Target America: A Sniper Elite Novel (26 page)

67

MONTANA,
Gil’s Ranch

Akram stood with Abad and a number of other men watching the house catch fire.

“They’ll be coming out soon,” Abad said. “Do you want them alive? We can shoot them in the legs if they won’t surrender.” They could still hear the man calling out from the front porch where Agent Starks had shot him down. “He’s going to burn up if we leave him there. He’s too close to the house.”

“Go and get him if you like.”

Abad wasn’t about to risk his neck. “You know, I don’t think Shannon is here,” he heard himself say.

Akram looked at him askance. “What are you talking about?”

“Too many of us are still alive. I think we’ve been tricked somehow.”

Akram dismissed this out of hand. “That makes no sense.”

Abad shrugged. “You’re the expert.”

———

 • • •

MARIE AND DUSTY
reined their horses to a halt on the easternmost side of the ranch, seeing the orange glow of the house fire through the fog.

“My God!” she said. “They lit the house!” She dug her heels into the flanks of the horse and took off through the mist.

Dusty quickly caught her up, diving from his saddle to grab her horse by the bridle and bring it to an abrupt stop. “We can’t go ridin’ in there like a pair of wild Indians, Marie! You wanna get killed?”

“My mother’s in there!”

“You don’t know that. Anything coulda happened by now. We gotta do this smart, or we could end up dead.”

She reached beneath her jacket and drew the Springfield .45. “You’re right,” she said. “I didn’t think. We’ll do it smart.”

“Okay then.” He released his grip on the bridle, and when he turned for his horse, she dug her heels in again and galloped off.

“Son of a bitch!” he hissed, jumping into the saddle and shucking the .30-06 from the saddle scabbard. “Why can’t women ever listen to reason?”

He took off after her, galloping the horse carefully through the dark, waiting for it to stumble or break a leg. Marie quickly drew out of sight, and when he couldn’t hear the galloping of her horse over his own, he reined to a stop and sat in the saddle, as unsure of himself as he had ever been.

Wild gunfire broke out in the direction of the house, and though it was too far off for it to have anything to do with Marie, it was more than enough to emphasize the gravity of the situation.

“Damn,” Dusty whispered, feeling the fear well up in his gut. He flicked the reins to start the horse walking. “Come on, Shiloh. I don’t reckon we can turn back now.”

 • • •

AKRAM AND THREE
other men stood covering Buck Ferguson and Agent Starks as the two stepped out onto the front porch with their hands in the air.

“Don’t shoot!” Buck shouted. Glancing down at the man on the porch who had recently bled out, he stood just behind and to the left of Starks. “We give up!”

Akram watched them through Duke’s infrared binocular. “Where is Shannon?”

“He’s upstairs with a bullet in his head,” Buck said. “You killed him in that last salvo of yours. We’re all that’s left.”

“Go in and check it out,” Akram said to one of his men.

The man looked at him in alarm. “But the house is on fire!”

“Check it out!” Akram screamed.

Buck dropped his hands, jerking the Sig Sauer pistol from the small of Starks’s back. At the same time, Starks brought up one of the MP5s, and they both opened fire as they danced away down the length of the porch.

One of Akram’s men went down. As for the others, half of them fired wildly at Buck and Starks, while half ducked for cover. The two men jumped off the far end of the porch and disappeared from sight.

“After them!” Akram screamed, and five men chased them into the fog.

Around the back of the house, Abad heard the firing, but he ordered his group to hold their positions. The house wasn’t fully engulfed yet, and he couldn’t risk anyone escaping out the back. The heat from the fire on the west side had driven the fog back some twenty feet from the house, so they could see pretty well.

He heard a rumbling sound behind him and whipped around just in time to be trampled beneath a charging quarter horse. He fumbled to get up, but a hoof whacked him in the side of the head to sprawl him out.

His men were still jumping for space as Marie reined the horse hard around and shot one of them in the back with the .45, expertly backing the animal to trample Abad a second time, crushing his chest. She fired two more shots, hitting another man before someone cut loose with a burst of automatic fire, killing the horse beneath her.

She rolled clear as the horse crumpled to the ground, causing her to lose her grip on the pistol.

A giant of a man grabbed her by the hair and jerked her to her feet. He was drawing back his arm to punch her in the face when Hal burst out the back door to blow him away.

Marie snatched up the pistol and ran onto the deck, grabbing Janet as she came stumbling out the door, her hair and clothing badly singed
and smoking. Hal leapt off the end of the deck, caving in a man’s skull with the barrel of the MP5. A burst of fire from his left dropped Janet to her knees, a single bullet through both buttocks. Hal wheeled and shot the man through his guts, charging forward to sprawl him out with the stock of the submachine gun. He took a bullet through the back, however, and spun to return fire, downing his attacker before going down himself.

Marie saw him collapse and disappeared with Janet around the western end of the house.

 • • •

OUT FRONT, BUCK
and Starks had taken cover behind the stone well, where they were now pinned down and exchanging fire with the enemy.

“This doesn’t look too good,” Starks said. “Is there any place behind us we can fall back to?”

“Nope.” Buck popped up to squeeze off a shot in the direction of the last muzzle flash. “Nothing but open country for two hundred yards until you reach the tree line. Why don’t you try getting away in the fog? I gotta stay here and keep these bastards busy to buy time for Hal and Janet.”

Starks squeezed off a few more rounds. “We don’t know if they even made it out of the house.”

Buck fired again. “Ain’t that the bitch of it?”

“How deep is this well?”

“About ten feet—been dry for years. Why?”

“Oh, I dunno,” Starks said. “I figure we can jump down it when we run outta ammo; save everybody the trouble of diggin’ us a grave.”

They heard Marie behind them in the fog, urging her mother not to give up.

“Marie, over here!” Buck hissed. “At the well!”

The women came out of the fog, and both of them collapsed to the ground. “Oh, thank God!” Marie said.

“Where’s Hal?” Buck asked.

Marie put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Buck. I’m so sorry.”

He put a hand to her face, dying a thousand deaths inside. “It’s not
your fault,” he said starkly. “Come on now. We’re gonna lower you girls down the well. Then me and Starks here are gonna draw these sons a bitches away.”

Marie looked at Agent Starks. “Who are you?”

“FBI, Mrs. Shannon.”

“Thank you for coming.” She took his hand.

“He’s a fine man,” Janet mumbled, struggling to remain conscious.

The enemy opened fire, and Starks answered it with a burst from the MP5. “Not much time left. We’d best get you two down the well.”

“No.” Marie shook her head.

“Marie, don’t argue.” Buck’s voice was peremptory as he fought to control his emotions. “If you girls don’t survive this, then my boys died for nothin’. Now you’re goin’ down the well so we can lead these bastards the hell outta here.” He set the pistol down on the ground. “Okay, you first, honey, so you can catch your mama. Hurry up, now!”

That’s when the propane cylinder on the western side of the house exploded in a giant fireball, burning back the fog to bathe them all in a brilliant flash of light and driving them flat against the earth with their arms shielding their heads.

68

IN THE SKY OVER GIL’S RANCH

Trussed up in his jump gear, Jack Frost ambled down the aisle to the back of the plane, where Gil stood poised to be the first man out the open door. “We’re approaching the DZ!” he shouted into Gil’s ear. “The fog down there makes it tough to see, but it looks like the house is on fire.”

“
On fire
?
”

“You wanna do a flyby before we jump?”

“Fuck no!” Gil shouted, glancing up to make sure the jump light was still red. “I gotta get down there!”

“Roger that! I’ll let them know up front. I’m the last man out the door, so I’ll see you on the ground!”

A minute later, the plane banked gently to the northwest, giving Gil a heart-stopping view of his home, which was now completely engulfed in flames. Ten seconds after that, the green light came on, and he threw himself out the door, with the rest of the team following right behind. They couldn’t wait more than a few seconds apiece to deploy their
chutes because they were already jumping below five thousand feet. And there was too much fog below to visually time their descent even with the infrared goggles, which provided almost no depth perception even under the best of circumstances.

69

MONTANA,
Gil’s Ranch

With the house a roaring inferno, Buck found himself staring straight up the muzzle of an AK-47. Agent Starks was flat on his back, out cold with a huge goose egg on his forehead where he’d been struck with a rifle butt. Janet lay unconscious in the lee of the well, and Marie was on her knees with Akram’s knife to her throat.

“Where is Gil Shannon?” Akram shouted at Buck. “I’ll cut off her head!”

“He’s not here!” Buck was enraged and ready to hurl himself at the man covering him with the rifle. “He’s with the government, looking for your goddamn bomb! Now let her go before I rip off your head and shit down your neck!” He got to his feet, and the Al Qaeda fighter screamed for him to get back on his knees.

“Go fuck yourself, heathen!”

“Buck, don’t!” pled Marie. “Don’t give them a reason to kill you!”

“I’m sorry, honey, but we’re as good as dead.” He looked at Akram. “Ain’t that right, you filthy cocksucker?”

Akram recognized the rabid look in Buck’s eyes. They were the eyes of a man unhinged. “Shoot him,” he said in Arabic.

The gunman fired his AK-47 directly into Buck’s chest, and the old Marine flew backward, dead before he hit the ground.

Marie screamed, and Akram hauled her to her feet by her hair, pressing the blade of the knife into the flesh alongside her nose. “Now tell me where your husband is.”

“I don’t know,” she wept. “You cut the phone lines; I couldn’t reach him.”

“Who killed Kashkin . . . the first man to come here?”

“I did.”

He jerked her hair, twisting her head around and hurting her. “You’re lying!”

“I’m not!” she spat in defiance, her anger suddenly overtaking her fear. “I shot the bastard twice from the bedroom window. Then I burned his body right over there!” She pointed toward the pyre.

Akram saw by the blazing fury in her eyes that she spoke the truth and slapped her to the ground. “You’re going to be very sorry your husband was not here.”

“Go to hell!” She crawled around the well to check her mother.

Akram conferred with the man who had taken Abad’s place as second in command. “How many men are left?”

“There are thirteen of us.”

“Get them ready to go. We’re leaving the same way we came in—and we’re taking these three with us.”

The man turned, shouting orders for an organized departure.

Then Akram heard an airplane engine overhead and pulled on Duke’s infrared binocular for a look up through the foggy overcast. He saw what he recognized as an old C-47 and scanned the binocular back along its line of flight to see parachutes opening in the sky over the northeastern corner of the ranch.

“Paratroops!” he shouted in Arabic, pointing up. “Kill them before they get to the ground—
move
!
”

The men rallied quickly, gathering up any extra ammo they could
find and running out to meet the enemy without really knowing exactly where he was going to land.

Akram waited until they were well away before slinging the TAC-50 around his back and snatching Marie up by her hair again. She fought him, so he shoved her back to the ground and unslung the rifle, putting the muzzle of the TAC-50 to her mother’s head.

“No!”

“Then do exactly as I say!”

She submitted, and Akram used one of Starks’s bootlaces to bind her hands tightly behind her back. Then he shoved her out in front of him toward the west, and the two of them moved away briskly, with Marie none the wiser about the parachutes descending over the ranch.

Once they were clear of the light from the fire, he spun her around and gave her a short jab to the abdomen, dropping her to her knees. He pushed her over onto the ground and jerked her pants down, cutting off her underwear with the knife and stuffing them into her mouth. He then tore a sleeve from her shirt and tied it tightly around her head to keep them in place.

“Now get up!” He pulled her pants back up and kicked her in the butt to get her moving again. “Remember . . . I stab you in the stomach the first time you make a sound.”

70

MONTANA,
Gil’s Ranch

The SEALs were taking fire before they even made it to the ground. Gil felt rounds ripping into his armor as he landed firmly with both feet together, hitting the release on the jump harness, and then hitting the deck to lay down a horizontal arc fire from his M4, forcing the heat signatures across his field of vision to stop firing and seek cover. This bought the rest of his team members valuable time in the moments before they touched down. The sight of a lifeless body impacting the ground to Gil’s left, however, told him that one of his men was already dead.

He switched out the magazine and began trading fire with the enemy as they were taking cover behind water troughs, wood piles, horse trailers, and corral posts. The SEALs were shouting back and forth, sorting themselves out and preparing to move forward.

Jack Frost crawled up beside Gil. “Take any lead on the way in?”

“Don’t think so. You?”

“Lost most of my foot.” Frost fired the rest of the magazine and pulled another magazine from his harness.

A quick glance, and Gil saw that, indeed, much of Frost’s left foot
was gone from the instep forward. “The only easy day was yesterday,” he said, firing a burst and putting a man down as he broke from the stable toward the water trough. “One of my men is dead yonder.”

“I saw him hit,” Frost said. “Couldn’t tell who it was.”

Crosswhite scrambled up on Gil’s left and hit the dirt. “Gil, why don’t you make a break and flank these sorry cocksuckers to the west? Go find Marie and let us reduce these guys. It’s obvious they don’t have infrared.”

The team was formed up now and laying down lethal grazing fire, pinning the enemy and maneuvering forward aggressively for the kill.

Gil detached from the M4 and unslung the Remington MSR, peering through the nightscope to place the reticule on the face of a man firing at their muzzle flashes from the loft above the stable. He squeezed the trigger, and the .308 Lapua Naturalis round struck the man to the left of the nose, mushrooming perfectly within the brain box to blow the head almost completely apart. An instant later, Gil was up and sprinting for the house over open terrain. It was during this sprint that he realized he was missing the little toe from his right foot along with part of the metatarsal bone, requiring him to roll the foot inward as he ran and giving him a slight limp.

Even with his damaged foot, he managed to quickly cover the hundred yards to the house, emerging from the fog to see that it was fully engulfed. The eastern half of the roof collapsed inward, and thousands of sparks shot skyward. A dead horse and a number of bodies littered the back lawn. No one inside the house could possibly be alive, so he ran around front, where he nearly shot Dusty Chatham standing beside his horse with a Browning hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. Dusty’s face was gleaming with sweat.

“Jesus! Is that you, Gil?”

“Dusty! Where’s Marie?”

Dusty shrugged, looking slightly ashamed. “I dunno. I just got here. Buck Ferguson’s dead, and Janet’s been shot in her hiney.” He pointed toward where they lay, just beyond the firelight. “She’s over there with some FBI guy; he’s pretty bad off too.”

Gil found his mother-in-law unconscious, her pulse weak. The sight of Buck Ferguson’s body filled him with a nauseating sensation of dread.
Agent Starks was semiconscious, but he was so badly concussed that he could only mumble confused responses to Gil’s urgent questions.

“Who’s doin’ all the shooting yonder?” Dusty asked. “That the cavalry?”

“Yeah, a day late and a dollar short,” Gil muttered, disgusted with himself and terrified for his wife. “Is it possible Marie’s in the house, Dusty?”

Dusty looked at the house and then back at Gil. “I don’t know, Gil. I don’t think so, but I don’t know. The house was already burning when we crested the rise.”

“Marie!” Gil shouted, looking helplessly around. “Marie! . . .
Marieee
!
” He turned on Dusty. “Where was the last place you saw her?”

“Just over the rise.” Dusty pointed back toward his ranch. “She bolted on ahead of me. I’m sorry, Gil, I froze up . . . I was afraid to follow her with all the shooting.”

“Did she ride in on the dead horse out back?”

Dusty nodded.

Gil ran back around the house to double-check the bodies, finding Hal Ferguson struggling to get to his feet, coughing blood and bleeding from a hole through the left side of his chest.

“Hal!”

Hal saw him and fell back to the ground. “Christ, am I glad to see you.”

Gil took a knee and rolled the wounded man onto his bad side to keep the blood from draining into the good lung. “Have you seen Marie?”

“Not since I got hit,” Hal grunted. “You shoulda seen her, Gil. Christ, she was blazing away with a .45 like a cavalryman.”

“Hal, I can’t find her. Was she hit?”

“I dunno. Last I saw her, she was running off with Janet.”

This gave Gil hope. “Okay, Marine. Hold on.” He took Hal by the arm and hefted him up over his shoulder.

“My dad’s dead, ain’t he?”

“Yeah,” Gil grunted, his foot hurting like hell under the added weight.

He carried the wounded Marine around to the front of the house, putting him down beside Buck’s body. “I’m sorry I got your family involved in this, Hal.”

Hal pulled himself up alongside his father, seeing the bullet holes in his chest, the calmness of his death mask. He looked up at Gil with tears rolling down his cheeks. “We’re Marines, Gil. My family’s been involved in this shit since Guadalcanal.” He wiped his face with bloody fingers and shook off the dread, knowing that Gil didn’t yet realize his younger brothers were very likely dead as well. “Better go find your wife now. Don’t let all this be for nothin’.”

Gil lifted Janet’s legs, resting her feet on the edge of the well to help keep the blood flowing to her vital organs, where she needed it most. Then he looked at Dusty. “My team will be here soon. Keep Hal on his wounded side so he doesn’t bleed into the good lung.”

Dusty nodded. “Gil, I’m sorry about—”

“Don’t apologize.” Gil put a hand on his shoulder. “You showed up, and that means a lot.” With that, he moved out toward the stable where his men were dragging an enemy survivor out of the main door by his heels.

The survivor was shot in the hip and couldn’t walk. “Just shoot me,” he said in American English. “I’ve said my prayers.”

Gil ignored him for the moment, turning to Alpha. “Who bought it on the way down?”

“Clancy,” Alpha said. “Took one in the head.”

Gil turned back around to step on the Al Qaeda man’s fractured pelvis, causing him to howl. “Why is your English so fuckin’ good?” He took his foot off the wound so the man could answer.

“Because I’m an American!” the Al Qaeda man gasped. “And you’re a—”

Gil stepped on him again. “Where’s my wife?”

The man gritted his teeth in agony, sneering. “Go fuck yourself!”

Gil stomped on the hip, breaking the fractured pelvis apart with a sickening crunch. “I said,
Where the fuck is my wife?
”

The Al Qaeda man screamed in furious agony. “Go fuck your mother!”

Gil lifted his bloody foot and stepped back. “He’s not gonna talk.”

Crosswhite drew his knife. “I’ll make the man talk.”

Gil shook his head. “Not this one.”

“Then he’s dead.”

“No. We’ll let the FBI have him. Did you clear the stable?”

“We did. She’s not in there, Gil.”

One of the SEALs pointed toward the well, where Oso was sniffing the unconscious Janet. “That your dog, Chief?”

Gil turned. “Sure as hell is.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and whistled. The dog froze and looked toward the stable, spotted Gil, and came running.

Gil ducked inside and reemerged with one of Marie’s Carhartts. He held the jacket to the dog’s snout. “Where’s Mama? Find your mama now!”

The dog ran back to the well, with Gil hot on his heels. He put his nose to the ground and began moving in a zigzag pattern toward the northwest. After forty or fifty seconds of sniffing, he stopped and looked back at Gil, barking once to let him know he’d picked up the scent.

Gil turned to Dusty. “Can I borrow your horse?”

Dusty handed him the reins. “He’s all yours.”

Gil mounted up, looking down at Crosswhite. “Secure the area as best you can, then pull yourselves into a defensive perimeter. Get Pope on the horn and bring him up to speed on everything that’s happened. Tell him it’s safe to get the FBI in here. I’m going after Marie.”

“Sure you want to do that alone?”

“Got no choice. You boys can’t ride, and you’ll never keep up on foot.” He looked down at all of them, saying, “I can’t ever repay what you men have done.” Then he reined the stallion around and dug in his heels. “Oso, find your mama!”

The dog took off, and Gil galloped after him.

Crosswhite and the others watched them go.

“What’s he gonna find out there?” Alpha wondered aloud.

Crosswhite shook his head and shouted, “Doc!” at the corpsman who was busy tending to the wounded Al Qaeda fighter near the entrance to the stable. “Leave that fucker alone for now. There’s three of our people over here who need help!”