The Invisible

“That’s a Pave Low,” Walland suddenly said. “You hear it?”

Kealey listened hard, and sure enough, there was the sound he’d been waiting for: the steady, distant thump of approaching helicopters. His relief was short-lived, as Owen came back on a moment later, ready to point out the overlying problem.

“Kealey, we’ve got to get up there,” he pressed. “They might not come down on the first pass, and if they circle, it gives Mengal a chance to run.”

“They could come down on the first try,” Walland pointed out quickly, his voice laced with tension. “That house is lit up like a Christmas tree. Even without infrared on the ground, they should be able to spot their landing zones.”

“Maybe,” Owen allowed, “but we can’t afford to sit here and wait.”

Kealey thought about that for a few seconds, then made his decision. “I’m going after them. Walland, watch for the two guards in the grass. Did you see where they dropped down?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think—”

“If they stand up, take them out. Owen, you watch the ground to the left of the barn. Massi, you’ve got the other side of the house.”

“Kealey, you can’t—”

“Just listen,” Kealey snapped, cutting Massi off in midsentence.

“When I move, watch for a muzzle flash. It’ll probably come from the top of the hill, and when you see it, pull the trigger. Don’t fuck around . . . It doesn’t have to be a perfect shot. Just squeeze the trigger, and keep firing until you run out of ammo, okay? I want suppressive fire, not a single round in the ten ring.”

“This is a bad idea,” Walland said. “If there is a sniper up there, you won’t get more than a few feet. You know you can’t—”

“Let me worry about that. Just watch for the—”

Kealey stopped talking when he heard the distant but unmistakable sound of an engine turning over. It was hard to tell with the rain and the rumble of tanks in the hills to the rear, as well as the sound of the incoming helicopters, but he was almost certain the sound was coming from the other side of the house. His muscles tightened involuntarily, and he swore viciously over his lip mic when he realized what was happening. “They’re running . . . We’ve got to go now.”

“Wait,” Walland said urgently, “Kealey, you—”

Kealey didn’t hear the rest; he was already moving. His right foot was already wedged against the same rock he’d used earlier. Launching himself up and forward, he began running hard for the edge of the field, eyes flickering over the wet, waist-high grass in front of him. He hadn’t taken more than a few steps when he felt the air flutter over his right shoulder. The strange sensation was immediately followed by the crack of a high-powered rifle. Massi said something like, “I see him, I see him,” and then Kealey felt the same sensation of another near miss, and Owen screamed, “Got another one. There’s a sniper on the left as well. . . .”

Kealey dodged to the right, ran hard for two or three seconds, then dodged back to the left, trying to make himself a harder target. His heart was thumping against his ribs, and he couldn’t breathe. He felt sure that death was imminent, just seconds away. He heard the rattle of automatic fire, then the crack of a bolt-action rifle, but the sounds seemed distant somehow, as if by running, he had removed himself from the ongoing battle, even though he was sprinting toward the enemy. It was a stupid thought, he realized; if one or both of the snipers had him in their sights, they wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger, and they were probably tracking him right now. . . .

“Got him,” Massi shouted over the earpiece. “I got one. . . .”

Owen: “Can’t see him . . . The fucker is down in the grass. . . .”

Walland said urgently, “Your left, Kealey. Watch your left. . . .” Still running hard, Kealey started to bring the rifle to his shoulder, but Walland was faster. Kealey heard a 3-round burst to his rear and got the scope to his eye in time to see a man dropping into the grass, the green-tinted image bouncing crazily against his face. Swinging the rifle back to the right, he saw a second figure rising up, a dark silhouette against the lights in Qureshi’s back garden. Kealey squeezed the trigger without looking through the scope just as the guard depressed the trigger on his AK-47. The man screamed and fell back, firing a half-dozen rounds in the process, but Kealey didn’t break stride.

He reached the garden a few seconds later and ran at a dead sprint up the hill. When he got to the top, lungs burning, he ran between the barn and the house in time to see a black van moving down the rutted path, the tires struggling to gain traction on the flooded dirt road. Suddenly, the vehicle swerved onto the highest point on the road, the tires caught, and the van lurched forward. He did a quick range calculation and placed the rapidly accelerating vehicle at a distance of 75 meters.

“They’re running,” Kealey shouted into his lip mic. “They’re running. . . .”

Lifting the rifle to his shoulder, he aimed for the tires and started to fire, the collapsible stock thumping steadily against his shoulder. He saw the rear tire go on the passenger side. The van swerved sharply, went off the road, and hit a depression in the grass. The vehicle flipped onto its side with a wet thud, the sound of crunching glass dampened by the overgrown grass in the field. Kealey was tempted to fire again—he had a clear view of the passenger-side door, which was facing up to the sky—but he didn’t know where Fitzgerald was in the vehicle, and he could risk hitting her with an errant round. As he moved slowly to the left, his rifle up at his shoulder, his earpiece came to life.

“Kealey, what’s happening?” Walland demanded. “Where are they?”

“They are in a van,” he shouted. “But I knocked out the tires. Get up—”

Kealey dove to the ground as soon as he saw the flash, but he wasn’t fast enough. He never finished the rest of the sentence. He felt an impact in his left side, but he couldn’t look: he was too busy rolling right to avoid the rounds kicking up the ground around him.Where the hell was it coming from? The question was right there, like someone was shouting it repeatedly inside his head, but then he figured it out, and it all came back in a flash of memory. The back of the van had popped open at the same time he had been distracted by Walland’s radio call, and at least one person had tumbled out of the cargo area. Or had it been two . . . ? And if so, which two had it been? Kealey was still trying to decide when something large and dark swept over the house, accompanied by the unmistakable roar of twin General Electric T700 turboshafts operating at full capacity. Still lying prone, he tilted his head up to the dark, rainy sky and watched as the big helicopter came in to land. The Pave Low dropped with surprising speed toward the large, open field in front of the house, but before it could touch down, Kealey was back on his feet, his attention riveted on the scene unfolding before him. For the moment, he was lost to the sound of the Apaches providing cover overhead, the guttural roar of the Pave Low landing 200 feet to his left, the radio traffic coming over his earpiece, and the stinging pain in his side. He was entirely focused on the struggling pair 50 yards in front of him. The rifle came up of its own accord, but before he could fire, his target spotted him, and with one swift move, he had his hostage wrapped up in his left arm. In his right, he was holding a gun, and he had it against Brynn Fitzgerald’s head before Kealey could squeeze off a shot he was comfortable with. The captor—along with his hostage—was less than 10 feet from the open rear doors of the disabled van.

“Don’t shoot!” Amari Saifi screamed over the roar of the helicopter. His attention was clearly torn between the helicopter and the lone soldier in front of him, but he knew enough to keep his body mass behind that of his hostage. “If you fire, she dies! Do you hear me? She dies! ”

He continued to scream random orders and threats, but Kealey didn’t hear a single word. In his peripheral vision, he could see Delta troopers streaming out of the gaping hole in the side of the MH-53, but for the moment, he didn’t care what they were doing, even though he knew that a good number of them undoubtedly had their weapons trained on his head.

“Drop your gun!” The Algerian shouted again. Kealey didn’t respond, and he didn’t move. He was still waiting for his opportunity. Gunfire erupted to the rear of the house, and the soldiers were screaming something at Saifi—at both of them, Kealey realized—but still, he refused to shift his aim. Through the AN/PVS-17 scope mounted to his rifle, he had a quarter moon of a target. . . . And that wasn’t enough. The thought hit him on a subliminal level; the decision to hold his fire was not a conscious one. It didn’t occur to him that he had been in a similar position twice before, and that it had ended badly both times. He didn’t think about the possibility that he might miss, and he didn’t consider the full extent of what would happen if his round hit the hostage instead of the target. The target was all he could see; for Ryan Kealey, Amari Saifi’s head was just a sliver behind the pale, frightened face of Brynn Fitzgerald. In his mind, she was no longer the acting secretary of state, the most powerful woman in Washington.