In the Crosshairs: A Sniper Novel Read online

  The real problem wasn’t with Gibson as an individual. The Marine Corps had been Swanson’s home for many years, and that meant he could always trust his fellow marines. It was automatic. It was why after moving on to other pursuits in life marines always had a bond with other marines. The brotherhood was tight. Luke Gibson wasn’t a marine. He may not have been anything.

  Coastie wasn’t a marine, either, not really. Task Force Trident was mostly a marine special-ops outfit when she came aboard from the Coast Guard. It was a tight family of equals, all superior at their jobs, and she had fit right in and might well have worn the Corps’ eagle, globe, and anchor insignia. The big thing at the moment was that she wasn’t with the CIA, either. Swanson intended to cross up whoever was the behind-the-scenes master of this morbid game by bringing in a ringer.

  More out-of-the-loop help was waiting at the other end of this train ride. Gibson didn’t need to know any of that.

  MEXICO

  BETH LEDFORD TURNED OFF her cell phone and put it away for the night. She would never carry it on a mission, because the accidental push of a button might result in unwanted beeping or lights flashing at the worst possible time. She checked herself in the full-length mirror mounted behind the door of her bedroom. It was good that Kyle hadn’t wanted to Skype, because she would have had to refuse, claiming modesty or some other lame excuse. He probably would have wanted to know why her face was striped in nonreflective green and black camo paint, why her yellow hair was tucked beneath a black knit watch cap, and why she was dressed in a black shirt, jeans, and boots. That made her smile as she gave a final check to the Sig Sauer P226 handgun that she had chosen for the night. It was a bit big for her hands, but it was reliable. Having personally polished each of the dozen .40 S&W cartridges, she pushed in the magazine and locked one in the chamber. No need for a holster. Coastie shoved the pistol into the waistband of her jeans.

  Another one of Mickey’s boys, a sergeant, was waiting for her with the car and made no comment when she climbed inside. The entire squad backed the señora’s quiet campaign of revenge for the death of her husband. The little woman was a serious warrior.

  The first hit in the forest had taken out a middleman distributor belonging to the Villareal Organization. Tonight she would dispose of a leader of the rival Beltran Brothers tribe. Neither gang was a major cartel, but they were growing and were always ready to protect their turf through bullets, knives, acid baths, or beheadings. Coastie wanted to spark a fight and let them kill one another rather than her having to do it. She figured she could do her new job with Kyle in Washington and still get down to Mexico on vacation. After all, she had family here.

  As they drove away from the city, Coastie started breathing deeply and shutting down her emotions, letting her body and mind slow down and focus. It took only fifteen minutes to get to the beach road, and the car slowed for a curve. “Good luck, señora,” said the driver as he tapped the brakes once and Coastie rolled out the door and into soft sand.

  A side road fed off toward the water, and she jogged down it quietly, unseen in the shadows. The house was straight ahead now, with no lights burning. Manuel Beltran was asleep. Beth made herself comfortable in a ditch, pulled on some night-vision goggles, and watched the single guard make his rounds. The man was so bored that he hardly looked beyond his feet. There was no movement inside the house. By about two o’clock, the fat guard was nodding off in a sagging beach chair on the patio with his weapon across his knees. Coastie moved like a black cat, a shadow lost in the other shadows. A hop over the rail put her on the patio. A few more steps and she was behind the guard, pulling his head back to stretch the neck and slashing fast, deep, and hard at the arteries to leave as much of a mess as possible.

  Inside the house, she paused and took a note from her pocket. Written by one of the marines so that it looked as if it had come from a man, it was a warning to the Beltrans to stay in their own territory. Ramiro Delgado had powerful friends, it read, and tonight was a night of revenge.

  She moved like a wraith down the hallway and into the bedroom area, checking each room until she found Manuel Beltran sound asleep, with his right arm thrown across a woman. Slowing even more, Beth assumed a proper shooting stance and brought the pistol into position, even taking a moment to aim. As time stood still, she felt in complete control of her world, and a burning hatred for the man in the bed.

  Shooting had always seemed so easy and natural to her, and she gently gave Manuel a triple tap in the head, two in the chest, and one in the groin. The noise awoke his bed partner, and Beth stepped forward and clobbered her twice with the pistol. She wouldn’t be able to remember a thing.

  Beth bailed out, avoiding the guard’s blood on the patio, and jogged back down the road, tasting the sweet night air rich with its salty ocean smells. By the time she was back in the car and moving off, she had decided to leave for Washington on Sunday.

  PARIS, FRANCE

  IT WAS EASY TO hide in France in the springtime. The annual flood of tourists was rising fast, and no stranger drew a lot of attention. For the freshly shaved Nicky Marks, it was easier to blend in as a somewhat lost and overwhelmed American sightseer than to sneak around like the killer he was. As that wise old Chinese Communist dude Mao Zedong preached, the revolutionary should mingle among the people the way a fish swims in the sea. Marks was no revolutionary, but he got the point.

  The girl he picked up last night was the real deal, a freshly divorced American lawyer out to experience the wonders of Paris, and hooking up with a handsome French-speaking escort like Nicky was a find. Sylvia White of Montgomery, Alabama, spoke with a funny southern accent, and he let her do most of the talking in public as she struggled with her maps and guidebook and laptop. Her holiday was more like a military campaign, from the food at a certain sidewalk café, to the artists on the Left Bank, to the Louvre and a list of at least twenty must-see artworks. At least Nicky could have a nice dinner in the evening and an energetic bout of sex while Sylvia commented that her former husband—also a lawyer, name of Reginald—had never done that to her in bed, or THAT! Nicky would put up with it for a while, for being with Sylvia meant that he was safe. Terrorists normally run. Her accent, however, was driving him crazy.

  He hadn’t spent much time thinking about throwing that grenade back in Berlin. He did it and got his money. Planning wasn’t his responsibility. He was puzzled about why he hadn’t been instructed to make sure of a kill. Setting off a loud boom and doing nothing else seemed rather pointless. The thing in Mexico had been equally nonsensical, to his way of thinking. However, the Prince was working out another one of his master schemes.

  “I want to go visit that big Versailles place tomorrow, and see where Marie Antoinette lived,” Sylvia had announced in bed, making the name sound like Marie-Ann Tawnette. “Would y’all like to go along?”

  “The Château de Versailles,” he said, gently correcting her mangled pronunciation. “Sure. Let’s do that.” In fact, the choice pleased him. The monstrous complex of palaces, gardens, and museums would swallow him from sight for an entire day, just another tourist fish.

  The Prince would signal when it was safe to come out of hibernation. The lawyer from Alabama was in France for two more days, after which she would move on down to Italy to absorb the colors of the golden Tuscan sun. That was a whole different set of guidebooks, and he had already politely refused to accompany her, claiming important pending business meetings. She would be able to find another sleeping dictionary down there, he told her, and she giggled.

  By then, the Prince would probably have him on the move anyway.

  7

  SIR GEOFFREY CORNWELL RELAXED in a lawn chair that sagged in the shape of his butt. The warm sun baked on his face while his wife, Lady Patricia, puttered nearby in a patch of flowers. She could have had the gardener perform that chore, but Pat delighted in helping the earth come to life again in springtime, after the frosts, and she was thinning her perennials. Beside her lay a pyram
id of fifty bulbs that needed to be planted today, and those Gladioli acidantera didn’t care that she was rich. If her ladyship wanted their gorgeous summer flowers, she needed to get them into the ground.

  Kyle had arrived the night before, in time for a family dinner with these two people who were his surrogate parents. They had known one another for years. The gods of fate had gambled freely with Kyle’s life until he got a winning hand with the Cornwells. Merely being around them was a calming balm. He threw a pebble at a duck in the pond and missed.

  “Quite a conundrum, my boy,” opined Sir Jeff. “You and this Nicky Marks fellow being tied together in two attacks on different continents.” Kyle had laid out the situation in a late-night session with them, then let them sleep on it before having any real discussion.

  “So the bad man is after you personally? It has to be you, doesn’t it?” added Pat.

  “I don’t know.” He threw at the duck again, skipping the rock past its tail. The bird quacked annoyance. “It’s too early in the game, Pat. I don’t have enough information.”

  “It cannot be a coincidence,” Sir Jeff observed.

  “No. Maybe I killed somebody’s cousin at some point back in the day and they’re out for revenge. A lot of people hold grudges against me.”

  “Sit down and stop molesting our livestock, Kyle.” Lady Patricia shook her dirt-scabbed trowel at him, put it down, and lit a long, thin cigar. “We haven’t seen a thing on the news or in the papers about either of these incidents.”

  “Different stories in Mexico and Germany. Nobody has tied them together yet.”

  She was cross-legged on the grass. “Our poor Coastie. That was a beastly thing to do. She and Mickey were a wonderful pair. I called her yesterday and we had a long talk. She’s not very steady yet.”

  Sir Jeff nodded. “In her condition, are you seriously considering bringing her to work? She may be too fragile.”

  “I think I’ll need help that nobody knows about. I’ll make up my mind after I see her. Fragile, she ain’t. You know that.”

  Lady Patricia released a stream of smoke. “Oh, poof. You can’t make that decision to keep her out of things, Kyle. If trouble begins, and you’re involved, she’ll want to be right there, and you know it.”

  “Only time will tell,” he said, lowering his voice to mock a television reporter. “When this is done, I’ll send her packing over here for you to take on holiday. Out on the boat, maybe. Go shopping. Woman stuff.”

  “There’s a leak in the CIA?” Sir Jeff interrupted. “Of course there is. So who benefits from this? There are a lot easier ways to take you off the board than by concocting some complex scheme involving the Central Intelligence Agency. You may be the link, Kyle, but it might be bigger than you.”

  “Again, I don’t know enough yet.”

  Sir Jeff had a frosty glass of lemonade. “What’s the one thing the CIA, or any intelligence service, truly fears?”

  “Losing its secrecy. Inner workings coming to light. Outsiders getting a look at what it’s doing and planning,” Kyle replied. “They even warned me that someday this might come before a congressional hearing. None of us want that.”

  “So there you go, my boy. Perhaps the question should be not who has the most to gain but who has the most to lose. And why? Isn’t that interesting?”

  Kyle nodded. He had first met Sir Jeff and Lady Pat years ago when he was a Marine Corps sergeant and Jeff was a medically retired colonel in the British Special Air Services. Sir Jeff used his savings to start a weapons-development business, and the U.S. Marines lent him their best shooter to develop a world-class sniper rifle. They had warmed to each other right away, and created the Excalibur, the best of its kind in the world. After that first success, Excalibur Enterprises never looked back.

  That seemed so long ago now. Sir Jeff had found that he was even better in the business world than he had been as a commando, and the company had grown and expanded until it became a major player in the weapons game. And he had brought Kyle along for the ride, persuading the Marines to allow him to borrow the young marine whenever his special experience was needed, which was often. That closeness eventually led to Kyle’s becoming the executive vice president of a huge enterprise, leaving the Marines, and becoming heir apparent to Sir Jeff, with an obscene salary and benefits program.

  The flip side and hidden fuel behind the success was that the Pentagon and the British government, the CIA and MI6 were able to cloak many delicate operations behind a front that was willingly supplied by Excalibur. Somewhere along the way, the aging British couple formally adopted Kyle Swanson, who had grown up as an orphan in the States, to be the child they never had.

  Like all families, they had disagreements, the major one being that Kyle wasn’t yet married. Lady Pat wanted grandchildren, and Sir Jeff wanted whatever she wanted. Coastie had once been a candidate, and, as Lady Pat often reminded Kyle, it was his own fault that she got away.

  “Tell me more about this Gibson fellow?” Sir Jeff brought the conversation back to life. “Can you work with him?”

  Kyle shrugged. “I have no real choice in that. He seems capable enough, and the Berlin incident proved that he has balls.”

  “Watch your language, dear. The ducks are listening.” Lady Pat smiled. “You were lucky that Mr. Gibson was there.”

  “No such thing as luck, my dear.” Sir Jeff finished off the lemonade, put his feet up on a garden bench, and closed his eyes. “Check him out thoroughly, Kyle. Your life may depend on it.”

  * * *

  THE PRINCE WAS NOT a prince at all, in the traditional sense of the word. His father was a king in name only, and neither of them carried a drop of royal blood. Others had bestowed the title on him, and he kept it because he liked it.

  He was alone in a booth at Joe’s Stone Crab in Washington, pondering the next move in protecting his drug kingdom, a vast enterprise that extended from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the refineries in Mexico, and, finally, into the noses and veins of willing American customers. It was very profitable. It was also powerful, which was why he was at one of the favorite restaurants of the men and women who ran the nation’s capital. This place was a fund-raising heaven, allowing political figures to wheedle campaign donations while enjoying excellent food.

  He spotted Congresswoman Veronica Keenan the instant she entered. Tall, dark-haired, and attractive, the freshman legislator was trolling for support and her aides had set her up with the moneyman waiting in a private booth. She hated begging, but it was the name of the game. It took a lot of cash to stay in office, to which she had only recently been appointed upon the death of her husband, who had held the seat for three terms. The campaigning never stopped; she had a lot of bills to pay, including thousands of dollars in dues to her political party.

  A waiter escorted her to the table, and she followed with a confident walk. She extended a hand and a high-wattage smile. “Mr. Prince, a great pleasure to meet you.” She measured Harold Prince carefully. A mane of thick black hair was swept low across the forehead like a rock star from the eighties. The teeth sparkled. Glasses with tinted lenses kept his eyes in a bit of shadow. There was a small flesh-colored Band-Aid on his cheek that drew her eyes away from his other features. He was in his thirties and was totally unremarkable in any way. Wig, caps, dark glasses. Phony, she thought.

  Prince welcomed her, and when a bottle of wine appeared at the table they each had a glass and the waiter poured and withdrew. He had seen this dance hundreds of times; members of Congress did not come to Joe’s just for the food.

  They clinked glasses, and Veronica Keenan said in a low voice, “Let’s get the nasty part of this meeting out of the way, Mr. Prince, then we can have a nicer chat. I appreciate your generous donation to my campaign.”

  The Prince had a delivery service take an envelope to her office that morning. In it were a check for $9,999 and the supporting paperwork to show where it came from. Donations below $10,000 didn’t draw close scrutiny. “
Congresswoman, my firm admires your work and we are happy to support you.”

  “The people of my district thank you, sir. As do my party and I. Every little bit helps.” Ten grand wasn’t big league enough to buy special favors. The congresswoman could probably find that much money in the cushions of her office sofa after an important lobbyist visited. She thought that Prince was smart enough to know that. It was enough to get a lunch.

  The Prince smiled. “I know. I know. It isn’t much,” he said. “It is a gesture of goodwill and gives me this chance to have your ear for a moment. “It is information, not cash, that I bring to your table today.”

  Veronica Keenan suddenly grew attentive. The handsome man had undergone a change of expression and his eyes had sharpened. Behind those shaded lenses, she couldn’t see their actual color. The waiter came back and took their orders, then left again, not wanting to witness whatever was about to be discussed.

  “You want to be a crusader, Congresswoman, but you have not yet been able to grab an issue that will vault you into the limelight. That is the assessment of my friends, at least.”

  “That is candid, rude, and wrong,” she sniffed, taking a sip of white wine. “My work is forcing the big pharmaceutical companies to make major concessions in the pricing of their drugs.”

  The Prince laughed softly. “Sure. No matter what you do, those companies will not be hurt, because America is a nation of pillheads and cocaine freaks, and you, madam, have no real clout.”

  She inhaled and let the air out slowly. “Fuck you,” she whispered, her eyes flashing with anger. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “Just a new friend who would like to give you that breakthrough moment to put you on the Sunday shows for a year. God knows you’ll need the help if you want a second term.”

  “How dare you talk to a member of Congress like that!” She was growing a bit worried. Mr. Prince wasn’t bowing to her power in Washington.