While it was happening, Soulless gazed down into the old man’s eyes, which were wide with panic. His own eyes were devoid of anything: pity, empathy, or even acknowledgement of the man as a fellow human being. For Soulless, the caretaker was a potential problem that needed to be handled before he could put a hitch in his plans. Juan Rico, the old caretaker, might as well have been a frayed rug that needed to be removed before someone caught their shoe on one of its loose threads and tripped.
Juan Rico, a widowed father of five and grandfather of eight, died within minutes from a lack of oxygen.
Soulless left him lying in the bed. When he was found, his death might be attributed to a heart attack or some other natural cause. If an investigation into his death did occur for some reason, or an autopsy revealed there was a suspicion of murder, none of that would happen before Carlotta’s funeral and burial, which was hours away.
Soulless departed the apartment by slipping out of the same window he had used to enter it and joined Gwen in the vehicle that would take them out of town.
“He’s dead?” Gwen asked.
“He is, and now all we have to do is wait.”
They drove out of town and headed back to the nearby city. From there, they would take a flight to Cancún. By the time they landed, if all went as planned, A.J. Pirrello would be dead, and the contract fulfilled.
8
Death In A Box
Tanner was miserable, but he had known to expect it. He’d spent more than four days lying out in the hot sun while wearing the ghillie suit, which only made him feel hotter. He could have rigged a remote device to activate the box, but he hadn’t wanted to rely too much on technology. The box was nearly a mile away. During the briefing he’d been given by Lawson and Rhona, they had speculated that Krakoff’s security people used cell phone jammers when the cult leader made his speeches. That way, no one inside the compound could communicate to someone outside it and alert them that the man would be on the balcony and vulnerable. If those jammers disrupted a signal sent to the box, all his work and planning would have been for nothing. He’d rather rely on himself and his ability to make the shot when the time came to do so.
Tanner had lost track of how much water he had consumed. It was close to two gallons a day, simply to replenish the fluid he lost through sweating. He had been prepared for it. As a younger man, he had hunkered down in a sniper’s nest for weeks to get an opportunity to take out a target. That had also been in hot and humid weather.
Being older, his body was protesting with minor aches about having to lie in a prone position for so long. He had been many years younger the last time he had done something like this, and the aches had been few.
On the bright side, he seemed to be tolerating the heat better, but some of that was due to his recent visit to Mexico. He had made it a point to run twice his usual distance each day in the humid and blistering heat of the Baja California desert. Along with the high altitude, it had helped to prepare him for what he was doing now.
Yes, he was miserable, he was hot, uncomfortable, suffering from body aches and the occasional cramp, but he was willing to endure it to complete the contract.
He’d been bothered more by rattlesnakes than he had been by patrolling guards. Three of the snakes had come by at different times, or perhaps it had been the same snake all three times. One of the sightings had happened when he had woken up at dawn the day before to find a snake slithering over his camouflaged legs. The snake moved on toward a collection of rocks the sun was beginning to warm.
As for the guards, Tanner had seen them only once, and they had been some distance away. At his position nearly two miles from the balcony, they probably deemed that there was no need to patrol the area. It would be unlikely for anyone to use a sniper rifle from so far away.
In fact, the balcony where Krakoff would be when he made his speech wasn’t even visible from Tanner’s position. But neither did it need to be thanks to the box he had designed. Tanner could see the box. Once he shot it and activated the second rifle, it would all be up to the laser-guided rifle scope to do the work.
The squeal of the loudspeaker being activated reached Tanner’s ears just past ten a.m. It was soon followed by the voice of Krakoff. Tanner had been expecting to hear him because two drones were up and roaming the sky. The time had come to see how well his box contraption would do.
Looking through the scope, Tanner could see numerous figures walking in the area where he’d left the box. They were the guards given the task of searching for snipers or anyone else that might be a threat to their leader. One of the men was standing still, and his legs were blocking Tanner’s view of the box’s rear panel. Until that man moved along, he wouldn’t be able to make his shot.
Krakoff’s electronically enhanced voice travelled well in the humid desert air. Tanner heard him mention something about making plans for the future. The man would soon have no future, and it was predicted his cult would fall apart without his leadership.
The guard moved aside, and Tanner took aim at the box through the scope. There was no wind to speak of, which was helpful, but he had to factor in elevation. As a professional assassin and an expert sniper, Tanner had taken more practice shots at long-range targets than nearly anyone else living or dead. He had also been born with a natural ability that made him an accurate shooter.
He had one chance to hit his target. Any more than that and it was a certainty Krakoff would have taken cover before the second rifle fired its round. And although the pressure was on, Tanner didn’t feel it. His focus was on making the shot, and he didn’t allow his mind to entertain the thought of what it would mean if he missed. He wasn’t the type of man to consider failure, only success.
He fired.
The rifle boomed as the butt of the gun slammed back against his shoulder. His round struck the rear of the disguised box on the other ridge at almost the exact center of the back panel. The panel bent inward at great speed from the force of the impact, struck the swiveling arm on the bar positioned alongside the rifle and set it in motion. The connected but opposite sides of the swiveling arm performed their two functions. One end of it smashed into the front of the box to create an opening for the rifle barrel, while the other hit the protuberance that was seated inside the ratcheting slot on the other side of the bar. That piece was forced against the trigger of the gun and held in place by the ratchet’s teeth.
With the trigger depressed, the electronic scope was activated. It went to work calculating the distance, wind resistance, humidity level, and best position needed to strike the target it was aimed at, one Joseph Krakoff.
The sophisticated scope made more than a hundred changes and computations and did so at the rate of sixty a second as it locked its laser in on the target. Two-point-eight seconds after the scope was activated the rifle fired and sent death toward the cult leader.
Krakoff’s elite guard heard the echo of the round Tanner fired and knew it for what it was. One of them grabbed Krakoff by his right arm as another man took his left and began pulling him backwards toward the door that led inside.
Another two guards had swung open the bulletproof doors so the first two would have a clear path inside. They had rehearsed this procedure dozens of times before and it showed, as they moved in choreographed precision to drag their leader back into the safety of his inner chamber.
They were inside with the doors closing shut behind them when the round fired by Tanner’s box went through the gap between the doors and struck Krakoff at a spot three inches below his chin. The exit wound sent blood and gore spreading throughout the chamber, and by the time the doors shut, and the automatic electronic locks engaged, Krakoff was a pile of cooling meat.
If the guards had moved their charge to the right or the left instead of dragging him back toward the doors, he would still be alive. The targeting system inside Tanner’s box was a wonderful piece of equipment, but it was incapable of making the rifle it was attached to move right or left. All it co
uld do was direct a round on a path in line with the positioning of the gun. Tanner had been counting on the guards’ desire to get their man to cover as swift as possible. To do that, they had to head straight for the doors at their backs, which helped him succeed.
Four minutes later, over twenty of Krakoff’s guards were surrounding the box on the ridge. Except for the holes at its rear and front, it appeared to be made of rock, like the ridge itself. Above them flew one of the drones, while the other was being directed to search in the hopes of finding whoever was responsible for Krakoff’s death.
At the four-minute mark, the explosives hidden inside the box went off. The countdown timer that triggered it had been activated when the front panel on the box was knocked out. The blast destroyed the box, the twenty-two men near it, and shrapnel traveled upward and disabled the drone.
After firing his shot. Tanner had waited to see if the box would fire its own round. Once it had, he broke from cover and headed away from the compound. He was moving slow. Some of his lack of speed was due to the weight of the rifle he carried, but he was having difficulty picking up his pace because his body ached so from the five days he’d spent imitating a rock. And yes, some of it was due to the fact he wasn’t as young as he used to be.
He found himself picking up speed after the first hundred yards as he limbered up. He kept his head on a swivel to look for threats and his ears pricked for the sound of a drone. He’d also listened for the explosion he knew was coming when the box blew up.
The explosion came as he was nearing the camp where Henry should be waiting for him. Tanner knew there was a good chance the explosives had killed the guards who’d been standing near the box and hoped the directional blast that had been aimed upward had done its work and taken out a drone. With luck, it might have disabled both drones.
There was no such luck. The whining engine of the surviving drone reached his ears and Tanner knew whoever was controlling it had spotted him through its camera. Depending on its range, they might be able to follow him back to his campsite and identify the vehicle he was using.
The sound of gunfire came from Tanner’s left. He dove to the ground then looked over to see Henry aiming a shotgun skyward. Henry was dressed in his own ghillie suit and was unidentifiable if you didn’t already know who he was. The drone above made a squealing sound, then plummeted toward the ground. Henry had damaged it. It was one of the tasks he had been given by Tanner, and he had performed well.
Tanner joined him as Henry was yanking loose a wire that was connected to the camera on the drone’s belly.
“I heard the explosion. I take it the box worked?”
“It worked. But I don’t know yet if Krakoff is dead. Let’s get moving.”
Tanner was pleased to find Henry had followed directions and had things packed away and ready to go. All they needed to do was to remove the ghillie suits and they were ready to leave the area.
Tanner drove and was surprised when Henry lowered the window to let in the hot air.
“You don’t like air-conditioning?”
“No offense, dude, but you are ripe.”
Tanner smiled. After days of laying out in the desert sun, he had grown used to the scent of his own stink. He lowered his window.
“I’ll stop and grab a shower the first chance I get.”
They reached the road that would take them right to the nearest highway. As they were approaching the interstate, Tanner spotted a line of cars flying along behind them. They were too far away to make out details, or even to count how many of them there were, but he assumed they were being driven by men from the cult’s compound.
“We’ve got company.”
Henry turned around in his seat and used the binoculars. “Six vehicles, but I can’t make out the plate numbers, or the makes and models.”
“That means they can’t read our plate either.”
Tanner merged onto the highway and kept his speed to where it matched that of the traffic around him. Two minutes later, several cars and a pair of pickup trucks flew up on them while in the fast lane. A glance revealed that the men inside the vehicles had the shaved heads and the beards of Krakoff’s elite guards. Tanner was driving a white vehicle. It was the most common color on the road. One of the men glanced over at them as they sped by. What he saw was a man and a teenaged boy driving along at standard speed and looking normal. Tanner was wearing sunglasses to hide his unique eyes, and there was a Colorado Rockies baseball cap on Henry’s head. They looked like a typical father and son off on a drive somewhere. The vehicles moved on as they searched for a car they assumed would be moving at great speed to get away from them. It never occurred to them that the man they sought would be calm and unafraid.
Tanner took the next exit after seeing a sign advertising a truck stop. He parked there and went inside to grab a shower and change into fresh clothes. Afterward, he entered the truck stop’s diner with Henry and had the first good meal he’d eaten in days.
Back in the car, they turned on the radio and heard the news. It was being reported that Joseph Krakoff, a controversial cult leader had been killed by a sniper’s bullet, and that a number of his cult members were killed in an explosion. Police were on the scene, and there was a report that they had uncovered a stash of weapons that had been stolen from an armory.
“Your box worked!” Henry said. “Is that a new record for sniping?”
“No. It wouldn’t count. It does mean that we know one more way to kill a target.”
“I’m glad it worked. If you had to kill Krakoff by infiltrating the compound it would have been riskier.”
“But quicker,” Tanner said as he stretched the muscles in his neck. “That’s the last time I’ll camp out in a ghillie suit for days.”
“It must have sucked. I was hot in the tent, but I didn’t have a ghillie suit on all the time.”
Four hours later, they were at an airport and waiting to board a flight for home. On the televisions in the airport lounge, images of the aftermath of Soulless’s latest hit were being shown. As Gwen had predicted, it would be news everywhere.
9
The Slaughter Of Innocents
As Joseph Krakoff had been stepping out on the balcony to make his speech in the Colorado desert, the funeral for Carlotta Pirrello took place in Mexico.
Carlotta’s burial was held in a section of the town cemetery where the last six generations of the Pirrello family had been laid to rest. Carlotta was placed in a grave beside her late husband, Manuel Pirrello. The grave had been chosen decades earlier, so the couple would be together throughout eternity.
Other members of the Pirrello clan had also prepaid for their graves in order to save their surviving loved ones the trouble of being bothered with such details at a time of loss.
Mourners were gathered around the grave in large numbers, in ages that ranged from the hundred-and three-year-old great-grand uncle of A.J.’s, to his sister’s three-month-old daughter. In all, there were nearly two hundred people gathered near the grave, including the town’s priest and mayor.
No one noticed that several of the monuments and gravestones around them were larger than they had been. If they had been more observant, they might have wondered why that was, and their curiosity could have prevented the slaughter that took place.
Soulless had come up with the idea of fashioning explosive devices that would resemble the monuments and gravestones. By doing so, anyone standing near a certain grave at the center of the blast zone would surely die. To make certain such a funeral took place, he had killed the saintly Carlotta.
His only target was A.J. Pirrello, but his plan would result in nearly every member of the Pirrello family being at A.J.’s side when the bombs went off. Such things didn’t matter to Soulless. Other people dying was none of his concern, not as long as A.J. died with them.
It was a plan of assassination only an unfeeling monster could have conceived and executed, but without doubt, highly effective.
Seven bo
mbs detonated simultaneously as the priest was saying a prayer for Carlotta’s soul. The force of the blasts sent forth thousands of steel ball bearings at speeds that were faster than a bullet. A.J. Pirrello wasn’t merely killed, he was damn near obliterated by a multitude of massive wounds and the incredible power unleashed by the force of the blast. The same was true for everyone else in the vicinity, as well as every headstone within a hundred feet of the bombs. One of the ball bearings traveled over half a mile and penetrated the windshield of a bus. It struck the driver in the face, breaking his jaw. The man lost control and crashed the bus into a storefront. Two passengers on the bus died, along with a young female clerk who’d been working behind the counter inside the store.
The cacophony of the blast could be heard in the neighboring towns, with many fearing that a plane had crashed at a local airfield. When the truth was known, it seemed unimaginable. To those unfortunate enough to be the first on the scene at the cemetery in the aftermath, it was a sight that would haunt them until they reached their own graves.
In all, the blasts killed a hundred and fifty-three people, while maiming or seriously injuring forty-six others. It was believed the death toll would rise in the coming days.
Mexican authorities sent aid to the community, which was overwhelmed and had no way to deal with such a horrendous event. It took days to find the body parts strewn around, and many of them would turn up months later. There would also be a gold coin found in the area. It was Soulless’s way of signing his assassinations.
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