Robert Ludlum's The Utopia Experiment - By Kyle Mills Page 0,53

was finally in a position to assess their situation. The Afghan was about seventy-five meters to the north, lying behind two boulders tipped against each other. The gap between them was low and just large enough to get his rifle through, making him impervious to gunfire from below, but affording him only a narrow field of vision.

She saw a flash and Grant took another hit, rocking backward with the force of the round against her body armor. For a moment, she didn’t think he was going to be able to right himself, but he threw a hand back and managed to stabilize before flashing her a courageous grin. His teeth were tinted pink with blood.

There was no way she was going to let him die. She’d lost too many friends already.

Randi dropped her M16 and pulled what Deuce called “the new toy” off her back. There was a fist-sized chunk blown off the butt and she couldn’t help wondering what Heckler & Koch was going to charge to fix it. The combination of the XM25’s thirty-five-thousand-dollar price tag and thirteen-pound weight had made her consider leaving it at home, but Deuce convince her otherwise. It seemed that his sixth sense for combat had come through again.

Randi was chambering the twenty-five-millimeter digital round when another shot sounded, quickly followed by the now-familiar thud of an impact against Kevlar.

“I think that one cracked a rib,” Grant said just loud enough for her to hear. “I would really appreciate it if you’d kill that guy.”

“Working on it.”

The Afghan didn’t have an angle on her so she rose up and sighted through a scope that she prayed hadn’t been knocked out of alignment when the butt had been hit.

A laser judged the distance to the boulders the man was hiding behind at seventy-nine meters. Based on the few inches of barrel she could see protruding from the gap, it seemed likely that the rocks were a little less than a meter thick and that he was lying straight out behind them.

She clicked a button near the trigger and added one meter to the range, which would be right around his shoulder blades. Then there was nothing to do but see if the thing was worth the money the CIA had paid for it.

She aimed just over the top of the boulders and squeezed the trigger, feeling the painful jolt of the broken butt against her shoulder. Inside the bullet, a computer calculated the distance it traveled by counting rotations and, at exactly eighty meters, it exploded, sending deadly shrapnel down to earth.

Randi remained motionless, watching the barrel of the gun between the rocks waver and finally tip to the ground.

“Did it work?” Deuce said over her earpiece.

She panned the scope right and saw the telltale pockmarks in the dirt at the correct range, then scanned left and saw more. “Looks good,” she said quietly. “But I can’t guarantee anything.”

“Only one way to find out,” Deuce responded and then ran back out into the open, sprinting to his previous position. The Afghan’s rifle remained motionless.

“Can you cover me from there, Deuce?”

“No way I can hit him from this position, but I should be able to kick up enough dust to throw off his aim.”

“Do it.”

She dropped the XM25 and drew her sidearm, running up the slope as Deuce fired repeatedly at the ground in front of the gap the man was aiming through.

She slowed when she got within ten meters, watching her footing and trying to remain silent as she closed on the Afghan’s position. At five meters, Deuce stopped firing, concerned about catching her with a ricochet. She held her pistol in front of her, listening to the sudden silence as she edged around the boulders the Afghan was using for cover.

In the end, her weapon wasn’t necessary. He lay motionless with his finger still curled around the trigger and his back riddled with the same tiny holes as the ground around him.

26

Central Marrakech

Morocco

GERHARD EICHMANN MOVED nervously through his home, retrieving a leaf from the ancient fountain in his entryway and checking for anything out of place.

He’d restored the derelict riad almost twenty years ago, combining it with two others and leaving most of the rooms open to three interior courtyards. There were no windows to the outside, creating a surprisingly profound sense of privacy and security in a city choked with shops, hawkers, and tourists.

He’d sent Hafeza to visit her family in the mountains and it was the first time in years that