I’ll find a way to get you out, someday, she promised Dick silently. It felt as though she was lying. She had already tried to get him released, but it hadn’t worked.
The Black Eagle was keeping him locked up somewhere. Apparently, that meant that any normal negotiation rights went out the window.
The silence from the American embassy around this was frustrating. It made no sense to Sarah. There was something else going on – there had to be. Layers to this all that she couldn’t see.
But most importantly, for Connor. She missed him in the way that you miss family. Yeah, you might not always get along, you bicker and fight over things that don’t matter, not really. But no matter what happens, they’re still family.
Sarah finally turned off the hot water and stepped out of the shower feeling refreshed and energized. She toweled herself off and picked the dress off the bed. The fabric was light and breathable and made for Southern climates but, most importantly, it was sexy.
She doubted that Vandervoort remembered her from the party – they hadn’t spoken after all. But she recognized his hungry eyes, looking up and down her body from across the room.
That was the basis of her plan. She could seduce Adrian and whisper sweet nothings in his ear. That would lower his defenses. He’d never see it coming.
What better way to attract his attention than by flaunting her assets?
Her father would have hated it. Her lack of modesty was always a point of contention between the two of them as she grew up. She smiled to herself knowing that he would hate it. It made her happy to think that, after all.
She adjusted her bra under the dress before thinking better of it and removing it entirely. Her breasts, she noted with a touch of vanity, were perky enough that she didn’t need one anyways.
She would also stand out in a crowd. This was how you got noticed by a sadistic fuck like Vandervoort. The fabric wasn’t so thin as to be transparent or scandalous, but it tied up at her neck and was open and flowing from her shoulders all the way down to the small of her back, which allowed Sarah to show off her toned and athletic figure.
Shit I’m sexy, she thought to herself, doing a little dance in front of the bathroom mirror. She could still see the bags underneath her soft brown eyes, but somehow they weren’t as pronounced as they’d been.
At thirty-five, she had aged well. She didn’t look a day over thirty and, with the right makeup, she could seem ten years younger.
Her body craved sleep, but there wasn’t any room for error now. Sarah popped a few caffeine supplements from her bag and waited for them to take effect.
She would need to be alert, and think on her feet tonight, after all.
The Intel didn’t say what Vanderfuck was doing in Ibiza, but Sarah would bet her left nut, if she had one, that he wasn’t on vacation. He was hunting someone, so the longer she delayed, the more chance there was that another innocent person dies.
Her plan was simple enough. Seduce Adrian, bring him back to her hotel room and immobilize him. He’d been seen with a gaggle of different girls each night, so in theory getting him to agree to sleep with her would be simple.
Men always thought with the wrong head, after all.
The official orders were to immobilize him. Sarah took a small case out of her suitcase and laid it on the bed. Taking a syringe in her delicate hands, Sarah filled it with carisoprodol, an effective drug typically used for pain relief which caused sedation in higher amounts.
She placed a protective cover on the syringe, checked to ensure that it was on tightly and put it in her clutch purse and then repeated the process two more times.
This should be enough for the fucker, she thought. In all likelihood, only one syringe of carisoprodol would be sufficient to sedate the British man, given his height and assumed weight but Sarah didn’t get to where she was today by being sloppy.
Finally, she shrugged on a holster to the outside of her thigh. She checked her gun out. It was clean and in perfect working order, just as she had expected it to be.
The safety clicked on reassuringly on her suppressed .22 caliber High Standard HDM/S. It was a silenced gun which was deadly effective. She slid it home into the holster adorning her right thigh and then checked herself out in the mirror.
Good, she thought. The dress was long enough that it covered her holster entirely. To the average person, she would look like a pretty girl in a sundress looking for fun.
She would try to immobilize him first with the carisoprodol, but Sarah had been an agent for a long time. She knew that sometimes things happened in the field which was not preventable.
Sometimes, for instance, slip-ups happened. Sometimes a man who was supposed to be brought in alive would end up with a bullet hole in his head.
You know, tit for tat.
By this time tomorrow, she promised, it’ll all be over. And you’ll be able to rest peacefully, my friend.
The thought made her happy.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
One of Adrian’s Golden Rules which he’d learned early on in his career with the Black Eagle was that you never left the same day as you killed.
You see, when organizations like Interpol check the hotel records, they focus first on the suspicious looking files. The single man, traveling alone merely happens to leave the same day as a suspected murder? A few flags go up; people get detained for questioning, airports cancel flights.
Long ago Adrian had mastered the art of being a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Guns were too loud, too flashy. Better instead to make it seem like an accident, or to sexualize it.
Nobody asked questions when bodies were found strung up by their belts with their pants off. Death by autoerotic asphyxiation was something that pretty much everyone wanted to cover up.
Government organizations would pressure the police to proceed cautiously for fear that the public would discover that their beloved mayor, or whoever, Adrian didn’t care, was choking themselves to come harder.
Hotels, of course, don’t want the bad press. The more awkward and sexually deviant the death is, the fewer questions people will ask.
He had made sure that his target’s death was very awkward.
The wife would ask questions, undoubtedly. He could almost hear her pleading with the local authorities.
“My husband would never do that!” Although she would always have that voice at the back of her head. “But what if he did.”
Other operatives, at his command, had placed incriminating items in his target’s home back in Berlin. Politician, sexual deviant.
It was beautiful.
What was more was that his target’s death would send a strong message to the Bundestag.
“This is what happens when you oppose Abelard Lochte.” First, the Black Eagle under the front of the New Socialist party would control Germany. Then the European Union. Then the world.
And the God of Death, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, would blend in. There would always be dissidents to subdue. He would get the thrill of killing for as long as he wanted to. Maybe forever.
That didn’t matter right now, anyway. Adrian sat down by the bar dressed in white cotton slacks and a matching blazer. He felt younger than his years and alive.
Adrian, now lightly tanned after his week in the strong Ibiza sun, sipped at his glass of rum and looked around the cabana. Killing always awoke an insatiable sexual desire in him, and he had no intention of denying that primal side of himself tonight.
But the night was still in its infancy. The sun was disappearing behind the horizon, but the heat lingered, caressing his face gingerly like a lover. He spied two girls sitting in a corner, sipping on sky blue drinks with umbrellas in them, giggling at each other.
For a moment he pictured what it would be like to take them both. They’d probably thought about being with each together before, anyways. A few drinks and some gentle persuasion would be all that it would take.
He could see them now. The nervous giggles as they stripped wi
th his kisses. Seeing each other in the nude for the first time, feeling each other’s breasts as they embraced with their full lips.
And then beginning, hearing one of them laughing nervously, until she realized that he had his hand wrapped around her friend’s throat a little too tight to be pleasurable.
She’d see her friend’s bulging eyes, the feeble grasps at his arm to get him to stop.
Then the laughter would turn into fear and panic. Would she try to help her friend, he wondered, as he choked the life out of her? Or would she just run away afraid for her life, leave her friend behind?
Adrian smiled and turned away. The bloodlust still consumed him, the memory of his kill fresh in his mind. He took another sip of rum, savoring the sweet taste of Malibu rum in his mouth.
Stay focused, my boy, he said to himself. Drawing attention to himself was not a wise move. Not now, not ever.
He lit a Parliament and inhaled, tasting the smoke on his tongue.
“Thanks, mate,” he said to the bartender bringing him an ashtray.
Had the body been found yet? Maybe by his target’s wife? Adrian recalled the dossier with eidetic precision.
His mark, a prominent member of the German Bundestag, wasn’t officially on vacation. He had taken a weekend trip to Ibiza to watch his daughter perform in a dance competition.
Not too bad, as parents, husbands, and politicians go. But he’d been integral in opposing Abelard Lochte in the Bundestag, and that was inexcusable.
He flicked the ash of the cigarette into the ashtray and looked towards the Mediterranean, where a group of tourists was frolicking in the surf.
They were carefree, enjoying life. They had no idea that they were so close to a professional killer. Adrian smiled wolfishly.
“You look lonely,” a feminine voice said. Adrian glanced over and saw a beautiful freckled redhead dressed in a bikini top and jean shorts.
He smiled. She had a nubile body and full, pouty lips and moved with the grace of a trained dancer.
Perfect.
He wouldn’t kill her. No, that could get messy, and he didn’t want messy. But he would take her over and over again until she forgot her name and left bloody scratch marks down his back.
“Not anymore, my dear. Can I get you a libation?” He asked, signaling the bartender.
#
“Shit! Shit shit shit!” Sarah swore, watching a beautiful redhead approach Adrian Vandervoort.
She had been sitting in the corner of the same cabana, observing her target. He’d had a few drinks, smoked a few cigarettes. Sarah had drunk water in a vodka glass as she waited. She wanted his senses dulled before she’d made her move.
She had waited too long. The CIA agent watched them with feigned disinterest. This changed everything. A quick scan of the hotel records showed that this was the last night that Adrian was scheduled to be in Ibiza, as well.
She needed to act tonight. But the scantily clad girl with the hair that looked like fire had fucking ruined everything.
She did wonder what it was that so many women found so appealing about the tall British man. He was covered in well-toned muscle, of course, but there was something beyond that.
He seemed to have this magnetism which specific types of women found irresistible. They came up to him, not the other way around.
The sun had finally dipped below the horizon, and the cabana was now thoroughly bathed in the dancing lights of tiki torches and overhead string lights, making the sun-kissed skin of the patrons appear even darker than before.
Sarah’s brown eyes flitted over to her target, Adrian Vandervoort and the young girl who was engrossing him in conversation.
She had planned to walk over after she’d seen him have a few drinks and strike up a conversation, lead him to somewhere more private, where Sarah could have taken him out without any public eyes around.
But little miss Perky McFaketits was screwing everything up.
So, what now, Nieminen? She thought to herself. She’d seen this dance in more bars than she could recall.
She was playing with her hair, laughing at too many things, like Vandervoort was the funniest person she’d ever spoken to.
And he already had his hand too far up her pale, shapely leg to be considered modest in public.
They would talk for a bit longer, Sarah knew, before one of them – most likely Vandervoort - would suggest heading up to his room for some extracurricular activities.
She considered approaching him anyway but quickly discarded the idea. No, seducing him was now out of the question. The last thing she wanted was for the flirty redhead to start yelling or throwing drinks at her because Sarah had taken her toy away.
But nothing was to be done, so Sarah sat back and waited. As she predicted, it didn’t take longer than a few martinis for Adrian to kiss her and whisper something in her ear.
The redhead giggled her acceptance and stood up. The suave Brit took a 100 Euro bill from some pocket in his sportscoat and slid it to the bartender.
That display of wealth was intended to be flashy, and it was. Somehow it made Sarah hate him that much more.
She waited until they left the bar, then stealthily got up and followed them. She’d heard of this kind of surveillance pursuit before, but in her almost 12-year career as a CIA operative, she’d never dreamed that she’d have to do it herself. That’s what fancy tech gadgets were for, after all.
There’s your room, you fucker, she thought to herself as the flirty redhead, and her blonde target entered the room.
Room 1408. She felt the metal of her silenced service revolver pressing up against her thigh, warm from the oppressive heat of the night of the island.
It was begging to be used.
Syringe first. Gun last resort. Sarah wanted nothing more than to take out her High Standard HDM/S, click off the safety and blow out his brains.
How many people had he killed over the years? More than can be counted, almost certainly.
Sarah knew that her target was much more valuable to the world alive. He had answers in his head that were invaluable. The CIA needed to crack his ugly blonde head open, reveal his secrets.
Maybe that’s how she would get Dick Mitey out of jail.
But that didn’t stop her wanting to kill him for everything that he’d done.
What would Connor have done in this situation, she wondered, thinking of her deceased partner. The big man had always been so voracious in his cases, bullying his way through them with the grace and aplomb of a bull stuck in a china shop. But it had been effective.
Sarah had always adopted a less aggressive style, preferring to finesse her way through an investigation. That was part of the reason why they’d worked so well together. Sarah would be able to pick out details which Connor would never have noticed, and Connor’s tenacity had always kept the investigation moving forward.
She sighed internally. People leave. Or they’re taken. That’s just what happens in life, and it sucked. It made her want to push away, keep everyone at arm’s length.
Sarah took a deep breath. No time for that high emotional bullshit right now. She had a job to do. She pictured it in her head. She’d burst into the room and shoot him in the back of the head. No less than 5 seconds from start to finish.
The redheaded girl who Adrian was bedding would undoubtedly be crying, inconsolably upset. Sarah regretted that, but some things were unavoidable.
Sarah was improvising, and that worried her. This was real life. Mistakes got you killed. In real life, you needed more than a combination of charisma and incredible skill to overcome improbable situations.
Deep breaths. Start thinking rationally. What would Connor do?
Connor would kick in the door frame using every ounce of strength in his 6’4” body. Sarah was a full foot shorter and over one hundred pounds lighter. That wasn’t an option.
Myriad situations fluttered through her head, from getting a key cut at the front desk to posing as a bellhop with room service.
One by one she discarded them as impractical, inefficient wastes of time.
Suddenly an idea flitted into her mind. Perhaps it was due to her state of mind, or the inordinate amount of stress she had been under for the past few months, but at that moment it made perfect sense.
What would Dick Mitey do?
He would think of it practically, the path of least resistance. He wouldn’t worry about the wheels on wheels logic to which Sarah had become so accustomed.
He would do the easiest and the simplest solution.
You’re fucking crazy, you know that?
At least if it didn’t work, she wouldn’t be alive to hear the boys club back at the CIA talk about how badly she’d fucked up.
Far From Ordinary Page 17