The Sniper and the Wolf by McEwen Scott & Koloniar Thomas

Author:McEwen, Scott & Koloniar, Thomas [McEwen, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: War
ISBN: 9781476787268
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2015-05-12T05:00:00+00:00

40

THE WHITE HOUSE

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Couture hung up the phone and looked across the room at White House Chief of Staff Glen Brooks. “You’d better get the old man, Glen. The shit is about to hit the fan in Eastern Europe.”

Brooks put down the report he was reading. “They hit the pipeline?”

Couture shook his head. “That was Pope. Shannon just knocked over a Russian whorehouse in Istanbul. Now he’s getting ready to fly eighteen female abductees home to Moscow.”

Brooks gaped at him. “He can’t do that.”

“Wanna bet? He’s a got a Russian passport and three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Turkish lira. He can do just about anything he wants at this point.”

“No, I mean he can’t do that,” Brooks said, getting up. “He’s on a mission. He’s got orders.”

Couture stared across the room with his hands on his hips. “Where the hell have you been the past eighteen months?”

“But—”

“But hell,” Couture said, stepping forward. “Didn’t you read the file I sent over on Operation Tiger Claw?”

“I skimmed it.”

“Did you skim the part where Shannon brought a pregnant Iranian back from Iran—a pregnant Iranian he’d been ordered to kill by that idiot Lerher?”

“I didn’t catch that part, no.”

Couture dry-wiped his mouth. “If we don’t play this right, it’s going to rain dung. President Putin is one suspicious son of a bitch, and it’s all too possible he’ll think we staged this as a stunt to make him look like a fool. Not to mention that Shannon’s head is packed with intel we don’t really need the Russians to have.”

Brooks stepped around the table. “I’ll get the president.”

“Hold on a second. Let’s make sure we’re on the same page.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, what are we going to advise?”

Brooks looked at his watch. “How soon does Shannon land?”

“Pope doesn’t know, but they’re not even in the air yet, so we’ve got time. Shannon still has to get them to the airport and buy the tickets. He called Pope so State would have time to contact Moscow before their arrival.”

“Why the hell is he flying with them? Why doesn’t he just put them on the plane?”

“Because the Russian mob is going to be hot on his ass.”

“And his solution to that is flying to Russia, for Christ’s sake?”

“All he’s got is a Russian passport.”

Brooks let out a sigh, and they each grabbed a chair.

“Okay,” Brooks said. “So we check the scheduled flights out of Istanbul. That will give us some idea of the time frame we’re working with. From there we can judge how soon to contact Moscow.”

Couture nodded and picked up the phone, directing his aide to print off a list of flights leaving Istanbul for Moscow over the next twenty-four hours.

“What about the Spetsnaz guy?” Brooks said. “Is Dragunov dead, or what?”

“Pope didn’t mention him. What we need to figure out right now is how to advise the president before he gets on the horn to Putin.”

Brooks sat thinking. “What about grounding the flight? We have people in Istanbul who can make that happen, right?”

“You mean maroon them there?”

“Sure,” Brooks said.

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