by Scott Blade
Gregor showed the rifle to them. It was a bolt-action hunter rifle. A German thing that Widow had never heard of.
“This is an easy rifle to get here. It was bought easily. The previous owner got it with a license.”
Tiller asked a needless question.
“What did he do?”
Cassidy said, “He climbed up a bell tower in an old church. Shot four people. And then jumped off the roof.”
Tiller said nothing to that.
Gregor said, “He saw it in an American movie.”
Widow said, “This is a hunting rifle.”
“So?”
“So, Lenny was shot from two miles away. He wasn’t shot with this.”
“My point is that we don’t know who sold the weapon to the killer. Or how the weapon got into the country. Or even if the guy bought it locally.”
“You think he snuck it in?” Widow asked.
“No way!”
Cassidy said, “It’s possible that he flew it in legally. Plenty of airlines will allow transportation of rifles with proper paperwork. He could’ve flown it into London.”
“Come on. You guys checked all that stuff already.”
Cassidy said nothing.
“Did you find a sniper rifle with that kind of range that will fire this bullet?”
“No. Nothing.”
Tiller said, “Maybe he stole it locally?”
Widow said, “He bought it here. Probably, waited for it for two weeks or a month.”
Gregor placed the rifle down, butt on the floor. He sat in a chair next to it.
“How do you know this for sure?”
“Why are you guys being so confrontational about it?”
Cassidy looked at Gregor and said, “We just need to know.”
Widow reached his hand out, pointed at the laptop.
“Pull up the video from the watermelon again.”
“It’s still up now.”
“Can you see the killer?”
“You know I can. Nothing above the neck. It’s a black blur.”
Widow said, “What’s he wearing?”
“All black.”
“Look at the frame.”
Cassidy looked down at the screen.
“What’s he wearing specifically?”
She studied the black, blurry figure again.
“A black jacket. Maybe canvas. Black shirt underneath. Black pants. I guess black boots.”
“What else?”
“Nothing.”
“Concentrate on the detail.”
“No jewelry. Nothing that distinguishes him from anybody else in Ireland. Not based on this video.”
“Look carefully. Don’t look for the exact details. Look for the normal.”
She looked again, close.
Gregor scooted his chair over and peered over her shoulder. The rifle moved with him. Tiller scooted back and over, around the table. He looked over her other shoulder.
He said, “Just tell us what we’re looking for.”
Another order, Widow thought.
“Keep looking.”
“I see nothing, Widow.”
Cassidy said, “He’s wearing a backpack.”
CHAPTER 20
HE RETURNED TO THE IRISHMAN who had sold him the weapon. A hard rifle to get in Ireland, but not impossible. Nothing was impossible to get if you know the right people and you have the right dollar amount.
He wasn’t from Ireland. He was a foreigner. He was a foreigner every place he went these days. He wasn’t returning to his own country.
That was impossible.
But he should’ve left the country yesterday, after. Any other criminal would’ve. But, why would he? He had unfinished business.
There was more to do.
More people to kill.
He waited behind the trees at the top of a hill, about fifteen yards from the old country road. That’s when he saw a beat-up country truck coming down it.
The truck was an import, a white import, he liked to think. He distinguished it as white because it came from a Western country and not from an Asian country. Not that he had a thing against Western countries. At least not when it came to manufacturing.
A lot of machines with complicated, mechanical parts came from Western countries. Like America. A lot of good stuff came from America.
This truck wasn’t one of them. It was a German thing, he figured. It had a good engine sound, smart design, but was beat-up. He could hear the springs rocking on the bumpy road from there. He could hear the gears grinding, like the guy was switching them between second and third gear, or first and second.
The truck was painted blue. It matched the front side of the driver’s house. The house that was fifteen yards away from him.
The house was something he had heard described as a rock cottage. It was small and outdated. If he hadn’t seen outside lamps posted below the roof, he would’ve pegged it as a house straight out of Lord of the Rings, like a hobbit home.
He didn’t know which movie he had seen. He only knew it as Lord of the Rings. The copy he had seen was a bootleg. He saw it well over a decade ago, in his home country.
The truck slowed, the gears ground, the tires stopped bouncing and the driver looked around and pulled into the driveway, which was in better condition than the roadway. He pulled the vehicle all the way up, like he was expecting someone else to come home and park behind him.
A girlfriend maybe?
Maybe the guy was expecting a hooker to pay him a visit.
The Foreigner waited, crouched down, stayed out of sight. He took off his backpack, set it down, and unzipped the main compartment. He reached inside, past the disassembled Valkyrie rifle, and grabbed a Heckler & Koch USP. He took it out. It was stuffed in a holster. He drew it and clicked the safety to fire.
He closed the backpack and strapped it on his back.
He waited.
The driver of the blue truck parked the vehicle, killed the ignition, and slid out.
The door squeaked behind him.
He walked to the back of the truck and looked around. He stretched and yawned. He had been up all night, driving back along a six-and-a-half-hour drive, from Ballyhillin, a town at the northern tip of Ireland. He had spent the last several days there: fishing, drinking, taking in the scenic terrain. It was one of his favorite spots in Ireland to fish. This time of year, it was cold, but not as cold as six weeks earlier.
Mostly, he liked it because there was a little-known brothel there where he could get a lot of bang for his buck. And he had just made a lot of bucks lately. Off a sale of some kind of high-end rifle from America.
The Foreigner walked down the hill and stopped. He saw a figure approaching up the driveway.
The Irishman saw her too.
He paused by the tailgate of his truck, where he kept a back-up shotgun, for unwanted visitors.
The girl walking up the drive was young.
She looked younger than the girls he knew from Ballyhillin’s brothel. And she was definitely not like them. They were all Irish and she was not.
She stood five-foot-one, maybe. She had a nice walk, like a strut that he had seen before. Probably in the brothel. He saw it as an invitation.
What the hell was a girl like her doing way out here?
He took a street cap off his head, an Irish gentleman’s acknowledgement to a lady.
“Can I help you?” he asked, with politeness and sensitivity in his voice and his demeanor, but not in his intent.
She had long black hair, jet black. She had nice eyes. Her clothing was standard, Irish country affair. There was a jacket, for combating the wind, comfortable black pants, good hiking shoes, and a dark shirt under the jacket. She also had a shadowy wool cap to keep her head warm.
She wore no makeup. But she didn’t need it.
She spoke with fluent English. That he had not expected.
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
“Are you Malcolm?”
He took a look around. Placed his right hand on the lip of the truck’s bed, just above the tire. His shotgun was under a tarp, right there. It was already loaded, if he needed it.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m sorry. My name is Sarah,” she lied.
“Sarah?”
He hadn’t expected that name. It was probably an alias or just plain fake. Her real name was probably something too hard for people in Ireland to remember.
She nodded.
“And who are you?”
“Are you Malcolm?”
“Why?”
“You look like Malcolm. I was told he was a very handsome man who lived here.”
“Who sent you?”
Malcolm lowered his right hand, slowly, down into the bed of the truck, to the edge of the tarp and the shotgun.
“I was sent by Cathery.”
Malcolm stopped going for the gun. He looked at her with a puzzled expression.
“He says you deserve a bonus.”
She smiled at him in the way the girls at the brothel in Ballyhillin did.
“A bonus?”
“He says you do good job. He says that your big client loved the merchandise and paid him bonus. So he sent me.”
“You?”
She stepped closer to him. She opened her coat, reached to the bottom of a black shirt underneath and pulled it up.
He saw her stomach. It was flat and tight, a variation of abs and just being a thin girl. Then he saw the bottom of her bra. It was white and clean.
She said, “Bonus. For you.”
She smiled a big smile, bigger than the girls in the brothel in Ballyhillin.
“A bonus,” he said and he smiled.
She lowered her shirt and gestured that they go inside.
Malcolm didn’t argue.
He led the way. Left his truck unlocked, no reason to lock it way out here anyway. He left the tarp where it was. He left the shotgun where it was.
They walked into his hobbit house and he closed the blue door behind them, locking the deadbolt.
THIRTEEN MINUTES LATER, the girl unlocked the deadbolt.
The Foreigner stood near the truck. He looked around, in all directions.
Saw no one.
Malcolm’s closest neighbor was a mile away.
The Foreigner walked to the door. He didn’t wear gloves. No reason to. No one was going to identify him from his fingerprints. He had never been fingerprinted outside of his own country and they shared nothing with the outside world.
And he had no need for a suppressor on his sidearm. Not way out here.
Out here people shot guns all the time.
He felt the doorknob. It was cold to the touch. He leaned in close to the door, close to the blue painted wood, and listened.
He heard low voices, low giggling, a female voice, mostly. The girl’s.
He grabbed the knob and opened the door and went inside. The blue door closed softly behind him.
Malcolm’s house was small and tight. He could’ve ejected a bullet from the USP and probably hit the refrigerator from the living room with it.
The furniture was old and grimy, like hand-me-downs from his great-great-grandparents who might’ve been peasant farmers. Not much has changed.
The floor was tile, crisscrossed with white and black patterns.
The Foreigner crept through the living room, over to an opening that led down a short hallway. He heard the girl giggling, louder.
He heard her speak a foreign language, foreign to Ireland. His language.
She called out his name.
She said, “Are you here? Now is the time.”
The Foreigner took three steps, stepped into the open doorway to a bedroom, where Malcolm sat on the edge of his bed, and the young girl was on her knees.
“Bloody shit! What the hell are you doing ‘ere!” Malcolm asked.
The Foreigner raised the USP, pointed the muzzle at him.
“Oh, no! No man!”
The Foreigner smiled, squeezed the trigger. Once. Twice. Three times.
He’d triple-tapped the Irishman.
Malcolm’s chest burst open. Three holes exploded, a triangle pattern where his heart was. Blood exploded and sprayed everywhere like blood-packed squibs. It was the short range.
The girl turned, on her knees like she was begging for her life. She stood up.
The Foreigner could see blood splatter across her face and bare chest.
The Foreigner smiled at her.
Slowly, she smiled back.
CHAPTER 21
“WHAT DOES A BACKPACK have to do with anything?” Tiller asked.
Widow said, “What does the bullet tell us?”
Cassidy said, “It’s common.”
Gregor said, “Long range.”
“What else?”
“Untraceable?”
“What else?”
Gregor shrugged.
Cassidy said, “It had to be fired from a long-range rifle.”
Gregor said, “That could be any number of rifles.”
“What does a long-range rifle have to be?”
They looked at each other. No one spoke.
Widow said, “Long.”
Cassidy looked at him like she was a kindergarten teacher looking at a student full of smartass answers.
Widow said, “This sniper is good. Really, really good. Which means that he knows his rifles. He knows his ammunition.”
Cassidy said, “Okay.”
“It also means that he’s a snub. He’s an elitist. An elitist would never use an instrument that was beneath them. He wouldn’t use a hunting rifle. No, the weapon we’re looking for will be unique. And expensive.”
“I’m not following you. What does that have to do with the bullet?”
“Nothing. You guys are focused on the bullet. When you should be looking at the rifle.”
Gregor started to say something, but Cassidy put her hand up, pulling rank.
She said, “We look at the bullet to match it to the rifle.”
“That will never work. Most bullets for sniper rifles can fit multiple guns. You’ll never find this kind of weapon that way.”
“What do you suggest?”
Widow shrugged and said, “Just look at the rifle.”
“How?”
Widow raised his hand, pointed at the laptop screen, at the frozen black figure on the screen.
“There. Look at it. Directly.”
They looked at the screen again.
Cassidy said, “Where? There’s no rifle.”
“Look at his hands.”
“I am. They’re empty.”
“So where’s his rifle?”
Tiller said, “He set it down and went back for it.”
“No. He didn’t. Cassidy already said that he never goes back.”
Cassidy’s face lit up. She got it. She understood his point.
“A snub.”
They all looked at her.
“An elitist sniper like him would never leave his rifle behind in the dirt.”
Gregor said, “So, where is it?”
Widow said, “It’s right there. In the frame.”
“It’s in the backpack,” Cassidy said.
Widow nodded.
“He never goes back for it because he already took it apart and set it inside his backpack.”
Tiller said, “That backpack is thin. How the hell did he do that?”
Cassidy said, “It looks light. Too light for a rifle.”
Widow looked at Gregor.
Gregor said, “It’s possible.”
“It’s not just possible. There’s an American company that’s already done it.”
Cassidy asked, “Would it still fire that far?”
“Sure. It’s partially about the caliber, the bullet, and ninety percent the talent behind the rifle.”
He had a sudden memory flash. Maybe it was caused by the concussion. M
aybe by the man they were after.
It came on quickly and left quickly. It was just a flash.
He saw the volcanic eyes again. He saw blood. He saw smoke.
He heard radio chatter, in his head. Then it was gone.
He said nothing about it to them.
Cassidy asked, “Who makes this rifle?”
“I don’t remember the name of the rifle. But I’ve seen it before. They were only working on it, last I checked. Which was years ago.”
“The name of the company?” Gregor asked.
“Nemesis. They probably have a website. Purchase to order. Shipped to your door.”
Gregor said, “Only in your America.”
“One of the things that make us great.”
Cassidy clicked on the trackpad and typed on the keyboard and waited.
“Here,” she said and rotated the laptop so that the screen faced Widow.
He looked at it. She had googled the name Nemesis and had gone to their website. Widow scrolled his fingers across the trackpad, touching her fingertips, briefly. He searched the website for their rifles. It looked as if that was all they made. That and tactical backpacks.
He found the only rifle it could be. Their most expensive offer. Just to hold the rifle in his own hands would’ve cost him five grand.
Gregor let out an exclamation that sounded like “Oh, boy,” only it was half in English and the other half, Widow guessed, was thick Irish.
Cassidy said, “Valkyrie Sniper Rifle.”
The gun had a designation after it, but she did not read it out loud.
Gregor said, “That’s an expensive rifle.”
There was a video thumbnail at the center of the page. It led to a YouTube video of the rifle in operation. Widow clicked and played it. The video was short. It showed two guys, American, talking about the rifle. It could change calibers on a dime. It was super lightweight, they claimed all in all about ten pounds, with suppressor.
They showed it assembled, loaded, and fired. Then they repeated the process backward—unloaded and disassembled. They took it apart and set it into a black tactical backpack that could’ve been the same one the killer carried. It would be unnoticeable in a crowed public square or an airport or a live event or a university campus.
Cassidy said, “This weapon is legal in America?”
“All weapons are legal in America,” Gregor said.
Widow stayed quiet.
