Kill for Me

by Tom Wood

  Victor shrugged. “Work’s always getting in the way.”

  The pilot responded with a nod. “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a salesman.”

  “Oh,” Estuardo said, losing interest fast. “What do you sell?”

  “Something no one wants.”

  The hangar was open. Estuardo led him inside where two light aircraft were parked. The air smelled of oil and cheap tobacco, body odor and greasy food.

  Estuardo held open his arms. “Which one?”

  “Which what?”

  “Which plane would you like to learn to fly?”

  Both aircraft were similar, but they weren’t the same. Both were fixed-wing propeller planes, one painted white, the other blue and with a yellow stripe. The white aircraft was a Diamond Twin Star, only a few years old. It was clean and bright. The other vehicle was much older, a Cessna 182.

  Victor said, “The blue one.”

  “Favorite color?”

  He shook his head. “It has character.”

  “Not scared because it’s old?”

  Victor shook his head again. “You don’t get old without having lived.”

  He placed his backpack in the rear of the plane, behind the two seats. There was enough room for another couple of passengers, but not with anything approaching comfort. There were no rear seats. They had been removed long ago, Victor reasoned, to create more space for cargo. For the same weight as two passengers and seats, a couple of hundred kilos of product could be flown instead.

  Estuardo saw him glance at the empty space and said, “They need replacing. The seats, I mean.”

  “Ah,” Victor said, as if a mystery had been solved.

  Estuardo performed a halfhearted check of the aircraft and strapped himself in. He gestured for Victor to do the same. Victor made the motions but didn’t fasten the belt. Instead, he tucked the clasp under his buttock so the belt looked taut. Estuardo didn’t notice.

  Victor wasn’t scared of flying, but he didn’t enjoy it. He didn’t like that it kept him contained. It made him rely on the pilot’s skills and the vehicle’s thousands of moving parts to keep him alive. He didn’t like surrendering his fate to forces outside of his control. Most aviation deaths were caused by small and light aircraft crashing. Heavier meant safer, somehow. A rogue trader whom Victor had once been hired to kill had been a keen pilot until he crashed his prop plane into a meadow. It was ruled an accident because it had been. Victor had been planning to assassinate the man at his mansion, but he had been paid in full for causing the plane crash. He had even received a bonus for making it look like an accident.

  Estuardo was a competent pilot. He was relaxed in his seat throughout takeoff. He took the aircraft in a steep climb, explaining, “We’re going to start with the basics. No takeoffs. Just cruising. Think you can manage that?”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  Estuardo glanced at him. “Have you heard that thing—what’s it called?—which says however hard you can push yourself, you can go another twenty percent?”

  Victor shook his head. “Then I’ll try my best plus twenty percent.”

  “That’s more like it.”

  Estuardo eased the joystick away from him and the nose of the plane dipped a little until they were horizontal. He peered out of the door window. “Stunning country, isn’t it?”

  Victor looked out of his own. “Very.”

  Estuardo spoke to him for a while, explaining the roles of the various instruments, what they did and what Victor needed to look out for when he had the controls. Victor listened and nodded and said “Uh huh” when required. Estuardo never repeated himself. He was going through the motions but he didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to waste his time teaching Victor. He was making a reasonable pretense, however, and Victor didn’t challenge him on his lack of passion.

  “It’s so beautiful up here,” Victor said. “Do you mind if I take some pictures?”

  “I thought you were up here to learn how to fly.”

  “Just a couple of snaps.”

  Estuardo shrugged. “It’s your hour. Use it as you wish.”

  Victor used his camera to take some photographs through the side window. “Wow, these are coming out great.” He turned in the seat and took some through the pilot’s side window. “Can you just lean back a little?”

  Estuardo did so. “Don’t take too long.”

  “I won’t,” Victor said, dropping the camera and lurching at Estuardo, the belt coming loose.

  His left arm went for the front of Estuardo’s neck as the right snaked around the back. Victor’s hands found each other, locking off, and he squeezed as he slipped between the seats, pinching shut Estuardo’s carotid arteries in a choke hold.

  Estuardo went slack after four seconds, and Victor kept the hold on for another four to make sure Estuardo would stay unconscious for what he needed to do next. He hit the cruise switch and took out a small leather case from his backpack. From inside the case, he took out a pre-loaded syringe and stabbed the needle into Estuardo’s lower back. He was snoring by the time Victor had replaced the syringe and case.

  He used the map and GPS to work out exactly where the aircraft was in the skies over Guatemala, and adjusted the flaps until he was on the right trajectory. He was no pilot, but he knew enough. While the plane had autopilot activated, provided he didn’t try anything too adventurous with maneuvers, there was little that could go wrong.

  He didn’t have to fly far. They had begun close to where he wanted to be. He had spent a long time and considerable effort ensuring he organized a lesson from that particular private airfield. It was the nearest one to his ultimate destination.

  Within ten minutes he was close enough, so he took a large telephoto lens from his backpack and fixed it to the camera.

  The lens was the best he had been able to acquire, weighing almost two kilograms, with a focal length of 1,200 mm, so Victor could peer down at Maria Salvatierra’s horse ranch a thousand feet below and see the faces of those who stood guard or patrolled. He had only a few minutes before they were out of range, but he had a great angle to photograph the entire property.

  He changed memory cards twice.

  When Estuardo woke, his head snapped up and a trail of drool stretched from his chin to where it had been resting on his shirt. He was confused. He was disorientated. He glanced at Victor, at the controls, at the sky ahead.

  Short-term memory loss was often a side effect of losing consciousness, and it was always a side effect of barbiturates. Estuardo had no idea what had happened.

  Victor—the camera lens now safely back in the rucksack—pointed out of the side window. “Did you just nod off?”

  Estuardo said, “Uh, no. Of course not,” as he wiped drool from his chin.

  • Chapter 25 •

  At another time, in another life, Victor might have been a photographer. Taking a good picture with a camera was a lot like taking a good shot with a rifle. Aim, timing, and a steady hand were everything. There were further similarities too. Positioning, patience, even stealth all helped to find that right frame. Training, practice, and talent all fused together to create skill. Any amateur could take a picture, as any amateur could squeeze a trigger, but the outcomes of that amateur and professional would be worlds apart.

  Victor was no professional photographer, but in a rare moment of vanity he allowed himself to believe he could have been. The pictures he had taken of Maria’s ranch were excellent, as were those of the surrounding area. It would have taken days to have gathered intelligence of half the quality, and he would have needed to put himself at considerable risk while doing so. He counted twenty-nine gunmen guarding the ranch. There would be more he couldn’t see, inside the buildings or vehicles, or else otherwise out of shot.

  He saw a Land Rover driving on a nearby road. It was no
t an uncommon vehicle in rural Guatemala, but it was the same green color as another Land Rover that was parked at the ranch. A mobile patrol then, doing laps of the surrounding roads as an advance warning system to any threats. Maria, or whoever organized her security, was thorough.

  If the Land Rover held another four gunmen—and based on the distribution of the other twenty-nine, Victor estimated another 10 percent might be out of shot—then there could be up to thirty-six men protecting the ranch.

  Victor wasn’t sure he had ever been tasked to kill someone so well protected. It was going to be every bit as difficult as he had imagined.

  He had been right to acquire the aerial surveillance first, because now he knew what he was up against, but he still needed to collect closer intel. He would need to take an extreme level of care. He was no local and even untrained guards could see that, and that alone marked him out as suspicious. He was used to operating where he could be anonymous, but in Guatemala, in the rural environs, that was impossible. Everywhere was hostile terrain. Everywhere was enemy territory.

  He used the photographs to sketch out a plan of the ranch, using the heights of figures and the length of vehicles to measure distances and dimensions, until he had a pretty good representation of where Maria lived. He left to conduct further recon only once every detail had been imprinted into his memory.

  He took his time. He took no risks. He kept his distance, utilizing his binoculars and camera to build up a more thorough picture of the ranch and its security.

  The first and most obvious problem to consider was the veritable army of sicarios that guarded Maria Salvatierra. There was a long, one-lane driveway that led from the ranch, with a gatehouse where it met the highway. An ornate, wrought-iron gate blocked the entrance, which would not stop any determined assault from her rivals, but behind it lay three rows of police stingers to ensure that even if the gate was open, a conventional vehicle would make it no more than fifty feet along the driveway. Six guards occupied the gatehouse, all wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles. Their training and competence was obvious to Victor. They weren’t kids from the slums. These were former military.

  The ranch was surrounded by a wooden fence, which offered no real security, but it was patrolled by more guards, again with body armor and assault rifles. They had sophisticated radio equipment too—headsets and throat mics—and were in near-constant communication. The land was flat all the way to the ranch and, from examining topographical maps, Victor could see that this was by design. The natural undulation of the land had been flattened and filled. There were a thousand meters of open killing ground between the fence and anything resembling cover, and that ground was dotted with tiny lumps. They were hard to spot at first, as they had been painted to match the color of the grass. Some were only a few inches in height. Some were up to half a meter. They were arranged in a seemingly haphazard pattern, but this was deliberate. At night, with an infrared lens, Victor saw the crisscrossed beams of light that covered the land between the fence and where the buildings lay. The single expanse that wasn’t protected in this way was the grazing pastures, but these were enclosed with fences that had motion detectors of their own.

  He reexamined the photographs, which, besides showing the many armed gunmen patrolling, revealed there was other activity. Several men stood or sat around an outside table, all facing toward where someone else sat in the shade of a parasol. The parasol obscured the person beneath it, but the shadow was unmistakably a woman’s.

  The photographs captured the end of the meeting, and most of the men dispersed through the ranch—going indoors or otherwise out of frame.

  One did not.

  He left the ranch in a yellow sports car. The license plate was hidden by the angle, but upon zooming in Victor identified the car as a Lamborghini Aventador. An expensive vehicle for a serious player.

  Victor wondered if the visit was a one-off or a regular occurrence as he analyzed his research. The only way to get close to the ranch would be with an invite. Not impossible—he had gained the trust of well-protected targets before—but improbable, given that Heloise and Maria had been trying to kill each another for some time now. He could foresee working his way into the cartel, doing jobs and earning respect, slowly being introduced to the hierarchy, proving himself again and again over a long period of time, until he found himself invited to the ranch to meet the boss. What he couldn’t envision, however, was killing her and slipping away again without being discovered. It would require too much guesswork, too many assumptions, and would be too reliant on improvisation. It wasn’t a workable course of action.

  Besides, the last time he had operated undercover in such a way, everything that could go wrong had. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.

  The one hole in all the ranch’s security was its dedication to security. The flattened land, the lack of trees and vegetation left uninterrupted lines of sight straight to the house.

  Which was why he found himself approaching an abandoned building.

  It was a shack of some sort, made of timber and half reclaimed by nature. The elements had stripped away any paint or seal, and the exposed wood was cracked and warped. Plants climbed all over it. The single door was locked, but it required nothing beyond a shove to open.

  The air inside was thick with dust. He coughed a little as he stepped inside. Light filtered through gaps and cracks in the wood. Nebulas of swirling dust glowed and flickered. It was humid and cooler than outside. The wood was more rotten than dry. The floorboards were soft underfoot.

  The ceiling was low, and a dust-caked cobweb rippled above his head.

  A home, he reasoned, long ago. There were a few items of furniture, an old stove, and some rusted pans. A wooden stepladder led up through a hole in the ceiling to a second floor. He had to crouch to avoid hitting his head on the roof, and shuffled his way past the remnants of a mattress to where a single small window, caked in grime, let in a swath of bright sunshine.

  The catch was corroded and required considerable effort to shift, and he almost broke the window frame forcing it open.

  He peered through the gap, over the track and the vegetation, through the foliage. After a moment his gaze stopped on the pristine white gleam he was looking to find.

  He adjusted his position to get a better angle and raised his binoculars. It took a few seconds to adjust the focus and turn the white blur to a crisp image of the gatehouse. He would need a rangefinder to be accurate, but he expected one would tell him the building was between .5 and .6 of a mile from his current position.

  He angled up his head and the binoculars with it, refocusing so he could see beyond the gatehouse and along the driveway to where, just more than a mile in the distance, the ranch house itself was.

  Several cartridges could make it, but a .50-caliber round would be the best option. Even so, flight time would be approaching two seconds. That was a long time to be pushed by wind and pulled by gravity. Temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure all had to be factored in when making the ballistic calculations.

  He would need a stationary target, precise measurements of all contributing variables, exact ballistic information for the round he was going to use, plus time spent practicing with the weapon in question.

  He could shoot only when the conditions were just right, and only when Maria was in front of the house, unmoving. He knew if he missed he wouldn’t get a second chance.

  One shot, calculated to perfection, and his job would be complete.

  First, though, he would need a rifle.

  • Chapter 26 •

  Her name wasn’t Georg, but she had once been known that way. She had chosen the name for some flippant reason she couldn’t even recall. Was it because of that old film actor she liked? It didn’t matter. She dealt in a world where men dominated and women weren’t respected, so it had helped to pretend. It had helped for men to think she too
was a man. Men were simple like that. If they didn’t know any better, they were happy in ignorance. It hadn’t lasted, of course, because nothing ever did.

  Her business partner—former business partner—had turned on her, and would have killed her too had it not been for the intervention of one of her customers.

  That customer had met her in one of her warehouses to collect explosives, and it had been during their negotiations that the traitorous partner had come to murder her. Two of Georg’s closest people had been killed in the ensuing gun battle, but at the end of the firefight the partner and his men were all dead by the customer’s hand. Georg lay dying on the floor, shotgun pellets buried in her guts, and would have died in agony had the same customer not dialed her an ambulance.

  An act of compassion, of mercy, she had thought in the aftermath, but she later realized it had been done only to create a favor that would need to be fulfilled at a future time. She had paid her debt, and had not heard from him again after that call. She hadn’t expected to, but when one of her crew came to her bearing a look of confusion and handing her a phone, she somehow knew who would be on the end of the line.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  He said, “I want a gun.”

  She recognized the voice. A deep sound. A hard-to-place accent. Not German, though he spoke the language like a native. An American, maybe. She recalled his face and the blank, neutral expression. Pale skin. Dark hair. Beard. A gray suit beneath an overcoat, unfastened. A killer.

  Georg said, “You don’t want to ask how I’ve been?”

  “I want an Accuracy International AX50. I won’t accept anything else. With a couple of scope options. Long range and infrared. And don’t skimp on the ammo. If you can’t get hold of match grade, then I’ll only accept the next best thing: PMC Bronze Line Six-Sixty grain boat-tail.”

  “I’m a lot better, thank you for asking,” she replied. “I only need to take acetaminophen these days. I’ve even cut back on the tobacco. Well, I’m trying.”