Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

was perfect. A death funnel, perfect for what he had in mind. Egress might be tricky after he took the shots. Getting his ass outta there was nine-tenths of his strategic plan – but surprise was on his side. Shit like this just didn’t go down in a sleepy little town like Juneau. The shock of shattered glass and quarts of blood would lock the attention of any passersby onto the marshals’ sedan. Childers wouldn’t need to look. His Nemesis Vanquish would be dead on target. And he knew from experience what a .308 round would do to a car window or a human brain pan.

He used his toe to downshift, smiling behind his helmet visor. They’d be talking about this ambush down at the Viking Bar for years, and everywhere else too. No one would ever figure out who pulled it off, but they’d talk about it, and that was good enough for Dallas Childers. He was too slick to get caught, too careful. The Yamaha was stolen. He’d burn it after, just to be sure he hadn’t left any DNA behind. It was crazy how often you got cut running through the brush and didn’t realize it until later. He didn’t want to get caught because some twig scratched his face and a drop of his blood or sweat got on the handlebars. Being a shooter was about paying attention to details – wind direction, humidity, angle of the sun. Now that he was no longer putting warheads on foreheads for Uncle Sam, he had to watch his own DNA as well. Hell, he’d heard the CSI suits could get markers from the condensation of your breath. He’d burn everything after the hit – bike, helmet, clothes, all of it. The beloved .308 Vanquish would go over the side too, deep into the water of Stephens Passage. The entire setup was a piece of expensive art – ten grand including the bolt action rifle, suppressor, and optic – but it was still just a machine. Dollarhyde had already bought him another one.

Childers rolled on the throttle, staying just under the speed limit as he passed the tidal flats of the Gastineau Channel and the crumbling concrete “stumps,” bases of long-gone antennas for the FAA. A stiff wind shoved the bike right, thankfully pushing back the stench of the landfill. A copse of tangled willow and birch trees ran along the road on his left, just before the junction with Egan, the main thoroughfare between Mendenhall Valley and Juneau proper.

The little Yamaha was light, a street-legal dirt bike. He’d stash it in the willows and set up well before the marshals got there. This didn’t require a ghillie – one of those shaggy suits worn by snipers to blend into their surroundings. The grass was thick, and the scrub willows exploded with spring foliage. The entire thicket off the side of the road was one big ghillie suit. He just needed to wear neutral colors – urban camouflage that wouldn’t draw second looks while he was on the bike – and then disappear into the mottled shadows of the trees.

This morning would have been better, when the driver was nearest his side of the road, but these guys were US marshals. He wanted to get a look at how they did things first.

He’d stayed in the Marine Corps long enough to deploy twice, the last as a scout sniper where he learned the value of surveillance. He was meant for that kind of life and would have still been in the thick of it too, but for that bitch in Okinawa. She completely lost her shit after she sent him the wrong signals and he tried to help himself to a little Japanese squeeze. Her brother had tried to defend her honor and got his ass beat for the trouble. The fight had not only been enjoyable, it had saved Childers from the brig. The brother turned out to be a low-level enforcer for the yakuza, so Childers was able to claim self-defense. It wasn’t his fault he was a better fighter than the Japanese thug. In the end, the Marine Corps decided that they wouldn’t send Childers to prison, but they didn’t want him around either.

He’d returned home to northern Idaho and practiced his shooting, working the odd backhoe job until he got on full time at a silver mine in Wallace. The foreman identified him immediately as someone who could help “sort things out.” Childers ended up bloodying his knuckles for management by the end of the first month. Higher-ups at the mine eventually learned that their new backhoe operator had skills far beyond the bucket. Soon, he was sorting out a few of their most sensitive issues. Most of the time he just tuned up troublemakers. Once in a while, though, some hard case ended at the bottom of an abandoned shaft or flooded gravel pit deep in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains. Unfortunately, one of those hard cases Childers helped disappear turned out to be a shirttail relative of the Shoshone County Sheriff.

The boss started tying up loose ends, and Childers figured he might end up at the bottom of a mine shaft himself. He abandoned the stuff in his apartment and drove all night to Seattle, where he caught a boat to Alaska. People like Grimsson and Dollarhyde were magnets to bent men like Childers. It didn’t take long for them to find one another. The job at the Valkyrie mine was a perfect fit. Equipment work was steady, and there was just enough sorting out to hold his interest. He’d never taken out a fed before – or any kind of cop – but they didn’t have magical tactical powers. Hell, these marshals drove with their heads so far up their asses that he’d be able to pop everyone in the car and then ride away without breaking a sweat. Sure, he could get the needle in Terre Haute – if he got caught.