Nick buried his raw anger and worked to forget the sight of Anne in their yard. The sight of the scope tracking Jernigan across the yard reminded Nick of dozens of shots from his past.
How many had he killed? He'd once known, but after a while, they ran together. The real professionals stop keeping track.
Colonel Jernigan walked toward his truck, looking calm and unhurried this morning. Jernigan always paused in front of the door to his truck, and since it was an older model 4x4, he had to unlock it manually with a key. Nick planned to take the shot at this moment when Jernigan wasn't moving.
Jernigan took his final steps to the truck, and Nick felt time slow down and his senses sharpen. Some kind of bug climbed his leg just above his boot, and he shifted his mind from the sensation to focus on the crosshairs and Jernigan's body. The wind remained constant, blowing just slightly from left to right.
Nick began easing back the trigger, as delicate as you might test the blade of a razor-sharp knife with your finger.
Chapter 47
"Cruel Angel, this is Team 4 Leader. Do you read, over?"
"Roger, Team 4 Leader," Whitaker said. "This is Cruel Angel. Read you loud and clear."
"Be advised, Cruel Angel. We have November Whiskey in our sights."
November Whiskey stood for Nick Woods, and Whitaker could not contain the joy those words brought to him. He smiled at Tank, as they sat in a hotel room in Jacksonville, just a few miles from Camp Lejeune and Colonel Jernigan.
"Team 4 Leader, are you absolutely certain you have November Whiskey in your sights?"
"Roger, Cruel Angel. We can see his position and the outline of his body."
Whitaker grinned. His plan would work.
"Roger that, Team 4 Leader. Follow the original plan and do not intercept until after the shot is taken."
Tank laughed, and Whitaker looked up from the radio.
"What?" he asked.
"You're an evil son of a bitch," Tank said.
"Might as well close the final loose end. Plus, it ties off nicely with the story that will emerge."
"Still, pretty cold blooded to allow Col. Jernigan to take a bullet."
"It is," Whitaker shrugged, "but we deal in big schemes, and in the big scheme of things, it's a minor footnote."
Whitaker glanced down at his radio. He wished he was out there with his troops. The one bad thing about command was how quickly you got pulled from the front lines.
Eventually, you found yourself looking at maps and listening to radios. You found yourself perfecting plans and studying strategy.
At least in this instance, Whitaker knew he had a great strategy in place. He'd overseen countless operations, and this was one of his best yet. And like all great plans, it started with first-rate intel.
Whitaker knew Nick Woods would go after Col. Jernigan. He also knew he had a civilian-made .308 hunting rifle, which was not nearly as effective as a military sniper rifle.
Thus, Whitaker estimated 300 yards as a max range for Nick. Really, that was barely outside assault rifle range, so Nick's greatest strengths as a sniper were severely diminished.
From there, Whitaker had drawn a 300-yard circle around Col. Jernigan's home, as well as his office, though both Whitaker and his team snipers felt Nick would shoot Jernigan around the home. The office was too jammed up with people and buildings to be effective.
Whitaker had set up surveillance at both locations, just to play it safe. But his men had quickly seen Nick snooping around the Colonel’s home. It had been so tempting to take him out early on, but Whitaker's plans relied on Nick taking Col. Jernigan out.
The advantages to this were numerous. First, it closed a final loose end. Second, the shot would be a flat-out murder, further undermining Nick's outlandish story involving conspiracy and threatened news media. Third, after the shot, Whitaker's men could kill him in a way that would allow Marine Major Hawkins of the MP unit on base to take credit for just happening to be in the right place at the right time.
Hawkins was the Marine who'd helped Whitaker get on the base to begin with, and he even allowed him to borrow a couple Hummer's on his first trip to Camp Lejeune. This would be a huge repayment of that favor.
Major Hawkins was about to become a real-life hero, and his career would be set.
Whitaker had ordered all members of Team 4 to arm themselves with H&K MP5 submachine guns, since these fired 9 mm rounds. This was the same caliber as the rounds fired in MP service pistols. Best of all, the H&K MP5 came with a suppressed model that all of Whitaker's teams used regularly, so they were familiar with them.
Once the men had killed Nick Woods, Major Hawkins would come roaring up in his Hummer and fire the appropriate number of times into the air that Nick had been hit. The Team 4 leader had assured Whitaker they could take Nick down with two good center mass shots, and maybe one in the head.
That would be three shots for Major Hawkins to fire in the air while Team 4 policed up their brass and got the hell out of Dodge. Investigators wouldn't even take the time to run ballistics on the rounds.
It'd be a routine shooting, and no one would question the integrity of Major Hawkins.
"Shot fired! Shot fired!" screamed Team 4 Leader over the radio.
"Here we go," Whitaker said to Tank.
"I hope they nail the bastard," Tank said, and Whitaker looked up and thought he heard something in Tank's voice.
Typically, Tank wanted to get his hands on their targets. Had Nick Woods gotten in Tank's head?
Chapter 48
Nick focused his scope on Colonel Jernigan, making a couple of last-second adjustments. He eased the trigger back and loosed the round that would right many wrongs.
Immediately, Nick worked the bolt to reload the rifle. He moved the rifle back on target and prepared for a follow-up shot, but saw Jernigan go down. Blood sprayed across the truck door.
Nick knew the shot had felt good and figured he'd hit Jernigan within a few inches of the heart -- certainly through one of his lungs. The man stood no chance unless an ambulance pulled up in the next thirty seconds, and even that would be a stretch.
Nick began to push himself up from his position. He had a four-mile hard evasion route in front of him, and he mentally prepared himself for it.
Out of nowhere, he caught movement and ducked back down. A van came roaring down the street toward a fake hide he'd placed right at three hundred yards from Jernigan's home.
Nick had placed the fake hide there in case there were any counter-snipers watching for him. He'd set it up a bit obvious, even placing a cheap scope he'd bought at Wal-Mart among the bushes so that there'd be some reflection there from the morning sun.
Nick pulled the rifle back up as the van slid to a stop just yards from the hide, which sat just inside the tree line. As the men jumped from the truck and fired silenced H&K MP5 submachine guns toward the hide, Nick realized these were not MP's or Marines. They wore Marine uniforms, but Marine MP's didn't carry silenced weapons or deploy like an assault team.
Nick quickly realized that these were men of whatever shadowy unit it was that was hunting him and Allen Green. He also recognized this as a golden opportunity. One they had forced him into. After all, his plan didn't include trying to outrun eight men who had vehicle support. He'd expected some pursuit, but by men who were also trying to avoid getting seen by MP's or other base personnel.
The sheer audacity of these men brought up some fear Nick hadn't expected. Then he remembered the fake FBI agent, whose name turned out to be Nancy Dickerson. Just as he finished twisting the range down on his scope and placing the reticule on the first man, he thought of how this group had rounded up Allen and destroyed his life.
Whoever was behind this group was cold blooded, and not afraid to break any law on the books. By the time Nick pulled the trigger, he'd decided he'd kill every one of the men in the van if he could.
They had chosen to work for a murderous organization. And they had taken part in an illegal operat
ion in which they had impersonated legitimate Marine MP’s and fired silenced weapons into a hide in an act of calculated murder.
These men hadn’t even given the “sniper in the fake hide” an opportunity to surrender. It had been an ordered hit. The kind which few men willingly go along with.
Yeah, Nick would kill every one of them if he could. He pulled the sniper rifle’s trigger and his first shot blew a man off his feet.
"Where'd that come from?!" yelled the Team 4 Leader. "Spread out! Eyes outboard! Communicate, damn it. What do you see?"
His men ignored the fake hide they had just shot up and spread out into a quick 360, each taking a knee and looking for the source of the shot.
Nick racked the bolt and aimed at the leader standing and shouting. He fired quickly. After all, it was just four hundred yards away this time, instead of seven hundred.
The man went down hard, and Nick dropped a third man before they scrambled into the prone.
"Where are those shots coming from?" screamed one of the men, real urgency and fear in his voice.
"He's to the west, I think," another said.
"Spread into a linear formation," one man yelled, pointing with his finger toward the woods. "He's this direction."
The men not facing toward Nick jumped up and ran to get into a skirmish line, except now everyone was in the prone.
"Cruel Angel, this is Team 4," yelled the next in charge into the mic in his vest that connected to the radio in his pack. "Team 4 leader is down, as are two other team members. We're taking very effective fire from several hundred yards away. Request support, over."
Tank saw Whitaker look down at his radio with a sick look.
They had no support in the immediate area for his besieged troops.
"Team 4, support is on the way, but it'll be a few minutes getting there," Whitaker said.
He saw Tank furrow his brow at the obvious lie, but continued, "You must try to fire and move toward him. He can't hold you all off, and that's your best chance."
The Team 4 member who was next in command didn't answer Whitaker. He looked up and said, "All right, guys, we're going to fire and move and take this fucker out."
"Come on, Lewis," someone said. "We've got piss-ant pee shooters that barely shoot a hundred yards. We're dead men if we try to run him down when he’s three or four hundred yards away."
A shot echoed, and the telltale whack sounded. A moist slap caused all the men to squirm lower to the ground.
"Who was that? Who got hit? You all right?"
"We need to go," another Team 4 member said. "If we make a break for it, some of us can make it out of here."
Lewis wanted to argue with him, but facts were facts.
"Sounds good," he said. "Get ready for some covering fire."
Nick had a hard time seeing them while they were in the prone, and he knew they'd probably make a break for the van soon.
He prepared for their next move by pulling his nearly empty magazine from the rifle and inserting a fresh one in. That gave him five rounds and only four remaining targets.
Piece of cake.
In the distance, he could hear sirens approaching, but that was as much a threat to the men lying in the grass before him as it was to him.
Suddenly, two men jumped up, and rounds started zipping by him, some low -- striking the dirt -- and others high -- cutting branching and leaves. He couldn’t hear them firing because of their silenced weapons, but that was okay. At 400 yards, it would take some serious bad luck on his part for him to get hit by a pistil-sized, 9 mm round.
Nick ignored his fears and braved the bullets thudding all around him. He aimed at a man jumping into the driver's seat of the van. Nick fired, but his shot shattered the glass and missed due to the deflection the window caused. He worked the bolt and sent a second shot toward his target.
This one struck the side of the man's face and instantly killed him.
Nick aimed at a second man who had jumped into the back of the van. He lost him in his scope when the man ducked behind a seat.
The other two men, who had been providing cover fire, leapt to their feet and ran for the truck. He shot the one darting toward the vehicle’s rear doors and blew him into the van, before the man’s body slid out.
The second of the last two to scramble made it to the driver's door. As he yanked it open and pulled the dead man from the driver's seat, Nick put a bullet right into the front of his face. Both men fell.
Nick worked the bolt again and aimed toward the rear of the van.
On second thought, he lowered his rifle. He'd let the final man live – along with any others who were tough enough to survive taking a well-placed 7.62 mm bullet. Their stories would intensify the fear among the rest of the opposition's troops.
And with that thought, Nick slid back from his position and exited the area. The ghost of Nick Woods had shown these men what a true sniper could do with a fully capable military rifle.
Eight men lay bleeding or cowering in fear, and not a single one of them had managed to see him. Hell, they hadn’t even located his true position.
Nick knew as he exfiltrated the area that these men had felt terrifying fear today. They, nor their friends in the other squads, would be looking forward to tangling with Nick again.
Not today. Not ever.
Chapter 49
Allen Green grew increasingly worried following the day of Nick's mission. Nick had said it might take a day or two -- maybe even three -- to get off the base, depending on how tightly they clamped it down after the shooting of Col. Jernigan.
News channels had shown the complete devastation after a Marine leaked a video clip taken from an iPhone. Bodies lay busted and broken across the landscape. Best of all, the men that Nick killed had left a treasure trove of intelligence for the Marine Corps investigators, as well as the FBI, to work with.
Now media throughout the country were reporting that the violence hadn't been a terrorist attack as initially reported, or if it were, it had been an internal militia group; possibly from out west.
All the men found dead or wounded were carrying various forms of identification ranging from private investigators to former police officers to former federal agents, including even one former FBI member.
Neither the Marine Corps nor the media could figure out exactly what had gone down yet, but all the bodies had helped the dialogue between Allen and his former press friends.
More and more were starting to buy into a conspiracy of such scale and width as to be mindboggling.
One, a reporter from The New York Times, had begun to seriously dig and ask questions to DOD and the CIA. His name was Ken Leonard, and he had already been publishing bits and pieces of an upcoming story on his blog. His readers weighed in on comments and offered suggestions on what they thought was happening.
On the second day following the shooting, Allen Green again dutifully drove down a barely used state road bordering the Marine base and, more importantly, the training area Nick planned to exit from.
Nick had told Allen to drive down the road each night and look for a series of signals along the road at a pick-up point the two had agreed would work best -- both for the man in the woods and the man driving the car. And just as he did on the first night, Allen nervously drove down the road, looking for a branch in the road, followed by an RC Cola can, followed by an old red shirt that would be lying in the gravel on the shoulder.
Allen had worried other trash might confuse him, but the two had driven the spot that would be used and confirmed it was relatively litter free prior to Nick leaving for the op. Besides, Nick had asked, how many RC Cola cans have you seen lately? Not to mention the red shirt he'd be packing in with him.
But despite how hard Allen squinted in the darkness of that second night, he saw none of the three signs when he passed the area at midnight as directed. He arrived back at his hotel room dejected and increasingly worried.
However, that negativity was soon replaced by joy onc
e Allen checked The New York Times website and saw a news story -- third down from the top, in fact -- that had been written by Ken Leonard, the reporter who'd been jumping more and more on Allen's side in regards to the conspiracy.
Ken had asked Allen earlier in the day if everything he had told him in the previous few days could be used on the record. Allen, now a fugitive on the run, figured he had nothing to lose by having his name used in a story with quotes and statements from him.
This agreement to be quoted on the record with his name attached had been the decisive factor in Ken Leonard's editor at The New York Times giving him the green light on his article.
And as The New York Times so often does, they'd placed the article online around midnight, which almost always meant the article would appear in the next day's print edition. Allen clicked the link and waited impatiently while the page loaded.
The headline read, "Colossal conspiracy or frantic felon, full of foolish fancy?"
Well, Allen thought, they sure nailed the alliteration.
He read on, full of anticipation. Sure enough, Ken Leonard recounted the story from beginning to end with flawless precision. Of how an award-winning reporter had worked for months on a huge story. Of how the story had claimed that American snipers had engaged Soviet Spetsnaz troops in Afghanistan despite years and years of Americans adamantly claiming no such thing ever occurred. Or even nearly occurred. Of how those same snipers had been sold out to close up any loose ends and determine who a Soviet mole actually was.
And then the article described how Allen admitted it was all false the very next day, and how the police said he set fire to his apartment and had child pornography found on his computer. The article followed these two points with a quote from Allen himself, now hidden allegedly somewhere in the south, according to the article.
"It's absurd that I made that story up and would withdraw it the very next day," Allen Green said in an interview. "I've been writing articles for thirty years and had only two clarifications in that time. Yes, two clarifications and no, read zero, corrections. And child porn? Wouldn't you think that if I looked at child porn, I wouldn't have done so from my work computer, which is monitored by my employer? This is part of a huge government conspiracy. The government couldn't allow this story to stand, so they came after me with some secret group."
Sold Out (Nick Woods Book 1) Page 16
