The Sniper and the Wolf

2

Gil caught a cab a half mile from the target area. The overwatch told him which words to use in French, and though Gil’s accent was terrible, the cabbie understood him well enough to follow his directions along the outskirts of Paris. The cabbie saw how badly his passenger was bleeding, and it soon became apparent to him that Gil was getting his directions from someone speaking to him through an earpiece. He began jabbering away over the back of the seat in hurried French.

“He thinks you’re CIA,” the overwatch said with a chuckle.

“You’ve seen too many movies,” Gil told the cabbie. “Just drive.” He was betting the cabbie spoke at least some English, as did most Parisians, though they usually pretended not to when dealing with American tourists.

The cab driver pulled to the curb. “Get out. I don’t need your trouble.”

Gil wasn’t in the mood for games. He lunged forward over the back of the seat, punching the cabbie in the face Indiana Jones style. “Now, you either drive this cab, or I will! I don’t have time for your shit! Comprendre, mon ami?”

The cab driver leaned against the door, holding the side of his face where Gil had struck him, his eyes full of anger. “You are CIA.”

“You’re damn right I am,” Gil grumbled. “Now drive!”

The driver sullenly shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb. “Why are you bleeding?” he asked a couple minutes later.

“I was attacked by a werewolf.” Gil sat listening to the overwatch, who was monitoring the cab from above in infrared via satellite locked in geosynchronous orbit two hundred miles up.

“Make a right up here,” he told the driver. “We’re close.”

A minute later, they pulled to the curb, and Gil got out in a Muslim section of Paris, shoving three hundred dollars’ worth of euros into the cabbie’s hand. “Keep it.” He shut the door, and the cab pulled quickly away up the street.

Gil stood in the shadows, eyeing the three-story apartment building on the far corner. There was a light on in one of the apartments on the top floor. “I don’t suppose you know which floor Umarov is on,” he said to the overwatch.

“Not a clue, but the SUV on the corner is the one he arrived in. It’s probably got an alarm.”

Gil rooted around in a trash can on the corner until he found a glass bottle. He hurled the bottle across the street, and it shattered against the windshield of the SUV, causing the car alarm to start blaring and the headlights to flash on and off.

“I guess that’s one way of doing it,” the overwatch said in amusement.

Gil stepped into the shadows. The curtains in the lighted room parted, and a man stood looking down at the SUV for a moment before closing the curtains again.

“It worked.” Gil slipped across the street, where he hopped a waist-high stone wall and took cover in the darkness beyond the amber light of the streetlamp.

The car alarm fell silent after a minute, and the man from the window came out the front door of the building. He stood staring at the fractured window of the SUV in the light of the lamp, his visage at once discerning and predatory. He watched hawkishly up and down in all directions from the intersection, with a hand inside his jacket.

Gil lowered himself into a crouch, keeping low as he made his way along the stone wall toward the corner. The man reset the car alarm and turned to go back into the building. As he passed the end of the wall, Gil pounced like a cougar, delivering him a deadly strike to the cerebellum and knocking him forward off his feet. Even as the man fell face-first onto the sidewalk, Gil followed through with his attack, bringing down the heel of his boot on the back of his neck fast and hard to break the spinal cord.

He immediately dragged the body into the shadows by the head, searching it for weapons and intel. Gil found a ring of three keys — one of which went to the SUV — and a Glock 39 subcompact .45 with a six-round magazine. He made sure a round was chambered and moved out around the back of the building. One of the keys fit the rear door, so he slipped inside easily. He was casual about mounting the staircase, keeping the pistol gripped in his right hand but concealed behind his thigh. The halls of the ancient building were dimly lit, and the wooden stairs creaked with every step.

He reached the top floor and stood watching the door to the apartment. A light shone beneath it, and Gil could hear at least two men speaking in Chechen. Their voices were anxious, and he assumed it had to do with the car alarm, but there was no way to be sure. He looked at the third key on the ring, guessing it would fit the knob, but he didn’t know if the Chechens used some sort of secret knock before keying into the room. There was no telling how many hostile Muslims might be living in the building, and six rounds wouldn’t last long in a protracted firefight. Not to mention he didn’t fancy another encounter with the French police.

Deciding to keep the initiative, Gil pocketed the keys and stalked forward, kicking in the door to the room and shooting the first man he saw. The wide-eyed Chechen grabbed his throat and fell backward over a coffee table. Gil’s original target, the bearded Dokka Umarov, leapt up from the couch, grabbing for a Glock 39 tucked into the waistband of his trousers, and Gil shot him through the top of the forehead. Most of the skullcap disappeared in a spray of bone and blood as Gil pivoted left to shoot the last remaining man in the room.

He froze a mere fraction of an instant before squeezing the trigger, finding himself face-to-face with agent Trent Lerher of the CIA, formerly attached to Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC. “What the fuck are you doin’ here?”

Lerher was tall and slender, and highly experienced in the world of espionage. “Take it easy, Gil. This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Answer the question!”

Gil had worked with Lerher on two separate occasions during his time with SEAL Team VI. Once in Indonesia years earlier, and once more recently in Afghanistan when Lerher had sent Gil into Iran to eliminate an Al Qaeda bomb maker and his pregnant wife. Gil had refused to kill the wife, instead bringing her back alive to Afghanistan and making a stink about Lerher’s mishandling of the operation. The CIA agent’s controversial order to assassinate a pregnant woman hadn’t sat well with his superiors at headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and as a result, Lerher had been demoted from JSOC and returned to regular field operations.

“Who’s there?” the overwatch asked in Gil’s ear.

“It’s Lerher!”

Lerher spotted the earpiece. “Tell Pope that I’m—”

“How the fuck do you know it’s Pope?” Gil demanded. “Get those hands back up!”

Lerher lifted his hands higher. “We don’t have time to do this here, Gil. Let’s go, and I’ll explain on the way.”

“Gil!” said Bob Pope into Gil’s ear.

“I’m listening.”

“He’s the one who fed you to the wolves. Take him out.”

“You’re sure?”

“Listen!” Lerher said, realizing he was losing the initiative. “This isn’t what it looks like! Pope doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about!”

“Gil, kill him and get the hell out of there. You don’t have much time.”

“Goddamnit. You’re sure?”

“I’m an American!” Lerher shouted.

“Kill ’im, Gil! The police are on the way.”

Lerher grabbed for the inside of his jacket, and Gil shot him through the face. Lerher stumbled backward, twitching and blinking, making a sickening strangling sound, and Gil shot him again in the chest. The agent went down, and Gil jumped forward to search him. All he found was the same model pistol that the Chechens were carrying, so he grabbed up the spare magazines and dashed out of the room, running down three flights of stairs to the street and getting into the black SUV. European high-low sirens were approaching from the north, so he sped off south.

“What the fuck is going on, Bob? Lerher isn’t even attached to JSOC anymore!”

“He’s not really attached to anything anymore,” Pope deadpanned.

Gil stopped for a red light. “That’s not funny.”

“You said you wanted him dead. You got what you wanted.”

“I want to know what the fuck he’s doing in Paris with Dokka Umarov.”

“I’ll get to the bottom of it,” Pope promised. “Right now you have to head for the Russian Embassy.”

The light turned green, but Gil didn’t notice. “What the fuck am I gonna do at the Russian Embassy?”

“Get yourself stitched up, for one thing. Maybe even a shot of penicillin. Those dog bites are going to fester.”

“You’re saying the Russians have agreed to take me in?”

“You just killed Russia’s bin Laden,” Pope said, referring to the Chechen Islamist warlord Umarov. “It’s the least they can do for you. Now make a left, and try not to drive like you’re fleeing the scene of a multiple homicide, will ya?”