Raymond Benson

by Hitman: Damnation

  Both vehicles had been riddled with bullets, but the tires were sound. Cromwell had a good lead, but 47 quickly switched gears and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. Both drivers were forced to swerve and dodge masses of pedestrians, but Cromwell took less care—his bus invariably hit horrific-sounding bumps as it zoomed across the mall.

  At last 47 caught up to Cromwell. He held steady on his prey’s left side as both buses sped neck and neck. The militant turned to grimace at his pursuer through his window, intent on making it to the stage first. 47 grabbed the manual handle and opened his door. Then, with his left hand on the steering wheel and a Silverballer in his right, the assassin carefully aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger. The bullet went through the open door and shattered the driver’s window of the other bus. Cromwell’s head exploded as the slug penetrated the man’s skull and exited the other side.

  The militant’s bus swerved wildly out of control and veered to the mall’s western edge. Police unloaded a firestorm of ammunition at it, not realizing the driver was already dead. The bus made a final careen, tipped over thirty degrees, and plowed into a food vendor’s stand. The vehicle crashed onto its side and slid another twenty feet before it came to a screeching, sickening halt.

  Agent 47 ignored all that and focused on getting Wilkins. He headed full speed toward the stage. Crowds parted like the Red Sea in front of him as he blasted the bus’s horn.

  Charlie Wilkins stood frozen on the stage, watching with revulsion what he had wrought.

  Oh Lord, I didn’t mean for it to be like this!

  The plan had been for Cromwell and his men to shoot a few of the Church members, disappear into the crowd to mingle with the real National Guard, and eventually get away to safety. But Cromwell got carried away. The man who was once an American hero—he had attempted to save lives in Iraq—had become a monster willing to massacre his own countrymen. He had ordered the New Model Army to slaughter everyone in sight. Just as Darren Shipley had lost any semblance of humanity, Wilkins, too, had fallen into depravity.

  And it had become … this.

  “Charlie! Get down!”

  Wilkins thought he heard a voice calling him, but he wasn’t sure. He kept staring at the carnage that spread across the mall in front of him. And then there were the two school buses. One crashed; who was driving it? The other one—it was speeding straight at him, on a collision course with the stage.

  “Reverend!”

  Wilkins looked down. Mitch Carson was on the ground, his hands out.

  “Jump, damn it! Jump! We can take the limo!”

  For the first time in his life, the Church leader couldn’t speak. He was immobile. Wilkins reached into his soul to find the Will, but it wasn’t there. Everything he had learned, all he had taught, was nothing but a void.

  The Will had failed him.

  Finally, Carson grabbed Wilkins’s ankles and jerked. The reverend fell on his back, which jolted him to his senses. Carson continued to pull the man’s legs until he had the reverend on the stage apron.

  “Come on, Charlie!”

  Wilkins, dazed and in shock, nodded and whispered, “Show me where to go.”

  Carson helped him to the ground and led him by the arm around the side of the stage. They ran to the limousine, the doors of which were already open. Wilkins ducked into the back while Carson got in the driver’s seat. The doors slammed shut, and they were off. Carson turned the car around and drove south toward the edge of the mall and Independence Avenue.

  * * *

  Agent 47 lost sight of the reverend, but he also knew the man’s limousine was behind the stage. There was no time to steer around the flimsy structure. The bus was sturdy enough. He hoped.

  Fifty feet until impact.

  The hitman glanced in the right side mirror. Police vehicles were hot on his tail, lights flashing.

  Thirty feet.

  He glanced in the left side mirror.

  The Faceless One stared back. Death.

  47 averted his eyes and stared straight ahead.

  Ten feet.

  Two feet.

  The bus tore into the stage, ripping right through it as if it were made of paper. The sides collapsed and the WILKINS–BAINES! banner floated down and crumpled limply on top of the wreckage. The police cars were forced to swerve to the right and left to avoid hitting the ruins.

  And the chase continued, with the limousine in front and 47’s bus trailing closely behind.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The limo shot south, jumped the sidewalk, and tore onto Independence Avenue, on the westbound-only side. Luckily, traffic had been halted there due to the rally, but police cars and other emergency vehicles lined the road. Instead of turning the limo and following the avenue west, though, Carson navigated between a fire truck and an ambulance, dissected the street, and continued south, jumping onto the grass again.

  “What the hell are you doing?” shouted Wilkins from the backseat.

  “I know a way out!” the driver yelled.

  The limo cut between trees and then slammed hard onto westbound Maine Avenue SW.

  “You’re going to kill us!” the reverend screamed.

  “Shut the fuck up, Charlie!”

  The car was back on the grass, still pointed south. A wide-open patch of grass and trees lay between them and eastbound Independence Avenue, which had not been closed to traffic.

  Behind them, Agent 47 tightly gripped the bus’s steering wheel as the heavy vehicle bounced and bumped across westbound Independence Avenue, over the grass, and dissected Maine Avenue. Despite the siren-shrieking police cars behind him, he was intent on staying with his prey.

  For a moment he imagined ending his days on earth in a hail of bullets from law-enforcement personnel. Even if he did catch up to Wilkins and manage to kill the man, how would he get away from the police? Hundreds were after him. If this was to be the day he died, then so be it. He would shuffle off this mortal coil with the knowledge that he had done his duty, completed the assignment, and rid the world of a nasty and dangerous criminal. What more could he ask for?

  The love of a woman?

  No. That was impossible. He’d almost had that and he intentionally rejected it. The flirtation with a normal relationship had been a learning experience and one that he would treasure for the rest of his life, but it wasn’t for him. Not for a man who constantly remained one step ahead of Death, the Faceless One whose identity 47 still had to expose.

  The bus approached eastbound Independence Avenue, closing the distance between it and the limo, which was now fifty yards ahead. The hitman noted the heavy traffic on the road and realized they’d never get across without a major collision. He figured the driver planned to merge into traffic and drive east with the flow. It would be a difficult maneuver, but the limo could do it.

  The bus would not be so accommodating. It was too big and cumbersome. 47 would be forced to slow considerably in order to do so, and by then the police would be on top of him and the limo would be long gone.

  Whatever.

  The assassin kept his foot on the pedal and stayed the course.

  * * *

  “Are you mad? You’re going to kill us!” Wilkins shouted again.

  “Seriously, shut the fuck up, Charlie!” Carson screamed.

  The Greenhill employee knew it would be a do-or-die maneuver. The oncoming traffic on Independence Avenue was heavy and fast, with no breaks in the lines of cars and trucks. Carson’s only hope was that the other drivers would see the limousine ripping through the grass, followed by a huge yellow school bus and dozens of police cars with sirens blaring. Surely they would stop!

  The car approached the road at a speed of seventy miles per hour.

  “Hold on, Charlie!” Carson commanded. The reverend braced himself.

  And then they were there.

  The limousine hopped the curb and dropped onto the avenue as Carson spun the wheel to change directions—

  —and a U-Haul truck slammed ferociou
sly into the vehicle.

  Then an SUV plowed into the truck.

  Three passenger cars collided with one another while attempting to avoid the catastrophe.

  The pileup dominoed down the line as horns blasted, tires screeched, and an ugly, crunching, crashing cacophony topped the police sirens in decibels.

  The limousine flipped and rolled once, twice, three times—before it slid, upside down, a hundred feet along the road and came to a stop.

  Charlie Wilkins, secure in a seat belt, had hit his head on the window. At first he thought he was dead, for the world was topsy-turvy. It took him a moment to realize that the limo was upside down. He took stock of his body. There was a lot of blood, but he could move his arms and legs.

  He was alive.

  “Mitch?” he called.

  The same could not be said for Carson. The driver slumped in his seat at an obscene angle. The man’s face was completely crimson.

  Then Wilkins remembered what was happening. He heard the sirens, looked toward the National Mall, and saw the yellow bus about to jump the curb and come crashing down on the road.

  The Agency’s hitman was almost upon him.

  Wilkins struggled to unbuckle his seat belt, kicked the door open, and crawled out of the wreckage. As he stood, the earth spun and he almost collapsed. But the sight of the bus, now plowing through other wrecked vehicles and heading toward the limo, motivated him to move.

  He ran south toward the Tidal Basin.

  Agent 47 witnessed the horrific pileup but didn’t slow down. The bus entered the foray at full speed, barely dodging the ruined vehicles and adding insult to injury.

  Stay on target.

  The hitman turned the steering wheel sharply toward the east, almost overturning the bus. Two wheels lifted off the ground but then slammed heavily back on the asphalt. The overturned limousine lay a hundred yards ahead on the highway. 47 saw a man emerge from the wreckage and stagger.

  Wilkins. Still alive.

  But not for long.

  The man saw the bus bearing down on him, and he ran south off the road and onto the grass. He was headed for a group of trees that stood between the avenue and the water. 47 couldn’t allow him to get that far, for the trees would act as obstacles and prevent the bus from following the reverend. The assassin had to head him off; luckily, the bus was faster than a running man.

  47 pulled the bus in a curve, around and in front of Wilkins, so that the man’s route was blocked. The hitman continued the pursuit, this time chasing the reverend straight for the basin.

  Wilkins was out of breath and in pain.

  But the Supreme One would stop this attack! Charlie Wilkins was not destined to end his time on earth like this!

  Find the Will! You can do it!

  But the Will had deserted him.

  Stop the bus! Where is the Will? Do it!

  When nothing happened, the reverend cursed at the sky and then snapped back to reality. He had to get out of there. A paddleboat-rental facility was located farther southeast along the shore. The parking lot for the attraction was now between Wilkins and the basin. Many cars had taken up slots and therefore created yet another barrier for the bus. That was promising, so the reverend ran through the lot. But then he found himself dead-ended at the bank. What next? He could run along the shore to the boathouse. That was it. He would be safe there. He’d find a policeman or somebody who would protect him from the madman on his heels.

  The Supreme One would intervene.

  Wouldn’t he?

  It was as if Agent 47 had put on blinders. Nothing in his peripheral vision was significant. The crosshairs were on Charlie Wilkins as the man stood on the basin shore like a deer caught in the headlights.

  Finish the job.

  The assassin didn’t let up on the gas. The bus was a locomotive, barreling across the grass and into the parking lot. The yellow juggernaut crashed through several parked vehicles, catapulting them in opposite directions as if they were insects. Now nothing stood in the way of the hitman and his target.

  Wilkins dropped to his knees and folded his hands in front of him.

  He was praying.

  How’s that working out for you? 47 thought.

  For the assassin, the last two seconds stretched into a time slip. The fast-paced, nonstop action suddenly switched to slow motion. All sounds ceased and were replaced by a vacuum. Agent 47 was aware only of his own heartbeat as it pounded in his chest and echoed in his brain.

  He locked eyes with Wilkins. For those brief moments, the two adversaries understood each other. 47 saw that the confidence the reverend usually displayed was gone. In its place were fear, despair, and the realization that he had lost. Wilkins had lost his faith and it was replaced by the hand of Death.

  The man opened his mouth to scream, but it was too late.

  This was it.

  The bus broke through the railing, sailed into the air six feet off the ground, and then dropped in an arc. The behemoth’s front end smashed into Wilkins with tremendous force and carried his body fifty feet over the water; then the vehicle pierced the surface and disappeared into the dark green-brown murkiness.

  * * *

  Emergency crews worked feverishly for an hour to find Reverend Wilkins. Scuba divers finally recovered the battered body and brought it ashore, where it was then taken to the city morgue for an official autopsy.

  Area hospitals were overwhelmed by the influx of wounded rally attendees. It was too early to tabulate the number of deaths.

  Some of the New Model Army men who were arrested had already begun to talk. The truth of what happened was going to come out.

  The school bus was pulled out of the water and thoroughly examined by the FBI. There was no trace of the driver. Divers continued to search the basin bottom and found a lot of garbage, broken bottles, a couple of old tires, and other odd items, but they uncovered no other corpses. One curious retrieved item, which investigators didn’t attribute to the events of November 1, was an empty briefcase bearing a strange fleur-de-lis insignia on its exterior.

  A few witnesses reported that it had all happened so quickly that they never saw the man driving the bus. Even more onlookers claimed that no one was at the wheel—that the figure in the driver’s seat was some kind of “faceless shadow.” At any rate, the person who killed Charlie Wilkins had vanished.

  It was just one more mystery added to a list of many regarding that fateful day in Washington, D.C.

  THIRTY-NINE

  The Jean Danjou II gently rocked at anchor off the coast of Sardinia. She had spent the last week island-hopping, perpetuating the pretense that the yacht was owned by a wealthy tycoon who had nothing better to do than sail around the Mediterranean for no reason at all.

  Deep within the ship’s bowels, however, it was business as usual in the Agency’s command center. At least six different operations were active around the globe. Handlers monitored their assassins’ progress every step of the way. Managers initiated contracts with clients and supervised the handlers. The money poured in to the ICA’s coffers. Personnel were paid, expenses were met, and life—and death—went on.

  Benjamin Travis sat in his cabin/office studying the latest reports from America.

  What a mess …

  He hadn’t slept, had a cranium-busting headache, and was fighting a cold. On top of that, upper management was pressuring him for an update on his pet project and demanding answers for what was perceived as a monumental screwup in Washington, D.C.

  The Agency’s top assassin was missing. No one knew if Agent 47 was alive or dead. Travis knew the operative well enough to believe that the hitman had gone into hiding. Again. Since law-enforcement authorities in the States had failed to recover a body in D.C.’s Tidal Basin, it could only mean that 47 had indeed escaped and was holed up somewhere, biding his time.

  The fact of the matter was that the ICA’s greatest killer had succeeded against all odds. No one could have pulled off the spectacular hit on Charlie Wil
kins. Sure, there was a tremendous amount of collateral damage. That was unfortunate but, given the circumstances, unavoidable. That kind of thing came with the territory. Nevertheless, the hitman had proven that he was still at the top of his game.

  Now if they could only find him, bring him in, debrief, and move on to the next stage.

  Travis was more concerned about the Diana Burnwood situation. Until the traitorous bitch was located, his pet project was in jeopardy. Upper management was breathing down his neck. Where was the money going? Where were the results? Why was he being so secretive?

  He didn’t want to tell them the truth. Travis couldn’t reveal what Burnwood had done. So far only a few select individuals knew about it, and that was a few too many. Sooner or later, management would find out, and Travis’s head would roll. Until then, he would work continuously on damage control, spin tales, stall reports, and wait with frustration as Jade did her magic. The lead to Burnwood’s whereabouts in the midwestern United States seemed promising at first, but the trail had gone cold. Travis had given his assistant a severe reprimand, which the stoic woman brushed off as just another of her boss’s outbursts. Jade was one tough customer. He knew that someday she would have his job if he didn’t watch out.

  The manager stood, rubbed his weary red eyes, and moved to the stand where he kept a coffeemaker. He poured a cup and swigged it down, black. He’d consumed so much caffeine in the past several days that he had the shakes.

  Travis considered bailing. Pack a bag, get off at the next island, and try to disappear. If Burnwood wasn’t found soon, then the shit would indeed hit the fan. No one was simply fired from the Agency. They didn’t hand out a pink slip and severance package. Failure had far more serious consequences. He wouldn’t be able to just revamp a résumé and go knocking on doors for new employment. It didn’t work that way in the ICA.