Super Sniper

by Rawlin Cash

  Hunter would trust his life with it any day of the week. He had to. It was his gun. The gun given to him by his government, by his country, by his people. The Saudis had the smart bullet, but where Hunter came from, people put a lot of stock in teaching a man how to shoot the old fashioned way. The first time Hunter aimed a rifle he was barely big enough to hold it. His grandfather taught him. Hunter could say a lot of things about his grandfather but one thing was certain, the man knew how to teach a kid how to shoot. The skills he got from his grandfather were honed in the First Ranger Battalion, then in Reconnaissance Company, the Joint Special Operations Command, and finally at CIA Black Ops. Hunter knew how to shoot.

  And he trusted his gun.

  It embodied everything Jamal Al-Wahad would never understand. It was the reason an advanced sniper system would never be enough to destroy 250 years of democracy. It was the reason the Saudi King wouldn’t get away with whatever game he was playing.

  1774.

  That was the year the House of Saud ascended to power.

  Two years before the Declaration of Independence.

  And then there was 1816.

  That was the year a man named Eliphalet Remington set up the company of E. Remington and Sons in the town of Ilion, New York. The factory he opened that year was the oldest factory in America still making the product it was originally built to make.

  It was in that factory that Hunter’s rifle had been made.

  The cartridge was a .300 Winchester Magnum, a cartridge manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company from New Haven, Connecticut.

  Hunter was used to having the better equipment. When he went up against adversaries in Afghanistan or Syria, he knew everything about the equipment an opposing sniper might be using. He knew what rifles were on the local market. He knew what rifles were being imported. He knew what ammunition was available, the ballistic profile of each bullet, the scope most likely being used. He knew what he was going up against and it was almost child’s play to predict what an opponent would do in any given situation.

  He knew that for all the talk of skill and bravery and valor, there was almost nothing you couldn’t predict about an enemy if you had enough information about his equipment and situation.

  Hunter went over what he knew about Jamal Al-Wahad. He was the oldest son of one of the Saudi King’s many cousins. He’d grown up in Riyadh within the strict confines of the royal court. When he was fifteen, he was sent to a private boarding school in the Kaliningrad Oblast. It was a school that had been used by Prussian aristocrats for centuries and was an odd choice for a Saudi royal. Its focus was on discipline and it was the only elite school in Europe to advertise its use of corporal punishment. From there he went to Oxford before returning to Saudi Arabia with an advanced degree in political science.

  From what Hunter had read, Al-Wahad was bullied ruthlessly at boarding school. Being an outsider was never going to be easy at a school for Prussian elites. His looks didn’t help either. He was short and ugly. From the photos Hunter had seen, his neck was unusually thick and his face looked like it had been flattened out with a skillet.

  He also had a cruel streak. His mother had been something of a free spirit. When it was discovered that she’d been having an affair with her driver, her husband had her raped and lynched by his bodyguards. The body was found swinging from a tree behind Jamal’s bedroom. He never forgot the sight of her swinging there, or the feeling of his father slapping him in the face until he disavowed his mother and called her a slut. The details of the incident had been recorded by the Saudi special police force that monitored the private lives of the royal family.

  Hunter had read the file. Its recommendation was ‘no action’.

  In boarding school, there’d been an incident where four boys beat Jamal almost to the point of unconsciousness and then pissed and masturbated on him. A year later, dead cats were found on the school grounds, killed in sophisticated booby traps and tortured with great attention to detail. While the school never found out who’d set the traps, the Saudi special police file revealed it was Jamal.

  As a henchman for the Saudi king, Jamal Al-Wahad was second to none.

  He had no qualms.

  He’d carry out any order.

  When the king wanted to make an example of someone, he was known to detail especially brutal actions to be taken in their murder. Jamal carried them out to the letter, leading to a string of increasingly heinous murders in the Saudi capital and around the world.

  A man in London with ties to a Saudi opposition movement was found dead with his testicles stuffed in his mouth. Another in Istanbul was found crucified upside down.

  There were cases of fetuses being ripped from women’s wombs, or palace wives being disfigured with acid, their faces literally melted off, one drop at a time, until they looked like something out of a horror movie.

  Hunter wanted to kill this man.

  He wanted to know that whatever else he did in his life, he’d killed Jamal Al-Wahad. Jamal was the type of man who even someone like Hunter could kill and feel like his life meant something.

  From the roof of the Watergate he had a clear view of the embassy grounds. Security had been beefed up since his break in and he could now count over fifty armed guards on the perimeter. A new guard tower was being erected on the southeast corner. The area had been marked off by the contractor and construction was set to begin in a matter of days. Local activists were already protesting, claiming it would make the community look like a prison yard.

  There was a large helicopter pad in front of the embassy and Saudi royals and dignitaries flew in and out of the embassy the way the president flew in and out of the White House. The only difference being that the Saudis had taken great pains to ensure their chopper was bigger and better than the one used by the president. The president flew in either a Sikorsky VH-3D Sea King, or the newer VH-60N White Hawk, both operated by Marine Helicopter Squadron One, or HMX-1, headquartered at Quantico.

  After going through a number of different helicopters, the Saudis, in 2019, managed to purchase the still unavailable and experimental SB-1 Defiant. This helicopter was a joint project between Boeing and Sikorsky. It was designed for the US Army’s Future Vertical Lift program with performance requirements that put it in a class above all existing vertical lift aircraft. Not even the army, who’d commissioned it, had been given access yet.

  But Boeing was suffering financial pressure.

  There had been two Boeing 737 Max crashes and the resulting political and business backlash put the company in urgent need of funds.

  And they turned to the Saudis.

  The US government paid a flyaway price of 6.4 million dollars for each Sea King. For a White Hawk, they paid an average of 21.3 million.

  For the SB-1, the Saudis paid over 300 million dollars. It was more money than anyone had ever paid for a rotocraft.

  As per usual, both Sikorsky and Boeing had to lobby the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to permit the sale of the advanced technology. The deal, which would give the Saudis an experimental and highly advanced vehicle that the US Army still did not have access to, was only approved when the Saudi King intervened, providing an undisclosed sum for a joint pipeline venture between Saudi Aramco, the Saudi national petroleum company, and also the world’s most profitable company, and three American oil companies, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. Together, the four companies accounted for over a trillion dollars in annual revenue and, through their contributions to political candidates in both parties, were a deciding factor in election outcomes in vast swathes of Texas, Alaska, California, New Mexico, and North Dakota.

  Hunter heard the chopper before he saw it. He knew from the flight plan registered with the Federal Aviation Administration that it was coming.

  What he didn’t know was who would be on board. When he saw it coming he had to admit it was a thing of beauty.

  It was a compound design with coaxial rotors, meaning it had tw
o main propellors, one above the other, each spinning in opposite directions. The rotors were powered by Honeywell T55s, engines that had been used on American military helicopters since the fifties. Future versions were to use the FATE, or Future Affordable Turbine Engine, and the Saudi chopper would be upgraded when it became available. Over 250 million dollars had been spent on the design by Sikorsky and Boeing, all of which was recouped with the Saudi sale. The blades were manufactured using automated fiber placement, and the first test flight, which took place in August 2019 at the Sikorsky test facility in West Palm Beach, demonstrated that the craft had a cruising speed of over 290 miles per hour. The coaxial design alone gave it a speed increase of over a hundred knots. It had a sixty percent wider combat radius and a high-hot hover performance 50 percent longer than any competing craft. It was more maneuverable than any craft in a hover position had ever been, and could hover with its nose pointed vertically down.

  Hunter took a moment to admire it through his scope, then waited intently to see who stepped out.

  Forty-Seven

  Fawn and Hale were in a daze by the time they were released the following morning.

  “Was that even legal?” Fawn said, her legs painfully stiff from being forced to sit for so many hours.

  “I’ll have to look into it,” Hale said.

  “It can’t have been.”

  “There are military laws that apply.”

  “We work for the CIA. We broke no laws. How can they do that?”

  “They were giving us a message.”

  “No shit, Hale. I got that. What I don’t understand is how they think they can get away with it.”

  “They’re obeying orders.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “Meredith’s the president. She can do whatever she needs to maintain security.”

  “Fuck her,” Fawn said. She was in no mood to hear it. She knew what the government could do. She’d done it herself. She’d had citizens apprehended on US soil and interrogated, even with enhanced interrogation techniques, for days on end. No civilian judge ever knew it happened. No police were involved in the arrest.

  Sometimes, if the person was guilty, they simply disappeared. There were dozens of Islamic militants who’d obtained US citizenship prior to 2001 who were disappeared by the CIA.

  Fawn had always known it was possible.

  It was something every CIA agent knew deep down.

  Sooner or later, the worst, most draconian power they ever exercised would come back to haunt them.

  “That fucking bitch,” Fawn said.

  “At least we’re out.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Hale said.

  “She knows we’re on to her.”

  “Maybe a military court ordered it.”

  “Maybe she went too far, arresting so many people,” Fawn said.

  “Maybe she thinks we got the message and now we’ll just do her bidding.”

  “And ignore the fact that she was put into power by a foreign government?”

  “I don’t know,” Hale said. Fawn could see it in his face. He knew something was amiss. “Maybe she’s watching us. Maybe she’s hoping we lead her to Hunter.”

  Fawn nodded.

  “Whatever she’s up to, we’re on shaky ground. She can have us picked up and locked in a cell whenever she wants. She’s demonstrated that.”

  “Maybe she’ll let us watch something other than CNN next time,” Hale said.

  Fawn shook her head.

  They were in the Pentagon’s southeast concourse, just outside the security checkpoint, and they had no idea what they were to do next. They’d each been escorted to the concourse from their cell by a single army officer. They were told nothing about what had happened, why they’d been detained, or what their status was now that they were free.

  Hale didn’t even know if he was still CIA Director.

  “What next?” Fawn said.

  There were tourists in the concourse gathering around tour guides, waiting for their tours to begin. Others were standing in lines, checking in, buying tickets. There was a coffee shop and gift shop.

  “You hungry?” Hale said.

  Fawn nodded.

  They went to the coffee shop and took a seat at a table.

  “You still got your wallet?” Hale said.

  Fawn checked. She had her phone, her wallet, her keys. She nodded. “You?”

  Hale nodded.

  “I think we’ve got to go up to the counter,” Fawn said.

  They got up and bought soup, sandwiches, coffee, juice, and brought their trays back to their table.

  “This is weird,” Fawn said.

  Hale nodded. He dipped his sandwich in the soup and took a bite. Fawn looked around the concourse. On the surface, everything looked as it always had. She was at the Pentagon almost every weekend, usually at the west lobby, and the place always felt the same. There was an officiousness about it, security guards, guests signing in, getting passes, registering, going through security scanners. It was the same at Langley and it was an environment she was very familiar with. But it felt different somehow.

  “I’m disoriented,” she said.

  “We need to find out if the other people who were arrested have been released.”

  Fawn took her phone from her pocket and opened her news app. The media was buzzing with theories and commentary. It was hard to get her head around what was fact and what was conjecture but it looked like most of the people arrested were being released.

  Hale had found a copy of the Washington Post on one of the other tables and was flicking through it.

  “I’m calling Jasper,” he said.

  Jasper Marten was a Washington Post reporter who sometimes slept with Hale in exchange for information. Fawn wasn’t sure she approved of the arrangement but it did have its advantages. There was a time when Fawn thought Hale was nothing more than a dirty old man, but the more she watched him, the more she realized he was smarter than that. He wasn’t just using Jasper, or his other contacts, for sexual favors. He always had an agenda, and everything he gave them furthered it.

  “Jasper,” he said. “It’s Hale. Listen, could you do me a little favor, honey?”

  Fawn rolled her eyes. She took a bite of her sandwich and pretended to be looking at something on her phone while she listened.

  “Who’s the president of the United States?” Hale said. He let out a little laugh, pleased with himself.

  “I’ve been out of the loop for a little bit.”

  Fawn looked at him.

  “Purge, right. That’s what they’ve been calling it?”

  Fawn could see articles about the purge all over the news. It appeared as if everyone who’d been arrested was gradually being freed. The media even had information from detainees on where they’d been held. They were all over the city.

  Fawn looked around the café. Were there more prisoners coming out of the Pentagon? If there were, she didn’t see them.

  Hale looked up and spoke to Fawn. “Jasper’s saying the official line is that it was a raid to try and narrow down who was responsible for the bombing.”

  “Is the media buying that?”

  Hale shrugged.

  “We weren’t asked any questions about it,” Fawn said.

  “Do the detainees still hold their offices?” Hale said into the phone.

  He was nodding. It looked like they still had their positions.

  To Fawn it was all so baffling. She wasn’t sure what she knew any more. Had the presidency been usurped? Were the assassins done? Had they achieved their objective?

  Her phone rang and she pulled it out of her bag. It was an unknown number but when she answered, she heard Hunter’s voice. It filled her with a sense of relief.

  “Fawn, you’re out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re releasing everyone,” he said.

  “I take it that’s why you didn’t rescue us?”

  “I
was still enjoying the peace and quiet.”

  Fawn was quiet for a moment, then said, “You led her right to us.”

  “I’m sorry. I needed to slow Hale down. He was going to send me in to kill her.”

  “I know.”

  “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

  Fawn purposefully didn’t answer him.

  “I can’t talk long,” Hunter said.

  “Is this a secure line?”

  “It’s a burner .”

  “Where are you?”

  “Saudi embassy.”

  “I saw she declared war on Iran.”

  “Yeah. Air strikes have already begun.”

  “But we’re certain it’s the Saudis?”

  Hunter said, “It has to be. She approved the tech sales. The Dayton MacGregor connection led to Al-Wahad.”

  “Every step she’s taken is consistent with a Saudi connection.”

  “Including a war with Iran.”

  “Especially a war with Iran,” Fawn said.

  Iran and Saudi Arabia were archenemies in the Middle East. The conflict that had been going on between them since 1979 was commonly referred to as the Middle East Cold War. Since it began after the Iranian Revolution, it had fed into dozens of conflicts and proxy conflicts in the region, including the Iran-Iraq War, the Qatif conflict in eastern Saudi Arabia, the suppression of a Shia insurgency in Bahrain, the support of opposing Sunni and Shia factions in the Syrian Civil War, and the Saudi led intervention in Yemen. The conflict had led directly and indirectly to hundreds of thousands of casualties, military and civilian, in virtually every country of the Middle East, and had drawn in units at various times from Hezbollah, the Syrian Armed Forces, the Iranian Armed Forces, the Iranian Republican Guard, the Russian Army, Houthi fighters, the Yemeni Army, the North Korean Army, the Armed Forces of Saudi Arabia, the Bahrain Defense Force, the Free Syrian Army, the pro-Hadi Yemeni Armed Forces, and the Peninsula Shield Forces of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.