In the Crosshairs

16

“Up! Up! Get Up!” Kyle Swanson had gone for a run to get some exercise, choked down a sandwich, and collapsed on a bunk in the special-ops dorm at midnight, a new day in Pakistan. He groaned now as some worthless SOB pounded on the plywood door. “What?” he called out angrily, and the voice answered, “Briefing room SAP.” Swanson looked at the blue numbers on a digital clock. Two-thirty in the morning. Not enough sleep. Not nearly enough. He heard the man pounding on Gibson’s adjacent door and shouting the same instruction, followed by the thump of something, probably a boot, hitting the door in response. Gibson was awake, too.

They met in the hallway, two bleary-eyed operators in wrinkled T-shirts and boxers and flip-flops. Gibson stretched and yawned, and reflex made Swanson to the same. They stumbled down the short hallway, out the door, across a patch of pavement, and into the command center, where young men and women in front of computer consoles and projected maps ignored them. Operators came and went through this room, and no one raised an eyebrow. A man with a shaved head waved them into a side room and they flopped into chairs.

“What?” Swanson asked, glancing at the three clocks mounted side by side on the wall: 0230 local time, which meant that the calendar had flipped from Tuesday to Wednesday. It was still Tuesday in England, where the Greenwich Mean Time — called Zulu by the military — was 2230. Washington lagged behind, at 1930 Tuesday, five-thirty in the afternoon, which meant that offices all across the capital were closing.

“Coffee,” Gibson said. “I demand coffee.” The man pointed to a sideboard where a squat Mr. Coffee pot was full. Gibson poured two cups and handed one to Swanson.

“Your target popped up again,” the CIA briefer said, lighting up a map. “Got into a shoot-out at a border crossing and killed two — one Paki and one Afghan — and wounded two more. Cameras caught it all, so the ID is positive. You want to watch it?”

“No need,” said Swanson. The coffee was hot and strong, but he still felt as wobbly as a duck. “Where did he trip up?”

The officer enlarged the map several times, then used a red laser pointer. “Right here. A lightly used road, way off the main highway. More of a village road than anything.”

“Why didn’t he just go around it?” Gibson asked.

“We don’t know.”

“The bastard wanted us to see him again.” Gibson told the briefer. “Draw a straight line from Islamabad to the border point, then extend it on up.”

The officer tapped some keys and a thick black line appeared that crossed flatlands and mountains alike.

“I know where he’s going,” Gibson said with certainty. He stood and walked over to the map, where he tapped a specific area with his fingertip. “Nicky plans to get beneath the Taliban umbrella in the Wakham Corridor.”

Swanson was at his shoulder, the briefer forgotten. The pros were at work. “And you know this how?”

“It’s a big drug town. He and I did a hit on the warlord there some time ago — a major player in the drug trade. If he gets to the poppy fields, he’ll have an army of fighters and informers around to protect him.”

“International drug trade, you say?”

Gibson nodded. “Big-league growing, processing in superlabs, and shipping. Your friend, down in Mexico — that was drug-related, right? I’ll bet it’s all tied together somehow.”

A fever rose in Swanson’s chest. “So we have to stop him before he gets there.” Turning to the CIA briefer, he asked, “How quickly can you scramble up a bird?”

“How about a Blackhawk? By the time you guys get dressed and geared up for the mission, I’ll have the crew warmed up and waiting.”

Gibson put down his coffee. “No, not this time. Chopper is too slow. I’m through chasing the sumbitch. Let’s get ahead of him for once, Kyle. I think I know exactly where he’s heading — an abandoned safe house where we staged for that raid. Let’s get there and wait for him.”

“Okay.” The briefer thought for a minute. “Something bigger. Something to haul you all the way if you can give a GPS point.”

“I can do that. You get us there, and we jump.”

Lucky Sharif finished interviewing the wrinkled old woman with the sharp mind and sharper temper in the late afternoon. He checked his watch: 5:30 PM in Savannah meant that Kyle was probably sound asleep in Pakistan. No use sending up distress flares yet, because he had some gaps yet to fill. After all, Clara Boykin was almost a hundred years old; her facts would have to be double-checked. She had given him a hurricane of information. He was unsure how much was fact and how much was just her remembrance of “Get off my lawn” commands.

At the recommendation of the nurse, Adele, he wound his way back onto Victory Drive and headed south toward Tybee Island in search of a down-home crab shack on Wilmington Island. He followed the nav system right to the crushed-shell parking lot, got a table in the rear, and ordered a combination platter. “You want tea with that, hun?” asked the waitress. “Why not?” he replied, noting that she hadn’t used the “sweet” adjective because it was superfluous. When his order arrived and was arranged on the thick paper that covered the table, he snapped a picture of the spread — fresh salad, crabs, oysters, shrimp, hush puppies, fresh bread, butter, tartar sauce, coleslaw, and tea — and sent it to Janna, texting, “Call you later. Got some good stuff.”

As he ate, he let his mind roam to find the weak points and the work he needed to do. For starters, Luke Gibson wasn’t really Luke Gibson, according to Mrs. Boykin. The boy’s original last name was King, but his mother divorced his father early on, remarried, and assumed the new name. Mrs. Boykin had no use for the first husband, Thomas, who was apparently wealthy, arrogant, and generally no good.

That little house didn’t look like the home of a rich guy, Sharif had noted, and the neighbor gave a little laugh. That wasn’t King’s place, she said. Daddy lived overseas primarily but kept a huge place up at Hilton Head and used that when he came back to America to visit Luke.

“How did he make his money?” the FBI agent asked, and she said the magic words: “Oil. Construction. Saudis. The Arabs, all over.” The first thing on Sharif’s list would be to get the office to run a full background on Thomas King and determine any links he had with the players in the oil game.

“Now, that Perry Gibson — he was a real gentleman,” Mrs. Boykin had told him. “Right as rain, a good Christian man who worked out at the shipyard, manufacturing machine parts. He was good to Luke, but the boy detested him. Luke and his biological daddy had a strong bond. The child idolized the absent father, who showered him with praise and money. When Luke was about ten years old, he started spending his entire summers with his important daddy, who took him all over the world.”

Sharif made a mental note. Ah! That’s how Gibson learned to speak Arabic — a big question that the VMI résumé had introduced. Odd, but nothing weird once he found a logical explanation. Sharif worked on a crab cake while he considered how rich little Luke Gibson must have felt when the summer ended and he had to go back to the modest white home with all its financial constraints. He must have been miserable.

But the money and, more important, his father’s influence, kept flowing like a running faucet. The best prep school in town, Benedictine Military, started him down the military road, and he excelled in all things, as if touched by destiny, and was the cadet colonel brigade commander in his senior year.

Mrs. Boykin said the boy became insufferable around the neighborhood, strutting as if he was better than everybody else. The other kids shunned him, and he withdrew into the country-club life of his richer friends. In a sad tone, she related that the death of Luke’s stepfather during his junior year at Benedictine devastated his mother but almost put a skip in the boy’s step. A real little bastard, Sharif thought, seeing it unfold in his mind. He pushed the remains of the meal away and called for the check. A hotel room down on the waterfront was waiting, and he was tired, so he would call Janna and then hit the pillows. The puzzle that was Luke Gibson could wait another few hours.

At about eleven o’clock, Coastie once again cadged the Land Rover from Double-Oh Dawkins, saying that she just wanted to drive around with Nero for a while, maybe along the lake, and do some alone-time thinking. She tossed a cushy down sleeping bag into the back, Nero took the passenger seat, and they headed out, stopping briefly near the bell to retrieve the AR-15.

The dog stuck his head out the window to get the wind in his face as Coastie headed toward the lake. Few places were as dark and haunting as the Vermont North Woods in the middle of the night, and they were alone on what felt like a silent, foreign planet that was both forbidding and comfortable at the same time. Nero’s ears were up, the nose busy, the eyes piercing the woods. She felt better with him around.

They picked up the main road, and after ten minutes of traveling north a steeple of light tore away the gloom and a red neon sign marked the oasis of Trapper’s Bar & Grill. She drove by slowly, taking a look. The main building was long and low, with a broad parking lot of packed dirt off to the right. She could hear the sounds of music and people inside. Nero watched impassively. His owner wasn’t stressed, so neither was he.

Coastie drove for another mile, turned around at a crossroads, went back, and entered the lot. Trapper’s was busy tonight, but the dinner crowd was already gone. The night people were taking their turn, chasing away the blues in a variety of ways. She parked nose first in the back row, left the windows partially open to contain the dog, told Nero to stay, and gave him an ear scratch. “Be right back, big guy.”

Even in faded jeans and a hoodie sweatshirt, with a billed Toronto Blue Jays cap pulled over her upswept hair, she still turned heads when she walked in. Eyes were on her. Several couples were dancing to a country song, groups of men and women congregated at tables, and there was hardly an empty spot at the bar. She stepped to the side, and a waitress found her. “Can I help you, sister?”

“Do you have a place for just one person? I want to get a burger.”

The waitress, a round woman who had seen a lot of people, detected sorrow in the new customer. “Sure, I got a small table back by the kitchen. The guys won’t bother you much back there. C’mon.”

“Thanks.” Coastie followed her, conscious that she was being examined as a stranger intruding into a familiar environment. “Cheeseburger with no onion. A cold draft beer.”

The first pickup artist ambled over before the beer even got there. He had on his best blue Walmart T-shirt, made in China, and jeans that were tattered at the heels of his workboots. His eyes were deep and a bit unfocused. “Hey, you,” he said. “I’m Steve.”

“I’m Marie,” she replied softly, looking directly at the triangular face. “Where can a girl score some dope around here?”

Steve sat down uninvited, and the waitress returned with the beer. “That didn’t take long. If this asshole starts to be a problem, you let me know.” She went back to the bar.

“You a cop?” Steve wasn’t a stupid man. At least, he thought so.

“Absolutely. You got me,” Coastie said, and blinked a smile. “I’m working undercover for the government, and I’m here to take your guns.”

“You ain’t really, are you?” Steve was in love. “Can I buy you a drink?”

She lifted the full mug of beer. “I have a drink, you idiot. What I need is some good dope. Not marijuana. Coke. H. The sort with a heavy kick. You got any, or do I move on to somebody else?”

He screwed up his face in puzzlement. This conversation wasn’t going as he’d hoped. “How about trading for sex?”

“How about I stick this fork in your eyeball?” Coastie used the table knife to slowly saw the burger in half. She took a bite and a sip. “I got the money. You got product?”

Steve slowly looked around the bar. “See that big guy in the camo jacket? Looks like a fuckin’ dogwood tree? That’s Moose, and he’s a gooood friend of mine. He’s the best dealer around here. Me and him can meet you out by his truck — big black Dodge, left side of the lot — in ten minutes. You bring the money and he’ll give you whatever you need. Good shit, too. But what do I get for all this help?”

Coastie had another sip of beer. “Okay. After I get the heroin, I’ll flash my boobs. Good enough?”

Steve was thinking that, once out of sight, out there in the dark with the woods for cover, out there with his big pal Moose, more than that might happen with this smart-mouthed girl. Coastie was thinking that it was too bad she was going to have to kill this one, too.

She finished half the burger and half the beer, dropped two twenties on the table, and left through the kitchen door. Back at the SUV, Nero was waiting, smiling his toothy dog smile. Coastie got in, gave him a smooch, and they drove to a better parking spot on the opposite side of the parking lot from the big Dodge, shut down the engine again, and climbed into the back. With the seats out of the way, there was more than enough room for her to roll out the sleeping bag, and she used the space to give the rifle a final check. The grip and stock were a bit oversized for her, and it wouldn’t have been her weapon of choice, but it was okay. She racked in a thirty-round Magpul magazine.

She rolled half of the sleeping bag over her and called Nero, who came and lay beside her. Rifle ready, she pushed the button to lower the back window. The sight line from her to the Dodge was clear. Any expended cartridge would be contained within the truck bed. Coastie took a deep breath, rested her face on the rifle for a moment, thought of Mickey, then said, “Easy, Nero. This won’t take long.”

Two men came out of the bar, down the stairs, and walked, laughing, toward the truck. Steve was on the right, and a fat guy was on the left. Coastie could see the bulge of a pistol beneath his tight jacket. They went to the rear, and Moose unlocked and lifted the lid, then propped it open. He had a wagon full of dope, she concluded.

She breathed easily, let her heartbeat slow, clicked off the safety. Moose filled the sight picture of the scope. Nero whined softly and turned his head just as a big hand reached in, grabbed the barrel of the AR-15, and yanked it aside.

In his deep voice, Double-Oh Dawkins said, “Coastie, my friend, the bad news is that I can’t allow my guests to roam around murdering people on my turf, even if the targets are ignorant scumbuckets like Moose and Stevie. How long do you think it would take for the cops to figure out how a real sniper might have come into our midst? I would have to turn you in, testify against you in a murder trial, and send you to prison.” He gave Nero an easy head rub. “The good news is that you passed the test. Let’s go home.”