The Last Rainmaker

by Scott Blade

“You’re homeless.”

  He shrugged again, looked out the window. People were walking past, umbrellas, raincoats, couples holding hands, families bundled up together. Then he noticed many of them wore nice clothes, like churchgoers.

  He looked back at her and joked, “For me, home is where the homeless is.”

  She stared at him, didn’t laugh or smile, which he had hoped she would.

  He asked, “So what else do you want to know?”

  “What’s your interest in this?”

  He was quiet a moment. He started thinking about the question, started thinking about the answer.

  His arm hurt.

  His head hurt.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the bottle of Tylenol, swallowed a pill. Followed it with another pull of his coffee.

  He looked into her eyes, stared at them for a long, long second. The concussion dragged his mind back twelve years into the past. He saw the volcanic eyes again.

  She had been thirteen years old.

  “Widow?”

  “I came to help catch this guy. That’s all.”

  “Why that look?”

  “What look?”

  “The one on your face.”

  He shrugged.

  “It’s guilt.”

  He stayed quiet.

  “You feel guilty about something.”

  She paused a beat.

  “Or someone.”

  Widow took a last drink of the coffee, looked out the window again, saw more churchgoers pass.

  “Looks like church is out.”

  Cassidy turned and looked out the window, saw the same nicely dressed people. She nodded and they finished up and left the coffeehouse.

  On the walk, back to the stakeout, Cassidy stayed close to Widow, closer than before. Closer than she might have to a man who was nothing more than a guy she was supposed to babysit. That was his impression.

  He disregarded it because she was out of his league. He made no mistake about that. Or so he thought. But on the walk back to the Range Rover, she said, “Maybe we can get a drink?”

  Widow paused a step, which halted their walk back since he held the umbrella again and she had one free hand on the small of his back.

  “We just had a drink.”

  “That was coffee. I meant like a drink. You know at a pub.”

  “Now?”

  “At night. After this is all over.”

  Widow smiled a big smile, for the first time in two days, maybe more because he still wasn’t sure about how long he had been in the hospital after the train wreck. He knew today’s date. He had seen it on a calendar back in Cassidy’s office, but that didn’t help because of his lifestyle. He didn’t really keep up with dates. The day of the week, sure, but not particular dates. Calendar dates were for people who had kids, bills, jobs, a mortgage, health insurance, spouses.

  He said, “I’d love that.”

  CHAPTER 25

  ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN, whose real names were Smith and Jahns, had waited in the lobby of the Gardaí Special Unit Headquarters a couple of hours earlier.

  They had waited for orders from Tiller. And they got them.

  Smith looked at his phone and saw the text messages, which Tiller had sent while pretending to need the bathroom upstairs.

  Smith told Jahns the messages and the orders, which they had already expected.

  They took their messenger bags, which contained a laptop and an external hard drive that contained information, payments. The payments were for weapons and equipment, including transportation, so they could drive around Ireland inconspicuously.

  They were given a gray panel van with generic markings on the sides. A nonexistent company logo. Some kind of utility company. It sounded real enough. It might even have been real; they had no way of knowing, not without doing some research into the matter. But just like that guy Widow didn’t care to know their names, they didn’t care to know about the origins of the utility company.

  The provider and receiver of their payments was nothing more than a guy from MI6. A contact that Tiller had provided them. They saw the guy for a whole five minutes in the exchange of the digital information that they had and his giving them a panel van with legal plates and a small bag with illegal sidearms, two Glock 17s and a special handgun loaded with a tranquilizer dart. They had one backup round.

  The dart gun was a single-action thing that looked like some kind of modified handgun with a miniature bolt action on it instead of magazine feed.

  They had no idea what was on the laptop or the external hard drives. They figured it must’ve been something valuable. Probably, unrelated to their mission. Probably, some kind of state secrets or other valuable intel that the British government wanted enough to lie about to Irish police. Although, it wasn’t technically lying. It was simply making deals behind their back.

  Possible obstructing justice, but Smith and Jahns could not care less about those sentiments. One, they weren’t British. And two, they were in the business of breaking laws on foreign soil. They knew that they had come there to take the Rainmaker alive. They knew he was too valuable to kill.

  They knew what they were dealing with. Tiller had provided intel to them about him. However, the Rainmaker’s file was pretty thin. Not much was known about him. Intel out of North Korea had always been scarce.

  They knew he was an aging man, probably mid-forties, maybe older. They knew that he had survived a rigorous training process, since being an orphan and before elementary school, he had been recruited into it.

  They knew he was not someone to be trifled with in a long-range firefight.

  They weren’t sure how he had gotten out of North Korea. No one did. The file did not specify if he had escaped or been sent out into the world. It seemed more plausible that he had escaped. And now he was setting up shop to be a sniper for hire.

  That was all fine to the agency. They could just hire him to kill foreign dignitaries that they needed killed. Not a real quandary for the CIA.

  That’s not what Tiller wanted. He knew that the Rainmaker’s knowledge of the top-secret North Korean sniper program was far more valuable.

  Smith and Jahns parked the panel van around the block at a building that sidelined the street where Cathery’s Pub was.

  Tiller was certain that the Rainmaker would show up. He would probably take out his loose ends since he had already murdered Lenny.

  They waited.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE FOREIGNER saw the cops for only a moment, staked out on the side street in front of Cathery’s Pub. Now, they were parked half in sight, but at a weird angle. The Foreigner could still see the hood of the Range Rover. He saw figures moving behind a small portion of the windshield, but it wasn’t enough to see their faces or to shoot them.

  Plus, he had no idea how many were in the Rover. He couldn’t take the risk of shooting them, not until he had Cathery dead. The cops had no idea who he was. How would they?

  No one had ever escaped from him before. No one. He was fairly certain about that.

  He watched them for several minutes, until he saw a couple coming out of the same alley, holding each other under an umbrella.

  Seeing them made him doubt his paranoia, made him doubt their being cops. Why would they park their Range Rover and leave it?

  If they were staking out Cathery’s Pub, they wouldn’t leave their vehicle.

  He watched them come out of the alley.

  The man was huge. The woman was small. She was struggling to hold onto his waist as they walked off toward the cafés and shops in Pope Quay.

  After they came out of the alley, he wasn’t quite sure if the Range Rover had been cops after all. He might be getting paranoid, which was normal for a man trying to branch out as his own assassin for hire.

  The rain hadn’t let up for anyone in the city.

  Everything was wet. The Range Rover that the couple drove up in. The open window. The cobblestone street below. The windowsill of the ro
om he was in. The barrel of his Valkyrie sniper rifle.

  Only the tip of the suppressor on the rifle was wet. It was wet because he had it assembled and resting on its bipod on a small, rectangular dining table that came with the room. He was in a small and quaint bed-and-breakfast set up across the street from Cathery’s Pub. It wouldn’t be suspicious to Cathery at all because the elderly couple who owned the B&B had been there for forty years, before he ever bought the pub down the street.

  The Foreigner hadn’t rented a room there. That would’ve been stupid. Renting a room required a face-to-face conversation, legal passport, credit card, and friendly smile. He had none of those things to share with two more witnesses that he would just have to kill anyway. The right way to go about taking out Cathery now was to sneak in through the back in the early morning hours and find an empty room, wait for the right opportunity.

  Of course, when that didn’t work, he simply let his protégé use her skillsets to get them into a room. Cathery had never seen her before. So when she walked into his pub, late the night before, dressed as a young girl looking for gentlemanly company, all she had to do was wait for the perfect target.

  The street was lined with old B&Bs, tourist shops, and one overpriced hotel. They had thought they might be able to get to Cathery the night before, but no luck. When she found a gentleman staying down the street, with fetishes for Asian and teenage-looking, it wasn’t hard to see he was the next best thing.

  The guy she found lay dead in the bathtub, about twelve meters from the Foreigner.

  The Foreigner watched the rain through his scope.

  The rain reminded him of the ridiculous name that the Supreme Leader had given to the sniper program he was in, the Rainmakers.

  The story went that the Rainmaker program originated as a fantasy of the Supreme Leader’s late father, some kind of throwback to old American movies from the seventies or sixties about snipers and war and bringing hellfire. He supposed the American war phrase of bringing the rain, which had something to do with shooting massive amounts of bullets, like raining bullets, was where the name had come from. Although, the former Supreme Leader also had a predilection for American Western movies, the kind with cowboys and Indians. And, he believed that a Rainmaker was a kind of Indian holy man.

  All of this was speculation. His knowledge of English was decent. Not as good as his protégé’s. She spoke impeccable English, a byproduct of going to American language schools in South Korea.

  The Rainmaker stared out the scope and watched the two men in the Range Rover.

  He breathed normally.

  His heart rate was normal, which was slower than most people’s. He had been rigorously, torturously trained to keep his heart rate slow and steady at all times, under the most horrendous strain and stress. Now, it was all secondary.

  The Rainmaker lay prone, boots off, on the dining table. He was flat and ready to shoot, ready to kill.

  He took another deep breath and saw a panel van drive down the block. It was a utility company, something strange about it. He watched it.

  It was strange. He saw the drivers. They were cops. He was almost positive. They looked out of place, like cops. They weren’t very good at being conspicuous.

  Taking out Irish police was not preferable. Not when he didn’t have to, but here they were. They were giving him the opportunity. In his life, in his past experiences being a sniper, the best thing to do was to always take advantage of the opportunities when they presented themselves. Especially if the opportunity was to take out the enemy in silence, without anyone else knowing about it.

  He studied the van.

  He read the name of the company. Then he rested the rifle back and grabbed a burner cellphone out of his inside jacket pocket. He pulled it out, fast-dialed one of the only numbers he had.

  He paused and waited. The phone rang.

  The girl’s voice came on the line. She spoke Korean.

  He said her name and then he said, “What’s Cathery’s status?”

  “He’s still in the church.”

  “How much longer?”

  She was quiet for a second and then she said, “Maybe twenty minutes.”

  “Plus he has to walk back here.”

  She said nothing.

  He asked, “What’s the name of the local utility company?”

  She paused for a moment and then told him.

  He read the side of the panel van and asked about the name.

  She said, “Hold on. I’ll google it.”

  He smiled. Modern technology. One of the advantages of having her around. One day she’d make a deadly assassin.

  She came back on the line and said, “That company went out of business like a year ago.”

  “Get back here.”

  “What about Cathery?”

  “He’ll come straight back after church. Get back here. I need you for something else.”

  CHAPTER 27

  SMITH AND JAHNS had to park the panel van two blocks south, slightly around a bend, and tail back into a short alleyway, because they did not want to risk being seen by Gregor.

  Jahns sat in the passenger seat, the tranquilizer gun on his lap.

  Smith looked at him, they did not speak for five minutes and one second, until Smith’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He undid his seatbelt and leaned back against the seat and fished the phone out of his pocket.

  He looked at the phone.

  “Tiller?” Jahns asked.

  “Yeah. A text message.”

  “What is it?”

  “He said to stay out of sight. He said that Widow and the woman cop went for breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I could eat.”

  “He said we gotta wait out of sight.”

  “He say anything else?”

  Smith waited and stared at the phone as another text came in, followed quickly by another vibration.

  “Just to be on the lookout for the Korean.”

  Smith tucked the phone away.

  Jahns looked right, down the street, and looked left.

  No one was out in the rain. Not on this street.

  Another five minutes passed, and then, suddenly, Jahns perked up.

  He stared left, coming from the direction of Cathery’s church. He leaned forward in his seat and craned his head and then followed it with his body. Shoulders facing north. He stared out the passenger side window.

  Smith said, “What is it?”

  Jahns said nothing.

  He stared at a small figure walking in the pouring rain, walking straight toward them.

  Smith asked again, but got no answer, again.

  He leaned forward to see what Jahns was staring at.

  Then he saw it.

  Walking straight toward them, down the sidewalk, was a girl who could’ve been a teenager. She had fishnet stockings, a short black skirt, knee-high boots, and a white top. She had no purse, only a black backpack.

  Her hair, her arms, her legs, the stockings, the boots, and her white top were all soaking wet.

  Smith and Jahns stared at her white top. They were transfixed by it. They couldn’t take their eyes off that particular region of her body.

  As she got closer, her expression turned a little frail, a little seductive, a little like she knew what she was doing to the two men.

  Jahns was so mesmerized that he reached over with one hand and started to open the door, like a man with no plan, like he was going to hop out and ask her if she needed a ride. He had to consciously make himself let go of the handle.

  They both watched her. She walked up to the panel van, stopped on the street corner, stared at them for a moment, smiled, and then she looked right, looked left, and crossed out in front of the van’s nose. She passed them by, not fast, not slow, but a steady walk that could have been a saunter.

  They both watched her walk away.

  Then Jahns stopped for a second, snapped himself out of it.


  He asked, “Hey, was she Asian?”

  Before Smith could answer, he turned back to look at Jahns’ face and contemplate the question, only he never got past the look because right then he saw another figure standing on the same street corner that the girl had passed by.

  The figure was a man, average height, a little thin. He stood perfectly still about five feet from the van’s nose. He held something in his hand, out in front of him. It looked like a Heckler and Koch USP. It looked like it had a suppressor screwed into the barrel.

  Turned out that Smith was right about it, because right then he saw a puff of smoke come out of the tip of the silencer. Then he saw an explosion of glass and a hole in the windshield.

  Jahns saw Smith’s forehead blow open. A small, black hole formed in an unrealistic flash like a bad movie edit. Blood exploded out the back of Smith’s head and onto the headrest.

  Jahns turned, fast, panicked. He saw a man standing in front of the van. The man paused and stared at him over the barrel of a gun. Smoke plumed out of the tip.

  First, Jahns saw the same black clothes he had seen only hours before on Cassidy’s laptop video. The same jacket. The same pants.

  Then he looked at the man’s face.

  He had a short, but deep white scar across one eye. It cut down like a straight lightning strike. The guy’s eye was completely white and foggy like cigar smoke caught inside a fish bowl.

  Jahns had just asked his dead friend if the girl was Asian.

  The man standing in front of him was an Asian foreigner.

  The man did not kill him right away. Instead, he stepped closer, circled around to Jahns’ door, stayed back five feet.

  Jahns thought about the tranquilizer gun in his lap.

  His instincts kicked in and forced him to raise his hands, near his face, the universal surrender gesture.

  Jahns looked at the guy. His lips were moving, inadvertently. The man read his lips. The only word he knew was the English word, Rainmaker.

  That told the Rainmaker everything he needed to know. These guys were there for him, cops or not.

  He shot Jahns in the center of the forehead, like his friend. Only this time, the blood that exploded out the back of Jahns’ head sprayed all over the van’s cabin.