“Did you know we were on the wrong side of the border?” They heard the buzz of the approaching choppers, and Swanson popped a smoke grenade to signal their location.
“I was always lousy at map-reading,” Swanson grinned. “That bastard needed killing and now he’s dead. That was the job. Fuck the border.”
CHAPTER 1
THE BOATMAN STOOD WAITING in the cold fog, a ragged apparition resting against a long oar that disappeared into the black water. He smelled of death, and his robe pulsed in the stiff wind. “Do you have another one?”
“No. Not this time.” Kyle Swanson recognized the five silent passengers seated in the low craft, for he had brought them all here, one by one. They stared at nothing, with empty and lifeless eyes, and did not know him.
“Then I still have an empty seat,” said the Boatman. “Will you furnish someone else soon?”
“I don’t know. Probably. Maybe not.” Over the Boatman’s shoulder, he saw tongues of fire raging along the far shore.
“No.”
The spectral figure shook its head and exhaled a foul odor. “I cannot leave with an empty seat.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Swanson looked about, but there was no one else around. He carefully put down his fully loaded M40A1 sniper rifle, unsnapped the web gear, and let the pack fall away. He took off blocks of C-4 explosive and tossed them aside. Two razor-sharp knives, gleaming blades streaked with blood. A silenced 9 mm pistol. A sawed-off shotgun. An M-16 and an AK-47 and a Claymore mine and its clacker. Smoke, fragmentation, and thermite grenades. A small satellite radio. All the tools of the sniper’s trade. He wanted to hold on to something. “Can I keep my boots?”