Assassin

Chapter Two

STOKELY JONES WAS STANDING ON THE CHURCH STEPS WITH Brick Kelly and Texas Patterson, the three of them maybe four feet away from Alex Hawke when it happened. Stokely thought he’d caught the wink of a muzzle flash. It had been high and on the outside, straight down the third baseline and up in the tree line, near the left crest of that hillside, just opposite the front of the church.

Vicky was dead. That much was for damn sure.

Only took one glance at the girl and he’d known the wound was crosshairs mortal. Then, looking at Alex, still holding his bride in his arms, his anguished face buried in her hair, Stokely heard American and British security forces inside the church shouting at everyone to get down, hit the deck. Heavily armed and flak-jacketed personnel immediately formed themselves a cordon around those standing outside on the steps, telling them to get their asses down as well.

Inside the church, everybody had heard Alex’s scream. There was screaming and confusion in there, too. Hell, man, you had the British prime minister in there, you had lots of royal folks, and you had the damn American ambassador and secretary of state. Not to mention all kinds of other foreign dignitaries and some famous Hollywood people. Lots of likely targets in the little church. But the sniper, he shot the bride.

“Get a doctor here for God’s sakes,” he heard Alex cry again and again in a broken voice, “She needs a doctor right now!”

Stokely saw the look on Alex’s face when he spoke and then he just took off running for the hills, knowing there was nothing he or anybody else could do for Vicky, but thinking there was something he could goddamn well do for Alex.

“Saw a muzzle flash,” he shouted ahead to the group of British special forces and plainclothes guys, bristling with weapons. They were forming up into a perimeter along the stone wall surrounding the churchyard. “Shooter’s up there in the trees on that hill!” The old wall was over four feet high but Stokely, still in his morning clothes, vaulted it in mid-stride and kept running. “You guys, you not too busy, you might want to give me a hand up there,” he shouted back over his shoulder. If the Brits had any brains they’d come with him. If not, he’d go catch the son of a bitch all by himself.

And when he did—

He’d entered the dark woods, the mossy ground spotted with sunlight but dark now even though it was mid-morning, and was scrambling over the roots of some of the biggest trees he’d ever laid eyes on. He saw old stone tablets sticking out of the ground at odd angles and realized he was running through a graveyard, now overgrown with underbrush. The slope of the hill angled sharply upwards and he was having a tough time keeping his footing in the fancy-ass new shoes he was wearing.

That must have been why the young plainclothes guy had been able to catch up with him, and, shit, run right alongside of him for a minute. Stoke was the fastest guy he ever knew and here was this blond-haired, freckle-faced kid matching him stride for stride. Maximum speed of a normal human being, in a short sprint, was about fifteen miles an hour. Stoke had been clocked at a shade under twenty, and this kid was pulling away. Looking at him kind of sideways, too. Hell, six-foot-six black guy in striped pants, a black cutaway and top hat probably not all that common a sight in this neck of the woods.

“Who the bloody hell are you?” the English guy said, not even breathing hard.

“Friend of the groom,” Stokely said, as the two of them leapt over a heap of fallen trees. “Who the bloody hell are you?”

“MI5. Security. Assigned to the prime minister.”

“Good. Shooter was at the top of one of those trees. Just up there on that overhanging cliff…if you—”

The guy sprinted ahead so fast that Stoke didn’t even bother to finish his sentence. For a white guy, the kid was quick. And, if they managed to get lucky, two guns were always better than one. Stoke ripped the top hat off his head and flung it away, picking up his pace and closing the distance between them. Still it was tough to run in a pair of shiny sissy shoes, especially when you had to keep your eyes looking up all the time. Chances were, the shooter had split, but he also could be sitting up there somewhere in the treetops just waiting to pick off somebody like Stoke or the plainclothes kid. Tough call.

Kind of guy who would shoot a bride just coming out of the church? Flat-ass crazy.

He looked down for a split second, having seen or sensed something, all those years in Nam kicking in, and that’s when he saw the trip wire. He managed to clear it by maybe half an inch.

Christ, Stoke thought, the asshole has mined the goddamn woods!

“Stop!” he screamed at the kid up ahead. “Mines! Fucking land mines! Stop right now!”

The kid was wide-eyed, looking back over his shoulder at Stoke when he tripped the wire.

“Aw, Jesus,” Stoke said as he watched the kid go up in a fiery reddish burst of blood and bones and smoke. “Jesus, goddamn Christ!”

The kid still had his eyes open when Stokely reached him. The big man dropped to his knees on the ground beside the boy and cradled what was left of him in his arms. Blood was pouring out of his mouth, but the kid was trying to talk.

“Tell…tell me mum that…tell her that…”

“Hey. Listen up, ’cause this is important. Ain’t nobody but you gonna tell your mum anything, son. You going to be okay, you hear me? You just take it easy, now, and old Stoke, he’s going to stay right with you till the medics get here, all right? They going to fix your ass right up, understand? Good as new. You going to make it, kid, I’m going to personally see to that.”

He sat there, waiting for the boy to die, eyes scanning the treetops, using his handkerchief to catch the blood coming out of the kid’s mouth, and suddenly he was back in the Mekong, middle of a firefight, holding on tight to his troops, tears running down his face, so many of his good friends and best asshole buddies blown all to shit by Charlie’s AK-47s and land mines and RPGs, all of them talking about they mamas at the end.

He looked down at the kid and saw him die.

“You was fast, son,” Stokely said to him, still stroking his head. “You the only person on this earth ever to outrun old Stoke, and, man, that’s truly saying something. You was a brave kid, I could see it in your eyes just in the short time I met you. You going to a better place now. You be all right.”

Stoke heard noises below him and looked up to see three commandos in black coming up over a small rise, gunsights already on him.

“Stop!” he screamed. “Stop right there! Land mines all over the goddamned place!”

They did what he said and one of them called up to him. “We heard the explosion. What’s his status?”

“His status?” Stoke called back. “His status is over.”

After they’d taken the kid away, Stokely led a team of the Brits up to the place where he thought he’d seen the muzzle flash. Stoke was out in front, picking his way over the tripwires and calling out their locations when he came across the tree with the cable hanging down.

There was a loop in the bottom of the thick wire cable and, higher up on the stainless steel cable, a small electrical-type box with a black button and a red button.

Stoke, not worried about prints because he was still wearing his wedding gloves, grabbed hold of the cable, stuck one foot in the loop and pressed the button on top, the black one. It was like being in an elevator without the elevator. He was instantly flying up through the trees, at least fifty to sixty feet in less than five seconds. When he got near to the top, he saw the big electric motor mounted on the tree trunk with four heavy bolts. Electric? Up in a tree? Had to be battery powered.

But the motorized cable wasn’t the amazing thing.

The amazing thing was the shooter had left his gun in the tree.

It was right there, stuck in the crotch at the top of the tree. Stoke had removed his blood-soaked gloves and now used the wedding program to try and remove the weapon without messing up any prints. Wouldn’t budge. He hit the butt sharply with his hand and the thing didn’t move an inch. No wonder the guy had left it up here. Need a goddamn crowbar to get it out, way he’d managed to wedge it in there.

Stoke instantly recognized the kind of sniper rifle it was, even though he hadn’t seen one since the seventies. It was a Russian-made Dragunov SVD. A Snayperskaya Vintovka Dragunova to be exact. Amazing. How many times you go to a crime scene a find the perp’s left his goddamn weapon stuck right there in your face?

One thing was for damn sure, evidence or no evidence.

Guy who murdered Vicky and the English kid, he was long gone.