Target America

27

Since killing the trooper, Nikolai Kashkin had been camped in the foothills above Gil Shannon’s horse ranch, and so far he’d seen neither hide nor hair of the former Navy SEAL he had come to assassinate. Each morning, he awoke in the wee hours before sunrise, slowly emerging from his tent like a lazy bear coming out of hibernation. He would stretch and yawn and leisurely set about preparing his backpacker breakfast over an MSR pocket stove. Then, after breakfast, he would sit beneath the trees, listening to the birds while enjoying his morning coffee and watching the sunrise. It was a pleasant time for him, perhaps the most pleasant he had experienced since he was a boy.

Upon finishing his coffee, Kashkin would say his morning prayers and then pick up the German Mauser Karabiner 98k rifle with Zeiss optics and make his way to the ridge overlooking the ranch, where he had carefully prepared himself a sniper’s nest among the rocks.

Throughout his boyhood, he had enjoyed hunting with his father’s father in the great forests near his home. His grandfather had been a sniper in the Red Army during the Second World War, and he had taught Kashkin the art of shooting game at long distance with an old Soviet Mosin-Nagant, but Kashkin had long since grown attached to the German Mauser, which he considered a more elegant weapon. There were more modern sniper rifles on the market with higher calibers and greater ranges, but he had never desired to bother with them. Besides, he was too old to be learning new tricks at this stage of the game. With an effective range of a thousand meters, the Mauser was more than enough rifle for the job at hand, and its 7.92x57 mm round was more than enough bullet to put a man down and keep him down. His one-shot kill ratio during the First and Second Chechen Wars was evidence enough of that.

Kashkin felt no personal rancor toward Shannon, though he was aware that the SEAL had executed a Muslim cleric with a garrote in Afghanistan. In Kashkin’s experience, most clerics were pushy, arrogant men seeking to burnish their egos while claiming to do the work of Allah. He understood that to assassinate one of them was a horrible insult against Islam, but he doubted very much whether the late Aasif Kohistani had been any different from the others he had known, so he doubted equally that there had been any great loss.

Akram al-Rashid and his people in AQAP had held up their end of the bargain by helping to purchase the RA-115s, so Kashkin would hold up his end by shooting Navy SEAL Gil Shannon dead in his very own backyard. He supposed this would send a definite message to the American Special Forces community, particularly if it served as a prelude to a devastating nuclear strike, but to Kashkin, killing Shannon would be little more than a justifiable act of vengeance—“an equal wound for a wound,” as it said in the Koran.

For the fourth morning in a row now, he lay prone in his hide eight hundred meters above the ranch, watching the woman with long, dark hair as she went about her morning routine of loosing the horses into the various paddocks outside the stable. He assumed she was Shannon’s wife, and he enjoyed watching her despite himself. He had never been one to covet another man’s woman, be he friend or foe, Muslim or not, but the woman was undeniably pretty, and her beauty, when combined with the heady experience of living so closely with nature, was enough to make him stir.

Keeping her in the crosshairs throughout most of the morning, he wondered idly if blowing off one of her arms might draw Shannon out of the house. By this point in the stalk, however, he was growing confident that his prey was not bedding down in its usual lair. So he began to think in terms of going down to the ranch and putting a knife to the woman as a means of finding out where Shannon was and when he would return. She might even get him on the phone to expedite that return.

Marie Shannon had been married to a professional sniper for almost ten years, so when she saw the glint of Kashkin’s scope high on the ridge, she knew that something was god-awful wrong because she’d seen a glint the morning before in precisely the same spot. She hadn’t thought much of it the day before, however; the Fergusons crossed the ridge from time to time between the ranches while hunting coyotes, and it was only human nature to scope things out from above.

She continued currycombing Gil’s Appaloosa, Tico, maintaining an easy smile in case the shooter’s optics were strong enough to make out her facial features. A Chesapeake Bay retriever named Oso Cazador (Bear Hunter) came trotting across the yard and paused to take a leak on a post. He was a big dog, one hundred pounds, with a devilish canine smile and a reddish brown coat.

“Oso,” she said, without looking at him. “Get inside, baby.”

The dog looked at her, as if unsure if he’d heard her correctly.

“Go check on Grandma!”

The dog turned and ran back to the house, jumping onto the deck and ducking inside through the dog door.

Marie guessed there was a price on Gil’s head and that the shooter wasn’t up there for her, but even knowing there was a rifle pointed in her general direction was more than enough to make her want to run for the house. She was just able to suck in her fear and finish combing the horse before finally dropping the comb into the green bucket at her feet and walking the short but hellish few feet into the stable.

Once inside, she sat down on a bale of hay and at last allowed herself to tremble. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders, swearing quietly at her husband for bringing an assassin to their gate. Part of her knew she was nuts to believe there was a sniper in the foothills above the ranch, but another part of her realized that thousands of people the world over lived with snipers all around them all the time, never knowing when someone might be shot dead in front of them. Now that reality had come to Montana.

She got up and walked to the far end of the stable, pausing at the door to draw a breath, and then set off casually across the yard toward the house — knowing she would be within the shooter’s line of sight for better than a hundred feet. It was the longest hundred feet of her life, but she made it to cover and hurried up onto the front porch, jerking open the screen door, and ducking inside.

“Mama!” she called. “Where are you?”

Oso came running over to her.

“Right here,” her mother said, poking her head around the kitchen doorway. “Why? What’s the matter?” Her name was Janet. She was seventy-six years old and just over five feet three inches tall, with long gray hair she wore in the braid of a horsewoman.

“Stay away from the windows on the west side of the house.” Marie trotted up the staircase. “And don’t go outside!”

Janet stood in the kitchen drying her hands, then set down the towel and went upstairs. She found Marie in the spare bedroom taking Gil’s Browning .300 Winchester Magnum with a 3 to 24 Nightforce scope from the gun safe in the corner.

“Marie, what in hell’s half acre are you about?”

“We’ll find out in a minute.” Marie lay the rifle down on the bed and gathered her long brown hair behind her head, weaving it quickly into a loose braid. Then she picked the rifle back up, popped off the lens caps fore and aft, and slipped past her mother into the hall, making her way to the master bedroom on the west side of the house.

Oso followed her excitedly, thinking they must be going hunting.

Janet followed too, a discerning frown creasing her face.

“Stay away from the windows, Mama.” Marie knelt beside the bed opposite the windows, extending the legs of the bipod on the hunting rifle and resting it on the mattress. She put her eye to the scope and trained it on the ridge overlooking the house. When she spotted Kashkin, wearing an olive drab ball cap, hunkered down in the rocks behind the scoped Mauser, the urine in her bladder turned to ice water. The house was not built parallel to the ridge line, so she was looking at him angle-on and angle-off to Kashkin’s right at about 30 degrees. From the look of him, he seemed to be glassing the house, but she knew there was no way he could see deeply enough into the room to spot her because the room was too dim.

She pulled back the bolt and rammed one of the torpedo-nosed .30 caliber rounds into battery.

“Marie, what are you doing?”

She safed the weapon and got to her feet. “Have a look,” she said. “Up in the rocks above the ranch.”

Janet knelt beside the bed and pulled the stock into her shoulder. She was not a stranger to shooting, and she didn’t have to adjust the aim much in order to spot Kashkin in his nest.

“Lord A’Mighty!” She sat back from the rifle. “What’s he doin’ up there?”

Marie got down beside her. “Al Qaeda put a price on Gil’s head. He must be some kind of damn bounty hunter.” Janet got up, and her daughter retook her position behind the rifle, pulling the stock back into her shoulder and making the weapon hot. “Bring me a sofa cushion from downstairs, and fill Gil’s CamelBak with water for me,” she said intently. “I can’t see enough of this guy for a shot, so I’ll have to wait until he gets up. And lock the dog door, so Oso can’t get out.”

Janet watched her, grim faced. “Are you sure you want to do this? What if you’re wrong? What if he’s just some ignorant fool up there bein’ silly?”

“Mama, you don’t believe that any more than I do.” She continued to study Kashkin through the scope. He didn’t look like an Arab in the eyes, which was about all she could see, but if he was a bounty hunter, he could be anybody — even an American. “Now please bring me a cushion for my knees. I won’t last long on this hardwood floor, and I don’t dare take my eyes off this man. There’s no tellin’ when he’ll let out, and I can’t afford to let him get away.”

Janet went below and returned with the sofa cushion, slipping it under Marie’s knees one at a time. Oso jumped onto the bed, whining because he still thought they were going hunting.

“Get down.”

“But what about your conscience?” Janet said. “If you shoot that man, you’ll have to live with it the rest of your life.”

“Gil lives with it, so I reckon I can too. That man’s up there lookin’ to kill him, and I can’t abide it — I won’t abide it!”

Janet stood nodding for a moment and then went to fill Gil’s CamelBak with water. When she returned, Marie was naked from the waist down with the bedspread bunched up beneath her on top of the sofa cushion.

“Marie Anne! What on earth!”

“I might have to pee later. This way, I can pee on the blanket and not have to worry.”

Janet set the CamelBak down on the mattress and took a seat on the cane-back chair in the corner, resting her hand on Oso’s big head. The dog was getting frustrated with all the waiting. “We could call the police, ya know.”

“They’d just make a circus of it, especially when the media found out. And suppose he got away?” She took her eye from the scope for just a moment. “This is business between Al Qaeda and the McGuthrys, Mama.”

“Oh, so now you’re a McGuthry again.”

“This is McGuthry land,” Marie said, repositioning herself behind the scope. “Daddy wouldn’t have done any different.”

Janet sat back in the chair with a sigh. “Well, your daddy wasn’t always the smartest man in the world.”

“Mama, you know I’m right; otherwise you’d be downstairs on the phone right now callin’ the sheriff — in spite of anything I had to say about it.”

Janet clicked her tongue. “Maybe so. And then again, maybe I’m still tryin’ to make up my mind.”

“Well, until you do, I’ll be right here behind this rifle.”

By the time the sun began to set, Kashkin’s back had grown stiff, just as it had during the past three days. He thought it odd that the woman hadn’t come back out to bring the horses into the stable as she normally did, but there was no telling with people.

A coyote yammered somewhere off behind him, and his eyes shifted immediately to the colt down in the paddock. Surely she wasn’t going to leave the colt outside overnight with predators roaming the land. A single coyote would be foolish to attempt getting past the colt’s mother, but a pack of coyotes might be another story.

He thought back over the day, only now completely conscious of the fact the woman had definitely changed her routine. For three days running, she had cleaned out the horses’ stalls, but not today. And after combing the Appaloosa, she hadn’t taken the green bucket back into the stable. He recalled her route back to the house that morning and realized she’d taken the shortest route possible instead of entering through the back door the way she normally did, always leaving her dirty cowboy boots on the back porch.

He scanned the tree line beyond the ranch to the east, briefly imagining policemen staring back at him through multiple pairs of binoculars. Then he scanned the dirt road far beyond the ranch to the south. He saw no sign of law enforcement anywhere, but somehow he was sure he’d been compromised. He could feel it. Paranoia began to creep its way into his mind, and over the next ten minutes, he talked himself into believing that Gil might be stalking him. The painful tightness in his chest returned, and he decided he’d waited long enough. He would go down into the house and take the woman alive, forcing Shannon to show himself.

He took a satellite phone from the bugout bag beside him and called the al-Rashids. “This is Kashkin,” he said. “Let me speak to Akram.”

“He’s not with me right now,” said Haroun al-Rashid, the younger of the two brothers. “Is it done?”

“No, it is not done,” Kashkin said. “It’s possible I’ve been compromised; that the target is stalking me. If you do not hear from me by tomorrow morning, you should proceed with plan B.”

“What? How are you compromised? Are we all compromised?”

“No, only me. You are safe. So good luck, my friend. I must go now. May the blessings of Allah be upon you.”

“No, Kashkin, wait—”

Kashkin switched off the phone and smashed it against a rock.

He then drew his knees beneath him and began to pray, stretching the muscles of his lower back at the same time. When he was finished, he stood up and had a good look around, drawing a breath before taking that first step downhill toward the ranch.

He didn’t hear the shot because it was muffled by the house, but when the .30 caliber round struck him, it tore out his right floating rib and a good deal of flesh along with it. Kashkin wasn’t aware of any pain, just the queer sensation of having instantly had all the air sucked from his lungs.

Marie knew she’d hit him from the way he’d grabbed his side. Her shoulders were aching from sitting hunched over the mattress all day, but she shrugged it off and worked the bolt to ram another round into battery before placing the reticule of the scope right below Kashkin’s chin.

She drew a breath, held it… and squeezed the trigger a second time.

The round hit Kashkin dead center in the sternum and slammed him onto his back. He landed with his arms splayed out at his sides, and though all that Marie could see of him now was the sole of his right boot propped up on a rock, she knew she’d taken him out.

She sat back from the bed and looked up as Janet hurried into the room.

“He’s down,” she said, getting stiffly to her feet and taking her jeans from the edge of the bed. She stepped into them and gathered up the pee-stained bedspread, stuffing it down the laundry chute in the hallway. “I’ll wait til dark, then rig the travois to Tico and go up and get him. We’ll bury him on the ranch.”