by Ted Dekker
If he placed the crosshairs directly on a target that was four hundred yards out, he would hit it precisely as aimed. But at this distance, he had to place the crosshairs more than five feet above the target.
He steadied his aim, lowered his heart rate, released the air in his lungs, and focused on a spot roughly five feet above and slightly to the left of the yellow cube.
A round went off to his left. Englishman. The red target leaped. All of this was peripheral to Carl. He slowly increased the tension in his trigger finger.
His rifle jerked in his arms. It took the bullet almost two seconds to reach the yellow cube. When it did, the cube bounced high, rolled to the left, and came to a rest.
Carl ejected the spent shell and chambered a second cartridge.
A breeze cooled his neck. A musty odor from the dust under his chin and the gun oil mixed with the sharp smells of burned gunpowder. His body hugged the earth. He was a killer. His preferred instrument was the rifle, and his weapon was his mind.
Carl shot the second round, waited for the target to bounce, reloaded quickly, and reacquired the yellow cube.
He was a man who loved and hated only if and when it facilitated his objective to kill. To kill he had to survive. Survive and kill, this was his purpose.
He sent a third round speeding down the range.
“Do you know what happened today?” Kelly asked behind him and to his right.
He held the scope over the target until it settled for a fourth shot. “No,” he said.
“In the pit, do you know what you did?”
Carl considered the question, trusting his instincts on the fourth shot. She was talking about the heat. Rifle cracks filled the air in rapid succession. Three cubes bounced downrange, like three puppets on strings.
“No.”
“Did you try to lower the temperature in your pit?”
“Yes.”
She lay down beside him, glassing the field with binoculars. “You succeeded, Carl.”
So. His mind was connected to his immediate environment through this quantum field that Agotha had told him about.
He shot the target for the fifth time. Successfully. Chambered his last round.
“Do you see the white target on the right farther down range?”
He moved his scope. “Yes.”
“It’s over three thousand feet. Can you hit this target for me?”
She knew he could—he’d done so many times in a row. Carl answered anyway. “Yes.”
“But by the time the bullet reaches that distance, its parabolic rotation will be nearly ten inches in diameter. You can’t control the bullet’s wobbling to place it where you want in that teninch circle.”
“Correct.”
“But if you can lower the heat in your pit, can you affect the flight path of a bullet?”
Carl eased off the scope and looked at her. Was she serious?
“I want you to shoot your next five shots at the static target. Shoot for the center.”
“I was in a different place when I lowered the heat.”
“Go there now.”
“I was in the pit for three days. My mind was focused. And I don’t know what I did. I created a second tunnel, but beyond that I don’t really know what happened.”
“You can’t create a second tunnel now?”
He didn’t know. Even if he could, he had no idea how to affect the flight path of a bullet leaving the end of his barrel at twenty-nine hun-dred feet per second.
“Please, they insist.”
He would try, of course. He would do whatever they wanted. He would do it for Kelly, but he was quite sure he would fail.
And what were the consequences of failing this time?
“They don’t care if you succeed or fail; they only want you to try.” Carl nodded.
The 150-grain bullet would fall much farther over two thousand feet. And the target looked much smaller, barely more than a white speck in the distance.
He spent a full minute bringing his focus into alignment and entering his tunnel. The light at the end was the target. It was here, on the range, that he’d first thought of consciousness as a tunnel.
The air had become still; there were no shots from the others. There was a path between where he lay and the white target. He walked that path, feeling the wind, the humidity, and the trajectory that the bullet would take, arching over the field to fall precisely into the porous white electronic board.
He lowered his heart rate so that he would have enough time to shoot between beats. Made his muscles like rubber so there would be no movement conducted through his bones into his shoulder, or fore-arms, or trigger finger.
It was time to send the bullet. He knew that he would hit the target if he shot now.
But they wanted more.
Carl tried to form a second tunnel as he had in the pit. But no matter how he focused his mind, it refused to form. Why?
Maybe he didn’t need a second tunnel. Maybe he could just focus on the bullet and force it to fly straight.
He brought all of his mind to the bullet. For a moment everything around him simply stopped. His breathing, his heart, the air itself seemed to pause.
Carl sent the bullet.
He couldn’t see the impact on a static target at this distance, but through her scope, Kelly could.
“Again,” she said.
“Did I hit it?”
“Again,” she repeated.
Carl reloaded and repeated the same shot five times to her urging. “Did I hit it?”
She lowered her binoculars. “You did fine, Carl. I’m very proud of you.”
Kelly handed him the binoculars and walked toward the others, who were watching patiently.
“We’re going to play a game,” she said loudly enough for all of them to hear. Carl lifted the binoculars and quickly studied the target.
He’d hit it, he saw, but in a scattered pattern, with no more accuracy than any other time. The marks winked out as the target electronically cleared itself. He lowered the binoculars. Kelly had reset the target with the remote in her hand. She offered him a small smile and continued.
“Each of you will lie down in a crate with your weapon. The crates have been treated with a chemical that agitates hornets. You have a six-inch opening in the front panel through which to shoot at the reactive twelve-hundred-yard targets. Once you are ready, three dozen black hornets will be funneled into each of your crates. Their stings will adversely affect your muscles. The first to place five rounds into the target will win this contest. Do you understand?”
None of them responded.
“Good. The winner will be freed and given a knife. The next one to succeed will be armed with a handgun and will hunt the winner until one of you is either killed or incapacitated. The third will be left in the crate for an additional five minutes and then taken to the infirmary.”
Carl dropped the binoculars on a sandbag and picked up his rifle.
8
Robert Stenton ruffled Jamie’s short blond hair and hugged him tight with one arm. “You’re smarter than most of the senators in Washington, buddy. That’s why I insist you hang around.”
Jamie smiled sheepishly, then pulled away.
They were in the Oval Office, where the secretary of commerce had just briefed the president on the progress of a White House initiative to increase import tariffs. Jamie had sat on the couch and fidgeted through most of the meeting. He’d had a bad night, the first in a week. The pain in his stomach hadn’t settled until he finally vomited at three in the morning.
“Can I go?” he asked.
“Sure.” He’s not himself, Robert thought. “You sure you’re okay?” His son shrugged. “I’m tired is all.”
“Okay, go get some rest. Mom will get you something to eat.”
“’Kay.”
Candace poked her head in the door. “Your next appointment is here, Mr. President.”
“Send him in.”
Jamie turned b
ack. “Who’s that?”
“Classified, buddy.”
“’Kay.”
Jamie passed a thick, short, dark-haired man at the door and was gone.
“Sir?”
“Come in, Frank. Have a seat.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was clear that Frank Meyers wasn’t accustomed to visits to the White House, particularly not the Oval Office. The few times Robert had met with the CIA had always been with the director, Ed Carter. This time Carter wasn’t even aware of a meeting.
“Drink?”
“No, sir.”
Robert seated himself on the sofa facing the director of special operations. “What do you know about the X Group?”
Frank Meyers blinked. Clearly he hadn’t expected the question.
Robert grinned. “No sense beating around the bush. I realize that most of what you do is classified and rarely discussed with us political types, but it’s a direct question and I want a direct answer.”
Meyers cleared his throat and clasped his hands together. “The X Group. I’m not sure I know precisely what they are. Or precisely—”
“I don’t need you to be precise. Just tell me what you know. If you don’t know, then give me the word on the street.”
“Well, I’m not sure there is a word on the street. Very few are even aware of their existence.”
“But you are.”
“Don’t misunderstand me; I’ll tell you everything I know. It’s just that this group is an unusual animal. We aren’t sure where they’re located or which hits they carry out, but—”
“So they are assassins.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ordered by?”
“They have no apparent political or ideological interests. Strictly guns for hire. Mercenaries. They’re run by a man named Laszlo Kalman. Hungarian descent. From what we know, they use cutting-edge psychiatric science to train their people. Phase-three memory wipes, torture, extreme forms of psychological manipulation. But they get results.”
“Phase-three memory wipes?”
“There are three levels of memory manipulation. The first pertains to specific memories, dates, occurrences—the kind that comes with age. The subject forgets what has happened. The second involves time-space disorientation. Not knowing who you are or where you are. The third and most invasive is forgetting that you should know who you are or where you are. The Chinese proved fifty years ago that even otherwise healthy men can be effectively reduced to a phase-three memory wipe in less than forty days. The assassins employed by the X Group are first reduced to shells of their former identities and then trained as extremely loyal and lethal killers.”
“So this group has been used?”
“By us?”
Robert lifted an eyebrow. “That would be illegal, right?”
“Under most circumstances, yes.”
“Most?”
“I have to say, sir, I’m not sure—”
“I know that both the military and the CIA have been known to take out a bad guy now and then.”
“The rules change under declared war.”
“So we declare war on drug lords and take out a cartel in Colombia. Just give it to me straight. To your knowledge, has the CIA ever employed the X Group to carry out an assassination?”
“That’s not the way it works. We hire people who hire lawyers who have clients protected by their attorney-client privilege who have other clients who hire assassins. Follow?”
Robert grinned. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Some of our offshore interests have contracted the X Group. The fact of the matter is there’s no organization as isolated and as sure to give us the desired results. Some people say they’ve never failed in the ten years they’ve been on the market.”
“I wasn’t aware the market was so well organized.”
“On the contrary, the black market requires more organization than the open market to avoid authorities.”
So the X Group peddled assassinations on the black market. David Abraham not only knew about them but thought they were somehow linked to Assim Feroz.
Robert stood and walked behind the couch. “Who do they typi-cally target?”
“At five million dollars a hit, the targets are pretty far up the food chain. High-level executives. You heard about the death of Sung Yishita, president of the Bank of Japan? It was reported as an accident, but it wasn’t. His throat was cut two minutes after a high-level speech in Tokyo.”
“Government officials would make natural targets,” Robert said. “Heads of state.”
“Yes. Which is why we have established an agreement with them to reject any contract on a United States federal government official.”
The revelation surprised him. It was tantamount to paying off terrorists. At the same time, it gave him some comfort. He hated to ask how much they paid.
“Sounds like the agency’s in pretty deep with them,” Robert said. “In this regard it’s unavoidable.”
Robert walked to his desk, wondering how far he really wanted to go with this.
“You have any reason to believe there might be any connection between Assim Feroz and the X Group?” he asked, facing the man.
Like most politicians, he’d learned to judge people by how they reacted to questions. Being asked this run of questions by the president of the United States was usually disarming even for someone as practiced as the director of special operations. Meyers showed no visible sign of surprise, but his answer was too long in coming. He stared at the president, mute.
Robert pushed. “I have reason to believe that there is a connection. I want to know whether there’s any plan on or off the books to deal with Feroz using the X Group.”
A pause. “There’s been some discussion. Only that. I’m afraid I simply can’t say more.”
“You can’t possibly think that killing Feroz would resolve the dilemma we’re facing with the Iranian initiative.”
“No.”
“It would only fuel their fires.”
“I agree. But killing a man isn’t the only way to remove him from the scene.”
“What, you wound him? Give him a disease that turns him into a vegetable? Poison him?”
“They’ve all been done, but no.” Frank Meyers averted his eyes. “With all due respect, I really don’t know of any operational plan involving the X Group. I’ve already said way more—”
“Remember which office you’re in, Mr. Meyers.”
A direct stare. “That’s my point.”
Robert knew he’d pushed the topic to its limits. He already knew more than he wanted to know.
“You’re right. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to compromise your position. But I assure you that the last thing we need is to make the Iranian defense minister a martyr.”
“Absolutely, I agree.”
But there was still a plan. What then? It would make no sense for anyone to attempt to kill Feroz or him. Or, for that matter, the Israeli prime minister.
“Does Director Carter know about this ‘discussion’ with the Group?”
Another slight pause. “I believe he’s aware of some things.”
Then a formal plan existed. A plan that was being considered at the highest level. And his spiritual adviser seemed terrified by this business. Which part of it, David himself probably couldn’t explain. The man operated on spiritual discernment as much as on facts. Evil was lurking.
Then again, David Abraham had come face-to-face with evil and lived to tell of it. The president of the United States had Gandalf the White as a spiritual adviser.
Robert regarded the director of special operations steadily. “You know that I’ve decided to oppose the Iranian initiative at the UN summit in two weeks?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please tell whoever you need to that I want no agency involvement in this. Are we clear? If I have to, I’ll talk to the director, but the last thing we need is some kind of cover-up in a matter as critical as this.” �
��Understood, sir.”
“Thank you, Frank.”
9
Carl lay on his belly in the narrow crate, rifle extended, ready, with the barrel an inch from a small wooden door he assumed would be opened when it was time to shoot. A strong medicinal scent made it hard to breathe.
The implications of his predicament were clear. He was expected to win. Neither Jenine nor Englishman could place five rounds in a target at two thousand yards as quickly as he could.
And if he won, one of the others would hunt him. He would have less hornet venom in his system, but the hunter would have a gun. He wasn’t sure which he preferred, to be the hunter filled with poison, or the hunted with far less poison. They both sounded like a kind of death. The thoughts crashed through his mind as he tried to focus.
A gate opened behind him, and a faint, then loud, buzzing swarmed in his ears. Closing his eyes would compromise his accuracy now and his sight later. He wondered briefly if a hornet could sting someone in the eyeballs.
He searched for his tunnel, ignoring the soft bump of frantic hornets along his legs, then up his back. He shut down methodically, easing into the safe place of darkness.
A hornet buzzed past his right ear and slammed into the crate in front of him. For a moment it came into focus. A large black insect with gangly legs and appendages sticking out in every direction. It ricocheted off the wood and struck his right cheek.
The gate slid open in front of him. He peered through his scope at the tiny white target. The hornets were slamming into his shoulder blades now, buzzing loudly around his head.
A sharp pain cut into his neck, and he gasped. This pain had sliced past the wall of protection he’d erected. How?
Panic crowded his mind. He’d felt fear before, and he knew how to shut it down. It had to go first, before he could shut down his nerves. He couldn’t hope to hit the target until he’d rid himself of pain.
The buzzing became a roar. Carl reluctantly took his eyes off the target and closed his eyes. He felt another bite, this one on the small of his back.
He disassociated his mind from the pain and let himself fall into a soft black pillow. There he formed his tunnel from the blackness.
