Glass Tiger
- Автор: Горес Джо
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Quercus
- ISBN: 978-1-84724-072-9
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Glass Tiger». Краткое содержание книги:
He would be firing from the prone, the most stable of positions, with a tripod. The pines would make the opening invisible to scanning binoculars directed up the cliff-face from the meadow far below. The floor was dry packed earth. Where the slot came to a point a dozen yards behind him, the torrent he had followed down the cliff face would be his escape route.
Corwin pointed the Barr & Stroud prismatic optical rangefinder like a camera at the only place in the meadow where they could put a podium. It was 1,210 yards. A hellacious long shot: nobody would be looking up here before he pulled the trigger, and after he fired, it would be an hour of confusion before they scoped out exactly where the shot had come from.
By then he would be long gone, in the stream to confuse the inevitable bloodhounds. And instead of riding it down, he would climb uphill through the icy water to emerge into shielding trees, cut diagonally up across the face of the mountain below the tree line, go back around to the western side. No exposure, not even to choppers. Back to Janet’s 4-Runner by dark, start driving long before they could get their perimeter checkpoint system operational, be hundreds of miles to the west by dawn.
Not even the unknown tracker, even if he somehow got the location right, could know where Corwin was planning his ambush. He would have dozens of square miles of meadow, forest, and precipitous rock face to comb for shooting sites, with nothing to indicate that Corwin had ever been in any of them.
When Thorne stepped off the helicoptor at Camp David, he was picked up by a six-foot, hard-bitten man in a golf cart who said he was Ray Franklin, Hatfield’s hot-shot who had been outfoxed by Corwin not once, but twice. And, concomitantly, embarrassed by Thorne not once, but twice. Franklin was from a crack FBI field unit, and Thorne had made them all look foolish.
Flanking the narrow blacktop was dense forest; beyond were Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. Camouflage tarps covered the Secret Service Command Post and the roof of the comm center.
‘Were they already in place before 9/11?’
Franklin sucked hard on a Marlboro. He was just as hostile as his boss. ‘Yeah. Towel-heads aren’t the only ones gunning for the President besides your shit-heel buddy Corwin.’
They didn’t speak again until Franklin swerved into the woods to stop at a one-story 3,000-square-foot rustic cabin with a half-log exterior. Reverence entered his voice.
‘Behind those logs is a solid-concrete inner shell with Kevlar plugs. Bomb and weapon resistant. The basement is stocked with supplies and reinforced to ground-zero specifications in case of a nuclear attack.’
The door opened and Hatfield gestured at them impatiently.
‘Thanks for the ride,’ Thorne said.
‘Fuck you,’ said Franklin.
Dominating the big informal room was a burnished dining table with a halfdozen chairs around it. Framed cowboy art, landscape photographs, and western-motif tapestries covered the walls. Two overstuffed sofas were covered with textured pillows.
The president, Jaeger, Hatfield, and the Bobbsy Twins, Crandall and Quarles, were already at the table. For the moment, no Johnny Doyle. When Thorne began his presentation he realized that he didn’t have many friends in the room. Hatfield’s play obviously was to get Thorne’s input, downgrade it in the president’s eyes, then present it as his own.
Thorne began, ‘Mr. President, in your website announcement of locations where you will be giving speeches on your trip, I noted one in the Bitterroot Mountains of western Montana.’
‘Yes, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is releasing two young grizzly bears back into the wild there. It’s an experiment, not popular with everyone, to show my support for the environmental movement.’
‘Corwin will be there,’ said Thorne.
‘The Secret Service will be there too,’ said Hatfield. ‘In force. The local ranchers claim the grizzlies will attack their livestock, and Montana and Idaho are loaded with anti-government militia and survivalist groups. Security will be very tight. A fucking squirrel won’t be able to get close to the President.’
‘Corwin doesn’t have to get close. He’s a sniper.’
‘Was a sniper — forty years ago. We’re talking about a mountain meadow surrounded by mixed hardwood and conifer stands. In the forest, Corwin has no shooting lanes. The surrounding peaks are too far back for a sniper shot, and he can’t get close enough for a knife or a bomb or a grenade. So it has to be a handgun, and a snap shot at that, from the crowd. Forget it.’
Thorne made his voice incredulous, though it was what he had expected from Hatfield.
‘We’re talking about the life of the president of the United States here! I was brought in because the computer told you that the scenario I worked out would probably be the one Corwin will use. Well, this is where I would strike. A sniper shot from outside the Secret Service security perimeter.’
Hatfield had come prepared. He snapped his fingers; Johnny Doyle appeared with a topographical map to spread out on the table. All carefully choreographed. Had Hatfield’s hostility blinded him to the dangers of this site? If he had considered it in private, he now was rejecting it in public.
‘The closest places from which he could get a clear shot are seven-hundred-fifty yards out.’ Hatfield jabbed his finger at the map. ‘There and there and there. Corwin wouldn’t waste his chance on a shot he’d be sure to miss.’
‘I agree. But he will be using a high-powered rifle with a sniper scope from an elevated rock-face beyond seven-hundred-fifty yards out.’ Thorne was doing his own finger-jabbing. ‘Here, say, or here. It’s what I would do if I had his skills.’
‘What the hell do you know about his skills? After he left Vietnam, we have no hard facts about—’
‘But in Vietnam,’ said Thorne quickly.
When Corwin was in a bodybag he’d file a report with the facts he’d dug out, but not before. They knew nothing about Victor Blackburn’s intel, nothing about Corwin hiding out in his old cabin near Portage, nothing about those thousand-yard practice shooting sites. Thorne wanted to keep it that way.
‘He’s fifty-six fucking years old,’ sneered Hatfield, ‘and half-crippled. His hand and eye coordination have to be going.’
‘Do you want to take that chance? Let the Secret Service handle the upclose and personal. It’s essential that your men set up at seven-hundred-fifty yards, looking out and up, not down and in. I can be on site, monitoring—’
‘Like hell you can! You’re here in an advisory capacity only — your own request. No field work. Well, you’ve advised. Ray Franklin is waiting outside to take you back to the chopper. You will return to D.C. forthwith to await further instructions.’
Thorne looked to Wallberg for support. It was the man’s own life that was at stake here. The president wavered, then looked away. Hatfield had convinced them that he had it under control. None of them understood how formidable Corwin was.
Jaeger said, ‘Thank you for your input, Mr. Thorne.’
Thorne walked out. It was up to him to go to Montana and assess the site in person rather than on paper.
‘I say we ship his sorry ass back to Kenya,’ said Hatfield when he was gone. ‘His usefulness here is ended.’
‘What if, just what if, he’s right?’ asked Wallberg. ‘What if Corwin is there and does try to shoot me when I—’
‘Then my men will tag him before he can fire. This is my game, Mr. President. I know that nobody can make a thousand-yard down-angle shot while dealing with those mountain updrafts.’
‘With the Secret Service and the FBI’s hostage rescue men on site,’ Jaeger added unctuously, ‘we will have security, and containment of the fact that there’s a lone gunman from the President’s past stalking him with murderous intent. That he’s a deluded psycho is irrelevant. If the fact that he’s out there became known, the political fallout would be unthinkable.’