Стивен Хантер - Game of Snipers

“Fine. It was bought under untraceable arrangements.”

“We leave, transfer cars quickly, and—”

“To the airport. Where my jet awaits.”

“All the men with me, they will be armed. Just in case.”

“Heavily. Well-trained, ready to fight and die, if necessary, to make your escape good.”

“It shouldn’t come to that.”

“The locals, even the Marshals,” said Menendez, “are earnest but not the kind of highly trained, highly experienced operators on our team. They can’t possibly react quickly unless they have someone of extraordinary talent on-site. And that is highly unlikely.”

McConnell Air Force Base

Jared, you have to deal with this.”

“Ah. What was the name again? He called himself Ali La Pointe, that’s all I know.”

“You’re in direct contradiction with Imam el-Tariq of Dearborn. In fact, it’s his testimony that he chose you specially to act as Juba’s facilitator, as he got acclimated to the United States. According to him, you spent more time with Juba than anybody. And if anybody knows Juba’s secrets, it would be you.”

“You know, I think I need a lawyer.”

“I would agree with that, but, unfortunately, you signed that right away. You’re here all by your lonesome. Your choices are somewhat limited.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Silence is not an option.”

“What are my options?”

“We can remainder you to Detroit, and the general prison population at the state penitentiary at Kinross. My goodness, I hope that doesn’t happen. The results would not be pretty.”

“Or?” said Jared.

“A case could be made that, in assisting Juba, you became an accessory before the fact to all his crimes. Since one took place in Israel, the Israelis, who are very interested in Juba, could demand extradition, for interrogation by their intelligence services.”

“Ouch. Okay, so what’s your deal?”

“Same as the one you’ve got. You go this afternoon to the courthouse and testify before the grand jury. That gives DEA license to pick up Raúl Menendez. You testify against him in a court of law. He goes away. You go into Witness Protection. All that stays the same. However, upon your testimony this afternoon, you are flown to a heavily guarded FBI safe house, also on military property, and you give us everything you have on Juba. I mean everything. No playing cute, as you did with DEA. We will go over it time and time again. We will medicate you, as your permission to do so will be part of the deal. We’ll go deep hypnosis. You will also work at length with the finest police sketch artist in the world, and you will give us a good portrait of the sniper. And if we feel you’re holding back in any other way, the interrogation will become sterner. And if we fail to stop him and he commits whatever mission he was sent here to commit, that will go very hard on you. When it’s all done, we’ll loan you out to the Israelis, and any other country — Malaysia, for example, or the Philippines — that has suffered at Juba’s hands. Then back to Kinross. If there is a ‘then.’”

Jared sighed, signaling epic self-pity at the horribleness of what was happening to him. It was so wrong. He didn’t realize that it was just the world routinely, mercilessly, rotating on the fulcrum of the innocent and the idealistic.

“See,” he finally said, “Menendez is shit. He doesn’t matter. He tried to kill me. I was nothing to him, so turning on him, that’s cool. It’s kind of fun. Juba is different. He’s part of the cause. I don’t care about Islam, really, but I do care about the shit that my people suffer. I don’t believe in Allah or Yahweh or Jesus H. Christ, any of it. But those people are so fucked by everybody, and nobody talks for them except the Jubas.”

“If you become older,” said Gold, “you will perhaps see the wisdom in moderation, mercy, and simple courtesy. The bold warrior archetype, so impressive to youth, will reveal himself to be psychotic, utterly corrupted by the flame of his hatred. It’s fine to have heroes of force, but you will learn that it is not fine to have heroes of evil.”

“No doubt you’re speaking from the heart, Mr. Gold, but one man’s evil is another man’s heroism. I’ll take what’s coming.”

“You poor kid,” said Chandler. “You’re shipping yourself to Hell.”

“Do they get Netflix there?” the boy asked but was unable to laugh at his own joke.

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Wichita, Kansas

At precisely 1410, a black SUV pulled up. The first team, six of them, were dressed as priests — if priests were weight lifters, had MORIR EL CABRÓN!! tattoos in 48-point Bodoni Light Gothic showing under their clerical collars, and wore earphones with foam-encased mics. They were highly professional, all veterans of 1st Brigade, 2nd Special Forces Battalion, Mexican army. Many fights had they seen, many operations had they prevailed in, all over South America’s raw and violent regions, and many cartel members had died at their hands. Now they were on the other side, and that is why Menendez so treasured them, and so overpaid them. For their part, they got the bargain and had made friends with it: if you take El Patrón’s salt, you must obey his orders, unto death if need be. Actually, they liked to fight so much that the outcomes didn’t make that much difference to them. Everyone dies; their preference was to do it in battle.

Black-frocked and solemn, they found the exquisite interior of the domed cathedral largely deserted. They strode down the nave like Becket’s murderers, piously genuflected before the mounted cross when they passed in front of it in the chancel, for they had no urge or need to commit blasphemy, only murder. There was no need to be disrespectful. They strode quietly, for such big guys, amid the shafts of sun and the flickering of candles and the orangish old bulbs that had been burning since 1923, and began, as discreetly as possible, the process.

It didn’t take strong-arm stuff to control the building. Merely a brief opening of robes to display each fellow’s AK-74 Krink, the lighter-caliber, short-barreled version of the world’s most famous and prolific firearm. That made the point, and without sound or fuss the authentic clerics followed their captors’ instructions, gathered in the nave of the cathedral, where they were made to kneel, were flex-cuffed and ball-gagged.

The sergeant in charge spoke quickly in Spanish, then English.

“We mean you no harm. We are true believers ourselves, and ask the Lord Jesus Christ to bless our endeavor, for its outcome favors la raza over the usurpers and represents the reconquest. You will remain silent for another few minutes, and, presto, we are gone, and someone from the police will arrive to free you. Do not look carefully at our faces or attempt to commit details to memory. It could haunt you at some future time.”

That said, the perimeter established, a sign placed in front of the entrance reading NO ENTRANCE/NO ENTRADA, he spoke into the microphone held before his lips, giving the signal.

Another black SUV pulled up, and out of it climbed Unit 2, three more men in priest’s robes, a fellow said to be an expert on the workings of glass, a stout and dedicated load bearer, with a gun case wrapped in a bright Navajo textile and a tripod simply wrapped in brown paper, and Juba the Sniper.

“This way,” said the husky man. He was Special Forces as well, had reconned the site personally, and knew exactly where he was going. He led them into the structure.

The church held no magic for Juba. His mind was fixated on purpose. No sense of grand importance came to his mind, no urgency, no care, no anxiety. All that mattered was the shot; in the moment, faith would be a distraction. He didn’t notice the vaulted grace about him, the shafts of holy sunlight, the dust floating in the air. He didn’t observe the designed serenity of the place, made no comparisons between the busy beauty of Christian religious ambience and the severity and simplicity of his own faith.