Target America

54

Hal stood back from the upstairs window beside Marie, both of them studying the stable with every flash of lightning. They caught glimpses of men with AK-47s moving about inside, but for the most part, the enemy was keeping out of sight, so they had no idea how many they were up against.

Marie had taken Gil’s Browning from the gun safe and lain it across the guest bed for Hal to use. “Are we waiting for them to make the first move or what?”

“Right now we have the advantage,” he said. “Every minute closer to daylight works in our favor. If they move to surround the house, we’ve got trouble because we won’t be able to see them.”

“What do you think is going on with your brothers?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We underestimated the enemy, and I got a bad feeling the boys might have been taken by surprise up there.”

“God, I hope you’re wrong. Your father will never forgive — Look!” She pointed out the window. “Somebody just ran from the barn and ducked down beside the water trough.”

Hal wrapped a poncho liner around his upper body and head to reduce his heat signature, stealing a peak around the window frame. Lightning flashed, and he saw a perfect snapshot of Tahir crouching beside the corrugated water trough. “I didn’t see a weapon. Did you?”

“No, but he was clutching something in both hands. Like he was really afraid of dropping it.”

“A grenade, maybe?”

“I don’t know.”

Hal went to the top of the stairs. “Dad, be ready for a grenade!”

“He’s running toward the house!” Marie shouted.

Akram lay on his belly in the loft with the stock of the TAC-50 pulled into his shoulder, watching through the nightscope as Tahir jumped up from the water trough and took off in a headlong dash for the house, not bothering to maneuver from cover to cover as he’d been told. He cursed the youth for his stupidity and cowardice, for it was now obvious the boy’s heart was not in the mission; that he was merely going through the motions to get it over with as quickly as possible.

There was a flash of lighting, and a rifle shot rang out. The boy fell in the mud and lay there gripping his leg with his free hand, his mouth open in a scream of pain that was carried off on the wind.

Akram got to his knees, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting, “Get up and run!”

Though Tahir could not hear him, he managed to get his feet beneath him and to gallop off toward the house again, still gripping his wounded leg as he approached the deck on the back of the house.

The entire ranch was lit up by a brief moment of daylight. Another shot rang out, and the boy exploded in a blinding flash.

The shock wave blew out the windows on that side, peeling back the two-by-sixes on the deck and blasting the house with a hailstorm of debris, but the structure remained intact, and nothing caught fire.

Enraged, Akram began to back away from the loft door, but Duke arrived and dropped down next to him, training his M40 sniper rifle up the slope.

“Shannon’s not in the house. He’s up there on the ridge. Keep your eyes peeled for muzzle flashes, because we probably won’t live to see more than one.”

Akram got back down behind the TAC-50, believing he could almost feel the omniscient eyeball of the Navy SEAL sniper watching him through the scope of his own rifle from up on high, leering down on them like Black Death. He struggled to dominate his flinching reflex — as if one could flinch away from an incoming round — and swept the bulky rifle in twitchy movements from point to point along the crest as he searched for their target.

“You’d better relax,” Duke cautioned, able to feel Akram’s herky-jerky movement through the straw. “You’ll never spot him that way. Keep your sweep smooth. He probably displaced after shooting that dumb-fuck kid on the chance we saw his muzzle flash. So we got a minute or two before he’s resettled. Just keep calm, and we’ll get him.”

Akram resented the American’s composure, but he knew Duke was the better shooter, so he shoved the .50 cal in his direction. “We’d better trade.”

Duke grinned. “Hell, you speak my language better every day.” They swapped, and he put his eye to the expensive night scope. “Watch what a man of talent can do with this fine piece of artillery — and keep your finger off the trigger over there. You’re my spotter now. If you shoot and miss, that’ll be our ass, so just help me find the squid fucker and let me blow his ass in half.”

They studied the rocks above for the next four minutes.

“I’ve got something!” Akram said. “A rifle.”

“Where?”

It took another minute for Akram to help Duke locate the target.

“Ah, there he is,” Duke said. “And do you know what, my camel-jockeying friend?”

By now Akram was past taking Duke’s invectives personally. “What?”

“The reason we’re still alive is that he can’t fucking see us. He’s got no night vision up there. He’s blind as a fucking bat without the lightning.”

“So kill him already!”

The Duke chuckled. “Patience, Kimosabe. This ain’t a shot you want me to rush. If I miss, and he sees the flash, he’ll fire this way on pure reflex — and who the fuck knows which one of us he’ll hit, eh?”

Akram reached nonchalantly down his leg to unsnap his pistol, planning to kill the Duke the second Shannon was dead.

“And before you get the wise of idea of putting a bullet through my head,” Duke said, taking his eye from the scope, their faces faintly visible in the glow of distant lightning, “we’ll need to walk up there to be sure he’s dead. You don’t wanna kill your best marksman until you know that goose up there is cooked, do you?”

Akram smiled. “The thought never crossed my mind.”

Duke put his eye back to the scope. “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s rainin’.”

He placed the reticle on the nose of the face he was looking at. He couldn’t make out the features because the shooter had a wool watch stander’s cap pulled down tight to his eyebrows, and the rest of the face was obscured by the scope.

“It’s too bad this can’t be a fair fight,” he muttered. “I almost feel bad about it.” He squeezed the trigger, and the rifle kicked against his shoulder. It wasn’t the mule kick he was expecting, however, because the hydraulic piston in the rifle’s stock had greatly absorbed the recoil.

When he recovered the sight picture a second later, the shooter’s rifle was still sticking out from the rocks — but the head behind the scope had disappeared.

“Bull’s-eye!”

“Did you get him?” Akram was unable to see for himself because the optics on Duke’s M40 weren’t as good as those on the .50 cal. “I can still see the rifle.”

“I wasn’t aiming at his fucking rifle, jerkweed.” Duke got to his knees, swinging the TAC-50 around to point it at Akram. “Now, here’s how we’re gonna play this, Zatoichi. We’re goin’ up there to check the body… just me and you. If he’s dead, we’re walking down the backside of the ridge to the trucks and leaving all those dumb fucks downstairs behind. You’re gonna transfer the rest of my cash as soon as we get back to the hotel, and if you don’t like that idea, I can just blow you the fuck away right now.”

Akram backed away from the M40 and got up on his knees. “I’m guessing I leave my guns here?”

“You guess correctly, Buster Brown. So drop the pistol, and let’s move it out.”