by Scott McEwen
Hancock stared at the photo, visualizing the shot in his mind’s eye. There was no greater feeling, no greater thrill in the world to him, than shooting another human being at long range. He had become addicted to the experience almost immediately during the Iraq War, and though the cartels were paying him extremely well, he would have gladly done the work for food money. He was willing to shoot anyone. Man or woman—it didn’t matter.
He used his own modified ammunition, having paid a munitions expert in Nevada to design him a special soft-tipped round that would pancake to the size of a hubcap upon entering the human body. As it was, the standard .50 caliber sniper round did a devastating amount of damage—the hydrostatic shock of the impact being hundreds of times more powerful than the body could absorb—but Hancock sought maximum devastation with every shot now, like a junkie needing a larger and larger fix as his addiction progressed. He had used the special round to blow Alice Downly’s guts all over the street, and it still made him snicker to think about the way she had exploded. One second a raving lunatic—the next, total obliteration.
The phone vibrated in his pocket with an incoming text message: “listo,” meaning “ready.” This was the signal from their man inside the church letting him know that Guerrero would soon be coming out the front door, as they had hoped. There had been some initial concern when the informant reported that the police car had been pulled around behind the church, but apparently the chief was feeling lucky today.
Well, Hancock thought, putting on his protective earmuffs, I’m gonna give the dude a stiff dose of a bad time.
He felt his blood begin to thrum as he slid in behind the rifle to peer through the Leupold 4.5-14x50 Mark 4 scope. The church doors were open, and people were coming out slowly. The first person to really catch his eye was the young lady whose special day it was. She was dressed all in white and shone like a beautiful pearl in the bright sunlight. Next, there was the chief of police, standing perfectly in his crosshairs between two other policemen. The timing was sublime, the shot pristine, and there was no hesitation, no need to even think. Hancock squeezed the trigger, and the 600-grain projectile streaked down the hallway at 2,800 feet per second, blasting out through the hole near the floor and speeding its way down the street to strike Chief Juan Guerrero in the base of the throat, severing the spinal cord perfectly. Guerrero’s neck disintegrated. His head went twirling up into the air like a pop foul, slinging blood on the little girl’s dress in bright globs of crimson as his body dropped to the sidewalk. The head landed and bounced once before coming to rest near the feet of one of the other policemen.
No one in front of the church heard the faint report of the rifle over the clanging of the bronze bell above them, but many saw the chief’s head ripped from his body, and no one needed to be told what had done it. Bedlam ensued as everyone began to scream, scrambling back inside the church for safety. One of the policemen grabbed up the little girl and swept her inside along with the rushing throng.
As Jessup slid the block into place, plugging the hole, Hancock stripped off his ear protection and rolled onto his back, laughing uproariously. The vision of the chief’s twirling head was more comical to him than any cartoon had ever been in his youth.
Jessup ran up the hall, shouting for him get up and move, but Hancock rolled to his side, holding his belly as he continued to roar with delight.
Jessup grabbed the Barrett by its carrying handle and snatched up the spent shell casing. “Rhett! We gotta get the fuck outta here!”
Hancock did not seem to hear him, his laughter continuing in a maniacal craze.
“Rhett!” Jessup kicked him in the ass with the side of his boot. “Get the fuck up!”
But Hancock did not rise until he had finally laughed himself out, nearly two minutes later. He sat up against the wall. “Oh, fuck me!” he said, wiping the tears from his face. “Oh, Christ, it was beautiful—a once-in–a-lifetime shot!”
Jessup could have cared less. “You’re gonna get us fucking killed! We gotta go!”
Hancock chuckled one last time, exhausted from his fit. “Calm down, Cochise. There ain’t nobody lookin’ for us. They think we’re long gone. Besides, they’re all too busy piling out the back of that goddamn church.”
“Ruvalcaba’s people are waiting in the alley, but they’re not gonna wait all day!”
Hancock stuck up his hand, and Jessup hauled him to his feet.
“Fuck, Rhett. Sometimes I wonder what the fuck is wrong with you.”
TWO HOURS LATER, they sat in a cantina on the outskirts of Mexico City, safe in the heart of Ruvalcaba’s territory. Hancock was drinking straight from a bottle of Jose Cuervo, and Jessup sat across from him, nursing a beer.
“Are you sober enough to comprehend some bad news?” Jessup asked harshly.
Hancock nodded slowly.
“I just got a call from Oscar, and it looks like the snatch-and-grab at Crosswhite’s place must have gotten fucked up. All three of Ruvalcaba’s people are MIA, and the place is crawling with cops. I told you we should have shot the bastard instead of fucking around with him. Now he knows we’re after him, and he’ll go to ground.”
Hancock shook his head drunkenly from one side to the other. “Nope. No, he won’t. He’ll come after me. And that’s okay. It’s what I want.”
“ ‘He’ll come after me!’ ” Jessup echoed sarcastically. He shook his head. “You’re dreaming.”
Hancock gripped the bottle by its neck and held it in his lap between his legs, inching closer to the table. His eyes lost their glassy appearance, and he seemed strangely sober all of a sudden. “I had a little talk with one of my own sources late last night.”
“What source?”
“Never mind. What’s important is what I found out.”
A doubtful frown appeared on Jessup’s face. “And what’s that?”
Hancock tossed the tequila bottle into the corner and braced his elbows on the table top. “Crosswhite’s a contender.”
Jessup cocked an eyebrow. “A contender for what?”
Hancock turned to look over at the bartender. “Hey, cabrón! Where the fuck is my steak?”
The bartender disappeared into the back, and Jessup let out a weary sigh. “You never asked for a steak.”
“I just did,” Hancock said. “Didn’t you hear?”
“Are you gonna tell me about Crosswhite?”
“Yeah.” Hancock got up from the table and went to the bar, pulling out his penis and pissing into the drain at the base of the bar stool, which was not an uncommon sight in some of the older, rougher cantinas. “Turns out the guy was part of Operation Earnest Endeavor. He’s a Medal of Honor winner. The leader of a special Ranger unit in Afghanistan. They were one of the first teams in-country, even before the bombs started to drop.” He finished taking his leak and shook himself dry, zipping up his pants and coming back to the table.
“And that’s why you think he’ll come after you?” Jessup asked.
“Fuckin’-A, he’ll come after me.” Hancock sat back and spread his arms. “This ain’t the kinda dude to spend the rest of his life hiding from nobody. He’ll look to end this shit, and that’s gonna bring his ass right into my crosshairs, Cochise. Wait and see.”
Jessup took a swig from his beer. “Cochise was an Apache, you stupid shit. How many times I gotta tell you I’m a Sioux?”
“Name me a famous Sioux.”
“Sitting Bull, jag-off.”
“Fuck that.” Hancock glanced over his shoulder, looking for the bartender. “I ain’t callin’ you no goddamn Sitting Bull.”
Jessup took another drink. “We need to talk about these last two missions, Rhett. Today was the second time you tried to get me killed. If I can’t count on you to perform like a professional, I’m the fuck outta here.” He’d been on the roof with Hancock in Mexico City on the day of Downly’s assassination, act
ing as Hancock’s spotter. Downly had been in the open from the time she had exited the vehicle, and Jessup had kept calling for Hancock to shoot her, but Hancock had chosen to shoot the ambassador and two of the DSS agents first, wasting valuable escape time. Jessup had ducked into the stairwell only seconds before Vaught had reached the roof and killed their security team of crooked policemen.
Hancock yawned and stretched. “I’m getting hungry.”
“Or better yet,” Jessup said, “why don’t we split? We’ve got plenty of money now.”
“No,” Hancock said, shaking his head. “If you wanna split, split. I’ll start taking things more seriously, if you want, but I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I don’t give a fiddler’s fuck about the money. Shit, you can have mine. This is the only the fucking thing I was ever any good at, and I’m gonna keep right on doing it until somebody better comes along and stops me.”
But Jessup knew it went deeper than that, and he couldn’t help but wonder if it might be better for everyone involved for him to put Hancock down himself. There was, after all, such a thing as taking shit too far.
18
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
11:10 HOURS
CIA Director Robert Pope was talking with Clemson Fields in his office. Pope was tall, in his midsixties, with a head of thick white hair and boyish blue eyes peering out from behind his glasses. His professional relationship with Fields dated back to the Cold War. They weren’t what most people would consider friends, but neither man was the type who valued friendship a great deal.
“. . . and you have a soft spot for Shannon,” Fields was saying. “That could be problematic for us. He does whatever the hell he wants—like this nonsense with Blickensderfer’s fiancée. He wasn’t trained by the CIA, and I think you’re trying to teach an old dog too many new tricks.”
“His unpredictability is what makes him effective,” Pope said. “And his loyalty to me is unquestioned.”
“For the moment. What about Crosswhite?”
“Crosswhite belongs to me lock, stock, and barrel. If need be, I can use the girl and the baby to control him.”
Fields sat back in the chair. “And Shannon will stand for that?”
“Gil understands that Crosswhite is reckless and needs a firm hand.”
“And now Shannon is getting reckless.”
“He got horny,” Pope said dismissively. “Not having your ashes hauled will do that to a man.”
Fields was skeptical. “I think you’d better be careful not to ask too much of him. He’s too principled. And he’s not young anymore—he doesn’t have anything left to prove. If he stops believing in what we’re doing, you’ll have to retire him.”
A dark shadow fell over Pope.
“I don’t mean retire him,” Fields said. “I mean pension him out.”
“Know this now,” Pope said, pointing a finger at Fields. “No one ever touches Gil Shannon. Is that understood?”
“Completely,” Fields replied easily. “That was a poor choice of words. But my point stands. He’s too principled for what you have in mind for the ATRU. You’re selecting targets that won’t be defined well enough by his standards.”
“Gil’s a specialist,” Pope said. “I have no intention of using him as a general-purpose operator. That’s what men like Chance Vaught will be for, and the other men I’m recruiting. Speaking of which, I want you to activate one of our people in Europe—someone out of Berlin. I want Blickensderfer dead as soon as possible. If Gil ends up shagging Lena Deiss for more than a few days—and I have to assume that to be a strong possibility—Blickensderfer might move against him.”
“I’ll see to it,” Fields said. “And what happens if Shannon disapproves?”
“Gil will have nothing to complain about. He’s got the girl, and he doesn’t have to pull the trigger. If he has any complaints after the fact, they won’t be of any concern to me.”
“If you say so,” Fields remarked. “Now, what about Hancock?”
Pope rocked back in his chair, scratching at his neck. “That’s a serious problem. We have to neutralize him before the Mexican government can make a positive ID. If they can prove one of our own people pulled the trigger on Downly, they’ll throw this entire incident right back in our faces.”
“Will the president clear the ATRU to handle this?”
Pope nodded. “He already has. I told him I want Vaught, so Vaught officially belongs to me.”
“Then that takes care of that, but there’s something else.”
“Yes?”
“Mariana Mederos flew down to Guadalajara early this morning and then flew back to Texas a few hours later. I have no idea what she was doing down there. Did you send her?”
“She must have gone down to meet with Crosswhite.”
“About what?”
Pope chortled. “Kids pass notes in class when the teacher’s back is turned. A good teacher learns to tolerate a certain amount of it. They’re both patriots. Crosswhite is probably just looking out for Paolina. I can’t blame him.”
“Do you want Ortega to look into it?”
“No,” Pope said. “Don’t use Ortega any more than necessary. Crosswhite already had to punch his lights out. Next time he might kill him, and I don’t need the hassle of replacing the Mexico chief of station in the middle of this mess.”
When Fields was gone, Pope’s Japanese American assistant, Midori Kagawa, came into the room. She was in her early thirties, with shoulder-length black hair and a round face. Aside from being a genius in her own right, Midori was the single person in Pope’s life that he trusted absolutely. “Should I have him watched?” she asked. “He obviously has doubts.”
“Fields doubts everyone and everything,” Pope said. “That’s why he’s still in the game. But, yes, you’d better begin your electronic intrusion. Be extremely careful. Fields is nobody’s fool.”
“What about Mariana Mederos?”
“I’m not sure yet.” Pope was staring out the window. “Something happened between her and Crosswhite down in Cuba, something that brought them closer together. I have no idea what it was, but it’s been intriguing me for a while now.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Midori said.
He looked at her. “You mean sex?” He shook his head. “No, whatever happened, it was nothing as trivial as sex. We’ll have to keep an eye on that relationship. Despite what I said to Fields, it could become a thorn in my side if I’m not careful. Mederos and Crosswhite are both too damn smart for my own good.”
19
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
19:50 HOURS
By seven o’clock that afternoon, Crosswhite was back on the ground in Mexico City. During the flight, he’d received a coded text message from Paolina letting him know that she was leaving for Toluca, but his phone had been turned off, so the message was already an hour old by the time he landed. He was able to exchange another coded message with her before leaving the airport, verifying that she was okay and that they would meet in Toluca.
He was sitting in his Jeep at a stoplight on the outskirts of Mexico City when the vehicle began to vibrate as though it had broken a motor mount. “What the hell is this now?” he wondered aloud.
A few seconds later, chunks of concrete began falling off the aging office building across the street, and the traffic light started bobbing up and down on its metal arm.
A man hawking bottled water in the street stood outside Crosswhite’s open window.
“Terremoto!” he said. Earthquake!
Crosswhite got out of the Jeep to feel the earth trembling underfoot. He’d been in Los Angeles during the quake of ’94, and he could already tell this one was shaping up to be somewhere along those lines. He had to get on his knees, as there was no way to keep standing with the vibrations. He knew that Mexico City was built on an ancient lake bed of mostly sand, and that soil
liquefaction would exacerbate the quake’s effects to the extreme. The shaking became more intense, and all at once, the ten-story office building collapsed as if in a controlled demolition.
Cracks appeared in the asphalt, and the power to the streetlights failed. Crosswhite’s first reaction was wanting to hide under the Jeep until the shocks passed, but he forced himself to get back in the vehicle and got the windows up just as a billowing gray cloud of dust engulfed everything.
Within two minutes, the earth grew still, but Crosswhite knew there would be aftershocks, believing the quake to have easily been a 6 or 7 magnitude. The city’s last major quake, in 1985, had registered 8.1 on the Richter scale. That one had killed at least twenty thousand people. This one wasn’t as strong, but Crosswhite knew that it had been plenty powerful enough to bring the city to a halt. It would be months before everything would be back to normal.
He took out his phone to call Paolina, but there was no signal. “Shit!” He threw the phone down on the seat beside him.
By the time the dust began to clear enough for him to see, sirens were wailing. A fire engine roared past with klaxons honking as the emergency services machine came to life.
Getting to Toluca in a hurry would now be easier said than done, but he had a four-wheel drive and a full tank of gas. Crosswhite shifted into drive and sped off down the road, knowing the police would be too busy to worry about enforcing traffic laws.
20
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
19:50 HOURS
Vaught and Paolina were in a taxi cab headed south for Toluca when the earthquake hit. The taxi was just entering a tunnel that ran beneath a circular intersection when a portion of the tunnel collapsed, blocking the exit with large chunks of concrete. The result was a thirty-car pileup at fifty miles an hour. The taxi was smashed, and Paolina’s head hit the window, knocking her unconscious. Three-year-old Valencia was tossed into the front seat, where she bounced off the dashboard and bloodied her nose. Vaught slammed into the back of the driver’s seat but took no damage. Meanwhile, the cabby was pinned behind the wheel with a pair of broken legs.
