The President Is Missing(81)

She finds herself back in the Trebevic mountainside, on the run, in hiding, after it was over, after she turned the tables on the sniper, Ranko, the redheaded Serbian soldier who, for pity or sex or both, had taught her how to fire a rifle.

“Here, again, you’re using your arms too much!” Ranko said as they sat up in the bombed-out nightclub that served as a sniper’s hideaway in the mountains. “I do not understand you, girl. One day you can shoot a bottle of beer off a tree stump from a hundred meters away, and today your mechanics are those of a beginner? Let me show you once more.” Taking the gun from her, settling into the perch. “Hold steady, like this,” he said, his last words before she stuck the kitchen knife into his neck.

Taking his rifle, on which she was now well trained, to the open window of the nightclub overlooking Sarajevo, aiming down at Ranko’s comrades, the patrolling Serbian soldiers who had beaten her father to death and carved a cross in his chest, all for the crime of being Muslim. Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop, firing the rifle in rapid succession, picking them off one after the other after the other, having to lead the last one as he dropped his weapon and sprinted toward the trees.

She hid in the mountains for more than a week afterward, hungry and thirsty and cold, moving about constantly, afraid to stay in the same spot, as they hunted for the young girl who killed six Serbian soldiers, one of them up close and the others from a hundred meters away.

With the pack and rifle on her back, she moves forward gingerly; with each step, she plants her foot before shifting weight onto it. To her right, something jumps, and her heart skips a beat as she reaches for her sidearm. Some little animal, a rabbit or squirrel, gone before she can make it out. She waits for the adrenaline to drain.

“Two kilometers due north,” they tell her in her earbud.

She continues her gentle, quiet movements forward. Her instinct is to move quickly to her spot, but discipline is essential. She doesn’t know these woods. She never scouted the location, as she’d normally prefer. The ground is dark and uneven, obscured by the brush and lack of light, full of tree roots and branches and who knows what else.

Foot forward, weight forward, stop and listen. Foot forward, weight forward, stop and listen. Foot forward, weight for—

Movement.

Up ahead, appearing from around a tree.

The animal is no bigger than a large dog, with thick salt-and-pepper fur, tall ears perked at attention, a long snout, and beady black eyes that focus on her.

There aren’t supposed to be any wolves around here. A coyote? Must be.

A coyote that is standing between her and her destination.

Another one now, a second one, popping its head up, farther down, about the same size.

A third one, a bit smaller and darker in color, separating itself from the others, moving to Bach’s left, eyes on her, something fleshy dripping from its mouth.

A fourth one, to her right. A semicircle of four, in what she can only assume is some kind of formation.

A defensive formation. Or an attack formation.

The latter, she decides.

Eight beady eyes on her.

She takes a step forward and hears a low growl, sees the sides of the first animal’s long snout tremble, revealing teeth—presumably jagged fangs—that she’s too far away to make out. The others, spurred on by their leader, join in, snarling and growling.

Are they coyotes? They’re supposed to be afraid of humans.

Food, she thinks. They must be close to food or already feasting, maybe something big and tasty, like a deer carcass. They must see her as a threat to their lunch.

Unless they see her as the lunch.

She doesn’t have time for this. It would be too risky and time-consuming to alter her path. One side is going to have to move, and it isn’t going to be hers.

Her body otherwise still, she removes her sidearm, her SIG Sauer with the long suppressor.

The lead animal lowers its head, the growling louder, snapping at her.

She aims her weapon at the small space between its eyes. Then she adjusts her aim for its ear and fires once, a single suppressed thwip.

The animal yelps and spins around, bounding away in a flash, nothing worse than a small flesh wound on the tip of its ear. The others disappear just like that, too.

It might have been a problem if they’d all attacked at once, coming from different directions. She would have taken them all out, but it would have required more ammunition and probably made more noise.

It’s always easier just to take out the leader.

If there is nothing else to learn from history, it’s that from humans to animals, from the most primitive to the most civilized, most individuals want to be led.

Take out the leader, and the rest of the pack panics.





Chapter

68



It would be better if it came from you,” I say to Chancellor Richter as we confer in the room I would call the cabin’s family room. “The other leaders in the European Union look to you, Mr. Chancellor. That’s no secret.”

“Yes, well.” Richter places his coffee cup on its saucer, searches for a place to set it down, buying himself a moment to think. It never hurts to stroke the boundless ego of the chancellor, the longest-serving leader in the EU and, my flattery aside, increasingly the most influential.

Never mind the fact that if the virus activates and decisions of war must be made, I will be making the same phone calls, with more or less the same pleas, to the leaders of France, the UK, Spain, Italy, and the other NATO countries.