Ghost Sniper

3

Wearing a camouflage snow parka, Gil Shannon lay well ensconced within a copse of tall pines halfway down one of the most challenging ski runs in the mountains above the village of Malbun, a .308 Remington modular sniper rifle pulled into his shoulder as he eyed his target: a man dressed in a yellow ski jacket and green pants. He and his blond fiancée were flanked by five security men, all of whom had pulled to the side of the run for a breather. A heavy snow had begun to fall over the past few minutes, and with the coming of late afternoon, Gil knew this would be the group’s last run of the day. If he didn’t take the shot now, it would mean spending a fourth night in the Malbun ski lodge.

Landlocked between Switzerland and Austria, the small country of Liechtenstein covered only sixty-two square miles and was the only nation located entirely in the Alps. Traveling on a Canadian passport, Gil had spent the last three days stalking Sabastian Blickensderfer, a forty-year-old Swiss banker on holiday with his wife-to-be.

CIA Director Robert Pope had targeted Blickensderfer for termination because of his financial ties to the Islamic terrorist organization Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Blickensderfer’s money-laundering operations were well known to the CIA. However, the US and British governments considered him untouchable due to his close financial and familial ties within the Swiss government, which viewed Blickensderfer’s illicit business affairs as inconsequential: if Blickensderfer didn’t launder AQAP money, someone else would, and at least the millionaire businessman was able to provide useful intelligence on the movements of certain Islamic clerics. This was enough to keep Western intelligence agencies such as the CIA and MI6 from filing serious grievances.

There were more and more profiteers like Blickensderfer operating in and around Europe, and Pope understood the important role they played. He also understood that if they began turning up dead, others would take notice and be forced to think twice about doing business with Islamic fundamentalists. As the world stood at present, there was one rubric for the ruling elite and another for the bottom 99 percent. Pope regarded these hypocrisies and double standards as anathema, and his aim was to change the dangerous paradigm from within.

Gil’s aim was to destroy whomever Pope put in front of him. At present, that person was Sabastian Blickensderfer. He’d read the corrupt banker’s dossier and agreed the man was in need of removal. For Gil, the mathematics were simple enough: Blickensderfer was making it easier for AQAP to carry out terrorist operations. AQAP was responsible for the 2012 attack on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya. Former Navy SEALs had been killed in Benghazi. And if Sabastian Blickensderfer didn’t mind helping to kill Navy SEALs, Gil Shannon sure as hell didn’t mind killing Sebastian Blickensderfer.

Of course, Gil knew that Pope’s future targets might not always be quite so easily sorted out, but the Swiss banker was a good place to start. If Pope ever targeted anyone Gil didn’t agree needed to be removed, he would simply take a pass.

As he eyed Blickensderfer through the scope at a hundred yards, he watched the man laughing and handing a flask to one of his security men whom Gil knew — from seeing around the lodge over the past few nights — to be carrying a Beretta pistol beneath his jacket.

At last, after three long days of stalking his prey on the snowy mountain, the moment came right. The air was still, and the snow fell straight down all across the slope. Gil placed the reticule on Blickensderfer’s sternum over his heart and began to squeeze the trigger.

Inexplicably, Blickensderfer’s fianceé lunged forward into the sight picture just as the trigger was passing the point of no return. Gil twitched as the rifle went off, and the .308 Lapua magnum blasted almost silently from the end of the suppresser at more than 2,500 feet per second. His heart stopped as he watched, waiting for the woman’s head to explode. It did not. He saw her blond hair kick up at the nape of her neck as the round passed through it, soundlessly impacting the white powder thirty feet beyond.

The woman brushed absentmindedly at the back of her neck and pulled her ski poles from the snow with a laugh. Apparently she had lost her balance and nearly toppled off her skis.

Gil rolled behind the trunk of a pine and pulled the white watch cap from his close-cropped head, breathing a deep sigh of relief. He had very nearly murdered an innocent woman.

He lay there with large snowflakes landing silently on his face in the quiet surroundings. He stroked his stubbled chin and tried to recall his estranged wife’s face. Montana seemed very far away as he dug the cigarettes from his parka and lit one with a Zippo lighter. He knew that Pope could not have been watching via satellite due to the cloud cover, but that was a moot point. Gil was on his own for these off-the-books missions, which meant no overwatch.

Still, he told himself, you never knew what Pope was up to.

As the Blickensderfer party skied off down the mountain, Gil finished the cigarette, knowing he’d see them around the lodge again that night. “Fare thee well,” he muttered, thinking of the pretty woman who had no idea that a hot .308 had passed within two inches of her spine at the base of her skull. “And enjoy yourself tonight, Sabastian. I won’t make the same mistake tomorrow.”

Tucking the cigarette butt into his pocket, he disassembled the rifle and packed it away before taking off his reversible parka and turning the red side out. Then he stripped the white pack cover from his red rucksack and skied off down the slope dressed as a begoggled member of the Malbun Ski Patrol.