The sniper checked the area again. Still cool. He knelt on the ground, reached into his pack, and pulled out a claymore mine, then carefully broke it open to get at the small ball bearings packed inside. He gathered a handful and rolled them, one by one, down a barrel of the Zeus, repeating the procedure until all four barrels were packed with dozens of tiny steel balls. Then he inserted the little rolls of C-4 explosive he had molded earlier. Each roll had a detonator. He opened the butt of his M-16 and took out the four-piece cleaning rod, which he twisted together into a single long, thin shaft that he thrust into each barrel to compact the mixture.
He moved into the village, to the little store he had watched throughout the day. A low wall surrounded most of the two-story building, with a rollaway gate locked across the front. When open for business, the gate was pushed back to allow customers to wander in and out. The owners lived upstairs.
Kyle went over the rear wall and dropped into a crouch, pausing long enough to drop his pack and rifles inside the yard. From a lightweight vinyl holster near his left shoulder, he pulled a silenced match-grade.45-caliber pistol with an infrared laser scope, a competition-class weapon that carried an expanded magazine of fifteen rounds.
The front door of the store was locked, but a side window stood open to catch the night coolness. Swanson looked inside with his night vision goggles to avoid kicking anything, and then went over the windowsill. The pungent smell of spices was overwhelming. He did a 360-degree check of the room, holding his pistol in a firing position. Shelves, crates, a table with two chairs, a cooler in the corner, where an electric motor hummed. A stove was along the back wall beside a big cutting board on some cabinets. A carcass hung from a hook, waiting to be butchered. Cans were stacked in neat rows.
A plate of small cakes sat in a bowl on the main counter and Swanson wolfed some down, and it was the best food in the world, although he had no idea what it was. Taking a chance, he moved to the cooler and lifted the lid only a millimeter at a time to avoid making it creak, and a wave of chilly air rose into his face. Bottles of juice, water, and soft drinks were lined up like little soldiers and he pulled one out. The cold water went down better than the cakes, and he drank until he was ready to puke. After hydrating himself, he topped off his canteens. Water came first. He could not live without it. Then he grabbed an orange juice drink and gulped it down for the electrolytes, vitamins, and nutrients.
With his thirst slaked, he checked the available food, still able to read labels in the crisp green light of the night vision glasses. The shopping list was short but definite, and he fought the urge to belly-up on food. He had a roll of Ziploc bags in a pocket and loaded them with things that were small, easy to carry, and required no preparation. Dried figs and dates were in trays, in measured little plastic bags with twist ties, and he stuffed some into his Ziplocs, the sides of which had been strengthened with duct tape. He hated dates, but fruit was fuel. Flat cakes of day-old pita bread were taken for their starch, along with the peculiarly Middle East favorite, the ever-present Mars bars, with chocolate to provide sugar and energy. Finally, he grabbed a few boxes of unscented baby wipe tissues, one of the best things going for desert hygiene. One more look around and he decided that was enough.
The luminous dial of his watch showed that eleven more minutes had elapsed, so he packed his goodies and went back out through the window. He gathered the rest of his gear and scaled the wall.
Swanson reassembled everything, took some deep breaths, and turned the NVGs to his next target, the house where the fighters nested. Nothing stirred, not even a fucking mouse.
He crossed the street and stalked completely around the wall of the house, peering over the wall and into the shadows. Nothing. He hoisted himself onto the barrier and spider-dropped down the other side into the space between the wall and the right side of the house. A window was open, and he could hear the grunts of sleeping men. At least two were snoring. He had counted at least eight men going into the house, and guessed there were probably a few more, each having a gun within reach, and he planned to kill them all.
His first move was to check the inner perimeter, and he again stashed the pack and took out the pistol. Holding it in his right hand, Swanson flattened against the wall of the house and slid in a sidestep to the first corner on his right. He did a quick peek around and saw the dark backyard, crisscrossed by clotheslines laden with tunics and robes. With careful strides, he turned that corner and stepped along the rear wall to the next one, where he again stopped and slowly leaned his face around the edge.
A guard with an AK-47 on a shoulder strap, who had been obscured by the drying clothes when Kyle had studied the place, was staring straight back at him, face-to-face, within a foot of each other. The guard’s eyes went wide with surprise at the goggle-eyed creature that had appeared before him out of the night. He had one hand on the stock of his AK-47 and started to raise it at the same time Kyle brought up his pistol and pulled the trigger. The gunfire sounded like the explosion of an ammunition dump to Swanson, and he felt and smelled the heavy warmth of blood wash on his head and chest, and pieces of flesh and bone plaster his arms and face.
CHAPTER 32
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER SHARI Towne spent a long time in the restroom preparing for the afternoon meeting of the National Security Council. She peered into the mirror and thought she looked horrible, but her magic bag of makeup, with careful application, helped hide the lines of worry and the darkness beneath her eyes. She put on a fresh white uniform and brushed her short hair one final time. Still horrible, but it would get her through the meeting. Through every source of effort she could summon, she donned the professional, no-nonsense mask of a neutral expert.
She just wanted this over with, and to go home to her little brick condo in Alexandria, pour a stiff shot of ice- cold Boodles gin with a lemon twist, follow that with a scalding shower, a warm cup of Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea, and a little oval white tablet, 10 milligrams of Ambien. That combination cocktail would go a long way toward putting her down for the night, and at least allow her body to get some rest, but she did not expect much sleep. Her mind was still on Kyle, and tears were only a couple of blinks away.
Doing her duty, making automatic responses to familiar sights and sounds and questions, had propelled her through the personal sorrow so far, and she would be back on the job tomorrow, because what was happening in Syria was much bigger than any one individual, even bigger than two people in love. When it was all done, she intended to call Jeff and Pat and get back out on that yacht and forget everything, particularly this job. The damned Middle East was her desk, and bad things were always happening there. There would be another crisis next week, and the week after that, and the week after that, and plenty of work would always be coming her way. She knew from watching other people go through grief that the mind-numbing work would help her start getting over what had happened to Kyle, one day at a time, never forgetting the death, but learning to accept it. She already missed his crooked grin, and longed to be able to go home tonight and find shelter in his strong arms.
Shari made a final mirror check and grimaced at what she saw, and five minutes later she entered the Situation Room to take her seat along the wall behind Gerald Buchanan, beside Sam Shafer.
She neither liked nor trusted Shafer, who was smart, slim, and handsome, with thick black hair slicked straight back. He was nothing more than Buchanan’s slavish go-to guy for shortcuts on things that might stray over the foul line. Shafer was always flirting with her, eyeing her with open desire and working sexual innuendoes into almost every conversation.
He turned as she sat down and handed her a brown folder with a red stripe running diagonally across the front. “Here’s a new file on the helo crash. Crazy stuff. Turns out that Gates Global had a couple of operators near the village, looking for the general on their own. They made it to the crash site and brought back these images of the victims.”
Shari looked at him. “Gates Global? The private security company? What were they doing there?”
“God knows how they did it. It’s really making us look bad-not only did the rescue mission fail, but a PSC team
