She looked around the neighborhood and failed to spot any cameras. She believed high resolution security cameras were unlikely but low resolution cameras were probably on a quarter of the homes. To counter that, she reached into the backseat and grabbed a plastic bag from a costume store to apply costume glue and a fake goatee to her face. After pressing it taut against her skin, she put on latex gloves and sat silently.
Believing the men would be asleep, she smiled at the sounds she didn’t hear. She didn’t hear a dog. No whispering meant there was probably no wife or kid to worry about either.
She pulled the gun from her backpack and affixed the 7-inch silencer to it. Unlike in the movies where a silencer makes the gun silent when it is fired, her silencer only muffles the sound so that it is not ear-blastingly loud. This neighborhood was quiet and still on the cool summer night; if she had to shoot, it would surely wake someone.
She put a shoulder holster on, careful not to tear the sewing job on her flannel “chub shirt,” then holstered the gun. She made sure the lock pick set was accessible at the top of her backpack.
After a long look at her appearance in the rear-view mirror, she asked herself, “Start step two or get the fuck out?” Her mind flashed at her prospects. She still had access to her emergency stash after the shit in D.C. went down. That was fifty thousand dollars in cash, fifty thousand dollars in gold bullion, a passport, her service weapon, and the backup gun that she just affixed a silencer to. She was glad that Helen Cluntz made her assemble an emergency kit and seethed that she was unable to get to her apartment where she had far more stashed.
That agent from the FBI, Aurora Wulfers, was on top of them so quickly that the only thing she could grab was her emergency kit, which was stored offsite.
She looked in the mirror. “What the fuck?” Getting out of the car, she gently closed the door behind her, leaving the door unlocked and the keys in the ignition. If someone happened upon it and stole it, it would solve one problem. Besides, she was ready to take the car that these two guys were driving.
It had been three years since she last had to pick a lock. And even that was in training. She would have considered bumping it, but was afraid that would give off too much noise. She fidgeted with her picking instruments for a few seconds. She got them both inside the lock and could feel the tumblers moving. She put a constant pressure to the side so that when the tumblers lined up the lock would start to turn.
She felt the bolt moving slightly as she raked the pick towards her and tried to turn harder. On a high quality lock, her pick would have caught in a groove and snapped already. On this lock, she applied only enough force to feel a slight bend on the metal prong. She eased off on the pressure because having to fish out a broken pick could be real trouble.
She raked again, felt the tumbler move, and was able to pull the lock open in under a minute. With the door open just one inch, she pulled out a syringe with the etorphine and placed it in her left hand. She kept her right hand free, ready to act or pull the gun from her holster as she maneuvered through dark the apartment.
Very little light was coming in from behind her or through the windows. She closed the door behind her, just to the point where the door started to stick in the frame without making any noise. She looked around and noted the sources of ambient lighting. A cable box and stereo were on and displayed the time. The cheap vertical blinds on the windows were closed so only a tiny bit of light from the street lamps outside had filtered in.
The living room was nearly devoid of furniture. There were pillows on a couch opposite the television and component equipment. She listened intently as she waited for her eyes to adjust. She confirmed there was no one sleeping on the couch. She felt her breathing and pulse steady. She counted to ten in her head while still listening intently to the surroundings.
Zillow said this was a one-floor house with two bedrooms and one bathroom. From what she could make out in this darkness, it appeared correct. She looked into the kitchen and noted it was empty. It looked like there was a door to a back patio and a yard. The bedrooms and bathroom would be to her left down the little hallway. ‘Damn it,’ she thought because she had hoped the bedrooms would have been on opposite sides of the house.
A month ago, she would have had access to gas that could be pumped under the doors to knock the men unconscious, cameras on a scope to run under the doors, gas masks, night vision goggles, and infrared scanners. Not to mention a team of trained operatives. Now, she just had herself and makeshift gear.
She saw that one of the three doors in the hallway was open, and guessed it was the bathroom. She moved the syringe into her right hand and gently turned the knob on the door of what she believed would be the smaller of the two bedrooms. Her pulse quickened until she could feel her heart beating in her neck. She smiled widely with instant relief when she turned the handle halfway and found the door wasn’t locked.
She turned the handle all the way to crack the door open, then waited. She heard nothing so she slowly released the handle. She counted to ten then pushed the door open six inches and looked inside. The same cheap vertical blinds kept outside ambient light from entering the room. On a nightstand, a cell phone gave off a faint flashing green light indicating that it was either charging or had a new message.
It was just as dark inside the room as out. She knew it would be obvious to someone awake that the door was open, but no light from behind her would wake up whoever was sleeping.
She pushed the door open another few inches so that she could squeeze through. She stepped with short soft shuffles so she would be ready to pounce or act. A few stealthy steps in, and she could fully make out the outline of the man on the bed. He was sleeping on his side facing her, his eyes closed.
With her nerves ablaze, her muscle memory took over. She took three quiet steps and then jammed the needle into his neck plunging the drug inside of him while simultaneously placing her hand over his mouth. His body tensed with fright when he felt the needle in his neck and he started to yell out, “Ayu…da.” The drug acted before he could scream one word. She unholstered her gun and waited silently for ten seconds. She checked his pulse through her latex-gloved hands and felt a faint one. She might have given him too much. ‘I’ve got two chances,’ she thought.
She holstered her gun, then softly walked back to her bag, which she left at the entrance of the house, to retrieve a second syringe. This time she brought the bag with her and set it down in the open bedroom next to the drugged man. She walked to the other door and turned the knob but found it locked. She knocked gently on the door, heard nothing, then knocked a little harder. A voice called out, “Que quires?”
She went to the bathroom and pretended to heave and flushed the toilet repeatedly with the lights off. The syringe remained in her right hand the whole time. She heard a voice call out, “Que pasa? Estas bien?”
She flushed again and called out in a muffled voice, “Mi estomago.”
She stopped heaving and heard a response from the bedroom. She saw a faint light spilling out into the hall from underneath the door of the second bedroom. She figured the man had turned on the light in the bedroom and would be coming to the bathroom so she partially closed the bathroom door and hid behind it. The man walked in and saw no one in the bathroom. He left the bathroom, walked a few feet, and turned the light on in the other bedroom to see his friend lying on the bed looking dead.
“Arturo?” the man called out. “Arturo?” Through the commotion and shaking of the man in the bed, he was surprised to feel a stinging in his neck. She had plunged the syringe into it and before he could turn around he was heaped on the ground next to the bed where his friend lay. With the light on in the room, she looked at the syringes. She had injected less etorphine into the second man. She felt his pulse; it was faint but stronger than Arturo’s.
She pulled a zip tie from her bag and bound Arturo’s hands. The other man appeared smaller; she frowned at him having the stronger pulse and higher chance of su
rvival. After a quick search of this room, she found a few hundred dollars cash, a few thousand Mexican Pesos, and a driver’s license from Tijuana, Mexico that said Arturo Vilchis, 5’11”, one hundred and ninety pounds. She also found a semi-automatic handgun.
She unscrewed the silencer from her gun and attached the silencer to Arturo’s gun. She looked at the window in the bedroom; it was a single pane, and the walls were poorly insulated. Even with the silencer, a gunshot would not go unnoticed at this time of night in the quiet neighborhood.
‘Shit,’ she thought. If Nick or Spencer was here they could easily build a sound proof chamber. She looked at the smaller man on the floor and dragged Arturo right over him and into the master bedroom. She went back into the other room, grabbed the blanket off the bed and threw it on top of the body lying on the ground, then went back to Arturo’s room and grabbed his blanket and two pillows. She looked into the bathroom and saw two towels and a bathrobe. She grabbed those too.
Back in the master bedroom, she started building a fort on top of Arturo’s head. She went into a closet, pulled twenty hanging shirts out, and threw them on top of her fort.
She pulled the mattress from the queen-sized bed on top of Arturo. It folded over and touched the ground on two sides with openings at his head and feet. She thought this would provide pretty good sound-proofing, but to be sure, she jogged over to the living room and turned on the television. After twenty seconds of playing with the remote control, she got it on and had the volume at a level that wouldn’t draw any noise complaints from the neighbors but could be heard if you strained to listen in from outside.
She grabbed three couch cushions and headed back to the master bedroom where she placed them at Arturo’s feet. The sound waves should be absorbed by the two ends of the mattress and those pillows, or be sent back towards her and would have to carry through the house and back past the television onto the street. She felt confident the noise would be minimal.
In a neighborhood that has probably heard its share of gunshots, the silencer and level of muffling would make the sound be just a pop, if it is heard at all.
She set the gun down next to Arturo’s head and started arranging all the clothes and blankets on his head more carefully. She chastised herself for not doing this arrangement before throwing the mattress on top because it was hard as hell for her to prop it up and arrange everything underneath.
She lay down on the floor next to the mound, reached for his head with her left hand, and aligned the barrel of the silencer next to his head. With her finger on the trigger and her alignment proper, she withdrew her left hand and pushed down on of blankets, towels, and clothing to make as tight of a seal around her arm as she could.
She squeezed the trigger. “Psshhoook.”
With her ear just a foot away from the blast, it didn’t sound any louder than a kid making a single loud fake gunshot. She felt comfortable that neighbors wouldn’t recognize the sound if they even heard it.
She pushed the mattress back up onto the bed and threw the mound off of Arturo’s body to see his blood-soaked head. He would have been dead from the etorphine, but she needed to frame this other guy in order to get him to do her bidding.
She unscrewed the silencer, pulled out the clip from the gun, and emptied and cleared the chamber. She went to the other room and retrieved her gun from her bag, holstered it, and placed the silencer in her bag. She placed the second man’s right hand on the murder weapon and squeezed, leaving a clear set of fingerprints on it. She rubbed her latex-gloved hand against his hand, attempting to transfer any gun powder residue onto his hand.
She reached into the bottom of her bag and pulled out a roll of duct tape. She rifled through the drawers in the room until she saw a sock. She rolled it up, stuck it in his mouth, and taped his mouth shut. She used a zip tie on his hands to tie them behind his back. She reached into her bag, pulled out the “antidote”, and injected him.
A few seconds later, his body jerked and he tried to scream. He rolled around and strained against the zip tie that bound his hands. He was losing his breath and would soon pass out from the exertion and lack of oxygen.
The woman put his gun to his head. “Shhh. Calm down and I won’t kill you.”
He heard a feminine voice coming from this man in a flannel shirt and became even more confused. “I’m going to take that gag off of you. If you scream, I will shoot you like I shot your friend in the other room. Understand?”
He calmed down a bit and nodded yes.
“Okay, if you play your cards right, you will not only survive this but will also make more money this week than you would in an entire year of playing smash and grab. So get ready to listen to me.”
He nodded again. She sat him upright, ripped the tape off of his mouth, and pulled out the sock. He inhaled deeply then exhaled rapidly several times in succession.
“Do you recognize this gun?”
“Si. Yes.”
“I put your finger prints on it and used it to kill your friend down the hall. You understand this makes you look guilty for his murder?”
He nodded his head. This he-she killed his cousin. “Why you kill him?”
“Because I didn’t need Arturo. What’s your name?”
“Carlos.”
“Well Carlos, you need me even more than I need you,” she said, showing him ten thousand dollars in cash and explaining his role in her plan.
Chapter 4
After Xiaowan left Aaron’s office, he figured the best place to start would be to learn a little about immigration and federal laws to see if it would be possible to get Xiaowan’s parents into the United States. He called his friend at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Enloe Burden, who he met in law school ten years ago.
Enloe had an interesting background, he was one of the few black jockeys to vie for a victory in the Kentucky Derby since 1902. In the 1800s, there were a lot of black jockeys, including three who were inducted into the Hall of Fame for winning fifteen of the first twenty-eight derbies. Due to race issues in the early 1900s, black jockeys fell out of favor and for some inexplicable reason never came back.
Enloe entered law school at the age of twenty-eight, measuring 5’2”, and allowed his weight to “balloon” up to one hundred and thirty pounds. He was in terrific shape; no one would consider him overweight, but he was up fifteen pounds from his racing days.
Aaron looked up Enloe’s phone number on the California State Bar website and dialed it.
“U.S. Attorney’s Office,” a woman answered.
“Enloe Burden, please.”
“Who shall I say is calling?”
“Aaron Baker.”
“One moment.”
After a few beeps, Aaron heard, “Hey A-B, why didn’t you call my direct line? Everything okay?”
“Enlowww,” Aaron stretched out. “I’m becoming a luddite. I don’t have saved numbers in a cell phone anymore and haven’t made an old-school rolodex yet.”
Enloe laughed at him. “Okay, what’s up buddy? ”
“I have some questions about immigration law for a client of mine.”
“Is this for an active prosecution? Something that might come before me?”
“No, nothing like that. If it was, you wouldn’t be able to talk about the case. I don’t do immigration law so I was hoping for some general information. This is really important.”
“Okay buddy, I was about to take lunch. Want to come join me? You do know, with Comic-Con, the parking and streets are packed?”
“I can be there in an hour. Thanks for the reminder, I’ll take the trolley. Thank you.” Aaron hung up and headed to his car.
From the parking lot, the woman with the short black hair watched Aaron leave his office and get into his car. She installed a rudimentary tracker on his car this morning when he arrived at his office. It was she who placed the bug in Aaron’s office, which to her chagrin he discovered, forcing her to be more cautious in her surveillance.
She arrived in San
Diego two weeks ago with her new identity and all of her unabandoned worldly possessions in tow. She exhausted nearly half of her cash securing necessities, including a month-to-month lease for a house with an attached garage and two cars. A three thousand dollar deposit and three thousand dollars for the first month’s rent weren’t cheap and neither were the crappy versions of the electronics she had to get.
She watched Aaron as she spoke to Carlos on the phone. “You figure out when it’s best to get her and you’ll have ten thousand dollars cash and the gun that killed your amigo. You fail, your picture and gun get mailed to the police. Understood?”
“Okay, comprendo lady. I’ll get the little Asian woman and bring her to you.”
She hung up and decided to follow Aaron Baker and get him wherever he was going. She had hoped to find a moment when Aaron was out drinking so that she could slip him a drug that would put him out, but his boring and consistent routine didn’t provide any great opportunities. Home, office, court. Repeat. She could have bought a rifle and just taken him out from afar. She thought about it repeatedly. But no, she was doing this so that her network, well, so that Helen Cluntz would appear to be powerful. She needed him and Tina alive.
The woman sat wondering how much loyalty she could expect from Carlos. She framed him for murder and also made him swallow a capsule, telling him it was a tracking device. She showed him tracking software on her cell phone that showed his location on the map, so Carlos believed she had implanted him with a tracking device. In reality, it was an app she installed on the iPad that was in the next room, which he had stolen from her car. The appearance of power is power.
Carlos might figure that out her ruse so she had to act soon. And if things went south, so could she. She was minutes from Mexico, and from there she would have the ability to fly anywhere in the world from Tijuana by connecting through Mexico City.
Sunshine or Lead Page 3
