Dimitry taught them everything except how to retreat. In order to keep the gunfire to a minimum, the men carried unloaded weapons and used the age-old “bang, bang!” method of simulating gunfire on the targets.
After dinner they were free to drink, smoke, and joke, bonding in the same manner that men have done under similar circumstances since the beginning of time. Many boasted about sexual conquests, either real or imagined. Tanya was a favorite topic. She was responsible for delivering groceries to the team on a semiregular basis, and the men all looked forward to ogling her tight body when she came to call. Cell phones were not permitted and, other than the satellite television that seemed to always land on adult entertainment channels, she was their only link to the outside world.
They trained six days per week and quickly began to act as a cohesive team. They would never stand a chance against a real military unit but, with the element of surprise on their side, they would get the job done. The key would be the target package, and Vitya was building a vivid intelligence picture on that front.
* * *
Vitya watched the screen of the iPad, steering the drone to track the vehicle’s progress below. The custom SUV was easy to spot, making target identification a simple process. He could hear the whine of its powerful engine as it climbed the hill. The driver eased off the accelerator as the vehicle crested the rise, moving almost silently as it approached the tight turn ahead.
He was close enough to see the driver’s bearded face as the Toyota rolled past, his attention diverted to something below, probably a phone or perhaps the stereo. The brakes engaged as the hairpin curve approached, and Vitya saw the red lights illuminated as the vehicle reached the corner. One couldn’t take this blind turn at more than 30 miles per hour and the thick copse of evergreens provided the ideal concealment that his team would need. That turn was where James Reece would die.
CHAPTER 25
Kumba Ranch, Flathead Valley, Montana
REECE STOOD BAREFOOT, STARING out at the lake behind his cabin. The water was dead calm, without the slightest breeze to ripple its surface. He adjusted his feet on the soft carpet of short pine needles and squatted to grasp the thick handle of the seventy-pound kettlebell before him. Exhaling sharply, he thrust his hips forward, driving the cast iron weight to full extension, keeping his core muscles flexed as it floated briefly at the top of its arc. Gravity swung the bell downward, and he let it fall between his legs as he sucked a breath of air into his lungs. Up he came again, repeating the process until he’d done ten perfect swings and set the weight back onto the ground. He dropped to his chest and executed ten push-ups, then went back to the kettlebell, alternating reps until he’d performed a hundred of each.
His chest heaving and his shoulders searing with lactic acid, he picked up his bow and tried to get his breathing under control as he drew. His arms felt the let-off of tension as the cams engaged, and his eye found the green fiber optic sight pin through the rear peep entwined in the bow’s taut string. The aperture of his vision blurred everything but the sight as his thumb found the cold aluminum of the release. He didn’t fight the pin’s movement, but increased tension using his upper back muscles, transitioning that pressure naturally to his thumb, the sight picture settling into an ever-decreasing orbit at the target’s center. The snap of the bowstring echoed in his ears as the carbon fiber arrow sped from zero to 340 feet per second in an instant. His eyes did their best to track the arrow during its half-second flight and his ears registered the hollow “twock” of its impact on the target.
He drank water from a Nalgene bottle as he caught his breath and progressed to a series of Turkish get-ups, box jumps, shoulder presses, and goblet squats with kettlebells of various sizes. He alternated each section of his workout with a shot or two from his bow in preparation for a bugling elk at thirty yards. To prepare for just such a moment, Reece practiced shooting under the stress of a tough training regimen.
His combined workout and archery session had lasted the better part of an hour. After a quick shower, he slipped on a pair of semi-clean jeans,