Killing Sanford (Gary Cannon Book 1)

by Mike Kershner

  He had to put that feeling behind him, had to get back to center and focus on what he needed to do.

  Gary swung his legs off the bed. The old springs creaked as he moved. From the nightstand he grabbed a bottle of Jim Beam, screwed the cap off and took a long pull right from the bottle. The hot bourbon warmed his insides, he took a breath and then another drink, replaced the cap and stood.

  He lit a Lucky and Gary sat at a small table near the door. He unfolded the files in front of him, the detail was incredible on this job. The targets had been well defined.

  Gary’s paycheck was high on this one, and usually for jobs like this there had been an advance team in place doing rough surveillance. The level of detail was beyond what he was used to seeing. He laid out his schedule for the next four weeks as he crafted the end to four lives.

  Each of the targets were independent of each other however they were tied together in the commonality of his mission. Their ends would have to come in close sequence as to not alert the others. The deaths which by the nature of the targets would appear to be unrelated would have to look like accidents. There was also a condition to make a deadline of July 4, at 18:30.

  Gary rubbed his eyes, he needed to think of a way to either dispatch each of them quietly in separate secluded locations, or have one or more than one fall into an unfortunate circumstance that would lead to death.

  Gary worked over the files for hours on end, he needed to commit all of the information to memory before he started to make his moves. Before everything started he would destroy the files, the only copy left would be in his head.

  Gary's first move was usually to track down each of the targets, and watch them for patterns, learn their routines, and decide when he should make his move. In this case, the advance team had taken care of so much of that his job would really be just to learn the lay of the land, and get a feel for each of them.

  Gary studied the list of names before him. Julia Ann Meir, 31, born in Boston MA, currently employed as a waitress at a small restaurant in Bellville.

  Raul Santiago Garcia, 34, born in Raton NM, currently employed with a contractor sealing cracks in the SAC runways.

  Edward Roger Pringle, 27, born in Panama City FL, currently unemployed.

  Paula Marie Hanson, 29, born in Denver CO, currently employed as a secretary with Johan and Williamson law firm.

  Gary knew very little about the why behind this job, and this was the normal operating procedure. Most of the jobs that were handed to him were jobs that never existed. Targets like this came from the top. No one would get a four person job that had not been looked at all the way to the top.

  Clearing out four people was big money, and in the States those figures multiplied rapidly. For a job like this to get handed out, the men sitting around the long table had looked at these folders, they had taken money up front. These where the non-refundable deposits as they liked to call them, and money had already been moved into escrow accounts.

  Within the company only Gary would be working on a job of this size and obvious importance alone. Gary had the pull and the reputation to make his own rules. He had made it his rule to work alone.

  Gary reasoned this had something to do with the Strategic Air Command, the location only made sense, had to be the Russians he thought, must be moles, sleepers maybe, something the spooks had rooted out as they rattled cages in Eastern Europe.

  Why they had to die had little to do with his thought process or his planning, it was his job to make it happen. The details of why were simply distractions he could not afford to have. However, they were always on his mind, just part of his thought process. Part of learning the targets.

  ***

  June 13, 1976

  According to the radio the weather was even hotter than usual in Omaha that year. Gary noticed the heat but the weather seemed mild to some of the places he had been in the past few years. The heat was certainly not as overwhelming as it had been in Southeast Asia.

  For a week he had shadowed his targets, learning their patterns, and laying the foundation for his move. Working out the order was the most difficult, make the wrong one disappear first and attract some attention and suddenly the other three are on their guard.

  Done right he could do one or two a day in the right order and everything would be fine. In just a few weeks he would be heading south in the '65 Ford that he had bought from a kid at the A&W the week before.

  The work was to be completed by 18:30 on July 4th, it would be the country’s bicentennial, how ironic he thought here he was working in the center of a country founded only two hundred years ago about to kill four people, who were likely citizens of the same country.

  ***

  June 20, 1976

  Gary piloted the Ford to Bellville he was going to check on Julia. He would order some coffee, and eat a couple of pieces of bacon that the Chef in the back there at Hal’s was always so feverishly laboring over.

  Miss Meir was like clockwork she was at the dinner waiting for Hal to unlock the door every morning at 4:45, Julia was like a piece of Swiss machinery.

  She would work at the dinner in the mornings, eat lunch in a park four blocks away. She normally left the bread crumbs for the pigeons, and spent some time window shopping almost every afternoon. There was nothing she was doing on a daily basis that raised any undue attention.

  She was a happy attractive single lady in a Midwestern city. She was right as rain, a hard worker, pretty smile, always got good tips from the customers, she led a simple life, and she was almost invisible.

  It was that fact that made her obvious, to someone like Gary she was a beacon, a flashing red light. She was too plain, it was all too perfect.

  The house she lived in was maybe a little too nice, even with the good tips that she got because she had a nice smile, because she was better at her job than a waitress at a place like that was supposed to be. Gary had talked to her twice, just casual conversation, but it was obvious she was smart, and well read.

  He also had noticed that she was very aware of what was around her, very seldom did a customer come in that she missed, most of the time she welcomed each one as they entered, no matter what she was doing she noticed them all.

  Lastly, it was his gut feeling. Gary could read the ebb and flow of a person from across the room. For everything she appeared to be there was more just below the surface, with this one, he needed to be careful.

  ***

  June 24, 1976

  Gary’s evening was quiet. He ate a greasy burger he had picked up on the way back to his place. He was thinking of how he was going to progress in the next week.

  He needed to spend some more time with Raul Garcia, but he was out at SAC, and the weather had been good and they had been sealing on twelve hour shifts. It was tricky getting out around there, way too easy to get noticed. He had to catch him mainly when he was home but even then Raul had been the random one.

  Garcia was a butterfly, very seldom saw the same people in the evenings, and he never ate alone. Just like Julia there was something under it all, there was some undertone that just made Raul something more than another fellow painting tar on the ground.

  Garcia was a big fellow, muscular, huge chest, arms like tree trunks and huge legs. He was a touch over six feet, and he was 245 pounds if he was 50.

  Gary had been watching the guy three days ago, on Garcia’s day off. He had a little shack of a place, with a small garage out back. Just a little single door garage with about half a stall off to one side.

  The advance team had noted that the only thing that was close to consistent with Garcia was on his days off he would work in that old garage. The file had said Garcia had picked up a 1959 Corvette a few months back, he and been rebuilding the motor and transmission.

  At his table now he was thinking of watching Garcia moving things about in the shop, the guy was a brute, he had watched him carry a 55 gallon drum of oil from the garage.

  Garcia had been holding it by the end rin
gs. Gary remembered putting down the field glasses in shock, then bringing them back up to double check it. His first thought had been disbelief, but then he started to think about the actual physical feat that it really was. The shoulders, the back, legs, and the grip, to hold that much weight with little more than the fingertips, a guy like that would have a grip like a vise.

  Setting there thinking about Garcia handling that drum, suddenly he was not feeling quite right, he could feel sweat building on the back of his neck, then down his back. He was hot. Gary stood up, his legs felt weird almost shaky, he could feel his heart pounding, and he sat back down.

  He was sweating pretty good now, beads of sweat formed on his forehead, he felt uneasy, he tried to get a hold on his breathing, no good, getting worse, his mind was telling him someone had gotten to him, he had been poisoned.

  Too many times before this feeling had preceded terrible circumstances to overcome. Gary was speaking to the empty room now, “No, no one knows, no one could know,” he paused, wiped the rivulets from his forehead, “I would have seen it coming, I’ve been too cautious.”

  He stood again, breaths were coming in short bursts now, he looked around, looking for anything, and he was confused, Gary was panicking now really fearing the worst. He was used to his body responding with precision. There had been years of training and work that had molded him into a specimen of physical control.

  That control had come with hard work, Gary was not especially blessed with the reflexes of a world class athlete or the muscle tone of some he had worked with but it had always been his mind that allowed him to overcome.

  When his body said it was tired, his brain said not yet. When the body said it was cold, his brain said no time for that. When his brain said kill, his body did it. But now, for some reason his body appeared to be calling the shots.

  Gary was now in full throttle panic, he was scared, looking over his shoulders every few seconds, he had no idea what he was looking for but he felt he needed to look and see what was behind him.

  He took three quick steps to the bathroom, and the burger came up, and then more. His stomach contracted for so long when the relief came he took a breath as if he had been drowning.

  He sat back against the wall, knees pulled up to his chest, he was exhausted, suddenly beyond tired. He got up and wiped his face, rinsed out his mouth in the sink and strode over to the bed, laid down and closed his eyes. He had not felt like this in years, something was just not right.

  ***

  September 12, 1965

  Neil Degrassi and Gary Cannon left Kansas City, they headed south, and they were both quiet for the majority of the drive. The hum of the asphalt made a sorrowful howl to their mutual feeling of despair.

  On that afternoon in September they would make three stops. One at a bank, one at Mrs. Hunters, and one at Gary’s home. From there they would continue south Neil told Gary they were going to Texas, he offered no other details. Neil had made calls and arranged for Gary’s parents effects to be placed in storage.

  Neil piloted the Chevrolet south switching highways backtracking. The uneven rhythm this created was enough to make Gary go mad. Just when he thought he knew where they might be headed Neil would switch directions, take some narrow country blacktop. Then they would meander through the fertile ground of Oklahoma and Kansas, moving ever south and west.

  The first night they stopped in Paris, Texas. It was Gary’s first time not sleeping in Missouri, he felt more scared than he could put into words the fear of not knowing was torturing him.

  It was late when they checked into the small motel Neil found, Gary carried his single bag into the room. One bag was all that Neil had allowed him to pack.

  Neil closed the door behind them, latched the bolt and moved through the room quietly, checking the bathroom, behind the door, inside the tub, and then finally laying his bag down at the foot of the door.

  Gary sat on one of the beds quiet and still. Neil took two glasses from near the sink and placed them on a small round table at the far end of the room, then knelt by his bag, unzipped it and pulled a fifth of Jack Daniels.

  He tossed his jacket on the bed as he walked back to the table un-holstered a pistol concealed in his waistband and placed it on the table. Neil poured three fingers of Jack in the glass and sat.

  Neil took a drink, looked at Gary lifted the empty glass, “Want a drink Gary?”

  Gary hesitated, shocked that this man who had barely spoke to him all day was now offering him to sit and drink, “Okay.” it came out almost as a question, but he moved to the table.

  “Ordinarily I wouldn't say you should be having a glass of whiskey but, I think under the circumstances you and I should have a drink, and we’ll have a talk.”

  “I’m sure what you have in your glass will be enough for me Neil.”

  “Know your limits do ya?”

  “I know that it doesn't take a lot of whiskey for me to fall into a rose bush.”

  Neil laughed a great belly laugh, and poured the Jack into Gary’s glass, “Gary, I know you’ve had a lot thrust upon you this last week, and especially this last day but, you and I have some things that we need to talk about.”

  Neil paused, “First, you’ve read the letter your father left, and I think you got a picture of what this was about, right?”

  “He was an assassin, or a mercenary?”

  “Yes, you could say mercenary. It’s also true to say an assassin. He was more than that really but I will tell you the story and let you decide how much more. I am guessing you have figured out that I am in the same line of work that he was once in?”

  “I sort of guessed that.” Gary nodded at the pistol on the table.

  “Well, Gary...here it is, I’ll try and make this as simple as I can. Your father and I were both recruited during the Second World War, we were trained to track, trained to kill. We were trained move in and out of countries get behind enemy lines cause confusion, and disrupt the chain of command.”

  Neil took a great gulp of his whiskey and refilled the glass, “We did it, Gary, and we were goddamn good at it. We burned command posts, captured officers and interrogated them. Sometimes we would kill the officers and make it look like their own troops had turned on them. We were in every theater of the war, and when it was over they brought us in and said, ‘boys, thank you for all your work it’s time to go home.’ that was fine for them, but not for us.”

  Neil sipped the whiskey, “Your father, he was the oldest of us, thirty-one by the time they turned us loose. He had spent time in the world before the war, but the rest of us, they had gotten us young. Shit, I had barely turned eighteen when I killed my first man. It was only a few months later that Whaite and I talked about how I had been killed, and who I would become.

  Neil looked off over Gary’s shoulder thinking, “So many of us didn't know a damned thing else, we were all orphans, we didn't have anything waiting on us at home. We just couldn't turn it off.” Neil drank the last of what was left in his glass.

  Neil refilled his glass, and lit a cigarette, “One night your father came to me, we were in London it was early in ‘46, he had an idea, and he had someone he needed me to meet with, he was a Greek, part of the resistance movement there during the war. His name was Arvanites, I’m not sure I ever knew a better fighting man. He had made some contacts during the war in Switzerland. His contacts had been used to handle the financing of their effort. For the fighting man that Arvanites was, he was even more vicious with his money. He was the key, that Greek bastard had cash rat holed away in Swiss accounts that would have let him live the life of a prince. His problem was more than green he loved the blood on his hands. That night in London over a bottle of dry gin the three of us sat down and laid the groundwork for what would become Sanford International Holdings."

  Gary sat in silence, slowly sipping the whiskey trying to choke back its burn. He was not doing a good job of hiding his discomfort. Neil continued, "Our business exploded, there were people, govern
ments, and of course crazies lined up before we had finished setting up the accounts to hold their money. It was a great problem to have, and in the beginning we were small and did what we had to make the rent payments. Quickly we recruited, pulled guys in who served with us, guys who were like us.

  Neil worried at a spot on the table seemingly lost, Gary almost spoke, but he continued, “They were the best we could get our hands on. Some of the guys spoke four or five languages with perfect natural dialects. We had guys who could carve your name in a wedding cake with explosives, guys who could shoot so instinctively you would think they were born with guns in their hands. Almost immediately Sanford International had assembled the most crack fucking team of killers on the planet. We made one rule we would always help further the cause of democracy. Our work was often disguised as accidents, or random acts of tragedy, and when we were unnoticed, we had done our jobs. We were ghosts, moving in and out of buildings, cities, and countries as if they were goddamn hopscotch squares."

  Neil leaned in close to Gary, "Gary, one day we were in the states, Kansas City, we didn't typically do domestic work and I fucking hate working in the States, people have too hard of a time accepting that murder is a viable option.” Neil took a long last drag from his smoke and crushed it in the ashtray.

  “In this case though, the money was there, oh man was it there. We felt that because the target was a Mafioso we would go for it, democracy or not. We were in the prep stages of the job when your father met your mother, she was a ray of beauty, so pure. He was stricken by her at the first moment he saw her. When we finished that job James came to me and he had already worked his exit from Sanford International as quickly and ingeniously as he had created its existence. He spent three more months with us, and then he settled. There were times in the following years, even after you were born, when we called on him for special favors, or planning, but by the time you were six, he was out. After he left the board had voted unanimously to pay him severance for the rest of his life.” Neil began untying and loosening his shoes to remove them.