Basaleyev explained, ‘This man was chosen from a handful of American operatives. He has been a thorn in our side for some time. Unfortunately, until recently we knew very little about him save for the photograph before you. What we do know is that he’s a ghost, working for the Central Intelligence Agency, yet with no direct connections with that agency. They appear to value him highly, according to our information, calling on him for specific tasks where the security of their agents is required but a larger force would attract too much attention.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘He seems an ideal candidate to use as a lesson for them that we will not accept such activity any longer.’
‘He’s a contractor, in blunt terms,’ said Dolmatov with a sneer. ‘A freelancer working for money. But given a few hours, not for much longer.’
Grishin snorted. ‘We have many of those, too, don’t we – contract fighters? But will the Americans miss him? Shouldn’t we be aiming at one of their own instead, to ram home the message?’
‘We could,’ Basaleyev agreed mildly. ‘But the message we’re sending is far more important: we will not accept further interference by this man or any other. Any questions?’
‘Does this man have a name?’ Kolodka asked, tapping the paper before her.
Basalayev nodded. ‘Indeed he does. Thanks to Agent Seraphim in Washington and her diligence, we now know much more about him. His code name is Watchman and his real name is Portman. Marc Portman.’
THREE
The shooter must have been on edge. He’d let loose with a volley on full auto, the echoes bouncing around the hillside like a vicious drumbeat. Only the first three or four shots came near me before heading off to who knew where. But that was enough. The rest of the magazine poured down the slope and away, the shells’ energy spent on ploughing up a line of holes in the earth and rocks.
I was fine with that. I was still in one piece and my attacker had just told me he didn’t know exactly where I was. Using the spray-and-pray technique in the hopes that he’d hit something or scare me into showing myself was an old trick I wasn’t about to fall for.
Sorry, pal; been there and done that. Didn’t work then, either.
I kept on going down the slope, skidding and sliding and picking up a painful rash of cuts and digs until I reached the lip of a deep gulley I’d spotted on the way up. I rolled into the bottom and shrugged off my day sack, turning it on its head. To the casual eye it looked like a standard piece of hiking equipment you’d see on a hundred backs all over the world. But this one had been remodelled for me to provide a handy extra in the shape of a hidden compartment in the base. It was accessed by a zipper underneath, and wouldn’t have stood close examination, but so far I hadn’t had to test it. I ripped open the concealment flap held in place by a Velcro strip and tugged at the zipper.
Inside was a pocket holding the Kahr and spare magazine. The gun was neither big nor accurate enough at distance to scare off my attacker, who was using a rifle. But I’d picked it because it was small enough to conceal and would allow me to dump it easily if I ran into government military personnel or a militant group road block. Right now I was wishing it had a sixteen-inch barrel, a thirty-two-shot mag and a rapid rate of fire so I could spray the hell out of the hillside above and scare the crap out of whoever seemed to want me dead.
I checked the magazine and clicked it quietly back into place, then closed the flap of the backpack and took the bottle of water from the main compartment. It was warm and tasted like mud but it would keep me going for now. Dehydration can be a killer in hot climes like Lebanon, especially in a combat situation where the body temperature can go up like a rocket. Powered by the stress of the situation it can creep up unnoticed, the dryness of the mouth dismissed as nothing more than par for the course and you can always catch a drink later. Fact is, sometimes that later never comes, and anyway drinking the water was also a distraction exercise while I assessed my situation and my next move. Then I lay still and waited, listening.
Any hunter who takes a shot at a moving target is automatically disadvantaged by being governed by two powerful factors. If they don’t see a body go down, curiosity makes them desperate to know if they got a hit or not. It’s the not knowing that can eat away at them, especially if there’s no subsequent movement. You shoot and expect the target to fall. Simple as. If it keeps running you try again. But if you can’t see it, you eventually have to go take a closer look. And that’s a dangerous gamble. The target might only be winged yet capable of fighting back. What usually overrides the shooter’s need for caution is the pride thing; pride in their own marksmanship and the struggle to accept that they just might have missed when they held all the cards; that in the seconds between focussing their aim, judging wind-speed, elevation and angles and controlling the desire to get the job done, letting go that final slow outward breath might have been a fraction too quick, dumping enough air and muscle control to induce a faint wobble. And a wobble means a miss.
The scuff of leather against rock was my first indication that the gunman had moved. Common enough anywhere else, out in the hills the
