Sins of the Assassin

Home > Other > Sins of the Assassin > Page 17
Sins of the Assassin Page 17

by Robert Ferrigno


  Chapter 19

  Leo slapped at the mosquito on his neck. “I hate it here.”

  Rakkim watched the tops of the office buildings sticking out of the Gulf, the remnants of the New Orleans skyline silhouetted by moonlight, the satellite dishes and helipads reduced to aviaries for seagulls, their cries echoing across the water. A hundred years from now the buildings would have crumbled under the waves, and it would have been as if the city had never existed, just a peaceful lagoon with oil slicks. Moseby had chosen a house on the bayou with a dramatic view—maybe he figured he better enjoy it while he could before it was destroyed by the next monster storm. Typical shadow warrior philosophy. Everything in life was transitory, enjoy the moment.

  More mosquito slaps. “I can’t see anything,” said Leo.

  It was just before dawn, the haze from the burning offshore rigs making the night even darker. Plenty of light for Rakkim, though. More than enough to see the sentry sleeping in front of the outbuilding in the distance, the man curled in the dirt beside a glowing hotbox in the evening damp.

  “Stay here.” Rakkim moved forward, crawling through the weeds for ten minutes. Elbows and knees, elbows and knees. Gigantic blue land crabs scuttled past, reeking of decay, clacking their claws at him as they thronged toward the mudflats. Rowing over into the bayou, Rakkim had spotted an anaconda close to shore, had to have been twenty feet at least. All kinds of critters were migrating up from South America since the big warm—caimans, piranha, sea snakes, and pure white carnivorous orchids no one had ever seen before. He peeked from the grass.

  The sentry didn’t move. Closer now. Close enough to hear the man snoring, his chest rising and falling. One of the Colonel’s irregulars, probably. No uniform, but he had an insignia of some kind pinned to his collar and a jackhammer shotgun cradled under one arm. Best of the Belt small arms. Gas-operated, drum magazine, 240 rounds a minute at full auto. A man with a jackhammer could take out a charging rhino or a full platoon. The Colonel might forgive a sleeping sentry, but laying the jackhammer in the dirt, that was a firing squad offense. So the Colonel trusted the men left behind to guard Moseby’s family, trusted them enough to give them good equipment…but a couple weeks of baby-sitting and they were already getting sloppy.

  Rakkim and Leo had reached the little town of Kenner yesterday afternoon. Just a speck along the Gulf, filled with dive bars and hangouts for the men who made their livelihood recovering artifacts from New Orleans. Plenty of Idents in Kenner, working the boats and doing the heavy lifting. Nobody paid any attention to Leo. By nightfall, Rakkim was buying beers for some of Moseby’s old crew, tough guys with salt-hardened hands and faces. Rakkim said he was looking for Moseby, wanted to hire him and the crew—I hear you’re the best. The crew nodded, ordered more beer, then said Moseby was out of town, no telling when he was coming back. A few hours ago Rakkim had helped the crew boss stumble home, a skinny Cajun named Hampton, complaining about four armed men staying out at Moseby’s place on the edge of Blue Bayou. Four soldiers, they called themselves, and sure as shit not from around here. Might as well be Yankees the way they bitched about the weather and the bugs. Hampton and the rest of the crew would have damn sure done something about it, soldiers or no, damn sure run them out of the barn and off the land, if Moseby’s wife hadn’t insisted that she didn’t want trouble. Said Moseby himself had left instructions for them to keep their distance, promised he’d be back before the hurricanes started up again.

  Rakkim skirted the perimeter of the outbuilding, a refurbished barn. He made less noise than the breeze through the banyans. The wind billowed the Spanish moss that hung from the branches, and Rakkim thought of pennants at medieval tournaments, knights charging, lances pointed straight ahead. Ancient war, ancient warriors, ancient tactics. Direct attacks were foolhardy. The circumspect survived. And the deceitful prevailed.

  The rear door of the barn hung off the hinges. Rakkim approached, knife in one hand, the pistol in the other. More snoring from inside. He took a position beside the door. He couldn’t smell any animals inside, which was good—hard to sneak up on an animal. Glance and back. Three more men inside. Two sleeping on straw. The nearest to the door a muscular hillbilly with half his face blistered. He got the only mattress. Had to be Jeeter. Three inside, one asleep on guard duty, all four accounted for. Assuming that Hampton was right.

  A light went on in the house nearby and Rakkim froze. A few moments later he moved forward, retraced his steps, making sure he hadn’t left any indication of his passing. Leo was right where Rakkim had left him, shivering with the chill. He didn’t see Rakkim. Rakkim left it that way, eased his way to the house.

  Rakkim heard the clink of silverware, the rattle of pots and pans. He glanced in the window. Saw Annabelle Moseby alone in the kitchen, busy at the stove. The screen along the side was latched, but the thin blade of his Fedayeen knife lifted it up. The spring on the door was a problem. Everything rusted in the damp air. He listened to Annabelle’s movements in the kitchen, learned her rhythm, the unconscious pace she set for herself as she stirred something thick, a wooden spoon going round and round a heavy crock, the rush of water into a metal pot. Rakkim internalized her rhythm, moved with it, opening the door as a cast-iron skillet slid back and forth across the burners. He heard the faint squeak of the screen door spring as he stepped inside the house, but she didn’t.

  Cypress planking underfoot, and the smell of bacon cooking and sourdough biscuits in the oven. Someone stirred in the next room, stifled a yawn and then turned over, sheets rustling. This was his favorite part of a mission. Insinuated into a subject’s routine. Inside their private moment. His solitude. Silent as a kiss. This ability to absorb another person’s pattern, to slip between the spaces of his routine, was the essence of shadow warrior training. Impossible to teach, the training was only able to improve an innate capacity to slow down the warrior’s own consciousness, to lose one’s self for a time.

  To graduate the shadow warrior had to infiltrate one of the instructor’s own haunts and tap him on the shoulder without being caught. His favorite restaurant or coffee shop. His mosque. His streetcar. Rakkim had watched his chief instructor’s home for three days from the house next door, lain atop the neighbor’s roof for two days and nights, not moving, watching everything inside through the bulletproof windows. On the third day, the instructor’s wife went outside to feed the birds, as she did every morning, and Rakkim slid off the roof, vaulted the fence, and went inside. That night, as the instructor sat down for dinner with his wife and children, Rakkim walked out of the linen closet, tapped his instructor on the shoulder, then bowed and asked for his blessing and a bowl of soup.

  Annabelle poured tea, humming to herself as she filled two mugs. A plain crucifix loomed over the stove. Family holograms in the dining nook, Moseby with a shy smile, holding hands with his wife and daughter. The kitchen was furnished with salvage from New Orleans, the ceiling embossed tin, Cajun bubble-glass windows. Brightly colored origami animals were arranged on the soapstone counters, a menagerie of cranes, ducks, deer, and cats. Overhead, three geometric forms dangled from the ceiling, odd origami shapes he couldn’t recognize, gleaming as they rotated on the warm air currents. Rakkim stepped out of the alcove of the side door. Her back was still to him, and he saw the creases along her neck, age and fatigue catching up. Time always won the race. She sighed, spooned brown sugar into her tea, the spoon banging against the side.

  She had been more delicate the last time he saw her, the twenty-seven-year-old mother of a young daughter, plump and rosy. He had watched her and Moseby from the shelter of the surrounding forest, watched them go about their daily routine while he tried to decide whether to kill the renegade shadow warrior. Trying to decide if he would turn his back on his duty, as Moseby had. She was thirty-five now, lightly tanned, her long, dark hair gathered in a thick braid. Strong hands, the knuckles raw from hard work and not enough time to care for herself. The Belt did that to people, the land poor and played ou
t for the most part, no real industry except what was owned by foreign companies: Chinese and Brazilian auto manufacturers, Swiss food giants, Congolese textile plants. Annabelle had kept her figure; the modest blue dress slid along her slender ankles and he wondered for a moment if Moseby still appreciated her. Foolish question. John Moseby had given up everything for her and the baby. He had abandoned his Fedayeen oath. Turned his back on his country. His religion. He had nothing left but love.

  Annabelle turned. Saw him standing there. “It’s okay,”

  Rakkim reassured her. “I’m Rikki. A friend of John’s.”

  The mug of tea trembled in her hands. “I know who you are.” Hot water ran down the sides of the mug and over her fingertips, but she didn’t react. “You here to kill me?”

  “No. No. I’m here to help you. To help John.”

  “I saw you that night,” whispered Annabelle. “I woke up…I woke…and you had a knife at John’s throat. I pretended to be asleep, rolled over and reached for something to hit you with…when I looked again, you were gone. I thought you were a dream. John tried to convince me that’s all you were, but I saw the look on his face, and I knew you were real.”

  Rakkim took the mug of tea from her hand, set it down before she burned herself worse.

  “John told me who you were afterwards. Told me who he really was too.” Annabelle backed against the counter. “Now, here you are. I suppose I should be grateful to you for letting him go that night. For letting us all go.” She slowly shook her head, her braid twitching around her shoulders. “Still…I see you and I see death in your eyes.”

  “You’ve got me wrong.” Rakkim heard the bed creak in the next room. “I’m here to help you.”

  “Sure you are,” she said.

  “Mama? What’s going on?” The girl stood in the doorway in a pair of red flannel pajamas. She was dark brown, with her daddy’s smooth skin, her hair in tight curls. Young…she couldn’t have been older than seventeen, all her curves in place, a sheath of baby fat just starting to melt away. “Mama?”

  “It’s all right, Leanne,” said Annabelle, “this gentleman is just leaving.”

  “You don’t look like you’re all right.” Leanne sidled toward the wood-block holding the kitchen knives. “And this gentleman doesn’t look like he’s leaving.”

  “Annabelle, please.” Rakkim sat down, trying to defuse things. “The men who took John…they’re not going to bring him back. You know that.”

  Annabelle stared at him, then sat down across from him, her shoulders slumped.

  “I’ll find him,” said Rakkim. “I’ll find him and bring him home.”

  “You’re not kin, and for certain you’re no saint.” Annabelle tore a paper napkin into shreds. Confetti drifted onto the floor. “So what’s in it for you, mister?”

  Rakkim touched her hand and she pulled it away. “I need his help.”

  “John’s in no position to help anyone,” said Annabelle, fingers working away.

  “Let me be the judge of that. When exactly did he leave?”

  “Twelve days, twenty-two hours, and nine minutes,” said Leanne. “Exactly.”

  “That ugly redheaded toad wanted to leave at dawn, but John made him wait,” said Annabelle. “John said we were going to eat breakfast together…Together. Like a family.” A tear rolled down her cheek and she swatted it away.

  “The redheaded bastard, that would be Gravenholtz?” said Rakkim.

  Annabelle nodded. “Yes, that would be Gravenholtz.”

  So the Colonel had sent his number-two man to fetch Moseby. “I’ve read about him.”

  “What you read doesn’t do justice to the malignant toad that he is,” said Annabelle.

  “The men that Gravenholtz left behind,” said Rakkim. “Is there just the four of them?”

  “Just four?” said Leanne.

  Annabelle watched Rakkim’s eyes. “That’s right, just four. That’s not hardly anything for you, is it?”

  Rakkim glanced out the window. It would be dawn soon.

  “I bring them breakfast at eight-thirty,” said Annabelle. “It keeps them from showing up at the back door.”

  “It didn’t stop Jeeter from peeking in my bedroom window,” said Leanne.

  “No, it was a pot of hot grits that stopped him,” said Annabelle.

  “I thought he was gonna kill Mama for burning him, but I guess he thought better of it,” said Leanne. “Instead he killed our dog.”

  Rakkim had seen the small grave at the edge of the woods. “You won’t have to worry about this Jeeter—” He heard footsteps, had already flattened against the wall beside the side door when he recognized the clumsy pace. Knock-knock on the door. Unbelievable. Rakkim opened the door, pulled Leo inside.

  “C-careful,” sputtered Leo.

  “This is Leo,” said Rakkim.

  Blushing, Leo waved. “Hi.”

  Annabelle stared at him. Leanne waved back.

  “Do Gravenholtz’s men check in with him?” asked Rakkim.

  “I don’t know,” said Annabelle.

  “Twice a day,” said Leanne. “Eight a.m. and eight p.m.”

  “You’ve seen them clock in?” asked Rakkim.

  Leanne nodded. “It’s some special encrypted phone from China that gets great reception. Hardly any chaff. Jeeter won’t let anybody else use it, but Pruitt spied the access code one time when Jeeter wasn’t paying attention—”

  “I told you I didn’t want you talking with that Pruitt boy,” said Annabelle.

  “Pru’s not like that, Mama.” Leanne watched Leo wander over to the corner of the kitchen, watched him stand there looking up at the three dangling geometric balls.

  “Pru?” said Annabelle.

  An encrypted phone could work both ways. It allowed the Colonel to keep track of the four men here, but it also might allow someone to eavesdrop on the Colonel’s communications. With the phone, Rakkim and Leo wouldn’t be operating blind. “What’s Pru look like?”

  “Tall, blond, and with sweet puppy-dog eyes,” said Leanne. “He hates Gravenholtz too. He says they all do…all of ’em miserable, except Jeeter.”

  “Is that right?” said Rakkim. “They argue in front of you?”

  “All the time,” said Leanne. “Jeeter’s always smacking somebody or making fun of Tom Tipton’s little chin whiskers, calling him Billy Goat Gruff and saying he’s going to slice them off some night.”

  “I could crack this code you’re all excited about,” said Leo, watching Leanne out of the corner of his eye. “Won’t be any problem at all for me.”

  “Yeah, you can bend steel in your bare hands too,” said Rakkim.

  “To a man like you, cracking code must seem like bending steel.” Leo fingered the collar around his neck. “I’m not really an Ident, you know,” he said to Leanne.

  “Wouldn’t matter if you were,” said Leanne.

  Leo lightly stirred the three geometric shapes, set them bouncing against each other. “Who made these?”

  “I did,” said Leanne.

  “Do you know what they are?” said Leo.

  “Do you?” said Leanne.

  Leo touched the largest multifaceted shape. “Giant dodecahedron.” He tapped the spiky one. “Great icosahedron. Sometimes known as the Poinsot solids.” He spun another, even spikier, like the star on a Christmas tree. “Stellated dodecahedron.”

  Leanne stroked her curls. Sniffed. “Two out of three isn’t bad.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Leo.

  “Count the pentagramic faces.” Leanne stepped toward him. “Go on, count them.”

  “Do you know what she’s talking about?” Rakkim asked Annabelle.

  “Not since she was ten,” said Annabelle.

  Leo turned the spiked ornament over and over in his hands. He looked up at Leanne. “This is impossible.”

  “For you, maybe,” said Leanne.

  “Fourteen faces instead of twelve?” said Leo. “Five pentagrams meeting at each vertex?
How…how did you do that?”

  “I call it a Derbyshire star,” said Leanne, “after an old-days mathematician.”

  Leo stared at her, cheeks pinking up.

  “Oh, sweet suffering Jesus, it’s love,” said Rakkim.

  Chapter 20

  Rakkim slowly removed the automatic rifle from beside Jeeter, slid it under a heap of straw with the other three weapons. The sleeping sentry outside had been trickier to disarm, actually using his jackhammer shotgun as a pillow. Rakkim tickled him until he turned over, removed the weapon as the young man sighed, said a woman’s name. Jeeter was older than the other three, more muscular, a hardened vet, his face so blistered that one eye was swollen shut. Annabelle had caught him good with the hot grits.

  Jeeter stirred as Rakkim watched him. That was Rakkim’s fault. Never let your gaze linger if you want to stay invisible. Jeeter might be lying in his own sweat and stink, but there was a good soldier under there somewhere. Gravenholtz knew what he was doing. Rakkim squatted beside the man, watching…waiting.

  Jeeter opened his eyes.

  Rakkim blew him a kiss. “Rise and shine.”

  Jeeter reached for his weapon, found it gone, and rolled to his feet. Quick too.

  Rakkim punched him in the throat. The two others in the barn woke to the sound of Jeeter gagging. Saw Rakkim standing there, hands in his pockets. “Morning, boys,” said Rakkim. “Come on over and let’s talk.”

  They got carefully to their feet—Ferris, a chunky, bleary-eyed dullard, and Pruitt, lean and delicate somehow, both of them looking around for their weapons, embarrassed. The sentry stumbled inside, his hair wild, stopped when he saw Rakkim. Scraggly goatee on his chin. Tom Tipton. Billy Goat Gruff.

  “Come on in, Tom.” Rakkim flashed the penlight video he had taken a few minutes ago. “Wish I could see Gravenholtz’s face when he sees this.”

  They stared at the mini-movie on the wall, right about the axes and chain saws and dive gear—images of themselves snoring, scratching their privates, guns in the dirt, oblivious in dreamland.

 

‹ Prev