Night of the Assassin (Assassin Series 4_prequel) (18 page)

Comfortable with the feel of the neighborhood, he walked six blocks until he came to a major artery, and had a coffee shop call him a taxi while he enjoyed a cup of green tea. Once back at his hotel, he did a quick calculation of the time back home before going downstairs to ask the concierge where he could get a cell phone. The pert young woman directed him four blocks away, and soon he was paying for the latest model Nokia with a three month prepaid service plan. As soon as it was activated, he fished a matchbook out of his pocket and dialed the country code and phone number he’d jotted down. Valiente’s voice answered.

“I’m here. Do you have anything for me on a local contact?”
El Rey
asked.

Valiente gave him a local Sidney cell number and told him to ask for Victor.

He did as instructed, and a gravelly, Australian voice answered.
El Rey
told him he was from out of town, and used Valiente’s name by way of entre. They arranged to meet an hour later at a cafe immediately in front of the ferry terminal. Victor would be wearing an orange T-shirt with a blue windbreaker and tan cargo pants.

El Rey
watched the man enter the cafe and sit down by the window. After five minutes of scanning the quay to ensure there was no surveillance, he walked in and took a seat opposite him. Victor was in his mid forties and rail thin, with a heavily lined, sun-damaged face with the perennial flush of the habitual hard drinker, spectacularly crooked teeth, and thatches of salt-and-pepper hair pointing in all directions. He looked nothing so much as like an absentminded professor with a boozing problem.

“G’day, mate. Name’s Victor. I was told to give yah whatever yah needed, and mum’s the word,” Victor started.
El Rey
couldn’t really make out what the man was saying, so instead began speaking in his quiet, calm voice. His English was passable from years of study, but still heavily accented with Spanish inflection.

“I will need a boat with a captain tomorrow to take me around the harbor so I can look over some places. I have also made a list of items I will require. And I think I’ve found an area with some industrial space you can rent inexpensively. If not, I need a small warehouse in a quiet neighborhood where it will have no neighbors, yes?”
El Rey
handed him the neatly hand-written note with his requirements.

Victor studied it, and nodded. “No worries, mate. Good as done – but it’ll run yah dear. My guess is twenty grand American at least, plus the boat tour. How many rounds you need for the rifle and the pistol?” Victor asked.

“A hundred for the rifle and its magazines, and fifty for the pistol and its spares. Will the night vision equipment be a problem?”

“Mate, none of it’s a problem. Just a matter of money. Give me two days and I’ll have the whole lot sorted,” Victor assured him. “Now in the meantime, what about yerself? Need any company? Interested in the ladies?” Seeing the lack of interest, he tried again. “Or maybe the boys? A little
Cage aux Follees
, if yah catch my meaning? Whatever yer flavor, Victor’s the man…”

“Just the items on the list, some warehouse space with no neighbors and a boat with a captain. Nothing fancy. Something that will blend in. I’d like to use it tomorrow for around four hours. And make sure it’s got some fishing equipment onboard. I’ll call you in the morning. Will that work for you?”
El Rey
asked.

Victor assured him that it would, and they quickly parted ways, Victor to procure the necessary hardware and
El Rey
to have an early dinner and get some sleep.

The following day, Victor had made arrangements for a cabin cruiser to pick
El Rey
up at the pier that hosted the W Hotel and the adjacent condominiums and restaurants. He checked out of his current hotel and walked over to the W, taking a waterfront room for a week on the third floor. Once he’d unpacked, he grabbed a quick bite downstairs before heading out to meet the boat, a heavy set of binoculars in tow. It was a thirty eight foot Riviera sports fisherman with twin diesel engines, and soon they were cutting through the chop at a fair clip.
El Rey
gave the captain GPS coordinates for the portion of the harbor he wanted to anchor in and fish. The man looked at him as though he was crazy.

“Won’t catch much there but muck suckers, mate,” he advised.

“That’s okay. I just like being on the water, enjoying the scenery and looking at all the beautiful houses,”
El Rey
explained.

They motored to the designated spot and dropped anchor. The captain dutifully got out two light-tackle salt water fishing rods and a bag of frozen bait.
El Rey
played along and allowed the man to drop a line into the water for him, then went inside the salon, where the heavily tinted windows blocked anyone from seeing in. He raised his binoculars and scanned the house, noting the neighbors’ homes, searching for anything that could afford him an advantage. He paid special attention to the shore area and the distances between the homes, which wasn’t much. Fortunately,
El Chilango
had built tall walls on either side for security and privacy, so he wouldn’t have to deal with neighbor issues once inside. As they sat there, bobbing in the wake of the boats cruising past them, he noted that there were three security men nosing around, not just the one the report would have led him to believe. So either the house had received some sort of warning, or the surveillance had been sloppy. Instead of a day man and a night one, there were six total, three and three.

They spent two hours at anchor, with
El Rey
mainly watching the house. By lunchtime, he’d seen enough. The target had been visible several times in his living room and bedroom, and it would have been a cinch to take him out with a single shot. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what he was being paid to do. Reconciling himself to the grim reality that he’d have to do this the hard way, he told the captain it was time to leave. Just then one of the two rods screamed as line tore off the reel – the skipper ran to tighten the drag. He set the hook and then offered the pole to
El Rey
, who shook his head – he had no interest in trying to fight the fish. After a few moments the line went limp; when the captain reeled it in, the leader had been bitten through.

“Probably a shark,” he said.

“Are there a lot of them around here?”
El Rey
asked, curious.

“In the harbor, yah get some sand sharks and a few larger ones. Out in the ocean, there’s great whites, you know. Don’t want to mess with one of those, I’ll tell yah,” he warned.

“No. Probably not.”

That evening,
El Rey
had a phone discussion with Victor, and they arranged a meeting for the next day to look over the space he’d gotten and inventory the hardware.

In the morning, a blue Ford sedan pulled to the curb by the original hotel
El Rey
had stayed at. Victor grinned from behind the wheel, inviting him to get in. Soon they were motoring to the deserted area near the W, and after a few turns, they arrived at a bleak strip of old industrial warehouses. Victor got out and opened one of the heavy steel doors and they stepped into a dilapidated twenty by forty brick space that reeked of stale air and urine.
El Rey
tried the lights – two fluorescent bulbs flickered above as if struggling to stay lit and then suddenly illuminated.

“This will do.”

Glancing around the dank room,
El Rey
dictated an additional list of items he’d need, based on his surveillance of the target and his appraisal of his new workspace. Victor scribbled furiously in a small notebook as
El Rey
ticked off the requirements. Finished, they eyed the overhead steel beams that supported the roof, before
El Rey
made two more requests. Victor nodded, and told him that within forty-eight hours he would have the space outfitted. He went to the car and removed a long duffle with the requested hardware and brought it inside the space.
El Rey
inspected each item and nodded in approval. Perhaps Victor resembled a buffoon, but he’d gotten everything right on the first try. That was good. He hoped Victor did as well on the second round of stuff. None of it was that specialized, so he was confident the man would be able to get it all.

Three days later, they returned to the warehouse. It had been transformed.
El Rey
was impressed. He’d spent parts of the last few days in the target’s neighborhood, driving around with Victor, studying the layout, and had a watcher confirm the number of guards at night, as well.
El Chilango
rarely left the house, so whatever his wine business was, you could apparently run it from home. That would make things somewhat harder – it would be far easier to stage something while he was in transit, but you played the cards you were dealt, and
El Rey
was confident.

Tomorrow would be show time, and he would either justify the considerable money he’d been spending over the course of his antipodean vacation – or die trying.

A stiff breeze blew through the tall oak trees near the water’s edge, occasionally eliciting a moaning lament at the air’s harmonic passage through the branches. It was a partially cloudy night with only a sliver a moon peeking through the overcast. The lights from the surrounding homes on the harbor twinkled and danced as the roiling surface of the water reflected them up, moving in time with the swell from the harbor mouth as it surged against the outcropping shore of Point Piper, as the upscale neighborhood was called – a nub of land thrusting into the water, creating Double Bay on one side and Rose Bay on the other.

Three tough-looking guards prowled the grounds of the target’s home, two stationed front and back, with one circulating around. It was a lot of security for a relatively modest home. The neighbors had to wonder who the occupant was. The men did their best to appear discreet but they were obviously trained killers with military bearings and the bulges of handguns under their jackets.

This was the easiest duty any of them had ever had. Endless hours of nothing guarding a nobody from imagined threats that never materialized. They’d gotten complacent over the nine months they’d been working the gig, which was understandable given the uneventful nature of the job. But if it made the man happy, it was his money to spend as he liked and they weren’t going to complain. For fifteen thousand American dollars a month apiece, they’d put on a trapeze performance or ride unicycles on a tightrope every evening if that’s what their patron wanted.

It was quiet at one a.m. on a week-night, with very few cars winding their way along the New South Head road that tracked the coastline. Sydney’s suburbs were asleep, the citizenry enjoying its well-deserved rest in the privileged enclave.

A small black inflatable dinghy moved towards the target, bobbing over the swells as it made its silent way through the night. A hundred yards off the point, the operator dropped an anchor into the water before cutting the little electric motor. He sat, rising and falling with the waves, getting a sense for the amplitude and acclimating himself.

The waterside of the target’s home glimmered through the luminescent green of the night vision scope.
El Rey
could easily make out the sentry, sitting on the rear deck, smoking a cigarette and reading a book. Very unprofessional, but then again, given that the biggest threat the security team thought they were likely to encounter was an enraged koala bear on a eucalyptus-fueled rampage, he could appreciate their lackadaisical attitude. It would be the last mistake any of them ever made. But still, it was understandable.

The crosshairs of the modified M-4 assault rifle’s night scope bounced up and down from the waves, the weapon made ungainly from the additional weight of the long flash-suppressing silencer affixed to the barrel’s end. It would inevitably affect force and accuracy, as all silencers did, but he’d spent a few hours in a rural area out of town sighting it in with Victor yesterday for exactly the required distance and the margin of error was acceptable – down to a variance of two inches. Normally the rifle was far more accurate, but the silencer skewed the equation. An additional factor would be the brisk breeze; he automatically made a mental adjustment for it. It was blowing from the harbor mouth toward the point, so shouldn’t have a huge effect.

He’d spent the prior morning loading twenty shells with a special blend of a more powerful charge to compensate for the velocity difference the silencer caused, which had proved worthwhile when he was sighting it in. The higher-velocity payload attenuated much of the distortion introduced by the device. He’d flatted the tips of each slug a little and carved an X into the top before filling the indentations with solder and filing them so there would be no danger of a jam. Nothing could ruin a well-planned assault like a faultily-loading weapon, and so he’d spent hours on the task before taking the gun out and putting it through its paces.

He watched as the floating sentry approached the seated guard, presumably to ask for a cigarette because the seated man offered him one from his pack.
El Rey
watched the two men through the scope, taking care to close his eyes while the seated man lit the other’s smoke. It wouldn’t do to ruin his night vision with the match’s flare.

As the pair chatted lazily on the rear stone patio of the darkened house,
El Rey
gently squeezed the trigger. The standing man crumpled next to the seated guard, his chest exploding outward and onto his stunned partner; the fragmented slug having torn through his back, the shards exiting his front along with chunks of his pulmonary system and heart.
El Rey
caressed the trigger again, gently, as a lover might the receptive lips of his mate, and the seated man’s throat blew onto the heavy stucco house’s rear facade. That left the man in front, who would be getting a little apprehensive within a few minutes.