by Dan Ames
Pauling also realized that walking around her living room with a gun in hand was not the best idea. If a camera was following her, the viewers would know that they’d been discovered. So, she immediately acted as if she was studying her gun in the light, pretending that she’d encountered a problem.
Back in her bedroom, she put the gun into her purse, retrieved her cell phone and keys from the kitchen and left.
Once back out on the street, she dialed the number of a man whose specialty was concealed surveillance. She’d hired him many times for cases in the past.
He answered on the second ring.
“Pauling,” he said.
“I’ve got a rush job, as in right now.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Name your price.”
“My favorite kind,” he answered. “Where?”
She gave him her address.
10
They were known as William and Kate.
For several reasons. One, they were British, and at some point it was decided it would be fun to have a pair of assassins named after the famous royal couple William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
It was especially amusing as they looked nothing like the famous couple. William was much older, tall and willowy with dark hair and sallow skin.
Kate was built like a rugby player with stout legs, a thick torso, and hair that was rarely fashioned with any sense of style.
The nicknames worked because they were, after all, a team. And, because they killed people for a living, their real names were not an option. Finally, the nickname was a nod to those who might hire them. As in, oh, William and Kate – the British couple who frequently pose as husband and wife while carrying out contract killings. Yes, I remember them.
Now, they prepared to leave their hotel room off of I-15 just over the southern border between California and Nevada.
Kate caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she passed by and she saw a relatively pretty face looking back at her. She wore no makeup and her honey-colored hair was pulled back into a bun.
They were currently posing as tourists on their way from Las Vegas to Hollywood. They spoke with their original accents, but if they chose, could instantly turn those off and sound like they’d just stepped off the farm in Iowa, or were deckhands on a Louisiana shrimp boat.
They rolled their suitcases out of the room, took the elevator down to the hotel lobby and made their way to their rental car.
William popped the trunk, and Kate tossed her suitcase inside. There was already a long, rectangular garment bag stowed away that housed a variety of weapons, including a scoped rifle, multiple handguns, knives, and a power tool with various attachments should torture be required.
Torture was Kate’s specialty.
Long-distance shooting was William’s.
They went back inside and partook in the hotel’s free breakfast buffet. William chose scrambled eggs and coffee. Kate enjoyed multiple servings breakfast sausage, a pastry, skim milk and toast.
She regularly used hotel weightlifting equipment to keep her strength up, and usually chose protein at meals to feed her muscles.
They took a table in the corner, as far away from the serving counter as possible, even though they were the only guests present.
“Any more information?” Kate asked.
William sprinkled some salt and pepper on the bland eggs, and answered. “We have an address where he expired. It’s believed no information was passed along. We need to confirm.”
Kate nodded.
William handled most of the communication between their employers. He was better with technology than she was. She, on the other hand, had skills he admired with a mixture of pride and horror.
They finished their breakfast, each selected a bottled water from the small cooler near the breakfast area, and went out to the rental car.
William folded his tall frame into the driver’s seat, Kate took the passenger’s.
They left the hotel parking lot, joined the light traffic on I-15 before taking the first exit toward Independence Springs.
“Did they provide any information on the occupants of the house?” Kate asked.
“A man. Single. Lives alone. Retired military.”
“What branch?”
“Navy.”
Kate nodded. A former military member meant it was quite possible there would be weapons involved. Most retired service members were used to having a gun nearby, even after they’d left the service.
She was excited.
Kate liked a challenge. There was nothing better than destroying an armed man. Taking him from a feeling of utter power to sobbing desperation. It was a beautiful story arc and she was the author.
“Name?”
William glanced down at his phone.
“Michael Tallon.”
11
It took nearly an hour for electronic surveillance expert Herb Watkins to make his way from Brooklyn to Pauling’s place. He drove a white van with no external signage. Outdoor advertising was not an effective vehicle for selling his specialty services, rather, referrals represented one hundred percent of his new business strategy.
As she watched his van pull up across from the coffee shop, Pauling smiled. She’d worked with Herb Watkins many times in the past, and it had always been a positive experience.
Pauling had already paid for her coffee, a habit she had gotten used to thanks to Jack Reacher. Reacher always paid everything ahead of time so he could simply leave and walk away at a moment’s notice.
Like he did when he walked away from me.
The thought had occurred to her without any amount of bitterness. That’s who Reacher was, and what he would always be. He would never change, and for her part, she wouldn’t want him to. Then again, she would have preferred for him to stay, at least for awhile longer.
Pauling dumped her paper coffee cup into the recycling bin and met Herb as he was getting out of the van. He always reminded her of Gene Shalit, the movie critic who had a huge afro, thick black glasses, equally thick black eyebrows and a big, overgrown caterpillar of a moustache.
“What happened?” he asked, nodding toward her building. “Someone pull an Erin Andrews on you?”
Herb was referencing the sports reporter Erin Andrews, who’d been unknowingly filmed on multiple occasions by a stalker. Even worse, the nude video had then been posted online. Eventually, the man was arrested and Andrews sued just about everyone involved, and won over fifty million dollars.
“Not sure,” Pauling answered. “Hopefully you can get me some answers.”
After the surveillance specialist retrieved several large duffel bags from the back of the van, together they went up to Pauling’s condo.
She let him in and watched while he unpacked the duffels, and began an electronic sweep of the place. It took him over an hour to explore every nook and cranny. Pauling scrolled through her phone, checking and answering emails while he worked.
Finally, Herb met her back in her living room where he plopped onto the couch with a heavy sigh, as if he’d just completed a half-marathon.
“You have any beer in this place?” he asked.
Pauling laughed, and dug out a Stella Artois from the back of the fridge.
After handing it to him, she sat down across from him.
“Is your place always this clean?” he asked her.
“Mostly.”
“Impressive. I didn’t even find a dust bunny.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Does that mean you didn’t find anything?”
“Nada,” he said. “If someone was in here, they certainly didn’t plant any listening devices, cameras, GPS trackers, nothing.”
Pauling felt a little better, but not much.
“Are you changing the locks?” Herb asked.
“Already made the call, they’ll be here in an hour or so.”
He took a drink of his beer. “Why don’t you have video as part of your security system here?
”
Pauling waved a hand toward the interior of the space. “What for? I don’t bring clients here. My serious security system is in my office. I didn’t think I would need anything over and above here. Until now.”
She knew that Herb’s specialty included the type of systems he was talking about.
“If you had the kind of system I have in mind,” Herb explained, “and if someone had actually come in here and looked around, all of that would have been recorded on video and instantly streamed to a cloud-based server.”
He took another drink of his beer.
“They could possibly cut the feed, but not before they’d already been filmed,” he continued. “And once the video was streamed, which is instantly, of course, and stored on an external server, there’s no way they could get their hands on it. So at least you would know who, or what, you were dealing with.”
“I’m struggling to understand what their goal was,” Pauling said.
“I’m pretty sneaky, too,” Herb continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “My cameras are very, very difficult to find, even if you know what you’re looking for. They might get one or two, but I’d bet my bottom dollar they wouldn’t find them all.”
Pauling sighed. After a long career of putting many, many people under surveillance, she wasn’t thrilled about doing it to herself. But what Herb was saying made sense. And the fact was, someone had been in her condo without her knowledge. She was already going to have the locks replaced.
A more powerful security system was a no-brainer.
She looked at Herb.
“How soon can you get it done?”
12
Fackrell.
Tallon pictured the man in his mind. A grunt. Infantry. Hard-core.
Not one of the leaders of the mission in Colombia. A lower-ranking team member primarily serving as backup, with an expertise in aerial surveillance, if he recalled correctly.
He’d been recommended by one of the other commanders. If Tallon’s memory served him right, Fackrell had been touted as somebody you could count on. That he’d been through a lot of firefights and knew how to keep his mouth shut, no matter how badly the shit might hit the fan.
That made Tallon wonder what exactly had happened to Fackrell. Why did somebody kill him now? Was it a premeditated murder? An accident? A domestic situation? A drug deal gone wrong?
And why did Fackrell show up on Tallon’s doorstep? Why hadn’t he gone to the police or an emergency room?
Tallon once again searched his memory banks.
Who had been the other team leader who’d recommended Fackrell in the first place? If he could remember that name, he could contact that person and get some more information on the dead man.
And what in the hell was Operation Reacher all about?
Tallon’s mind immediately went to Lauren Pauling. She had a history with Reacher and maybe she could shed some light on the mysterious piece of paper. If, in fact, the term had anything to do with the man. Maybe it was something else entirely.
But what?
Tallon felt like he needed more information before he reached out to Pauling, if he even decided to do that. He would look pretty foolish if he contacted her about Jack Reacher, and then this incident proved to have nothing to do with the man.
So, instead, he went back to the photograph of the group in Colombia and studied the faces. He scanned them several times until he stopped on one face.
Roy.
Roy was a ball-busting African-American Navy Seal and had been one of the leaders on the mission.
It was Roy who had brought in Fackrell.
Tallon got out his phone and scrolled through his contacts and found that he still had a number for Roy so he tapped out a quick text message: Carl Fackrell?
He then added his name and suggested Roy call him if he had any information.
Tallon slipped his phone back into his pocket and took his empty beer bottle into the kitchen. He put it in the sink next to the other one, turned and was about to head to his bedroom when he noticed the light on the security system flashing a quick strobe of red.
Tallon didn’t stop, instead, he kept moving forward.
Instantly, he knew that the situation with Fackrell wasn't over. That the man who had shown up at his doorstep was no accident.
Tallon ducked into his office where his security cameras were and saw an image that gave him pause. Standing in the middle of his front yard was a woman. She was stocky, in a sundress, with wispy, disheveled hair and tears streaming down her face.
She was saying something, or yelling toward the house.
Tallon watched her mouth move and understood what she was saying.
Help me.
13
The rifle was steady in William’s hands.
He was positioned on the other side of the road, across from Michael Tallon’s adobe house, nearly six hundred yards from the front door. A series of slight undulations in the ground leading away from Tallon’s house had given them the idea of how to best approach this job.
William had found a dip in the ground that was the perfect contour for his body. Once in position, he was virtually invisible.
The scope was equipped with night vision and he now waited, Kate well-illuminated, the front door still black, but framed with green edges.
It was a well-practiced technique. Place Kate front and center, letting the target mistake her for a harmless, vulnerable even, woman. This would allow William to pursue a long-distance solution.
His breath was slow and steady, his eyes didn’t blink. He could smell his own breath, a little stale tinged with the scent of old coffee.
There was barely any breeze at all, and it was a simple shot. One that he could make 99.9% out of 100. And that one tenth of a percent was only included if he was struck by lightning, because he would make this shot every time, barring some kind of natural disaster.
Now, William watched as Kate slowly inched toward the house. The goal was to get the home’s owner, a man named Tallon according to their information, to simply open the door.
William would blow his head off, and if he had any information inside they would destroy it. The feeling was Fackrell hadn’t been able to pass anything along, but William and Kate’s bosses weren’t the kind to take chances.
They wanted solutions.
The permanent kind.
William watched as Kate continued inching toward the door. Maybe the owner was asleep. But Kate was making a hell of a racket. They didn’t want Kate to handle it on her own, though. The guy was ex-military. Better to take him out from a distance. If things went haywire and close quarters combat was necessary, Kate would take care of that. No man was a match for her, William had seen ample proof of that fact. Many a guy who had fancied himself a hard case had died at Kate’s hand, surprise permanently etched on their face.
William kept his breathing steady.
When the opportunity happened, he needed to be swift and decisive, but steady. He didn’t want to miss and have the man call 9-1-1 and then have a bunch of cops out asking questions.
No, that wouldn’t do.
He watched as Kate stopped.
Had she seen something? Heard something?
William bore down on the gun. If something was going to happen, it was going to be now.
His finger was firm on the trigger. The round was a powerful caliber, and would make short work of anything it hit.
What was taking so long?
They hung there, William prone in the dirt, the gun propped on custom-made sandbag.
Kate, acting like a helpless motorist in the front yard.
And in the house, silence.
William waited.
Kate waited.
Just when William thought it was time to go to Plan B, he sensed movement to the right of the house.
William took his eye from the scope and peered into the darkness.
The bullet entered his skull between the eyes, and slightly above them, ju
st below the center of his forehead. The impact blew the back of his head off and he was dead before his face crashed back onto the rifle scope.
14
Tallon was on the move. He’d spotted the shooter across the street, thanks to an additional layer of home security. The infrared sensor sat on the highest point of his roof, and provided four different views of heat signatures up to a distance equivalent of a sniper rifle’s range.
No man with Tallon’s background would ever allow a straight shooting line into his home without taking some precautions. In this case, there were multiple sensors that carried out far enough to ensure against a long-distance rifle.
In addition to the security system alerting Tallon to the woman in the front yard, it had also notified him of a heat signature six hundred yards out that could be a simple anomaly, or it could be something else.
Plus, the woman in front of the house hadn’t fooled him.
He had known instantly that she was there to draw him out. It was too big of a coincidence that he would have two unannounced visitors on the same day. Plus, he could tell by the way the woman stood that she was a lot lighter on her feet than the average person might think. Her feet were shoulder-width apart, and she stood on the balls of her feet, leaning slightly forward. It would have been easy to think of her as overweight, but Tallon could see that while the woman was thick, he bet she was also powerful. A lot of that body was muscle, not fat.
So instead of opening the door to see what the woman wanted, he’d chosen a rifle and circled around to the side of his house. There, he’d fashioned a low adobe wall with square openings placed every few feet. It looked perfectly natural in a decorative sense, but also provided an excellent window for shooting.
With his own powerful night scope, he’d immediately spotted the shooter.
