Time to Kill: A Sniper Novel

5

“Were the Admirals satisfactory, sir?” Major Shakuri asked Colonel Naqdi when he came into the office for the evening briefing, dreading it, for he brought some bad news.

“Moving slowly, as usual,” the colonel replied. “They are afraid of putting their expensive toys in harm’s way, and I have to remind them firmly that those ships were built or bought to do exactly that. What do you have for me?”

Mansoor handed over a single sheet of paper containing a summary of the Egyptian Tourism Authority’s dismal monthly report. The industry that was the nation’s primary source of jobs and revenue was drifting toward total collapse. Almost fifteen million tourists had visited Egypt in 2010, more than ever before; then, immediately after the fall of the dictator Mubarak, that number went off the cliff. Tourism was now down 80 percent.

The illusion of personal security had been crushed, and foreigners were taking their MasterCards to safer destinations instead of coming to Egypt to drift down the Nile and visit the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Millions of dollars were being lost every month, thousands of Egyptians were cast out of work, and the coalition governments that came and went with regularity were blamed.

“This is excellent,” said the colonel. “Keep the pressure on. Come up with some incidents where other tourists with camera phones capture the action for television. Maybe a German riding a camel, or a Canadian woman shopping for a rug, or some American hikers who believe they are exempt from the world’s woes.”

“Yes, sir.” Major Mansoor sucked in a sharp breath. Better to get this next part over with. “There has been an unwelcome development concerning the death of the American accountant. The sniper who was supposed to fly to Texas decided to drive instead and has been arrested on a traffic violation in the state of Alabama.”

The colonel closed his eyes tightly, fighting his temper. There was no need to argue about this, because Allah had willed it so. He remained quiet for a moment, letting his thoughts churn through the problem. “We must assume that the U.S. government has assumed custody of this fool by now. Can he hurt us?”

Mansoor felt almost giddy with relief that he was not being blamed. “No, sir. He knows nothing. If he remembers any of his training, and is faithful, he will not say a word to them, even under torture, particularly if we maintain his legal representation.”

“Why did he drive instead of fly?” That made no sense. The man should have been safe in Texas instead of in a jail cell.

“I have no idea, sir. His instructions were explicit, to get on the first plane available.”

The colonel pushed away from the desk a bit and crossed his legs, straightening the creases in his pants as he did so. The black shoes still gleamed in the overhead light. “You gave those instructions to him personally?”

“Yes, sir, in the usual way, sir, through encoded e-mails on a pornography site. The links were taken down after each use. He knew only enough to carry out the assigned task.”

The colonel cocked his head to one side. “So there’s really nothing we can do.” It was a statement, not a question. “The man made a serious error and it came back to bite him.”

“He cannot hurt us, sir. I’m certain of that, but it is unforgivable that he disobeyed orders.”

“Instruct our people in Tehran to kill the fool’s mother, and have that news passed along when Washington allows him to communicate with a lawyer. That will encourage him to remain quiet.”

Major Mansoor smoothly moved to the next subject. “We have had a positive result, sir, on your idea to follow the accountant’s route home to determine if he met with anyone. Aside from the travel and hotel people, his only private meeting was in London, with an industrialist named Sir Geoffrey Cornwell.” He slid a typed biography and a photograph across the desk.

The colonel studied it. “I know of this man. Retired colonel in the British SAS, a wealthy industrialist and an expert in weapons development.” He shut his eyes once again in thought, wondering what Cornwell might have done with the information from the accountant. “Major, I want you to dig deeper on Cornwell. Examine his schedule for the next few weeks to see if there is an opening through which we can get to him.”

Mansoor made a note on his pad. “Yes, sir.”

The colonel was studying the biography again. “And one other thing. Take a look at his wife, this Lady Patricia Cornwell, too. Perhaps we might reach her with less trouble. If we take her, Sir Geoffrey will be much more willing to have a conversation with us.”

Jim Lincoln held their unwilling guest in a steel-tight grip as Buster Lincoln opened a rear door of the enclosed truck trailer. When Pejman Mobili struggled, Jim said, “Be still, boy. I’m looking for a reason to hurt you.”

“Where are the police?” shouted Mobili.

“Don’t know.”

“What about that man and woman? Give me back to them.”

“You really don’t want that,” Jim answered. “Pair of badasses, the both of them. Kill you without a thought. You better off ridin’ along with us for a while.”

“Hey, Jim?” Buster’s deep voice came from inside the ventilated trailer. “We already got a dead piggy back here. Damn.”

“Can’t sell a dead pig,” Jim explained to the prisoner. “We do our best to get them all to market alive, but they are fragile little things. Even these two-hundred-pounders.”

“I demand that you give me back to the police! My lawyer!”

“We don’t use electric prods or slap ’em around. Grow up on our farm and they get treated pretty good. We even work close around them so they get used to being near humans. They’re afraid of their own shadows, and getting them to market is a chore in itself, ain’t it, Buster?”

Mobili heard the other man rattling things around inside the truck. Pigs were squealing and snorting. “Sure is. Can’t be too hot, not too cold, not too wet, not too dry. Just the right kind of bedding. Partitions to keep the groups separate so they don’t fight and bite tails or kill each other. OK, hand him up here, brother. We can put him in with the dead one.”

Mobili squirmed, but Jim Lincoln easily lifted him up, and Buster caught him under the arms and hauled him in the rest of the way. “No! Please!”

The brothers securely tied him in strips of silver duct tape. When he continued to shout, Buster hit him hard in the stomach.

“Kyle said we shouldn’t kill him.”

“I know, brother. I just had to do something … for Beatrice.”

“I understand. Slap some tape on his mouth and let’s get going.”

While Buster applied the gag, Jim lifted the partitions in the surrounding pens. Then they jumped out and closed the door. The Iranian had been thrown onto the cold dead pig, and now other swine began to snort and stumble around him. When one snot-covered snout licked his face, Mobili began to cry.

Colonel Yahya Ali Naqdi dismissed the major for the day, then took a minute to encrypt a message and download it into the micro SDHC memory card of his cell phone before leaving for dinner with the two visiting admirals at the Pool Grill on the fifth floor of the Four Seasons Hotel. Following the main course of stuffed sea bass, but before dessert of cinnamon rice pudding, he excused himself to use the bathroom. After washing his hands, he received a warm towel from a wizened old man who was there to attend the customers, and in doing so, exchanged his cell phone memory card for an identical one.

It was good to have a lot of different friends and contacts in this new world in which everything he had ever known had changed; up became down, backward was forward, and there was no right or wrong anymore in politics and power, only survival. The very sands of the desert seemed unsteady after the coups of the Arab Spring, and nothing was ever certain.

Several months earlier, during the initial planning stages for his ultimate actions, Colonel Naqdi had opened a secret line of communication with British intelligence in London. He fed them just enough background information concerning the turmoil in Egypt to keep them interested, although it was usually delivered after an event had happened. It was still worthwhile, because it was always detailed and had proven to be accurate, so the British considered their new agent to be intelligence gold. They knew the material came out of Egypt, but they didn’t know who he was, so they gave him the code name of Pharaoh.

A few hours after the dinner, as Naqdi prepared for bed and the tremendous events that would happen tomorrow, his latest message reached MI6 in London. The Pharaoh had confirmed that the sniper arrested in America was an operative of Iran’s Army of the Guardians, and the assassination of the accountant had been carried out on orders of an intelligence officer named Major Mansoor Shakuri.

Kyle Swanson was at a large rectangular table in the kitchen of Janetta Lincoln, drinking strong coffee with a taste of chicory and slicing bright red tomatoes the size of softballs. Warm aromas of a home-cooked meal clouded the air. Sybelle Summers was washing huge leaves of lettuce that had come straight from the family’s hydroponic greenhouse and joking with the Lincoln girls, Mara, fourteen, and Becky, sixteen, who swirled around her in a friendly storm of energy.

He and Sybelle had driven straight from the rendezvous to the Lincoln home, where a long three-rail white plastic fence lined the road for about two hundred yards. A spacious open gate was anchored by decorative rock columns. The SUV bumped across the cattle guard when they turned beneath a large sign that read LINCOLN PRODUCTS. The grounds were winter bare but neatly laid out, with a number of barns and metal warehouse outbuildings flanking a spacious brick and wood home set back on several hundred acres of prime dirt. A greenhouse was attached at the rear of the house, and two more were in the distance. The girls had come charging across the broad porch to bring them in when Sybelle parked beside the wide stairs. They had not seen each other for about two years and had a lot of girl-talk catching up to do. Both had lost their baby fat and had the long-legged, coltish figures of two beautifully developing young women.

The kitchen was a madhouse for a while, then settled down as routine kicked in and a big lunch was prepared, and conversation became less excited. Another thirty minutes, and Kyle heard the downshifting grumble of a big truck and saw the ventilated pig-hauling trailer maneuvering into the driveway, then branching off on another path to one of the more distant barns. It disappeared inside, and the door was closed. Buster Lincoln emerged from the barn and stopped in an outbuilding near the house that served as a giant mudroom, where the dirt and grime and stench were washed away before setting foot in the house. He wore jeans, a faded wool pullover, and clean boots when he came through the door and pecked his daughters on their foreheads before sweeping Janetta into a hug and spinning her around the kitchen. The table was almost filled to its length with dishes and pans and plates when they were all seated, and Janetta closed her eyes and said grace.

“Isn’t Uncle Jim coming in for lunch?” asked Mara. “Did you know Sybelle carries a gun? She’s like some kind of cop!”

“We have a visitor who is interested in the Hogzilla Project. Maybe an investor. Jim is giving him the tour. He’ll be in later.”

“Eewh. I hate those big hogs. They stink.”

“I told you, little girl. They smell like money.”

Kyle took his cue to change the subject. “How’s the Hogzilla thing going? I mean, making a commercial product out of wild boars has got to be pretty challenging.”

“It’s a start-up enterprise, so we go one step forward and two steps back and throw a lot of money into the pigpen. Actually, some upscale restaurants are showing interest, and zoos and nature parks have bought some. Big rascals, though. Some more than five feet long, up to four hundred pounds.” He laughed. “Janetta raises giant vegetables, and I raise giant hogs.”

Sybelle finished a bite of salad and asked, “Why bother?”

“Why not?” Buster replied. “I studied business, and Jim did animal husbandry, and we’ve got ten years of experience now building on what our family left us. We think it might be an opportunity. Nothing is ever a guaranteed success. Maybe we’ll find a slot somewhere for them.”

“Meanwhile, they still stink.” Becky crossed her arms and rolled her eyes.

Jim Lincoln was standing on a concrete floor, with a rack of sharp knives within reach and blood pooling around a drain as he butchered the pig that had died on the truck. He worked methodically beside a set of four pens, each containing a wild boar excited by the feeding. Lincoln stripped out the guts and hurled them into a pen, and a huge hog would attack the food in a frantic rush. The big shoulders would hunch over as the tusks on the bottom jaw helped scoop the meat into the chewing mouth. Their bodies were smeared with the bloody offal, and they banged against the gates, wanting more.

Pejman Mobili was lashed naked to a post overlooking the boars, and his eyes rolled in fear. The ride in the back of the truck had seemed like a vision of hell, but the pigs had not actually hurt him, although one had fallen heavily on Mobili’s right foot, almost crushing it. At present, he would willingly go back among the tame swine. These four bristly, ugly hogs were terrifying, and they seemed to be eyeing him as they cried out for more food.

“Wow,” said Sybelle. “They are huge.”

“We call them Hogzillas. Each weighs over four hundred, and capturing them is a fight.” Buster Lincoln nodded grimly toward the captive sniper and told him, “They can make you disappear, totally and forever.” Mobili was shaking.

Kyle Swanson stepped close to the Iranian. “OK. Here’s the deal. We gave you a safe ride with the little pigs just to get your feet wet. Now you have to make the biggest decision of your entire life — look at me, not the pigs. I am your only hope of reaching paradise.” His voice was quiet and unhurried. Jim dangled a fat strip of gooey intestine over a pen, and a boar lunged for it, his weight crashing against the fence.

“You tell me everything I want to know within the next hour, without wasting my time or making me ask the same questions over and over, and I’ll take you out of here safely. You will go to Guantánamo Bay or maybe a maximum security prison for the rest of your miserable life, but you will be alive. Fuck around with me and you go headfirst into the Hogzilla pens. That’s the only deal you will be offered today, you son of a bitch.”

“They would start by eating the soft and easy parts,” said Jim, a specter in boots and bloody rubber apron and holding a dripping cleaver. “Ears, eyes … your little dick and balls.”

Mobili wept again, tears coursing wet paths through the filth on his cheeks. He had never felt so lost. “Yes. Yes. Ask me anything.”

Kyle stood with his feet spread, arms crossed, and cocked his head. “Don’t think I won’t do it.”

“I know. I understand.”

Swanson nodded to the others, and they walked out as Kyle started asking questions. Jim went to the mudroom to wash off while Buster and Sybelle headed back inside. “Would the Hogzillas really eat him?” she asked.

“Probably not. Mess him up a bit, though, just by rooting on him. We maintain them on top-quality forage and grain. Those ugly beasts are almost vegetarians.”

“A fresh pint for you, Billy-boy, from the bloke in the back corner booth. Asks a minute of your time.” The bartender whisked away the empty glass, made a quick swipe at the remaining circle of dampness with a cloth, and plopped down the fresh and foaming mug of beer. Bill Gorn did not touch it for a moment, nor acknowledge the benefactor waiting at the table, for he was usually a cautious man. He was built like a fireplug, with a mop of unkempt dark hair, a thick neck, and sloping shoulders that led to arms corded with muscle from a lifetime of heavy physical work around the docks along the Thames. The scarred hands were large. When not earning an honest wage, he worked part-time as a leg breaker for a bookie, and he had spent a few years in the lockup on his only assault conviction. Turning slowly from the bar, he stared into the gloom at the back of the smoke-filled pub and saw a gent in a black suit sitting alone. The man looked directly at him, held up an envelope, and laid it on his table. Billy Gorn smelled money.

There were no other strangers in the pub, just the usual congregation of dock workers and watermen clustered in rowdy conversations at the other tables and along the bar. Gorn picked up the beer in his left hand and went to the back booth, using a moment sidestepping through the crowd to dip into his right trouser pocket, pull out the switchblade knife, and palm it up his sleeve. “Thanks for the pint, sir,” he said as he came to a stop at the table.

The stranger was a medium-sized man with gray hair and gray eyes. Ordinary to the point of being invisible in London. “There is a ten-pound note sealed in this envelope,” he said. “It is yours, for your time. I have a proposition through which you could earn nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety more.”

Billy Gorn visibly struggled with the arithmetic, and the tall man rescued him. “Ten thousand pounds, sir. Would you like to make ten thousand pounds?”

“Wot’s your name and how is it that you walk into my pub and ask exactly for me, who’s never laid eyes on you before?” Gorn took a bite of the beer and wiped foam from his lip.

“My name is unimportant, but I am a solicitor by trade, and I was asked by a client to find someone like you, someone reliable for a special task. A former client suggested your name.” He took a small sip from his own pint.

“Well, your client knows that I’m no killer, if that’s what you are after. I can break them, but they can always be mended.”

“Indeed. You will not be asked to kill anyone. Just the opposite, in fact. You are to keep her alive and safe. Another of my clients wishes to speak with her husband and believes this may be the best avenue to have such a conversation. Now are you interested?”

“Ten thousand quid for snatching some woman?”

“Just so.” The solicitor laid a twenty-pound note on the envelope. “No bodyguards involved, so there probably should be a minimum of rough trade. Would you be interested, then?”

“For a kidnapping, I’ll be asking twenty thousand pounds, then. Ten for a friend to help me.” Billy Gorn was confident in his negotiation style. The thick eyebrows came together, the ledge of his forehead wrinkled, and his little eyes hardened.

The solicitor was familiar with dealing with criminals, however, so he reached out and picked up the fresh twenty-pounder and put it back in his pocket. “You may ask, but the offer remains ten thousand.”

Gorn was taken aback at seeing money removed from the table. He thought quickly. Clyde would help him for a thousand, and be happy to do so. “Twelve, then.”

“Ten.”

“Ten it is. Half up front.”

“No.” The lawyer had not broken a sweat but pulled a larger envelope from his briefcase. “You are not to be totally trusted, Mr. Gorn. So I shall give you a thousand pounds now to pay for your expenses, and the rest when the job is done and I see the woman is alive and safe. Everything you need to know, including the place she is to be held, is in this packet.”

Billy tipped up his pint and finished it. “What is the time on this job?”

The solicitor slid out of the booth and took a moment to straighten his suit. Bland as wallpaper, Billy Gorn thought. “As soon as possible. And if it all goes well, I shall include a bonus.”

“How much of a bonus?”

“Please, Mr. Gorn. Stop being foolish and just take care of the job.” With that, the gray man drifted toward the door, cigarette smoke swirling around him, and disappeared.

Billy remained at the table and watched him go. Then he caught the eye of his mate, Clyde, still at the bar and gave a slight nod. Clyde peeled away and followed.