I was on the outer edge of thirteen hundred yards away from my target. I could go further, but there were few as skilled as me beyond this point so I used that as a guide.
Within seconds, I located the slightest gleam of a reflection against a scope. Considering there were hardly any vantage points in the area, that wasn’t as difficult to manage as might be expected.
Jesus Christ, though.
Two snipers in Ballymena.
What the fuck had this couple done?
Now I wasn’t just goddamn curious, I was fucking foaming at the mouth with the need to know why this simple pair of hippies had earned themselves a death sentence.
Returning my focus to the camper van, I found Johnathan doing as anticipated—pissing up against a tree before splashing his hands with the water he’d collected from the river.
As he zipped up, I tried to locate the woman, but she must have been inside. In these temperatures, not exactly a dumb move.
I sighed at the prospect of having to wait a couple of hours for them both to leave the van at the same time.
Take Johnathan out now, and she could just hop into the driver’s seat and get the hell out of town. Instinct might have her rushing outside to check on her husband, but I didn’t think so.
She’d found herself in the crosshairs of two snipers—Siobhan Lenister wasn’t a regular woman, regardless that she played the role of hippie to perfection.
Pressing my finger to the trigger, I ignored the bitter cold, the chill wind, the frigid block of cement beneath me that made my body numb. All of it went by the by as I did my job. As my soul took a vacation and my mind switched off. Thoughts of my beautiful wife faded, Afghanistan and the last time I’d been in a position like this over there drifted away.
I was a blank canvas.
A clean slate.
That was when I saw it.
A third piece of fabric.
A third motherfucking piece of fabric.
What the actual fucking fuck?
I zoomed in on the marker, testing to see if it was the same sniper’s handiwork, but I saw two different styles of knots at play. One tight and simple, a butterfly knot, the other circling around the branch then slotted in through the loop.
With my eye glued to the scope, I tapped my finger against my earpiece. “Call Eagle Eyes.”
Within seconds, the call connected to the other sniper.
“Are you in Ireland?”
There was a pause. “No.”
I grunted and cut the call.
He was.
Two more calls and I cast aside the notion that Mossad, and the disbanded but totally still active KGB, were here with me.
There was a list of other agencies from all over the world that could have been involved, but they were the usual suspects.
“Call Driftwood.” The line connected to my handler. “May have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
The cut glass British accent had me rolling my eyes.
When I’d first been approached, I’d admit that I took the whole James Bond shit to heart. I’d gotten hooked on Martinis for a while, and I’d been desperate to meet a Q. But then, I recognized it was the same old bullshit as anywhere else.
Same shit, different agency.
“Two others here.”
“Bollocks.” My handler rarely cursed so I raised a brow. “Any idea who they might be?”
I didn’t tell him that I was pretty sure Eagle Eyes was here.
“CIA and CIS. I think.” I just wasn’t sure which had called Eagle Eyes in. He was a gun for hire, after all.
“CIS? Ireland?”
“You don’t know?” I queried.
“No.”
The question was, did I believe him? Handlers weren’t always honest. It didn’t exactly fit the job description.
“Who the fuck are these people?”
It wasn’t the first time I’d had more than one sniper tracking a target, but two? Highly irregular.
“That’s classified.”
“What’s classified is that I’m sharing territory with two marksmen in a tiny fucking town, Driftwood. Am I about to find myself in someone’s crosshairs?”
That was a possibility.
They could be there to make sure I did the job, then they could take me out if I was their target.
For a second, I let myself think that the last time I’d seen Inessa was this morning, tucked up in bed before I left for the day. Her moaning about getting up, even though I’d booked her into an overnight spa treatment.
I thought about how beautiful she’d looked last night when I dressed her in her mother’s jewels.
I thought about how her features contorted as she came.
I thought about how much I fucking loved her, when I’d never thought that was in the cards for me.
And something inside me died even as another part of me blazed into being.
Today wasn’t my day to die.
I had something, someone, to live for now, and I wasn’t about to goddamn leave her.
“Is this a trap?” I snapped at Driftwood.
“No,” he ground out.
“As if I can trust a word you fucking say. You draw me in after five years of inactivity and expect me to think this isn’t a setup? What the hell’s to stop me from rolling off my perch right this goddamn second and getting the hell out of here?”
There was dead silence on the line, and I pulled away from my scope, about to do as I’d threatened, then he admitted, “The Lenisters are… IRA.”
“So?” My da wouldn’t be pleased about me shooting some Republicans, but his politics and mine didn’t align. “There are plenty of fucking IRA in these parts. They were rioting here just a week ago. It’s what they fucking do.”
Driftwood grunted, “Okay, so they’re not IRA. They’re with the ECD. I’m sure you know who they are considering your infamous family ties.”
Intrigue had my temper cooling down. “They’re with Éire le chéile go deo?”
Driftwood confirmed, “Yes.”
“Shit,” I rasped.
“Exactly.”
The ECD were pricks. They’d been behind several bombings in the 90s, which had not only made them a household name but had identified them as evil fuckers.
Standard IRA protocol was to call in a bombing with plenty of time for an area to be evacuated by the authorities. They wanted economic damage. Hitting the British coffers where it hurt was how they tried to affect change.
The ECD, however, didn’t care about civilian casualties. They wanted to be heard.
“What the fuck is the Lenisters’ game?”
“According to our sources, they’re at the top of the ECD’s sniper shopping list. They’ve got outstanding warrants for murdering an old couple in County Louth close to ten years ago, as well as a few dissidents in Belfast. They’re what we know about.
“As for the ECD, well, there’s been a call to arms to take down a prominent member of the Irish government that would not be conducive to our agenda. Plus rumors that someone big in the US government has found themselves in the group’s crosshairs, but I’m of the mind that that is definitely chatter.”
Chatter was like assholes—everyone had them, and after enough butt-fucking, they all gaped.
“No idea who?”
“No.”
I narrowed my eyes upon not-so-innocent Johnathan. “The Lenisters… they’re not bombers?”