by Jack Ketchum
The man who refers to himself as TapTap on the message boards of the Deep Web jogs along a sidewalk that skirts a municipal park in a midsize city on the Great Plains. There’s still a chilly bite to the early morning air and, for the moment, he’s alone. He contemplates the message he received from The Idea Man the previous evening.
The Idea Man is a stranger to TapTap, and yet he somehow knew about TapTap’s past, because he introduced his idea of charity assassinations as a way to atone for past mistakes. People didn’t understand how grueling life as a cop could be. It had quickly become apparent to TapTap that fighting the good fight would be a never-ending—and all-too-often losing—battle. It wasn’t long before he was on the take, turning a blind eye to certain activities and transactions. Sometimes not all the evidence seized at crime scenes made its way to the evidence room. He made extra cash on the side with the resale of these items. And he’d been smart enough to leave the force the moment he felt the noose tightening around his neck. He relocated and now supplemented his income by drawing on skills from his past. He’d received several commendation bars for his marksmanship, and kept the same cool detachment he had at target practice when the targets were moving and shooting back.
Hits paid well, or well enough, for him to live comfortably despite his minimum wage job. The Idea Man wanted pros to assume the added travel expenses and additional time needed to plan a hit. And for what? To satisfy the bloodthirsty unwashed masses? To quell their own guilty consciences?
Another man rounded the bend and came jogging toward him. TapTap did not slow his pace, but only glanced back as they neared. The sidewalk remained clear. TapTap and the approaching man had crossed paths jogging three consecutive mornings now.
When fifteen feet separated the men, TapTap reached behind his back with his left hand. He drew his .22 and emptied the clip into the other jogger’s chest at point-blank range. Then he increased his pace, leaving both the dead man and any further consideration of The Idea Man’s plan behind.
Across the nation, other professional killers, a few master hit men whom The Idea Man had reached out to directly—and the journeymen who read his message board proposal—came to the same conclusion. This idealistic and unworkable idea was not for them.
Last Week
“Have you given my proposal any further consideration?”
The Wild Card shakes off a feeling of déjà vu and swallows the last of the scotch in his tumbler. The liquid sears his throat and his stomach feels like a pit of writhing snakes. He runs his fingers through his tangled hair and ponders another sunset. This is a similar location, but a different situation.
The drinks are top-shelf. The furniture is immaculate. This house also perches at the top of a hill. But this is not The Idea Man; this is The Devil’s Advocate. How he located The Wild Card has not been divulged. But he has contacted him to set up this clandestine meeting. Other professionals would be content to exchange information on the Deep Web, but The Devil’s Advocate knows that The Wild Card insists on doing business face-to-face. He’s contacted The Wild Card and he’s offered a counterproposal.
“I’m torn. I see his side of it, and I see yours.”
The Devil’s Advocate leans forward, strong hands gripping the armrests of his Lodgepole Pine throne. “His idea is idiotic; a pipe dream. Contract killers doing charity work? Conscience plays no part of this! Who’s he trying to fool?”
The Wild Card says nothing. He fingers the rim of his tumbler and waits for his host to continue. “Anyone misguided enough to follow through on his crazy notions risks exposing themselves to law enforcement, and worse, public scrutiny. They draw back the veil. We’re all exposed.” The Devil’s Advocate stabs the air between them with a meaty finger as if picking his guest out of a lineup.
The Wild Card takes this as his cue. “He’s only spoken to a few of us. Maybe his idea will fail to gain any traction and the movement will fizzle.”
The Devil’s Advocate bares his teeth in a snarl. “The fact that you just referred to it as a ‘movement’ tells me that we need to nip this in the bud. And we need to do it now.”
“Are you putting a price on his head?”
“I am.”
“How many zeros are we talking about for the hit? No Bitcoin in an escrow account either; I only take cash.”
The Devil’s Advocate gives him a number. The Wild Card decides it is enough.
By the Books squeezes the trigger from his rooftop perch. The cannibalistic old man who’d been found not guilty by reason of insanity drops to the sidewalk like a sack of rotten produce. By the Books knows everyone in the city will sleep better tonight.
Three hundred eighty miles south, Lady Justice snaps the neck of a celebrity who had been accused of beheading his live-in girlfriend. In a case that divided the nation, the celebrity went free. Now, at last, justice has been served.
The next day, in Los Angeles, The Introvert serves a hazelnut and strychnine Café Latte to an aspiring actress who has delivered her junkie roommate into the hands of a producer of snuff films.
The Wild Card knocks on the door of his intended victim. His heart hammers in his chest while he waits. The Idea Man opens the door and The Wild Card shoots him five times; one slug through each eye socket and three more slugs into his heart.
This Week
It is nightfall.
“I see you took care of our mutual problem. Quick and effective, but headline-grabbing,” The Devil’s Advocate frowns. “You risked too much publicity.”
“I carried out a hit.” The Wild Card says, gazing at his host. “You never specified what method I should use. The subject you wanted eliminated is out of the equation, and I appreciate your prompt payment.”
The Devil’s Advocate sighs. “It was reckless, but it’s done. Still, I think it would be for the best if we were to never meet again.”
“I agree.” The Wild Card draws his weapon and once again pulls the trigger. This time it’s a single shot to the temple. He wipes his prints from the gun, and places it in the other man’s hand. He leaves The Devil’s Advocate in a growing puddle of blood.
The Wild Card hopes the right people find out about The Idea Man’s murder. He hopes they will spread the word about his idea with the fervent zeal of religious converts. If the average citizen, fed up with all the injustices and loopholes of the legal system, begins to condone these public service assassinations, the entire justice system could change.
“Let the revolution begin,” The Wild Card whispers, and disappears into the darkness.
TANTSE SO SMERT’YU
(DANCING WITH DEATH)
BY ERNESTUS JIMINY CHALD
A tall Kazakhstani man enters the doorway of a sumptuous penthouse suite on the top floor of the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Chicago, dressed in black and carrying a large tactical briefcase. He walks purposefully toward a set of large casement windows overlooking Grant Park, and sets his briefcase on a nearby table. A fly on the wall could tell that this room’s mysterious occupant is enacting something rehearsed—something he’s plotted and played out in his mind in great detail leading up to this moment. There is a look of total detachment in his eyes, which peer out coldly from behind a pair of lightly tinted spectacles.
With methodical precision, he opens his briefcase, revealing the unassembled components of a .50 caliber Windrunner M96 sniper rifle. He removes each of the rifle’s five pieces individually from the briefcase’s thermal-lined interior, and, in a matter of moments, holds in his hands a fully assembled long-distance implement of murder. He then retrieves two pillows from the suite’s impeccably made king-sized bed and places them on the carpet to rest his knees upon as he perches himself in front of his window of choice, one that affords him an unimpeded view of the bustling park below. Once he’s completed building his nest, the assassin draws a cigarillo out of a crumpled pack in his hoxter and waits. He shifts his gaze periodically from the digital interface of his wristwatch to his scope’s eyepiece, which he’s focu
sed at a podium on a large stage that’s been erected in the park below. A massive crowd of spectators has gathered around this stage, and continues to grow as the clock inches its way toward six p.m.
Emblazoned across the front of the podium his scope is locked upon is the Presidential Seal. The assassin occupies himself by counting the arrows and stars depicted on the seal while softly whistling the melody of “Hail to the Chief.” At half past six, a group of political figures emerges and ascends the stage flanked by Secret Service agents wearing dark suits, black sunglasses, and impassive expressions. The crowd cheers uproariously as the President approaches the podium and begins to address them—all smiles and assertive hand gestures—utterly oblivious of the high-powered, magazine-fed rifle currently aimed directly at his forehead. The Kazakhstani’s breathing grows shallow and focused as he wraps his index finger gently around his M96’s trigger and braces himself for the powerful recoil his body’s about to absorb.
He inhales his pre-squeeze breath slowly and deeply, deriving a warped sense of satisfaction in knowing that, the moment he begins to expel this very breath, his finger will exert a slight flicker of pressure against his trigger, and he will see the President’s face explode instantaneously. Just as his finger begins to flex, the tip of a carbon-steel broadhead arrow, having made a precise trajectory from the back of his skull and through his brain, pierces through the sniper’s squinting left eye, and he slumps over dead instantly. Hovering above the Kazakhstani’s lifeless body is the silhouette of a dark, fearsome figure wearing a hooded cloak of charcoal gray and brandishing a massive arbalest. As this specter emerges further into the light to inspect its kill, its ballistic face mask—molded to resemble the face of a stylized ghost—peers out vacantly from beneath the hood of its heavy cloak.
With great precision and speed, the specter’s gloved hands open a large trolley case and remove a folded triage tarp, which is quickly unfolded and spread across the suite’s plush carpeting. The sniper’s corpse is then dragged into the center of the tarp, the fatal arrow still lodged firmly in its skull. The hooded figure splays the sniper’s arms and legs apart before retrieving a pneumatic surgical saw from a suitcase and attaching the saw’s pressurized fluid inlet to a small helium gas compressor. The saw emits a soft whine as its blade begins to spin, tearing through the corpse’s clothing, flesh, and bone like lunch meat. Blood begins to pool on the tarp as the sniper’s extremities are removed one by one and placed inside the arbalester’s suitcase, which is lined with heavy-duty polyethylene plastic.
When the body has been separated into eleven pieces and each of these pieces has been stuffed inside the suitcase, the Kazakhstani’s M96 is field-stripped and situated neatly back in the dead man’s briefcase, which is then stuffed on top of his dismembered remains. The masked specter quickly refolds the gore-splattered triage tarp and places it inside a separate compartment of the suitcase before field-stripping the arbalest and situating it alongside its broadhead quiver in the luggage’s anterior compartment. With the crime scene thoroughly stripped of evidence, the specter begins to undress.
Beneath its hooded cloak, the arbalester is clad in black from head to toe—a black, Kevlar-reinforced ballistic bodysuit, black carbon fiber gloves, black tactical boots, black utility belt, and, most strikingly, that menacing black facial helmet. When the specter unbuckles and removes its helmet, the face of a beautiful young woman is revealed—a woman with dark Slavic eyes and long auburn hair that spills out of her helmet and cascades down her shoulders. She stands five foot six, and her body is a fine-tuned specimen of impeccably toned musculature and curves. At first sight, one might even mistake her for a professional dancer; few would peg her as the merciless killing machine that she actually is.
Her name is Ogrifina Voronina, but those enmeshed in the insidious underworld of murderers-for-hire know only her nom de guerre—Prizrak (“The Wraith”). She is one of only a small handful of what are known in her native tongue as Ubitsayedi—assassins that specialize in assassinating other assassins—in the world. She is the sole surviving member of the legendary Hishniki clan, an assassin sect whose lineage can be traced back more than two-hundred fifty years to Grigory Lagunov, the assassin who exterminated Peter III in 1762. Although the Hishniki are no more, their dynasty of dominance in the assassin underworld lives on through Ogrifina, who has earned her position at the top of the Ubitsayed food chain under the Prizrak guise by successfully executing one contract after another for more than a decade now. The name alone—Prizrak—is enough to cause even the world’s most hardened assassins to shudder. This fear-inciting name, for them, is synonymous with death ... for wherever Prizrak goes, death follows.
Ogrifina peels off her tactical gear one shred at a time until she’s down to bare flesh, then begins retrieving fresh articles of clothing—a high-necked floral sundress, whale-net stockings, red pumps, a wide-brimmed hat, and a pair of oversized sunglasses with heart-shaped frames—from her suitcase’s anterior compartment and dresses herself. She then folds her Prizrak gear, places it in her suitcase’s clean anterior compartment, and gives the suite a final once-over before exiting the room, suitcase in tow, looking much like a tourist as she strolls casually down the hall to a nearby elevator. In a matter of moments, she finds herself ambling down the street, blending in perfectly with passersby as she makes her way toward the lakefront where a docked boat awaits her. A muscular Russian man with grizzled hair and a bushy mustache stands on deck, his arms folded. A look of relief comes across his face when he sees Ogrifina approaching.
He doesn’t ask her any questions or even greet her verbally. He simply smiles and waves her on board. As the boat sails away, Ogrifina watches the monumental Chicago skyline shrink slowly away from view, disappearing in the night. Once the city is only scarcely visible, she opens her suitcase and begins to scatter its contents in the deep, murky waters of Lake Michigan. When the suitcase has been emptied, she casts it overboard and watches it sink slowly away.
To some, the events that transpired on this day in the life of Ogrifina Voronina might seem grisly and traumatic. To Ogrifina, it was just another day on the job.
Ogrifina often finds herself lying awake at night reminiscing about her past. As a child, when most girls her age were busy playing with dolls and studying ballet, she was performing complex assassination drills underground in the Hishniki hive, which was located in Uliuiu Cherkechekh—“The Valley of Death” in western Yakutia. Her father, Vasily Voronin, was a fifth-generation Hishnik and the clan’s elected leader. A legendary and formidable figure in the ubitsa underworld, Vasily could trace his own lineage with the clan back to its origins.
At the time of Ogrifina’s birth, there were sixteen Hishniki living in the clan’s subterranean hive. Each of them had received the same highly specialized training as Ogrifina herself. Being a Voronin entitled her to no special treatment. She was Vasily’s daughter—his blood—and he expected her performance to reflect that. Rather than teaching her social etiquette, or instilling in her a sense of conventional morality, he taught his daughter ubitsa etiquette—the etiquette of death. He honed her awareness and acceptance of the fragility of life—the fact that it may be taken from anyone in a single calculated instant. Strong and weak alike—anyone can die in the blink of an eye.
By the age of thirteen, Ogrifina was being jobbed out to several of Vasily’s most notable contractors. As a child—and somewhat of an assassination prodigy—it was easy for her to complete many contracts, as nobody expected a lovable little girl to be a highly trained murderess in disguise. Initially, most of her targets were low-level grifters, hitmen, and extortionists. But, as her skills advanced, her father promoted her to higher-profile assignments—high-ranking clergymen, politicians, and, ultimately, other assassins. The need for Ubitsayedi was greater than ever. Assassins tend to be a duplicitous lot. Many will default on jobs abruptly without warning (take-the-money-and-runners), leaving their contractors, who are often mere middlemen themselves, to
face whatever ramifications may come as a result of their failed or botched jobs. Unscrupulous and self-motivated, many assassins are also easily bribed. All it often takes is a better offer from their target to make an assassin train the old crosshairs back around on the original contractor.
Of course, these sorts of actions are frowned upon by the contractors themselves. To let an assassin take advantage of them without facing grievous repercussions would make the contractors look unwary and impotent. Therefore, when an assassin defaults on a job—for whatever reason—the contractors find themselves in the unenviable position of having to hire another assassin to eliminate the assassin who screwed them over. This is where Ubitsayedi come into play. As assassins themselves, they know how their peers think. They know all the tricks and tools of the trade—how to disappear when shit needs to blow over, and how to track down those who’ve already disappeared.
As she reclines in her bed at night reminiscing, certain memories tend to be recalled more vividly and with greater frequency in Ogrifina’s mind than others. She can barely remember her mother’s face, for example—it has been lost with the passage of time. Yet she can remember as if it had occurred just yesterday the face of the first man she assassinated at the age of thirteen (an unsavory swindler and art forger who swindled the wrong person and found himself choking on a bowl of borscht Ogrifina had covertly sprinkled with cyanide). Most vividly of all, Ogrifina remembers her father and the countless hours of brutal, intensive training she’d spent under his strict tutelage—the same sort of training he’d received himself from his own father before him. Manufacturing human killing machines was what the Hishniki clan had done since its inception, and nobody has ever done it better.