The Sniper and the Wolf

16

Gil stood with his hands on the hood of the shot-up Fiat while Dragunov explained to the Sicilian police sergeant in very broken English that he and Gil were simple Russian tourists. He said they didn’t know who had shot at them or why. The sergeant then asked him if he knew anything about a yacht anchored off the southern coast, and Dragunov pretended not to understand the word yacht.

“Boat!” the cop said, pointing south. “A rich man’s boat. Do you know about it?”

“No, we arrive by car.” Dragunov pointed back toward the ferry.

The cop rolled his eyes, growing impatient with the man he believed to be avoiding his questions.

Gil couldn’t see the second cop standing right behind him, his hand on Gil’s shoulder, but he could tell by the look on the sergeant’s face that he and Dragunov were only seconds from being placed under arrest. He adjusted his hips slightly in preparation for the spin move he would use to take the cop off his feet when he reached for Gil’s wrist to cuff him.

A hundred yards off, a white van pulled to the side of the road. The side door slid open, and a man appeared with a scoped rifle. Though Gil couldn’t make out the weapon at that range, it was a Heckler & Koch G28 in 7.62 mm.

“Ivan, get down!”

Gil ducked behind the car as the cop grabbed for his wrist. There was no report from the suppressed rifle, but the cop flew backward, hit in the chest by an armor-piercing round that easily defeated his thin body armor and exploded his heart before ripping out through his back.

With the speed of a striking cobra, Dragunov hit the sergeant in the throat and dove for cover. The cop stumbled backward, and he too was struck in the chest by a bullet. He crashed to his knees and fell over onto his face. Dragunov grabbed for his sidearm, but a round took off the ring finger on his left hand, and he jerked back behind the car, swearing foully.

It took the pedestrians in the vicinity a few seconds to realize what was happening, but once they did, they ran off up the street. Bullets tore into the car — deadly missiles that made no sound at all until they struck the steel and tore clean through. Gil crawled beneath the car in an effort to retrieve their pistols.

“I can only reach one!”

“They’re coming!” Dragunov shouted as the van pulled back into the street, speeding toward them.

Gil slid from the beneath the car and tossed the Russian the pistol, jumping up and running for the police car.

Dragunov got to his feet and fired at the windshield of the oncoming van, but the pistol ran dry after four shots, and he again turned for the dead sergeant’s sidearm.

Gil jerked open the passenger door of the police car and opened the glove box, popping the deck lid and scrambling for the trunk, where he found an H&K MP5 submachine gun. He primed the receiver and shouldered the weapon, running out into the street.

Seeing he was about to be machine-gunned, the driver cut the wheel hard to the left, exposing the door gunner on the right side, who was forced to grab the handhold to keep from being thrown from the vehicle. Gil fired on the run, cutting the door gunner to pieces with a sustained thirty-round burst. The van hit a road sign, bounced to a stop, and stalled. Gil dropped the machine gun and leapt aboard through the open door.

The driver fumbled free of his seatbelt and tried to jump out, but Gil caught him by his curly black hair and yanked him back inside, punching him in the face repeatedly until he quit struggling.

“Who sent you?” Gil screamed. He found a compact Colt .45 in the man’s waistband and jammed the muzzle into his groin, thumbing back the hammer. “One more time, cocksucker! Who sent you?”

The driver’s lips were split and bleeding. “CIA,” he sputtered in a British accent. “Malta station.”

“Fuck you!” Gil slugged him with the pistol in the side of the head.

Dragunov stood in the street, aiming the sergeant’s gun at a blue Nissan rounding the bend, a startled young Italian woman at the wheel. She stopped the car, and Dragunov opened the door, shoving her over. “Come on, Vassili! Let’s go!”

Gil grabbed the G28 from the floor of the van and jumped in on the passenger side of the car. Dragunov gunned the motor to spin the car around, and they sped off in the same direction as Kovalenko’s men.

“They’re CIA!”

“You are surprised?” Dragunov had one eye on the road, the other on the rearview mirror as he ran through the gears, taking the winding road as fast as he dared.

“I’m not surprised — I’m pissed!”

The girl begged in panicked Italian to be let out of the car.

“Sorry, baby, I don’t habla, so shut up.” He stole a look at Dragunov. “Any idea where they’ll go?”

“Palermo.”

“Why Palermo?”

“Because they’re going to need resources, and Kovalenko will want to finish me here before running back to Georgia.”

“Please!” the girl begged in English. They were getting blood all over her and her car, and she was completely petrified.

Dragunov downshifted and gunned it through another curve. “What about her?”

“She stays with us.” Gil took a moment to check his ammo. The G28 had a dual-magazine clamp, and both ten-round mags were full.

“Please!” the girl bawled into his face. “Liberatemi!”

“Listen!” he said, grabbing her arm. “I don’t understand what the fuck you’re saying — so shut up!”

She pulled her arm free, apparently understanding the “shut up” part, and sat sobbing between them.

Dragunov glanced up at the mirror, the hint of a grin on his face. “We could kill her.”

“Sure,” Gil said, checking the .45 and tucking it into his belly. “Even you’re not that cold-blooded.”

“We’ll have to find a place to treat our wounds soon.”

Gil chuckled sardonically. “It was no big deal when it was just me, but you lost a finger, so we suddenly need a corpsman? I don’t think so, partner. No stopping before we get to Palermo. I’m gonna kill those Russian bastards.”

“Chechen,” Dragunov said. “They’re Chechen bastards.”

“I’m gonna kill those Spetsnaz pricks. How’s that?”

The Russian smiled without taking his eyes off the road, pressing the accelerator and gripping the wheel with his bloody left hand as he grabbed another a gear. “If they already found the Palinouros, the island will soon be crawling with carabinieri. We might find Kovalenko in time to kill him, but we’ll never make it back to the mainland alive.”

“I’ll get us off this rock when the time comes,” Gil assured him. “You just find Kovalenko.” He gripped the G28 resting butt-down between his knees. “I’m gonna reach out and touch that son of a bitch.”