In the Crosshairs

23

“You lost me somewhere along the line,” Swanson said, easing his lower legs against the chair, feeling for advantages while keeping his eyes locked on Gibson. “Your whole story seems pointless. You kill me, the agency kills you, and other operators take our place. There is never a number one.”

“There is! I’ve always been the best. Always better than you.”

Swanson gave a chuckle. “It doesn’t matter, Luke. Can’t you understand that? Nobody but you cares, and you’re laying it all on the line out here in a mud hut in the middle of Afghanistan, where nobody will ever hear about it.”

“You’ll know what happened out here. I’ll know what happened. That alone would be enough.”

Swanson raised his handcuffs level with his eyes. “And this is how you prove it? You with a gun and me taped to a chair and without a weapon. Where’s the glory in that? Anyway, get on with it.”

“The people will know, Kyle. The ones around here and up and down my network. Those are the ones who matter. They know me as the Prince, and that I run a tight kingdom. When they hear that I killed the top CIA shooter in one-on-one combat, my legend will be at its zenith.” Gibson’s eyes had taken on the unusual sparkle of a serial killer.

“A prince.” Swanson cracked a smile. “Honor without honor. What a crock.”

Gibson checked his watch, getting antsy, ready to go.

Swanson guessed that he only needed a few minutes alone, but Gibson wouldn’t stop his spiel of self-glorification. “There’s one big problem with your idea, Luke. It’s all built on the premise that you kill me. Unless you pull the trigger right now, it won’t happen. I will kill you, and, deep down, you’re afraid because you know it’s true. So let’s do it… partner.”

Gibson snapped on the bait. “Yes, I’m going to leave now, and Hamid will remain as a guard until three o’clock. At that point, he will put the key to the cuffs on the table and also leave. If I come back at dawn and you’re still here, I will shoot you on sight.”

“And if I get out, you hunt me down.”

“Exactly.”

“Luke, you’re more trouble than you’re worth. Go already. I’ll see you again in a few hours.”

Gibson was upset that Swanson didn’t seem angry or worried. He turned, removed the key to the handcuffs from his pocket, and motioned for the boy to go outside with him. “I’ll give him a few instructions in private. Just understand that he may be young but he’s just fine with a gun. One order is to shoot you if you try to cause trouble.”

“You know I’ll have to kill him,” Swanson said as Gibson and the boy exited into the night.

“It’s your only hope,” Gibson said, throwing a protective arm around Hamid’s shoulder as he closed the door. “He is one of my young lions, however, and is tougher than he looks. He might even be able to take you out.”

Tick. Tick. Tick. Swanson counted fifteen seconds before moving. He didn’t care why Gibson had taken the boy outside, only that they’d left him alone. The handcuffs rattled when he made his move, inching the chair away from the table using the toes of his boots and rocking his body.

He lost his knife when he was knocked cold by Gibson, the pistol had been stolen, and the Excalibur was propped against the wall next to the AK-47. It might as well have been on the moon. This didn’t mean that Swanson was without assets, though.

He was tightly taped to the chair, but by stretching his arms down and pushing his legs up he was able to snag the left leg of his trousers and pull it out of the boot; the tape held the cloth and not the flesh beneath, which made for a minuscule bit of freedom. He wiggled his feet as high as they could go. Inside of thirty seconds, he had his hands between his calves, searching blindly with his thumbnails for a different piece of tape. No one had ever said he could take only one knife with him on a mission. Screw fairness.

The thumbnail caught the top edge of a strip of easy-pull medical adhesive that stretched vertically up the back of his left leg. A casual pat-down normally touched only the outside of the feet, searching for an ankle holster. An amateur might even rub the crotch area, but the back of the calf was seldom touched.

It was there that Swanson had secured a folded straight-edge razor. Almost a minute had passed by the time he worked it free, and there were still no sounds from outside. He hoped that whatever the boy was doing to serve his prince would last for a while. No bets on that.

Swanson held the razor at lap level before opening it, and it glittered. Holding it with his forefinger and thumb, braced in his palm, he went to work. The old-fashioned blade cut though the individual sticky strands of tape with a minimum of sawing and he was able to part the bands of tape across the top of his right leg, then his left, until they barely hung together.

That allowed him just enough freedom to extend the razor to his ankles and slice those bands, too. To the naked eye, he would appear to be as immobile as before. Two minutes had passed. He folded the straight blade and pushed it far up the sleeve of his left forearm. Then he pulled the chair back near the table and sat and waited, hands in plain sight on the wood, cuffs in place, trying to look resigned to his fate and not sweat the details of the coming attack. There were too many unknowns. Just let it flow.

Hamid seemed a bit unsteady when he reentered the house and shut the door. The truck engine that was fading away was evidence that the boy was now alone with the prisoner, and, despite apparently having all the advantages, he was nervous. The Prince had told him not to worry. Hamid took the chair facing Swanson at the table and placed the AK-47 between them, with the barrel pointed at Swanson and a finger near the trigger, then plopped the small key for the cuffs beside it. When the prisoner hardly looked up, more confidence flowed into the young captor, who ranted a few Arabic curses. Swanson just sat there, unmoving.

Long minutes passed. Swanson knew that his silence and his manner would foster the illusion that the boy was in control, and the young fighter wouldn’t be able to maintain that baleful glare and menacing attitude for long. Swanson yawned, planting in the other man’s mind the suggestion that he, too, was sleepy so late in the night.

Hamid adjusted his position in the chair, leaning back to a more comfortable position, hands pulling farther away from the Kalashnikov. There was no danger evident in the room. He was in control.

Swanson slowly rotated his hands and put them on his thighs, so that the palms faced upward, then rested again. No reaction. With a mighty surge, he grabbed the table by the edge and threw it at Hamid as hard as possible, following with a leap that was powered by his legs as the few remaining threads of tape parted. The gun spun away, and the astonished boy cried out as the table crashed into him, followed by Swanson’s full weight. The connecting links of the steel handcuffs were jammed across Hamid’s throat, and Swanson pushed down viciously to crush the windpipe and simultaneously head-butt Hamid under the bridge of the nose. Physics and biomechanics did the rest. The nose shattered on impact, and the resulting hemorrhage sent a torrent of blood spewing outward, but because the victim was on the floor, more blood also poured back down the throat and into the lungs, further stressing the fractured larynx. The boy flailed wildly at the table, the strangling handcuffs, and Swanson. Death closed in fast and with a lot of pain. It sounded as if he was calling for his mother.

Swanson kept the pressure on until he was sure that Hamid was gone, then crabbed away from the debris. Luke knew something like this was going to happen. He threw the boy to me as a sacrifice to buy time because he really wants the one-on-one stalk and kill. This was just to tire his prey. Swanson banished the thought as fast as it had appeared, because there was no use dwelling on the past, even if was only a minute ago.

The razor had remained in his sleeve during the attack, so he slid it out, spread it open and cut through the tape that still bound him to the chair with easy strokes. The chair fell away with a clatter, allowing him to peel off the sticky strips one by one.

When it was all off, he stretched his muscles luxuriously. Truly free, and still alive.

He dug the AK-47 from the debris and gave it quick check. The banana clip was fully loaded. Then he recovered the Excalibur, which had been severely damaged. Gibson had taken the time to waste the weapon so that it couldn’t be used against him from a distance.

Sand spilled from the barrel, the trigger housing had been battered with a hard object, and the magazine was gone. The front scope lens was cracked. No .50-cal ammo anywhere to be seen. Swanson would take it along all the same to keep the technology secret, and also because the Big E wasn’t yet out of the game.

After a drink of water and answering the call of nature from having sat tied up for so long, Swanson moved to his next task, which had come to him while he was bound to the chair. Somewhere high above, a drone was circling with a load of high explosives, but he had no direct control over it. The reverse was true, because electronic beacons had been sewn into the clothing of both members of the sniper team before they had departed, which meant that a missile might be coming down the chimney if Gibson decided to rain down some hellfire.

Swanson cut the small tracking device from beneath his collar and tossed the gizmo into a bucket of water to drown it. Gibson had probably already gotten rid of his, too, leaving the drone as blind as a really big bat. Step two was to get the heavy drag bag that protected Excalibur on an active mission. The weapon itself was what caught the eye of someone curious, not its cloth container. A strong zipper ran the length of the case, with an inch-round fob for opening and closing the metal teeth. Swanson pried the metal fob open and extracted another round object that rested inside like a Russian nesting doll. Carrying it over to the damaged rifle, he plugged the button into a tiny slot beneath the battery pack normally used to power the scope. It activated with a soft beep and began sending signals to the blind drone. Swanson was back on the grid.

With the AK in hand, he toured the little house, memorizing directions and moving about slowly, aware that Gibson’s hint that he would return at dawn was worthless; he might be standing outside right now. The man-to-man stuff was a crock, too, and Swanson didn’t want a trip-wire booby trap to ruin his day.

But he needed to gather supplies, and he had to have some food. In a quick sweep, he gathered up carbohydrates, sugar, liquid, a spoon, some cord, plastic wrapping, and anything else that might prove useful, including the needle and thread he found in the bedroom. The half-used roll of duct tape spoke for itself. Some first-aid stuff. A cloth bag to carry it all. On the kitchen counter was a half-eaten plate of stew. On the stove was a covered pot of the same. Somebody had had a meal, so odds were it was probably safe to eat, and he wolfed it down cold.

The one thing that was guaranteed to be in a safe house was weaponry, stored somewhere out of sight. Swanson looked around. It had to be under the rugs, but if Gibson was going to plant an improvised explosive device anywhere, it would be where Swanson was sure to look for some armament. Forget it. With the AK at the ready in his right hand, the bag of goodies in his left, and Excalibur across his back, he went out through a window.