Raymond Benson

by Hitman: Damnation

  The woman, who appeared to be an everyday housewife and mother, thirty-something years old, took each kid’s hand and walked them down the block. 47 was patient. He could wait for the woman to return. It wouldn’t be long. Drop the children at school, kiss them goodbye, and promise to pick them up later in the day. He figured she’d be back in ten or fifteen minutes.

  The assassin turned and stepped inside the café and ordered a large coffee, black. He wondered why so many customers had to have fancy concoctions—a latte this or that, a mocha whatsit, a cuppa-cinno however—when it was just the caffeine anyone wanted. They could be in and out of the shop a lot quicker if they ordered simple coffee. But the whims and desires of the average person meant nothing to 47; if he attempted to fit in, he only found it awkward.

  Dressed in his signature black suit, white shirt, and red tie, he sat with his coffee, his briefcase on the floor within reach, and watched through the window as humanity passed by.

  No question about it. People were peculiar.

  And he was even more so.

  The woman returned to the townhouse exactly twelve minutes after she’d left. She fumbled in her purse for her keys, unlocked the front door, and stepped inside. 47 knew that the father of her children lived in Manhattan. The couple was divorced.

  She was alone.

  The assassin finished his coffee, threw away the cup, and stepped outside with his briefcase.

  It was a beautiful, brisk day.

  Time for business.

  He rang the doorbell as if he were a traveling salesman. After a moment, he noticed the movement in the peephole. She knew he was there. He felt her hesitate, and then she opened the door.

  “Holy shit. If it isn’t Agent 47,” she said.

  “Cherry.”

  “What the hell? I heard you were dead.”

  “Not yet.”

  She looked him up and down, not sure if he was a ghost or not. After a moment’s silence, she stepped aside and gestured inward. He moved past her and she closed the door behind them.

  Cherry Jones was one of the many assets Agent 47 knew around the world. No one suspected that this unassuming, everyday, divorced American mom was a high-level arms dealer, drug distributor, and FBI informant, all rolled into one. She appeared completely harmless, but 47 knew that Cherry was as lethal as they came.

  She led him into the living room. “Coffee?”

  “I just had some across the street.”

  She nodded, stepped into the kitchen, and poured herself a cup from a contraption on the counter. When she returned to 47, she held the coffee in her left hand and a Smith & Wesson in the right.

  “What brings you here, 47?” she asked.

  “Put that away, Cherry. I’m here on business.”

  “I thought perhaps you’d come to collect on that old debt.”

  “And I thought perhaps we could talk about that.”

  “I was going to pay you. Life interfered. I got divorced. I had two kids to raise. You disappeared. Like I said, I thought you were dead.”

  “Put the gun away and let’s talk.” He set the briefcase on the floor and held out his empty hands. “I’m not armed.”

  “Liar. You’re always armed. I just can’t see your weapons.”

  He allowed a slight grin to form on his face. “Fair enough.”

  Cherry set the gun on a table and sat in a chair next to it. The Smith & Wesson was easily within reach, and 47 knew she could grab it and fire a round in the time it took most people’s brains to simply initiate the command to do so.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I gave you a loan of a hundred thousand dollars,” he said as he pushed a toy fire truck out of the way with his foot. He then sat on the sofa and crossed his legs. “I’m willing to forgive that loan, but I need some equipment and some information in a hurry.”

  “I’m low on equipment these days. Business sucks. The information depends on what kind you want.”

  “You have access to classified material at the FBI. I know that computer of yours in the basement is linked to their secure network. You can pull up any document, any file, any photo, any report. Right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let’s go to the basement and I’ll tell you what I’m looking for. I’d also like to browse what you do have in stock. There’s an item I need.”

  “What item?”

  “I’ll know it when I see it.”

  Cherry sipped her coffee. “And you’ll forget about the hundred grand? Just for a piece of equipment and some classified FBI info?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s awfully big of you, 47. All right. Let’s go.” She picked up the handgun and stood. “You don’t mind if I hold on to this, though, do you?”

  “If it makes you more comfortable …”

  She jerked her head toward a door. Cherry opened it, revealing a staircase. 47 followed her down to a playroom full of toys, a flat-screen television, and a treadmill. Cherry unlocked another door and led the hitman into a room that was obviously off-limits to her kids.

  It was full of weapons on tables and shelves. Hightech assault rifles, handguns, bazookas, grenades of all types and functions, knives, swords, and small bombs.

  “Here we are, 47. Mayhem R Us,” she said with a chuckle.

  “You make a nice living, Cherry?”

  “It’s okay. Like I said, business is down. Too much competition.”

  The assassin moved between the tables, examining the various pieces of hardware. He stopped at the table containing the bombs and grenades. He picked one up and turned it around in his hand.

  “This work?” he asked.

  “Of course it works. I mean, it’s not going to kill anyone, but it does what it’s supposed to do.”

  He nodded and placed the pear-sized object in his jacket pocket. “I’ll take it.”

  “All right.”

  47 continued to browse, paused at the knives, picked up a few, replaced them, and moved on. He found a bookshelf filled with Chinese fireworks.

  “Why do you have these?” he asked.

  “Fireworks are illegal to sell in the city,” Cherry explained. “In most states you have to go out of city limits to buy them.” She shrugged. “I make it easier for New Yorkers when they want to celebrate the Fourth of July or New Year’s Eve. They’re not really dangerous.”

  “But they make a big noise, right?”

  “Sure. Some of them do.”

  “Show me.”

  She picked out a selection and gave them to him. “On the house. And I won’t even ask what you need ’em for.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So what about drugs? I got amphetamines, crystal meth, cocaine, heroin, OxyContin, marijuana.” She pointed to a cabinet where dozens of bottles and cans were stored. “Oh, wait, I forgot. You don’t do any of that stuff.”

  47 stared at her for a moment, and then he said, “Let’s boot up your computer.”

  “That’s all you wanted?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a funny dude, 47.” She walked over to a desk, sat, and switched on a high-end Mac. The hitman stood behind her. “So what do you want to know?”

  “Everything the Bureau has on Cromwell and the New Model Army. I’d also like to look at material on Charlie Wilkins. See if there’s any evidence of a connection between them.”

  Cherry laughed. “Charlie Wilkins? Are you kidding?”

  “No.”

  “He’s a preacher! What’s that religion he runs, the Church of Something …?”

  “The Church of Will.”

  “Right. People love him! Hell, I watch his program on TV every now and then. It’s good entertainment. It beats the reality shows that swarm the networks. You’re out of your mind, 47. That’s like saying Gandhi was a terrorist.”

  “Just bring up the documents, Cherry.”

  “Fine.”

  She went to work on the keyboard, hacked into the Bureau’s secure network with a
password, and did a search for New Model Army. More than a hundred links popped up.

  “Jeez, 47, where do you want to start?”

  He scanned the subjects and pointed. “Click that one.”

  It was everything the FBI knew about Cromwell. Several pages of text.

  Cherry stood. “Have a seat and knock yourself out. Looks like that’ll keep you busy for an hour or two. I’m going back upstairs. You hungry? Can I make you something to eat?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  “Try not to stay too long on one link. They track stuff like that. You have to be done by noon. That’s when I pick up Sally from kindergarten.”

  “What happens if you don’t show up?” he asked.

  She shot him a look. “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. This might take a while.”

  “My ex-husband is on the call list. But he’d have to come in from Manhattan. I’d rather not do that, 47; he’s a total asshole. He liked to take it out on me when he got drunk. You didn’t know about the two teeth he knocked out a few years back. It was a nasty divorce. He was very greedy and he had a better lawyer. Bill has visitation rights, but I don’t have to like it. The kids don’t like him much either. And, frankly, I don’t want Sally or Billy seeing you here. All right?”

  She left him alone but kept the door to her inner sanctum open.

  A good assassin always did his homework. 47 made it a point to study his targets, get to know them personally, even if he never met them during the course of the operation. He had already researched Dana Linder. She was easy. No skeletons in her closet that 47 could see, other than that she was a member of the Church of Will, for what that was worth. She and her brother, Darren—twins—had lost their father in a hunting accident in Maryland just before their twelfth birthday. Their mother, 47 learned, was associated with Charlie Wilkins from the beginning. She and her husband were members of Wilkins’s “modern” house of worship, a forerunner to the Church of Will. In the 1970s, Wilkins’s Church was run out of evangelical touring tent productions. After her husband’s death, Mrs. Shipley traveled with Wilkins, dragging the twins along wherever he and his entourage went. She died of cancer when the children were still in high school. Wilkins kept them with his organization and raised them both with the help of other Church followers, even fronting much of the cash for Dana’s education.

  Interesting, the hitman thought.

  By scrutinizing footage of Dana Linder’s campaign speeches and appearances, the assassin knew how he would accomplish the hit. A public execution was always difficult, but it was not beyond his ability. He already had a plan in place. Of more interest to him was the background of the second target, should the orders go forward. Wilkins was a fascinating objective; 47 wasn’t sure if he’d ever killed someone so famous.

  The hitman studied the file and photos. The FBI had no idea who Cromwell really was, but reliable intelligence suggested that he had military training and was of the age to have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. The face he revealed on television was not the one he was born with. Plastic surgery had changed his features considerably. He also had a prosthetic arm, so it was conceivable that the man had seen serious combat. Whoever had performed the plastic surgery had done a remarkable job. Cromwell now had rugged, chiseled features that gave him the appearance of a Roman god. The skin was a bit too shiny and obviously grafted, but he didn’t look bad. A bit like an action figure.

  The New Model Army had been operative for two years and was supposedly once based in the Pacific Northwest, most likely Oregon or Washington State. It consisted of a battery ranging between fifty and a hundred men, all of whom were either onetime professional soldiers or homegrown military enthusiasts. The FBI and the Pentagon were investigating possible black-market weapons sales between the NMA and the real army and marines. Just as the government had lately become corrupt, so had its military branches.

  While everything the NMA was doing was criminal, many of the American people considered Cromwell a folk hero. Whenever the FBI raided a suspected NMA camp, the group had somehow got wind of the impending attack and left in a hurry. It was no longer believed that Cromwell and his men had a permanent base of operations. They moved from town to town, working with local militias and rebels to house and feed them.

  And their attacks were moving eastward across the country.

  47 scanned the rest of the document and went to another. Titled “The New Model Army and the Church of Will,” the folder contained several files. He spent the next half hour going through each one, but they were inconclusive. The only suspicious activity in evidence was that cellphone calls had been made to and from suspected NMA camps and the Church of Will main headquarters in Virginia. The FBI had attempted to legally tap landlines in Wilkins’s compound, but more than one judge had denied permission. 47 was surprised that the Bureau hadn’t gone ahead and done it anyway. Apparently Wilkins held more power and influence than the hitman had imagined, but there was no substantiation that the reverend himself was involved with the NMA.

  One file contained a satellite image and corresponding map of Greenhill, the Church of Will’s compound in Virginia. Blueprints revealed the layout of Wilkins’s mansion. 47 found it interesting that the man’s home was so well protected. A bulletproof wall-sized picture window facing a lake? Surely the man wasn’t afraid of being attacked by an amphibious landing force. Nevertheless, the hitman thought the file might come in handy, especially if he had to go through with an undercover operation. A spindle of blank CD-Rs sat on the desk, so he took one, inserted it into the computer, and copied the ground plan onto the disk.

  “Are you done yet?” Cherry called from the top of the stairs.

  He ejected the disk and took it. “Yes.”

  She came down and looked at the screen. “Get what you needed?”

  “I suppose.”

  She took over the mouse and keyboard and closed the software.

  “Cherry, you down there?” a male voice called from the top of the stairs. They both heard footsteps descending.

  “Shit!” Cherry whispered. “My ex! We have to—”

  Before she or 47 could move, a man appeared, wide-eyed and mouth gaping. He was a little older than Cherry and was dressed in a suit.

  “What the hell is this? Since when did we have this extra room in our house?” Then he saw the guns and other weapons. “What the—” He turned to 47. “Who the hell are you?” Back to Cherry. “You will tell me what the fuck is going on here now.”

  “Bill, calm down; it’s my house now, and this is not what you think,” Cherry said, but 47 noted she was obviously distressed. She had also left the Smith & Wesson upstairs. “And how the hell did you get in? The judge said you weren’t allowed to have a key.”

  “Yes, let’s call the judge!” the man said, moving toward his ex-wife. “You’ve got my kids living in a house with goddamned weapons? Wait until my lawyer hears this! You’ll never see those brats again.”

  Agent 47 did have the presence of mind, despite the commotion, to slip to the foot of the stairs and stand there, blocking Bill’s exit.

  The former couple continued to yell at each other. Clearly, the man couldn’t leave the house with knowledge of Cherry’s extracurricular activities. Too many people would be hurt, and the assassin would lose a valuable asset. And didn’t she say the man used to beat her? Sure, the kids might miss having a father, but there was no question that the husband was going the wrong direction on a one-way street.

  Over Bill’s shoulder, 47 saw Cherry give him a barely perceptible nod. It was a signal, a green light.

  Agent 47 spoke. “Bill.”

  The man whirled around, furious. “What?”

  The killer grabbed the man’s head in his gloved hands, wrenching it sharply to the right. With a sickening pop, the third cervical vertebra snapped and a shard was driven through Bill’s spinal cord.

  Bill’s mouth gaped as he fell. He died before he hit the floor, his body slumped in an unna
tural position.

  A moment of silence passed.

  “Thanks, 47,” Cherry said, exhaling deeply. “If he had gotten out of here alive, I’d be in deep shit.”

  “What about the body? Won’t the police suspect you?”

  “I know an excellent cleanup crew. They’ll destroy every bit of evidence. He was never here.”

  47 gazed at the corpse.

  “You did me a favor, 47,” she said. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. He was a sick bastard.”

  “I didn’t do it because of your domestic situation,” 47 replied. “I did it because I had no choice. He knew too much.”

  Cherry eventually nodded. “Is there anything else you want? Anything?”

  The assassin considered her words for a moment and then gestured to the “medicine cabinet.” She snickered a bit, went over, and unlocked it. “Help yourself,” she said.

  He found several bottles of oxycodone and stuffed them in his jacket pocket.

  Back upstairs, he asked to use the washroom while Cherry made the call to her crew. He popped a pill and swallowed it with water in a cupped hand. Then he simply and quietly left the townhouse without saying goodbye and grabbed a taxi on 7th Avenue.

  Next stop, the airport.

  TEN

  I’d just landed at O’Hare. Chicago. Dana Linder’s next campaign stop was a rally at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. Facing the Great Lawn. Tomorrow.

  I’d be there.

  I rented a car and drove to Des Plaines, not far from the airport. The storage facility was easy to find. I already had the key; I didn’t even have to check in at the front desk. Just parked at the storage building, climbed the stairs to the second floor, and unlocked door 210. My briefcase and other equipment, including a custom-made U.S. military M40A3 sniper rifle with a removable stock, were waiting there for me. The drop-off had worked like a charm.