“On frosty mornings and damp days, there is a great danger of smoke from the rifle giving the position away. On such occasions, the sniper must keep as far back in the hide as possible.”
—US Marine Corps Scout/Sniper Training Manual
It was after midnight when they passed through Harris Mills, Maine, and left Route 16. A couple of miles north of the town Houston turned onto an unpaved logging road and darkness and the woods closed in like a shroud.
Anne looked out at the night sky. Without the ambient light of street lamps, millions of stars were visible, creating an amazing spectacle. “Now I know how it would feel to fly through space.”
“Yeah, it’s remote.” Houston glanced in the rearview mirror and checked that Jimmy and Gordon were still following. He was unable to see their vehicle, but could see the glow of their headlights through the cloud of dust his tires created.
The road suddenly turned north, angling west, back to New Hampshire. According to Rosa’s instructions, they were to stay on this road until they passed a gravel pit and came to a small picnic area and campground.
Houston was drowsy and shook his head to keep from nodding off. Fatigue bore down on him and he knew that he couldn’t go any further, when a deep gravel pit suddenly appeared in the beams from his headlights. In the darkness, it looked like a lunar crater. Houston’s exhaustion disappeared and he became alert. He studied the road, searching for the turn-off to the campground. Rosa had told him that the entrance was about a half-mile past the pit.
The entrance to the campground appeared out of the primordial darkness and they pulled in. Houston hoped that it was unoccupied and sighed in relief when his headlights swept around the camp site and revealed that it was empty. Hunting season was still a couple of months away and he didn’t want nosy campers asking why they had all the weapons. He parked near a picnic table and shut off the motor.
Houston and Anne got out of the rental SUV and stretched. The engine ticked as it cooled and the whirring of flying insects and the chirping croaks of frogs seemed loud in the darkness. Anne walked around the car and stood beside him. Still fascinated by the stellar light show, she looked up. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stars in the sky.”
When Winter turned into the gravel-covered parking area, Anne and Houston held their hands up to shield their eyes from the brilliant glare of the Lincoln’s halogen headlamps. The SUV stopped, its lights went out and the engine shut down. O’Leary stepped from the Navigator and he too looked at the sky.
“Amazing, ain’t it?” he commented.
Winter placed his hands against his lower back and stretched while he too looked to the heavens. “There’s gonna to be a full moon the next few nights—that ain’t favorable.”
“Not a goddamned hotel within miles,” O’Leary said. “I was never into this Boy Scout shit.” He wrapped his arms around his torso. “Fu—” He cast a nervous look at Anne and amended his words. “Friggin’ cold, too.”
Houston said, “We’ll just roll out some canvas and sleep on the ground.”
Houston felt it wasn’t necessary to be cautious and did not attempt to be quiet. There was no need to worry about Rosa—at least not until he got to the killing ground. Rosa wouldn’t violate the rules of the game—after all, he had made them.
Houston grabbed his and Anne’s sleeping bags and a lantern from the back of the SUV. He switched on the battery-powered lantern, found a level place, checked the ground and removed several rocks that would make sleeping impossible. Once he was satisfied that the turf was as smooth and free of obstacles as possible, he spread the impromptu sleeping mat. He held the lantern and watched while Anne prepared her sleeping bag. It was the first time he had seen Anne in a plaid flannel shirt and blue jeans, and he thought she was born to wear them.
Houston glanced at his watch; it was four in the morning. To the east, he saw a slash of bright sky split the darkness above the horizon. Houston was surprised to see O’Leary standing beside him.
“I always wondered where the expression ‘the crack of dawn’ came from,” Jimmy O said.
“Now you know. We’d better get some sleep—even a couple of hours can make a big difference.”
Jimmy O walked toward the SUV. “What I wouldn’t give for a nice soft king-size mattress . . . ”
Houston chuckled and flopped down on his sleeping bag. Once again, he realized that old habits return fast. In the Marines, Houston had learned to eat and sleep whenever and wherever he had the opportunity, because in combat you never knew when, or if, you would get another chance. Once he reached the island, he would be in a battle situation and sleep deprivation and cold meals would be the norm until the mission was completed.
The sun shining on her face woke Susie up. She lay still and surveyed the cabin. It was bare bones, with everyday conveniences nonexistent. The decrepit shack didn’t even have running water. They had brought her here yesterday, thrown her on the old bunk and tied her up. The bed was horrible, a musty, mildew-covered mattress and pillow that smelled of rodent droppings and years of accumulated sweat.
The woman sat at the rough-hewn table in the center of the room. She wore camouflage clothes, her face painted in green and black stripes; she looked like one of the amazon warriors Susie had seen in action movies.
“Good morning,” the woman said.
Susie glared at her.
“Have it your way,” the woman stood up and walked to her. “You need to use the head?”
Susie did not understand what she meant.
“The bathroom, do you need to use it?”
Susie nodded.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“Yes.”
The woman removed the bonds that held Susie to the cot and helped her up. “I hope you aren’t too delicate to pee in the bushes.”
“I’ll make do,” Susie said.
“Good. You just keep that attitude and you’ll be fine. This will be over tomorrow and you can go back to being a student.”
“I thought he wanted my father alone.”
“He does, but snipers always work in teams of two. Also, in the event that fails he has a backup plan. If your father is anywhere as good a sniper as I’ve heard, he won’t be alone either—he’ll have at least one spotter with him.”
The scarred man walked into the shack. “Where you going?”
“Head call.”
“Keep a close eye on her.”
“I will. When do you think he’ll arrive?”
“I doubt he’ll get here before tomorrow morning.”
“I’d feel better if we’d brought along a couple of my men to act as sentries . . . ”
“The last thing I need is a bunch of trigger-happy reservists running around and stirring things up. Besides, that would take all of the challenge out of the game—wouldn’t it?”
“I’m not real comfortable with your referring to this as a game,” she said.
“It’s the ultimate game—one where coming in second gets you a body bag. Now take the kid and do what you gotta do.”
The woman took Susie’s arm and led her outside.
Houston woke at six. His eyes felt like burning coals and his back was stiff and damp from the heavy dew that covered everything. He knew there was no time to waste so he began gathering his gear for the trek through the woods.
The sound of him preparing his equipment woke Anne. She stretched in her sleeping bag.
“Good morning.”
“Mornin’, beautiful, time to rise and shine.”
“I’ll rise, but I’m not so sure about the shine part.”
Houston rocked back on his heels and swept the area with his eyes. “There’s something that I love about the early-morning light. Everything seems so clean and brilliant—not faded as it does in late morning and during the afternoon hours.”
Anne sat up and reached for her boots.
O’Leary sat up, grunted and lit his first cigarette of the day. “How in hell is a guy supposed to sleep with all that chit chat going on?”
Anne stared at him, ready to go on the attack.
“Hey, lighten up,” he said. “I’m just jealous, that’s all. It’s been a long time since someone greeted me in the morning.”
Anne realized his comment had been meant as a good-natured barb and relaxed.
“Sorry, Jimmy.”
“Don’t sweat it, kid. It took my mother thirty years to get to like me—even then, I think she was faking it. I’m like a fungus—give me time and I’ll grow on you.”
Winter got up and walked to the boat. He reached inside and brought out a gas camp stove. “The least we can do is make breakfast. It’s even better in the great outdoors. Anyone want to get some water? There’s a hand pump over there. There’s nothin’ better than that first cup of coffee in the mornin’.”
While Anne fetched the water, Houston and Winter lifted a large cooler from the inside of the boat. Winter lifted the cover and Houston saw enough food to feed them for the better part of a week.
“Gotta eat if we want to keep up our strength.”
They cooked eggs, sausage and canned potatoes on the stove and sat quiet while they ate.
Finally, O’Leary broke the early morning silence. “What’s our plan of attack?”
“The shooter gave me very detailed instructions. I’m to follow the trail that leads due east from here for about three hours, until I come to the lake where he’s hidden a boat in some brush. I’m supposed to go north on the lake to the largest island. Once I reach the island, the game will begin.”
Houston spread out a map. “There’s no way we’re going to be able to portage Gordon’s boat three hours through the woods.” He indicated a point on the Magallaway River. “It looks as if there’s a boat launch here, you guys drive there and we’ll meet on the south end of the third island this evening.”
Jimmy stared at the map for a second. “Send Gordon and Anne back there—I’ll stay with you.”
“Jimmy, this ain’t a stroll on the common. You got a three-pack-a-day habit and hiking through rough terrain is tough enough without that. I’ll make the hike alone. I’m not so naïve that I think he’s alone. He could have someone watching to make sure I didn’t bring anyone with me.”
“Why don’t you come with us? We can use the motor boat to get there.” Anne motioned to Gordon’s boat.
“I’m going to follow his instructions to the letter.”
Winter stood and peered into the trees around them. “Shit, they may be watching us now . . . ”
“For some reason, I don’t think so. But once I get to the lake it wouldn’t surprise me if they were watching. That’s why I want you guys to arrive at the island after dark—no lights on the boat.”
Gordon Winter snorted. “All we got to do is navigate a lake I’ve never been on, to find an island that I’ve never been to, in the dark—should be a piece of cake.” He poured the last of his coffee on the ground.
“That’s where the full moon will help us,” Houston said. “Besides, I’ll have a small campfire going. You should be able to see it a long ways off.”
“Won’t the fire give away your location?” Anne asked.
“Possibly, that’s why I’ll camp on the south shore, away from the fourth island. Even if he does see the fire, he’ll be expecting me to make a fire when I camp. The important thing is that he doesn’t learn that I’ve brought you guys along as backup.”
Winter rinsed the pans and coffeepot. “Well, looks as if we got a full day ahead of us—time to break camp.”
Houston got his rifle from behind the backseat of his vehicle. He took great care when he placed the rifle on a blanket, unpacked the ten-power Unertl scope and securely mounted it to the rifle.
“That’s a beautiful weapon,” O’Leary commented. “I hope you appreciate what I had to go through to get it on short notice. They only made a thousand of them, and you’d be damned lucky to get one on the open market. In fact, I’d say it was almost impossible.”
“It’s accurate,” Houston said. “Even though it’s been years since I’ve been a sniper, I’m still more than capable of keeping a group in a two-or three-inch diameter inside two hundred meters.”
Houston seemed to slip into another world as his hands caressed the rifle stock. He took out a bore-sighter and, with help from Winter, spent several minutes ensuring that the scope was properly aligned. He seemed more at ease than she had ever seen him . . . it was as if he had gone back in time to a place where no one would ever reach him.
Houston looked at O’Leary. “Thanks, Jimmy. What it set you back?”
“More than you can afford on a cop’s salary—leave it at that. All I ask is that if possible you bring it back. I can probably resell it.”
Houston raised a hand in the universal signal to stop. “I don’t want to hear anymore, Jimmy. Remember, even though we’re allies and brothers-in-law, I’m still a cop.”
Houston took a box of ammunition from the truck and loaded the rifle. He opened the bolt and fed the integral magazine by pushing four cartridges into the breach one at a time. Once the last round was inserted, he closed the bolt and double-checked that the rifle was on safe.
When he gently placed the loaded weapon on his sleeping bag, Houston noticed that no one spoke and the camp was abnormally quiet. He looked at his companions. “I need to sight it in. I haven’t fired any live rounds through this and I need to get a feel for the rifle and check the scope’s alignment.”
Anne picked up the rifle for him and was surprised by its weight. “That’s heavy.”
“Fourteen and a half pounds,” Houston said. “That and the fact that it’s bolt action is probably why it was never popular with the grunts.” He saw the question on Anne’s face. “The infantry call themselves grunts. This weapon would be too heavy to carry for hours on end and in a fire-fight it’s difficult to gain fire superiority with a bolt action. It doesn’t fire fast enough—accurate, but slow. We scout-snipers became accustomed to it.”
“I don’t know about anyone else,” Winter added, “but I wanted more than five rounds in my magazine; then there’s the problem of having to manually work the bolt action in the middle of a shit sandwich where gaining fire superiority means survival.”
“I agree,” Houston said, “but to a sniper it’s all about accuracy.”
“One shot; one kill,” O’Leary said.
“It has an effective range of a thousand meters. At that distance you have plenty of time to work the bolt action.” Houston took the rifle from Anne and picked up two boxes of 7.62 mm ammunition.
Winter walked to his truck, opened the door and motioned for Houston to join him. “I’ll go with you and spot.” He picked up a black plastic case and tossed it to Houston.
“What’s this?” Houston asked.
“A Leupold Mark 4 Tactical Spotting Scope. All we need now is someplace big enough to sight in these weapons.”
“That gravel pit we passed last night will be ideal.” Houston placed his rifle, targets and ammunition into Winter’s truck. “Shall we go?”
They reached the pit in ten minutes. While Houston cleared a shooting position, Winter used duct tape to mount targets to some plywood stands he had in the back of his truck, then paced off an estimated one hundred and three hundred meters, setting targets at each benchmark. He returned to the shooting position and stood beside Houston. He used a range-finder scope to measure the distance to the hundred-meter target. Winter sat on the ground and watched the target through the Leupold.
Houston got into a prone firing position and peered through the scope. When he was satisfied that he had good sight alignment and sight picture, he used his thumb to take the rifle off safe and fired.
“Low and to the left . . . bring it up one and right two,” Winter said.
Houston turned the elevation knob up one click and the windage two to the right. He settled back in, worked the bolt to eject the expended cartridge and loaded a live round into the chamber. He took three deep breaths, exhaling slowly after each one. When the scope’s crosshairs centered on the bull’s-eye, he fired again.
“Bull.”
Houston fired four rounds as fast as he could work the bolt action.
“Nice tight group in the bull,” Winter said. “Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?” He removed a small spiral notebook from his hip pocket and recorded the scope’s elevation and windage settings for the hundred-meter distance.
“The military—the high of going into combat with a group of guys you’d bet your life on and hunting an armed enemy.”
“I did for a while. It’s been over fifteen years since I was in and it fades.” Houston fed another load of cartridges into the rifle’s magazine.
“I hope I never get that way. I loved being in.”
“Why’d you get out?”
“Wasn’t entirely my choice. There was this sergeant who rode my ass from sunup to sundown. I finally had enough of it and took action.”
“You get a dishonorable?” Houston asked.
“No, the members of the courts martial realized that the asshole had pushed me too far. Nevertheless, like everywhere, lifers always rally together and look out for each other. I got an honorable discharge under general conditions.”
Houston glanced down range and turned his attention to the three-hundred-meter target.
It took a little over an hour for Houston to zero in the scope, record the windage and elevation settings for each distance and feel comfortable in his ability to hit anything he shot at out to five hundred meters.
Winter walked to his truck and returned with an assault rifle. He fired a full magazine of twenty rounds into the hundred-meter target. The barrage of supersonic rounds shredded the target and Winter smiled. “I don’t think I’ll be using this past one hundred meters—seems fine to me.”
Houston stared at the target. Winter’s volley had ripped it in half and the pieces flapped in the breeze like pennants.
“Not exactly a subtle weapon, is it?” Winter asked.
“No, I’d say it’s about as subtle as a kick in the nuts.”
“Can’t beat one of these in a firefight though.”
“Does Jimmy have you use that much?”
“No way I’m going to answer that. Who knows, once this is over we could be facing each other from different sides.”
“If I know Jimmy as well as I think I do, I’d bet he does a lot of his own wet work.”
“He believes in a hands-on managerial approach,” Winter said. “Besides, his smoker’s breath is lethal enough.”
Houston laughed and packed up his equipment. As they drove back to camp, they passed the time chatting about their time in the military.
Once they were back in the campsite, Houston changed into camouflage coveralls and pulled out his Ghillie suit. He had chosen an oak color so he would blend in with the hardwoods that inhabited the northern woods. Once he started stalking, Houston would gather native flora, weave it into the netting, and tie the suit to his camouflaged coveralls. It was obvious to him that he was going to have to move through heavy brush and didn’t want to worry about the suit snagging on branches and bushes as he moved. He carefully rolled the Ghillie up and fastened it with Velcro straps to the bottom of a backpack.
Once the sniper suit was secure, the backpack was filled with ammunition, beef jerky and canned cheese and crackers. He strapped two canteens of water around his waist and made a mental note to ensure the canteens were full at all times; all the camouflage in the world would do no good if his quarry heard water sloshing around in a half-full canteen. He poured a cup of coffee and, while drinking, conducted a mental inventory. Damn it, he thought, it’s been so long and there’s so much to remember.
Had the sniper not taken Susie, he would say to hell with it and return to Boston where he would be on familiar turf and could use conventional police procedures. He knew those thoughts were folly. After eight days and seven deaths, he was no closer to getting the shooter than he had been on the first day. It had to be done this way: using the rules that had been hammered into him and the assassin long ago. What bothered him most was that his quarry had obviously kept his skills honed, while he, on the other hand, had let his deteriorate.
Thus far, Anne had left him to his thoughts, but now that the time for the operation to commence was upon them, she broke her silence. “I don’t like the thought of you going in without backup.”
“It’s no big deal.”
“Still.”
“Anne, don’t worry. I’ve done this before.”
“When you were a lot younger! It’s been a long time since you were a marine, Mike.”
“Like riding a bicycle . . . it never leaves you.”
“Mike . . . ”
“I’ll be all right.”
“This is nothing to take lightly.” She knew Houston didn’t want to debate with her in front of the others and glanced over her shoulder to see if either O’Leary or Winter were within earshot. “Fatigue raises the percentage that you’ll make mistakes and you’ve only slept a few hours in the past two days. It could be fatal. What if you become exhausted on the island?”
“I’ll deal with it.” Houston was curt, ending the discussion. “I’ll be all right. Trust me on this.”
Jimmy stood beside Winter’s car and called out. “Anne, we better get moving if we want to get to the island before midnight.”
Anne wiped her hands on her jeans, reluctant to leave.
“Go on,” Houston said. “I’ll be fine.”
She nodded, stood still for a second and then walked to the truck.
Previously, they had agreed that they would leave both vehicles at the boat launch, so O’Leary got into Houston’s SUV. Anne paused, then turned and gave Houston a final look before getting in beside him. Winter waved out the driver-side window of his SUV and backed out of the campground.
Houston waited until they were out of sight, opened his backpack, took out the pistol belt that held his Glock 9mm automatic pistol with holster, and strapped it around his waist. He doused the campfire, slid the backpack over his shoulders, shrugged a couple of times to settle it on his back and started down the trail with the sniper rifle slung over his right shoulder.
O’Leary smoked a cigarette and flicked ashes out the open window. He finished smoking, dropped the butt into a disposable cup of cold coffee and glanced at Anne.
“It’s going to be okay.”
Anne stopped staring at the forest and looked at him. She made no sign of recognition.
“You don’t like me much, do you?”
“Jimmy, I don’t know you enough either to like or dislike you on a personal basis. It’s what you do that’s my problem.”
“That’s bullshit and we both know it. I can see it in your face every time you’re around me. You aren’t one of those broads who hate the fact that her man had a life before her, are you?”
“Not especially.” Anne continued to glare at him. “Besides, Mike isn’t my man. He’s my partner.”
“Either way, I know women like that. They think that everything that happened to him before they came along is a threat. Well, Anne, all I can say is this: Mike and me grew up together. Yeah, we’ve had our differences, but ain’t nothing going to happen to him as long as ol’ Jimmy O has any say in the matter. So what you say we bury the hatchet until we get beyond this—then you can go back to disliking me.”
“Jimmy, as I said, it’s not that I don’t like you . . . ”
“I know, I know. I smoke too much, I’m a chauvinistic asshole, I’m uglier than road kill, and you don’t like what I do for a living—other than that I’m a prince. Ain’t I right?”
Anne started laughing, in spite of herself. “Jimmy . . . ”
“Yeah?”
“Mike and I . . . we’re nothing more than friends and partners.”
O’Leary looked at her. “Whether you know it or not, you mean a lot to him. I saw him like that once before. With my sister. Mike and Pam married young. Hell, as close as we were as kids, it didn’t surprise anyone. Still, you ever know two people who were crazy in love, but at the same time were toxic to each other?”
“A few come to mind.”
“Well, that was my sister and Mike. Pam had gotten her fill of craziness and violence when we was kids. All she wanted was a quiet life away from Southie and all the bad shit that happened to her there. On the other hand, Mike’s like me. I guess you could say that we’re adrenaline junkies. We need action. Things that are normal, if there is such a thing, bore the shit out of us. The only difference between him and me is the way we get our fix.”
Anne remained quiet, mulling over what O’Leary had said.
“In her own way, Pam was as fucked up as we were. I done some reading and I think I know what her downfall as a wife was. After years as a helpless victim, she wanted to control the uncontrollable . . . ”
“And by uncontrollable, do you mean Mike?”
“Yeah, no matter how much anyone tries to convince him otherwise, he’s gonna do what he has to do. I know that and he knows that. Hell, I’ll take it a step further—sometime down the road he and I are gonna come up against each other professionally. Well, I’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
Anne offered him her hand and when he gripped it she said, “Truce until this is over?”
O’Leary shook her hand. “It’s going to be a nice day for a boat ride.”