American sniper had him in plain view. It was time to quit. He dropped to his knees and held his hands high over his head.
Kyle shot him through the chest, and the al Qaeda officer flopped over on his side. A final shot went into his head.
“Both targets down,” said Sybelle.
Kyle grabbed his rifle and pack, and Sybelle picked up her scope and gear and called out the signal for the controller to send in the TAXI for pickup. They hustled out through the gate and back to the landing zone, where the little bird arrived two minutes later. They jumped in and were gone.
The fighting was over in the house. The nest of terrorists had been wiped out to the last man, and the Marines would secure the area.
“Was he trying to surrender?” Sybelle asked, wiping some camouflage greasepaint from her face. “Might have given up some intelligence.”
“I saw a weapon,” Kyle said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”
3
THEY ARRIVED BACK AT Incirlik with plenty of time to shower, change clothes, and have breakfast before their next flights. With the special op done, they could mix anonymously with the crowd. Lines of soldiers and airmen and Marines talked in a garble of background noise, and silverware and china clinked a tinny chorus. The aroma of cooking eggs, sausage, and bacon rose like a cloud from the grills as cooks in stained whites kept the food moving to the steam tables. Air Force chow halls were the best, so although the flyboys wore bus driver uniforms, Kyle was always happy to share their food. He stacked a tray full of the good stuff, while Sybelle settled for bran flakes and fruit. Plenty of black coffee. They found a small table off to one side and put down their trays.
“What are you going to do on your R-and-R, Kyle? Two weeks is a long time.”
“Rack time. Sleep. Wake up and then go back to sleep. I’m tired.” He drank some coffee and thought back over the last few months, during which he had been constantly on the go. The two weeks spent stalking a terrorist in Chechnya had been exhausting, and before that he was looking for a drug operation buried deep in Brazil’s giant rain forests. Leading a Filipino marine unit against an island hideout of Islamic terrorists ended in a screwed-up firefight. Last night’s raid into Kurd country seemed like just another routine day at the office for Swanson, but even professional hunters get tired.
Sybelle studied him as they ate. Kyle Swanson: the legend himself, the ghost arisen. He was not a big man, 5'9' and 175 pounds, with muscles that were sinewy rather than bulging. The kind of guy with remarkable endurance who could fight all day, long after the bigger guys gave out. Gray-green eyes and sandy brown hair that was longer than normal, even by civilian standards, around an angular face. He was neither handsome nor unattractive, just unremarkable, which was exactly what he needed to be.
On paper and in all government computer banks, Swanson was dead, and he had a tombstone in Arlington National Cemetery to prove it. Two years ago, Kyle was the best scout-sniper in the Marines, a veteran shooter who was often tabbed for special ops work by other agencies. Then General Bradley Middleton had been kidnapped as part of a plot to topple the United States government and put the Pentagon beneath the thumb of a private military contractor. Kyle was on the rescue team sent into Syria, and although the rest of the force had been wiped out, Swanson pulled Middleton to safety while most of the Syrian army hunted them. He was badly wounded in a final firefight, and his fiancee, Shari Towne, was murdered by the plotters in the United States.
Important people realized the value of a single operator in the modern-day climate of terrorism, and it was decided that Kyle Swanson, with no living relatives, should cease to exist. He accepted the deal, with one condition. After recovering from his wounds, the billionaire maniac responsible for killing Shari Towne was soon thereafter found dead on a Colorado mountain, shot through the head in what was ruled to be a hunting accident.
With the fake burial at Arlington, and Kyle’s entire identity and fingerprints wiped away, Task Force Trident was created around him, with General Middleton in charge and Sybelle Summers as the operations officer. Swanson was virtually the invisible man, free to take on any assignment. He could kill anybody, anywhere, and walk away untouched by law.
But he had never fully recovered from the death of Shari, his bride-to-be, and one of the reasons that Sybelle had come out from Washington for this otherwise routine operation in Iraq was to evaluate his physical and mental condition. She found that he still had his normal cold edge and the hard shell that made sure nothing got inside. Swanson simply did not care about much. Kyle’s problem was not about being dead but about continuing to live with himself.
“Middleton wants me to report back on how you’re doing, Kyle.” She held the warm mug of coffee in both hands. “I know you can still shoot straight, but how’s your head?”
“You mean, am I crazy?”
“Are you?”
“Of course. I have to be crazy to do this job!” He grinned. “No. At times, I get tired of being dead. It can be a pain in the ass. I mean, having to wear a black mask in that room with other Marines? I knew half of those guys but couldn’t even say hello. I have to check my latest fake passport every morning to remember my name for the day. They even gave me a set of Dutch identification papers a while back. Do I look Dutch to you?”
“Got to be tough,” she agreed. The ultimate loner. “Tell you what. You’re obviously exhausted and running on battery power alone. So take your R-and-R and rest up, get drunk, get laid, and sweat out a hard physical conditioning program. Then come back to Washington and let’s figure out how to slow down the workload. They can’t expect you to cover the whole world by yourself.”
“Is the general complaining about me again?” Swanson and Middleton had not gotten along for years, dating back to their first encounter during the First Gulf War. Middleton had come across Swanson after a particularly vicious firefight and saw the sniper trembling as he reflected on the carnage he had caused during the battle. Swanson always had found a few moments alone after a fight to bring himself back to normal, but Middleton had mistaken the reaction as evidence of incompetence. Not only had he tried to get Swanson kicked out of the Marines, but he also used the term “shaky” in the official report. The attempt failed, but the ironic nickname of “Shake” stuck, for his friends knew that Kyle Swanson was anything but unreliable in battle. It had taken the rescue in Syria to start Middleton and Swanson on a path of mutual respect and friendship.
“No. He’s just concerned. We all are. Without you, there is no Task Force Trident.”
Kyle finished a final slice of toast and pushed away his plate. “Well, Captain Summers, tell the folks back home that I am just skippy. I still believe in our mission. I still hate terrorists, and I’m still willing to kill whoever the president decides needs a good killing.”
WITHIN A FEW HOURS, Summers left for Washington aboard a military transport, and Kyle climbed into a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter. It was shining white except for two narrow bands of dark blue stripes and a gold corporate symbol on each side marking it as part of Excalibur Enterprises Ltd., the holding company for the many businesses of British tycoon Sir Geoffrey Cornwell. The sleek bird was a combination executive passenger vehicle and all-around workhorse, and Kyle was the only passenger in its spacious and soundproof cabin. The aircraft had no ties to anything military, and its flight log for the day recorded just a routine trip for a company executive, but in the world of clandestine operations, Sir Jeff was known to occasionally lend a hand for off-the-book operations. Kyle strapped into a comfortable leather seat as the powerful Turbomeca Arriel 2S2 engines revved up, and in minutes the Sikorsky was up and heading toward the Mediterranean Sea. The steady low throb of the engines helped him fall asleep almost instantly.
“We’re landing, sir.” The pilot’s voice on the intercom aroused him after what seemed only a few minutes, but when he checked his watch, Swanson saw they had been in the air for more than an hour. The blades were slapping hard, and from the cabin window, he could see the square landing deck of a luxurious yacht with the same color scheme as the helicopter. The sparkling
