Ghost Target Read online

  Time to move. The ejected casings would probably not be found anytime soon, but they were clues left behind nonetheless.

  * * *

  Having seen what he needed to see, Harwood packed his bag and shouldered his ruck while he was still in the prone position. The sound of two coughs skidded inland from the tranquil ocean.

  A boat roared in the distance as Harwood prepared to depart. Thinking he could use the noise as good cover, he stopped when he saw a black spot low on the north-facing side of the estate. Instead of evading away from the compound, he dipped below the sand dunes and jogged along the wall of the sand, eventually reaching the razor wire. Acting boldly, he retrieved some wire cutters and snipped his way through the thin layer of defense, certain that cameras were monitoring him. He refused to care; he’d come too far. Harwood approached the dark cavern on the side of the mansion where water ran from Tybee Creek into an arched passageway. Wading knee-deep in the murky water, he felt ebbing tide rush against his legs.

  He reached the cavern and saw a cigarette boat on a lift.

  Be One Bomber.

  Had to be Markham’s boat, Harwood thought. It was blue and silver, air force colors. Its sleek, long design befit the former fighter pilot. An escape avenue or a play toy? Harwood wondered. He cut through some more wires, this time setting off an alarm inside the building. Harwood climbed into the boat, found the console, reached into his rucksack, and—thanks to Lanny’s supplies—took about three minutes to do what he believed needed to be done.

  He waited a moment, looked at his handiwork, and was satisfied. Footsteps were racing above, as if through the front door. A door opened above him, about twenty yards away. As he was jumping into the water, a light came on and a voice called out, “Who’s there?”

  He retraced his route through the cut wires and then began jogging the beach back to the north. As he was running, he looked up at the guard towers he had seen on his initial recon. The western tower looked empty. The eastern tower had a man slumped halfway out of the tower, evidently shot. He cut up onto the peninsula and crossed the main street, where he found Monisha waiting impatiently. He was sweating heavily as he pulled up to the bench where Monisha was swinging her legs like the fourteen-year-old she should have been. She smiled and asked, “Kill anyone?”

  “No. Let’s go,” Harwood said. They had been on the island for two and a half hours. The good trackers would find him in thirty more minutes. The lousy ones another hour and a half.

  They jumped in the car as the parking lot was filling up with customers. Monisha snatched her phone from Harwood’s pocket as he used both hands to maneuver the car.

  “Hey,” Harwood said.

  “Just checking to make sure you weren’t looking at my pictures,” she said.

  “Wasn’t. Now give me the phone back.”

  He was heading north toward the turn for the bridge back to Savannah.

  “Hot damn,” she said. “You took some pictures of a mansion. That’s who you’re going to kill next.”

  “No, it’s not,” Harwood said with little conviction.

  “Oh, shit,” Monisha said.

  “What?”

  “Twitter. Damn that shit moves out,” she said.

  Harwood followed Route 80, racing toward the bridge over the Wilmington River, trying to get back into Savannah. From the bridge, he could see a string of police cars with lights flashing about two miles away.

  “I knew it,” Monisha said. “You just killed them two guards. We’re just like Bonnie and Clyde!”

  CHAPTER 19

  “I didn’t kill those guards,” Harwood said. “Don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Not what it’s looking like,” Monisha shot back. “Internet’s got you pegged as the killer. Latest CNN poll says eighty-four percent of the people think you’re guilty.”

  “At least I’ve got sixteen on my side,” Harwood quipped.

  “Not really. They the same bunch that don’t know who’s president.”

  Harwood had parked the Mustang under a low-hanging live oak tree about fifty yards from a warehouse at the north end of the Port of Savannah. A dirt road led to a sixty-acre wooded site that was up for lease, commanding top dollar because of its river frontage and relatively new warehouse. There was a boat ramp and a small pier with two center-console boats moored at the dock. The open lot seemed like prime land for a shipping business that wanted to be close to the port. The morning sun had risen. It was about 8 A.M. and Harwood figured that unless there was a showing of this property in the next couple of hours, they should be okay here. The car was completely out of view from overhead surveillance and only marginally visible from ground level. They remained seated in the bucket seats.

  “Take a nap, Monisha. It’s going to be a long day. I’ve got to figure out what to do with you after I make a few phone calls with your phone.”

  “Hey, we got a deal if we do a quick Snapchat I can send out. Then I want a two-minute video I’m gonna upload to YouTube and it’ll make me a millionaire.”

  Harwood thought for a moment. What better journalist to cover his story than someone who wasn’t a journalist? Monisha was just a lost fourteen-year-old child who needed some grounding. Of course, the whole thing could backfire on him. The mainstream media could allege he had taken liberties with the child, and for that matter, so could she. He needed to protect himself, and the best way to do that was to get some of their interaction on digital video.

  But first, the call he had been waiting for came through.

  “Just a sec, Monisha. We’ve got a deal. You’ll be famous under one condition and that’s you stop this internet hooking you’re doing.”

  She paused. “Okay. It’s a deal.” She held out her slender hand and they shook. “Better take that call.”

  “Roger,” Harwood said as he answered the phone.

  “Ranger, you have good instincts as we’ve always known,” Command Sergeant Major Murdoch said. “What’s more, you should train your students that Q-36 radars are good at confirming those instincts and crater analysis. I just looked at a few reports.” A Q-36 radar was a ballistic-intercept radar that could track mortar rounds or incoming Scud missiles.

  “If I’m to properly train these students, Sergeant Major, I want to be able to tell them that sometimes blue-on-blue action can occur, no matter how many precautions you take,” Harwood said. “Blue-on-blue” meant friendly fire. “Blue-on-green” meant U.S. fire on Afghan forces. “Blue-on-red” meant U.S. fire on enemy forces.

  “Indeed. What’s even more important for your trainees to know, Sergeant, is that blue-on-blue doesn’t necessarily mean you’re dealing with military forces. There are other types of blue forces as well.”

  Just as he thought. MLQM had a raid team conducting missions in Kandahar Province. Sometimes they provided security to dignitaries and sometimes they had independent missions, such as securing critical targets like cell-phone towers, schools, or water reservoirs. Ninety-nine percent of the military contractors Harwood had served alongside were true professionals with the same mission and goals as him and his Ranger teammates. There were a few, such as Xanadu, that had given him a bad vibe.

  “My advice to you, Ranger, is to wrap up this training as quickly as possible so that you can Charlie Mike with the Ranger mission.”

  “Roger that, Sergeant Major. One last mentorship question.”

  “Make it quick,” the sergeant major said.

  “Why would an enemy ultimately want to kill a sniper?” Harwood asked.

  “Always the same reason. To take an enemy’s most effective operator off the chessboard in preparation for the big finale.”

  The line went blank. The sergeant major had given him everything he had, filled in some gaps, though some questions remained.

  “Get what you need?” Monisha asked. She was looking at him with big eyes and a wry grin. “I got good ears, but I didn’t understand none of that.”

  “Yeah. I know what to
do,” he said. The sergeant major had confirmed for him that MLQM forces had fired the mortar rounds at him. He wondered if it was MLQM private military contractors conducting the kidnap raid in Sangin that he and Samuelson saw directly before the mortar attack.

  Bring her back! the Chechen had messaged. Then: Trade? Was his adversary making a legitimate request? Could the MLQM contractors have kidnapped or killed someone the Chechen knew? It was a possibility. But what did the Chechen have to trade?

  “So that means my phone’s going to be famous and shit, right? Sell it on eBay?”

  “Not if you keep talking like that. For all practical purposes now you’re my kid sister.” Harwood thought of Lindsay, his foster sister, the one he didn’t save. Was he being offered redemption? Perhaps.

  “So you do what I say and pay attention. Things could get dangerous. But I don’t know where to take you where you just won’t get lost in the system and get jammed up like I did.”

  “Like you did?” Monisha asked. Harwood nodded. Monisha looked away. She wiped away a tear and looked back at him.

  “Here you were a loser like me and you at least made something out of your life. Killed some dudes in war.”

  “You’re not a loser, Monisha. Just obey me and we’ll get out of this. I’ll get you somewhere safe and finish my mission.”

  “I don’t want to be somewhere else,” she said. “I want to stay with you. Like you said. You’re my big brother now. Never had that.”

  “Well, pay attention to me like I’m your brother then,” Harwood said.

  She paused. “I’ll do that as long as we keep our deal.”

  “You got it,” Harwood said. Monisha smiled and leaned back in the bucket seat.

  “Me and the Reaper. Gonna write a book one day.”

  “Yeah, well, in the meantime understand this. Your phone has probably been intercepted by now, so we need to shut it off until I need it again.”

  “You’re in charge,” she said.

  They sat silent in the car a moment, watching a large merchant vessel slide quietly along the river.

  “Who do you think killed those people in the guard towers I was reading about?” Monisha asked. “Because I believe you now, bro.”

  Harwood heard the innocence in her voice and the newfound belief in him that he had not done the killing.

  “Someone trying to frame me. All these murders—the generals, the police, the senator, the two guards—they’re all related somehow to something that happened in Afghanistan.”

  “Maybe they bad people and deserve killing,” Monisha said.

  “Maybe so,” Harwood agreed. “But that doesn’t make it right.”

  “Was it right what you did to save me?”

  He looked at her and a thought crystallized. He powered the phone back on and called the sergeant major, who answered abruptly.

  “Operational security is another lesson you need to teach your trainees,” he said.

  “Roger that, Sergeant Major. As I talk to my trainees, I’m telling them that they may have a single adversary that becomes a nemesis for them. And to beat that adversary, the sniper needs to know everything about him, including his personal life. For example, is he married, children, and so on?”

  After a short pause, the sergeant major said, “That’s an excellent instructional point, Sergeant. Let me do some thinking on it and I’ll get back to you.”

  “You’re speaking in code to him, ain’t you? Asking him to do stuff for you,” Monisha said, smiling again.

  “Maybe,” Harwood said.

  The sun had fully risen. Harwood saw that the time was almost 9 A.M. He had maybe today to resolve the situation. The phone rang again much sooner than he expected.

  “Sergeant, two things. I need you to recall a search mission you had when you were a private. Second, I suggest you teach your trainees to build the most complete target folders and to know where those folders are located always, even maintaining access while deployed in the field. And I suggest you instruct your students on that, right now, because you never know when there will be no time left to train and fighting is the only option.”

  The sergeant major clicked off and Harwood wondered if he would ever talk to him again. He immediately hit the Google home button, and typed in his Gmail password, which gave him access to a joint account the sergeant major had created for him two years ago to study unclassified information when training to be the best Ranger and best sniper he could be.

  He eyed the emails containing sniper manuals, lessons learned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and blogs from combat veterans the sergeant major trusted and respected. Then Harwood noticed a bold number “1” on the draft folder icon.

  Clicking on the drafts icon, he found an unsent, draft email, which he opened.

  There he saw a picture of a woman, dark hair, green eyes, fair skin, next to a businessman dressed in a pin-striped suit. They were in a casino, probably in one of the places Harwood knew his life would never take him, like Monaco or Casablanca. It was the same photo he had seen in Kandahar as he had built a target folder on the Chechen.

  The dapper man was unmistakably the man who had ridden in the elevator with him. The note contained in the folder read:

  TS/SPECAT//This is the Chechen and his wife, Nina Moreau. Three months ago, Moreau was reported kidnapped on the battlefield and has not been seen since. Moreau is DGSE, French CIA equivalent, and a trained registered nurse, but we believe that is a legend. We do not assess her relationship with Basayev to be related to her DGSE official duties. The French government seeks her safe return, though they would prefer not disclosing her links to Basayev. Crater analysis and Q-36 confirms Basayev did not fire mortars. PMC suspected of running drug and sex trafficking ring also on battlefield. Basayev believes U.S. military involved in PMC activities. Basayev possibly the fourth man in 2010. Moreau possibly rogue with Basayev to complete 2010 mission. Russian government believed to be financing. //TS/SPECAT

  Harwood immediately deleted the file from the drafts folder. The sergeant major had risked his career by placing top-secret, special-category information in an unclassified email draft folder. Technically, he had not sent the email, so there was no transaction other than the uploading of the photo of Basayev and Moreau.

  What he and Samuelson had seen directly before Basayev had held up his “Bring her back! Trade?” sign was the kidnapping of three women by MLQM contractors dressed as Taliban. Moreau, it seemed, had defected to support her husband’s mercenary activities. The fourth man in 2010 was a bit more confusing. When Harwood had been a private in 2010, he was serving in the 1st Ranger Battalion at Hunter Army Airfield. The “fourth man” referred to a police stop of four “Russians” walking with shovels and rucksacks. The police captured three of the four, two Russians and one from Kazakhstan.

  Murdoch was telling him that Basayev, the Chechen, was possibly the fourth man. Based upon the equipment police had discovered, the men had parachuted into the area. Parachute harnesses, kit bags, shovels, and even some hazmat gloves and masks. Those men were ultimately released, because they had green cards and the Department of Justice saw no reason to hold them, despite the outcry from the local and special operations communities. He and his Ranger buddies, though, had plowed through miles of brush around Hunter Army Airfield with mine detectors, night vision goggles, thermal imaging equipment, and so on. They left no stone unturned and found two kit bags with untraceable high-altitude sport parachutes.

  What was Command Sergeant Major Murdoch saying? That Basayev was here in 2010? And had come back to finish the job?

  Could this be his trade? Harwood wondered.

  The worst-case speculation at the time was that they had planted a tactical nuclear device that would incapacitate the Special Operations Aviation Regiment’s 3rd Battalion, the Ranger battalion, and a full infantry division thirty miles down the road at Fort Stewart, Georgia, along with one of the busiest ports on the East Coast, in Savannah.

  “Whatcha
thinking ’bout?” Monisha asked.

  Harwood switched gears, tucking away the thoughts and possibilities. He now understood much of what was happening. He was the rabbit that Basayev needed the police to chase while he maneuvered freely.

  “Okay, that’s it. A guy I was fighting in Afghanistan thinks I kidnapped his wife. I didn’t, but I know who did. If I find the guy who did it, then we’ll probably find the wife.”

  “That’s why they trying to frame you. Keep the heat off them,” Monisha said.

  “Maybe. Something like that. Perhaps, they figured my memory would come back eventually and I know too much. The private military contractors know I saw them. They couldn’t just outright kill me, but using my rifle is the next best thing. Frame me for the killing of these people. That’s half the equation.”

  Harwood knew he was missing a large piece of the puzzle. Why kill their own people when doing the frame job? Make it more authentic?

  Harwood’s adrenaline was fading. Exhaustion swept through his body like an ocean wave.

  “Tired?” Monisha asked.

  “Yeah. Just worn out. Been on the run. My memory’s still not right, but it’s getting better.”

  She looked at him. Wide doe eyes that looked innocent and perhaps could be again. It occurred to Harwood in his drowsy state that Monisha had been a catalyst of sorts for him. Her predicament had catapulted him from reactionary and forgetful to proactive and tactical.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “About stuff you don’t know about?”

  “I know more than you think, Reaper.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about you?”

  “I’ll trade with ya,” she said.

  “Deal.”

  “I ain’t never known a brother. My mama? She couldn’t afford me, I’m told. So I kept getting put in different homes, mostly homeless shelters in downtown Atlanta. They don’t watch over us much there. Public school bus picked us up, but we could pretty much go wherever we wanted if we showed up every few days. Once you turned teenager, the men there expected things, ya know?”