Tactical Deception: Silent Warrior, Book 2

by J. L. Saint

  He was a man who’d walk through fire without a word.

  A soldier, whose heart was still in the fight though his body was too damaged to win.

  The crack of another rifle shot slammed into her knotted fear and she bit back a cry. She didn’t want a dead hero. She wanted a living, vibrant man in her arms. So what twisted game was fate playing now? As if being kidnapped with her godsons by a butchering drug lord last month hadn’t been enough.

  She winged off a prayer for both Rico and Franz and breathed a major sigh of relief at the sight of policemen in protective, tactical gear flood the area. Keeping low and behind the cover of cops were the EMTs. Help had arrived for Franz, but Rico was still out there after the sniper. Alone.

  The rifle crack let Rico know he’d pegged the sniper’s hideout. Heart pounding, shoulder throbbing, Rico kept low as he clung to the shadows, running as fast as he could to the sniper’s knoll. About fifty yards into the clearing on his left, a man laid Tango Uniform, the side of his head blown off. The remains of a family picnic—sandwiches, drink boxes, apples—scattered the grass and the abandoned blanket. The frightened cries from the trees on his right told a sad story, and Rico’s blood boiled beneath his skin. The son-of-a-bitching coward!

  “Daaaddy!” A little girl, about three years old, in pink shorts, darted from the trees just ahead of Rico, her pigtails bouncing as she ran toward the dead man.

  Shit. Rico left the shadows and angled into the clearing, aiming to intercept the child. He ran so hard his muscles became knots of pain.

  “Tanya! NO!” A woman carrying an infant appeared from the trees, attempting to go after the child, her dark eyes wide with horror, her complexion ghost pale. She was in shock and trying to cope with the incomprehensible.

  “Get back!” Rico passed her going after the kid. Another bullet hammered the air. The dirt behind the little girl exploded. Rico ran harder. He wrapped his good arm around the child when he reached her and hit the ground at a roll. Pain slammed him like a freight train as his injured shoulder made impact with mother earth. He kept rolling and rolling until a dip in the terrain let him gain his feet. The child smelled of peanut butter and baby powder and was so stunned that she lay like a rag doll in his grip until he reached the trees. Then she struggled and cried out for her daddy. A daddy who would never hold her again as her sugarplum dreams became nightmares of his murder.

  Rico clamped harder on to his anger, sure he would tear the sniper apart with his bare hands, limb from limb. This violence should have never touched the child’s life.

  “Thank God. Oh thank God,” the woman cried as she ran to meet them.

  “Don’t let go of her. Hide quickly.” Rico thrust the little girl into the woman’s arms and pushed them behind a tree, toward the woods. He spared a glance in Angie’s direction but couldn’t see her. He prayed to God that she’d stay covered just as he thanked God that Lauren hadn’t brought Matt and Mitch to the picnic as planned. The twins had been through hell and didn’t need this. Nobody needed this and he had to stop it.

  He ran harder. His lungs ached and heaved, dying for air he couldn’t seem to get enough of. His injury from Lebanon screamed bloody murder at him and his other muscles tried to cramp up and freeze on him. The surgeries had taken a toll on his body.

  Turning toward the sniper’s position, he backhanded the sweat from his eyes and ran even harder. A police siren wailed in the distance, assuring help was on the way.

  Yet the sniper squeezed off another round and Rico heard a distant scream.

  He couldn’t move fast enough to satisfy the boiling anger in his gut. Less than two minutes later, armed with a heavy branch, he crested the tree-covered knoll where the sniper had shot from.

  Brass shell casings—.30 caliber WSMs—littered the churned ground. The guy probably had a Remington 700 rifle.

  Fifty yards to the left, disappearing around a copse of trees, Rico saw a man in fatigues and moved at a cautious run forward. The man appeared to be confused, running zigzag as if looking for something. He didn’t have the rifle with him, which meant the guy had ditched it in the park. Rico poured on the steam and tackled the bastard from behind.

  They both went down, hitting the ground hard. Rico saw stars as a bolt of pain shot through his shoulder and neck. He tried to pin the guy, but the man went berserk, screaming wildly, arms and legs flailing in a mindless defense. At about six foot, the guy weighed an easy two twenty, all muscle and deadly power unleashed.

  Rico could have held his own in a sane fight, but this insanity was impossible to contain and a blow to his injured shoulder had him rolling away from the guy, fighting for consciousness.

  Instead of going for the kill that Rico wondered if he could stop, the man turned and ran. Rico gained his feet, sucking for air and followed, digging for his cell phone. There were people running and shouting for others to run as the man he was after weaved between them. Others stumbled back in confusion, unsure which direction to go. Rico dodged teenagers with skateboards, a mother with kids carrying kites, and a plump elderly couple with their dogs.

  Stopping the guy was out, but a picture would work. The man exited the park onto a busy street at a dead run. Rico kept after him, fixing the man’s image in his mind and trying to get cell pics of the guy before he jumped into a beat-up black Jetta and burned rubber. Only three letters of the license plate were visible.

  “Holy Moses, boy. You got trouble?”

  Rico turned to see a beret-wearing homeless man, complete with shopping cart of belongings, camped out at the park entrance. “You can say that and a prayer,” Rico told the man. He called 911 as he headed back into the park gate, hurrying to Angie. He moved against the flood of panicked people pouring from the park. The emergency dispatcher answered just as he tripped over a baby stroller two veiled and covered-from head-to-toe women were pushing. Rico grabbed the front end to keep it from tipping and mouthed a sorry to the ladies, but they just kept their heads down and moved on. He turned his attention to the dispatcher. “I think I have a picture of the Piedmont Park shooter and his car.”

  He told them the partial license plate number then told them what park entrance he was at. They ordered him to stay there.

  To hell with that. If Angie needed him, he was out of there. He called Angie. The paramedics were with Franz and she would accompany him to the hospital. Rico explained what happened on his end, but that was as far as he got before suspicious cops surrounded him with their Glocks drawn. “I’ll call you back, Angel.”

  One of the cops stepped forward. “Hands up where we can see them. I’m Officer Carver. You call about the sniper?”

  “Yes.” Rico’s shoulder pain worsened as he raised his arms, his body shook, and sweat drenched him from head to toe. “I’m unarmed and the bastard is getting away.” Rico went to lower his arms.

  “Keep your hands up, sir. Until I confirm you’re unarmed.” The officer patted him down.

  “What the hell is this? I called you. The sniper just took off in a black Jetta. I have a picture of him and the car.”

  “Okay. You’re good. You can lower your arms. Just keep your hands were I can see them. If everybody told the truth, I’d be out of a job. Let’s see what you got then you can tell me your story from the beginning.” Two of the cops remained, and the rest of the men scattered into the park.

  Rico pulled up the pictures from his cell; they were worse than blurry since he’d snapped them at a run. “Damn. The guy is wearing fatigues, brown hair, gray eyes and built.” He told them what happened from the moment Franz was shot. He gave them the sniper’s height and weight. What kind of rifle the gunman had likely used, though he never saw it, and the ammo cartridge size. “He didn’t have the Remington with him, so he must have ditched it in the woods. I can show you where he was shooting from.”

  “For a guy who just happened to be taking a stroll in the park you sure as hell know a lot. Can anyone verify your story?”

  Rico exhaled a load of fru
stration. Were he in the cop’s shoes, he supposed he’d be suspicious as well. “Why don’t we start over, Officer Carver? I’m Corporal Rico Santana, First Special Forces Operational Detachment-D stationed at Fort Bragg. It’s my job to know. And I can verify where I was. My, uh, girlfriend is on the way to the hospital with one of the victims. I was with her when the shootings started. Why in the hell are we wasting time? You can catch this guy.”

  “An APB has been out since you made the call. My job is you right now. Just because you weren’t pulling the trigger doesn’t mean you aren’t involved. Why don’t you show me the sniper’s spot, then I’ll take you down to the station. We’ll put your cell pics through analysis and you can give the sketch artist a description of the suspect while we check out your story. Then we’ll see.”

  Rico bit back a curse. His gut told him his ass was about to be microscoped inside and out. And it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  Chapter Eight

  White Aryan Vipers (WAV)

  Militia Training Camp

  Harnett County, North Carolina

  1800 hours

  “He’s never gonna shut up,” Dugar muttered under his breath from the back of the crowd as he watched Slayer pound his fist into his palm. Thirty fools stood around, hanging on the idiot’s every word. Even his friend Bean looked hooked. Believing in seedline supremacy was one thing, but this man was off his rocker. This was supposed to be a training exercise, and he was turning it into a worship-Slayer session.

  “Stuff it, ’fore he hears ya,” Bean whispered. Bean moved in front of Dugar to keep him out of Slayer’s line of sight.

  Dugar frowned. Why the hell was Bean even with WAV? The man avoided fights every chance he could and seemed to have set himself up as Dugar’s bullshit counselor or something. Especially when it came to keeping the peace between Dugar and Slayer. He did owe Bean though. Being a vet, the man had stitched him up and pumped him with antibiotics after that towelhead bitch stabbed him. It killed him that her ass was still running around free in America, unpunished, mooching off American money, using up America’s resources and opportunities then trashing America and what it stood for while she did it.

  Dugar spat in disgust and shifted his hold on his assault rifle. He’d like to put a bullet right between her lying eyes. That’d be a shot worthy of Sugar. Oiled to perfection, Sugar was his prized possession. This evening she was smelling sweet and begging for some action, even if it was to execute dummy targets—again.

  He was the only man at the camp who owned a Sturmgewehr 44. One marked by its original Nazi owner, who’d notched his kills into the stock butt. One hundred and ten to be exact. Dugar was still making up his mind on whether to add his six to it or not. He hadn’t killed them with Sugar. But getting that bitch any way he could would be a Sugar-worthy notch.

  There’d been a few modifications done to make Sugar a damn good automatic, but otherwise she was a part of the Third Reich’s attempt at setting the world right, a part of history he could put his hands on and feel all the way to his bones. He usually didn’t bring this baby out of hiding, but when Slayer took over the reins of WAV after Lloyd Benson’s middle-of-the-night departure, Dugar had wanted a sharper edge among the men at the camp. Dugar had wanted something Slayer didn’t have and couldn’t get fast.

  Dugar had hit pay dirt with the StG 44 rifle then rubbed it in even more with the kick-ass ’57 Chevy he’d stolen a few weeks back from a towelhead’s whore, who had no right to be driving an American classic car.

  Slayer’s brown eyes were so green with envy that Dugar was now looking twice over his shoulder at night and stealing C4 from WAV’s armory every day—his get-out-of-jail-free card.

  Anywhere he lived, any place he went, he always had an escape plan that he shared with no one. He also kept secret his large cache of weapons in his own brand of “secure” self-storage and only had a few of his guns on hand. Even as a kid, anything important to him he’d kept hidden. That way his father could never find and destroy Dugar’s shit ever again.

  Over the years he’d gotten really good at hiding everything, himself included. He’d even managed to steal the gun he eventually killed his father with years before the deed. Cops never found the weapon and really hadn’t suspected that a twelve-year-old would have pulled off an execution-style murder.

  “Lying lips are an abomination to me.” Slayer punched the air, working himself into a fire-and-brimstone lather.

  “To the Lord,” Dugar whispered. “Proverbs. ‘Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.’ He fucking thinks he’s God.” Dugar knew his Bible. He could blame his father for that. The drunk bastard had beat it into him with a rod every day and the last thing Dugar wanted or needed was another son-of-a-bitchin’ preacher shoving things down his throat.

  “Politicians lie,” Slayer shouted. “Government officials lie then send their murdering lackeys after us innocents. They, the FBI, the ATF, are abominations who are unfit to live. We, the true seedline, are the future of America. We are the rightful heirs. The rightful rulers. I am the rightful leader and we must show them the way.”

  “I’m gonna throw up if I hear another word.” Dugar turned around and left. Slayer was no Lloyd. Lloyd was the real deal when it came to explosives and knowing what lies the government could tell. Dugar would never tell a soul, because to say anything to anyone would get him killed, but Lloyd knew McVeigh, and Lloyd knew exactly what had been planned for April 19. He knew what the lies were. Said he’d written them down someplace real safe. Said that they were not only his insurance policy but also his retirement plan.

  “Where in the hell are you going?” Bean hissed at him.

  Dugar kept going.

  “We’re a team. I can’t win if you bail.” Bean caught up.

  Dugar wasn’t surprised Bean had followed him. Bean was like a lost puppy. “I’ll still play.” He wasn’t about to lose out on his chance at the five hundred bucks. “But if that ass is going to blow hot air, I might as well eat.”

  “What’s your beef with Slayer? He’s not so bad.”

  “Besides thinking he is God Almighty? I done told you, Bean, but you aren’t listening. It’s mighty convenient that Lloyd got fingered for the Judge Ted Faraday mail bombing just as soon as Slayer became the number two man around here. The investigation had been cold for over two years then suddenly the FBI knows shit and is after Lloyd? I bet Slayer gave the FBI an anonymous tip.

  “Slayer has done nothing but preach since Lloyd left and you know I can’t stand any preaching. Heard enough from my old man to last me till hell freezes over. If Lloyd were here, WAV would be into some real action by now.”

  Dugar hadn’t come to WAV to follow Slayer. He’d come out of hiding, down from Canada to be with Lloyd. Lloyd knew how to fight and had taught Dugar everything he knew about explosives. He’d been with Lloyd in Washington State when the Viper militia kicked ass, bombing judges, migrant camps and ghettos.

  Lloyd was supposedly south of the border, lying low, and Dugar needed to blow this hellhole and hunt Lloyd down.

  “Hurry.” Bean glanced back out the doorway. Dugar had no doubt the men were still listening to Slayer’s bullshit. “We need to get back quick. I’ve been eatin’ shit for weeks cause of you.”

  Dugar scowled. “Me? Fuck, Bean. It’s that bitch’s fault and you know it. She should have stayed her ass in her own country. Then she never would have hit me with the fucking door and pissed me off. I don’t care what Slayer says. He can’t keep me a prisoner. I’m going to get that bitch. She damn near cut my dick off. I’ve got—son of a bitch. There she is.”

  Dugar ran across the room to the big screen, kicking shit out of his way with his steel-toed Doc Martens. He couldn’t believe it. A video clip of the bitch was on the news. She was getting out of a car in the middle of what looked like some kind of riot. Part of him hoped the crowd would kill her like a pack a wolves while he watched, but another part of him wanted the pleasure of killing her all to himself. He n
oted the license plate and make of the car she’d exited and could see that it had happened outside of Fort Bragg that morning.

  He knew she’d been hiding there. He just knew it. The news clip ended and started into something else. He couldn’t hear because Bean was running his mouth.

  “Shit, Dugar. You have to forget about her. She’s nothing but trouble we don’t need. Slayer almost kicked you out before.”

  Dugar heard the word sniper on the news. “Shut the fuck up, Bean. Listen to this shit. There’re snipers killing people all over the country. New York, Atlanta, Miami, DC, Chicago, Beverly Hills, Seattle. Damn…what an opportunity. I could get that bitch and we could even knock off some spooks and tell Slayer—”

  “Tell me what, you sneaky bastard,” Slayer demanded as he slammed into the mess hall.

  Dugar swung around. Slayer and three of his brown-nosing gorillas entered the room. Showdown time. Typical for Bean, he was in the middle of the room, wavering back and forth on his feet, unable to make his mind up which way to run. Dugar met Slayer head on. “To tell you your yellow belly won’t have to take the blame for the shit. We can get some action in and whoever is behind the other shit will get blamed.”

  Slayer turned purple and Bean groaned.

  Dugar gave Sugar, which was cradled in his arm, a pat. Just a little reminder to Slayer that Dugar was armed with full-automatic action. Slayer wasn’t armed. The three men behind Slayer were but two had single-action rifles, and one had a semi-automatic. Slayer wasn’t dumb. He could clearly see Dugar would kill him before the other men nailed Dugar.

  “A little snipering just might be something to think about,” Slayer said. “Right, Tom?”

  The idiot on Slayer’s left blinked with confusion. “Uh, right, Slayer.”

  The man didn’t get Slayer’s real meaning, but Dugar got the message loud and clear. Slayer wasn’t talking about ridding Fayetteville of some trash. He just said outright that he’d marked Dugar as a target.