The Sniper and the Wolf by Scott McEwen, Thomas Koloniar Read Free Book Online

the water as he kicked hard for the yacht. There was no place else to go. St. Paul’s Island was entirely flat, with no cover except for a statue of the island’s namesake on the far side. Brody moaned in Gil’s arms, unable to swim because his hands were locked onto his mangled privates.
    Dragunov and the other three men swam as fast as they could, porpoising like dolphins to make themselves as difficult to hit as possible. Gil was unable to drop below the surface because of Brody, so he concentrated on making as little wake as possible as he kicked his feet, stroking with one arm. He couldn’t hear the incoming rounds, but from the angle they were striking the water, he could tell that they were coming from the Maltese shoreline to the south.
    “The only easy day was yesterday,” he muttered, certain he would never make it out of the water alive.
    Another of Dragunov’s men cried out and began to flounder, shot through both lungs. Within a few seconds, he sank beneath the water and did not resurface as Gil stroked steadily past the point where he’d gone down.
    Gil watched the stars to keep his heading, estimating that they had probably covered half the distance to the Palinouros , and glad that shark attacks in the Mediterranean were basically unheard of.The way Brody was gushing blood would have been bad news in most other seas.
    Another Spetsnaz man cried out, hit in the leg, but he kept swimming as best he could. Unable to continue porpoising, he was quickly zeroed for a second shot and hit through the torso. He made no sound at all this time, but sank at once and did not return to the surface.
    With fifty yards to go, the firing stopped inexplicably, and they made it to the stern of the Palinouros without taking any more casualties. There were four of them left alive, but by the time Gil and Dragunov managed to haul Brody from the water and onto the low-riding stern of the yacht, Gil could see the young man was nearly bled out.
    Dragunov’s only other remaining team member, a Russian Mongol named Terbish, provided cover with his pistol as Gil and Dragunov tended to the quickly dying Brody.
    Dragunov hissed, “He could have gotten you killed. You should have left him. ”
    “That’s not how SEALs operate,” Gil said, unzipping Brody’s wet suit for a look at the wound and finding that the young man’s penis and most of the scrotum were completely shot away. Aggravated that the man was going to die, he looked at Dragunov, the two of them able to see each other clearly in the yacht’s stern lights. “And we don’t shoot our own men for falling behind on a mission, either.”
    Dragunov smirked. “Then you don’t have what it takes to be Spetsnaz.”
    “You got that right.” Gil zipped Brody’s wet suit closed. There was nothing to be done for him. He was dead a few moments later, and the three of them formed up to move forward with Dragunov at the head of the column.
    The sight of a dead middy sprawled out in the lower passageway stopped them in their tracks. She had once been a pretty young woman with long blond hair, but she’d been shot in the head, and one of her eyes was now badly distended in an eight-ball hemorrhage, indicating that she had not died instantly.
    “We’re too late,” Dragunov whispered. He mumbled something to Terbish in Russian and then looked back at Gil, who covered the rear. “Kovalenko and his men have already been aboard.”
    Gil had begun to suspect as much by the time they reached the vessel without taking any fire from the crew. He nodded, gripping his pistol. As they began to move forward again, a furious firefight erupted near the Maltese shore some five hundred yards away. The shooting reached a murderous crescendo and then died off after ten seconds of constant firing.
    Gil locked eyes with Dragunov. “We’d better hurry the fuck up if we’re gonna do this!”

7
    MALTA
    Prone on the deck of a small charter boat, the frustrated Kovalenko couldn’t see the