Free Target America: A Sniper Elite Novel by Scott McEwen

know anything. I’m only a legate—an ambassador!”
    Castañeda stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “I don’t know what more to tell you, amigo. You only have one huevo left. After that, Lorena will cut out your eyes. And after that . . .” He sighed and held out his hands in exasperation. “After that, I fear life will become very unpleasant for you.”
    Lorena took a bloody grip on his scrotum once more.
    “Stop!” Dudaev shouted, gnashing his teeth in agony and self-loathing, knowing he deserved this fate for having strayed from the path; for having spent the last month living in sin. “I will tell you,” he sobbed shamefully. “Please, just no more cutting—for the love of Allah!”
    “Okay then, amigo,” Castañeda said softly, patting the Chechen on the shoulder. “No more cutting, I promise. Now tell me what you know.”
    After Dudaev spilled his guts about the two Russian-made RA-115s, Castañeda signaled Tanya to cut his throat. He would use the information when the time was right. When he needed to save himself, he would contact the CIA.

12
    LANGLEY
    Robert Pope, director of SAD, the Special Activities Division of the CIA, arrived at the office of the CIA director, George Shroyer. The director and his deputy, Cletus Webb, were expecting him.
    “Good morning,” he said, taking a seat in front of Shroyer’s desk. Pope, a tall man in his midsixties with bright blue eyes and a head of thick white hair, was regarded as somewhat eccentric by his CIA counterparts.
    “Good morning.” Shroyer was a hawk-faced individual with a bony nose and peering green eyes. He wouldn’t have dared let on, but he’d been extremely relieved when Pope had requested an immediate meeting. On a personal level, he didn’t care for Pope; he was a little bit afraid of him. But he knew that Pope was probably the most gifted member of the US intelligence community, and if he was asking for a meeting less than twenty-four hours after a nuclear bomb had been detonated on American soil—which was what the army had determined to be the case—there was a good chance he had something important to share.
    The president had gone surprisingly easy on Shroyer and the directors of the NSA and FBI during their closed meeting in the Oval Office. All three had expected him to ream their asses good for having been caught completely unaware by what was now being called the “New Mexico Event,” particularly with the presidential election only a couple of months away, but the president was leading in the polls by a margin of greater than 20 percent, and his opponent was seen as weak on foreign policy and even weaker on national defense. The president had crushed him during the first televised debate, and the sad truth was that a terrorist attack on the United States would probably only serve to lock up his reelection. Conspiracy theorists were already lighting up the web, accusing the president of having staged the New Mexico Event for that very reason.
    If Pope were able to provide Shroyer with something actionable that he could take to the White House, that would put the CIA far out in front of both the FBI and the NSA, which hadn’t been able to provide any intel at all.
    “What can we do for you, Bob?” Shroyer asked, concealing the eager anxiety rising in his gut.
    Pope offered a small flash drive over the desk. “There’s a WMA file on there I think you gentlemen should find interesting.”
    Shroyer clicked the audio file, and the three of them sat listening to the phone conversation between Kashkin and the man with the Arabic accent. When the exchange ended, Shroyer sat gazing quietly at Webb.
    Webb understood that he was expected to speak first so that Shroyer would be less likely to end up looking ignorant in front of Pope. “What did we just hear, Bob? Who are they?”
    “The Arabic voice was Muhammad Faisal,” Pope replied. “He’s a very minor member of the House of Saud who became a naturalized