Viral

Again, the high-pitched tweet of the alarm sounded. The other man was somewhere behind the cottage now—a vantage point Charlie couldn’t see—and coming closer. Charles Mallory felt a kick of adrenaline. He walked to the back bedroom and planted the rifle’s bipod on a table, several feet from the window. The woods were thicker in back, and he scanned them in the direction of the tripped sensor. Right to left. Up and down. Saw the details of the tree bark, the veins in fallen leaves. But nothing human. Il Macellaio was too far away to see yet, or else hidden among the trees.

He moved in a crouch back to the front room. The other man was coming closer, close enough to see Charles Mallory, probably, and to take him out if Mallory made a mistake. He shuffled to the corner of the right front window. Found him again in his scope. Watched as he crawled through the brush to a spot on a rise and then lay flat in the leaves, barely visible. Something, he saw, was strapped to his back. A second rifle? Charlie ducked away from the window as the predator lifted his scope, aiming at the window.

Charles Mallory crawled to the back room. Looked through the rifle scope at the thick rolling forestland behind the house. Listening to the breeze. At first, he didn’t see anything, scanning the woods meticulously. Then, finally, he found him: a blur among the trees.

Il Macellaio would come in later, Charlie sensed, after the first blow had been delivered. The other man was his front line. Unless they were planning to try to overpower him, coming at the house from two directions. But that wouldn’t be smart, because he had a surveillance advantage. He could see them coming better than they could see him. Mallory returned to the front room. Found the other man through his scope, lying on a leafy patch of earth among the beeches and pines. He watched the man raise his weapon again, aim it toward the cabin. Mallory ducked away from the window, but not before recognizing what was strapped to the man’s back. It was a second gun. The one in his hands was a Russian-made sniper rifle. The other was something else entirely: a twelve-gauge, pump-action shotgun. What looked like a Mossberg 500. Why would he use a pump-action shotgun for a sniper mission? Then he realized: It wasn’t for a sniper mission. The other weapon was a riot gun. He was preparing to shoot rounds of tear gas into the house through the windows. That was their tactic. Mallory would be forced out the front door, and as soon as he was visible, the predator would cut him down, probably with a body shot.

It was actually a pretty good plan, although Charles Mallory had prepared for it. He had a tear gas mask beside the surveillance monitor. But he wasn’t planning on using it. His plan was that it wouldn’t be necessary.

Charlie watched as the man moved closer—shuffling quickly for a few yards then flattening himself once again, in a pocket of fallen branches and shrubs and under-growth. Mallory scrambled to the other front window. Saw him lift the sniper rifle again, aim it toward the cabin. Lower it. He watched whenever the man moved, and he ducked from sight when he raised his gun.

Again, the alarms chirped. Two of them. Both men were closing in. He thought about Nadra Nkosi and Jason Wells, both of whom had wanted to be here. Stay calm, he told himself. Stay focused.

The first predator was less than three hundred meters away now. Probably close enough. The Heckler & Koch PSG1 had an accuracy range of more than six hundred meters, but Charlie wanted to be certain that he could get him with a single shot. And even then, he didn’t want to do it without knowing where the other man was.

Another sudden movement. The man in camouflage jammed himself forward through the brush and went down. Mallory tried to find him through the scope. Saw nothing. He looked at the monitor screen. Nothing. Where was Hassan?

Charlie listened to the quiet, identifying each of the sounds: light wind high in the branches; a bird calling from a tree; another lifting off into the air; a distant scurrying sound.

When he spotted the other predator again, he felt a surge of relief. He watched the man pull himself on his elbows into a closer cover, behind a tree stump and a thicket of branches.

The man mounted his gun on the branch of a fallen tree, this time sighting the window, it seemed. Charlie’s window.

Charlie stood in front of the window for an instant to let the man see him, then ducked away, falling to the floor and crawling across to the other window. He removed the bipod from the gun and pointed the weapon from a corner of the window. Adjusted his sight and dialed an elevation into the scope to correct for the arc of the bullet at three hundred meters. He found the man again in his cross-hairs. Saw the pores in his skin. The receding hairline. The hook on his cheek. The eyes—steady, obsessively steady, but focusing on the wrong window.

The predator pulled his head away from the sight for a moment, to give himself perspective. That’s when Charlie squeezed the trigger. The 7.62mm bullet cracked through the silence, striking the man in the left eye, snapping his head back. The sound of the shot echoed through the woods, along with frantic motion. Deer, probably.

Charles Mallory crawled to the back room and studied the woods where Hassan had been, moving his scope from side to side. Nothing. He listened. Heard twigs cracking, faraway footsteps. Someone running, perhaps, in the other direction. He planted the bipod on the table and adjusted his scope for a longer range. Saw a blur in the woods, moving away from him. He dialed an elevation for five hundred meters. Found the moving target skittering down a hill. But he was unable to get a clear view. He fired, missed. Fired again. The figure seemed to drop. Silence. Then he scrambled up, running. Mallory saw him through the scope, fired again.

He looked with his naked eye, saw nothing. Heard nothing. Fourteen minutes later, the perimeter sensors chirped. Il Macellaio was leaving the site. Fourteen minutes.

Charlie carried the sniper rifle out the front door. He got in the Jeep and drove back toward the two-lane paved road. A quarter mile down the gravel drive he stopped. Surveyed the woods through his scope.

But he saw nothing.

He drove on, more slowly, scanning the woods with his eyes.

Another eighth of a mile and then he saw him, to the left in the woods. Il Macellaio, lying on his side, facing away from the drive.

Charlie stopped the truck. He cautiously stepped out, aiming his rifle at the predator. Stepped toward him, watching his hands, which were still gripping his rifle. Waiting for him to move. The wound was in his shoulder, he saw. Probably not fatal. Charlie stood behind him, waiting for Mehmet Hassan to lift up his torso. To take a final shot. But nothing happened. If Hassan was not dead then, he was a minute later.

FIFTY-FIVE

THAT EVENING, JON MALLORY posted the first installment, about alleged irregularities involving Champion Funds investments. The link with the criminal banking network was enough to start a chain reaction. It began with this paragraph:

“WASHINGTON—One of the world’s largest but most secretive private equity firms has quietly poured billions of dollars into unlikely corners of Africa and elsewhere in the developing world over the past eleven months through more than a dozen separate, but connected, corporations. These entities have purchased land and businesses and launched ambitious infrastructure and energy projects, in some cases working with unstable and corrupt regimes and a largely unregulated banking network controlled by developer Isaak Priest, according to sources familiar with the deals.”

Over the next several weeks, a succession of stories played out in newspapers and magazines, on television and websites internationally. When a good story gathered momentum, it became a kind of living organism, Jon Mallory had learned. But in this case, most of the big scoops came from The Weekly American.

The headlines cascaded into one another, as new revelations emerged on an almost daily basis:

Regulators Probe Champion Group