“We’ve got another man!” Shouted the Air Force sergeant in the OPS center. The drone feed shifted slightly to show a man coming forward in a crouch, moving carefully.
They all swarmed around Meredith again. She stood, ignoring them, walking from behind her table, approaching the monitor. There was something about the way this newcomer walked, the way his knees rose and fell, the flicker of his free hand beside his hip. She had to be right about this.
“That’s John!” she shouted, looking back toward Rance and the SEAL captain. She quickly remembered her protocol. “That’s our case officer. That’s our guy. We need to protect that guy!” She slapped the bottom of the monitor with her pointing hand.
“I thought you said the sniper guy was John,” said the frustrated Air Force lieutenant colonel in charge of the drones.
Meredith admitted she’d been wrong. It had been hard to tell. But this new guy—that was him; that was their officer. The colonel rolled his eyes.
A chorus of voices asked if she was sure, noted the gravity if she was wrong. They needed a PID, positive ID, not this wishy-washy might-be stuff. Meredith felt a rising sense of frustration with all of them. Yes, she was motherfucking goddamned sure. Of course she was. She’d been married to the man. Did they think she didn’t know who the hell he was? Then, gaining control of herself, she added that she was extra certain because he was moving now, making him easier to recognize.
“Confirm PID,” she said with grim finality, swallowing hard.
When Rance asked her one more time if she was sure from across the room, she nearly pulled her sidearm from her hip to shoot him. Then she fought off the impulse. Keep it together.
“Yes, I know that’s him,” she announced again across the room, her eyes steady on John’s screen, watching him advance slowly. But then she glanced at the other monitor, the one zoomed in on the unknown contact they’d previously thought was John.
“Oh, shit. Look!” she cried, willing all of them to see the same thing.
“We need to launch!” she shouted.
The grizzled SEAL captain scowled at her, startled. He said something about taking it easy.
She cut him off. “Can’t you see that sniper? He’s moving! He’s aiming at our officer! We need to fucking go!”
Oleg couldn’t believe his luck. He saw the new man approaching. The stealthy crouch forward and the studied use of concealment suggested he was a skilled operator. On focusing further through the scope, Oleg saw that it was Dale. He recognized the face. Finally.
Not smiling now, are you, Dale?
The Spetsnaz Alpha sniper shifted the long barrel of the Dragunov, putting the CIA man in the center of the scope’s reticle. He paused to think through the slight wind drift, the distance. He exhaled slowly, squeezed the trigger. He fired.