Дэвид Балдаччи - The Guilty

After that Robie looked around the two-story warehouse. The place was cavernous and, except for them, empty. And most important, they were completely hidden from view.

Rain started to ping off the warehouse’s metal roof.

Robie looked up and his gaze seemed to pierce the roof and venture to the outside. He glanced over at Gathers, who was checking their equipment, his manner subdued probably by the prospect of having to perform in such adverse conditions.

Robie glanced at his watch and then sent off a secure communication from his phone. The answer came back as he was halfway up a ladder that led to a catwalk on the warehouse’s second story.

IT’S A GO.

He put his phone away and continued his climb, reaching the catwalk and skirting down the narrow metal path until he reached the front side of the facility.

Gathers followed him up with the gear, two duffel bags’ worth. They both sat down and started to assemble the tools they would need tonight to accomplish the mission.

Spotting scope, weather and wind analyzers, and, of course, the sniper rifle.

There was one other tool required. There were no windows up here, so Robie had to make one.

He used the battery-powered saw to cut two holes of different sizes in the side of the metal. He used a suction cup to grip the metal, and when the cut was complete, he pulled the metal toward him and deposited it in his duffel.

One hole was large enough for his muzzle and his scope to fit through simultaneously. The other hole was for the spotting scope to be used by Gathers.

Each picked up their respective “weapons” and inserted them through the holes. Robie did a sweep of the street while Gathers did the same with his spotting scope. This was going to be a far longer shot than Robie’s last mission, nearly twenty-two hundred meters.

A British soldier currently held the world record for the longest sniper shot. In 2009, he had killed two Afghan insurgents at a distance of nearly 2,500 meters. The shots were so far away that it had taken the .338 Lapua Magnum rounds nearly five seconds to reach and kill their targets.

Robie’s shot would be almost three hundred meters less in distance. But the conditions were far from ideal, and he would be shooting in between a pair of buildings that could create a wind tunnel that might foul the shot. That was another reason that Gathers was here as the spotter. He would feed Robie all the information that he needed. All Robie had to focus on was making the kill when he pulled the trigger.

The good thing about this shot was that the target’s security forces had never even considered the abandoned warehouse a potential threat. It was simply too far away from the event that would be taking place over a mile from here.

Well, Robie hoped to prove them wrong about that tonight.

Robie checked and rechecked his ammo, and then made sure his weapon was pristine and in perfect working order. While he did that, Gathers was soaking up every bit of data that would have an impact on the shot Robie had to make.

When that was done both men sat back. They each ate a power bar, downing it with some G2.

Gathers said, “Heard about your last mission.”

Robie folded up the plastic wrapper from the power bar and stuck it in his duffel along with the empty plastic bottle. Plastic wrappers held fingerprints and used beverage bottles contained DNA. Though his were on no database anywhere, the key principle was that no detail was too small to be overlooked.

“After the shot we have thirty seconds to get out of here,” Robie said. “They’ll be waiting for us with the RIB,” he added, referring to a rigid inflatable boat. “Ten-minute ride on the water, then we load onto a chopper. That’ll carry us to the harbor. We board the freighter, which leaves three minutes after we get there.”

Gathers nodded. He knew all this, but it never hurt to run through it multiple times.

Over the next few minutes Robie caught Gathers glancing at him and decided to just get it over with.

“You have an issue?” he asked, staring across at the other man.

Gathers shrugged. “You know why I’m here.”

“To be my spotter.”

“You work alone, Robie, everybody knows that.”

“Not always.”

“Almost always. You accidentally killed a kid. Could have happened to any of us.”

“But it didn’t happen to you.”

“I’m here because they have—”

“Doubts? Do you have doubts that I can make this shot?”

“Not if you’re the same Will Robie, no.”

“But if I’m not the same Will Robie?”

“Then I’ve been instructed to make the shot.”

Robie sat back on his haunches. This he had not been told.

Gathers obviously read this on his face and said, “I thought you should know. In fact, we can reverse roles now, if you want. No one will know the difference.”

“Have you even made a shot from over two thousand meters, Gathers?”

“Nearly so. On the practice range.”

“Nearly so. On the practice range, where conditions are ideal.” Robie pointed upward where rain was still pinging off the roof. “These conditions are not ideal. In fact, they’re horrendous for a long-range shot. Do you still think you can make the kill here and now?”

Gathers drew a long breath. “Yes, I think I can.”

“Well, let’s hope we don’t have to find out because ‘I think I can’ doesn’t cut it.”

Two hours later Robie got another communication.

“It’s a final go,” he said to Gathers.

Gathers nodded and started reading his weather instruments again and taking looks through his scope.

Robie picked up his rifle and edged the muzzle out through the hole he’d cut. The barrel was hit by rain, but his scope was still under the roof and dry. He placed his cheek against the synthetic stock and took a look through his scope. This piece of optics was the best in the world, an engineering marvel that allowed one to see great distances with superhuman accuracy.

“Feed me,” said Robie.

Gathers started giving him the weather and distance information. Robie took all of this in and made corresponding and necessary adjustments to his optics. Calibrating against the weather was critical here. With the long distance that the ordnance needed to travel, the elements would have a terrific opportunity to screw the shot. And then there was gravity, which while undeniably present at every spot on earth, was also, unlike the weather, highly predictable. He sighted through it again and the glass atrium came into view.

“It’s helpful they have a flag on top of the building,” said Gathers. “Makes the wind call easier, like a wind sock at an airport.”

“That was why our people had it put there,” replied Robie curtly.

He looked at his watch and adjusted his ear mic. The voice came on and updated Robie. He gazed through his scope again and people came into view.

The party was just getting started. The man of honor would arrive in about twenty minutes. He was incredibly wealthy in the way only a man who had plundered an entire country could become. Had he remained content with that, he would not have been targeted. But he had committed the cardinal sin of deciding to fund terrorist activities that had struck directly at America and her allies. For this, Robie had been dialed up to put a stop to his heartbeat and along with it his ambitions.

The event tonight was the man’s fifty-eighth birthday. He would not celebrate another.

In an impoverished nation the limos gliding down the street might as well have been figments of a country’s collective imagination — or nightmare, rather. But the country had a wealthy few and they were all coming out tonight because not to do so would probably ensure their deaths.