Ben left his son and followed the trip wire through the trees.
The seven dead Vietnamese Communists are laid out in a neat row like sardines in a can; a clean black V has been burned into their foreheads with the red-hot branding iron. Lieutenant Ben Brice will never forget the smell of burning human flesh.
Ben now had the same branding iron in the cross hairs of the Starlight Scope: employing ambient night light, a battery-powered intensifier produced an image seventy-five thousand times brighter than the human eye. A sniper could detect enemy movement up to six hundred meters away. Once Starlight Scopes were deployed in Vietnam, the night no longer belonged to Charlie.
John had buried himself in the sleeping bag; he was exhausted after the two-hour hike and freezing in the zero-degree temperature. Ben was standing behind a tree, using the scope to scan the camp and to locate the best shooting position. A white SUV was parked outside the main cabin. The branding iron hung on the door of the next cabin over. Two old pickup trucks sat in front of the other cabins, blocking his line of fire to the cabin doors from his present position. Tree cover was available on the east, west, and north sides of the camp.
Satisfied with the layout of the camp, Ben swept the scope up and searched the area above the camp on both sides. A ridge about five hundred meters west of the camp would be the ideal sniping position if sniping were his only mission; but this was a rescue mission. He needed to be closer to the camp. He was about to put the scope down when he noticed something on that ridge: a movement. Not noticeable to the naked eye, but noticeable through a Starlight Scope. Maybe an animal. He focused in on the location again.
That was no animal.
Pete O’Brien was pissed off.
Low man on this totem pole meant Saturday nights on the mountain. Shit rolls downhill in the Bureau and nowhere faster than in HRT. He put the night-vision binoculars to his eyes.
Pete O’Brien, a five-year man with the FBI but the rookie operator on this seven-man sniper team, had caught the overnight shift again. The team leader and the senior operators had taken the Humvee down to Coeur d’Alene for the night; at that moment, they were sleeping in warm beds next to strange women, while Pete was up here on this damn mountain freezing his ass off. At least the wind had died down. The night was so still and quiet he could hear his heart beating. If anything moved on this mountain, he would know it.
Pete thought of the girl.
And he thought of HRT’s motto: Servare vitas. To save lives. And of HRT’s mission: to rescue U.S. persons held by hostile forces. If he had a daughter and some hostile asshole abducted her, he’d damn sure expect the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team to save her life or die trying, not to take pictures while she was being raped or killed. But Pete O’Brien was under strict orders to conduct visual surveillance of the “crisis site,” i.e., the cluster of cabins, and shoot 35-millimeter black-and-whites instead of. 308-caliber slugs at the bad guys holding the girl.
She’s a hostage!
And we’re the Hostage Rescue Team! Not the Hostage Photography Team! Not the Hostage Hope You Get Out Team! Not the Hostage is Probably Being Raped but We Got More Important Shit to Worry About Team!
This is bullshit!
What could be more important than that little girl’s life? We ought to blow the door to that cabin and save her life! Or die trying.
Pete was pissed!
Pete O’Brien had signed on to save lives. But after killing a mother at Ruby Ridge and letting those children die at Mount Carmel in Waco, HRT had been cut off at the knees. They couldn’t take a shot or a shit without an okay from a suit at Headquarters. And then the World Trade Towers dealt a body blow to the Hostage Rescue Team: HRT had been created for the specific purpose of rescuing airplane passengers held hostage by terrorist hijackers. But if the terrorist hijackers were willing to fly the plane, themselves, and their hostages right into office buildings, what the hell good was HRT? That realization had sent morale to such depths that highly trained and high-testosterone snipers were chasing pussy instead of shooting bad guys on a Saturday night.
And that was what graveled Pete’s butt. HRT was better trained, better equipped, and better funded than any other civilian law enforcement unit in America- we fly around the country in our own C-130 transport, for God’s sake! — but we never shoot anyone! We never rescue anyone! We never do anything!
Pete O’Brien was really pissed!
We wear our cammies and face paint and body armor and pack MP-5s and M-16s and 9-millimeter semis but we don’t do a goddamned thing! We got Bradley armored vehicles and helicopters, we got night-vision goggles and binoculars and scopes, we got flash-bang grenades and explosives to blow doors, we got black paramilitary outfits and polypropylene panties, we got. 50-caliber rifles with bullets that’ll blow your head clean off-but we got no balls.
We’re a bunch of goddamned career bureaucrats scared shitless of fucking up and facing an administrative review or a criminal investigation or a Congressional hearing and losing our jobs and our pensions instead of doing the right thing: taking a chance and saving lives.
This is wrong!
Pete O’Brien touched the rifle beside him. He was a trained FBI sniper, qualified at the Marine Sniper School, although he had yet to pull the trigger with the cross hairs on a human being. Sniper School had taught him to stalk a target without detection, to lie in wait for days if necessary for a shot opportunity, to camouflage himself so that to the world he was the mud, the swamp, the trees, the bush, anything but an FBI sniper, to wait for that one moment when the target presented himself, to take the shot, to kill the bad guy, and to save lives. All Pete O’Brien wanted was a chance to do what he was trained to do better than anyone else in the world.
He felt something cold against his cheek, cold like steel. Like the barrel of a gun.
“That’s her,” the FBI agent said.
Agent O’Brien was looking at the photo of Gracie illuminated by Ben’s flashlight. Ben turned the light on the agent’s map of the camp. The agent pointed at the main cabin with both hands, which Ben had bound with duct tape. He never left home without duct tape.
“She’s in that cabin, last we saw her.”
“When was that?”
“Seventeen hundred hours, day before yesterday. She tried to escape. She didn’t make it.”
“You people didn’t help her?”
The agent sighed. “No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Orders from the top. The very top.”
“How many men?”
“Eleven, all tucked in for the night. Couple of the men got into a fight yesterday, one left, never came back. We don’t know what happened to him.”
“We do. Agent, why does the FBI want these men bad enough to sacrifice a ten-year-old girl?”
The young agent shook his head. “Honest to God, I don’t know. Need-to-know basis, and I guess I don’t need to know. But they’ve stockpiled enough weapons in the main cabin to start a war. And they look like real soldiers.” He shook his head. “Whatever they’re up to, it must be something real important.”
Ben doused the flashlight.
“Son, there’s nothing more important in the world than getting my granddaughter out alive.”
“Eugene, she’s alive!”
“Who?”
“Gracie! I called eight times yesterday to your cell phone.”
