Execute Authority

by Dalton Fury

  POTUS wasn’t expected for another two hours, but the lawn of War Memorial Plaza, just to the east of city hall, was already crowded with people hoping to catch a glimpse of the president, or, more likely, hurl insults at him. Many of them were carrying hand-painted signs with angry accusatory messages directed at both the president and the Baltimore PD. Tensions between the city government and the mostly black, economically disadvantaged population had been hovering near critical mass for years, and the outcome of the recent election had evidently left residents feeling even more disenfranchised.

  Between the crowds and the towering baroque building that housed the municipal government stood a phalanx of BPD officers in riot gear, and a smaller contingent of Secret Service special agents, some of whom Hawk recognized from Athens. She wasn’t too worried about being recognized by the latter. They were too busy doing their job, looking for threats instead of looking for familiar faces. But if Racer was right, the real threat was a lot farther away.

  Standing in front of city hall, Hawk scanned the horizon in every direction, looking for places from which a sniper of exceptional skill might—hypothetically speaking—try to take a shot at POTUS. City hall itself blocked the view to the west. There were several tall buildings to the south, but those had already been checked and cleared by the police. So had all the structures in direct line of sight to the west, which included one of Baltimore’s most notable landmarks, the Phoenix Shot Tower. The 234-foot-tall redbrick tower would have been a perfect spot for the sniper to set up if not for two things. First, it was too close, barely two hundred meters from city hall. Second, it was already occupied by a Secret Service counterassault team.

  The high-rise buildings of downtown blocked the line of sight in nearly every other direction except almost due north, along the Jones Falls Expressway corridor. Hawk stared in that direction, wishing she possessed the visual acuity her code name suggested. If Shiner really was the shit-hot marksman that Raynor believed he was, then that was the only direction from which he might be able to strike.

  “Shaft,” she said, pointing north. “How ’bout we go that way?”

  As they made their way north, through the downtown business district, Hawk kept checking behind her to verify a direct line of sight with city hall. The buildings to either side of the street averaged about six to eight stories high, and as they continued north into the Mt. Vernon neighborhood, the buildings were even shorter, but there were high-rise buildings visible in the distance at the far limit of her vision. She tagged them using the RaptorX Mobile app on her phone—an open-source version of the satellite mapping system used by the Unit and other military agencies—checking the distance of each to city hall. One likely candidate, a twenty-three-story redbrick condo building, was just over 1,200 meters out. Another, twenty stories high, was almost 1,350 meters.

  “Clear lines of sight on both of those,” she muttered.

  Shaft remained skeptical. “It’s a longshot.”

  “No kidding.”

  * * *

  Miric brought his eye to the spotter scope. He had no difficulty locating the woman to whom Dooley was referring. She stood almost directly at the center of the field of view. He couldn’t make out her facial features, but her slight build and distinctive figure were readily apparent, especially in contrast to the men standing around her. And, as Dooley had suggested, she appeared to be looking directly at them.

  “It is coincidence,” Miric said. “With the naked eye, she cannot even see building.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. But it’s still kind of freaky.”

  The woman kept staring for a few more seconds, but eventually turned to one of the men with her. Miric saw a flicker of movement behind her, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Then, just as quickly, she returned her gaze to whatever it was that had captured her attention, this time raising an arm and pointing a finger that seemed to perfectly align with the scope’s central aiming reticle.

  “Dude,” Dooley whispered. “She sees us.”

  Miric did not know what to say.

  The woman lowered her arm and began moving, walking in the direction she had just indicated. The three men who had been standing beside her followed.

  “They’re coming!” Dooley said, his voice now rising to a dangerous volume. “What do we do?”

  Miric’s jaw clenched tight. As impossible as it seemed, they had been discovered. “There is only one thing we can do,” he whispered.

  * * *

  “How far out did the SS guy say they checked the perimeter buildings?” Hawk asked.

  “One klick, typically,” Shaft said. “Rarely more than that, for numerous reasons.”

  “Shiner used a Dragunov in Greece,” Hawk said. “That’s within the max effective range for that rifle, right?”

  “We’ll check them out,” Shaft said, though his tone was skeptical.

  “Shit!” Hawk said. “Did you see those two light flashes?”

  “No. Reflections?”

  “I’d swear on it,” Hawk said.

  They set a brisk pace and reached the closest of the two five minutes later. Shaft flashed his ersatz Secret Service creds to the young African-American woman at the sales desk. “Hi…” He checked the plastic nameplate on the desktop. “Grace? We’re doing a routine security assessment. I guess you heard the president’s in town?”

  “Ugh,” Grace complained. “Don’t remind me. Everyone’s talking about it. I wish they would get a clue.”

  Shaft nodded patiently. “We need to have a look at the rooftop, Grace.”

  “The rooftop isn’t one of our public areas.”

  Shaft gave her a disarming smile. “That’s why we need you to show us up.”

  * * *

  As they rode the elevator to the top, the four Delta operators planned their next move, communicating with nothing more than eye movements and head nods. Hawk would run interference with Grace, while the other three assaulters checked every corner of the rooftop. Even though the odds of finding Shiner there were slim, they were going to execute the search with the same level of professionalism as in any other operation—live or simulated. That was the only way to get the job done and, more importantly, ensure that you made it back to the squadron bar for a cold one at the end of the day.

  Hawk kept Grace occupied with small talk on the elevator ride up, and then, as soon as the woman unlocked the door to the stairwell leading up to the roof, deftly maneuvered her out of the way so that Venti and Joker could go through first. Grace didn’t even seem to notice. Once outside, Hawk let the other woman take the lead again, moving toward the edge of the roof. From the corner of her eye, she could see Joker cautiously peeking around the corner of a concrete structure—probably the mechanical room—before disappearing around it.

  There was no sign of anyone else on the roof, but Hawk remained vigilant, surreptitiously slicing the pie as she moved past a large metal vent cover near the southwest corner. When she and Grace reached the edge of the roof facing south, she surveyed the urban mosaic below. It took her a moment to find the distant green rectangle of War Memorial Plaza and City Hall beside it, but when she did, she immediately recognized that the roof was a viable shooting position. With the right weapon, a skilled sniper would absolutely have a shot.

  But there was no sniper.

  She turned to see her mates approaching from different corners of the roof. Shaft gave an almost imperceptible head shake.

  Nothing here.

  Feeling slightly deflated, Hawk turned to Grace. “How often is the roof accessed for maintenance and things?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe twice, three times a week?” Grace said.

  “Any services yesterday or today?” Hawk said as she trailed off, realizing that something wasn’t right. She glanced to her right, checking the southeast corner, which was wide open and empty, then raised a hand, signaling her mates to close on her. Only then did she turn back to Grace.

  “That vent in the corner,” she whisper
ed. “How long has it been here?”

  Grace glanced back, shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t come up here.”

  Hawk raised a finger to her lips as she drew the M1911 from her shoulder bag. Grace’s eyes went wide in alarm, but she said nothing. Hawk waved the others closer, keeping the weapon aimed at the vent cover. Now that she was actually looking at it more closely, it was obvious that the structure was fake. A prop. There were no rivets or seams, just overlapping sheets of metal forming a slightly oblong cube, about one meter high and wide, and almost two meters long. But the real giveaway was the placement. There was no reason to put a large exhaust fan directly above a residential unit, but it was the perfect spot for a shooting blind.

  Shaft and the others approached, their weapons drawn and likewise aimed at the metal structure. Shaft nodded to Venti, who crept closer, and then signaled that he would go on three.

  Hawk squared her shoulders and found her trigger as Venti started counting silently with raised fingers.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  He ripped away one of the panels, and then rolled to the side, coming up in a crouch with his pistol aimed into the camouflaged blind.

  “Clear!” Shaft called out.

  Hawk relaxed her finger. The blind was empty.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. There wasn’t a person inside, but there were objects. Dozens of water bottles—some empty, some obviously filled with piss—were strewn haphazardly around the interior. Several corrugated boxes had been flattened and stacked to form a raised platform, and several sandbags had been arranged on top of it to form a stable firing position.

  Venti’s face twisted in disgust. “That hide reeks, man.”

  Shaft leaned in for a closer look. “Someone’s been living in here. A few days, at least.”

  Behind them, Grace let out a squeak of dismay.

  “He was here,” Hawk said, realizing for the first time that Raynor had been right. Shiner was real.

  “Good call, Hawk,” Venti said. “You definitely were picking up optics or spotter’s glass.”

  “Hard to believe that spooked them from this far away,” Shaft said.

  “He saw us coming up the street,” Hawk said, thinking aloud. She turned to Grace. “Did someone leave right before we got here? Someone you didn’t recognize?”

  Grace stared at her, goggle-eyed and mute, so Hawk gripped the woman’s shoulders and gave her a shake. “Grace. Stay with me. Did anyone leave right before we showed up?”

  “No.” A pause. “I mean, I recognized everyone who left. They all live here. Except the couriers.”

  “Couriers? As in more than one? When did they leave?”

  “Maybe five minutes ago,” Grace said, clearly rattled by the flurry of questions. “They were early today. I didn’t actually see them come in. Someone else must have let them in.”

  “Describe them,” Hawk said. “Do you have security video cameras?”

  Grace shrugged helplessly. “The cameras are just decoys, they don’t really do anything. They’re just the package guys, though.”

  “Black? White? Tall? Heavy?”

  “White. I think the shorter one is Russian. I don’t know about the new guy. I really don’t talk to them much. Oh, he wears an eye patch. The Russian, not the new guy.”

  “Eye patch?” Hawk looked over at Shaft, but he was already dialing his phone.

  FOURTEEN

  Rasim Miric was angry. Angry at whoever it was that had interfered, outmaneuvered him. Angry at himself for having let it happen. It was not the first time he had been forced to abandon a position, but it was the first time he could remember being caught without a backup plan.

  He had miscalculated the vast security checks before a POTUS speech, much more thorough than those carried out by officials in Greece. He also realized he should have never let Lizard view the objective area with a spotting scope during the daylight, due to the sun reflection. Yes, he knew better.

  In any endgame, it was necessary to commit completely to a course of action, but there was always the possibility of the opponent doing the unexpected, making a move that defied logic. A skillful player weighed the risk, accepted it, but also established contingency plans. He had failed to do that. He had invested himself completely in a successful outcome. Now he had to figure out how to regain the advantage.

  With only a few slight changes, he was able to utilize his original egress plan to escape both the high-rise and the city. The first thing he had done was order Dooley to break down and pack up the rifle. He had originally planned to leave it behind, but since it had not yet accomplished its purpose, there was no sense in simply abandoning it. He might still have need of it. Everything else had to be left behind, which was unfortunate, since it would confirm to the American authorities that an attempt had very nearly been made on the life of their president, but there was nothing to be done about that.

  After departing the building, they discarded their courier uniforms, and Miric took the further step of donning dark glasses and deploying a white guide cane. If the authorities questioned the tenants of the building, they would be on the lookout for a man with an eye patch, not one evidently blind in both eyes. The ruse got the two of them to Miric’s escape car, parked a few blocks away.

  That part had gone off mostly as planned, even with last-second modifications, but once in the car and on the move, Dooley had started melting down.

  “What do we do now, man? They’re gonna know.”

  “Shut up,” Miric hissed. “I need to think. Just drive.”

  This was much worse than the close call in Greece; not because he had nearly been discovered, but because he had failed to carry out the hit. All the pieces were still in place, the preparations made, and now it was all useless.

  “They’ll get our fingerprints,” Dooley said, ignoring the admonition. “Our DNA. We’re so screwed.”

  Miric turned to look at him. He was not particularly worried about the physical evidence that had been left behind. Knowing his identity would not help the authorities track him down.

  Dooley, however, was another matter. Maintaining the young man’s anonymity had never been part of the plan, but then neither had this failure. Miric had been planning to kill him at the first convenient opportunity, when they were well away from Baltimore, but now it occurred to him that perhaps Lizard had not completely outlived his usefulness.

  Maybe there was a way to salvage this mess.

  “Have you ever been arrested?” Miric asked.

  Dooley shook his head.

  “You were not in the military?” Miric already knew the answer to that question. Dooley had opted for the militia as an alternative to serving in the army of what he considered to be an illegitimate government. “They do not have your DNA or fingerprints in their database. Besides, what crime have you actually committed? Trespassing? No one will know what we intended to do unless you tell them. Are you going to tell them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then drive. For now, you will go back to your life as if none of this happened.”

  Dooley contemplated this for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. I’ll just … Shit. I’ve missed too much work. No call, no show. My ass is so fired. How am I going to explain where I’ve been?”

  Miric sighed. “I’m sure you will think of something to explain your absence. As for your employment, you need not worry about that. You have other work now. Unfinished business.”

  Dooley looked over in alarm. “What? No way, man. I can’t go through all that again. I’m out.”

  “You are warrior, now!” Miric said sharply. “While warrior lives, he fights. Quitting is not a choice for you.”

  The young man looked back at him, eyes wide. “When are we going to…?”

  “I do not know,” Miric admitted truthfully. “But soon.”

  FIFTEEN

  Kolt Raynor was already en route to the compound when he got the call from Webber’s secretary.
The message relayed was short and one-sided. “Colonel Webber needs you to report to his office, ASAP,” Joyce had said, and then hung up without elaborating further.

  Raynor took the terse message as a bad sign. Hawk’s discovery of the shooting blind on the rooftop in Baltimore had pulled back the curtain on the squadron’s pseudo-unauthorized training activity, and even though they had almost certainly stopped the assassination attempt before it happened, not to mention handing the police and Secret Service a substantial amount of physical evidence—DNA, fingerprints, some fuzzy outdoor surveillance camera footage of Shiner and his as-yet-unidentified accomplice—Raynor got the distinct impression that Webber was not calling him back to the Unit to congratulate him.

  He decided to make one quick stop before entering the lion’s den. When he reached the Delta Force compound, hidden away in a remote section of Fort Bragg, he went straight to the squadron bay, shaved, and dumped his civvies for his best set of sterile Multicams.

  Webber’s secretary wore a concerned expression, which Raynor took as another bad sign. “Hello, Kolt, go right in. He’s expecting you.”

  “Thanks, Joyce,” he told her, managing a wan smile.

  Kolt noticed Joyce lean forward, closer to him. “Just a heads up, Kolt, but Major Taylor and Colonel Johnson are in there too.”

  Kolt’s eyebrows raised and he frowned slightly at hearing both the Unit JAG lawyer and psych were there too. “Coincidence?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, the more the merrier. Thanks, Joyce.”

  He took one final breath and then opened the door and strode in.

  Webber sat at his desk, statue-still, but Raynor knew the man well enough to see the barely contained anger under the surface. Kolt advanced to within two steps of the desk—the prescribed distance for reporting to a superior officer—and stood at attention. He could make out the other two in his peripheral vision, but figured he needed to be a little more formal. Kolt thought about saluting and offering the bullshit conventional greeting, but such protocols were never observed in the building, and judging by his mood, Webber would probably assume Raynor was being a smart-ass anyway.