Ghost Sniper

5

Daniel Crosswhite hung up the phone after talking to Fields and went back into the bedroom, where his twenty-one-year-old wife, Paolina, lay in bed. They had finished making love only a couple of minutes before the phone rang.

“Who was it?” she asked in Spanish. She spoke no English.

“The devil’s little brother.” He rolled his eyes and took a soft pack of Camels from the edge of the dresser. “Don’t look at me like that. We knew one of Pope’s men would call sooner or later. Today’s the day, that’s all.”

Crosswhite was a former Delta Force operator and Medal of Honor winner. He had returned to the US after multiple tours in Afghanistan to take up a life of crime as a vigilante but had gotten himself caught. Only the intervention of Robert Pope of the CIA and Navy SEAL Gil Shannon had saved him from life in prison.

Paolina lay on her side in the midday heat and caressed her growing belly, which was just beginning to show. She was a Cuban national, but CIA Director Pope had pulled some strings for her and Crosswhite, enabling them to move to Mexico City, along with Paolina’s three-year-old daughter, who was taking a nap in the next room.

“Who is Pope sending you to kill?”

Crosswhite smiled. “Nobody.”

She rolled onto her back and propped herself up on a couple of pillows. Paolina was five feet tall, slender, with dark skin, soft brown eyes, and long black hair full of tight curls. “I don’t trust him. He helped us move here only to use you as an assassin against the cartels.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, running his fingers through her hair. “I made a deal, corazón.” He caressed her breast and got to his feet. “I have to get dressed and go. You remember everything we’ve talked about, right?”

“Yes. I want to know what’s going on before you leave.”

“One of the cartels assassinated the US ambassador and some American woman a couple hours ago.” Crosswhite snatched a pair of jeans from the back of a chair. “I have to bring in a wounded DSS agent who can’t be seen at the embassy. He’s shot in the arm, so make a spot in the kitchen. It sounds like I’ll have to remove the bullet and sew him up.”

“DSS?”

“Diplomatic Security Service.” He crushed out the smoke in the ashtray on the dresser. “Hand me my socks, baby. Have you seen my boots?”

“Under the bed.”

Using the GPS in his Jeep Rubicon’s console, Crosswhite found the building that Fields had given him the address for about seven miles from his house. He and Paolina lived in a nice neighborhood where there were a lot of Canadians, so he didn’t stick out, and all of their neighbors knew that Paolina was Cuban, so no one suspected he was CIA. Most everyone was under the assumption he was a retired American GI living on a government pension.

He took out his phone and called the number Fields had given him.

“Bueno?” answered a Mexican voice.

“Soy Crosswhite. Estoy aqui.” It’s Crosswhite. I’m here.

A door opened, and Mendoza waved for him to come inside. Crosswhite did not generally move around armed because getting caught with a gun in Mexico meant many years in prison, so unless he was sure there was going to be big trouble, he chose to rely on his fists, much preferring death over incarceration.

He locked the Jeep and stole inside the building. The smell of death and burnt powder flashed him back to combat, and his internal systems came online. The hair raised up on the back of his neck. Mendoza smiled, turning to lead him down the hall to a room full of dead bodies and one very pissed off Chance Vaught, who sat in a chair, handcuffed to a steel doorknob.

“Why is he handcuffed?” Crosswhite asked in Spanish, glancing around at the dead cartel members. “Is this your work?”

Mendoza nodded.

“I’m handcuffed because he’s a fuckin’ bastard,” Vaught said in English.

Mendoza explained that he’d needed to take a dump and couldn’t trust Vaught not to leave. Afterward, it had been easier to leave the increasingly mouthy American handcuffed to the door.

Crosswhite looked at him. “You ready to go, champ?”

“Go where?”

“I got you a room at the fuckin’ Hilton. You ready or not?”

Vaught looked sullenly at the floor. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

Ninety minutes later, Vaught sat in a chair in Crosswhite’s kitchen, flexing his wounded arm, examining the suture work. “It’s not exactly straight.”

“Well, this ain’t exactly a triage unit.” Crosswhite snapped off a pair of rubber gloves. “And I’m not exactly a medic.”

Paolina sat staring at Vaught from across the table, her gaze flat and reproving. She wanted him out of her house but knew they were stuck with him unless and until Pope’s man Fields found someplace else for him to hide out.

Vaught smiled, asking Paolina her name in Spanish. “Como se llama?”

“Paolina,” she said, not overly friendly. She glanced at Crosswhite.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Chance. I appreciate you welcoming me into your home like this.”

“If it were up to me,” she said, getting up from the table, “you wouldn’t be here.” She caressed Crosswhite’s arm where he carried a scar identical to the one Vaught would now carry in almost exactly the same spot. “I’m going to buy food,” she told him. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Careful,” Crosswhite said. “We’re working now.”

She nodded, kissing him. “Valencia is playing in her room.” Paolina left the house.

Vaught stared after her, unable to deny his attraction. “She’s Cuban, isn’t she?”

Crosswhite went to the sink to wash his hands. “Yeah. If you touch her, I’ll kill you.”

Vaught nodded, reaching for his can of Copenhagen. “Roger that. So what’s next?”

Crosswhite dried his hands and shook a cigarette loose from its pack. “We wait to hear from Ortega at Mexico station.”

“Who’s Ortega?”

Crosswhite lit the cigarette, tucking the lighter into his pocket. “CIA’s chief of station here in DF.”

“So you work for Ortega?”

Crosswhite stood leaning against the ceramic-tiled counter. “Never met him.” He went to the fridge and took out a couple of Coronas, setting them down on the table. “Ortega has to wait on orders from Clemson Fields — who takes his orders directly from Bob Pope. It’s my guess you’ll be kept out of sight until the PFM needs you to testify against Serrano. So in effect you—”

“Building a case against Serrano could take months!”

Crosswhite popped the tops from the beers with a church key. “Welcome to the CIA, amigo.”

“I don’t work for the CIA.” Vaught took a pull from his beer. “And I sure as hell don’t work for the PFM. I’m a DSS agent. That means I—”

“You don’t belong to DSS anymore. You belong to the CIA by executive order — at least, you will within the next few hours, or however long it takes to get the paperwork shuffled across the president’s desk — and there isn’t jack shit you can do about it.”

“So who the fuck is Clemson Fields?”

Crosswhite took a drink. “Shit,” he muttered to himself. “I hope she remembers limes. Fields is the last of the old guard — a right bastard.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Okay, look.” Crosswhite sat down. “During the Cold War, the CIA wasn’t restricted to using personnel from special mission units like Delta Force and SEAL Team Six the way they are today. We were fighting the big, bad Soviets, so they were allowed their own in-house contractors with no official ties. Fields was a recruiter and part-time assassin — an operational goon.”

Vaught took another drink. “So you work for Fields?”

“No. I work for Pope. Technically Fields isn’t even CIA anymore. He’s attached to the ATRU.”

“The ATRU? What the hell are you talking about?”

“The Anti-Terrorism Response Unit. Congratulations, champ. You’re now privy to a newly formed SMU that the vice president of the United States doesn’t even know about.”

Vaught didn’t like the sound of that one bit. “Who gave you clearance to bring me into the loop?”

Crosswhite grinned. “You’re finally starting to ask the right questions, champ.”

“The name’s Chance.”

“Whatever. You’ve been put on ice because you’re a political embarrassment to both countries now. You went off the reservation when you chased that sniper, and you killed three Mexican cops.”

Vaught put down his beer. “I didn’t kill any fucking cops!”

“The guys in the stairwell and the guy on the roof were all Federales.”

“They were wearing fucking ski masks and carrying AK-47s!”

“Well, they might’ve been crooked Federales, but they were still Federales, and that embarrasses—”

“We were taking sniper fire! My entire team was wiped out!”

“Hey, I get it,” Crosswhite said easily. “Everybody gets it. And the PFM probably gets a secret kick out of it. But it’s political now, champ, and politics trumps everything. You’ve embarrassed the Mexican government, and you’ve made powerful people look bad on both sides of the border, which means nobody’s in a hurry to see your face. They don’t know how to spin this yet, so it’s easier to let everyone think you’re dead for the time being. Putting you with Fields is probably the best way of doing that. Pretty soon the PFM’s going to release a statement saying the body of an American DSS agent was found with those of known cartel members. That will put Serrano at ease, and he’ll drop his guard, thinking you’re dead.”

“In the meantime, my family gets to think I’m dead, too? No way.”

“You come from a military family, champ.”

“Chance!”

“They’ll bear up well enough,” Crosswhite assured him, “and think how happy they’ll be when they eventually find out you’re still alive.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Dan Crosswhite.”

Vaught stared at him for a long moment. “Earnest Endeavor Dan Crosswhite?”

Operation Earnest Endeavor had been an unsanctioned rescue operation led by Navy SEAL sniper Gil Shannon to liberate female Night Stalker pilot Sandra Brux, who was being tortured by Islamic extremists in the Panjshir Valley of Afghanistan. Crosswhite and Shannon had both received the Medal of Honor for their part in the operation, but both men were ultimately run out of the military by jealous and resentful superiors, costing Crosswhite the career he had loved.

Crosswhite frowned. “That’s me.”

“Last I heard, you were dead. You were supposed be working down here undercover for the FBI or something.”

Crosswhite smirked. “Look at me, champ.”

“Chance, goddamn you!”

“Look at me, champ. How is a gringo gonna work undercover in Mexico? Grow a mustache and buy a fuckin’ sombrero?”

“Well, I can tell you this,” Vaught said. “I’m not sitting around here waiting for the PFM to build a case against Serrano while my family gets the news I’m dead. And another thing: there’s a GI sniper running around down here doing contract work for the cartels. Somebody has to put that guy down, and since I seem to have a lot of extra time on my hands at the moment—”

“You wouldn’t even know where to begin looking.”

“Well, unlike you, I don’t need a fuckin’ sombrero. I already look the part, and I happen to know one or two people down here.”

“I’ve been briefed on your Mexican family. I don’t think letting the cartels get wind of them is a good idea.”

Vaught got up from the chair. “You let me worry about that.”

“I don’t think you’d better go fucking around out there,” Crosswhite said nonchalantly, setting down his beer on the counter. “You’ll only make shit worse.”

“I know what I’m doing.” Vaught shouldered past. “Thanks for the beer and the shitty stitch job, hero.”

Crosswhite let him pass. Then he slipped the stun gun that Mendoza had given him from beneath his jacket and zapped Vaught in the ass. The agent dropped to his knees with a shout, and Crosswhite stepped forward to zap him again between the shoulder blades, sending him flopping forward onto his face.

Paolina came through the door a few seconds later with a plastic bag of groceries in each hand and stood in the threshold gaping. “Daniel, he’s drooling on my kitchen floor.”

Vaught lay paralyzed with his cheek mashed against the ceramic tile watching a tiny piss ant making its way past his face as it carried out its little piss ant business. “You fuckin’ cocksuckers,” he mumbled.