Stealth Attack

by John Gilstrap

  “Huh,” Gail said. “What are the odds?”

  “I know, right?” Kramer said. “And you know what’s even stranger? As a favor—you know, so you could know the names of your local lookalikes—I ran their names and faces through the databases we have, and I found the oddest thing. Both of those agents are real people.” His eyes narrowed. “Seriously, if you saw these ladies, you’d swear you were looking in a mirror.”

  Jonathan cleared his throat. “So, these agents,” he said. “Are they suspected of any wrongdoing?”

  Kramer reached down and gave JoeDog the tummy rub she was begging for. “No, not that I know of. I mean, we never did catch those burglars at the school, but I don’t think that will ever be a big priority for us.” As he petted the dog, his eyes never wandered from Venice and Gail.

  “I appreciate you letting us know about those doppel-gängers,” Gail said. “With identity theft being as rampant as it is these days.”

  Kramer laughed. “Exactly.” He stood, and the rest of the room stood with him. “I’d show you the footage, but this whole thing seems snakebit. Fumble-fingered as I am, I somehow erased the digital record as I was watching it.”

  “What a shame,” Venice said. She put her hands behind her back when she noticed that they were trembling.

  “I don’t even remember what the agents’ names were.”

  Kramer held out his hand to Jonathan, who accepted it.

  “One day,” Kramer said, “after we’re retired and don’t care anymore, you really must fill me in on just what you do here.”

  Jonathan smiled. “One day.”

  JoeDog followed as Kramer headed for the office door. “I’m really glad you got your boy back, Ven. No price is too high to pay for that kind of reward.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  If I’ve counted correctly, Stealth Attack is my twenty-third book, making this the twenty-third round of acknowledgments. Think about that for a second. When I was a kid, I dreamed of one day having one book published, but I would have felt greedy even praying for this honor to be bestowed so many times. Thank you all so much for being a part of the journey.

  My lovely bride, Joy, is the one who really makes any of this possible. I have heard rumors—all of them unsubstantiated, as far as I’m concerned—that I can be difficult to be around as I dive more deeply into a story. Without stipulating to anything, I am blessed that she’s tolerated me for so long and continues to love me as much as I love her.

  My technical support team continues to keep me from digging holes for myself in things related to weaponry. Thanks to Jeff Gonzales, Rick McMahan, and Steve Tarani for their guidance in tactics and weapons. Thanks also to Robbie Reidsma, my go-to expert at Heckler and Koch.

  Thanks to Chris Thomas for his aviation expertise.

  Chris Shaw is a member of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, and I am forever thankful that he returns my texts quickly and cheerfully.

  Steve Thompson is the proprietor of After-Hours Bail Bonds in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Thanks, Steve for your patient guidance through that fascinating corner of the law enforcement world.

  As always, I am indebted to Art Taylor, Donna Andrews, Ellen Crosby, and Alan Orloff for their wisdom and guidance as I wrote Stealth Attack. Ditto the wise counsel of my buddies Jeffery Deaver and Reavis Wortham.

  This has been a challenging year on many fronts. The fellowship and support shown by my Masonic brethren and fellow nobles of the Kena Shrine kept sanity alive in my world. Thank you so much, brothers.

  Kensington Publishing has been my home for many years now, and I hope for many more. My editor, Michaela Hamilton, showed special patience with me this year, as did Lynn Cully and Steve Zacharius. Somehow, in spite of everything, Crystal McCoy, along with Vida Engstrand, Lauren Jernigan, and Alexandra Nicholajsen kept the train on the tracks for me. There’s a real sense of family at Kensington, and I am proud to be a part of it.

  Last but never least—far from it—is a thank-you to my longtime friend, mentor, agent, and fellow martini lover Anne Hawkins of John Hawkins & Associates in New York.

  Don’t miss the next exciting Jonathan Grave thriller

  LETHAL PREY

  Coming soon from Kensington Publishing Corp.

  Keep reading to enjoy a gripping sample chapter . . .

  Chapter One

  Jonathan Grave hadn’t moved in nearly three hours. He sat at the base of a towering cedar tree, his knees pulled up to his chest, his rifle draped across his lap as he scanned the sloped bank on the other side of the river for any sign of his prey. The November Montana air felt clear and sweet. Not yet cold by local standards, but weather reports said that the mercury would dance around fifteen degrees after dark—about where it was when he’d started out this morning.

  Somewhere in the woods on Jonathan’s left, his giant friend, coworker, and Army buddy Brian Van de Muelebroecke—a. k.a. Boxers—was presumably scanning the horizon on his own.

  Jonathan was certain he’d seen a bull elk along the far side, but by the time he’d settled into position for a shot, the beast had disappeared into the trees. He hadn’t run, though. Jonathan took that as evidence that he hadn’t been spooked. If he was correct, then he figured there was a good chance that the bull—or one of the cows he was no doubt trying to impress with his big rack of antlers—might follow the same trail back this way. Jonathan had allotted five days for this hunt, and this was only the first. He had the time to show patience.

  This was his favorite part about hunting, anyway. He didn’t get enough silence in his life these days. Sometimes solitude worked against him, dredging up images and events that he’d rather forget, but so far, the demons had all stayed away. He considered those demons to be a form of occupational hazard, having spent so much time in nasty places doing nasty chores to protect innocents from nasty people.

  In many ways, on a hunt like this, pulling the trigger and dropping the animal was a kind of letdown. Not that he felt guilty about filling his freezer with seven hundred pounds of deliciousness, but because the gunshot marked the end of the silence.

  The transceiver in his left ear popped as it broke squelch. “Scorpion, Big Guy.”

  He and Boxers had had those radio handles since their days back with the Unit, and old times died hard.

  Jonathan reached under the blaze orange vest he wore over a camo’d chest carrier and keyed the radio that resided in its pouch on his shoulder. “Go ahead,” he whispered. God had blessed elk with amazing ears and an even better nose. He didn’t want to waste these last hours by spooking his prey.

  “Gotta take a break, Boss,” Boxers said. “We got a visitor. We’re coming your way.”

  Boxers knew better than to break a moment like this, so whoever the visitor was, Jonathan knew it had to be important. Smart money said it was a game warden. He muttered a curse under his breath as he flexed his knees, straightened his back, and stood. He let his Vortex Viper binoculars fall against his chest by their lanyard and slung his rifle. “Are you coming to me or are we meeting in the middle?”

  “We’ll come to you.”

  As he waited, Jonathan brought his binoculars back up to his eyes and scanned the opposite bank again. Believing with all his soul that Murphy and his law ruled the universe, he knew that if Mr. Elk were going to make a surprise midday appearance, it would be now, when Jonathan was out of position, or in a few minutes when he’d be locked in conversation with somebody.

  Rustling leaves and heavy footsteps preceded Boxers’ arrival with exactly the person Jonathan had been expecting. The game warden looked to be little more than a kid—maybe twenty-five—and he carried himself with the stern authority of a street cop. Topped with a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, the warden wore the standard uniform of a khaki shirt and blue jeans, along with Sam Browne belt packed with a big Glock, handcuffs, and enough spare mags to engage a militia single-handed.

  Jonathan adjusted his rifle on his shoulder, put a smile on his face, and walked toward the oth
ers. “We can’t be in trouble yet,” he said, offering his hand. “We haven’t been here long enough.”

  The warden looked at Jonathan’s hand, then tucked his thumbs into the arm holes for his ballistic armor. The name SIMONSEN was stitched into a patch that was Velcro’d onto the vest.

  Jonathan didn’t appreciate being dissed by a child, but he also didn’t want to get sideways with the one agency in Montana that could turn this adventure into something very unpleasant. He decided to roll with it and see what the guy wanted.

  “Are you from DC, too?” Simonsen asked.

  “Nope. Virginia.”

  “You two are hunting together, then?”

  “We traveled together,” Jonathan said. “Not sure we’re exactly hunting together, with him being a couple hundred yards away. Have we done something wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” Simonsen said. “Have you?”

  Boxers made a sound and rolled his eyes.

  Simonsen turned on him. “Did you just growl at me? Get around with your friend, where I can see both of you. Let me see some identification.”

  Jonathan reached around to his back pocket for his wallet. “I’ve got my nonresident hunting permit, too,” he said as fished out his driver’s license and handed it over. “But it’s on my phone.”

  Simonsen held the license with two fingers on his left hand while he jotted the information into a skinny, lined reporter’s notebook. “Won the permit lottery, did you?” he asked as he wrote.

  “Been trying for years and finally struck. Both of us did.” Elk licenses were distributed by lottery every April 1, and they cost nearly $1,000 to get.

  “How’d you get here?”

  “We flew.”

  “What airline?”

  Jonathan hesitated. There was no inoffensive way to say the next part. “My own. I have my own plane.”

  “How many stops between home and here?”

  “None.”

  “Not even a fuel stop?”

  This was all beginning to sound strangely intrusive. “Not even,” Jonathan said. “My plane has the range.”

  “And a lot more,” Boxers said. As the designated pilot for their team and the man who specked out the two planes that comprised Jonathan’s fleet, he showed a certain parental pride.

  Simonsen handed back the driver’s license. “I’ll see your permit now.”

  Jonathan returned his license and wallet to his back pocket and pushed his hand into his left front pocket for his phone.

  Simonsen pointed at the binoculars hanging from the strap around Jonathan’s neck. “I guess that a man who can afford his own plane has plenty of scratch for those eight-hundred-dollar field glasses.”

  They were only six hundred, but Jonathan let it go. He pulled up the electronic image of his permit, but Simonsen barely looked at it. “Put it away,” Simonsen said. “I figure if you were that ready to show me, I got no reason to look.” He nodded to Jonathan’s slung rifle. “What’re you shooting?”

  “MR-seven-six-two,” Jonathan said. “It’s the civilian version of—”

  “The Heckler and Koch four-seventeen. Yeah, I know. Same as your tall buddy.” Simonsen’s mood lightened as he spoke of weaponry. “I carried the four-sixteen over in the shit pile.” He glanced at Jonathan, then gave Boxers a long look. “You guys serve?”

  “A long time,” Jonathan said. “Been out for a few years, though.”

  “Why are you wearing body armor?”

  “We’re not,” Jonathan said. “Just the plate carrier. Easiest way to keep the essentials at hand.”

  Simonsen pointed to the camo-patterned rucksack that rested against the base of a tree. “You and your buddy dress together every morning?”

  “That was the best Uncle Sam could buy,” Jonathan said. “Why try to improve on it.” This whole interview didn’t seem right. It felt two clicks too adversarial.

  “What would I find if I opened it?”

  “Socks, shirts, some underwear. Can I ask why you’re so curious about Boxers and me?”

  “You guys are drivin’ a Suburban, right? A rental?”

  “Yup.”

  “The way you parked it up there,” Simonsen said. “Most people when they hunt, they just pull off to the side of the road and go at it. You folks tried to hide your vehicle. Pulling it into the trees, well off the road.” His eyes narrowed. “Mind tellin’ me why?”

  Jonathan had no idea why. It was just the way they’d parked. He looked to Big Guy for help.

  “Old habits die hard, I guess,” Boxers said. “I never like leaving a vehicle too close to the road.”

  “It’s the way poachers behave,” Simonsen said. “I didn’t have a lot else to do, so I thought I’d seek you out and find you.” He pointed briefly to Boxers’ boots. “Them size fifties make tracking pretty easy. I saw where you guys split from each other, so I followed the easy one first.”

  Now it made sense. Sort of. “You walked all this way just to ask a question?” Jonathan said. “That must be two miles.”

  “Every bit of three,” Simonsen corrected. “And it’s my job. It might not surprise you to know that not everyone has the patience to wait the years it can take to win the permit lottery.”

  Jonathan had grown tired of the jaw flapping. “Are we free to go?”

  “As far as I’m concerned. Unless you need to confess to something.”

  Jonathan chuckled. If only the warden knew what Jonathan could confess about the last many years. “I’ve got a question for you about elk. This is my first time with game this big. Is this spot—”

  Simonsen’s vest dimpled, and he made a burping sound as he sat down hard. He was still moving when the sound of a gunshot reached them.

  “Shit!” Jonathan and Boxers said it together. They reacted instantly—instinctively—by likewise dropping to the ground and crawling for cover. Jonathan had just dived behind another cedar when a bullet tore through it at what would have been the level of his head if he hadn’t ducked. The report reached them about a second later.

  “You okay, Boss?” Boxers asked.

  “Fine. You?”

  “Peachy. Who’d you piss off this time?”

  Simonsen had been hit hard, drilled through his center of mass. He’d collapsed onto his back, staring up at the blue sky. Jonathan had no idea whether he was dead or alive, but he knew he was unacceptably exposed.

  “Cover me,” Jonathan said. “I’m going to pull him to cover.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  Jonathan watched as Boxers shifted his butt around so he could better stabilize his rifle. “You do what you want,” Big Guy said, “but I don’t think Ranger Rick is the shooter’s target.”

  “Why?”

  “Watch. Keep an eye on the slope on the other side of the river.” Without any warning, Boxers darted back into the clear for half a second and then ducked back behind cover. Two bullets tore into the trees behind where he would have been, accentuated after the fact by the sound of two reports.

  “Big Guy!” Jonathan yelled. “What the hell?”

  Boxers had made himself small—as if that were possible—behind his tree. “Did you see muzzle flashes?”

  “Seriously?”

  “I told you to watch the other side.”

  Jonathan settled in deeper behind his cover and thought things through. The fact that the shooter had not anchored his kill of the game warden with another shot made it clear—well, mostly clear—that Simonsen was not his intended target. That left the only two men who were left.

  “What do you figure the time delay between the impact and the report?” he asked Boxers.

  “I give it about a second.”

  “That’s what I got. Speed of sound is three hundred forty meters per second, right?”

  “Three forty-three,” Boxers corrected

  “What’s that, three hundred seventy-five yards?”

  “Give or take.”

  Jon
athan pulled his laser range finder from its pocket on his vest and scanned the other slope. The trees were thick, and the hill was steep. At the three-fifty- to three-seventy-five-yard mark, the woods were especially thick.

  “I don’t see a spot at that range where he could get a shot off without hitting another tree,” he observed aloud. This was not a long shot for a talented sniper, but it was a challenging range for a hunter. Even twigs and leaves can make a difference in the flight path of the bullet.

  Maybe that’s what happened.

  “Hey, Boss,” Boxers said. “Take a look at the rock ledge about ten meters to the left of the massive red tree.”

  Jonathan pulled the range finder away to locate the landmark with his bare eyes, then brought it up again. An outcropping of rocks rose from the trees. From it, a shooter could have a clear field of fire. Mother Nature had built a perfect sniper’s nest—an elevated platform for taking the shot and lots of cover in the event of return fire. And it was at the right distance.

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. “Now that I know where to look, jump out again and I’ll watch for the muzzle flash.”

  “I already rode that horse once,” Boxers said. “I believe it is your turn.”

  It was hard to argue the logic. Besides, since Big Guy’s stunt had clearly been a ruse to get the guy to show himself, the shooter would be foolish to fall for the same trick a second time. “He’s probably moved on to get a different angle,” Jonathan said.

  “Definitely,” Boxers agreed. Neither of them moved.

  “You’re still going to make me do this, aren’t you? After all the good times we’ve had together.”

  “Nah,” Big Guy said. “I’m not making you do anything. I don’t mind sittin’ here till dark. It’ll get damned cold, though.”

  Jonathan peered through the range finder again. He supposed there were other options. They could just pound the outcropping with a shit-ton of ammo, but if they did that and the bad guy wasn’t there, that would just reduce the bullets available to them to fight off the real attacker.