Ghost Sniper

83

An RPG tore through the steel security curtain of the shoe store display window, blasting fragments of molten steel and glass through the shop like a giant shotgun blast. One officer was killed outright, and Crosswhite was thrown across the floor. Shoes and wounded men caught fire, and Crosswhite jumped back up, running to the door and shooting at the shadows in the street.

The carbine shattered in his hands, followed by the instant boom! of Hancock’s .50 caliber.

He threw himself flat as the great rifle boomed again. The big bullet ricocheted off the concrete, sending hot pieces of spall into the wounded. The men screamed and tried to crawl deeper into the shop.

“We have to surrender!” one of the officers shouted.

Crosswhite grabbed his carbine away from him. “Surrender then, goddamnit. Let ’em cut your balls off! See to the wounded!” he ordered another, not knowing what else to say.

He could feel his lacerated hands bleeding as he mounted the staircase to the roof, finding it hard to keep a good grip on the weapon. “Motherfuckin’ sonofabitch!” he snarled. “Goddamn cocksucker, I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out!”

He threw open the hatch and crawled out onto the roof, knowing exactly how naked he was but too pissed to care. Paolina and the baby were in the back of his mind, but he knew now that he would never see his young wife again — that some other man would raise his daughter.

“Fuckin’ Pope! Cocksucker!” he sneered, belly-crawling toward the parapet. “I’m gonna die on a goddamn shoe store, you motherfucker!” He glanced up at the sky on the off chance one of the CIA director’s stealth drones might be up there and gave it the finger.

Hancock’s rifle went off again, and he sprang into a crouch, firing at a pair of shadows on the far rooftop. Both shadows went down, and he dropped flat, rolling to the south side of the roof without taking any return fire.

The rocketeer beside Hancock was hit in the face and killed instantly. Hancock was hit in the shoulder. He swore a blue streak as he crawled closer to the parapet, pulling the Barrett after him by the strap, not knowing if the smartass on the far roof would have any grenades to pitch across.

“Shit just got real,” he told himself, knowing the bullet was still in him, possibly embedded in the bone, and feeling that the stitches in his leg were torn open.

“Hey!” he shouted, stuffing gauze into the shoulder wound. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Fuck you care?” Crosswhite called back.

“Got me pretty good, asshole!”

“Stand the fuck by! I’m about to do better!”

Hancock laughed, crawling south along the roof in the direction of the voice.

Crosswhite crawled quickly toward the north, keeping low behind the parapet. A few seconds later, Hancock’s rifle went off, and an armor-piercing round blasted a hole in the brick-and-mortar parapet, very close to where Crosswhite had been.

He sprang up and fired at Hancock’s silhouette just as the sniper was squeezing the trigger a second time, the carbine slippery in his bleeding hands.

Hancock fell over.

“How’d I do that time?” Crosswhite shouted across. When Hancock didn’t answer, he smiled. Crosswhite knew he hadn’t killed him — his aim had been off — but he’d hurt him.

“I’ll wait for him to come back up for air,” he said to himself, opening fire on the narcos below and shouting to his cops that the sniper was down.

The police downstairs began firing into the street, and Ruvalcaba’s men fell back.

Hancock’s shadow appeared once again over the parapet, but Crosswhite fired on him before he could raise the heavy rifle, driving the sniper back under cover.

“Come on, show me some more!” Crosswhite taunted. “Lemme air that shit out for ya!”

Hancock’s sluggish movement had told Crosswhite that the gringo sniper was badly hurt.

“Don’t you die on me over there! You suck that shit up and fight me!”

Hancock sprang up unexpectedly, firing a round through the parapet one foot from where Crosswhite was crouched.

“Fuck me!” Crosswhite murmured, displacing fast and firing at the sniper’s silhouette before he could track him.