On Scope: A Sniper Novel

by Jack Coughlin

  The police took photographs, filed thorough reports, and concluded that Bello and his luckless defender had fallen victim to an unknown party who had been scammed by the banker and had decided to settle the account by hiring some professional killers. The decision was made because Bello was so unpopular on so many fronts and the motives were revenge and robbery. The case was put aside to gather dust in the archives of a police building on the distant mainland. The bodies were disposed of by professional cremation, paid for by the Spanish taxpayers. The house was cleaned by a company that specialized in that sort of thing and was resold to a Canadian who had never heard of Cristobál Jose Bello. The fact that Bello was a member of the Group of Six was not considered important.

  7

  GIBRALTAR

  COASTIE AND KYLE had retreated to the waiting Vagabond after the Mallorca hit, and Captain Michael Berryman had in hand all of the port clearances needed for the big yacht to cruise softly away from the island in the darkness. It dropped anchor in the shadow of the Rock by morning’s first light, home again. For the next two days, while the CIA and the FBI in Washington churned through the information raked in by the intelligence sweepers who went through the Bello home, the white ship rode at anchor on the Med side of Gibraltar for protection against the usual stormy conditions that rolled in from the Atlantic Ocean. It was also protected from unwanted attention because it had every right to be there; it was registered in the United Kingdom to a permanent-resident Briton and flew the red ensign, and was therefore considered a little slice of London as it bobbed in the bay. Nevertheless, Captain Berryman posted watches around the clock, for his yacht was no ordinary pleasure craft, and trouble could come from any quarter at any time. British laws applied in Gibraltar, which meant gun laws were stringent. At home, private weapons had to be kept at a gun club, and if you fired ten rounds of .22 caliber long ammunition at a practice range, you had to hand back the ten spent brass cartridges. In contrast, the crew of the Vagabond was armed to the teeth, and the yacht, with the permission of the queen and her government, carried enough weapons to start a small war.

  For two days, they relaxed aboard and played tourist in the town, batting away the thieving monkeys that were intent on stealing their lunches while ashore. Lady Pat guided Beth Ledford through the shops to gather art supplies and books to study for a future cover: They acquired a portable tripod and some blank canvas squares, and for a generous price they bought an unfinished work and the used paint tubes and jars, brushes, and palette from a street artist. The surprised artist, who had rarely managed to sell any of his work before, gave his generous patrons the paint-smeared smock for free. Then Beth Ledford went back aboard to learn a bit about art, since she couldn’t draw much more than stick figures.

  “You shall be an Impressionist, my dear,” coached Lady Pat. “Slather on a lot of random color and say it’s your impression of the palace at Versailles. Creative artists at work are given great license by people who think them crazy, for otherwise, why would they be artists at all? Hitler and Churchill both were artists, one crazier than the other. You can set up anywhere, for any length of time, with few or no questions asked.”

  Kyle suited up and trained her further in SCUBA diving, thinking that when she was underwater in her black wet suit and flippers, Coastie looked a lot like a baby seal. She did not look like a seal at all when she was sunning on the aft deck beside the pool in her blue bikini.

  “Did it bother you, what we did in Mallorca?” he asked when they were alone. He was thinking, The body on this girl.

  “Nope,” she replied, eyes closed.

  “Shooting an unarmed foreign civilian?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Her eyes popped open, startlingly blue against the tan on her face. More cover. People over here were not as ivory white as a kid from Iowa, and she needed to bronze up. “You and Sybelle and the master gunny have beaten it into me that I am not to consider myself as the judge and jury, particularly on this mission. You, we, are the sharp end of the stick, and these are targets, not people. Trust the others to make the ultimate decision. Anyway, you’re the super sniper, so how many confirmed kills do you have?”

  Swanson stretched his muscles, gripping his fists high above his head and pointing his toes downward, then relaxed back into the chair. He hated that question. “I don’t know. I don’t count, and ‘confirmed kills’ is a load of BS. It does not automatically translate into being really good at the craft. It has become popularized through the media as a way to identify tough guys. A single drone can kill more during one strike than any sniper over a career. What’s it going to do, put notches on its tailfin to proclaim how badass a machine it is?”

  Beth rolled onto her side and levered up on her left elbow, facing him. “I think I will remember all of mine, forever.”

  “No, you won’t. Nobody can carry that load, so you will find some way to deal with it so you can get on with the job. Maybe you want to see a shrink?”

  “You’re my psychiatrist, old man. If this becomes a problem, you’ll talk me through it. Right now, it just doesn’t bother me.” She unfastened her bikini top and lay down again, this time on her stomach.

  Kyle got up, took two quick steps and dove into the warm waters of the pool, and stayed beneath the surface for a full minute.

  NEW YORK

  MANNIX DILLON had been a problem student as a child because she asked so many questions and took great delight when teachers could not answer. The professors at Harvard Law had no better luck in shutting her up than had the frustrated nuns at the Carondelet Catholic School in Minneapolis. Now she posed a question to one of her better clients, Yanis Rebiane, “Should I be concerned about the shooting of Señor Bello?”

  They were in her carpeted office on Wall Street. Yanis was visiting the belly of the American money beast, and he was quiet while thinking, refusing to be rushed by Mannix, who was a frustrating person. She was an attractive woman of about forty, with light brown hair that brushed the collar of her tailored gray business suit, and long legs that ended in expensive high-heeled shoes. Without a veil, so really nothing but a whore. A whore with whom he must negotiate a price carefully, for she was managing partner of a powerful hedge fund that could slip millions of dollars around the world with the punch of a button on her computer. “No, I believe not,” he replied. Her abilities had been very handy over the past year.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Yanis. His place was cleaned out after he was dead, which means my name is going to show up in his little electronic black book or on his computer.”

  “Mine, too. Along with hundreds of other names, if not thousands. Believe me, Mannix, we are in no danger. Bello was a peddler of influence and information but dealt with many unsavory characters. He did business with a wide range of people on an international front. If China wanted a license for mining bauxite in Sierra Leone, Bello could arrange it, for a price. Running some guns into the Balkans? Call Bello.”

  She gave one of her tight smiles that held no good news. “So who shot the bastard? Who’s got that black book with all of our names and phone numbers? God knows what else is in it.”

  “No idea. It was a professional hit, but our best guess is that he double-crossed the wrong people in a deal. They would have emptied the place of information to prevent their own connection, and to find what else he was up to. Señor Bello was not above doing a little blackmail. It does not endanger the Group of Six, other than subtracting one from the number of members.”

  Mannix swept her right hand through her hair behind her left ear, then toyed with the diamond stud. The smile warmed only slightly as she remembered Sister Mary Margaret telling her that the devil is a natural liar who mixes his falsehoods with truth in order to sow confusion. She thought she might be sitting across from him right now. “I disagree. I think it is linked to the attack in Barcelona. That was stupid, Yanis. It brought us unwanted attention, and if Bello had information that can put the finger on
us for sponsoring that event, Washington will throw my ass in the deep-fry.”

  There were times that Yanis did not understand the idioms she used, but that soon would no longer matter. “Let your mind be at peace. Think of your personal riches and future importance. Great rewards require great risks.”

  “No shit? How could I have worked on Wall Street all these years and not know that?”

  Yanis Rebiane recoiled at the newest outburst from the vulgar woman, then swallowed and regained his calm. “I do not mean to insult your intelligence. We are all taking chances. I came to New York hoping to privately put to rest any concerns you may have, and to give you a gift as a sign of our appreciation for your work.” He took a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it over.

  Printed on it was the name of a small manufacturing company in Germany. She typed it into her computer and washed it through several financial programs, the brown eyes flashing on the numbers as she bit gently on her lower lip in concentration. “It’s trading at fifty-four dollars a share today, and the fundamentals look normal. The price-earnings ratio may be too high. Beta is average. I am not impressed.”

  Rebiane gave her a steady stare. “The company will declare bankruptcy within two months. A class-action lawsuit is going to receive an unfavorable court ruling next week, accountants are finding irregularities, and when some loans are called by certain bankers, the chairman of the board will commit suicide. The shares will collapse at least thirty points. Anyone who sells the stocks short might make a little money and at the same time enhance their already enviable reputation for crystal ball predictions.”

  “Inside trading. Money laundering. Lying, cheating, and stealing? That I can do.” Mannix had soared like a comet in the financial world, then bounced hard off the glass ceiling at the vice president level of an investment bank. She resigned before the real estate bubble burst and established BQM Private Advisers, a boutique company of her own that specialized in discovering unique opportunities unseen by other experts. She alone knew the initials stood for “Bloody Queen Mannix” and symbolized her contempt for rivals. Her clients considered the company’s returns to be almost magical, particularly during the hard recovery years, but by then she had junked most normal financial rules and restraints and found that doing business was a lot easier and more lucrative over on the dark side of the street. Over there, there were no ceilings, just doors waiting to be opened. The Group of Six had been such a door, even if it had just become the Group of Five with the death of Bello—and she was smart enough to deal with anything Washington threw at her.

  “So do you feel better now, Mannix? We can continue to count on you for the work in Spain?”

  “Yes.” Dillon stood behind her desk. This time the smile was genuine and the voice somewhat breathy, as part of her mind figured that if she played this right on the market, the profit on the German bet could be about five million dollars. “Yes.”

  The price agreed upon, Yanis returned the smile and said good-bye, thinking, Whore.

  8

  ABOARD THE VAGABOND

  FINANCIER JUAN DE LARA was the next target. Kyle Swanson and Beth Ledford studied the photographs of a man who was no battle-hardened terrorist warrior but someone so soft that his idea of exercise would be a round of golf at an exclusive resort, where he could ride in an electric cart with his clubs jangling to the back. Violence was not de Lara’s direct purpose in high-stakes business, but he did not object if casualties resulted, as had happened in Barcelona, to accomplish a higher goal. It was an unavoidable and legitimate by-product of his work.

  The corpulent executive lived with his wife in a spacious villa with wide views of the Bay of Palma from their infinity pool, and he kept a beautiful mistress in a penthouse in downtown Madrid, not far from his office. Like the late Cristobál Bello, Juan de Lara had sidestepped personal disaster in the banking collapse and had been left perfectly positioned for continued success when the expected economic recovery kicked in. Rivals complained that he was propped up by secret oil money rerouted through mysterious channels, and he was raking in sizable fees from the European bailout.

  “This man is a thoroughly political animal who paints himself as an ardent Spanish patriot,” said Commander Benton Freedman, the wizard of Task Force Trident, who had delivered the folder and the decision that de Lara was to be eliminated. “He became such a player in opposing the European Commission’s bailout conditions that he is now the go-to guy for journalists needing a quote or sound bite from that side of the fence. De Lara says true Spaniards would rather live in an independent nation with ancient and honorable Muslim ties than in a state that is an economic cripple dependent upon the whims of Berlin, Brussels, London, and Washington.”

  “Did he order Barcelona?” Coastie wanted to know.

  “He condemned it in public,” replied the Lizard. “Fact is, he financed it.”

  The words jolted Kyle Swanson, who leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Memories flooded in of dead Marines in brushed aluminum coffins aboard a big airplane, of his friend Mike Dodge and his family, and a resolve took hold. “I want him,” he said.

  Freedman had seen that wolfish look before in the gray-green eyes and knew the final decision had been made. He adjusted his big glasses and continued as if nothing had changed. “The general sent me out here for a couple of reasons. I need to tweak the Vagabond communications suite to provide you guys with better secure contact with us back in Washington, so the general thought I might as well deliver the Green Light folder.”

  Swanson stared at the pictures again. So this was another paymaster who never got his hands dirty, a toad sunning himself on a gilded lily pad without a care in the world while innocents were slaughtered by his decisions. Swanson saw Juan de Lara as already dead and getting aboard the Boatman’s skiff for a quick trip to hell. Then he snapped his attention back to the folder, which was thick with other information: layouts of his home and apartment, pictures of the wife and mistress, daily habits, overheads of surrounding neighborhoods, some media reports.

  “Kyle, with this new secure computer and satellite gear now connected, I can walk you and Coastie through the decision-making process if you want. Part of it came from material taken from the house on Mallorca. Place yielded some really good intel on names, dates, locales, and amounts paid and collected.”

  Before Beth Ledford could speak, Kyle overrode any objection. “We were discussing that very thing a while ago, and we know that we are involved in something that is way bigger than ourselves. You don’t need to justify anything to us, Liz. We are satisfied that you guys are making the right calls.”

  “Nevertheless, Kyle, the general wanted me to be very clear that this target is a Spanish national and a civilian. His death will demonstrate conclusively that the United States and its allies are rewriting the strategy of retribution. His fingerprints may be all over the money, but Señor de Lara did not directly kill those people nor destroy our consulate in Barcelona.”

  Coastie tapped the table with her trimmed and polished nails, which she had painted blue that morning. The little sequence sounded like the hoofbeats of a running horse. “Commander Lizard, sir, are you mistaking us for someone who gives a shit?”

  Freeman chuckled. “No. I just had to deliver the information, and I wanted to get out of the office.”

  NEW YORK

  MANNIX DILLON slipped an arm through the shoulder strap of her Louis Vuitton handbag and gave the long mirror on the wall behind her office bathroom door a final check. Her hair was fluffed out a bit today to get a windblown look, and she used a small soft brush to smooth out a blemish that she saw in the skin tone. A heavy antique bracelet encircled her right wrist, and she liked the way the tweed skirt and short-sleeved sweater caressed her figure. No doubt, the gym time was paying off. She closed the purse and walked out to the desk of her personal assistant, a nice young man who adored her.

  “Perry, I’m going to a short lunch and will be back by one thirty. How a
bout the reservations for tonight?” She thumbed through her electronic diary as she talked at him as if he were a lamp.

  “Three places are reserved at the Four Seasons at nine o’clock, Ms. Dillon,” he responded efficiently. “A driver will pick you up at eight thirty. His name is Harold.”

  She said, “OK,” and turned away, still not looking at him and asking herself silently, Lunch with Joanie and Patrice, and then clubbing tonight with the same two? She liked them as friends, but really, wasn’t this too much? Patrice, with her crazy hair that drooped over one eye, was vice president of a publishing company and always filled with tidbits of gossip. Joanie had lost her job in the downsizing when the bear stomped through Wall Street and was only now coming back into the marketplace, recently landing an executive position that paid $150,000 a year. They would all bitch over lunch about how anybody could live on such a salary.

  The restaurant was a Japanese affair three blocks from her office on Fifth Avenue, and they sat at a table slightly raised on a platform near the back, so they could watch the chefs chopping up ingredients at the sushi bar and shouting greetings to arriving customers. A round of drinks started the lunch; then came tea and some raw things and rice and finally a dessert that bore a vague resemblance to a pudgy rat. It was a good hour, and Patrice was enthusiastic in describing a sex scandal that was about to break involving a mover-shaker type and two pregnant mistresses, one of whom was filing a lawsuit against the other. “Someday,” Patrice said, “the idiots will realize that there is no such thing as privacy in the digital world. The photographs are delightfully grotesque!” They laughed, split their bill three ways with a 15 percent tip, fumbled for exact change, and went back to work.