but steady. When he reached ten feet, what he saw astonished him. Not only was
the sniper rifle brilliantly camouflaged, but the entire apron of branches on
which the sniper reposed was fake. It was incredibly lifelike, admittedly—the
work of an arboreal Madame Tussaud—but up close he could see that it was an
artificial construction attached to the trunk by means of metal rigging, an
arrangement of steel-wire rope, rings, and bolts, all spray-painted an olive
drab. It was the kind of equipment that no individual had access to, and only a
very few agencies. Consular Operations was one.
He reached for the rigging and, with a sudden yank, he released the central
eyebolt; the steel cable slithered free, and the sniper’s nest was suddenly
unanchored.
He heard a muffled curse, and the whole nest dropped through the tree, breaking
branches as it tumbled to the ground.
Finally, Janson could make out the green-clad body of the sniper beneath him. He
was a slender young man—some sort of prodigy, no doubt, but momentarily stunned
by the fall. Janson lowered himself to the ground in a controlled drop, landing
with his legs spread over the sniper.
Now he wrenched the rifle from the marksman’s hands.
“Damn!” the curse came out like a whisper. It was light in timbre, the voice of
a youth.
Janson found himself holding a forty-inch rifle, hard to maneuver at such close
distances. A modified M40A1, which was a bolt-action sniper rifle hand made at
Quantico by specially trained armorers of the Marine Corps Marksmanship Unit.
“The tables are turned,” Janson said softly. He reached down and knotted the
sniper’s collar around his neck, ripping off the radio communicator. He was
still prone. Janson noticed his short, spiky brown hair, his slender legs and
arms: not a formidable specimen of manhood at first glance. He started to pat
the sniper down, removing a small .32-caliber Beretta Tomcat pistol from his
waistband.
“Get your stinking hands off me,” the sniper hissed, and rolled over looking at
Janson with a look of the purest venom.
“Christ,” Janson said, involuntarily. “You’re—”
“What?” A defiant glare.
Janson just shook his head. The sniper reared up and Janson responded with
force, shoving the sniper back down to the ground. Then, once more the two
locked eyes.
The sniper was lithe-bodied, agile, surprisingly strong—and a woman.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Like a wild animal, she lunged at him yet again, frantically trying to retrieve
the Beretta pistol in his hand. Janson deftly stepped back and pointedly pulled
back the slide lock with his thumb.
Her gaze kept returning to the Beretta.
“You’re overmatched, Janson,” she said. “No embassy lardasses this time. See,
this time they cared enough to send the very best.” Her voice had the twang of
the Appalachian backcountry, and though she was trying to sound conversational,
the tension showed.
Was the bravado meant for him, or for her? Was she trying to demoralize him, or
ginning up her own courage?
He put on a bland smile. “Now, let me make you a very reasonable proposition:
You deal, or I kill you.”
She snorted. “Think you’re lookin’ at number forty-seven? In your dreams, old
man.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That would make me number forty-seven.” When he did not reply, she added.
“You’ve done forty-six people, right? I’m talking sanctioned, in-field
killings.”
Janson’s face went cold. The number—which was never a source of pride and
increasingly a source of anguish—was accurate. But it was also a count that few
people knew.
“First things first,” Janson said. “Who are you?”
“What do you think?” the sniper replied.
“No games.” Janson pressed the muzzle of her M40A1 hard into her diaphragm.
She coughed. “Same as you—same as you were.”
“Cons Op,” Janson ventured.
“You got it.”
He hefted the M40A1. At three and a third feet and almost fifteen pounds, it was
too big and bulky if much repositioning was required; it was for the stationary
shooter. “Then you’re a member of its Sniper Lambda Team.”
The woman nodded. “And Lambda always gets its man.”
She was telling the truth. And it meant one thing: a beyond-salvage order had
gone out. Consular Operations had sent a directive to an elite squad of
specialists: a directive to kill. Terminate with extreme prejudice.
The rifle was obviously well maintained and was, in its own way, a thing of
beauty. The magazine held five rounds. He opened the chamber and removed a
cartridge. He gave out a low whistle.
A mystery solved. It was a 458 Whisper, a cartridge made by SSK Industries,
which propelled a custom six-hundred-grain very-low-drag Winchester magnum. The
VLD bullets lost velocity slowly, retaining a great deal of energy even at
distances exceeding a mile. But the feature that had made it irresistible was
that it launched the bullet at subsonic velocities. It eliminated the cracking
noise of the supersonic bullet, while the small amount of powder diminished the
internal detonation. Hence the name: Whisper. Someone just a few yards away
would hear nothing.
“OK, sport,” Janson said, impressed despite himself by her cool. “I need to know
the location of the others. And don’t bullshit me.” With a few quick movements,
he stripped the M40A1 of its magazine, and threw it high into the tree’s tangled
branches, where it lodged, once more a branch among branches to the casual
viewer. Then he leveled the Beretta at her head.
She glared at him for a few long moments. He returned her look with complete
impassivity: he would kill her, without compunction. Only luck had prevented her
from killing him.
“There’s one other guy,” she started.
Janson looked at her appraisingly. She was an antagonist, but with luck, she
could be turned into an asset, someone he could use as a shield and as a source
of information. She knew where the fortified positions were, where the members
of the sniper team were nested.
She was also a glib and effortless liar.
With his gun hand, he reached over and cuffed her hard on the side of the head.
“Let’s not begin this relationship with lies, sweetheart,” he said. “As far as
I’m concerned, you’re just a killer. You almost shot me, and you endangered
lives of noncombatants in the effort.”
“Bullshit,” she drawled. “I knew just what the margin of error was at all times.
Four feet in any direction from your torso midline. None of my shots exceeded
that error margin, and the field of fire was clean before each trigger pull.
Nobody was in jeopardy. Except you.”
The geometry she described was consistent with what he had observed: that much
was probably the truth. But to achieve that tight a cluster from more than five
hundred yards away made her an off-the-charts marksman.
A phenomenon.
“OK. Axial formation. It would be a waste of manpower to station another
marksman within fifty yards of you. But I also know there are at least three
others spread out in the vicinity. Not to mention whoever’s on the Wilmut-Dixon
crane … Plus at least two others using tree cover.”
“If you say so.”
“I admire your discretion,” Janson said. “But if you’re not any use to me alive,
I really can’t afford to keep you around.” He cocked the Beretta, his forefinger
curling around the trigger, testing its resistance.
“OK, OK,” she blurted. “I’ll deal.”
The concession came too quickly. “Forget it, baby. There’s no trust.” He flipped
back the safety once more and placed his finger on the trigger, flexing the
hardened steel. “Ready for your close-up?”
“No, wait,” she said. Any vestige of bravado had evaporated. “I’ll tell you what
you want to know. If I’m lying, you’ll find out and you can kill me then.”
“My game, my rules. You give me the location of the nearest sniper. We approach.
If you’re wrong, you die. If the sniper repositioned himself without notifying
the team, too bad. You die. If you give me away, you die. Remember, I know the
systems, the protocols, and the procedures. I probably wrote half of them.”
She stood up shakily. “All right, man. Your game, your rules. First thing you
gotta know is, we’re all working as singletons—camouflage requirements ruled out
partners, so we’re all doing our own range finding. Second thing is, we’ve got
somebody stationed on the roof over Hanover Terrace.”
He flashed on the majestic neoclassical villa facing the park, where many of
England’s grandest citizens made their homes. The blue and white frieze over the
architrave. The white pillars and cream-colored walls. The marksmen would have
to be perched behind the balusters. True? No, another lie. He would have been
dead by now.
“You’re not using your head, sport,” he said. “A sniper on the balustrade would
have already taken me out. He’d also be visually exposed to the crew repairing
the roofs on Cumberland Terrace. You considered the position, and rejected it.”
Once more, he cuffed her hard, and she staggered back a few steps. “Two strikes.