by D S Kane
Ann closed the book and waded into the pool. The day was perfect, pleasant and peaceful. They splashed water at each other and Ann’s face sharpened into a grin. She just barely stopped herself from calling Cassie “mom.”
After lunch in the tower, Ann finished her social studies report on local government. When Cassie read it, she said, “This is as good as anything I could have done at your age, sweetie.” Ann beamed back with pride.
Her last vacation dinner with Cassie. She wanted to show how adventurous she could be and was surprised when Cassie said, “Let’s have something that won’t stress your taste buds. How about Italian?”
After they returned to the hotel and much later in the night, Ann climbed into bed. Her last night before she was to return home. She closed her eyes and the world fell away,
She lay thrashing on the bed with another nightmare. She awoke with a start, rubbed her eyes and sought Cassie in the other bedroom. She looked at the bright LED clock: 2:45 a.m. Ann could hear Cassie’s breathing. She climbed into the bed and curled up next to Cassie. She tried closing her eyes, to see if sleep would come. But all she could manage was lying awake with her eyes closed, fearing another nightmare.
She considered her new life. Cassie had delivered on her promise. She’d even helped Lee to become less of a jerk. That was a miracle. And there was Gizmo, who loved her no matter what she did. Ann had done nothing in return except cause trouble. She felt strong feelings for her pretend mom, and absolutely knew she’d miss her while they were separated.
Was Cassie her new mom? So confusing. But Ann lay there, unable to close her eyes. She hugged the older woman’s body, tears welling and falling over her face.
She whispered the word. “Mom.” Asleep, Cassie wrapped her arms around the teen. “Mom.” Nothing terrible had happened when she said the word. In fact, she felt better, protected by a woman strong enough to wipe out hundreds of terrorists. Ann smiled.
Homeless no longer.
Chapter Nineteen
October 22, 4:26 p.m.
Maui Airport, Kahului, Hawaii
It was sprinkling rain from a single, massive gray cloud as Michael and Ann taxied to the airport. They walked through the terminal, and she noticed crowds coming off aircraft, almost all of them male, and all dressed for a much cooler climate. Moving as if a troop on a forced march, they all raced at double speed toward the baggage claim. Ann and Michael walked through security onto a half-filled plane.
Michael took the seat next to her. He mumbled, “I wonder why so many men are wearing long sleeved shirts? And where the hell are they going?”
Ann felt surprise that her thinking mirrored that of her bodyguard.
She sat in her seat on the long nonstop flight and watched the movie, a comedy about a family whose uncle came to visit and made their lives a living hell. But her attention drifted to last night, lying there with Cassie. She fell into a dreamless sleep and awoke refreshed when the flight attendant asked if she wanted a bottle of water.
Ann thought about her return to Washington for school. She was full of expectations that from now on, her life would be wonderful.
Cassie and her remaining four bodyguards returned from the lobby.
Cassie said, “Lester, move into Ann’s room.”
He nodded and they all returned to her suite.
She picked through the suitcase. “Okay. I’m going to change into a bathing suit. Then we’ll all go for dinner by the pool.”
She emerged from the bedroom wearing a bikini. They took the elevator to the sushi bar located one floor below the hotel lobby. Their waitress was Japanese, dressed in a geisha kimono. She bowed at their table, handing them thick menus in aged paper. “This sushi bar was built in Tokyo and then disassembled and brought to Hawaii by boat. It was reassembled here and cost much money. Over two hundred thousand dollars.”
Behind the counter, a man named Ivan was conjuring tasty and inventive sushi treats, and Cassie ate her fill. All the bodyguards stuffed themselves as well. JD said to Lester, “This is as close to kosher as we’re ever going to see here.”
Cassie said, “Afraid I’m going to get fat while I’m here.” She smiled and rose. “More swimming now, to reduce the impact of the food on my waist. C’mon guys. Up to the pool.”
But when the doors to the elevator opened at the lobby, Ari stopped at the edge of the exit and huddled them all back inside it. He began pressing the close door button with a look of pure panic on his face.
He waited until the doors closed and then turned to the others. “These people aren’t here for vacation. There’s hundreds of them, mostly men and they’re dressed for winter. Most are carrying.”
Dushov muttered “Shit. Let’s get back to the room. It’s more defensible than being out in the open.” JD nodded and pressed the button for the tenth floor.
The bodyguards crowded around Cassie and kept her well-covered as the elevator rose to the tenth floor. She felt a sense of dread ironically contrasting her bodyguards’ cool behavior.
The elevator slowed and bumped to a stop. The four bodyguards moved in front, two on bended knees at the door and two standing behind them. All had their weapons pointed toward the door, each with its safety off.
Cassie stood behind them, in a confused state of shock. This couldn’t be happening! Wasn’t this her vacation?
The doors glided open on ten. In front of the elevator, there were dozens of armed men, the closest less than fifty feet in front. Each of the armed men watched the door of Cassie’s room, not knowing it was empty.
Her bodyguards forced her at a run back down the hall toward the twin suites. Lester fired his Ruger Mini-14 in automatic mode, clearing a path in front for them. Men holding all sorts of guns fell in front of them. The armed men turned and saw them; prepared to fire back. Ari shot a man with a rifle across the hallway on the other side. JD aimed his Beretta at a man wearing a flannel shirt, armed with a sniper’s rifle.
Ari said, “Damn. We’re totally exposed.” A bullet flew by Cassie’s head and a puff of plaster blew out of the wall behind her. She gasped. JD squeezed the trigger and the flannel-shirted man staggered. The rifle dropped from his hands and fell ten stories down to the outdoor lobby.
Lester pulled his keycard from his pocket and hit the door’s lock at a run. Just behind, the other bodyguards pushed Cassie at a full run through the entryway and slammed the door.
A shotgun blast tore through the closing door. Pellets slammed into Lester’s back bouncing him onto the floor near one of the windows. JD threw Cassie across the room. She landed flat on her stomach, bounced off the couch, and howled in pain. As she crawled behind it, she looked at the large hole in their door. “Shit! What’s all this about?”
JD replied. “Don’t know, Cassie. Someone doesn’t like us.” He crawled on the parquet floor into the bathroom. Cassie heard breaking glass and JD emerged holding a cabinet drawer from the bathroom containing pieces of a broken vanity mirror, now lying in large irregular-shaped pieces. “Do we have any duct tape?”
Lester picked himself up. Shotgun pellets fell off his Hawaiian shirt onto the floor. “Arghh. That’ll leave a mark. Thank God Mossad gave us these bulletproof shirts.”
JD crept into the bedroom, out of the line of fire from the hole in the front door. He pulled a roll of duct tape from his suitcase. “Ah, duct tape. Some say it holds the planet together.”
Lester smiled back. “Gonna build a periscope?”
JD smiled. “Yes indeedy. We need intel. We’re too close and don’t know how many or where they are. Not to mention why. Toss me the tape.” Seconds later, as Cassie watched, he broke the drawer into several pieces and used the wood to brace the pieces of mirror into place, held together by the tape. It was ugly but functional. He tested it, made a few adjustments, tested it again and placed one end of the scope near the large hole in the front door. “Many, too many to count. I guess at least thirty, but maybe as many as fifty. They’re everywhere. I don’t understand why
they don’t just charge the room. We’re pinned here. Fuck. Major league clusterfuck.”
Lester nodded, falling to a prone position. “They value their own lives. Besides, they can just bleed us dry, wait until we have no more food, and pick us off whenever they have kill shots.” He crawled into the kitchen. “We have enough food in this kitchen for about two days. Figure the same amount from the other kitchen. Four days. Six, if we ration.” He picked up the phone, “And, good, we have dial tone on the phone. If we have electricity, we can also recharge the cell phones. We need to call for help.”
“Avram Shimmel,” said the huge man into the receiver.
“Lester with Cassie and your other friends in Hawaii, and we’re hip deep in feces. Don’t know why, but there are many hitters trying to blow another hole through the front doors of our suites. At least thirty hostiles.”
Shimmel’s voice was steady. “Ach, and this was to be her vacation. You must keep her calm. I can get a force there in one day, max. Available force is just over sixty mercs. Can you hold out that long?”
“Yes, yes, we probably can, but suppose there are more? We can only see those that broke down the security gate on the tenth floor. And, be advised that we have food for a maximum of four days and no medical supplies. Not even a band aid in the medicine cabinet. Oh, and we need intel. Who is behind this?”
Shimmel took a few seconds to reply while he entered notes into his desktop. “Done. Remain where you are. What are the room numbers?”
“1024 and 1025. Just follow the trail of dead bodies. Lester out.”
Shimmel rose from the desk and moved his tall, broad body with surprising speed to the office next door. “William, I need you now. Right now.”
William Wing said into the phone receiver, “Gotta go,” and hung up. He got up, facing Shimmel. “Sounds serious.”
“I need you to investigate who wants Sashakovich dead and has the money to buy the services of many assassins. At least thirty. I need this information ASAP.” He turned and ran back to his office.
Shimmel brought up the home page of Travelocity.com. He found all the flights to Maui were sold out. Same for Orbitz, Hotwire, and all the other travel sites. Shimmel began to envision all the planes going to Hawaii filled with hitters.
He called a corporate jet rental agency and was told there were none available for the next three days.
He shook his head and made a decision that would have serious implications for the Swiftshadow Consulting Group. Avram called his handler from their days at Mossad, the current Israeli Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs. “This is Avram Shimmel. I have an urgent need to speak with Yigdal Ben-Levy. This is personal,” he said, hoping if Ben-Levy was present at the Embassy, he could help.
“Avram. What’s this urgent issue?”
“I need a private aircraft capable of transporting up to seventy men with weapons ASAP. To Maui. And no, this is not an Israeli op. This is personal for me.”
“Can you tell me more?”
“Just that this is urgent. There is a troop of hitters trying to kill Sashakovich as we sit talking.”
Silence at the other end. Shimmel heard clicking of a computer keyboard. “Consider it done, but now you owe me yet another favor. The aircraft will be fueled and ready, unmarked and waiting at the Reagan El Al terminal in three hours. Approach from the outside ramp to check your weapons with the diplomatic bag inspector. I’ll leave word with him. Then go back inside and go through normal airport security. Good luck.”
Shimmel was sure he’d need that luck. He silently prayed as he began assembling the cell call list for his mercenary force and weapons load-out.
William Wing sat at his computer, his fingers flying over the keyboard. Screens danced across his monitor. The speed of his commercial access node took him faster and faster through his list of research tools, hacking his way through the Internet. Suddenly, his back straightened. “Ah-hah!” And then a second later, “Holy shit!” He got up and ran to Shimmel’s office next door.
Shimmel heard Wing running and looked up. “What do you have?”
“Uh, remember what happened at the first board meeting last month? Cassie asked for a list of possible investments. Then she invested in GrayNet and took out all the inverse bids that would have drug company CEO’s assassinated?”
Shimmel hit the Send key that triggered the weapons load-out for the rescue mission. “Yes. So?”
“Someone named Omasu Maru took out an inverse contract on Cassie’s life.” He handed Avram a printout of the screen from GrayNet. “I had to hack his name from a Chechnyan server. And he funded it with a bounty bonus of three million dollars, a bet way larger than anything anyone’s ever done before. At this point there’s almost a quarter billion betted on both sides. It’s the biggest bet ever.”
Shimmel read the page and shook his head. “Who is Omasu Maru?”
Wing handed Shimmel another printed page, this one from Google.com It listed known facts about Maru. “He’s a Yakuza kingpin. Started out as an enforcer. But if you look at the first page I handed you, you’ll see that the hit calls for her murderer to remove her head and ship it packed in ice, in a wooden box, to a bank in central Asia where Maru has an account. Isn’t beheading the Muslim punishment for murder?”
Shimmel began to think about the situation. “Do the Japanese do any construction work in Saudi Arabia?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yakuza’s biggest enterprise is construction of commercial buildings. On the page you just handed me, Maru’s name is linked to several building projects in Tokyo.”
“Oh. And you think that this is quid pro quo, either as a thank you for projects they’ve completed or payment for a successful bid and permit on future projects?”
Shimmel donned a Kevlar vest coated in STF. “Yes,” was all he said.
Chapter Twenty
October 25, 1:56 p.m.
Downtown Detroit, Michigan
Louis Stepponi stood on the pristine sand in the bright heat of the sun, drenched in perspiration. He’d sent the gun case via FedEx and picked it up at a different hotel before he came here, and the case was now strapped to his back. It contained the disassembled sniper rifle, more than enough ammunition, and an infrared night-scope.
He’d ripped the sleeves from his shirt but that didn’t help much. His physical discomfort couldn’t inhibit his sense of joy, seeing all the idiots he was competing with. None of them seemed to know how to complete a hit. He whistled “Mack the Knife” as he threw the rope up from the base of the palm tree, trying to get it to where he could use the rope to pull himself up to its top. The rope flew toward the top of the palm tree but missed again. He lacked the skill to make it work. “Damn!”
Stepponi removed his sunglasses and looked for another high point, but couldn’t find one that gave him a view through the windows of suites 1024 and 1025. “There’s got to be some way to get a view inside.” But the only solution he could think of was to hire a helicopter. “I wonder,” he said and went off to find a phone directory.
On the tenth floor, surrounded by forty-three others competing for the bounty, Harry Aimes held the old Winchester rifle. He knew the odds of him being the one to kill her were ever so small, but he stood stock-still, thinking—it had to be him. He had to get that money for Nancy.
But he didn’t have the courage to move. Someone else did, a middle-aged man who seemed to know less than Aimes about how to shoot a gun, or how to move in an open area. Harry guessed the other guy must be one of the “zombie patriots” that included him. The label seemed to have made it onto the Internet, and it fitted them well enough, implying that the label’s bearer was willing to die to win, possibly because he or she had a terminal disease.
He watched as a single shot blasted the other man’s face off. Aimes gulped and moved behind a pillar in the outdoor hallway. He’d counted the shots since his targets had vanished into their suite. With ten bullets they’d killed ten of the shooters. Thi
s wasn’t going to be the picnic he’d hoped for.
That morning, he’d bought Internet time at the coffee lounge in the hotel lobby, and saw the odds for the bet evening up. Aimes only had five hundred dollars in the pool, put there when the odds were a thousand-to-one against. If the odds evened, Sashakovich’s death wouldn’t even pay for his trip. Unless, of course, he was the hitter who collected not just the bet but also the bounty.
“It has to be me,” he whispered.
From her hiding spot behind the couch, Cassie made another call, this one to William Wing. “William, I have a list of things for you to do ASAP. First, find a way to remove the bets on my life. Then—”
“Cassie, I tried. Doesn’t work. Search engines don’t update fast enough and the web spiders already picked up the pages. They’ve been widely dispersed across loads of servers. Worse, they’ve been translated into other languages. So taking them down won’t work. You have to get Predictive to retract the bet from their website.”
“Then we need to grab Phillip Watson. I’ll have Shimmel assemble a team. Since you’ve met him, you know what he looks like. You’ll have to go with the Shimmel’s acquiring team. But first, locate all his bank accounts. I want them drained of every last penny before you go home tonight. And let me know that bastard’s location as soon as you have it.”
“Okay. This will take at least four or five hours. The bank accounts are pretty easy. But as for finding Watson, he could be moving even as we speak. By the time I know where he is, he might be gone from there. He’s smart and he’ll either already be using a different identity or he’ll acquire a new one as soon as he hits his first destination. I’ll do my best. Anything else?”
“Yeah. Please get mercs to our house to help Michael protect Lee and Ann. I don’t know, but I think they might also be targets.”