The Third Option

chapter 14
The birds were chirping, and the sky was slowly showing signs of morning. A thin bank of clouds obscured the top of Mount Evans due west of E where he was sitting. The house was at eight thousand feet, some six thousand feet short of the mountain's summit. Scott Coleman could see why people moved here. The thick pines and aspen-laden hills, towering mountains, icy creeks, and glassy ponds enveloped one with an awesome sense of calmness. Like being in one of the great European cathedrals, you were left with the feeling that you were in the presence of the creator. Coleman was an ocean man. He had always been and always would be, but he could clearly see why others chose the mountains.

Coleman was sitting on the deck of an A-frame cabin located at the top of Prospect Drive. From his perch, he could see the Jansens' house several hundred feet below and across a large ravine. Hackett had found the cabin on the Internet. It had been a relatively simple task. First, he had legitimately accessed the Pentagon's computer network and retrieved detailed elevation maps of Evergreen. From there, Hackett located the Jansens' house and picked four streets that would offer a good position to set up surveillance. Next, he searched the local real estate and property management Web pages. It took about fifteen minutes to find the house at the top of Prospect Drive. It was listed under the Weekend Getaway section of the Evergreen Leasing and Management Company. The company specialized in helping owners rent their mountain retreats when they wouldn't be using them. Hackett had very little trouble hacking his way past die site's security measures. Once in, it took less than a minute to find that the cabin was available, and with a little more work he retrieved the combination for the lock box.

Coleman was wrapped in a camouflage sleeping bag and sitting in a deck chair with his blue baseball hat pulled down tight over his blond hair. On the table next to him was a night-vision scope and a pair of binoculars. Unfortunately; they were too far away to use the directional microphone they had brought. Stroble and Hackett were in the living room sleeping on the floor. Around eleven o'clock the previous evening, the Jansens had been dropped off by an airport shuttle van. The three former SEAU had watched them for about an hour and then settled into two-hour shifts. Coleman was in the final minutes of his 4:00-to-6:00 watch. The three men had agreed on a plan of sorts. They would see how the morning went and then phone the Jansens and give them the choice of meeting them in town for a chat or inviting them up to their house. If the latter was the case, Stroble would be positioned in a spot of his choice with his trusted and robust Galil sniper rifle.

Coleman was to bring the Jansens back to Washington, whether they wanted to come or not, and killing them was to be avoided if at all possible. They had talked the night before about jumping the Jansens at dawn. Stroble had pointed out that they'd been traveling for the better part of a day and would be tired and disoriented. His vote was to hit them at first light and get it over with. Nothing cute. Strap on the body armor, tactical vests, and goggles, grab the silenced MP-5s and a few flash-bangs, and bust down the front door. This was classic Stroble. Hit the target hard, and hit it fast.

Hackett saw very little virtue in his mend's plan. Plus, he was still getting his bad vibe. Coleman, for his part, was intent on returning to Washington with his two men and the Jansens. He wanted everyone alive and no one in Evergreen the wiser that three very lethal individuals had spent a night in their perfect little town.

The former SEAL Team Six commander knew from experience that once you started setting off flash-bangs and breaking down doors, things could get out of hand. Plus, they weren't dealing with a couple of teenage rag-heads. The Jansens were highly trained army commandos, and they were on their home turf. They would surely have weapons nearby, and this was what really bothered Coleman. He and his men weren't trained in policing action. They were trained to kill. It had been hammered into them during thousands of hours of close-quarters battle, or CQB as it was known in the counterterrorism trade. If someone had a gun, they were trained to shoot them in the head, not the arm. Three shots to the head, and then move on to the next target. It was not hard for Coleman to envision a scenario where one of the Jansens, or both, reached for a weapon in the middle of the raid. If that happened, the Jansens would be dead, and there was a chance, though a slim one, that one of them would also get shot. Nope, thought Coleman. There was no reason to get anyone killed.

It was getting light now. The sun was still not up, but he could see the Jansens' house clearly. Coleman looked behind him. Hanging from the wall of the cabin was a circular white thermometer with a mountain lion in the middle. The temperature was a crisp fifty-two degrees. Coleman stretched his arms above his head and looked at his watch. It was 6:02, time to wake up Hackett and let him keep an eye on things for a few hours. As Coleman stood, he looked down for one last check. He was about to head into the cabin when the front door of the Jansens' house opened, and a man walked out. Coleman snatched the binoculars from the table and brought Jim Jansen into focus just before he entered the detached two-car garage.

This was a little unexpected. In the still mountain air, Coleman could hear the car start even though it was more than a half a mile away. Next came the brake lights, and then the car backed out of the garage. Coleman walked quickly to the sliding glass door and flung it open. "Get your asses up, you two! Jansen's on the move." Coleman went back to the railing and watched as the Subaru station wagon turned around in the driveway. Jansen got out, opened the back hatch, and then ran back into the house, leaving the car running. Coleman started for the living room. He didn't like what he saw.

PETER CAMERON WASN'T the only person who thought of logging onto the Internet to check up on what had happened in Germany. At one in the morning, Jim Jansen had signed onto his AOL account. His wife was sound asleep, but he was restless. They had just made a lot of money, and he wanted to go someplace remote and warm, so he and his wife could relax. Jansen knew Kennedy would want to debrief them. That was all part of the plan. Since Iron Man wasn't around, there wouldn't be anybody else to contradict their story. After the debriefing, they would have to go someplace nice and hide out for a few weeks. The work that he and his wife did paid great, but it was absolutely draining. Looking back on it, he could honestly say if they were offered the same amount of money to do this job again, they would turn it down. Iron Man had made him nervous. The man had sensed that something was up, despite all of the planning they had done. His wife had told him in detail about what had happened in the house  -  the way Iron Man had shot Hagenmiller and disabled the bodyguard. They had been lucky that Beth had killed him so easily.

Jansen started with the London Times. The European press would have had a full day to cover the story, and he figured there was a decent chance that the Times might mention the assassination of Count Hagenmiller in its Sunday edition. When the German authorities figured out that Iron Man was an American, the story would be frontpage news everywhere, but that would take a while.

Jansen was pleasantly surprised to find the headline "Germans Believe Count Was Assassinated" plastered across the front page. He couldn't help feeling a little excited over the high-profile treatment of the case. By the second paragraph, the excitement was replaced by confusion. There was no fire when they had left the estate. By the fifth paragraph, the confusion had deepened, and by the end of the article, it had been replaced entirely by fear.

He had followed the story right up to the point where it said a man and a woman posing as BKA agents had left the estate in a maroon Audi sedan at approximately 11:15 P.M. and had not been seen since. Then there was the mention of a third individual who left approximately five minutes later in a car that was stolen from one of the guests attending the count's party. Jansen's heartbeat picked up as he read on. The stolen car had been tracked to the Hanover airport. From there, the article jumped to a cab driver who was found bound and gagged in a hotel in Freiburg, Germany. Based on the detailed account that the driver had given the police, there could be little doubt that the man who had held him at gunpoint was none other than Iron Man.

Jansen had raced into the bedroom in a panic and got his wife up. He asked her again exactly where she had shot the operative they knew only as Iron Man. It didn't take long for the two of them to figure out that he must have been wearing a bulletproof vest and had not told them. It was a stupid mistake. Jim Jansen wanted to strangle his wife for not putting a third bullet in the man's head. This was the exact reason he was supposed to be the trigger man.

What they had to do was glaringly obvious. They had to run, and they had to run fast and far. When the man they had ambushed in Germany made his way back to the United States, he would tell Irene Kennedy everything, and she would understandably give him all the information he needed to track them down. Jim Jansen had very little doubt about the outcome of that confrontation. The Jansens would last right up until they gave up who had hired them, and then they would be killed the proper way  -  a bullet to the head.

WHILE JIM AND Beth Jansen raced around their house gathering the things they would need for quite possibly the rest of their lives, they didn't realize that there was a far more imminent threat sitting in room ten of the Buffalo Bill Motel. Peter Cameron had listened to every word the Jansens uttered, and it had given him ample time to plan and get things into place. With a little luck and cooperation from the Jansens, he would be back in Washington by noon.

Cameron was extremely efficient with virtually every firearm there was. It didn't matter if it was a pistol, a shotgun, or a rifle. In his early twenties, he had gone to a gun club in rural Virginia with another employee of the CIA and was exposed to competition shooting for the first time. Over a period of years, this had turned from a passion into an obsession. Cameron was the top pistol shooter in his club and one of the best on the East Coast. He was very proficient at skeet shooting and was deadly accurate with a rifle. All of this shooting, however, was done under controlled conditions.

Cameron's pride and joy was his gun collection. Over the years, he had steadily built it up to the point where it now, totaled more than a hundred pieces. Since he had bought them wisely and they had appreciated greatly over the last two decades, the collection was now worth a small fortune.

Despite all of this, Cameron was deeply embarrassed by one fact. He had never killed another human. Villaume was right  -  Cameron had always sent someone else to do the dirty work. Now that Cameron had officially broken with the CIA, and he was dealing with hired killers like Villaume and Duser, he felt it was time to make a statement. This was how he had rationalized his decision to be the one to pull the trigger on the Jansens. He was in a dangerous line of work where a peer's respect for one's talents could someday mean the difference between life and death. Deep down inside, however, Cameron knew the real reason. He had wondered for years what it would be like. He had spent thousands of hours shooting at inanimate targets with weapons that were designed to kill living things. Many of them designed specifically to kill human beings. The competitions had always taken place under closely controlled and regulated circumstances. The only variables were often the wind and the humidity. His passion had never been taken to that final level, and now it was time.

Cameron, it turned out, was beginning to realize it was, a good idea he had brought Villaume along for the job instead of Duser. The man was a meticulous planner, like himself, and in the end someone with far more practical field experience. Cameron had brought two handguns, a sniping rifle, an assault rifle, and a submachine gun. He had had it in his head that he would take the Jansens from a safe distance of five hundred to six hundred meters with his Walther WA 2000 sniping rifle. Villaume didn't like this idea. The Walther fired a. 300 Winchester Magnum cartridge, and the shot would sound like a cannon up in the mountains. They wanted to get in and out of Evergreen without attracting any attention. Villaume, used to trying to make things easier rather than more difficult, had pointed out to Cameron that they could take up a position two-hundred meters from the Jansens' front door.

At 4:45, the van stopped half a mile down the road from the Jansens' house. Villaume and Cameron got out and started their trek up the mountain. Lukas and Juarez pulled the van off the road and onto a small trail, where they monitored the surveillance devices and waited. If Cameron failed, and the Jansens' got past, they were to block the road with the van and hose down the Jansens' vehicle with their silenced MP-5s.

It had taken Cameron and Villaume longer than they had wanted to get into position. Villaume was not happy about this. At fifty-two, he was far from in top shape, but compared with Cameron, he felt like an Olympic decathlete. At least, he seemed to know his weapons, Villaume thought. It was almost 5:30 by the time they settled into their spot underneath a towering pine tree. They were on the other side of the Jansens' driveway and down a bit toward the road. They had a clear view of both the house and the garage. Cameron had planned his first kill meticulously and brought everything that would give him an edge. In addition to the bed of soft needles that he was lying on, he had brought a padded mat and a roll. He was wearing a camouflage sniping suit and was nestled in behind a Stoner SR-25 assault rifle. Threaded onto the end of the weapon's free-floating barrel was a customized silencer, and attached to the fore end was a spring-operated bipod for added stability. In essence, the weapon was an M-16 modified to act as a sniper support weapon. Unlike the M-16, though, it fired a heavier 7.62-mm cartridge. The weapon could be fired in single shot or burst mode. Cameron had the selector switch on single shot and was looking through the times-six telescopic sight.

When Jansen appeared from die house at 6:00 A.M., Cameron was not surprised. Mary Juarez had already informed them that it sounded as if they were ready to leave. The warning didn't help. Cameron's heart began to beat harder even before the front door opened. Despite the cool morning air, sweat formed on his brow, and his breathing became short. Cameron swung the rifle from left to right as Jansen walked to the garage. The cross hairs stayed centered on the side of the target's head for less than half the trek. Cameron couldn't believe how nervous he was. His normally steady aim was anything but. Talking himself down, he reminded himself of the backup that was in place. If he missed, everything would be fine. Lukas and Juarez would take care of things.

This approach did not work. Cameron knew he had a relatively easy shot, and if he missed it, Villaume would see it as proof of his amateur status. When the car started to back out of the garage, Cameron took a moment to close his eyes and wipe a layer of sweat from his forehead. Counting backward from one-hundred, he concentrated on his breathing in an attempt to slow his pulse. Everything needed to be brought back down into the zone, and he would be fine.

Villaume whispered in his ear, "I'll let you know if the woman comes out. Keep the guy in your sights." The car backed out of the garage and turned around in the driveway. When the driver jumped out and ran back into the house, Villaume said, "This is it. When he comes back out, wait as long as you can to shoot until she comes out, but don't let him get behind the wheel. We don't want to have to shoot up the car if we don't have to."

Cameron did not reply. He felt better. His breathing and pulse had slowed. He could feel himself falling into the zone. The cross hairs stayed centered on the open front door. He kept counting down, slower and slower. His breaths were shallow and taken through the nose. When Jim Jansen appeared on the porch a minute later, Cameron was not startled. He simply followed the man as he walked toward the rear of the wagon. After throwing several bags in the back, Jansen reached up and slammed the tailgate closed. The action left his face perfectly bisected in the black cross hairs of the scope. Cameron's right forefinger sat poised over the cold trigger of the Stoner rifle. He heard Villaume start to speak, and at that moment the target turned his head toward the front door. Cameron knew immediately what Villaume was saying, and without waiting another second, he squeezed the trigger in one smooth, constant motion.

SCOTT COLEMAN BROUGHT the pair of binoculars to his eyes and looked down on the Jansens' house. It looked as if they were getting ready to go someplace, and it appeared they were in a hurry; Keeping the binoculars up, he turned his head toward the sliding glass door and in a hushed voice said, "Dan, get the truck out of the garage. We'll come back and sanitize the place later."

If they hurried, they could beat them down to the main road and block them from getting into town. If things could be handled peacefully, they could talk them into coming back to Washington. If they couldn't cut them off, they'd have to follow, and things could get tricky.

Coleman watched as Jim Jansen came back out of the house and threw two large duffel bags into the back of the Subaru station wagon. Jansen's mouth was opening, as if to say something, and then his body lurched violently away from the car and thudded to the gravel driveway. Coleman instinctively crouched several inches lower and moved the binoculars toward the front door. For the briefest of moments, he saw Beth Jansen alive and staring, her mouth agape, at the limp body of her husband lying on the ground. Before she could overcome the shock of watching her husband struck down, a bullet hit her in the forehead and sent her into the bushes next to the porch steps.