Good enough.
Tucker ran in that direction. He caught a glimpse on the screen of Kane doing the same, tracking the man, still scouting as ordered.
Both were on the hunt now—which is what army rangers did. Aside from rare exceptions, rangers didn’t patrol or provide humanitarian relief. They were single-minded in purpose: find and destroy the enemy.
Tucker had enjoyed the simplicity of that.
Brutal, true enough, but pure in a strange way.
He emerged from the container maze in time to draw even with Kane. He motioned the shepherd to him. Kane came trotting up and sat down beside him, awaiting his next command, his tongue lolling, his eyes bright.
They were now near the eastern edge of the dockyard. Directly ahead, across a gravel lot, lay a set of train tracks, lined with abandoned and rusted freight cars. Their quarry had vanished among them.
Beyond the train yard, a perimeter barbed-wire fence rose high—and beyond that, a dense pine forest.
Aside from the muffled dock sounds in the distance, all was quiet.
Suddenly Kane’s head snapped to the left. A section of the barbed-wire fence shook violently for a few moments, then went still. In his mind’s eye, Tucker envisioned a second target wriggling through a gap in the fencing to enter the dockyards from that direction, using the cover of the forest.
Why?
Searching farther to their left, he spotted a tall crane tower, once used to load the freight cars. The tower was one of the six potential sniper perches he had marked in his head.
Tucker checked his watch. Fedoseev would arrive in six minutes. Hurrying, he pulled out a pair of small binoculars from his jacket’s pocket and focused on the top of the crane. At first he saw nothing but indistinct scaffolding in the swirling snow. Then a shadowy figure appeared, slowly scaling the ladder toward the high platform.
That’s who came through the fence just now—but where’s the guy I was following?
He considered calling Yuri with the abort code, but even if his message got past that gatekeeper, his boss’s careless bravado would win out. Fedoseev would not back down from a threat. Bullets would have to be flying before the industrialist would consider a retreat.
It was the Russian way.
Tucker dropped to his belly and scanned beneath the freight cars. He spotted a pair of legs moving to the right, disappearing and reappearing as the figure passed the steel wheels. Whether this was in fact his guy, he didn’t know, but it seemed likely.
He reached back and drew the Makarov PMM pistol from the paddle holster attached to his waistband. A decent weapon, but not his preference.
But when in Rome . . .
He looked over to Kane, who was crouched on his belly beside him. His partner’s eyes had already locked on to the target jogging down the rail line, heading away from the man climbing the crane.
Tucker gave a one-word command, knowing it would be enough. He pointed to the target moving on the ground.
“TRACK.”
Kane took off, silently sprinting after the man on foot.
Tucker angled toward the left, toward the crane tower.
Hunched over, he swept across the gravel lot, reached the train yard, and belly-crawled beneath a freight car and down the sloped ballast into a drainage ditch beyond. From the meager cover, he spotted the gap in the perimeter fencing; the cut was clean, recent.
To his left, a hundred yards away, rose the crane tower. Rolling to his side, he zoomed his binoculars and panned upward until he spotted his target. The assassin was perched on a ladder a few feet below the crane’s glassed-in control cab. A gloved hand reached for the entry hatch.
Tucker quickly considered taking a shot at him but immediately decided against it. With a rifle, perhaps, but not with the Makarov. The distance and the scaffolding made a successful hit improbable. Plus the snow fell heavier now, slowly obscuring the view.
He checked his watch. Three minutes before Fedoseev’s limousine entered the main gate. Fleetingly, he wondered about Kane, then brought his mind back to the task at hand.
One thing at a time, Ranger. Work the problem.
Let Kane be Kane.
Kane runs low to the ground, his ears high, picking out the crunch of boot through ice-crusted snow. The command given to him is etched behind his eyes.
TRACK.
He sticks to the shadows of the rusted cars, following the dark shape through the whiteness, which grows thicker. But his world is not one of sight alone. That is the dullest of what he perceives, a shadow of a larger truth.
He stops long enough to bring his nose to a treaded print, scenting rubber, dirt, and leather. He rises higher to catch the wafting trail of wet wool, cigarette smoke, and sweat. He smells the fear in the salt off his prey’s skin; distantly his ears pick out the rasp of a hurried breath.
He moves on, keeping pace with his quarry, his paws padding silently.
As he follows, he draws the rest of his surroundings inside him, reading the past and present in the flow of old and fresh trails. His ears note every distant shout, every grind of motor, every wash of wave from the neighboring sea. On the back of his tongue, he tastes frost and winter.
Through it all, one path shines brightest, leading to his prey.
He flows along it, a ghost on that trail.
10:18 A.M.
From his vantage in the drainage ditch, Tucker watched his target slip through the hatch at the top of the crane and close it with a muffled snick.
With the man out of direct sight, Tucker stood up and sprinted toward the tower, holstering the Makarov as he went. Discarding stealth, he jumped onto the ladder’s third rung and started climbing. The rungs were slick with snow and ice. His boots slipped with every step, but he kept going. Two rungs beneath the hatch, he stopped. The hatch’s padlock was missing.
Holding his breath, he drew the Makarov and then gently, slowly, pressed the barrel against the hatch. It gave way ever so slightly.
Tucker didn’t allow himself a chance to think, to judge the stupidity of his next action. Hesitation could get you killed as easily as bravado.
And if I have to die, let it be while I’m still moving.
In the past, he had pushed blindly through hundreds of doors in countless Afghan villages and bunkers. On the other side, something was always waiting to kill you.
This was no different.
He shoved the hatch open, his gun tracking left and right. The assassin knelt two feet away, crouched over an open clamshell rifle case. Behind him, one of the cab’s sliding windows stood open, allowing snow to whip inside.
The assassin spun toward Tucker. The look of surprise on his face lasted only a microsecond—then he lunged.
Tucker fired a single shot. The Makarov’s 9 mm hollow-point round entered an inch above the bridge of the man’s nose, killing him instantly. The target toppled sideways and went still.