American Sniper

by Ian Patterson

  “Don’t say it, Mathias: One more thing.”

  “The motorhome arranged for by Chan’s boss was a four-hundred-thousand-dollar ride. The power boat they used to travel to Tampico is no less impressive. It will be noticeable via satellite imagery. If it were me, I’d want a place on the water with access to the river and from there to the Gulf Coast or upstream. To keep my options open, a private landing strip nearby.”

  Mathias sensed Berkshire nod. “An airstrip; of course, to make a hasty escape inland over the mountains or across the bay to Cancun. Then, like a stone, skip over the water to La Habana.”

  “The one place Bohannon knows I can’t chase him.”

  ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN

  Washington, DC

  DABNEY BERKSHIRE DID NOT appreciate being summoned by Acting Director Gloria Resnick. He agreed on condition they meet on neutral ground, away from any Bureau or Agency office or affiliate.

  To Resnick, neutral ground was code for a place they couldn’t be recorded or overheard by their respective masters. Which suited Resnick just fine.

  By the time Resnick arrived to join Berkshire on a bench across from the Carousel on the National Mall, it was going on noon. The day was humid and warm, the sun obscured behind a layer of heat haze and pollution.

  “You’re late, Rez. I was beginning to feel like a pedophile.”

  Beads of perspiration formed along Berkshire’s high brow. Resnick was pleased, thankful to see the ADD sweat.

  With children chattering and shouting nearby, babies wailing, mother’s barking out orders to sit, stop, pipe-down, and behave, the music from the carousel blaring, even had someone wanted to record their conversation it would come out no more than a jumble of voices on tape.

  Ah, Berk, thought Resnick: Ever the Spook.

  Cutting to the chase, she said, “You need to tell me what’s going on, Berk. Otherwise, I’ll decide you’re responsible.”

  Berkshire shrugged. “Springsteen is coming to town. A benefit concert on the Mall in support of one bleeding-heart liberal cause or another. Amnesty International this time, I think.”

  “Don’t be an asshole.”

  Berkshire snorted. “You give me too much credit, Rez.”

  “I think maybe not enough credit, at all, dear friend.”

  “What would you have me say, Gloria? What is it you want from me? An admission that the Agency is responsible? Okay, I admit: Bohannon did not go rogue in Iraq. He was recruited for an Agency black-op targeting Sunni insurgents, the bastards Cheney, Rumsfeld and their gang let live, the bastards killing our boys.”

  “Jesus.”

  “But we did not bring Bohannon home.”

  “After what you’ve just told me, how can I trust you?”

  “I recruited Mathias to track him down for you, didn’t I?”

  Which only deepened Resnick’s distrust. “He contacted me, Mathias.”

  “Looking for a date?”

  Resnick groaned. She said, “For months, Ezekiel Bohannon is taking pot-shots at American citizens on U.S. soil, murdering dozens in cold blood. You bring me Mathias to put an end to it. You convince Mathias to set up his girlfriend as live bait. The best way to catch a killer, you say. And now Bohannon has her.”

  “Is there a point to all this, Gloria?”

  “Early this morning, I spoke with Alexis Kim.”

  Berkshire stiffened.

  “At six-oh-two, Charles Padgett died; cardiac arrest. Later today, his passing will be announced formally to the nation in an address by the President from the White House lawn. I will be named his replacement.”

  “Congratulations,” said Berkshire, wary.

  “Congratulations may be premature, Berk.”

  “Oh? Why’s that.”

  “Because I still don’t know if we’ll be working together, or if I’ll be coming after you with chains.”

  ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN

  Tampico, Mexico

  STANDING ON THE DOCK overlooking the small lagoon at the rear of the house, Bohannon smoked.

  “I need to run an errand, William,” he said to Jackie Chan. “Be a good host and look after our guests.”

  Attempting, but failing to hide his skepticism, Chan said, “An errand? Here? Who do you know in a shithole place like this, Chief?”

  Bohannon flicked the butt of his cigarette into the water, ember sizzling as it hit the surface.

  Placing a hand on Chan’s shoulder, he said, “Low on smokes, my man. There must be somewhere in a shithole place like this sells American cigarettes, you think?”

  Chan shrugged. “American booze, American whores; why not?”

  Bohannon laughed. “After this is done, William, you and me will get us some of each, yeah?”

  “Sorry, Chief. I’ll pass.”

  Serving in Iraq alongside Chan, Bohannon had never known him to touch alcohol or to do drugs. Unlike Hathaway, Chan required neither booze nor chemicals to turn him batshit crazy.

  Prompting Bohannon to say, “Play nice with Hathaway, William. He means well.”

  ◊◊◊

  Leaving the home, Bohannon proceeded along Paso Doña Cecilia, a narrow, partially paved laneway leading to the beach. Though the daytime heat had yet to dissipate, Bohannon wore a lightweight nylon windcheater; no sense warning the hombres that he was packing.

  At the beach was an OXXO convenience store selling cigarettes. Bohannon purchased three packs of Marlboro, jammed the cigarettes into a side pocket.

  At the terminus of the breakwall leading to the open water of the Gulf, he found a seat alone on a concrete planter box supporting a spindly-looking palm tree. Bohannan smoked one cigarette, two. One more before the man finally appeared from the shadows, approaching Bohannon from between a row of market stalls shuttered for the day.

  Bohannon had no reason to distrust the man. Just the same, he had no reason to trust him either. He fingered the Magnum at the small of his back. His fingertips tingled. It had been a week since his last kill.

  Standing close, the man said, “Garet-ah?”

  Bohannon took him to mean, cigarette. Offering an unopen package of Marlboros, the man nodded, said, “Muy bien.”

  Taking a seat beside Bohannon on the planter, the man pocketed the package of Marlboros. Extracting his own brand of domestics from an opposite shirt pocket, the man ignited, inhaled, offered the pack to Bohannon.

  Bohannon accepted.

  An innocuous exchange serving as a simple code for identification.

  Bohannon ignited and inhaled. The smokes were shit. But after serving time in Iraq, Bohannon could puff rolled camel dung, which he swore he had once or twice.

  After five minutes of smoking with no conversation, the man stood. From a rear pocket of his jeans, he retrieved what looked to Bohannon like a small notepad. The notepad had a dark blue cover and an emblem featuring a crown, a lion, and a unicorn stenciled in gold relief. Printed in block letters above the symbol was the word CANADA; below the emblem in gold relief the words Passport/Passeport.

  The man said to Bohannon, “Tu pasaporta?”

  Bohannon wasn’t playing dumb, only reluctant to surrender his own U.S. identity to this man in exchange.

  Impatient, the man repeated, “Pasaporta?” more fervently.

  It was a condition of the agreement that Bohannon relinquish his U.S. Passport. Canadian citizens could travel freely to the Country of Cuba, while American citizens remained restricted to twelve specific categories, none which included assassin, serial killer, mercenary, deserter, or traitor.

  Also, no one wanted an American fugitive and former U.S. Navy SEAL discovered dead on a Cuban beach with an American passport in his hand.

  Relenting, Bohannon passed the man his passport.

  After what he’d sacrificed for his country, it felt to Ezekiel Bohannon like losing an arm.

  ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN

  Tampico, Mexico

  AT THE SAME TIME Bohannon returned home, Mathias touched down to a private airfiel
d in Tampico owned by the giant oil company Pemex. According to Berkshire, the airfield was less than five kilometers to the home where satellite imagery showed Tara was being held captive.

  The chopper pilot spoke decent, if heavily accented, English.

  “Ex-military,” he explained to Mathias. “Like you!”

  After years spent watching comrades die on the job battling the Narcos while those switching sides became rich—“Dying, too,” he admitted—the man defected to the opposition.

  Under instruction from Berkshire, the pilot was to remain at the airfield with the chopper fully fueled and ready for take-off. If Berkshire didn’t hear from Mathias in two hours—the time agreed to by both men for a successful extraction—the pilot was to abandon the mission and return to Matamoros alone.

  Waiting for Mathias on the helipad was a ten-year-old Nissan Pathfinder with faded paint, dented side panels, and a broken taillight.

  To explain the vehicle, the pilot said, “In Tampico, Narcos no tener nuevo coche.”

  Mathias took it to mean in Tampico, criminals don’t drive flashy cars.

  ONE HUNDRED TWENTY

  Tampico, Mexico

  WITH CHAN AND HATHAWAY patrolling the perimeter, Bohannon took time to reflect, if not to relax.

  The men had agreed on four overlapping shifts of six hours on, six hours off. This would allow Bohannon the chance to spend three hours twice each day with both Hathaway and Chan alone. It would also lessen the risk the two would kill each other. Downtime, they slept and ate, listened to music on their mobile phones, tended to the prisoners. Turning an extra bedroom into a makeshift gym, Chan buffed his already chiseled physique.

  Still hobbled by the gunshot wound suffered in New York, Bohannon worried it would affect his judgment. Hathaway had joined him under duress, Chan out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to a former commanding officer. How far could either man be trusted to protect Bohannon’s best interests?

  He’d willingly surrendered his passport in exchange for a new identity and nationality. He’d never have considered doing such a thing—even after returning from Iraq under threat of Court Martial and death—yet now he’d done so freely. And while kidnapping the McDonald woman seemed a good idea in retaliation for Mathias joining the game, what had prompted Mathias joining the game in the first place?

  Bohannon popped a painkiller and an antibiotic. He needed to sleep. Popped a second painkiller. Three hours he would sleep, no more. Things would be clear when he woke.

  ◊◊◊

  Rod Hathaway hadn’t found Jesus. Still, the thought of executing Bohannon and Chan in cold blood made him squirm. Hathaway wasn’t the same man who escaped to Italy from Iraq to find a new life in the Florida Keys. He could kill to eat, to defend himself, maybe. The way Chan was behaving, he might have no choice.

  His former comrade was doing two thousand push-ups a day. Five hundred chin-ups on a metal bar supported by a doorframe. Arm curls with solid oak armchairs in each hand. Squats with a bar fridge balanced on his shoulders. With his shirt off and sweating, he resembled the cut figure of a Marvel Comics superhero.

  In battle, a man like Chan would be good to have at your side. In peacetime, it was like sleeping beside a spring-loaded IED.

  As Hathaway considered this, his earbud chirped. Three a.m.

  Chan.

  “All cool on this side of the ranch, Sarge.” A faint giggle as if he’d made a joke. “You?”

  “All cool, here, Chan.”

  Two minutes later, chirp.

  “You think much about I-raq, Sarge?”

  “Don’t remember Iraq, Chan, let alone think about it.”

  “Yeah, you were pretty wasted.”

  “Wasn’t everyone?”

  “In prison, not much else to do but to think.”

  Hathaway tensed. Chan’s way of saying: While you were touring the Tuscan Hills and deep sea fishing in the Keys, I was rotting in a Federal Supermax prison.

  No.

  “All worked out in the end, Sarge.” Pause. “Except for this. This, I’m not so sure about.”

  ◊◊◊

  William Jackie Chan was an obedient child. A loyal soldier in the Marines. A loyal foot-soldier in the organization of Liu Jianguo. A loyal follower of SEAL Team 9 Commander Ezekiel Bohannon even after Bohannon had gone all Apocalypse Now in Iraq, like Marlon Brando in the movie.

  In Tampico, sucking on refinery fumes thick enough to cause brain damage, Chan recalibrated his options. Recalling Mathias not as the skinny newbie who’d first joined SEAL Team 9 but as the battle-hardened warrior he’d become, Chan decided a re-think was in order.

  Clearly, the McDonald woman was a high-value asset. Mathias wanted her, Bohannon had her. According to the newspapers, the FBI, CIA, and Homeland security had joined together in searching for the woman and the man they called The Shooter, a very high-value target. Also, according to reports, the price on Bohannon’s head had climbed collectively to a cool two million.

  No less confounding to Chan was why Bohannon had recruited Hathaway and him to his cause in Iraq in the first place.

  ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE

  Tampico, Mexico

  WITH THE PATHFINDER concealed by a copse of stunted shrubs bordering Paso Doña Cecilia—the laneway traveled by Bohannon earlier—Mathias performed a final weapons check.

  Mathias wore a soft armor Level IIIA tactical vest able to withstand the impact of anything from a BB gun to a .44 Magnum handgun. (If any of Bohannon or his men chambered a .375 round in a long-gun, it would slice through both the vest and Mathias like a hot ice pick through butter.)

  Looking like a gunfighter at the OK Corral, Mathias had strapped to his hips two 9mm Sig Sauer MPX Copperhead machine pistols with suppressors and thirty round mags. In a fanny-pack, he carried four spare magazines.

  For accuracy and close quarters, he carried a pair of eight-round SIG P225 Compact handguns. In a rucksack, Mathias carried a dozen golf ball-size explosive devices nicknamed Bogies, powerful enough to amputate a man’s legs to the hip with a blast radius designed to minimize collateral damage. Finally, a half dozen concussion grenades; blinding, deafening, able to knock a man flat, but not seriously injure or kill.

  If nothing else, the CIA was much better equipped than the U.S. military.

  ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO

  Tampico, Mexico

  BOHANNON THOUGHT he was dreaming. Or having a flashback episode. PTSD? Startled awake, he jumped from the sofa, struggled to clear the fog. The painkillers were messing with his mind. He felt fevered; infection or the tropical heat? A second pop! had him fully awake and moving fast.

  Bohannon retrieved his handgun from a side table. He slipped on his boots. Before leaving the home, he checked on the prisoners.

  McDonald was fully alert, eyes wide and questioning, yanking at her restraints like a tethered animal, frightened, not yet panicked.

  “A car backfire,” Bohannon said, unconvincing.

  “Mathias,” McDonald said, a mix of hopefulness and regret.

  “If it is him, you die here,” Bohannon said, voice level, sweat stinking of adrenalin and anticipation.

  ◊◊◊

  Shaken by the blast, Hathaway disengaged the safety of his M249. It wasn’t fireworks or a car backfire coming from the tangled brush behind the home. Immediately, he radioed Chan.

  “What the fuck, Chan?”

  “Small explosive device, Sarge. In the bush two o’clock off my right flank. We’re under attack. A distraction. They don’t want us dead; yet.”

  “Stay put. I’m on my way.”

  “No! They plan to flank us. Stay where you are.”

  With that, Chan unleashed a barrage of fire, sweeping through the underbrush and trees at an angle of ninety degrees. Muted by the weight of humidity, the roar of gunfire and splintered wood echoed through the damp, night air.

  “Moving away from the house, Sarge,” Chan said. “Fifty yards out with a view to the front and side. Whoever it is will ne
ed to pass this way to enter. I suggest you do the same.”

  Without Hathaway acknowledging, Chan heard a burst of machinegun fire from the opposite side of the house.

  “Moving now!” Hathaway said over the comm.

  Chan moved, too. Not away from the house, but in.

  ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-THREE

  Tampico, Mexico

  USING NIGHT VISION goggles, Mathias watched the man on his right flank move away from the house fifty yards, the man on his left sprint low along the wall disappearing out of sight around the front of the wood-frame structure. Redeploying to join the man on his right? It would leave the left flank exposed. Retreat to join the third man inside the home, collapse-down to protect the asset? A risky strategy considering they only had three men, a fact confirmed by Mathias using an infrared sensor.

  Even with night vision and infrared, Mathias couldn’t positively identify Bohannon. If he could, he’d take him out, hope for Hathaway and Chan to abandon the mission, retreat into the back alleys of Tampico, arrange for narco-transport out of the country, later.

  But he couldn’t. Instead, he retrieved a fistful of Bogies from his rucksack. Lobbing them four into the air one after the other, Mathias carved out a path of potholes leading to the front of the building. Hopefully, the explosive activity would freeze Right Flank in place, convince the other men to remain inside the home.

  Staying low, Mathias hustled into position.

  ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR

  Tampico, Mexico

  BOHANNON RETRIEVED his long-gun, inserted a fresh mag: He was a surgeon, not a butcher.

  Outside, he heard four explosions; pop-pop-pop-pop! Rapid fire one after the other. Whoever it was, was moving.