Free Dead Zero by Stephen Hunter

a rifle shot, and beat it before the locals got organized. The rifle was a Dragunov, expendable, untraceable.”
    “Got it.”
    “A day out, the team got hit. We don’t know what happened, but they were jumped by another sniper team and the spotter was killed, the commo equipment was totaled, the sergeant, we think, was hit.”
    “I’m guessing he didn’t turn back.”
    “You got that right. Very impressive individual. Your type of guy. You, in a way, twenty years ago at the top of your game. Gunny Sergeant Ray Cruz, full name Reyes Fidencio Cruz, forty-two years old, father a retired lieutenant commander, U.S. Navy, of Portuguese ancestry named Tomas Cruz, mother a Philippine national, Urlinda Flores Marbella. He grew up essentially on the big naval station at Subic near Cebu City, where his dad became head of the golf club as a second career. The kid should have been a pro golfer. Instead he became a sniper.”
    “Good for him.”
    “Pretty outstanding guy. Everybody wanted him to go to Annapolis, but he went to UCLA instead. A shooter. NRA junior champion small bore, three years running. Went distinguished in high power in a singlesummer before he was twenty. Talent with the rifles. High IQ. Good grades. Just the best.”
    “Not your country-boy sniper type. Why isn’t he running a software company somewhere?
    “Because his parents were killed in an auto accident and it really upset him. He joined the marines in ninety-one, won a batch of marksmanship awards, served with distinction in the first Gulf thing. He was offered commissions up the wazoo but wanted to stay a sniper. He thought it was a growth industry, I suppose.”
    “He was right.”
    “Was he ever. This is his fifth deployment after two in Iraq, two previous in Afghanistan. Hit twice, fast recovery. Incredible record all the way through. Now this is a guy who could have quit at any time, gone to work for big dollars at some security multinational. He could have taken a commission, retired a colonel, gone to work for GE or somebody. He could have started his own tactical school, run SWAT people and wannabes through for a thousand bucks a head a day and lived in the big house. He could have joined the Bureau, Secret Service, the Agency, State Department security, any outfit with initials instead of a name. Fool for duty. Stays operational, stays in the suck. Seems to love the suck. Goes out on this mission and gets whacked and keeps on going, full-tilt boogie.”
    “What happened?” Bob asked, loving the sniper already—
where are we going to find more people like him?
—and fearing the answer.
    “Somehow, again, we’re not sure how, he survived the first hit, he worked some fancy clever game on his pursuers and evaded them, and he made it to the target, but they were on his tail.”
    “How do you know all this?”
    “He was carrying a GPS and transmitter and the satellite could track. At the battalion’s S-Two bunker they were getting a real-time feed from a recon drone the whole time. It was Monday Night Football. They have his signal at the shooting site at the time of the hit.”
    “He made the hit?”
    “There was no hit. There was a mysterious explosion. Thirty-onepeople died.”
    “That was on TV too,” said Susan.
    “Another night I must have missed,” said Bob.
    “The hotel—he was on the roof—was cratered. Nobody knows how or why. Missile? Doubtful, as we had no Reapers in the area—”
    “The drones are our program,” said Susan. “We had no missile activity at that time. I’ve gone over the records very carefully. Ugh, I went there, a princess like me, and talked to the on-the-ground people.”
    “Maybe your outfit even has secrets from you.”
    “This isn’t
The Bourne Conspiracy,
Swagger,” she said.
    “What’s that?”
    “Never mind.”
    “Gas-main explosion. IED,” continued Nick. “Ammo cache, bomb factory, nobody knows, and our forensics people weren’t invited in to go through the wreckage. The