Target America: A Sniper Elite Novel (28 page)

74

MONTANA

By the time Akram stumbled from the trail and onto the logging road, he looked and felt like he’d just fought a running battle with a mountain lion. His face was torn and bleeding from crashing headlong through juniper thickets, and his injured testicles were throbbing. He ripped open the back door of a green Ford Excursion and tossed the TAC-50 onto the seat. He was reaching for the driver’s door a moment later when he realized that both tires were flat on that side of the vehicle. In disbelief, he looked over at the second truck to see that it had been disabled in the same fashion.

“Ain’t that a bitch?” Gil said, standing at the edge of the road twenty feet in front of the truck.

Akram looked up, shocked to see his enemy standing there in the dawning light bleeding from a head wound. He flexed the fingers of his gun hand, considering whether to go for the pistol, but he could see that Gil’s holster flap was loose, so he chose to wait, allowing the arrogant American time to make a mistake.

“I like seeing you bleed,” he said. “Your wife, she bleeds too. So does her mother.”

Gil stepped fully into the road. “Ever seen a Gary Cooper movie?”

Akram smirked and stood up straight, squaring himself to face Gil directly. “Even if you kill me, there will be another and another—always another until you and your wife are both dead.”

“Dog’s ass.”

Akram went for his pistol.

Gil jerked the 1911 and shot a hole through Akram’s wrist before he could even touch the Berretta.

Akram held his arm in shock, scarcely able to believe a human being could move so fast with such accuracy. He stood gaping at his left hand now dangling uselessly at the end of the radius bone, the end of the ulna shot completely away. His knees gave out, and he slumped against the fender of the Ford.

Gil came forward to take the Berretta from his hip, tossing it over his shoulder into the brush. He holstered the 1911 and stood looking at Akram, the heel of his hand resting on the butt. “I reckon you can guess what happens now.”

Akram spit in his face. “The bomb goes off. That’s what happens . . . and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Gil reached to take hold of Akram’s nearly severed hand, twisting it around.

Akram screamed, sinking to his knees beside the wheel of the truck. “Allah will punish you! He will punish all of you!”

Keeping a grip on the hand, Gil stood looking around. “Well, in the meantime, you can tell me where to find the bomb.”

“Fuck you!”

Gil nodded. “I figured you’d say that.” He gave the hand a powerful jerk, and the ligament popped as the appendage broke off the end of the bone.

Akram screamed, clutching the bleeding stump to his chest.

Gil crouched down, holding the hand as if it were nothing more significant than an empty glove. “Here’s the deal, partner. You’re gonna do the right thing and tell me where to find that bomb, or I’m gonna do some horrible shit to you—the kind of horrible shit
you
people do. Is that what you want? You want to look out there in the road and see your body parts layin’ in the dirt? Because that’s what you’re gonna see.
Just as sure as God makes little green crocodiles, that’s what you’re gonna see.” He tossed the hand out into the road, where it landed palm down and flopped over. “See there? That’s the beginning.”

Akram stared back at him, his eyes burning with defiance.

Gil jabbed a thumb into his eye, and Akram jerked his head back, whacking it against the fender of the truck.

“See how silly it gets? How fast a man loses his dignity? This is why you don’t let yourself be taken alive.” Gil shook his head. “Just tell me where to find the goddamn bomb.” He jammed a thumb deep into Akram’s other eye, and the man’s head bounced off the fender again as if they were playing out a macabre Three Stooges parody.

Half blind, Akram swatted at Gil’s eyes, but Gil grabbed the hand, twisting it hard around until the wrist snapped. Akram screamed, and Gil adjusted his grip, getting to his feet as he continued to twist the arm, popping the elbow and jamming his bloody boot hard into Akram’s armpit to dislocate the shoulder. Akram sprawled with his face in the dirt, bawling out loud, and Gil let the ruined arm drop to the ground.

“And these are just the prelims.” Gil crouched back down, picking up a stone and tossing it down the road. “You gotta understand me when I tell ya this
ain’t
Guantanamo. Hell, this ain’t even Afghanistan. This is downtown hell, and you’re on the corner of Main and Broadway with the devil’s boot on your neck.” He took hold of the now-quaking Akram to help him sit up against the tire, drawing his Ka-Bar and placing the blade alongside Akram’s nose. “Now, you tell me where to find that fuckin’ bomb—right
fuckin’
now—or you’re gonna get the VIP tour! And I absolutely do
not
mean maybe.”

Akram’s eyes were too badly injured to keep them open, but he could feel the cold steel against his face, and he knew what it meant. With shock setting in, he shivered uncontrollably, swallowing hard before mumbling, “San Diego.”

Gil cut off his nose and Akram screamed.

“Don’t lie to me!” Gil grabbed one of his ears and laid the blade alongside of his head. “We know it’s in DC! Tell me where!”

Akram clutched his face, screaming in pain and horror. “Washington was the primary target, but the bomb never got there!”

Gil cut off the ear and Akram went berserk with impotent rage,
beating ineffectually on Gil’s leg with his one good arm as Gil grabbed a handful of his hair and began to slowly scalp him. “Where’s the fucking bomb, asshole?”

“San Diego!” Akram shrieked. “San Diego!
San Diego
!
”

Gil let go of his scalp and crouched down in front of him. “Where in San Diego?”

Akram began babbling prayers to Allah, his blood pouring down over his face. “I don’t know,” he stammered, shivering like he was attempting to shit a peach pit. “Kashkin. Kashkin’s people have it. The Chechens. The bombs were Kashkin’s plan . . . Kashkin’s plan.”

Gil stood up and drew the 1911. “Shovin’ my wife’s panties in her mouth was the single dumbest thing you
ever
fuckin’ did.” He put the muzzle to the top of Akram’s head.

Crosswhite and a pair of SEALs burst through the brush, ready to throw down with their M4s.

“Wait!” Crosswhite shouted.

Gil pulled the trigger, and Akram fell forward onto his face. “Wait for what?”

“What the fuck do you call that?” Crosswhite said, his chest heaving from the near-legendary run up one side of the mountain and down the other.

Gil holstered the pistol. “Due process. Did you find Marie?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. The dog too.” Crosswhite kicked the hand from the road and came forward. “Alpha and Shearer are carrying them down to the ranch.” He pointed at the body. “He have anything to say before you blew his brains out?”

“Yeah. Gimme the sat phone. I gotta call Pope.”

Crosswhite gave him the phone, and he got Pope on the line.

“Bob, it’s Gil. Listen, the bomb is
not
in DC. It’s somewhere in San Diego. The DC bomb went off in New Mexico.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Akram al-Rashid just told me.”

“Gil, we have to be sure. Are you
sure
he’s telling the truth?”

Gil looked down Akram’s battered body. “I’d bet my life on it, Bob.”

75

LANGLEY

Pope hung up from talking to Gil and immediately called the president.

“What do you mean it’s in San Diego?” the president asked, his aggravation clearly evident. “How the hell could Shannon possibly know that?”

Pope told him what little he knew.

“And al-Rashid just volunteered that information?”

“I doubt it was that simple, Mr. President.”

“Look,” the president said, “NSA and FBI have both looked at the Kashkin files, and they concur with your DC assessment. All of our resources are moving toward the East Coast, and now you’re changing your mind because of a forced confession?”

“Mr. President, we know there were two bombs. It makes sense the enemy would choose targets on opposite coasts, and the Pacific Fleet
is
based out of San Diego Bay. We have two nuclear aircraft carriers in port there right now—priceless targets in the eyes of the enemy.”

“Look, we’ve already got everything moving toward DC. If we pull back now, and you’re wrong . . . Christ, I don’t even want to think about
it! How do we know it wasn’t the other way around? How do we know it wasn’t the San Diego bomb that went off in New Mexico? Al-Rashid could very easily have lied about that.”

Because of the carriers, Pope believed in his bones that the target was San Diego . . . specifically, San Diego Bay. “Please trust me on this, Mr. President.”

“I’ll have NSA and FBI look at the files again,” the president said. “Right now I’ve got my hands full trying to figure out how we’re going to deal with the possible invasion of South Korea.”

Pope was off the phone a short time later, scanning back through Kashkin’s files. An hour passed without him finding a single piece of evidence to even hint at San Diego.

Midori, his assistant, sat across the table scanning through Kashkin’s browser history but could find nothing related to the West Coast. “Maybe he used a separate computer for each target,” she suggested.

Pope glanced over. “It’s possible.” He reopened Kashkin’s email account, since those files wouldn’t be specific to either computer. A half hour later, after skimming dozens of innocuous emails for the second time, he clicked on an email marked “no subject” that Kashkin had sent to someone in Chechnya the month before. He had opened it earlier but hadn’t seen anything about DC, so he had quickly moved on to the next email.

Opening the note, he paged down to find a list of ten real estate addresses . . . all of them on Coronado in San Diego Bay.

He grabbed immediately for the phone, starting to dial the president, but then he thought better of it and called Gil instead.

“Gil, it’s Pope. I’ve got a question for you: If the chips were down, and you had to call on one of the West Coast SEALs to save your butt, who would it be?”

76

SAN DIEGO BAY,
Coronado Island, a Half Mile from the USS
Ronald Reagan
(CVN-76)

Kashkin’s nephew Bworz sat in a recliner in the corner of the tiny living room, watching television as he listened to two of his men squabbling in the kitchen over who had eaten whose food out of the refrigerator. With eight men living in the small two-bedroom house, unable to go outside except for at night for fear of raising the suspicions of the neighbors, it was becoming rather cramped, and the men were growing increasingly edgy.

He went into the bathroom and closed the door, looking into the mirror and lifting his upper lip to check his gums, which had begun bleeding the day before. At first it had scared him, realizing he was suffering from radiation poisoning, but then he decided it didn’t matter. The idea of dying didn’t frighten him. He welcomed it. He’d lost his wife and son to the Russians years earlier, leaving him with nothing to live for but the jihad.

In addition, his uncle Kashkin had not yet returned from Montana, and there had been nothing in the news about Gil Shannon’s death, so Bworz had come to the conclusion that Kashkin was either dead or
captured. If that was the case, he and the men would have to stay with the bomb right up until the moment of detonation. His uncle was a brave and dedicated man, but no one was immune to torture, and the Americans would surely torture him to find an atomic weapon.

His only worry was that the men might see the blood on his teeth and realize that radiation was leaking from the bomb. If that happened, they might desert him, so Bworz was careful to take a drink of water before talking.

He urinated and then went into the kitchen, where the two men were still arguing, refilling his glass at the tap and turning to watch them. He took a drink and then set down the glass.

“Shut up. The both of you. I’m tired of listening to it.”

They stopped and looked at him.

“When is Kashkin coming back?” one of them asked irritably. His name was Tomas.

“He’s not.”

“How do you know?” said the other. “Has he called?”

Bworz shook his head. “He would never risk exposing our location to the NSA.”

“Then we should leave,” Tomas said. “We’ve planted the bomb, so our job is done.”

“Our job is
not
done,” Bworz said. “We must now remain with the bomb until the end—in case Kashkin was captured and forced to talk.”

Overhearing this, the five men sitting in the living room quickly came crowding into the kitchen.

“What’s this now?” one of them asked.

“If Kashkin doesn’t return,” Bworz said, meeting their gazes individually, “then we must all remain here with the bomb until
the
day. Until
the
moment. My uncle is a devout man, but no one can stand up to torture for very long—as some of you know from personal experience. It’s a risk we cannot take.”

“So change the timer,” Tomas said. “Set it for five hours and let’s go.”

Tasting blood, Bworz took another drink of water. “Only Kashkin knows how to change the timer.”

“Oh, well, that’s bloody convenient!” Tomas said in British English.
He had studied in London. Only half the men understood what he’d said.

Bworz stared at him. “Are you afraid, Tomas?”

“I fear only Allah,” Tomas said. “His judgment. If we have to die, we have to die. But
do
we have to die? That’s the real question. What will be the point in staying if we can’t self-detonate the bomb in the event the house has been compromised?”

“To defend the bomb,” Bworz said, “or to move it.”

“I don’t like it,” one of the men said. “We could never defend this house from a military attack, and they
will
attack if they think there’s a bomb here.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bworz said, deciding to gamble. “There’s no point to leaving. We’re all dead anyhow.”

“What’s that mean?” Tomas said.

Bworz bared his teeth to show them the blood. “We’ve all been poisoned. The bomb is leaking radiation. I’ve been around it longer than any of you, but not by much. So you all have a personal choice to make. You can die here with me, painlessly and for the glory of Allah, or you can run away like cowards to die a coward’s death. Because I tell you this, brothers . . . cancer stalks us all. And the only cure is to die.”

One of the men dropped his gaze to the floor, muttering, “It is God’s will.”

Bworz set the water glass down on the counter and slipped through them toward the living room. “The choice is yours. I’m going to pray.”