Стивен Хантер - Game of Snipers

“The payment was always the same: money wired from the same Swiss bank. The last shipment shows he’s still in southern Syria, far from the war.”

“You think that’s him?”

“I do. The trouble with ammunition is that it’s so heavy by density. Which means he can’t order a million rounds and be done with it. He’s got to get a small, manageable amount every few months. If he’s going to stay sharp, if he wants to stay at operational peak, he’s got to have it coming in all the time. Clearly, it’s the same customer, no matter the location or the customer name, because the method of payment is always the same. Don’t you see what that gives us? Not an address, but a town. In this case, the last batch, only a month ago, went to a town in southern Syria called Iria. He has to be there. Somewhere in that area, convenient to whatever outlet receives out-of-country shipping, obviously with government approval.”

“That’s really not an address. It’s not actionable.”

“No, but a good man could infiltrate sometime when the next shipment is due. He could locate the point of arrival and mark the pickup. If it was impossible to follow to the source, he could ask around. Surely someone has noted a lone guy, quite prosperous, living in the far desert, doing a lot of shooting.”

“I don’t think so,” said Bob. “If he’s as smart as you say he is, he’ll have snitches scattered throughout the town. If anyone shows up asking questions, that’s the signal to find new digs. He’ll move fast, and be chastened by his near miss and double up on his security. Maybe he’ll stop receiving the heavy ball or find another source. He’s probably worried because he’s been getting it from SouthStar for so long. Have you gone to the Agency with this?”

“No. They’ve had me kicked out of so many countries it’s funny. They think I’m the Madwoman of Baltimore. I’m nothing but trouble to them. They’ve even gotten me on the no-fly list, so I’ve had to become an expert at clandestine identity. That’s why no emails, no phone calls, no announcements. I just show up and count on my pathos to get me an audience. I have no shame. So, no, I won’t go to them. I want to handle it the same way I’ve handled everything else, which is on my own. I still have relatives, I can still pay a substantial amount. But it has to be fast, because he’s skittish, he moves a lot. That’s a pattern of his I’ve come to recognize.”

“I see,” said Bob, considering. “And you think I’m the fellow who could get in there, find him, and put him away?”

“Now that I’ve laid it out for you, I hope you’ll alter your position. I can get you in on a very good phony passport. I’d get you a guide and translator, someone I trust. You won’t even be in country more than a few days. You find him in the Iria area, then you smoke him. One shot, one kill. Not only is it righteous, it’s profitable. And you’ll be doing the world a favor.”

Of course it wouldn’t go as planned, but, still, to end up with Juba in his sights and to see the shattered face sink into oblivion forever: that was quite an enticement. Everything about it felt right, no denying. But it was still wrong.

“No,” he said, “I won’t do that. Murder, not war. Revenge, not justice. Of no intelligence value, of no strategic value. May save some lives of some diplomats somewhere, but I don’t care.”

“There’s nothing—”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help. You’re some piece of work, Mrs. McDowell. American suburban woman becomes her own CIA and outperforms the professionals. Outguts them too. Understands she’ll get degraded and beaten and perhaps even killed, but goes ahead. You’ve got some sand in you. I respect sand. What do they call it? True grit.”

“I’m not a hero. I just had to do something or the pain would have killed me. I only had Tommy.”

“I’ll tell you what I will do. None of it involves money on your part.”

“That’s a first,” she said.

“I agree on staying away from the Agency. That was smart. It’s full of idiots who think they’re playing the long game. They’ve convinced themselves they’re the masters of chaos. In this case, they wouldn’t action this guy, they’d track him, see where he led them. If he led them to somebody bigger, maybe they’d sell that information, maybe they’d kidnap and debrief, but they’d do something so smart it would be stupid. And not to beat jihadi, but to outsmart the guy in the next cubicle, who’d be working on the same thing but from a different perspective. It’s a mess. It’s like an eighth-grade classroom with too many smart kids and a wobbly teacher.”

She said nothing, but her silence suggested she’d reached a similar conclusion.

“Here’s what I’m offering,” he said. “I have a contact with a guy who’s very high in the Israeli outfit, the Mossad. Never met him, but he ran an operation that kind of dovetailed with something I got involved in a few years back. So I heard he looked into me, and, as it turned out, I was his inadvertent benefactor. I know this because my daughter was a Fox correspondent in Tel Aviv, and he reached out to her and became a friend and a source. So I think, through her, I can put this before him. I’d guess this Juba operated against them too, and unlike our fellows, the Israelis take everything personal. So let me go to Tel Aviv and see if I can get them interested.”

“I should pay your expenses.”

“Guess what? I’m rich. Not sure how, but I’m just spending my dough on guns and an occasional trip to Cracker Barrel with my wife. It’s an honor to invest in the takedown of Juba the Sniper. You pay me by sitting back and relaxing and not getting yourself beat up and raped no more.”

Near Iria, southern Syria

It was the same dream. He’d had it for years, he’d have it forever. Allah would not intercede. Allah had commanded it, and for a purpose: it kept him smart, scared, aware. And it reminded him of the hard reality of the world he had chosen to occupy and the price that he’d have to pay to dominate it.

In this dream, he crouched in the rubble. He imagined Americans in front of him. He imagined his Dragunov against his shoulder, braced solid against wall or fallen column or automobile fender, his eye to the reticle, his hand to the grip, the butt against the shoulder.

He had been thus many times. He imagined the scurry and twist of the Americans. The helmets were turtle-shaped, sand-colored, flanged to protect the back of the neck. They wore so much gear, it was a miracle they could even move. They looked like Crusaders, lacking only the flapping white tunics emblazoned with the Templar cross. In their armor, and with rucksacks and an abundance of weapons, they seemed to be a new crusade, and, in the way his mind worked, it wasn’t hard to go from there to cities in flame, men burned at the stake, mosques desecrated, women raped, towns pillaged, despair everywhere in the land of Muhammad. All that had happened ten centuries ago meant nothing. Time was meaningless; there was no “then,” as there was no “now.”

The rifle was marvelous to his practiced touch. No tremble afflicted the chevron that dominated the center of the broad encirclement of his scope image. He put the point of the chevron where it had to be, gauging distance, adjusting the hold up a bit, down a bit, perhaps a bit to the right or left if heavy winds blew sand across the lens. Then the squeeze, almost automatic at this point, as the trigger resisted him slightly as he pressed it back, toward himself. No torque, no twist, the regularity of a robot’s press, and the gun issued death in the form of Bulgarian heavy ball, which to Juba felt like a bit of smash to the shoulder and looked like a blur. Followed by the recovery of the system as it fell back to steadiness after its adventure in recoil.