Execute Authority

by Dalton Fury

  After leaving the injured interpreter at a local hospital, Raynor did not see him again, nor did he expect to—Miric was blacklisted—but rumor had it that the young man had lost his left eye as a result of the scuffle in the woods.

  An eye-for-an-eye misfire.

  A few weeks later, Arab terrorists crashed hijacked passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and what little interest the administration had in rolling up the architects of genocide in the Balkans evaporated completely. Ten more years would pass before Ratko Mladic’s arrest, culminating in a lengthy trial before the war crimes tribunal, which was still ongoing.

  In the short term, Raynor found himself in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, for a very different but equally frustrating manhunt, and he would spend much of the next fifteen years hunting Islamic extremists and fighting in both declared and undeclared wars in the Middle East and Africa. From time to time he would hear rumors of an unusually skillful enemy sniper working those battlefields, moving from one conflict to the next. A lone-wolf mercenary who showed up in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Chechnya, and then moved on. A killer who signed his work with a unique and grisly signature: a bullet through his target’s left eye.

  There was no conclusive evidence to support the theory that all the killings were the work of some quasi-mythic assassin—a Carlos the Jackal–type figure. The eye shots could have been a coincidence after all, but Raynor didn’t believe that.

  Shiner—Rasim Miric—was real, and now Raynor knew it for certain.

  FOUR

  The plain face with a slightly crooked nose and dark hair were mostly as Kolt remembered. His cheeks looked a little fuller. Better fed. His skin was creased and weathered, giving him the appearance of someone much older. He definitely wasn’t a teenager anymore, but Raynor recalled that even in his youth, Miric had looked old beyond his years.

  It was the eyes that really caught Raynor’s attention and clinched the positive ID; they didn’t quite match each other, and when his right eye glanced over in Raynor’s direction, the left one didn’t follow.

  Glass eye. It’s Shiner. No doubt about it.

  He was just fifty feet away, walking by himself on the edge of the trail, looking at the man on the police motorcycle with innocent curiosity and reasonable apprehension, just like everyone else. Raynor put on his best poker face as he calmly squeezed the clutch and tapped the shift pedal to neutral. He reached down with his feet, letting them drag as the motorcycle used up the last of its momentum. He needed to get closer, close enough to take the other man down without endangering any innocent bystanders.

  Something must have given him away.

  There was no warning, no change of expression or look of alarm on the bland face. Without any provocation, the sniper dashed forward, plowing into the family that had been walking just ahead of him, only a few yards from Raynor.

  Kolt’s immediate response was to plant his feet on the ground, stopping the bike completely, and draw the Glock from his appendix holster, but as he twisted around in the saddle to acquire the target, he saw that Shiner had picked up a human shield. When he had bulldozed through the midst of the tourist family, the sniper had seized hold of one of the kids, and now he had one arm wrapped around the child, half carrying, half dragging him down the path. Shiner was shorter than average, making the boy seem even bigger than he really was.

  Kolt lined the fleeing sniper’s head up with the business end of the Glock and started to exert pressure on the trigger.

  Reflex shooting with zero hesitation on paper targets, where at close range there was little chance of accidentally hitting the two-dimensional hostage, was one thing. But in the real world, with every step the sniper took away from Kolt the pucker factor increased and the odds of actually scoring a hit diminished. Yes, Raynor had the shot and he was going to take it, but even though he was confident in his ability, he wasn’t cavalier about the potential risk.

  Then a shrieking woman stepped in front of him, chasing after the man who had just taken her son.

  Raynor jerked the pistol up, letting go of the trigger before it broke. “Shit,” he rasped.

  Shiner was now twenty yards down the trail, and the woman was still in the way. After a couple more steps, the sniper let go of his hostage, thrusting him into the woman’s path, and then plunged to the left, heading off-trail, into the woods.

  Raynor jammed the Glock back into its holster and grabbed the handlebars again, trying to clutch, shift, and accelerate all at the same time. The bike lurched, almost stalling, then shot forward up the trail. Kolt hauled the front end around, leaning the opposite way to avoid laying the bike on its side, and headed into the woods in pursuit.

  As he steered diagonally across the slope, weaving through the trees, he caught glimpses of his quarry through the screen of pine boughs. In this terrain, the bike’s horsepower afforded little advantage, but once the sniper emerged, it would make all the difference.

  Kolt groped for the push-to-talk. “Got him. On the southwest footpath.”

  Even as he said it, the woods abruptly ended and Raynor found himself looking down from a waist-high retaining wall onto the street beyond. The fleeing sniper had just leapt from the abutment, and was stumbling forward across the pavement right into the path of a car—a little silver Volkswagen Polo. The car screeched to a halt, but there wasn’t enough stopping distance, and Shiner slammed onto the hood.

  Raynor faced a similar problem, except he didn’t have time to stop short of the drop-off. He twisted the throttle hard, propelling the motorcycle forward, and as it shot out over the edge, he planted his feet on the side pegs and pulled up on the handlebars with all his might, lifting the front wheel higher.

  The landing sucked just about as much as he expected it to. The back wheel slammed down onto the pavement with a screech, the impact jolting up through his legs, slamming his ass down onto the saddle and driving the Glock into his nuts. A stab of pain shot through his lower back. Then the front wheel came down. The shocks absorbed most of the energy, but the bike immediately started to wobble, and for a fleeting instant Raynor was sure he was going to spill it, but resisting the urge to fight with the steering, he gave it some more throttle.

  To his complete amazement, it worked.

  As the bike righted itself, he turned up the paved street, away from the stalled VW, but only long enough to get the machine back under control. He carved a tight 180 and came around just as Shiner hauled the driver—a middle-aged woman—out of the car and took her place behind the wheel.

  Raynor opened the throttle, but Shiner had too much of a head start. The VW pulled away before he could cross half the distance, heading along the road that skirted the base of the mountain.

  Raynor backed off, pacing the other vehicle. Trying to shoot while driving the motorcycle wasn’t feasible—there was a reason the Greek cops rode double—and trying to run Shiner off the road wouldn’t work either. Kolt simply wasn’t in a position to do much to stop Shiner by himself, but fortunately, he didn’t have to.

  He shouted a description of the vehicle into the clip mic, along with his best guess at a direction of travel. He couldn’t make heads or tails of the little blue placards on each street corner, so “heading north, parallel to the mountain” and “turning west” and “I can hear sirens to the south” was the best he could do. A few of the storefronts had legible names, so he dutifully reported these as well.

  Shiner drove like someone being chased, blowing through intersections without stopping, blaring a warning with the VW’s horn and passing slower vehicles, sometimes nudging them out of the way, sometimes veering onto the sidewalk to get around a jam. Yet, for all the chaos he was causing, he seemed to be moving with a purpose other than simply getting away from the pursuing motorcycle.

  After about a minute of this, both the sirens and Slapshot caught up to Raynor.

  “Racer, they need you to back off. Their jurisdiction, brother. Hold what you have.”

 
“Negative,” Raynor fired back. “I have PID. It’s Shiner.” As far as Kolt Raynor was concerned, no further explanation was necessary.

  “Understood,” Slapshot replied. “But you don’t need to be the one to bag him, boss. He just iced their PM. It’s their ass wound.”

  Kolt could tell from the other man’s tone that he was struggling to keep his anger in check, anger almost certainly directed at Raynor for taking off on his own. One of Slapshot’s primary duties as squadron sergeant major was to keep Raynor out of trouble, and he was probably regretting that he hadn’t been able to tackle and zip-tie Racer when the craziness started.

  Raynor let the admonition slide without comment, but he did not back off. Instead, he started flipping switches on the console until the siren started shrieking and the revolving blue emergency light mounted behind him began flashing.

  In his other ear, Raynor heard Simmons with an update on POTUS’s ETA at the airport, and realized that barely five minutes had passed since the assassination.

  The silver VW turned northeast onto a major thoroughfare. Shiner floored it, driving down the center line. The symphony of police sirens grew louder behind Raynor, with additional patrol cars and motorcycles joining the pursuit, some pulling in ahead of him. A pair of police cars appeared ahead and cut the road, but Shiner simply made a sharp left and headed down a narrow side street. Raynor was right behind him.

  Shiner took a couple more turns, found another main boulevard, but then after just half a mile, turned into a run-down neighborhood with block after block of seedy apartment flats liberally adorned with spray-painted graffiti. The streets were lined with parked cars, leaving only enough room for one-way traffic.

  Without warning, the VW’s brake lights flashed and the car came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the street. Raynor hit the brakes, gearing down, but didn’t come to a full stop until the car door was thrown open and Shiner burst from the interior. The sniper dashed toward the entrance to one of the apartment buildings, never once glancing in Raynor’s direction.

  Raynor braked hard, laid the bike on its side, and leapt free, palming his holstered Glock to be sure he didn’t lose it. He sprinted after the fleeing killer, but in the instant Shiner disappeared through the entrance, two men stepped out to cover his retreat. Raynor’s eyes fixed on their weapons—from his down-the-barrel vantage, he couldn’t tell make or model—and he drew his own on the run.

  They hesitated. Kolt didn’t.

  A controlled pair dropped the guy on the left. Kolt shifted, still running toward the remaining crow, knowing that if he didn’t kill the guy right fucking now, his survival would depend on luck and body armor. But instead of returning fire, the crow did something completely bat-shit crazy: He dropped his weapon and charged.

  The guy was probably in full panic mode, defaulting to his primary threat response setting, which in his case was purely physical. He probably hadn’t received any kind of combat training, so when faced with a life-or-death situation, his reptile brain took over. The reasons for it didn’t matter. He was a crow—an enemy combatant—and armed or not, Raynor had no compunction about wasting him.

  But he didn’t.

  In the split second it took him to put his sights center mass, it occurred to him that the crow might be more useful alive than dead. Shiner was a mercenary, a lone-wolf shooter for hire, but this loser was probably with the group that had hired him, and might have some valuable operational intel.

  And since he wasn’t about to shoot back, taking him alive was actually doable.

  Raynor lowered his stance to meet the charge, and a moment later, when they collided, he immediately regretted his decision.

  The guy might have been shit with firearms, but he evidently knew a thing or two about hand-to-hand. Raynor could almost hear Slapshot chiding him. “They call it Greco-Roman wrestling for a reason.”

  Only this hit felt more like something from an NFL game. Despite bracing himself, and cleverly trying for a throw, Raynor was put on his ass by the impact, momentarily stunned, the wind knocked out of him. The crow staggered back a little, shaking his head, but recovered quickly and moved in, trying to circle around to Kolt’s left side.

  Despite the fresh waves of pain radiating up from his sacrum, and the fact that he couldn’t seem to draw a breath, Raynor’s body remembered what to do. He bent one knee, planted his foot on the ground, and used it to pivot on his butt so that he was still facing his opponent. He got the other leg up, ready to kick at the man if he tried to move in.

  Which he did.

  As the crow made a grab for him, Kolt used his bent leg to propel himself back, and then hooked his elevated foot behind the man’s right knee, sweeping his leg out from under him and putting him flat on his back.

  Raynor’s breath returned with a gasp as he erupted out of his seated guard position and pounced, throwing himself across the other man’s body. Kolt rolled him over, wrapped his legs around the crow’s waist, immobilizing him, and then went for the chokehold.

  As his opponent fought a futile battle to stay conscious, Raynor heard footsteps coming from behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw Greek policemen stampeding toward the apartment entrance.

  For the first time since initiating pursuit, Raynor’s instincts were telling him it was time for some tactical patience.

  Shiner had not chosen this place at random. It was probably his base of operations, which meant he would have weapons and probably more confederates waiting inside. The two crows at the entrance had bought Shiner plenty of time to set up an ambush. Or he might have an escape route out the back. Shiner wasn’t stupid enough to let himself be cornered. He had led the pursuit here intentionally.

  This was a trap.

  Raynor’s sixth sense was positively on fire.

  “Wait!” he shouted, shaking his head. “You need to spread out. Cordon off the area.”

  The crow in Raynor’s arms had stopped struggling, so he let go and waved the cops back, but his sign language seemed to be no more comprehensible to them than his words. The nearest officer made a cutting gesture and growled something in Greek, probably telling Raynor to get out of the way or maybe to fuck off.

  “Damn it,” Kolt snarled. “Pull back. It’s an ambush.”

  The cop pushed past him into the courtyard with several more of his buddies in tow.

  Raynor hastily stuffed the unconscious crow’s wrists into a pair of flex-cuffs, then keyed his mic. “Slap, we’ve got him pinned down in an apartment block, but something stinks here. You’ve got to convince the cops to pull back, go into siege mode, or a lot of people are going—”

  The firecracker pop of semiautomatic pistol fire reverberated in the courtyard, intruding on the transmission. Raynor ducked reflexively, then looked up, searching the landings overhead to locate the site of the battle.

  That was when the world exploded.

  FIVE

  Raynor dragged himself through the haze of smoke and dust, getting out of the way of the police and emergency workers who were heading into the blast zone. From a safer distance, he could see smoke billowing from the second-story windows of the flat.

  It was not the first time he’d gotten his bell rung, nor was it the worst. Not even close. The blast had stunned him, knocked him flat, and pelted him with concrete fragments, some as large as both his fists put together, but he was back on his feet in a matter of seconds, or at least it seemed that way. He might have lost consciousness for a minute or two. It was hard to say, really. He ached all over, and knew that he would probably feel a lot worse in the hours and days to come, but didn’t think he had sustained anything worse than scrapes and bruises. He was doing better than the police officers who had pushed past him at the entrance. They had been standing at ground zero when the bomb inside detonated.

  Raynor reached for the push-to-talk, discovering only then that his radios weren’t working. His phone, however, shielded inside an impact-resistant Otter Box, had survived intact. He went to his
contacts and initiated a call. His ears were still ringing, masking the signaling tone, then he heard Slapshot’s voice. Barely.

  “Boss! We heard the shooter blew himself up. You okay?”

  Raynor wasn’t sure where to start. “Just get here.”

  “Hey, we’re en route, Racer, hang on.”

  Raynor ended the call and turned back toward the blast site. Something about the scene didn’t sit right with him.

  Shiner wasn’t some newly radicalized jihadist, itching for a chance to die a martyr’s death and go out in a literal blaze of glory. He was a sniper, someone who preferred killing from a distance, concealment over confrontation. He certainly hadn’t survived as long as he had by making stupid decisions.

  Had this been the exception? Had the unexpectedly swift pursuit caused him to panic? Or had he used the bomb to cover his tracks, slipping out a back window after rigging the front door to blow?

  Yeah, Raynor thought, nodding. That’s what he did. It’s what I would have done.

  * * *

  Raynor waited until they were back at the airport, in the repurposed hangar building they had been using as a combination bunk room and tactical operations center, to place a call to Colonel Webber at Fort Bragg. Kolt did not doubt that his commanding officer already knew about the incident, and he was a little surprised that Webber hadn’t tried to call him first.

  One reason for Raynor’s delay in making contact was that he wanted to allow some time for things to settle down. In the aftermath of an international incident like this, there would be a tornado of conflicting reports and wild rumors, and truth be told, he didn’t have enough information yet to answer the questions he knew the Delta Force commander would ask. Mostly, though, he was stalling because he knew Webber would probably chew his ass out for going Lone Ranger after Shiner.