Earlier, Ben had swapped out the rifle’s ATN 2-6X68DNS 3A daytime eyepiece for the nighttime one. The scope stayed zeroed-in that way. He lurped out into the dunes, and took a position midway up a more distant rise, about five hundred yards away from the hotel. There was a higher, more advantageous hill three hundred yards closer to the hotel, but he avoided it. He eschewed the high ground, moral and actual, wherever he could, for fear of being an easy target silhouetted against the sky. If Chalk had any counter-sniper training, that preferable, higher ground closer in would be the first place they’d hunt for Ben once he opened fire. If they could still walk.
Ben switched on the sight and scanned the area. His men, for so he thought of them, were invisible. He aimed the rifle at the hotel. He spotted the dangling key in the upstairs window. Good. If he could see it from his hide, Chalk would notice it from the beach, and from farther out on the water if he had binoculars. The prep work was done. The trap was baited and set. Now it was time for the slaughter.
Ben waited, checking his watch so often he believed it had stopped. Shadowed visions of his mother raced through his mind. One moment, she was decked in the Norwegian cardigan she loved during the months containing the letter R, happily hanging laundry to dry in the saltbox yard. The next minute she was captive in a cramped, dank oubliette. Ben still had The Kid’s sat-phone. He was tempted to call Chalk to bargain for the truth about her. Might be worth a couple-two-three boxes of gold to finally know. His friends would understand that. His neighbors, on the other hand, might not.
CHAPTER 55
Chalk did not personally know the three new members of his unit. He knew them by repute, and by their employment files. They were dragooned out of the New Orleans office of Right Way Moving & Storage. Fresh as they were to major league play like this, he was sure they understood his Calvinist Puritan work ethic based on how fast he’d knackered Farron MacDonald.
Tim O’Malley was a husky man in his thirties. An Irishman and a Catholic, he was looking for a new fight now that The Troubles back home were dying down. He had bright red hair tactically shortened both for convenience and to disguise his fast-retreating hairline and incipient fighting-monk’s tonsure nouveau. The luckiest of the three in the plane crash, he suffered only minor cuts and abrasions of which nobody in their line of work would think twice.
To Chalk, Hagan Pallaton seemed twitchy, wiry and mean-eyed. In a word, perfect. Though not sure of Pallaton’s ethnic origins, the black hair and broad cheekbones said it all to Chalk: angry, oppressed, displaced minority with a chip on his shoulder the size of an M1A2 Abrams main battle tank. Too bad he didn’t pack the same punch. Pallaton had a serious, but not crippling, gash across his left shoulder from the crash. Tahereh had already sluiced it with peroxide and slapped a five-by-nine dressing on it before the Palestrina was five minutes out of Tangier Island.
The third man, Abel Stein, had two badly fractured ribs that made breathing quite entertaining for him. Despite that, his eyes were clear. Like the other two survivors, all Stein’s arms and legs were still attached, functional, and not too badly braised.
Chalk was aware that none of these guys was in midseason form for the hundred meter dash. Smoke inhalation had played hell with their lungs. Christ, they hacked and coughed sitting still. Once in position, he figured they could at least point, shoot, and when needed, stop a bullet meant for him. They were certainly not a full strength strike force. Despite their deficiencies, he kept them all on the roster for now.
Tahereh and Slagget were both taking care of his new gimps. Chalk still kept a close eye on the patients in case anyone got shocky from internal injuries and looked like he needed a swim. No one was ever safe. Dominance through fear and disunity was the key to all Chalk’s success, but he wished he didn’t have to change the lock so often.
They cruised into the night toward Spring Island. Half the reason Chalk wanted the gold was to invite Dick Blackshaw to try and take it away from him again. Chalk wanted to piss off that traitorous thief. Then he wanted to kill him. This pleasurable thought warmed him on the boat ride. He wondered when that infernal whore-whelped prick would show himself. The things Maynard would do to him!
Slagget interrupted Chalk’s sweet flow of thought. “Chief, any ideas on how we’re going to handle this?”
Chalk replied, “Pretty routine, don’t you think? Put half the team in the inflatable and pinch those bastards in between us. We’ll enfilade the living shit out of their defilade and be home in time for breakfast. That about sums it up.”
Slagget persisted. “And the teams?”
“Tahereh, me, and Pallaton in this boat. You take the hypocrite and the Jesus-killer in the inflatable. Any questions?”
Slagget shrugged. “Timing.”
Chalk pushed the chart over to Slagget and picked up the navigational dividers as a pointer.
Chalk said, “You want it spelled out in neon, Bill? Okay. We’ll stage in the waters a half mile south of Spring Island. Tahereh, how quick is that inflatable we’re towing?”
She said, “We made thirty knots easily with a full tactical unit.”
Chalk smiled at her precision. He enjoyed this quality in her. If dancing the birthday boff-anova with Phoebe DeLyte got him into this mess, shagging Tahereh might be the way out. She had a sharp mind. The Bryn Mawr education she’d bragged about during their chat in the cuddy cabin would tell. Always ready with the right stuff in any situation. He could love a woman like that. In his way.
Chalk said, “Fine. And this tub’ll do about six knots if I try to keep her stealthy and the engine somewhat quiet. Faster, and they’ll hear this old four-banger all the way to the Naval Academy. In fact, once you’re in position on the west side, Bill, here’s what I want. From the time we split up, plus zero-zero-one-zero minutes, my team’ll go straight in through the front door from the south like D-Day. Raise the damn roof. That should give your team plenty of covering distraction. We’ll be the thunder. You hit like lightning. Be the lightning, Bill. Sound good to you?”
Slagget barely nodded. “And the exfil?”
Chalk sighed. “You’re getting tiresome, Bill. Really tiresome. I’ll have resources come get us when the work is done. Okay by you?”
Slagget shrugged.
Tahereh said, “You expect organized resistance, don’t you?”
Slagget said, “Depends on how many we’re talking about. Shouldn’t be more than a guard or two. They haven’t probed our perimeter at all—”
Chalk snapped, “Other than blowing the crap out of a lighthouse and killing a planeload of mercs with trees and piles of dirt? No Bill. No probing.” Chalk was stoked for a fight, and more easily angered than usual.
Slagget said, “But they don’t have clue one about what we’re packing.”
A wheezing Pallaton said, “Which ain’t shit. Our gear burnt up in the plane.”
Chalk said, “Bill, stop talking nonsense, break open our gun locker, and arm these true blue patriots. We’re going to hit these marsh monkeys hard.”
Slagget obeyed. They had their own back-up weapons, Clynch’s guns, and leftovers from Tahereh’s murdered squad. Chalk’s team might be outnumbered, but they were blooded, and damn well ready for anything.
He thought it a fine thing to watch a band of soldiers get acquainted with their new girlfriends, taking them apart. Checking the action, the magazine, chamber, barrel, and sights. Testing the heft. The balance. He loved the utter concentration and engagement of all lethal faculties for a single purpose: muscle memory, but only as it pertained to the accurate, effective discharge of weaponry with hardly a conscious thought. For Chalk, beholding these young operatives quick-wire the human fighting machine within was magical, even inspiring. Forgetting all the injuries and their paltry numbers, now he felt like they were rolling down on Spring Island like old Commodore Perry steaming into Kurihama; a squadron of mighty conquerors.