Charity slowed her breathing and relaxed her muscles. As she centered the crosshairs below his face, she allowed the reticle to move with the beat of her heart, falling squarely on his throat after each pulse.
Al Din Asfour moved, quickly raising his weapon and shouting something, but Charity moved the rifle with him, holding his neck steady in her sights. Squeezing the trigger a little more, she took the last of the slack out of it.
Timing the fall of the hammer with her own heartbeat, she heard the big rifle boom, just as the sound from the automatic weapons down below reached her ears.
Time seemed to slow as she watched al Din Asfour through the scope. His head suddenly jerked back. A greenish mist, as seen through the night optics, emanated from behind his head as the back of his skull literally vaporized.
Before anyone could react, Charity moved the sights to the next man in line and squeezed the trigger again. No longer waiting to see if it was a kill shot, she moved to the next man, killing him before the others even noticed. Suddenly, the terrorists realized what was happening and scattered toward the safety of the rocks around them, like cockroaches fleeing a bright light.
Charity scanned the area slowly, looking for another target. She’d already accomplished her assigned mission, but she was now playing by their rules. Which meant there were no rules, and no quarter would be given to anyone. She spotted a man who was crouched on the wrong side of a rock, looking up at the rim to the west. He was the sixth to die.
It became harder to find a target, the men crouched behind rocks and shrubs. But there were still nine men down there, and sooner or later, one would move. She held all the advantages. Cover, technology, greater range, and the vaunted high ground.
Charity’s barrel swung left and right, when suddenly, a man made a dash toward the trail leading down to where she knew their camp was located. She sighted and squeezed, the big rifle roaring once more. Without waiting to see if he went down, she quickly went back to scanning the area for another target.
She found them all running toward the safety of the fumarole and returning fire wildly in her direction with the small machine pistols. The very best they could hope for was a one-in-a-million lucky shot. When they reached the rock they’d been shooting at, she saw one recoil away from its heat, leaving him exposed and in a sitting position. Charity put a bullet in his chest.
Seven men now hid behind the giant lava rock and seemed to be firing a lot more in her direction, having finally found the muzzle flash of the big Barrett rifle. But their weapons weren’t even remotely accurate at this distance.
Charity grunted as she felt a tug at her right hip. At the same instant, she heard the crack and whine of a bullet ricocheting off the rock above her. It suddenly felt like someone had laid a red-hot fire poker against her ass.
Looking through the scope again, she saw another man stand, tossing his weapon away and raising his hands high above his head. When she shot him in the chest, the others rose and ran headlong for the safety of the crater’s southern rim and their camp below it.
Charity dropped two more men as they ran. The other four managed to get in the tree line and disappear from sight. Calmly, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her hip and the warm wetness on her outer thigh, she quickly removed the night optics attachment mounted in front of the scope. Setting it aside, Charity attached the thermal monocular to the Picatinny rail, locking it in place with her thumb. Settling behind the scope again, she looked through it into the far tree line. The range was eight hundred and twenty yards with a twenty-degree down angle. Charity ran the declination calculation in her head, as she adjusted the elevation knob.
The fumarole glowed white hot, halfway across the crater. In the distant tree line, she saw two hot spots, both very small, shielded by the coldness of solid rock. She placed the center reticle just below the first one and squeezed. One corner of her mouth went up in satisfaction as she watched the warm spray shoot up from the back of the man’s head.
Inserting a second magazine, she looked through the scope and thermal monocular again, knowing that only three men were left. The other hot spot she’d seen was gone.
It was getting lighter now, but still dark in the forest eight hundred yards away. Charity patiently scanned the far rim of the crater. Night or day, the thermal optics worked the same. The only way to hide from it was to be behind something very dense or in front of something the same temperature as your body.
Charity wanted them all dead. Each one deserved a slow, cruel death, but dead was dead. If they didn’t show themselves, she’d have to go after them. The magazine in the rifle was fully loaded with ten rounds. In close quarters, the machine pistol she’d taken from the dead man, or even her sidearm, would be preferable to trying to bring a thirty-pound sniper rifle to bear.
The throbbing in her backside had lessened somewhat, but that was going to slow her down. Knowing the three were in the opposite wood line, the idea of moving across the open terrain of the crater wasn’t all that appealing either.
Glancing at the incendiary magazine, Charity had a thought. She looked up from the scope and scanned the crater floor and the high rim surrounding it. Her present location was a lot higher than any other part of the rim and a good four hundred feet above the crater floor, which seemed to slope slightly toward where the men had disappeared over the south rim. She could see tiny rivulets where rainwater flowed. They joined together and became the path down which the men had vanished.
I wonder, Charity thought as she scanned the trailhead at the opposite rim, by far the lowest point of the whole rim. Quickly, she dropped the magazine, inserted the Raufoss mag and ratcheted the bolt. The ejected round bounced off the rock to her right as a new round was chambered. One that could penetrate a half inch of steel and explode inside an armored vehicle.
“Wonder what these things will do against a volcano,” Charity said aloud.
Studying the fumarole through the thermal optics, she dialed down the intensity until the great rock was barely glowing. Jagged white lines crisscrossing the rock became visible, like unmoving lightning bolts carved into the surface. They glowed brighter, because they were considerably hotter. On the northeast side, near the base, the thermal monocular showed a small jet of heat shooting up diagonally, swirling several feet out, before disappearing in the cool predawn air.
Charity aimed carefully at the spot where several lines came together and the jet of hot gas spewed out. She didn’t know anything about volcanoes, but she knew that if there was a leak in her boat, making it bigger wasn’t a good thing. Unless you wanted to sink the boat.
When she pulled the trigger, the white-hot flash of the incendiary round as it exploded was blindingly bright. When she looked again, the stream of gas was spewing a lot higher into the cool air. She fired again. And again.
The blinding flash of the third round was accompanied by a loud roar as the whole mountain seemed to vibrate.
This is stupid, Charity thought. Trying to set off a volcanic eruption when she was inside the crater was suicide. She fired a fourth round.
The whole mountain shook as the lava dome shattered and hot gases spewed into the air, hundreds of feet above the crater. Looking over the thermal scope, Charity witnessed a nightmare. Even with her tucked inside the narrow rock gap, the heat seared her skin. She pulled the backpack up for protection as the hot air inside the gap blew over her. Molten lava begin to spill out of the fumarole, arcing away and splashing to the ground twenty feet away. The rock which had held the pressure of the gases in check for who knew how long was gone, shattered into millions of pieces.
Grabbing only the rope and leaving everything else, Charity scurried backwards out of the crack. The last thing she saw was red-hot lava, flowing freely like colored water. Filling the crater, it ignited everything it touched, flowing toward the low side.
“What are you doing here so early?” Chyrel asked, entering the office.
“How could you go home?” Tony said, looki
ng up from the computer screen. “This is like live sci-fi, and I’m the only one seeing it.”
Pulling up another chair, Chyrel sat down next to the grinning black man. “I watched most of the night from my laptop. What’d I miss driving in?”
“I zoomed way out,” Tony said. “About three hours ago, I saw a truck on a rutted road heading toward the volcano.”
“I saw him on foot,” Chyrel said.
“Yeah, he came the last three miles on foot, after parking the truck in a washout. He’d driven the truck without the lights on for quite a ways.”
As the two watched, they saw the same thing happen that Chyrel had seen yesterday. “I watched these guys all day yesterday. Except for sunrise, they change lookouts every two hours.” Pointing to the figure crossing the screen, she said, “That guy’s relieving the other guy early, so he can go down and eat. Where’s the guy from the truck?”
“Disappeared about twenty minutes ago,” Tony said, watching the screen like a kid stares at a cartoon. He tapped a few keys, and the camera zoomed closer to the sentry’s position.
“He went up here,” Tony said, pointing. “Then disappeared into these rocks. Wait! There he is.”
Over the next few minutes, the two watched as the man from the truck, who seemed to be dressed in dark clothes and a hat, made his way to a spot between the two sentries. Without warning, he apparently killed one, and the other came to investigate. The new guy then jumped on him and left him lying with the first sentry, apparently dead, as well. The man then went back to his hiding spot.
“Who is this guy?” Tony asked.
“I don’t know, but I better get Deuce on this.”
Chyrel picked up her phone and quickly called Deuce’s secure line in Washington. “Get on the vid-com, Boss,” she said, without waiting. “Something’s happening on the volcano. A new guy just killed two of the terrorists.”
“I’m in the office,” Deuce replied. “Patch me in.”
She ended the call and scooted Tony aside. In seconds, she set up a videoconference with Deuce’s computer.
“Bring me up to speed,” Deuce said over the vid-com.
Tony explained what he’d watched all night—the truck approaching, the man continuing on foot, and the quick killing of the sentry and his relief.
On the screen, the image dimmed. “Clouds are thickening,” Chyrel said. “It started raining there a few minutes ago. Let me see if the thermal camera can penetrate it.”
The thermal image was better, but lacked distinguishing characteristics because of the white-hot glow of the fumarole.
“What’s the temperature of that thing now?” Deuce asked.
Pinpointing the center of the fumarole, Chyrel answered, “Over four hundred degrees.” Clicking more keys, she added, “And it’s grown sixty-three inches in diameter.”
The thermal imaging dimmed to where only the fumarole was visible, but only barely.
“The storm is intensifying,” Chyrel said. “But it’s not very big, and it’s moving quickly to the west. It should end in just a few minutes and clear up.”
“Any idea who this guy is, Deuce?” Tony asked. “He one of ours?”
“No idea,” Deuce said, but Chyrel could tell from his expression, even over the video feed, that he was lying. This troubled her. She’d never known the man to tell an untruth.
“It’s clearing,” Tony said. “And the sun’s rising.”
Chyrel switched back to the night optics camera and zoomed out to show the whole crater. The men at the fire had now formed a semicircle around the fumarole. Though she’d watched it happen yesterday, she was still amazed at their stupidity.
Just as the men began to open fire on the lava dome, the one on the left side went down, followed quickly by two more. Suddenly, the terrorists began firing wildly in all directions. Another went down and then a fifth when he tried to run to the south.
“It’s a firefight!” Tony said. “The guy in the rocks is a sniper.”
The remaining terrorists ran toward the fumarole, one colliding with it, then falling backwards. The sniper shot him as he struggled to get up.
“These clowns don’t stand a chance,” Tony said. “That guy has to be one of ours. He never looked up, so I couldn’t get a picture for facial recognition.”
At the side of the fumarole, they clearly saw a man toss his weapon away and step out into the open. The merciless sniper shot him where he stood, and the remaining men ran fast for the south side of the crater.
Two more terrorists were shot in the back, as the remaining three made it to the safety of the rocks at the edge of the jungle and took cover. One was suddenly yanked backwards, as if a spring had been released. The last two disappeared into the foliage.
“Dayum!” Tony exclaimed. “That crater’s three-quarters of a mile across!”
Chyrel switched to thermal imaging and followed the two men through the jungle. They were headed to their camp. When they reached it, she zoomed out, to bring the sniper’s hide back into the screen.
A laser-like line shot out from a spot on the north rim, appearing as a thin, white line of heat, striking the fumarole and erupting in a blinding flash of heat.
“Holy shit,” Chyrel said. “He’s shooting at the volcano!”
“Those are incendiary rounds!” Tony added, sitting forward.
One by one, three more shots struck the fumarole, when suddenly the whole screen went white.
“What the hell just happened?” Deuce asked.
Chyrel quickly zoomed further out, the widening hot spot expanding. “I think the volcano is erupting!” She glanced at the temperature sensor display, and her mouth fell agape. “Deuce, the temperature at the fumarole is over eighteen hundred degrees.”
“Good God,” Deuce said with a sigh. “She can’t possibly survive that.”
Chyrel switched to the regular camera and zoomed in. The sun was getting higher, and the glow from the spewing lava flow provided enough light that the night optics were no longer needed.
“Show me all the known locations,” Deuce said.
Chyrel was frozen, mesmerized at the sight of the lava tumbling out of the fumarole and flowing like a red-hot river toward the gap in the rim.
“Chyrel!” Deuce snapped over the vid-com.
“Sorry, Boss,” she replied and quickly pinpointed the camp, the sniper’s hide and the cooking area.
As the three watched in horror, the lava swiftly flowed past the rim’s gap, pouring freely down the southern slope, igniting and vaporizing everything in its path. The fleeing men didn’t stand a chance.
“There!” Tony yelled, coming to his feet and pointing at the top of the screen. “Is that the sniper?”
Zooming in quickly, Chyrel found a solitary figure, dressed in black, scrambling down the north slope, in a straight downhill run.
“He’s on rappel,” Tony said. “Go, man! Get the hell out of there!”
The fleeing sniper must have reached the end of the rope and started moving along a trail to the northwest. Suddenly, the figure stopped and looked up into the sky. Chyrel quickly zoomed in tight on the sniper’s face and gasped.
“That’s Charity!” Tony exclaimed.
“Chyrel,” Deuce said. “Stop recording now. Delete everything after you just zoomed in.”
“Deuce! Charity’s alive!” Chyrel said and it suddenly dawned on her what the man had earlier said, “She can’t possibly survive that.”
“You two are to forget what you just saw,” Deuce ordered. “Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Tony replied, with a bit of a grin. “Forget what?”
“Chyrel?” Deuce asked.
Her hands danced across the keyboard, zooming the camera out to a five-mile radius and stopping the record function. Suddenly, the whole mountain seemed to explode, throwing rocks and ash in all directions.
Chyrel’s hand flew to her mouth, and Tony’s sardonic grin disappeared.
Nearly a week later, Deuce and
Chyrel videoconferenced, having both tried and failed to find out more, or piece together Charity’s movements to get to the volcano. All they could come up with was when Tony had zoomed out and noticed the truck driving on the rutted dirt road with its lights out. They had no way of knowing how she had arrived in Mexico, or where. And Stockwell wasn’t giving up anything. Further, he’d ordered the deletion of the entire video file.
“She had to have flown,” Chyrel said.
“That Huey just doesn’t have the range,” Deuce replied over the encrypted videoconference call. “Besides, that’d be too conspicuous.”
“An airliner’s out. Too much chance of being spotted on the security cameras.”
“She had to get there in a boat of some kind,” Deuce said, thinking. “I’d like to think she’d survived the eruption. But, without knowing where and how she exfiltrated, there’s just no way to know for sure.”
“Until Travis sends her on another mission.”
“If so, he’ll have to bring me into the loop,” Deuce said. “Until then, the only ones who know it was her at the volcano are me, you, and Tony. As much as I hate it, we’ve been ordered by the secretary to continue the lie that she stole the chopper.”
“And if Travis doesn’t send her on another mission?”
“Then we’ll have to assume she was killed. It’ll be months, maybe years, before the Mexican authorities can get in there to see the devastation firsthand.”
“She kicked ass, though. Didn’t she?”
Deuce smiled slightly. In just the two weeks since he’d taken the job in DC, Chyrel thought years had been added to his face.
“Yeah,” Deuce replied. “She most definitely kicked some major ass.”
Meanwhile, Travis Stockwell was living up to the illusion of a retired public servant, drinking and carousing up and down the middle and lower Florida Keys. Jesse McDermitt was barely taking out a charter a week, so he had plenty of free time.
Merciless Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 1) Page 15
