Unwilling to carry a Bullpup, Team Leader opted for a Sig Sauer P220 40-caliber with suppressor and grip-attached laser sighting. It was his weapon of choice — a weapon he had become accustomed to as an assassin.
On the floor al-Hashrie and al-Bashrah lay cuffed and dressed in pressed military fatigues, the men praying softly in Arabic, which Team Leader allowed without punitive action from anybody on his team.
For the third time in the last five minutes, Team Leader looked at his watch, realizing that months of preparation would soon bear the fruit of their labors. And then he closed his eyes once again, the images of that day in Ramallah reminding him why he was about to go to war.
The time was 0128 hours.
CHAPTER SIX
The Governor’s Mansion was a two-story Colonial, situated on a manicured rise. Columns and expensive fascia designs enhanced the house’s appeal, while Boston ivy climbed the brick and trellises with reckless abandon.
On the gravel-laden driveway leading to the mansion’s cul-de-sac, two state police vehicles sat on the perimeter with an officer in each unit. They were no match for Team Leader’s recon group; they were dispatched quickly, quietly and efficiently.
Agent Nedza had a good view of the grounds from the mansion‘s wraparound porch and examined the landscape through night vision binoculars, making a slow scan. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he lowered the device and moved along to the porch’s south side. The moment he started to ebb from sight, Team Leader’s recon group scaled the wall and landed behind a row of pruned hedges.
Unslinging the world’s most accurate sniper rifle, the Barrett M82A1, Team Leader’s sniper took aim through the crosshairs of an emerald green lens, drew a bead, slowed his breathing, and pulled the trigger. With the sound of the gunshot muted, Agent Nedza’s head snapped forward with the bullet’s impact, and fell to the floor as a boneless heap.
The lighting in the hallway was somewhat subdued as an agent from the president’s detail walked into the governor’s darkened library and stood silhouetted within the door frame, listening. The moment he raised his hand for the light switch, three muted pops sounded off in quick succession, the muzzle flashes winking intermittently from the darkest edges of the room. With cold efficiency, the perfectly placed bullets hit the center of body mass in a tight triangular pattern, dropping the agent as fast as gravity would allow.
On the second-tier landing where the bedrooms were located, two agents stood vigil at opposite ends of the corridor. When one of the agents began to toy with his earpiece, a darkened shape moved along the wall with feline stealth, drew a garrote around the agent’s neck, and pulled him silently into the shadows, strangling him with such surgical precision that the agent was unable to emit a sound upon the moment of death.
After the assassin lowered the body to the floor, he melded so easily with the surrounding darkness that he became a part of it. And then he was gone.
Agent Cross stood alone at the opposite end of the corridor, unaware he was surrounded by a group of hostiles. The moment he raised his hand to adjust his lip mike, he was taken down. The action was so quick, so proficient, he was numbed by surprise.
Now, with the front line of defense taken out, all that remained was the task of securing the designated targets.
Darlene Steele was unable to sleep. The sound of the wind blowing the leaves outside sounded to her like a symphony of distant tambourines. Even from where she lay she could hear the wind driving the already fallen leaves along the cul-de-sac in a cacophony that sounded like the crackle of fire.
After releasing a barely audible sigh, she turned to her husband who lay beside her, his chest rising and falling in a slow, even rhythm. Apparently the stirring of autumn winds was more of a lullaby to him than an annoyance. So she lay there for hours, watching patterns on the ceiling as sleep eluded her. Her eyes remained open and sighs escaped her. Her restless motions were unable to elicit even a single uncouth comment from her husband, as he lay undisturbed by her actions. In time she slid the covers back, got out of bed, and embraced herself against the unseasonable chill. Grabbing her robe from the post of the bed, she left the room and closed the door behind her.
In the hallway she turned up the thermostat before descending the spiral staircase of their state-funded $650,000 home — one of many political perks that made her marriage tolerable. As the wife of a prominent governor, Darlene Steele found comfort in the prestige and material goods her husband’s position provided. She knew her marriage was not about love. It was a business arrangement. Her job was to be the dutiful first lady, projecting a public image of grace and beauty and elegance. Meanwhile, her husband was mired in affairs, an acceptable vice since she no longer cared to try to fulfill him sexually. She would tolerate his violations as long as she garnered the prize in the end, the status of senator’s wife.
Passing through the living room, holding the robe tightly around her, Darlene was already anticipating a warm glass of milk to exorcize the chill from her bones.
Once in the kitchen she felt for the island, found it, then made her way to the refrigerator, a stainless steel unit built into the wall. When she opened the door, a feeble beam of light shone across the kitchen, barely touching the darkest reaches of the room. It wasn’t until she brought the milk to the island that she saw something black and amoeba-like standing against the far wall, something that finally took the shape of a man with a weapon.
Before her mind could register that she was not alone, her breath hitched in a tiny gasp. And just as she was beginning to sober to the seriousness of the situation, the figure stepped into the outer edges of the light. He wore a tactical uniform, black, with matching boots, and his face was partially obscured by the headgear of his night-vision monocular. In the intruder’s hand, which he raised for the kill shot, was a.40 caliber Sig Sauer equipped with sound suppressor and laser-grip sighting.
“I’m sorry,” the man whispered, directing the red dot of the laser sight to her chest, then to her brow. “But I’m afraid it’s necessary that you become a casualty of the cause.” With that he pressed the trigger, the muted sound barely audible as the well-placed bullet struck her forehead and exited out the rear. The pulpy expulsion from the exit wound cast a Jackson Pollack design of blood and tissue along the wall behind her. As Darlene Steele pirouetted soundlessly before hitting the floor, the assassin was already gone from the room.
Jonathan Steele was in the midst of a bad and slow-moving dream when he awoke to find his wife missing. His hand was searching the warm area of her side of the bed when he spotted the phosphorous-green circles moving around his bed like lazy fireflies. With a rare ability to speak out powerfully, he called out to the living shapes in his room.
The glowing circles stopped moving.
Then, from the depths of the shadows, an emotionless voice said, “Governor Steele.” A threatening figure moved closer to the bed. “You’ve been deemed a moral sacrifice.”
The governor galvanized himself into action by swiftly throwing the covers aside, the unfamiliar voice striking an undercurrent of terror as several hands pushed him back onto the mattress. “What do you think you’re doing? You have no right to do this to me! Let me go!”
Steele could see the phosphorous eyes moving, could feel the strength of his attackers as one of the intruders lifted the sleeve of his pajama top and inserted a needle into his arm. Immediately the governor saw a nebula of light, felt the slowing of his mind, then fell into complete and utter darkness.