Laura 01 The Jaguar Prophecy

by Anton Swanepoel

  Not trying to draw attention, Victor decides to ignore the man next to him and again brings his drink to his lips to drink. The man next to Victor bumps him just as he is about to take a sip, causing him to spill some of his drink.

  “I tell you, it’s nonsense,” the man repeats. Victor decides that he is not going to be able to ignore the man, so he might as well hear his story. Looking up Victor replies, “What’s non…” His words are cut off when he sees the man’s face. Victor cannot believe his eyes. The man is an almost exact match to the man Victor saw leaving the dining room with the ill-fitting suit on. Is this the man that left the room earlier and has now returned? Something is different about the person. Ah, that is it, he is slightly shorter and broader in the shoulders.

  “My room, it was broken into and my dinner suit stolen, but the ship’s security says no one but me and the cleaning personnel were in the room, and the cleaning personnel did not take it,” the man replies furiously.

  “What kind of suit was taken?” Victor asks, his heart skipping a beat then resuming its pace at double speed. The man describes the stolen outfit, and Victor realizes that the man he saw leaving the dining room earlier was wearing it.

  “What room are you in?” Victor is now standing, ready to leave.

  “502, why?” Victor does not bother to reply but immediately runs towards the exit and Laura’s cabin.

  Victor knows that the man he saw must be an assassin and that he is using a cover. He probably went to the man’s cabin to kill him and take his identity. It is pure luck for the man that the assassin did not find him in his room and decided to only take his clothes to be able to blend in at the dining room. Victor realizes that the person must have then followed Laura from her room to dinner, watching their every move. He wonders if the man saw him find the memory card, and if so, if he is too late to save Laura.

  As Victor runs out of the room the man at the bar yells at him, “Hey, your drink,” but Victor does not care. “Inconsiderate bastard,” the man says as he gets up to leave and takes a few steps, but then turns around and takes Victor’s drink before Thibault can stop him. After gulping down Victor’s drink in one motion, he slams the glass down on the bar counter and starts to leave the room. He gets as far as the doors when he drops to the ground, dead, foam coming out of his mouth, cyanide poisoning. Thibault is already busy sending a report to the same agency that Victor works for, informing them of the failed attempt. He was placed on the ship without Victor’s knowledge before the ship left port, in case Victor failed, due to the importance of the mission.

  Russtoff smiles as he sees the details from the memory card, it is exactly what he wants. He closes the net book and removes the card from the slot on the side. After replacing the memory card back into the pen, he hides the pen in his jacket pocket. What an excellent idea for hiding a memory card.

  Slowly, he takes a 9mm Beretta 92 A1 pistol from an underarm holster. He then removes a silencer from his right jacket pocket and starts to fit the silencer as he walks over to Laura. With the silencer fitted the pistol is too large to fit in its holster and he has to keep them separately.

  Russtoff is careful in keeping his eyes on Laura where she is lying on her stomach on the bed, in case she has woken up and is waiting for just the right moment to attack him.

  “No loose ends,” he says, as he puts the gun to Laura’s head and starts to pull the trigger. The trigger is halfway pulled when a click at the door causes him to freeze. Who else has access to her room?

  Quickly Russtoff rushes to the bathroom and manages to slip inside just as the door opens. Standing in the bath, he peers through the small opening between the wall and the end of the door. Three men enter the room, guns drawn. They stop when they see Laura unconscious on the bed, and then look at each other as if waiting for the other man to make a decision.

  “She is not supposed to be here,” one finally says.

  “Does not matter, we will take her with us. Quickly, check for any discs.”

  Within seconds they locate the music discs Nick had sent Laura and take them together with her net book. Zack bends down over Laura and picks her up, throwing her over his shoulder, then walks towards the door.

  As he is about to leave the room one of the others starts to make for the bathroom. He is already halfway inside when Zack calls out to him, “What are you doing? We need to leave.”

  “I need to use the bathroom, just give me a minute.”

  Russtoff presses himself as far as he can against the wall and behind the door, hoping that the man will not enter any further, just a foot more and he will see Russtoff.

  Slowly Russtoff raises his pistol, ready to shoot. He will have no problem taking out this man, but the other two could pose a problem.

  “You can go when we are back in our room, let’s go now,” Zack replies angrily.

  “Okay, coming,” the man replies as he turns and walks out of the bathroom.

  The three men leave Laura’s cabin, with Zack carrying her on his shoulder. The hallway is 100 feet long and has a turn at each end. Zack is walking in front and the others follow. Just as Zack is about to go around the corner, Victor comes running around the corner and crashes into Zack, causing him to drop Laura hard to the ground and both Victor and Zack fall against the hallway walls. Victor is now between the three men a very dangerous situation.

  “My apologies, I just heard my wife is having our baby. You ok?” Victor blurts out.

  “All ok, congratulations!” Zack replies.

  Following Victor’s gaze to Laura lying on the floor, he comments, “She drank too much, taking her back to her room.”

  Victor nods but has already summed up the situation. He can take all three of them if he moves quickly, but just before he can move he notices someone exiting from Laura’s room. Trapped between four people, he will not make it out alive, better to take his leave while he still can and save her later.

  The three men are so focused on Victor that they do not notice the man until after he has exited the cabin and assume that he must have walked down the hallway. Victor nods again and starts running down the hallway as if he is on his way to his wife. Zack quickly picks up Laura and starts walking back to his cabin.

  Chapter 6

  The moment Victor rounds the corner of the hallway and is out of sight of the men, he quickly takes his cell phone from his pocket and activates the trace that is hidden in the chest ornament he gave Laura.

  The sender has a range of 500 feet and Victor quickly retraces his steps to make sure he does not go out of range. As long as Victor is able to stay in range, he will know exactly what cabin they are taking Laura to, allowing him to rescue her, possibly asking Josh to help him. For 15 minutes Victor follows the three men, making sure they do not see him, until the little dot on his cell phone’s screen comes to a standstill, showing Victor the exact cabin the men are in.

  Victor makes sure that the men enter the room then quickly runs in the opposite direction to get the tools he needs for the job. It takes him only minutes to reach lifeboat number 11. After looking around to make sure no one sees him, he lifts the boat’s canvas cover and pulls a large black rucksack from it. He quickly makes his way back to his cabin to prepare to rescue Laura.

  Meanwhile, Russtoff makes his way to the main deck. The ship will be docking in a few hours at Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, and he wants to be one of the first passengers to disembark the ship on arrival. He plans on waiting until the next day after the ship has departed, then claim that he partied too hard and missed the ship. The ship will be too far away to turn around and he will then need to fly out. It happens all the time.

  Russtoff however is unaware that his cover lies dead in the ship’s morgue and as soon as he takes his cover’s identity he will be found out and arrested.

  Zack has managed to carry Laura undetected to his room and waits for Chris to open the door after giving the password for the day. As soon as he enters the room, he goes directly to the couch
and roughly drops Laura onto it.

  “What did you do to her?” Peterson demands angrily.

  “Nothing, we found her passed out in her room, her computer was lying on the ground,” replies Zack, a little bit unsure of what is going on.

  “We also found this,” Chris breaks in, holding up the discs they found.

  “Check them, and the computer,” Peterson barks while walking over to Laura.

  “Pretty little thing,” he comments in a softer voice as he bends over her, bringing his lips an inch from hers. “Drugged, chloroform,” he says as he brings his head back up. “Someone else has beaten us to her, but why leave the computer, her and the discs, unless he got what he wanted? Chris, what do you have?”

  Chris has just opened the lid to Laura’s computer and is still powering it up. “Just a sec Boss.” Peterson gives him an annoyed look but does not comment, the look says it all.

  “Boss, there is a memory card missing.” Russtoff had pulled the memory card from the computer before it finished closing all the files on the disc. There is an error message on the computer stating that it failed to access drive E.

  Chris quickly checks the last used file list and notes a number of picture file types being accessed and a large word document.

  “I think someone found the disc and removed it before we got there, Boss.”

  “Dammit, did you see anyone, did you search the room?” Peterson is furious.

  “No Boss, we saw nothing, the room was clean,” Zack replies, too afraid to inform Peterson that they did not search the room. In any case there was no one in the room, or was there?

  “Ok, I will contact head office and try to find out if there are more players in the game, we will wait for her to wake up, maybe she saw who drugged her.” Peterson goes to the table and sits down, pouring himself some vodka while typing a text message on his phone to inform headquarters of the changes.

  Due to the size of the room that the men are in, there are only four rooms in the corridor; theirs is the last one on the end. They have rented all the rooms in the corridor to make sure no one will accidently spot them, and to try to confuse anyone trying to surprise them, they are however unaware of the sender on Laura, transmitting their exact location. The transmitter is a standard open frequency transmitter, allowing anyone with a receiver to pick up the signal.

  The men keep themselves busy by playing cards and talking while awaiting new orders and information.

  Silently an assassin dressed all in black, with his face hidden by a mask, approaches the door to the room.

  He has on a bulletproof jacket, lined with multiple pockets, ten of which contain spare magazines, and he carries two Heckler & Koch MP5K sub machine guns, one in each hand, each fitted with a silencer.

  On reaching the door of the room Laura is being held in, he places one gun on the floor and reaches inside a black bag hanging from his left shoulder. Carefully he removes a specialized headgear and puts it on, activating the thermal imaging sensor mode. The gear shows differences in heat patterns and allows one to detect people’s body heat in any lighting condition up to 300 feet and through thin objects, such as the cruise liner’s door and thin walls. The assassin can make out every person’s exact location and movement in the room.

  Slowly he picks up the second machine gun and places both guns’ silencers against the door. Each gun is highly modified to increase its fire rate and ammo capacity. 45 rounds for each gun, two seconds worth of continuous deadly fire. Each round is a deadly 9mm armor piercing messenger of death, propelled by the maximum amount of gun powder the machine gun is able to handle.

  There are six people in the room, two walking around, one sitting down alone at a table to the left, two sitting at a table to the right, and one seemingly sleeping upon something in the middle of the room.

  The assassin rechecks his watch and frowns, 3am, interesting that all the people in the room are still awake, so much for sneaking in.

  Carefully he takes aim, one gun covers the man sitting at the table, the other gun covers the two men walking about. Slowly both triggers are squeezed at the same time.

  Inside the room Peterson has just got up to go to the bathroom when suddenly bullets burst through the door, cutting down Zack and Chris who are in the middle of the room, then continue to tear up the rest of the room.

  A bullet catches Peterson in the right side and passes right through, causing a painful but not life threatening wound.

  Peterson drops to the ground to his left and quickly crawls to the bathroom, already drawing his gun. Steven and Bob are on the far right side of the room playing cards at a small table when everything behind them is suddenly ripped apart as bullets tear into it.

  Bob is just in time to turn around and face the door when a burst of death aimed at him breaks through the door and tears into him. Steven, seeing multiple bullets cut Bob down next to him, pulls his pistol as he dives to the ground. Peterson is almost in the bathroom and turns just in time to see a burst of bullets, perfectly aimed, rip into Steven’s right arm as he lies on the ground. The concentrated fire severs the arm at the shoulder. Steven cries in pain as his arm is torn off, but he does not pass out. He drags himself with his left arm to the gun in his severed right arm’s hand, now lying useless on the ground in a bloody mess.

  As soon as Steven manages to pry his pistol from his dead right hand, a new burst of bullets tears into him, severing his left arm.

  Steven lies helpless on the floor, going into shock as blood pumps out of him from the open wounds. There is a second’s delay then a short burst takes Steven in the head, three bullets finding their mark.

  Peterson looks at the scene in horror just as he crawls into the bathroom, his entire team lies dead on the floor. There is another few seconds delay before more bullets rip into each body, concentrated and well targeted, making sure all are dead. Peterson immediately knows that whoever is behind the door must be able to see them somehow. With effort he crawls into the bathtub, while scanning the door.

  After reloading for the second time, the assassin outside the door takes some small explosives from his backpack and places them on the door at the hinges, lock and centre. Moving to the wall to take cover, he prepares to press the button to activate the charges.

  Inside the room, Laura starts to wake up, and although still a bit dazed, she immediately knows something is wrong. The room is littered with door splinters, pieces of furniture and blood. Four men lie dead on the floor, ripped to pieces. Her immediate reaction is to get out of the room, and she jumps up from the couch just as Peterson takes a peak into the room.

  On seeing Laura trying to escape, Peterson takes aim at her, intending to kill her - leave no witness alive is his belief. Just as Peterson pulls the trigger, the door explodes and fragments of it blast all over the room. The shockwave knocks Laura backwards and to the ground, causing Peterson to miss.

  Peterson is not one to give up and empties his pistol in Laura’s direction.

  From outside the cabin, the assassin notices bullets ripping into the floor and couch all around Laura and immediately jumps into the room, emptying both guns in the direction of Peterson. Landing on top of Laura, he reloads as he shields her, then again empties both guns into the bathroom, this time with more precision.

  90 armor piercing bullets rip through the thin bathroom wall, twenty finding their target.

  Laura is lying on her back and looks up at the man lying over her who is using her chest as a stable platform to aim and reload.

  Again the man reloads, but this time does not fire, he just stares intently in the direction of the bathroom, listening. Laura is so afraid she almost cannot breathe, fearing the man will feel her chest rise and fall as she takes a breath, so she breathes as shallow as she can.

  The smoke from the explosion that blasted the door to pieces slowly rises up into the air and suddenly the fire alarm activates. Laura’s body jerks as the alarm activates, causing the assassin to look down at her. There is some
hair in her face and he gently reaches over with his left hand to move the hair with his little finger while still holding the gun.

  Laura is taken aback by the gentleness of his touch. Suddenly the assassin gets up, knowing that within seconds the trained ship’s fire crew will be at the door.

  While he gets up, he empties another clip into the bathroom, shooting through the walls, making sure the person in the bathroom is dead.

  As he walks out of the room he nods to Laura, and she notices that he is limping, blood coming from a wound on his left upper thigh. Laura does not know what to do or say, and lies on the floor in shock.

  The ship’s fire crew arrives only minutes later, and then there is a commotion the moment they see the bodies and spent cartridges.

  Laura is helped to the sickbay where a nurse attends to her minor cuts on her right arm and shoulder due to splinters from the explosion. She also has a slight concussion from the shockwave of the explosion and bumping her head on the floor as she fell down.

  Josh informed her that he would be around later to question her as soon as he has secured the room and evidence, leaving two armed ship’s security guards with her. No one is allowed to see her for the time being except the sickbay staff. The nurse informs Laura that a doctor will see her in a few minutes to check on her head injury.

  Chapter 7

  Josh looks at the dead men in the room, five in total, four on the living room floor and one in the bathroom. The four men in the living room have multiple bullet wounds, some done execution style after they were already dead, and one has both his arms shot off. It is the most gruesome killing he has ever seen, but moving to the bathroom he is even more shocked. The man in the bathroom is a mess. The assassin must not have known how many men there were in the bathroom and just opened up.

  Josh is intrigued by the holes in the bathroom walls. Although the walls are made from ALUSTONE, a composite of a 3mm thin slice of real stone combined with ultra-light aluminum foam, making a very thin lightweight but soundproof wall that even a standard 9mm bullet will penetrate, armor piercing rounds had been used, as if the killer expected the people in the room to be wearing body armor.