The Sniper and the Wolf Read Free Page B

right I am,” Gil grumbled. “Now drive!”
    The driver sullenly shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb. “Why are you bleeding?” he asked a couple minutes later.
    “I was attacked by a werewolf.” Gil sat listening to the overwatch, who was monitoring the cab from above in infrared via satellite locked in geosynchronous orbit two hundred miles up.
    “Make a right up here,” he told the driver. “We’re close.”
    A minute later, they pulled to the curb, and Gil got out in a Muslim section of Paris, shoving three hundred dollars’ worth of euros into the cabbie’s hand. “Keep it.” He shut the door, and the cab pulled quickly away up the street.
    Gil stood in the shadows, eyeing the three-story apartment building on the far corner. There was a light on in one of the apartments on the top floor. “I don’t suppose you know which floor Umarov is on,” he said to the overwatch.
    “Not a clue, but the SUV on the corner is the one he arrived in. It’s probably got an alarm.”
    Gil rooted around in a trash can on the corner until he found a glass bottle. He hurled the bottle across the street, and it shattered against the windshield of the SUV, causing the car alarm to start blaring and the headlights to flash on and off.
    “I guess that’s one way of doing it,” the overwatch said in amusement.
    Gil stepped into the shadows. The curtains in the lighted room parted, and a man stood looking down at the SUV for a moment before closing the curtains again.
    “It worked.” Gil slipped across the street, where he hopped a waist-high stone wall and took cover in the darkness beyond the amber light of the streetlamp.
    The car alarm fell silent after a minute, and the man from the window came out the front door of the building. He stood staring at the fractured window of the SUV in the light of the lamp, his visage at once discerning and predatory. He watched hawkishly up and down in all directions from the intersection, with a hand inside his jacket.
    Gil lowered himself into a crouch, keeping low as he made his way along the stone wall toward the corner. The man reset the car alarm and turned to go back into the building. As he passed the end of the wall, Gil pounced like a cougar, delivering him a deadly strike to the cerebellum and knocking him forward off his feet. Even as the man fell face-first onto the sidewalk, Gil followed through with his attack, bringing down the heel of his boot on the back of his neck fast and hard to break the spinal cord.
    He immediately dragged the body into the shadows by the head, searching it for weapons and intel. Gil found a ring of three keys—one of which went to the SUV—and a Glock 39 subcompact .45 with a six-round magazine. He made sure a round was chambered and moved out around the back of the building. One of the keys fit the rear door, so he slipped inside easily. He was casual about mounting the staircase, keeping the pistol gripped in his right hand but concealed behind his thigh. The halls of the ancient building were dimly lit, and the wooden stairs creaked with every step.
    He reached the top floor and stood watching the door to the apartment. A light shone beneath it, and Gil could hear at least two men speaking in Chechen. Their voices were anxious, and he assumed it had to do with the car alarm, but there was no way to be sure. He looked at the third key on the ring, guessing it would fit the knob, but he didn’t know if the Chechens used some sort of secret knock before keying into the room. There was no telling how many hostile Muslims might be living in the building, and six rounds wouldn’t last long in a protracted firefight. Not to mention he didn’t fancy another encounter with the French police.
    Deciding to keep the initiative, Gil pocketed the keys and stalkedforward, kicking in the door to the room and shooting the first man he saw. The wide-eyed Chechen grabbed his throat and fell backward over a coffee table. Gil’s original target,