Hunter Killer

by Brad Taylor

  My assault plan was pretty simple and tailored for the threat. Instead of a fireworks show of a ninja assault force, only Aaron and I were going forward.

  We knew there were four terrorists, and that they rotated sleeping duties, meaning only three would be awake at any given time. One was always in the captain’s cabin, which was Jennifer’s target. The other one or two were down below, which would be our targets.

  Using the HEED, we’d swim to the concrete lighting buoy the boat was anchored against. From there we’d work our way to the boat, Aaron to the stern, where one target was located, and me to the bow, the location of the other one.

  We’d studied videos of the ferry in action on various tourist websites and had seen children climbing up the old tires the ferry used as bumpers and diving off while the boat was under way, showing off for the tourists. I figured if a damn ten-year-old could climb up the side while the boat was steaming full ahead, two commandos should be able to do it quickly enough to neutralize the threat.

  Felipe said, “How will I know when to come forward?”

  “I’ll call Jennifer. Or you’ll see a giant fireball.”

  The biggest problem we had was communication while we infiltrated, since I couldn’t talk while underwater, meaning they’d just have to wonder if we were getting shot at while we advanced. Once I was in position, I’d be able to get an earpiece in, but that was about it. Any problems beforehand and there would be no support. No help.

  Felipe flashed his eyes at me at the fireball comment and I said, “I’m just kidding. I’ll call, I promise. But when I do, you’ll owe me another favor.”

  He looked at me with suspicion and said, “What?”

  “That original Russian I gave you? I want some time with him. He’s involved in more than just this. He’s involved in the death of a friend of mine, and I want to know why.”

  He stuttered for a moment, then said, “That’s impossible. He’s in the custody of Brazil now. We’ll deal with him.”

  Taken aback, I said, “What? That’s not an unreasonable request, given what we’ve done here.”

  “It’s not going to happen. I appreciate what you’ve done, but I have to respect Brazilian laws.”

  His words caused a spike of anger, forcing me to fight to keep the beast at bay. Jennifer saw what was happening and tapped Shoshana. They both came forward.

  I said, “Listen to me closely, because I mean what I say. I wanted to save your family because it was the right thing to do, but if you don’t let me talk to that Russian, you and I are going to have an issue. And you don’t want an issue with me.”

  For the first time, his face reflected the fear of the men he’d recruited to drive the boat.

  He said, “Pike, I cannot allow that to occur.”

  I snapped, “Why not?”

  Shoshana stared at Felipe, reading him in her weird way. She said, “Because he can’t.”

  I said, “What the fuck does that mean?”

  She turned to me, and, as if Felipe weren’t even there, said, “I don’t know. But he can’t. I can see it.”

  Felipe shrank into himself upon hearing her words. I saw shame flash through him, then he looked at Shoshana as if she were the devil incarnate.

  I regained an even keel, glad it wasn’t that he didn’t want to, but couldn’t. I said, “What did you do? Give him back to Russia? Send him to the embassy on the words of someone higher? After what he did to your family?”

  He closed his eyes, shutting them so hard I could see the squint, an internal debate raging. He finally opened them and said, “No. He’s dead.”

  My team sat in silence for a moment, the words he uttered incomprehensible. I said, “Dead? Are you serious?”

  He looked embarrassed, and I understood exactly what had happened.

  He said, “He tried to escape.” But there was no conviction in his words. While I had been reining in my own fire for vengeance since I’d entered Brazil, I truly didn’t fault his. I glanced at Jennifer, wondering if she was going to sour this whole mission, and she surprised the hell out of me.

  She went to him, patted him on the shoulder, and said, “He shouldn’t have tried to escape.”

  What the hell?

  He relaxed at her words and said, “I’m sorry. Sometimes these things happen.”

  I let him know he was full of shit, saying, “Yeah, but not that often when the guy is tied up and handed to you. I needed him.”

  He started to protest, and I nodded at him, telling him it was water under the bridge, then said, “I don’t want that other Russian to attempt the same thing. Understand?”

  He nodded back, glad to be away from the conversation. I looked at Jennifer and said, “Let’s make sure you and Shoshana know what you’re doing with that weapon.”

  I dragged her to a pelican case about the size of a carry-on at the front of the boat. I knelt down and flipped the latches, revealing an Accuracy International AX-MC precision rifle, broken down into components. A bolt-action chambered for the Taskforce in 6.5 Creedmoor, it was a precision shooter’s dream, and one that Jennifer had fired many, many times. Because of it, she knew I hadn’t brought her over here to give her a class on the weapon’s assembly.

  As soon as the case was open, I said, “What the fuck was that all about? You know that Russian didn’t try to escape, right? Felipe murdered a man you made me save and you pat him on the back?”

  She gave me a little indignation back, saying, “Pike, it was done, and Felipe is our support for this. There was no reason to make him second-guess whether we might be a threat when you’re about to get in the water, leaving Shoshana and me alone on the boat with a bunch of BOPE officers he commands. I don’t need to be watching him while I’m trying to use the scope.”

  I shook my head and said, “You confuse the shit out of me. You think strategically when it matters, and tactically when I want to do the same damn thing.”

  Shoshana was standing above us, looking on intently. Jennifer glanced at her, then said, “I knew you were about to call him out on it, because you have no filter. I only care about my family. He can deal with his own demons for what he did. Something you won’t have to do, because you did the right thing.”

  I grinned. “Always the smart one.”

  And she relaxed, smiling.

  Shoshana said, “Good.”

  I turned to her and said, “What’d you say? What do you mean, ‘good’?”

  Looking like she was the sensei master, she said, “Good. This was good.”

  I laughed and said, “Get the weapon assembled and positioned. What will be ‘good’ is if you can get Jennifer on target as the spotter.”

  Jennifer started working the rifle in a practiced manner, snapping in the barrel, putting together the bolt, and attaching the bipod. Shoshana said, “Don’t worry about the spotting. You just worry about Aaron.”

  Standing behind her, I saw him roll his eyes. I said, “I’m pretty sure he can take care of himself.”

  I felt the motor cut out on the boat, the hull now gliding silently on the water. Felipe came forward and said, “This is as close as we can get. Any closer and they may feel we’re a threat.”

  I looked at Aaron and said, “Time to go.”

  Chapter 49

  Knuckles felt his eyes close, the sleep monster trying hard to take over his conscious mind. He snapped them open, glanced at Brett, and saw the same struggle. He leaned over and whispered, “Pike is taking his damn time. Dawn is about an hour away.”

  Brett let out a tired chuckle and said, “Maybe it’ll be another cycle of darkness.”

  The suspect passenger heard their conversation and cracked an eye, his right hand in his jacket pocket, like it had been since they’d noticed him.

  Knuckles caught the movement, put his hand on the knife, and said, “No. It’s this cycle. My phone wouldn’t ring tonight. He’s out there.”

  I swam blindly through the darkness, staring at my Taskforce phone, the last known loca
tion of Knuckles’s beacon plugged in and giving me a bearing. It was waterproof, but most definitely not made for underwater operations, and I hoped it hadn’t locked up or lost signal underneath the surface, leading me astray on some vector that was no longer valid.

  When I’d first broached the plan, I’d assured Aaron that it would work, but I truthfully didn’t know, and we didn’t have enough air in the HEEDs to recover from a mistake. If it was wrong, we’d be forced to surface.

  To make matters worse, the cheap-ass diving mask and fins we’d purchased at a beach store were not really giving me the cutting-edge capability I needed. The mask made it hard to see the phone, and the fins made me feel more like an eight-year-old playing in a pool than a commando. The only good thing was the water wasn’t freezing cold. We’d thought about using wet suits, but I wanted the camouflage of the BOPE uniforms at the end, so I’d opted just to swim in the fatigues. It turned out to be a good call, because, while it wasn’t pleasant, the temperature was bearable.

  I kept plowing ahead, following the compass bearing, Aaron behind me tied to my left hand by a length of twine, blindly trusting me. The bearing never changed, which was giving me growing concern. I couldn’t be that good a swimmer to be directly on the line of march to the grid location without some shifting. Not with ocean currents and the darkness.

  Five minutes into the swim I checked again, and I was headed straight toward the boat, the beacon showing it about seventy meters away—if the bearing was real, but I was now having my doubts. We only had between eight and ten minutes of air, which meant I had to make a decision: continue on, or break off and swim back. Or surface only to find us right next to the boat, alerting them to the assault and causing a catastrophe.

  I slowed my swim, felt the line on my hand go slack, and turned, heading at a ninety-degree angle. The arrow shifted, aiming away from me, still on the same bearing.

  So it is working.

  If I could have, I would have smiled and high-fived Aaron. Instead I just congratulated myself on being a damn good swimmer, reminding myself to brag to Knuckles when I saw him.

  I oriented back on the bearing, kept going, and reached the endpoint. I looked up and could barely make out the shape of the ferry against the faint light coming through the water. We’d made it. Now all we had to do was find the pylon.

  We’d studied the ferry’s location, and, while the terrorists had been smart to place it offshore to prevent an assault, they’d been limited in what they could do to keep it there, and had tied it to an old chunk of concrete that rose thirty feet out of the water, a large base at the bottom, but a thin concrete pillar that held a light to guide in the ships to the harbor. It was the only thing around that would allow us to prepare for the assault out of view of the men on the ferry.

  I oriented on the bow of the shadow above me, then began swimming diagonally to the east, splitting off it. I went twenty feet and just about slammed into the cement pylon sinking to the ocean floor below me. I gingerly stuck out my hand, caressed the barnacles over the concrete, then swam around, getting behind it. When I was out of view of the boat, I rose, breaking the surface of the water.

  I grabbed on to a set of concrete stairs at the base, holding off from the small current trying to push me into it, and Aaron broke the surface next to me.

  He spit out the regulator of the HEEDS, dropping the bottle to a lanyard around his neck. “I thought for sure you were bullshitting me about that beacon trace. Especially when you stopped.”

  I grinned and said, “And you still followed me?”

  He chuckled and said, “No. Hell no. Shoshana said it would work because she has some unreasonable faith in you. I followed her.”

  I withdrew my Glock, saying, “Maybe I should start listening to her.”

  I drained the water out of the barrel, dropped the magazine, and conducted a function’s check. It worked fine. I reseated the magazine and saw Aaron doing the same. He said, “Maybe you should.”

  I said, “You and I both know that ain’t going to happen. She’s crazy.”

  He stifled a laugh and I pulled a balaclava out of my thigh pocket, wrung it out, and pulled it over my head. I said, “Okay, here we go. You have the stern; I’m swimming around the bow to the starboard side. Remember, once we’ve eliminated the threat, get all the hostages facedown, hands out.”

  His face went to stone, getting into mission mode. He nodded, put in his earpiece, pulled on his own balaclava, and said on the net, “Check, check.”

  I heard him and said, “Roger. Got you. Koko, Carrie, we’re at LCC. Moving now.”

  Chapter 50

  Jennifer responded to Pike’s call, her voice flat, “Roger all. Target acquired. Standing by.”

  What she didn’t relay was the absolute fear rocking through her body. The AX-MC was a precision shooter’s dream, leaving any mistakes not a function of the weapon, but a function of the shooter. And the platform she was shooting on was less than ideal.

  She did have the target in her sights. She hadn’t lied. With the optic at twenty-power, she could clearly see the terrorist through the window of the captain’s cabin, the light above him giving her hyperclarity of his features, down to the acne on his cheeks, but the “calm cove” still had a swell, causing the reticle of her scope to bob up and down. She couldn’t keep it still.

  She said, “Shoshana, what’s the wind now?”

  Lying prone next to her, Shoshana said, “Jennifer, at this distance, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Wind.”

  Shoshana held up a Kestral wind meter and said, “Still three miles an hour, still head on and zero value.”

  She dropped it and said, “What’s the problem? I know it’s not the distance or the wind.”

  “This boat isn’t stable. It’s rising and falling, and under the scope’s power, it’s like trying to settle a crosshair on the back of a bucking horse.”

  Shoshana said, “Is it steady? Or random?”

  “It’s steady.”

  “Ride it. Dry-fire now. Time it and squeeze.”

  Behind the scope, Jennifer exhaled and said, “I don’t know if I can do this. Everybody on that boat is relying on me. If I miss, or even if I just wound him, he’ll think an assault is imminent and kill everyone on board. All he has to do is press a button.”

  Shoshana rolled over and put her hand on Jennifer’s shoulder. Jennifer looked at her, and Shoshana brushed a strand of hair out of her face, an odd, out-of-place gesture.

  She said, “Jennifer, I would take this shot for you if I could. I can do it, but I’m not as good as you with that weapon. I know it and Pike knows it. Banish the thought of failure. Focus on the reticle. Focus on the bullet. Make it go where you want it to go.”

  There was such an intensity coming out of Shoshana that Jennifer was unsure of what to say. She nodded, and Shoshana rubbed her back and rolled over again, the gesture more intimate than the situation demanded.

  At one time, Jennifer and Pike had thought Shoshana was a lesbian, and then had learned that she didn’t understand such a distinction. Shoshana’s concept of love had nothing to do with gender. If she cared about you, she did it with all of her being. If she didn’t, she’d kill you without a second thought.

  Shoshana commanded, “Dry-fire. Get the timing.”

  The conflicting nature of her commands and the intimacy caused Jennifer to shake her head, but the conviction from Shoshana gave her strength. Jennifer had learned early on that Shoshana had an unearthly skill at killing, and if she believed in Jennifer, the least Jennifer could do was believe in herself.

  She settled down behind the stock, obtained a cheek weld, closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. She watched the Christmas tree of the reticle rise and fall, rise and fall. She got the rhythm, took a breath at the bottom, exhaled at the top, then broke the trigger.

  She repeated the maneuver, gaining confidence.

  She did it one more time, and then the radio broke, “Koko, Koko, this is Pi
ke. We are set. Need a read on the targets.”

  Jennifer felt the adrenaline start to rise and quelled it, not wanting to alter her rhythm with a racing heartbeat. She didn’t dare shift the scope to find Pike at the bottom of the boat, instead relying on her spotter.

  Shoshana said, “I see Pike. He’s just below the ledge of the gunwale, holding on to one of those tires the kids use to climb up. He’s secure, his target is above him at Alpha One, unaware.”

  She paused, and Jennifer knew she was scanning the back of the boat. After a few seconds, she said, “Target two is at the templated location on the stern at Charlie Five, just to the left of the latrines. He’s sitting down on the gunwale. Aaron is unsighted.”

  To prevent the boat team from having to try to describe where the terrorists were by using landmarks on the ferry—like “He’s near the third row of seats on the port side” or “He’s by the anchor”—Pike had broken the boat down into sectors, with the length being numbered from one to five and the width from A to C, thereby eliminating any possibility of confusion.

  Jennifer got on the net, her conscious mind not wanting to initiate, but she set the mission in motion anyway. “This is Koko. We have you. Your target is just above you, Alpha One. You’re in perfect position. Second target is at the projected location Charlie Five. Aaron is unsighted. I have my target with high confidence.”

  She didn’t want to say the next words, but she did. “Ready to execute.”

  “Any sign of the sleeper?”

  He was asking about the final terrorist. Jennifer knew that once Pike and Aaron eliminated the terrorists currently on guard duty, they’d need to get to the one asleep before he woke up and realized what was happening. Before he could simply press a trigger on a detonator. Before he could immolate everything she held dear.

  Horrific thoughts racing through her head, she said, “Stand by.”

  Off the net, deferring to her as the command of their element, Shoshana said, “I can’t see inside the boat. He could be anywhere.”