Scott McEwen, Thomas Koloniar
The Sniper and the Wolf
“Only God can judge whether the terrorists are right or wrong. It is our job to arrange the meeting.”
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to the men and women whose lives have been lost in fighting the war on terrorism worldwide.
On April 8, 2014, the director of the Russian Federal Security Service confirmed the death of Dokka Umarov, the Chechen Islamist militant responsible for Moscow Metro bombings in 2010. Though the exact date and place of his death remain unknown, his demise has been confirmed by the United States government, and he was removed from the US State Department’s Rewards for Justice list in April 2014.
PROLOGUE
Former White House chief of staff Tim Hagen sat beside the pool at his Cancún hotel on the tip of the Yucatán Peninsula sipping a piña colada and skimming a paperback copy of The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Though he knew each of the twenty-seven concepts backward and forward, he enjoyed studying the printed words, searching them for insight into the mind that had written them. He was particularly interested in the concepts covered in chapter thirteen, “The Use of Spies.”
Up until six months earlier, Hagen had been chief military adviser to the president of the United States, but that had changed abruptly upon the president’s asking for his resignation mere minutes after San Diego was nearly destroyed by a Soviet-era suitcase nuke. Of course, Hagen’s ego wouldn’t permit him to see that he’d brought the dismissal upon himself through his constant manipulation of the president to serve his own ambitions. Instead, he blamed Gil Shannon and Robert Pope for undermining his influence.
Now Hagen was waiting to hear that the indefatigable Navy SEAL was either dead or on his way to a French prison. Upon hearing the news, he would return to Washington, DC, with his honor restored to him and begin anew his ambitious pursuits of power and influence. He intended to offer his strategic services to a rising new political star: a handsome, young senator named Steve Grieves from New York, who, with the right guidance, might one day make a successful run at the White House.
A hotel concierge approached from across the patio. “Señor Hagen?”
Hagen looked up from the book. “Yeah, I’m Hagen.”
“There is a call for you, señor, at the front desk.”
Hagen glanced at his phone sitting silent beside his drink on the table. “For a Tim Hagen?”
“Sí, señor.”
Wondering if something had gone wrong, Hagen picked up his phone and left the book on the table. “Show me the way.”
“This way, señor.” The concierge guided him to the hotel lobby, and they stopped at the front desk, where a young woman handed Hagen the landline.
“This is Hagen,” he said, taking the receiver.
“Tim?”
“This is Tim Hagen,” he said impatiently. “To whom am I speaking?”
“Tim, it’s Bob Pope. How are you enjoying the sunshine down there?”
Hagen’s heart skipped a beat, and his sandaled feet felt suddenly cold. “Well enough,” he said, clearing his throat. “What can I do for you, Robert?”
“I’m calling to tell you that Gil Shannon has run into some serious trouble in Paris.”
“I’m awfully sorry to hear that,” Hagen said, a thin smile coming to his lips as the blood began to flow again. “But I’m no longer with the White House. Why would I be interested in anything having to do with Chief Shannon?”
Pope chuckled. “Well, I know how closely you and Lerher have been following his career.”
Pope’s cheerful demeanor sent a chill down Hagen’s spine. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, Robert, but I—”
“Gil’s out of France,” Pope said, his tone suddenly icy. “So if I were you, I’d start looking for a cave to hide in.”
Hagen’s mouth went dry. “Listen, you don’t — who the hell is Lerher?”
“You should be running,” Pope answered, “instead of standing there in the lobby wearing that ridiculous hat.”
The line went dead, and Hagen turned around, searching the lobby for anyone resembling Robert Pope. He spotted a security camera on the wall above the desk. “Is your security system connected to the internet in any way?”
The concierge glanced up at the camera, a puzzled look on his face. “I don’t know, señor. I don’t think so. Why, is something wrong?”
“No,” Hagen said, his paranoia increasing by the moment. “I’ll be checking out within the half hour. Please send someone to the room for my bags.”
“Sí, señor.” The concierge smiled curiously at the young woman as Hagen hurried off across the lobby, watching him drop his Panama hat into a hotel trash container on his way to the elevator, wondering why the caller had asked him to describe what Mr. Hagen was wearing before bringing him to the phone.
1
The hour was closing in on three o’clock in the morning, and Master Chief Gil Shannon lay prone atop an empty freight car on the outskirts of Paris, a Remington Modular Sniper Rifle pulled tight into his shoulder, eye to the Barska nightscope, its illuminated green reticle highly visible in the darkness. He studied the blacked-out warehouse one hundred meters across the rail yard to the east. The April night was cool, and there hung on the breeze the distant whine of a locomotive as Gil adjusted his posture carefully, needing to urinate, waiting for Dokka Umarov to show himself. His right foot ached dully where he’d been shot the year before during a combat jump over Montana — much of the metatarsal bone having been replaced with an experimental titanium implant — and his chest tightened with anxiety that nowadays seemed to haunt him whenever things got too quiet for too long.
He drew a deep breath, slowly letting it back out, taking his hand from the grip to flex his fingers.
“Are you tensing up?” asked the voice of his overwatch, an earpiece nestled comfortably in his ear.
Gil smiled in the darkness. “Are you watching me or the target area?”
The voice chuckled softly. “I see all.”
“You see too much,” Gil muttered good-naturedly. “How about you get off my nuts and watch if Umarov slips out the back.”
Again the chuckle.
A few minutes later, Gil said, “This little meet and greet’s takin’ longer than it should. I wonder if—”
“Heat signature! Sniper on the roof!”
Gil didn’t so much as twitch, but kept his eye to the scope. “North or south?”
“North side,” the voice said. “He’s been hiding under an awning of some sort… no, I think it’s a proper hide. He’s sliding back under now. Umarov must have anticipated satellite surveillance.”
“Can you see the rifle barrel?”
“Enhancing resolution now… Yeah, I can see six or eight inches of it — the suppressor.”
“Which way is it pointing?”
A slight pause. “About twenty degrees to your right… south of your position.”
“He hasn’t seen me, then,” Gil said. “But that’s obvious.” He let his eye scan back and forth across the flat roof of the three-story structure, cluttered with water tanks and air-conditioning units, ventilation ducts, and enclosed observation platforms once used by train spotters. “I can’t find him. You didn’t get a look at his optics by any chance, did you?”
“Yeah,” the voice said. “Big scope.”