Slaton walked slowly toward his target, the UMP still poised. Not that there was any doubt as to his fate. Two of the bullets had struck center of mass in his chest, the third in his neck. The big .45 rounds left no room for error.
Three steps away Slaton paused. The man had come to rest on his side, his left arm twisted beneath. On the blood-soaked ground near his right hand was a Sig Sauer 9mm. All as expected. All according to plan.
In the next few moments, however, everything went wrong.
The first problem was the man’s face. Slaton recalled the words of the salesman in Davos. There was a younger man with an accent—I thought he might be Russian, or perhaps Latvian. This man wasn’t young at all—he was easily mid-forties. More damningly, Slaton realized he’d seen the face before in a series of photographs. Standing on the balcony of a dacha with three oligarchs. Hunting with the president of Russia. The dead man on the ground before him was none other than Viktor Zhukov. Former Spetsnaz, 45th Guards.
His unease growing, Slaton looked at the metal container. That was what had first drawn his focus to this clearing on the windswept point. In his final moments, Zhukov had lifted the lid. It remained open now, and Slaton saw why the Russian had seemed so perplexed—the box was completely empty. The gun case leaning against the sapling? Slaton knew there was no need to look inside. A wooden crutch, or perhaps a tree branch—it would contain anything but a Barrett fifty.
The voice in his head was now screaming.
In that critical moment, and for reasons he didn’t understand, Slaton shifted his gaze upward. He looked down the southern coastline for the first time, searching for a villa he’d seen before only in photographs—the place where Vladimir Ovechkin had purportedly taken refuge. As he did, disjointed thoughts surged through his head. An empty case on a wind-whipped clearing. A gravedigger named Smith in Marrakesh. A sat-phone that had inexplicably stopped working. The thoughts swirled mercilessly, but there was no time for them. Not here. Not now.
Slaton picked out the villa easily, and in the next instant he saw a distinct flicker of light from a balcony.
He knew instantly what it was: through the morning’s shadows, he’d just witnessed the most fateful sight a man could see. The last vision of a million soldiers in a hundred wars. It was the muzzle flash of a rifle. Which meant a bullet was flying toward him at greater than the speed of sound.
A guided bullet that could track any target.
Sent by an expert shooter.
Slaton stood absolutely still.
* * *
The sergeant took the brunt of the Barrett’s recoil in his shoulder, his firm two-handed grip mitigating the jolt. He reacquired his target through the special optics.
He had spotted Slaton the instant he’d emerged from the tree line. Then he’d watched him stalk Zhukov silently. All as predicted. Colonel Zhukov had reacted, but of course not fast enough. The colonel had been good in his day, but he was getting old. Getting soft. Slaton had finished him effortlessly, then eased closer to survey his work.
It was in the next moments that the sergeant had taken the slightest of liberties. In that tiny window of opportunity he should have taken his shot, no quarter given while Slaton was distracted. Yet he’d waited just a beat, watching through the optics for a reaction—he wanted the kidon, in his last earthly thoughts, to realize he’d been outwitted. And the sergeant had seen it in his face, in the instant the Barrett’s trigger had given way—the legendary assassin knew what was coming.
The sergeant saw the bullet hit—of that there was no doubt. Slaton was lifted completely off his feet and thrown backward. There was an awkward half roll before the only unforeseen outcome—he went tumbling over the side of the cliff.
He pulled away from the optic. That hadn’t been in the plan—the loss of the body. He realized his miscalculation—Slaton had been wearing a vest. It was no defense against a fifty-cal round, but clearly had absorbed a great deal of energy. Instead of a straight-through shot to the chest, the projectile’s momentum had translated widely across the victim’s torso, throwing him ten feet back and over the precipice.
The sergeant decided it hardly mattered.
Dead was dead. The police would recover the body at some point.
Lesson learned.