The Sniper and the Wolf (31 page)
82
THE CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS
Gil stalked boldly into the camp, his face concealed by the hood of the ghillie suit, gripping the suppressed AK-105. One of the women pointed and said, “Kovalenko!”
He stopped and knelt at the body of Dokka Umarov, using the knife to cut off one of the thumbs. He stuck the digit into a pocket and kept moving, leaving the women gaping after him.
He reached the far side of the encampment and was approached by six men who had been left behind to look after things. One of them asked where he’d been in a language that Gil did not understand. He gunned them all down at point-blank range, dumping the magazine and reloading the weapon as he slipped back into the forest like a wraith.
He picked up the pace, moving into the Spetsnaz kill zone where the claymores had wreaked their devastation. There were Chechens everywhere tending the wounded. Cries of agony filled the forest. He spotted Mukhammad conferring with his officers and kept going.
One of the officers spotted him. “Kovalenko!”
Mukhammad turned his head. “Sasha! Come here!”
Gil kept going, his fist closed around the ready-grenade.
“Sasha!”
One of the men started after him, but Mukhammad called him back, telling him to let Kovalenko join the chase if he wanted to.
Gil fell in on the trail of the Chechens who were in pursuit of Yablonsky and his men. The terrain grew increasingly rugged, covered with rocks and strewn with impenetrable thickets of rhododendron that forced everyone to skirt around them. He could tell from the way the ground was torn up that at least fifty men were in on the chase and moving fast.
A thousand meters into the track, he ran into four Chechens who had given up the chase and turned back. One of them had broken his leg in the rocks, and the others were helping him return to camp. They smiled at him in his leshy suit, and he sprayed them with suppressed fire. Then Gil stripped their bodies of grenades and whatever ammo would fit his AK-105 before moving on.
He heard firing in the distance and increased his pace. His bad foot was killing him, but the lead element had made contact with Yablonsky, and time was running out.
COLONEL YABLONSKY FIRED
a 40 mm grenade to drive the Zapad men undercover and fell back, helping the man with the shattered shoulder blade who had since been shot through both legs. He could tell from the overly aggressive manner in which the lead element was maneuvering against them that they were Spetsnaz trained, and he cursed them for the traitors they were.
The badly wounded man was firing a pistol because he was no longer in any condition to wield a rifle. “Leave me, Colonel. I’m slowing you down.”
Yablonsky propped him against a tree. “You’re sure, Maxim?”
“I’ll never make it. Leave me a grenade, and I’ll make it count.”
Yablonsky pulled the pin on a grenade and put it into the younger man’s hand. Then he patted him on the face and dashed off to catch up with the other four Spetsnaz men.
Maxim crawled forward on his good arm, gripping the grenade. When the Chechens broke cover, he released the safety lever and counted to two before biffing the grenade in their direction. It detonated on impact and blew three of them off their feet. The others overran him and stabbed him with bayonets before moving on.
Yablonsky heard the blast and rallied his men to make a brief stand. They were running out of 40 mm grenades, but they had to keep the enemy back on its heels as much as possible. They fired a volley, and the last of the Chechen Spetsnaz were blown away by the barrage, giving them a much-needed respite.
“LET’S NOT STOP
to watch the birds fuck,” Yablonsky said. “The rest are not far behind.”
Gil caught up to the tail end of the pursuers. He could hear them crashing through the forest ahead of him, calling out to one another to keep themselves organized. The 40 mm barrage echoed through the trees, and everyone picked up the pace.
He switched the AK-105 to semiauto and shot a straggler in the back, stepping on his head as he dashed over him. He shouldered the rifle and shot another man through the back of the skull.
A Chechen to his left heard the hiss of the rifle and jerked to a stop. “Kovalenko? Is that you?”
Gil shot him through the face and kept moving. He picked off a dozen men in this same manner, shooting them silently from behind, sometimes at ranges of up to forty yards, but a group of seven Chechens got wise to him and stopped to form a rear guard, thinking that one of the Spetsnaz men had slipped through the net and gotten into their rear.
Gil crouched motionless in the rhododendron, looking straight across a small glade at the men waiting in ambush. He was tempted to stand up and pretend to be Kovalenko, but it would only take one of them to call his bluff, so he remained motionless, losing time to the mission as he waited them out.
After almost ten minutes, the Chechens began to grow restless,
whispering back and forth across their line. A few minutes after that, all but one of them pulled slowly back and resumed the pursuit.
Gil stayed where he was, watching the spooked Chechen who’d been left behind to cover the rear.
He waited until the man displaced to better cover; then he shouldered the rifle and shot him through the neck.
A hundred yards farther on, Gil came across Maxim’s body. He saw the Russian was still alive and knelt to check his wounds. It was obvious the young man didn’t have long to live. He put back the hood of the ghillie suit, and the Russian opened his eyes, recognizing Gil.
“Umarov?” he asked.
Gil drew a finger across his throat, and the Spetsnaz man smiled. He died a few moments later, and Gil moved out.
He caught back up to the posse shortly after they’d left the forest to descend into the river valley that led downhill to the west toward the bridge. He took cover in the tree line and picked off eleven of them over open sights before they realized they were being fired upon. When the rest finally did realize what was going on, there was nothing they could do about it. Gil was so well camouflaged, they couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from. So they ran. They ran as fast as they could over open terrain—and Gil killed ten more of them before finally tossing aside the AK-105 and unslinging the .338.
He looked through the scope to see thirty more Chechens stretched out along the riverbank in hot pursuit of Yablonsky and his men. The Spetsnaz team was in full sprint for the bridge that still lay five hundred yards ahead. The Chechens fired wildly as they ran, but there were at least five hundred yards between the two parties, and the Chechens were too tired for accurate shooting at that range.
Gil set up the bipod and positioned himself behind the rifle. He shot the man closest to Yablonsky in the small of the back from almost eight hundred yards. Then he worked the bolt and fired again, picking off the next closest man. He shot them off the riverbank one at a time, working his way back.
The Chechens gave up the chase and sought whatever cover they could along the riverbank.
Yablonsky and his men pulled up short, stopping to launch the last of their 40 mm grenades in a high arc, blowing the Chechens off the bank and into the river. Then they watched as the last one was picked off by sniper fire, hearing Gil’s shot echoing down through the valley.
The Spetsnaz men held their positions, watching Gil come walking down the side of the mountain carrying the .338 in his right hand, with the ghillie suit draped over his left arm. A French Puma and a heavily armed Cayuse helicopter flew into the valley and hovered high over the southern bridgehead without crossing into Russian airspace.
When Gil finally limped up, he smiled and offered Yablonsky the ghillie suit. “This was Kovalenko’s leshy. I thought you might offer it to Putin as a souvenir, with my compliments.”
Yablonsky smiled back, accepting the suit and passing it off to one of his men. “Umarov is dead?”
“You bet.”
The Russian gestured across the river. “Are those helicopters here for us?”
“They better be,” Gil said, setting off for the bridge. “I’m in no shape for walkin’ home.”
The helos landed as they walked along the bank.
“I got close to Mukhammad,” Gil said, “but I didn’t have a shot.”
“Don’t worry about him,” Yablonsky said. “He doesn’t have the influence that Umarov had. Not yet, at least.”
They were met halfway across the bridge by Mason and three other heavily armed men. There was also a civilian among them, a man in his forties with thinning blond hair wearing a North Face jacket.
Gil returned Mason’s sniper rifle. “I lost your ruck. I’m sorry.”
Mason accepted the weapon. “You brought back the part that counts, Chief.”
“Master Chief Shannon,” said the civilian. “I’m Parker Smith with the US Embassy in Tbilisi. I was sent by the State Department to debrief you on the elimination of Dokka Umarov. There’s some concern that we won’t be able to confirm his death because you chose to kill him with a headshot, so I need you to—”
“Give me your hand,” Gil said.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, give me your hand.”
Smith was reluctant but did as he was told.
Gil put the thumb of Dokka Umarov into the palm of Smith’s hand and closed his fingers tightly over it. “This is all the DNA you and the State Department will need for confirmation. Now fuck off.”
Gil turned and limped away toward the waiting helos. “Come on, Colonel. First beer’s on me.”
Smith opened his hand and turned green, stepping to the side of the bridge and retching over the railing.
EPILOGUE
PARIS,
France
Three months later, Gil and Crosswhite were walking across a self-storage lot on the outskirts of Paris, not far from the rail yard where Gil had his first run-in with Kovalenko.
“So tell me about this girl,” Gil said.
Crosswhite took a drag from a cigarette. “Not much to tell.”
“I know better than that. You moved to a communist country to be with her, for Christ’s sake.”
“It’s actually not all that communist anymore—just dirt poor.”
“So you’re not gonna tell me about her?”
“Well, she’s a little younger than me.”
“How young?”
“Twenty-one.”
Gil chuckled. “Twenty-one’s a good age.”
“She wants to get married soon—have a baby.”
“You should do it,” Gil said, lighting a cigarette of his own. “Be good for you.”
“The idea of havin’ a kid scares me,” Crosswhite said. “And what happens when you get yourself in another jam? Who’s gonna save your ass?”
“Don’t use me to try and wriggle out of it,” Gil said. “Besides, I was just in another jam. You were nowhere around.”
“Yeah, and you damn near died, from what I hear.”
“I damn near died the other two times.”
Crosswhite stopped and turned to face him. “Fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Means I think you should get married and have a baby, dumbass. Be good for you.”
“Yeah,” Crosswhite said with a sigh. “I know it.” They set off walking again. “She’s Catholic. I gotta start goin’ to church on Sundays. I hate fuckin’ church.”
“Christ, it ain’t gonna kill ya,” Gil said. “You’ll have to stop with the drugs, too.”
“Already did. You talk to Marie lately?”
Gil grew immediately sad at the mention of his wife. “She doesn’t want me back until I’m out for good. And I just ain’t ready to quit.”
“You know these young guys comin’ up,” Crosswhite said. “They’re faster, stronger—more dangerous than we are.”
“I know it, partner, but I ain’t ready.”
They stopped in front of the orange overhead door of the storage garage and stood looking at the big white number 9 stenciled on the front of it.
“So what the fuck do you suppose is gonna be in there?” Crosswhite wondered. “A booby trap?”
Gil tossed the cigarette to the ground and stepped on it. “I doubt it.”
“You’re absolutely positive you don’t wanna tell Pope about this first?”
“Yeah.” Gil stepped forward and put the key into the lock, giv
ing it a turn. The door went up automatically, and both men stood staring.
“You gotta be shittin’ me,” Crosswhite said.
The phone rang in Gil’s pocket. “Hello?”
“So what’s behind door number nine?” Pope asked.
Gil glanced up at the sky, not at all surprised. “I think you’d better get on a plane and come have a look for yourself.”
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