Jeff couldn’t help the smile. “Now tell me, is there any better mechanism of defense other than to kill your enemy before they get a chance to kill you?”
“That’s the point. They’re not our enemies. They’re people doing their job and earning a paycheck.”
Jeff then fed a bullet into the chamber of his weapon by drawing the slide back. “Then they should have worked safer jobs.”
“No… killing.”
“What… ever.”
They moved to the end of the privet hedges until they had a full view of the estate.
“I don’t see anybody,” whispered Stan.
“They’re around… Somewhere.”
Kimball moved forward. “Stay close to the hedges. I’ll maintain point; Jeff, you watch the periphery; and, Stan, you keep an eye on the rear flank.”
“Who in the hell died and made you boss?” queried Jeff.
Kimball turned on him with the same bearing and intensity he once held as a member of the Pieces of Eight — that look of murderous fortitude. “Look. I didn’t come here to argue. So do you want point? Or do you want the periphery position? I don’t care.”
Jeff noted the fire in the warrior’s eyes. It was the same vicious ferocity Kimball held moments before making a kill. And Jeff realized that he was the current object of his focus. “No, you’re good,” he told him, his tone less brash, less cocky. “You can take lead.”
Kimball met his eyes a little bit longer before breaking off. And then he moved toward the house with the Hardwick brothers in tow.
A plain clothed Capitol police officer was making a round of the grounds. Cradled within his arms was a TAR-21 mini assault rifle with holographic view and NV scope. The man, however, moved with all the ease of taking a leisurely stroll, a telltale sign of complacency. When the officer rounded the corner of the house, Kimball and company moved quickly and took position beneath a semi-round balcony that overlooked the swimming pool. To the sides of the balcony stood trellises covered with roses that were thick and lush and blood red. And the balcony doors stood open, allowing for a crisp, midnight breeze to circulate the air of the senator’s bedroom.
Kimball raised a fisted hand in the air, and then pointed a finger to the balcony’s landing. The brothers acknowledged his gesture, holstered their weapons, and quietly climbed the trellises while Kimball maintained his position on a bended knee and kept watch, the point of his firearm held out in front of him, scanning.
When the brothers quietly hit the landing they motioned for Kimball to follow, with Stan watching his back by monitoring the grounds from above.
Quietly, Kimball scaled the trellis. His movements were silent, stealthy, the man bearing incredible athletic economy as he mounted the balcony rails and took footing.
The doors were open, the scrim-like drapes floating with the course of a slight breeze, the gossamer fabric moving with phantasmagoric grace. Inside, the room was dark.
For a brief moment the men stood silhouetted in the balcony’s doorway, the light of the pool serving as the backdrop.
And then, in unison, they moved into the room and became a part of the darkness.
They closed the doors softly behind them, all spreading out, the points of their weapons directed to the bed. Stan went to the left side, Jeff to the right, and Kimball stood at the foot of the bed.
Senator Shore lay beside his wife, both beneath a single blanket that was being worked into a wild tangle by their shifting legs.
The senator lay on the left side of the bed slack-jawed, his limbs contorted in such a way it seemed impossible to be a position of comfort.
Carefully, Stan hunkered over the senator, his lips inches away from the senator’s ear. “Wake up, Sunshine,” he whispered.
The senator didn’t move.
“Come on, Sunshine, wakey-wakey.” Stanley reached out with the tip of his middle finger and flicked the lobe of the senator’s ear.
The senator snorted in surprise, his eyes fluttering, then opening, his jaw closing with the snap of a bear trap. And then his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, his brain registering certain shapes and forms of things that did not belong.
Looking down, Stan smiled with malicious amusement. “How’re you doing, Sunshine?”
But before the senator could react or respond, Stanley Hardwick clamped a gloved hand over the senator’s mouth.
“Now listen to me,” he whispered. “And listen well. You make a noise, you’re dead. Do anything stupid, you’re dead. Understand?”
The senator nodded.
“And that goes for your wife, too.”
The senator’s wife, however, remained dead asleep.
“Now I’m going to take my hand away. And when I do, you will answer our questions accordingly. Is that understood?”
The senator’s eyes moved in their sockets, scanning. There was a large man standing by the foot of the bed and another standing over his wife, the point of his firearm aimed at her skull.
Then again, from Stanley, and in the same measured whisper: “Is that understood?”
The senator nodded once again, the gesture telling Stanley he had no doubt about his mortality should he disregard the intruder’s wishes.
“Good boy.” Stanley removed his hand while directing the mouth of the pistol’s barrel at the senator’s head with the other.
Defensively, the senator began to draw the blanket toward the point of his chin, a weak barrier against a bullet. “What do you want?” he asked.
The level of his voice caused his wife to stir. He was not whispering.
“We just want to ask a few questions,” said Kimball, who stepped closer to the foot of the bed. “And then we’ll be on our way.”
From what the senator could see, the large man was not aiming or bearing a weapon like the other two. But there was something about his features, the angle of his jaw line, the breadth and width of his shoulders, the tone of his voice. This particular man reminded him of an old-time warrior he once knew nearly two decades before — a man whose empty coffin was buried as an honorary gesture by the Pentagon brass at Arlington.
“Do you remember me?” asked the large man.
The senator searched his memory further. “Should I?”
Kimball leaned forward, no longer leaving any doubt in the senator’s mind.
The senator’s eyes flared to the size of an owl’s, the sudden realization as palpable as a slap in the face. “You’re dead.”
“People keep telling me that. But apparently I’m not.”
The senator’s wife began to raise her head, slowly, suddenly realizing the voice was not her husband’s. When she looked up and saw Jeff proffering her a wink, she attempted to scream. But Jeff quickly nullified that by placing hand over her mouth. In an act of self-preservation she began to beat his arms with open hands. But when she saw him calmly raise his firearm and felt the tip of the suppressor planted against her forehead, she quickly stilled.
“Calm down,” he told her. “Or I put your pretty little brains all over this expensive silk you’re lying on.”
“Remember what I said,” reminded Kimball. No killing.
“Just get on with it.”
The senator sat up so that his back was square against the headboard. “Kimball Hayden,” he said, his voice sounded awed, the surprise genuine. “You were supposed to have been killed in Iraq.”
“Only he ran away from the mission like a spineless coward,” said Stanley. “Isn’t that right, Kimball? Tell him how you ran away from the mission like a spineless coward.”
Kimball refused to respond.
Jeff, however, snickered in amusement.
Suddenly a visual of stereotypical inbreds flashed in Kimball’s mind: the brothers no doubt poster children as descendents from the backwoods. How much he hated them.