[Tanner 16.0] To Kill a Killer

by Remington Kane

  Meanwhile, in the small town of Raguso, Sicily, the murders of Maria, Antonio, and little Anna was the most sensational thing that had ever happened. Add to that the revelation that they had been the family of Maurice Scallato. A famous assassin had been living in their midst, and it left the citizens of Raguso stunned and with many unanswered questions.

  Scallato stepped from the chopper and looked around. The brick home was surrounded by trees, but they were all well over a mile away to prevent against their use as a sniper’s nest. Other than the helicopter pad, there was only one road leading into the property. That road was blocked by a series of iron gates and was watched over by a 24/7 security service.

  The interior of the home was alarmed, had motion, heat, and vibration sensors. Glass break alarms were near every window along with decorative iron bars. There was also a drone with night-vision that flew over the perimeter at random intervals each day, and of course, a panic room on each of its three floors.

  The house had been built by a high-ranking member of the former KGB and another such individual oversaw the firm that supplied its security. It was a perfect place for a man like Scallato to hide and he had bought it outright in exchange for many Russian rubles.

  Scallato rarely thought of his family. They had become a liability and he used them as a tool for his survival. While he would have liked to have spared Maria, the woman had known him better than anyone alive. Under the proper interrogation she might have led someone to his doorstep before he could have fled to Russia.

  Tanner, now there was someone Scallato thought of often, and to his consternation he realized that he feared the man. He had not lied when he told Tanner that he was in his league, and that he was an equal. They would have to meet again someday and decide which of them was the best. Scallato wanted that day to be of his choosing, however, he had no doubts that Tanner was hunting for him.

  Given his new surroundings, Scallato thought Tanner would have to be a miracle worker to breach his security. Yet, he still worried that would happen somehow.

  Scallato helped his new bride from the chopper, then got a laugh out of her when he insisted on carrying her through the snow to reach the door on the roof.

  His thumbprint was read by a scanner, followed by a retina scan, and he and Veronika were granted access to their home. While Veronika undressed and took off her jewelry and makeup, Scallato made a quick circuit through the huge home with a gun.

  He was checking for intruders, he told Veronika, but there was only one intruder that concerned Scallato, and his name was Tanner.

  Once satisfied that they were alone in the house, Scallato sat on the side of their huge bed and removed his boots. Veronika blew him a kiss as she disappeared into the master bathroom and into the shower.

  Scallato turned on the television and watched the news. It was the same old crap they always reported, and only the names of the players changed over the years. Still, he needed to stay abreast of current developments. He’d been watching the TV for less than a minute when a thought occurred to him.

  While he’d had a view into the bathroom from the bedroom, he had never checked the shower before Veronika stepped into it. After easing his gun off the bedside table, Scallato called out to her as he sat up on the side of the bed.

  “Veronika!”

  There was no answer, only the sound of running water.

  He moved from the bed and crouched by the bathroom door, then reached up and turned the knob slowly. Steam wafted through the opening along with the pleasant scent of perfumed soap, while the sound of the shower grew more distinct.

  “Veronika?”

  Still no answer.

  Scallato moved into the bathroom and crawled along stealthily on his elbows and knees. His eyes remained fixed on the shower door, as he attempted in vain to see what was going on behind it. However, the door’s beveled glass was clouded by steam and streaked with soap lather. It allowed only an impression of a form, or, possibly, forms, moving within the spacious shower stall.

  Once he reached the base of the shower, Scallato took a deep breath, then reached up and tapped twice on the door by using his gun. He had expected to hear a cacophony of sound as a barrage of bullets shattered the glass door, but instead, he heard only Veronika’s voice.

  “Maurice?”

  Scallato cracked the door open an inch and saw her soapy back and perfect buttocks. After sighing, he stood and opened the door wider.

  “Didn’t you hear me calling for you?”

  “In here, with the water running? Why? Is something wrong?”

  “Tanner is still alive, that’s what’s wrong.”

  “And you were worried? Maurice, you saw the snow outside. If anyone had walked through that snow they would have left tracks.”

  “I was not worried; I was being cautious.”

  “All right, but now please close the shower door; it’s getting chilly in here and I still have to wash my hair.”

  Scallato shut the door, stomped back into the bedroom, and cut off the TV. Veronika was right. She was right about the snow and she was right about him being worried.

  Him, Il Fantasma, The Ghost, worried, it was disgusting. He had to get a grip on himself. Tanner was good, but he was no magician who could walk on snow and not leave a trace.

  Scallato smiled as he fell atop the bed and wondered what he must have looked like crawling along atop the bathroom floor. His mind had been filled with a vision of Tanner standing in the shower, looking like a ninja, with one hand holding a knife to Veronika’s throat, and the other gripping an Uzi. He chuckled to himself. If he kept it up, he’d be checking under the bed at night for the man.

  Scallato rolled over onto his stomach, fluffed his pillow, and closed his eyes.

  The sound of four distinct, although muffled, gunshots reverberated throughout the room.

  Scallato’s eyes opened for what would be the last time, and he watched in amazement as Tanner slipped out from under the bed. There was a gun in Tanner’s hand that had a sound suppressor attached.

  The two men stared at each other wordlessly, although Scallato had many questions. However, a set of collapsed lungs along with the blood filling his mouth made Scallato’s queries impossible to ask.

  Tanner stared at the bathroom door and heard no disruption in the sound of falling water. Veronika was still inside the shower and apparently had not heard the muffled shots. Tanner was thankful for that. Veronika likely would have been a handful to restrain, and he saw no reason to kill her.

  Tanner leaned over until he was eye-to-eye with Scallato. There was a look of immense disbelief on the Sicilian’s face. Scallato had thought he was the best assassin who had ever lived, but he was now faced with the truth. Tanner was better, without equal, and the price of that knowledge was death.

  Tanner straightened up. Maybe another man would curse Scallato or wish him a fine time in hell, but Tanner only wanted to watch the bastard die and know that their personal war was finally over.

  Tanner did just that, as life faded from Maurice Scallato, and in his mind, Tanner ran over the events that led him to their final confrontation.

  In the days after the massacre, Tanner barely slept as he searched for Scallato in and around Sicily, but it soon became apparent that Maurice Scallato had made it to a place of safety.

  Durand’s organization took most of the heat for the escape, because they had been watching the port and airfield, while other agents had surreptitiously observed the few vehicles that traveled in and out of the small town of Raguso.

  However, he had gotten away, Scallato was gone, and Tanner, Sara, and Durand, were back to square one.

  That all changed two weeks after the funerals of Maria, Antonio, and Anna.

  That’s when the man who ran the local hotel walked into the police station. Accompanying him was his son, Paolo. Paolo had been best friends with Antonio Rizzo, yet even he hadn’t known that Antonio’s father was the assassin, Maurice Scallato.

  Youn
g Paolo had a story to tell, one that was interesting and could be the key to finding Scallato. Tanner, Sara, and Durand met with the boy to hear the tale, but Paolo had a request before he would recite it.

  “He doesn’t want me here?” Sara said to Durand, who had asked her and Tanner to step out in the hallway of the precinct.

  “I don’t know the details yet, only that the story involves sex,” Durand said. “Your presence might make the boy… uncomfortable. At least, while talking about some aspects.”

  Sara laughed.

  “All right, it’s being filmed anyway, and I’ll watch the interview later. But what big sex secrets can a fourteen-year-old boy have?”

  Very big, as it turned out, because Antonio had confided in Paolo and told him all about his visit to Rome.

  Antonio had been with a girl, Paolo told them, but no, more than a girl, a woman like Sara, and she was Russian too. His father had arranged it at the apartment of another woman named Veronika, and the blond girl’s name had been Yana. Paolo also knew that Veronika was the mistress of Antonio’s father.

  It took Durand’s people only a day to find and interview Yana. The petite hooker was happy to help them. She had liked Antonio, and she disliked Veronika.

  Information gathered from her led them to Russia, where a bribe to a relative of Veronika’s procured an email with a picture of Veronika’s fabulous new home, which resembled a fortress. There were no pictures of her husband, but Tanner knew the man’s face all too well.

  The Russian security firm that monitored Scallato’s secluded home was obstinate in their stance of non-cooperation and said they would fight any legal action. They also threatened to inform their client, Ivan Yenin, of the authorities’ interest in him.

  Durand told the company’s CEO they had reason to believe that Ivan Yenin was Maurice Scallato. The CEO said that his company was in the business of selling security, and if they betrayed the trust of their clientele, even a man like Scallato, that they might as well close up shop.

  Tanner convinced the CEO to make an exception.

  He made it past the chief executive’s own superb security, into his bedroom, and promised him death if he didn’t cooperate or alerted the man they were after.

  The CEO agreed that there were times in business when you had to make compromises. He came to that decision with the barrel of Tanner’s gun pressed against his forehead. An agreement was reached that they would allow access to the home while doctoring any surveillance footage of the time in question. All sensors within the home would be disabled and anyone viewing the home’s cameras remotely would receive a feed of old video that made it appear all was well.

  The final hurdle was the snow, and the question of how to get inside the house without leaving tracks. A similar situation had happened to another Tanner decades earlier. That had been Tanner Four, and Tanner remembered from the memoirs of the man that he had figured a way around it.

  Minutes after Tanner marched his way through two feet of snow, a team of firefighting airplanes covered the area around the home. The planes usually carried water or fire retardant, but instead, they carried snow, and after several passes, Tanner’s footprints were eliminated, while leaving the landscape looking pristine.

  Then, the waiting game came.

  Tanner had spent thirty-eight hours in the home before Scallato returned from a trip to the city of Barnaul. Thirty-eight minutes after that, Tanner stood over the man and watched him die.

  Tanner’s mentor, Spenser Hawke, once told him that if the day ever came that a Scallato and a Tanner went head-to-head, that their best better be better than that of the Scallato’s.

  It had been, and now the long line of assassins known as the Scallato’s had ended.

  Tanner felt a mixture of annoyance and happiness when he saw that Sara had chosen to come for him at the designated pick-up spot. She was dressed in a fur coat and leaning against a Mercedes, while looking out at the icy landscape.

  She greeted Tanner without turning his way. “Congratulations.”

  He sighed as he walked in front of her.

  “What if I had been Scallato? He could have killed me, sent a phony message, and come looking for my ride.”

  Sara smiled. “That’s not possible; I know it and so do you.”

  After sharing a kiss, Tanner drove toward the nearest town with a decent hotel.

  Once he reached his destination, he stopped at a mailbox. There was one last thing to do.

  Epilogue

  GENOA, ITALY

  Nurse Ginevra Valli smiled as she handed the padded envelope over to Carlo Scallato. Carlo was sitting up in bed inside his private room, and, he was having a good day.

  “Good” for Carlo meant that he was aware of who he was, and what day it was, at least, most of the time.

  As he opened the envelope, Carlo saw that it held no letter, only a single item. It was a ring, an unadorned band of gray metal which had a storied history. It had started its life as a bullet.

  Carlo gasped when he understood the ring’s significance, and he realized who must have sent it to him.

  The last of the Scallato’s held a ring that had been a family talisman. If there had ever been any luck in the damn thing, Carlo knew it had all run out.

  TANNER RETURNS!

  WHITE HELL - BOOK 17

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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