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  Timothy Gladden had been a captain with the elite British Parachute Regiment for more than a decade, leaving the Paras only because a broken right leg did not heal properly and doctors would not allow him to continue jumping out of airplanes. He resigned his commission and launched a vigorous new hobby as a triathlete, principally to prove the British Army diagnosis wrong. There was nothing wrong with his leg, nor with his Oxford-trained brain, and Sir Jeff had hired him into the corporate side of his growing weapons development business. Once a poor farm boy in Wales, Tim was now deputy chairman.

  “Of course, old boy,” he said. “I’ll toss in the blue barrel first, then the red and the yellow at fifteen-second intervals, steadily increasing the visibility problem. The blue one is going to present you with a very difficult shot.” He thumped one barrel, which gave back a hollow clanging echo. It contained only ten gallons of gasoline, so the remaining space was packed with explosive fumes. “The captain is making a steady twenty knots and will hold her course straight whenever you are ready. Make all three shots from prone, if you will.”

  A section of the aft railing had been removed, and Swanson slid into the familiar position flat on his stomach and dug the toes of his deck shoes into the rubberized mat. One problem with designing a new generation of sniper rifle was that he had not been allowed to actually shoot an enemy soldier with it in a combat situation, which made all the difference. Range targets cannot think and react or shoot back, while a human being might turn, duck away, trip, or break into a run in a microsecond and spoil an otherwise perfectly good solution. This field test was designed to duplicate those sorts of unexpected movements, as the floating colored barrels would rise, fall, spin, and bounce unpredictably in the waves.

  Jeff came down the ladder, his eyes bright with excitement. “The lads upstairs are primed and hungry for adventure, so don’t get nervous on me now, Kyle,” he said in a tight voice.

  Kyle pushed the cool fiberglass stock of Excalibur, the best sniper rifle in the world, hard into his shoulder. It had been molded to fit him like a custom-made Armani suit. “Be quiet, Jeff,” he said.

  The aristocratic British voice repeated, “Really, there is no pressure, Kyle. Just take your time, lad, and do it right.”

  He brought his eye to the scope and clicked a button with his thumb. That activated a BA229 lithium battery and engaged the heads-up display, and the scope came alive with numbers that paraded in a steady, changing readout. The range to the target, measured in meters by an infrared laser, showed in the upper right-hand corner, while digits at the top left gave the wind compensation. Barometric pressure was in the lower right, and the bottom left figures summed up all of that and gave the exact setting to dial in the scope. The weapon was doing the algorithms that he normally would have had to do in his head.

  “We will be videotaping this test,” Jeff said, rubbing his hands in anticipation.

  It had taken a while for Kyle to become familiar with the moving avalanche of numbers, but with practice, they had become part of the background and did not distract from his concentration. He took a deep breath and steadied Excalibur in his left palm, exhaling slightly and tightening his finger on the trigger. He did not want to move in any way that might change his position. “I got it, Jeff. No pressure! Videotape! Now will you please be quiet?”

  No pressure. Only that he was being watched by a line of venture capitalist vultures along the stern rail of the yacht with drinks in their hands and fat checkbooks in their pockets. If Swanson could make Excalibur sing today, they would invest millions of dollars and pounds with Jeff to build secret weapons with dream-world technology. Even so, Kyle thought, this was just dollars and cents. Pressure came in battle, when if you missed, your buddies died.

  “I can’t believe I’m putting the future of my entire corporation in the hands of a bloody Marine,” Jeff complained.

  “The SAS eats shit for breakfast,” Swanson growled. “Now shut the fuck up, get this tub steady, and drop the barrels.” He wiped the world from his mind and concentrated on the scope, settling into his personal cone of silence. Things slowed down, his senses increased, and background noises became whispers. He was becoming one with his rifle.

  Tim Gladden said, “Trust the numbers, Kyle. Trust the numbers.” He felt the big yacht, which handled like a sports car, settle into a smooth glide.

  Kyle had gotten to know Jeff Cornwell while running joint special operations, and their friendship had grown tight over the years. When Cornwell had set his engineers and scientists to work designing a state-of-the-art weapon for long-range precision firing, he asked the Pentagon to loan him Kyle Swanson as a consultant periodically when he was not on other assignments, and the generals had agreed.

  Swanson had loved the weapon from the moment he saw the raw diagrams, and Jeff knew how to speak sniper talk. Together with the engineers in a span of three years, they built a sniper’s wet dream.

  It was a very smart weapon, and fired a hand-crafted.50-caliber round that increased the power of a punch over longer distances. Developing experimental material, with Kyle and Jeff insisting on a lightweight weapon that would be easy to carry in the field, the engineers had developed a super epoxy for the stock and a special alloy for the trigger assembly. The rifle was surprisingly light, only 19.9 pounds with a full magazine, a critical factor for the man who would have to lug it around all day in combat. The normal.50-caliber sniper rifle weighs in at 37 pounds unloaded. The free-floating barrel provided space and could whip up and down when fired but not throw off the sight, which was further strengthened with an internal gyrostabilizer. The gyrostabilized infrared laser worked with a small geopositioning satellite transmitter and receiver in the stock to triangulate the precise distance between the rifle and the target. The GPS provided a further element of safety by letting a sniper know his exact position anywhere in the world. When the sniper is out there all alone, that little bit of information can mean a lot. The rifle, therefore, was more than the sum of its mechanical parts. It was an incredibly accurate weapon system that reduced the chance of a miss by at least 75 percent. In many tests, Kyle put a shot group within a half-minute of angle, an eight-inch circle, at up to 1,600 meters in daylight and 1,000 meters at night. The average human head measures ten to twelve inches. If he could see an enemy a mile away, he could kill him with a shot right to the head.

  They named it Excalibur, after King Arthur’s magical sword, and it was more than strong enough to end any bad guy’s day.

  Jeff counted down from five and whispered, “Go!” Tim pushed the blue barrel overboard and it hit the water with a loud splash. Twenty knots may not seem fast, but the twisting target rushed away from the boat, tumbling in the wake, already growing smaller. Kyle could not fire until all three were in the water. He heard the red one go over, watched it through the scope as it wiggled into the distance, and the final fifteen seconds seemed like an eternity before the yellow one splashed overboard. “You may fire in five seconds,” Jeff said, and did another countdown.

  He looked for the yellow barrel, but already the water had snapped it out of the frame of the scope. It was just too close, and he lowered the magnification by fine-tuning the focus ring. As he brought it back into the picture, he punched the laser button once to lock onto the target and a second time to get the range. Exactly 547 meters. That alone was amazing, since he did not have to consult any written tables of mathematics nor wait for a second man, the spotter, to come up with the information. It was all right there in the scope, and the rifle was making its own adjustments. The laser locked on and talked to the GPS system, which had a brief chat with the gyrostabilizer, and it didn’t matter what the barrel did now as long as Kyle kept it in view. Excalibur automatically computed any changes and adjusted the firing solution. The barrel squirmed in the water and the rifle tracked it, numbers whirling in the scope.

  “You may commence firing,” said Jeff. The scope gave a microsecond flash of a bright blue stripe down one edge that meant ev
erything was ready. Kyle gently squeezed the trigger straight back, for to press it even slightly sideways could screw up a shot.

  Excalibur barked a sharp, keening sound and the bullet smashed hot and hard into the yellow barrel, detonating the collected gasoline fumes inside like a small bomb. The container disintegrated in a loud explosion and pieces of shrapnel showered down, some almost reaching the Vagabond. Lady Pat was not going to be pleased about that.

  Swanson was already looking for the red barrel that was somewhere on the other side of the ball of orange fire and gray smoke. Some movement contrasted with the ordinary motion of the water, and he found it out at 893 meters, about nine football fields behind the boat. This time he didn’t wait for the blue stripe, but just locked on the laser and squeezed the trigger. Another explosion shook the water to prove the hit, followed by a ball of fire and more smoke as he jacked in a fresh round.

  Jeff was dancing a little jig off to the side. He had stolen a look at the money men and their wives at the rail, and they were pointing and talking excitedly. “They’re wetting their knickers up there,” he said. Tim Gladden held a pair of big binoculars to his eyes.

  But when the smoke cleared, Kyle couldn’t see anything but water. The damned barrel seemed to have vanished, but he did not dare remove his eye from the scope. “I don’t see it, Kyle,” Gladden said.

  Swanson slowly glassed the wake directly behind the boat and let the laser scan the surface, looking for something solid. The laser blinked momentarily when it found the steel surface of the bobbing barrel, and Kyle saw a little blue dot that was not much different from the color of the water, ducking and weaving behind low waves.

  “There!” said Gladden. “About a thousand meters or so and off to the port side ten degrees.”

  The laser measured and the computer did its thing. Exactly 966 meters. Tricky-ass shot. Follow the bouncing ball and trust the numbers. Swanson exhaled and took up slack on the trigger and the blue stripe flashed in the scope. Squeeeeze. Excalibur barked in triumph and he could see the disturbed air trailing the bullet, which ate up the distance in an instant. This time everyone saw the fireball detonate before the sound of the explosion reached the boat.

  “Yes!” cheered Tim. “My, what a fine shot!” It was as high a compliment as could be expected from another warrior.

  “Beautiful,” said a relieved Jeff. “You got them all.”

  Swanson lowered the rifle to a little stand beside the mat and realized that he was drenched in sweat. “Boys,” he pronounced, “this puppy works.”

  His part of the demonstration was done. Now he and Shari could totally relax for the next ten days. Tim would run things for the next few days while Jeff wrung cash from the impressed investors. The rest of the cruise would be a treat, with opportunities to sample the local wines, food and grapes and cheese, and fire-breathing ouzo in places like Piraeus, Monemvasia, and Mykonos. The two of them planned to spend a few days alone in Venice, walk over the Bridge of Sighs, visit the Doge’s Palace, slip through the canals in one of those big canoes called gondolas, and dance in the moonlight on the wet stones of St. Mark’s Square. Time for fun.

  CHAPTER 4

  TWO MERCENARIES RESTED their elbows in pockets of loose sand and held large binoculars steady as they watched the oncoming Thursday morning traffic. Only their hands and heads, covered by desert-brown camouflage, were visible above a small hill crowned by scrub brush about ten meters from the highway between Riyadh and Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. AK-47 assault rifles were strapped across their backs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were at their sides. Between them, a radio transmitter lay sealed in a plastic bag that protected it from sand. Everything was in place for the snatch-and-pull ambush.

  They had worked through the night, digging into the gravel beside the highway. By dawn, passing vehicles had whipped up enough dirt and debris to erase almost all traces of their work. The only evidence that a bomb had been planted was a needle-thin wire antenna that stuck up six inches above the dirt.

  The night had ended suddenly, and the brilliant summer sun rising behind them punished the eyes of oncoming drivers. It was hot, already in the low nineties, and sweat trickled down their faces, but they would not lower their binoculars.

  “Gettin’ hot, Vic,” observed former U.S. Army Ranger Jim Collins. He stood six feet tall but was the smaller of the two.

  “No shit, Jimbo? Hot in Saudi Arabia? You’re fuckin’ brilliant.” Victor Logan’s rumbling voice was more like a low growl. The former chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy SEALs never let Collins forget who was in charge of this Shark Team.

  “Just sayin’,” Collins replied, then shut his mouth and thought about the money instead. They were getting fifty thousand dollars each for this job. He wanted to talk about what he planned to do with the cash. Definitely a new truck. When they got back to the house, he would log onto eBay Motors and shop for a while.

  Vic Logan and Jimbo Collins were part of an elite group of hand-picked former special ops warriors who were used only for high-risk, off-the-books jobs by a multinational private security company. Logan grinned. If we’re Sharks, then I’m a Great White and this dumbass is a fucking Hammerhead.

  The big American was pissed at everyone, including himself. He had been less than six months from retirement, with twenty years in the navy, when his career went down the toilet. The body of a badly beaten young prostitute was discovered in an alley in Naples, and the shore patrol found him passed out a block away, drunk as a skunk. Since the only witness was dead and no evidence tied him to the girl, the cops had to cut him free, but Vic Logan was through as a SEAL. They had kicked him off the teams so fast it had made his head spin. And I hadn’t done anything all that wrong! There was not enough evidence for a court-martial, but some sea lawyers picked through his records and found enough dirty laundry for fighting, drunkenness, assault on an officer, and suspicions concerning another dead whore in Olongapo, that dirtbag town right outside of Subic Bay, to lay an Administrative Separation hearing on his ass. The AdSep ruled Logan to be morally unfit for service, which was the navy’s chickenshit way to get rid of him. It took everything-rank, loss of pay, benefits, and retirement-and he was told to consider himself lucky that there was no jail time and no federal conviction.

  Fuck the navy, the SEALs, and the whores, including the ones they never found. In his view, the AdSep was trumped-up bullshit. If he killed enemies of his country, he got medals. Stop a couple of whores trying to rip him off and he was framed. Within six months he hired on as a mere. This was payback.

  The most difficult part of the job was waiting, and their patience was rewarded when three boxy, shiny black Hummers came into view, heading toward them like a line of big beetles.

  They knew exactly who was in each vehicle. A radio update had come in moments after the convoy had departed the U.S. Embassy compound in Riyadh. Brigadier General Bradley Middleton of the U.S. Marine Corps was alone in the back of the big vehicle in the middle of the small convoy. A Marine guard was in the front seat, along with the Saudi driver.

  Another armed Marine rode shotgun beside the driver of the lead Hummer, with two Saudi security troopers in the rear. The trailing vehicle had a driver and another Saudi guard, and its passengers were a young woman Marine captain who was the general’s aide, and a civilian escort from the foreign ministry.

  On they came, arrow-straight along the broad road. A mile. Half a mile and coming fast. On the ridge, Vic Logan readied the little radio transmitter.

  In the lead car, Staff Sergeant Norman Burroughs was glad the trip was almost done. He felt naked in the unarmored, civilian-style Hummer. Cool air-conditioning blew on his face, but he would have preferred to be sweating and uncomfortable inside a Marine armored vehicle with a.50-caliber machine gun up top. Burroughs did not like this place. Trouble just seemed to ooze from the desert sands. The Saudi guards and the driver were joking and smoking cigarettes instead of paying attention. Security was for shit. The staff se
rgeant tugged the brim of his hat lower, adjusted his sunglasses, and continued to stare into the morning sun as he counted off the miles back to the real world, which for him was the Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard the task force cruising in the Persian Gulf. His fingers unconsciously traced the trigger guard of the M-16 rifle propped between his knees, locked and loaded.

  The driver smirked at the nervous American. Dhahran and Riyadh were the two safest places in the kingdom, and the long road between them was smooth as glass and totally safe. He had driven it a hundred times or more just in the past year, and knew that he would soon be away from this unpleasant heat, spending the day at a villa in the cooler Dhahran Hills, waiting to pick up a government official for the return trip to Riyadh in the evening.

  Burroughs kept his eyes moving, looking for possible threats, but by the time he saw a glitter of sunlight bouncing off the thin wire antenna, the speed of the Hummer had taken them into the kill zone. The staff sergeant started to yell a warning, but didn’t make it.

  The bomb detonated with a horrendous roar, and the first Hummer catapulted into the air, flipped twice, and crashed down on its roof. The fiery wreckage skidded and ground forward on the pavement, bathed in churning smoke and flame.

  When the blast wave rolled over them, Logan and Collins moved smoothly into kneeling positions with the rocket-propelled grenade launchers on their shoulders. They triggered a pair of missiles that rushed with low hissing sounds toward the last Hummer, and the car exploded in a ball of fire.

  They tossed the launchers aside and ran down the slope with AK-47s in hand. Collins broke away to check the rear vehicle, while Logan opened fire on the middle Hummer, a careful fusillade that destroyed the tires, crashed into the engine, shot out the front windshield, and killed the driver and the guard in the front seat. Bullets sang in ricochets, glass shattered, and a smell of burning rubber and oily smoke oozed from the destroyed vehicle.