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CHAPTER 19



The handle was on the right side. It turned easily enough, and he pushed, half afraid of a blast or shot. The door had swelled from weather and stuck slightly at the top, but gave to a bit more force. The dim light within was still far brighter than that outside, and he blinked against it. His glance took in crates, dust on a badly cracked floor and cobwebs. He held the rifle in close and eased through the opening.

To the left was al Asfan. He was standing, smiling, and held a device in his hand, with wires running to a backpack. Kyle took that as a warning and made no sudden moves. Adrenaline should have been ripping through his body, but he’d exhausted all he had already.

“Please sit, so I can keep an eye on you,” al Asfan said. His smile wasn’t there anymore, just a smirk. “I have no reason to trust you.”

Kyle sat on the floor and said nothing. He ignored the chunks of concrete poking him and waited. He wasn’t sure what to do under the circumstances, so he would wait until something happened he could deal with, then react accordingly. Al Asfan was wearing that pack, the thing in his hand could be a detonator, and Kyle wanted to know a lot more about the situation before he tried to shoot. It might be a switch that triggered on release. He had no reason to trust, either.

“Remove the headset slowly,” al Asfan said. Kyle sighed very softly. He’d hoped he might get a word out. Still, his silence would be a broad hint to Wade. Eventually. “Now lower the rifle slowly.”

Which assumed Wade could get up here in time. So he’d stall and hope. In the meantime, he’d keep an eye out for exploitable mistakes, and curse himself for being rash. He lowered the rifle muzzle first. Caution and stealth. And they shouldn’t have split up. An Army of One, he thought to himself.

Bad idea.

“This is a mercury switch,” the terrorist said. “Attack me, tilt it just a little, and it will connect. I use them to avoid having people handle my bombs.” He smiled a little.

“How special for you.” No fear. At least not visible. He looked the man over. Work jacket, pants, boots. A bit muddy. He’d been outside. A Browning Hi-Power tucked into his belt. The backpack. The wires. The switch.

“It is special,” al Asfan said. “Few can do it well. I’ve counted five bomb-disposal experts among my score.”

“Not bad. I’m up over thirty terrorists and their buddies,” Kyle replied. He wasn’t going to accede anything to this jerk.

“You should watch your words.” That while shaking the switch in his hand. Kyle cringed inside and felt his anus pucker. He forced his eyes away from the stubby tube and back to his opponent’s eyes.

Was that a real switch? he thought. I wasn’t smart to shake it, if so. But then, this man was insane and stupid, and he’d only stirred it around in the air, keeping it vertical. So assume it was real, for now.

“Hey, I call it like I see it,” Kyle said. “You wanted to compare body counts, so I gave you mine.”

Again the twitch of the switch. Again Kyle kept his face clear, though inside his guts were ice, his stomach flopping and acidic. He might get an ulcer from this, if he survived.

“I will not kill you yet,” al Asfan said. “Perhaps I will not kill you at all. But I do require your silence and stillness while we deal with your assistants. Then we shall leave this place. Would a ransom be paid for your survival, hmm?”

It was very unlikely the current administration would back its troops that way, he thought. It was always bad policy to pay a ransom. They might send a team from Delta, if it was deemed worthwhile—assuming this jackass intended for him to stay alive. The best way to help that was to play along.

“Very likely,” he said conversationally. He wanted to be loud enough for Wade to hear, but not obvious. “We’re not the easiest people for the CIA to replace.”

“Isn’t it interesting how often the CIA makes such critical mistakes?”

“Yes, but we also get a lot of things right. Those don’t get heard about. Like your buddy bin Qasim.”

“He was shot by Delta Force in Pakistan,” al Asfan said. “I watched. And that is why I moved to Europe, where such cowardly tactics are harder. Witnesses might see such skulking and object. That is the weakness of your world.”

“I killed him,” Kyle said, pushing. “Through the head and chest with a .303 Brit. And if I’d known you were there, I would have hung around to get you, too.”

That got a reaction. The man snarled, his face in an ugly, screwed-up mask. “Then I am glad to meet you, so I may send you to hell!”

“No problem. I’ll be waiting when you get there and spend eternity blowing your ass away,” Kyle replied.

A growl and clenching of his other fist was the only immediate response. This man didn’t like being outmaneuvered, out-talked, or out-flanked. He really wasn’t very bright. But he was dangerous.

Kyle stared at the mercury switch for a fraction of a second. He thought about a shot at that hand, hoping the energy imparted would destroy the switch. But from what he recalled of the subject, it wouldn’t take much of a connection to cause it to trigger. If he managed a head shot, it would be dropped and trigger. A center of mass shot wouldn’t kill fast enough, and the switch would be dropped and trigger. Frankly, he couldn’t think of anything to do that would not cause the switch to trigger. He wasn’t sure of the power of blasting gel, but he was sure that there was enough present to paste him throughout the bunker, even if it didn’t detonate hard enough to take the rest of the cache with it, because a surreptitious glance revealed as many crates as he’d seen under Bran. There were also radios here, Russian surplus and shortwave. That meant messages could be sent to either start or stop bombings. But which? If they hadn’t been ordered yet, all he had to do was kill this jerk, which was easy. Grabbing him and shaking him would do it.

Which would also kill Kyle.

It wasn’t that Kyle was against dying for his mission. This way would be relatively painless, in fact. But he wasn’t eager for the process if he could think his way out of it.

He must have telegraphed just a bit of his intent. The smirk was back as al Asfan said, “That is the difference between us. I don’t fear death.”

“I don’t fear it, either. I’d just like to make mine count for something,” Kyle said. “I’m not sure killing you is worth the effort.” He was going to harass this asshole until something happened. The worst that could happen was death, and that meant a qualified kill of a terrorist. “I mean, you’re going to stand before God and tell him you helped blow away innocent children? Won’t he be so proud?”

“I am changing the course of nations,” was the response. But he wasn’t quite so firm or assured.

“Right, you’re scaring people into changing so you don’t kill their kids. Big, brave man. Even here, you strap on explosives, because you know with any weapon or bare hands, I’d rip your fucking head off.”

“And which of us is known? Whose name makes people shake in fear?”

“Mine does, to shitballs like you,” Kyle said, growing more confident. “You heard about me in Pakistan. And I don’t need to flaunt my name to know what I am. I’m the best fucking shooter in the world, and you know it, I know it, the people I work for know it, and I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks. I don’t get a kick out of scaring kids. Matter of fact, I love kids. I’m not afraid to admit it, either. Die to save a kid? Yeah, I’ll die to save a kid. That’s what a man does. It takes a special kind of person to kill a kid and be proud of it. And do you know what we call that kind of person in the civilized world? Usually something along the lines of ‘pussy’.” He was leaning forward now, and had his hand nearly in his jacket.

He was going to die, he decided. He was terrified of the event, and not afraid to admit it to himself. But as soon as he could reach that pistol, he was going to try a shot for that switch. Worst case, he died. Best case, he disabled the switch and made a follow-up shot. Either way, he accomplished his mission and this freak died.

“So says a man who can’t die!” al Asfan challenged. “Death is not to be feared. Allah chooses his own and brings them to paradise. Infidels afraid of how they will be judged fear death.”

“Yeah? Well I’ll be happy to look your God in the face, tell him I spattered four baby-killing, woman-scaring, scumbag terrorist assholes personally, along with three dozen junior-grade assholes who worked for them, and let him judge me on that. I’ve got no problem at all, pal. Go ahead, tilt the switch!” Kyle had known reverse psychology to work sometimes. Perhaps this would be one of them. Because he had his hand inside his coat and brushing the Ed Brown. That was his confidence. Not a bomb to blow up everything and make a mess, but a surgical tool to eliminate this cancer, if he could hold of it.

“You’re bluffing.” Al Asfan grinned and shook the switch, seeing if Kyle would react. Just a bare jiggle, but how much would be needed to set it off?

“TILT THE FUCKING SWITCH, YOU COWARD!” Kyle shouted, snarling to hide the sheer terror he felt. He gripped the .45 and started to draw, knowing it to be the last thing he would do.

The terrorist grinned hugely, and the mindless hatred shone through his eyes. He shifted his hand and turned it sideways, a loud popping sound disturbing the air.

That’s an odd last sound to hear, Kyle thought, the pistol clearing his coat and coming up, up into sight plane. Al Asfan was staring stupidly at the switch, because it hadn’t worked, and Kyle raised his aim, letting it drift up, up over that confused, wrinkled forehead. He snapped the trigger.

The first round smashed through al Asfan’s forehead and the confused glint in those eyes disappeared into death. Kyle let the pistol rock back and down, snapped the trigger, and a second round went through the middle of the face, just left of the nose. Recoil, drop, and shoot, and a third round punched through the chin, making a shambles of the jaw and shattering the spine behind it.

The man was a corpse. Three 230 grain bullets at barely subsonic speed had shattered his head with nearly 1700 foot pounds of energy, like a half dozen full-strength swings of a ball bat, only much quicker. What was left was reddish-gray slop with shattered bone fragments in a rawhide bag that could only charitably be called a scalp.

Kyle was panting, sweating, shaking. He sat for nearly a minute, unable to move. Every sense was overwhelmed by the event, and by the sheer stress. He didn’t know what had happened, but he knew he’d never been closer to death. His pulse had to be 240 beats a minute and was just starting to slow. His ears heard something else, but he wasn’t sure what it was yet. They were still ringing from the shots.

“Yo,” he heard it again, above the headache and aftereffects of shooting in an enclosed space. It was Wade.

“Yo,” he said back, unable to find words of his own. He looked around to see his partner entering the doorway, AK in hand.

“Not bad,” Wade said. “Three shots off under that kind of stress. You really are a sniping God.”

“Thanks,” Kyle said, flushed and feverish, sweating and shivering. “I don’t know what happened. But it didn’t go off.”

Wade walked past him, carefully, and bent down next to the body. He pulled a piece of string loose and studied it.

No, not string . . . it was the wire from the mercury switch, neatly cut. Kyle stared dumbly at it for just a second. Then he knew. There was 7.62 millimeters of wire missing, that had to be embedded in that little crater in the wall he hadn’t seen until he followed Wade’s eyes to it. He drew a line back from the wall and figured the shot had gone over his shoulder, within a handsbreadth of his head.

That had been the popping sound he heard.

“Holy shit,” was all he could say.

“Hey, no problem,” Wade said.

“No problem my ass.” With the situation explained, his brain came mostly back online. The inexplicable was terrifying. The rational, no matter how unlikely, was just impressive. “How far was that shot?”

“Seventy-five meters,” Wade said. “From that tree.” He pointed. It was a broad, spreading oak at the edge of the meadow, skeletal in the spring night. Kyle had to lean out the door to see it clearly.

Seventy-five meters, and at a target the diameter of the bullet, seeing as the bullet was larger than the wire. On the range, quite doable. From a tree, through a door, over a friendly shoulder, through a wire connected to a backpack of explosives. With wind and at night. That was one bastard of a shot.

Kyle dredged up the phrase he used at the school to students who impressed him. “Way to go, Sniper. You rock.”

And had saved his life, with perhaps a half second to spare.

“I owe you one,” he added. Al Asfan had been going to blow them both away. And though that was a sacrifice Kyle now knew he could make, he was just as happy he didn’t have to. There were far better things to die for than that asshole.

In fact, there were far better things to live for.

“Hell, after Pakistan and the castle, I think we both owe each other a few,” Wade said. “Let’s not keep score or it’ll get messy.”

“Done,” Kyle said.

Wade bent back down and pulled the Browning from the corpse’s belt. He cleared it and handed it to Kyle. “Souvenir.”

“Thanks.” It was a needed distraction, and he examined it. Older, worn, but matching numbers and Belgian production. “Fabrique National de Armes de Guerres. Herstal, Belgique.” There were other symbols from whoever had issued it originally.

He looked back up at Wade and started to get to his feet at last.

Wade twitched at a sound in his ears and grabbed his phone. “Yes, it’s safe. Come on in.”

“On second thought,” he continued to Kyle, “I’m calling in a favor. You do the paperwork on this.”

“Ah, hell, just shoot me and be done with it,” Kyle said.

Then they were both laughing hysterically. They were stressed as much as they’d ever been and needed to lose it somehow. Kyle reached out a hand and Wade grabbed it. Then they were shaking hands, hugging, and whooping.

Shouts from outside interrupted them, and they leaned back, panting. “We’re here!” Wade shouted. Kyle was still too shocky to do much.

Then Pavenic was at the door, a pistol in hand, two troops behind him with rifles. Seeing the two snipers alive, they relaxed slightly and moved inside.

“I assume that is him?” Pavenic asked, looking at the corpse. There wasn’t enough face to identify. Likely dental records would be insufficient, if indeed there were any. Fingerprints might do it.

“It was,” Kyle said. “It came right down to the wire.”

Then he realized what he’d said and roared with laughter again.

Noticing the expression on the Romanian’s face, he said, “Wade, you explain. I’ve got to go take a whiz.” He really did, very badly. He was amazed he hadn’t wet himself over the incident. It wasn’t every day you sat on the floor in front of a loon with half a ton of explosives in the room and his finger on the button.

He brushed past for the door as Wade said, “Ah, well, look here, because you won’t believe me if I tell you.”

Dobrogeanu was outside standing guard against threats, and there were two wounded who were watching each other. Kyle made it quick, draining against the side of the building, then turned back in. Pavenic was examining the wire, and his expression was priceless. But there were more important things.

“It’s secure here,” Kyle said. “Should we call the Army and get your casualties out?”

“We await the helicopter,” Pavenic agreed. “I just called. And I have something for you,” he said turning. He took two steps forward and grabbed Kyle in a huge embrace, European style, then again for Wade.

Then he started whooping, before switching to an obscene Romanian folk song.


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