Execute Authority

by Dalton Fury

  Connection lost.

  He thought nothing of it at first, but then noticed that the signal strength bars had all been replaced by the “no” symbol—a circle crossed with a backslash—indicating no reception whatsoever.

  He frowned, staring at the display for a moment, then attempted to dial the number anyway. Intermittent signal disruptions weren’t unheard of, and might clear up at any moment, but as soon as the phone displayed the message “No Connection,” he knew it was not a transient interruption.

  The significance of this filled him with apprehension. “The Secret Service is jamming radio signals.”

  “You said they would not do that,” protested one of the Russians.

  “I did not believe they would. It is standard procedure to use electronic countermeasures when traveling through unsecured areas, but this is a military base and a hospital. Signal jamming is very disruptive. They must have found Rasim and decided to take precautionary measures. We will have to arm the device manually.” He put the phone in his pocket and turned the key to start the van.

  The men exchanged anxious glances. Miric was not one of them and they did not care if he lived or died, but if the sniper had been killed, then it meant there was a chance the other member of their group, who had accompanied the sniper to the high-rise building in Bethesda, was dead as well. Mehmet, however, suspected there was another reason for their alarm.

  “Do not worry. I will set it for a delayed detonation. We will have plenty of time to get clear.”

  This was technically correct, but it was also a lie. He could not take the chance of something else going wrong. If the Secret Service was on an alert footing, they would probably be moving the president soon, which meant there could be no further delay at all.

  As soon as he reached the bomb, Mehmet would detonate it and they would all die together.

  THIRTY

  Raynor and Miric remained on the deck, bent and entangled, one living, one dead.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Boss, you okay?”

  Kolt didn’t respond. He heard the familiar voice but wouldn’t let it break his grip on the man. Too many of his brothers were dead because of Rasim Miric and the man working with him. Stitch. Jeremy Webber. Barnes. And now Venti and Joker.

  Raynor arched his back again and squeezed, putting everything he had into breaking whatever bones of Shiner’s that were still holding together.

  “Kolt, relax, man,” Slapshot said, now shaking his partner’s shoulder to snap him out of it. “He’s dead. Can’t get any deader.”

  Raynor shoved the lifeless body away and rolled up to his knees. His face stung where Miric’s nails had raked him, but he felt dissociated from the pain, dissociated from everything. He didn’t even look up when Slapshot dropped to the rooftop beside him.

  Raynor stared dully for a moment, but then shook his head to clear it. “Digger…” He reached for the Bluetooth device, but it was gone, knocked loose during the struggle.

  “Offline,” Slapshot said. “Just a guess, but I’d say he got your message. You really think there’s a bomb down there?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Raynor rose to his feet and headed for the edge of the roof, facing north. He could see the medical complex in the distance, the distinctive tower jutting up above the other buildings like a monolith.

  Now that Shiner was dead, he felt useless. The threat, the real threat, was a mile away. “I blew it, Slap. Tunnel vision.”

  “That’s not how it looks to me,” Slapshot said. “And since we didn’t just hear a great big boom, I’d say you got that one right, too.”

  Raynor just gripped the top of the waist-high parapet. “I wish I knew what was going on down there.”

  “Digger’s got it. He’ll find a hard line soon enough.”

  Raynor looked past his friend and saw a black hockey bag nearby—presumably Shiner’s. He also saw the discarded rifle lying near the corner of the superstructure. He went over to the latter, picked it up, and gave it a quick once-over.

  The weapon was an SVD-63 Dragunov sniper rifle with attached PSO-1M2 optical scope, nearly identical to the system Shiner had used in Athens, but with one unusual modification. There was an additional scope attached to the upper receiver. Raynor placed the rifle’s stock in his shoulder and peered into the eyepiece, but all he saw was an electronic haze.

  “What the hell is that?” Slapshot asked. “Thermal?”

  Raynor changed position, turning slowly to change his aimpoint and watching how it altered the display. “It’s an M-wave receiver. You can see through walls with it. Slap, this is some next-gen shit. Shiner didn’t get this from the Russians.”

  “Who, then?”

  Raynor had no idea. In any case, the M-wave receiver was just in the way. He loosened the set screw holding the device in place and shoved it aside. Then, he pointed the rifle downrange and looked through the scope again.

  * * *

  The tower, also known as Building 1 and the President Zone, was not tall by comparison to most high-rise structures. At 264 feet, it was less than one-tenth the height of the Burj Khalifa—the tallest building in the world. It was shorter even than the brick condominium building in Baltimore where Hawk and the rest of A-team had missed Shiner by mere minutes. But because it stood more or less by itself, surrounded by structures that were less than a third of its height, the sense of being at high elevation was even more pronounced. No doubt the narrow profile of the tower added to this effect. The rooftop was a rectangle, about forty feet wide—the length of the average school bus—and twice that long.

  At least it wouldn’t take long to search, Hawk thought as they moved out into the open. There were just a handful of structures—some as large as garden sheds, others no bigger than a washing machine.

  Digger pointed to a large metal structure—a cube, roughly ten feet on a side—and headed toward it. “I’ll start with that. Check everything. We don’t know what it’s going to look like.”

  “This is crazy,” Kearney said, not hiding his nerves. “We have EOD teams and dogs for this crap.”

  “No time.”

  Hawk headed for a smaller structure to Digger’s right. It looked to her like a rooftop air-conditioning unit, but looks, she knew, could be deceiving.

  Kearney followed her. “If we don’t know what it looks like, how are we supposed to recognize it?”

  Digger fielded the question. “If it’s a thermobaric device, there will be a large drum containing fuel material. Powdered aluminum or something like that. Look for large containers. Fuel drums. Propane tanks.”

  “But generators and air-conditioning units will have tanks too, right?”

  “Just start looking,” Hawk said, exasperated. Kearney’s can’t-do attitude was starting to wear thin. She walked around the small structure, looking for some way to get inside. There were hinges on one side, but no visible latches or locks. The metal panel was smooth, except for a pair of recessed machine screws in the corners opposite the hinges. She took out her Gerber multiplier, unfolded the large screwdriver blade, and twisted each of the screws in turn until the panel popped open.

  A sudden movement in the corner of her eye caused her to look up. It was Kearney, dragging his weapon from its holster.

  “Stop there,” he shouted.

  Hawk went to full alert, drawing her own weapon. Before she could identify a target, however, she heard the softened report of a suppressed pistol, and saw the Secret Service agent go down.

  * * *

  Raynor swept the scope back and forth, scanning the southernmost areas of the distant military facility. Beside him, Slapshot was rat-fucking Shiner’s gear bag.

  “Killer,” the sergeant major exclaimed, holding up a spotter scope. “This’ll do the trick.” He moved to stand beside Raynor and held the optical device to his eye. “What am I looking for?”

  “Miric went nuts when I told Digger to crank up the ECMs, so I’m guessing that a remote detonation was plan A. Sec
ret Service protocol is to evacuate the president immediately. Maybe plan B is to hit POTUS when they’re moving him out.”

  “Maybe Shiner was plan B.”

  “Maybe. But I—”

  “Got something on the tower!”

  Raynor jerked the scoped weapon up, trying to find the structure.

  “Rooftop. Looks like a damn gunfight.”

  “Got it.”

  The PSO-1 scope paired to the sniper rifle did not have adjustable focus, so there was no way to zoom in any closer, but he could see enough to confirm Slapshot’s assessment that a battle was taking place on the distant rooftop. He even recognized two of the combatants by their familiar clothes and hair color. A man that had to be Digger, recognizable by his blond locks, was standing behind a large structure, emerging every few seconds to squeeze off a few shots before returning to cover. The smaller form, with long black hair tied back in a ponytail, could only be Hawk. She was crouched behind a smaller object, but as Raynor watched she rose up, firing her pistol—he assumed she was firing, though her suppressor eliminated any telltale muzzle flash—as she made a dash for Digger’s position.

  She only got a few steps before stumbling and going down in a heap.

  Raynor sucked in a breath. “Get up,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “Come on, Hawk. Move your ass.”

  But Hawk didn’t move.

  Raynor shifted the scope away from the embattled operators, moving left across the rooftop until he spotted the enemy force. There were three men—or four if the unmoving form sprawled out near the access door was included. They wore what looked like light blue or gray coveralls. Any identification beyond that was impossible. Two of them were firing handguns, evidently outfitted with suppressors, but the third was making his way toward something—a large HVAC unit or emergency generator—located to the east of the access door, behind the superstructure that topped the elevator shaft.

  Raynor instantly recognized what the man was attempting to do. “That’s the bomb. He’s going to attempt manual detonation. That’s plan B.”

  “So fucking shoot him.” Raynor wondered if he had misheard, but then Slapshot added, “That’s a sniper rifle, isn’t it? Take the shot.”

  “That tower’s more than a mile away, Slap. I’m not a sniper.”

  “Oh, okay. I’ll just give Stitch a call. See if he can pop over from Section Sixty.”

  Slapshot’s voice was thick with sarcasm, but Raynor found himself wishing his mate, Sergeant Major Clay Vickery, was still around. Stitch would have welcomed the challenge of shooting an unfamiliar weapon at a target that was probably a record-breaking distance away.

  “You’ve got the gun,” Slap continued. “So you’re the sniper. I’ll spot. End of discussion. Now shoot that fucker.”

  Raynor put the aiming chevrons on the man in coveralls, who appeared to be trying to unscrew or pry open one of the panels on the suspected bomb. At the edge of the scope, Digger was exchanging fire with the two crows. One of them went down, but his partner grabbed the fallen man’s pistol and began firing both weapons at Digger, unleashing a storm of fire that forced Digger behind cover again.

  Slapshot was right, as usual. Maybe Digger would be able to take down the last two crows by himself, but if he couldn’t, POTUS and a lot of other innocent people would die.

  Kolt knelt down, resting the rifle on the half-wall. It was a far from ideal firing position, but everything about this was far from ideal. He reacquired the target, took a deep breath, and began methodically going through the steps like a wet-behind-the-ears kid in boot camp following the drill sergeant’s shouted commands.

  This wasn’t going to be anything like zeroing on the hundred-meter range, or even busting plates at eight hundred meters from the sniper condo. This was a fucking mile, with an unzeroed weapon.

  How much would the bullet drop over that distance? Ten feet? Twenty?

  If he miscalculated the drop, the round would either sail over the target and drop somewhere on the far side of the tower—God only knew where—or it would strike the building, punch through a window or a wall, and maybe kill some poor motherfucker on the other side.

  “No,” he said. “I can’t do this, Slap. Eagles too close and I’m not zeroed.”

  “I’ll talk you in.”

  “I can’t shoot up the tower just to get my range.”

  Slapshot was silent for a moment. “Okay, you’re right. We’ll have to zero dirty. By eye, go left about one-five-zero meters, and down about ten degrees.”

  Raynor did as instructed, opening his nonshooting eye. He kept looking straight ahead, not moving his eye or turning his head, but instead shifting his whole body behind the rifle, laterally at first and then rising up slightly for the tilt-drop. Once off the tower, all he could see was the green and gray background of the distant North Bethesda neighborhood where he and Slapshot had been only a few short minutes before. When he looked down, he saw the spacious green lawn in front of the medical center.

  “Do you see the pond?”

  “Yeah … Wait, you’re not serious.”

  “As a fucking heart attack,” the other man said. “Go to glass.”

  Raynor opened the eye that was behind the scope, adjusting slightly until the chevrons were on the small pond that was almost exactly halfway between the parking lot and the highway outside the base.

  “Contact.” He choked a little as he said it.

  In a typical shooting situation, Slap would have talked him through holdover and wind conditions, but without a baseline zero, none of that mattered. “When ready.”

  Raynor leaned into the weapon, doing his best to brace it with his shoulder, then drew in a breath and let it out slowly, tightening his finger on the trigger. With the last of his breath, he said, “Sniper ready.”

  “Fire.”

  Kolt maintained steady pressure until the trigger finally broke. Despite his precautions, the weapon bucked against his shoulder, and his sight picture jumped. His ears were instantly ringing. He rarely fired unsuppressed weapons without ear protection and had forgotten just how shockingly loud the report was. He brought the scope back to where it had been a moment before, and started looking for the splash.

  “Up three clicks,” Slapshot said. His voice sounded distant, funereal, through the ringing in Raynor’s ears, but what he said was even more ominous. Raynor’s shot had gone high, missing the pond by a country mile.

  He felt for the elevation knob on the scope and made the adjustment. Took another breath. “Contact.”

  “When ready.”

  The breathing cycle came a little more naturally this time. “Ready.”

  “Left point eight.”

  Raynor compensated for the wind and broke the trigger. He was better prepared for the kick, and the damage to his eardrums was already done so the report didn’t seem as loud. And this time he saw an eruption of water from the edge of the pond. It wasn’t quite exactly where he’d put the aimpoint, but evidently it was close enough for Slapshot.

  “By eye, go to the tower.”

  Raynor shifted his aiming point back to the tower. How much time had passed? Thirty seconds? Not even?

  For Digger, it was probably an eternity.

  He found the blond assaulter in the scope, still crouched behind the large superstructure. The crow he had been trading fire with was still there too, hiding behind the elevator shaft, but as Raynor looked on, the man leaned out into the open and fired again. Digger moved at the same instant, and the crow dropped.

  And then Digger went down, too.

  “Shit!” Raynor snarled, not only because another one of his friends was down, possibly dead, but because he was now the only person on earth with a chance of stopping the last remaining crow from detonating the bomb.

  “Freeze! Move away from the weapons.”

  Because of his lingering tinnitus, the shout from behind was faint, and for a moment, Raynor thought it was his imagination. Then he heard Slapshot yelling a reply.
<
br />   “We’re federal agents. Don’t interfere.”

  Fucking cops, Raynor thought. Perfect.

  He found the last crow, still working furiously to open the panel and get access to the guts of his bomb, and centered the chevron, center mass. “Contact.”

  “Drop the fucking weapons, or I will shoot you.”

  The cop’s voice seemed louder. Maybe he was moving in closer. Raynor wasn’t about to look, and he definitely was not going to comply.

  “We’re federal agents,” Slapshot repeated forcefully. “We’re trying to save the fucking president.”

  “Drop the weapons and show me your creds. Slowly.”

  Raynor knew he couldn’t wait for Slapshot to talk the policeman down. He also recalled that his second zeroing shot at the pond had been a little low and to the right, and corrected his aim slightly, then took another breath, let it out, and squeezed the trigger.

  “Stop!” The cop was almost screaming now, and Raynor expected at any moment to feel the sledgehammer punch of a nine mil hitting his body armor … unless the guy went for the point-blank headshot.

  Raynor counted silently, trying to gauge the bullet’s time to target.

  One … two … three …

  The crow jumped back in alarm.

  “Careful. You just shot the bomb.” Slapshot sounded unnaturally calm.

  In the scope, Raynor saw the man looking around, clearly trying to figure out where the shot had come from, but after only a moment of this, the crow attacked the cover to the enclosure with renewed ferocity.

  “Right, just a hair,” Slapshot said, and then in a louder voice, “I’m reaching for my credentials. Don’t shoot.”

  “Drop the—”

  Raynor adjusted his aim and without any further hesitation, squeezed the trigger. The rest of the police officer’s shout was drowned out by the report.

  Raynor lifted his hands away from the rifle, but kept the stock against his shoulder, and his eye to the scope.

  One … two … thr—

  There was a flash of red mist.

  EPILOGUE