by Scott McEwen
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This book is dedicated to the men and women whose lives have been lost in fighting the war on terrorism worldwide.
“Only God can judge whether the terrorists are right or wrong. It is our job to arrange the meeting.”
—Unknown US Navy SEAL
On April 8, 2014, the director of the Russian Federal Security Service confirmed the death of Dokka Umarov, the Chechen Islamist militant responsible for Moscow Metro bombings in 2010. Though the exact date and place of his death remain unknown, his demise has been confirmed by the United States government, and he was removed from the US State Department’s Rewards for Justice list in April 2014.
PROLOGUE
CANCÚN,
Mexico
Former White House chief of staff Tim Hagen sat beside the pool at his Cancún hotel on the tip of the Yucatán Peninsula sipping a piña colada and skimming a paperback copy of The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Though he knew each of the twenty-seven concepts backward and forward, he enjoyed studying the printed words, searching them for insight into the mind that had written them. He was particularly interested in the concepts covered in chapter thirteen, “The Use of Spies.”
Up until six months earlier, Hagen had been chief military adviser to the president of the United States, but that had changed abruptly upon the president’s asking for his resignation mere minutes after San Diego was nearly destroyed by a Soviet-era suitcase nuke. Of course, Hagen’s ego wouldn’t permit him to see that he’d brought the dismissal upon himself through his constant manipulation of the president to serve his own ambitions. Instead, he blamed Gil Shannon and Robert Pope for undermining his influence.
Now Hagen was waiting to hear that the indefatigable Navy SEAL was either dead or on his way to a French prison. Upon hearing the news, he would return to Washington, DC, with his honor restored to him and begin anew his ambitious pursuits of power and influence. He intended to offer his strategic services to a rising new political star: a handsome, young senator named Steve Grieves from New York, who, with the right guidance, might one day make a successful run at the White House.
A hotel concierge approached from across the patio. “Señor Hagen?”
Hagen looked up from the book. “Yeah, I’m Hagen.”
“There is a call for you, señor, at the front desk.”
Hagen glanced at his phone sitting silent beside his drink on the table. “For a Tim Hagen?”
“Sí, señor.”
Wondering if something had gone wrong, Hagen picked up his phone and left the book on the table. “Show me the way.”
“This way, señor.” The concierge guided him to the hotel lobby, and they stopped at the front desk, where a young woman handed Hagen the landline.
“This is Hagen,” he said, taking the receiver.
“Tim?”
“This is Tim Hagen,” he said impatiently. “To whom am I speaking?”
“Tim, it’s Bob Pope. How are you enjoying the sunshine down there?”
Hagen’s heart skipped a beat, and his sandaled feet felt suddenly cold. “Well enough,” he said, clearing his throat. “What can I do for you, Robert?”
“I’m calling to tell you that Gil Shannon has run into some serious trouble in Paris.”
“I’m awfully sorry to hear that,” Hagen said, a thin smile coming to his lips as the blood began to flow again. “But I’m no longer with the White House. Why would I be interested in anything having to do with Chief Shannon?”
Pope chuckled. “Well, I know how closely you and Lerher have been following his career.”
Pope’s cheerful demeanor sent a chill down Hagen’s spine. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, Robert, but I—”
“Gil’s out of France,” Pope said, his tone suddenly icy. “So if I were you, I’d start looking for a cave to hide in.”
Hagen’s mouth went dry. “Listen, you don’t—who the hell is Lerher?”
“You should be running,” Pope answered, “instead of standing there in the lobby wearing that ridiculous hat.”
The line went dead, and Hagen turned around, searching the lobby for anyone resembling Robert Pope. He spotted a security camera on the wall above the desk. “Is your security system connected to the internet in any way?”
The concierge glanced up at the camera, a puzzled look on his face. “I don’t know, señor. I don’t think so. Why, is something wrong?”
“No,” Hagen said, his paranoia increasing by the moment. “I’ll be checking out within the half hour. Please send someone to the room for my bags.”
“Sí, señor.” The concierge smiled curiously at the young woman as Hagen hurried off across the lobby, watching him drop his Panama hat into a hotel trash container on his way to the elevator, wondering why the caller had asked him to describe what Mr. Hagen was wearing before bringing him to the phone.
1
PARIS,
France
The hour was closing in on three o’clock in the morning, and Master Chief Gil Shannon lay prone atop an empty freight car on the outskirts of Paris, a Remington Modular Sniper Rifle pulled tight into his shoulder, eye to the Barska nightscope, its illuminated green reticle highly visible in the darkness. He studied the blacked-out warehouse one hundred meters across the rail yard to the east. The April night was cool, and there hung on the breeze the distant whine of a locomotive as Gil adjusted his posture carefully, needing to urinate, waiting for Dokka Umarov to show himself. His right foot ached dully where he’d been shot the year before during a combat jump over Montana—much of the metatarsal bone having been replaced with an experimental titanium implant—and his chest tightened with anxiety that nowadays seemed to haunt him whenever things got too quiet for too long.
He drew a deep breath, slowly letting it back out, taking his hand from the grip to flex his fingers.
“Are you tensing up?” asked the voice of his overwatch, an earpiece nestled comfortably in his ear.
Gil smiled in the darkness. “Are you watching me or the target area?”
The voice chuckled softly. “I see all.”
“You see too much,” Gil muttered good-naturedly. “How about you get off my nuts and watch if Umarov slips out the back.”
Again the chuckle.
A few minutes later, Gil said, “This little meet and greet’s takin’ longer than it should. I wonder if—”
“Heat signature! Sniper on the roof!”
Gil didn’t so much as twitch, but kept his eye to the scope. “North or south?”
“North side,” the voice said. “He’s been hiding under an awning of some sort . . . no, I think it’s a proper hide. He’s sliding back under now. Umarov must have anticipated satellite surveillance.”
“Can you see the rifle barrel?”
“Enhancing resolution now . . . Yeah, I can see six or eight inches of it—the suppressor.”
“Which way is it pointing?”
A slight pause. “About twenty degrees to your right . . . south of your position.”
“He hasn’t seen me, then,” Gil said. “But that’s obvious.” He let his eye scan back and forth across the flat roof of the three-story structure, cluttered with water tanks and air-condit
ioning units, ventilation ducts, and enclosed observation platforms once used by train spotters. “I can’t find him. You didn’t get a look at his optics by any chance, did you?”
“Yeah,” the voice said. “Big scope.”
“Shit,” Gil muttered. “That means infrared. Sounds like maybe I brought a knife to a gunfight. What was he doing out of the hide?”
“Stretching his back, I think.”
“At least he’s careless. That’s something.” Gil relaxed and proceeded to piss his pants to solve that nagging issue. This was more difficult to accomplish while remaining stock still than most people might have imagined, but Gil had more or less mastered the art by this point in his career. An operative had to drink a lot of water in Afghanistan to stay alive and alert, and a sniper couldn’t be jumping up to hit the head every ten minutes.
Now he was ready to engage. “I need to eliminate this guy before Umarov comes out. Guide me to him.”
“Find the northern water tank.”
“Got it.”
“He’s beneath a hide made of plywood and debris thirty feet south of— Look sharp! He’s shifting his aim!”
Gil adjusted his own aim ten degrees right. His blood froze when he saw the enemy sniper, perfectly visible beneath the hide, silhouetted in the greenish-black field of vision.
“Shit!” He flinched away from the scope a mere instant before it shattered, the enemy round passing directly through the optic tube without touching the sides. Splinters of glass stung the flesh of Gil’s neck as the deadly bullet streaked past his ear. He let go of the Remington, rolling across the roof of the railcar to drop off the far side just as the enemy’s second round grazed his hip. He twisted midfall to land feetfirst like a cat in the gravel, ducking for cover behind one of the great steel wheels of the railcar.
“Christ Jesus, that was close!”
“Are you hit?” the overwatch asked, slightly unsettled.
Gil took a moment to pull down his jeans partway for a look at the wound. “He nicked my hip. Nothing serious.”
“Good,” the voice said grimly, “because you’re about to be hip deep in shit. You’ve got a few dozen French gendarmes converging on your position from the north and west. Two hundred yards distant. They’ve got a pair of German shepherds.”
Gil didn’t want any part of German shepherds. He might handle one if he was willing to take damage, but a pair of them would drag him down and rip him apart. He took off at a dead run to the south, running parallel to the train through the loose gravel. “What’s the fuckin’ sniper doing?”
“Forget him,” the voice said, slightly distracted now. “He’s pulling back.”
Gil adjusted the earpiece as he ran. “Is it possible the gendarmes are here for Umarov?”
“They’re not moving toward the warehouse. Hold on a second.” Another pause. “Umarov and his people are leaving out the back. You must’ve been set up, Gil.”
“Goddamnit, by who?” Gil demanded, running through the darkness with the shouts of the pursuing gendarmes drifting down on the wind.
“The dogs are loose,” the voice said. “Closing fast at a hundred yards.”
“Fuck!” Gil leapt onto the ladder of a railcar and scrambled to the roof, sprinting along the tops of the cars, jumping the gaps between them as he made toward the locomotive still a half mile ahead at the front of the train.
“They’re going to see you up there.”
“Well, if you got a better idea, Bob, I’m all ears.” The dogs were barking, catching up fast, the hollow thudding of Gil’s footfalls clearly audible; the microdroplets of his perspiration heavy in the air and impossible for canines to miss.
“Widening the angle for a look ahead,” was the response from his overwatch.
Gil could feel the titanium implant in his right foot beginning to bite into the muscle tissue, and he wondered how long before something inside the foot broke loose. He wasn’t exactly built for escape and evasion anymore, and the fact became more evident with each leap from one railcar to the next. The German shepherds were directly below now, barking their asses off to let their handlers know they had caught up to the suspect.
A pistol shot rang out, and Gil cut a glance over his shoulder to see a gendarme fifteen cars back, also running along the rooftops.
“What happened to ‘Thou shalt not shoot a fleeing felon’?” Gil muttered aloud.
“You’re in France,” the voice reminded him. “They don’t have that law over there.”
“Bob. I’m running out of train, and that gung-ho prick back there is faster than I am.” Another pistol shot. “I’m pretty sure they aim to kill me.”
“They do. Somebody called a tip into the Sûreté about a terrorist in the train yard.” The Sûreté Nationale was the French national police force.
“You’re channel surfing?” Gil leapt a gap between cars, almost stumbling upon landing.
“I have to find out what you’re up against,” the voice said calmly, the faint sound of fingers running over a keyboard. “Okay, you’re in luck. The tracks span a wide canal about ten cars ahead. The dogs won’t be able to follow you across, so you can hit the ground and do some open-field running.”
Gil jumped another span and stumbled, expertly summersaulting back to his feet, the footfalls of his pursuer growing ever closer. “I have to shake Carl Lewis back there.”
“Run, Gil. If you’re captured alive, you’ll do life in a French prison.”
“Thanks, Bob, no shit!” Gil ran across the car that spanned the canal way, leaving the dogs barking at the edge and scrambling down a ladder to the ground. A quick glance, and he saw the gendarme only six cars back, closing fast with pistol in hand. He disappeared into the shadows of a stockyard full of shipping containers stacked two high. The shouts of more gendarmes became audible as they gathered at the canal’s edge, the beams of their flashlights flickering wildly.
Gil pulled up around the corner of the nearest shipping container to wait for the gendarme. As the younger man rounded the corner in the darkness at full speed, Gil delivered him a vicious strike to the throat with the V of his forefinger and thumb, temporarily collapsing the esophagus and taking him off his feet.
The pistol fell to the ground, and Gil snatched it up. He didn’t want to kill anyone, but the possibility of life in prison was not acceptable to him, so he would have to play this fucked-up mission as close to the edge as it came, dancing along the razor until he finally escaped or was forced into making some fatal decision. He jammed the pistol into his waistband and kept moving, leaving the gendarme choking in the dirt.
“Find me a way outta this fuckin’ rat maze!” It was moments like this that Gil was relieved that he and his wife were separated, and that she wasn’t at home worrying about him.
“Keep moving straight down the row until it dead-ends, then break right. A few of them are crossing the canal over the train now. The rest are moving west with the dogs toward a footbridge.”
“Where am I in relation to the embassy?” Gil asked.
“You can forget the embassy,” the voice answered. “It’s being cordoned off as we speak. Somebody knows you’re an American, and they’re expecting you to head that way.”
Gil dashed down a narrow passage between the containers. “Where is Umarov?”
“Never mind him. We have to find you a place to hole up.”
“Fuck that!” Gil snapped. “Vector me back toward Umarov!”
“Gil, no. It’s—”
“Bob, your Paris contacts are compromised. I’m completely on my own down here. So vectoring me toward Umarov is as good a direction as any—and it’s the last thing he’s gonna expect!”
The overwatch remained silent, so Gil kept moving toward the end of the row, reaching the dead end. He looked up into the starry night sky. “So what the fuck up there? Am I turning left or right?�
��
“Oh, hell,” the voice said. “Break left!”
Gil took off down the row. “Did Umarov go far?”
“He stopped and entered an apartment building about two miles away.”
“What about the gendarmes?”
“They’ve crossed the footbridge to the west, and the dogs are looking for your scent. You don’t have more than a minute before they’re back on your trail.”
Gil reached the end of the row and dashed across the open rail yard toward the warehouses.
“Step on it,” the voice urged. “You’re entirely exposed.”
“I’m worried I’ll blow out this damn implant.”
“If you don’t make it to cover within the next the thirty seconds, you’ll be spotted by the gendarmes. They’ve got night vision.”
Gil stepped up the pace and made it to cover behind a line of six lone tanker cars parked on a sidetrack, ducking behind another wheel.
“Hold there a minute,” the overwatch said. “They’re scanning up and down the rail yard.”
“What are their orders?” Gil knew that his overwatch spoke fluent French. “Are you listening to their traffic in real time?”
“Their orders are to not let you escape.”
“Okay, so dicey at best,” Gil muttered. “I could use a smoke.” He sat on his haunches with his head tilted back against the wheel, sucking air deep into his lungs. “I can’t run like this much longer. You have to find me a ride.”
“The dogs will pick up your scent any second now,” said the overwatch. “Get up and move out exactly perpendicular to the tracks. You need to keep the wheels between you and the men on the far side. If you can make it to the warehouses without being spotted, you’ve got a chance.”
Gil ran and made it to the nearest warehouse, running down the far side to get out of sight.
“Oh, Christ,” said the overwatch. “Do you hear any shooting down there?”
Gil froze. “No—why?”
“Someone’s shooting the gendarmes. Two of them are down on the tracks, and the rest are falling back under cover. They just set the dogs loose again.”
