do that sort of thing.”

“Middle East?”

“A stretch. But I see smarter guys.”

“Okay,” said Nick, “I guess we’ll have to keep calling him Mr. Wakowski. Oh, wait, am I forgetting anything? Gee, I wonder what it could be?”

Wakowski hesitated, then said, “I was hoping you’d forget.”

“Too bad for you, pal, I just remembered it. All that is nothing without a name to put with it. Cartel, yeah. Bad people, yeah. Sworn enemies of all that’s good and holy, for sure. But I need a name, and it better be a right one or … vulture chow.”

“You didn’t hear this from me. You don’t even know me. I don’t exist. But the name is Menendez.”

The range

He thought it might be the climate. So target number two paid with his life for that experiment. Clearly, the weather data from the service was too generic. It would have been downloaded from the nearest regional U.S. weather station, and that could be miles away. Good enough for TV, good enough for government work, but not good enough for man killing at a mile’s distance.

So instead of doing it that way, as FirstShot allowed, he laboriously filled in the blanks of data from his own Kestrel there at the range. Tedious, but tedium was a material snipers trafficked in. Wind speed, direction, altitude, temperature, humidity, and other subtleties of weather reality that only meteorologists knew, stuff so arcane, no TV guy even bothered with it.

He took his shot.

Better, but not good enough. The first one hit about fifteen yards shy. And although he dispatched target number two on the second shot, on The Day he would not be allowed a ranging shot. It didn’t work that way in the real world. He had to know he was on with the first press of the trigger.

There was really only one thing to do: check the precision of the scope clicks and do the math. So the next day, instead of shooting at a mile, he shot at a hundred yards, at benchrest targets.

The exercise: five targets vertically arrayed a hundred yards out, stapled to blank cardboard and mounted in a frame. But the hundred yards itself was not simply lased for distance, it was hand-measured — again, not from the muzzle of the rifle but from the elevation knob of the Schmidt & Bender — for the most accurate possible hundred yards. He started at the bottom, fired a three-shot group. He moved the elevation knob up one click and fired three more at the second target. Then the third, the fourth, and the fifth, in the same one-click increments. Of course, for every click, the three-shot cluster moved up a bit. But how much? Was it the one minute-of-angle Schmidt & Bender’s brilliant minds said or was it more? Or less? Working the target sheet with calipers, he determined that each click produced a rise in strike of not 0.552 inch, as per specs, but 0.489. It was so tiny an increment, it would have meant almost nothing out to three hundred yards, but with each leap in distance, it grew larger and larger. Thus, he was able to reconfigure FirstShot algorithms so that the click measure was 0.489.

Target number three: first shot, via FirstShot, was an ankle hit. The man — large, black, and dissolute — slid down, screaming, his lower leg shattered. Not good enough. Juba corrected a click, fired again, and eternally stilled him.

Target number four: close — closest yet — but low stomach. Probably not survivable, but given the speed of arrival of emergency personnel and the sophistication of trauma medicine, survival could not be ruled out. He had to hit the chest, destroy the heart and both lungs, sever all arteries and veins converging at the nexus of the heart. That hit, with a thousand pounds of energy and a sharpened missile more than a third of an inch wide, was the only guarantee.

Target number five.

Target number six.

Target number seven: a tough one, a fighter, he wouldn’t stop moving, he yanked, pulled, twisted the cuffs that restrained him and was still squirming heroically at the arrival of the bullet.

But all succumbed to the first shot of the finally correct program.

He was done with prayers. His food had been delivered and eaten. He had worked out, sweated hard, spent forty minutes on Systema Spetsnaz, sparring with a bag, and finally showered. Now he settled down for a good reread of Jack O’Connor’s The Complete Book of Shooting , a favorite text. He could read what might be called shooter’s English, having taught himself first rudiments, then technical terms. At first, it was very slow, but with dedication, energy, and time, he’d mastered enough to read texts that dealt with his subject, and his mind could stay with the math, which most could not. He was absorbed in “Revolution Theory II: The Wind Factor” when the knock came.

He opened the door to find Señor Menendez, accompanied by Jorge, the translator, and by the fellow with the black sock over his head.

“Yes.”

“My friend, we must talk.”

“Certainly.”

He admitted them. He sat on the bed. Menendez took the chair, the socked one stood behind him, at his right shoulder, quickly assuming perfect stillness. More twitchily, Jorge positioned himself to the left of Menendez, but somewhat forward, where he could hear both men clearly.