On Scope: A Sniper Novel

by Jack Coughlin

  “No.” Torreblanca’s eyes were sharp and dark. “I will hold this little phone in my shirt pocket, next to my heart. If nothing else, that picture will always remind me of the consequences of making rash decisions.”

  Djahid finally stirred. “You are refusing a polite request from my father?”

  The banker did not flinch from the menacing look and replied in an easy voice. “I do not work for your father, Djahid. I owe him nothing, and I am not afraid of you. Both of you are responsible for Barcelona, for bringing the roof down on our heads and for ruining months of hard work.”

  The younger man’s eyes glittered. “You should be very afraid of me.”

  Torreblanca folded his napkin and let it fall to the floor, the signal for two men and one woman to step from their hiding places nearby and converge on the table, their hands on or near pistols in hidden holsters. “Your imported thugs failed to protect me last night, Djahid. They were all big and dressed in black and ultimately worthless, which is why four of them were killed. As you see, I now have a new security team, all from the CNP, which has assigned them to me during this dangerous time.”

  Both Yasim and Djahid blinked. The Cuerpo Nacional de Policía was the hammer for the Ministry of the Interior. Among its duties was combatting terrorism. “This is madness, Daniel,” Yasim sputtered. “What will you tell them?”

  The new guards were in a semicircle about ten feet from the table. “I will tell them the truth, my friends. I was a member of the Group of Six and trying to help Spain resolve its financial difficulties. Unknown forces, probably Americans, targeted us all, and despite having professional security teams, a massacre took place at my home last night.”

  Yasim lowered his voice. “What will you tell them about us?”

  “Nothing they do not already know. That you are also one of the Six, and we were previously scheduled to have this meeting this morning. And that our offer to lend Madrid a helping hand is being rescinded because of this upsurge in American terrorist activity that has killed three of our partners, all innocent civilians.”

  “So we just crawl away with our tails between our legs?” Djahid was on alert now, his eyes on the gun hands of the lurking police guards.

  “Yes. That would be my advice.” Torreblanca was glad this was over. He was certain that Washington was behind the attacks, and the new American policy of holding the high-ranking people responsible for terrorism was frightening. They would never stop. Torreblanca brushed unseen crumbs from his jacket and stood. “Good-bye, Yasim. If you come up with more ideas in the future, please do not contact me.”

  The police guards closed around the banker and escorted him from the hotel.

  SPRINGFIELD, VIRGINIA

  SOUTHWEST of Washington, just outside the I-495 Capital Beltway, Douglas Jimenez sat alone in a bare room, eating scrambled eggs and a blueberry muffin with coffee. His hands were no longer bound, and his feet were also free.

  The arresting agent who had removed the restraints had warned, “We will allow you to be comfortable because you are too much of a bureaucratic weenie to try to escape, and my orders are to double-tap you in the head with a pair of nines if you get rowdy.”

  Douglas knew the agent was right; he wasn’t going anywhere and had no intention of getting into a physical brawl that he could not possibly win. Hell, he doubted if he could even give the guy a black eye. His karate training was of zero help. He nibbled at the cheesy eggs sprinkled with tangy red pepper while the man talked.

  “I’m with the government, and I’m here to help,” the man joked with a deadpan look. He was of medium size, had an angular face and neatly trimmed hair going gray, and wore a dark suit, a white shirt, and a patterned tie. When he hung up the coat, Doug saw the badge and pistol clipped to the belt. He pulled a chair up to the table and powered up a laptop.

  “What about my rights?” Jimenez asked with a listless voice. “No matter what you think, I am still an American citizen, with constitutional protections.”

  “Yes, you are, Douglas. I am absolutely certain that when the process goes forward, all charges brought against you will be dropped because we overstepped our authority. Some judge will be shocked, just shocked, at how you were treated. No lawyer, no Miranda warning or that sort of thing. By then, you will be of no further use to us anyway, so we will apologize and cut you loose.”

  “I could sue your asses off.”

  “Feel free to do so. It would be interesting. Imagine the case file: Traitor and Child Porn Monster Douglas Jimenez v. The United States of America. The minute you file the first piece of paper, we will have lawyers and investigators all over you. Do you really want to be audited by the IRS for the rest of your life? To be followed by cops forever? Stop with the impossible dreams and let’s get down to business. Eat the muffin. It’s good. Came from Starbucks.”

  The unidentified agent worked the keyboard briefly, and a picture popped up, sharp and clear. “Oh, my, Dougie. Look at this. Your senator has had a heart attack. This is a live feed from his room at Walter Reed.”

  Senator Jordan Monroe was beneath hospital sheets, hooked to a rack of IVs and monitors, with a ventilator down his throat. His eyes were closed, the chest and stomach rose with regular breathing, and he looked like a shriveled old man.

  “Did you do this?”

  “Nope. That was all his own doing. Too much barbecue and sugar over a long life of overindulging himself and creating stress.”

  “Is he going to pull through?”

  “The doctors give him a good chance. He’s under arrest, but we hope he does.”

  That threw Jimenez off balance. “Why? Monroe was the one making me do this stuff. Just let the bastard die.”

  The man went silent for a few minutes, putting on glasses to read from the folders. “We need him alive, Doug. He is of no use to us as a corpse. And here’s the surprise: We need you, too. These folders contain your get-out-of-jail-free card. Would you be interested in getting your life back?”

  Doug straightened in his chair, crossed his arms, and nodded. “Hell, yes.”

  “You two losers form the only direct contact we have to the people behind the terrorist bombing in Barcelona,” the man explained. “Consider yourself to be part of a bridge between us and the bad guys, Douglas. Our intelligence units will feed specific information for you and the senator to pass along.”

  Jimenez said, “Fine, but as far as I knew, it was another rich campaign cash cow.”

  “Quit lying. You knew Yasim Rebiane was a member of the Group of Six that was trying to overthrow the Spanish government. They planned, paid for, and carried out Barcelona, which killed a bunch of Americans.”

  Jimenez struggled with the big picture. Morality had never been his strong suit. “I never talked to the man.”

  “That is immaterial. You will, if you want to get your life back.”

  Jimenez leaned forward, interested, sensing opportunity.

  “Are you are willing to help by taking charge of the senator’s office as if nothing has changed?”

  “Will that make these charges go away?”

  “You haven’t been charged with anything yet, remember? After this is over, you’ll never work in this town again, and you’ll lose all of your security clearances, but there will be no criminal charges. We will expunge the record, give you a wad of cash, and help you set up a law practice in some faraway city under a new name.”

  “If I don’t help, I’m fucked.”

  “Really and truly.”

  “Brilliant. I’ll do it.”

  ABOARD THE VAGABOND

  “WHAT IS NEXT in your training cycle, dear?” Lady Pat sat still, facing a mirror, as Beth Ledford brushed the older woman’s hair with lazy strokes.

  “They’re going to teach me to fly a helicopter,” Beth replied. “The Army school at Fort Rucker, Alabama. Trident likes to move me through the different branches of the service, but I’m still a Coastie.”

  “They believe in you. So do Jeff an
d I.”

  Coastie stopped for a moment, put her hands on Pat’s shoulders, and smiled at her in the mirror. “Thanks. It means a lot. I can see why Kyle loves you guys. People like us need a place to decompress after a dirty mission; a home away from home.”

  “I have been doing that for a long time, dear. When Jeff was with the SAS, he also brought his lads home on occasion to give them downtime. Your feelings are not unique in the company of warriors I have known.”

  Beth tried a little grin, but failed. “But mine are unique, Pat. I’m a woman, and you know that it’s different.” She continued brushing the hair. “Every springtime, like right now, I start getting all maternal and want to hug a fuzzy baby chick or buy a kitten. Then I realize that I can’t even take care of a potted plant. I really love Mickey, and I don’t want that to fade because of the miles and time between us. Sex? What’s that? A man might be able to walk away from feelings, but women remember.”

  Pat reached back and closed her fingers over the brush hand and found it trembling. Tears welled within her. Beth was finally breaking through her tough-girl shell, and her natural breeziness was gone. Lady Patricia got up and locked the stateroom door for privacy, then returned to where Beth had plopped down on the green sofa and wrapped her arms around her and hugged the girl close, saying nothing. Coastie started crying so hard that she shook and developed hiccups.

  Pat thought of how Special Forces could take kids out of high school, with a minimum of training and no worldly experience, and in a few years cram them full of college-level or advanced-degree knowledge in things ranging from ballistics to meteorology to electronics to aviation to medicine and teach them how to kill other people in a dozen ways without flinching. She had been expecting Coastie’s tears for some time. The emotional dam burst and the internal agony came flooding out. Pat had played this same role over the years with Jeff, and with Kyle, too, and with others, even Sybelle Summers. It came with the territory … but Beth was so different, on so many levels. She was a savant with a firearm, but that prodigious talent had led her to a dangerous crossroads. Her choice would affect the rest of her life, but she would never be the same once the decision was made.

  “I don’t know if I can take this much longer,” Coastie sobbed. “I’m not normal, Pat! Normal people can’t do what I do. I’ve turned into a monster, a point-and-shoot mutant toy for the government. I don’t have any close friends my age, I don’t have any social life, and since Mom passed away last year, all of my family is dead. When I get Facebook pictures of my high school classmates getting married and having babies, I want to scream.”

  Beth put her hands up and squeezed her temples as if she had a migraine headache or wanted to tear out her hair. “I’m not really me; I’m just a freak with a gun.”

  “Umm,” soothed Pat. Let her talk.

  “I can’t keep it inside any longer. My supergirl act is just that … an act. My professional competence is at a peak while my personal confidence has collapsed to below zero. Some of the things I have seen and done are beyond the bounds of sanity. I kill people, Pat, just take their lives and erase them from the world. Worst of all, I’m beginning to enjoy it!” There was another hard, shaking burst of weeping.

  Lady Patricia Cornwell was concerned. She went and got them both shots of whisky. “Have you seen a doctor or confided in a psychiatrist?”

  Beth shook her head. “I was afraid if I told anybody at all, I would be kicked out of Trident. General Middleton would never let this pass. I shouldn’t even be telling you.”

  “Kyle doesn’t know about it? Sybelle?”

  “No. At least not yet. But it’s always there now, Pat, like a curtain over my entire life.”

  Pat paused and let some silence pass. “How about Mickey?”

  “Absolutely not. How could anybody as sweet as my Mickey love an emotional cripple like me?”

  Pat finished off her drink. “I’m the only person who knows? You poor thing. It is too heavy a load to carry by yourself, Beth. You have done nothing wrong, and you are not the only Special Forces operator to be caught in such a tangle.”

  Coastie fetched another round of Scotch, this time in a glass with ice for herself. “I want to be normal again.” She mopped her nose and eyes with a tissue. “I guess I have to make some big choices, huh?”

  “I’m afraid so. Time will help, and some psychotherapy, and definitely love.” She caught Coastie’s hands in her own. “You have to go and tell Mickey everything. My guess is he will be your strongest ally. And you do have to decide whether you want to continue this peculiar, but very important, life.”

  “I’m a mess.”

  Lady Pat held on to her. “Well, just think about attending your twenty-fifth high school reunion, when they ask what you have been up to.”

  That brought a sudden little laugh. “I guess I could do a strafing run on that little bitch Shauna, my archenemy mean girl since the ninth grade, as a show-and-tell.”

  “Now that would add a little sparkle to the event, although it probably would be somewhat ill-advised. What you cannot tell them, of course, is that you have been protecting all of those dear mommies and daddies and babies by putting your life on the line every damned day.”

  “At least it’s not boring.” Beth rubbed her eyes with the sides of her hands.

  Lady Patricia Cornwell pushed her back and gripped her shoulders. “No. Boring, it is not. You were wrong in not telling Trident right away. They are also your family, Coastie, every one of them. And you cannot go back into the field on another mission, with mixed feelings that would endanger your partner.”

  “I know. I would never do that to Kyle. Never.”

  Pat pressed an intercom button, and Swanson answered from his room. “Kyle. Get your butt down here to the bar. Beth wants to tell you something.”

  31

  SEVILLE, SPAIN

  SIX MARINES had been murdered in Barcelona. Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson had escorted their bodies back to the United States, and subsequently was tasked with going after the Group of Six, the money people who sponsored the massacre. Three of the scheming financiers had since forfeited their lives: Cristobál Jose Bello in Mallorca, Juan de Lara in Madrid, and Mercedes Sarra Bourihane in Paris. Their outrageous scheme to turn Spain into an Islamic state lay in ashes. Then Swanson was told the mission was both successful and over, and he was ordered to walk away.

  Swanson felt unfulfilled. What about the other three schemers? Why should Daniel Ferran Torreblanca, who had been so close to death beneath Kyle’s knife, still be alive and safe in Seville? Or the wealthy Marwan Tirad Sobhi isolated by his money in Abu Dhabi? Or the mysterious and dangerous Yanis Rebiane? It was clear to Swanson that the overall mission had never been an eye-for-an-eye exchange at all, and just ironic that the numbers worked out that way. Instead, it had a larger purpose, a ruthless method to squash the money ring supporting the radical political cause.

  When the Group of Six conspiracy fell apart, Kyle, Trident, and their CIA helpers got pats on the back, and everybody got a week’s leave.

  He had hardly been surprised by Coastie’s confession about having doubts about their work, and had helped Pat settle her down by recounting his own periodic hallucinations involving the character he called the Boatman. They had had similar conversations before. “You’re my partner, Coastie. I trusted you yesterday, I trust you today, and I will trust you tomorrow,” he told her. “If we had to go right now, I would want you with me.”

  “I might not be strong enough, Kyle. I might not…”

  “Quiet down,” he said and gave her a hug. “You’re not crazy. You’re just a regular member of Task Force Trident, a place where we all have nightmares or risk having a mental meltdown and disconnecting entirely from the world. We go out and do a dirty job in order to stop bad guys from doing horrible things.”

  They all agreed to let her take some more time to think about the situation, and she remained with Pat and Jeff on the boat to play tourist along the
Spanish coast.

  Kyle decided on a more private holiday. They would rendezvous back in Washington in eight days, where Beth would be dispatched to go play with helicopters, getting her out of harm’s way for a while. Kyle made her promise to tell General Middleton and the other Tridents about her confused feelings during the stopover. In his opinion, she would be crazy if she didn’t have such doubts about killing human beings, because that would mean she was just a plain vanilla psychopath.

  Meanwhile, things were slowing down in Spain as the Islamic offer was removed from the table to ease some of the overall tensions. It would not be long before some new assignment took its place for Trident. Swanson did not mind it. It was part of the game. For him, the War on Terror never ceased, and his skill set was always in demand somewhere. It should have been enough just to know that he had been instrumental in foiling an international plot, and yet he had the nagging feeling that he had not done enough, that his buddy Gunny Mike Dodge deserved a better send-off. Swanson could not turn off the unanswered questions.

  Who had planned the tactics of the Barcelona strike? Who gathered the terrorist muscle? Who was the on-site commander of the hit team? That had all been pushed aside in the haste to rupture the financial pipeline that threatened to destabilize Madrid. As soon as the word came down from Trident that the main job was over, and he should take a week off, Kyle decided to spend his vacation time trying to find that missing combat leader. It was unlikely that a man who had committed such an atrocity had gone underground. Like Kyle, he would feel an important job had been left undone.

  * * *

  THE SUN felt warm and good on Swanson’s torso as he lay on a deck chair beside the sparkling swimming pool of a luxury hotel, with dark sunglasses letting him watch others without moving his head. Squealing children splashed in the shallow end with brightly colored rubber rings and floats. Teenagers were showing off: the boys extravagant with their swagger; the sleek girls acting cool and ignoring them. Men and women of all ages came and went while Swanson baked silently and let his thoughts roam.