Стивен Хантер - Game of Snipers

Only one thing mattered and that was escape.

He came at last to the end, climbed up a ladder, pushed aside a flimsy door, and climbed into night air. He blinked, checking. He was alone, over the crest from the big house, oriented toward Route 193. He had to veer toward it, somehow get out of the zone of police activity and get himself a car. If he had to, he would kill everyone who stood a chance of preventing him from doing that.

He waited a bit for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, feeling a night wind against him, though it was still warmish out. Above, low clouds, the air heavy with the threat of rain. A front was said to be coming in from the west. Good, it would cover his smell and melt his tracks. He looked back in the direction of the house, and though the crest obscured it, he could see the pulsating illumination of the red-blue staccato rhythm lighting the low clouds, confirming that the raiders were indeed police. He thanked God for the good luck that got him on the run before, rather than after, the attack. Juba may have killed Menendez, but his shot had saved La Culebra from the raiders. So it goes in the mad world. He was alive now, or at least free, with a good shot at escape because of it.

He tried to reconstruct in his mind the lay of roads and fields on this side of the house and came to the conclusion that if he trended north, which he could determine by glimpses of the highway a mile or so away, he would intercept the entry road to the property, could follow that east off the property to 193.

He knew he had to move fast. These raiders would soon be organized, and, once organized, they’d call in reinforcements. They’d organize search parties, forensics teams, interview the staff, and put together a picture of who was there and what they had done. Of course, they’d discover Rita and Rosita and understand that the Arab wasn’t responsible, he was too busy killing Menendez and the bodyguards to bother with putas . So the staff would know another player was responsible and they would soon give up information on the man in the mask, and the search for him would begin. The raiders would be provoked by a man who liked the knife so much. And, sooner or later, they would find the other bodies and realize that his hobby was essentially killing young women, and he would shortly become a high priority for them. How could they care so much about putas ? They lived to serve and die. That was reality. To care was more gringo madness.

And then — was this evidence that God had not forsaken His most wayward of children?—he saw it. A sedan, on the entry road, in the midst of the blackness. Its headlights were on. In the next second, he made out the languid shape of a man lounging against the bumper. Now, what was this strange hombre doing here? He didn’t appear to be a sentry and was on no kind of guard duty, not from the position he had assumed. He wasn’t dressed like a raider, instead basically wearing the clothes of an American at the mall, jeans and a light jacket. And he had no machine gun or helmet. He wasn’t smoking, he wasn’t on the radio, he just seemed sort of disgruntled, according to his posture, a bad boy exiled from the main action by a stern authority.

The Mexican reached under his shirt, selected his seven-inch, and withdrew it. Bone grip, tight, thin, and checkered by the bladesmith, a dagger meant to kill by thrusting deep into the organs, but sharpened on both edges so that a quick, strong slash would open the body, perhaps fatally, certainly enough to paralyze by shock so that he could get the point into the chest and puncture the heart. It was a good blade. He loved it. The Toledo steel whispered as it came from the leather. He began his slow approach, though he could see that the man was old, perhaps some kind of cranky derelict or local law enforcement senior citizen moved out of the action for everybody’s safety and disarmed. In any event, he would die quickly under the blade, and killing him would be, as it always was, a supreme pleasure. Another one! The two women, targets of opportunity, and now this lanky, stupid gringo . God was bountiful tonight.

He drew close and closer, amazed at how uninterested the man was in everything around him.

It was not Swagger’s best moment. He stood there, fulminating in the dark, occasionally going on the ’Net to learn that there had been no gunfight, and they were trying to get things sorted out.

What am I supposed to do? he wondered.

He went off ’Net again. Somehow, he hadn’t been figured on this possibility, much less figured it out. He didn’t want to go in on foot alone. The boys were still nervous, not quite sure what they had uncovered. Yet at the same time, Nick had said he’d send an all-clear and he hadn’t. He didn’t want to interrupt the radio transmissions with his own questions, because they had too much to do and didn’t need interruption. He could drive in, but some hotshot might empty a mag into a strange vehicle appearing from nowhere. His best bet, obviously, was to wait it out just a few more minutes. The secondary convoy, with forensics people and other crime scene processors, medical personnel and equipment for the anticipated casualties, as well as dogs to track escapees, was said to be on the way. He would latch onto that. It couldn’t be more than five minutes or so away.

And just to fuck things up even more, a cold rain began to fall. If the skies really opened up, the rain could turn things to mud and destroy any tracks or scents left behind, assuming that, as it now appeared, the sniper had in fact again evaded them. The guy had more lives than a cat.

These things filled his mind. That meant he’d totally given up on tactical awareness. That meant he’d made the old man’s most likely mistake: not paying attention. So his reflexes were shut down, and if there was a footstep, a snap of a twig, the brush of legs sprinting through bush — anything at all — he missed it, and the man hit him hard, filling his brain with chaotic flash and infinite regret, and he lost another second, wondering, Huh? What the fuck? and he was down and pinned.

It was too easy. The strike of the keen predator against the unaware prey. La Culebra drove his left forearm hard into the old man’s head, knocking his baseball cap awry, scrambling his mind, while his full body weight, propelled at near maximum burst speed, sent the old arms akimbo and broke him fast to the earth. La Culebra knew the tricks, and, with killing speed, he laced his left arm through the old man’s, pinned it, achieving maximum leverage, and put his full strength against the enemy. The old man flattened, gulping, perhaps grunting, even as he understood he hadn’t the strength of his own to defy the attacker. In another second, the old man was helpless.

“You should pay attention, old one,” La Culebra said in English, for he recognized him as a gringo , noting that he looked like an old-time cowboy, a marshal or town sheriff, all crags and wrinkles.

“Now it is time for you to go,” he said, rather enjoying the moment and the intimacy between killer and victim.

He put the dagger point into the man’s neck, below the ear, and the glare from the headlights showed the blue blur that signified the carotid just a quarter inch under the white skin, which even now picked up the gossamer reflection of the rain drops beginning to crash against it.

“But you should see he who slays you and know at whose dispatch your fate has arrived,” he said, and, with the tip of his dagger, plucked off his mask so that his full face was bright in the beam of light.

Swagger was gone and knew it. Though thin, his assailant was extremely strong, far stronger than he was, and, more important, clearly schooled in the darkest of all the martial arts. The man had him pinned and stilled. He was the pig hanging on the hook as the slaughter boss leaned in close, with a smile on his face and no fear in his heart, and with the throat cutter in his hand.