A moment later she moved away from the opening, and his sight line once more became unobstructed.
Robie let out a long breath of relief and allowed his muscles to relax.
He rested his right cheek against the rifle stock’s carbon fiber left side. The use of this material had dropped his rifle’s weight from eight pounds to three. And as with an aircraft, weight was critical for Robie’s task, meaning the less the better. He gazed through the optics latched down on his Picatinny rail. The inches-wide crevice in the curtains came into focus. Through his scope it looked a mile across. It would be impossible for him to miss.
There was a table in view. On the table was a phone. Not a mobile phone — an old-fashioned landline with a spiral cord. The call would be coming through in less than two minutes. The stage was set, everything choreographed down to the last detail.
Part of Robie couldn’t believe the man or his bodyguards would not notice just how carefully everything had been arranged. Through the parted curtains he could see the bodyguards doing what bodyguards did. Moving, taking in details, trying to keep their deep paranoia in check long enough to carry out their job. But never once did they look toward the window. Or, presumably, think about where the phone was positioned in front of that window.
Never once.
Which meant they were idiots. Robie’s people had long since discovered that convenient truth. Because of that they had not even attempted to buy these folks off. They weren’t worth the price.
Robie started exhaling longer and longer breaths, getting his physiological markers down to levels acceptable for a shot of this kind: cold zero. In reality the actual shot would not be that difficult. The narrow street including its curbs was barely a hundred feet wide, which was the reason he was using the quieter subsonic round; it was an ordnance perfectly acceptable for a shot over such a short distance. His shot was angled down one story — again, not a problem. It was true he would be firing through glass at the other end, but at this range, glass was not a factor. There was no wind and no ancillary light sources that could possibly blind him.
In short, it should be an easy kill.
But Robie had found that there was really no such thing.
The voice in his ear spoke two words.
“Vee one.”
It was the same terminology that pilots in the cockpit used. V-1 meant that the takeoff roll could no longer be safely aborted. Your butt was going up into the sky whether you wanted it to or not.
There was one small difference here, though, and Robie well knew it. So did the person on the other end of his secure line.
I can abort this mission all the way up until my finger pulls the trigger.
“Thirty seconds,” said the voice.
Robie gave one more sweeping glance left, than right. Then he looked only through his optics, his gaze and aim dead on the opening between the curtains.
Place empty except for target, two bodyguards, and the maid.
Check, check, and check.
“Ten seconds.”
The call on the phone would be the catalyst for all.
“Five seconds.”
Robie counted off the remaining moments in his head.
“Call engaged,” said the voice.
It was being done via remote computer link. There would be no living person on the other end.
A man moved into view between the curtains.
He was of medium height and build, but that was all that was average about him. Like Hitler before him, he had the extraordinary ability to whip his followers into a frenzy of such devotion that they would commit any atrocity he ordered. That skill had led him to be deemed a Category Alpha enemy of an important if fluid ally of the United States. And that category was reserved only for those who would eventually suffer violent deaths, as the United States played the role of global wrecking ball for those willing to pony up allegiance to it, however briefly.
Robie’s finger slid to the trigger guard and then to the real V-1 point for him — the trigger.
He saw motion to the right of the target but still fired, pulling the trigger with a clean, measured sweep as he had done countless times before.
As was his custom, after the muzzle recoil, he kept his gaze aimed squarely on the target through his optics. He would see this to the end of the bullet’s flight path. The only way to confirm a kill was to see it. He had been tricked once before. He would never be tricked again.
The glass cracked and the jacketed round slammed into and then through the target. The man fell where he stood, the phone receiver still clutched in his dead hand.
There was no one alive on either end of the call now.
Right as Robie was about to look away, the target disappeared completely from sight. And revealed behind him was the child — obviously the blur of motion Robie had seen right as he fired.
The jacketed round had cleared the target’s skull and still had enough velocity to hit and kill the second, far smaller target.
Through his optics Robie saw the girl, the bullet hole dead center of her small chest, crumple to the floor.
One shot, two dead.
One intended.
One never contemplated.
Will Robie grabbed his gear and ran for it.
Chapter
2
His escape route took Robie out the fourth-floor window opposite where he had fired the shot that had killed one male adult and one female child. With his duffel over his shoulder he jumped and his booted feet landed on the gravel roof of the adjacent three-story building. He heard gunshots and then the breaking of glass.
The bodyguards had just fired their salvos at the building he’d been in.
Then he heard two more rapid-fire shots: bang-bang.
The maid had just dispatched the guards, or so Robie hoped.
And then she had better run like hell because Robie could already hear tires squealing on pavement.
His landing had been awkward, and he had felt the scarred skin on his arm from a past injury pull and then partially tear as it took the impact of the landing. He leapt up and ran for the roof doorway that led into the building. He took the stairs down three at a time. He cleared the building and found himself in an alley. There were two vehicles parked there. Into one he threw his gear and his outer layer of clothes and his boots. Now he had on only skivvies. The driver sped off without even looking at him.
He climbed into the rear of the other vehicle. It was an ambulance. A man dressed in blue scrubs was in the back. Robie climbed up on the gurney, where he was covered with a sheet and a surgical cap was placed on his head. He was hooked up to several drip lines, and an oxygen mask was placed on his face. The man injected a solution into Robie’s cheek that swelled his face and a few moments later turned his skin a brick red and would keep it that way for another thirty minutes.
The ambulance drove off, its singsong siren and rack lights going full bore.
They turned onto a road that ran parallel to the street that separated Robie’s shooter’s nest from the target’s building.
Two minutes later the ambulance lurched to a stop and the back doors were thrown open. Robie closed his eyes and let his breathing run shallow.
Men with guns appeared. One climbed in and barked at the man in scrubs. He replied in his native language with just the right amount of professional indignation, and then pointed at Robie. The man with the gun drew very close to Robie’s face. Then he examined the IV lines and the oxygen mask and Robie’s swollen and flaming-red face. He asked another question, which the scrubs man answered.
Then the armed man climbed out and the ambulance doors closed. The vehicle started up again.