Matt plugged a cable from his sniper scope into a USB port in his small handheld satellite com-munications device. He was transmitting his sight picture back to Langley, but he also knew that the national command authority in the White House situation room and the national military command center in the Pentagon routinely tapped into the CIA video; all in the name of post-9-11 intelligence sharing.
Matt could not give a rat’s ass about who was watching the video feed.
They want proof? They can watch the bullet pass through his brain.
They were perched high above the village nearly 500 meters away. The driving snow provided ample cover, especially with their white gilley suits that lay atop them. Two of his men were faced outward, securing their position from any passerby. Tony Macrini, known as X-Ray, lay next to him peering through a larger scope, confirming what Matt was seeing as well as providing redundant digital confirmation of the kill.
“Pred lost them, but they’re heading this way,” Matt said, confidently.
“Roger,” Macrini said, then spit some tobacco into the bone-white snow. The brown juice disappeared instantly beneath a fresh layer.
Bones and McKinney tapped Matt every fifteen minutes. One tap meant all ok; two taps meant there was a problem. Better with minimal talking.
Matt’s heart quickened just a bit. Though he was experienced, to know that he potentially had the shot on Al Qaeda senior leadership elevated his nervous system slightly. That was good, he thought. He wasn’t nervous or anxious, but there was something nagging at him.
He had been told to call in approval for any sniper shot on AQ senior leadership. It’s okay to drop a bomb on a cave and kill the dude, Matt thought, but I can’t pull this trigger without approval?
“Movement,” Macrini said.
Matt shifted his scope marginally and picked up two men with AK-47s slung across their backs standing outside in the snowstorm.
“That’s it,” Matt said. Pulling into the view of his scope was a makeshift ambulance with a large, red cross on either side. It slowly wound through a defile and pulled to a stop in front of the larger adobe structure in the nine-building village.
Men clambered out of the ambulance and opened the back door, extracting a stretcher. After the AK-47-clad stretcher bearers pulled the litter from the back, a short man wearing wire-rim spectacles stepped carefully from the compartment into the snow.
Matt watched as the wire-rimmed, spectacled man rapidly ushered the precious cargo into the large building. Momentarily losing sight of everyone, Matt was pleased when they placed the stretcher on a table juxtaposed to an open window.
“I’ve got the shot.”
“You’ve got the shot,” Macrini affirmed.
Matt deliberated in his mind. Make the call, not make the call?
“You’ve got the shot,” Macrini said again, emphatically, as if to say, screw the call.
Before Matt could ruminate any further, his earpiece crackled with the sound of a distant incoming radio call.
“Garrett, standby.”
“Don’t answer it,” Macrini cautioned. “I don’t like it.”
“They can see my feed, they know we can talk.”
“Garrett, standby, acknowledge immediately.” Matt didn’t recognize the voice through the wind and static, though he assumed it was some bureaucrat seventeen times removed from his low level status as an operator. He registered that the voice could be coming from any of the outstations: Langley, the White House, the Pentagon, and God knows whoever else might be watching. The 8,000-mile screwdriver was going cordless.
“I’m telling you, man,” Macrini warned. “You know anything good to ever come from head-quarters?”
Matt looked at his friend, a former Marine Force Recon scout. Macrini’s beard, like his own, was thick. He wore a pakol and tan and green blankets beneath the white sheets they used to conceal their position.
He turned back to his sight picture and lined up the black dot of the cross hairs on the middle of the patient’s torso. The medical team had stripped the man, a very tall man, down to his long johns. The white shirt was stained red on the left side. Shrapnel, maybe a bullet, Matt figured. The scope traced the body and then the black dot landed on the bearded face, actually just to the side of the elongated nose and just beneath the dark, brooding eyebrows. The eyes, though, seemed compassionate, or perhaps he had the faraway look of a wounded deer.
Matt nodded to his battle buddy, exhaled steadily and placed an exposed trigger finger on the trigger mechanism. He found that spot where he would have no pull on the weapon, just straight back, not moving the weapon, sending the bullet directly where the cross hairs were resting. He closed his eyes briefly, retreating into that inner sanctuary that allowed him complete focus. Opening his eyes, all he saw was the black dot and the man’s face looming large in his sight picture, the way that a slow-spinning curve ball might look to Tony Gwynn, the greatest batsman of all time.
“Homerun,” Matt whispered.
“Homerun,” Macrini confirmed.
“Do not fire! Do not fire! Kill chain denied!”
“What the hell?” Macrini said, rolling away from the scope and yanking out his earpiece.
Matt didn’t move. He was in his zone. Every-thing was in slow motion; his breathing, his trigger finger beginning the squeeze, the movement of the patient’s head turning toward him, exposing the worn prayer callous on his forehead.
“Take the shot!” Macrini growled.
“Do not fire! Kill chain denied!”
“Take the shot!”
With the good angel on one shoulder, Macrini, and the bad angel on the other, the anonymous voice, Matt closed his eyes.
I’ve got the shot.
“This is a direct order. Entry into Pakistan was not authorized. Kill chain denied. Violation will be prosecuted.”
I’ve got the shot. I’m close.
“Take the shot!” Macrini demanded.
Matt exhaled again, keeping his sight picture, and squeezed the trigger at the same time a JDAM missile exploded perilously close to his position.
“Holy shit!” Macrini shouted, covering his face. Bones and McKinney turned toward Matt, who was still in his zone.
The bomb’s detonation created a bright orange fireball that mushroomed into the sky nearly 100 meters from his position.
“Closer to us than the shack,” Matt said to his three teammates.
He looked at Macrini, who stared back at Matt and shook his head.
“We were punked.”
“Roger that,” Matt said.
“Kill chain denied, Garrett. Return to Jalalabad for new orders.”
Phase I: Chasing Ghosts
Chapter 1
The one time my country asks for a head on a platter, Matt Garrett said to himself as he recalled the nightmarish scene in Pakistan. He let out a heavy sigh, watching the sun dip behind Mount Apo, just to the west of Davao City, Republic of the Philippines, on the island of Mindanao. From the freezing snow to the humid backwaters. From the epicenter to the periphery.
I had the damn shot!
Disappointed in himself, he shook the memory from his head and crushed a smoldering butt under the sole of his dingy work boot.
Keeping his gaze fixed on the gray evening, he noticed a few destitute, but nonetheless workman-like, Filipinos scurry around the concrete fishing piers that abutted Davao Gulf, a horseshoe expanse of water adjacent to the Celebes Sea.