Hunter Killer

by Brad Taylor

  “I tried that. I was told to stand down.”

  “Okay. You’ve done your duty.”

  “No, I haven’t. I need to talk personally to Brett, Knuckles, and Jennifer. I need to give them the order.”

  I said, “Good luck with that,” and passed the phone to Jennifer.

  She took it with a question on her face, listened, then said, “I understand.”

  She looked at me and said, “No, sir. I’m not coming home.”

  She passed the phone to Knuckles, and then he passed it to Brett, all with the same results. Eventually it came back to me. I said, “You want to talk to the Israelis? Or are we done?”

  He ignored that, saying, “What are you doing next? At least tell me what’s coming.”

  I said, “A few days ago, Jennifer tagged one of the Russians. We have the beacon track in Rio. That’s where we’re going. We’ll develop the next steps from there. I’ll send in reports to Creed back-channel to keep you in the loop. Put it all on me, sir.”

  He said, “Veep has Amena and Kylie in Savannah, with some Ranger Battalion friend of his. They’re good to go. I’m not ordering him to return until this is over.”

  And in that moment, I knew he supported my actions. He couldn’t come right out and say he was with me, but he could turn off the beacon track. That he completely shifted gears at the mention of the beacon told me he just didn’t want to know.

  He’d also demanded to speak to everyone on my team, ordering each of them individually to come home—all the while knowing they wouldn’t. On the other hand, he didn’t ask to speak to the one team who could really gum up my ability to operate: the pilots of the Rock Star bird. Those guys had no allegiance to me or the team, and would absolutely listen to him about coming home, which would render me toothless. Losing the aircraft would be more than just travel. I’d lose the ability for tagging, tracking, and locating the Russians, along with my entire arsenal of weapons to deal with the problem.

  He held the ability to prevent me from operating, and because he’d failed to cut me off at the knees, I knew he wanted me to continue.

  I said, “Thanks for keeping track of them. I appreciate it, sir.”

  He said, “I’ll give the Oversight Council your decision. Expect some retribution when you get home.”

  Which was the same as saying, “I’ll put you in time-out, young man!”

  We packed up and went ripping from Salvador to Rio, only to find out by the time we’d arrived, the beacon was gone. At first, I’d thought it had finally expired, the liquid battery eating the brains of the beacon to prevent follow-on forensics, and had wasted time setting up surveillance at its last known location, a fancy hotel on Copacabana Beach. We’d established a box and waited to spot the guy Jennifer had beaconed, burning an entire day, and then the damn thing had surfaced again, in Manaus.

  We had no idea why, but our target had fled Rio. We’d boarded the Rock Star bird and gave chase, landing in Manaus early in the morning only to find the beacon had quit transmitting again, and this time I feared it was gone for good because its battery had already exceeded the service life.

  It had remained stationary for our entire flight up, which meant it was no longer on the target, but that might not be a catastrophe. Jennifer had put it on a jacket, and Manaus was definitely too hot to wear one, so maybe it had simply died in his suitcase in a hotel room.

  We’d repeated the maneuver from Copacabana, boxing in the Hotel Villa Amazonia, now a day behind whatever the Russian had planned. By noon, I had started to believe that we were wasting our time yet again, and then Shoshana had triggered.

  Now I was one person back in the gelato line, with a clear view of the targets. I called Shoshana and said, “Did you get a photo of the other Russian?”

  “No. I didn’t get the opportunity. They walked right by us.”

  I said, “Roger,” and pulled out my phone. They walked behind me passing the line and entering the square, heading to the front of the opera house.

  I surreptitiously snapped a couple of bad photos, saying on the net, “I don’t think they’re moving to a car. They’re cutting through the square, probably to a restaurant.”

  The opera house was a gigantic, ornate building sporting a gilded domed roof that towered over the square, looking like something from the Middle East that was in sharp contrast to the colonial style of construction it rested on. Flowing down from the front terrace were two sweeping granite staircases that circled toward themselves until they reached the pavestones of the square I was on.

  I bought my gelato just as they passed by the first set of stairs. I remembered one for Jennifer and stepped out of line in time to see them turn into what looked like a small alcove in the wall between the staircases. They disappeared from view.

  What the hell?

  Intrigued, I took a seat on a park bench and waited, calling on the net, “Target temporarily unsighted.”

  Brett said, “This is Blood, what’s my vector? Do you want me to exit my vehicle?”

  “No. Stand by. Something strange going on.”

  Five minutes later, the wall at the back of the alcove swung open and the men exited, now carrying, of all things, two guitar cases.

  I said, “I have them again. They’re crossing the square.”

  They stopped at a minivan, unlocked it, loaded the guitar cases, and prepared to drive away. I gave a description of the vehicle and the direction of travel, hearing Brett say, “Got them. I’m on them.”

  I said, “Roger all. Give us a status every ten minutes. Carrie, you provide close-in early warning. Koko, meet me at the front. Time to crack the room.”

  Chapter 62

  Alek ordered Pushka to drive even though he was the one who’d conducted the reconnaissance of the park. He wanted to think through the plan one more time, knowing it was borderline insane. Something more out of a James Bond movie than a well-planned assassination.

  After the failure in Rio at the Christ Redeemer, Alek couldn’t afford another mistake. He’d had to tell Nikita of the fiasco, and it hadn’t been pleasant. Nikita had ordered Alek off the mission and Alek wondered if he should fear for his life. The only saving grace was that Pushka’s security contact at the Petrobras building had managed to obtain the Mines and Energy minister’s schedule in Manaus, a mixture of both work and pleasure.

  Alek had begged Nikita to let him continue—to make it right, in his words—and Nikita had allowed it, even as he said he doubted the man would travel up to Manaus after the death of the Chinese investor. Alek prayed that wasn’t true, because it would set back their entire mission. And would set off Nikita.

  Luckily, they’d found the minister and his Chinese guests—now down to three—exactly where they said they’d be, staying at the Hotel Villa Amazonia near the historical city center. Alek and Pushka had reserved a room and set about designing a plan of attack. They had two days to find a “firing solution,” as Nikita called it. Two days while the entourage was out discussing the refining of oil and the potentially lucrative returns for China should they invest.

  He’d given Pushka the close-in reconnaissance of the tour locations in town, to include the mansion of an old German rubber baron who helped found Manaus, the Adolpho Lisboa open air market, and the Manaus Opera House.

  That left the CIG nature park for Alek, located about an hour outside the city, a zoo full of Amazon flora and fauna staffed by the Jungle Training School of the Brazilian army. He’d hired a local guide to show him around, ostensibly to learn about the creatures of the Amazon, but in reality to see if the park would facilitate an “accident.”

  He’d learned that there were plenty of things in the Amazon that could kill a man, and most of them were located in the park, but he could see no way to cause the minister to fall into a pit of anacondas or slip off the bridge spanning the jaguar enclosure.

  There were plenty of hidden spots and solitary jungle paths, all of which would make a perfect ambush location if he were allowed
to employ lethal means such as a rifle or his bare hands, but nothing that he could leverage as an accident—especially since the minister would be surrounded by the three Chinese. Alek would have to kill all four to make it work, and he just couldn’t see a way to do that inside the park.

  After an hour of wandering around, listening to the guide, Alek had begun to think the trip had been a waste of time. They reached the very edge of the park, running into a tall chain-link fence surrounding a lake, a sign in Portuguese out front that he couldn’t read except for one word. Perigo! So something dangerous was beyond the fence.

  The guide saw him looking into the lake and said, “We can’t go out there today. It’s closed.”

  “What is it?”

  “The piranha pit. It’s pretty cool if you’re the bloodthirsty sort, but also a little cruel.”

  “How so?”

  “Piranhas aren’t really the deadly killers the movies make them out to be. They’re dangerous, no doubt, but don’t really attack large animals unless they’re threatened or extremely hungry. Or trained.”

  “Trained?”

  “Yeah. They feed the piranhas live animals here. Rabbits, other things. Basically, they’ve trained them to ignore their instincts so they can put on a show.”

  He pointed to a small dock with a medium-sized rubber Zodiac boat and said, “They take VIPs out to the middle, smack the water a few times, then throw in the live bait. To make sure they’re really in a frenzy, they don’t feed them for days beforehand, which is why we can’t go out today. Apparently some important government official is coming here tomorrow, and they want a show.”

  Alek knew who that government official was, and his plan began to form. Batshit crazy, but a plan nonetheless. He’d returned to the hotel and learned that Pushka’s reconnaissance had turned up no viable alternatives, and so he’d decided to go with the crazy idea instead of telling Nikita they’d failed. He’d called Nikita and asked him to leverage his contacts in Manaus for the equipment he’d need, and, after more threats from Nikita, he’d been given the drop location: the Manaus Opera House.

  He’d thought Nikita was screwing with him at first, his boss describing a secret tunnel the city founders had used to smuggle in mistresses to the theater, allowing them to bypass the front door for an orgy in the box seats. If that weren’t weird enough, he’d been ordered to leave a stack of cash in Pushka’s room to pay for the cache. He’d done so, of course, but wondered how the contact placing the cache would even know what room Pushka was in, much less have a key to retrieve the money.

  Alek hadn’t told Pushka his reservations about the cache, but he had been pleasantly surprised to find the tunnel existed, and then was surprised again when they’d located the equipment deep in the tunnel, next to some artifacts that had been lost to time. That meant Nikita had a much greater grip on what the two of them were doing than he’d given him credit for.

  Now, driving out to the park, he began to doubt the plan he’d created. There were so many different variables, any one of which was a single point of failure. He felt an enormous pressure, so much so that he hadn’t even told Pushka what the plan was, afraid he’d balk before they’d even begun. He’d decided to wait to tell him only after it was too late to back out.

  The GPS showed they were within five minutes of the park and Pushka said, “You want to tell me what you have in mind? Why the sniper systems? We can’t shoot him, especially not in front of the Chinese.”

  Alek took a deep breath, paused a minute, then told him. When he was done, Pushka smiled and said, “That is diabolical.”

  Relieved not to be told he was insane, and appreciating the confidence, Alek said, “If it fails, and it looks like they’re going to escape, put a bullet in the target’s head. The others can live.”

  Pushka said, “You sure about that?”

  “Yeah. It’s not like there will be much to autopsy.”

  Pushka passed a single-track road snaking off the hardtop into the jungle and Alek shouted, “That’s it, that’s it!”

  Pushka turned the minivan around, and they bounced through the woods for a few minutes until the road grew so rugged that Alek was afraid they’d get stuck. He said, “Stop the vehicle. We walk in from here.”

  Pushka turned off the engine and exited, meeting Alek at the rear of the van. Alek opened the first guitar case, seeing a Heckler & Koch MSG90 sniper system. Next to it was a camouflaged smock that looked like a mechanic’s jumpsuit. He pulled it out and began snaking his legs into it, Pushka following suit.

  Five minutes later they were following the GPS into the jungle on foot, Alek surprised at how open the forest floor was. After seeing the dense foliage on the way to Christ Redeemer, he’d expected to be beating the bush, thrashing through vines and ferns, but the natural jungle here was more like a hardwood stand, with little in the way of ground foliage. The trees blocked out the light from above, but it wasn’t hard movement.

  They walked for close to a half an hour, both stalking like they were hunting deer, taking a few steps and then halting, listening for the signs of compromise. Alek had stressed that they were literally infiltrating the Brazilian army’s jungle training center, and neither wanted to be found in the bush wearing camouflage and carrying sniper rifles.

  Eventually, Alek saw sunlight spilling out through the trees at the edge of the jungle and called a halt. He left his weapon with Pushka and low crawled toward the light on his belly, breaking through a stand of sawgrass. He saw the lake to his front, the shore he was on elevated above it, the grass sloping to the water from the tree line. He called Pushka forward and they started preparing firing positions, one right next to the other, using the grass as cover.

  When they were done, satisfied they could range the lake, they took their positions behind the rifles, beginning the patient wait of the sniper. An hour and eighteen minutes in, Pushka saw movement at the dock. Alek settled his scope and recognized the target, along with the three Chinese and a man in an army uniform. It was a shame he would have to die, but that was just the way of it.

  The Chinese and the minister boarded the boat, sitting in the front, and then the army guide loaded a cage holding three rabbits, the beasts sniffing the air nervously. The guide picked up a pole and began pushing them out into the lake, the guests sitting in the front and the guide standing in the back, giving the impression he was a native of the Amazon providing a realistic experience. It might have worked if he was poling a wooden raft down the Negro River, but pushing an army Zodiac boat seemed a little ridiculous.

  They reached the center of the pond and the guide set the pole in the boat. He grabbed a small paddle and slapped the water once, twice, three times. Alek saw a flicking on the surface and said, “Remember, you have the port chamber. I’ll take the starboard side. Put in at least three rounds.”

  Pushka nodded and settled behind his scope. Alek did the same, seeing the man pull out a rabbit, hold it over the water by its back legs, then drop it. The rabbit began to swim for a split second, and then the water started boiling next to the boat, the guests in the front with looks of shock at the savagery.

  Alek said, “Fire at will,” and squeezed the trigger. He saw his placement was good, heard Pushka firing, and shot three more times, with each bullet puncturing the inflated boat twice—an entrance and an exit wound. He quit firing and focused on the action in the boat, seeing the men panic as it deflated, the army guide grabbing the pole and attempting to push them to shore, the boiling water following them.

  Eventually, the boat began to sink in on itself like a withering balloon, the men clinging to themselves and desperately trying to find a solution. One of the Chinese decided to make a break for it and jumped into the water, swimming furiously. His thrashing was overcome by a shredding of the water from below. He screamed, the sound carrying across the lake, and Alek watched him fight a monster he couldn’t find, the hundreds of fish killing him one bite at a time.

  The others in the boat looked on
in horror, and then the rubber collapsed completely, the metal ribs in the hull dragging the boat down until the remaining men were bobbing on the surface. The guide began swimming to shore, the minister and final two Chinese attempting to follow. All the motion caused was a redirection of the piranha shoal as the swarm came looking for fresh meat. Alek watched the water boil, wincing at the screams, but wanting to make sure none escaped. The guide came the closest, but he eventually succumbed like the others, sinking beneath the surface.

  Alek breathed a sigh of relief and picked up his rifle. Pushka said, “What happens if they pull that boat out and find bullet holes?”

  Alek stood, folded the bipod to his rifle, and said, “You think anyone is going to go diving in that lake for a boat on the bottom?”

  Chapter 63

  I met Jennifer on an outdoor patio at the front of the hotel. I handed her a gelato and said, “You ready to get to work, spider monkey?”

  I saw the excitement in her eyes and wanted to rib her, but I didn’t have the heart. It was gratifying enough to know she really enjoyed the mission, even as she spent an inordinate amount of time claiming I was a Neanderthal. She was just as big a meat-eater as I was, but she didn’t want anyone to know. Like admitting it was uncouth or dirty, and I found that adorable. Yeah, I guess that does, in fact, make me a chauvinistic Neanderthal, but if I was, so be it. I still got to go to bed with an operator at the end of the day, which made it all worthwhile.

  She shoved a spoonful of chocolate gelato into her mouth and said, “I’m thinking about wearing body armor on this one. We get caught in the room, there’s no escape, and these guys shoot first, ask questions later.”

  I said, “If you think you need it, put it on, but we aren’t getting caught.”

  She took another spoonful and said, “So you don’t need it?”

  I started walking up the outside stairs to avoid the front desk and said, “Not today. We’ll know in plenty of time to leave.”