The Sniper and the Wolf Read Free

overwatch. “Get up and move out exactly perpendicular to the tracks. You need to keep the wheels between you and the men on the far side. If you can make it to the warehouses without being spotted, you’ve got a chance.”
    Gil ran and made it to the nearest warehouse, running down the far side to get out of sight.
    “Oh, Christ,” said the overwatch. “Do you hear any shooting down there?”
    Gil froze. “No—why?”
    “Someone’s shooting the gendarmes. Two of them are down on the tracks, and the rest are falling back under cover. They just set the dogs loose again.”
    Gil broke a window and climbed into the warehouse. “I’m inside now.” He made his way toward the back of the building, winding among the crates and quickly getting disoriented in the darkness. He came to a dead end and had to turn around. “Who stacked these fucking things?”
    “What things?”
    “Crates,” Gil said. “Who’s shooting at the gendarmes? Is it that damn sniper?”
    “I don’t know. Gil, you have to find a way out of there right now. The dogs are jumping in through the window—they’re inside!”
    Seconds later, Gil heard the dogs’ claws on the concrete as they scurried unerringly through the inky dark, following his exact path through the maze of crates. He came to a steel staircase and ran two stories to the top, where he stood overlooking the warehouse floor. He ran to the end of the catwalk and came to a locked steel door.
    Both German shepherds scampered to the top of the stairs, and he saw their faint silhouettes at the far end of the catwalk, moving toward him shoulder to shoulder, each growling low in the throat.
    Gil’s own dog came to mind, a Chesapeake Bay retriever, as he took the Beretta from his pants, preparing to shoot them. The German shepherds snarled and charged. In the glow of a vapor light mounted outside the window, he saw a series of conduit pipes running down the wall, leading to a door at the bottom. On the spur of the moment, he dropped the pistol, swung his legs over the railing, and stretched to grab on to the conduit, bracing his feet against the wall. The dogs snarled furiously as he clung to the wall less than a foot beyond their reach. Glimpsing their white fangs, he shinnied down the conduit to the floor two stories below. The dogs backtracked to the stairs.
    Gil made it to the floor only to find that this door, too, was locked. “Can I get a fuckin’ break?”
    “What’s the matter now?” asked the overwatch.
    “ Dogs are the matter!”
    He ran along the wall toward what he hoped was the back of the warehouse as the shepherds scrambled down the stairs. Gil broke into a locked office and quickly jammed a desk up against the door, snatching a pack of French cigarettes from the desk and stuffing them into his pocket. Within seconds, the dogs were scratching around outside, whining in frustration. He forced open another door at the back of the office and ran down a blind hallway toward a dim glow at the far end.
    “You still up there?”
    “Yeah, I’ve been making some calls,” the voice said. “Trying to find you a place to hide. How close are you to finding your way out of there?”
    “Let you know in a second.” Gil put his hand against a pane of grime-covered glass. “I think this leads out.”
    He groped about in the darkness for a chair or a trash can to break out the window.
    Without warning, a German shepherd slammed into him at full tilt, sinking its teeth into his left forearm.
    “Holy shit!” he shouted, completely unprepared for the suddenness of the impact. He struggled to keep his feet with the dog whipping him from side to side, not quite like a rag doll but close.
    “What’s happening?” the overwatch asked anxiously.
    The animal was unbelievably strong and took Gil down in seconds. He sensed more than heard the second dog’s arrival, and so he kicked out in the dark to ward it off. The animal latched onto his boot, savagely ripping it back and forth,