The Sniper and the Wolf

31

“There goes the sun,” muttered Ivan Dragunov.

Gil glanced toward the horizon, the stock of the G28 still pulled into his shoulder. “I’ve been thinkin’. Suppose Kovalenko’s men brought night vision. We could be in for a shift in the initiative here.”

Dragunov considered the possibility. “If Kovalenko had infrared, we’d already be dead. It’s not likely the men brought night vision with them.”

Gil adjusted the sat phone’s earpiece. “Midori, you still reading us?”

“Roger. I copy direct.” Midori was now monitoring both of their phones on separate channels back in Langley, and they could both hear her, but they could not hear each other.

“You still got visual on us?”

“Roger that as well.”

“Okay.” Gil took the 1911 pistol from the small of his back and gave it to Dragunov. “As soon as the light fades, you can work your way down close to the house on the blind side to the east. Stay away from the barn and the goat pens, though. If those fuckers start bleating, Kovalenko’s gonna know what we’re up to.”

Gripping the Italian cop’s Beretta, Dragunov tucked the 1911 into his belly.

“You know how to work a 1911?”

“Of course,” Dragunov said. “It was the preferred weapon of my enemy for a long time.”

Gil chuckled. “It’s still my preferred weapon.”

“I suppose you’re staying up here where it’s safe?”

“Well, this ain’t exactly a close-quarter weapon, Ivan. We have to play to our strengths.”

“I’ll man the rifle,” Dragunov said, taking the 1911 back out of his pants.

Gil moved away from the G28, almost preferring to take the fight to the enemy, and put out his hand for the pistol. “Okay, chief.”

His bluff called, Dragunov put away the pistol again. “Don’t miss, Vassili — and don’t shoot me by mistake.”

Gil repositioned himself behind the rifle. “Midori will make sure I know where you are at all times. Right, Midori?”

“Roger that.”

When the light faded, Dragunov moved out to the east, skirting the farm until he reached the edge of the road. Visibility was less than fifty feet in the darkness. “No movement outside the house?” he asked Midori.

“None,” she answered. “You’re exactly in line with the blind side of the house now. You should be able to advance without being detected. I’ll vector you in.”

Over the next couple of minutes, she fed him directions for the most expedient approach to the house, helping him to skirt copses of trees and brush without getting disoriented in the dark. He arrived at the eastern side and lowered himself into a crouch with his back to the wall, trading the Beretta for the 1911. “Make sure Gil knows I’m in position,” he said in a low voice, knowing that whispers carried in the dark.

“Roger.”

Back up the bluff, Gil scanned the silhouetted terrain below. There was no light inside the house; not so much as a candle burning. “I can’t see much of anything from here,” he said. “It’s just too dark. Advise Ivan I’m moving in closer.”

He began to slither forward down the slope, knowing that if Kovalenko possessed even a chintzy nightscope, he was a dead man.

“Stop!” Midori said. “A man with a rifle just climbed out the opposite side of the house from Ivan.”

Gil backed into his hide among the brush. “What’s he doing?”

“Nothing. Just waiting.”

“Do I have line of sight from my position?”

“Negative,” she said. “He’s still around the corner. Ivan’s asking what he should do.”

“Tell him to hold position.” Gil knew that Dragunov would willingly defer to his judgment because he held the high ground. “We’ll give the situation time to develop.”

Inside the house, Kovalenko decided that his enemies did not have night vision capabilities. The badly wounded Tapa had voluntarily crept past the kitchen window three different times without taking a bullet. So Kovalenko sent Zargan out the side window with orders to stalk the American sniper. He understood they might be under infrared satellite surveillance, but there was simply no other choice.

“We have to put an end to this,” he said to Vitsin and two other Spetsnaz men. With Zargan outside now, there were only four of them left in the house, and though Tapa was bearing up well under incredible pain, he was fast losing what little remained of his combat effectiveness. “Either we fight our way out, or we die here on this fucking goat farm.”

“I’ll stay behind to cover your withdrawal,” Tapa said, holding a Kashtan submachine pistol against his leg, his right arm now bound tightly across his chest with a torn bedsheet.

Kovalenko patted him on the good shoulder, regretting having sacrificed him for a shot at Gil. He knew in his gut that the American was still out there and still very much alive, because the goats were still bleating in their pens, when they should have been bedded down for the night. “We’ll take you with us if we can. First, we have to find out whether we have an open avenue of escape.”

“Is it just me,” asked Anatoly, a Chechen born in Moscow, “or are the goats carrying on more these past couple of minutes?”

“It’s not you,” Kovalenko said. “They picked up just before Zargan went out the window. The enemy is near — probably around the blind side of the house. Get ready now. You’re next out.”