When he reached a few ragged rows of sun-browned maize, he stopped. Beyond was a field waist-high weeds shared with stubby sprigs of millet, the source of the bitter beer that was the main beverage of the area. He listened to a symphony of insect buzzes, birdcalls, and sounds he could not identify before he heard it: human voices. They were both male and female, young and old, and didn’t seem to move — the sounds of a village. At the same time, the faint breeze shifted, bringing him a whiff of charcoal and sweat with the faint undertone of untreated sewage, the smell of human habitation.
A few more steps and he heard women’s voices approaching. He flattened himself among the spindly stalks of millet just as two statuesque women balancing water jars on their heads gracefully stepped across what would have been his extended path. Each wore bright prints and was bedecked in beads and necklaces of small bones. Their heads were shaved except for a single queue.
He waited, listening as their voices faded. Then, he stood and unrolled the loose mesh that was his sniper’s blanket. Picking grass here, weeds there, the few empty spaces in its mesh were soon filled. Cradling the rifle in one arm, he pulled the material over him. Instantly, the heat blurred his vision. Ignoring his discomfort, he began to crawl.
After about fifteen minutes, he stopped and peered through the gaps in the foliage of his cover. Twenty or so mud-and-thatch huts formed a semicircle around a dirt square. In the middle of the open space, workmen were completing a platform. The men wore loincloths, along with necklaces, anklets, and armbands of bone and fur. A few wore headdresses of ostrich feathers, had painted faces, and carried long spears. Few Africans dressed in native costume in their day-to-day lives. Today was a special occasion where the normal cheap, imported blue jeans, mail-order dresses, and flip-flops had been temporarily put aside.
This was President-for-Life Bugunda’s tribal village. He preferred its humble backdrop, which emphasized his native Shana heritage to the palatial presidential palace in the capital when making a speech he knew would be filmed or perhaps televised to the rest of the world.
The president was, by his own account, a humble man, was he not? A humble man who had removed the chain from his people’s throat and set them free from the foot of the oppressor.
Perhaps.
He was undeniably fond of metaphors. And today’s would be a momentous speech indeed, if not the way the president intended.
For an instant, the sniper almost pitied whoever was in charge of the man’s security detail. A building can be secured as tight as needed. But facing acres of open space with head-high grass?
The sniper rolled onto his back, affixed the scope, and returned to his stomach before he checked the scope’s stability in its mount.
Ordinarily, the ravings of African dictators were ignored by Western civilization, the brutality of an Amin or Mugabe the source of amusing headlines somewhere in the inside pages of newspapers. Genocide? No threat to national security. Famine and plague? Quarantined by oceans.
Except where national security was involved.
Months ago, Bugunda had startled the world, or at least the world’s intelligence communities. ECHELON had picked up a series of telephone transmissions between Bugunda and eastern Pakistan. Thinly coded, they had been quickly deciphered. Bugunda would shortly be hosting Al Mohammed Moustaph, al-Qaida’s number-three man.
Although Bugunda was no threat outside his own borders, Moustaph was one of the world’s most wanted men. Suspected of engineering train and subway bombings in Europe, an attempt to blow an international flight out of the air, and a mass shooting at a beach resort in Australia, the various rewards offered exceeded the gross national product of most third-world countries.
That was where the sniper became involved.
2
Brush in hand, Jason Peters stood in his villa’s loggia before the easel, not quite content with the seascape he thought he’d finished. The jagged rocks of the coast were right; he could almost feel the spray. There was something not quite right with the color of the sea, though. Of course, that color changed hourly as the sun moved. A dark, almost black morning ocean became cerulean by noon, electric by sunset.
Perhaps the fishing boat needed to be painted out.
Perhaps acrylic was not the proper medium.
He bobbed his head as the mathematics of a Mozart concerto danced through the villa. Then he put down his brush and simply admired the same view he had enjoyed for the last three years. Half a mile away, the medieval Cathedral of the Assunta crowned a hill that dropped into the sea. He could also see the fifteenth-century causeway that joined the tiny hamlet to the larger island, a rugged bit of rock that jutted out of the water like some legendary sea monster about to devour a ship and its crew.
His view was not entirely for aesthetic purposes. With the high, rocky coast, the only approach to his villa was by that path and the single road that came up the hill to his front gate. There had been a time when he had first come here that security was more important than scenery.
A loud snore was audible over the music, disrupting his artistic thought. Turning, he saw the large dog sprawled across the tiles of the floor. It was difficult to even look at Pangloss without smiling. Part German shepherd, part collie, part whatever had been available to a promiscuous kinsman, the animal personified the description “mutt.” He also had been the only friend Jason had had for a very long time, a time from the death of his wife until Maria …
The dog awoke suddenly, lifting his head, and whined softly.
“Yeah, I miss her too,” Jason said, kneeling to take the big furry head in both hands. “But she had to go to Hawaii to observe the eruption of that volcano. You understand?”
A long tongue polished a black button nose before the animal gave a sound that could have been a sneeze or a snort. With Pangloss, one was never quite certain what was going on.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”
Having assented, the dog stretched, extending shaggy legs in a move that, had it been made by a woman, might have been sexy. Well, maybe not exactly sexy, Jason thought, but it did somehow remind him of Maria waking from the afternoon nap indigenous to the island and all of Italy.
Maria. God, but he missed her.
Whenever she was not actively pursuing her profession as a volcanologist, she had shared Jason’s villa and the dog’s affection. An eruption somewhere on the globe — Indonesia, the Italian mainland, or northwestern America — meant days of absence. Worse, boredom.
Jason had gotten used to living alone before she came into his life. He had actually enjoyed having only Pangloss’s company for days on end. The peaceful serenity of obscure islands had appealed to him since his life had undergone a violent change over a decade ago. He could paint without interruption and had no social obligations to waste his time. He also could keep fully apprised of who came and went, an unfortunate necessity of his former employment.
Maria had changed all that. It was well and fine that he lived what most would consider a dull life while she was in it. But when she was gone …?
He sighed, turning back to the easel and reaching to pick up the brush. She was all the excitement he needed when she was there. When she was gone, memories of past adventures seemed sweet indeed. He had lived up to his promise of retirement, but that pledge might be hard to keep if the opportunity arose, the chance …