He turned onto the street and immediately spotted a white van at the entrance-the sentries. His heart kicked harder. They were here. It was on.
He rode up the street, the 250 cc engine buzzing, knowing the sentries would have already alerted the primary team. They couldn’t have recognized him through the helmet, but a heads-up would be SOP. The primary team would move in for a closer look. Larison would give them one.
He parked the bike between two cars and killed the engine. He swung his leg over the side and engaged the kickstand. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Then he removed the helmet, set it on the seat, and started walking toward the entrance of the condo. His face twisted into a smile and he thought, Come out, come out, wherever you are, motherfuckers.
26. The Element of Surprise
Ben and Paula watched the motorcyclist pull up and park not ten yards from the entrance to Nico’s condominium. They were in the van on the other side of the street, about twenty-five yards away, on the crest of a slight slope in the street. Any farther and they would have lost line of sight to the entrance.
“That’s him,” Ben said, watching the guy kill the engine.
“You’re sure?” Paula said.
Ben nodded. He couldn’t have explained how he knew, but he knew. Larison had decided not to come up through the construction site. Smart. He must have realized the route would be too foreseeable, and Ben mentally kicked himself for earlier assuming Larison would do the predictable unpredictable thing. But others, it seemed, had made the same mistake Ben made, and were now committed to it. Three hours earlier, Ben and Paula had watched through the one-way glass at the back of the van as various hard-looking foreigners cased the street by ones and twos. None of them had set up in front of the condo entrance, which suggested to Ben they’d decided Larison was going to approach through the construction site and were waiting for him there. Larison, it seemed, was one step ahead of them.
But why the street? The sentries would have made him instantly, and even if they weren’t sure it was Larison they were seeing through the visor of the helmet, they would have alerted the primary team to be safe. Larison had lost the element of surprise.
So what surprise was he planning?
The motorcyclist got off the bike and removed the helmet as though he had all the time in the world. He set it down on the bike’s seat, ran his fingers through his wet hair, and dried his hands on his jeans.
“Oh, my God,” Paula said. “You were right.”
Ben moved from one side of the van to the other, looking through the one-way glass. He didn’t see anyone approaching yet, but they would be. Any second.
“What the hell’s he doing?” he said.
27. Head Shots
Larison stood a few yards down from the entrance to Nico’s condo, facing the building. His eyes were open but he wasn’t focusing on their input. All his concentration was focused through his ears. He tuned out the birds and the insects, the sounds of distant traffic. It was stealth he was listening for. And he would hear it soon enough.
He turned and walked slowly toward the entrance. He knew he wouldn’t reach it.
He didn’t. He heard the soft pop of a CO2 cartridge from somewhere behind him. At the same instant there was a slap/sting sensation on the right side of his neck. His hand flew to the spot, found the dart, and ripped it away despite the barbed tip. It was already too late, of course; the dart had a small explosive charge that had instantly pumped the tranquilizer into him upon impact. Ripping it out was useless. But it’s what Larison had seen countless rendition targets do before, and it was important that he mimic them precisely now.
He wobbled, then dropped to one knee, leaning forward, the way tranquilized targets always did, his right hand already inside the fanny pack. He closed his eyes and listened.
Three sets of footsteps, approaching fast: two from the flanks, one directly behind. The ones to the flanks would have flex-cuffs and a hood. The one in the middle would have a gun out to provide cover.
The sounds of the footsteps changed as they went from gravel to sidewalk, then to the street. Twenty-five feet. Twenty. Fifteen.
In a single motion, he stood, spun, and brought up the HK in a two-handed grip. The guy in the middle had just enough time to widen his eyes before Larison blew the top of his head off. He tracked left-bam! Tracked right-bam! Three down, all head shots.
He heard a car coming fast from his right. He moved between two parked cars and confirmed it was the white van he’d seen parked at the end of the street when he came in. He waited until it was forty feet away, then stepped out into the road, brought up the HK, and put a round through the windshield into the driver’s face. The van swerved wildly and slammed into a parked car ten feet from Larison’s position on the other side of the street. Larison crossed over, moved past the van, and approached it from behind on the passenger side, the HK up at chin level. A dazed-looking operator covered in his partner’s blood and brain matter was struggling with the door, which must have been jammed. He saw Larison and tried to bring up a gun, but the angle was all wrong and the timing useless. Larison shot him in the head.
He walked quickly across the street, mounted the Kawasaki, fired it up, pulled on the helmet, and raced down the street toward where he knew the other sentries would be. Even if the first set hadn’t contacted them already, they would have heard the gunshots, would have known something had gone badly wrong. They’d be trying to raise their comrades on cellphones right now. He noted another van, a green one, on his right as he rode, but it was in the wrong position to have been of any use operationally and he judged it just a civilian coincidence.
There it was, at the end of the street, another white van, parked on the right, facing away from him. He scanned the other parked cars and potential hot spots to ensure he wasn’t missing anything. He wasn’t. The van was the target.
He gunned the engine so they would hear him coming, then swerved between two parked cars, jumped the curb, and raced up the sidewalk to the passenger side of the van. He saw the passenger’s reflection in the sideview. The man had heard the whine of the Kawasaki’s engine and naturally assumed Larison was coming up the street, not the sidewalk. So, sadly for him, he was now facing the wrong way.
Larison pulled up to the window. The guy’s ears must have had just enough time to send an urgent corrective message to his brain-threat on right, not on left-because his head started to turn in the instant before Larison put an armor-piercing round into the back of it.
The driver was amazingly quick. In the moment during which Larison was focused on his partner, he managed to open the door and jump out onto the street. Larison stepped back, judged the angle, and fired twice through the van. He heard a cry from the other side and circled carefully around the front. The guy was splayed out on his back in a growing pool of blood, a gun on the ground beside him, his legs kicking feebly as though to propel him from the scene of his own destruction. Larison checked his flanks-clear-stepped out from behind the cover of the van’s engine block, and approached him, the HK up.
“Please,” the guy whispered. “Please.”
Larison smiled and shot him in the face.
He went back to the bike, reloaded, and roared off.
Seven down, he thought. Five to go.
He wished there were more.
28. Shaken Up
The whole thing happened so fast that Ben didn’t have time to figure out what to do. In the space of a half minute, he watched Larison appear, drop five men, and disappear again. Ben could have gotten out of the van after the first three and engaged Larison from behind, but his orders were strictly to observe, and besides, the point, if anything, was to snatch Larison, not to kill him. Still, it was appalling to have to be a spectator to so much killing, to be helpless to do anything about it.