Текст книги "Gideon's War / Hard Target"

Автор книги: Howard Gordon

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Gideon's War and Hard Target

Tillman held her look, but before he could answer, a sharp...

Lorene turned on him. “You set us up! I told Jim not to trust you!”

“Hold on,” said Tillman, raising a hand in self-defense, when he saw three tiny flashes of light down at the gate on the far side of the house. Muzzle flashes. The sound reached them half a second later. Ba-bang . . . bang. It sounded like a heavy handgun, probably a .45.

She motioned with the gun. “You’re coming with me,” she said. “If something’s happened to Jim, I swear I will kill you with my own hands.”

He didn’t give a shit about Jim Verhoven, or Lorene’s threats. But if the gunfire had anything to do with Gideon . . .

With Lorene’s carbine at his back, Tillman moved swiftly toward the sound of gunfire.

When Gideon heard the gunfire, he had already searched half the trails along the western portion of Verhoven’s property but had found no structures or subterranean bunkers anywhere in the woods. When he heard the shot, Gideon tried to reach Tillman on the radio, but got no response. He hurried back toward the shooting range, where he knew his brother was checking. But he couldn’t see Tillman anywhere. Peering through the night-vision spotting scope, however, he saw two figures in the distance. One of them was definitely Tillman. The other looked like a woman with a gun.

In his zeal to find the elusive hidden room, he had left his brother exposed. Now he heard more gunfire, and the woman was taking Tillman at gunpoint toward the main house. Gideon drew his pistol and began running through the trees.

18

ANDERSON, WEST VIRGINIA

Sixty seconds earlier Deputy Director Ray Dahlgren had been driving up the long steep gravel drive toward the Verhoven house. The rutted washboard road made the entire body of his Crown Vic vibrate so that even with the windows rolled down, it was impossible to hear anything from outside the car. He had killed the lights, hoping to approach stealthily. But with all the racket the car was making, he now knew there was no point to it.

If anybody was paying any attention at all, they’d hear him coming.

As he was thinking, a gate swam up out of the murky half-light of dawn. He slammed on his brakes—though not in time to prevent the car from thumping into the gate.

He saw movement out of the corner of his eyes, made out a figure bounding up out of a chair. It was a young man dressed in camo, an AR-15 hanging from his neck on a single-point sling.

“What the fuck!” the young man said, looking around wildly.

Dahlgren opened the door and started to climb out.

“Hey, whoa. You’re in the wrong place. Get the fuck out of here.”

Dahlgren continued to exit the car, hands in the air. “Easy,” Dahlgtheeeee d‡ren said. “Take it easy. My name is Deputy Director Raymond Dahlgren with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m here to see Colonel Verhoven.”

“The fuck you are!” The young man’s entire body was twitching. Dahlgren could see he was scared shitless.

“Young man, pull yourself together,” he barked. “I’m here to see Jim Verhoven.”

“Bullshit,” the young man said. His voice was high, and his hands were shaking as he pointed his AR-15 at Dahlgren.

“Look, I’m here to talk to Colonel Verhoven about a man named Gideon Davis.” Dahlgren reached into his coat pocket to retrieve a photograph of Gideon. He didn’t make it. Apparently the kid thought he was reaching for a gun. Or maybe he was simply so nervous that he pressed the trigger by accident.

Whatever the case, the AR went off with a sharp crack. Dahlgren felt a thud in his side, like he’d been hit with a baseball bat.

Ray Dahlgren had spent a great many years training with his weapon, until its use was so instinctive that he didn’t have to think.

He drew and fired blindingly fast. Bang bang, two shots center mass, bang, a third shot to the face. It wasn’t until he’d let off the third shot that his eyes even became aware of the three greenish white dots of his tritium sights. But by then it didn’t matter. His third shot had drilled a very large third nostril in the boy’s face, then tossed a torrent of red muck out the back of his head.

The boy fell in a heap.

“Shit,” Dahlgren muttered.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Down the road, two cars were waiting, containing four more...

It took Dahlgren a moment to respond. “Threat neutralized. I want you to stand down and stand by.”

“Copy that, sir.”

Dahlgren reached into the cruiser, pulled out a bullhorn. He realized his hand was shaking as he raised it to his mouth. “Colonel Verhoven. This is Ray Dahlgren of the FBI. I have been fired upon and have returned fire. I do not, repeat, do not seek any further engagement.” Even as he launched into his speech, though, a horrible feeling was sweeping over him. He’d come up here to defuse a potential situation, and now he realized he may have ignited one as he saw dark figures spilling out of a long low building a hundred yards away. It had the look of an old chicken coop. But the men pouring out of the building were not chickens. They were armed.

Within seconds they were firing on him.

Dahlgren tossed the bullhorn into a patch of kudzu next to the gate, emptied his magazine in the direction of the oncoming men, and then jumped into the car and threw it into reverse.

“I am under fire,” he shouted into his mic as he floored the gas and steered backward down the gravel road. “Previous order countermanded. Teams One and Two, engage threats at will. Rendezvous with me on the gravel road and seal the perimeter.”

Even as he steered down the road, bullets whacking into his car, all he could think about was the headlines that would follow. The nut jobs in the blogosphere would be calling this another Ruby Ridge, another Waco.

Gideon goddamn Davis. This is all his fault, Dahlgren thought as he retreated. He also had a dawning realization that the only way his career would survive this situation was to make sure the president understood that Gideon was responsible for everything that had happened and everything he feared would happen very soon.

19

ANDERSON, WEST VIRGINIA

Tillman pounded down the trail toward the house, Lorene a few steps behind him, the barrel of her rifle aimed at the center of his broad back. There had been a lull after the first few shots. Now, a full-on firefight was happening.

Near the barracks at least a dozen guns were firing at a black Crown Vic backing into the trees. A cop car.

Tillman understood there was only one possible conclusion. Gideon had warned him that Nancy’s boss was coming to look for him. He must have been surprised at the gate. Tillman needed to find his brother. Then they both needed to get the hell out of here.

Within minutes, the FBI had returned in force. He could see muzzle flashes in the tree line. Slow, measured fire. Like somebody shooting a bolt gun. And if he was hearing it correctly, it was a deeper, louder thump than the higher crack of the .223s down by the barracks. Something in the .30 cal range. Probably .308s.

Sniper. There was a sniper in the tree, which meant they needed to find cover fast.

Tillman saw the muzzle flash again, this time on the near side of the woods, the side he and Lorene were running on. The sniper was about two hundred yards east of the gate, only a couple of hundred yards from the house.

“Lorene,” he shouted, “we have to find cover!” He pointed at the woods.

“You stay right where I can see you!” Her eyes were glazed with adrenaline, and if the sniper didn’t get him first, she might.

“No, there’s a sniper in the—”

A red mist suddenly exploded from her back. Lorene screamed and fell.

Tillman knew the smart play was to haul ass for the trees. But he couldn’t leave her here.

He scooped her up and began charging toward the trees, hoping that the sniper would move on to richer targets. His heart pounded from exertion. Lorene was a big woman, close to six feet, probably 150 pounds.

Tillman staggered toward the woods. He could see the sniper’s hide now, a few pieces of misplaced vegetation, a dark splotch of something that didn’t match the background. Another ten yards and he would reach cover—a creek bed that had eroded a cut in the earth. He picked up a black circle in the dense vegetation. A scope lens. The sniper’s scope swiveled, trying to track him.

He plunged over the edge, then the black circle was gone, hidden behind the lip of the creek bed.

“You okay?” he said.

Lorene winced. Her face was gray, and he could tell she was in danger of going into shock. “I don’t know. I can’t . . . I think . . . those motherfuckers. Fuck those goddamn piece-of-shit motherfuckers.”

“Let me see,” he said, tearing open her shirt. The wound was pretty bad. Survivable, but bad. It had entered her side just under one rib and exited her back about an inch from the spine and a couple of inches below her bra strap. Fortunately the bullet appeared not to have deformed much, so the exit wound was clean. “Wiggle your toes,” he said. “Can you wiggle your toes?”

“Eight years,” she said. “I haven’t cursed in eight years.” She shook her head vaguely. “Feels kinda good.” She smiled fiercely. “The goddamn shit-sucking motherfuckers.”

“Wiggle your toes.”

“My toes are fine. There’s no spinal injury.” She drew a Glock 17 from her hip, passed it over to him. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. Now go find ’em. Kill those fucking motherfuckers before they kill us.”

He heard a whizzing sound over their heads. Someone was firing on their position, trying to pin them down in the creek bed.

She was right. If he was going to get out of here alive, he was going to have to figure out a way to neutralize them. There’d be a sniper and a spotter. The sniper was probably still firing at the guys near the barracks.

So it must be the spotter, lying down suppressing fire, hoping to preserve their position.

He’d have to flank them. He press-checked Lorene’s Glock. The chamber was loaded.

“Stay here,” he said.

Then he ran along the little ridge in a crouch, looking to flank the snipers and drive them out of their hide.

Dahlgren had left two teams as backup at the head of Verhoven’s driveway. The sniper was already in position. The second team took about half a minute to reach him. When they did, Dahlgren slammed on the brakes and leapt out of the car.

“Sir, are you hit?” shouted the head of the team.

“Don’t worry about me,” Dahlgren shouted back. He could feel blood running down inside his shirt. The .223 had penetrated his vest near his left shoulder. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but he sensed that he was okay for now. No bones smashed, no major nerves or arteries damaged.

“That’s a hell of a volume of fire coming from the camp,” the HRT man shouted. “All we’ve got up there is the sniper. If they pin him down and we can’t help out, he’s fucked.”

“So let’s reinforce him,” Dahlgren said.

“Yeah. Thing is, we’ve got eight men, half of them armed only with shotguns or sidearms, and they’ve got twenty, all of them armed with military-grade weapon rifles. If we go up there now, we’ll take casualties. Do you want that?”

Dahlgren scowled. If FBI guys died in this op, it would be the end of his career, no doubt. There was only one thing to do. He put his radio mic to his mouth. “Sniper team retreat to your rally point. We’re falling back to consolidate our position. Repeat. Retreat to your rally point at this time. Copy?”

“Roger.”

Dahlgren turned to Agent Ferris. “Secure the perimeter. Call for additional backup from Charleston. Every spare agent they’ve got.” He pulled out a map, spread it out on the hood of the car, pretending not to notice that he dripped blood on the paper. “We’re okay here on the south perimeter. But look, there’s a logging road on the south perimeter. We need a unit on that road to block them or they’ll retreat out the back and we’ll be combing the hills for the next thirty years looking for these assholes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And call DC. We need HRT up here yesterday. We need air support. We need . . . Hold on.” He felt a gloomy, corrosive anger pouring over him, but he knew the boys were counting on him to stay cool, so he concentrated on keeping his voice commanding but conversational. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number. “Director Wilson? Yes, sir, Dahlgren here. I’m afraid things have gone sideways on us up in West Virginia. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We’re probably looking at a standoff. It’s that moron Gideon Davis. He provoked this entire thing, I’m afraid.”

Tillman trotted up the creek bed in a crouch, hoping to turn the sniper’s flank. In about fifty yards the cut through which the creek flowed began to flatten out, decreasing the amount of cover available to him. He went to his knees, then to a low crawl, finally slithering out behind a clump of rhododendron.

It took a moment for his eyes to pierce their camouflage, but eventually he was able to make out the sniper and his spotter. They wore ghillie suits with vegetation shoved here and there to break up their outlines and make them blend into the surrounding woods. The suit was hiked up enough on one of the men that he could make out big white letters on the back of his shirt:

FBI.

So they were Feds.

Tillman considered what to do. Shooting them was out of the question. He considered simply bailing into the woods and leaving Lorene to die. But he didn’t like that option for a variety of reasons. Leaving a woman to die—no matter how crazy or deadly she might be—just wasn’t his style. Besides, another plan was beginning to form in his mind. Until he could bounce it off Gideon, though, he had two well-trained and well-armed men lying not thirty yards in front of them, men who wouldn’t mind a bit if he was dead, but who he couldn’t respond to with lethal force.

The spotter was situated behind a 20-power scope, an M-4 in his right hand, periodically spraying a barely aimed three-round burst at the area where Lorene was still concealed. It was obvious that his primary concern was not Tillman and Lorene, though. He was focused on the spotting scope, still calling whispered shots to the shooter, who was picking out targets of opportunity down near the house. The shooter lay prone behind his bolt gun, eye to the scope, oblivious to everything but the image in his scope.

Tillman pulled out the balaclava he was carrying and slid it down over his head unt th caril it covered his face and neck. As much as anything else, he needed not to be recognized by the men he was about to take on. He crept closer. Eventually the spotter exhausted the magazine on his M-4. As he rolled onto his side to feed another mag into the carbine, Tillman charged out into the opening and jumped between them.

“Don’t even think about moving,” he said softly, the Glock aimed at the spotter’s face.

The spotter was a big, hard-looking man. Ex-military unless Tillman missed his guess. Tillman could see the spotter was deciding whether or not to make a grab for his sidearm. The shooter swiveled his head around and then froze like a deer in the headlights. Tillman knew that in sniper teams, the spotter was generally the more senior and experienced man. Whatever the spotter did, Tillman was counting on the shooter to follow his lead. Control the spotter, he’d control the team.

Before the guy could make a wrong decision Tillman planted his boot on the spotter’s hand, and said softly, “Guys, I’m not here to hurt you. But I will kill you if you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do.” He was keeping his voice low. The plan forming in his mind required Lorene to remain ignorant of what he was up to. “Spotter, pull out your SIG with your thumb and index finger, taking great care not to get your finger near the trigger. Then drop the mag and very carefully pull the slide back and show me clear.”

The spotter seemed oddly reassured by Tillman’s professional manner. After only the briefest hesitation, he unloaded his SIG.

“Now the same with the M-4 . . .”

Once the spotter was disarmed, Tillman ran through the same drill with the shooter, making him unload his sidearm and the Remington 700 bolt gun. Having disarmed both men, he whispered to the spotter, “Give me your radio.”

The spotter did as he was told.

Tillman screwed the radio into his ear just in time to hear a commanding voice on the other end say, “Sniper team, retreat to your rally points. We’re falling back to consolidate our position. Repeat. Retreat to your rally point at this time. Copy?”

“Say ‘Roger,’” Tillman said to the sniper. “Not one word more, not one word less.”

The sniper didn’t hesitate. He hit the send button on his radio and said, “Roger.”

“You guys have been ordered back to your objective rally point,” Tillman said to the spotter. “I’m gonna make a deal with you. I’m gonna let you take your weapons with you. Load ’em up when you get back to the rally point, your boss’ll never know I got the drop on you.”

The two men looked at each other, then nodded.

“What’s your name, spotter?”

“Crane,” the big man said.

“Agent Crane, you can tell your commander your radio got hit, whatever, you lost the thing. You don’t mention me, nobody’s ever gonna be the wiser what a shit job you did of holding your position. Hoo-ah?”

“Hoo-ah,” Crane said, confirming Tillman’s guess that the man had served d & lmain the military before joining the FBI.

“All right guys . . . bolt comes off the 700, upper comes off the M-4, slides come off the SIGs, stow all the pieces in your drag bag. Then I’m gonna fire four or five shots in the air. Soon as I fire, you start running. Got it?”

The two looked confused.

“You don’t need to know what my agenda is, boys,” Tillman said in his best NCO voice. “Just do what I say. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

The two Feds stowed their weapons in the sniper’s camouflaged drag bag, the bag used to protect the sniper rifle while crawling into position.

“I was never here,” Tillman said. “You never saw me.”

Without waiting for an answer, he fired the Glock into the ground close enough to spatter dirt in their faces. Ba-bang. Ba-bang. Bang.

The men were gone within seconds.

Tillman waited until they had disappeared completely into the trees, then sprinted to the creek bed, where he found Lorene lying on her side, pale and sweating.

“What happened?” she croaked. “I heard shooting.”

“They’re dead,” he said. “Now let’s get you back to your husband.”

Surprisingly the firing had ceased within a matter of minutes. Tillman was unsure what had happened, what had driven the FBI to withdraw from contact. He suspected that they had not brought enough agents to take on Verhoven’s men.

Whatever the case, by the time he and the pale and bloody Lorene had reached the Verhoven house, no one was shooting.

“Thank God!” Verhoven said as Tillman brought her in the back door, supporting most of her weight. “What happened?”

“I caught one,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to smile. “I’m okay, though. Tillman saved me.”

“In here,” Verhoven said, pointing to a guest bedroom on the first floor.

The mood inside the house was tense and chaotic. Despite all the maneuvers and range practice, this was the first time any of them had ever exchanged live fire, and several were clearly in shock. Two had thrown up, and one was pacing a tight line back and forth, muttering repeatedly, “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

“Sir,” one of the young men said, “the guys think we should surrender.”

“Get out,” Verhoven snapped, slamming the door in his face.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

“Worthwhile question, though, Jim,” Tillman said evenly....

Verhoven looked around furtively and then answered. “We’re getting the hell out of here is what we’re doing.”

“What about your men?” Tillman said, trying to keep the contempt out of his voice.

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“Keep your voice down,” Verhoven flashed. “I told you yesterday that Lorene and I have a mission. The importance of that mission outweighs the lives of my men. They’ll hold off the Feds long enough for us to get out of here. We’ve got some ATVs out back we can use.”

Tillman raised one eyebrow. “Well, whatever you’re planning, I don’t think she’s going to be in any shape to be of much help. But if you want, you’ve got me.”

Verhoven looked out the window but didn’t answer.

Lorene lifted her upper body off the bed, grimacing. “He saved my life, Jim. We were pinned down by a sniper. He killed him and his spotter and brought me back to you.”

“That may be, but—”

“He could have left me to die in that fucking ditch! He didn’t. You can trust him.”

Verhoven’s eyes met hers. Then he nodded brusquely. “Help me get her to the ATV, Tillman,” he said.

Tillman nodded. “Why don’t I go get them for you. You don’t want your men seeing you retreat any sooner than they have to.”

“You’re right,” he said, then tossed Tillman a ring with several keys on it.

Tillman went out the back door and jogged toward the shed where three ATVs were parked. He started the closest one, drove it quickly to the house, and left it idling.

“Let me get the other one started before you go, Jim,” he said. “That way we won’t get separated in the woods.”

He ran back to the shed. As soon as he was out of sight of Verhoven, he pulled out the radio Gideon had given him. “It’s me,” Tillman said. “Do you copy?”

“Are you okay?” Tillman could hear the concern in Gideon’s voice.

“Yeah. Verhoven’s bailing on his men, getting out of here with his wife on some ATVs. I’m going with him.”

“What are you talking about? You need to get as far away from Verhoven as you can.”

“Verhoven knows something. But he’s definitely not the ringleader, claims he doesn’t even know the target. If I stick with him, I can follow this operation back to whoever’s running it.”

“Tillman—”

“You want to kill the snake, you got to chop off the head, right?”

Gideon sighed. “I didn’t mean for you to get in this deep.”