Killing Sanford (Gary Cannon Book 1)

by Mike Kershner

  “Fine, I see your reasoning. But, you have Gary Cannon, not James Cannon, just what makes you think one is as good as the other?”

  “You haven’t seen the results of the base lining yet have you?”

  “No, I haven’t. I assume you have?”

  “I don't need to see them. I was there.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And, are you going to tell me?”

  “So you are curious?”

  “Jesus Neil, do you have to be so damned dramatic?”

  “Off the charts.”

  “What?”

  “Off. The. Charts. We’ve never had anyone close to him. When James wrote the scoring he never even wrote provisions for what we saw.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit. I watched it, I have never witnessed anything like it. The power and control that boy has over what he thinks, what he believes, and his apparent disregard for external stimulus...I’m not sure I have the words to describe it.”

  “How far did they take it?”

  “They water boarded him.”

  “My God.”

  “Frank, there is potential there, potential like none of us have seen.”

  “And the concern for the boy? Have you thought about how this is going to affect him?”

  “I have. I have a group watching him even now. He is going to complete schooling to a high school level. There will be of course all of the normal courses we would put him through anyway. There will be some extra psych evals, but he won’t know the difference anyway.”

  “I’ll be blunt Neil. I don't like this. Something about having a kid that we are training to kill people, I just don't like it.”

  “By the time he’s in the field he won't be a kid anymore Frank, the age is relative anyway, who’s to say you and I weren't kids in some fashion when we killed our first men?”

  “Tell you what. I’ll propose this. I’ll speak with the rest of the board, but I think they’ll back me. If this blows up, if there is fallout from this, if this causes problems, it’s all on you. If shit hits the fan, I’ll expect your resignation.”

  Neil contemplated this for a several minutes, he contemplated it long after he had already made a decision. He looked up to the walls, saw Frank pictured with senators and astronauts. Neil looked to the bookshelf and could read the books names, “1984”, “Ten Days that Shook the World”, “I am Legend”, “The Caine Mutiny”, and about six others on the shelf that the print on the spine was too small to read. Neil had read those himself, and he thought about that group of books collectively.

  “Fair enough Frank. Let’s say something gets all SNAFU, I’ll take all the heat, I’ll turn in my resignation I’ll collect the kid and be gone. But, when that kid blows away all of our expectations, when he burns through everything we have to throw at him and looks for more. I’ll take over Class A hits.”

  “What?”

  “When Gary successfully finishes training, I want to take over the tasking of all Class A hits, full control and dispatch.”

  “We have a team that takes care of that.”

  “I know we have a team Frank, I want it. I want the whole thing. Full control and 20 percent of the fee.”

  “Twenty fucking percent?”

  “That's right twenty percent and full control.”

  “What makes you think that first I should let you have twenty percent, and second full control of Class A hits? Let’s not forget that I think this whole thing is a mistake. I think this kid is going to cause a problem within the corporation. I think he is going to change everything that we have worked for.”

  “Oh, you’re right about one thing Frank, he is going to change everything. Gary is going to change the expectations that we have for all of our people, he is going to cause us to re-write the book on training, and operationally we are going to have to rethink how we task jobs. This is a point we are all going to look back and see it as a turning point, the twenty percent you give me is going to be nothing. And if you really think it’s going to fail then, you've got nothing to worry about, because I’ll be gone.”

  Frank sucked at his teeth, lit his pipe and puffed on it a few times, “I think you're fucking crazy Neil, but I think I’m going to go ahead and agree to your terms, when he fails you resign, and if on the outside chance he get out into the field, I put you in charge of Class A hits, and give you the twenty percent. I’ll be honest, I hope you have some other career options in mind.”

  “Good enough.” Neil stood up and walked out of the long office.

  At the street level Neil sat on a concrete planter outside of the doors of the building, he lit a Camel, “I hope my hunch is right about you kid.” he said to himself as he exhaled into the hot Dallas air.

  ***

  Back aboard the Pan Am flight Neil had calmed some, Frank’s arrogance and ignorance had sent Neil into high gear, and he hoped he had done his best not to let him see that. He was going to make sure Gary was the best any of them had seen. Neil reclined his chair a bit and closed his eyes.

  ***

  January 4, 1946

  James Cannon walked into a small pub in the western side of the Chelsea Borough of London. Neil watched as James eyed the place from wall to wall. He had watched James a thousand times survey a room, or a restaurant, scan a village and tell him the best way to move through it.

  James could look at a situation and see it all again in his mind, for all that Neil could tell, he could remember it forever. James would often recall situations they had been in years before down to minute detail. Neil sat against the wall in a corner booth, the lighting was dim and only a few customers that night. There was a light fog of smoke in the air, hanging about shoulder height, and there was an underlying scent of the rain falling outside.

  James walked to the table, he was smooth in his gate. He was a physical machine, he could run like a distance runner, or sprint like a cheetah.

  Neil had watched him once, run half crouched over a grassy field for over a mile, then sprint the last hundred or so yards in the open, he then watched him set up on a rock ledge and shoot a man at nearly 1000 yards, pack up and come back the same way. He had done it all with the same casual look that he had now. Neil remembered how James had barely paused as he brought the rifle up, almost like he had not need to catch his breath.

  James sat to Neil’s right, and Neil slid slightly to his own left so they would have an equal view angle of the pub. “How have you been Neil?” James asked.

  “I’ve been okay James, its hard getting used to this. This new pace is, well its fucking killing me James.”

  “You’re not the only one, I’ve talked to some of the other guys over the last few weeks, Vickery, Washington, Thompson, the ones I could count on...the ones I like.”

  “How are they doing? Same?”

  “Seems like everyone’s going a little bat shit, getting turned loose the way we did, thousand bucks and a ticket home, full set of papers courtesy of some manila envelope that was doctored up who knows where.”

  “Well, what are you going to do? I don’t think there’s much call for what we’ve got. You were out in the world before Pearl, when was the last time you remember having the need to jump out of an airplane, pretend you were a Kraut and stick a bayonet into a man’s ribs?”

  “Neil, that’s why I’m here tonight. You see there is a lot of need for that type of work in the world. You don’t think there is because you aren’t thinking about it right. You’re thinking about going home, which is great, that’s why we fought this damned war so we could go home. I don’t know about you but, I’m not sure I can go home and enjoy it, not sure I can go back to the states. Head up Detroit way make a few Fords, or go out down south find some fishing boat in the Gulf and sign up as part of the crew. What the hell have I really got to go home to Neil? For that matter, what have you got? Have you thought about that?

  “Sure I’ve thought about it James. I’ve thought about it a lot. You
know we were special here, what we did, how we did it. When we get home, we’ll just be some guys, and we won’t even be some GI’s in uniform, with the welcome home party. Shit, that guy died three years ago.”

  “What I’m saying is there’s more of this coming, it’s not going to be like it was, not going to be all this thousand bombers flying over dropping ordinance all over hell and creation, none of this ships shelling a city from beyond the horizon. There’s going to be blood Neil, and lots of it, and there’s going to be a need for people to do it. It’s been a long brutal path to get to where we’re at, and now that it’s over people aren't going to want to see it again for a while. You’ve got some pretty hefty marble bags getting split up right now, ‘To the Victor goes the spoils’ and all that.”

  Neil sat back, motioned for the waitress, ordered a pair of gin and tonics, and said “So what James, they’re just going to turn us loose only to send us a letter six months from now and say whoa, hey, sorry about that but we could use a hand again?”

  “Nope. Neil, we’re not going to give them the chance to do that, what we are going to do is fill that hole before they fully understand that they do need us as bad as I think they are going to.”

  “So just how do you propose we do that?”

  “In a little while Arvanites is going to walk through that door. He’s going to sit down here with us. The three of us are going to work something up. I think I’ve got a portion of it in my head already. We’re going to build a company, a corporation. This company is going to sell a product that will make us rich.”

  “What? What’s the product?”

  “Death, Neil. We’re going to sell death. But, we’re going to do it on our terms, our way. No more go here kill this person, nope, we get an offer, and we evaluate it, look at the risks, the payback, and then either take it or decline. We’ll lay out the full set of criteria once we get up and running, get a board of directors selected. I was thinking for the short list Vickery, Washington, Thompson, maybe Huff, and you of course, that’s why you’re here. I’d like to you be my number two. You’re smart, determined and I can trust you, trust you more than anyone, and that’s what I’ll need to make this work. Once we get moving, see some demand we can add in new faces, develop a training program, recruiting, we work it just like any other company looking for talent. In the beginning Neil, it’s just going to be us, we’ll be the board and the staff, what it comes down to is we’ve got the skills to do this, we just need a little capital to get this up and running.”

  The door opened and Arvanites walked into the pub shaking the rain from his jacket. He walked over, sat down, signaled for a round of drinks, and said, “James, how are you my friend? What have you got up your sleeve?”

  ***

  May 31, 1947

  They were still two hours out of Heathrow, the flight had been a rough one, much worse than the shorter one they had made from Santiago to Buenos Aires. Neil had slept for the first three hours but the brutal turbulence now had made that impossible. James on the other hand had been awake, he was scribbling away in a worn notebook. His notes and lines were visibly affected by the sudden bursts of turbulence.

  The work they had done over the last week had worn Neil down to exhaustion, but James was in overdrive. This was often the case for him after he had completed a job. This one was a bit different than most and it had in some part taken James back to the start of it all.

  Three months before they had been contacted by a group of Jewish refugees from Poland who had fled to Britain. The group, partially made up of survivors from various concentration and work camps, others who had fled before the Nazi occupation. The group had gotten a tip that a commandant from one of the work camps was living in Chile. Wolfram Brandt, who had been a notoriously brutal camp director had fled the camp only days before the Russians liberated it.

  Brandt had made his way to South America and to Chile, the group of Jews wanted him taken care of, and through an acquaintance in the Swiss banking circle they were put in touch with Sanford International.

  It was the first work that Sanford International had done for an entity that was not from a government. The transaction was set up and the group offered bonuses for extra detail work they asked for. James had not seen directly the horrific conditions that the Nazis had subjected the Jews to but there had been pictures circulated, and the stories were well known. For James and Neil it was almost nostalgic to be hunting Nazis again.

  Finding Brandt had been easy, he was an arrogant man who felt he was untouchable living in the mountain town of Putre. The details James had on Brandt showed him to be a total sadist, he was capable of the type of pure evil the Nazis fostered and nurtured. In the file were accounts of Brandt’s debauchery, the torture, explicitly sexual in nature, usually involved the mutilation of sexual organs, both male and female.

  He often forced prisoners to perform acts upon each other, or with various animals of husbandry in use around the camp. Other notorious stories involved the two pythons Brandt had raised since they hatched. Almost all of the accounts of his exploits resulted in a painful often slow and always humiliating death for the unwilling participants.

  Brandt was famous for randomly selecting prisoners and executing them with the Luger pistol he carried. Often he would shoot them through the liver and let them lay, crying and moaning for the entire camp to hear. The file went on, page after page of atrocities and injustices.

  After Jim had explained the work to the board and the conditions of the bonuses, he told the board he and Neil would be handling the work, he was making sure this one was done to the letter of the request.

  They had been told that Brandt had a small cottage on the north western side of Putre. He had let his beard grow out thick, and despite the gray in his hair the beard grew in dark and black. However, his skin was too light for the region and he stood out. They had been given pictures, some of which had come from his personal effects left behind at the camp before he fled.

  Neil and James first spotted Brandt two days after making the overland trip from Santiago, they had driven the distance over almost four days it had been a slow painful trip. Brandt was strolling through the town market, he picked three onions and a street vendor placed them into a paper bag for him. It was the complexion that James noticed first, he leaned to Neil, “Over there, at ten o’clock, the pale one”

  “Can you see his right eye?”

  During World War I Brandt had been near Ypres in western Belgium, chlorine gas and an unlucky change in the wind had claimed half his eyesight. His right eye was a milky white and Brandt never covered or hid it, wearing it as a badge of honor. James stepped forward, “I haven't been able to see it yet. We need to move to the other side of him, let’s move a block east and circle back around and come in from the North.”

  They moved east, and quickly moved around to come in from the north. Seeing the man’s eye as he passed on the street was all the conformation they needed. Neil and James split up and followed Brandt to his cottage.

  The cottage was simple, three bedrooms, and kitchen off the west side, small porch on the front and to the east side. Brandt lived alone, his nearest neighbors were half a mile away, the darkness that fell around the small house was comforting to James as he watched and waited for the lights to go out. Tonight James would watch, tomorrow they would secure a few supplies and take Brandt the next evening.

  ***

  Their supply list contained common items, rope, rags, gloves, pliers, an alarm clock, and four rolls of film for Neil’s Leica Standard, a heavy tarp, some salt and a paring knife. Supplies were gathered mid-morning and the two had a light lunch.

  Neil had a thin fish soup and James a bowl of fried vegetables and stewed rabbit, they discussed the architecture surrounding them. James was fascinated by the brickwork on a building directly across from their table. Neil nodded in agreement that it was a nice looking building and then James launched into why the courses of brick were the way they were and how impo
rtant it was. Neil was all too accustomed to this as James remembered everything he read, and all the conversations he had. This was the same as every other topic that came up.

  “We going to go through with this the way they want?” Neil asked wiping his mouth.

  “That's the plan.” James answered still looking across the street.

  “You know the money is pretty good without their bonuses, we could just do this work the way we normally would?”

  “Nope.”

  “James, don't you think all of this is a little dramatic?”

  “Yea, maybe. I suppose it is a bit dramatic.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you? Not even a little.”

  “Oh I don't know that the dramatic nature of this bothers me, it’s just a job. We’ll do this and move on with a nice paycheck that will cover some bills we have coming up. It might even let us expand a bit.”

  “James, it’s just that I think this makes us a little like Brandt when we do this.”

  “It’s what they want, not for us to be like Brandt, but the want him to feel like it is. Their requests have meaning, and if you think this type of thing doesn't get out to the others that are hiding you're crazy.”

  “I see your point.” Neil looked down at the empty soup bowl.

  James looked at him and pursed his lips, “I understand that this seems wrong to you and I’m glad that it does, if this didn't bother you I’d be worried. This guy is a sickness and we are here to make that go away, and we are going to be paid handsomely to enact a little revenge along the way.”

  “Even so, I don't think I like it.”

  “Duly noted. Grab your things we have to round up our stuff and get going.”