He waited, then smiled, “Very nice. Have you contacted the other team? She was the only one left.”
Frustration crossed his face, “Fine, I’ll wait for the call from the second team.”
He hung up the phone, things were progressing nicely, Gary had already killed three of the marks as of this morning but he needed all four dead to make it look like he was aiding the Russians by tearing down the defenses for Offutt and SAC. Why had the kid waited so damned long to kill them he wondered? But the time did not matter, soon the kid would be coming to him.
The phone rang again, “Yes.”
His eyes lit up, “Ah, very good. And the body?”
His eyebrows crumpled, “Why not at the house?”
He waited again for a response, “What do you mean she wasn't alone?”
He sat up straight, “What did he look like?”
He pursed his lips, “Okay, very well.” Ray hung up the phone.
“He was fucking her.” Ray said aloud, and he laughed.
Suddenly it made sense why Gary had waited so long to kill them all. Ray thought for a second, then picked the phone back up, “Release his photo to the media.”
He thought for a second, “No, Milo Bronson.”
He paused, “Yes, and have Gordon come down when he gets here.”
Ray picked himself up from the desk, and moved over to the couch across the room and laid down, he was too excited to sleep but he liked to think laying down. He closed his eyes and continued to imagine the unraveling state of affairs in Omaha. Ray tried to picture Gary’s next moves.
He wondered how much he had put together, had Gary been blindsided? It would please him very much to think that the son of the great James Cannon was caught off guard. The man who as a mere boy had breezed through every piece of training he had been given.
Gary Cannon was the crown jewel in the Sanford arsenal, and Ray had infiltrated to the very top of their organization and was at the very edge of pulverizing that jewel into tiny pieces. Ray continued to picture Gary squirming and scrambling to get underground and he smiled until his cheeks hurt.
After an hour on the couch there was a knock on the door, “Come in.” Ray called to the door, sitting up.
A tall thin man opened the door and entered the room. He was pressed from head to toe. His short sleeved shirt had perfect creases. His white slacks would have stood up without him in them. He looked clean and perfect on every level. “Ah, Gordon. How was your trip? Have a seat.”
“The trip was fine Mr. Flockstein.” Gordon answered, sitting down.
“You know it’s just Ray.”
“Very well Ray.”
“Gordon, you have been a very loyal employee. You might be what I would consider to be the perfect employee, you are always very thorough, you always follow directions, and you have never failed to accomplish a task that has been set before you.”
“Thank you Ray.” Gordon reached down onto the desk and squared a paper with the desk’s edge.
“Gordon, outwardly you look like someone I can trust.”
“Thank you sir, I like to think that I can be trusted.”
“Can I trust you Gordon?”
Gordon was aligning a pencil with the piece of paper he had previously straightened, he stopped, “I’m not quite sure what you mean when you ask me that.”
Ray stood from the couch, “What I mean Gordon. If I gave you a task would you complete it? Would you complete it no matter the task?”
Gordon brushed a hand along an already impossibly smooth pant leg, “Ray, as always I have not looked at failure as an option I can afford.”
“Good. Gordon, I have something very important I need you to accomplish for me.”
“Name it sir.”
“You may not be aware of this but recently Gary Cannon has gone rogue. We believe he may be working for the Soviets. Earlier today he leveled Rosenblatt stadium in Omaha Nebraska to flush out and kill the commanding general of SAC.”
“I see.” Gordon responded with no particular change in expression.
“In the last month he has killed four American citizens that we know of, all tasked with advanced surveillance and protection of SAC. The body of General Donovan was found just an hour ago left in the street. The man was at the stadium watching his granddaughter sing for the bicentennial for Christ’s sake!”
“Yes, it would have been quite a crowd.” Gordon replied again he seemed unmoved.
“Gordon, I need for you to kill Gary Cannon.”
Gordon’s eyebrows raised slightly. His eyes were focused squarely on Ray’s then Gordon looked at his hands and picked lightly at a fingernail, “Ray, this is a very difficult thing you are asking of me.”
“Are you saying you won’t do it?”
He looked back up, his eyes narrowing, “I do not believe that was my answer. What I said was you have asked me to do an extremely difficult thing. Gary Cannon is not unkillable in the sense that he is invulnerable however, he would be a very difficult person to kill in the best of circumstances.”
“Is this beyond your ability?”
“Again Ray you are putting words in my mouth, I respect who you are, and I will kindly ask you not to do that again. As you should know Gary possesses a skill set that makes him very difficult to kill. Along with that set of skills he has an intuition like I have never seen before, and his senses will be on high if he is looking to escape the country or at least go underground.”
Gordon shifted in his seat and continued, “Add to this I have no idea where he will be and this becomes quite a monumental task.”
Ray sat back down, “Oh, but Gordon we will know where he will be, you see he has already reached out to several of our other top assets. He feels that he must kill me, he feels that I have undervalued his efforts in the last few years. I fear this is why he has turned to the Soviets.”
“Who did he reach out to?”
“Del Guidice, and Hannagan.”
“And did you ask them to put him down?”
“I did.”
“And their response?”
“I am sitting here asking you.”
“I was not your first choice?”
“You were my first choice.”
“And yet you asked Del Guidice and Hannagan first?”
“Del Guidice contacted me, I asked him to take care of him, he declined. I put out a request that you be contacted. You can be very difficult to find. Hannagan called in shortly after, that was when he declined.”
“Hmm.”
Ray was growing frustrated, he needed Gordon to get on board. He also needed him to answer before he left this room, he could not risk Gordon speaking to Hannagan or Del Guidice, which would get him asking too many more questions, “Gordon I ask you again, will you kill Gary Cannon for me?”
“What were the exact words Del Guidice and Hannagan used to decline your request?”
“Del Guidice said he didn't have a death wish, and Hannagan said I was asking for the impossible.”
Ray saw Gordon’s eyes widen ever so slightly and he knew he had his answer.
“What will you pay me for this work?”
“If you do this for me Gordon, I’ll give you dispatch of all Class A hits, and I’ll twenty-five percent of the fees.”
“Degrassi handles Class A hits.”
“Degrassi is in with him, when this is done you’ll be handling them, you let me worry about Degrassi.”
“I’ll do it. You said you knew where he’d be, I’ll need that information.”
“A few hours ago I let it out that I was here, I’m using myself as bait, all you have to do is get ready and he’ll come to you.”
“He’s as good as dead.”
Gordon stood reached out, shook Ray’s hand and began to walk out, but Ray stopped him, “I knew I could count on you Mr. Vice-President. One more thing Gordon, after he’s dead, the body needs to be public, very public.”
Gordon smiled as much as Ray had ever seen, nodded,
and he left the room, off to begin whatever planning happened behind his stone face. Ray lay back down on the couch and resumed his day dream.
***
July 6, 1976 10:10
Neil had boarded a plane for San Diego the previous day and he was making his way south to rendezvous with Gary at El Comienzo. Gary would make his way across the Gulf of California and they would make their assault on the El Comienzo facility after dark on the 7th. He knew Ray would be locked down tight but Neil helped plan the construction of the facility. As he had been taught so many years ago he had always left himself outs. Normally an assault with a small force on a place like El Comienzo would have been suicide, but Neil really felt they had the upper hand. Ray’s arrogance would be in full force, as his plan was so far working just as he had expected. Having never been under real fire he would likely grow bold and careless, and that is what Neil was counting on.
***
July 7, 1976
Gary was sore from his drive and had come in to Guaymas late in the previous evening, he had missed the last ferry by about five hours and had ten hours to wait for the morning ferry.
Gary ate a light supper and curled up in the back seat of the Chevy, windows down and fell asleep with the smell of salt air in his nose.
Now in the daylight, he was waiting for the morning ferry to leave, he sat smoking cigarettes as he watched the workers arrive at their post and begin to ready the boat for its day’s work.
When the time came he rolled slowly onto the deck and waited for the boat to disembark. For the first two hours of the journey Gary sat on the upper deck, first watching the land shrink into the ocean and then watched the gulls fly alongside the boat, occasionally landing on a section of handrail not occupied by a passenger.
At midday Gary went to his car and retrieved a change of clothes, swapping out his regular street clothes for a full tan set that would help him blend into the scrub surrounding El Comienzo.
He walked around the deck for a while, and conversed with one of the other passengers, the father of three who had traveled to Guatemala to take care of the estate of his mother and who was now on his return trip.
Soon Gary could see land again, and he thought just how pleasant this portion of his trip had been. He thought about how all the people around him would go along to their lives never know where he was headed, or the blood he would soon be spilling. Ignorance was a luxury they possessed. He had seen more death, usually at his own hand, than most of them would see in ten lifetimes.
There were days, and nights he was haunted by those deaths he had caused, but those days were few and far between. Gary had always been able to disconnect from most of what he had done, able to kill a man no differently than if he were killing a fly annoyingly perched on his arm. Only LJ would come to him regularly in his dreams, and those nights were always bad.
As the land loomed larger in the distance Gary’s mind cleared of his sentimentality and of his past. He began his sequences, and how he would be approaching the next few hours. His plans were always lose, he let them go like balloons and then followed as the winds changed, making adjustments as needed.
Eight hours and twelve minutes after leaving Guaymas the ferry docked at Santa Rosalía on the Baja peninsula. Gary waited as the cars in front of him cleared the way and he followed them off.
Gary drove out of town and headed south down highway one. He had about three good hours of daylight left. He had a short drive before a decent hike across some rough country in the heat of the day. Gary found the road he was looking for and headed west on into the desert a plume of dust followed him.
The arid landscape stretched out before him and he envisioned the valley just beyond the rise where his former home rested below the surface. He pictured the small buildings above ground and their weathered appearance. The above ground buildings however, were primarily smokescreen for what lay beneath.
When Gary had been there ten years ago only two of the seven buildings had any function. One of the buildings, the one he had been baselined in, housed the main elevator. Despite the appearance that it was a broken down adobe hut, it was quite hardened with CBN filtration, reinforced concrete walls, blast resistant glass, and CCTV cameras.
The other functioning structure resembled a small barn and housed the other entrance, the freight elevator. This elevator was how they were able to keep vehicles on site and out of sight. The freight buildings defenses were comparable to the main entrance.
Gary reached a point on the road where it turned to the south and began to take him further from his destination, he pulled the car over and killed the engine. He got out of the car and pulled a pack from the trunk, it was not full but already heavy with the weight of his gear.
He strapped the 629 across the top of the pack, and slung the 609 across his chest, loaded a mag and chambered a round, put the weapon on safe and he closed the trunk of the car. Mag pouches and the Ka-Bar ringed his waist.
He jumped up and down a few times to make sure he had secured everything in a manner that it would not make any noise, Gary was satisfied that he had. He took a quick look around and started off west into the desert.
Neil had given him some coordinates to bearing to once he was over the range in front of him. He would make the six mile walk before dark. He would stop again in the early twilight and plan his navigation. Then he would wait for dark and make the trip in to their rendezvous point just before midnight. By that time they would be in close to the facility.
***
Neil’s feet ached, in the last fifteen years he had hated his office job more times than he could count but under the stars over the Mexican desert tonight he would have been happy to be sitting in his high backed chair sipping a Johnny Walker on ice.
He had humped four miles across the desert with a light pack and his pistol. Gary was bringing him a rifle as getting one through airport security would have been a difficult task. He had nestled himself into a bunch of sage and had taken his boots off and was rubbing his feet. “If I had known I would live to fifty I would have taken better care of myself.” He whispered to himself.
Neil rolled to his side and glassed down toward the facility, he could see three men near the main entrance and two were on a revolving patrol around a 200 meter perimeter. Neil had half expected the place to be lit up like a prison after a head count came up short but it was modestly illuminated. Had it not been for the extra men stationed around outside it would have looked almost as inconspicuous as it had always been intended to look.
He rolled back on to his back again, slightly sitting up in the sage, and he looked up at the stars. All those years back and that memory of Brandt, and this was where he had ended up for that piece of nastiness. “James, you son-of-a-bitch. I knew I’d pay for this one way or the other, seems you’ve steered clear of this one. I should have known, shit runs downhill.” He whispered.
He adjusted again, shifting a rock from under his left hip, then checking his watch. “That goddamn kid is late.” He whispered again, “Jesus, I seem to be having a regular conversation with myself out here. Know what they say, people who talk to themselves, play with themselves. Guilty as charged.” This time he suppressed a laugh.
“I always knew you were a dirty old man.”
Neil spun in the sage, his pistol coming up in the darkness, Gary grasped his wrist, “Careful you old bastard you’ll hurt someone.”
“Holy tits. How fucking long have you been sitting there?”
“Long enough to know the conversations you have with yourself aren't any better than the ones you have with me.”
“Oh, go to hell. At least my directions got you here.”
“Actually, your directions got me about 1,000 meters back to the east, but since I could hear you grunting and rutting around out here like an elephant...”
“I haven't done this in years you little shit, do you know how bad I have to piss?”
“Weak bladder, weak mind. What do you see down there?”
Neil briefly scowled at Gary, “I’ve counted five, two on patrol.”
“Have you thought about how you want to take them out? The patrols are the obvious firsts.”
“Nah. We’re going to let them be, I’ve got another plan. Follow me.”
Neil got up slowly, giving a grunt at each movement, and started to work his way to the southwest, “And how about you give me that fucking rifle you promised me?”
Gary slung out of this pack and unstrapped the 629, handing it to Neil. From the pack’s interior, he pulled seven mag pouches and one spare mag. Neil loaded the magazine, and chambered a round, he looked at the weapon, and the 609 Gary carried, “Nice choices.”
Gary smiled and winked, “Lead the way old man, I’ll try to keep up.”
Neil flipped Gary the bird and moved forward. The two hiked to the south of the facility, still more than 500 meters outside of the perimeter patrols.
Periodically Neil would stop and scan the area, both of them had their weapons up and on the ready, the muzzles sweeping like spot lights, aimed everywhere they looked.
Neil stopped and knelt down, he pointed, “There.”
Gary looked along Neil’s arm, a washout was ahead, but even in the darkness he could make out something that did not belong, a single tree in the gully, the tree was long dead and bare.
The two made their way to the tree and at the base Neil got down on his knees facing back to El Comienzo, and he began to push the sand away and to the side. About six inches down a steel plate began to be uncovered. Gary helped Neil brush and push the sand away from the steel. In a few minutes they had unearthed what looked like a manhole cover.
Neil continued to brush sand away from the cover, and he brought his face down close to the metal and blew some of the last bits of sand away from a depression. He got his thumb into the depression and popped up a lever and turned it a quarter turn, then pulled it back and a small door in the center of the cover swung open.
He pushed numbers into a mechanical keypad below the cover and yet a bigger portion of the cover opened. Neil swung that up and away. Next Neil spun a wheel below the second cover and the entire manway opened up.
Killing Sanford (Gary Cannon Book 1) Page 19