THIRTY-FOUR

•   •   •

The nest was located in an RV park on an elevated plot of ground overlooking Colington Creek. It was a fifth wheel–style motor home, nice but certainly not audacious. Murphy and his team had taken care to make sure it blended in with the style and value of other RVs at the campground. The interior was clean and appeared untouched. The other couple that had been occupying the space for the past few weeks were gone and left not a trace of their presence.

Jed and Karen had been given a truck, the same truck the former couple had driven, and instructed to casually enter the RV, Jed first, then Karen, without saying a word to each other. No smiles, no conversation, no looks. Get out of the truck, enter the RV. Simple. Jed didn’t know why those instructions were so important other than the fact that the former occupants had been given the same instructions, and for continuity’s sake the Patricks had to comply. Lilly, of course, had been kept out of their sight. There was never an explicit threat, but Lilly’s well-being loomed over them every time they were ordered to follow instructions precisely. If they tried to flee, they would never see Lilly again. If they tried to contact anyone other than Murphy, they would never see Lilly again.

If Jed failed to make the shot, Lilly would disappear forever.

Jed walked the length of the RV in silence, Karen close behind him. On the right side of the trailer a slideout contained a table with bench seating around it. On the wall of the slideout was a window facing east, looking out over the creek and, in the distance, a very small mound. The monument. Jed found his equipment on the table: .300 Win Mag rifle and bipod, spotting scope, box of ammunition, mobile phone. Jed stared at the rifle for a long time. He hadn’t seen it since he came home from Afghanistan. He’d sold it to a guy from Oklahoma, or so he thought. Apparently he’d sold it to someone in the government. He reached out and touched it, ran his fingers lightly over the stock, the barrel. The last time he’d used it . . .

Shafiq Kazmi was the mastermind behind a series of ambushes that took five American lives and three British. Intelligent, cunning, and ruthless, and he makes no excuses for his hatred of America and her allies. It’s about time somebody put an end to his reign.

Intelligence tracked him to this village at the foot of the Hindu Kush. The place isn’t much to speak of, typical of Afghan villages. The colors drab, the soil fruitless, the sky low and blue and blazing.

Jed has been watching Kazmi for hours as the warlord wandered the streets of the village, knocking on doors, chatting with the locals, laughing, hugging. A real local hero. Jed just needs word from HQ for the go-ahead to pull the trigger. The heat in the area has been building, radiating off the rocks that hid his position and baking him in the early evening twilight. Neither he nor Habit has said more than five words to each other in the past three hours.

Finally, as the sun is just beginning to dip behind the mountains, the orders come in. Take him out.

Habit peers through his spotting scope. “Seven hundred meters. No wind.”

Perfect conditions. Jed adjusts his scope and puts the crosshairs on Kazmi’s chest. From his position a hundred feet above the village, he has an excellent angle on the target. He couldn’t miss.

Kazmi knocks on the door of a home and waits. He’s surrounded by four other men, all with black beards and wearing pakols and khet partugs. The door of the home opens and Kazmi rotates a quarter turn to his right. Jed has the shot.

“Take him,” Habit says.

Jed steadies his breathing, locks in on his pulse, and depresses the trigger.

But as he does, a kid steps out of the house and embraces Kazmi. He can’t be more than fifteen or sixteen. Tall and thin, with skin as smooth and clear as butter, not a trace of a beard yet, not even a few stray hairs on his chin. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It takes only a second or two, but he places himself there. Stupid kid.

The round enters the kid’s back near his spine, passes through the fullest part of his thin chest, and enters Kazmi’s heart, dropping them both.

Karen’s touch on Jed’s shoulder brought him out of his memory. “You okay?”

He nodded. “I didn’t think I’d ever use this again.” After that shot, part of him didn’t want to ever use it again.

“Just this one last time,” she said. “For your country. For me and Lilly.”

For his country, for his family. What better reasons could he have for picking up that rifle again? Jed lifted the spotting scope and put it to his eye. He pointed it east and found the monument sitting high on Kill Devil Hill. Seventeen hundred meters. Just a tad over a mile. He ran the scope over the terrain, noticing which way the leaves on the trees moved, which way the grasses bent. The wind was unpredictable and shifting. The bullet would travel over water and land and cover the distance in just a couple seconds. If Jed hit his mark, if he made every calculation correctly, gauged the wind right, timed his breathing perfectly, it would be over in the time it took him to exhale. Connelly would be dead or at least fatally wounded. The watching crowd would go into a panic. The surrounding area would be shut down. The nation would be grief-stricken and would mourn for someone they thought was a hero but in reality was a monster. A devil. Murphy had given specific instructions for them to leave as soon as the shot was fired. Neighbors would be glued to their televisions and wouldn’t notice them doing so. And if they did notice, their recollection later would be so distorted they wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the time of departure. The RV would be thoroughly cleaned, scrubbed, and later hauled away and destroyed. There wouldn’t be a trace of Jed and Karen’s presence at the campground.

Jed sat at the table and Karen followed, sitting beside him. She put her hand on his shoulder. “What are you thinking about?”

“The last time I held this piece,” he said, running his hand over the stock of the Win Mag. “I pulled the trigger, but it wasn’t right. Something felt off.”

“Did it ever feel right?”

“There was a time, yes. I knew I was killing bad guys, evil men. Men intent on killing my brothers. Men with a sole purpose of killing me. I had no hesitations and no regrets afterward.”

She rubbed his shoulder. “So what changed?”

“I had a target, an Afghan warlord. I’d been watching him for days, waiting for the okay to pull the trigger. I knew everything about him. When he woke up, what kind of coffee he drank and how many cups. When he went to the bathroom, when he played with his kids. Who he talked to and how long the conversations lasted. I watched him undress at night and get dressed in the morning. The way I saw him those couple days, it wasn’t as an evil man; he was just a man going about his days, his life. When I finally got the go-ahead, I had him in my sights and his wife was there.” He paused and sighed. “I don’t know. She reminded me of you and he reminded me of myself. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pull the trigger. He was a man, you know?”

“You didn’t think he deserved to die?”

“I did. He did deserve to die. Just not that way. Not in front of his wife like that.” He picked up the spotting scope again and turned it over in his hands. “Things were never the same after that. Soon after was the ambush and everything fell apart. I don’t remember much after that.”

Karen leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Do you think you’ll be okay tomorrow?”

Jed shrugged. “I’m gonna have to be, aren’t I?”

•   •   •

It wasn’t hard to steal a vehicle to replace the truck. Actually, Tiffany didn’t see it as stealing, more like swapping. She’d found a late-model Ford F-150, dented and faded, parked at the end of a long lane that led to a brick farmhouse. The sign in the windshield said the truck was for sale, 185,000 miles, $500 OBO. She had a better offer. She left the five-year-old F-250 with a note in its windshield saying she was sorry she didn’t have time to make the swap in person but she would return later to complete the paperwork. The old farm truck was unlocked and she’d learned years ago how easy it was to hot-wire an older vehicle.

With the swap complete, she’d gotten back on the road and driven the four hours to Kill Devil Hills, NC. The truck ran as well as could be expected. Its engine hiccuped every now and then, and it pulled to the left at higher speeds, but it got her where she wanted to go.

In Kill Devil Hills she found a café, bought a large coffee and sandwich with cash, and took a seat in the back of the dining area, away from the other customers. There she opened Jack’s laptop and waited for it to boot. She’d only get one chance to determine where Jedidiah Patrick would take the shot.

First, she looked up any information she could get on the vice president’s speech. He’d be there to dedicate a new exhibit at the museum. The article said that as a flying enthusiast and combat pilot who had flown several missions during the Iraq War’s initial “shock and awe” campaign, Vice President Michael Connelly was looking forward to visiting Kill Devil Hills and the Wright Brothers National Memorial and Museum for the first time. He’d give his speech at 11 a.m. at the memorial itself, which was situated on the crest of Kill Devil Hill, the once-sand dune where the Wright brothers tested their first flight.

Next, she pulled up Google maps and studied the area, the terrain, the elevation points, population centers, and street layout. She took into account the area the Secret Service would have cordoned off, the area they would have monitored and patrolled, and the areas that would simply not afford a feasible shot and quick escape route.

Her analysis narrowed the search to several locations, all difficult shots but possible if every condition was right and whoever was shooting knew what he was doing. Which, apparently Patrick did.

Finally she turned to the printouts of the Centralia documents she’d stuffed in her duffel bag. Paging through them, she scanned each line for any information on a possible location for the shooter. There wasn’t much in there concerning the assassination attempt. Only that it would take place and that Patrick would be the man.

Tiffany was about to give up when she noticed a section that was apparently a thread of e-mails between two individuals code-named Blue Parrot and Tommy Jeff. Blue Parrot mentioned acquiring a camper. Tommy Jeff responded, Done.

That was it. Simple, to the point. No more information than that.

Tiffany went back to the map and searched the area surrounding the memorial. She ran her finger along the screen in a widening circle, zooming out to get a broader view of the geography around Kill Devil Hills.

There. It was outside the perimeter she had initially thought would make for the most difficult shot. This would be a nearly impossible shot what with the distance, terrain, and shifting winds of the coastal area. If Jedidiah Patrick was that good of a shot, then there must be something inhuman about him. In fact, the longer she looked at it and studied the trajectory the bullet would have to take to find its mark, the more she thought she had to be mistaken. It couldn’t be the correct location. They’d be crazy to think anyone could make a shot from that distance and hit a target no bigger than a newspaper.

But it had to be the location. If they were going to use a camper, it was the only possible option.