The Sniper and the Wolf

10

Gil and Dragunov arrived on the Sicilian coast near the small town of Sampieri about twenty-five minutes behind Kovalenko and his men. The Maltese P21 patrol boat was already sinking by the stern in thirty feet of water and would disappear long before the sun came up.

Gil killed the engines on the Palinouros and dropped both bow anchors. “You up for another swim? If we leave the skiff on the beach, it’ll be obvious somebody came ashore.”

Dragunov pulled on the hood to his wet suit, saying grimly, “Let’s get wet, Vassili. In two hours the sun rises.”

They weighted Brody’s body with a scuba tank and watched him sink beneath the surface at the stern before stepping into the water and swimming the hundred yards to land. The two of them came ashore on a stretch of empty beach concealed from an adjacent village by a long wood running the length of the cove. They ditched their wet suits and moved east through the trees parallel to the road.

“Will they move inland on a direct route to Messina?” Gil asked. “Or stick to the coastal road?”

“They will steal the first car they can and take the coast road. We’ll have to do the same if we want to catch them before they make it to Italy. Are you prepared to kill Sicilians?”

“Only to stay alive and out of prison,” Gil answered. “Not to steal a car.”

“What if stealing a car is the only way to stay alive and out of prison?”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”

They moved into the village and found a small black Fiat with the keys in the ignition. Dragunov slipped behind the wheel, and Gil pushed it down the dirt road away from the house before Dragunov started it up. Soon they were riding along the coastal road, headed east.

“I think they’d take the highway inland,” Gil said. “It’s a lot faster to Messina that way.”

“Oh, you are Spetsnaz?” Dragunov asked in his gravelly voice, shifting gears, his eyes glued to the winding road. “You know how they were trained?”

Gil chuckled. “Well, maybe we could take the highway and get to Messina ahead of them. We could cover the ferry.”

“And do what?” Dragunov said, stealing a glance. “Shoot them in front of everyone?”

“Hey, I’m just thinkin’ out loud here.”

“Think quiet,” Dragunov said. “Your thoughts give me a headache.”

Twenty minutes later, they rounded a bend and saw, in the taillights of another black car pulled off to the right, a man just finishing up with changing the left rear tire. Dragunov gunned the engine and swerved toward the car.

“Watch it, Ivan, you’re gonna hit the fuckin’ guy!”

“Blyat!” Dragunov snarled, slamming the front right fender of the Fiat into the man as he jumped too late to get out of the way. The body flew up over the top of the car and landed in the road behind them as Dragunov slammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a stop in the dirt. “That was Lesnichy — one of Kovalenko’s men!”

Gil pulled his pistol and dove from the vehicle, rolling into a shallow depression at the side of the road. Dragunov disappeared in the darkness on the far side.

Both the black car and the badly broken — but not dead — Lesnichy were faintly visible in the taillights of the still idling Fiat. Lesnichy’s right leg was folded grotesquely beneath him, the other leg twitching involuntarily.

Gil heard the faint sound of a suppressed pistol shot, and Lesnichy’s leg stopped moving. Two more whispered pistol shots took out the taillights of their Fiat in quick succession, throwing the road into almost total darkness. Screwing the suppressor back onto his Strike One, Gil knew they were all equally pressed for time by the coming of dawn.

The red dot of a laser sight glinted off the chrome fender of the Fiat, and Gil grabbed a handful a dust from the road, throwing it into the air behind the car. The powder instantly formed a cloud, illuminating the beam of the laser. The laser disappeared in that same instant, but it was too late. Gil had been shooting azimuths by eye for too long. His brain worked with computerlike speed to trace the angle of the beam back to its source through the darkness. He fired three shots from the Strike One on pure instinct.

A man grunted.

Hearing him scramble to displace, Gil fired two more shots, and the man cried out, swearing in Russian. Gil could tell by the sound of the voice that he’d struck vital organs, so there was no reason to fire again.

A suppressed rifle shot hissed through the air, and a chunk of flesh the size of a quarter was torn from Gil’s right shoulder. Recoiling from the suddenness of the impact, he rolled back into the road against all prudence, hoping the sniper would expect him to roll the opposite way. Another shot hissed through the air, striking the ground three feet to his left, and Gil froze, knowing the sniper would now be listening for the faintest hint to his location.

“Comrade Dragunov!” someone called out from behind the enemy car.

“Kovalenko!” Dragunov called back.

Gil used this noise as cover, inching his way backward around the front of the car. He listened as the two Spetsnaz men exchanged brief insults in Russian, sitting against the front bumper of the Fiat, probing the wound. It wasn’t life threatening, but it was bleeding and would be difficult to conceal without a proper field dressing and a change of clothes.

“It will be light soon,” Kovalenko was telling Dragunov. “We should finish this another time. Otherwise we may spend the rest of our lives washing one another’s backs in an Italian prison.”

“You’ll wash my back, traitor!”

Kovalenko laughed uproariously from the far side of the car. “Even so, there will soon be light enough to see.”

“You’re the one with your back to the water!” Dragunov shouted. “I have all day!”

“Do you, comrade? We both know I am the man with the rifle.”

Dragunov thought that over, believing Gil dead and realizing he’d be no match for Kovalenko’s rifle once the sun came up. “What do you propose, traitor?”

“You in your car, me in mine — now! While it’s still too dark to see one another. I reverse, you go forward, and we both live to fight another day.”

Dragunov decided to let discretion be the better part of valor. “On three?”

“We count together!”

Together they counted: “One… two… three!” Then each man darted for his car.

With no idea what the hell had been said, Gil heard Dragunov come scrambling from the rocks. When Dragunov jumped into the car, he reasoned what must be going on and moved quickly around to the passenger side where the door still hung open.

Dragunov nearly shot him when he appeared. “Get in! I thought you were dead!”

Gil got in, and Dragunov gunned the motor before he even had a chance to close the door.

“What the hell was all that about back there?”

“We called a truce before it got light,” Dragunov said. “Kovalenko doesn’t want to risk being caught by the police, and I couldn’t fight him without a rifle. If I’d known you were still alive, I would not have agreed, but at least this way we can beat him to Messina.”

“How do you know he won’t change his plan?”

“The rest of his men will be waiting for him in Rome.”

In the beam of the headlights, Gil saw clothes hanging on a line in front of a house up ahead. “Stop there. I need a new shirt.”

Dragunov pulled to the side and Gil jumped out, grabbing a shirt and some socks to use for bandages. They were under way again a few seconds later.

“Do you guys have a safe house in Italy? Someplace I can get stitched up?”

“Don’t you, American?”

Gil shook his head. “Pope still has no idea who we can trust in Europe. I can’t risk being tracked.”

“I thought you said the GRU was just as bad.”

Gil was shrugging out of his shirt. “You said they were clean. Besides, any port in a storm, Ivan. I won’t be effective for long unless I get this fixed.”

Dragunov shifted gears. “You killed one back there, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, Vassili. Maybe you Americans would have given us a fight after all.”

Gil wrapped a sock around his wound. “Yeah, well, I’m glad we never had to find out.”

“It does not matter,” Dragunov remarked a few moments later. “There would have been nothing left for anyone. We always knew that. It was all a stupid waste. War is a stupid waste.”

“So why do we love it so damn much?” Gil wondered.

Dragunov smiled in the light of the dash. “That is a good question.”