“A small canyon,” Ian replied, struggling to keep Reilly in sight. “That’s where Usman is headed, not Gwoza. If I’m right, there will be a lot of caverns and cave entrances and he’s going to duck into one of them. You’re the closest one to it, and if Usman makes it there before you do, we’ll lose him for good.”
“Copy,” the sniper answered, sounding as if they were discussing some routine bureaucratic matter. “I’ll redirect and set up overwatch. If he shows up, he’s getting popped.”
Cancer took cover behind a rock formation, checking his six o’clock before withdrawing his phone to confirm his distance from the canyon.
He saw his own icon hovering within a hundred meters of the canyon’s western edge, while those from Reilly’s and Ian’s phones were slowly ticking downward from the northeast. David would be arriving before them, his tracker moving toward the opposite side of the canyon at a range of four hundred meters, while Worthy, bless his heart, was nowhere close: his icon was far west, almost to the base of the mountains where he’d link up with Tolu and be able to flex for a possible interdiction on the outskirts of Gwoza.
Pocketing his phone, Cancer rose and brought his G28 to the low ready, proceeding through the trees toward a sniper position overwatching the canyon. He moved at half-speed now, scanning for threats in the undergrowth as the remaining distance ticked down with each footfall.
The canyon wasn’t a massive diversion from his previous course, though the default labeling of X1 seemed appropriate for the situation——a total unknown, a place he was entering alone with little more than his wits and a sniper rifle. The weapon would be ideal for surveying the canyon once he got there but absurdly ill-suited for any close-range engagements prior to that point, and Cancer found himself questioning the sanity of ordering Worthy to recover the van prior to Ian’s revelation.
Cancer was covering ground as quietly as he could when he heard a twig snap in the forest to his front. He ducked behind the nearest tree, its trunk wide enough to conceal him, at least for the time being, and readied his rifle as he listened.
A male voice called out, “Man yadhab hunak?”
He must have been ten meters or more from Cancer’s hiding spot, and the sniper was racked with a momentary sense of disbelief—he knew there were survivors from the ambushes, but how could any have gotten here so fast?
That question had a simple explanation, one that occurred to Cancer along with the somewhat grim realization that he may have just overcommitted himself. The survivors hadn’t come here at all, not yet; instead there was a pre-staged element, probably too low-level to be involved in the exchange.
But that didn’t make them any less lethal.
The verbal challenge was repeated, and Cancer heard footsteps approaching through the brush. Whoever this man was, he wasn’t certain he’d heard something—but he was going to find out. The sentry’s voice on that second command was desperate, quavering with fear. Why wouldn’t it be? He’d probably been expecting a glorious confirmation of three leaders from his command, and instead heard explosions and automatic gunfire all around his outpost followed by radio silence. Cancer was fortunate not to have been shot at already. If he didn’t find a way to get the man’s guard down, that streak of luck was seconds away from ending, possibly for good.
Fuck it, he decided. If Usman planned to stumble in here unannounced, then he could too.
Cancer had only an elementary grasp of Arabic, and none of the many local dialects used in Nigeria, so he sided with the universal greeting before transitioning to an outright bluff.
“As-salamu alaykum,” he quietly replied, then added, “ismee, Usman Mokhammed.”
The footsteps continued to advance, and after a moment Cancer heard the tentative reply, “Wa alaykumu s-salam, qayid.”
The man sounded as if he’d relaxed somewhat—not entirely, of course, but hopefully sufficient for the sniper to drop him before he knew what was happening.
Cancer turned behind the tree, then eased out from beside the trunk while raising his barrel in a swift upward arc, aligning with the chest of a teenage boy coming to a halt not ten feet distant.
His eyes went wide, hands shakily grasping a wood stock AK-47 as he opened his mouth to yell.
Cancer looked over the top of his scope to take reflexive aim, firing his first shot before the boy could make a noise of protest. The subsonic round punched clean through his upper abdominals before Cancer followed it with two more, a choking gasp fleeing the sentry’s parted lips before he collapsed, dropping to his knees and falling forward amid a tangle of low brush.
Advancing with swift steps, Cancer delivered a close-range headshot to eliminate any possibility of a death rattle, then swept his rifle in a half circle that confirmed the sentry was alone. A quick scan of the body revealed an Icom radio clipped to the boy’s waist. Cancer quickly reloaded and then knelt to recover the radio, using his free hand to turn off the device before sliding it into his cargo pocket.
Then he continued moving forward, his caution tempered by the knowledge that three of his teammates would be racing toward the canyon whether Cancer had cleared it or not.
He saw the trees thinning out ahead, an indication that the ground fell away to a depression. Weaving his way forward, Cancer took his first tentative glances into the abyss below.
Ian had been perhaps too quick to classify the landscape feature as a canyon; it was more of a tight, deep ravine, possibly the remnants of some long-expired river. But the intelligence operative had been right about the rest—its rock walls were dotted with dark crevices leading to caves, or caverns, or both.
And while Cancer’s line of sight was limited to the northern side, already he could make out three figures standing below.
He wouldn’t be able to maintain visual on them from the prone, but a seated firing position would work just fine. The range was right around 180 meters, he estimated, and if he couldn’t get the drop on them after neutralizing their early-warning sentry, then it was time to hang up his spurs as a sniper.
Cancer selected a patch of ground and sat cross-legged, resting his triceps against the inner edges of his kneecaps to avoid bone-to-bone contact. Then he leaned forward to decline his barrel and looked through his magnified scope to assess the men.
They were conversing in an animated fashion, probably debating what to make of the recent sounds of battle or arguing their course of action amid the ensuing lack of guidance. Cancer briefly debated whether to prolong his assessment, but within a moment the debate was over. There could be any number of fighters in the surrounding caves, but the certainty of three kills now trumped the possibility of more than three later.