Page 132 of Lone Wolf

A half second later, Lopatina’s projectile hit directly in the center of the Nowhere Man’s thermal optic and then crashed through his dominant left eye into his skull, blowing out a fist-size chunk along with secondary fragments of the optic.

60

Shut Up and Hold Me

Moments earlier

Evan centered the reticle of his Leupold scope in the middle of the dark mass where he expected Lopatina to set up for her shot.

Frozen in predatory stillness, he thought in biology.

Breathing in a four-square cadence to lower his heart rate. Blinking at regular intervals to clear debris and flush the ocular surface. Attuning himself to his heartbeat so he could gauge the nearly imperceptible pulse in his fingertip, pressed to the side of the trigger guard.

But the critical mass of Lopatina’s body was still invisible to him, swathed in IR-masking camouflage that disclosed less of her body’s heat signature than the throw from an earthworm or a bird dropping. He estimated where her head and torso would be, approximately two to two and a half feet behind the polished objective of the Phoenix-S clip-on thermal. He had to determine precisely where her vital areas were. And there was only one way to do that.

In the hide that the Wolf was zeroed on, Evan waited patiently, not moving a millimeter, barely respiring. Ten meters to his side, a broomstick handle duct-taped under a cardboard mailing tube protruded through the deck railing, the convex mirror of a lady’s purse compact makeup pushed into the forward end of the tube. To complete the tableau, Evan had duct-taped a mannequin’s head to the right side of the decoy rifle and scope. And he’d shrouded the whole apparatus in the Armus IR coated camouflage— except for a two-inch gap in the treated fabric directly in front of the mannequin’s face. One foot in front of that plastic face was an encrypted burner phone with the screen facing upward, programmed with the most annoying ringtone he’d ever heard.

Evan triple-checked his math. One meter from the end of the Wolf’s SureFire suppressor to the trigger guard. Fifteen centimeters farther to the nexus of spine and skull. Ten centimeters back from there and fifteen centimeters down pulsed her ascending aorta beneath the left scapula.

He slowly reached inside his chest pocket and pressed his RoamZone to dial.

The screen of the burner cell flickered for less than a second before the Wolf reoriented, her first round smashing through the mannequin’s left eye.

From Evan’s vantage through the Phoenix-S thermal, the hot gases that could not be contained by her SureFire suppressor vented into the cool predawn air, a conical mist.

He waited. Let her cycle the bolt-action and recover her sight picture. Her body would settle into the same position from which she’d sent the first shot.

He waited another 1.5 seconds.

Took the slack out of the trigger.

Calm-as-death inhale.

Smooth exhale.

Waiting for the space between the muffled thumps of his heart.

Steady even pressure, the trigger releasing at the bottom of the exhalation.

The crack of the projectile going supersonic.

The muffled push of butt plate into his shoulder.

The stock jogging his cheek against his molars.

And then she was lying sprawled atop the plywood sheet, spun onto her back into a fall of ambient light, blood pumping from the union of her arm and shoulder. He sensed a flash of movement as her sniper rifle, a match of his own, tumbled from the tree house.

He had another clear shot at her chest, but he wouldn’t need it to end her.

She was already dead.

Groggily she pulled at what looked like CamelBak tubing, looping it around the gushing mess of her shoulder and tugging it tight with her teeth. But the entry wound was right at the shoulder; there was no proximal spot on the limb to tourniquet and therefore no point.

When he rose, his joints burned, lactic acid rushing out as the blood flow worked in.

He slipped over the railing, slid down one of the deck’s support posts to the square of concrete footing, and then stepped off onto the steep, ivy-tangled hillside.

He headed across the canyon.