Kimball lay the folders down and got to his feet. His face was beginning to hang with fatigue and his eyes were growing glassy and red.
“Take my bed,” said Hawk. “It’s comfortable.”
“Thanks, man. And, Hawk?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s good to see you again.”
Hawk turned toward the landscape while resting the CheyTac across his lap. “Yeah. You too, brother.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The assassin wore a Ghillie Desert suit. At nighttime the color didn’t matter much since the darkness was his camouflage and the suit looking as much as the surrounding desert sage. From a hilltop overlooking Hawk’s ranch, the assassin spied down on them through a night vision monocular.
Sitting on the porch were two men, talking, the Native American keeping a vigil eye over the landscape with night vision goggles of his own and a rifle across his lap, a CheyTac M200.
So, you were expecting me.
The large man sitting beside him he couldn’t quite make out, so he dialed the lens and zoomed in, first catching the pristine white collar and then the man’s face.
The assassin’s breath hitched. Well, if it isn’t the priest who is not a priest.
The level of the assassin’s jeopardy had just risen tenfold.
Moving slowly across the terrain on his belly, the fabric of his Ghillie suit swaying like grass in a soft breeze, the assassin moved to gain a different vantage point. When he reached a row of thick sage, the assassin had a solid blind that granted him a complete frontal view of the entire ranch. The question was, how was he to encroach with Kimball and Hawk working in tandem? He was sure that he could take down one, but not both. Not when they were members of the Pieces of Eight no matter how far removed they were from active duty. Kimball Hayden was testament to that.
But killing Hayden now was not in the assassin’s scheme of things, as he wanted Hayden to die in the sequential manner of the way the warriors were posing in the photo: First Hawk, then the brothers, and then Kimball.
But if it was one thing the assassin learned in life was that plans rarely came together due to the unpredictability of the human element. And Kimball Hayden had become that element.
In the west where thunderheads gathered, celestial rumbles sounded off like aged cannons of the Colonial period — something distant with the deep grumble that shook the earth miles away.
Patiently, the assassin waited for the opportune moment, always believing that there was a solution to everything. And twenty minutes later a solution presented itself.
Kimball rose from the chair, spoke to Hawk, then disappeared into the house.
Divide the team, and then conquer. Always level the playing field before engagement.
The moment Kimball left, the assassin moved away from the blind careful not the catch the eye of Hawk through the NVG he was wearing, fully aware that he was time restricted and needed to act quickly now that the team was separated.
So inch-by-inch and foot-by-foot, the assassin made his way toward Hawk in a hastened belly crawl with murder as his sole intent.
Hawk sat on the porch with all the ease and content of a retired layman with the CheyTac M200 resting across his lap, and rocked leisurely on the curved skids of his chair while looking through his NVG.
The landscape before him was lit up in luminescent green. Everything that was once steeped in shadow was now clearly defined; the saguaros, the brush, the sage — even the outlines of the sandstone escarpments were obvious to where he could see every curvature or indentation of any particular rock or boulder.
Night had become day.
Slowly, moving back and forth on the skids of his rocker with his eyes forward and focused, nothing moved other than the occasional sway of sage branches that moved with the course of a soft breeze.
But because something could not be seen did not mean that it did not exist. Predators often waited for hours for the opportune moment to strike; the reward always the relish of the kill. And no one knew this better than ‘The Ghost,’ who once waited as long as seven hours to run the blade of his knife across an unsuspecting throat.
A cool breeze came in from the west, along with the soft soughing of the desert wind that sounded like a drawn and distant sigh, almost pleasurable in its tone. In the sky lightning flashed. Most likely the coming of a storm, he considered; the slight wind an obvious precursor.
On most nights he would delight in such cool weather, but not tonight. Not when strobes of lightning would render the optics of his NVG inoperable.
Not with the assassin a click or two away from his ranch.
Are you out there? he thought.
At the trailing edge of Hawk’s thought, Dog responded symbiotically to his master by craning his head off the floor and staring off into the darkness, centering on something only he could see. A deep growl rumbled in the back of his throat, the red flag that Hawk had become accustomed to when they were not alone.
Reaching over, Hawk scratched the dog behind the ears. “He’s out there, boy, isn’t he?”
The dog remained as still as a Grecian statue, focusing, sensing, the growl abating little.
Hawk then placed both hands on the rifle, then carefully popped off the caps covering the front and rear lenses of the weapon’s hi-tech scope.
All he needed was one shot.
In the not too distant skyline lightning flashes were becoming more pronounced, the wind rising to more than just the soft soughing.
Damn!
The brush began to sway and roll with the direction of the growing breeze, the landscape coming alive from all directions.
Hawk stopped rocking.
But Dog continued his growl at a leveled measure as he slowly got to his feet. The hackles on the back of his neck rose the same time the folds of his muzzle lifted to show off canines that were polished and keen.
“Oh, yeah,” whispered Hawk. “You’re out there all right.”
Hawk then spoke in a manner Dog had heard many times before, giving that one order geared to attack an opponent with the intent to kill.
“Get him.”
And Dog bounded off into the darkness with his jaws snapping.
The assassin lay quietly in wait. Behind him, coming from the west, a wind began to surge. The brush swayed all around him, the earth coming alive with movement that gave him aid, his Ghillie suit just another part of the living landscape.
Through his NV scope he could see the Indian sitting serenely on the porch with his dog next to him, the Native American seemingly at ease but obviously suspect that he was not alone. Odd, though, that he would sit openly like that knowing he could be in the crosshairs.
And then the dog lifted its head, staring, the creature looking uncannily his way and drawing a bead.
The Indian stopped rocking.
And the dog got to its feet.
What a truly amazing sense of instinct and intuition, he thought.
Reaching beneath the folds of the Ghillie suit, the assassin worked his way to the hilt of a KA-BAR knife and slowly retracted it from its sheath, turning the weapon over in his hand in order to get a better feel, and then a better grip.
If the assassin understood one thing, he knew that dogs were full of incredible fight with courage as stout as their loyalty. And that self-preservation was secondary to the welfare of their masters.
He gripped the knife tighter.
And then the dog launched itself in his direction, a straight line — the shortest distance between two points. But most noticeably to the assassin, its jaws were snapping in a manner to rent and tear.
But all he could do was to lay in wait as the beast drew near.