Ghost Sniper

67

The moment Hancock had gotten word that a lone police truck was patrolling the northern part of town, he’d gone straight into action. Northern patrols were not rare, but the Toluca police force was less than half its normal size now, so the northern sector was generally overlooked after dark. The report was that the truck carried a machine gunner, which probably made the patrol feel safe operating alone. Machine gunners were prime targets in any war, and Hancock was ready to give the police an education.

He lay prone on the rooftop of a single-story house overlooking a well-lit four-lane avenue. After a half hour of waiting, the truck finally drew into view at two hundred yards, coming toward him at an oblique angle up the street. He scanned the men in the back of the truck, spotting the white marks on the helmet of Ruvalcaba’s informant. The gunner was making a futile attempt to appear small behind the machine gun.

Hancock smiled, centering the crosshairs on the front of the gunner’s helmet and squeezing the trigger. The Barrett .50 caliber bucked against his shoulder, and the machine gunner’s head exploded inside the helmet.

To Hancock’s surprise, the truck suddenly accelerated up the avenue at high speed in his direction. A second later, he heard the rumble of a Dodge Hellcat V8 engine screaming up from behind.

“What the—” He looked over his shoulder to see the black-and-white Charger screeching to a stop on the far side of the avenue. Four heavily armed cops dismounted and dashed across the street.

He turned for a shot at the driver of the pickup, but he was too late. The truck had already veered up onto the sidewalk.

Having just gone from predator to prey, Hancock sprang to his feet. The cops crossing the avenue called out to one another, shouldering their weapons and opening fire.

“Goddamn Ranger tactics!” he snarled, running for the stairs with a hail of bullets flying past his head.

He scrambled down the concrete stairwell, dragging the rifle behind him as he wriggled out a back window. His only secondary weapon was the Sig Sauer .357. This was the reason most snipers did not work alone. If he’d had Jessup to back him up with an M4, his situation would have been much less urgent.

An explosion blasted open the steel door to the front of the building, and that’s when Hancock really felt the devil bite him in the ass. The last thing he wanted was be to run down from behind and wind up in a Mexican prison. He turned and thrust the barrel of the Barrett back through the window, firing at the first figure to come into view. The policeman’s chest exploded inside his body armor, and the other officers dove for cover.

“Keep moving!” someone shouted in English, repeating it immediately in Spanish.

“Vaught!” Hancock hissed acidly, retreating out the back of the house.

Automatic fire tore through the door behind him as he slammed it shut and kicked over a pile of construction timber to block it.

Another burst of fire, and a round tore through his shoulder. The sniper lost his balance and pitched over into a table. Scrabbling back to his feet, he dashed across a courtyard and hurled the Barrett over a seven-foot brick wall, the top of which was lined with shards of broken beer bottles set in cement to discourage people from scaling it. Hancock leapt up and grabbed the top of the wall, feeling the glass cutting into his fingers. He threw a leg over, and the glass bit into the inside of his thigh, ripping open the crotch of his trousers and slicing his penis.

He dropped down on the far side of the wall and grabbed up the rifle. The scope didn’t appear to be broken, but that didn’t matter. He was out of the fight, wounded, and in need of immediate extraction.

Running through the night, Hancock called for his two bodyguards to pick him up at a prearranged emergency extraction point two hundred yards up the street. They were waiting for him when he got there, and he dove into the backseat, pulling the door closed. “Go!”

The driver sped off.

“What happened?” asked the man in the passenger seat.

“The sons of bitches laid a trap!” He grabbed his medical bag from the floor on the backseat and rifled through it. “They even sacrificed a man to draw me out!” Wriggling his bloody trousers down to his knees, he examined his torn penis and was relieved to find that the cut was less severe than he’d thought. The bloody member would need only a couple of stitches, but he wouldn’t be laying any pipe for the next few weeks. The bullet wound to his shoulder was a through-and-through, and the wounds to his legs and hands were nothing — just more superficial combat damage that no veteran soldier would let himself worry too much about.

“But I need a shitload of stitches,” he grumbled, unscrewing the lid from a bottle of alcohol. “Get me to the medico.”

“Was it the Americans?”

Hancock’s veins were burning with anger. “Who the fuck else?” He poured the alcohol over his penis and swore viciously at the pain, slapping a patch of gauze over and binding it tight with tape. “They want a war,” he muttered, tearing off the tape with bloody fingers and jamming the roll back into the bag, “I’ll give ’em a goddamn war! I’ll give ’em a war they’ll wish they never fuckin’ had.” He looked at the passenger, who was staring aghast over the back of the seat at his bloody genitalia. “Call Ruvalcaba! Tell him to send me at least a hundred men. No more fuckin’ around! We’re gonna kill every last cop in this fucking city!”