The Sniper and the Wolf

12

Twenty-nine-year-old Jason Ryder was not a Medal of Honor recipient, though he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for bravery during the Afghan War. He was lean and wiry at 145 pounds and stood no taller than five foot six. He was fast on his feet and even faster with a gun. Ryder was also a man with a severe case of post-traumatic stress, and since returning home from the war, he had been virtually ignored by the Veterans Administration. “Backlogged” was the official term they used.

It hadn’t taken Ryder long to give up on the VA, turning to a private military company (PMC) named Obsidian Optio, where he took a job leading offshore security details. The work was boring and tedious, and it made his nerves hum with anxiety. When he wasn’t working, he spent his time drinking and smoking pot, sliding ever deeper into the hole of PTSD until he finally began to consider suicide. It was during a detail in Brazil that Ryder had first met Ken Peterson of the CIA.

Peterson was very coy at first, feeding Ryder’s anger at being brushed aside by the VA. He said there were factions within the US government working to change things from the inside out, but key people were standing in the way. It didn’t take more than three hours over beers for Peterson to have Ryder talked into accepting a private contractor’s role with the agency.

“Sure, it’s against our legal charter,” Peterson said, “but the agency’s been turned upside down since the nuke attacks last year.” He went on to exaggerate further the severity of a genuine administrative problem. “Nobody really knows who’s in charge of anything, and nobody can get anything done according to policy. So we’re operating outside official parameters to keep the ship afloat, fighting a holding action against the old guard back in Langley while Washington decides how it wants us to function in the age of ‘nuclear terror.’ ” He smirked. “Hell, the president can’t even get Congress to confirm a new director. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so damn tragic.”

Ryder now sat in George Bush Intercontinental Airport, waiting impatiently to catch an early-morning flight to Washington, where he would assassinate Bob Pope, one of the traitors Peterson claimed was standing in the way of a safer, stronger America.

What Ryder did not know — nor did Peterson or Tim Hagen — was that Pope was the director of a newly formed top-secret Special Mission Unit of the CIA called the Anti-Terrorism Response Unit (ATRU). Though the ATRU was similar in concept to other SMUs such as SEAL Team VI and Delta Force, it was much smaller. It did not operate under the auspices of the Special Activities Division. In fact, the ATRU was not even officially part of the CIA. It answered directly to the Office of the President. It did not conduct large-scale operations, it did not gather its own intelligence, and its operations certainly weren’t subject to congressional oversight. Operators within the ATRU had one purpose and one purpose only: close with and destroy Muslim terrorists wherever they could be found and do so without leaving a trace of having been there. To use the cliché, they didn’t exist.

Ryder sat at the gate and looked at his watch, his leg jiggling up and down. He needed a cigarette, but there was no place to smoke. He’d gone to the restroom to sneak a drag, but there’d been a pair of chubby National Transportation Safety Board cops standing right outside the door, jawing and laughing about some foreign national they’d just denied entrance into the country. So instead, he popped a Xanax and chased it with a swig of water, wondering idly if Peterson understood how close to the edge he really was these days.

Part of him didn’t trust Peterson — the guy was a spook, after all — but fifty grand was good money, and if this guy Pope was only half as bad as Peterson made him out to be, the disloyal bastard still deserved what was coming to him. He’d seen much better men killed on the battlefield for a whole lot less. But in the end, it didn’t really matter to Ryder. He was itching to take his aggressions out on someone in government, and Pope was probably more deserving than most.

An hour before boarding, he managed to nod off, but a bickering couple sat down across from him. A young Mexican woman was bitching about something in Spanish. She was in her early twenties, accompanied by a man easily fifteen years older, and she had long black hair, dark sunglasses, and jeans so tight they fit her like she’d been poured into them.

“Would you shut the fuck up for five minutes?” the guy said irritably. He was tall with dark features, built like a professional baseball player.

Ryder pulled his black Craft International shooting cap down tighter over his eyes, tuning them out.

“If your mother pulls that shit on me again,” the girl said in English, “I’m slapping that bitch right in her fucking mouth!”

“Calm down,” he repeated. “We’re not the only ones in the airport.”

“Hey!” the girl said. “Hey, you.”

Ryder lifted the brim of his cap. The girl was looking right at him. She’d taken off her glasses, and he could see the bloodshot drift of her black eyes, the cocaine shine. “You talkin’ to me?”

“Would you let your mother call your girlfriend a whore?”

Ryder stole a glance at Crosswhite. “Depends on if she was.”

Crosswhite snickered, and Sarahi sat back in the seat. “Pinches putos,” she said under her breath.

Ryder pulled the cap back down and drifted off again. He awoke a short time later to the toe of someone’s shoe tapping against his. He looked up to see the tall man standing over him.

“This your flight?” Crosswhite asked, drinking from his coffee. “It’s boarding.”