Friday
“Where are you, Colin?”
Xenos sat in the back of a stretch limousine (the most inconspicuous transport he could think of, considering the area) slowly driving through some of the most exclusive roads in America. The multihundred-acre estates were worth millions, their owners worth considerably more. High-tech security systems were the norm—not telltale at all. And the country’s “best, brightest, and most beautiful regularly gathered at any given mansion in the area to decide the fate of the world.”
Vedette, Albina, and Franco sipped their drinks and shook their heads as palace after palace (or the front gates thereof) passed in silent stately review.
“This place bespeaks a great deal of waste,” Albina said, using his ultimate compliment for the highest level of riches attainable.
“Amazing,” was Franco’s only response.
Vedette looked up from his map, checked an address, then looked down again. “It’s a pain in the ass. Every place here has state-of-the-art thugs and street-tough systems to get around. And most of them have no particular threat outstanding. Like other people have fancy landscaping. I hate to think what our place will be like.”
Xenos just stared out the window. “Okay,” he said as the limousine slowly completed its circle of the area and headed back toward the interstate. “We’ve seen all the possibles twice. Five doors, only one right one, and we won’t get a second chance.” He seemed deeply distracted, as if his mind were out among the southern manors and carefully manicured grounds. “Any thoughts?” he mumbled.
“DeWitt’s visited three of them in the last ten days,” the surveillance expert, Vedette, said after checking his surveillance logs. “I say we eliminate the other two.” He checked a computer printout. “The Collier and the Al Sheihala properties.”
“Three
doors.”
Franco looked at the notes he’d made as they’d driven by the residences where Valerie’s aide’s emergency call could have been routed. “The Krusiec woman remembered a long curving driveway just inside the gate.” He took a deep breath as if what followed was offered only with the most reluctance. Which it was. He didn’t like this seemingly casual elimination process. He was a man who believed in careful analysis then overwhelming action. Not informal discussion.
But he also believed in Xenos.
“Number one has a straight drive with right-angle intersections off it,” he finally offered.
“Two
doors.”
Vedette quickly pulled out the two files he’d compiled on the remaining possible targets.
“Briarcliff,” he read aloud. “Owned by a television executive named Jacob Haft. Fifty-seven, married, three children. Educated at Missouri State University, two-year fellow at Cambridge and Manchester Universities in England. Inherited his money, parlayed the family capital into a thirty percent ownership of Wilkins International Network. Not a controlling interest, but enough to get what he wants. DeWitt visited him last Saturday night. Stayed over.”
Albina checked
his
file on the place. A thing carefully
pulled together from sources in both the straight and crook communities.
“Eighty-five-hundred-square-foot,” seven-bedroom mansion, he began. “Four guesthouses, eight other outbuildings. Full-time, professional security—both automated and human. State-of-the-art and a lot of it.”
He looked over at Xenos. “Media man, wealthy, English education, big estate, heavy security. Looks good, no?”
Xenos closed his eyes and slouched down in his seat. “Next.”
Vedette began reading from his other file. “Heisenberg House, originally Maple Row Estate. Purchased five years ago by Heisenberg Assets, Limited—of Liechtenstein and Panama. Corporate purpose believed to be as a holding company to divert cash for tax purposes. But for whom I don’t know yet. Current resident is Anthony Grimes, the artist.”
He shrugged as he closed the file. “Grimes is an open book. Politically conservative, wealthy, only six months in England when he was in his twenties. Some art school in the West End of London.” He shook his head. “The guy’s a pussycat. But DeWitt
did
visit him Wednesday night.”
Albina continued the thought. “Very little security. A few cameras,” a man at the gate, another in the house, one on the monitors, one roaming. He turned a page. “A lot of cameras, some lights with motion detectors.” He shrugged. “The driveway curves, but so does Haft’s.”
Franco was studying the man who had the backseat to himself. Xenos seemed asleep, or at the least, deeply distracted. But his lips barely moved in soundless calculations, his breath became shallow, his movement almost nil. And Franco knew.
“You’ve decided,” he said quietly.
Xenos never moved or opened his eyes. “I’m holding high-profile hostages in a rich man’s paradise. I can expect a major effort if the congresswoman goes to the police. I want a place quiet, removed, but not a place where I
would be noticed. A place big enough to establish a topflight security perimeter, without it being obvious. I don’t want any of the neighbors to be even a little aware of it, but I’ll need any queries easily satisfied by the given eccentricity of the owner or resident.”
He opened his eyes and looked at the small infiltration expert. “Any buildings or cluster of buildings set off by themselves—ideally, connected—on either of the estates?”
His answer came a moment later.
“Work buildings well away from the main house and guesthouses at Briarcliff, maybe fifteen hundred meters,” the little man read off his carefully prepared fact sheets. “Just inside the north fence.” He turned to his file on the other estate. “We’ve got an old abandoned, sealed-up, fallout shelter in a grove of trees—maybe two thousand meters from the nearest occupant structure at Heisenberg.”
“How close to the fencing, Ugo?”
Albina pulled out a pocket ruler and checked the distance. “Close to two kilometers, a little over a mile from any fence. Almost in the center of the estate. The house and guest cottages are on the south end.”
“Franco?” Xenos said in a faraway voice.
“Si, amico.”
“That’s your target.”
Franco nodded and took the files on Heisenberg House from the others.
“Si, amico.”
His voice was firm, committed.
Vedette looked less sure.
“Excuse me, Dureté, but I don’t agree. Haft fits the profile better. His estate is better prepared to withstand an assault, his position in the community more useful to a man in Apple Blossom’s position.”
“I agree,” Albina added. “With no disrespect, we
will
get only one chance at this, as you have said. Perhaps we should discuss this more, Dureté.”
Xenos barely moved. “Before you go in, Franco, check the local photo libraries and real estate archives. There’s got to be some aerial photos of Heisenberg House lying
around somewhere. Make your maps from that and make sure every man in your team has one.”
Franco continued studying the real estate maps and limited intelligence he had. “I’ll get it done as soon as we get back.”
Xenos finally moved. Sitting up, he gestured for the Corsican driver to head back to the warehouse.
“They’re in there,” he said to the other two in the back. “I know it.”
“How?” Vedette demanded. “There is no room for error.”
Xenos took a bottle of water from the ice tray, swallowing half of it in one gulp. “Two reasons. One: the name of the place. Heisenberg House. Named after the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which says ‘We can be sure of nothing. It’s Colin’s sense of humor.’”
“Thin,” Albina said with a little scorn. The man across from him in the car might be a living legend, the personification of death and destruction itself, but Albina was being asked to design a plan that would put nineteen brothers of the Union and two small children in harm’s way.
And he would be damned certain they were hitting the right place before he did.
“What’s your other reason?” he asked with toughness and resolution.
Xenos turned back to the window, closed his eyes, and slid down in the seat again.
“It’s where
I
would hold them.”
The discussion was over and the three Corsicans began planning the assault even before the car had reached the expressway.
“You shoot good for a woman,” Fabrè said matter-of-factly as he took the pistol from Valerie’s hand and gave her another.
“I’ve had a lot of experience lately,” she mumbled as she tested the heft of the new pistol. “Heavy sonofabitch.”
Fabrè adjusted her hands around the gun’s butt. “Heckler & Koch VP 70, 9mm. No external hammer so it can’t catch on your clothes. Eighteen-round clip, with one up the pipe. Very nice.” He smiled spasmodically. “Longer trigger pull, but more accurate with more hitting power. Try it.”
Valerie sighted in on the target—a mannequin of a man holding a doll of a small child in his arms—located in the basement of their temporary headquarters. She slowly squeezed the trigger, surprised at how long it took until the sound exploded around her.
“Loud,” was all she said as the shot kicked up dirt from the pile behind and to the left of the target.
The assassin shrugged. “Big muzzle flash tells the bastards where you are anyway.” He nodded for her to fire again. “Every shot goes up and left with you. You’re probably a natural shot, that tells me. So”—he took her hands and adjusted her aim lower and to the right—“we make adjustments.”
Valerie sighted in on the new aiming point, then jerked the trigger. The round flew low and to the left. Angrily she slammed the gun down on the table in front of her.
“What’s wrong?” the Corsican said patiently.
Valerie started pacing. “It’s too damned close,” she yelled. “You honestly expect me to be able to take a shot at a man holding one of my babies in front of him?” She was furious—at the Corsican, at herself for her inability to make the kind of shot she’d made on ranges for years.
At the terror of possibly being the cause of one of her children’s deaths—
directly
instead of indirectly.
“It’s an unusual trigger pull,” Fabrè said quietly, understanding. Then he cocked his head to an angle and picked up the gun. “There is an old Corsican story,” he began as he casually held the gun in front of him, wiping its blue steel exterior with a silicone cloth to ease its holster pull. “The story of Lucien ècraser.” He smiled openly, casually, a strange sight amid the smell of gunpowder and fear. “My papa named me for him.”
“ècraser was a secretary of the Nicosian Union of the Brotherhood. The man charged with settling the Union’s accounts with those it transacted business with.
“Some
camorra
owed the Union a great deal of money and ècraser went to collect. They refused.” He spread his hands in a gesture of futility. “What could he do? He killed three of the five leaders and made his collection.”
“What does this have to do…” But Valerie cut herself off when she saw a clouded expression cross the huge man’s face.
“Six months later ècraser returns home from business to find his house burned to the ground, his family dead or dying. His teenage daughter missing, taken into bondage by the Spanish bastards.”
Again, the gesture of futility. “What could he do? He buried his family, paid holy obeisance to God’s greater wisdom, then went in search of his daughter.”
“He found her in a private
camorra
brothel in Málaga, near Gibraltar.” He smiled suddenly. “Beautiful town, great hotel right on the beach if you like such things.” Then the mood returned. “Anyways…
“ècraser shot his way in, finding the two men who had taken his daughter, hiding behind her nakedness on a bed.” He paused, the objective voice returning. “She was lying on the bed, you see, and they were on the floor behind her, only their eyes and the top of their heads peeking out from behind, holding guns on her. You get it?”
Valerie nodded.
“Well,” he continued, “what could he do?”
A silence filled the room, then the Heckler & Koch flashed up to shoulder level and two blasts shouted out.
Stunned, Valerie walked out from behind the table, over to the mannequin. Tracing her fingers over the still smoking, unquestionably fatal holes in its right eye and forehead… inches from the head of the baby doll.
Fabrè stood very still, looking not at the target, but deep into Valerie’s shocked eyes.
“He could do… what he
had
to do.”
For the next three hours Valerie practiced unflaggingly
with the gun. Each round, each lungful of cordite and saltpeter invigorating her, cleansing her, hardening her for the night to come. Finally Fabrè seemed satisfied and took the gun from her swelling hands.
“You soak them in heavy salt and sugar water for an hour, then rinse with very hot water. Your fingers come alive then.” He cleared the weapon, then nodded at the target. “Go get the baby, please.”
After rinsing her mouth with cold water, swallowing some and spitting out the rest, she walked over and worked the baby from the terrorist’s grasp.
“Another reason I like the H&K,” Fabrè said simply as he slammed a new clip into the handle. He turned the butt of the gun toward her. “You see this little lever, set on green?”
Valerie nodded. “The safety. What about it?”
The experienced Corsican weapons expert laughed loud and long. “In a manner of speaking only. On green you fire one shot per trigger pull. On red—”
“It won’t fire, I know,” she interrupted.
“Not quite.” He flipped the almost invisible lever to the red pin spot. “Step away, please.”
Valerie pressed herself against a side wall as she watched him take a tight grip on the weapon, sight in on the empty-handed mannequin, and then pull the trigger… once.
Three
shots let go in almost instantaneous canon, neatly severing the head of the mannequin at the neck. It rolled on the ground, coming to a stop by Valerie’s feet.
Fabrè laughed as if it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard. “Red means three rounds automatic fire per trigger pull,” he said between roars. “For those less
delicate
moments.”