Lee (In the Company of Snipers Book 12) Read online

  That this particular Taliban soldier had become as good a sniper as one trained by the United States Army didn’t equate to a hurry-up-and-die situation. It still took time to position, draw that steadying breath, and line up the tango in the crosshairs. A sniper was an animal unto himself and able to draw on the calm of the universe when needed, sit in the dirt, muck, and weather for days to get the job done if necessary, and save a few buddies and brothers in doing so. Eric called on that inner calm now, squeezed the trigger in one, slow, sweet—

  Whoosh! A covey of birds exploded around him, followed immediately by a falcon soaring low on its nighttime hunt. Wasn’t that just great? Apparently, Eric and Seth had surprised the raptor as much as he’d surprised them. Flap and feathers dipped too close. At least the damned bird didn’t squawk and give their position away. At least Seth hadn’t screamed like a girl and run. But could he keep still? Not on your life.

  No matter. Eric had fired. The Taliban sniper now knew he wasn’t alone. The round hit short, spiking a puff of dust next to Turik instead of knocking him down and sending him to his just reward in paradise.

  “Damn. You missed,” Seth muttered, his rangefinder up to his face where it should’ve been all along.

  No kidding! Eric sucked in a slow, deliberate breath, willing the biting words away. As angry as Seth made him, he knew the kid was trying. Seth just needed to know when to shut up.

  Turik had the audacity to simply turn toward Eric. He should’ve run home to his mother, but no, he lay as calm as if an annoying mosquito had just landed nearby. The man beneath that scarf had nerves of steel.

  Eric rolled the knot out of his shoulder. Turik thought he was invincible. Rumor was he also had an American wife. A willing American wife. How the hell did that work?

  “Yeah, I see you,” Eric muttered under his breath, not relinquishing his post, either. Another round slid into place. He sighted Turik again. The jerk turned his eye back to his scope, paying no mind to the shot that had barely missed him, taunting Eric with his insolence. His cocky confidence in himself.

  Five people had fallen to this particular enemy warrior in the last month. Well, no more. This second chance was a gift from the universe. Today was Turik’s day to meet all those virgins the terrorists were always bragging about.

  Eric calmed, recalculated in his head the dynamics of this shot that his spotter should’ve offered up, but didn’t. The day’s heat rising up from the ground invited a small variation. The soft breeze caressing the earth offered yet another. Eric stilled, did the math, made the adjustments, and it was time.

  I’ve got you now.

  But just that fast, Turik dropped out of sight. Of course, Seth noticed that. “Damn. You lost him.”

  Eric shot a loathing glance to his junior agent, the newest member on The TEAM, and the only one with a big mouth. No sense scolding the kid. He knew better. But damn it to hell!

  Eric placed his eye to the scope again. Turik must’ve dug a depression in the ground next to him, a good idea now that Eric had time to think. A disquieting whisper persisted in the back of his mind that this Taliban sniper might have somehow known he’d be both target and assassin tonight. How could he have known? Who told? Was the man just that good that he’d prepared for all possibilities, including that he might also be hunted?

  Seth shifted to his knees. “It’s hot out here, bro. Let’s go.”

  “We’re in Afghanistan,” Eric bit out without looking at him. “It’s hot everywhere. Sit your ass down before someone takes a shot at you, and don’t call me bro.”

  “What? Do you think he’s still there?”

  Seth wanted to argue? “I think if you don’t shut the hell up, I’m going to shoot you instead of Turik.”

  Seth grunted, but hunkered down, his belly flat to the ground.

  For three months now, Turik had made a laughing stock of the American soldiers sent to end his war game. The way he moved easily throughout the country reminded Eric of his SERE training in the hills of southern California. Turik was one damned good fox at survival, escape, and evasion. Of course, his success had more to do with the conflicted loyalties of the Afghan people. Somehow, despite the terror the Taliban brought to town with them, most of the local people didn’t believe all Taliban were evil, mostly because, well, not all Taliban were evil.

  Case in point, Mohammed Turik. Homegrown in Kabul, known by many as a neighbor and friend—heck, he was a family man. Interestingly, he had only the one wife instead of two or more, and he had a son. Eric knew where the man lived, just hadn’t caught him there yet, not that he would’ve killed him in front of his family, but once—just once—he’d like to get his hands on the cunning bastard.

  Turik had no problem hitting American and NATO targets, armed or not, and lately, he’d taken out five civilians for no apparent good reason. The French Ambassador, two American nuns, and two assistant curators at the local museum. He had to be stopped.

  “Do me a favor.” Eric hugged the butt stock of his rifle and fixed his scope on the last known position of his savvy target.

  “Yeah, what?” Seth bumped Eric’s shoulder, meriting another dark look when the rim of the scope dug into Eric’s orbital bone. Either man on a hunter-killer team should know damned well better. Never touch a man engaged on target. Never!

  “Watch the palace.” Eric gritted his teeth and bit back his impulse to beat the living shit out of his partner. “He’s aiming that direction. Tell me what or who he sees that we don’t.”

  Silence meant Seth might be doing what he’d been asked. Eric hoped. He breathed a shallow breath, his eyeball once more on target. When he finally caught a flicker of Turik’s keffiyeh skimming the ground at the same position as before, Eric allowed a small smile. I’ve got you now.

  He aimed. Let go a calming breath. And... he kept waiting. The rest of Turik’s head never showed, and there was no reason to shoot a scarf. Eric waited for thirty minutes, steeled to take the shot. The keffiyeh was there, but no head. No man. Damn.

  “You think he’s still there?” Seth asked finally.

  “You were supposed to tell me why Turik’s laying out here,” Eric ground out. “What’s going on at the palace?”

  “Nothin’,” Seth answered grumpily. “That’s why I kept quiet. You were busy, and I didn’t see anything much to mention. We should go.”

  “Then go!” The heavenly calm evaporated. Eric turned on Seth. “You’re killing me here. Shut the hell up when I’m working. Damn it, man, you’re supposed to be on my side.”

  As if he hadn’t just gotten his butt reamed, Seth looked calmly toward the palace and exclaimed, “Wow. Look at that guy run.”

  Eric pulled his night scope up and followed the action on the rooftop beyond Turik’s location. An individual raced across the dimly lighted roof at the northern end of the palace. A pack of uniformed men appeared behind the guy, their flashlights bobbing as they gave chase. The runner kept going. Looked like he meant to fly off that roof.

  Eric looked closer. That wasn’t just any runner. He was slender. Ran like a girl. “That’s Tess Culver. What the hell’s she doing here?”

  Tess Culver. Notorious cat burglar. The gutsy American gal with big brass balls who’d stolen ancient artifacts from the very men robbing their country blind. She’d become a local legend and a heroine for this beleaguered country. So she was the one Turik had been waiting for.

  Seth tapped Eric’s arm again. “Hurry, bro. Turik’s back. Same place. Do your thing.”

  Several gunshots popped from the direction of the palace. Eric hurried. He leveled his scope back to the assassin between them and Miss Culver. Sure enough, the Taliban’s mighty sniper was back on target, his rifle aimed at the roof of the palace. At Culver.

  “If she’s there, Lee’s got to be close by,” Eric muttered, worried for that daring woman under fire. “Cover her. See if you can spot him.”

  “You bet.” Seth snapped his rifle to his shoulder, finally acting like the soldie
r he used to be.

  Eric zeroed in on the Taliban assassin once more. Pressure could make a man sloppy. Not Eric. Turik had settled his head and shoulders above the dirt this time. Putting his angst aside, Eric aimed low, going for body mass instead of a headshot.

  “Shit. She’s running off the roof. No wait. She stopped,” Seth reported.

  Shut up, damn it. Eric focused the crosshairs between his arrogant opponent’s shoulder blades and fired at the same moment Turik got a shot off.

  “Oh, my God,” Seth cried out. “Did you see that?”

  Eric ignored him, the last of his calm down that Leupold scope mounted to his rifle. I hit him. I know I did.

  “She’s gone,” Seth exclaimed.

  Damn it to hell! Seth might as well have told the whole world! No keffiyeh ruffled in the wind, and Eric bet Turik had been lying in a shallow ditch that led to a culvert big enough for escape. He bit down his anger and pivoted his scope to the palace roof where six men stood at the edge, looking down. “Did they shoot her? Where’d she go?”

  “I... I... don’t know,” Seth whimpered.

  Eric dropped his forehead to the butt of his weapon, stifling a tsunami of frustration. Seth had no business being in this fight. He was dead weight. A liability.

  What the hell was Alex Stewart thinking?

  Chapter Two

  Get me the hell out of here.

  Tess Culver exploded through the roof door and ran, her boots hitting the flat concrete surface like her life depended on it. Truth was—it did. She had no time to worry about consequences now. The deed was done, the die cast. Either Clint was where he should be or he wasn’t. The jerk better be.

  “There he goes!” an angry voice bellowed behind her. “Hurry! Catch him!”

  Ha! The fools still thought she was a guy in her black cat burglar outfit. Next, there’d be shooting, and all those tough guys could kiss her—

  Zip! Ping!

  Right on schedule, two shots whizzed past her and splattered against the low brick wall that edged the roof. Her Adrenaline ramped up higher—like she needed more of it flooding through her system. Fire burned in her lungs. That familiar out-of-breath taste of copper, sulphur, and bile rose at the back of her throat. A sharp right turn ahead, and she’d be home free—if Clint was there.

  She hit the corner and aimed her feet north to the circular front of the bombed-out palace, the best point for her most daring getaway yet. While her heart pounded incredibly loud in her chest, her feet pounded louder on the rooftop. And faster. Too quickly, the edge approached. She might not have enough time to hit her target as perfectly as she needed to. That could be bad.

  Closer.

  Faster.

  She vaulted to the end of her road, dead center of the curved exterior wall where all could see. Back when Darul Aman Palace was built, this might have been a primo place to take in a romantic view. Not tonight.

  Zip! Ping!

  Whew. That one was close. Jerk better damned well be waiting for me.

  Ignoring the bullets popping around her, she scanned the ground below. These buffoons wouldn’t hit her. They couldn’t risk it. If she fell now, she might break the prize in her hand when she hit the pavement.

  No brother in sight. No truck headlights in the near distance, either. Damn him. Where is he?

  With the prize still snug in her left hand and a sneer blossoming on her face, she whirled to face her pursuers. She might be sweaty and a teensy bit worried for her life, but these fools would never get what they wanted from her. They would, however, remember this day.

  For months, she’d been on the prowl. Listening. Watching. Connecting dots as to exactly what was happening to all those ancient Afghan treasures suddenly missing from the National Museum, the prestigious building to the north of where she stood with the desert breeze at her back.

  One artifact had eventually surfaced, a lovely golden necklace of inestimable value, now in the private collection of Prince Kalim Abdul Hazzan—in Saudi Arabia. Like that did the Afghan people any good.

  Then another treasure, a simple carved knife handle of ivory, inlaid with lapis lazuli and emeralds, turned up at an auction in, of all places, Sotheby’s in Paris. Nothing said “love of country” like stealing its ancient history and selling it on the black market.

  Tess had decided right then and there. The plundering of Afghanistan by greedy men had to stop. That was the day the cat burglar within her arrived like a witch summoned from another world.

  She hadn’t realized she had a knack for thievery until the Sotheby story broke, but the exquisite treasures and relics needed to be saved. Someone had to do it. She knew so many of them by name and loved them all. The gold coins from the Yuezhi Chieftan, Hellenistic tritons, Scythian gold artifacts, and more, all bartered on the black market because of a few greedy buyers and sellers, all of them hypocrites and liars who’d proclaimed national loyalty to the country they loved. Yeah, right.

  She spat her disgust to the palace rooftop. The six museum guards behind her screeched to a halt, the two in the rear bumping into the others they’d stopped so quickly. Uniformed and sweaty after chasing her up four flights of stairs from the basement, they looked like the pigs they were. Dumb. Bumbling. Stupid, if they thought the edge of the roof would stop her. It might if Clint didn’t show in the next few seconds, but they didn’t need to know that.

  She stalled. That these pompous security guards participated in the demise of their country made them accomplices worthy of the same disgust she felt for that prince in Arabia. She had enough disgust to go around.

  “Give it back, boy.” The one with a thick black Manchu moustache approached cautiously, his fingers beckoning toward the bag in her hand.

  Ha. Her ruse had worked. They still didn’t know who they were up against. Wouldn’t they be surprised?

  “What? This?” she growled hoarsely, her throat ragged from the run, lending credence to her ruse. The bag dangled off her index finger like it meant nothing to her. The best part of this heist was that these guys didn’t know if she was still armed or not. She wasn’t. She’d accidently lost her pistol when the final door hadn’t opened as easily as she’d expected. A girl could only hang onto so much when she was running for her life.

  Fortunately, the roof was dark. Not knowing who else might be up there with her, combined with shadows, kept the guards nervous. Wary. Off balance. It also gave Clint a few more seconds to show up, damn him. She cocked an ear for the sound of his truck engine. Where is he?

  Mr. Manchu seemed to be the bravest of the six, since he was the only one who took another cautious step forward. He scowled in that patronizing way Afghan law enforcement officers did when they thought they had the upper hand, or when they assumed their quarry was just a dumb kid they could intimidate.

  “You must return what you have stolen, boy.” He nodded knowingly while he spoke, as if she’d agree just because he’d told her to.

  Guess again, tough guy.

  “Come.” He curled his fingers at her, urging her to repent and give up. “You’re young. My boss will go easy on you. I’ll make certain he does. I’ll protect you.”

  “You mean Sherazi?” she taunted, keeping her voice deep and masculine. Assistant Museum Curator, Abdul Sherazi, the lowest of the low, had yet to make his appearance on the roof—not that she’d expected him to climb all those stairs. He could have. The man was svelte and athletic, but a thieving scoundrel like him had to keep a low profile, at least as low a profile as a thief like her. Only their motivations differed. He stole the treasures of his country for greed and gold. She stole for honor and the future of that very same country.

  A thinner guard stepped forward, his gun clasped in both hands and aimed at her head. He actually smiled. “You’ll never get away with it. There are six of us and only one of you.”

  Yeah, but you’re all fat and stupid. She panted for more air, analyzing alternatives instead of telling him what she thought. Six armed men on a roof? Her back
to the edge? These idiots still believed they were up against a boy? A girl couldn’t get any luckier. Still...

  She glanced to the barren road below. Clint had better get his ass in gear.

  But since he wasn’t there yet, she had time to give these guys a taste of American one-upmanship if only to stall. Tess shook the knitted beanie from her head and let her other accomplice—the wind, the one that had shown up—catch the length of her hair. She stripped the gloves off her long delicate fingers to reveal her richly painted nails. She might not have been wearing her brand of scarlet lipstick, but it was important she let these guys know they’d been beaten by the best, and her name was—

  “He’s a woman! An American woman!” Mr. Manchu hissed. Another guard spat in disgust. Yeah. She got that a lot from the macho guys in this country.

  At last, a truck engine rumbled below. Relief washed through her. She scanned the wall’s edge, searching for her mark. The letter X she’d scratched into the wall during her previous visit meant life tonight. Any deviance spelled splat in bright red below. Three stories down was a helluva drop when you’re falling backward. She slid her boot heel over the X.

  “You’ll die in prison,” Mr. Manchu growled. “I’ll make sure of that now. A thousand lashes will not be enough for a filthy infidel like you.”

  “I say kill her now,” Skinny Guy declared while he crouched to a firing position, one knee on the ground, licking his lips like he couldn’t wait to end her. Another guard stepped forward, his lip curled in a sneer. Suddenly, everyone turned brave, like they all wanted a piece of her. “No, wait. We must rush her. Catch her. Then she’ll be ours to do with as we please.”

  “That ain’t never gonna happen,” she taunted as she glanced down and verified her landing zone. Thank God. Clint. Truck. Airbag. Good to go.

  Ping.

  Damn. That bullet hit way too close.

  “No, no, no.” Still holding the bag where they could all see it, she waggled her finger, scolding the man who’d fired. She loved this part of the game. Risky. Reckless. But still alive and the one and only female cat burglar of Kabul. “If you shoot me, this little golden trinket will be destroyed in the fall. You don’t want that, do you? What will your boss say when you fail to return it to him in one piece? Will he let you live? Any of you? I doubt it.”