Ghost Target

by Nicholas Irving

  As he jogged, he didn’t want to think about the unthinkable: Had he actually committed the shootings? That thought, like a penny dropped in a large cone, began to circle slowly toward the abyss of his mind, the black hole of memory. He was unable to reach in there and find what he was looking for. Was it the possibly spiked sports drinks? Or had the mortar attack dislodged something, shaken his brain, and kept him from stringing together the logic in events? He was trying his best to find a guidepost or grounding around which he could stabilize his freefall. After running a good mile to the north along the riverfront, he was in downtown Macon running along Dempsey Park, having turned to the west.

  He emerged into a clearing populated with hundreds of people. They were all facing a stage with spotlights. The scene reminded him of a football-game tailgate party. He stumbled through a parking lot, recognizing a sports car and a dark-haired woman. A group of rowdies started yelling before he could connect the dots. He kept moving around the back side of the throng, headed to the far wood line. A voice echoed over a loudspeaker system, talking about a new tomorrow and how the establishment politicians were stemming the tide of technology such as artificial intelligence and driverless cars.

  “And we should be able to buy a car directly from the manufacturer without having to go to a dealer!” the politician shouted, to the resounding applause of his hundreds of supporters.

  “It’s time to take back America from those who have stolen it from us, those who husband the power like it is theirs alone; and only issue out bits and morsels while they fly around in their private jets and sail along in their sleek yachts!”

  More applause. The Reaper took a knee, winded. His memory reeling. Where had he seen this man before? He was a politician. Perhaps a visit in Afghanistan? Politicians were always coming there to “touch the magic,” as they called it.

  The penny in the cone began to spiral more rapidly. The crowd was in a frenzy. Harwood backed away and knelt in an isolated area apart from the crowd. Then, he unshouldered his rucksack.

  * * *

  The sniper felt fortunate to have been in position to take the shot on the former CEO of a major soft-drink manufacturer turned politician. Here the man was talking to a group of about five hundred people, peddling lies and bullshit.

  The sniper didn’t care, because this man’s background was unimpressive. What was more, the sniper knew things about this man that no one else did. Julian Assange and Anonymous were probably better hackers than the sniper, but not by much.

  The politician’s name was Senator Tyler Kraft, a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth and one who had never done an honest day’s work in his life. He had been placed in a high-level position at his father’s soft-drink company and then migrated to the CEO position by pure gravitational force. The U.S. Senate was a downgrade in pay, but an upgrade in power. The sniper guessed that when Kraft breathed, a mirror somewhere fogged up and that made him qualified for the job.

  The sniper had to take these opportunities when they presented themselves. The kill sheet included just ten names, and the sniper had killed four so far. The fifth was about to be added to the list. There was no order in which they needed to be killed; the only requirement was that they wind up dead.

  With a full FBI manhunt on the trail of the Reaper, the sniper knew that the leaders of MLQM were also probably hot on the Reaper’s trail, too. There was a thin veneer between what they had been doing in Afghanistan and Iraq and what people believed they were doing.

  The sniper lined up the crosshairs from a kneeling position, one of the more difficult sniper shot positions. Nonetheless, the sniper drew a solid bead on the head of the politician. Dark hair with flecks of gray shone in the spotlighted stage. Shirtsleeves rolled up to show he was a man of the people. Khaki pants and loafers to speak to the preppie, regular-guy crowd as well as to soccer moms. MLQM owned him and that was all the sniper needed to know.

  The sniper’s index finger began a light tug on the trigger. The sight picture held steady. The man was standing at the microphone motionless as the trigger spring collapsed, the 7.62 mm match round cut through the humid night air, the sound suppressor no more than coughed, and Senator Tyler Kraft’s head exploded as he tumbled backward into a small rock band that had been playing “Eye of the Tiger.”

  The sniper liked that song and was sorry that it had to end, but then again, everything had to at one time or another.

  CHAPTER 16

  FBI Special Agent Deke Bronson looked at the map on the fifty-five-inch HD monitor inside the Hunter Army Airfield makeshift command post and said to Faye Wilde, “Given all the local intersections here, can you get the police chief on his way in, please?”

  “I already gave him a heads-up. Should be here in a few minutes.”

  Bronson smiled and shook his head. “What was that helicopter that took off about an hour ago from the other side of the airfield?”

  “Saw that. I inquired. No flight plan. Probably a Ranger training mission.”

  “No. First of all,” Bronson said, “the army doesn’t do single-aircraft missions. Remember that Top Gun movie where Iceman says, ‘Never, ever leave your wingman’?”

  “Not really. All I remember is the white T-shirts and the volleyball scene.” She smirked.

  “Okay, well follow up on that heli—”

  Before he could finish his thought, Wilde’s phone dinged again. She pushed her chair back and stood. “Oh my God. That politician. The soft-drink guy. Kraft.”

  Bronson looked at her and knew before he asked. “Dead?”

  “Sniper bullet to the head during a campaign rally. Just now.”

  “Location?” Bronson asked.

  “Macon, just west of Statesboro. Man, this has got to be our guy,” Wilde said.

  “Maybe,” Corent chimed in. “We’ve got Harwood and Colt as potentials. Remember, she can shoot.”

  “She’s also an Olympic champion with her own sports drink and about to be on a Wheaties box. But, okay. Five dead now in less than seventy-two hours. I agree, we’ve got to consider everyone,” Bronson said.

  “Really about forty-eight. This is going to break huge on the national news in about fifteen minutes. Kraft was a huge deal in Georgia. Kind of a moron but his political party loved him for some reason,” Wilde said. She flipped her hair behind her ears, exposing the freckles on her cheeks.

  “Moron is right,” said a new voice. It was the police chief. He was a beefy, tall man who could have been a defensive end for the University of Georgia back in his day. But he had gone soft. Pink jowls hung like a bulldog’s above a fleshy throat. Four stars sat on each shoulder epaulet of his navy-blue uniform. He spoke with a deep baritone voice that commanded respect. “But he was my moron, so we’ll have some respect, please.”

  “Sorry, Chief. We’re all a little punch-drunk,” Bronson said.

  “Well then, don’t drive,” he joked. “I’ve got two nuggets for y’all, but first, I’d like to know why this pretty lady called me down here.”

  “Special Agent Wilde did so at my request,” Bronson said. “We just wanted to keep you up to date given that there’s so much happening in your city.”

  “I’m Chief Frank Harvey, by the way. We lost two men yesterday. I thought they were good men, but I’m hearing about this opium. Hard to believe, honestly, but I’ve been around enough that I reckon nothing should surprise me anymore.”

  “We’re sorry for your loss, Chief.”

  While the chief was overweight, Bronson thought, he was young to be a police chief. He’d gotten a big promotion somehow. Jumped the line. Maybe he was a Georgia football star.

  “Thank you. I see you looking at me and my stars wondering how I can be not even forty years old and police chief.”

  “Well, we work with a lot of police departments. You’re probably the youngest chief I’ve seen,” Bronson said.

  “No magic to it. Local boy. Played a little football at Georgia Southern. Won a national championship. Serv
ed in the infantry for my three years. Came home. Then lucked out and caught them Russian spetsnaz.”

  “Spetsnaz?”

  “Yeah, Russian special forces—”

  “I know what spetsnaz are, Chief. You caught them here? Not Afghanistan or overseas?”

  “Yeah, here. It was a huge national story. A little disappointed big-leaguers like you guys don’t know about it.”

  “I do,” Wilde said. Bronson rolled his eyes and guessed that Wilde had discreetly used her Apple watch to scan the story.

  “Two thousand and ten,” she said, “you were a lieutenant, three years back from the war. You see four guys walking down the road with shovels and rucksacks. Haul them in and they don’t speak English.”

  “Oh, they spoke English. Just wasn’t very good. Two were Russian, one from Kazakhstan, and we never did find the fourth guy. They all sounded like bad actors in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie and one ran through the woods and escaped. The others we drew down on hard.”

  “Where was this?” Bronson asked.

  “That’s the bitch of it,” Chief Harvey said. “Apologies, ma’am.” He nodded at Wilde, who waved him off. “It was right close to where my two men were murdered.”

  “What were they doing? Where were they coming from?” Bronson asked.

  “Wouldn’t say. We scanned the woods all over the place. The shovels had been used. They were sweaty and tired. I found them near their car. It was pulled over on the side of the road. Probably better to say I found the car first, backed off, and let them come to it.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get in a firefight,” Bronson said.

  “I had my partner and my assault rifle. No worries there.”

  “What would four Russians be burying in Savannah, Georgia? Or digging up?” Bronson asked.

  “We had a rash of missing-persons cases. We figured it was dead bodies. Why we sent the cadaver dogs out. The Rangers even joined in the hunt. All the First Battalion guys.”

  “But no bomb-sniffing dogs?” Wilde asked.

  “By the time we got to that point, you feds had taken over,” Chief Harvey said. “We drove on with our regular business and then it just faded away.”

  Bronson nodded. “You said you had two nuggets?”

  “Roger that. First, we’ve got the pictures from the hotel. Got your Reaper. Got your Olympic champion. And got your basic terrorist, we believe.”

  “Terrorist?”

  “We ran everyone’s photos past the government’s no-fly-list’s facial-recognition software. Got a hit on an individual named Khasan Basayev. He’s a mercenary.”

  “I know who Basayev is,” Bronson said. “Interpol, everyone, wants this guy.”

  “Well, he’s here in my city. I intend to find him.”

  “What’s the second nugget?”

  “The DNA in that red room in General Dillman’s house? There’s some evidence that there was a woman in there. My team found four pairs of handcuffs in between the mattress and box springs. All had blood. DNA shows young woman—teens—either Pakistan or Afghanistan descent. And you know about the message etched into the hardwood floor beneath the bed. Help me.”

  The room fell silent.

  Before Bronson could crystallize his thoughts, Wilde’s phone rang. It was lying in the middle of the table and it buzzed with an incoming call. The caller ID revealed, “Unknown.”

  “This is Faye,” she answered.

  “This is your boss’s boss, Faye.”

  “Hi Director Stein, how are you this evening? You’re on speaker by the way with Agents Bronson, White, and Corent and Police Chief Harvey. We’re doing interagency coordination.”

  “Good, because you all need to hear me very clearly. Two dead generals. Two dead police officers. And a dead politician,” FBI Deputy Director Stein barked into the phone. “And Chief, sorry for your loss.”

  “Sir, we’ve got a plausible theory, multiple persons of interest, and solid leads. We haven’t slept for two days and we are pressing ahead at full speed.”

  “Well find something that goes faster,” Stein said. “That politician was a personal friend of the president and vice president and they gave me twenty-four hours to solve this thing.”

  “And my senator,” Chief Harvey said.

  “The president? He’s getting involved?” Bronson asked.

  “No. He’s already involved. The call came from him personally,” Stein said.

  Bronson paused. “Okay. Twenty-four hours. We’ll do our best, sir.”

  “You’ll do better than that, Deke. Or you and your task force will be a footnote in history. If you can’t solve this one, then what can you solve? We’ve got an obvious disgruntled veteran who is an expert marksman and is in every one of the exact locations that these murders are taking place. Let’s try to remember that these are not random kills. He has a kill sheet. The question is, who is he going after next? If you can’t figure that out, you’ll all be walking back to Virginia to pack your shit and find another job.”

  “Sir, I get the veteran thing. But as we were just discussing, it’s not that easy—”

  Stein cut off Bronson before he could speak any more.

  “Then make it that easy.” Stein hung up the phone.

  Bronson turned to his team and said, “Helicopter. Macon. Now.”

  “I’ll catch you guys later,” Chief Harvey said.

  Bronson and his team raced through the door, Director Stein’s words nipping at their heels.

  CHAPTER 17

  A throng of people raced directly toward Harwood and then beyond him. Hundreds of attendees at the political rally hurtled past him as if the shooter were still active, capping people as they ran. Perhaps he was, Harwood thought.

  Hoisting his rucksack on his shoulder, he began running with the crowd. Shouts and screams of panic permeated the night. After a hundred yards, he veered into the parking lot and found a man with a duffel bag fumbling with his keys.

  “Damn it!” the man grumbled. He looked at Harwood, as if he were too incapacitated to find the right key.

  “Hey, can I give you a hand?” Harwood asked the man, secretly hoping for a ride. The man was white, about six feet tall, wearing a black windbreaker over blue dungarees, and a long-sleeved shirt beneath the light jacket. The duffel bag was an aviator’s kit bag that zipped up the middle.

  The man stared at him a moment and said, “Sure, man. Just lift that into the trunk for me. This place is a shitstorm.”

  He pressed a key fob and the lights to a blue late-model Ford Mustang flashed, as if it were awaiting its owner and ready to race. The trunk popped open and Harwood hefted the bag into the cavity with one arm. It wasn’t so much heavy as it was bulky.

  “Be careful,” the man said. “Important shit, there. Just hurt my arm running through this wild crowd.”

  People swam past them like a river surging around a rock.

  “No problem,” Harwood said. He turned to walk away, reconsidering his need for a ride.

  “Hey, dude. You want to get out of here in a hurry, this bitch hauls ass.”

  Harwood stopped, thought, and, knowing that the police in the area were looking for him, accepted the ride. Sitting in the front bucket seat of the Mustang, he kept his rucksack in his lap as they drove. They dodged traffic and the driver seemed to have an agenda to escape the scene just as quickly.

  “I’m Lanny,” the man said.

  “Vick,” Harwood responded. Lanny was a stocky man, well built, authoritarian, as if he might have been law enforcement. The driver studied him when he wasn’t steering around confused people. Finally, they were on a major road, up on a bridge and crossing the span. Where there was a roadblock setting up. The bridge was chaos. Cars were careening into the bridge railings, but Lanny found a path.

  At least four police cars had responded to the shooting and were spinning blue lights as they began to get in position to block all traffic and close off the crime scene.

  “Get ready,” his driv
er said. “Hang on.”

  Lanny sped the Mustang through the incomplete roadblock, getting air as they flew over the apex of the bridge. Wasting no time, he gunned the Mustang to one hundred miles per hour as they raced away. Lanny downshifted the manual transmission and fishtailed onto a dirt road, shut his lights, and sped along what must have been a familiar road, because Lanny was negotiating it like a professional race-car driver.

  Lanny had a double-lightning-bolt tattoo on his forearm, and while there was no sound coming from the muted speakers, the digital display showed Chaos 88, which was a white-supremacist rock band.

  Lanny caught Harwood staring at the radio display and grinned.

  “Nothing for you to worry about, boy,” Lanny said.

  Harwood’s hand quietly slid his Blackhawk knife from the outer pouch where he kept it on the right side of his rucksack, which was out of Lanny’s view.

  “You can drop me off anytime now,” Harwood said.

  Lanny laughed. “Yeah, right. I got me the Reaper right here in my car. The number-one wanted suspect in all these murders going down. A true African American.” Lanny said the last two words with scorn, as if they weren’t part of the English language. “A little too close for you to use your sniper rifle on me, dumbass. Plus, I was at that rally to firebomb that bitch, but thanks to you, the sumbitch is dead. He was all about affirmative action and diversity and all that happy horseshit.”

  The car hurtled along the unlit gravel road to an unknown destination. Lanny punched a button on his steering wheel, his Bluetooth kicked in, and a phone began to ring. Harwood saw that the name appearing in the dash display read Stoner.

  “Hey, Lanny, whatcha got?” a voice said, most likely Stoner.

  “Stoner man. You ain’t going to believe what I’ve got. I’m almost at the lodge. You pick up the girl?”

  Lanny clicked off Bluetooth and held the phone to his ear, driving with one hand. Harwood now couldn’t hear Stoner, but Lanny replied with, “What? Damn straight. Keep working her, save some for me. I’ve got a new plan. By the way, someone else did Kraft for us.” He punched off the smartphone and grabbed the steering wheel again with both hands.