Kill for Me

by Tom Wood

  He dressed and began his day, thinking about what was to come. Constantin had prepared himself for many considerations, many options. There wasn’t much left to do because he was thorough and he was efficient. Everything had been worked out. “Planned to perfection” would be a grandiose claim, but Constantin left with a feeling of calm confidence that soon the world would be a little less ugly.

  No life should be ended without first understanding it. Constantin believed this to be true as much as he needed it to be so.

  He understood this one. He had not had much time to do so, but some people were easier to understand than others.

  She had a routine, as did everyone. Even the chaotic, the lazy, the erratic had routines. She was none of those. She was diligent and she was careful and she was predictable. She dropped off clothes at the dry cleaner every Monday evening and picked them up again every Saturday morning. She had four business suits, as far as Constantin could tell, in a constant circulation—while two were worn, the other two were cleaned. She did the rest of her laundry at home. In Constantin’s experience, how a person handled their laundry revealed much about their character. Her regularity was a definite mark in her favor.

  She was pretty too. He had expected as much. Not to his tastes, but it had been so long since Constantin had required company of any sort that he wasn’t sure if anyone would ever be to his tastes again. Even what his body needed, his mind found repulsive. In time, he had mastered himself in all things. He knew, though, that the rest of humanity reveled in that ugliness. They sought it out. The other killer liked this woman. Constantin wondered what was so likable. He tried to imagine being one of them—which was hard enough without vomiting—and he saw skin and hair and the flesh and blood beneath. A meat sack, at most.

  He looked down at his long, thin fingers and his rough palms. He looked at the hairless skin of his forearms, thin and colorless. He was no different from her. He was uglier than all of them, he could admit. Like his body, he had mastered even his own mind, his own ego. He had risen to a higher state of consciousness, wherein his essence existed even beyond reach of impulse, desire, and self-worth. That essence required a meat sack of its own, but was not of it; they occupied the same space only. Matter and dark matter in coexistence.

  Joanna Alamaeda had no idea he was watching her. She saw him but she did not see into him. She saw only what existed in the observable universe, the matter.

  He was considering how to proceed when his phone rang.

  It was the Frenchman. The charlatan who had no will. “I have a proposition for you.”

  Constantin said, “I’m listening.”

  “The Wraith is proving to be unpredictable,” Lavandier explained. “He’s not as discreet as we had hoped.”

  “How very interesting,” Constantin said, uninterested.

  “Would you consider taking over as primary on the contract?”

  “I imagine if I agree this would mean removing the Wraith from the equation.”

  There was a pause, before Lavandier said, “It would.”

  “What has the Wraith done to warrant such displeasure?”

  Lavandier’s tone was curt. “That’s none of your concern. All you need to know is that we want you to put an end to him.”

  “I would end everyone if only I could,” Constantin replied, “I would lay waste to this world and, oh, how it would thank me for that service.”

  Lavandier’s tone was impatient. “A yes or no will suffice.”

  “Oui,” Constantin said. “Je vais finir cet homme, et le reste du monde peut attendre un peu plus longtemps.”

  “Make sure it’s done quickly,” Lavandier said. “And then maybe we can talk about how to improve your accent. It’s a little flat.”

  The line disconnected and for once Constantin did not know how to proceed. He had not expected this, so everything had to be reconsidered. He lifted his wicker hat to wipe his brow with a handkerchief and followed behind Alamaeda, never close but never far.

  This was the best part of the job for him. To be invisible in a world of ugliness was the highest of achievements.

  • Chapter 58 •

  Gulls squawked in the early-morning mist. It was still dark, but the dawn was coming. The sky in the east was almost blue above the horizon. A tiny, almost imperceptible flicker of yellow marked the coming day. It was cold. Victor’s breath misted and the steam from his coffee rose in pluming swirls. In an hour or so the temperature would have jumped by ten degrees. Puerto Barrios was quiet at this time.

  He sipped his coffee from a waxed paper cup. He had removed the plastic lid. In part because he preferred his coffee without the taint of BPA and other chemicals, and in part because he could toss the hot liquid in an assailant’s face, should it come to it.

  There was no one nearby. He stood on an empty stretch of concrete bordering the port, looking out to the harbor. A high chain-link fence rattled in a sudden gust of wind. His pickup was parked nearby, facing the exit so he could make a fast getaway if necessary. He stayed mobile out of habit, never staying in one place for too long, despite the fact there were no obvious sniping lines and the coastal wind would make any shot impossible for all but the best marksman.

  Nearby were low buildings. Small industry. One business made parts for refrigerators. Another recycled paper. Others had no signs and nothing in their lots to give away what they did. Victor wasn’t interested in anything but the harbor. He gazed out at the horizon, at the sea. Waiting.

  Across the harbor the huge shape of a cargo ship emerged through the dawn, an apparition almost slow and cumbersome. Victor liked ships, but not as much as he liked trains. Feats of engineering impressed him. He imagined the thousands of bolts and rivets, screws and welds. He pictured endless bulkheads, hatches, and portholes. He could see giant rotors turned by colossal cylinders. A floating testament to human perseverance and will.

  The cargo ship was right on schedule. Victor had been able to track its progress across the Atlantic, thanks to the shipping company’s Web site. There had been no rough seas. No hurricanes. A boring voyage for the crew of the cargo ship, he had no doubt.

  On occasion he would pay a captain in cash to let him travel on such a ship. A slow but secure way to travel. The last time it had been to cross the Black Sea on his way to Russia. The captain had been talkative, happy to have someone new to pass the time with, and had many stories to share. Victor looked forward to the next such trip.

  The coffee was excellent, even for takeout from a street stall. The beans were not only freshly ground but freshly roasted. Instead of weeks from plant to cup, as he was used to in Europe, it was but hours here. The downside was it was too good to take his time over. If an enemy attacked him now, he would receive nothing more than a few lukewarm drops in the face as way of discouragement.

  The giant ship neared the port. On its deck were thousands of containers, piled neat and high. In one of them was a rifle. Of course, it was impossible to tell which container held the weapon, but that didn’t stop Victor from using binoculars to watch the ship moor and the tall cranes begin to unload.

  Over the course of the morning the cranes ferried the containers to different areas of the port, stacking them in smaller piles depending on both space and consignment. Of all the crates, some were separated from the rest and delivered to an area where they were opened and their contents examined by men with clipboards. The distance was too great and the line of sight too restrictive to provide Victor with any hope of seeing if the rifle was found, but he could measure the reaction of the inspectors.

  They would be used to finding undocumented cargo that no duty had been paid on, not weapons. Victor expected a rifle would cause a something of a furor.

  With so many containers, they might check twenty, giving only a slim chance they would open the right one. There would be other cargo within the container, and the rifle would be d
isguised, further reducing the chances of discovery, but hoping for the best wasn’t part of Victor’s professional philosophy. So he watched and waited and tried hard to read body language and behavior.

  Should the rifle be discovered, it wouldn’t take any effort to find out who sent it and who was due to collect it, and a welcoming party could be arranged to greet Victor when he did. That could happen only with police involvement, which he would see coming. Agents would be sent to the port. They would inspect the container and the rifle. They would stand out from the dockworkers and inspectors. They would be wearing hard hats too, but also smart clothes. There would be no difficulty distinguishing them from managers, because they would be treated with a certain amount of curiosity and reverence, instead of fear and disdain.

  He waited all morning and all afternoon too. A hot sun burned off the mist and blazed down on Victor, who had dressed in readiness with light clothing and a hat. He grew tired of standing. His arms were weary from holding the binoculars up so long. His eyes were feeling the strain too. He didn’t get bored, however. He was never bored when his life or freedom were at stake. He took breaks when the inspectors did, and while they worked, he did too.

  By the end of the working day, the inspectors with clipboards left and no more containers were checked. No police officers arrived either.

  Victor checked his e-mail. He had a message from the shipping company.

  The package would be ready for collection in the morning.

  • Chapter 59 •

  Assembled, the AX50 weighed more than fifteen kilograms. But stripped down, no single piece weighed more than five. With the aid of some bungee cords, he was able to strap the disassembled weapon into the chassis of his pickup, utilizing the plates he had welded to support the larger pieces. A thorough inspection of the vehicle would find those pieces without too much trouble, but such an inspection was almost beyond probability. If he were stopped by curious police or suspicious sicarios, they would check inside the cab and the load bed. They would need to suspect he had a weapon hidden beneath the vehicle to warrant someone sliding under there to take a look.

  He took the rifle far from Puerto Barrios, far into the countryside. He already had a place picked where he could be alone, where the sound of gunshots wouldn’t reach anyone else’s ears. He spent most of the day practicing with the rifle, familiarizing himself with a weapon he hadn’t used in a long time. By nightfall, his shoulder ached but his shooting was as good as ever.

  He drove through the night, rifle again stashed in the vehicle’s chassis, crossing the country from east to west, but not as far as Guatemala City. He wanted to store the weapon where it was needed, for when it was needed.

  The roads here were not well used, and he had seen no other vehicles in half an hour. He slowed almost to a crawl to make sure he didn’t miss the turn onto the dirt track that took him within a mile of the abandoned shack. The pickup was impossible to hide, and trying to disguise it would only create suspicion should it be found.

  With a penlight between his teeth he slid beneath the vehicle and retrieved the AX50’s parts, placing each one into a sports bag after wrapping it in newspaper to both muffle any sound and protect the more delicate parts from the heavier ones.

  He switched off the penlight and spent fifteen minutes still and quiet in the darkness until his eyes had adjusted back to the starlight before he set off into the brush.

  Dawn was an hour away. The night sky to the east had a thin blue line across it.

  In the darkness, it was hard to check the surrounding area for signs anyone had been to the shack since his previous visit, but he did what he could. He set the sports bag down in the undergrowth and approached the building with his Glock drawn and out before him. He had been here before, which meant it was a good place for an ambush.

  Such an ambush would be possible only if the ambusher or ambushers knew when he was due to return, which would be impossible. He still approached with caution, however, because the next best thing to an ambush would be a booby trap. A Claymore mine behind the door, rigged to a filament trip wire, would be perfect. Which was why Victor ignored the door and scaled the shack’s north facade—simple enough to climb with lots of handholds provided by the uneven timbers—and eased up the windowpane he had left a little open last time.

  He slithered inside the opening and crouched in the darkness, redrawing the pistol, having tucked it into his waistband for the short climb. In his free hand he used the penlight to examine the interior of the shack.

  There was no Claymore behind the door. No other booby trap or IED.

  The dust-caked cobweb, however, was gone.

  He checked where it had hung, stretched between timbers, and found traces of broken spider silk. Victor examined the shack. He checked everywhere. He searched for any sign, no matter how small, someone else had been here, but he found none. The web hadn’t fallen apart by itself. Victor knew he had not disturbed it either, which meant someone had been here in the past week, but had left no other signs of their presence. No condom, no drug paraphernalia, no empty glass bottle. Whoever had opened the door hadn’t used the shack for anything. So why had they been inside?

  Only one answer: they were looking for Victor.

  Four people knew he was in the country. Phoenix had no reason to betray him, especially so early into their arrangement, and especially given their pact of mutually assured destruction. Similarly, Georg knew better than to turn on him. Which left Lavandier and Heloise. He doubted Lavandier had the means to organize a vengeful response to Victor’s refusal of his offer with such speed, and Heloise had no reason to wish him harm. If the job was a charade, she had invested more time, energy, and money into it than was necessary.

  There was another explanation, however. One that did make sense.

  They were keeping an eye on him. Someone was shadowing him or else tracking his movements. Maybe they didn’t trust his motives or his skills. Perhaps that someone was insurance. Perhaps that someone had the same objective as Victor.

  “We don’t do things by halves,” he remembered Lavandier telling him in Madrid.

  So, another assassin. Another professional tasked with killing Maria. One who had come to the same conclusion as Victor regarding the shack’s viability as a sniping point, and performed his or her own reconnaissance, composing his or her own plan.

  Did that assassin know about him?

  Yes, was the answer, because he had left something behind. Victor hadn’t seen it at first because it was so small, almost invisible against the floor in the dim light.

  A leaf.

  Seemingly insignificant, seemingly a natural occurrence among the dust and the dirt and the debris, having been blown or trodden inside. It was too fresh, though, not brown or blackened. Still green. Still moist. He examined it with a close eye. It had fallen, at least, instead of being picked, but it had fallen recently. Within the past few days. Victor hadn’t brought it inside, and it hadn’t ended up on the floor by the door by chance but by deliberate placement.

  Had Victor entered through the door, the draft would have disturbed its careful placement. He noted how it was placed with its tiny stalk lying along a gap between floorboards, making it easy to see if it had been disturbed.

  Victor had seen nothing similar by the window upstairs, so he checked again. He had not missed anything. Whoever had placed the leaf by the door had not anticipated Victor entering the shack through the window. Which was interesting, and told Victor the other assassin was not much of a climber, else not limber enough to slip through small windows. A very tall man then, which was consistent with the broken cobweb. Tall and not athletic. Ungainly. Such a man would stand out to Victor’s watchful gaze. He thought back through his recent experiences, scanning his memory for such a figure in the crowd of a street, on a bus or train, or sitting in a hotel lobby.

  No one. Whoever he was, he must have k
ept his distance.

  The assassin also lacked the ability to envision tactics beyond those he would employ himself. He would not be able to gain entry to the shack through the window so did not conceive someone else would. So, a proficient sniper, able to deduce from his own skill set the suitability of the shack. That alone was enough to make him dangerous.

  The only question remaining was whether the assassin was merely in competition with Victor, or a direct threat.

  • Chapter 60 •

  A client breaking the terms of his employment was neither a surprise nor something new. It was more common than not that those who hired contract killers could not themselves be trusted. Victor expected betrayal. It was part of the business he was in. He was making a fresh start, but the world remained the same around him. He wasn’t yet sure how best to respond.

  Another hot and humid day greeted Victor as he left the hotel. The sky was more yellow than blue, the bright sunlight diffusing through polluted air heavy with noise and the acrid taste of exhaust fumes. Victor’s sunglasses were already in place, as protocol demanded. Putting them on outside created avoidable vulnerability. For an instant he was distracted, unaware, unable to keep watch on his surroundings. Far better to do so in a hotel lobby, without the risk of potential snipers or drive-bys.

  It was early afternoon and he was hungry for breakfast. He took a circular route from the hotel, often doubling back, using frequent and sudden changes of direction, sometimes walking, sometimes using public transport. A hot-dog stand was his ultimate destination, and it took him more than an hour to make the ten-minute journey. He was ravenous by the time he placed his order, but it would be worth it.

  The guy serving the hot dogs wore sunglasses, even in the shade of the truck. He had a slicked-back ponytail wrapped up in a hairnet. He wore a single latex glove—so he could check his phone between customers, Victor realized.