The Guilty

by David Baldacci

  Gathers followed him up with the gear, two duffel bags’ worth. They both sat down and started to assemble the tools they would need tonight to accomplish the mission.

  Spotting scope, weather and wind analyzers, and, of course, the sniper rifle.

  There was one other tool required. There were no windows up here, so Robie had to make one.

  He used the battery-powered saw to cut two holes of different sizes in the side of the metal. He used a suction cup to grip the metal, and when the cut was complete, he pulled the metal toward him and deposited it in his duffel.

  One hole was large enough for his muzzle and his scope to fit through simultaneously. The other hole was for the spotting scope to be used by Gathers.

  Each picked up their respective “weapons” and inserted them through the holes. Robie did a sweep of the street while Gathers did the same with his spotting scope. This was going to be a far longer shot than Robie’s last mission, nearly twenty-two hundred meters.

  A British soldier currently held the world record for the longest sniper shot. In 2009, he had killed two Afghan insurgents at a distance of nearly 2,500 meters. The shots were so far away that it had taken the .338 Lapua Magnum rounds nearly five seconds to reach and kill their targets.

  Robie’s shot would be almost three hundred meters less in distance. But the conditions were far from ideal, and he would be shooting in between a pair of buildings that could create a wind tunnel that might foul the shot. That was another reason that Gathers was here as the spotter. He would feed Robie all the information that he needed. All Robie had to focus on was making the kill when he pulled the trigger.

  The good thing about this shot was that the target’s security forces had never even considered the abandoned warehouse a potential threat. It was simply too far away from the event that would be taking place over a mile from here.

  Well, Robie hoped to prove them wrong about that tonight.

  Robie checked and rechecked his ammo, and then made sure his weapon was pristine and in perfect working order. While he did that, Gathers was soaking up every bit of data that would have an impact on the shot Robie had to make.

  When that was done both men sat back. They each ate a power bar, downing it with some G2.

  Gathers said, “Heard about your last mission.”

  Robie folded up the plastic wrapper from the power bar and stuck it in his duffel along with the empty plastic bottle. Plastic wrappers held fingerprints and used beverage bottles contained DNA. Though his were on no database anywhere, the key principle was that no detail was too small to be overlooked.

  “After the shot we have thirty seconds to get out of here,” Robie said. “They’ll be waiting for us with the RIB,” he added, referring to a rigid inflatable boat. “Ten-minute ride on the water, then we load onto a chopper. That’ll carry us to the harbor. We board the freighter, which leaves three minutes after we get there.”

  Gathers nodded. He knew all this, but it never hurt to run through it multiple times.

  Over the next few minutes Robie caught Gathers glancing at him and decided to just get it over with.

  “You have an issue?” he asked, staring across at the other man.

  Gathers shrugged. “You know why I’m here.”

  “To be my spotter.”

  “You work alone, Robie, everybody knows that.”

  “Not always.”

  “Almost always. You accidentally killed a kid. Could have happened to any of us.”

  “But it didn’t happen to you.”

  “I’m here because they have—”

  “Doubts? Do you have doubts that I can make this shot?”

  “Not if you’re the same Will Robie, no.”

  “But if I’m not the same Will Robie?”

  “Then I’ve been instructed to make the shot.”

  Robie sat back on his haunches. This he had not been told.

  Gathers obviously read this on his face and said, “I thought you should know. In fact, we can reverse roles now, if you want. No one will know the difference.”

  “Have you even made a shot from over two thousand meters, Gathers?”

  “Nearly so. On the practice range.”

  “Nearly so. On the practice range, where conditions are ideal.” Robie pointed upward where rain was still pinging off the roof. “These conditions are not ideal. In fact, they’re horrendous for a long-range shot. Do you still think you can make the kill here and now?”

  Gathers drew a long breath. “Yes, I think I can.”

  “Well, let’s hope we don’t have to find out because ‘I think I can’ doesn’t cut it.”

  Chapter

  5

  TWO HOURS LATER Robie got another communication.

  “It’s a final go,” he said to Gathers.

  Gathers nodded and started reading his weather instruments again and taking looks through his scope.

  Robie picked up his rifle and edged the muzzle out through the hole he’d cut. The barrel was hit by rain, but his scope was still under the roof and dry. He placed his cheek against the synthetic stock and took a look through his scope. This piece of optics was the best in the world, an engineering marvel that allowed one to see great distances with superhuman accuracy.

  “Feed me,” said Robie.

  Gathers started giving him the weather and distance information. Robie took all of this in and made corresponding and necessary adjustments to his optics. Calibrating against the weather was critical here. With the long distance that the ordnance needed to travel, the elements would have a terrific opportunity to screw the shot. And then there was gravity, which while undeniably present at every spot on earth, was also, unlike the weather, highly predictable. He sighted through it again and the glass atrium came into view.

  “It’s helpful they have a flag on top of the building,” said Gathers. “Makes the wind call easier, like a wind sock at an airport.”

  “That was why our people had it put there,” replied Robie curtly.

  He looked at his watch and adjusted his ear mic. The voice came on and updated Robie. He gazed through his scope again and people came into view.

  The party was just getting started. The man of honor would arrive in about twenty minutes. He was incredibly wealthy in the way only a man who had plundered an entire country could become. Had he remained content with that, he would not have been targeted. But he had committed the cardinal sin of deciding to fund terrorist activities that had struck directly at America and her allies. For this, Robie had been dialed up to put a stop to his heartbeat and along with it his ambitions.

  The event tonight was the man’s fifty-eighth birthday. He would not celebrate another.

  In an impoverished nation the limos gliding down the street might as well have been figments of a country’s collective imagination—or nightmare, rather. But the country had a wealthy few and they were all coming out tonight because not to do so would probably ensure their deaths.

  Since these folks had a lot more to lose than their bedraggled fellow citizens, they came, like the obedient pets they were. What good was it to be rich, if you were dead?

  “Wind call,” said Robie.

  Gathers checked his instruments and gave him the required data. Robie made the necessary adjustment on his optics. The biggest problem, he felt, was the gap between the buildings. The funneled wind there could do things that it wasn’t doing here or at the other end where the bullet would strike. He would have to penetrate glass, and unlike his last mission, at this far greater distance, the glass would have a profound impact on a bullet that had already traveled nearly a mile and a third.

  And the drop of the ordnance had to be carefully calculated. That was what the spotter, range finder, and weather conditions would determine.

  If Robie had placed his crosshairs on the target’s chest and fired, by the time the bullet had arrived nearly five seconds later, it would have struck the floor. The calculations involved were complex and there was no margin of err
or. It involved Newtonian dynamics, gravitational pull, and mathematical formulas that might well have confounded Einstein.

  As the time drew closer for the shot, Gathers slid over to squat to the right and slightly behind Robie. That way, using the same opening Robie was firing through, he could follow the trace of the bullet through his scope. This was necessary if the first shot did not accomplish the kill. In a combat zone there were usually opportunities for follow-up shots. In this scenario there probably wouldn’t be. If the first shot missed, people would scatter, and the target would be surrounded and pulled to safety.

  But since the bullet would take nearly five seconds to get to its target, Gathers might have the opportunity to call out adjustments to a second shot, if needed, before the first shot had even struck. If they were lucky the second shot would find its target. If they were really lucky they wouldn’t need the second shot.

  The target arrived and swept into the room. He was a big man whose appetite for food and drink neatly matched that of his desire for wealth and power. He sat down in his chair at the head of the table.

  “Vee one,” came over Robie’s ear mic.

  “Last call,” said Robie immediately.

  Gathers made his final calculations, focusing on the wind tunnel and the flag between the two buildings. He fed this information to Robie, who made the slight, nearly imperceptible changes to his optics.

  “Dialed in and locked,” said Robie. He would make no more changes. With his naked eye he looked once more at the flag. Then he settled down with his scope. From this point until the shot fired, his optics were his only eyes. He had to trust in them, like a pilot did his navigation instruments while flying through fog.

  His finger slid to the trigger guard.

  In his mind he mouthed the term, True Vee One.

  The target had picked up a glass of red wine. He was raising it up, as though to toast himself. He wore a tuxedo. The white shirt with the silver studs represented a huge bull’s-eye for Robie, but he would not be aiming there. Because ordnance dropped over distance, he was actually aiming at a spot above the target’s head. Everything was dialed in. Everything was ready to go. Gathers would tell him if the man moved from this spot.

  Everything about Robie began to relax: his blood pressure dropped, his heartbeat slowed, his respiration grew even and deep as he reached cold zero.

  Or rather all of those things should have happened.

  But they didn’t. Not a single one.

  His blood pressure was amped, his heart raced, and his breaths were more like gasps. He was stunned when, despite the coolness of the air, a drop of sweat slid down his forehead and leached into his left eye.

  He could not rub it away. Not now. He refocused. His finger moved to the trigger. Right before he touched the thinnest and most important piece of metal on his weapon—

  He saw the child.

  The little boy ran across the room and held his arms up to the man. He wanted to be picked up. The man did so, cradling the little boy against his chest.

  “Fire, Robie. Fire.”

  He thought the voice was coming from his head. But it wasn’t. It was coming from his ear mic.

  “Fire, now!”

  This order was not coming from his head or his ear mic.

  It was coming from Gathers, who squatted next to him.

  But the little boy was in his daddy’s arms. To kill him, Robie would have to kill the child.

  “Fire, Robie, fire!”

  Robie’s finger was frozen, a millimeter from the trigger.

  The shot rang out.

  Seconds later the glass tinkled and the man fell out of his chair, mortally wounded.

  Robie took his eye away from the optics and looked down at his finger. It had never touched the trigger.

  “Egress, egress!” the voice in his ear mic called out.

  Gathers was already pulling Robie to his feet.

  “Move, Robie, move.”

  In a daze Robie still managed to follow Gathers down the metal steps, their duffels over their shoulders. The next moment they were running pell-mell down narrow, dark streets toward the water.

  Robie remembered getting in the RIB.

  It took off fast and shot through the darkened water at a furious clip.

  Then came the ride in the chopper. It was brief and turbulent as hell as the storm kicked it up a notch higher.

  Ten minutes later they were hustling up the gangplank of the freighter.

  Three minutes after that the huge ship moved away from the pier and gathered speed as it headed across the bay and into vast and open ocean waters.

  Robie looked over at Gathers, who sat opposite him on the bunk in their cramped quarters.

  “The shot?”

  Gathers said, “They had a backup team in place. Just in case.”

  “You told me you would take the shot if I didn’t.”

  Gathers looked nervous. “I was under strict orders, Robie. I’m sorry.”

  Robie looked away.

  “But why didn’t you take the shot?” asked Gathers. “It was all lined up.”

  Robie looked at him incredulously. “Why didn’t I take the shot? The little boy, that’s why. He jumped right into the target’s arms an instant before I was going to fire. If I had, he’d be dead.”

  Gathers stared across at him, his features full of concern. “There was no little boy there, Robie.”

  On hearing this Robie simply stared at Gathers. But he wasn’t actually seeing the other man. He was seeing a little boy. A little boy who looked familiar, but he just couldn’t place him.

  Robie lay back on his bunk and didn’t move the rest of the trip.

  One question kept beating into his brain.

  Am I losing my mind?

  Chapter

  6

  LATE AT NIGHT.

  Washington, DC.

  A place filled with more acronym agencies than any other city on earth.

  When ordinary folks were asleep, others from these acronym platforms stayed awake keeping them safe.

  Or else spying on their fellow citizens.

  Robie walked the familiar path to the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which took him past the Lincoln Memorial. He didn’t look at the seated sixteenth president as he walked by. He had a lot to think about. And the darkness, with a bit of rain thrown in, had always been a good place for him to think.

  He reached the bridge, walked halfway across it, and then stopped and gazed down at the white-capped Potomac. No jets flew overhead following the river to their final destination, because Reagan National was closed due to nighttime sound ordinances.

  The wind-swept swirling waters far below neatly matched what he was thinking. It was all a mess inside his head.

  He had royally screwed up a mission. He had seen a child where there was no child. He had apparently hallucinated in the middle of a mission—a first for him. Hell, probably a first in Agency history.

  And, inexplicably, cold zero had never materialized for him. He stared down at his hands. They were trembling. He touched his forehead where the sweat bead had meandered before hitting him in the eye. Unless he figured this out, he was done. He couldn’t do his job. Which meant he was nothing.

  Officially, he had been placed on leave. Until he got things straightened out in his head, if he ever did, Robie would not be going back into the field.

  He stared down at the waters, and in their murky depths he once more saw the face. Only now he realized he had taken Sasha and, in his mind, changed her gender, moved her a thousand miles away, and given her another father, and along with it a reason for him not to take the shot.

  He should have known something was wrong. How could he have seen a little boy in his father’s arms if his scope was aimed at a spot above the man’s head?