I might be here a while…
I lift the rifle into place in front of me, tucking the stock into my shoulder and flipping the lens cap up, so I can look through the scope. I use my left hand to adjust the focus and activate the thermal imaging. The world goes dark, and the heat signatures of everything and everyone around me appear in my line of sight in a blur of reds, blues, and yellows. I look at Josh crouching by the exit.
“I see you,” I whisper into my earpiece.
“Good,” he replies. “Any sign of life?”
I look up at the back wall, where I know King’s office is and scan the area. “Nothing yet. We just need to play the waiting game now.”
“Copy that.”
An important part of this job is patience. Ironic, given my general lack of such things. But when I’m working, it’s different. If need be, I might have to wait hours for King to show…
“I’ve got movement,” I say to Josh. “Two targets are in the office now; one standing, walking back and forth, the other sitting down.”
“The guy sitting down has got to be King, right?” he replies.
“That would be my guess, yeah, but I’ll take them both out to be safe.”
I take a long, slow breath, steadying my heart rate and composing myself. I line the crosshairs up on the colorful image of King’s head, adjusting slightly for the wind.
“Got him in my sights,” I confirm, tweaking the focus slightly.
I take another deep breath, and everything slows down around me. The individual background noises sound off to me in turn. I can hear the chaotic bustle of the traffic on the Boulevard… the gentle roar of the water from the river… a bird squawking overhead, lost in the clouds… After each one registers in my ears, it disappears from my radar, eventually leaving an un-natural silence. It’s in this moment when I prepare myself, focusing on the task at hand.
The sound of the shot will be loud — especially a fifty caliber round — but it shouldn’t attract too much attention. I’ll be long gone before anyone tracks down the source of it anyway.
“Ready when you are, Boss,” Josh says.
I move the scope subtly back and forth, practicing the shot. King’s head — bang… quick to the right, second target’s chest — bang. Job done. I replay it almost a dozen times. I’m maybe eleven hundred yards away. At this distance, I need only move the barrel of the gun a millimeter or so. The movement is so precise, the slightest error in judgment on my part and I’ll miss my shot by ten feet…
I re-focus on King and line up the shot once again. My finger tightens on the trigger. I slow my breathing down, steady my arms, and push my weight forward, planting my feet into the ground so I have a firm base.
One breath, in and out.
A second, in and out — slower this time.
The third, in… And out as I squeeze gently on the trigger. The gunshot’s louder than I anticipated, and the recoil slams the stock into my shoulder. The bullet traveled the distance in a fraction over a second, punching through the wall and into the head of Johnny King. I see the figure through the scope slump to the floor, motionless; the heat signature slowly fading away. I quickly line up and fire at the second target in the next breath, hitting him in the chest. He too falls to the floor.
I take a deep breath and let it out with relief.
“You’re up,” I say to Josh.
I place the rifle down and get up to a crouch as watch him enter the building. I pack everything away, hastily make my way down the fire escape, and back over to the Winnebago. I put the sports bag in the back and get in behind the wheel. I sit and focus on my breathing, urging the adrenaline rush to subside. I tap my fingers on the wheel impatiently as I wait for Josh to come back out.
Five minutes pass. I’ll admit I’m starting to worry. I’ve not heard any gunshots, but I’m not sure I would from this distance anyway. Finally, a few moments later, he appears in the back doorway. He walks casually toward the back of the parking lot, clears both fences with an ease not befitting his age, and climbs into the passenger seat next to me.
“All good?” I ask.
His face is solemn and his eyes are serious. I was expecting him to look more… I don’t know — alive, or something, after coming out of there.
“I think we just cemented ourselves in the annals of history as being the two most unlucky bastards ever to walk God’s green Earth,” he says.
I sigh.
“Of course we did… what’s happened now? It wasn’t King we killed, was it?”
“Oh yeah, you took out King — great shot, by the way. Manhattan will be well pleased. I swept the building, managed to take down the three other guys in there without firing a shot.”
“Nice.”
He shrugs modestly. “Thanks. I got to King’s office, saw him and another guy dead, and thought, great — a nice, clean hit. I figured I’d have a look at his papers and on his computer, to see if there was anything of interest. May as well, while I was there.”
“Can’t hurt…” I agree, nodding.
“I found a lot of accounts information, which I’m sure Manhattan will be glad of. I downloaded them to a flash drive I happened to have on me. I always carry one, just in case I ever need it.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“I had a quick read through his financials,” he says. “Johnny King used his club for many things, most of them illegal. Including, but not limited to, laundering money for various gangsters and corrupt politicians within the state…”
“Right…”
“Want to have a guess which gangster in particular was his biggest client?”
His words hang there for a moment as a painful silence descends.
“Johnny King worked for Wilson Trent…” I say, closing my eyes and massaging the bridge of my nose in frustration.
“He basically ran Allentown for him, which accounted for a sizeable percentage of Trent’s overall income,” Josh confirms. “And we just killed him. Well… you just killed him.” He turns and pats my shoulder. “Nice going…”
I laugh, more out of disbelief than humor. “For fuck’s sake…”
20
Wilson Trent had hardly slept the night before. He was too angry to think about resting. All he could focus on was Adrian Hell and how much he wanted to kill him. And what made things worse was that everyone seemed intimidated by the guy… they seemed to have forgotten it was him they should be scared of, and what he’d do to them if they failed to bring him Adrian Hell’s head on a silver platter.
He sat eating his lunch in a small restaurant not far from his personal skyscraper. It was busy, due to the lunchtime crowd, but he was a regular and… well, he was Wilson Trent, so he had a table to himself at the back of the room, with three men guarding him. The waitresses knew to give him a wide berth, only approaching his table to deliver food and take empty plates away.
It was a nice place, well decorated with a slightly over-priced menu. Trent enjoyed the seafood pasta dish they served there and had been a regular customer for a several years.
He’d instructed Duncan and Bennett to put the word out and find a contract killer who was up to the task of taking that sonofabitch Adrian Hell down, and he’d yet to hear back from them.
He had, however, been contacted by the manager of the Hilton hotel, which was only a few blocks away from where he was sitting. He’d informed him that two police officers were there the night before looking for a man who was staying with them, fitting Adrian’s description. They’d approached him, and he gave chase when he ran, but he hadn’t seen either the police or Adrian since. This just added salt to the wound for Trent, because he knew perfectly well what had happened to the police officers he paid a small fortune to, having spoken with Adrian himself the other night.