The Warriors Series Boxset II
Page 33
He heard whispers and stepped in front of them.
‘Looking for me, guys?’
They rushed at him, Brown Hair first, Dark Hair and Nervous followed. All neatly bunched together.
Amateurs.
The trash can’s lid slammed deep inside Brown Hair’s midriff and he doubled over. Before he could recover, the lid swung up and caught him flush in his chin.
Zeb dropped the lid, pivoted on his left heel and caught Dark Hair in a judo lock and hurled him against the Escalade. Nervous slid to a halt, took one look at Zeb and fled.
Zeb was back on Pine Street an hour later, seated under the awning of a coffee shop, watching the world go by as his drink worked its magic inside. Picture of a visitor relaxing. Brown Hair and his companion hadn’t given him much.
He had gotten their names, that they were unemployed, and were enroute to Jackson from Rock Springs. They had stayed overnight at a chain motel and had met a stranger in the bar who had plied them with drinks and put them up to the play they had made. Zeb ran the questioning in his mind.
He said you pulled a joke on him and he wanted to return the favor. Brown Hair had groaned as he clutched his stomach.
How much were they paid?
The dude said he would settle their hotel bills if they were successful.
He didn’t say why?
Brown Hair shook his head at that, spat blood and groaned louder.
Describe him.
Tall, white, neatly dressed, soft-spoken.
Zeb placed bills under the Escalade’s wipers to cover the damage and left the men to their misery.
Tall, white, neatly dressed. That’ll fit hundreds of men in the town.
He waited till he was sure the three men didn’t appear again. He toyed with the idea of reporting the incident to Knowle but dropped it. The town being as small as it was, word would get to the sheriff. If he wants to talk, he has my number.
Zeb checked out the bar the men had been to; it was in a side street and from the outside, he could see it was busy.
I can ask the twins to hack inside their computers and find out who stayed there, get their details. However, this isn’t an agency mission, and I don’t want to involve them. Heck this isn’t even a mission. I’m just satisfying my curiosity.
He made his way inside and ordered a drink and toyed with it for an hour. He made small talk with the bartender, asked him if he had seen Zeb’s buddies, showed him their photos on his mobile phone. Zeb had just come to town and was hunting them.
The bartender squinted. Yeah, he had served them the previous night. Wild bunch. He had to ask them to dial it down a few times. This was a small town bar.
Did Mike, the bartender, remember who they hung out with? There should have been a fourth guy with them.
The bartender moved away to serve another patron and when he had finished polishing glasses, he came back.
They talked with several folks. It was a busy night and Mike wasn’t paying attention. What did the fourth guy look like?
Oh, you know nothing special. Tall, dresses well, white guy. Speaks well.
Mike shook his head with a rueful grin, gestured at the people inside his establishment. Three men fit the bill, right there. That description wouldn’t get Zeb far.
Zeb thanked him and left, spent another couple of hours hanging around on Main Street, making himself visible. No one approached him; no one took any shots at him. No cruisers rolled up to arrest him. He went to the men’s motel and found they had checked out an hour back. Their vehicle was absent.
It was getting dark by the time he went back to his hotel. Dawn Besterman was behind the desk again and a smile came up in her eyes.
‘You’re quite popular, Mr. Carter,’ she laughed.
Zeb smiled ruefully. ‘I’ve no idea what beef those guys had with me, ma’am. They weren’t local were they?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Not from what I heard. You reported them to the sheriff?’
‘Nope. It isn’t a big deal. I figured they were just feeling frisky.’
She printed his receipt and watched as he signed it. ‘I am sorry you had to experience that in our town. Such incidents are very rare. You think they’ll cause any more trouble for you?’
‘I don’t think so, ma’am. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve left town by now.’
‘And if they hassle you again, I am sure you can take them on. My son brought some of his friends home one time. A couple of them… you have their look, Mr. Carter.’
He looked at her and said simply. ‘I’m just a guy on vacation, ma’am.’
It was dark by the time he headed to the car park and slung his pack in the SUV. He bent and inspected his tires. They were good. He straightened and stilled when the voice spoke from behind him.
‘That was neat play. Textbook stuff on how to handle amateurs in a family place.’ The voice was rich, soft, and amused.
Car park has thirty spaces and leads to a rear entrance to the hotel. It’s walled on three sides; the fourth side is the entrance as well as exit. He could be behind any car.
Zeb’s hand drifted to the Glock in his shoulder holster.
‘No need for that, Mr. Carter.’ The voice chuckled. ‘We are just having a conversation.’ The voice paused and Zeb strained to hear if the man was moving, was smoking, or was doing anything else.
He heard nothing above the faint noises of the town. Somewhere a car door slammed, an engine gunned, and tires squealed.
‘That advice those guys gave you was good. Looks like you are taking it. Poking your nose where it doesn’t belong… we both know what happens to such busybodies.’
The voice continued when Zeb didn’t respond. ‘Going back to the mountains, Mr. Carter? Or are you heading to New York?’
The voice laughed when Zeb stayed silent. ‘You’re a hard man to talk to. No matter. Wherever you are going, Mr. Carter, stay safe.’
Zeb waited, but the voice didn’t speak anymore and then moved softly and checked out the car park.
It was empty.
My inner radar didn’t ping, didn’t sense his presence. That has never happened before. This guy is as good as me.
It was when he was heading to a trailhead that another thought came to him.
Better than me.
Chapter 5
The assassin was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He had been in the capital for four months, had established his cover, and then a lucky break had got him to the position he was in. He was a personal trainer to the royal family, the House of Saud, who ruled over Saudi Arabia.
The royal family was huge and had more than ten thousand members, but the inner coterie, those who wielded the real power, numbered to no more than a couple of thousand. The assassin was the personal trainer to the family of the king’s fourth cousin. The cousin held an enormously important position in the kingdom and also represented the kingdom internationally in specific policy matters.
The cousin was the assassin’s target, and even though the assassin had served the cousin several times, the timing hadn’t been right.
The assassin specialized in making his kills look like natural causes. Such killers were rare and his skills were in great demand, but he undertook only one or two commissions a year. Organizing such kills took a lot of research, effort and time.
He had received the commission more than a year back, through his usual channels of cutouts and dummies and had been intrigued. Saudi Arabia was the world’s largest exporter of petroleum and had twenty percent of the world’s crude oil reserves. Oil was not the only currency it was known for, though.
The country, because of its relative stability, played a very vital role in bringing some calm to war torn Middle East. The country was an important ally to the United States; with the emergence of extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, that relationship had grown stronger.
There were many who suspected Saudi Arabia of playing an elaborate con game and secretly sponsoring the extremists. The assassin�
�s target was known to tacitly approve of several terrorist organizations in the region and had been seen in the company of leaders of such groups. The assassin’s initial reaction had been to turn down the assignment when his cut-out had told him about it. If he was successful, he would be the most hunted man on the planet. The United States would throw its massive weight behind the manhunt and all Western allies to the House of Saud would follow. Oil lubricated relationships.
The cut-out had been most persuasive however, and had suggested the killer meet the sponsor’s emissary once before making a final decision. The assassin had been bemused. In his business, sponsor or emissary and killer didn’t meet. They operated via elaborate fake identities and scores of middlemen.
‘What’s the point? Is he going to reveal who the sponsor is?’
‘No. You know how this business works. Sponsor and assassin never know about one another. However, the emissary knows the sponsor’s motives and will present his case. What do you lose? He knows he’s taking a risk in meeting you. You could kill him in a hundred ways.’
‘I might still do that.’
‘He knows that too.’
The assassin met the emissary in Berlin, heard the man’s impassioned plea and held his hand up.
‘Not interested. Tell me how you can help. No kill is impossible, but this one ranks very high on that scale.’
The emissary, one of the most powerful men in the world, looked in the cold eyes across him, swallowed, and told him about his connections to the royal family. He was an advisor to the king on international investment markets and had brokered several deals for the king every year.
‘And you want me to kill his cousin?’ The assassin asked in disbelief.
‘I don’t. I am just the messenger. The people behind this commission, some of the most powerful people in the world,’ he smiled at the assassin’s raised eyebrows, ‘yes even more powerful than me, have their reasons’ He went on to explain more lucidly and this time his reasoning made sense to the killer.
He took on the commission.
The assassin’s brand of killing required close proximity to the target and after researching the royal extensively, he had come up with posing as a personal trainer. His dark skin meant that he could easily pass for being from the Middle East. He knew the language and spoke fluently with a local accent. It also helped that he knew all about body conditioning.
He created a sophisticated cover and used the sponsor’s contacts to add credibility to the cover. The cover stood up to the most penetrating scrutiny. It had to; the assassin’s life depended on it.
He started by becoming personal trainer to wealthy bankers and worked his way up and in six months he was training billionaires. He moved to the Middle East, created a network of contacts and got his name out.
The emissary then referred him to a lowly royal in the family, a man who had more wealth than common sense. He improved the royal’s fitness and stamina, fawned over him and then started training his wife.
Women gossiped, compared notes and soon Mohammed Rauf, the assassin, became masseur to more women in the royal family. He started coming and going at the palace at will. The security cordon around the palace relaxed whenever it came across Rauf. Familiarity always bred freedom no matter how thorough the discipline and training.
Word of his magical hands and sweet talk spread and when the target’s personal trainer was injured in an accident - an accident carefully engineered by the assassin – the target’s wife whispered Rauf’s name.
The assassin had access now. Access led to a few sessions with the royal. However having sessions wasn’t enough. The target had to die when he was alone without any blow back to the assassin.
The assassin ruled out various rooms where the royal was alone. Bedroom, office, dining hall, several others. None of them were practical; none of them had an exit route. He considered the bathroom long and hard and tried to check it out, but it was too well protected.
He looked into exotic poisons that worked slowly, but ruled those out too. The royal’s food went through tasters and these days anyone with access to the internet could research and detect poisons.
No, it had to be death administered directly by the assassin.
During one of the massage sessions, the royal had abruptly pushed away Rauf’s hands and had left the gym without a further word. The assassin had looked at his departing back in astonishment. His surprise had cleared only when the target’s assistant had poked his head inside and said his Royal Highness had gone for his prayers.
Prayers. Prayer room.
The assassin liked the idea.
The royal prayed alone. No one was allowed to disturb him. The prayer room was two hallways away from the gym and one evening the assassin ‘mistakenly’ ventured into the room. He was spotted quickly and hustled out by guards, but not before the nano-cameras on his thobe, the ankle length dress that men wore, had captured the room from multiple angles.
The prayer room was rectangular, air-conditioned, had only one exit, and had small windows high up that overlooked an inner garden. The garden was accessible by women of the royal family and in the evenings, was a busy place. The room could be locked from the inside, and the royal did secure the room when praying.
The assassin ruled out using the windows as an escape route. He looked at the air conditioning vents. They were a possibility.
He needed to get inside them or get their plans.
Getting the plans took a month. The killer’s sponsor got details of the contractor, who worked exclusively on the royal palace and one evening the killer broke into their office. Security at the contractor’s office was understandably lower than that at the palace and the killer didn’t need to draw on all his skills.
He studied the plans late at night and ideas formed in his mind.
Six hallways away from the gym was the laundry room. Personal laundry was washed in-house, but furnishings were sent to a service provider. The laundry was bundled in enormous white sheets, tagged and labeled and a closed truck transported the furnishings to the contractor. The truck had only two occupants, the driver and his helper.
Clean laundry was stacked in a room, unpacked every week and stacked for future use. The clean bales were unpacked only after two days of entry into the palace.
More ideas.
The palace had fire alarms in all hallways and the assassin started toying with them, making them go off at random by using a pocket-sized device that tampered with their detection mechanism and made them go off. Guards in the palace rushed to an alarm each time it sounded, leaving just one man with the royal.
Getting into the palace’s computer network was far easier than he anticipated.
He gave a customized training program to the lowly royal and told him everyone could use it. The insignificant royal uploaded the program on the network and then the embedded malware did its work. The assassin worked with one trusted man, a hacker in Russia who could work magic with his coding skills. The hacker was alerted, was ready.
As the kill day approached, the assassin made more fire alarms go off simultaneously by remotely activating the devices he had concealed in various hallways. The palace called in experts, but they weren’t able to find the problem. They wouldn’t. They were looking in the wrong place. They fitted new alarms, those went off randomly too.
The assassin had made plans for leaving the Middle East. He made them visible now; he bought advertisements in newspapers, which announced his departure from the region to pursue his business in other countries.
Kill week came.
Monday was the usual hot day it was in that part of the world. The killer greeted the security cordon, smiled and joked with them, stood patiently as sniffer dogs searched him for drugs and explosives. He was waved inside with a crude joke to keep his hands away from certain female body parts.
He completed working over the royal’s wife and other women in the family. In the evening, the royal lay underneath his hands and grunte
d softly as the killer’s hands kneaded his shoulders and neck.
The killer went to a canteen and had dinner, watched TV for a while, and when it was late, when the shift in the security cordon changed, he disappeared. The new shift didn’t know him by sight, which worked in his favor.
The killer kept his head bowed and walked purposefully in the direction of the gym and when the hallway was clear, he darted to a concealed doorway in the corridor. The doorway led to a small passage that opened up to a narrow utilities room. It had panels of switches, coils of cables, a stool, and a ladder for workmen. The utilities room had never been opened in recent years and new guards didn’t know of its existence.
The killer made the room his home for the next twenty-four hours. He had once been buried in sand with just his head above ground for three days. Twenty-four hours on a stool was luxury.
At ten p.m. that night, his hacker penetrated the security camera database and inserted images and videos of Mohammed Rauf leaving the palace. He altered the logs to show the personal trainer had clocked out. He destroyed the malware and exited the network stealthily. His job was done.
Tuesday morning came and the killer broke open a packet of high-energy bars, drank water, and warmed his body up. Once he had finished his routine, he lay on the floor and went into a dreamless state.
Just before evening, he rose, drank water again, wrapped up his packet of biscuits and pocketed them and erased all signs of his presence in the room. He looked at his watch. Five minutes.
In precisely four minutes, he fingered the remote in his pocket and set off several fire alarms simultaneously. He heard footsteps pounding and saw shadows crossing through a thin crack.
Once the pounding faded away, he counted another minute, opened the door and walked out as if he belonged. The one piece of luck the killer was counting on came his way.
The solitary guard outside the prayer room was looking in the direction of the alarms. He was also perfectly poised for the killer, with his neck and shoulders exposed. The assassin came behind him and before the man could turn, squeezed a nerve on his upper body. At the same time, he applied a choke hold and caught the man as he collapsed.