In the Crosshairs

6

Luke Gibson arrived at the Alexanderplatz Radisson Blu Hotel only to discover that Kyle Swanson had checked out and departed last night. No note had been left. There was no forwarding address. After wrapping up the grueling GSG 9 debriefing, they had agreed to meet for breakfast at nine o’clock, then hire a private car to take them out to the Berlin Tegel Airport for their Lufthansa flight to Washington. “Well,” Luke muttered to himself, standing in the lobby and staring blankly at the giant aquarium. “This sucks.”

He went to a little café nearby and took a table, gave the snotty waiter his order, then opened his phone. No message from Swanson. Where was he? Gibson called the local CIA. They had nothing other than that Swanson was due in Washington that afternoon via Lufthansa to Dulles. That ain’t gonna happen, Gibson mused, but didn’t say anything. He looked out over the broad avenue. It was a beautiful morning in Berlin, and even the abrupt service by the waiter couldn’t really put Gibson in a foul mood, because he was learning things.

Working with Kyle Swanson was going to be difficult if Swanson didn’t want him along. That was why Gibson hadn’t put up a fight over being dismissed as a partner. The fuckin’ super-sniper works alone. Okay, so be it. There would be less resistance when Swanson had to reach out for beans or bullets and Gibson would be there to help. It wasn’t as if Swanson had a lot of choice in the matter if he wanted to keep the operation secret. And in the background lurked the evil specter of Nicky Marks. Gibson willed himself to be patient, to ride it out. Good things would eventually happen.

Gibson bit into a monster of a Berliner, the mother of all doughnuts, and felt the sugar rush. Tourists wandered by, maps in hand. Gibson drank coffee, which perked him up even more. He should be mad at Marty Atkins, if anyone. The director of intelligence had turned to him for the premier assignments until Swanson came along. Nowadays, he was lucky to get a high-value job at all, and the new guy got the best assignments. There was no use trying to convince himself that Swanson wasn’t a great shooter, but Gibson doubted that the former marine was actually better overall at the job. For one thing, Gibson was younger, and trigger time wasn’t the only measurement. He believed Swanson had lost his edge, a victim of age who was pulling along the clanking debris of a long and difficult military life. Swanson was almost a dour old prisoner in a golden cage, while Gibson considered himself to be a free spirit who was current with the times and in his prime.

The bottom line was that Marty Atkins worshipped the guy. Gibson was number two. It was a hard place to find himself after being number one for so long. He finished his breakfast, flopped some bills on the table, and walked back to the hotel parking lot to retrieve the rental car. Like any good hunter, the sniper knew the secret was patience; he would just let Kyle Swanson come to him. Meanwhile, where the hell was he?

Swanson was halfway to London, relaxed in a premier seat aboard the Eurostar train that was dashing beneath the English Channel. He had left the Radisson Blu and caught the 10:14 PM City Night Line overnight sleeper to Paris. The train rocked him to sleep in a deluxe cabin, and less than fourteen hours later he was transferring to the Eurostar for London, and enjoying un petit déjeuner of strong coffee and a warm croissant. He wasn’t hiding, exactly, but he also hadn’t told anyone where he was heading. No use in advertising his whereabouts unnecessarily.

After reading a newspaper, Swanson plugged in his laptop, hooked up to the train’s onboard Wi-Fi, and from that to a private server, to send a text message to Beth Ledford. France was seven hours ahead of Mexico, so it was midnight for her. The Skype app remained off because he didn’t want to be overheard, and she probably wouldn’t want to be seen.

He hit the Send key and waited. There was a ping of response as Coastie came online, and they slid into a silent conversation.

Swanson closed the laptop with a sense of quiet satisfaction as the train rushed through the Chunnel on its two-hour-and-fifteen-minute journey. The iPod music fed a playlist through the earbuds and helped him calm his mind.

He thought about Luke Gibson, how he seemed to be a nice guy and how he was obviously good, or else Marty Atkins wouldn’t be using him. And he had proved his fast reflexes in the grenade attack. Swanson was already ducking away when the device was thrown, but Gibson had moved even faster. Age? So, yes, maybe they could work together, as long as Swanson got to make the decisions.

The real problem wasn’t with Gibson as an individual. The Marine Corps had been Swanson’s home for many years, and that meant he could always trust his fellow marines. It was automatic. It was why after moving on to other pursuits in life marines always had a bond with other marines. The brotherhood was tight. Luke Gibson wasn’t a marine. He may not have been anything.

Coastie wasn’t a marine, either, not really. Task Force Trident was mostly a marine special-ops outfit when she came aboard from the Coast Guard. It was a tight family of equals, all superior at their jobs, and she had fit right in and might well have worn the Corps’ eagle, globe, and anchor insignia. The big thing at the moment was that she wasn’t with the CIA, either. Swanson intended to cross up whoever was the behind-the-scenes master of this morbid game by bringing in a ringer.

More out-of-the-loop help was waiting at the other end of this train ride. Gibson didn’t need to know any of that.

Beth Ledford turned off her cell phone and put it away for the night. She would never carry it on a mission, because the accidental push of a button might result in unwanted beeping or lights flashing at the worst possible time. She checked herself in the full-length mirror mounted behind the door of her bedroom. It was good that Kyle hadn’t wanted to Skype, because she would have had to refuse, claiming modesty or some other lame excuse. He probably would have wanted to know why her face was striped in nonreflective green and black camo paint, why her yellow hair was tucked beneath a black knit watch cap, and why she was dressed in a black shirt, jeans, and boots. That made her smile as she gave a final check to the Sig Sauer P226 handgun that she had chosen for the night. It was a bit big for her hands, but it was reliable. Having personally polished each of the dozen .40 S&W cartridges, she pushed in the magazine and locked one in the chamber. No need for a holster. Coastie shoved the pistol into the waistband of her jeans.

Another one of Mickey’s boys, a sergeant, was waiting for her with the car and made no comment when she climbed inside. The entire squad backed the señora’s quiet campaign of revenge for the death of her husband. The little woman was a serious warrior.

The first hit in the forest had taken out a middleman distributor belonging to the Villareal Organization. Tonight she would dispose of a leader of the rival Beltran Brothers tribe. Neither gang was a major cartel, but they were growing and were always ready to protect their turf through bullets, knives, acid baths, or beheadings. Coastie wanted to spark a fight and let them kill one another rather than her having to do it. She figured she could do her new job with Kyle in Washington and still get down to Mexico on vacation. After all, she had family here.

As they drove away from the city, Coastie started breathing deeply and shutting down her emotions, letting her body and mind slow down and focus. It took only fifteen minutes to get to the beach road, and the car slowed for a curve. “Good luck, señora,” said the driver as he tapped the brakes once and Coastie rolled out the door and into soft sand.

A side road fed off toward the water, and she jogged down it quietly, unseen in the shadows. The house was straight ahead now, with no lights burning. Manuel Beltran was asleep. Beth made herself comfortable in a ditch, pulled on some night-vision goggles, and watched the single guard make his rounds. The man was so bored that he hardly looked beyond his feet. There was no movement inside the house. By about two o’clock, the fat guard was nodding off in a sagging beach chair on the patio with his weapon across his knees. Coastie moved like a black cat, a shadow lost in the other shadows. A hop over the rail put her on the patio. A few more steps and she was behind the guard, pulling his head back to stretch the neck and slashing fast, deep, and hard at the arteries to leave as much of a mess as possible.

Inside the house, she paused and took a note from her pocket. Written by one of the marines so that it looked as if it had come from a man, it was a warning to the Beltrans to stay in their own territory. Ramiro Delgado had powerful friends, it read, and tonight was a night of revenge.

She moved like a wraith down the hallway and into the bedroom area, checking each room until she found Manuel Beltran sound asleep, with his right arm thrown across a woman. Slowing even more, Beth assumed a proper shooting stance and brought the pistol into position, even taking a moment to aim. As time stood still, she felt in complete control of her world, and a burning hatred for the man in the bed.

Shooting had always seemed so easy and natural to her, and she gently gave Manuel a triple tap in the head, two in the chest, and one in the groin. The noise awoke his bed partner, and Beth stepped forward and clobbered her twice with the pistol. She wouldn’t be able to remember a thing.

Beth bailed out, avoiding the guard’s blood on the patio, and jogged back down the road, tasting the sweet night air rich with its salty ocean smells. By the time she was back in the car and moving off, she had decided to leave for Washington on Sunday.

It was easy to hide in France in the springtime. The annual flood of tourists was rising fast, and no stranger drew a lot of attention. For the freshly shaved Nicky Marks, it was easier to blend in as a somewhat lost and overwhelmed American sightseer than to sneak around like the killer he was. As that wise old Chinese Communist dude Mao Zedong preached, the revolutionary should mingle among the people the way a fish swims in the sea. Marks was no revolutionary, but he got the point.

The girl he picked up last night was the real deal, a freshly divorced American lawyer out to experience the wonders of Paris, and hooking up with a handsome French-speaking escort like Nicky was a find. Sylvia White of Montgomery, Alabama, spoke with a funny southern accent, and he let her do most of the talking in public as she struggled with her maps and guidebook and laptop. Her holiday was more like a military campaign, from the food at a certain sidewalk café, to the artists on the Left Bank, to the Louvre and a list of at least twenty must-see artworks. At least Nicky could have a nice dinner in the evening and an energetic bout of sex while Sylvia commented that her former husband — also a lawyer, name of Reginald — had never done that to her in bed, or THAT! Nicky would put up with it for a while, for being with Sylvia meant that he was safe. Terrorists normally run. Her accent, however, was driving him crazy.

He hadn’t spent much time thinking about throwing that grenade back in Berlin. He did it and got his money. Planning wasn’t his responsibility. He was puzzled about why he hadn’t been instructed to make sure of a kill. Setting off a loud boom and doing nothing else seemed rather pointless. The thing in Mexico had been equally nonsensical, to his way of thinking. However, the Prince was working out another one of his master schemes.

“I want to go visit that big Versailles place tomorrow, and see where Marie Antoinette lived,” Sylvia had announced in bed, making the name sound like Marie-Ann Tawnette. “Would y’all like to go along?”

“The Château de Versailles,” he said, gently correcting her mangled pronunciation. “Sure. Let’s do that.” In fact, the choice pleased him. The monstrous complex of palaces, gardens, and museums would swallow him from sight for an entire day, just another tourist fish.

The Prince would signal when it was safe to come out of hibernation. The lawyer from Alabama was in France for two more days, after which she would move on down to Italy to absorb the colors of the golden Tuscan sun. That was a whole different set of guidebooks, and he had already politely refused to accompany her, claiming important pending business meetings. She would be able to find another sleeping dictionary down there, he told her, and she giggled.

By then, the Prince would probably have him on the move anyway.