A Jack Tate SAS Thriller. Alex Shaw

felt a sadness, and then didn’t want to say anything more.

      The old lady carried on talking, unaware of the distant grief behind his smile. ‘Hill walking is what I love. Give me a good hill and I am happy. Tomorrow a group of us are walking down to Rockport and back. The weather forecast says that it’ll be clear skies and sunshine. Well, goodbye.’

      ‘Good luck and goodbye,’ Oleg said as he watched the woman walk away. He noticed a cuddly panda keychain hung off the back of the day sack. He took a further five minutes to enjoy the scenery before trudging back up the path towards his Tahoe. It would be interesting to see how many yachts and other vessels arrived after the attack and how, if at all, they were affected. He pulled his encrypted sat phone out of his trouser pocket and read the message sent from his employer. The plan was unchanged. His team was to monitor the aftermath of the attack before falling back to the regional operating base six hours after the event.

      Oleg checked his watch; he had time for one extra supply run. He’d drive past the inn, turn up Conway Road and go to Hannaford Supermarket. He may even buy a few bottles of Wild Turkey to take back home; they’d skyrocket in price once the stock in stores ran out and production ended.

       Camden Police Station, Maine

      ‘How’s the coffee?’ Donoghue asked.

      ‘Good. Thanks,’ Tate replied, four hours after the last time he’d faced the chief.

      ‘I thought you Brits drank tea.’

      ‘That’s just the women; real men drink coffee.’

      The police chief nodded. ‘See this?’ He pointed to a couple of sheets of letter-sized paper on his desk. ‘This is all we got from running your prints through the system. Now the first sheet here is what I was meant to see … mundane details about your entry into the US and movements, et cetera. But the second is what I managed to see after I called an old buddy of mine who owes me a favour, and that’s what took the time.’

      ‘Am I still a person of interest, Chief?’

      ‘You are an interesting person, Mr Tate. You were in the SAS.’

      Tate frowned. ‘Was I?’

      Donoghue nodded. ‘That’s why I couldn’t get much on you. It was classified, but the three lines I did eventually get from my buddy, who is connected, really opened my eyes.’ Donoghue looked down at the paper for effect. ‘You joined the Parachute Regiment straight from school and then three years later passed SAS selection. After seventeen years you left the army and took a job with Hush Hearing. And that is as much as I got. So the question I still have is this, why is a former member of an elite Special Forces unit in my town at the same time as a gunman?’

      ‘Happenchance.’

      ‘You see, Tate, I still have an issue here. The tracker on your Tahoe says you were near the scene of the Piper shooting. Care to explain?’

      ‘This morning I drove from Bangor to Camden.’

      ‘And did you stop anywhere?’

      ‘Yes. I needed a piss.’

      ‘Did anyone see you?’

      ‘I hope not; I was pissing in the bushes.’

      ‘You think this is funny, Tate? Some type of joke?’

      ‘No, I don’t.’ Tate fixed Donoghue with his steel-grey eyes. ‘But I do think that your belief I had anything to do with this is hilarious. I insist that you call the British Embassy in Washington and notify them that I am being held, without charge.’

      ‘Now you’re giving me orders?’ Donoghue folded his arms in an attempt to curb his irritation. ‘OK, we’ll do as you say and call them, like you were a US citizen with constitutional rights.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘Who do you really work for?’

      ‘Ask for Simon Hunter; he’s the Commercial Attaché. I met him on a trade mission last year. He’ll vouch for me.’

      ‘I’m sure he will.’ A thin smile appeared on Donoghue’s lips. ‘You see, I looked at your tracker data twice, in fact, after it was brought to my attention that you were near Piper’s place and that you did stop. But then I realised that you couldn’t be the shooter, as you were stationary for less than a minute.’

      ‘I see.’ Tate was annoyed; Donoghue had been fishing and now knew about Simon Hunter.

      ‘And then, of course, your tracker had the SUV outside a pizza parlour thirty miles away at the time of the first shooting.’

      ‘First shooting?’ Tate said, surprised.

      Donoghue ignored the interruption. ‘We contacted the restaurant and sent them your mugshot. They confirmed you were there eating the entire time the tracker shows the Tahoe as stationary.’

      ‘That’s because I was.’ Tate was terse. ‘How many shootings have there been?’

      ‘Two. One yesterday and one today with the same MO – a single .338-calibre round. You see, whilst you were cooling your jets in my holding cell we got the second round identified. It’s a confirmed match to the first. Not a .50 cal, as you said, but a .338, and still big enough to all but split the victims in two.’ Donoghue shook his head. ‘No one ever gets shot in Maine, but now we’ve got a maniac on the loose with a Magnum calibre rifle.’

      Tate nodded. He’d made a mistake. ‘Of course.’

      ‘Of course what?’

      ‘Of course it was a .338. I wasn’t thinking earlier.’

      The police chief folded his arms across his large chest. ‘OK, I’ll bite. Go on.’

      ‘Two shootings, in two days with the same rifle, so unless this was some type of “tag team” operation, it’s reasonable to assume both were carried out by the same shooter. Correct?’

      The police chief nodded.

      ‘And the targets were in urban environments?’

      ‘Well, as urban as small-town Maine gets. The men were at home, in their gardens, nice green places. What’s your point?’

      ‘The shooter may have been able to conceal himself, and subdue the sound of the kill shot, but how did he hide his rifle?’

      ‘You mean as he moved to and from where he took the shot?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘He carried it in a bag?’

      ‘But how big was the bag? Rifles aren’t known as “longs” in the British Army for nothing. A guy carrying a bag as long as a pool cue would be noticed.’

      ‘Simple. He disassembled it.’

      Tate closed his eyes for a moment, thinking, visualising and then carried on, ‘But, as far as I know, there are only two types of precision rifles that can be broken down in the field quickly and reassembled. One is used by the US Army and another by about a dozen different international police units.’

      ‘So that narrows down the weapon used and where it came from? But, Tate, there has to be millions of the one used by the US Army floating around.’

      ‘It wasn’t that one.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘The Remington MSR has a barrel that can be removed to change the weapon’s calibre, not for concealment. And the accuracy of the Remington isn’t what I’d call that of a precision rifle because the barrel can be changed. Things get misaligned – the scope, the barrel and the action.’

      ‘I get it. It’s the other one and this helps me because it’s what, rarer?’

      ‘Especially in .338 calibre. Very rare. You’re looking for a shooter using a German sniper rifle,